One thing really missing is a national or perhaps even a global unique "company ID". Law makers are so eager to tag and trace individuals, but ignore company tracking. It is time for a national company-ID number.
Every company that pays US taxes is assigned a Tax ID. Been around forever. I used to be able to rattle off Tax IDs for about half of the Fortune 500 due to my job. What possible good would it do to identify companies by a number rather than a name? The problem is fraudulent companies, not an inability to identify them by number.
The sequel to the game you are looking for is Jedi Academy, and IMHO is a better game. In addition to the standard lightsaber, you have the choice of dual lightsabers or the double bladed saber used by Darth Maul. JA was so good that I went out and bought Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast after the fact, just so I could duel sabers again in the single player. Both games worth every penny if you ask me. I played JA through 4 times, and will probably play it again.
I test software for a living, and the methodologies I use apply in any field: from lab work to consumer product review, we all essentially do the same thing. Scientific method, anyone?
What a lot of people don't realize is designing a test for anything sufficiently complicated is hard. There are so many variables. In a crash test, for example, how tall is your driver, and how much does he weigh? Is the pavement wet? What is the temperature outside, and how does that affect brake efficency? Is there any wind blowing? You get the idea. With so many variables, you have to decide what to control for, and ignore the rest. You just have to hope that you picked the right variables.
And then how do you measure it? What metrics do you gather? Does gathering those metrics affect the test?
When you look at any test results, there are two things you must consider: who your tester is (do you trust your tester to control the variables he said he controlled), and the methodology used. It is up to you to decide if what was being tested is what actually matters to you. CR has been held beyond reproach by the courts, so you can't argue with their ability to run a test. You can disagree with their methodology, but it is not like they keep that secret. If they weren't the tests you were looking for, go somewhere else. For the vast majority of consumers, what they do is spot on.
It also adds bloat to the code, takes more resources from the computer, means less people are actually able to play the game, causes more chance of bugs to show up. And generally pisses the end user off. Remember this isn't like the one time activation of Windows XP, this kind of draconian piracy checking is bad business policy. A great game shouldn't have things tacked onto it that make it worse, it should just be a great game.
You obviously never played Counter-Strike, the game that kept the original HL engine alive for years.
The best reason to do draconian pirate checking is to cut down on cheaters, not pirates. Nothing ruins a multiplayer game faster than some assshole with an aimbot. I suspect that Valve realized that the people willing to pirate software were also more likely to cheat. All the extra Steam stuff makes cheating a serious PITA, and if you catch someone doing it, you can ban them all the more easily - CD keys are harder to come by. As an honest player and purchaser, I welcome Valve's efforts to enforce honesty in their world. It doesn't piss me off in the slightest.
Collaboration with an evil is as good as being evil. Sorry Google. Perhaps we could add an additional meaning to the phrase "to google?" Activities like talking endlessly about how good you are, and then silently supporting the worlds largest oppressive regime would fall into that category. It is almost like bad science fiction. There is no excuse for enabling oppression. I don't care about markets. This gives the average Chinese citizen the impression that the rest of the world (e.g. google) supports their intellectual imprisonment. Conversely, having a site like google firewalled would underline the level of their oppression.
In the world that I live in there is this thing called compromise. And Big-Picture world view. Principles and ideology are great, but in the real world they often get in the way of doing the right thing.
Any coward can die for what he believes in. It is easy to die. Its much harder to live and bear the burden of compromising your principles for what you know is a long term good. Trading with China is short-term bad, long-term probably a whole lot better than the alternative.
This is why idealists tend to be young. They aren't old enough to have had to compromise.
Google is smart enough to start small. You can't win if you don't play. Good
for them.
Valve's commitment to their community is unprecendented throughout the industry. Seriously. CounterStrike was one of the top online games for *years* - and remember, it started life as a mod. This is because of Valve's commitment.
