"No matter how good you are or how good your deck is, it's realistically very possible to be completely screwed out of a game by the random nature of your deck. "
I do not play Magic very often but isn't this problem part of the deck building exercise? You place too many creature/spell cards in your deck and you run the risk of not drawing any land cards for a while.
Not entirely. The common wisdom is something close to 1 land/2 spells (give or take a bit). However, at 60 cards required, that's a chance (however unlikely) to get 40 spell cards in a row, or 20 land cards in a row. It's not a common thing, but it can and (assuming truly random shuffles) will happen. That's part of why many Magic players I've seen don't actually use a fully random shuffle - they'll seed land out initially to ensure it is well spread throughout the deck.
Massively Huge Systems are likely to be put together properly, run at correct speeds, appropriately cooled, and kept clean. How often did he run tests on home-built systems that have 4 years of dust, inconsistent voltage to the PSU, over-drawn PSUs, insufficient cooling, and chips not completely seated properly? Imagine a room of 100 PC MMORPG gamers. Do you think at least 1 of them has a machine that matches the above description, and that it might produce some unusual errors, particularly when the system is under high load?
Imagine the message sent to both parties if Stein, or Johnson handed Obama a loss.
You mean like when Nader handed Gore a loss in 2000?
The lesson the Republicans learned was "we have a mandate" and proceeded to pursue a decade of self-destructive jingoistic policy they still haven't recovered from. The lesson the Democrats learned was "don't get Nadered again."
You must be young - Perot handed the Presidency to Clinton in '92 and '96.
The race would have been closer, but the analysis I've usually seen indicates that Perot pulled pretty equally from both parties, so it would have simply been a slim victory for Clinton, particularly in Electoral College numbers (several states switched back, but still not enough for Bush to win). For example, this looks like a good write-up.
I will agree that it did lead to some of the fastest bi-partisan changes ever seen, though, shoring up the election rules to reduce the chances of having a similar third-party candidate ever again. It's too bad, I was hoping the Republican's treatment of Ron Paul and the Libertarian-faction within their party would have led to a larger defection to Johnson during this election, possibly gaining him enough to at least hit the debate floor.
They can't claim that it's fun or enjoyable. They can't claim that it's interesting.
They can and do. Regularly. What they won't do is claim they're fun, enjoyable, and interesting for everyone. They understand a lot of people don't like all aspects of the game. They equally can't claim that raids are fun and enjoyable and interesting for everyone. Or PvP. Or Exploration. Or Dungeons. Point to any single aspect of the game, and there's probably someone that plays WoW that doesn't like that part, and never does anything with it. Even basic combat. I've enjoyed the variety of dailies. It's something neat to do while waiting for a dungeon, or for a friend to log in, or during my lunch break as a neat bite-sized block of content. In reaching exalted one the two factions I've worked on, I have only repeated a few of the quests more than once.
I will note that I haven't been running every single daily every single day -- and there's necessary no reason to do that, for anyone. Seriously. Not even the Hardcore Raiders looking for every advantage actually need to do it. Anyone doing so is doing it because they can't learn how to pace themselves, manage their time, and can't take a logical look at the rewards and work out what they'd need to do for each, and then how much time it would take to get the required costs for them outside of the rep (i.e. with the VP cap, you're waiting a week or two per item anyway).
And then, despite that being a joke, they actually did add the Pandaren to Warcraft 3 - The Frozen Throne, just not as a full race. The bonus campaign "The Founding of Durotar" includes the Brewmaster Hero unit Chen Stormstout (one of the major NPCs in MoP). Earlier, you may have seen a quest in the Barrens for Chen's Empty Keg (a reference to this). They've hinted at adding in the Pandaren race for years (and nearly did so for Burning Crusade), and have included them in other elements of the game, such as the Pen&Paper RPG books and the Trading Card Game.
Point being... They've been in the lore for Warcraft long before there was a World of Warcraft. Their inclusion was neither unexpected by those that had been following the game, nor even a major break in lore (like, for example, the Draenei were). Death Knights as playable characters make less sense than Pandaren in the game, and they seemed to be accepted just fine. The Pandas will be accepted just as well by anyone that enjoys the game in general.
It was a joke at first, sure, but a popular one, and much earlier than the Pandaren Express one. If you want the original joke, it was this: http://classic.battle.net/war3/pandaren/
And then... they actually did add the Pandaren to Warcraft 3 - The Frozen Throne, just not as a full race. The bonus campaign "The Founding of Durotar" includes the Brewmaster Hero unit Chen Stormstout (one of the major NPCs in MoP). Earlier, you may have seen a quest in the Barrens for Chen's Empty Keg (a reference to this). They've hinted at adding in the Pandaren race for years (and nearly did so for Burning Crusade), and have included them in other elements of the game, such as the Pen&Paper RPG books and the Trading Card Game.
Point being... They've been in the lore for Warcraft long before there was a World of Warcraft. Their inclusion was neither unexpected by those that had been following the game, nor even a major break in lore (like, for example, the Draenei were). Death Knights as playable characters make less sense than Pandaren in the game, and they seemed to be accepted just fine. The Pandas will be accepted just as well by anyone that enjoys the game in general.
By contrast, the situation is pretty shitty in France. Polls have shown that among the OECD, French people put a higher value to work than most, but also that they tend to hate their workplace. Interestingly, French workers show less insatisfaction when they work for foreign companies. Some economists pin this on the fact that French economy is largely based on inheritance, and it results in a fundamental lack of trust between the various strates of workplace hierarchies. The workers, the middle management, the bosses, no one trusts another.
