It is a book by Niven and Pourelle(sp?), and it details such an event. The characters in the book thought it had a 1000 to 1 chance of missing too, but they were horribly wrong.
3 percent is pretty high considering its the extinction of a sentient race (humans) possible, or at least civilization.
I can just see my genetic decendants going "shit I wish my great *9 or 10 grandfathers generation had taken a little time out of their primitive lives to think about some kind of solution to this..." just before they get the big bam that causes 400 foot ocean swells to kill them in whatever the US is called at that time.
But who knows, end of civilization might not be so bad, but hey whats the percent chance of only that happening if it hits?
It is in its own way unoriginal, it is taking something from one medium and adapting it to the other. It's uniquness is derived from the previous work. Yes it was done in a new medium, but it in of itself is unique. I think what is more important is that it is well done. Take a look at Half Life 2, on the surface it is a new FPS game, but its probably going to carry it off with style and depth that you wont find from say other recent FPS such as Red Faction 2.
and Ok "snood" hehe.
But I wasnt saying the derivative works were bad, just that they were in no way new. I dont think there are any stories out that have done something that others hvaent done, I have read a VERY many books, and most have overlapping elements in some ways. The way they do it is what makes them good and in there way unique. I was also arguing a little in a sarcastic way at "how" the original author was dissing it as a DDR clone, that even though it is a derivative type of game, it is unique in its own way, which was the focus of my argument. I said there is no such thing as a truly unique game, but there can be uniqueness in how well it is done.
I am actually just salivating over the new halflife 2 engine coming out, and the ability for people to truly have nearly complete freedom to express tehre ideas in a game format.
The thing is, can you find a game idea that is original?
Ok heres a game idea, lets make a game thats like a trippy roller coaster ride through sewers, except you have a gun and you have to kill the sewer life. All of this takes place in an apocalyptic future, and if you can survive this insane roller coaster ride you get to watch a fat dude rolled down a hill in a tire!
oh, wait that was a game!
I mean seriously, there is almost nothing i have thought of that hasnt been done. And everything I have thought of that hasnt been done, would be done, except that it would require shitloads of money, and be MMORPG version of games that already exist.
Even puzzle games have almost been worn out. I saw someone extolling the virtues of this game called "snord" calling it "innovative" but the thing is I had seen that game like 10 years earlier in an arcade, just oh it looked different but had the same goal nad required chunking quarters in it.
These guys arent too bad, they made an interesting game in a genre that hasnt been totally smacked around and devalued. Yes I know you could bring up britney spears dancing etc, but hey it is a relatively rare gametype, and I propose thats really all you are going to get.
i even doubt that when we move into 3d VR games (sometime in the future) that you are going to find anything that isnt really just a derivation of previous work.
Just because something that was done before, or was trying to be done before, now has technology that can do it better, does not make it unique. If that were so, if i invented tomorrow a way of transmitting data across time and space, then millions of companies could start patenting things that already exist, except that they hadnt been done before in my new ether communicator..
Just becuase you are doing something in a new medium doesnt make it unique, and i dont think there are going to be many unique games out there in terms of how the game is played.
I think the biggest thing is if you make a game have a good story, and enjoyable in terms of standard games, and for puzzle games you need to make them challenging in a new and unique way. But it in no way would really be unique in the term that it would be something "so new" that you had never been challenged similarly, or seen something like it before.
They are trying to stop people from using it longer correct? What happens when people figure out how to copy them?
Sure, they are in the same boat as before, but the problem is, the people that they are most concerned about arent going to be stopped at all by these if they can copy them and have a near perfect copy residing on their computers...
Instead of using these directly as ram, could they sell them as a ram drive? Basically just have some software supporting it, but have the harddrive at boot just start dumping itself onto this nano drive thing. and at some point do a switchover to that being say.. the C drive?
after about 30 minutes an entire hard drive could be there, and it could connect via some standard connector. use the hard drive as secondary storage backup, and when the machine turns off, it dumps the harddrive back on it at bootup.
Of course I havent really gone through the idea hurtles on the thinking on that, but just an idea;-)
I mean, why are we here discussing Jesse Venturas "Guide to how the Universe works" I mean in his book, it would be possible that when I post this message, It might accidently get posted in a Universe where say some bonehead like that wrestler Steven Hawking as a crippled SuperGeneous, and we havent seen that kind of mind since Eisenhowers general theory of relativity in 1938.
I mean how do we know these things dont happen all the time?
Never underestimate the industries ability to find women willing and able to have naked pictures of them taken doing all sorts of extremely interesting things which we might want on our hard.... drive...
Sadly, as everyone and his troll brother pointed out, my spelling was a bit off.
[quote]Don't forget for the USA it always seems like there never is any thought about tomorrow [/quote]
This is actually where I disagree with you, I think the U.S. IS looking toward the future. The United Nations, if not a state, is nothing at all. The reason for this is that if it does not control its own members, then it HAS no power. The United Nations HAS to be a world government, to simply be a facilitator of trade and negotiations means nothing when you come to a belligerent nation. If the United States/United Nation had had foresight 12 years ago, and finished the job in Iraq the world MIGHT be a more stable place today, simply because they would have cut the funding of groups unfriendly to the United States at the knees.
I very much think the United States is taking the LONG view of the situation, I know Bush seems like the big almighty dickhead right now, and in most cases I completely AGREE!!! War sucks, and we know that, but there are legitimate reasons to go to war.