IF such a worst case scenario happened, and IF it happened in such a time frame that you still even *remember* HL2, I can't imagine that Valve would neglect this community. They'd release a way to unlock the game.
As a competitve CS player a while back, I got to witness first hand how active Valve was with their community. They spent thousands of man hours supporting a game that was FREE (if you owned HL), and the work of a non-Valve developer. The can afford to have 6 year development cycles because they know their user base is loyal, and the mod community heavily active - because they take care of them.
Caveat:
Valve abused that relationship about a year before HL2's release. They released a half finished version of CounterStrike (Condition Zero) that had been eagerly anticipated by CS fans that ended up being a bitter disappointment. In addition, it had to work with the obviously beta-quality version of Steam. It was pretty obvious that Valve was using the CS community to work out the bugs with their distribution platform prior to the release of HL2. Their actions following the release of HL2 in the mod community will determine whether or not the company has had a change in philosophy regarding their customers, or whether this was an isolated incident (CS:CZ was written on the original HL engine - it could be that once the Source engine was finished the dev team realized that it would eclipse CS:CZ, and decided to cut their losses and release what they had).
Oh I'll bitch about my taxes. I'll bitch about those people who want to live in inaccessable areas and expect me to pay for their roads and sewers.
Personally, I would love to see a rule that any tax money collected has to be spent in the county where it was collected.
I call bullshit. The largest archeological site in North America is just outside of St. Louis, in Cahokia, Illinois. This is the site of the largest Mississippian settlement known, dating back 13,000 years. It has a museum, active digs, and an archaeological club where enthuisiasts can join and participate in active digs. My mom is a member, and went on a dig last month. I've been there (and walked on the mound, which took hundreds of years to build, and involved millions of tons of earth.)
I have no idea what agenda you are pushing, but the idea that ancient sites in the Americas are not being actively worked is patently false. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Word actually used in Hebrew scriptures is "almah" (="young woman").
Hebrew word which could have been used, but wasn't, was "bethulah" (="virgin").
The Septuagint is a version of the Old Testament prepared in the 3rd century BC by Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew sciptures into Greek for the Greek-speaking Jewish community.
In translating for the Septuagint, "almah" was translated as "parthenos" (="virgin").
Thus, Isaiah's prophecy in the original Hebrew states that the Messiah would be conceived by an "almah" (="young woman"), whereas the Greek translation in the Septuagint version of Isaiah refers to a "parthenos" (="virgin").
I dabbled as a religion major for a while before going to tech. I changed majors when I developed my first axiom of religion:
1. As soon as a religion becomes organized, it begins to make decisions that favor the well-being of the organization, rather than the spiritual well-being of its adherents.
The apocryphal gospels are a perfect example of this principle in action. The single common thread amongst all the aprocryphal gospels is that relationship with G-d is personal; that Jesus was the Son of Man (as opposed to the son of G-d), and therefore his acheivements were within all of humanity's reach. (Book of Mary goes the furthest on this). More importantly, they all emphasized that no intermediary was necessary to interact with G-d. Obviously, priests are not happy with this assertion, and so that is why (I believe) that these books were omitted.
Another example is Aquinas and original sin. What a bastard. The concept that one is damned simply by being born delivers all the power to the preisthood, and has fucked up Catholics for the last few centuries. Talk about unnecessary guilt.
Every instance I have studied where a decision on dogma was made where there was a pontential for a reduction in power of the Christian church, the decision came down on the side of the church. (Duh.) It's just common sense. My point is, good or bad, this is human nature, and as consumers of religion, people should be aware of this phenomenon. It is why I am so big on spirituality in general, and why I am so down on it in practice. True spirituality is a relationship between yourself and the divine, however you happen to envision it. It should never be confused with religion. Religion seems to be more about controlling people and starting wars, if you ask me.
hyperbole
A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton.
[Latin hyperbol, from Greek huperbol, excess, from huperballein, to exceed : huper, beyond; see hyper- + ballein, to throw; see gwel- in Indo-European Roots.]