It might also be related to the grandes ecoles (with all the extra accent markers I don't feel like adding), which I've been told ends up amounting to a caste system of sorts. If you're in a French business, you're locked into your job with little upward or downward mobility based on where you went to school. Japan can be similar, as can the U.S., where the right school certainly gives you a significant advantage in a hiring process, but you can also get your own work experience and move up based on that.
The economy has $20,000 to pay the workers. Is it better to pay 10 workers $2000 or 8 workers $2500, tax the workers the $500 and pass it to the two unemployed men so they can get along? In both scenarios, each employee has $2000, but are the two situations identical? No, if each of the workers are equally productive, and each worker can produce 1000 units of goods per month, and everybody spends all of their money, then the situation with all 10 employed is better, because the economy has 10,000 units to distribute at $2/unit. In the 8 worker situation, we get 8000 units at $2.50 a unit. In the first situation, everybody gets 1000 units of economic goods available to consume and in the second you only get 800.
Sure... or they'll hire 6, pay $1500, force unpaid overtime or unsafe working conditions to make 1000 units, and still sell for $2.50, and talk about record profits they pass on to share holders. And if one of them refuses? Hey, 4 other guys that would jump at the chance.
Hmmm... what company are you using? I'd like to ensure I avoid them.
I've had it trigger twice myself. Once correctly, and once a false-positive (but not unexpected - it was a sudden business trip, and I was making purchases in another state that were also out of character - I don't eat out much, and was also buying some gifts while I was there). Both times were essentially correct in flagging improper behavior, and ensuring it was quickly noted and checked upon (as in, within minutes of the purchases, rather than days later). They called me with an automated message asking some questions. Thinking it was a phishing attempt of some sort (since it asked for some verification data), I chose to call the credit card directly rather than trusting an incoming call, and it dumped me into the same system with a quick "Your card has been flagged as possibly fraudulent activity, please verify these transactions."
After the automated part, where I could accept or deny any given charge for the window they thought might have been I was almost instantly dumped onto a live customer service rep that was there for any follow-up questions I might have, and for the false-positive, ensured the card I was using wasn't locked out and would accept purchases properly for the remainder of my travel. Really pretty good, as such things go. I'd agree with cbhacking -- find a different provider, your current one isn't working for you at all. For the record, the above is a Bank of America Visa (for all the hate BoA has gotten, the BoA Visa has some really good features associated).
Airports already serve any purpose that trains would, and are faster.
For now. Trains in vacuum tunnels would be both faster and less expensive on a per-trip and maintenance basis. For most trips where proper modern systems have been implemented, trains are already the better option (see: Japan, parts of Europe). Initial construction costs are pretty steep, but could be worth while if fuel prices continue to rise, or the desire for global rapid commutes increases.
That's fine. You're welcome to believe Khruschev, or any official Soviet documentation. I wouldn't, but hey, I know that most of what they wrote was to re-work history in whatever way fit the current party's objectives. Stalin gave an order which had plenty of legal standing within the framework of the Soviet Union, even if it betrayed the principles of the founder, the people, the Communist Party. Abuse of the law is still a use of the law. It was the law system that perpetrated those deaths. How can you argue that it was somehow outside the legal system?
But sure, let's speed this up since you're convinced Stalin committed murder despite having the full legal authority and never facing charges, even post-humously, from the Soviet government. I'll concede the point on Stalin being a psycho that committed murder, since I believe that part anyway, I just think your reasoning is lacking on how it substantially differs from other similar sorts of actions that allowed for mass-killings of otherwise innocent people within a legal framework. What does this have to do with anything? He didn't perpetrate those acts to further "Atheism". He did it for himself. Inquisition? For God (and possibly within the legal framework)! Crusades? For God (and techncially a war)! Stoning those that convert away from Islam? For Allah! Northern Ireland Terrorism? For slightly different Gods (and a lot of politics)! Witch burnings? For God (and likely some psychotropic drugs, and a lot of class-warfare)! Waco Branch Davidians? For God? Jonestown? For God? Terrible at religion? Possibly. But they were advocating their actions as being specifically for their religion. I don't see how you can say that Christians are somehow definitively against mass-murder when so much of history is filled with Christians committing it, and specifically doing so in the name of God (i.e. I won't hold a psycho mass-murder who happens to have been raised Christian against it -- but when the entire society of Christians backs the action... yeah, harder to dismiss it).
That all said, you completely skipped the remainder of the post to get your "you can't win" statement in. You still need to justify God's killing of first-borns in Egypt as not-mass-murder. There's no war. No legal framework in place for it. Obvious targets that could potentially be justified ignored. Possible peaceful solutions purposefully and specifically prevented ("God hardened Pharaoh's heart.") All the first-borns, most of which were completely uninvolved in the conflict, killed instead.
I'm also still not clear what objection you're looking for "on the basis of evolution". I already gave a framework for allowing for symbiotic mutual gain. Perfectly logical, fits both evolutionary and economic theories, visible throughout the natural and human world. Societies that cooperate when possible instead of conflict do better over time. There's also reason within that for mass-killing (competition for highly limited resources). It'd be legitimate warfare, so it's fine and not mass-murder. I guess.
P.S. According to your definitions, which I'll use from now on, I don't advocate mass-murder. Everything thus far would be justified and a legal act or an authorized act of war, so just mass-killing. God, on the other hand, is all about the mass-murder, unless you want to say everything he does is part of his own super-national supernatural legal framework... and if you're going that route, yeah, we're done, since anything a Christian does for God would not be mass-murder and would be totally ok, because God said so. I'm not going to accept that.
By your own words, you advocate mass-murder, with unspecified qualifications, presumably left up to your feelings at the time.