To the point of the United Nations having its own army, it does not necessarily need one, it just has to rely on its own member nations, but as I said if its member nations cannot agree on anything, then the United Nations is very pointless. The Long view for the United States is if we spend a considerable amount of money now, and stomp the biggest current and future threats to our country, then the future will be more prosperous. The only thing I am sad about is how hypocritical we are, and not in the sense that some of you might take it considering "Bush as dictator" (just wanted to get that stupidity out of the way) but that we are ALLIES with countries that have brutal, and or oppressive dictatorships and turn a blind eye to them for economic reasons. Is it right for us not to go to war with these people? I am not a War Lover by any means, but I do feel that a diplomatic solution should be sought with foreign countries of such persuasion, so that the United States does not look hypocritical.
As to the fellow that went on to the hype about "ruthless corporations." Yes the United States has "ruthless corporations" luckily though they can be deterred by laws against them, and every oh... 4 years or so the people of the United States have a good chance of changing how the United States operates fundamentally. Corporations are around to make money; it is a base definition of capitalism. Capitalism is the most efficient type of government in the world, but it is not necessarily the most humane. And for better or worse we are stuck with it, and all we can do is try to mitigate the worse effects of capitalism, but that comes with being American, and hell if you do not think it can be mitigated think about what web site you are reading right now, and think about the issues and stances going on here. If you believe in the things posted on Slashdot (thinks like RIAA is bad, Open Source good) you are taking an opinion and running with it, and you are being swayed and directed by the writers of Slashdot, and Slashdot gets read by people with less certain opinions as well, and it gets people exposed to matters that are of technological abuse (yro section, oddly enough... here). So do not tell me that freedom of the people does not work... look your sitting here reading something I am sure Monster, the RIAA, and the MPAA would rather have you not doing since it probably considers the site a group of terrorists!
Oh well, I wander in tangents but I do so hate to post a lot of different times;-0
If we are going to have "diplomatic" solutions to everything, then any country in the world can "threaten" and then get diplomatic solutions right?
If we were in the world of Pre-Bush strong handed politics, what exactly would we be doing if say... Cuba, said "hey guys you know back in '68, we really do have nukes" and say... someone more "level headed" was in office (level headed I mean, and facetiously, a far left liberal) would they "give" Castro whatever he wanted, if thats what he said. If he said "lets do a diplomatic solution" what "diplomatic" solution COULD there be in a case like that?
That is something I always wondered about Saddaam Hussein, we had 12 years of attempting "diplomatic solutions" and they found that when "diplomatic" people were in power (Clinton God bless 6 years of financial bliss for the country) the situation in Iraq got worse considerably, because the person we were contending with was not searching for diplomatic solutions, he wasnt searching for "compromise" unless you mean "compromise" as "you give us everything we want, because what your doing now only makes you look bad" as compromise.
I think that the United States WAS justified in attacking Iraq, the only thing I feel is that it was not done soon enough. The United NATIONS should have done something about it earlier, the problem with the United Nations, is it really is as teathless a body as the League Of Nations (for those of you that miss that, its the ones that watched hitler do what he wanted prior to WW2).
The United States IS the teeth of the U.N. without the U.S. the U.N. has no teeth. We have shown that against Russian technology, we can litterally take destroy an entire modern army into mush within 90 days (not talking about iraqi freedom). The only countries with as modern equipment are the European countries, and the thing is, they will always take a diplomatic solutiion before going to war, and it doesnt even need to be to there advantage, because you can stall them..
That is all this has shown the world, yes a lot of people HATE the U.S.A. but the thing is, it reflects JUST AS BADLY on the United Nations, and how does that reflect on the world?
The thing is shows is that.
1. If the U.N. goes and says something, lets say against a foriegn power that attacks its neighbors, its sanctions against that country mean nothing to its leaders.
2. It shows that the U.N. cannot control its own members, IE the United States.
Those two things completely invalidate the United Nations as a legislative body, because legistlation means absolutely nothing without enforcement of that legislation.
And the United Nations does not seem to really enforce its legislation. As for "enforcement" power, the United States has more Enforcement Power than the United Nations, simply because you would never get the United Nations to agree on anything.
You could have the entire known world going "you know I think these guys are bad" but it doesnt matter a wit if you do not do something about it.
And I think thats what people really are getting at when they say things like "....Chinese and Russians put as much PRESSURE on IRAQ to comply with the previous 17 SANCTIONS..." (previous post).
It isnt that they are United States Imperialist Warmonger (which I have seen people say), its simply that there is no faith in the United Nations, the world has not matured enough to have a United Nations, because the world cannot agree on what is right and wrong.
How does this affect jobs for Monster.com? It is not simple United States arrogance, it is a company trying to obey the spirit of the United States sanctions and Embargos. Sanctions and Embargos ARE OUR Diplomatic solutions, to allow jobs to be exported oversees, and work to be imported, is to CIRCUMVENT our diplomatic solutions.
People often have the beleif that diplomacy is a peacfull solution to a problem, this is NOT true. D
The people in hicksville nebraska should get it paid for because of the very stereotype you assume of them.
The poor could not afford their own roads, this isnt strictly about class warfare issues of liberals. The problem is leaving a door open to those that do fall in class, they have to be able to get back out of the hole. THats what social welfare is, yes poor people pay a considerable amount of money and portion of their money because of sales tax.
Thats exactly why rich have to be taxed higher, because in proportion to their income they do not actually BUY anything, not compared to poor people, that IS why poor people do not pay income tax in any real way.
Yes, these turnpikes GET a profit, I did not argue that they would not GET a profit, but I am telling you they get a profit based on the fact that the road CAN be profitable! They would NOT build it for people that needed but lived in remote areas. That is why we have a lot of these social programs, it is to insure equality, and equality in infrastructure.
I have relatives that live on a mountain, so I know that in Montana the requirement for a paved road is 7 residences. Your taxes go to infrastructure, and the rich do not provide infrastructure for the poor.
