From the sound of it though, it seems no one in Europe will care, because they apparently don't want iPhones, they want phones that do X Y and Z that an iPhone doesn't do.
Pretty much the shape of things, I think. Between Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson, there's little enough room for this overpriced market entrant. And since we're already used to being able to transfer MP3s to and from phones freely via USB and Bluetooth, this business of direct downloading to the iPhone is unimpressive. Maybe it's a big deal in the US, where I hear you typically can't just transfer an MP3 over USB and say 'use this as the ringtone'.
On other fronts, the F-22 represents our leading edge technology (even though it's essentially 1990's tech) and is what gives us an advantage. It's not surprising the technology isn't up for export. The F-15 and F-16 both were in the same position when they were introduced, but eventually were considered for export after there advantage subsided a bit (or "lower" tech versions of them were available). As well, the F-22 is really expensive. The United States is one of the few countries (or groups of countries) that can pull off such an endeavor. This also naturally limits its export capability, there's simply few others that could afford to buy it.
This might be the reason the Japanese are showing off their plans to build their own plane. If that doesn't work, if the Americans still won't sell them F22s, then... well, while they're over there in Europe, I hear there are Typhoons coming off the production line in substantial numbers now... maybe they should make some inquiries... Oh, what's that, Mr Bush, you've reconsidered? What a pleasant surprise.
I've long argued that instead of paying the premium (read: 10 times) for state-of-the-art gizmos, the military should buy "just better than the enemy's" now, with a provision to upgrade everything 5 times in the lifetime of the product.
Depends how much you value the lives of your pilots, and the prestige that comes from an aura of invincibility.
Right now, the US air force has a reputation for being unbeatable. Nobody can compete with the US in the air. I don't think the Iraqi air force even bothered to leave the ground during the last war. What would be the point? It's suicide. That gives you a big bonus advantage - if your kit is that good, suddenly it doesn't need to be, because nobody's even going to dare try it on. Same thing happened back in the Falklands: the Argentines feared to engage Harriers in air combat, and that meant the British got away with only having about a dozen of them on site.
If you give the enemy a chance, he'll go for it. He'll take risks for his country or his ideology or his faith or his friends; he'll accept the likelihood of death for the chance of bringing down a Yankee imperialist. Sure, you'll still win. Your planes are still better than his. But no longer so much better that nobody tries to take them on. You get casualties. You get pictures on the news of American planes as burned wreckage on the ground, you get pilots dead or captured, you get this much more often. Depending on your priorities, this may well be worth the extra money to avoid.
After all, for the likes of America, or Britain, or indeed Japan, people are very expensive and need to be preserved. Recruiting is very hard right now, but building planes is comparatively easy - so build the best plane you can, to protect the few pilots you have. If you're China, with people in huge numbers willing to go to war for low pay, the equation might come out differently.
I'm surprised they don't do more with their Military. I think they are counting on their somewhat innocent attitude to bring the US to the rescue should they be forced into a war.
I think the US rather insisted on that. Pacifism got written into the Japanese constitution after the war, more or less at Washington's dictate. They're not allowed to spend more than some tiny percentage of GNP on defence, either.
Wow. The old meme's obsolete. If step 1 is 'violate Second Law of Thermodynamics', I don't think it matters much whether or not we have a clearly-defined step 2...
Why come up with currency when energy is the only thing anyone could ever want? You'd be better off trading with energy directly.
Humans : correct in making the leap from wealth as currency to wealth as energy. But logic failure : wealth ultimately is extension of desire, fluctuating with emotions and state of mind. Desires : when all are supported in purely adaptable system, true wealth is achieved.
-- Usurper Judaa Marr, "Human : Nature", on the subject of Adaptive Economics
Quite simply: the bible was written by fourty-some authors over several thousand years. The first author was Moses.
Citation for this claim, please? Certainly it is traditionally held that Moses wrote the Pentateuch (presumably including the account of his own death) but I find nothing to support a claim of such great antiquity. Except faith, of course. Certainly it seems that the first writers of the Torah would have lived long after the time of Rameses II, who AFAIK is the best candidate for the Pharaoh of Exodus.
My impression from the movies was that they have some form of anti-gravity for taxiing, which could also make up for lack of lift during atmospheric flight.
Ah. That explains a lot.