You are the only entity related to this discussion that is taking the position that mass-murder is acceptable.
You are as well, you just refuse to acknowledge it. Authorized Orders in a time of war can still be war crimes, and can still be mass-murder. There's a duty to refuse unlawful or ethically and morally reprehensible orders. If you comply -- that's still murder (and may even be considered so by the legal system after the war). So does the God of the Old Testament, but you refuse to acknowledge that as well. It's cool. I understand. Killing innocent first-borns while ignoring the soldier and political targets because of what you directly compelled the leader of a group to do doesn't seem like murder. It seems like a complete nonsensical joke of what should be done by an ethical being. It is still mass-murder. I was trying to avoid the mythical parts and deal with the possibly historical parts -- also the parts just after, not just before the Ten Commandments showed up -- but since you won't acknowledge the mass-slaughter of children, particularly when wielding discriminate single-target weapons, as possibly being murder because it was "an authorized order in a war", I'll move on.
Stalin was in complete control. He was the legal system. Anything he ordered was effectively legal. He might not have cared if it weren't. That isn't relevant. If you want to say what Stalin did was murder, then what God did was equally murder. Why did people follow God's orders? Same as why they followed Stalin's: Raw Fear. It says almost exactly that right in the same section: Do what God says, or he'll completely screw up you and your family and everyone in your entire town or nation.
Some of the scanners aren't radioactive. There's the back-scatter X-Ray devices, and the millimeter wave devices. The millimeter waves variety are radio-wave EHF range, just below IR, and a little above UHF and VHF. So the agent probably wasn't lying. It may or may not be safe, but if it was that class of scanner then it would not have been radioactive, and might have been equivalent to, say, RADAR (though definitely not Ultrasound).
I'm not all over the map -- I'm attacking a single point consistently - the God of the old Testament had nothing against mass-murder. Here, I'll show you what you said again, just in case you forgot:
"Does not mass murder" is not part of the dictionary definition of Christianity or any other religion I know about, so claiming it is is a classic No True Scotsman fallacy. It's one of the Ten Commandments. There is nothing more definitional as to what Christianity is, and is not.
It may be a defining characteristic of Christianity -- but if it is, it isn't because of the Ten Commandments. That God is totally cool with mass-murder. Now, on to your other points...
Before I proceed, let me ask, do you agree with, or disagree with, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
From my understanding of the situation at that time, I would provisionally agree with the action taken. My agreement with that action doesn't mean it wasn't murder. It absolutely was. Murder on a grand scale. Just that on the balance, it was very likely the best of bad options. I'm ok with the fact that I can ethically say "mass-murder is sometimes justified and can be the correct action." You don't seem to have reached that point.
In that context, given the assumptions we must make to discuss decisions within it, it was not merely highly probable that the people killed would continue to kill or aid in the killing of the countries they initiated attacks on, but -certain- they would, as a consequence of God's omniscience. If you're going to argue some of it should be taken as factual for the purpose of evaluating the ethical situation, you need to evaluate that situation in the context of -all- of it, as it is presented to be.
I never made any claims about the ethics of that action, or whether it was ethical or the right action to take. I claimed it was mass-murder. I stand by that assessment. Further, since you brought up the nukes... God is more than capable of committing his own mass-murders -- Sodom and Gomorrah show that. Too far back? Well, about the same time as the "noted Amalekite attack" on the fleeing Israelites, he killed every first-born in Egypt. He's more than capable of doing what is necessary according to his omniscience without forcing the hands of the Israelites to turn their plowshares into swords and go slaughtering everyone near by.
I will, however, take under serious consideration your insistence that God ultimately does say it can be necessary to kill our opponents, opponent, and will await to see if, in addition to you agreeing on that principle, you also want to present any ethical rationale against doing so from the perspective of evolution.
From an evolutionary standpoint, the best way for my genes to survive are to kill any being that is close-to-but-not-quite-like me. It's a wave function of sorts: Are you part of my direct genetic lineage - You live (e.g. Israelites). Different enough that I can perceive you as a threat to my own or my family's survival due to competition for limited resources - You die (e.g. Amalekites). Different species sharing my niche in the food chain - Kill when possible (e.g. predator animals, most agricultural pests). Using a separate niche in the food chain, but still sharing similarities and not a direct threat - awesome, you can stay (e.g. other passive herbivorous mammals - particularly those that eat grasses or leaves). Capable of using in a symbiotic or parasitic-benefiting-me relationship - You stay (e.g. domesticated animals). Too different - You also die (e.g. insects, reptiles).
That said, as our ability to obtain resources expands, so too can how far out I'll allow my considered genetic boundary to extend (e.g. no longer a direct pressure due to resource contention to go killing neighbors -- we can form diverse nations instead of cultural ones). Alternately, because of trade netwo
So killing women, children (including newborns), and even their animals isn't killing innocents? You have an interesting view point. God says "Thou Shalt Not Kill" on one side, then commands the utter destruction of a racial and cultural group with no exceptions on the other. You don't dispute the fact that God ordered the genocide (which has no connotations other than killing the entirety of a group and is defined as "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group" which is absolutely and very clearly what God demanded), just that it was part of a "war" as if that makes it "not killing" somehow.
