Absolutely.
It's a shame that global markets and outsourcing have caused this kind of work to be sent to places where people choose it over the dawn to dusk, cradle to grave subsistence farming they would otherwise have to do. Poor people in third-world countries need to learn their place! Stay in your hut scrabbling in the dirt - it's greener, anyway.
Wow. I checked this discussion thinking that surely it wouldn't have any political comments and lo and behold, it's almost full of such comments. Far be it for anyone to throw around some "irrelevant" mod points.
Hey, you can redefine "increased standard of living" to mean something negative, but I don't agree with your assessment - my standard of living is much better than that of my great-grandfather. You might find modern life stressfull, but life even 100 years ago was much more stressfull for most of humanity. It must be nice to sit at your computer in a comfortable environment and bitch about how stressfull it is to have to work 40 (gasp) hours a week, but most of your predecessors must be rolling in their graves. Most of them would have worked like dogs from sunup to sundown just to eke out a basic existence.
As to life span, I can't figure out where you're going wrong with that math, but just to review: 75 > 45, chemical cocktails or no.
Finally, you blame Kaiser Perm (et al) for lobbying for laws that convenience them, but apparently you exhonorate your elected representatives who appropriated powers for themselves not enumerated in the Constitution and then sold those powers to the highest bidder. Maybe, just maybe we should find a way to trim back the size and influence of the Federal Government. So my solution is not to make lobbying illegal (if it's off-limits for powerful corporations, it'll damned well be off limits to us little guys) but to cut back on how much power our politicians are allowed to put on the auction block in the first place. It misplaces the blame, in my opinion.
This is just more example of fascism plain and simple, when business tools government for it's own interests
You don't seem to know what facism is. The definition is certainly in some dispute, but insofar as we can agree that Hitler was a "facist", do you really contend that Hitler was being controlled by the corporations? It was pretty clearly the other way around.
Of course, you're using the modern definition of "facist", which is "not a progressive liberal", which is ironic, because progressive liberalism has more in common with facism than does conservatism.
Golly, your IQ is so big! Hey everyone - this guy's IQ is 152! It must be true, too, because he says so and - after all - his IQ is 152! Let's all stop arguing and just do what this guys says! 152! Wowwweeeee! 152!
By the way, I myself know what I'm talking about because my IQ is 312.
I've long thought that was a good use of modern humanities students' own arguments against them when they sneer at anyone who would hold one culture above another: If you believe that all cultures are relative and that no culture is better/worse than any other, then who are you to critisize my culture's feature of believing in its own supremacy?
The only problem with that is that is not what they really believe - they believe that Western culture is inferior and all other cultures are superior - the more different, the more superior. Most likely born of the spirit of mindless rebellion against one's parent culture.
Once upon a time, University professors adhered to a narrative that Western Civilization was the pinnacle of human culture. Then came the rebellion of the 60's, where students obstinately believed the opposite of whatever was promulgated by the authority figures. Then those students grew up and became tenured professors themselves. Hopefully we'll one day have a new rebellion against the new authority figures - especially since they're now teaching cultural suicide.
My vote is for electric vehicles. Where does the extra elecricity come from? Nuclear power. Now, I realise that there is a faction (sect?) of people who equate nuclear power with nuclear weapons, but they really aren't the same thing, I promise. Spent fuel reprocessing and disposal is a challenge, but not nearly as big a challenge as the collapse of civilization.
The choices seem to be: 1) Keep transferring large sums of money to the very states that long for our destruction. 2) Stop using farmland for food and make "green" biofuel instead. 3) Continue to improve our ability to store nuclear waste with minimal risk.
I pick (3), but I'd be happy to go with fusion power when someone finally sorts that out.
McCain was saying that he felt Iraq *would be* like Japan or Germany. He was certainly not saying he envisioned active combat operations for 100 years, as the left represents. Babies, by the way, are quite delicious and it is not our place to put value judgements on other cultures. How do we know that Chinese babies don't ENJOY being eaten? Arrogant American!;)
Wow. Talk about internet savvy. I'm sure you can look at that video on YouTube and learn for yourself that McCain was not expressing a *preference* for staying in Iraq for 100 years, but rather was expressing the *liklihood* of there being a US military presence in Iraq for 100 years. But that's been twisted by the left, who say that he wants to be in Iraq killing babies for 100 years.
Just to put things into perspective, how many years now have we been in Germany and Japan and South Korea? Why doesn't the left want us to stop "occupying" those countries? I think it's because if the European countries had to pay for their own defense instead of having it subsidized by us, then they wouldn't be able to afford their socialist eutopias, and after the USSR the left doesn't need any more examples of how poorly command economies fare in the real world.
