Mass Effect NEEDED its high-end graphics. Its opening cutscene where you character is introduced would NOT have been possible on lesser hardware where they would have either had to use amazingly low-ress animation OR a pre-rendered cut-scene. The WOW! effect was achieved because it was YOUR character in the cutscene with a seamless transition from cutscene to gameplay.
AND Mass Effect is NOT the end. It still needed pre-rendered scenes for the big space battle at the end. One day that too can be rendered in real time and feature YOUR character in it.
Take the other Bioware game set in ancient china. It had TONS of pre-rendered animations, one for each character you could play as. NONE of them showed the weapon YOU favored because that would have required even more pre-rendered scenes on the DVD.
Jade Empire never allowed you to change your outfit or alter your looks in anyway because that would have messed up the cutscenes.
More power means we can more and more go to "real" games where we are not limited by the hardware that breaks immersion.
What is rather telling is that ALL of the games you mention are sequels. Sequels that were produced for far more powerful hardware then the originals.
I wonder why that is? Where is your Diablo? Or its ancestors? Why don't you play them if graphics don't matter so much?
in a couple of years your list will be Diablo 3 and all the other little sequels.
We don't release prisoners because they have paid their debt but because keeping them inside costs to much.
We don't give parole because we think a criminal has bettered their life, we do it because the jails are full and the next batch needs a to spend a fraction of their jailtime behind bars.
High risk offenders (level 3) should be locked up. It is the humane thing to do. What is wrong with a society who releases people on to the street to fend for themselves when you know they can't do it? That is basically just setting up to offend for a worse enough crime that they can finally be locked up for life or even executed.
If an offender is deemed a high risk, it would be far more humane to have them restricted for the rest of their life but not in a punishment jail. A lot of child rapists are capable of living a normal life, just as long as their are no children around. So let them.
An excellent example is the so called Bird Man of Alcatraz. Don't for a second believe the way he has been presented in movies and books. He was a psycho who couldn't control his anger. But restricted and controlled he became a valuable member of society. BECAUSE he was locked up and restrained. ONLY the presence of guards and bars made him into a genius on birds.
The foreign legion does something similar. Some people need strict discipline to function. So why not give people who can't function in normal society just what they need?
If someone can't behave around children, remove him from the children.
If someone can't control his rage in the rush of daily life, then get him out of the rush.
Our current system forces people who can't cope to cope and if they don't we punish them for it, again and again until one or the other breaks.
Equality for all is a horribly nasty concept if you are just not like everyone else.
We could humanly care for all child molesters, give them a dignified and productive life, while the outside society remains safe. But no. People that can't/won't adjust must be forced back onto the streets and damn the consequences.
Is this a caring society? Mind you, society arrest women who can only make a living by selling their body, gives them a criminal record that stops them from getting any jobs even if there were any and then a fine they have to pay.
Those claiming to be humane really should ask themselves what their so called humanity really does to people.
Forcing a child molester to live in a society with kids everywhere hurts more then just society.
oh, and there is your signature. Nevermind. No doubt you can be a proffesor for a decade at one of the most exclusive schools in the world, have the president of the world as your friend who shares your skin-color but still, the man is out to get you.
Have you ever actually SEEN a so-called boyish girl? What about it reminds you of a boy exactly?
Their are LOTS of differences.
So called boyish figures on women do NOT resemble to young male, they represent young women. You can say a lot about the subjects of david hamiltons photographs, but calling them boys is not it.
A young girl who has an healthy weight might experience a growth spurt before she starts to flesh out in a typical womanly figure (wide hips, tits). It is this image that is being sought as the idea of a youth has become all important.
The same by the way is happening for men. No beard, no mustach, no body hair.
I think with the current economy, two wars etc etc that it is actually a full time job to run a country.
Just that nobody is doing it.
Reminds me of several projects I worked on. Lots of managers drawing up useless docs and sitting in endless meetings. Some idiot demanding you put an ETA on bugs you haven't even seen yet. Lots of excitement about upcoming projects and new potential customers.
