You're probably referring to the shooting in Montreal two days ago, and I can understand how you could take some, albeit misguided, offense at my comment. I don't really see how the two are relevant, though, as its clearly been demonstrated through numerous slashdot RIAA and MPAA articles in the past that hollywood advertising execs aren't people.
It didn't end with Fred Astaire selling a vaccum cleaner. Zombie Hepburn will be eating brains of people on Rodeo Dr very soon, while Gap ramps up its fall campaign.
The only way to redirect this abberant behaviour is a) don't pay attention, and b) for god's sake don't BUY anything related to it.
Part of the charm of watching old Tom Baker Dr Who or ST:TOS episodes is to see how _good_ the shows were with such primitive budgets. I will go on a shooting rampage is someone tries to add CG backdrops to the scenes in I, Claudius.
When a lawyer answers "I don't know" or "it depends", you know they're honest; when you're offered a guarantee its time to start running in the opposite direction. (note: this advice also applies to medical professionals).
He also reaffirmed my suspcisions that the justic system is highly subjectie to the whims and personalities of the justices preciding. Thank goodness for the right of appeal!
I had to get up an hour before I went to bed, drink a lump of cold poison, pay the mill manager for the priviledge of being allowed to work, and then i'd come home and get thrashed into two by my father with a bread knife while he danced on my grave singing Hallelujuah.
But you try to tell kids these days how easy they have it, and they won't believe you!
"In the American Civil War, the majority of people in the Confederacy were content with their government and its actions. Should the world community have respected their right to govern their country?"
Yes. Slavery was the 'boogey man' invented by the north part way through the war to justify its conclusion. Slavery is cruel and intolerable, but it was only a tiny element of a huge number of reasons why the North and South went to war.
The Civil War established the primacy of the federal government over individual states. If the colonies had the 'right' to succeed from England, then the states should have maintained the 'right' to succeed from the union.
There is a lesson in history that world leaders should heed -- you cannot liberate a country that does not wish to be liberated. See: Napoleon, the age of colonialism, India, Vietnam, Iraq 2, etc.
Unless, of course, you'd like the UN to intervene in the next American presidential election since there are widespread claims of corrupted officials, gerrymandering, and lack of integrity in vote counting? Thought not.
Given that this discount/budget card is intened for more casual gamers, its too bad there's no AGP version forthcoming. I suspect I'm in the same boat as many Slashdotters, having a hard time justifying the replacement of an 18 month old motherboard + cpu just to get PCI-Express -- especially since X2 AMD cpus are just now coming to the end of manufacturing.
I'm a dedicated ATI user, but I'd buy the best price/performance card for if someone was still supporting AGP.
Re:Privacy? In a Store? Which Amendment?
on
How Retailers Watch You
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
A long time ago when I worked in retail (Computer City), we had store numbers that suggested anywhere from 50-100% of our net-profit each week disappeared due to 'shrinkage' -- that was the innocuous term used for shoplifting. Back then companies weren't so blatant as to openly suggest a large # of our 'customers' were liberating the products, but that was precisely what was happening. Pretty slick stuff to.. it was back when Win95 was release, people would use razor blades to open the box, slide out the cds, and leave the box behind. That's why now shrinkwrapped software comes in that ridiculous overpackaging -- the corragated cardbord box inside a box is to prevent quick theft.
Stores are private property. Arrests and/or charges are still to be laid by legitimate police officers too, the most they can do is detain you. Your rights are not violated in any way./I'm speaking as a Canadian, but our laws are roughly equivalent in this regard.
I don't even mind RFIDs too much, but think they should be designed to be easily removable once you leave the store. This will take a few years to sort out I'm sure, but inventory tracking is a huge potential cost savings.
I've just started playing Wow in since last April -- so I'm a late bloomer. Of course, I have the benefit of most of the game balance and most eggregious broken parts fixed by the time i joined.
I play an average of 8-10hrs a week, not alot but not chicken feed. I'm in my mid-50s now. The big question is what happens at the end of the game for me -- raiding? unlikely. Rep grind? Boring. at this point i think I'll focus on tier 0 and.5 items.
The big problem with MMORPG is that they have no 'end game' component. In Baldur's Gate, or Ultima VII, or Wizardry, or even Rogue there is a definitive conclusion to the game. But with MMORPGs, they're deliberately open ended. Its part of their appeal, but also part of hteir curse.
I ahve to admit though, aside from maybe House or Deadwood (which I haven't watched yet), mainstream TV hasn't offered anything as compelling to me in the past year. And movies are even worse, although now the 'summer blockbuster' season is over and I can look forward to some more nuanced films worthy of my attention.
