But if we don't want to use carbon-fuels because they are running out, then nuclear ain't much better.
And Australia got a better chance at renewable energy then most countries because they got far more land available to put it on, and you can't import cheap coal electricity to make green energy to expensive.
Nuclear is far less economical then the nuke industry wants to make it appear. Would you trust a coal producer to tell you the truth about coal?
If I act/dress like Steven Conroy goose-stepping through the streets, THAT is parody. If I create a passport with his name on it, then that is fraud.
They should have registered the site in their own name, then it would be parody and they would probably win in court (don't know aussie laws on parody but presuming they are as similar to EU/US laws as you can expect from a continent of criminals).
Mind you, the fact that the registry changed its normal procedure for this case shows that this is a real attempt at suppression of critical thoughts. Then again, everyone knows not to use local registers for anything, they are all corrupt but without the global oversight the.com.org.net have to work under.
But if you want to parody/critize, you need to know what battles to fight. Like the show "Have I Got News For You". They can only do what they do because they got lawyers watching the entire show, who decide what joke/satire is worth it and which isn't. You can make far harder satire, if you give the enemy only the satire itself to fight. Not accidental criminal/libel stuff that they can use to shut you down.
For instance, I can say that George Bush is the monkey whose brain was served in The Temple of Doom, but if I then hint "which leads him to cheat on his wife" I am opening myself up to much to attack. This side is now attacked because it faked the registry, neatly allowing the attacked to side-step addressing the charge of facism.
Just as my post may now be modden down for attacking Bush, or the criminal aussie remark, rather then the main point I am trying to make.
Eh, you give the answer. Food
on
A Requiem For Saab
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Compare an american pizza with an italian one. A real hamburger with anything from any american restaurant. American beer? Coffee? We got Starbucks in holland now and frankly, their coffee sucks. I can get better from an espresso machine. Ben&Jerry icecream? For the price, not nearly as good as you would think.
That is not to say everything american is bad, it is just that when you have to appeal to 360 million people, you end up becoming distinctly average. The US HAS got local restaurants, even chains of them, that provide something different, something with a taste that dares not to appeal to everyone. To be unique, but they will always be local affairs that don't make it out of their local area, let alone across the ocean.
The big american cars you know are aimed at the general US population. They require a car NOT for local travel but for long distance travel (or at least, they think they do). The world is filled with car-buyers who buy a car for the situation they might one day be in that they seen in the movies and not the one they need every single day of their real lives. Every american dreams of driving along a long highway into the sunset. For that you need a 3-ton car with soft suspension. And you want plenty of room on an 12 hour ride. Oh sure, it is hell on the short daily trips, but one day you might drive away from it all and you will be glad for it then.
What amuses me most is the episodes of myth-busters where they test fuel-efficiency myths in 3 ton gas guzzlers. That is because no american can drive anything less then a v8. Because you need those extra horsepowers if you ever need to accelarate fast for some idiotic safety reason (that you would accelerate faster in a lighter car with a better power to weight ratio is something no american can understand).
There is a reason every famous car comes from europe. The same reason Michelin guide is french. Americans do big and succesful, europeans do financial failure but do it beautifully.
Get of your high horse yank. At least in other parts of the world you can show a nipple without the entire country throwing a hissy fit.
Rather typical you make no mention of that. A country where the word fuck is not just bleeped but the mouth of the person saying it hidden behind a mosaic, lecturing the rest of the world on censorship.
That is not what international law is at all. International law is the stuff that happens in The Hague and it has been around a long time and is desperately needed. It governs such silly every day things as trade. If you trade between countries (between sets of laws) which one goes? Well, that is what international law is for.
And it is in Holland because Holland was ONCE a world-power (yes really) but lost that status but still had a need to maintain its trading empire. So while the british and other powers settled trade disputes with the law of the biggest gun(boat) Holland needed something more.
International law is an entirely different beast then this, what we are talking about here are treaties. It may look the same, but it is fundementally different.
In fact, the current system is so wrong because it seeks to bypass laws altogether. The media companies are waging a very complex war against basic law by trying to get a new set of laws introduced by means that were never intended. Trade treaties were supposed to be "We sell you X and you don't charge for it and we allow you sell us Y without charging tariffs on it". Not "you will subject your citizens to our laws".
