There's an older email version of the first XCOM. The problem with a turn based multiplayer game is that it is quite slow waiting for everyone to take a turn. Especially if you have combats between turns, it gets boring to wait 5-10 minutes for one of the other players to get a combat finished. Also most people want a game that they can fisish in one gaming session. Most strategy games are long, which is great for a single player game, but it is hard to get even two people back together for a multiplayer game after the initial game is started.
Yeah and a car is just a box that gets you from place to place, but I'd rather be seen in something like this, than something like this. Even if both will get me from place to place equally quickly (at the speed limit), economically, and safely.
I've heard that Subaru was surprised by the demand for the first Impreza WRXs that they offered for sale over here, and buyers were citing the GT series as one of the major reasons for buying them.
Perhaps it was stealth marketing, the guy knows no one has heard of him and now maybe a million more have. If you believe the axiom, "there is no such thing as bad publicity", he just got a ton today, for a pretty small cost (whatever the license fee is for the protection).
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. I think it is originally from a Digital exec who was refering to IBM's marketer's speak on DEC's products. It seems to have taken on the meaning of any marketing message that makes you think worse of other companies products. As a side note this is what is always blamed when the less elegant solution wins.
I got the tip last night and finally tried it, turn of TCS and SCS in the options menu, it improves the feel of the cars, they oversteer and understeer quite a bit more, and are faster too boot, it's a whole lot better, than it was. Oh and try the other game that came with Sega GT, JSRF, it's different but fun, in a not at all realisic way.
They are important in that they drive what games get ported and produced for a system. A game can be much more niche oriented and still sell well for the PS2, but has to be pretty popular to sell well for the less penetrated consoles.
I just bought one too, and I've so far enjoyed MechAssault, SegaGT (although it's a poor imitation of GT, but still fun) Dynasty Warriors 4, that was actualy what I was waiting for, and SC2. The last two are cross platform but if it's the only console you have they're quite fun. Halo looks good, but I'll wait for it to hit the bargain racks first.
Be careful how you define your estate tax, I agree that wealth should be taxed more than income, to reward those who create it, rather than those who sit on it, but there are two caveats I'd urge you to consider, first that that much wealth is usually tied up in a business and other illiquid assets, so a tax basically means selling the business or other assets very quickly which can greatly reduce their sales price. I think the number should be higher, more like $10 to $50 million to avoid most of the small businesses which would presumably be run by the kids (who should be quite good at it). Also that trust funds have to be invested somewhere, and the real question is weather trust fund managers are better or worse than the government (or other sources of tax revenue) at stimulating the economy with that money. I know that these types of are a huge source of venture capital money, that neither the government or other tax payers can reasonably provide. Finally, remember that any tax creates incentives to find loopholes and that this will just increase the nubmer of trusts and other estate tax avoidance systems which may reduce capital mobility, but keep many generations wealthy.
I'll grant you Mr. Gates was born well off and really improved his lot with a sweet deal from IBM, but Mr. Dell has a business acumen that flat embarasses most of us. He didn't start by buying Intel Chips by the semiload, his dorm room business was to buy the RAM upgrades that IBM forced their distributers to take (and were unable to sell) for pennies on the dollar and reselling them to the people who wanted them for a discount compared to IBM's list prices. He'd been doing things like this for the better part of his life, and only later did he begin assembling computers, and they did their selling over the phone because he couldn't afford the expensive distribution channels that others used. I have no idea about his family's weath, but would guess that he was firmly middle (probably upper middle) class, he was going to UT not some Ivy or even private school.
In terms of share of tax structure most groups pay about equal to their share of the national income. From what I've seen the highest and lowest quartile pay slightly less than their share of income (not wealth) in taxes, and are in effect both subsidised by the middle two quartiles who pay a slightly greater share of the total tax bill than their share of the national income. No quartile was too far from their share of national income (within 1-2%) so we have a fairly flat tax structure, although quite a bit more expensive than a VAT or fully flat tax, but that keeps the accountants and tax lawyers happy. That is really my biggest problem with the tax structure, it turns out to be pretty fair, in the sense of flat, but we sure go through a ton of effort each year to collect it all, it seems like there would be a more cost effective method of collecting taxes in a flat (or progressive or regressive) manner.
Elite 3 was called first encounters, and was pretty fun, with some impressive graphics for its time, it didn't get marketed well, and you pretty much had to find it in a bargin bin near you, there was someone who was hosting the British version of the game, (much better than the US release which had several major bugs) but I don't know if it is still around. I had it running under 95/98, but you'll need mo slow if you want to play it on anything close to new, or a Pentium one sitting around. They were working on an Elite 4, but I haven't heard much about that recently. There is a really cool open source game, Vega Strike, that is the best new space trading sim I've played, I think it works on Linux, OS X, and Windows, it's still in beta but pretty darn stable, (at least the Windows version was for me).