First off, Apple has between 5-6% of the total PC base in the world right now. They have a loooong way to come even close to matching ONE of IBM (Lenovo), HP, or Dell. Intel made a nice marketing coup with lining up Apple, but its no panacea of profit.
Two, yes Intel goofed on the 64 instruction set. But WinXp runs on Athlon and Pentiums, and there's very little real 64 bit computing taking place on corporate desktops even today. Intel needed to make cheaper, faster, more efficient processors -- something they've finally done with the dual-core. Both server and desktop segements will do benefit from the latest designs.
Strikes me now that Intel finally has a decent product in the marketplace again, they're cutting back on R&D since they're 'in the game' once again. When you're behind, you have to spend money to catch up. Allowing AMD to beat them for so long on price and performance had to be galling to a company the size of Intel -- someone was asleep at the switch.
I love competition, I think Intel is in for some good times now, but I doubt they'll ever be as dominant as they were in the early 90s ever again. AMD has their work cut out for them, but getting where they are today was MUCH harder than what they're facing now.
Re:Just like there will never be another Doom
on
Can Anyone Beat WoW?
·
· Score: 1
In boxing there's a great phrase... "to be the man, you have to BEAT the man", meaning specifically that its not enough just to be as good, but you have to exceed your predecessor.
it is very, very hard to see someone 'beating' WoW under these circumstances. There's no point in me, as a user, leaving Wow to play a game that is almost as good -- i have too much invested in my Wow character(s).
Frankly though I only ever play one game at a time...its just the depth of WoW that keeps me hooked. Usually its 3-6 months to completely exhaust my interest in a game, with WoW at the 6 month mark I'm having to PLAN the next 6 months to optimise character advancement...(e.g. rep grind, joining raiding guild, etc)
I apologise in advance for my bad formatting on my previous post -- forgot my break tags.
Since american politics don't affect me as personally, I don't have as personal an opinion...on the whole Canada's political centre is left of the US', though, so the Republican party doesn't speak to me much after Barry Goldwater's political demise.
Some points I do agree with you on: Reagan got away with alot given Iran/Contra, but he was a more media-friendly personality and the economy was booming, so nothing ever came of it. Clinton, while ignoring a rising Chinese threat and invoking alot of rights restricting domestic laws (e.g. DCMA is his baby), never overtly circumvented the constitution or the 'spirit' of the mechanics of government. Although you're not a huge fan of Bush Snr, I can't think of anything he specifically did while president that would undermine or circumvent the powers of government -- the Iraq war was based on consensus building amongst allies, with a UN mandate.
America for a New Century scares the bejezus out of me though -- I can understand a fear of a neocon conspiracy, they have a website!
I agree that alot of my commentary was open to subjective interpretation, but I think some of your contrary responses go a bit too far into the realm of opinion given the historical context....
Nixon inherited the Democrats Vietnam by campaigning to end it, then escalating it beyond any reasonable level, in another unprecedented crime of tyranny. Twice, for two terms in office.
Certainly the first time he campaigned legitimately to end it, but by then North Vietnam had the tacit backing of North Korea and China and was not willing to negotiate despite horrendous losses. "Unprecenteded crime of tyranny" is a ridiculous statement; even if you consider the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, those countries did nothing to prevent the NVA's use of their land as staging grounds for attacks on South Vietnam -- they were legitimate targets in most definitions of war (which is why the Hague never purused crimes against humanity against Kissinger).
Nixon moved the US off the gold standard in a fashion that moved us to the petroleum standard, creating OPEC and our dependence on it.
The world's dependency upon the petroleum economy cannot be faulted to Kissinger.
Nixon desegregated the South by executing the Democratic Congress' laws and fulfilling the Democrats' promise, because it was too late to interfere with the nearly-won Civil Rights revolution without committing political suicide. When Nixon was Eisenhower's Vice President for 8 years, Nixon helped perpetuate racism and Jim Crow until the people took the lead in getting free, supported by Democrats. Nixon based the Republican political recovery on a "Southern Strategy" of pandering to Southern racists, which defines the Republican Party, and the US they usually control, to this day.
As opposed to the Kennedys who promoted a non-existent 'missile gap' and squeaked into the presidency based on fear mongering? That was Johnson too BTW. There are some definite ugly parts to the republican machinery, especially in the 50s and 60s, but to tar Nixon and Eisenhower with a wide brush of the 'KKK' is disengenous. If Nixon -was- a closet racist, he'd have found a way to kibosh desegregation.
