The reality is that the rise of America coincided with a very strange period for others: colonization and WWII. As countries have rebuilt after the devastation of colonization and WWII, expect more competition for America and a more even distribution of capabilities and wealth.
There is so much wrong with this statement that it is hard to know where to begin. The whole arguement is appallingly bad economics. Maybe it is a troll, but I doubt it, so I'll respond to it. This is a big myth that it is going to be bad for the United States (or whatever other country is dominant) if countries that are currently mired in all kinds of third world problems manage to pull themselves out of that mire and join the "first world." This is completely wrong, in fact, if we look at the objections to the H-1B program, we see that what is causing the problem is that people are exploiting the disparity of wages between the United States and the third world. The reality is that the temporary immigrant labor situation is caused by this disparity of wages. If India becomes an economic powerhouse it will be good for everyone in the world, including the United States.
This goes back to the old myth that the Japanese auto industry was harming Americans. In fact it was the corrupt and inneficient American auto industry that was harming Americans, the rise of the Japanese auto industry was good for Americans in general. (The same can be said of the video game industry, where would that industry be today if not for Nintendo. How many Americans does that industry employ? I don't think the Nintendo of America headquaters in Washington state is empty, now is it?)
In fact, the best way to end the H-1B program would be for wages in India to improve enough that people there decided that the expense and hardship of coming to the US was not worth it when they could get a well paying job locally. (I'd prefer to see the H-1B program reformed before then, but it makes me fairly happy to know that eventually it will become economically unviable.)
Actually, not really. You see, when Parker's nervous system became linked with that of the alien symbiante, he was able to make it grow on command. And he could control its growth so what actually looked like webbing was actually alien symbiante gunk made to look like webbing. This is why Venom's "webbing" and Carnage's "webbing" can actually take many different forms.
Note, alien symbiante gunk is pretty great stuff, and I'm not disparaging it, but it has very little to do with spiders or webbing except for the fact that it was coincidentally picked up by the Amazing Spider-Man.
I've always thought that Wolverine would have similar problems with his lovers, except instead of accidentally getting everything sticky, he'd probably destroy everything.
Hmm... Something similar to that happened in a scene with him and Rogue in the X-men movie. Remember, he was having a nightmare and stabbed her through the chest?
Oh, and, ahem, they had a very similar plot device in last nights episode of The Invisible Man... ahem...
Ok, you do know that Spiderman often wore his Web shooters under his street clothes (and also often the whole costume except the mask.)
The "organic Web shooters" thing is implausable too. How come the Web shooters are conveniently located in his wrists? In those Spider-Goats they created, the spider silk protein is only produced by their genetically engineered mammary glands when they lactate. (Note, they are female spider-goats.) I mean this is a still the story of a young photographer who gets bitten by a radioactive spider, right? It isn't even remotely plausable that he would get "spider powers" from that. So, why are we worrying about "plausibility?"
So, if it doesn't bother me that it isn't plausible, why does it bother me? Because it was pretty cool that Parker could come up with cool technology when he needed to. What about the spider tracers that he could track via his spider sense? How are they going to explain those? More convenient organic tech? Raimi has boxed himself into a version of Spider-Man that has to become more and more divergent from canon.
Now, despite my disappointment with certain details of the plot, I'm not saying it is a bad movie. Sam Raimi has done pretty well with other stories. It'll be "his" Spider Man (as opposed to "the" Spider Man), but I worry that the evil suits had some influence on the film. I won't see it, of course, until one of my friends or family inevitably rents it (or worse, buys it). MPAA bad, Sony bad, after all.
Well, one reason why people in the U.S. don't like paying taxes is that the U. S. government uses taxes as a way to siphon money away from uppity working class people and give it to large, soulless corporations, almost exclusively.
I know it probably seems strange to you, but if we had anything like BBC fees in the U.S. they would take the money and give it to Omniglobalmegatech to design programming for TV which would consist of nothing but program length commercials for Omniglobalmegatech's products. If anyone complained, the Senator from Omniglobalmegatech would claim that people were trying to shut down TV, so no one would be able to watch TV at all.
This is the way taxes work in the United States, it's called "pork barrel politics." If this is not the way things work in Britain, then Britons are indeed fortunate.
I'm sure I just saw the Queen of England on TV the other day... although I do have an active imagination.