I don't think it is acceptable to leave anyone behind. Just becasue a child is poor and his parents happen to be assholes doesn't mean that he isn't deserving of our help and attention.
In response to the grandparent...
Let's follow you logic through. Let's say through vouchers you reduce the population of a school by 10%, but because vouchers only take part of the money away, that funding decreases by 5%. Does a ten percent drop in students mean that building maintenance is 10% less? Can you lay off 10% of your teachers? Anyone that shops at Sams can tell you that the price per unit goes down the more units you have. They can also tell you that if you buy the Tub O Peanut Butter, and the Jar O Peanut Butter which is half the size of the Tub, the price isn't 50% less. So a 10% reduction in students does not automatically translate to a 10% reduction in costs.
Finally, someone who gets it!
Please don't confuse the fact that I disagree with you with misunderstanding the situation. I don't think it is acceptable to write off any of America's children, and the fact that you do proves to me that you, like most other neocons I've met, are a dick.
I can't believe intelligent people actually believe in this "No Child Left Behind" voucher crap. Geez.
Let me spell this out for you:
1. The single greatest predictor of academic performance is income level. Speculate why all you want, there it is.
2. Vouchers only cover a portion of private school tuition. THOSE FUNDS ARE TAKEN AWAY FROM THE PUBLIC SCHOOL WHEN A CHILD LEAVES. Public schools are funded per student.
3. Poor people are the ones most in need of relief in the educational system (see #1). However, they are also the least likely to be able to afford the remainder of private school tuition - the stuff not covered by the voucher - not to mention the added transportation burdens, etc.
So, what voucher systems do is provide the wealthiest children in a district (i.e. the ones most capable of incurring the extra costs of private school) with a means of taking money away from the children WHO ARE LEFT BEHIND at a failing public school. Its the stupidest thing I have ever heard, and I can't believe intelligent people are still talking like it is a good thing.
Course, I do live smack in the middle of "Jesusland", so I'm not nearly as incredulous as I should be.
Ever wonder why Slashdot seems so liberal to you? Maybe because liberalism, education, and IQ all correlate? Why do you think it is that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to define yourself as "liberal"?
I've become convinced that people who vote Republican overwhelmingly fall into three categories: single issue voters who would vote for anyone who claims to be anti-choice, callous blood sucking bastards who care for nothing but the size of their wallets and dicks, and the woefully ignorant and uniformed. Which one are you?
The single greatest political achievement of the modern era is how the Republican party has convinced so many people to consistently vote against their own best interests.
I would dispute the notion that throughout history, smaller forces won because of "heart". From Thermopylae to Agincourt, smaller forces win because they are better trained, better equiped, and take better advantage of terrain. I cannot think of a single instance where a smaller force has carried the day where one of the three above conditions was not met.
All things being equal, the unit with more "heart" will fare better. However, true students of war realize that things are never equal on the battlefield. One side will always have the advantage, and that side will always win - whether or not the advantage to either side is evident at the outset. The notion that "heart" can carry the day is how generals get troops who would otherwise flee (and wisely so) to march off to die.
The chaos won't contribute at all to making the secret service's job difficult. Ask any physical security specialist: It is almost impossible to stop an individual acting alone who is willing to sacrifice his life to accomplish his objective. It is the same as security through obscurity - it just plain doesn't work.
The secret to physical security is the same as computer security - make the payoff not worth the cost. In other words, stop making people so pissed they are willing to die to kill you.
You have said that recent CIA estimates of the instability and dire situation in Iraq represent the CIA "just guessing." Since you are choosing to disregard the intelligence community's considered assessment of the situation, on what basis do you formulate your contrary assessment of the situation in Iraq?
So was the CIA "just guessing" when you used their estimates to justify the war in the first place? Or are they "just guessing" only whenever their analysis doesn't support your position?