If we had been scared we would still be in our tree screaming "the ground is lava!"
There are two kinds of monkeys, those that cower and those that say "here kitty kitty" to the tiger... oh and the third is the one who runs the fastest once the tiger pounces. The heroes are the first to land on Omaha, the ones who had sons were in the second wave.
We can drill 12km down and that is a very small hole indeed, the distances involved here are a bit larger. And that is DRILL, not dig. If you drilled into lava/magma the drillbit would melt, get stuck and the hole be plugged with your drill. Even if could drill a hollow hole, the moment the magma flowed in it would cool and get stuck on its way up. It would be like trying to bleed to dead from a needle puncture. (which doesn't happen by the way, before I start a new internet scare)
Digging that deep, well there are mines that go down 1km and seems to be the limit for now.
So no, not really. There might be ways in the future, but for now we just have to hope that future has a change to happen.
Extended warranty on earphones. Oh they break fast so it SEEMS like a good deal, free replacement. Except wear and tear are not covered and what do they break off? Wear and tear... AND often within regular warranty too.
I think people got jealous of the lawyers, what with them surviving the nuclear holocaust and all, and thought "how can we be lower then the lawyers". And the answer "sell mobile phones". Good luck!
You are absolutely 100% right. And? What is Childs then guilty off? Being a jerk? An asswipe? An idiot? If that was a crime the jails would be full... fuller.
The case is insane and yet already Childs has served 18 months in jail because of it. For what?
Danger to security? What danger? If he is to blame then so are the people who were supposed to control him.
What we got here is someone who made some really dumb choices but the result of it all has been nothing. He should pay for it, but 18 months I think is more then enough as well as the fact that nobody will every hire his nutty ass ever again.
He never should have done what he did, but neither should he rot in jail for it. or can we lock up every overzealous politician and prosecutor as well? It will be standing room only in the jails.
People of slashdot, this is VERY VERY simple. Go to the boss, the highest you can barge in on, hand him in writing your objections and the passwords AND your resignation. Have them signed and don't look back.
NEVER EVER try to be clever within the system, you cannot win.
Always do this especially when working with government or semi-government (Huge companies that either were once state run, work mostly for the state, are run by ex-state people or because of their size have become ministates. You know the type, where people were ties, even when they are not.
This guy tried to be clever. It never works, you are never clever enough and the system knows how to deal with clever. Instead be smart, get out.
This guy really should have just done as said above. Hand it off and get the fuck out of the way.
There is good money to be made in this segment of the market, but only for those who can play the game and the first rule of the game is, don't get into the game if you don't know the rules.
Official price from maker, more then the actual price of the netbook.
Price from european screen supplier. 120 euro
Price from american ebay, 30 euro
I paid a small business that buys stuff in the US for customers and had the screen PLUS a 9 cell battery for 120 euro.
Morale, laptop makers bleed you dry anyway they can. The batteries are something you can't easily buy from others and the laptop makers try to make you believe that any aftermarket battery will eat your family. How else do you think Sony makes its profits (or rather these days, keeps it losses in control).
Charge what the market is willing to bear, then if not enough buy, charge more so you get more money from the rest. It works... the guy writing the article bought a VAIO. There is one born every minute.
Get this citizen and get this straight. When the king rapes a maid, that is all well and proper and his divine right. When a maid rapes the king, that is treason.
It is called, double standards. Much better then having just one standard which is the way of socialists and other enemies of freedom to screw those below you.
The real problem isn't the sound level/compression whatever, that is just a symptom. The real problem is to many ads. We as people are becoming better at tuning them out and so the advertisers think only of their own ad and try to think of a method to become impossible to notice. It is a constant arms race and that is a REAL problem, because arms races are done between enemies. Do you as a merchant really want your customers to think of you as the enemy? Does the TV network want people to fight their audience?
I barely watch TV anymore, simply because the ads have gone out of control. For the Americans, I grew up in Holland were we had ONE tv network (if you wanted to watch another channel, you tuned into the neighboring country) and no ads on Sunday and other Christian holidays. During the weeks ads were only between programs. Now we got 30 or so channels and are blasted by ads. And I watch fewer ads then ever. Progress? I think not.