I dont think such important base things as Roads, should be profitable. The government can do things cheaper, especially in rural areas. And thats what I mean especially, they need to provide it in rural areas to , not just areas that can bear the costs.
This is a fundemental difference I guess in our opinions.
Harry Schaffer: Cant find the exact book I read, since I sold it back! BUt here is a link to some information he has written! (though the page is kinda funny since its so poorly done, he is like 80 something, I met the fella, he has lived in every economic system you can think of)
You use the benefits of your taxes every single day. Could you imagine having to pay a toll for every single road you used? trust me, you dont even pay a small fraction of what you would pay if it came down to "what the market would bear" because the market would bear a much higher toll than the measily taxes you spend that go toward road production.
You wouldnt have long distance jobs, it would simply cost too much. Think abou the implications of having to pay per usage, at market bearing prices to things you take for granted now.
Imagine having to pay 10 dollars just to go to a city away. And there is no reason it wouldnt cost 10 bucks either, thats an hours wage right? say, 5 dollars each way on JUST that road.
Right now you have UNLIMITED use of roads you want to use, and you progressivly pay to do that.
The more gas you use the more roads you use. But imagine if you were using a bike, no taxes there for bike usage.
I dont knwo where you live where you say the roads are always broken down. In kansas the roads arent "that good" but they are servicable. Now i have travelled in Colorado and was appalled by the roads there, but they wouldnt be there at all if ti werent for taxes.
Imagine if a company was creating the roads, and bearing the costs, you would only have roads to places it was PROFITABLE to have roads. That probably menas there wouldnt even be country roads, that would have to be... erm... funded by taxes within a small group of people to get those roads.
Things such as interstates cost too much for any private interest to have made, especially when they made them. Just imagine how many vehicles would have to go over an interstate to make it profitable! PROFITABLE!
Remember, the roads now that you DO pay a toll on, are to pay for the construction of the road, your other taxes go for paying its maintanence. They arent there to make a direct profit off of the road, but a corporation would. I would rather have a slightly neglected road, than the pay out the ass for a pristine road. Hell I already do that, I take the back highway from where I live to get to and fro, instead of using the toll road, even though the back highway is a bit more curvy and takes about 10 extra minutes, I am not paying 3 bucks either.
People that want to privatise everything scare me, because they cannot be poor people that imagine wanting privatization.
Taxes are progressive too, poor people dont pay out the ass in taxes because they cannot bear the cost of the taxes. I know a LOT of poor people, and trust me they didnt pay a whole lot in taxes.
I finally read some good literature by Harry Schaffer (an economist who teaches at te university of kansas) on the REASON why we have progressive taxing, and why we do have government controlled programs.
Its because the market could not bear the kind of developments we have, no one would pay to use a great deal of what we take for granted. We wouldnt have parks, we wouldnt have a whole shitload of stuff that we take for granted to be there, things that enrich our lives.
Our governments role as defined by an econmist named Adam Smith is to Provide:
Law and Order
National Defence
Provide for public good. (whcih also means providing goods and services that are important but wouldnt exist otherwise)
If we let pure capatalism reign, there would be very few educated people in America, because Education is EXPENSIVE, and there would be no recourse for poor people, they would have no way to afford education to their children, their children would have no chance at succeeding because they were uneducated.
Social programs are NOT a bad thing, they are one of the things that help our econonmy!
rich people dont spend a great deal of their income, thye have a lot left over, and there is no sales tax applied to their expendirtures.
but say give poor people money to buy food, and every single ounce of that cash is put back into the econom
Honestly, if there was genetic manipulation, i feel everyone should have access to it kinda thing.
The biggest problem I had with the movie Gattaca for example (a movie dealing with it) was that not everyone had the ability to get Gene manipulation, you had to pay for it, and pay for it a lot.
The problem is it should be used to benefit EVERYONE , not just a small subset of the human population.
The biggest ethical issue is making a small elite group of people that can afford it, and then they can only afford afterward because they are the only ones that can succeed, basically making anyone without gene manipulation inferior, unable to succeed, and forced to do jobs that are in essence slave labour.
The ideal would be give let everyone have gene manipulation if they desired it at birth, it would be an option to have at conception if you would want your child to have desired traits.
It in itself could only "help" the human race in the long run, the people that did not choose to have such manipulation would be sort of a control group, and laws would have to be enforced (laws we already have) to make sure that they are not precluded from the chance at having a job, and jobs should be done on merit, not genetic choice.
Again I do not feel genetic manipulation is bad, only the use of it increase class differences. I dont think in of itself it is unethical, as long as it is fairly distributed.
I had to call in several times to get my K-Byte memory rebate, after I had followed the directions properly, and had the proper UPC code, and copies of everything.
they kept telling me "your UPC code is incorrect" and I said "the UPC is for the proper memory, I have copy of it on the box i bought it on, and I sent the cut out portion of that box"
eventually they sent me the rebate, it took them 16 weeks (4 months) and it really annoyed me and put me off of k-byte re-bates.
I think you miss the point a little, if you think someone will hear it, and report it, and then have it interpereted as sedicious speach, then you might not put your ideas out there.
If someone is constantly keeping track of what you are saying, and what you are sending, you might worry about "everyone" hearing it, and someone taking actions against you. The government is an example of someone you might not want taking action agianst you. When people speak out, often it is to a select audience as well, people who most likely would support their views.
The actual big issue, is people control how they interact with others by how much they allow that other person to know them.
Imagine if you met a girl, and you knew from a quick lookup that she was single, likes doritos, has 2 children and never married.
That kind of thing she probably would not want you to know at all!
Or lets say that people take your information, and do correllations on it. The correllations dont necessarrilly "Have" to be true, the problem is you could be added to a trend group that you do not want to be in.