Great now the RIAA will sue the HD makers for making the disks too small and reducing their potential infringment collections by $300,000,000 per user. In other news SCO has announced that their patent portfolio includes all uses of the term giga- in referance to both base 10 systems and base 2 systems.
The older benz S classes were both coupe and sedan trims, and in 98 they started calling the coupes CL classes, I grabbed the first one from the right era I found. I was just looking at the body lines, and I realize that the CLK is a coupe while the Aristo (Lexus GS) is a sport sedan, the smaller Benz sedans started sporting that look around that year, they just look very similar to me. By the way, nice ride. That whole Soarer line is pretty rare stateside, but boy are they pretty cars, they just look classy, quick, and clean. The newer 430s don't have the same flair, retractable hardtop or not. I agree that the Supra engine swap is the way to go, but I think the V8's never got any respect or aftermarket parts because they never were available with a manual. But then it could be that driving honda's has sort of warped my brain around the goodness of NA.
Your right, I don't know who was inspired by who but the Cadillac Deville DTS and Benz S class are remarkably similar, and the Lexus GS series (I don't know if Toyota has a similar model under a diffent name in Japan like the Soarer SC branding) look a lot like the Benz CLKs. In the first pair, the S Class appears to have been first with a redesign in the mid 90s, vs. late 90s for the DTS, but the CLK and GS both came out with a new model in 98. They aren't design rips but they do share some styling cues, and I know the first DTS I saw I was wondering which model Benz it was. The Toyota and CLK simlarities are probably just a similar sense of style, both good IMHO, since there really wasn't time for either company to get a process running on a new design that quickly. Of course the new Cadillacs are quite innovative and I really don't think that there is much of anything that looks quite like they do. Competely off the point, what I really wish is that Toyota had put a manual in the V8 Soarer and shipped it over here, or shipped the twin turbo version over. I guess I should have said newer rather than older, and you are quite correct in you assesment of my knoledge of Toyota's JDM lines, it is sorely lacking.
Actually they do hide their prototypes but that is mostly to prevent design stealing, or at least design cue stealing, and it's mostly done by the more prestegious designers, ever notice how much Caddilacs and Lexus look like older M-B? Benz tries to hide their prototypes during testing so that after the design lag at the other firms they are almost a gen behind.
Wal~Mart has age limits for buying spraypaint, games, movies, knives, guns, ammo, cigs, and I would guess now beer and wine in the stores that sell it. They have had all of these since I worked there in 1999. If you don't get asked it's because the cashier doesn't care. They are pretty agressive about id'ing for stuff.
Lending is probably legit under fair use, so long as no copies are made. It's copyright, not lendingright or useright no matter how much some may wish it to be.
No the trick comes from shifting the cost of J-Lo and Ben's limo's wardrobe assistant and such on to a very successful movie, so the first time actor who signed for a percentage of the profits in exchange for a smaller up front payment. The trick is to know that no movie ever makes a profit, and that you want a small cut of gross not net.
Why doesn't he just get a 250 GTO, they're rare as all get out (I think there are only about 20 available), sell for a fortune (the last one I read about sold for about 10 million but that was in 1999 and prices have softened a bit), and I believe already legal, due to age differences.
That's a pretty poor CBA. They lump all of highway spending as a subsity on gas, without mentioning that highway spending wouldn't change if we all drove electric cars, and gasoline taxes pay for most of the cost of highway construction. (I've seen the arguements that heavyer cars unfairly benefit since their road damage exceeds their extra gas consumption, but that's another agrument.) That appeared to be most of the cost, some other suspect charges included congestion and uncomponsated accidents, neither of which would change if we all drove zero emmision vehicles. Gas is taxed in the US, but not as heavily as in other countries, so gas is only cheap in the US if you think that European or Japanese tax levels are fair. I have no idea if gas is undertaxed, overtaxed, or properly taxed to compensate for its externalities under any of the tax systems. There are some subsides for the oil companies, but most of them are there to prevent the OPEC nations from controlling too much supply. Saudi Arabia is one of the cheapest places to extract oil from, they could theoretically drive everyone else out of the market but dropping prices to just below everyone else's cost, with the intent of raising prices until new capacity could be built, which would take some time (as we are learning in Iraq and Venesuela.
I'm curious are rims (good light weight forged rims like OZ or Volk) lighter than tires or tires lighter than rims? If you want a 20" wheel and tire with a given strength is it lighter to achieve this with a big wheel and low profile tire or a little wheel and higher profile tire? It seems most racing wheels are around 12"-14" with presumably the idea to buy a big tire to compensate. That would be ironic, I think.