And one poor smug sitting in the basement trying to do all the work.
But hey, that ain't so bad. I served my time and now I too am management!
A lot of people comment that Cobert is the only real news left and he is a comedian. But those same people watched comedians when they should have been watching the news and voted for the guy with the biggest smile and who said he was going to cut taxes.
The problem really isn't with the politicians, it is with the voter.
Really, you guys elected a B-movie actor. Wasn't reagan enough of a warning?
BSD gives unto the world its gift to improve the world and that improved world is its reward.
GPL shares with the world but in turn asks the world shares with them, that together we improve the world.
The GPL is like the marshall plan. In return for billions in aid from the US, EU nations could rebuild their economy in exchange for trade and within a decade the economies recovered and all prospored.
BSD is the billions pumped into africa where millions are still starving and the same wars are still being fought.
GPL is about working together, BSD is about charity. If all people where nice, BSD would be great but in the real world, GPL is the more succesfull licensing deal. Just take a long hard look at OSX. How much of a full loaded OSX server or desktop is closed source/BSD/GPL?
So, yes, you are right, some people release under BSD because that allows them to reach more people. But if you want to get somewhere, GPL is the way to go.
Proof me wrong, show me a BSD browser or other practical tool. Show me the countless people keeping the various BSD release up to spec for drivers.
BSD -> Core techs that drive the underlying OS
GPL -> Tools and drivers where someone doesn't want someone else to take their hard work and just use it without return the favor.
BSD is for finished things, GPL is for stuff that still grow.
What an AMAZING thought. Progress comes from conflict... Gee...
An often used and not entirely right example is WAR, what is it good for? lots of an lots of research. There is the broken window falacy but this is only partially true. War not just leads to a redirection of spending but also to a more focussed use of resources.
In peace time, there might a be dozen people researching medicine but a lot of that medicine will be crappy stuff like botox injections. In war we get peniciline. In peace we get the F-22. In war we get the Mustang.
Conflict is not just war but lots of people pursueing the same goal in different directions. We got the Mustang but there were also lots of loser planes. But the F-22 pretty much stood alone, less a product of pursueing the best plane as finding the way to get lots and lots of funding/support.
In science a lot of people sitting around agreeing with each other isn't going to do much. You need some crackpots flying of on their own trying to proof their own ideas are right and everyone else is wrong. That is science! Just flying off isn't enough. You got to PROOF it (which is where global warming deniers go wrong).
And in opensource, lots of people doing different stuff is what allows opensource to progress in areas that closed source just can't. MS has ONE desktop shell and that means ONE person decides how it should work (or worse a commitee who work for one guy) and then you get Windows ME or Vista.
Of course, there is also a price to pay for itall. The war spending can only happen by redirecting lots of money to fund all the research. The science progress can only happen if you are willing to spend money on crackpots and opensource lacks a clear goal. Unlike science there are no absolutes in design. there is no right dinner-plate. Square, wood, plastic, it alls works and has its uses. KDE/Gnome/Enlightenment/Fluxbox the list is endless and they all do their own thing. It is a drastic change from MS or Apple where you can have any desktop you want as long as it is black.
It allows these various desktops to pursue different goals and it is very possible that if one group achieves a goal, others adopt it.
The conflict between purists and pragmatists gives us a way to pursue two goals at the same time. On the hand, opensource will be death very quickly if it is riddled with closed source. Imagine that flash was not just optional but required? That you could not install a media player on Linux without paying a fee for the DVD codec? Mp3 Codec? Linux is really big on "hidden" installs like for instance my logitech G19 keyboard. Do you REALLY think this would be the case if it required lots of closed source each with their own licensing and possible fees?
On the other hand, you got to be practical. With no MP3 and DVD support, desktop linux is completly dead.
So ideally, we the users want the purists to keep pushing for a completly opensource world where all codecs and such are free while we can use closed source from the pragmatists in the meantime.
