Supporting those who support our rights, *all* of them, is a much better and more proactive form of protecting your rights.
Even as a strong supporter and partaker of the right to bear arms I think it's much better if we step outside of the pretenses of party politics and not feed into the lie thus stopping the complacent at the ballot box instead of having to resort to the cartridge box.
After all, if you're too lazy to pull a lever I doubt you'll be much more motivated to pull a trigger.
No, it sounds like a significant number of voters don't buy games. Again, the Slashdot crowd is not Joe Sixpack. Not everyone is buying games. It's a known fact that the average gamer is well over the legal voting age. (Why do we have to keep beating this fact into peoples heads?) There simply isn't enough of them to make a difference.
Can anyone help me understand this or is it nothing more than playing off mythical video game fears and targeting a group of people who don't vote?
I assume by saying "group of people who don't vote" you're talking about underagers?
If that's what you're thinking than the answer is no. It's more that they're hitting the pocket books of what they see as a minority of voters because they know it's not going to cause the kind of backlash that actually matters. No one is going to get voted out over this.
It's like when they tax cigarettes. The cigarette smoking public is about 20 percent, give or take, depending on who's numbers you use. They know that even if every smoker got pissed about it there really isn't so much of a margin to swing the vote. Why don't they tax (or stop subsidizing) the meat industry instead? It's known to be a health problem and it has a much wider tax base. That coupled with obesity is driving healthcare costs (and thus government payouts) way up.
Oh, that's right. Only about 6% of all Americans are vegetarian. That other 94% are part of the voting public. That's a bad move on election day so tax money helps keep the beef industry alive instead of forcing them to find a way to stand on their own two feet with a product that is in high demand.
So, no, it's not about the age of the voter. It's about the numbers of voters who have something to lose. If you can continue to pound on minority groups of voters it's not going to produce any real change at the top.
But than again, it's not like voting between Democrat and Republican is going to cause a real change at the top either.
That's right. I snail mail the institutions for the answers I seek and they write me back after looking it up on the web.
Even this post was done via correspondence. I mailed this letter to CmdrTaco a couple of days back and let him know to post my thoughts on the matter when the article hit the front page.
I have spent >90% of my gaming time this year playing.
So you're nearly done with your first full map?
I like Civ altho I haven't had a lot of time in Civ IV yet and the thing that always gets me is the endless micromanaging in earlier Civs. I like playing huge maps in Civ III because I hate my neighbor's capitol city being 12 whole squares away from mine but on big maps you get tons of cities.
Tons of cities = tons of units. Tons of unit = micromanagement.
I was really hoping this formula was going to go away in IV but from what I've seen it hasn't. Sigh, Civ V should be out in 18 months or so.
Again, I haven't played enough Civ IV to know the truth of the gameplay but I swear to God that if I have to pull workers from making a spiderweb of train tracks on every square at the north end of a continent just so that they finally connect the cities on the south end of the same continent I'm going to be extremely pissed.
Which kind of brings me to another bitch that I have about Civ in general (again, not playing IV enough to know if it's still true)...
I sat down about a year ago and decided that I was going to be a truely Utopian civ in Civ III. I was going to be open with trades and technology. Be nice to the annoying nations always on my coat tails for advancement and treat my people like people instead of rats...
Jesus, was that a mistake. After playing out the entire game without ever provoking a war, being a nation of happy people and prosperous in technology, what rating did I get? East "The Weak".
WTF?
While I was involved in two wars (never losing a city in either and taking two cities from the aggressor between the wars) . I agreed to peace the second they asked for it. I was the top of the technological scale and I had tons of wonders. Where the hell did I go wrong?
Civ III should be called "kick the shit out of the auslanders" for all the more being a prosperous peaceful civilization ever got me.
Man, this game just keeps going on and on. My hats are off to the people who beat this one.
Seriously, CoD4 is my game of the year at this point. I can't get into the single player but the multiplayer simply owns.
For single player it has to be Portal. Sure, it's not a hard concept and it's pretty short but it's a neat idea for the fantastic engine it's built off of and the end credit song is worth any minor frustration you may experience during gameplay.