TV with no commercials? Wow, that'd be great! They'd start putting on the kind of TV I like. What kind of TV is that? TV with lots of toy (or video game) based merchandising. A good example is the fact that I just bought the "Big O" and "Big Duo" toys from Bandai. I bought those because I watched "Big O" on the cartoon network. (Good thing my brother has cable!)
I think the Simpson's would stay on, what with those electronic character sets and video game tie ins. Oh, and this would be the type of thing that would save shows like Futurama. Turner itself might've been a little less quick to cancel Crusade!
Of course some shows, shows that couldn't have toy or video game tie ins, well those would just have to be replaced by infomercials or something. However, all wouldn't be lost, if you still wanted serious dramatic shows you could contribute to PBS. People have been doing that for years...
Of course, a lot of other types of shows would be in trouble... but then, how much quality TV survives anyway? TV is already a lowest common denominator based medium. Lots of times shows get critical acclaim and the axe a few episodes later. Most of the tripe that survives is not worth saving....
Re:The main thing I think the article misses ...
on
The Next Generation
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· Score: 1
Not all cultures have this view of physical immortality:
It was at Lung Hu Shan (Mountains of Dragon and Tiger), renowned as the birthplace of Taoism, that first -generation Heavenly Master Chang Tao Ling founded Taoism at the end of the Han Dynasty more than 1,800 years ago. Chang Tao Ling had visited many well known mountains and rivers in China and finally settled on the imposing Mount Lung Hu where he made immortality pills called Chiu Tien ( Nine Heaven Spiritual Elixir) for 36 years. Lung Hu Shan has remained a sacred place of Taoism to the present 65th generation descendants of Chang Tao Ling. With the support of ancient dynasties Taoism developed rapidly in China. During the Ching Dynasty historical records document 230 palaces, temples, and pavilions at Lung Hu Shan. The Taoist skills of making immortality pills played and important role in the formation and development of ancient Chinese chemistry and herbology. The achievement of Taoist medicine in its contribution to Chinese medicine and the treatment of difficult and complicated illness was outstanding.
No, the judge said that video games are not speech (note spelling) in supporting a law that was aimed, supposedly, at minors. The law is actually aimed at being a defacto ban, which is probably why he decided to go as far in his ruling as he did. Basically, his ruling states that you can do anything you want as far as suppressing games, including an outright ban. (i.e. if the county of St. Louis wants to say you can't bring a game into the county limits, they can, according to this ruling.)
The IDSA cannot let this ruling stand, it is a threat to their business, so it won't stand. But Judge Limbaugh will get a lot of good press among the conservative wacko crowd.
I suppose it is possible they might start a war to distract the populace from these internal struggles. However, I think if they decide to do any kind of sophisticated info-war it will be aimed at Falun Dafa and not at the United States in general (unless as an anti-Falun Gong smear campaign). Of course, if they decide to invade Taiwan, all bets are off. In that case, though, we may find ourselves in a shooting war with them. Or maybe we'll wait until they decide to invade Japan, too, but it will eventually lead to a World War.
Remember, though, the current imperative of the Chinese government is to crush Falun Gong at all costs. It's more important than Taiwan to them, though Taiwan is still considered important, too.
...when I heard about things like this going on in places like Missouri or Minnesota. Oh and by the way, since this law is based on the Indianapolis ordinance then it is really designed to ban M rated arcade games by making it economically unfeasable to stock them. It doesn't matter about parental permissions, in order to keep M-rated games away from kids (according to the Indianapolis ordinance) you would have to basically change the architecture in your arcade. If you couldn't afford it or your arcade wasn't big enough to comply, tough. Arcade owners were removing eeevil games like Tekken from the arcades out of fear of the harsh penalties that would come down on them.
The judges statement,
Limbaugh said he reviewed four different video games and found "no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech. The court finds that video games have more in common with board games and sports than they do with motion pictures."
is obviously pure nonsense. Heck, need I point out the Salon article about State of emergency. Not that I think a judge (or anyone else in government) would like the message in State of Emergency. In fact, I am absolutely sure that if this judge gets a book in front of him where he doesn't like the message, he'll find some excuse to suppress it. However, that's beside the point, I can point out numerous games with political messages. I got so mad about a pro-gun control message in A Mind Forever Voyaging that I quit playing, I prefer the paranoid Libertarian message of Half Life.