Nixon managed the Mideast into a series of wars with Israel, OPEC holding us hostage, Iran's revolution that might be the death of us all, and no peace until Democrat Jimmy Carter negotiated one between Israel and Egypt that lasts through today.
I may as well lay the blame on Truman then for allowing Israel to form as a country, he's the man responsible for the Mid-East problem! My point is that during the cold war, the mid-east conflicts were limited to the region w/o escalation, and no real change in the balance of power occured. Iran's revolution cannot be left at Nixons feet.
Nixon "leveraged detente" with China by sending George Bush Sr as his first ambassador, resulting in a China that's a more legitimate threat to us than even Soviet Russia ever was. In fact, by most measures, the modern China that Nixon helped create is beating us in practically every competition that counts, exploiting the loopholes designed to serve Nixon's Republican corporate constituency. Staking so much on a losing Vietnam War did more to strengthen China and Russia than just leaving Vietnam to go the way of Yugoslavia ever could have.
China's growth as a totalitarian free market country has occured long since Nixon left the stage. Reagan, Bush Snr, Clinton, and Bush Jnr have all progressively opened up trade with China in a much more dangerous fashion. Nixon opened up an embassy and started dialogue with an antagonistic country after about 15 years of isolation.
A "fair and balanced" (did you really just say that?) view of Nixon's legacy
Took me a sec to realise why you had a problem with that...we get Fox news now in canada on most cable services, but no one watches it.:)
Disclaimer: I'm a Canadian, whose political leanings are economic conservativism and social liberalism.
Nixon was bad, but his administration did have some accomplishments that substantially advanced America in many fields. I see Nixon as a politician with a shakesperian-level personality flaw of paranoia.
Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson's fault, NOT Nixon's. He inherited a war that was well into escalation. Nixon had to find a way to escape the war while trying to save face, when the threat of the USSR was still very relevant. Vietnam in some ways was a proxy war, legitimately or not, for European cold war angst.
Nixon's accomplishments included: a) getting the US economy off of the gold standard allowing for the next several decades of unprecedented US global economic domination -- HUGE strategic decision that in hindsight seems simple but took great forward thinking, b) desegregating the US south, Johnson's promise but Nixon's administration delivered, c) managing the tight-rope of the middle east through shuttle diplomacy, and avoiding ANOTHER vietnam for the US, d) leveraging Detente between China and the USSR, at a time when the communist alliance could have become much stronger.
These legacies are overlooked given the tragic (and deserved) end to his corrupt administration. A fair and balanced review of Nixon's career has to acknowledge that, especially in the first term, Nixon did deliver several important contributions to the long term success of the US.
In contrast, the past ~7 years for the US has been a complete wash. Aside from a ongoing mediocre economy despite a terrorist attack, I can find nothing positive. Perhaps time will provide a better context for judgement, but I doubt it -- record deficit, an administration that squandered unprecedented world sympathy into global skepticism, Osama Bin Laden is still free, Iraq has no exit or success strategy, regressive economic and social policies in almost any scientific field, and a US culture that is as polarised as it has been since the civil war. This isn't _all_ Bush's fault, but its on his watch and the buck stops with him.
My organisation is still running about 10,000 Win2k desktops and/or servers. We're hitting end-of-life milestones for patches and support, but the risks can be managed on T&M basis, aggressive firewall and network rules, and strong anti-virus protection.
We'll probably 'skip' XP and enter Vista after SP1 just to maintain reasonable support. But Microsoft is increasingly burdened with the 'good enough' justification by IT managers everywhere...
Take this further re: experience. On 60 minutes Bradley asked the creator of Starbucks "why venti?" and the response was simple -- "No one in their right mind would pay $3 for a small coffee". I was stunned, and impressed, by his honesty.:)
Apple is about the brand. They've switched processors more times than Madonna switched husbands, they have models that last barely a year before being yanked before the 'next best thing', they now are essentially PCs with a proprietary OS. But they're _Macs_, don't you get it? They're soooo much better...
This advertising campaign is dirty and mean spirited, but its working since we're talking about it. From my perspective, to paraphrase Shakespeare, "Apple doth protest too much"... the closer they come to commoditised PC hardware, the more they have to emphasize the differences to remain relevant. But that's my informed opinion as an admitted techie, not their target audience.
Mac stores now exist to persist this brand. They also exist since most of the 3rd party retailers carry limited Mac stock, since they're tired of accepting returns when the customer discovers 2 weeks later that all the games / shareware they want to use doesn't work. Just because Apple made iPods (admittedly very well designed mp3 players) DOESN'T mean they can make awesome PCs, but its a association people make due to the branding and they'd be foolish not to leverage it.