Yeah, conservatives aren't involved in the sciences at all. No, none.
Democrats offer the same thing that the Republicans do: lip service. If you want change you best try your hardest to start that change in your own back yard. Don't wait for the government to make truely impacting legislation unless you like to sit around and watch paint dry.
While I can understand where you're coming from I can't help but think that with the success of LotRs that the cookie cutter is now set in stone. Regardless of Jackson's involvement in the new movies there is likely to be little deviation from the overall look and feel of the trilogy as long as New Line has their hooks in it.
Whether this is a good thing or not depends on what camp you come from. All things being equal, little has an opportunity to change as far as the end product. Even if Jackson were to direct and he had a new outlook on Middle Earth I doubt it would get past the execs without a fight, and in that fight the winner would be decided by the golden rule. Jackson wouldn't stand a chance of persuading New Line.
In all honesty I would feel comfortable in re-reading The Hobbit and telling people outright what would and would not be in the film. The first three has set a road map for the next two. While I'll go to see them I'm guessing it's going to be visually appealing but the story is going to be a meager shell of the book.
And does it matter that we don't know and that most scientists don't seem to know or care where they come from?
I always felt that science was a way of uncovering where these laws came from. It sounds like I'm talking in a circle but I feel that in order to understand the whole you need to understand the parts. At least in the questions of where something comes from. You dissect the whole down in parts and those parts in parts and eventually you find the questions to the tough problems.
It would be nice to think that we would have an answer of the origins and we could fan our knowledge out from there. If that were the case science would be all but dead since we would have probably arrived at all possible answers at this point in time. Instead we're left peeling back layers and making theories about layer yet uncovered.
Actually, I've been taken to understand that Chris Rock has taken over the funny-misfit-black-guy roles lately.
Well, what I like about Eddie is his ability to switch from serious to funny so effectively. Truly the man's core talent.
And consider: With his roles in the Shrek franchise... Oh my, what was I thinking? SHREK! Good Lord, I've forgotten all about this element. I need to get back to my writing table and my storyboards. We can combine Shrek with The Hobbit in some way. We can have lunch boxes, video games and Happy Meal toys from this. The endless string of straight-to-DVD cartoons will be worth it to the studios alone. We've got a winner here. Get Hollywood on the phone!
The novel The Hobbit was written for children. I bet the film isn't.
If adults can be entertained with Harry Potter than there is more than enough meat to satisfy them in any Tolkien writing, even The Hobbit.
And I really don't see The Hobbit as a children's book on today's criteria. I would stand The Hobbit up against any Potter book or even all of them for that matter. Fairy tales, in general, have become a watered down version of themselves. Tolkien comes from an era when violence and villany could be relied on without having to make up some half-assed play on morality at the end to keep the Washington wives placated. There will be plenty to fill in the time without having to resort to Pixar tactics.
At one point I heard that Jackson said he could make a 40 hour adoption of The Hobbit. While it could be done it certainly wouldn't entertain today's audience.
Instead I think that the second film should be an "off adventure" not written by Tolkien but rather a modernized epic. It would be Bilbo looking for some obscure treasure of a distant relative where he pairs up with Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern and Eddie Murphy (Sorry, but with the passing of Bruno Kirby and Jack Palance I just can't find a suitable third). They would go to Mirkwood in search of this treasure, hilarity will ensue.
It will be called The Shire Slickers: Curley's Midget Brother's Silver Horde.
Hey, Pete, if you're reading this give me a call. I have a million ideas. Really.
Tell yourself that the next time that it's ESPN or ESPN2 or The NFL channel or any other number of sports channels that guys gladly pay money to see people playing a game. It's a big business.
Granted, the story is a bit gonzo but every game has it's fans that are going to make it out to be more than it is. Why not let the geeks be happy about it for a minute.
All you have to do is press the right buttons at the right time.
Isn't that all any video game is really?
But we see the exceptions if we think about it and that's why there is a current trend in gaming. Namely the Wii and Guitar Hero. We're use to the game pad or WASD controls. The Wii and Guitar Hero leads us to a different style of play that is exciting to people. For Guitar Hero it's people's chance to play on a "real" guitar without the years of practice it would take to play these same songs for real.