There used to be booze and cigs ads before the movies, I don't drink or smoke but they were intresting to watch. Didn't work since I didn't buy but at least I didn't resent every second of watching them. Then they banned them, now we got ads so horrible I actually walked out of the movie and demanded my money back.
In the fight for our eyeballs, advertisers are actually loosing eyeballs and rather then agree one some set of guidelines to stop this, they race each other to the bottom. Right now the ads on Discovery and such in Holland are for SMS. It can't pay much (I pray to god that it doesn't because I don't want to live in a world where there are millions of people who fall for these obvious scams "sms your name, his name to see if you will be together for ever This is part of a subscription plan which will charge you 4.95 per sms for the rest of your life, three times a day") but they still blast every 15 minutes. What is Discovery thinking? I can just download the shows you know. I don't even dare to drive a car, because if I did, people might think I watched a car ad (about 50 IQ points BELOW a SMS ad).
Why not instead make quality TV, then charge a premium for a 30 second slot every half hour. Captive audience who is sure to pay attention. But no, commerical break is when people have become trained to go to the toilet or have a quickie and advertisers are determined to give us even less reason to watch...
If McDonalds was an advertising company, they would try to boost dropping sales by injecting extra lard and making the que's double long. Because the best way to get more customers is to be extra horrible to them.
Because people in Holland stopped speeding when the speed limit was raised to 120. Or people never speed in Germany where is parts where is makes sense, there is no speed limit.
Pot is legal in Holland, so people don't do hard-drugs.
People will break whatever laws there are, even the law of no-laws (which would be a law therefor against its own law).
I see many arguments against this idiotic ban, but respect for the law ain't one of them.
No kid should be allowed to graduate without being able to quote every single episode word for word.
Know this series and all of politics will make sense.
Oh, and I think it is telling that some US citizens say that "the powers that be" is the US version of Yes Minister. Says it all for the Americans really. To bad. Ah well, what do you expect from colonists. We shipped them off for a reason. The criminals to Australia and the religious freaks to the US. Wonder which set of natives got screwed worse.
America, land of the free. As long as you agree with the party-line. As ex-soviet reporters have commented, the differences between the soviet union and the US are not all that big. Tell me, do they still have camps for the homeless in the US? Food stamps? Waiting in line for the food kitchen?
The US has created a very smart system, it is similar to what religious groups use. Sure you can criticize, HERETIC! Just see what happens if you dare to protest against copyright... how many hundreds of millions are you fined with? No, it is not the same as being tortured and shipped to some re-education center. It is far better. People are willing to die for freedom, spend the rest of their life in poverty, not so much.
You can see the true freedom in the US with cases such as the Dixie Chicks. Freedom should be MORE then just being able to say what everyone else says. What westerners often get wrong about dictatorships like Cube, Russia, Soviet Union (Russia today is not free), China etc is that they are NOT what you see in McGuyver episodes. There isn't a commisar on every corner, not everything is monitored and controlled. Rather, they use the fear of being noticed when you dare to stand out to stop you from standing out. And they "use" a few who are allowed to stand out but are slapped down from time to time to remind everyone what happens.
Same as western society when you dare question things. Copyright, mod-chips, they might seem like minor issues but it is what the powers that be care about in the west, and if you question them, you are slapped down. For that matter, what have all dictarorships got in common? Repression of the rights of homo-sexuals (true communism would give full rights to everyone). What western country is most repressive of gay-rights? Thank you.
Be very careful about thinking you are free just because they allow you to certain freedoms. A free-range chicken still gets eaten.
Just imagine, the roads being maintained by Microsoft. The FDA run by Apple. The city water utility by IBM.
If you know nothing about history, then I suppose those ideas might appeal. To those of use with a brain, it is a nightmare.
IBM would decide that a watertap is only worthwhile selling to big business, not to individual consumers.
Microsoft would make roads only drivable by Ford cars and then only the current model.
Apple would come up with legaleese to tell you that should your stomach explode, they are in a no way to blaim.
No, somethings are meant to operate slowly and ineffciently. If society was run efficient, we would raise all kids in centralized institutions and kill old people once they are no longer productive. I take my goverment lumbering, out of date and inefficient thank you very much. For the alternative, see 1939-1945 and current day China.
Every arm-chair capatalist knows that everyone else pays for the police who should NEVER stop them from doing anything just everyone else.
