The rest of the world might want a different U.S., but the President acts strictly for the interests of his own country. I, for one, think Bush has done an amazingly good job with foreign policy. Not one citizen has died from foreign terrorism on U.S. soil since 9/11...that is a tremendous track record for the Bush administration.
Does the term "foreign terrorism" not include the people who died from exposure to anthrax two years ago? I thought terrorism was all-inclusive, but it's convenient that there's so little of it now, isn't it? I have a rock that keeps tigers away.
Americans like to bandy about the word "terrorism" for everything from knocking down the World Trade Center to copying CDs. Even the army, supposedly acting in the best interests of the Iraqi populace, are calling the resistance "terrorists". Why do you think so many surveys show that Americans think Saddam Hussein is responsible for 9/11? The Bush administration never said he was, but they implied it by labouring over his well-known links to terrorist groups, and lots of people bought it. (The parent post seems to have been written by one of those people.)
Even the cynic in me doesn't want to believe that capturing Saddam Hussein isn't a good idea. However, the justification for invading Iraq has shifted so many times, and always because of tenuous information, that I still don't believe they should have resumed the war. It was always about chemical and/or biological weapons (because they thought it sounded like the most plausible reason for ousting Saddam's regime), but nobody could find any (and several people have been blamed for this), so the USA started playing the War-On-Terror card again.
But isn't that just a spin on the War On Terror? Declaring war on terrorism was just political grandstanding against Al Qaeda and the like; after they failed to catch Usama bin Laden, they needed a new scapegoat. It's the same logic that's robbing US citizens (as well as citizens here in Australia) of their civil liberties without them having a say in it. It's also the same excuse for only pursuing one supposed "evil" or "rogue" nation at a time, when issues in North Korea, India and Pakistan, Taiwan and the former Soviet Union all require attention for the same reasons used to justify the war in Iraq. If the USA were really that interested in making the region and the world safer, they'd focus on Israeli incursions and Palestinian suicide bombings, and ignore Iraq altogether. Hey, at least we actually know Israel has WMDs...
I'm one of more than a million Australians who marched against our country's involvement in the war in Iraq. Even though our protest didn't achieve anything in the grand scheme of things, I stand by my opinion and I'm proud that I joined the protest, probably because the war hasn't really achieved anything either.
And let's see how long it takes for the Mozilla folks to patch this one. And of course, for all those people running older builds to actually download and install.
I call "shenanigans" on this. Under Linux, both Mozilla 1.6a (2003102905) and Mozilla 1.6b (2003120809) show the spoof address correctly:
Originally, when they mentioned pretty, I thought this was what they were talking about.
However, just to be sure, I also asked Google about "women" and "pretty". The second resulting link was about urination, while the fifth link was about flatulence.
I have since come to the conclusion that the concept of being pretty is horrendously overrated, bordering on disgusting, and will eventually perish - pretty soon, hopefully.
I wonder how many people they can kill using this chip?
DARPA is a research arm staffed heavily by scientists, so it's perhaps a little more noble than its DoD links might suggest. The Internet is an obvious example: DARPA invented the Internet to distract computer nerds from procreation, to the benefit of future generations.
Think of the implications of a true democracy. Think of the masses voting on each and every topic.
Easy to imagine, since I used to live there (although I was not a voter).
Switzerland has a system whereby people vote regularly on all sorts of matters, both cantonal and federal. From memory, people often voted on several referenda at once, filling out several voting forms on the same day (presumably to save themselves a trip to and fro). There are about six major political parties, and if you don't like any of the candidates, you can elect anyone else who is eligible.
While I'm sure many of us could imagine this in their own neighbourhoods, and citing low turn-out and apathy (or general ignorance) of current affairs as reasons why such a system couldn't work for them.
However, the Swiss don't do too badly out of it, for the simple reason that they take responsibility for what goes on in their village, region, canton and country. The system means that the voters have to be, to some extent, both enthusiastic and well-informed. It might sound like a (crack) pipe dream for the voters, or possibly a nightmare for contemporary governments, but the Swiss are a smart bunch - well educated, fiercely patriotic, argumentative without compromising neutrality - and tend to form opinions in a very cool, calm and collected fashion.
How well does it work? The Swiss actually voted for a blatant tax hike, for no other reason than to pay of the national debt. Imagine that.