'Hmm. Disconnected in the rough landing the main cable to the antigravity device was. No wonder it is, that get this ship out of the swamp he cannot. Reconnect it I will, before to lift it through Force powers I attempt. Impressed will young Skywalker be, and respectful!'
That's why they don't have wings. They have S-foils.
And anyway, X-wings are quite capable of atmospheric flight. Just as long as you aren't damn fool enough to land one in a swamp; you'd never get it out.
So, we kill by using completely different mostions and hand gestures than we would use were we actually to do this.
Don't know about that. Lifting to strangle sounds similar to what you do in The Godfather. As if you're going for a grab on someone's throat, moving your hands from around waist level to the neck. A lot of what I'm hearing about Manhunt 2 I already did to endless Tattaglia goons, and yes, it felt damn real.
(Go play The Godfather on Wii. Not so much for the game, which is an okayish GTA clone, but for the violence, oh such violence it is...)
However, in the details, it ends up leaving me high and dry.
No surprises there. I might be wrong, but I think the whole industry's climbing up the walls; anyone can play guitar, publish online, and if you prove yourself and maybe get lucky, and if everything's in its right place then there's grounds to be optimistic. If you're a record executive at this point you probably feel like your time is up, you're falling and can't find the ripcord. Before too long there'll be just bones. No wonder they're in a sulk. They wish they were bulletproof, but in reality they're completely in limbo; the once-glamourous record company guy is shown up now as a creep out for dollars and cents, and everyone has the knives out for them.
A UK cat has no problem communicating with an Asian breed, for example. (Well, when it can be arsed to communicate, anyway;) It's a global language. So I say let's all learn to meow.
The idea is a good one - how many hollywood films have you seen where the secret agent/bad guy has managed circumvent security guards & systems because work like clockwork.
Bad guy? It's normally the hero exploiting this kind of weakness. Half of the Evil Overlord List consists of dire warnings about what happens if your guards patrol preset, predictable routes at preset, predictable times. Not to mention deadly flame jets firing exactly every 2.74 seconds, and laser alarms that can be bypassed by a sufficiently athletic ninja girl in a catsuit.
Quit the army? They were sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. Then they promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground.
I'm also told that for quite some time, still wanted by the government, they survived as soldiers of fortune. And that if you had a problem, if no-one else could help, and if you could find them, maybe you could have hired the A-Team.
Less money for Microsoft equals less taxation for the US regime equals less funds available for the occupation of Iraq.
Now, if large numbers of people insist on continuing to buy foreign goods instead of domestically produced products (as is the current trend)
So: less money for Microsoft
those corporations you seek to injure will simply close down production facilities here and outsource production, or go out of business entirely. Either way, they will cease to employ Americans. Those people will then collect unemployment and stop paying taxes.
Equals less taxation for the US regime
In case you hadn't noticed, the federal budget runs at a deficit anyway, so reducing tax revenue isn't going to magically stop the war.
Everyone's got a credit limit. Even the federal budget. Equals less funds available for the occupation of Iraq. Although I'll grant that the current leaders seem perfectly happy to spend money they don't have for as long as they can get away with it. You'd have to reduce revenues an awful lot before they seriously started to consider reducing 'defence' expenditure.
If you feel very strongly about the issue of Iraq, write your elected leaders, stage a protest rally, or campaign for office yourself. Attempting to somehow affect that situation by enacting personal economic sanctions against your own people only makes you look woefully ignorant of the situation.
Not my people. Much the same as the original story submitter, it's just some foreigners whose policies abroad I strongly disapprove (not that I approve of our own spineless acquiescence to every fresh horror out of Washington, mind, but it's starting to look like Gordon's got the message and is quietly planning to get us out of there.) American console, Japanese console, it's all just money going abroad. Money paid to Japan, however, isn't very likely to get spent on invading anybody, and other things being equal that might just make the difference when you decide which to buy.
If I disapprove of the war in Iraq, should I go out to buy PS3 instead of xbox?
If you feel very strongly about the issue, then yes.
How will this change the course of the government in the United States?
Less money for Microsoft equals less taxation for the US regime equals less funds available for the occupation of Iraq. One less xbox doesn't make much difference, but if large numbers of people decided to buy Japanese machines in protest against America's behaviour then it might indeed get noticed.
Though his face shows almost no emotion there is this absolute wave of sadness that you can feel, then it pans out with him slowly walking towards the battle accepting his fate.