Lets use a lewed example, lets say that using your credit card your sweetheart goes out and buys any numerous sex toys. Now lets say some group called "friend search" takes this data (which is relatively public or could be construed that way) but then correlates the data to you (since it was your card).
So lets say you are in the same situation as earlier, you are now sans girlfriend (perhaps didnt enjoy her pencheant for sex toys) and the girl does a lookup on you, and finds you like male sex toys... and then doesnt give you a chance because she thinks your gay lol.
Or better yet, you get spammed by sex toy sites that bought your info from the credit card company, trying to entice you to buy more.
Now these are a bit extreme, but imagine everyone just sold the data, or was allowed to track your data without any kind of real strong privacy laws. This could inhibit your freedom of speech in that it could also limit your credibility. Now if you do not beleive credibility affects the impact of what you say in public, just ask Peter Arnette. Now Imaging your at a public rally, or write a web blog, and someone says "hey i got info where e-mails were exchanged from his account, and from credit info that he buys sex toys for himself" and lets say your trying to fight for some religious cause. your credibility would be destroyed because someone had access to info that should have been private for you anyway, but it affects your freedom of speech.
There are much better examples, like how it could "directly" affect speech, but im a bit tired and cant think of anything nearly as witty as buying sex toys.
This stuff goes beyond that man, My friend owns and runs a popular website for mechwarrior gaming. He set up a paypal account on his site, and now had enough money to run a big internet pipe into his house, and host the site on hardware.
2 days after the transition, someone tried running 550k e-mails through his machine. His machine had a properly set up filter, and bounsed everything back, unfortunatly it knocked out his ISP who he was buying the business line out of. So now the site is down, and the isp hasnt restored service because they say that he has exceeded bandwidth quota for his business package he signed up for.
This stuff DOES affect the people having it happen to, its just as bad as sending it through the mail, in the mail people get paid for every letter of mail they send. Online when someone shuts you down by using your paid for bandwidth, the cost lies on you, not them to cover, and that is wrong.
Anyone that does what these people do, people like Ralsky, needs to get charged for every e-mail. They should have to register as bulk mailers, that way anyone hit by an attack originating from their bulk e-mails can hit them up for cost of business lost.
real vessels are on water, constantly subjegated to SALT water, the insides of high class ships, say like the Titanic or its sister ships, was very elegant, and very clean.
Well not really, the enterprise looked like a Flagship, which it was, really nice and sparkly on the inside. It is what the Federation WANTED everyone to see. It was clean, and probably had ensigns cleaning every spot on it every 5 hours.
What I liked about firefly is the ship looked like the ship you would have if you somehow were trucking around in space.
Dirty, not tidy all the time, probably needing a new coat of paint but you aint got the money kinda thing.
It was well taken care of overall, but by no means clean because you want to have as much free time as possible;-0
thats why I liked the firefly SHIP. Because it wasnt the hyper clean sterile environment, though they did have that feeling in the alliance ship, and on the tech planets.
or you have a very poor sense of what you are reading.
If you read the book, and I mean read it without a skewed Idea about what it is going about, it is about how mature children are, or at least how mature they feel they are. Ender happens to be our hero, the buggerwars, the game, thats all secondary to how Ender feels, and Enders struggles. It is not about government sponsored child abuse.
In fact, if you feel that you need "more" proof, in the beggining of the Enders game that I bought 6 years ago in the science fiction section at Walden Books, it has a preface by Orson Scott Card describing his intentions with the book, and why he wrote it.
So it is obvious you are very much completely wrong, and having been modded up in this case, especially when the skew means something in maybe 2 people who read only at your mod level is very bad. Because it allows ignorance to propagate.
Iraq beat us to it, but im sure after we beat Iraq the french will fold, especially when not given a part in the re-building, I mean they will still want the oil contracts they probably secretely signed with Iraq, except in this case they will have to get them from our Vice Presidents Oil Company (i mean erm he doesnt have any vested interest in the company anymore... erm ya right)
Well I can answer this one easily. I have met at least 5 people that I KNOW had aids right? And here is why it is less dangerous.
I did not have sex with any of them, nor did i get a blood transfusion from them, or exchange bodily fluids with them!!!
Man oh man, just imagine if I had been stupid enough to do that, especially since they teach every 5th grader since I was in 5th grade (about 13 years) that you dont do that kind of stuff because you might get a disease!
Though if it is as easy to catch the common cold, I go out and I have college and such that I have to attend in person, at least every single day, there i meat people and *gasp* have to be "near" them for long periods of time (up to an hour) and just having them brush against me, and sometimes cough near me has given me a cold! And I have caught the flu before too!
If that did not spell it out easily enough for you, I think I lack the ability to do so. AIDS is a problem for people who have irresponsible sex, and irressponsible trading of fluid (do you spit blood into your friends mouth?) anyway, I hope that clarifies it for you!
its something like that, i failed 2 classes and won 21 k, the tradeoff wasnt really worth it considering now my GPA is bad and i cant seem to get hired for a job, "so your gpa is 2.5, yea"
I dropped out of pro gaming because i wanted to get through college. But there is GOOD money in it, I won 21k in one year, and I was playing games the whole time.
The game i played got bogged down with cheating so they couldnt run any more for money games because cheating was so bad, but it was fun while it lasted.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a book by Niven and Pourelle(sp?), and it details such an event. The characters in the book thought it had a 1000 to 1 chance of missing too, but they were horribly wrong.
3 percent is pretty high considering its the extinction of a sentient race (humans) possible, or at least civilization.
I can just see my genetic decendants going "shit I wish my great *9 or 10 grandfathers generation had taken a little time out of their primitive lives to think about some kind of solution to this..." just before they get the big bam that causes 400 foot ocean swells to kill them in whatever the US is called at that time.