Nerf Protoss Shamen! They're _so_ unbalanced...my friend's brother's ex-girlfriend's aunt's cousin once lost a game in battlegrounds to a Protoss Shaman, and they clearly should have won!
I think its good to raise your children with a sense of distrust in the world -- trust has to be earned. Far too many children have been victimised by authority figures simply because they had a unfounded sense of trust in their role: scout leaders, teachers, priests, family membres, even police officers.
Until a child is 18, they are a minor and are NOT entitled to many of the freedoms afforded to full fledged members of society (e.g. adults). Some rules are fairly stupid, like you can fight and die for your country but you can't legally drink or smoke. Others aren't freedoms at all, they're privileges -- driving being one.
I don't really see the big deal to be honest -- this has been going on since the mid-80s at least (soon as betamax became economical to distribute).
You know those 'latest cancer breakthroughs' or 'scienfitic studies have shown today that...' -- they're ALL press releases. Guaranteed most newsrooms don't have health reporters trolling through medical journals, making informed opinions about what should and should not be broadcast.
Its a sad reality, but why is this a story all of the sudden? At least blogs are keeping journalists a bit more 'honest' now. NYTimes, CBS, Reuters have all been stung recently...and they deserved it.
I'll offer a suggestion: the worst thing a parent can do is not follow through on punishments. Kids thrive on structure, despite what popular culture would have you believe. Establish a set of expected behaviour, and list consequences if that behaviour is not achieved. THis is a reward based system, without spoiling your child. Its for their own benefit. The worst thing you can do is threaten ad nauseum all sorts of dire consequences, then not follow up -- your kid has you marked as a pushover.
Parenting is hard. Issuing out discipline is very hard, but its tough love. Skipping school is unacceptable in my mind; you miss school, DSL is cancelled for a month would be an adequate punishment. 2+ days of suffering by a parent unfortunately is required to correct such long established, detrimental behaviour.
Couldn't agree with your more. And I know the nemesis of 'good writing' -- its a vile, insidious, evil creature called the 'focus group'.
There's a great story by Warren Beatty about Bonnie and Clyde. The studio execs hated it. "Please give it a chance". Okay for your Warren. First weekend was a disaster. The first month was a disaster. "Keep it running, its getting good reviews!". Beatty coughed up money as incentive to keep it running in major cities. And then word of mouth started to spread... the movie was a 'hit' until about 6 months after its original release.
Today, movies are considered a bomb after their first weekend, if they don't hit expectations.
Focus groups give us the 'love concurs all' endings to Bladerunner and Brazil. I suspect focus groups are made up primarily of head-injury victims, people who ate lead paint as children, and people who buy extended warranties.
I didn't cry, but remember as a young boy getting a lump in my throat -- playing a TEXT based adventure.
MOD PARENT UP.
Note: Would this be considered more intune with literature vs a game? Perhaps we need to set some parameters, e.g. 2d/3d, interactive, result of player's actions?
Outside of the top end bleeding edge 7x00 cards -- you know, the ones that cost more than a motherboard + cpu + memory -- ATI competes fairly well on function/price. Its a good time to remember than probably ~80% of the market is made up by the low and mid tier.
2 years ago it looked like Nvidia was dead meat, now they've come back strong. I only get worried when one of these companies can't get their sh*t together for 2 or 3 generations in a row...then you know they've stagnated.
cultural priorities really explain it -- knowledge of how to use a technical device isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things. For example, I doubt the average Japanese developer is any better than an average Indian, Chinese, or American one. Their culture doesn't have an inherent +10 skill for technology, its just cultural priority. When you live in a shoebox, technology is an escape... i only need 1x1 meters for my sony playstation + lcd monitor + final fantasy VXIII.
How many cellphones have I had in a lifetime? 5 at least. I no longer learn all the functions of my electronic device, i want it to 'work'. Douglas Adams said it best (paraphrasing)-- "Technology is a word used for a device that doesn't work yet. A chair is technology, but no one things of it as such."
Mod parent up. Anyone versed in serious writing, be it journalism/english lit/history test/etc knows that you must validate your sources at a minimum of 2 times, preferably 3. When you have a sole source of knowledge, it must be identified as such.
Remember "All the President's Men"? Bernstein and Woodward did what CBS forgot to do w/ the supposed Bush service records -- validate with independent sources. When you don't you get burned, sooner or later.