Watch Fox-news, you will get the idea soon enough. All drunk-drivers should be stopped, but not if they need their car for business. All illegal immigrants should be kicked out, except their cleaning lady. Everyone should pay for schooling, but their school has to be free and no raises for teachers, ever. Think Homer Simpson, a parody people, not a role-model.
The article ends with mentioning that cutting edges graphics don't matter apparently because of the success of iPhone games.
This is both WRONG and RIGHT at the same time.
It don't matter in a "cheap" and cheerful game you play on the move to amuse yourself for a bit. It don't matter in a game that is window dressing for excersise. It DOES matter in the latest EPIC major story thrill ride game. I am currently both playing Dragon Age Origins and Ghost Master. Not heard of the last one? Not suprised, small game from years ago. Bit of an oddity in which you have to haunt a house. The graphics are "okay" but horribly out of date. I am not going to say that graphics don't matter in the game, but they are good enough and the subject matter is such that it don't matter that all the characters look really badly drawn (women have chests that would make Dolly Parton complain of backache).
Graphics MATTER for certain genre's same as input and for that matter storage. Would you want to play Dragon Age or the latest FF without speech? But speech soaks up space, space that has to be somewhere. Que the Wii not being able to handle nearly as much and meeting serious trouble with "random" speech. Streaming from CD was the reason the early Tombraider games used regular music CD track for complex sound moments, a horror to PC gamers who were used to sounds being mixed on the spot from sample randomly read from a HD. Non-developers or people without technical knowledge often over-estimate the Wii's capabilities, they see it as a non-HD version of the current console generation, a scaled down PS3/360. It is not. It is a totally different machine aimed at a different genre.
The new mario isn't a throwback to decades old gaming for nothing, that is what the Wii does. For people who like that, it is perfect but for people waiting for the next Triple A title, look somewhere else. You wouldn't expect them on the DS or on the iPhone would you?
On a dutch news site someone commented that Dante's Inferno wasn't coming for the PC and how that meant the end of PC gaming. Eh... when has a slash-em-up EVER come to the PC? Those type of games are the domain of the controller, not the keyboard. From the same company (EA) Dragon Age not only launced on the PC but is now also coming to the Mac and Saboteur (a FPS) is coming for PC as well. These Genre's started on the PC (console RPG's were a very different beast to what Bioware makes) and are remaining there more or less. Where is the DAO modding community for the PS3/360?
Different hardware for different genre's. You can't make WoW for the console, the way that game works is to have a ton of buttons and the challenge is to pick the right one. Bayonetta on the other hand has the challenge of hitting 1-2 buttons over and over. Different market.
I don't think that console gaming is dying, but the current console companies MIGHT have to rethink their strategies. Maybe... the sales figures in the article are horrible. MS posted a loss... eh no? Their REVENUE dropped. By a tiny amount. They STILL make a profit and a very nice one at that. Talk about mis-reporting, it is "correct" but also a complete and utter lie. Sony does seem to be in trouble but then again, Sony has been bleeding for a long time and it can't all be blamed on the PS3. They lost their position as "slightly overprice but reliable decent to good quality". This was a good position to have, it meant that the fast majority of the market, the "we got money but are not swimming in it" bought Sony if they could because it was better then the cheapo stuff and not as expensive as the high-end stuff.
What I think is hurting gaming is the move away from the nerdy gamer into the general "cool" kids market, but the companies forgot that this market is far more fickle. It is in a way easier to make game for the OLD hardcore market (think Deus EX/Mario) then it is for the MTV crowd. Modern Warfare 2 is a game for that crowd, lots of flash and bangs but very little substance once you dig down. The pro
Is if the best sand is in Saudi Arabia and the factory in Australia, then we would ship send both ways from desert to desert and be sure the aliens NEVER contact us!
We are not a civilization, we are an alien reality show "those crazy apes". They carefully direct us to remain this stupid through careful inbreeding programs.
Anything to keep the ratings. Today on "Those crazy apes", a planet that produced enough food for dinosaurs still has people starving on one side and unable to stand on their own legs on the other.
Sure, critics have called the show repetitive, but who can not get enough of those silly monkeys who haven't even discovered slood yet. Make sure to turn in next month, when we surprise them with 10k tons of ice.
Slashdot Mirror
But if we don't want to use carbon-fuels because they are running out, then nuclear ain't much better.