But who knows, end of civilization might not be so bad, but hey whats the percent chance of only that happening if it hits?
It is in its own way unoriginal, it is taking something from one medium and adapting it to the other. It's uniquness is derived from the previous work. Yes it was done in a new medium, but it in of itself is unique. I think what is more important is that it is well done. Take a look at Half Life 2, on the surface it is a new FPS game, but its probably going to carry it off with style and depth that you wont find from say other recent FPS such as Red Faction 2.
and Ok "snood" hehe.
But I wasnt saying the derivative works were bad, just that they were in no way new. I dont think there are any stories out that have done something that others hvaent done, I have read a VERY many books, and most have overlapping elements in some ways. The way they do it is what makes them good and in there way unique. I was also arguing a little in a sarcastic way at "how" the original author was dissing it as a DDR clone, that even though it is a derivative type of game, it is unique in its own way, which was the focus of my argument. I said there is no such thing as a truly unique game, but there can be uniqueness in how well it is done.
I am actually just salivating over the new halflife 2 engine coming out, and the ability for people to truly have nearly complete freedom to express tehre ideas in a game format.
oh well im tired, buzz OUT.
The thing is, can you find a game idea that is original?
Ok heres a game idea, lets make a game thats like a trippy roller coaster ride through sewers, except you have a gun and you have to kill the sewer life. All of this takes place in an apocalyptic future, and if you can survive this insane roller coaster ride you get to watch a fat dude rolled down a hill in a tire!
oh, wait that was a game!
I mean seriously, there is almost nothing i have thought of that hasnt been done. And everything I have thought of that hasnt been done, would be done, except that it would require shitloads of money, and be MMORPG version of games that already exist.
Even puzzle games have almost been worn out. I saw someone extolling the virtues of this game called "snord" calling it "innovative" but the thing is I had seen that game like 10 years earlier in an arcade, just oh it looked different but had the same goal nad required chunking quarters in it.
These guys arent too bad, they made an interesting game in a genre that hasnt been totally smacked around and devalued. Yes I know you could bring up britney spears dancing etc, but hey it is a relatively rare gametype, and I propose thats really all you are going to get.
i even doubt that when we move into 3d VR games (sometime in the future) that you are going to find anything that isnt really just a derivation of previous work.
Just because something that was done before, or was trying to be done before, now has technology that can do it better, does not make it unique. If that were so, if i invented tomorrow a way of transmitting data across time and space, then millions of companies could start patenting things that already exist, except that they hadnt been done before in my new ether communicator..
Just becuase you are doing something in a new medium doesnt make it unique, and i dont think there are going to be many unique games out there in terms of how the game is played.
I think the biggest thing is if you make a game have a good story, and enjoyable in terms of standard games, and for puzzle games you need to make them challenging in a new and unique way. But it in no way would really be unique in the term that it would be something "so new" that you had never been challenged similarly, or seen something like it before.
It is now as easy as 1. 2. 3. 4.
1. Get internet
2. Pay fee for lifelong service
3. Search for someone by name or SSN!
4. PROFIT by using their identity to buy items!
I am glad the government finally filled in the third step for me.
They are trying to stop people from using it longer correct? What happens when people figure out how to copy them?
Sure, they are in the same boat as before, but the problem is, the people that they are most concerned about arent going to be stopped at all by these if they can copy them and have a near perfect copy residing on their computers...
Thats right, a toy story with a character named Buzz and a Character named WOODY.
Thats right, what other childrens film have both a Buzz and a Woody in it, other than toystory 1 of course!
Perfect Film, A+
Or so the article says! Don't hate me because I agree!
Buzz OUT
(I also have a Woody)
Instead of using these directly as ram, could they sell them as a ram drive? Basically just have some software supporting it, but have the harddrive at boot just start dumping itself onto this nano drive thing. and at some point do a switchover to that being say.. the C drive?
;-)
after about 30 minutes an entire hard drive could be there, and it could connect via some standard connector. use the hard drive as secondary storage backup, and when the machine turns off, it dumps the harddrive back on it at bootup.
Of course I havent really gone through the idea hurtles on the thinking on that, but just an idea
I mean, why are we here discussing Jesse Venturas "Guide to how the Universe works" I mean in his book, it would be possible that when I post this message, It might accidently get posted in a Universe where say some bonehead like that wrestler Steven Hawking as a crippled SuperGeneous, and we havent seen that kind of mind since Eisenhowers general theory of relativity in 1938.
I mean how do we know these things dont happen all the time?
Never underestimate the industries ability to find women willing and able to have naked pictures of them taken doing all sorts of extremely interesting things which we might want on our hard.... drive...
Sadly, as everyone and his troll brother pointed out, my spelling was a bit off.
;-0
[quote]Don't forget for the USA it always seems like there never is any thought about tomorrow [/quote]
This is actually where I disagree with you, I think the U.S. IS looking toward the future. The United Nations, if not a state, is nothing at all. The reason for this is that if it does not control its own members, then it HAS no power. The United Nations HAS to be a world government, to simply be a facilitator of trade and negotiations means nothing when you come to a belligerent nation. If the United States/United Nation had had foresight 12 years ago, and finished the job in Iraq the world MIGHT be a more stable place today, simply because they would have cut the funding of groups unfriendly to the United States at the knees.
I very much think the United States is taking the LONG view of the situation, I know Bush seems like the big almighty dickhead right now, and in most cases I completely AGREE!!! War sucks, and we know that, but there are legitimate reasons to go to war.