When they fight in Exodus - sure - that's a counter-attack. The Israelites had what amounted to an army as they were trying to escape Egypt and invaded the Amlekite lands, the Amalekites attacked, the Israelites counter-attacked, self-defense. I can get behind that, even if the order "Thou Shalt Not Kill" had just come down. But in Samuel? That wasn't a counter-attack. That was pure revenge. "Hey, remember when 50 years ago the Amalekites attacked us while we were on the run? Yeah, we should go wipe them out." There had been some battles in between, but that wasn't the reason for this. It wasn't "The Amalekites will never leave you alone, so this one time I tell you to ignore my commandment." It was "I noted that they attacked when you escaped from Egypt. Go and utterly destroy them to the last man, woman, child, and suckling babe, and kill their farm animals to because fuck them that's why." That's no where near close to "Thou Shalt Not Kill," or even "Thou shalt only kill in self-defense," (which isn't the commandment) or "Thou shalt not mass-murder," (which isn't the commandment) or even "Thou shalt not kill unless in a declared war," (which isn't the commandment).
Long story short: The Commandments as written don't specify exceptions, but God gave other orders immediately after which contradicted them. That gives you some context there -- if someone says "Never do X," then turns around and says "Go do X to those guys... and those other guys... and really, X is ok against anyone that doesn't worship me, or is related to those people that have made war upon you," that very clearly shows that the original wasn't really "Never do X", it was "Never do X to Y". And the Y seems to be "Israelites" since everyone else around them is attacked and killed, though it could simply be "anyone who has never personally attacked you, or is part of a racial or cultural group that has attacked you."
Thus it's pretty obvious that the God that gave out those Ten Commandments isn't against mass-murder, so you can't say "It's one of the Commandments that Christians live by." It's very clearly and obviously not. Mass-murder is something God was all about when he gave those Commandments. I suggest switching to Jesus if you want to defend Christians as having some basic aversion to mass-murder, because God of the Ten Commandments is definitely not your guy.
"Does not mass murder" is not part of the dictionary definition of Christianity or any other religion I know about, so claiming it is is a classic No True Scotsman fallacy. It's one of the Ten Commandments.
No, it is not. The Commandment is probably closer to "Thou Shalt Not Murder Fellow Jews" -- often translated as "Thou shalt not kill", but within the Christian tradition (which includes all the books of the Old Testament, rather than just the first 5 books of the Jewish Torah) this clearly only refers to other members of the Judaic tradition, as God later commands genocide (e.g. 1 Samuel, Chapter 15) and has Saul removed as King of the Israelites in favor of David when Saul refuses to actually commit a complete genocide.
So... yeah, the God of the Ten Commandments era is totally down with mass murder. Jesus might have been against it, but you went back too far. Want to try again?
I dont know what you are smoking, but I have lived in a very competitive environment most of my adult life and I have seen very few taking anything for the sake of productivity
Really? No one drinks coffee or takes other forms of caffeine regularly around you?
It gets worse when a company relies on some given product that is no longer in production. New OS comes out - well, one machine gets to stay on the old version, since the drivers break in the new one. New OS comes out that breaks critical software item 2 (waiting on a very-long patch cycle), but the rest of the team really wants to use new-shiny available for software item 3 that only works in the new OS. I have seen a company (Graphics design firm that started on Macs back when everyone said they were the best computers for that purpose - and at the time they were probably correct) supporting at least 6 versions of Mac OS (that's just the ones I saw -- they may have had more somewhere -- a few were going on a decade old), with various hardware configurations as well (due to the variety of short-lived connector standards that Apple seems to like, they couldn't even get new hardware to go with them, so they have some atrociously slow load times), because there is no upgrade path for whatever product they are using, or no budget for replacing an otherwise perfectly functional and effective hardware device that may see limited (but business-critical) use (e.g. some large specialized-use printer).
Many Steam-downloaded single-player games can be launched directly, and do not require Steam to be up or connected to play. I checked a random sampling of mine and didn't actually encounter any that didn't have their own separate online-required DRM but required steam to play. Launching them manually is not exactly straight forward, but for many (I'd say most, but I haven't done a study or even really hit a large enough sample size of mutliple genres and publishers) offline Steam-purchased-and-downloaded games you can certainly play them even if the Internet is out and Steam won't launch.
Not if you feel entitled to Serf's Rights - protection from the predations of robbers (or terrorists), charity in times of famine (or depression), and such.
There might be a point to "hoarding" specific asteroids that are in more useful locations -- for example, in earth orbit. That's like saying there's no point to hoarding because there's an abundance of them in the Earth's core. Accessibility, composition, and so on will dictate that some claims are more valuable than others, without regard to overall theoretical availability.
The facts don't support your theory. When iOS was the market leader, and Android the minority, it was still Android which was getting virtually all the malware.
Isn't there a joke here somewhere about every phone with iOS having malware on it, called "iOS"?
In some states, those cyclists are correct. Stop-As-Yield is also in many local city ordinances if there is no state-wide statute regarding the matter. If there's someone else at the stop, yes, the cyclist must stop and the car gets to go. If there's no one there, the cyclist is welcome to slow, check for traffic, then roll through without coming to a complete stop. If a cyclist is blowing the sign while a car is already stopped in another direction... yeah, those guys are douches. And they're right up there with all the motorists who also flagrantly violate a plethora of laws daily, from illegal lane changes to speeding to make yellow lights to blowing stop signs themselves. Percentage-wise, I see a hell of a lot more people behaving dangerously in cars compared to on bikes, and the guys in cars can also do a lot more damage when that violation causes an accident.
So yes, the difference is responsibility, but the opposite of what you seem to think -- people in cars don't have any sense of responsibility since insurance and the crash cage allow them to ignore the consequences, whereas on a bike, it's all personal responsibility as when something goes wrong, it's their own skin directly on the line.
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"No matter how good you are or how good your deck is, it's realistically very possible to be completely screwed out of a game by the random nature of your deck. "
I do not play Magic very often but isn't this problem part of the deck building exercise? You place too many creature/spell cards in your deck and you run the risk of not drawing any land cards for a while.