Slashdot Mirror
You're probably referring to the shooting in Montreal two days ago, and I can understand how you could take some, albeit misguided, offense at my comment. I don't really see how the two are relevant, though, as its clearly been demonstrated through numerous slashdot RIAA and MPAA articles in the past that hollywood advertising execs aren't people.
apples and oragnes, really.
It didn't end with Fred Astaire selling a vaccum cleaner. Zombie Hepburn will be eating brains of people on Rodeo Dr very soon, while Gap ramps up its fall campaign.
The only way to redirect this abberant behaviour is a) don't pay attention, and b) for god's sake don't BUY anything related to it.
Part of the charm of watching old Tom Baker Dr Who or ST:TOS episodes is to see how _good_ the shows were with such primitive budgets. I will go on a shooting rampage is someone tries to add CG backdrops to the scenes in I, Claudius.
When a lawyer answers "I don't know" or "it depends", you know they're honest; when you're offered a guarantee its time to start running in the opposite direction. (note: this advice also applies to medical professionals).
He also reaffirmed my suspcisions that the justic system is highly subjectie to the whims and personalities of the justices preciding. Thank goodness for the right of appeal!
Sticks? You were lucky...
I had to get up an hour before I went to bed, drink a lump of cold poison, pay the mill manager for the priviledge of being allowed to work, and then i'd come home and get thrashed into two by my father with a bread knife while he danced on my grave singing Hallelujuah.
But you try to tell kids these days how easy they have it, and they won't believe you!
"In the American Civil War, the majority of people in the Confederacy were content with their government and its actions. Should the world community have respected their right to govern their country?"
Yes. Slavery was the 'boogey man' invented by the north part way through the war to justify its conclusion. Slavery is cruel and intolerable, but it was only a tiny element of a huge number of reasons why the North and South went to war.
The Civil War established the primacy of the federal government over individual states. If the colonies had the 'right' to succeed from England, then the states should have maintained the 'right' to succeed from the union.
There is a lesson in history that world leaders should heed -- you cannot liberate a country that does not wish to be liberated. See: Napoleon, the age of colonialism, India, Vietnam, Iraq 2, etc.
Unless, of course, you'd like the UN to intervene in the next American presidential election since there are widespread claims of corrupted officials, gerrymandering, and lack of integrity in vote counting? Thought not.
Given that this discount/budget card is intened for more casual gamers, its too bad there's no AGP version forthcoming. I suspect I'm in the same boat as many Slashdotters, having a hard time justifying the replacement of an 18 month old motherboard + cpu just to get PCI-Express -- especially since X2 AMD cpus are just now coming to the end of manufacturing.
I'm a dedicated ATI user, but I'd buy the best price/performance card for if someone was still supporting AGP.
A long time ago when I worked in retail (Computer City), we had store numbers that suggested anywhere from 50-100% of our net-profit each week disappeared due to 'shrinkage' -- that was the innocuous term used for shoplifting. Back then companies weren't so blatant as to openly suggest a large # of our 'customers' were liberating the products, but that was precisely what was happening. Pretty slick stuff to.. it was back when Win95 was release, people would use razor blades to open the box, slide out the cds, and leave the box behind. That's why now shrinkwrapped software comes in that ridiculous overpackaging -- the corragated cardbord box inside a box is to prevent quick theft.
/I'm speaking as a Canadian, but our laws are roughly equivalent in this regard.
Stores are private property. Arrests and/or charges are still to be laid by legitimate police officers too, the most they can do is detain you. Your rights are not violated in any way.
I don't even mind RFIDs too much, but think they should be designed to be easily removable once you leave the store. This will take a few years to sort out I'm sure, but inventory tracking is a huge potential cost savings.
I've just started playing Wow in since last April -- so I'm a late bloomer. Of course, I have the benefit of most of the game balance and most eggregious broken parts fixed by the time i joined.
.5 items.
I play an average of 8-10hrs a week, not alot but not chicken feed. I'm in my mid-50s now. The big question is what happens at the end of the game for me -- raiding? unlikely. Rep grind? Boring. at this point i think I'll focus on tier 0 and
The big problem with MMORPG is that they have no 'end game' component. In Baldur's Gate, or Ultima VII, or Wizardry, or even Rogue there is a definitive conclusion to the game. But with MMORPGs, they're deliberately open ended. Its part of their appeal, but also part of hteir curse.
I ahve to admit though, aside from maybe House or Deadwood (which I haven't watched yet), mainstream TV hasn't offered anything as compelling to me in the past year. And movies are even worse, although now the 'summer blockbuster' season is over and I can look forward to some more nuanced films worthy of my attention.