... so many products that could have been great, are not.
Someone further down mentioned Windows ME as an example of this. However, since WinME was destined to be a pot of shite from day one, I don't think it fits your description.
I'm sure there are others that could have made the list:
13) OpenOffice will never take off in the mainstream
14) [Choose a non-Microsoft operating system] will never take off in the mainstream without a decent office suite
15) Something about stolen intellectual property
16) "I don't want to sound like a troll, but..."
If a terrorist wanted to really upset things now, they'd next show that Anytown, USA was also vulnerable. Three days, three teams each with a van, 500 childrens lunchboxes with a timebomb inside the thermos and a road trip past small town schools in east, west and central USA should do it.
Haven't you been thinking about this a little too precisely? I'm not saying that what you said is suspicious; just don't answer the door for the next few days.
Who keeps modding this guy as a troll? What he says, at least about Phantasy Star Online, is actually true, and was back in the Dreamcast's time as well. He's not trying to annoy anybody, he's not trying to advertise, and he's contributing to a discussion about patents by including a reference to prior art.
I mean, let's face it, he's found the most prized Biblical Artifacts already, it's time for him to find something bigger.:)
How much bigger a find do you want? Realistic software patents? A boxed copy of Duke Nukem Forever? What?
Personally, I can't wait for "Indiana Jones and the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction". If anyone can solve the mystery and find these weapons, Indy can.
The more of these dime companies release crap boxes, the more Linux will be thought of as a crap OS, the kind of thing your redneck friends buy at Wal-Mart...
But what if, for $200, you get a computer that you can take out of the box, plug in and start surfing the Web within a couple of minutes? In short, what if the computer works as advertised and gets you doing what you want without any fuss?
I'd imagine that if Joe Public wanted a machine that could send email, and if that's what he got for his $200, he'd be happy enough. By and large, the operating system would be transparent and irrelevant to what he was doing.
As of 30 May 2003, the prices of both Xbox and Playstation 2 in Australia dropped to AUD 329, from AUD 399 previously. (You can get a Gamecube with Metroid Prime for under AUD 300. Of course, the 'Cube isn't marketed very well and has struggled here.)
That said, most of the shops here would sell you a console with a big pile of stuff bundled in: Gamecube plus Metroid Prime; PS2 plus movies; Xbox plus Halo (still), Amped (still) and discount vouchers.
I didn't see anywhere in the articles whether it was backwardly compatible with the existing machines. I'd hazard a guess that the PSX will be able to play PS1 and PS2 games, a feature that makes the machine even sexier again.
There is far too much positive, childish, gushing praise for games already.
Absolutely. If you read a gaming site, lots of games get good scores without being good games. Sometimes it's because the graphics are good, and sometimes it's just cool; but it's never got anything to do with the writers knowing anything about what makes a game good.
Here in Australia, we have one major multi-platform gaming magazine called Hyper, which is famous for giving every half-decent game a score of at least 80% and every other bad game 70%. Admittedly, they're not as bad as GameSpot and IGN about it, but really, how much use is that?
The only magazine I buy regularly for games is a British mag called Edge. As well as interesting articles, Edge has a review system that's just right: average games get a 5 out of 10, bad games get a 4, good games get a 6, and getting an 8 is a serious challenge.
I don't know of any other magazine that's not afraid to tell you that the game that you and your friends are all gushing about is actually a dog. Max Payne, Final Fantasy X (funniest Edge review ever), Return To Castle Wolfenstein and Morrowind - 90%+ games, according to other reviews and inevitable word of mouth - all got 6/10. (You can actually search for review scores here.
As for the parent post, I wholeheartedly agree that the negative aspects of a game can be just as important as the positive aspects. I might not agree with everything you say, but I can value your opinion a lot more if you can discuss it openly, if you're just as ready to gush over what you really like as you are to speak your mind about what you don't. Keep up the good work.
What's in it for Microsoft? The underground community that wouldn't normally buy anything branded by Microsoft are clamouring over each other to get Xboxes. Face it, the Xbox is cool to a whole different community now, and the faster the machines sell, the faster Microsoft gets its investment back.
Besides, if you've got a modded Xbox, getting an emulator is the only way you can play decent games on it. The Xbox has been out for a year and a half and Microsoft is still peddling its launch titles, and Halo 2 won't be out until next year. Call me cynical, but don't other games machines get good games on a more frequent basis?