Not entirely. The common wisdom is something close to 1 land/2 spells (give or take a bit). However, at 60 cards required, that's a chance (however unlikely) to get 40 spell cards in a row, or 20 land cards in a row. It's not a common thing, but it can and (assuming truly random shuffles) will happen. That's part of why many Magic players I've seen don't actually use a fully random shuffle - they'll seed land out initially to ensure it is well spread throughout the deck.
Massively Huge Systems are likely to be put together properly, run at correct speeds, appropriately cooled, and kept clean. How often did he run tests on home-built systems that have 4 years of dust, inconsistent voltage to the PSU, over-drawn PSUs, insufficient cooling, and chips not completely seated properly? Imagine a room of 100 PC MMORPG gamers. Do you think at least 1 of them has a machine that matches the above description, and that it might produce some unusual errors, particularly when the system is under high load?
The better analogy would be "as simulated typewriter noise is to a document editor" -- see also: old ICQ SFX.
Imagine the message sent to both parties if Stein, or Johnson handed Obama a loss.
You mean like when Nader handed Gore a loss in 2000?
The lesson the Republicans learned was "we have a mandate" and proceeded to pursue a decade of self-destructive jingoistic policy they still haven't recovered from. The lesson the Democrats learned was "don't get Nadered again."
You must be young - Perot handed the Presidency to Clinton in '92 and '96.
The race would have been closer, but the analysis I've usually seen indicates that Perot pulled pretty equally from both parties, so it would have simply been a slim victory for Clinton, particularly in Electoral College numbers (several states switched back, but still not enough for Bush to win). For example, this looks like a good write-up.
I will agree that it did lead to some of the fastest bi-partisan changes ever seen, though, shoring up the election rules to reduce the chances of having a similar third-party candidate ever again. It's too bad, I was hoping the Republican's treatment of Ron Paul and the Libertarian-faction within their party would have led to a larger defection to Johnson during this election, possibly gaining him enough to at least hit the debate floor.
They can't claim that it's fun or enjoyable. They can't claim that it's interesting.
They can and do. Regularly. What they won't do is claim they're fun, enjoyable, and interesting for everyone. They understand a lot of people don't like all aspects of the game. They equally can't claim that raids are fun and enjoyable and interesting for everyone. Or PvP. Or Exploration. Or Dungeons. Point to any single aspect of the game, and there's probably someone that plays WoW that doesn't like that part, and never does anything with it. Even basic combat. I've enjoyed the variety of dailies. It's something neat to do while waiting for a dungeon, or for a friend to log in, or during my lunch break as a neat bite-sized block of content. In reaching exalted one the two factions I've worked on, I have only repeated a few of the quests more than once.
I will note that I haven't been running every single daily every single day -- and there's necessary no reason to do that, for anyone. Seriously. Not even the Hardcore Raiders looking for every advantage actually need to do it. Anyone doing so is doing it because they can't learn how to pace themselves, manage their time, and can't take a logical look at the rewards and work out what they'd need to do for each, and then how much time it would take to get the required costs for them outside of the rep (i.e. with the VP cap, you're waiting a week or two per item anyway).
It was a joke at first, sure, but a popular one, and made a long time ago for Warcraft 3: http://classic.battle.net/war3/pandaren/
And then, despite that being a joke, they actually did add the Pandaren to Warcraft 3 - The Frozen Throne, just not as a full race. The bonus campaign "The Founding of Durotar" includes the Brewmaster Hero unit Chen Stormstout (one of the major NPCs in MoP). Earlier, you may have seen a quest in the Barrens for Chen's Empty Keg (a reference to this). They've hinted at adding in the Pandaren race for years (and nearly did so for Burning Crusade), and have included them in other elements of the game, such as the Pen&Paper RPG books and the Trading Card Game.
Point being... They've been in the lore for Warcraft long before there was a World of Warcraft. Their inclusion was neither unexpected by those that had been following the game, nor even a major break in lore (like, for example, the Draenei were). Death Knights as playable characters make less sense than Pandaren in the game, and they seemed to be accepted just fine. The Pandas will be accepted just as well by anyone that enjoys the game in general.
It was a joke at first, sure, but a popular one, and much earlier than the Pandaren Express one. If you want the original joke, it was this: http://classic.battle.net/war3/pandaren/
And then... they actually did add the Pandaren to Warcraft 3 - The Frozen Throne, just not as a full race. The bonus campaign "The Founding of Durotar" includes the Brewmaster Hero unit Chen Stormstout (one of the major NPCs in MoP). Earlier, you may have seen a quest in the Barrens for Chen's Empty Keg (a reference to this). They've hinted at adding in the Pandaren race for years (and nearly did so for Burning Crusade), and have included them in other elements of the game, such as the Pen&Paper RPG books and the Trading Card Game.
Point being... They've been in the lore for Warcraft long before there was a World of Warcraft. Their inclusion was neither unexpected by those that had been following the game, nor even a major break in lore (like, for example, the Draenei were). Death Knights as playable characters make less sense than Pandaren in the game, and they seemed to be accepted just fine. The Pandas will be accepted just as well by anyone that enjoys the game in general.
By contrast, the situation is pretty shitty in France. Polls have shown that among the OECD, French people put a higher value to work than most, but also that they tend to hate their workplace. Interestingly, French workers show less insatisfaction when they work for foreign companies. Some economists pin this on the fact that French economy is largely based on inheritance, and it results in a fundamental lack of trust between the various strates of workplace hierarchies. The workers, the middle management, the bosses, no one trusts another.