What are you smoking -- I'd like some!
First off, Apple has between 5-6% of the total PC base in the world right now. They have a loooong way to come even close to matching ONE of IBM (Lenovo), HP, or Dell. Intel made a nice marketing coup with lining up Apple, but its no panacea of profit.
Two, yes Intel goofed on the 64 instruction set. But WinXp runs on Athlon and Pentiums, and there's very little real 64 bit computing taking place on corporate desktops even today. Intel needed to make cheaper, faster, more efficient processors -- something they've finally done with the dual-core. Both server and desktop segements will do benefit from the latest designs.
Strikes me now that Intel finally has a decent product in the marketplace again, they're cutting back on R&D since they're 'in the game' once again. When you're behind, you have to spend money to catch up. Allowing AMD to beat them for so long on price and performance had to be galling to a company the size of Intel -- someone was asleep at the switch.
I love competition, I think Intel is in for some good times now, but I doubt they'll ever be as dominant as they were in the early 90s ever again. AMD has their work cut out for them, but getting where they are today was MUCH harder than what they're facing now.
In boxing there's a great phrase... "to be the man, you have to BEAT the man", meaning specifically that its not enough just to be as good, but you have to exceed your predecessor.
it is very, very hard to see someone 'beating' WoW under these circumstances. There's no point in me, as a user, leaving Wow to play a game that is almost as good -- i have too much invested in my Wow character(s).
Frankly though I only ever play one game at a time...its just the depth of WoW that keeps me hooked. Usually its 3-6 months to completely exhaust my interest in a game, with WoW at the 6 month mark I'm having to PLAN the next 6 months to optimise character advancement...(e.g. rep grind, joining raiding guild, etc)
I apologise in advance for my bad formatting on my previous post -- forgot my break tags.
Since american politics don't affect me as personally, I don't have as personal an opinion...on the whole Canada's political centre is left of the US', though, so the Republican party doesn't speak to me much after Barry Goldwater's political demise.
Some points I do agree with you on: Reagan got away with alot given Iran/Contra, but he was a more media-friendly personality and the economy was booming, so nothing ever came of it. Clinton, while ignoring a rising Chinese threat and invoking alot of rights restricting domestic laws (e.g. DCMA is his baby), never overtly circumvented the constitution or the 'spirit' of the mechanics of government. Although you're not a huge fan of Bush Snr, I can't think of anything he specifically did while president that would undermine or circumvent the powers of government -- the Iraq war was based on consensus building amongst allies, with a UN mandate.
America for a New Century scares the bejezus out of me though -- I can understand a fear of a neocon conspiracy, they have a website!
I agree that alot of my commentary was open to subjective interpretation, but I think some of your contrary responses go a bit too far into the realm of opinion given the historical context.... Nixon inherited the Democrats Vietnam by campaigning to end it, then escalating it beyond any reasonable level, in another unprecedented crime of tyranny. Twice, for two terms in office. Certainly the first time he campaigned legitimately to end it, but by then North Vietnam had the tacit backing of North Korea and China and was not willing to negotiate despite horrendous losses. "Unprecenteded crime of tyranny" is a ridiculous statement; even if you consider the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, those countries did nothing to prevent the NVA's use of their land as staging grounds for attacks on South Vietnam -- they were legitimate targets in most definitions of war (which is why the Hague never purused crimes against humanity against Kissinger). Nixon moved the US off the gold standard in a fashion that moved us to the petroleum standard, creating OPEC and our dependence on it. The world's dependency upon the petroleum economy cannot be faulted to Kissinger. Nixon desegregated the South by executing the Democratic Congress' laws and fulfilling the Democrats' promise, because it was too late to interfere with the nearly-won Civil Rights revolution without committing political suicide. When Nixon was Eisenhower's Vice President for 8 years, Nixon helped perpetuate racism and Jim Crow until the people took the lead in getting free, supported by Democrats. Nixon based the Republican political recovery on a "Southern Strategy" of pandering to Southern racists, which defines the Republican Party, and the US they usually control, to this day. As opposed to the Kennedys who promoted a non-existent 'missile gap' and squeaked into the presidency based on fear mongering? That was Johnson too BTW. There are some definite ugly parts to the republican machinery, especially in the 50s and 60s, but to tar Nixon and Eisenhower with a wide brush of the 'KKK' is disengenous. If Nixon -was- a closet racist, he'd have found a way to kibosh desegregation. Nixon managed the Mideast into a series of wars with Israel, OPEC holding us hostage, Iran's revolution that might be the death of us all, and no peace until Democrat Jimmy Carter