If you had read the article, you would realize that though you might be pissed, he doesn't need your permission. This portion of copyright law dates back to the player piano days, where it was ruled that a flat fee is paid to the artist being "covered". You don't need permission to sample music, you just need to pay the fee.
The solution to the price of video games is simple: find a source of reviews you trust.
I'm 30+ years old, and was on a business trip, I had nothing to read on the flight over. Embarassed, I bought a copy of PC Gamer magazine to entertain my exhausted brain. Best 8 bucks I ever spent. I agreed with every review I read of games I owned. I have gone against their recommendation only once since, and was very disappointed (LOTR: ROTK for PC - PC Gamer rating 69% maybe?).
They use a very granular rating system (0-100%), and have honest, in depth reviews. Look at it this way - if trying it out stops you from blowing
your $50 on just one game, it has paid for itself for 6 months.
It doesn't have to be PC Gamer, just find one you trust. Personally, I think the fact that good review material - be it movies, music or games - is available to those who seek it out nullifies the argument of "they're too expennsive; try before you buy". I save more time (by not downloading crap to see what it is like) and money (by only buying games I know I am going to like) by investing a few bucks a month in a "child's" magazine.
Slashdot Mirror
One thing really missing is a national or perhaps even a global unique "company ID". Law makers are so eager to tag and trace individuals, but ignore company tracking. It is time for a national company-ID number. Every company that pays US taxes is assigned a Tax ID. Been around forever. I used to be able to rattle off Tax IDs for about half of the Fortune 500 due to my job. What possible good would it do to identify companies by a number rather than a name? The problem is fraudulent companies, not an inability to identify them by number.
The sequel to the game you are looking for is Jedi Academy, and IMHO is a better game. In addition to the standard lightsaber, you have the choice of dual lightsabers or the double bladed saber used by Darth Maul. JA was so good that I went out and bought Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast after the fact, just so I could duel sabers again in the single player. Both games worth every penny if you ask me. I played JA through 4 times, and will probably play it again.
What a lot of people don't realize is designing a test for anything sufficiently complicated is hard. There are so many variables. In a crash test, for example, how tall is your driver, and how much does he weigh? Is the pavement wet? What is the temperature outside, and how does that affect brake efficency? Is there any wind blowing? You get the idea. With so many variables, you have to decide what to control for, and ignore the rest. You just have to hope that you picked the right variables.
And then how do you measure it? What metrics do you gather? Does gathering those metrics affect the test?
When you look at any test results, there are two things you must consider: who your tester is (do you trust your tester to control the variables he said he controlled), and the methodology used. It is up to you to decide if what was being tested is what actually matters to you. CR has been held beyond reproach by the courts, so you can't argue with their ability to run a test. You can disagree with their methodology, but it is not like they keep that secret. If they weren't the tests you were looking for, go somewhere else. For the vast majority of consumers, what they do is spot on.
You obviously never played Counter-Strike, the game that kept the original HL engine alive for years.
The best reason to do draconian pirate checking is to cut down on cheaters, not pirates. Nothing ruins a multiplayer game faster than some assshole with an aimbot. I suspect that Valve realized that the people willing to pirate software were also more likely to cheat. All the extra Steam stuff makes cheating a serious PITA, and if you catch someone doing it, you can ban them all the more easily - CD keys are harder to come by. As an honest player and purchaser, I welcome Valve's efforts to enforce honesty in their world. It doesn't piss me off in the slightest.
In the world that I live in there is this thing called compromise. And Big-Picture world view. Principles and ideology are great, but in the real world they often get in the way of doing the right thing.
Any coward can die for what he believes in. It is easy to die. Its much harder to live and bear the burden of compromising your principles for what you know is a long term good. Trading with China is short-term bad, long-term probably a whole lot better than the alternative.
This is why idealists tend to be young. They aren't old enough to have had to compromise.
Google is smart enough to start small. You can't win if you don't play. Good for them.