It might also be related to the grandes ecoles (with all the extra accent markers I don't feel like adding), which I've been told ends up amounting to a caste system of sorts. If you're in a French business, you're locked into your job with little upward or downward mobility based on where you went to school. Japan can be similar, as can the U.S., where the right school certainly gives you a significant advantage in a hiring process, but you can also get your own work experience and move up based on that.
The economy has $20,000 to pay the workers. Is it better to pay 10 workers $2000 or 8 workers $2500, tax the workers the $500 and pass it to the two unemployed men so they can get along? In both scenarios, each employee has $2000, but are the two situations identical? No, if each of the workers are equally productive, and each worker can produce 1000 units of goods per month, and everybody spends all of their money, then the situation with all 10 employed is better, because the economy has 10,000 units to distribute at $2/unit. In the 8 worker situation, we get 8000 units at $2.50 a unit. In the first situation, everybody gets 1000 units of economic goods available to consume and in the second you only get 800.
Sure... or they'll hire 6, pay $1500, force unpaid overtime or unsafe working conditions to make 1000 units, and still sell for $2.50, and talk about record profits they pass on to share holders. And if one of them refuses? Hey, 4 other guys that would jump at the chance.
Hmmm... what company are you using? I'd like to ensure I avoid them.
I've had it trigger twice myself. Once correctly, and once a false-positive (but not unexpected - it was a sudden business trip, and I was making purchases in another state that were also out of character - I don't eat out much, and was also buying some gifts while I was there). Both times were essentially correct in flagging improper behavior, and ensuring it was quickly noted and checked upon (as in, within minutes of the purchases, rather than days later). They called me with an automated message asking some questions. Thinking it was a phishing attempt of some sort (since it asked for some verification data), I chose to call the credit card directly rather than trusting an incoming call, and it dumped me into the same system with a quick "Your card has been flagged as possibly fraudulent activity, please verify these transactions."
After the automated part, where I could accept or deny any given charge for the window they thought might have been I was almost instantly dumped onto a live customer service rep that was there for any follow-up questions I might have, and for the false-positive, ensured the card I was using wasn't locked out and would accept purchases properly for the remainder of my travel. Really pretty good, as such things go. I'd agree with cbhacking -- find a different provider, your current one isn't working for you at all. For the record, the above is a Bank of America Visa (for all the hate BoA has gotten, the BoA Visa has some really good features associated).
Airports already serve any purpose that trains would, and are faster.
For now. Trains in vacuum tunnels would be both faster and less expensive on a per-trip and maintenance basis. For most trips where proper modern systems have been implemented, trains are already the better option (see: Japan, parts of Europe). Initial construction costs are pretty steep, but could be worth while if fuel prices continue to rise, or the desire for global rapid commutes increases.
That's fine. You're welcome to believe Khruschev, or any official Soviet documentation. I wouldn't, but hey, I know that most of what they wrote was to re-work history in whatever way fit the current party's objectives. Stalin gave an order which had plenty of legal standing within the framework of the Soviet Union, even if it betrayed the principles of the founder, the people, the Communist Party. Abuse of the law is still a use of the law. It was the law system that perpetrated those deaths. How can you argue that it was somehow outside the legal system?
But sure, let's speed this up since you're convinced Stalin committed murder despite having the full legal authority and never facing charges, even post-humously, from the Soviet government. I'll concede the point on Stalin being a psycho that committed murder, since I believe that part anyway, I just think your reasoning is lacking on how it substantially differs from other similar sorts of actions that allowed for mass-killings of otherwise innocent people within a legal framework. What does this have to do with anything? He didn't perpetrate those acts to further "Atheism". He did it for himself. Inquisition? For God (and possibly within the legal framework)! Crusades? For God (and techncially a war)! Stoning those that convert away from Islam? For Allah! Northern Ireland Terrorism? For slightly different Gods (and a lot of politics)! Witch burnings? For God (and likely some psychotropic drugs, and a lot of class-warfare)! Waco Branch Davidians? For God? Jonestown? For God? Terrible at religion? Possibly. But they were advocating their actions as being specifically for their religion. I don't see how you can say that Christians are somehow definitively against mass-murder when so much of history is filled with Christians committing it, and specifically doing so in the name of God (i.e. I won't hold a psycho mass-murder who happens to have been raised Christian against it -- but when the entire society of Christians backs the action... yeah, harder to dismiss it).
That all said, you completely skipped the remainder of the post to get your "you can't win" statement in. You still need to justify God's killing of first-borns in Egypt as not-mass-murder. There's no war. No legal framework in place for it. Obvious targets that could potentially be justified ignored. Possible peaceful solutions purposefully and specifically prevented ("God hardened Pharaoh's heart.") All the first-borns, most of which were completely uninvolved in the conflict, killed instead.
I'm also still not clear what objection you're looking for "on the basis of evolution". I already gave a framework for allowing for symbiotic mutual gain. Perfectly logical, fits both evolutionary and economic theories, visible throughout the natural and human world. Societies that cooperate when possible instead of conflict do better over time. There's also reason within that for mass-killing (competition for highly limited resources). It'd be legitimate warfare, so it's fine and not mass-murder. I guess.
P.S. According to your definitions, which I'll use from now on, I don't advocate mass-murder. Everything thus far would be justified and a legal act or an authorized act of war, so just mass-killing. God, on the other hand, is all about the mass-murder, unless you want to say everything he does is part of his own super-national supernatural legal framework... and if you're going that route, yeah, we're done, since anything a Christian does for God would not be mass-murder and would be totally ok, because God said so. I'm not going to accept that.