In the case of the Wii people are all up on a different controller style too. The idea of waving one's hand and making something happen on-screen is a form of magic to most people.
I agree to a point. I still think people should vote for their ideals. It bothers me the number of people who are willing to vote for a candidate because they have a chance of winning when there is another candidate that better represents their views. We need to send a message about who we want to see, not who has the best chance. And in some cases a blind vote for third parties is a great way of stating that we don't find the same trash to be satisfying and that we feel comfortable without the two old crutches of the status quo.
Just to chat? I got all these hot women moving to my area soon and they don't have any friends here. Just by random chance they found me on MySpace and are eager to meet with me. Man, I can't wait until they move in. Hot dog!
Any civilization that has the ability to do damage to us has the ability to detect us without the need for this active SETI. The only ETs that are possibly going to benefit from the active SETI are those who are like us; stuck on their little ball of mud hoping for a large signal to clue them in.
I predict that before a man walks on Mars, or soon there after, we will have the technology to be able to tell if there is intelligent life (as we know it) in the closer solar systems systems. We won't need some flimsy signal from them, we will be able to see them from here.
There is a saying in poker: If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is... it's you.
Why do we still think that we can swing between two parties that are the same in so many ways and have real change? Who's the real schmuck in that case?
Slashdot Mirror
How long until a kidnap victim is seen in public but isn't recognized as a kidnap victim and ends up in a shallow grave?
Oh, wait!...
True. But at least at that point he'll have a reason to go outside. :)
We need to have weighted Wii-motes to help go that extra distance. It would be like the 2 pound power-walking weights.
But still, these things are important, especially now.
Only if you plan on moving. You simply do not drop this kind of cash and buy a new house 6 months later.
Also, consider that the current housing slump will likely only last 2-3 years and it's really not that big of an issue.
Supporting those who support our rights, *all* of them, is a much better and more proactive form of protecting your rights.
Even as a strong supporter and partaker of the right to bear arms I think it's much better if we step outside of the pretenses of party politics and not feed into the lie thus stopping the complacent at the ballot box instead of having to resort to the cartridge box.
After all, if you're too lazy to pull a lever I doubt you'll be much more motivated to pull a trigger.
No, it sounds like a significant number of voters don't buy games. Again, the Slashdot crowd is not Joe Sixpack. Not everyone is buying games. It's a known fact that the average gamer is well over the legal voting age. (Why do we have to keep beating this fact into peoples heads?) There simply isn't enough of them to make a difference.
It's like these laws are passed just to keep us consuming at a ridiculous rate..
Yeah, because the life cycle of the types of bulbs that law applies to are sooooo long.
BTW: No one is making you replace anything but the bulb. And that's only when they die. Stop blowing this out of proportion.
Can anyone help me understand this or is it nothing more than playing off mythical video game fears and targeting a group of people who don't vote?
I assume by saying "group of people who don't vote" you're talking about underagers?
If that's what you're thinking than the answer is no. It's more that they're hitting the pocket books of what they see as a minority of voters because they know it's not going to cause the kind of backlash that actually matters. No one is going to get voted out over this.
It's like when they tax cigarettes. The cigarette smoking public is about 20 percent, give or take, depending on who's numbers you use. They know that even if every smoker got pissed about it there really isn't so much of a margin to swing the vote. Why don't they tax (or stop subsidizing) the meat industry instead? It's known to be a health problem and it has a much wider tax base. That coupled with obesity is driving healthcare costs (and thus government payouts) way up.
Oh, that's right. Only about 6% of all Americans are vegetarian. That other 94% are part of the voting public. That's a bad move on election day so tax money helps keep the beef industry alive instead of forcing them to find a way to stand on their own two feet with a product that is in high demand.
So, no, it's not about the age of the voter. It's about the numbers of voters who have something to lose. If you can continue to pound on minority groups of voters it's not going to produce any real change at the top.
But than again, it's not like voting between Democrat and Republican is going to cause a real change at the top either.
I browse the web via correspondence.