But I think it is VERY IMPORTANT to remember that if we give in all the way to pragmatists that we would quickly end up with a linux that is no longer linux. Linux is not just another OS like Windows or OSX. Opensource is a different way to think of the way software is both developed and owned.
I just put together a grate, how would it be if the hammer and nails and the wood and the idea of a crate is patented? It would be a terrible mess.
But that is what is happening in closed source land.
MS LOVES to tell about the TCO of Windows vs Linux. They TOTALLY and completly forget to do the TCO of Closed source vs Opensource.
Imagine you had to PAY for ALL windows software. No 7zip. You pay for it. No open-office. You pay for it. No firefox (and you think that if IE had no competition, that it would be free?). For that matter if MS had no competition, do you think all the included programs with windows would be free? If so, look up the Plus packs for Win9X
The purists keep linux linux. The pragmatisits make linux usuable. We the user need both.
I use that line on all my dates (it is called suspension of disbelief people, just go with the flow of the narrative and don't let the plot holes distact you).
"Hey sweety, when you are dating me, you will look back fondly at the guy you dated before me".
Works wonders, one of these days. It gotta!
Seriously, MS needs to hire me as their PR checker. Anytime a MS employee wishes to say something he comes to me and I taser him. So what do I check? That the taser is fully charged.
This PR-statement is total drivel and is really an open goal. Come on, who read it and didn't immidiatly think "Just how bad is W7 going to be that I will look fondly back at Vista?"
You can of course choose to live in a dream world where everyone should be free and is free and that just works.
In reality, bars have two problems.
A: Minimum legal age for drinking in a bar. As a society we seem to want this enforced rather then leaving it up to the individual to handle their own freedom responsible. Crazy I know. Surely 12yr olds are mature enough? Because a law without bards has no meaning and we are to wishy washy to lock up underage drinkers we created a REALLY odd situation in that someone else has become responsible for stopping others from breaking the law. Think about it, are car-makers responsible for checking that drivers of their cars have a valid driving license?
So, bars have to make sure their patrons are of legal age and if they fail to check, they can be held accountable. This is odd. Say I am a drunk driver, I drive along and the police fails to spot me and then I kill someone because of being drunk. Is the police then fined for having failed to spot me? No. So why is a bar fined for having failed to spot I am not of legal age?
Over the years in holland the check in supermarkets for selling beer has gone from not at all (we kids were often send to return an empty crate, get a new one and we could keep the deposit money for candy) to a visual check of the person, to asking for ID if in doubt to IDing everyone presumed to be below 20 (minimum age is 16 and being raised to 18).
And how do you prove you asked for an ID and that you had reason to believe it was legit? By making a copy. How do you make a copy without taking down LOTS of private information? Clerks are not specialists on identification of legal documents. That is why they have a scanner to check for false money (which by the way wasn't neccesary when we still had our own money that was extremely hard to fake, thank you EU and Mr Zalm, who said we had to trust him and then became head of a bank that is now under investigation but that is different rant).
Either we want our freedom to not have to ID ourselves when getting a drink and ACCEPT that it is a teens own responsibility to not try to drink before they are legal (yeah right) or we give up our freedom in exchange for protecting teens from themselves.
B: Keeping out underiables. This sounds a lot like Big Brother but people forget what a Big Brother really is. Someone who keeps you save. At least, that is what I was often told to do as a big brother of my little sister. I was to watch out for her and for instance stop her from getting into trouble or crossing the street.
The anarchists would say we don't need Big Brother but what always confuses me about anarchists is why they ain't mass emigrating to Somalia and places like it where there are no nasty laws to restrict you.
Most normal people resent cops/bouncers and their meddling but also wouldn't visit a place without cops/bouncers. Go ahead, proof me wrong, book a flight to Mogadishu.
Systems like this are designed to keep a record of people so that know undesirables can be kept out. For several decades this was considered not done. The right didn't want to spend the money and the left believed all people are basically decent and don't need to be constantly policed. Shortish example: Amsterdam light rail, no conductors for several decades. You could enter and exit legally through any door and there were no ticket checks of any kind. The dream world: people would pay for their tickets regardless. Yeah right. The conductor is back and it was very funny to see how empty the first trams with conductors were when the switch occured.