And Australia got a better chance at renewable energy then most countries because they got far more land available to put it on, and you can't import cheap coal electricity to make green energy to expensive.
Nuclear is far less economical then the nuke industry wants to make it appear. Would you trust a coal producer to tell you the truth about coal?
If I act/dress like Steven Conroy goose-stepping through the streets, THAT is parody. If I create a passport with his name on it, then that is fraud.
They should have registered the site in their own name, then it would be parody and they would probably win in court (don't know aussie laws on parody but presuming they are as similar to EU/US laws as you can expect from a continent of criminals).
Mind you, the fact that the registry changed its normal procedure for this case shows that this is a real attempt at suppression of critical thoughts. Then again, everyone knows not to use local registers for anything, they are all corrupt but without the global oversight the .com.org.net have to work under.
But if you want to parody/critize, you need to know what battles to fight. Like the show "Have I Got News For You". They can only do what they do because they got lawyers watching the entire show, who decide what joke/satire is worth it and which isn't. You can make far harder satire, if you give the enemy only the satire itself to fight. Not accidental criminal/libel stuff that they can use to shut you down.
For instance, I can say that George Bush is the monkey whose brain was served in The Temple of Doom, but if I then hint "which leads him to cheat on his wife" I am opening myself up to much to attack. This side is now attacked because it faked the registry, neatly allowing the attacked to side-step addressing the charge of facism.
Just as my post may now be modden down for attacking Bush, or the criminal aussie remark, rather then the main point I am trying to make.
Compare an american pizza with an italian one. A real hamburger with anything from any american restaurant. American beer? Coffee? We got Starbucks in holland now and frankly, their coffee sucks. I can get better from an espresso machine. Ben&Jerry icecream? For the price, not nearly as good as you would think.
That is not to say everything american is bad, it is just that when you have to appeal to 360 million people, you end up becoming distinctly average. The US HAS got local restaurants, even chains of them, that provide something different, something with a taste that dares not to appeal to everyone. To be unique, but they will always be local affairs that don't make it out of their local area, let alone across the ocean.
The big american cars you know are aimed at the general US population. They require a car NOT for local travel but for long distance travel (or at least, they think they do). The world is filled with car-buyers who buy a car for the situation they might one day be in that they seen in the movies and not the one they need every single day of their real lives. Every american dreams of driving along a long highway into the sunset. For that you need a 3-ton car with soft suspension. And you want plenty of room on an 12 hour ride. Oh sure, it is hell on the short daily trips, but one day you might drive away from it all and you will be glad for it then.
What amuses me most is the episodes of myth-busters where they test fuel-efficiency myths in 3 ton gas guzzlers. That is because no american can drive anything less then a v8. Because you need those extra horsepowers if you ever need to accelarate fast for some idiotic safety reason (that you would accelerate faster in a lighter car with a better power to weight ratio is something no american can understand).
There is a reason every famous car comes from europe. The same reason Michelin guide is french. Americans do big and succesful, europeans do financial failure but do it beautifully.
Get of your high horse yank. At least in other parts of the world you can show a nipple without the entire country throwing a hissy fit.
Rather typical you make no mention of that. A country where the word fuck is not just bleeped but the mouth of the person saying it hidden behind a mosaic, lecturing the rest of the world on censorship.
That is not what international law is at all. International law is the stuff that happens in The Hague and it has been around a long time and is desperately needed. It governs such silly every day things as trade. If you trade between countries (between sets of laws) which one goes? Well, that is what international law is for.
And it is in Holland because Holland was ONCE a world-power (yes really) but lost that status but still had a need to maintain its trading empire. So while the british and other powers settled trade disputes with the law of the biggest gun(boat) Holland needed something more.
International law is an entirely different beast then this, what we are talking about here are treaties. It may look the same, but it is fundementally different.
In fact, the current system is so wrong because it seeks to bypass laws altogether. The media companies are waging a very complex war against basic law by trying to get a new set of laws introduced by means that were never intended. Trade treaties were supposed to be "We sell you X and you don't charge for it and we allow you sell us Y without charging tariffs on it". Not "you will subject your citizens to our laws".
If we had been scared we would still be in our tree screaming "the ground is lava!"
