I program games. I just came back from the office from doing it 11 hours straight because of an upcoming milestone. I went onto MSN to complain about my life. My collage roommate asked me what I did today. I said that one of my tasks was modifying arrows to make them impale enemies "just right". Until his gleeful reaction, I had completely forgotten how lucky I was.
I believe that exception actually passed at the last decennial International Man Convention. Just make sure physical contact is kept to the barest minimum.
Exactly, firefighting is considered a manly enough job to justify venturing towards childrearing. There are other exceptions too, for example, if his children are hungry, a man may kill an animal to feed them; however if he goes so far as to cook it, he's a fag.
Um, wow, you might want to just have a quick scan at the statistics you are quoting there. Niger, Cuba, Uganda, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Turkmenistan, Comoros and Zimbabwe apparently have no prisoners. Also, there is apparently close to no assaults in the middle east. Apparently Turkey is the most violent country in that region with a trivial 7 assaults per 10 000 people per annum, completely being put to shame by Yeman which only has 4 assaults in 100 000 people, 1/200th as much as that violent mess New Zealand. In fact, Canada has 12 times as much violent crime as Columbia, making it the second most violent non-island country in the Americas, after the US.
Before quoting statistics, it is best to look at them. If they do not look right, they're probably not. For example, if the anglosphere and Scandinavia soar near the top of the list, you're probably dealing with incompatible figures, based on a range of different definitions as well as some serious lies by various governments near the bottom. If you quote non-credible statistics as the basis of your argument, it is never going to work well. Your prejudice may be wrong a lot of the time, but not nearly as often as raw statistics, it's best to listen to it when it tells you statistics are wrong.
it is clear that their high-speed trading is effectively a zero sum game and by enriching themselves, they are not providing greater prosperity for others.
So long as I can still make money day trading on the stock market, I don't care. And I CAN still make money.
Honestly, I don't think anyone else in the world would be hurt if you suddenly had to stop day trading. Investing give capital to business, the only service day traders provide to investors is allowing them to do stupid things like panic selling and impulse buying just a little bit faster. I think day trading is the exact type of zero sum industry the grandparent was decrying.
You make money, but what service do you provide for others?
is that how Polanski lived openly in France for decades?
Someone fiddles with your kiddies, so you lock him up then you let him out. If, once he is out of prison, he decides to piss off to France, this is a good thing. If he was going to get a prison sentence he would still be in there, so he would have either got probation, (i.e. keeping him in the country) or deported (i.e. an expensive way to send him out of the country). I don't get it, the judge told him he was going to be deported for being a pervert, so he left the country at his own expense. Now the United States government wants him back? This sounds like the old chestnut education anecdote about being suspended for truancy. Someone's just mad that the tough hand of justice didn't get to administer its pathetic slap on the wrist and now probably want to give him the hugest sentence they can to justify the time and money they spent getting him. Seriously, some people in the department of justice have got to grow up.
You could probably survive China, Moldova or Vietnam.
China is nice enough. However, in the case of China, if your country starts telling them that you stole billions of dollars, they're going to deport you for overstaying the visa that they just terminated. If your own country says "we want him back so we can kick his arse", then it is really not worth the effort for the Chinese government to argue with your government about a potential criminal they don't care about anyway. The US has sent Chinese embezzlers back to China, I'd imagine they would repay the favor. In fact, you'd have a very hard time finding a country that will knowingly take in a fugitive unless they can prove that they are a political refugee. Agreeing to repatriate suspects is an easy and popular way to get shady people out of your own country and keep the other country happy. You have never actually needed an extradition treaty to do it. Chinese law prohibits the extradition of Chinese citizens, which means that they will probably be tried by a local court instead, doubtfully a better outcome.
The competition's also been slashdotted, where it's being discussed by various people who don't know too much:
Starcraft is as good a topic as any to be completely naive about. Many people can sleep soundly in their beds without knowing how many units can fit into a Terran dropship. If he said the same thing at teamliquid.net then it would be different.
Plus, Starcraft is as dominated by rushing as the players want it to be, it is only an ineffective strategy when it is properly countered. We will have to wait to see the AI to tell how their strategies unfold.