You can run a bar without a bouncer and trust on the decency of your customers and you might get lucky. Until you attract some anti-social people. They might even be good customers but their actions turn away your other patrons. Seen this happen to a local eatery, wrong kids started to use it as their base, within a year nobody else came there anymore and it went out of business.
The capatalist United States spends more on social security then the socialist Netherlands. Well duh, 360 million people vs 16 million.
You can make numbers say almost anything if you are not careful.
If say morocans (the dutch problem minority) commit 100.000 crimes and the dutch commit 1.000.000 then you would foolishly claim that the dutch are more criminal. Two problems. The dutch figure would include some morocans as A: dutch police does not record ethnicity for its statistics B: some dutch are also morocans.
But the real killer is that morocans are less then 5% of the population. So, lets say there are 1 million muslims in holland and you would have accurate figures saying that they commitied 100.000 crimes. You would also know that there are 15 million non-muslims and they commited 1.000.000 crimes. Then you could totally tell the truth and say that non-muslims commit more crimes... but that ain't the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
In fact, recent studies have shown that crime figures in holland are indeed higher. Of course, these figures were disputed but again, the figures themselves don't tell the whole story. For instance, police are not allowed to collect racial information for their statistics. So, if you report a crime and say the person was black and the crime is never solved, that crime does NOT show in statisics. Oh and you can argue till you are blue in the face about racism, but since most anti-racist seem destperate to stop any attempt to finding out what is REALLY happening, we are now stuck with a world-wide perception that ALL immigrants are trouble and the powers-that-be are unwilling to do anything about.
And that sir, is damned close to what happened at the beginning of last century. The fact and figures might be different but the sentiments are the same.
And NO, you are NOT helping. The anti-racists need to start talking TRUTH rather then try to push their dream world onto everyone else.
because the simple truth about immigrant crime figures is this: They corrolate 100% with poverty based crime figures.
The immigrant areas are just new names for the slum areas. I am old enough to remember when the bad sections of towns were white. The residents also spoke their own language (slang if you like) only then it was "plat amsterdams" ("flat old amsterams"). The effect was the same, if you were born on the wrong side of town, it was hard to move out and crime was often an easy option.
The white moves up and the immigrants moved into the vacant spot taking up the jobs left vacant. Cleaner, hooker, thief.
Go ahead, look up the figures and you will see this is true.
Of course there is one problem, this problem can't be solved. Raise the living standards of the current immigrants and more will move in. Partly because society needs people to be at the bottom (where else are you going to get your 10 dollar car radio) and partly because no matter how bad it might seem to us, the western bottom is still better then the bottom in a lot of the rest of the world.
So the truth is, these crime figures are part of life and you can't do anything about it. Not a message either left or right can use in an election.
It is about TRUST. As a reader I got to trust that a leaked document has not been falsified in anyway. Throwing it through a filter will definitly remove that trust. If you changed the meaning of words... well how do I know exactly what you have changed?
var x "I helped my uncle Jack of a horse.";
document.write(x.toLowerCase());
Intelligent design is simple, everything can be explained because a god decided it had to be so. So our eyes work the way they work because god said so and you can't go questioning god. However god is not perfect. Why are some men color-blind while some women can perceive an extra color? Why can't we see ultra-violet? Why is that other animals have 4 or even 5 cones while we got only 3? It doesn't sit well with the ID idea that birds and fish got far better vision then we do.
But evolution is NOT a perfect replacement. We humans are detectors of patterns. That is why we see a face on mars or jezus on toast. Simple test. Imagine me holding something between my fingers. You see a short squared long white piece of wood of perhaps 4mm x 4mm x 3cm. What am I holding? Be honest, you think it is a match isn't it? It is a fair guess. You KNOW that most pieces of wood shaped like this are matches because that is really one of the only reasons to shape wood like this. And you might be right EXCEPT I might ALSO be holding a would be match that hasn't yet had its head put on OR a "toothpick" used by dentist to wedge teeth apart.