By your own words, you advocate mass-murder, with unspecified qualifications, presumably left up to your feelings at the time.
You are the only entity related to this discussion that is taking the position that mass-murder is acceptable.
You are as well, you just refuse to acknowledge it. Authorized Orders in a time of war can still be war crimes, and can still be mass-murder. There's a duty to refuse unlawful or ethically and morally reprehensible orders. If you comply -- that's still murder (and may even be considered so by the legal system after the war). So does the God of the Old Testament, but you refuse to acknowledge that as well. It's cool. I understand. Killing innocent first-borns while ignoring the soldier and political targets because of what you directly compelled the leader of a group to do doesn't seem like murder. It seems like a complete nonsensical joke of what should be done by an ethical being. It is still mass-murder. I was trying to avoid the mythical parts and deal with the possibly historical parts -- also the parts just after, not just before the Ten Commandments showed up -- but since you won't acknowledge the mass-slaughter of children, particularly when wielding discriminate single-target weapons, as possibly being murder because it was "an authorized order in a war", I'll move on.
Stalin was in complete control. He was the legal system. Anything he ordered was effectively legal. He might not have cared if it weren't. That isn't relevant. If you want to say what Stalin did was murder, then what God did was equally murder. Why did people follow God's orders? Same as why they followed Stalin's: Raw Fear. It says almost exactly that right in the same section: Do what God says, or he'll completely screw up you and your family and everyone in your entire town or nation.
Some of the scanners aren't radioactive. There's the back-scatter X-Ray devices, and the millimeter wave devices. The millimeter waves variety are radio-wave EHF range, just below IR, and a little above UHF and VHF. So the agent probably wasn't lying. It may or may not be safe, but if it was that class of scanner then it would not have been radioactive, and might have been equivalent to, say, RADAR (though definitely not Ultrasound).
I'm not all over the map -- I'm attacking a single point consistently - the God of the old Testament had nothing against mass-murder. Here, I'll show you what you said again, just in case you forgot:
"Does not mass murder" is not part of the dictionary definition of Christianity or any other religion I know about, so claiming it is is a classic No True Scotsman fallacy.
It's one of the Ten Commandments. There is nothing more definitional as to what Christianity is, and is not.
It may be a defining characteristic of Christianity -- but if it is, it isn't because of the Ten Commandments. That God is totally cool with mass-murder. Now, on to your other points...
Before I proceed, let me ask, do you agree with, or disagree with, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
From my understanding of the situation at that time, I would provisionally agree with the action taken. My agreement with that action doesn't mean it wasn't murder. It absolutely was. Murder on a grand scale. Just that on the balance, it was very likely the best of bad options. I'm ok with the fact that I can ethically say "mass-murder is sometimes justified and can be the correct action." You don't seem to have reached that point.
In that context, given the assumptions we must make to discuss decisions within it, it was not merely highly probable that the people killed would continue to kill or aid in the killing of the countries they initiated attacks on, but -certain- they would, as a consequence of God's omniscience. If you're going to argue some of it should be taken as factual for the purpose of evaluating the ethical situation, you need to evaluate that situation in the context of -all- of it, as it is presented to be.
I never made any claims about the ethics of that action, or whether it was ethical or the right action to take. I claimed it was mass-murder. I stand by that assessment. Further, since you brought up the nukes... God is more than capable of committing his own mass-murders -- Sodom and Gomorrah show that. Too far back? Well, about the same time as the "noted Amalekite attack" on the fleeing Israelites, he killed every first-born in Egypt. He's more than capable of doing what is necessary according to his omniscience without forcing the hands of the Israelites to turn their plowshares into swords and go slaughtering everyone near by.
I will, however, take under serious consideration your insistence that God ultimately does say it can be necessary to kill our opponents, opponent, and will await to see if, in addition to you agreeing on that principle, you also want to present any ethical rationale against doing so from the perspective of evolution.
From an evolutionary standpoint, the best way for my genes to survive are to kill any being that is close-to-but-not-quite-like me. It's a wave function of sorts: Are you part of my direct genetic lineage - You live (e.g. Israelites). Different enough that I can perceive you as a threat to my own or my family's survival due to competition for limited resources - You die (e.g. Amalekites). Different species sharing my niche in the food chain - Kill when possible (e.g. predator animals, most agricultural pests). Using a separate niche in the food chain, but still sharing similarities and not a direct threat - awesome, you can stay (e.g. other passive herbivorous mammals - particularly those that eat grasses or leaves). Capable of using in a symbiotic or parasitic-benefiting-me relationship - You stay (e.g. domesticated animals). Too different - You also die (e.g. insects, reptiles).
That said, as our ability to obtain resources expands, so too can how far out I'll allow my considered genetic boundary to extend (e.g. no longer a direct pressure due to resource contention to go killing neighbors -- we can form diverse nations instead of cultural ones). Alternately, because of trade netwo
So killing women, children (including newborns), and even their animals isn't killing innocents? You have an interesting view point. God says "Thou Shalt Not Kill" on one side, then commands the utter destruction of a racial and cultural group with no exceptions on the other. You don't dispute the fact that God ordered the genocide (which has no connotations other than killing the entirety of a group and is defined as "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group" which is absolutely and very clearly what God demanded), just that it was part of a "war" as if that makes it "not killing" somehow.