Maybe you were accepting your fate. Personally, I was on my way to kick ass and take names. All three major previous incarnations: absorbed. The Transcendent One: absorbed. The golden sphere: opened. Name: remembered. Character level: astronomical. Charisma stat: maxed long ago, 'You could lead the planes to war'. Bring it the fuck on!
But that's rather the wonderful thing about The Nameless One; he's a tabula rasa, and you impose your own ideas of what he is, and give your own answer to Ravel's old question.
They're both talking skulls who accompany the protagonist. There the similarity ends. Murray is a wannabe demon monstrosity. Morte has been to hell and knows what demon monstrosities are actually like, and is absolutely terrified that some incarnation or other of the Nameless One will eventually send him back where he belongs...
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty much the shape of things, I think. Between Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson, there's little enough room for this overpriced market entrant. And since we're already used to being able to transfer MP3s to and from phones freely via USB and Bluetooth, this business of direct downloading to the iPhone is unimpressive. Maybe it's a big deal in the US, where I hear you typically can't just transfer an MP3 over USB and say 'use this as the ringtone'.
This might be the reason the Japanese are showing off their plans to build their own plane. If that doesn't work, if the Americans still won't sell them F22s, then... well, while they're over there in Europe, I hear there are Typhoons coming off the production line in substantial numbers now... maybe they should make some inquiries... Oh, what's that, Mr Bush, you've reconsidered? What a pleasant surprise.
Depends how much you value the lives of your pilots, and the prestige that comes from an aura of invincibility.
Right now, the US air force has a reputation for being unbeatable. Nobody can compete with the US in the air. I don't think the Iraqi air force even bothered to leave the ground during the last war. What would be the point? It's suicide. That gives you a big bonus advantage - if your kit is that good, suddenly it doesn't need to be, because nobody's even going to dare try it on. Same thing happened back in the Falklands: the Argentines feared to engage Harriers in air combat, and that meant the British got away with only having about a dozen of them on site.
If you give the enemy a chance, he'll go for it. He'll take risks for his country or his ideology or his faith or his friends; he'll accept the likelihood of death for the chance of bringing down a Yankee imperialist. Sure, you'll still win. Your planes are still better than his. But no longer so much better that nobody tries to take them on. You get casualties. You get pictures on the news of American planes as burned wreckage on the ground, you get pilots dead or captured, you get this much more often. Depending on your priorities, this may well be worth the extra money to avoid.
After all, for the likes of America, or Britain, or indeed Japan, people are very expensive and need to be preserved. Recruiting is very hard right now, but building planes is comparatively easy - so build the best plane you can, to protect the few pilots you have. If you're China, with people in huge numbers willing to go to war for low pay, the equation might come out differently.
I think the US rather insisted on that. Pacifism got written into the Japanese constitution after the war, more or less at Washington's dictate. They're not allowed to spend more than some tiny percentage of GNP on defence, either.
Precisely. All that equipment we're carrying to detect gaseous anomalies - the thing's got to have a tailpipe!
... what does it transform into? And at which high school will they be recruiting the pilots?
Wow. The old meme's obsolete. If step 1 is 'violate Second Law of Thermodynamics', I don't think it matters much whether or not we have a clearly-defined step 2...
Humans : correct in making the leap from wealth as currency to wealth as energy. But logic failure : wealth ultimately is extension of desire, fluctuating with emotions and state of mind. Desires : when all are supported in purely adaptable system, true wealth is achieved.
-- Usurper Judaa Marr, "Human : Nature", on the subject of Adaptive Economics
Citation for this claim, please? Certainly it is traditionally held that Moses wrote the Pentateuch (presumably including the account of his own death) but I find nothing to support a claim of such great antiquity. Except faith, of course. Certainly it seems that the first writers of the Torah would have lived long after the time of Rameses II, who AFAIK is the best candidate for the Pharaoh of Exodus.
As I recall, Islam actually means 'submission'. Submission to the will of God, and guess who's going to be telling you what God's will is?
True enough. These days you can't even mention it without being told to watch 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' by at least three people.
Ah. That explains a lot.
'Hmm. Disconnected in the rough landing the main cable to the antigravity device was. No wonder it is, that get this ship out of the swamp he cannot. Reconnect it I will, before to lift it through Force powers I attempt. Impressed will young Skywalker be, and respectful!'
That's why they don't have wings. They have S-foils.