As pattern seekers we like to think that everything has a reason and evolution does not. Evolution just is. In this case, there were a dozen sapplings some of which had leaves that the bird didn't see and which were eaten. The ones that weren't, survived to reproduce. With the bird gone, the selector is gone but not the reason for the change. Over time more and more of the leaves might change and since now there is no bird to eat them, they might survive. It could well be that the leaves we see now are FAR less good at camoflage then the leaves 500 years ago, but with no selecting taking place anymore, all the plants are surviving.
that is evolution. Random minor variations that result in different species if the enviroment forces a selection of what variation survives till reproduction.
But there is no goal to it. The plant did not choose to have a certain colored leave. Just random mutation. Some work, some don't. But unless someone causes you to be eaten for a mutation, then there is nothing wrong with it and if you can attract a female with it, then you reproduce.
the original article btw never implies that the plant should have changed back. Just the "editors" that picked the story up.
There is this common misconception that javascript is slow. Yeah right. LOOK at the chrome demonstrations. The sad fact is that Javascript suffers from a couple of faults that are hard to rememdy (but google might be force changes).
It is hard to upgrade. Since every browser has to implement, you have to rely on every browsers implementation of it. If say Chome introduced javascript++ it would only run in Chrome. That is the reason googles api has a TON of IE specific fixes. So that dcvelopers can code for a good browser and have their library convert it for MS software.
It is hard to extend. More classical languages rely on a ton of libraries, for javascript these libraries have to be supplied with the program, this means extra data to be send along. The various javascript libraries use all kinds of tricks to keep themselves small and even be shared but still, this development is fairly recent and for years it means that every kb of javascript code had to be downloaded over dialup.
The DOM is a beast and while manipulating it can be done efficiently for years IE was the lead browser and boths its javascript engine and DOM model were completly horrible.
Your ideas of javascript are the same as those that let java to be rejected. In tbe beginning we had ton of HUGE java applets that gobbled up MB's of memory for their virtual machine all to display some animated horizontal break. Or a mirror effect beneath images. Fantastic! But back in the day computers had barely enough memory for the browser let alone some virtual machine coded by someone working from a book.
Javascript done right with a modern browser (anything not from MS) is en entirely different beast. LEARN to use it properly (it is NOT a classical language like C or Java but far more advanced) and it flies.
No, it will never be as fast as an optimized native C program but that is like saying bash scripts ain't as fast or powerful as a full language. Doesn't stop them from having their own very useful role.
Javascript is the language for working in a browser. All others, JAVA, Flash, SilverLight have tried to replace it but have failed to really replace it.
Really, use some javascript not written by some guy who knows a classical language and thinks he can do javascript without learning it.
Because recently (granted in northern ireland which is controlled by the brits) immigrants were chased from their houses and forced to flee. And this follows years of troubles in which thousands were killed for belonging to a certain church.
A couple of years ago, some alerts were ignored by the security services and 9/11 happened. Oh, some might argue that they had orders to do so but in security you RARELY respond with exactly the right response. Either you have 2 cops, 4 street coaches and a motor ambulance driver attending a scraped knee (just yesterday) or you are screaming in your radio for back up while people are dying because you only got one pair of hands.
In security be it police, firemen, ambulance there really is only ONE right response. EVEYTHING. Sadly, that is expensive but still, what if this crazy kid HAD acted on it? It is trivial to cirumvent airport security and even if it works, they got to be right every single time while an attacker only has to get lucky once.
think back to all the big scares, IF only someone had responded earlier with excessive force, then they would be labelled as using excessive force because we would never have seen what would have happened if they didn't.
The security guard who stopped 10/11 is still paid minimum wage. (and if you never heard of 10/11, that is my entire point)
Laws have to writter and this means somebody has to have thought of what could happen. This hostage taking by the court is supposed to convince you to comply. Most people do. The only people who often refuse are journalists out of principles that most of would support.