There are two kinds of monkeys, those that cower and those that say "here kitty kitty" to the tiger... oh and the third is the one who runs the fastest once the tiger pounces. The heroes are the first to land on Omaha, the ones who had sons were in the second wave.
We can drill 12km down and that is a very small hole indeed, the distances involved here are a bit larger. And that is DRILL, not dig. If you drilled into lava/magma the drillbit would melt, get stuck and the hole be plugged with your drill. Even if could drill a hollow hole, the moment the magma flowed in it would cool and get stuck on its way up. It would be like trying to bleed to dead from a needle puncture. (which doesn't happen by the way, before I start a new internet scare)
Digging that deep, well there are mines that go down 1km and seems to be the limit for now.
So no, not really. There might be ways in the future, but for now we just have to hope that future has a change to happen.
Extended warranty on earphones. Oh they break fast so it SEEMS like a good deal, free replacement. Except wear and tear are not covered and what do they break off? Wear and tear... AND often within regular warranty too.
I think people got jealous of the lawyers, what with them surviving the nuclear holocaust and all, and thought "how can we be lower then the lawyers". And the answer "sell mobile phones". Good luck!
You are absolutely 100% right. And? What is Childs then guilty off? Being a jerk? An asswipe? An idiot? If that was a crime the jails would be full... fuller.
The case is insane and yet already Childs has served 18 months in jail because of it. For what?
Danger to security? What danger? If he is to blame then so are the people who were supposed to control him.
What we got here is someone who made some really dumb choices but the result of it all has been nothing. He should pay for it, but 18 months I think is more then enough as well as the fact that nobody will every hire his nutty ass ever again.
He never should have done what he did, but neither should he rot in jail for it. or can we lock up every overzealous politician and prosecutor as well? It will be standing room only in the jails.
People of slashdot, this is VERY VERY simple. Go to the boss, the highest you can barge in on, hand him in writing your objections and the passwords AND your resignation. Have them signed and don't look back.
NEVER EVER try to be clever within the system, you cannot win.
Always do this especially when working with government or semi-government (Huge companies that either were once state run, work mostly for the state, are run by ex-state people or because of their size have become ministates. You know the type, where people were ties, even when they are not.
This guy tried to be clever. It never works, you are never clever enough and the system knows how to deal with clever. Instead be smart, get out.
This guy really should have just done as said above. Hand it off and get the fuck out of the way.
There is good money to be made in this segment of the market, but only for those who can play the game and the first rule of the game is, don't get into the game if you don't know the rules.
Recently I needed a netbook screen replacement.
I paid a small business that buys stuff in the US for customers and had the screen PLUS a 9 cell battery for 120 euro.
Morale, laptop makers bleed you dry anyway they can. The batteries are something you can't easily buy from others and the laptop makers try to make you believe that any aftermarket battery will eat your family. How else do you think Sony makes its profits (or rather these days, keeps it losses in control).
Charge what the market is willing to bear, then if not enough buy, charge more so you get more money from the rest. It works... the guy writing the article bought a VAIO. There is one born every minute.
Get this citizen and get this straight. When the king rapes a maid, that is all well and proper and his divine right. When a maid rapes the king, that is treason.
It is called, double standards. Much better then having just one standard which is the way of socialists and other enemies of freedom to screw those below you.
The real problem isn't the sound level/compression whatever, that is just a symptom. The real problem is to many ads. We as people are becoming better at tuning them out and so the advertisers think only of their own ad and try to think of a method to become impossible to notice. It is a constant arms race and that is a REAL problem, because arms races are done between enemies. Do you as a merchant really want your customers to think of you as the enemy? Does the TV network want people to fight their audience?
I barely watch TV anymore, simply because the ads have gone out of control. For the Americans, I grew up in Holland were we had ONE tv network (if you wanted to watch another channel, you tuned into the neighboring country) and no ads on Sunday and other Christian holidays. During the weeks ads were only between programs. Now we got 30 or so channels and are blasted by ads. And I watch fewer ads then ever. Progress? I think not.
There used to be booze and cigs ads before the movies, I don't drink or smoke but they were intresting to watch. Didn't work since I didn't buy but at least I didn't resent every second of watching them. Then they banned them, now we got ads so horrible I actually walked out of the movie and demanded my money back.