That's right. I snail mail the institutions for the answers I seek and they write me back after looking it up on the web.
Even this post was done via correspondence. I mailed this letter to CmdrTaco a couple of days back and let him know to post my thoughts on the matter when the article hit the front page.
I have spent >90% of my gaming time this year playing.
So you're nearly done with your first full map?
I like Civ altho I haven't had a lot of time in Civ IV yet and the thing that always gets me is the endless micromanaging in earlier Civs. I like playing huge maps in Civ III because I hate my neighbor's capitol city being 12 whole squares away from mine but on big maps you get tons of cities.
Tons of cities = tons of units.
Tons of unit = micromanagement.
I was really hoping this formula was going to go away in IV but from what I've seen it hasn't. Sigh, Civ V should be out in 18 months or so.
Again, I haven't played enough Civ IV to know the truth of the gameplay but I swear to God that if I have to pull workers from making a spiderweb of train tracks on every square at the north end of a continent just so that they finally connect the cities on the south end of the same continent I'm going to be extremely pissed.
Which kind of brings me to another bitch that I have about Civ in general (again, not playing IV enough to know if it's still true)...
I sat down about a year ago and decided that I was going to be a truely Utopian civ in Civ III. I was going to be open with trades and technology. Be nice to the annoying nations always on my coat tails for advancement and treat my people like people instead of rats...
Jesus, was that a mistake. After playing out the entire game without ever provoking a war, being a nation of happy people and prosperous in technology, what rating did I get? East "The Weak".
WTF?
While I was involved in two wars (never losing a city in either and taking two cities from the aggressor between the wars) . I agreed to peace the second they asked for it. I was the top of the technological scale and I had tons of wonders. Where the hell did I go wrong?
Civ III should be called "kick the shit out of the auslanders" for all the more being a prosperous peaceful civilization ever got me.
Hmpf.
Man, this game just keeps going on and on. My hats are off to the people who beat this one.
Seriously, CoD4 is my game of the year at this point. I can't get into the single player but the multiplayer simply owns.
For single player it has to be Portal. Sure, it's not a hard concept and it's pretty short but it's a neat idea for the fantastic engine it's built off of and the end credit song is worth any minor frustration you may experience during gameplay.
Oh, and the cake is pretty damn good.
Yeah, conservatives aren't involved in the sciences at all. No, none.
Democrats offer the same thing that the Republicans do: lip service. If you want change you best try your hardest to start that change in your own back yard. Don't wait for the government to make truely impacting legislation unless you like to sit around and watch paint dry.
While I can understand where you're coming from I can't help but think that with the success of LotRs that the cookie cutter is now set in stone. Regardless of Jackson's involvement in the new movies there is likely to be little deviation from the overall look and feel of the trilogy as long as New Line has their hooks in it.
Whether this is a good thing or not depends on what camp you come from. All things being equal, little has an opportunity to change as far as the end product. Even if Jackson were to direct and he had a new outlook on Middle Earth I doubt it would get past the execs without a fight, and in that fight the winner would be decided by the golden rule. Jackson wouldn't stand a chance of persuading New Line.
In all honesty I would feel comfortable in re-reading The Hobbit and telling people outright what would and would not be in the film. The first three has set a road map for the next two. While I'll go to see them I'm guessing it's going to be visually appealing but the story is going to be a meager shell of the book.
Just for the record, I did not RTFA.
And does it matter that we don't know and that most scientists don't seem to know or care where they come from?
I always felt that science was a way of uncovering where these laws came from. It sounds like I'm talking in a circle but I feel that in order to understand the whole you need to understand the parts. At least in the questions of where something comes from. You dissect the whole down in parts and those parts in parts and eventually you find the questions to the tough problems.
It would be nice to think that we would have an answer of the origins and we could fan our knowledge out from there. If that were the case science would be all but dead since we would have probably arrived at all possible answers at this point in time. Instead we're left peeling back layers and making theories about layer yet uncovered.
At least that's the way I see it.
Actually, I've been taken to understand that Chris Rock has taken over the funny-misfit-black-guy roles lately.