To the point of the United Nations having its own army, it does not necessarily need one, it just has to rely on its own member nations, but as I said if its member nations cannot agree on anything, then the United Nations is very pointless. The Long view for the United States is if we spend a considerable amount of money now, and stomp the biggest current and future threats to our country, then the future will be more prosperous. The only thing I am sad about is how hypocritical we are, and not in the sense that some of you might take it considering "Bush as dictator" (just wanted to get that stupidity out of the way) but that we are ALLIES with countries that have brutal, and or oppressive dictatorships and turn a blind eye to them for economic reasons. Is it right for us not to go to war with these people? I am not a War Lover by any means, but I do feel that a diplomatic solution should be sought with foreign countries of such persuasion, so that the United States does not look hypocritical.
As to the fellow that went on to the hype about "ruthless corporations." Yes the United States has "ruthless corporations" luckily though they can be deterred by laws against them, and every oh... 4 years or so the people of the United States have a good chance of changing how the United States operates fundamentally. Corporations are around to make money; it is a base definition of capitalism. Capitalism is the most efficient type of government in the world, but it is not necessarily the most humane. And for better or worse we are stuck with it, and all we can do is try to mitigate the worse effects of capitalism, but that comes with being American, and hell if you do not think it can be mitigated think about what web site you are reading right now, and think about the issues and stances going on here. If you believe in the things posted on Slashdot (thinks like RIAA is bad, Open Source good) you are taking an opinion and running with it, and you are being swayed and directed by the writers of Slashdot, and Slashdot gets read by people with less certain opinions as well, and it gets people exposed to matters that are of technological abuse (yro section, oddly enough... here). So do not tell me that freedom of the people does not work... look your sitting here reading something I am sure Monster, the RIAA, and the MPAA would rather have you not doing since it probably considers the site a group of terrorists!
Oh well, I wander in tangents but I do so hate to post a lot of different times
I agree, but for a little bit different reason.
If we are going to have "diplomatic" solutions to everything, then any country in the world can "threaten" and then get diplomatic solutions right?
If we were in the world of Pre-Bush strong handed politics, what exactly would we be doing if say... Cuba, said "hey guys you know back in '68, we really do have nukes" and say... someone more "level headed" was in office (level headed I mean, and facetiously, a far left liberal) would they "give" Castro whatever he wanted, if thats what he said. If he said "lets do a diplomatic solution" what "diplomatic" solution COULD there be in a case like that?
That is something I always wondered about Saddaam Hussein, we had 12 years of attempting "diplomatic solutions" and they found that when "diplomatic" people were in power (Clinton God bless 6 years of financial bliss for the country) the situation in Iraq got worse considerably, because the person we were contending with was not searching for diplomatic solutions, he wasnt searching for "compromise" unless you mean "compromise" as "you give us everything we want, because what your doing now only makes you look bad" as compromise.
I think that the United States WAS justified in attacking Iraq, the only thing I feel is that it was not done soon enough. The United NATIONS should have done something about it earlier, the problem with the United Nations, is it really is as teathless a body as the League Of Nations (for those of you that miss that, its the ones that watched hitler do what he wanted prior to WW2).
The United States IS the teeth of the U.N. without the U.S. the U.N. has no teeth. We have shown that against Russian technology, we can litterally take destroy an entire modern army into mush within 90 days (not talking about iraqi freedom). The only countries with as modern equipment are the European countries, and the thing is, they will always take a diplomatic solutiion before going to war, and it doesnt even need to be to there advantage, because you can stall them..
That is all this has shown the world, yes a lot of people HATE the U.S.A. but the thing is, it reflects JUST AS BADLY on the United Nations, and how does that reflect on the world?
The thing is shows is that.
1. If the U.N. goes and says something, lets say against a foriegn power that attacks its neighbors, its sanctions against that country mean nothing to its leaders.
2. It shows that the U.N. cannot control its own members, IE the United States.
Those two things completely invalidate the United Nations as a legislative body, because legistlation means absolutely nothing without enforcement of that legislation.
And the United Nations does not seem to really enforce its legislation. As for "enforcement" power, the United States has more Enforcement Power than the United Nations, simply because you would never get the United Nations to agree on anything.
You could have the entire known world going "you know I think these guys are bad" but it doesnt matter a wit if you do not do something about it.
And I think thats what people really are getting at when they say things like "....Chinese and Russians put as much PRESSURE on IRAQ to comply with the previous 17 SANCTIONS..." (previous post).
It isnt that they are United States Imperialist Warmonger (which I have seen people say), its simply that there is no faith in the United Nations, the world has not matured enough to have a United Nations, because the world cannot agree on what is right and wrong.
How does this affect jobs for Monster.com? It is not simple United States arrogance, it is a company trying to obey the spirit of the United States sanctions and Embargos. Sanctions and Embargos ARE OUR Diplomatic solutions, to allow jobs to be exported oversees, and work to be imported, is to CIRCUMVENT our diplomatic solutions.
People often have the beleif that diplomacy is a peacfull solution to a problem, this is NOT true. D
The people in hicksville nebraska should get it paid for because of the very stereotype you assume of them.
s /c ommand%20econ/reforms/harry_shaffer.htm
The poor could not afford their own roads, this isnt strictly about class warfare issues of liberals. The problem is leaving a door open to those that do fall in class, they have to be able to get back out of the hole. THats what social welfare is, yes poor people pay a considerable amount of money and portion of their money because of sales tax.
Thats exactly why rich have to be taxed higher, because in proportion to their income they do not actually BUY anything, not compared to poor people, that IS why poor people do not pay income tax in any real way.
Yes, these turnpikes GET a profit, I did not argue that they would not GET a profit, but I am telling you they get a profit based on the fact that the road CAN be profitable! They would NOT build it for people that needed but lived in remote areas. That is why we have a lot of these social programs, it is to insure equality, and equality in infrastructure.