In the fight for our eyeballs, advertisers are actually loosing eyeballs and rather then agree one some set of guidelines to stop this, they race each other to the bottom. Right now the ads on Discovery and such in Holland are for SMS. It can't pay much (I pray to god that it doesn't because I don't want to live in a world where there are millions of people who fall for these obvious scams "sms your name, his name to see if you will be together for ever This is part of a subscription plan which will charge you 4.95 per sms for the rest of your life, three times a day") but they still blast every 15 minutes. What is Discovery thinking? I can just download the shows you know. I don't even dare to drive a car, because if I did, people might think I watched a car ad (about 50 IQ points BELOW a SMS ad).
Why not instead make quality TV, then charge a premium for a 30 second slot every half hour. Captive audience who is sure to pay attention. But no, commerical break is when people have become trained to go to the toilet or have a quickie and advertisers are determined to give us even less reason to watch...
If McDonalds was an advertising company, they would try to boost dropping sales by injecting extra lard and making the que's double long. Because the best way to get more customers is to be extra horrible to them.
Because people in Holland stopped speeding when the speed limit was raised to 120. Or people never speed in Germany where is parts where is makes sense, there is no speed limit.
Pot is legal in Holland, so people don't do hard-drugs.
People will break whatever laws there are, even the law of no-laws (which would be a law therefor against its own law).
I see many arguments against this idiotic ban, but respect for the law ain't one of them.
No kid should be allowed to graduate without being able to quote every single episode word for word.
Know this series and all of politics will make sense.
Oh, and I think it is telling that some US citizens say that "the powers that be" is the US version of Yes Minister. Says it all for the Americans really. To bad. Ah well, what do you expect from colonists. We shipped them off for a reason. The criminals to Australia and the religious freaks to the US. Wonder which set of natives got screwed worse.
I don't even dare to imagine where will they have to put the collectors edition.
Uranus? [rimshot] Thank you, I will be here all evening, try the veal!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
Discuss.
America, land of the free. As long as you agree with the party-line. As ex-soviet reporters have commented, the differences between the soviet union and the US are not all that big. Tell me, do they still have camps for the homeless in the US? Food stamps? Waiting in line for the food kitchen?
The US has created a very smart system, it is similar to what religious groups use. Sure you can criticize, HERETIC! Just see what happens if you dare to protest against copyright... how many hundreds of millions are you fined with? No, it is not the same as being tortured and shipped to some re-education center. It is far better. People are willing to die for freedom, spend the rest of their life in poverty, not so much.
You can see the true freedom in the US with cases such as the Dixie Chicks. Freedom should be MORE then just being able to say what everyone else says. What westerners often get wrong about dictatorships like Cube, Russia, Soviet Union (Russia today is not free), China etc is that they are NOT what you see in McGuyver episodes. There isn't a commisar on every corner, not everything is monitored and controlled. Rather, they use the fear of being noticed when you dare to stand out to stop you from standing out. And they "use" a few who are allowed to stand out but are slapped down from time to time to remind everyone what happens.
Same as western society when you dare question things. Copyright, mod-chips, they might seem like minor issues but it is what the powers that be care about in the west, and if you question them, you are slapped down. For that matter, what have all dictarorships got in common? Repression of the rights of homo-sexuals (true communism would give full rights to everyone). What western country is most repressive of gay-rights? Thank you.
Be very careful about thinking you are free just because they allow you to certain freedoms. A free-range chicken still gets eaten.
Just imagine, the roads being maintained by Microsoft. The FDA run by Apple. The city water utility by IBM.
If you know nothing about history, then I suppose those ideas might appeal. To those of use with a brain, it is a nightmare.
IBM would decide that a watertap is only worthwhile selling to big business, not to individual consumers.
Microsoft would make roads only drivable by Ford cars and then only the current model.
Apple would come up with legaleese to tell you that should your stomach explode, they are in a no way to blaim.
No, somethings are meant to operate slowly and ineffciently. If society was run efficient, we would raise all kids in centralized institutions and kill old people once they are no longer productive. I take my goverment lumbering, out of date and inefficient thank you very much. For the alternative, see 1939-1945 and current day China.
Every arm-chair capatalist knows that everyone else pays for the police who should NEVER stop them from doing anything just everyone else.