Sure, they'll have to learn how to do a few things differently
No they won't. For the things they should actually be doing (like surfing the web), it is almost exactly the same. For things like installing applications and configuring hardware, it is different enough so that hopefully they never learn how to do it.
If I was this guy, I wouldn't even consider Mac or Ubuntu, I'd go straight towards something like Slackware or Gentoo. They both come with icons for things like web browsers, IM clients, file managers and office programs on the desktop like any other modern OS. However the console scares the hell out of most users, so leaving it the only vector to break a system is just like leaving a big, fierce and ugly dog outside the back door. Chances are, they will never even find out what a root password is, let alone find out that they don't have it.
Window's big issue is that uninstalling the drivers for your graphics card can be done by simply clicking buttons. Try getting the average user to uninstall ANYTHING under Gentoo or change anything outside of their account, even with the root password. There is a remarkably narrow skill level difference between those who can correctly administer a Windows system and those who can administer a Linux system. Most people can't really administer either, at least with Linux they will know it.
Disclaimer - I use Ubuntu and Windows, but can be trusted with a bright and colourful System->Administration menu.
As to the rest of your poorly written and ignorant post, YOU TOTALLY MISSED THE FUCKING POINT.
Wow, you are the least civil person I have encountered on slashdot. I am sad I didn't just simply mod you down rather than waste the effort to reply to your enraged and incoherent ranting.
There's no legitimate reason to make a criminal out of the PLAYER because YOU are irrationally concerned about the site being a scam, and tax laws already deal quite effectively with the revenue issues.
The grandparent was discussing Australia. Nobody is going to going to be fined or even tried by an Australian court for playing online poker. I'm not sure what the case is when something is banned in other countries, but in Australia, generally it just means it can't be advertised or be dealt with over the counter. Heaps of things are illegal in Australia, it doesn't mean you're going to get a criminal record for doing most of them anyway. Weed is illegal in Australia, it doesn't mean that you can't buy it or you'll be thrown into gaol for doing so, it just means that kids aren't bombarded with advertisements for it in supermarkets. Hard core pornography is banned from sale in all Australian states, but you can get it over the counter in stores country wide. Illegal in Australia just means "keep it in your pocket in public or the police will take it off you".
Most of Australia's laws are in place because most Australians are stupid and can't take care of themselves. Australia, like every other country is mostly filled with morons. The government tries to protect them from scammers because its job in theory is protecting the weak from the strong. This applies to the intellectually weak as much as the physically weak. The laws are not in place to punish morons.
And tax laws don't deal with the revenue issue because the sites are outside the jurisdiction where they are taxed. Dah.
In short, his position is completely justifiable. Maybe just cultural differences between America and Australia. In America, freedom is an ideal. In Australia, freedom is just doing what you want. I've been to America more recently than Australia, it's a nice enough country, but I did get the feeling that everyone wanted me to do more or less what I was told, whereas in Australia, people kind of hope that you play up a little. Australia has laws that would make a patriotic American's eyes fog with rage, but there are far less Australians in prison per capita and it's an ex-penal colony, what does that say?
Is the networking/interconnection system part of the engine, and if not, would the former be part of Carmack's responsibilities, too?
Yes, it is. Most major game engine packages, including IDTech contain a networking layer. In fact, John Carmack was the guy who pretty much pioneered the client-server model for graphical games back when he made Quake.
However I've never had a major problem with his game's network layers. The issue is only that the game itself (content and gameplay wise) has been fairly bland for the last few iterations. If what the grandparent post is saying is correct, John Carmack is only responsible for the technical side, (including rendering and networking) and not the game experience itself. However, if "Masters of Doom" is correct, that is simply not the case as that book attributes most of the decisions as to the focus on recent games to John Carmack. It argues that it is the direct consequence of his conservative policy in game design that lead to Quake2, Quake3 and Doom3 being how they are, for better or worse.