I have relatives that live on a mountain, so I know that in Montana the requirement for a paved road is 7 residences. Your taxes go to infrastructure, and the rich do not provide infrastructure for the poor.
I dont think such important base things as Roads, should be profitable. The government can do things cheaper, especially in rural areas. And thats what I mean especially, they need to provide it in rural areas to , not just areas that can bear the costs.
This is a fundemental difference I guess in our opinions.
Harry Schaffer: Cant find the exact book I read, since I sold it back! BUt here is a link to some information he has written! (though the page is kinda funny since its so poorly done, he is like 80 something, I met the fella, he has lived in every economic system you can think of)
http://econc10.bu.edu/economic_systems/economic
You use the benefits of your taxes every single day. Could you imagine having to pay a toll for every single road you used? trust me, you dont even pay a small fraction of what you would pay if it came down to "what the market would bear" because the market would bear a much higher toll than the measily taxes you spend that go toward road production.
You wouldnt have long distance jobs, it would simply cost too much. Think abou the implications of having to pay per usage, at market bearing prices to things you take for granted now.
Imagine having to pay 10 dollars just to go to a city away. And there is no reason it wouldnt cost 10 bucks either, thats an hours wage right? say, 5 dollars each way on JUST that road.
Right now you have UNLIMITED use of roads you want to use, and you progressivly pay to do that.
The more gas you use the more roads you use. But imagine if you were using a bike, no taxes there for bike usage.
I dont knwo where you live where you say the roads are always broken down. In kansas the roads arent "that good" but they are servicable. Now i have travelled in Colorado and was appalled by the roads there, but they wouldnt be there at all if ti werent for taxes.
Imagine if a company was creating the roads, and bearing the costs, you would only have roads to places it was PROFITABLE to have roads. That probably menas there wouldnt even be country roads, that would have to be... erm... funded by taxes within a small group of people to get those roads.
Things such as interstates cost too much for any private interest to have made, especially when they made them. Just imagine how many vehicles would have to go over an interstate to make it profitable! PROFITABLE!
Remember, the roads now that you DO pay a toll on, are to pay for the construction of the road, your other taxes go for paying its maintanence. They arent there to make a direct profit off of the road, but a corporation would. I would rather have a slightly neglected road, than the pay out the ass for a pristine road. Hell I already do that, I take the back highway from where I live to get to and fro, instead of using the toll road, even though the back highway is a bit more curvy and takes about 10 extra minutes, I am not paying 3 bucks either.
People that want to privatise everything scare me, because they cannot be poor people that imagine wanting privatization.
Taxes are progressive too, poor people dont pay out the ass in taxes because they cannot bear the cost of the taxes. I know a LOT of poor people, and trust me they didnt pay a whole lot in taxes.
I finally read some good literature by Harry Schaffer (an economist who teaches at te university of kansas) on the REASON why we have progressive taxing, and why we do have government controlled programs.
Its because the market could not bear the kind of developments we have, no one would pay to use a great deal of what we take for granted. We wouldnt have parks, we wouldnt have a whole shitload of stuff that we take for granted to be there, things that enrich our lives.
Our governments role as defined by an econmist named Adam Smith is to Provide:
Law and Order
National Defence
Provide for public good. (whcih also means providing goods and services that are important but wouldnt exist otherwise)
If we let pure capatalism reign, there would be very few educated people in America, because Education is EXPENSIVE, and there would be no recourse for poor people, they would have no way to afford education to their children, their children would have no chance at succeeding because they were uneducated.
Social programs are NOT a bad thing, they are one of the things that help our econonmy!
rich people dont spend a great deal of their income, thye have a lot left over, and there is no sales tax applied to their expendirtures.
but say give poor people money to buy food, and every single ounce of that cash is put back into the econom
Honestly, if there was genetic manipulation, i feel everyone should have access to it kinda thing.
The biggest problem I had with the movie Gattaca for example (a movie dealing with it) was that not everyone had the ability to get Gene manipulation, you had to pay for it, and pay for it a lot.
The problem is it should be used to benefit EVERYONE , not just a small subset of the human population.
The biggest ethical issue is making a small elite group of people that can afford it, and then they can only afford afterward because they are the only ones that can succeed, basically making anyone without gene manipulation inferior, unable to succeed, and forced to do jobs that are in essence slave labour.
The ideal would be give let everyone have gene manipulation if they desired it at birth, it would be an option to have at conception if you would want your child to have desired traits.
It in itself could only "help" the human race in the long run, the people that did not choose to have such manipulation would be sort of a control group, and laws would have to be enforced (laws we already have) to make sure that they are not precluded from the chance at having a job, and jobs should be done on merit, not genetic choice.
Again I do not feel genetic manipulation is bad, only the use of it increase class differences. I dont think in of itself it is unethical, as long as it is fairly distributed.
I had to call in several times to get my K-Byte memory rebate, after I had followed the directions properly, and had the proper UPC code, and copies of everything.
they kept telling me "your UPC code is incorrect" and I said "the UPC is for the proper memory, I have copy of it on the box i bought it on, and I sent the cut out portion of that box"
eventually they sent me the rebate, it took them 16 weeks (4 months) and it really annoyed me and put me off of k-byte re-bates.
I think you miss the point a little, if you think someone will hear it, and report it, and then have it interpereted as sedicious speach, then you might not put your ideas out there.
If someone is constantly keeping track of what you are saying, and what you are sending, you might worry about "everyone" hearing it, and someone taking actions against you. The government is an example of someone you might not want taking action agianst you. When people speak out, often it is to a select audience as well, people who most likely would support their views.
The actual big issue, is people control how they interact with others by how much they allow that other person to know them.