And anyway, X-wings are quite capable of atmospheric flight. Just as long as you aren't damn fool enough to land one in a swamp; you'd never get it out.
Write out one hundred times:
'Wesley Crusher is not Kibo'.
Don't know about that. Lifting to strangle sounds similar to what you do in The Godfather. As if you're going for a grab on someone's throat, moving your hands from around waist level to the neck. A lot of what I'm hearing about Manhunt 2 I already did to endless Tattaglia goons, and yes, it felt damn real.
(Go play The Godfather on Wii. Not so much for the game, which is an okayish GTA clone, but for the violence, oh such violence it is...)
No surprises there. I might be wrong, but I think the whole industry's climbing up the walls; anyone can play guitar, publish online, and if you prove yourself and maybe get lucky, and if everything's in its right place then there's grounds to be optimistic. If you're a record executive at this point you probably feel like your time is up, you're falling and can't find the ripcord. Before too long there'll be just bones. No wonder they're in a sulk. They wish they were bulletproof, but in reality they're completely in limbo; the once-glamourous record company guy is shown up now as a creep out for dollars and cents, and everyone has the knives out for them.
Meow? Some of us prefer to nya ^_^
Bad guy? It's normally the hero exploiting this kind of weakness. Half of the Evil Overlord List consists of dire warnings about what happens if your guards patrol preset, predictable routes at preset, predictable times. Not to mention deadly flame jets firing exactly every 2.74 seconds, and laser alarms that can be bypassed by a sufficiently athletic ninja girl in a catsuit.
Unix.
Quit the army? They were sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. Then they promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground.
I'm also told that for quite some time, still wanted by the government, they survived as soldiers of fortune. And that if you had a problem, if no-one else could help, and if you could find them, maybe you could have hired the A-Team.
Now, if large numbers of people insist on continuing to buy foreign goods instead of domestically produced products (as is the current trend)
So: less money for Microsoft
those corporations you seek to injure will simply close down production facilities here and outsource production, or go out of business entirely. Either way, they will cease to employ Americans. Those people will then collect unemployment and stop paying taxes.
Equals less taxation for the US regime
In case you hadn't noticed, the federal budget runs at a deficit anyway, so reducing tax revenue isn't going to magically stop the war.
Everyone's got a credit limit. Even the federal budget. Equals less funds available for the occupation of Iraq. Although I'll grant that the current leaders seem perfectly happy to spend money they don't have for as long as they can get away with it. You'd have to reduce revenues an awful lot before they seriously started to consider reducing 'defence' expenditure.
If you feel very strongly about the issue of Iraq, write your elected leaders, stage a protest rally, or campaign for office yourself. Attempting to somehow affect that situation by enacting personal economic sanctions against your own people only makes you look woefully ignorant of the situation.
Not my people. Much the same as the original story submitter, it's just some foreigners whose policies abroad I strongly disapprove (not that I approve of our own spineless acquiescence to every fresh horror out of Washington, mind, but it's starting to look like Gordon's got the message and is quietly planning to get us out of there.) American console, Japanese console, it's all just money going abroad. Money paid to Japan, however, isn't very likely to get spent on invading anybody, and other things being equal that might just make the difference when you decide which to buy.
If you feel very strongly about the issue, then yes.
How will this change the course of the government in the United States?
Less money for Microsoft equals less taxation for the US regime equals less funds available for the occupation of Iraq. One less xbox doesn't make much difference, but if large numbers of people decided to buy Japanese machines in protest against America's behaviour then it might indeed get noticed.
Maybe you were accepting your fate. Personally, I was on my way to kick ass and take names. All three major previous incarnations: absorbed. The Transcendent One: absorbed. The golden sphere: opened. Name: remembered. Character level: astronomical. Charisma stat: maxed long ago, 'You could lead the planes to war'. Bring it the fuck on!
But that's rather the wonderful thing about The Nameless One; he's a tabula rasa, and you impose your own ideas of what he is, and give your own answer to Ravel's old question.
Yes, it's a terrible insult to the Pistols' long tradition of good taste and common decency.
They're both talking skulls who accompany the protagonist. There the similarity ends. Murray is a wannabe demon monstrosity. Morte has been to hell and knows what demon monstrosities are actually like, and is absolutely terrified that some incarnation or other of the Nameless One will eventually send him back where he belongs...