"Slashdot is not on their suggested blogs list. Can't imagine why."
It does seem odd. Their bloglist seems to contain far-left ideological sites and Slashdot is certainly one of those. Even a discussion of the scarcity of the Wii Fit recently was comprised almost entirely of talk about how Bush=Hitler and Iraq and how America sucks, interspersed only occasionally with posts from people who chose to talk about the topic at hand. I admit to not having read this thread yet, but I bet it's mostly anti-Bush rhetoric - unless it happens to diverge from the usual pattern around here.
I thought for shits and grins I'd talk about, you know, Nintendo - since the article is about Nintendo.
I think it's just stupid. I saw an advertisement for the Fit the other day on television. Why waste money advertising? They're effectively not being sold in the US. If anything, the advertisement was a boon to all of the scalpers who are selling them for $170 on eBay, Amazon, etc. Nintendo could be selling them for $150 apeice easily.
I find it hard to buy the argument that Nintendo is savvily going where the profit is, when they waste money advertising their unobtainable product, and no doubt piss off vendors like Walmart and Target (and others) who have dedicated shelf space to this non-existent item.
You say the US economy is "in the shitter" and "in the craphole". Last time I checked, we were still doing better than just about anyone else - certainly better than the UK.
I agree. I remember the first time I played the F.E.A.R. demo. I was coming out of Doom 3, where I had gotten used to the old "get the enemy's attention, back up around a corner, wait for zombies to blindly follow you, pop their heads off with a shotgun" formula. I remember being very impressed with the fact that when I tried that after happening upon some guys in a room (I backed out) I found myself waiting, and waiting for them to follow - but they didn't! I peeked back in and they were nowhere to be seen - they'd actually taken cover! After the firefight started, one of the guys actually jumped out a window and rolled into cover behind a crate.
So I got the game itself and found the A.I. to be just as good. Best FPS A.I. I've seen yet - hands down.
Even more so - It's like the guy who wanted to generate power from the falling water in his rain gutters - who stands outside all day spraying water on his roof.
Well put. I'm very curious to learn how gracefully Vista manages to do this. I would be very surprised if it, for example, kept Aero loaded when running a DirectX 10 game.
I see a lot of complaints about DRM - and I sympathize with them to some extent. It pisses me off when I try to hit "menu" on my DVD player and am told the operation isn't allowed right now. But it always comes down to this: We don't have to watch big (DRM'd) Hollywood movies, or listen to big (DRM'd) recording stars. And even if DRM lived up to the FUD prophecies, and the meer act of copying the video of my son's birth required me to jump through draconian hoops, ultimately no one would be able to DRM me going down to the local bar and listening to some local talent live.
But imagine if it got that far - no one would be buying any new equipment. It is in the interests of the DRM software and hardware makers to make sure the DRM is no more obtrusive than people are willing to tolorate. In fact, they would compete with one another to be less obtrusive. But you could always learn an instrument - or, assuming "they" somehow made that illegal, learn to sing a capela.
But I imagine that the future holds many more convenient delivery systems for the fancy DRM'd stuff we enjoy as well as many more opportunities for non-mainstream artists to build audiences for their non-DRM'd wares. We should certainly be vigilant against government being directed to force things on the marketplace. For example, in a long-shot scenario imagine that the record companies, facing slumping sales despite their nearly tamper-proof (because of government, not some impossibly unbeatable technology) DRM, somehow manage to get the law written so all artists must pay a fee and get DRM'd in order to distribute their recordings. What are they going to do if the market continues to recoil from them and simply resorts to going to live shows? I just don't think it would go that far, but even if it did - even if the media producers decided to collude with the state apparatus and very, very thoroghly shot themselves in the foot - we could just read books and sing our own songs.
Sure, lets make sure things like Linux and distributing your own works on mp3 are not made illegal, but there's just no point in insisting that Windows Vista (or the latest Sony gadget) not have any restrictions placed on them - because the simple fact is that the people that make these "limited" products are working off of the assumption that the user will be willing to put up with some amount of hassle to be able to do things like download HD-quality movies to their "media center" (or whatever) on demand.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems like him bitching about it is a great way for the next appearance of Mohammed in South Park to be in a pig costume.
Still, I hope Parker and Stone have good security.
Absolutely. It's a shame that global markets and outsourcing have caused this kind of work to be sent to places where people choose it over the dawn to dusk, cradle to grave subsistence farming they would otherwise have to do. Poor people in third-world countries need to learn their place! Stay in your hut scrabbling in the dirt - it's greener, anyway.