The grandparent is claiming that John Carmack's technical record is unblemished and if he says P2P hosting is the way of the future then he should be given the benefit of the doubt and not questioned until he either recants, delivers a bad implementation or proves not to be able to implement this system in reasonable time. Even if he is responsible for the boring combat of Doom3, that suggests nothing about his ability to write game networking layers. I wrote a lot of the network system of a commercial game engine. My personal reaction towards this statement is to acknowledge that past history suggests that he will be able to deliver something very good and there is nobody who can really call him wrong until they have tested his implementation. I however, have not abandoned the client-server model and neither should anyone simply on the words of John D Carmack without thinking exactly about the priorities and requirements of their game.
Masten simply was prepared and had their permits and vehicles in place to be able to take advantage of that last launch opportunity.
Yes, on earth there is a lot of random chance. The universe is based on the laws of physics, not the United States. Launch permits mean nothing when you are trying to land on a far away planet. Away from earth, there is surprisingly little random chance apart from the reliability of the spacecraft (e.g. whether the mechanics did their job or were distracted) where Armadillo won by a huge margin. By the way, Mastern had their launch permits because they made their attempt at the last minute, whereas Armadillo's had expired months ago (i.e. after their attempt). This is not exactly a merit on Mastern's part. Armadillo isn't financially hurt for the same reason John Carmack has multiple Ferraris, but it doesn't mean this isn't a clear indication that the priorities of the organizes are dangerously diverged from reality.
But I digress, the purpose of my post was to ask you to apologize to HEbGb who you wrote to in a frightfully rude manner. I am pleasantly surprised that you didn't show me the same level of contempt, but nonetheless you have not apologized to him.
You're too focused on yourself and your greed to focus on the bigger picture.
I love how you accused HEbGb of personal greed after he tried to explain this to you. I'm not sure what sort of a cut he's expecting to get from Armadillo, but it really makes you sound like a paranoid dick. However, I'll try to explain it myself, just out of personal kindness.
Its not fair, but the universe doesn't have a concept of fair, just reality
The universe is supremely fair. It is a single set of physical rules that apply to every object, there is no random chance, bias or pity. It doesn't care about you or what you want to achieve. It will kill everyone equally should they not have the conditions met for their body to function. So if it was a lunar landing situation, when Armadillo's rockets fired and Masten's didn't, the universe would have killed the pilot of Masten's rocket and spared Armadillo's. Gravity is a constant, if your equipment doesn't work when you're in space, you die. Masten had two days to launch their rocket, on the first, the rocket didn't start, on the second, it caught fire. It sounds to me like the universe had something pretty clear to say about the relative qualities of the rocket. Unreliable equipment is useless, but some judges decided to be “nice” and give it another chance. I would rather trust Armadillo's machine to protect me or my property against the infinite impartiality of gravity and vacuum.
You see, at the very core of this is physical reality, which is why the teams were originally only given two chances to achieve a landing. V^2 = u^2 + 2as means that high above a planet's surface, if your rockets don't work, you will die. Very few fortuitous or unexpected things happen in space (like being given another chance), the only variable is in the vehicle itself. The money isn't the issue, it is the misguided belief by the judges that an arbitrary criterion such as distance from the target is more important than having the equipment work when it is supposed to.
Anyway, I think you should really apologise to HEbGb, you were quite disrespectful.
Guess you idiots can't read as he stated the laptop he's talking about pre-dates USB and doesn't have any. Nor does it have a NIC and the HD is less then 1GB
You are an extremely rude person. Even if guides to install DSL in _exactly_ that situation like this were not so easy to find, anything you can copy to a Linux formatted hard disk from a Linux rescue floppy can generally be installed. DSL is a great candidate.
I think at least some of the people that want realism are referring to the physics mainly. In any case, I don't particularly enjoy games because of how much they resemble reality.
Yes, E cup breasts on a slim Japanese teen is simply a stylized motif, but heaven forbid they don't bounce correctly.
you're also a racist fuck and I wish there were less of this shit on slashdot
Why is he racist? Genes are genes, ethnic groups have different genes to other ethnic groups, that's what makes them look different. It doesn't make them any intrinsically better or worse at being a "person" in the modern understanding any more than a Labrador is an intrinsically better or worse pet than a golden retriever.
If any ethnic group had Neanderthal DNA in its genepool, based on geographic range and skull shape chances are it is Caucasian people, my own race. If this is true, what difference does it make? We've done fairly well for ourselves I think, we're as human as anyone else. I don't really know many other Caucasian people where I live, but I don't feel like I'm grazing with a heard of some other species and I don't think they consider me to be a domesticated Neanderthal pet (at least I hope not).