When they fight in Exodus - sure - that's a counter-attack. The Israelites had what amounted to an army as they were trying to escape Egypt and invaded the Amlekite lands, the Amalekites attacked, the Israelites counter-attacked, self-defense. I can get behind that, even if the order "Thou Shalt Not Kill" had just come down. But in Samuel? That wasn't a counter-attack. That was pure revenge. "Hey, remember when 50 years ago the Amalekites attacked us while we were on the run? Yeah, we should go wipe them out." There had been some battles in between, but that wasn't the reason for this. It wasn't "The Amalekites will never leave you alone, so this one time I tell you to ignore my commandment." It was "I noted that they attacked when you escaped from Egypt. Go and utterly destroy them to the last man, woman, child, and suckling babe, and kill their farm animals to because fuck them that's why." That's no where near close to "Thou Shalt Not Kill," or even "Thou shalt only kill in self-defense," (which isn't the commandment) or "Thou shalt not mass-murder," (which isn't the commandment) or even "Thou shalt not kill unless in a declared war," (which isn't the commandment).
Long story short: The Commandments as written don't specify exceptions, but God gave other orders immediately after which contradicted them. That gives you some context there -- if someone says "Never do X," then turns around and says "Go do X to those guys... and those other guys... and really, X is ok against anyone that doesn't worship me, or is related to those people that have made war upon you," that very clearly shows that the original wasn't really "Never do X", it was "Never do X to Y". And the Y seems to be "Israelites" since everyone else around them is attacked and killed, though it could simply be "anyone who has never personally attacked you, or is part of a racial or cultural group that has attacked you."
Thus it's pretty obvious that the God that gave out those Ten Commandments isn't against mass-murder, so you can't say "It's one of the Commandments that Christians live by." It's very clearly and obviously not. Mass-murder is something God was all about when he gave those Commandments. I suggest switching to Jesus if you want to defend Christians as having some basic aversion to mass-murder, because God of the Ten Commandments is definitely not your guy.
"Does not mass murder" is not part of the dictionary definition of Christianity or any other religion I know about, so claiming it is is a classic No True Scotsman fallacy.
It's one of the Ten Commandments.
No, it is not. The Commandment is probably closer to "Thou Shalt Not Murder Fellow Jews" -- often translated as "Thou shalt not kill", but within the Christian tradition (which includes all the books of the Old Testament, rather than just the first 5 books of the Jewish Torah) this clearly only refers to other members of the Judaic tradition, as God later commands genocide (e.g. 1 Samuel, Chapter 15) and has Saul removed as King of the Israelites in favor of David when Saul refuses to actually commit a complete genocide.
So... yeah, the God of the Ten Commandments era is totally down with mass murder. Jesus might have been against it, but you went back too far. Want to try again?
I dont know what you are smoking, but I have lived in a very competitive environment most of my adult life and I have seen very few taking anything for the sake of productivity
Really? No one drinks coffee or takes other forms of caffeine regularly around you?
It gets worse when a company relies on some given product that is no longer in production. New OS comes out - well, one machine gets to stay on the old version, since the drivers break in the new one. New OS comes out that breaks critical software item 2 (waiting on a very-long patch cycle), but the rest of the team really wants to use new-shiny available for software item 3 that only works in the new OS. I have seen a company (Graphics design firm that started on Macs back when everyone said they were the best computers for that purpose - and at the time they were probably correct) supporting at least 6 versions of Mac OS (that's just the ones I saw -- they may have had more somewhere -- a few were going on a decade old), with various hardware configurations as well (due to the variety of short-lived connector standards that Apple seems to like, they couldn't even get new hardware to go with them, so they have some atrociously slow load times), because there is no upgrade path for whatever product they are using, or no budget for replacing an otherwise perfectly functional and effective hardware device that may see limited (but business-critical) use (e.g. some large specialized-use printer).
Many Steam-downloaded single-player games can be launched directly, and do not require Steam to be up or connected to play. I checked a random sampling of mine and didn't actually encounter any that didn't have their own separate online-required DRM but required steam to play. Launching them manually is not exactly straight forward, but for many (I'd say most, but I haven't done a study or even really hit a large enough sample size of mutliple genres and publishers) offline Steam-purchased-and-downloaded games you can certainly play them even if the Internet is out and Steam won't launch.
its about serfs and self-entitlemen
Aren't those mutually exclusive?
Not if you feel entitled to Serf's Rights - protection from the predations of robbers (or terrorists), charity in times of famine (or depression), and such.
They went there to gamble, they should have known the odds...
There might be a point to "hoarding" specific asteroids that are in more useful locations -- for example, in earth orbit. That's like saying there's no point to hoarding because there's an abundance of them in the Earth's core. Accessibility, composition, and so on will dictate that some claims are more valuable than others, without regard to overall theoretical availability.
The facts don't support your theory. When iOS was the market leader, and Android the minority, it was still Android which was getting virtually all the malware.
Isn't there a joke here somewhere about every phone with iOS having malware on it, called "iOS"?
In some states, those cyclists are correct. Stop-As-Yield is also in many local city ordinances if there is no state-wide statute regarding the matter. If there's someone else at the stop, yes, the cyclist must stop and the car gets to go. If there's no one there, the cyclist is welcome to slow, check for traffic, then roll through without coming to a complete stop. If a cyclist is blowing the sign while a car is already stopped in another direction... yeah, those guys are douches. And they're right up there with all the motorists who also flagrantly violate a plethora of laws daily, from illegal lane changes to speeding to make yellow lights to blowing stop signs themselves. Percentage-wise, I see a hell of a lot more people behaving dangerously in cars compared to on bikes, and the guys in cars can also do a lot more damage when that violation causes an accident.
So yes, the difference is responsibility, but the opposite of what you seem to think -- people in cars don't have any sense of responsibility since insurance and the crash cage allow them to ignore the consequences, whereas on a bike, it's all personal responsibility as when something goes wrong, it's their own skin directly on the line.