negotiated one between Israel and Egypt that lasts through today. I may as well lay the blame on Truman then for allowing Israel to form as a country, he's the man responsible for the Mid-East problem! My point is that during the cold war, the mid-east conflicts were limited to the region w/o escalation, and no real change in the balance of power occured. Iran's revolution cannot be left at Nixons feet. Nixon "leveraged detente" with China by sending George Bush Sr as his first ambassador, resulting in a China that's a more legitimate threat to us than even Soviet Russia ever was. In fact, by most measures, the modern China that Nixon helped create is beating us in practically every competition that counts, exploiting the loopholes designed to serve Nixon's Republican corporate constituency. Staking so much on a losing Vietnam War did more to strengthen China and Russia than just leaving Vietnam to go the way of Yugoslavia ever could have. China's growth as a totalitarian free market country has occured long since Nixon left the stage. Reagan, Bush Snr, Clinton, and Bush Jnr have all progressively opened up trade with China in a much more dangerous fashion. Nixon opened up an embassy and started dialogue with an antagonistic country after about 15 years of isolation. A "fair and balanced" (did you really just say that?) view of Nixon's legacy Took me a sec to realise why you had a problem with that...we get Fox news now in canada on most cable services, but no one watches it. :)
Disclaimer: I'm a Canadian, whose political leanings are economic conservativism and social liberalism.
Nixon was bad, but his administration did have some accomplishments that substantially advanced America in many fields. I see Nixon as a politician with a shakesperian-level personality flaw of paranoia.
Vietnam was Lyndon Johnson's fault, NOT Nixon's. He inherited a war that was well into escalation. Nixon had to find a way to escape the war while trying to save face, when the threat of the USSR was still very relevant. Vietnam in some ways was a proxy war, legitimately or not, for European cold war angst.
Nixon's accomplishments included: a) getting the US economy off of the gold standard allowing for the next several decades of unprecedented US global economic domination -- HUGE strategic decision that in hindsight seems simple but took great forward thinking, b) desegregating the US south, Johnson's promise but Nixon's administration delivered, c) managing the tight-rope of the middle east through shuttle diplomacy, and avoiding ANOTHER vietnam for the US, d) leveraging Detente between China and the USSR, at a time when the communist alliance could have become much stronger.
These legacies are overlooked given the tragic (and deserved) end to his corrupt administration. A fair and balanced review of Nixon's career has to acknowledge that, especially in the first term, Nixon did deliver several important contributions to the long term success of the US.
In contrast, the past ~7 years for the US has been a complete wash. Aside from a ongoing mediocre economy despite a terrorist attack, I can find nothing positive. Perhaps time will provide a better context for judgement, but I doubt it -- record deficit, an administration that squandered unprecedented world sympathy into global skepticism, Osama Bin Laden is still free, Iraq has no exit or success strategy, regressive economic and social policies in almost any scientific field, and a US culture that is as polarised as it has been since the civil war. This isn't _all_ Bush's fault, but its on his watch and the buck stops with him.
My organisation is still running about 10,000 Win2k desktops and/or servers. We're hitting end-of-life milestones for patches and support, but the risks can be managed on T&M basis, aggressive firewall and network rules, and strong anti-virus protection.
We'll probably 'skip' XP and enter Vista after SP1 just to maintain reasonable support. But Microsoft is increasingly burdened with the 'good enough' justification by IT managers everywhere...
Take this further re: experience. On 60 minutes Bradley asked the creator of Starbucks "why venti?" and the response was simple -- "No one in their right mind would pay $3 for a small coffee". I was stunned, and impressed, by his honesty. :)
Apple is about the brand. They've switched processors more times than Madonna switched husbands, they have models that last barely a year before being yanked before the 'next best thing', they now are essentially PCs with a proprietary OS. But they're _Macs_, don't you get it? They're soooo much better...
This advertising campaign is dirty and mean spirited, but its working since we're talking about it. From my perspective, to paraphrase Shakespeare, "Apple doth protest too much"... the closer they come to commoditised PC hardware, the more they have to emphasize the differences to remain relevant. But that's my informed opinion as an admitted techie, not their target audience.
Mac stores now exist to persist this brand. They also exist since most of the 3rd party retailers carry limited Mac stock, since they're tired of accepting returns when the customer discovers 2 weeks later that all the games / shareware they want to use doesn't work. Just because Apple made iPods (admittedly very well designed mp3 players) DOESN'T mean they can make awesome PCs, but its a association people make due to the branding and they'd be foolish not to leverage it.