Sometimes racial studies are done for the purposes of proving a master race. But usually, it's just because different people have different physiologies and have different common ailments, different recommended lifestyle and diet. If something as superficially obvious as race can tell a doctor what that person is likely to be allergic to and whether that person is likely to have diabetes, it is useful to know.
However, to me, those "Race and IQ" studies that seem to keep popping up on marginal websites and drawing the bulk of the attention, although not necessarily false, serve little other purpose than to piss people off. Even if they are true, I can see very little practical application, to me they just serve to aggravate the "PC" crowd, but sadly catch the individuals of the races at the bottom of the list (who may themselves be quite smart) in the crossfire.
The news you get about Australia generally comes from Australians. Australians have a habit of complaining about things, especially their own country. What news you get out of Australia will generally honest, but very much focused on the negative. It does cut down on things like illegal immigration, since any Australian will happily tell the world how prevalent racism is in their society and the shamefully brutal treatment of refugees. But it is important to remember that what you hear about Australia is a list of what needs to be improved, generally not a reasonable basis for comparison with other countries, since generally you might have heard those country's issues discussed in a less pessimistic voice. I've traveled around a fair bit, Australia has it's weaknesses but so do all countries, even Australia's government despite it's recent obsession with censorship is fair by government standards (not saying much). Australia's government is a bloated, inflexible and expensive pain in the arse, but so is yours.
The Australian censorship system worked fairly well in the past. Only a very small handful of media were banned in the past and they were generally things banned in most other countries too and was not vigorously enforced. Generally, censorship was aligned with what the bulk of the population wanted (although arguably that is still the case). Things changed a lot with the introduction of compulsory rating of computer games, since the ratings system wasn't able to handle the broadening scope of themes in computer games. But computer games is a small part of the Australian censorship system, and censorship is a small part of Australia. Also, it says a lot about Australia's unwillingness to accept bullshit that the government still can not implement an Internet censorship scheme after 3 years of trying despite having quite good IT resources at their disposal.
Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about Australia. A lot of stupid shit happens down there, but this is the case everywhere, it just pisses Australians off more.
Also, who says no good news? Yesterday Slashdot said that CSIRO invested $150M in scientific research, that's pretty good. The patents looked fair to me and even if they weren't, at least the ill-gotten gains are going somewhere useful.
until some bureaucrat wants to use the money to bribe his constituents
A bureaucrat doesn't have constituents, they just work for a government department. Essentially they just suck up to their bosses in the same way as we do in the private sector.
I live in China. Generally speaking I eat Japanese, Vietnamese or Korean food. The flavours are much simpler, I find it much easier to eat. I like to see the faces of Chinese when I am eating a big bowl of Vietnamese rice noodles, with fish sauce, mint, vegetable spring rolls and fresh salad leaves. The fact that I am not personally offended by what they served me is perplexing enough, the fact that it is actually what I ordered is incomprehensable. No meat, mostly raw and barely any flavour, the three forbidden properties in Chinese cuisine.
actively demonized and scapegoated by people like you, and encouraged to be the way they were.
I really doubt it, I spent the majority of my highschool lunchtimes in the computer lab because I was scared to go out and socialise. But that was my problem, not everyone else's. But I like how you picture me in your head, a toned, sexy Lothario, I bet the guy you picture me as gets laid much more often than I do.
Stop blaming the victims for trying to make their life better. You neoconservatives are such hypocrites; you are pro-war, pro-death penalty, pro-gun, and yet you get upset when your victims try to balance the playing field. You are narcissistic, and your response proves my point.
Wow, just wow, I have never had my political beliefs summed up so succinctly and so badly. You are precisely WHY I am not pro gun, I do not support the death penalty and I loudly complained about current two wars. You have an amazing ability to picture the rest of the world as fitting a certain archetype to be your oppressors and I'm not sure if I can help you.