Slashdot Mirror
Does the term "foreign terrorism" not include the people who died from exposure to anthrax two years ago? I thought terrorism was all-inclusive, but it's convenient that there's so little of it now, isn't it? I have a rock that keeps tigers away.
Americans like to bandy about the word "terrorism" for everything from knocking down the World Trade Center to copying CDs. Even the army, supposedly acting in the best interests of the Iraqi populace, are calling the resistance "terrorists". Why do you think so many surveys show that Americans think Saddam Hussein is responsible for 9/11? The Bush administration never said he was, but they implied it by labouring over his well-known links to terrorist groups, and lots of people bought it. (The parent post seems to have been written by one of those people.)
Even the cynic in me doesn't want to believe that capturing Saddam Hussein isn't a good idea. However, the justification for invading Iraq has shifted so many times, and always because of tenuous information, that I still don't believe they should have resumed the war. It was always about chemical and/or biological weapons (because they thought it sounded like the most plausible reason for ousting Saddam's regime), but nobody could find any (and several people have been blamed for this), so the USA started playing the War-On-Terror card again.
But isn't that just a spin on the War On Terror? Declaring war on terrorism was just political grandstanding against Al Qaeda and the like; after they failed to catch Usama bin Laden, they needed a new scapegoat. It's the same logic that's robbing US citizens (as well as citizens here in Australia) of their civil liberties without them having a say in it. It's also the same excuse for only pursuing one supposed "evil" or "rogue" nation at a time, when issues in North Korea, India and Pakistan, Taiwan and the former Soviet Union all require attention for the same reasons used to justify the war in Iraq. If the USA were really that interested in making the region and the world safer, they'd focus on Israeli incursions and Palestinian suicide bombings, and ignore Iraq altogether. Hey, at least we actually know Israel has WMDs...
I'm one of more than a million Australians who marched against our country's involvement in the war in Iraq. Even though our protest didn't achieve anything in the grand scheme of things, I stand by my opinion and I'm proud that I joined the protest, probably because the war hasn't really achieved anything either.
I call "shenanigans" on this. Under Linux, both Mozilla 1.6a (2003102905) and Mozilla 1.6b (2003120809) show the spoof address correctly:
http://www.microsoft.com%01%00@secunia.com /internet_explorer_address_bar_spoofing_test/
How this idiot got modded up so far I'll never know.
Originally, when they mentioned pretty, I thought this was what they were talking about.
However, just to be sure, I also asked Google about "women" and "pretty". The second resulting link was about urination, while the fifth link was about flatulence.
I have since come to the conclusion that the concept of being pretty is horrendously overrated, bordering on disgusting, and will eventually perish - pretty soon, hopefully.
Let's see if they can make the fish sing like this...
(It's a Flash movie, and due to its content, I recommend headphones.)
DARPA is a research arm staffed heavily by scientists, so it's perhaps a little more noble than its DoD links might suggest. The Internet is an obvious example: DARPA invented the Internet to distract computer nerds from procreation, to the benefit of future generations.
Easy to imagine, since I used to live there (although I was not a voter).
Switzerland has a system whereby people vote regularly on all sorts of matters, both cantonal and federal. From memory, people often voted on several referenda at once, filling out several voting forms on the same day (presumably to save themselves a trip to and fro). There are about six major political parties, and if you don't like any of the candidates, you can elect anyone else who is eligible.
While I'm sure many of us could imagine this in their own neighbourhoods, and citing low turn-out and apathy (or general ignorance) of current affairs as reasons why such a system couldn't work for them.
However, the Swiss don't do too badly out of it, for the simple reason that they take responsibility for what goes on in their village, region, canton and country. The system means that the voters have to be, to some extent, both enthusiastic and well-informed. It might sound like a (crack) pipe dream for the voters, or possibly a nightmare for contemporary governments, but the Swiss are a smart bunch - well educated, fiercely patriotic, argumentative without compromising neutrality - and tend to form opinions in a very cool, calm and collected fashion.
How well does it work? The Swiss actually voted for a blatant tax hike, for no other reason than to pay of the national debt. Imagine that.
Someone further down mentioned Windows ME as an example of this. However, since WinME was destined to be a pot of shite from day one, I don't think it fits your description.
Not everyone on Slashdot makes the same remarks over and over again, you insensitive clod!