This guy ain't somekind of hero. If he really didn't have the money, he could have fought that in court, but he didn't. Me thinks he got the money and an enormous stick up his ass that made him act this way.
The entire world relies on the fact that people more or less follow the rules. Someone who doesn't can seriouysly upset the system. Take serial killers. One of the "rules" of society is that you kill loved ones, not random strangers. Most murders are solved but serial killings are the major exception because it is very difficult for the system to deal with someone who works outside it.
Say a person is standing in front of your door. Doesn't go away when asked, doesn't go away when it rains or snows. If arrested resists, if released goes right back. If sent to jail, the moment he is out is right back. Year in, year out. What can the system do? NOTHING!
The system relies on people, even criminals, to obey the rules. If you really just don't, the system falls apart.
Just as countless women are killed by abusive husbands despite restraining orders and jailtime because if an abuser just does not listen, well the only cure then is the death penalty or he will go back and kill his ex.
We can more or less live without fear until the day we are on the wrong end of someone who just doesn't follow the rules.
This guy broke the rules and got trapped in a grey area where society doesn't work anymore. Nobody has any answer for somebody NOT complying with a court order other then prison and/or death.
Proof? 14 yrs and no proof the money ain't there or a payment.
Mind you, I think I should translate english to american for you:
Capatalist: Someone who does NOT pay taxes on 1+ million dollar salaries but expect the goverment to give them a social security check, oops sorry, bailout when they screw up.
Socialist: Someone who pays their illegal a wage that is enough to avoid immidiate starvation with 120 hours work per week.
Pinko: Someone who dares to suggest that for people who work a normal job making a normal salery without ever having a real chance to become superrich, it is kinda silly to worry about the tax rate for the superrich. Or indeed, to ask why any who already has more money they can ever spend to worry about a small increase on their taxes. Gosh someone with a million+ dollar income is going to go in the poor house from a 10$ increase.
Radical: Someone who dares to ask why you can't say fuck, show a titty or teach kids about safe sex, but everyone should be allowed to carry a machine gun and see torture morders on tv.
Commie: Someone who think thats paying taxes to the goverment is just like paying someone for services rendered and that you should worry less about how much you pay in taxes and more about what you actually get as a society for said taxes.
Theres nothing wrong with that though. Now, if you actually -do- any of those things, yes it is wrong. But talking about it? No one gets hurt so therefore it should not be prohibited.
South Africa, last year. Incitement to hatred against immigrants: result, countless attacks and weeks of unrest as the locals attacked immigrants and forced them to flee for their lives.
Rwanda, several years ago. Incitement to hatred against one "race": result, 1 million dead, many hacked to bits as they sought shelter. In a few weeks they killed then half a year of all the concentration camps of WW2.
Germany, Crystal Night. incitement to hatred against jews. Result: several dead, buildings burned and the prelude to the holocaust.
There are lots of other examples, and you DARE to say that incitement to hatred should not be a crime.
That is EXACTLY the same as saying that offering a contract on someones life should not be a crime because it is only words.
Read a book. Any book. Just once and grow up mate.
Forking sounds very nice but for this situation it would require NOT just for people to be willing to DO the fork but then to keep the fork up-to-date.
Remember MS sale technique. The first one is free. What if they release the base module as GPL, then put everything you are going to need once you started to use it as closed source? MS owns the code after all, so they GPL'ed this version but can keep any future version closed source just as long as they keep other peoples code out.
Read up on exactly WHAT Embrace, Extend, Extinguish means and remember that MS has NEVER EVER played nice. It will even hurt it self it thinks it can spite its customers. Look at the Zune. Why did it bend over backwards to introduce all kinds of restrictions? To appease who? The music industry? Why? The iPod didn't and Apple does just fine with the music industry. No, MS did it because MS will ALWAYS try to squeeze the last bit of money out of anything.