This is coming from a guy who was largely ostracised and had absolutely no friends in the first 7 years of his education, who was laughed at and even beaten by his peers during his early years. I developed my sense of social cohesion slower than most and I believe I have suffered as much as you have. However if you believe that anyone has the right to indiscriminately kill those around them as a cry for help, you are even worse than the people who mistreat you.
Yeah, I've noticed that people who don't back-stab, peer pressure each other to demonize scape goats to promote social cohesion often end up being demonized themselves when they end up on the news (like Columbine and Virgina tech).
If someone is narcisistic enough to kill tens of people in order to prove how mistreated they are by society, it is unlikely that this is the first antisocial thing they've done.
It is quite possible to become popular by treating people well, and the best way to have people hate you is to mistreat them. Arseholes generally do not have many friends and a lot of people without many friends are arseholes.
If you would consider killing a bunch of people to prove that you are miserable, you are a terrible person and this is why nobody else wants to be your friend, nothing about clique politics.
Slashdot Mirror
I program games. I just came back from the office from doing it 11 hours straight because of an upcoming milestone. I went onto MSN to complain about my life. My collage roommate asked me what I did today. I said that one of my tasks was modifying arrows to make them impale enemies "just right". Until his gleeful reaction, I had completely forgotten how lucky I was.
Exactly, firefighting is considered a manly enough job to justify venturing towards childrearing. There are other exceptions too, for example, if his children are hungry, a man may kill an animal to feed them; however if he goes so far as to cook it, he's a fag.
Um, wow, you might want to just have a quick scan at the statistics you are quoting there. Niger, Cuba, Uganda, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Turkmenistan, Comoros and Zimbabwe apparently have no prisoners. Also, there is apparently close to no assaults in the middle east. Apparently Turkey is the most violent country in that region with a trivial 7 assaults per 10 000 people per annum, completely being put to shame by Yeman which only has 4 assaults in 100 000 people, 1/200th as much as that violent mess New Zealand. In fact, Canada has 12 times as much violent crime as Columbia, making it the second most violent non-island country in the Americas, after the US.
Before quoting statistics, it is best to look at them. If they do not look right, they're probably not. For example, if the anglosphere and Scandinavia soar near the top of the list, you're probably dealing with incompatible figures, based on a range of different definitions as well as some serious lies by various governments near the bottom. If you quote non-credible statistics as the basis of your argument, it is never going to work well. Your prejudice may be wrong a lot of the time, but not nearly as often as raw statistics, it's best to listen to it when it tells you statistics are wrong.
Honestly, I don't think anyone else in the world would be hurt if you suddenly had to stop day trading. Investing give capital to business, the only service day traders provide to investors is allowing them to do stupid things like panic selling and impulse buying just a little bit faster. I think day trading is the exact type of zero sum industry the grandparent was decrying.
You make money, but what service do you provide for others?
Someone fiddles with your kiddies, so you lock him up then you let him out. If, once he is out of prison, he decides to piss off to France, this is a good thing. If he was going to get a prison sentence he would still be in there, so he would have either got probation, (i.e. keeping him in the country) or deported (i.e. an expensive way to send him out of the country). I don't get it, the judge told him he was going to be deported for being a pervert, so he left the country at his own expense. Now the United States government wants him back? This sounds like the old chestnut education anecdote about being suspended for truancy. Someone's just mad that the tough hand of justice didn't get to administer its pathetic slap on the wrist and now probably want to give him the hugest sentence they can to justify the time and money they spent getting him. Seriously, some people in the department of justice have got to grow up.
China is nice enough. However, in the case of China, if your country starts telling them that you stole billions of dollars, they're going to deport you for overstaying the visa that they just terminated. If your own country says "we want him back so we can kick his arse", then it is really not worth the effort for the Chinese government to argue with your government about a potential criminal they don't care about anyway. The US has sent Chinese embezzlers back to China, I'd imagine they would repay the favor. In fact, you'd have a very hard time finding a country that will knowingly take in a fugitive unless they can prove that they are a political refugee. Agreeing to repatriate suspects is an easy and popular way to get shady people out of your own country and keep the other country happy. You have never actually needed an extradition treaty to do it. Chinese law prohibits the extradition of Chinese citizens, which means that they will probably be tried by a local court instead, doubtfully a better outcome.