IF such a worst case scenario happened, and IF it happened in such a time frame that you still even *remember* HL2, I can't imagine that Valve would neglect this community. They'd release a way to unlock the game.
As a competitve CS player a while back, I got to witness first hand how active Valve was with their community. They spent thousands of man hours supporting a game that was FREE (if you owned HL), and the work of a non-Valve developer. The can afford to have 6 year development cycles because they know their user base is loyal, and the mod community heavily active - because they take care of them.
Caveat: Valve abused that relationship about a year before HL2's release. They released a half finished version of CounterStrike (Condition Zero) that had been eagerly anticipated by CS fans that ended up being a bitter disappointment. In addition, it had to work with the obviously beta-quality version of Steam. It was pretty obvious that Valve was using the CS community to work out the bugs with their distribution platform prior to the release of HL2. Their actions following the release of HL2 in the mod community will determine whether or not the company has had a change in philosophy regarding their customers, or whether this was an isolated incident (CS:CZ was written on the original HL engine - it could be that once the Source engine was finished the dev team realized that it would eclipse CS:CZ, and decided to cut their losses and release what they had).
Go ahead. I'm sure corporations would be happy to absorb that cost and pass it right back to you as they are shipping goods to your town.
The majority of tax revenue is corporate tax base. I'm sur ethat is the case for personal taxes, but not for corporate.
Oh I'll bitch about my taxes. I'll bitch about those people who want to live in inaccessable areas and expect me to pay for their roads and sewers. Personally, I would love to see a rule that any tax money collected has to be spent in the county where it was collected.
A dozen roaches can live off the glue on the back of a stamp for a month. Good luck.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679 724532/103-6585950-7191037?v=glance
I retract all of my previous statements. I got my dates wrong. I am an ass. Please don't flame me.
I have no idea what agenda you are pushing, but the idea that ancient sites in the Americas are not being actively worked is patently false. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Word actually used in Hebrew scriptures is "almah" (="young woman").
Hebrew word which could have been used, but wasn't, was "bethulah" (="virgin").
The Septuagint is a version of the Old Testament prepared in the 3rd century BC by Jewish scholars who translated the Hebrew sciptures into Greek for the Greek-speaking Jewish community.
In translating for the Septuagint, "almah" was translated as "parthenos" (="virgin").
Thus, Isaiah's prophecy in the original Hebrew states that the Messiah would be conceived by an "almah" (="young woman"), whereas the Greek translation in the Septuagint version of Isaiah refers to a "parthenos" (="virgin").
1. As soon as a religion becomes organized, it begins to make decisions that favor the well-being of the organization, rather than the spiritual well-being of its adherents.
The apocryphal gospels are a perfect example of this principle in action. The single common thread amongst all the aprocryphal gospels is that relationship with G-d is personal; that Jesus was the Son of Man (as opposed to the son of G-d), and therefore his acheivements were within all of humanity's reach. (Book of Mary goes the furthest on this). More importantly, they all emphasized that no intermediary was necessary to interact with G-d. Obviously, priests are not happy with this assertion, and so that is why (I believe) that these books were omitted.
Another example is Aquinas and original sin. What a bastard. The concept that one is damned simply by being born delivers all the power to the preisthood, and has fucked up Catholics for the last few centuries. Talk about unnecessary guilt.
Every instance I have studied where a decision on dogma was made where there was a pontential for a reduction in power of the Christian church, the decision came down on the side of the church. (Duh.) It's just common sense. My point is, good or bad, this is human nature, and as consumers of religion, people should be aware of this phenomenon. It is why I am so big on spirituality in general, and why I am so down on it in practice. True spirituality is a relationship between yourself and the divine, however you happen to envision it. It should never be confused with religion. Religion seems to be more about controlling people and starting wars, if you ask me.
hyperbole A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton. [Latin hyperbol, from Greek huperbol, excess, from huperballein, to exceed : huper, beyond; see hyper- + ballein, to throw; see gwel- in Indo-European Roots.]