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There's an older email version of the first XCOM. The problem with a turn based multiplayer game is that it is quite slow waiting for everyone to take a turn. Especially if you have combats between turns, it gets boring to wait 5-10 minutes for one of the other players to get a combat finished. Also most people want a game that they can fisish in one gaming session. Most strategy games are long, which is great for a single player game, but it is hard to get even two people back together for a multiplayer game after the initial game is started.
Yeah and a car is just a box that gets you from place to place, but I'd rather be seen in something like this, than something like this. Even if both will get me from place to place equally quickly (at the speed limit), economically, and safely.
I've heard that Subaru was surprised by the demand for the first Impreza WRXs that they offered for sale over here, and buyers were citing the GT series as one of the major reasons for buying them.
Perhaps it was stealth marketing, the guy knows no one has heard of him and now maybe a million more have. If you believe the axiom, "there is no such thing as bad publicity", he just got a ton today, for a pretty small cost (whatever the license fee is for the protection).
Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. I think it is originally from a Digital exec who was refering to IBM's marketer's speak on DEC's products. It seems to have taken on the meaning of any marketing message that makes you think worse of other companies products. As a side note this is what is always blamed when the less elegant solution wins.
I got the tip last night and finally tried it, turn of TCS and SCS in the options menu, it improves the feel of the cars, they oversteer and understeer quite a bit more, and are faster too boot, it's a whole lot better, than it was. Oh and try the other game that came with Sega GT, JSRF, it's different but fun, in a not at all realisic way.
They are important in that they drive what games get ported and produced for a system. A game can be much more niche oriented and still sell well for the PS2, but has to be pretty popular to sell well for the less penetrated consoles.
I just bought one too, and I've so far enjoyed MechAssault, SegaGT (although it's a poor imitation of GT, but still fun) Dynasty Warriors 4, that was actualy what I was waiting for, and SC2. The last two are cross platform but if it's the only console you have they're quite fun. Halo looks good, but I'll wait for it to hit the bargain racks first.
Be careful how you define your estate tax, I agree that wealth should be taxed more than income, to reward those who create it, rather than those who sit on it, but there are two caveats I'd urge you to consider, first that that much wealth is usually tied up in a business and other illiquid assets, so a tax basically means selling the business or other assets very quickly which can greatly reduce their sales price. I think the number should be higher, more like $10 to $50 million to avoid most of the small businesses which would presumably be run by the kids (who should be quite good at it). Also that trust funds have to be invested somewhere, and the real question is weather trust fund managers are better or worse than the government (or other sources of tax revenue) at stimulating the economy with that money. I know that these types of are a huge source of venture capital money, that neither the government or other tax payers can reasonably provide. Finally, remember that any tax creates incentives to find loopholes and that this will just increase the nubmer of trusts and other estate tax avoidance systems which may reduce capital mobility, but keep many generations wealthy.
I'll grant you Mr. Gates was born well off and really improved his lot with a sweet deal from IBM, but Mr. Dell has a business acumen that flat embarasses most of us. He didn't start by buying Intel Chips by the semiload, his dorm room business was to buy the RAM upgrades that IBM forced their distributers to take (and were unable to sell) for pennies on the dollar and reselling them to the people who wanted them for a discount compared to IBM's list prices. He'd been doing things like this for the better part of his life, and only later did he begin assembling computers, and they did their selling over the phone because he couldn't afford the expensive distribution channels that others used. I have no idea about his family's weath, but would guess that he was firmly middle (probably upper middle) class, he was going to UT not some Ivy or even private school.
In terms of share of tax structure most groups pay about equal to their share of the national income. From what I've seen the highest and lowest quartile pay slightly less than their share of income (not wealth) in taxes, and are in effect both subsidised by the middle two quartiles who pay a slightly greater share of the total tax bill than their share of the national income. No quartile was too far from their share of national income (within 1-2%) so we have a fairly flat tax structure, although quite a bit more expensive than a VAT or fully flat tax, but that keeps the accountants and tax lawyers happy. That is really my biggest problem with the tax structure, it turns out to be pretty fair, in the sense of flat, but we sure go through a ton of effort each year to collect it all, it seems like there would be a more cost effective method of collecting taxes in a flat (or progressive or regressive) manner.
Elite 3 was called first encounters, and was pretty fun, with some impressive graphics for its time, it didn't get marketed well, and you pretty much had to find it in a bargin bin near you, there was someone who was hosting the British version of the game, (much better than the US release which had several major bugs) but I don't know if it is still around. I had it running under 95/98, but you'll need mo slow if you want to play it on anything close to new, or a Pentium one sitting around. They were working on an Elite 4, but I haven't heard much about that recently. There is a really cool open source game, Vega Strike, that is the best new space trading sim I've played, I think it works on Linux, OS X, and Windows, it's still in beta but pretty darn stable, (at least the Windows version was for me).