Starcraft is as good a topic as any to be completely naive about. Many people can sleep soundly in their beds without knowing how many units can fit into a Terran dropship. If he said the same thing at teamliquid.net then it would be different.
Plus, Starcraft is as dominated by rushing as the players want it to be, it is only an ineffective strategy when it is properly countered. We will have to wait to see the AI to tell how their strategies unfold.
No they won't. For the things they should actually be doing (like surfing the web), it is almost exactly the same. For things like installing applications and configuring hardware, it is different enough so that hopefully they never learn how to do it.
If I was this guy, I wouldn't even consider Mac or Ubuntu, I'd go straight towards something like Slackware or Gentoo. They both come with icons for things like web browsers, IM clients, file managers and office programs on the desktop like any other modern OS. However the console scares the hell out of most users, so leaving it the only vector to break a system is just like leaving a big, fierce and ugly dog outside the back door. Chances are, they will never even find out what a root password is, let alone find out that they don't have it.
Window's big issue is that uninstalling the drivers for your graphics card can be done by simply clicking buttons. Try getting the average user to uninstall ANYTHING under Gentoo or change anything outside of their account, even with the root password. There is a remarkably narrow skill level difference between those who can correctly administer a Windows system and those who can administer a Linux system. Most people can't really administer either, at least with Linux they will know it.
Disclaimer - I use Ubuntu and Windows, but can be trusted with a bright and colourful System->Administration menu.
Wow, you are the least civil person I have encountered on slashdot. I am sad I didn't just simply mod you down rather than waste the effort to reply to your enraged and incoherent ranting.
The grandparent was discussing Australia. Nobody is going to going to be fined or even tried by an Australian court for playing online poker. I'm not sure what the case is when something is banned in other countries, but in Australia, generally it just means it can't be advertised or be dealt with over the counter. Heaps of things are illegal in Australia, it doesn't mean you're going to get a criminal record for doing most of them anyway. Weed is illegal in Australia, it doesn't mean that you can't buy it or you'll be thrown into gaol for doing so, it just means that kids aren't bombarded with advertisements for it in supermarkets. Hard core pornography is banned from sale in all Australian states, but you can get it over the counter in stores country wide. Illegal in Australia just means "keep it in your pocket in public or the police will take it off you".
Most of Australia's laws are in place because most Australians are stupid and can't take care of themselves. Australia, like every other country is mostly filled with morons. The government tries to protect them from scammers because its job in theory is protecting the weak from the strong. This applies to the intellectually weak as much as the physically weak. The laws are not in place to punish morons.
And tax laws don't deal with the revenue issue because the sites are outside the jurisdiction where they are taxed. Dah.
In short, his position is completely justifiable. Maybe just cultural differences between America and Australia. In America, freedom is an ideal. In Australia, freedom is just doing what you want. I've been to America more recently than Australia, it's a nice enough country, but I did get the feeling that everyone wanted me to do more or less what I was told, whereas in Australia, people kind of hope that you play up a little. Australia has laws that would make a patriotic American's eyes fog with rage, but there are far less Australians in prison per capita and it's an ex-penal colony, what does that say?
Wow, first time I've ever been grateful that someone has replied to my post and corrected me. Very interesting. Thank you.
Yes, it is. Most major game engine packages, including IDTech contain a networking layer. In fact, John Carmack was the guy who pretty much pioneered the client-server model for graphical games back when he made Quake.
However I've never had a major problem with his game's network layers. The issue is only that the game itself (content and gameplay wise) has been fairly bland for the last few iterations. If what the grandparent post is saying is correct, John Carmack is only responsible for the technical side, (including rendering and networking) and not the game experience itself. However, if "Masters of Doom" is correct, that is simply not the case as that book attributes most of the decisions as to the focus on recent games to John Carmack. It argues that it is the direct consequence of his conservative policy in game design that lead to Quake2, Quake3 and Doom3 being how they are, for better or worse.