In response to the grandparent...
Let's follow you logic through. Let's say through vouchers you reduce the population of a school by 10%, but because vouchers only take part of the money away, that funding decreases by 5%. Does a ten percent drop in students mean that building maintenance is 10% less? Can you lay off 10% of your teachers? Anyone that shops at Sams can tell you that the price per unit goes down the more units you have. They can also tell you that if you buy the Tub O Peanut Butter, and the Jar O Peanut Butter which is half the size of the Tub, the price isn't 50% less. So a 10% reduction in students does not automatically translate to a 10% reduction in costs.
Finally, someone who gets it!
Please don't confuse the fact that I disagree with you with misunderstanding the situation. I don't think it is acceptable to write off any of America's children, and the fact that you do proves to me that you, like most other neocons I've met, are a dick.
Let me spell this out for you:
1. The single greatest predictor of academic performance is income level. Speculate why all you want, there it is.
2. Vouchers only cover a portion of private school tuition. THOSE FUNDS ARE TAKEN AWAY FROM THE PUBLIC SCHOOL WHEN A CHILD LEAVES. Public schools are funded per student.
3. Poor people are the ones most in need of relief in the educational system (see #1). However, they are also the least likely to be able to afford the remainder of private school tuition - the stuff not covered by the voucher - not to mention the added transportation burdens, etc.
So, what voucher systems do is provide the wealthiest children in a district (i.e. the ones most capable of incurring the extra costs of private school) with a means of taking money away from the children WHO ARE LEFT BEHIND at a failing public school. Its the stupidest thing I have ever heard, and I can't believe intelligent people are still talking like it is a good thing.
Course, I do live smack in the middle of "Jesusland", so I'm not nearly as incredulous as I should be.
Man, you fit all three categories. How much education do you have, and from where?
I've become convinced that people who vote Republican overwhelmingly fall into three categories: single issue voters who would vote for anyone who claims to be anti-choice, callous blood sucking bastards who care for nothing but the size of their wallets and dicks, and the woefully ignorant and uniformed. Which one are you?
The single greatest political achievement of the modern era is how the Republican party has convinced so many people to consistently vote against their own best interests.
All things being equal, the unit with more "heart" will fare better. However, true students of war realize that things are never equal on the battlefield. One side will always have the advantage, and that side will always win - whether or not the advantage to either side is evident at the outset. The notion that "heart" can carry the day is how generals get troops who would otherwise flee (and wisely so) to march off to die.
The secret to physical security is the same as computer security - make the payoff not worth the cost. In other words, stop making people so pissed they are willing to die to kill you.
So was the CIA "just guessing" when you used their estimates to justify the war in the first place? Or are they "just guessing" only whenever their analysis doesn't support your position?
If you had read the article, you would realize that though you might be pissed, he doesn't need your permission. This portion of copyright law dates back to the player piano days, where it was ruled that a flat fee is paid to the artist being "covered". You don't need permission to sample music, you just need to pay the fee.
I'm 30+ years old, and was on a business trip, I had nothing to read on the flight over. Embarassed, I bought a copy of PC Gamer magazine to entertain my exhausted brain. Best 8 bucks I ever spent. I agreed with every review I read of games I owned. I have gone against their recommendation only once since, and was very disappointed (LOTR: ROTK for PC - PC Gamer rating 69% maybe?).
They use a very granular rating system (0-100%), and have honest, in depth reviews. Look at it this way - if trying it out stops you from blowing your $50 on just one game, it has paid for itself for 6 months.
It doesn't have to be PC Gamer, just find one you trust. Personally, I think the fact that good review material - be it movies, music or games - is available to those who seek it out nullifies the argument of "they're too expennsive; try before you buy". I save more time (by not downloading crap to see what it is like) and money (by only buying games I know I am going to like) by investing a few bucks a month in a "child's" magazine.