But these things don't bother me as much as they used to. One reason is that the video game industry is obviously all grown up and can take care of themselves as part of the larger content industry. The other reason is that I think that these conservative, midwestern cities are just deliberately trying to stir up controversies. Maybe they want to show, "Hey, we big government conservatives can be just as intrusive and divisive as the most left wing commie fanatics out there."
I mean, how else would this judge get a chance to make a whole moral value judgement on a technology he happens to despise, and get carried everywhere in papers. (I've noticed that conservatives like to be in your face every bit as much as your left wing protest groups, they just have different ways of going about it.)
I mean, I hate hearing about it as much as I hate hearing about government oppression in any place.
Well, I used to work at Winn-Dixie and K-Mart (and this was after I had gotten a BA in English), and I think this is the stupidist idea I've ever heard. (I'm pretty angry right now, both at the idea of this tax and the number of people saying, "yeah, we should do that." After I've calmed down, I'm sure I'll be able to think of some stupider ideas. Well, maybe...)
I think you are right, though, people shouldn't assume that just because you take a job like that that you are uneducated (and even less that you are stupid). It's hard, though, when confronted by a "brilliant" idea like this tax.
Look, it seems that the Russians have figured out how to make a space program work for them and turn a profit. The Chinese look at a space program as a source of national pride. The United States, however, wants to treat the space program as an excuse to persecute people who believe in progress. The existence of NASA prevents commercial exploitation of space. Well if the United States doesn't want to be involved in the commercial exploitation of space, we should leave it to those who are.
It's obvious to anyone who is paying attention that the public doesn't want NASA. Even though I'm pro-space I don't want NASA either. I mean Challenger exploded because politics demanded that it go up in weather that was too cold so Reagan could look good on TV. The lack of flexibility in the O ring that the cold weather caused was what caused the Challenger to explode. The engineers were over-ruled by the politicians in this case and people died for that. Politics will always win over good science at NASA. Why are we so hot to preserve this system, especially at the loss of our freedom?
More taxes specifically on SF mean less SF. It will be a great way to keep the people from dreaming of the future. Also, it will be great because as SF becomes less popular, interest in NASA will wane. At which point, they'll jack up the SF tax and reduce funding for NASA. Eventually NASA will be gone and we'll have a great new tax on intellectual malcontents, and a way of suppressing speech. (Oh, someones writing a new science fiction novel criticizing the government? Let's raise the tax to 1000%)
Yes, but demonizing hacker's is a necessary part of the RIAA and MPAA plan to destroy the ability of computers to function properly. After all, it's a necessary part of getting people to accept men and women being thrown into the horrors of the American Criminal "Justice" System for the crime of repairing their sold-broken computer so that it will work properly when the MPAA and RIAA insist that it stay broken.
These people will be hackers in the tradition you have described, they will also be hunted criminals for the government to "make examples" out of.
Hmm, how many years before we are living in the world of Jin Roh, I wonder....
Music is in the air! That's why I am often subjected to music that I don't like (and certainly didn't pay for). It was quite a bone of contention with my neighbors in my last apartment. They enjoyed listening to their music loudly on their very expensive stereo, and the apartment's paper thin walls made it a challenge for me to avoid listening to it!
I know, I know, that isn't what he meant. He meant it figuratively, but music is sound which is conducted mostly by air, so music is, literally, in the air. (It was also in the walls of my apartment, as well, obviously.)
And one could argue that copying a paper is even worse with the producer's consent than without. After all, in the first case only one person is corrupt, in the second case it is two people.
In fact, she's taken a context (copying an A paper to get a good grade) where there is no moral way to copy!
Slashdot Mirror
That's a sweeping generalization. Heck, there are people on /. who post pro-MPAA and pro-RIAA stuff every now and then.
It doesn't help your argument to generalize to all. (Heck, there are even some manager types on here who want to increase the H-1B cap.)
Of course, I probably just replied to a troll...