Nerf Protoss Shamen! They're _so_ unbalanced...my friend's brother's ex-girlfriend's aunt's cousin once lost a game in battlegrounds to a Protoss Shaman, and they clearly should have won!
I think its good to raise your children with a sense of distrust in the world -- trust has to be earned. Far too many children have been victimised by authority figures simply because they had a unfounded sense of trust in their role: scout leaders, teachers, priests, family membres, even police officers.
Until a child is 18, they are a minor and are NOT entitled to many of the freedoms afforded to full fledged members of society (e.g. adults). Some rules are fairly stupid, like you can fight and die for your country but you can't legally drink or smoke. Others aren't freedoms at all, they're privileges -- driving being one.
I don't really see the big deal to be honest -- this has been going on since the mid-80s at least (soon as betamax became economical to distribute).
You know those 'latest cancer breakthroughs' or 'scienfitic studies have shown today that...' -- they're ALL press releases. Guaranteed most newsrooms don't have health reporters trolling through medical journals, making informed opinions about what should and should not be broadcast.
Its a sad reality, but why is this a story all of the sudden? At least blogs are keeping journalists a bit more 'honest' now. NYTimes, CBS, Reuters have all been stung recently...and they deserved it.
I'll offer a suggestion: the worst thing a parent can do is not follow through on punishments. Kids thrive on structure, despite what popular culture would have you believe. Establish a set of expected behaviour, and list consequences if that behaviour is not achieved. THis is a reward based system, without spoiling your child. Its for their own benefit. The worst thing you can do is threaten ad nauseum all sorts of dire consequences, then not follow up -- your kid has you marked as a pushover.
Parenting is hard. Issuing out discipline is very hard, but its tough love. Skipping school is unacceptable in my mind; you miss school, DSL is cancelled for a month would be an adequate punishment. 2+ days of suffering by a parent unfortunately is required to correct such long established, detrimental behaviour.
Couldn't agree with your more. And I know the nemesis of 'good writing' -- its a vile, insidious, evil creature called the 'focus group'.
There's a great story by Warren Beatty about Bonnie and Clyde. The studio execs hated it. "Please give it a chance". Okay for your Warren. First weekend was a disaster. The first month was a disaster. "Keep it running, its getting good reviews!". Beatty coughed up money as incentive to keep it running in major cities. And then word of mouth started to spread... the movie was a 'hit' until about 6 months after its original release.
Today, movies are considered a bomb after their first weekend, if they don't hit expectations.
Focus groups give us the 'love concurs all' endings to Bladerunner and Brazil. I suspect focus groups are made up primarily of head-injury victims, people who ate lead paint as children, and people who buy extended warranties.
No WONDER everyone says Mexican astrophysicists have more fun.
In comparison to other astrophysicists...
I didn't cry, but remember as a young boy getting a lump in my throat -- playing a TEXT based adventure.
MOD PARENT UP.
Note: Would this be considered more intune with literature vs a game? Perhaps we need to set some parameters, e.g. 2d/3d, interactive, result of player's actions?
Outside of the top end bleeding edge 7x00 cards -- you know, the ones that cost more than a motherboard + cpu + memory -- ATI competes fairly well on function/price. Its a good time to remember than probably ~80% of the market is made up by the low and mid tier.
2 years ago it looked like Nvidia was dead meat, now they've come back strong. I only get worried when one of these companies can't get their sh*t together for 2 or 3 generations in a row...then you know they've stagnated.
cultural priorities really explain it -- knowledge of how to use a technical device isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things. For example, I doubt the average Japanese developer is any better than an average Indian, Chinese, or American one. Their culture doesn't have an inherent +10 skill for technology, its just cultural priority. When you live in a shoebox, technology is an escape... i only need 1x1 meters for my sony playstation + lcd monitor + final fantasy VXIII.
How many cellphones have I had in a lifetime? 5 at least. I no longer learn all the functions of my electronic device, i want it to 'work'. Douglas Adams said it best (paraphrasing)-- "Technology is a word used for a device that doesn't work yet. A chair is technology, but no one things of it as such."
Mod parent up. Anyone versed in serious writing, be it journalism/english lit/history test/etc knows that you must validate your sources at a minimum of 2 times, preferably 3. When you have a sole source of knowledge, it must be identified as such.
Remember "All the President's Men"? Bernstein and Woodward did what CBS forgot to do w/ the supposed Bush service records -- validate with independent sources. When you don't you get burned, sooner or later.