... "Round 3: FIGHT"?
... you don't want to be stealing from the MPAA, the RIAA and the television networks as well, do you?
I'm sure there are others that could have made the list:
13) OpenOffice will never take off in the mainstream14) [Choose a non-Microsoft operating system] will never take off in the mainstream without a decent office suite
15) Something about stolen intellectual property
16) "I don't want to sound like a troll, but..."
What, all of it? Even the stuff that Microsoft stole?
</conspiracy>
...it's been done.
Haven't you been thinking about this a little too precisely? I'm not saying that what you said is suspicious; just don't answer the door for the next few days.
Who keeps modding this guy as a troll? What he says, at least about Phantasy Star Online, is actually true, and was back in the Dreamcast's time as well. He's not trying to annoy anybody, he's not trying to advertise, and he's contributing to a discussion about patents by including a reference to prior art.
How much bigger a find do you want? Realistic software patents? A boxed copy of Duke Nukem Forever? What?
Personally, I can't wait for "Indiana Jones and the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction". If anyone can solve the mystery and find these weapons, Indy can.
But what if, for $200, you get a computer that you can take out of the box, plug in and start surfing the Web within a couple of minutes? In short, what if the computer works as advertised and gets you doing what you want without any fuss?
I'd imagine that if Joe Public wanted a machine that could send email, and if that's what he got for his $200, he'd be happy enough. By and large, the operating system would be transparent and irrelevant to what he was doing.
Yeah, but imagine a Beowulf cluster of them...
As of 30 May 2003, the prices of both Xbox and Playstation 2 in Australia dropped to AUD 329, from AUD 399 previously. (You can get a Gamecube with Metroid Prime for under AUD 300. Of course, the 'Cube isn't marketed very well and has struggled here.)
That said, most of the shops here would sell you a console with a big pile of stuff bundled in: Gamecube plus Metroid Prime; PS2 plus movies; Xbox plus Halo (still), Amped (still) and discount vouchers.
I didn't see anywhere in the articles whether it was backwardly compatible with the existing machines. I'd hazard a guess that the PSX will be able to play PS1 and PS2 games, a feature that makes the machine even sexier again.
The redundancy in the name justs maintains the redundancy of the game.
Bullet time, quick save, bullet time, quick save, bullet time, game over, quick load, bullet time, quick save...
Just wait for Max Payne Revival: The Revival Of Max Payne 2: The Fall Of Max Payne - slotted for a release next Christmas.
Absolutely. If you read a gaming site, lots of games get good scores without being good games. Sometimes it's because the graphics are good, and sometimes it's just cool; but it's never got anything to do with the writers knowing anything about what makes a game good.
Here in Australia, we have one major multi-platform gaming magazine called Hyper, which is famous for giving every half-decent game a score of at least 80% and every other bad game 70%. Admittedly, they're not as bad as GameSpot and IGN about it, but really, how much use is that?
The only magazine I buy regularly for games is a British mag called Edge. As well as interesting articles, Edge has a review system that's just right: average games get a 5 out of 10, bad games get a 4, good games get a 6, and getting an 8 is a serious challenge.
I don't know of any other magazine that's not afraid to tell you that the game that you and your friends are all gushing about is actually a dog. Max Payne, Final Fantasy X (funniest Edge review ever), Return To Castle Wolfenstein and Morrowind - 90%+ games, according to other reviews and inevitable word of mouth - all got 6/10. (You can actually search for review scores here.
As for the parent post, I wholeheartedly agree that the negative aspects of a game can be just as important as the positive aspects. I might not agree with everything you say, but I can value your opinion a lot more if you can discuss it openly, if you're just as ready to gush over what you really like as you are to speak your mind about what you don't. Keep up the good work.
What's in it for Microsoft? The underground community that wouldn't normally buy anything branded by Microsoft are clamouring over each other to get Xboxes. Face it, the Xbox is cool to a whole different community now, and the faster the machines sell, the faster Microsoft gets its investment back.
Besides, if you've got a modded Xbox, getting an emulator is the only way you can play decent games on it. The Xbox has been out for a year and a half and Microsoft is still peddling its launch titles, and Halo 2 won't be out until next year. Call me cynical, but don't other games machines get good games on a more frequent basis?
It takes a lot of discipline to read those words together without trolling.