I personally do not believe for a SECOND that MS will NOT introduce some sort of tierd service that somehow is going to screw anyone who is going to build their business on this tech. Just as MS did with the MP3 companies that build their business on MS music store only to not enable its own tech in its own player.
Slashdot Mirror
Mass Effect NEEDED its high-end graphics. Its opening cutscene where you character is introduced would NOT have been possible on lesser hardware where they would have either had to use amazingly low-ress animation OR a pre-rendered cut-scene. The WOW! effect was achieved because it was YOUR character in the cutscene with a seamless transition from cutscene to gameplay.
AND Mass Effect is NOT the end. It still needed pre-rendered scenes for the big space battle at the end. One day that too can be rendered in real time and feature YOUR character in it.
Take the other Bioware game set in ancient china. It had TONS of pre-rendered animations, one for each character you could play as. NONE of them showed the weapon YOU favored because that would have required even more pre-rendered scenes on the DVD.
Jade Empire never allowed you to change your outfit or alter your looks in anyway because that would have messed up the cutscenes.
More power means we can more and more go to "real" games where we are not limited by the hardware that breaks immersion.
What is rather telling is that ALL of the games you mention are sequels. Sequels that were produced for far more powerful hardware then the originals.
I wonder why that is? Where is your Diablo? Or its ancestors? Why don't you play them if graphics don't matter so much?
in a couple of years your list will be Diablo 3 and all the other little sequels.
We don't release prisoners because they have paid their debt but because keeping them inside costs to much. We don't give parole because we think a criminal has bettered their life, we do it because the jails are full and the next batch needs a to spend a fraction of their jailtime behind bars. High risk offenders (level 3) should be locked up. It is the humane thing to do. What is wrong with a society who releases people on to the street to fend for themselves when you know they can't do it? That is basically just setting up to offend for a worse enough crime that they can finally be locked up for life or even executed. If an offender is deemed a high risk, it would be far more humane to have them restricted for the rest of their life but not in a punishment jail. A lot of child rapists are capable of living a normal life, just as long as their are no children around. So let them. An excellent example is the so called Bird Man of Alcatraz. Don't for a second believe the way he has been presented in movies and books. He was a psycho who couldn't control his anger. But restricted and controlled he became a valuable member of society. BECAUSE he was locked up and restrained. ONLY the presence of guards and bars made him into a genius on birds. The foreign legion does something similar. Some people need strict discipline to function. So why not give people who can't function in normal society just what they need? If someone can't behave around children, remove him from the children. If someone can't control his rage in the rush of daily life, then get him out of the rush. Our current system forces people who can't cope to cope and if they don't we punish them for it, again and again until one or the other breaks. Equality for all is a horribly nasty concept if you are just not like everyone else. We could humanly care for all child molesters, give them a dignified and productive life, while the outside society remains safe. But no. People that can't/won't adjust must be forced back onto the streets and damn the consequences. Is this a caring society? Mind you, society arrest women who can only make a living by selling their body, gives them a criminal record that stops them from getting any jobs even if there were any and then a fine they have to pay. Those claiming to be humane really should ask themselves what their so called humanity really does to people. Forcing a child molester to live in a society with kids everywhere hurts more then just society.
oh, and there is your signature. Nevermind. No doubt you can be a proffesor for a decade at one of the most exclusive schools in the world, have the president of the world as your friend who shares your skin-color but still, the man is out to get you.
Have you ever actually SEEN a so-called boyish girl? What about it reminds you of a boy exactly?
Their are LOTS of differences.
So called boyish figures on women do NOT resemble to young male, they represent young women. You can say a lot about the subjects of david hamiltons photographs, but calling them boys is not it.
A young girl who has an healthy weight might experience a growth spurt before she starts to flesh out in a typical womanly figure (wide hips, tits). It is this image that is being sought as the idea of a youth has become all important.
The same by the way is happening for men. No beard, no mustach, no body hair.
I think with the current economy, two wars etc etc that it is actually a full time job to run a country.
Just that nobody is doing it.