Watch Fox-news, you will get the idea soon enough. All drunk-drivers should be stopped, but not if they need their car for business. All illegal immigrants should be kicked out, except their cleaning lady. Everyone should pay for schooling, but their school has to be free and no raises for teachers, ever. Think Homer Simpson, a parody people, not a role-model.
The article ends with mentioning that cutting edges graphics don't matter apparently because of the success of iPhone games.
This is both WRONG and RIGHT at the same time.
It don't matter in a "cheap" and cheerful game you play on the move to amuse yourself for a bit. It don't matter in a game that is window dressing for excersise. It DOES matter in the latest EPIC major story thrill ride game. I am currently both playing Dragon Age Origins and Ghost Master. Not heard of the last one? Not suprised, small game from years ago. Bit of an oddity in which you have to haunt a house. The graphics are "okay" but horribly out of date. I am not going to say that graphics don't matter in the game, but they are good enough and the subject matter is such that it don't matter that all the characters look really badly drawn (women have chests that would make Dolly Parton complain of backache).
Graphics MATTER for certain genre's same as input and for that matter storage. Would you want to play Dragon Age or the latest FF without speech? But speech soaks up space, space that has to be somewhere. Que the Wii not being able to handle nearly as much and meeting serious trouble with "random" speech. Streaming from CD was the reason the early Tombraider games used regular music CD track for complex sound moments, a horror to PC gamers who were used to sounds being mixed on the spot from sample randomly read from a HD. Non-developers or people without technical knowledge often over-estimate the Wii's capabilities, they see it as a non-HD version of the current console generation, a scaled down PS3/360. It is not. It is a totally different machine aimed at a different genre.
The new mario isn't a throwback to decades old gaming for nothing, that is what the Wii does. For people who like that, it is perfect but for people waiting for the next Triple A title, look somewhere else. You wouldn't expect them on the DS or on the iPhone would you?
On a dutch news site someone commented that Dante's Inferno wasn't coming for the PC and how that meant the end of PC gaming. Eh... when has a slash-em-up EVER come to the PC? Those type of games are the domain of the controller, not the keyboard. From the same company (EA) Dragon Age not only launced on the PC but is now also coming to the Mac and Saboteur (a FPS) is coming for PC as well. These Genre's started on the PC (console RPG's were a very different beast to what Bioware makes) and are remaining there more or less. Where is the DAO modding community for the PS3/360?
Different hardware for different genre's. You can't make WoW for the console, the way that game works is to have a ton of buttons and the challenge is to pick the right one. Bayonetta on the other hand has the challenge of hitting 1-2 buttons over and over. Different market.
I don't think that console gaming is dying, but the current console companies MIGHT have to rethink their strategies. Maybe... the sales figures in the article are horrible. MS posted a loss... eh no? Their REVENUE dropped. By a tiny amount. They STILL make a profit and a very nice one at that. Talk about mis-reporting, it is "correct" but also a complete and utter lie. Sony does seem to be in trouble but then again, Sony has been bleeding for a long time and it can't all be blamed on the PS3. They lost their position as "slightly overprice but reliable decent to good quality". This was a good position to have, it meant that the fast majority of the market, the "we got money but are not swimming in it" bought Sony if they could because it was better then the cheapo stuff and not as expensive as the high-end stuff.
What I think is hurting gaming is the move away from the nerdy gamer into the general "cool" kids market, but the companies forgot that this market is far more fickle. It is in a way easier to make game for the OLD hardcore market (think Deus EX/Mario) then it is for the MTV crowd. Modern Warfare 2 is a game for that crowd, lots of flash and bangs but very little substance once you dig down. The pro
Because the US cares about borders and others countries laws.
Nobody invented MP3 players in your area?
Is if the best sand is in Saudi Arabia and the factory in Australia, then we would ship send both ways from desert to desert and be sure the aliens NEVER contact us!
We are not a civilization, we are an alien reality show "those crazy apes". They carefully direct us to remain this stupid through careful inbreeding programs.
Anything to keep the ratings. Today on "Those crazy apes", a planet that produced enough food for dinosaurs still has people starving on one side and unable to stand on their own legs on the other.
Sure, critics have called the show repetitive, but who can not get enough of those silly monkeys who haven't even discovered slood yet. Make sure to turn in next month, when we surprise them with 10k tons of ice.
Hoe cans I believes u, u ares on te interwebs!