Imagine if you met a girl, and you knew from a quick lookup that she was single, likes doritos, has 2 children and never married.
That kind of thing she probably would not want you to know at all!
Or lets say that people take your information, and do correllations on it. The correllations dont necessarrilly "Have" to be true, the problem is you could be added to a trend group that you do not want to be in.
Lets use a lewed example, lets say that using your credit card your sweetheart goes out and buys any numerous sex toys. Now lets say some group called "friend search" takes this data (which is relatively public or could be construed that way) but then correlates the data to you (since it was your card).
So lets say you are in the same situation as earlier, you are now sans girlfriend (perhaps didnt enjoy her pencheant for sex toys) and the girl does a lookup on you, and finds you like male sex toys... and then doesnt give you a chance because she thinks your gay lol.
Or better yet, you get spammed by sex toy sites that bought your info from the credit card company, trying to entice you to buy more.
Now these are a bit extreme, but imagine everyone just sold the data, or was allowed to track your data without any kind of real strong privacy laws. This could inhibit your freedom of speech in that it could also limit your credibility. Now if you do not beleive credibility affects the impact of what you say in public, just ask Peter Arnette. Now Imaging your at a public rally, or write a web blog, and someone says "hey i got info where e-mails were exchanged from his account, and from credit info that he buys sex toys for himself" and lets say your trying to fight for some religious cause. your credibility would be destroyed because someone had access to info that should have been private for you anyway, but it affects your freedom of speech.
There are much better examples, like how it could "directly" affect speech, but im a bit tired and cant think of anything nearly as witty as buying sex toys.
This stuff goes beyond that man, My friend owns and runs a popular website for mechwarrior gaming. He set up a paypal account on his site, and now had enough money to run a big internet pipe into his house, and host the site on hardware.
2 days after the transition, someone tried running 550k e-mails through his machine. His machine had a properly set up filter, and bounsed everything back, unfortunatly it knocked out his ISP who he was buying the business line out of. So now the site is down, and the isp hasnt restored service because they say that he has exceeded bandwidth quota for his business package he signed up for.
This stuff DOES affect the people having it happen to, its just as bad as sending it through the mail, in the mail people get paid for every letter of mail they send. Online when someone shuts you down by using your paid for bandwidth, the cost lies on you, not them to cover, and that is wrong.
Anyone that does what these people do, people like Ralsky, needs to get charged for every e-mail. They should have to register as bulk mailers, that way anyone hit by an attack originating from their bulk e-mails can hit them up for cost of business lost.
real vessels are on water, constantly subjegated to SALT water, the insides of high class ships, say like the Titanic or its sister ships, was very elegant, and very clean.
Well not really, the enterprise looked like a Flagship, which it was, really nice and sparkly on the inside. It is what the Federation WANTED everyone to see. It was clean, and probably had ensigns cleaning every spot on it every 5 hours.
;-0
What I liked about firefly is the ship looked like the ship you would have if you somehow were trucking around in space.
Dirty, not tidy all the time, probably needing a new coat of paint but you aint got the money kinda thing.
It was well taken care of overall, but by no means clean because you want to have as much free time as possible
thats why I liked the firefly SHIP. Because it wasnt the hyper clean sterile environment, though they did have that feeling in the alliance ship, and on the tech planets.
or you have a very poor sense of what you are reading.
If you read the book, and I mean read it without a skewed Idea about what it is going about, it is about how mature children are, or at least how mature they feel they are. Ender happens to be our hero, the buggerwars, the game, thats all secondary to how Ender feels, and Enders struggles. It is not about government sponsored child abuse.
In fact, if you feel that you need "more" proof, in the beggining of the Enders game that I bought 6 years ago in the science fiction section at Walden Books, it has a preface by Orson Scott Card describing his intentions with the book, and why he wrote it.
So it is obvious you are very much completely wrong, and having been modded up in this case, especially when the skew means something in maybe 2 people who read only at your mod level is very bad. Because it allows ignorance to propagate.
Abdullah al-Muhajir is being held in relation to having possibly planned a bombing attack. Glad i could help you.
Iraq beat us to it, but im sure after we beat Iraq the french will fold, especially when not given a part in the re-building, I mean they will still want the oil contracts they probably secretely signed with Iraq, except in this case they will have to get them from our Vice Presidents Oil Company (i mean erm he doesnt have any vested interest in the company anymore... erm ya right)
Well I can answer this one easily. I have met at least 5 people that I KNOW had aids right? And here is why it is less dangerous.
I did not have sex with any of them, nor did i get a blood transfusion from them, or exchange bodily fluids with them!!!
Man oh man, just imagine if I had been stupid enough to do that, especially since they teach every 5th grader since I was in 5th grade (about 13 years) that you dont do that kind of stuff because you might get a disease!
Though if it is as easy to catch the common cold, I go out and I have college and such that I have to attend in person, at least every single day, there i meat people and *gasp* have to be "near" them for long periods of time (up to an hour) and just having them brush against me, and sometimes cough near me has given me a cold! And I have caught the flu before too!
If that did not spell it out easily enough for you, I think I lack the ability to do so. AIDS is a problem for people who have irresponsible sex, and irressponsible trading of fluid (do you spit blood into your friends mouth?) anyway, I hope that clarifies it for you!
its something like that, i failed 2 classes and won 21 k, the tradeoff wasnt really worth it considering now my GPA is bad and i cant seem to get hired for a job, "so your gpa is 2.5, yea"
I dropped out of pro gaming because i wanted to get through college. But there is GOOD money in it, I won 21k in one year, and I was playing games the whole time.
The game i played got bogged down with cheating so they couldnt run any more for money games because cheating was so bad, but it was fun while it lasted.