There is so much wrong with this statement that it is hard to know where to begin. The whole arguement is appallingly bad economics. Maybe it is a troll, but I doubt it, so I'll respond to it. This is a big myth that it is going to be bad for the United States (or whatever other country is dominant) if countries that are currently mired in all kinds of third world problems manage to pull themselves out of that mire and join the "first world." This is completely wrong, in fact, if we look at the objections to the H-1B program, we see that what is causing the problem is that people are exploiting the disparity of wages between the United States and the third world. The reality is that the temporary immigrant labor situation is caused by this disparity of wages. If India becomes an economic powerhouse it will be good for everyone in the world, including the United States.
This goes back to the old myth that the Japanese auto industry was harming Americans. In fact it was the corrupt and inneficient American auto industry that was harming Americans, the rise of the Japanese auto industry was good for Americans in general. (The same can be said of the video game industry, where would that industry be today if not for Nintendo. How many Americans does that industry employ? I don't think the Nintendo of America headquaters in Washington state is empty, now is it?)
In fact, the best way to end the H-1B program would be for wages in India to improve enough that people there decided that the expense and hardship of coming to the US was not worth it when they could get a well paying job locally. (I'd prefer to see the H-1B program reformed before then, but it makes me fairly happy to know that eventually it will become economically unviable.)
Note, alien symbiante gunk is pretty great stuff, and I'm not disparaging it, but it has very little to do with spiders or webbing except for the fact that it was coincidentally picked up by the Amazing Spider-Man.
Hmm... Something similar to that happened in a scene with him and Rogue in the X-men movie. Remember, he was having a nightmare and stabbed her through the chest?
Oh, and, ahem, they had a very similar plot device in last nights episode of The Invisible Man... ahem...
Sorry for the multiple mispellings of Spider-Man...
Ok, you do know that Spiderman often wore his Web shooters under his street clothes (and also often the whole costume except the mask.)
The "organic Web shooters" thing is implausable too. How come the Web shooters are conveniently located in his wrists? In those Spider-Goats they created, the spider silk protein is only produced by their genetically engineered mammary glands when they lactate. (Note, they are female spider-goats.) I mean this is a still the story of a young photographer who gets bitten by a radioactive spider, right? It isn't even remotely plausable that he would get "spider powers" from that. So, why are we worrying about "plausibility?"
So, if it doesn't bother me that it isn't plausible, why does it bother me? Because it was pretty cool that Parker could come up with cool technology when he needed to. What about the spider tracers that he could track via his spider sense? How are they going to explain those? More convenient organic tech? Raimi has boxed himself into a version of Spider-Man that has to become more and more divergent from canon.
Now, despite my disappointment with certain details of the plot, I'm not saying it is a bad movie. Sam Raimi has done pretty well with other stories. It'll be "his" Spider Man (as opposed to "the" Spider Man), but I worry that the evil suits had some influence on the film. I won't see it, of course, until one of my friends or family inevitably rents it (or worse, buys it). MPAA bad, Sony bad, after all.
This is the kind of thing you'd expect from Adobe, who's corporate motto is "We put Dmitry in prison."
It is called the Constitution. Please see the following article:
The Social Contract and Constitutional Republics
I know it probably seems strange to you, but if we had anything like BBC fees in the U.S. they would take the money and give it to Omniglobalmegatech to design programming for TV which would consist of nothing but program length commercials for Omniglobalmegatech's products. If anyone complained, the Senator from Omniglobalmegatech would claim that people were trying to shut down TV, so no one would be able to watch TV at all.
This is the way taxes work in the United States, it's called "pork barrel politics." If this is not the way things work in Britain, then Britons are indeed fortunate.
I'm sure I just saw the Queen of England on TV the other day... although I do have an active imagination.
A more upbeat story along the same lines is "Magic, Inc." also by Heinlein.
I think the Simpson's would stay on, what with those electronic character sets and video game tie ins. Oh, and this would be the type of thing that would save shows like Futurama. Turner itself might've been a little less quick to cancel Crusade!
Of course some shows, shows that couldn't have toy or video game tie ins, well those would just have to be replaced by infomercials or something. However, all wouldn't be lost, if you still wanted serious dramatic shows you could contribute to PBS. People have been doing that for years...
Of course, a lot of other types of shows would be in trouble... but then, how much quality TV survives anyway? TV is already a lowest common denominator based medium. Lots of times shows get critical acclaim and the axe a few episodes later. Most of the tripe that survives is not worth saving....