So the first thread "Is there oil" is not "offtopic", but is rated "funny". Apparently the prerequisite for bing a mod is being a douchebag.
Wow. I checked this discussion thinking that surely it wouldn't have any political comments and lo and behold, it's almost full of such comments. Far be it for anyone to throw around some "irrelevant" mod points.
Hey, you can redefine "increased standard of living" to mean something negative, but I don't agree with your assessment - my standard of living is much better than that of my great-grandfather. You might find modern life stressfull, but life even 100 years ago was much more stressfull for most of humanity. It must be nice to sit at your computer in a comfortable environment and bitch about how stressfull it is to have to work 40 (gasp) hours a week, but most of your predecessors must be rolling in their graves. Most of them would have worked like dogs from sunup to sundown just to eke out a basic existence.
As to life span, I can't figure out where you're going wrong with that math, but just to review: 75 > 45, chemical cocktails or no.
Finally, you blame Kaiser Perm (et al) for lobbying for laws that convenience them, but apparently you exhonorate your elected representatives who appropriated powers for themselves not enumerated in the Constitution and then sold those powers to the highest bidder. Maybe, just maybe we should find a way to trim back the size and influence of the Federal Government. So my solution is not to make lobbying illegal (if it's off-limits for powerful corporations, it'll damned well be off limits to us little guys) but to cut back on how much power our politicians are allowed to put on the auction block in the first place. It misplaces the blame, in my opinion.
Right on! I just hate how private enterprise has consistantly raised the standard of living and increased lifespans. F**king corporations!
You don't seem to know what facism is. The definition is certainly in some dispute, but insofar as we can agree that Hitler was a "facist", do you really contend that Hitler was being controlled by the corporations? It was pretty clearly the other way around.
Of course, you're using the modern definition of "facist", which is "not a progressive liberal", which is ironic, because progressive liberalism has more in common with facism than does conservatism.
Golly, your IQ is so big! Hey everyone - this guy's IQ is 152! It must be true, too, because he says so and - after all - his IQ is 152! Let's all stop arguing and just do what this guys says! 152! Wowwweeeee! 152!
By the way, I myself know what I'm talking about because my IQ is 312.
I've long thought that was a good use of modern humanities students' own arguments against them when they sneer at anyone who would hold one culture above another: If you believe that all cultures are relative and that no culture is better/worse than any other, then who are you to critisize my culture's feature of believing in its own supremacy?
The only problem with that is that is not what they really believe - they believe that Western culture is inferior and all other cultures are superior - the more different, the more superior. Most likely born of the spirit of mindless rebellion against one's parent culture.
Once upon a time, University professors adhered to a narrative that Western Civilization was the pinnacle of human culture. Then came the rebellion of the 60's, where students obstinately believed the opposite of whatever was promulgated by the authority figures. Then those students grew up and became tenured professors themselves. Hopefully we'll one day have a new rebellion against the new authority figures - especially since they're now teaching cultural suicide.
Not surprising. Around here "Defense of Western Civilization" = "Troll"
Uncomfortable truth = troll. Gotcha.
My vote is for electric vehicles. Where does the extra elecricity come from? Nuclear power. Now, I realise that there is a faction (sect?) of people who equate nuclear power with nuclear weapons, but they really aren't the same thing, I promise. Spent fuel reprocessing and disposal is a challenge, but not nearly as big a challenge as the collapse of civilization.
The choices seem to be: 1) Keep transferring large sums of money to the very states that long for our destruction. 2) Stop using farmland for food and make "green" biofuel instead. 3) Continue to improve our ability to store nuclear waste with minimal risk.
I pick (3), but I'd be happy to go with fusion power when someone finally sorts that out.
McCain was saying that he felt Iraq *would be* like Japan or Germany. He was certainly not saying he envisioned active combat operations for 100 years, as the left represents. Babies, by the way, are quite delicious and it is not our place to put value judgements on other cultures. How do we know that Chinese babies don't ENJOY being eaten? Arrogant American! ;)
First I've heard of that. You hear a lot of "no more occupying Iraq", but I have never heard anyone complain about our occupation of Japan these days.
I'm guessing they meant effusive?
Wow. Talk about internet savvy. I'm sure you can look at that video on YouTube and learn for yourself that McCain was not expressing a *preference* for staying in Iraq for 100 years, but rather was expressing the *liklihood* of there being a US military presence in Iraq for 100 years. But that's been twisted by the left, who say that he wants to be in Iraq killing babies for 100 years.