The grandparent is claiming that John Carmack's technical record is unblemished and if he says P2P hosting is the way of the future then he should be given the benefit of the doubt and not questioned until he either recants, delivers a bad implementation or proves not to be able to implement this system in reasonable time. Even if he is responsible for the boring combat of Doom3, that suggests nothing about his ability to write game networking layers. I wrote a lot of the network system of a commercial game engine. My personal reaction towards this statement is to acknowledge that past history suggests that he will be able to deliver something very good and there is nobody who can really call him wrong until they have tested his implementation. I however, have not abandoned the client-server model and neither should anyone simply on the words of John D Carmack without thinking exactly about the priorities and requirements of their game.
Yes, on earth there is a lot of random chance. The universe is based on the laws of physics, not the United States. Launch permits mean nothing when you are trying to land on a far away planet. Away from earth, there is surprisingly little random chance apart from the reliability of the spacecraft (e.g. whether the mechanics did their job or were distracted) where Armadillo won by a huge margin. By the way, Mastern had their launch permits because they made their attempt at the last minute, whereas Armadillo's had expired months ago (i.e. after their attempt). This is not exactly a merit on Mastern's part. Armadillo isn't financially hurt for the same reason John Carmack has multiple Ferraris, but it doesn't mean this isn't a clear indication that the priorities of the organizes are dangerously diverged from reality.
But I digress, the purpose of my post was to ask you to apologize to HEbGb who you wrote to in a frightfully rude manner. I am pleasantly surprised that you didn't show me the same level of contempt, but nonetheless you have not apologized to him.
I love how you accused HEbGb of personal greed after he tried to explain this to you. I'm not sure what sort of a cut he's expecting to get from Armadillo, but it really makes you sound like a paranoid dick. However, I'll try to explain it myself, just out of personal kindness.
The universe is supremely fair. It is a single set of physical rules that apply to every object, there is no random chance, bias or pity. It doesn't care about you or what you want to achieve. It will kill everyone equally should they not have the conditions met for their body to function. So if it was a lunar landing situation, when Armadillo's rockets fired and Masten's didn't, the universe would have killed the pilot of Masten's rocket and spared Armadillo's. Gravity is a constant, if your equipment doesn't work when you're in space, you die. Masten had two days to launch their rocket, on the first, the rocket didn't start, on the second, it caught fire. It sounds to me like the universe had something pretty clear to say about the relative qualities of the rocket. Unreliable equipment is useless, but some judges decided to be “nice” and give it another chance. I would rather trust Armadillo's machine to protect me or my property against the infinite impartiality of gravity and vacuum.
You see, at the very core of this is physical reality, which is why the teams were originally only given two chances to achieve a landing. V^2 = u^2 + 2as means that high above a planet's surface, if your rockets don't work, you will die. Very few fortuitous or unexpected things happen in space (like being given another chance), the only variable is in the vehicle itself. The money isn't the issue, it is the misguided belief by the judges that an arbitrary criterion such as distance from the target is more important than having the equipment work when it is supposed to.
Anyway, I think you should really apologise to HEbGb, you were quite disrespectful.
You are an extremely rude person. Even if guides to install DSL in _exactly_ that situation like this were not so easy to find, anything you can copy to a Linux formatted hard disk from a Linux rescue floppy can generally be installed. DSL is a great candidate.
Serves as a Z scale model of an N scale trainset and also serves as a N scale model of a Z scale trainset.
Yes, E cup breasts on a slim Japanese teen is simply a stylized motif, but heaven forbid they don't bounce correctly.
Why is he racist? Genes are genes, ethnic groups have different genes to other ethnic groups, that's what makes them look different. It doesn't make them any intrinsically better or worse at being a "person" in the modern understanding any more than a Labrador is an intrinsically better or worse pet than a golden retriever.
If any ethnic group had Neanderthal DNA in its genepool, based on geographic range and skull shape chances are it is Caucasian people, my own race. If this is true, what difference does it make? We've done fairly well for ourselves I think, we're as human as anyone else. I don't really know many other Caucasian people where I live, but I don't feel like I'm grazing with a heard of some other species and I don't think they consider me to be a domesticated Neanderthal pet (at least I hope not).
Sometimes racial studies are done for the purposes of proving a master race. But usually, it's just because different people have different physiologies and have different common ailments, different recommended lifestyle and diet. If something as superficially obvious as race can tell a doctor what that person is likely to be allergic to and whether that person is likely to have diabetes, it is useful to know.