Well, what I like about Eddie is his ability to switch from serious to funny so effectively. Truly the man's core talent.
And consider: With his roles in the Shrek franchise... Oh my, what was I thinking? SHREK! Good Lord, I've forgotten all about this element. I need to get back to my writing table and my storyboards. We can combine Shrek with The Hobbit in some way. We can have lunch boxes, video games and Happy Meal toys from this. The endless string of straight-to-DVD cartoons will be worth it to the studios alone. We've got a winner here. Get Hollywood on the phone!
The novel The Hobbit was written for children. I bet the film isn't.
If adults can be entertained with Harry Potter than there is more than enough meat to satisfy them in any Tolkien writing, even The Hobbit.
And I really don't see The Hobbit as a children's book on today's criteria. I would stand The Hobbit up against any Potter book or even all of them for that matter. Fairy tales, in general, have become a watered down version of themselves. Tolkien comes from an era when violence and villany could be relied on without having to make up some half-assed play on morality at the end to keep the Washington wives placated. There will be plenty to fill in the time without having to resort to Pixar tactics.
At one point I heard that Jackson said he could make a 40 hour adoption of The Hobbit. While it could be done it certainly wouldn't entertain today's audience.
Instead I think that the second film should be an "off adventure" not written by Tolkien but rather a modernized epic. It would be Bilbo looking for some obscure treasure of a distant relative where he pairs up with Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern and Eddie Murphy (Sorry, but with the passing of Bruno Kirby and Jack Palance I just can't find a suitable third). They would go to Mirkwood in search of this treasure, hilarity will ensue.
It will be called The Shire Slickers: Curley's Midget Brother's Silver Horde.
Hey, Pete, if you're reading this give me a call. I have a million ideas. Really.
Come on people. It's a damned game.
Tell yourself that the next time that it's ESPN or ESPN2 or The NFL channel or any other number of sports channels that guys gladly pay money to see people playing a game. It's a big business.
Granted, the story is a bit gonzo but every game has it's fans that are going to make it out to be more than it is. Why not let the geeks be happy about it for a minute.
All you have to do is press the right buttons at the right time.
Isn't that all any video game is really?
But we see the exceptions if we think about it and that's why there is a current trend in gaming. Namely the Wii and Guitar Hero. We're use to the game pad or WASD controls. The Wii and Guitar Hero leads us to a different style of play that is exciting to people. For Guitar Hero it's people's chance to play on a "real" guitar without the years of practice it would take to play these same songs for real.
In the case of the Wii people are all up on a different controller style too. The idea of waving one's hand and making something happen on-screen is a form of magic to most people.
but that diversity was diminished by the fact that the minorities in the main cast were all bit players.
Yeah, like that Vulcan. I'd never let a Vulcan date my sister. Why can't he find another Vulcan to date?
I agree to a point. I still think people should vote for their ideals. It bothers me the number of people who are willing to vote for a candidate because they have a chance of winning when there is another candidate that better represents their views. We need to send a message about who we want to see, not who has the best chance. And in some cases a blind vote for third parties is a great way of stating that we don't find the same trash to be satisfying and that we feel comfortable without the two old crutches of the status quo.
Just to chat? I got all these hot women moving to my area soon and they don't have any friends here. Just by random chance they found me on MySpace and are eager to meet with me. Man, I can't wait until they move in. Hot dog!
I had to bump "Terrorists attack Starbucks #528" off the list to make room
I thought Starbucks was the terrorists?
Oh, sorry, they're thieves. Wrong criminal. My bad.
Any civilization that has the ability to do damage to us has the ability to detect us without the need for this active SETI. The only ETs that are possibly going to benefit from the active SETI are those who are like us; stuck on their little ball of mud hoping for a large signal to clue them in.
I predict that before a man walks on Mars, or soon there after, we will have the technology to be able to tell if there is intelligent life (as we know it) in the closer solar systems systems. We won't need some flimsy signal from them, we will be able to see them from here.
Meet the new schmucks, same as the old schmucks.
There is a saying in poker: If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is... it's you.
Why do we still think that we can swing between two parties that are the same in so many ways and have real change? Who's the real schmuck in that case?