Just to put things into perspective, how many years now have we been in Germany and Japan and South Korea? Why doesn't the left want us to stop "occupying" those countries? I think it's because if the European countries had to pay for their own defense instead of having it subsidized by us, then they wouldn't be able to afford their socialist eutopias, and after the USSR the left doesn't need any more examples of how poorly command economies fare in the real world.
"Slashdot is not on their suggested blogs list. Can't imagine why." It does seem odd. Their bloglist seems to contain far-left ideological sites and Slashdot is certainly one of those. Even a discussion of the scarcity of the Wii Fit recently was comprised almost entirely of talk about how Bush=Hitler and Iraq and how America sucks, interspersed only occasionally with posts from people who chose to talk about the topic at hand. I admit to not having read this thread yet, but I bet it's mostly anti-Bush rhetoric - unless it happens to diverge from the usual pattern around here.
I thought for shits and grins I'd talk about, you know, Nintendo - since the article is about Nintendo. I think it's just stupid. I saw an advertisement for the Fit the other day on television. Why waste money advertising? They're effectively not being sold in the US. If anything, the advertisement was a boon to all of the scalpers who are selling them for $170 on eBay, Amazon, etc. Nintendo could be selling them for $150 apeice easily. I find it hard to buy the argument that Nintendo is savvily going where the profit is, when they waste money advertising their unobtainable product, and no doubt piss off vendors like Walmart and Target (and others) who have dedicated shelf space to this non-existent item.
You say the US economy is "in the shitter" and "in the craphole". Last time I checked, we were still doing better than just about anyone else - certainly better than the UK.
I nominate Nathan Fillion
I agree. I remember the first time I played the F.E.A.R. demo. I was coming out of Doom 3, where I had gotten used to the old "get the enemy's attention, back up around a corner, wait for zombies to blindly follow you, pop their heads off with a shotgun" formula. I remember being very impressed with the fact that when I tried that after happening upon some guys in a room (I backed out) I found myself waiting, and waiting for them to follow - but they didn't! I peeked back in and they were nowhere to be seen - they'd actually taken cover! After the firefight started, one of the guys actually jumped out a window and rolled into cover behind a crate.
So I got the game itself and found the A.I. to be just as good. Best FPS A.I. I've seen yet - hands down.
Even more so - It's like the guy who wanted to generate power from the falling water in his rain gutters - who stands outside all day spraying water on his roof.
Well put. I'm very curious to learn how gracefully Vista manages to do this. I would be very surprised if it, for example, kept Aero loaded when running a DirectX 10 game.
I see a lot of complaints about DRM - and I sympathize with them to some extent. It pisses me off when I try to hit "menu" on my DVD player and am told the operation isn't allowed right now. But it always comes down to this: We don't have to watch big (DRM'd) Hollywood movies, or listen to big (DRM'd) recording stars. And even if DRM lived up to the FUD prophecies, and the meer act of copying the video of my son's birth required me to jump through draconian hoops, ultimately no one would be able to DRM me going down to the local bar and listening to some local talent live.
But imagine if it got that far - no one would be buying any new equipment. It is in the interests of the DRM software and hardware makers to make sure the DRM is no more obtrusive than people are willing to tolorate. In fact, they would compete with one another to be less obtrusive. But you could always learn an instrument - or, assuming "they" somehow made that illegal, learn to sing a capela.
But I imagine that the future holds many more convenient delivery systems for the fancy DRM'd stuff we enjoy as well as many more opportunities for non-mainstream artists to build audiences for their non-DRM'd wares. We should certainly be vigilant against government being directed to force things on the marketplace. For example, in a long-shot scenario imagine that the record companies, facing slumping sales despite their nearly tamper-proof (because of government, not some impossibly unbeatable technology) DRM, somehow manage to get the law written so all artists must pay a fee and get DRM'd in order to distribute their recordings. What are they going to do if the market continues to recoil from them and simply resorts to going to live shows? I just don't think it would go that far, but even if it did - even if the media producers decided to collude with the state apparatus and very, very thoroghly shot themselves in the foot - we could just read books and sing our own songs.
Sure, lets make sure things like Linux and distributing your own works on mp3 are not made illegal, but there's just no point in insisting that Windows Vista (or the latest Sony gadget) not have any restrictions placed on them - because the simple fact is that the people that make these "limited" products are working off of the assumption that the user will be willing to put up with some amount of hassle to be able to do things like download HD-quality movies to their "media center" (or whatever) on demand.
Grendel gongan, godes yrre bær.