Great now the RIAA will sue the HD makers for making the disks too small and reducing their potential infringment collections by $300,000,000 per user. In other news SCO has announced that their patent portfolio includes all uses of the term giga- in referance to both base 10 systems and base 2 systems.
The older benz S classes were both coupe and sedan trims, and in 98 they started calling the coupes CL classes, I grabbed the first one from the right era I found. I was just looking at the body lines, and I realize that the CLK is a coupe while the Aristo (Lexus GS) is a sport sedan, the smaller Benz sedans started sporting that look around that year, they just look very similar to me. By the way, nice ride. That whole Soarer line is pretty rare stateside, but boy are they pretty cars, they just look classy, quick, and clean. The newer 430s don't have the same flair, retractable hardtop or not. I agree that the Supra engine swap is the way to go, but I think the V8's never got any respect or aftermarket parts because they never were available with a manual. But then it could be that driving honda's has sort of warped my brain around the goodness of NA.
Your right, I don't know who was inspired by who but the Cadillac Deville DTS and Benz S class are remarkably similar, and the Lexus GS series (I don't know if Toyota has a similar model under a diffent name in Japan like the Soarer SC branding) look a lot like the Benz CLKs. In the first pair, the S Class appears to have been first with a redesign in the mid 90s, vs. late 90s for the DTS, but the CLK and GS both came out with a new model in 98. They aren't design rips but they do share some styling cues, and I know the first DTS I saw I was wondering which model Benz it was. The Toyota and CLK simlarities are probably just a similar sense of style, both good IMHO, since there really wasn't time for either company to get a process running on a new design that quickly. Of course the new Cadillacs are quite innovative and I really don't think that there is much of anything that looks quite like they do. Competely off the point, what I really wish is that Toyota had put a manual in the V8 Soarer and shipped it over here, or shipped the twin turbo version over. I guess I should have said newer rather than older, and you are quite correct in you assesment of my knoledge of Toyota's JDM lines, it is sorely lacking.
Actually they do hide their prototypes but that is mostly to prevent design stealing, or at least design cue stealing, and it's mostly done by the more prestegious designers, ever notice how much Caddilacs and Lexus look like older M-B? Benz tries to hide their prototypes during testing so that after the design lag at the other firms they are almost a gen behind.
They could but you can't squeeze blood from a stone, and it isn't yet a requirement for everyone to carry a multi-million dollar umbrella policy.
Wal~Mart has age limits for buying spraypaint, games, movies, knives, guns, ammo, cigs, and I would guess now beer and wine in the stores that sell it. They have had all of these since I worked there in 1999. If you don't get asked it's because the cashier doesn't care. They are pretty agressive about id'ing for stuff.
Is rockstar owned by Take Two or are the still independant? Does anyone know?
Lending is probably legit under fair use, so long as no copies are made. It's copyright, not lendingright or useright no matter how much some may wish it to be.
No the trick comes from shifting the cost of J-Lo and Ben's limo's wardrobe assistant and such on to a very successful movie, so the first time actor who signed for a percentage of the profits in exchange for a smaller up front payment. The trick is to know that no movie ever makes a profit, and that you want a small cut of gross not net.
Why doesn't he just get a 250 GTO, they're rare as all get out (I think there are only about 20 available), sell for a fortune (the last one I read about sold for about 10 million but that was in 1999 and prices have softened a bit), and I believe already legal, due to age differences.
I was always partial to the 968s, now I think if I ever buy a "supercar" it will be an NSX, I love honda's approach to driving.
That's a pretty poor CBA. They lump all of highway spending as a subsity on gas, without mentioning that highway spending wouldn't change if we all drove electric cars, and gasoline taxes pay for most of the cost of highway construction. (I've seen the arguements that heavyer cars unfairly benefit since their road damage exceeds their extra gas consumption, but that's another agrument.) That appeared to be most of the cost, some other suspect charges included congestion and uncomponsated accidents, neither of which would change if we all drove zero emmision vehicles. Gas is taxed in the US, but not as heavily as in other countries, so gas is only cheap in the US if you think that European or Japanese tax levels are fair. I have no idea if gas is undertaxed, overtaxed, or properly taxed to compensate for its externalities under any of the tax systems. There are some subsides for the oil companies, but most of them are there to prevent the OPEC nations from controlling too much supply. Saudi Arabia is one of the cheapest places to extract oil from, they could theoretically drive everyone else out of the market but dropping prices to just below everyone else's cost, with the intent of raising prices until new capacity could be built, which would take some time (as we are learning in Iraq and Venesuela.
I'm curious are rims (good light weight forged rims like OZ or Volk) lighter than tires or tires lighter than rims? If you want a 20" wheel and tire with a given strength is it lighter to achieve this with a big wheel and low profile tire or a little wheel and higher profile tire? It seems most racing wheels are around 12"-14" with presumably the idea to buy a big tire to compensate. That would be ironic, I think.