However, to me, those "Race and IQ" studies that seem to keep popping up on marginal websites and drawing the bulk of the attention, although not necessarily false, serve little other purpose than to piss people off. Even if they are true, I can see very little practical application, to me they just serve to aggravate the "PC" crowd, but sadly catch the individuals of the races at the bottom of the list (who may themselves be quite smart) in the crossfire.
The news you get about Australia generally comes from Australians. Australians have a habit of complaining about things, especially their own country. What news you get out of Australia will generally honest, but very much focused on the negative. It does cut down on things like illegal immigration, since any Australian will happily tell the world how prevalent racism is in their society and the shamefully brutal treatment of refugees. But it is important to remember that what you hear about Australia is a list of what needs to be improved, generally not a reasonable basis for comparison with other countries, since generally you might have heard those country's issues discussed in a less pessimistic voice. I've traveled around a fair bit, Australia has it's weaknesses but so do all countries, even Australia's government despite it's recent obsession with censorship is fair by government standards (not saying much). Australia's government is a bloated, inflexible and expensive pain in the arse, but so is yours.
The Australian censorship system worked fairly well in the past. Only a very small handful of media were banned in the past and they were generally things banned in most other countries too and was not vigorously enforced. Generally, censorship was aligned with what the bulk of the population wanted (although arguably that is still the case). Things changed a lot with the introduction of compulsory rating of computer games, since the ratings system wasn't able to handle the broadening scope of themes in computer games. But computer games is a small part of the Australian censorship system, and censorship is a small part of Australia. Also, it says a lot about Australia's unwillingness to accept bullshit that the government still can not implement an Internet censorship scheme after 3 years of trying despite having quite good IT resources at their disposal.
Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about Australia. A lot of stupid shit happens down there, but this is the case everywhere, it just pisses Australians off more.
Also, who says no good news? Yesterday Slashdot said that CSIRO invested $150M in scientific research, that's pretty good. The patents looked fair to me and even if they weren't, at least the ill-gotten gains are going somewhere useful.
A bureaucrat doesn't have constituents, they just work for a government department. Essentially they just suck up to their bosses in the same way as we do in the private sector.
Wow, I've worked with some ex-CSIRO people. You're just screwing yourself there I'm afraid.
I live in China. Generally speaking I eat Japanese, Vietnamese or Korean food. The flavours are much simpler, I find it much easier to eat. I like to see the faces of Chinese when I am eating a big bowl of Vietnamese rice noodles, with fish sauce, mint, vegetable spring rolls and fresh salad leaves. The fact that I am not personally offended by what they served me is perplexing enough, the fact that it is actually what I ordered is incomprehensable. No meat, mostly raw and barely any flavour, the three forbidden properties in Chinese cuisine.
Great reasoning there. How can I argue with that?
I really doubt it, I spent the majority of my highschool lunchtimes in the computer lab because I was scared to go out and socialise. But that was my problem, not everyone else's. But I like how you picture me in your head, a toned, sexy Lothario, I bet the guy you picture me as gets laid much more often than I do.
Wow, just wow, I have never had my political beliefs summed up so succinctly and so badly. You are precisely WHY I am not pro gun, I do not support the death penalty and I loudly complained about current two wars. You have an amazing ability to picture the rest of the world as fitting a certain archetype to be your oppressors and I'm not sure if I can help you.
This is coming from a guy who was largely ostracised and had absolutely no friends in the first 7 years of his education, who was laughed at and even beaten by his peers during his early years. I developed my sense of social cohesion slower than most and I believe I have suffered as much as you have. However if you believe that anyone has the right to indiscriminately kill those around them as a cry for help, you are even worse than the people who mistreat you.
If someone is narcisistic enough to kill tens of people in order to prove how mistreated they are by society, it is unlikely that this is the first antisocial thing they've done.
It is quite possible to become popular by treating people well, and the best way to have people hate you is to mistreat them. Arseholes generally do not have many friends and a lot of people without many friends are arseholes.
If you would consider killing a bunch of people to prove that you are miserable, you are a terrible person and this is why nobody else wants to be your friend, nothing about clique politics.