My reply from Senator Bill Nelson of Florida
Or has he changed it since then? (Oh, and does he still include the Post Script about Anthrax?)
This will more likely lead to a crackdown on illegal guns as guns are already strictly controlled in Germany as well.
Dreamcast uses Planetweb for surfing.
Tai Hsuan Foundation
The Resident of Evil Creek
as his fourth game, plus Doom, Mortal Combat(that's how he spelled it), and Fear Effect.
So, the fourth game of the ruling was made up as well ;-)
It's obvious that he had decided without even looking at the games.
The IDSA cannot let this ruling stand, it is a threat to their business, so it won't stand. But Judge Limbaugh will get a lot of good press among the conservative wacko crowd.
Remember, though, the current imperative of the Chinese government is to crush Falun Gong at all costs. It's more important than Taiwan to them, though Taiwan is still considered important, too.
The judges statement,
is obviously pure nonsense. Heck, need I point out the Salon article about State of emergency. Not that I think a judge (or anyone else in government) would like the message in State of Emergency. In fact, I am absolutely sure that if this judge gets a book in front of him where he doesn't like the message, he'll find some excuse to suppress it. However, that's beside the point, I can point out numerous games with political messages. I got so mad about a pro-gun control message in A Mind Forever Voyaging that I quit playing, I prefer the paranoid Libertarian message of Half Life.But these things don't bother me as much as they used to. One reason is that the video game industry is obviously all grown up and can take care of themselves as part of the larger content industry. The other reason is that I think that these conservative, midwestern cities are just deliberately trying to stir up controversies. Maybe they want to show, "Hey, we big government conservatives can be just as intrusive and divisive as the most left wing commie fanatics out there."
I mean, how else would this judge get a chance to make a whole moral value judgement on a technology he happens to despise, and get carried everywhere in papers. (I've noticed that conservatives like to be in your face every bit as much as your left wing protest groups, they just have different ways of going about it.)
I mean, I hate hearing about it as much as I hate hearing about government oppression in any place.
Of course, it is not nearly as big as Falun Gong protesters paying the price for taking over the cable service in Changchun province in the People's Republic of China. (Which I'm surprised wasn't covered here on Slashdot as it was a clever hack in the service of free speech, peaceful protest, and justice for people who are being tortured and murdered for their belief systems.)
I do think we will get there (in the United States) soon though, probably within my lifetime. But we aren't there yet.
I think you are right, though, people shouldn't assume that just because you take a job like that that you are uneducated (and even less that you are stupid). It's hard, though, when confronted by a "brilliant" idea like this tax.
It's obvious to anyone who is paying attention that the public doesn't want NASA. Even though I'm pro-space I don't want NASA either. I mean Challenger exploded because politics demanded that it go up in weather that was too cold so Reagan could look good on TV. The lack of flexibility in the O ring that the cold weather caused was what caused the Challenger to explode. The engineers were over-ruled by the politicians in this case and people died for that. Politics will always win over good science at NASA. Why are we so hot to preserve this system, especially at the loss of our freedom?
More taxes specifically on SF mean less SF. It will be a great way to keep the people from dreaming of the future. Also, it will be great because as SF becomes less popular, interest in NASA will wane. At which point, they'll jack up the SF tax and reduce funding for NASA. Eventually NASA will be gone and we'll have a great new tax on intellectual malcontents, and a way of suppressing speech. (Oh, someones writing a new science fiction novel criticizing the government? Let's raise the tax to 1000%)
These people will be hackers in the tradition you have described, they will also be hunted criminals for the government to "make examples" out of.
Hmm, how many years before we are living in the world of Jin Roh, I wonder....
Music isn't just in the air.
Music is in the air! That's why I am often subjected to music that I don't like (and certainly didn't pay for). It was quite a bone of contention with my neighbors in my last apartment. They enjoyed listening to their music loudly on their very expensive stereo, and the apartment's paper thin walls made it a challenge for me to avoid listening to it!
I know, I know, that isn't what he meant. He meant it figuratively, but music is sound which is conducted mostly by air, so music is, literally, in the air. (It was also in the walls of my apartment, as well, obviously.)
In fact, she's taken a context (copying an A paper to get a good grade) where there is no moral way to copy!
Internet Cafe's are big in Third World Countries where they are legal and even in some where they aren't.