Reminds me of several projects I worked on. Lots of managers drawing up useless docs and sitting in endless meetings. Some idiot demanding you put an ETA on bugs you haven't even seen yet. Lots of excitement about upcoming projects and new potential customers.
And one poor smug sitting in the basement trying to do all the work.
But hey, that ain't so bad. I served my time and now I too am management!
A lot of people comment that Cobert is the only real news left and he is a comedian. But those same people watched comedians when they should have been watching the news and voted for the guy with the biggest smile and who said he was going to cut taxes.
The problem really isn't with the politicians, it is with the voter.
Really, you guys elected a B-movie actor. Wasn't reagan enough of a warning?
Plenty want violence on film also to be censored. And on radio. And in print. And even in art, whatever that is.
1. Shoot the patient
2. Take a bloodsample of the wall.
3. Give an accurete diagnoses that whatever the patient might have, it doesn't really matter anymore.
And they kept me out of med school. Can you imagine?
BSD gives unto the world its gift to improve the world and that improved world is its reward.
GPL shares with the world but in turn asks the world shares with them, that together we improve the world.
The GPL is like the marshall plan. In return for billions in aid from the US, EU nations could rebuild their economy in exchange for trade and within a decade the economies recovered and all prospored.
BSD is the billions pumped into africa where millions are still starving and the same wars are still being fought.
GPL is about working together, BSD is about charity. If all people where nice, BSD would be great but in the real world, GPL is the more succesfull licensing deal. Just take a long hard look at OSX. How much of a full loaded OSX server or desktop is closed source/BSD/GPL?
So, yes, you are right, some people release under BSD because that allows them to reach more people. But if you want to get somewhere, GPL is the way to go.
Proof me wrong, show me a BSD browser or other practical tool. Show me the countless people keeping the various BSD release up to spec for drivers.
BSD -> Core techs that drive the underlying OS
GPL -> Tools and drivers where someone doesn't want someone else to take their hard work and just use it without return the favor.
BSD is for finished things, GPL is for stuff that still grow.
the originally wanted to unbundle IE to show the EU. Then they saw the EU didn't cave so MS caved.
Pity ain't it, when the fanboys talk thougher then the thing they are defending.
What an AMAZING thought. Progress comes from conflict... Gee...
An often used and not entirely right example is WAR, what is it good for? lots of an lots of research. There is the broken window falacy but this is only partially true. War not just leads to a redirection of spending but also to a more focussed use of resources.
In peace time, there might a be dozen people researching medicine but a lot of that medicine will be crappy stuff like botox injections. In war we get peniciline. In peace we get the F-22. In war we get the Mustang.
Conflict is not just war but lots of people pursueing the same goal in different directions. We got the Mustang but there were also lots of loser planes. But the F-22 pretty much stood alone, less a product of pursueing the best plane as finding the way to get lots and lots of funding/support.
In science a lot of people sitting around agreeing with each other isn't going to do much. You need some crackpots flying of on their own trying to proof their own ideas are right and everyone else is wrong. That is science! Just flying off isn't enough. You got to PROOF it (which is where global warming deniers go wrong).
And in opensource, lots of people doing different stuff is what allows opensource to progress in areas that closed source just can't. MS has ONE desktop shell and that means ONE person decides how it should work (or worse a commitee who work for one guy) and then you get Windows ME or Vista.
Of course, there is also a price to pay for itall. The war spending can only happen by redirecting lots of money to fund all the research. The science progress can only happen if you are willing to spend money on crackpots and opensource lacks a clear goal. Unlike science there are no absolutes in design. there is no right dinner-plate. Square, wood, plastic, it alls works and has its uses. KDE/Gnome/Enlightenment/Fluxbox the list is endless and they all do their own thing. It is a drastic change from MS or Apple where you can have any desktop you want as long as it is black.
It allows these various desktops to pursue different goals and it is very possible that if one group achieves a goal, others adopt it.
The conflict between purists and pragmatists gives us a way to pursue two goals at the same time. On the hand, opensource will be death very quickly if it is riddled with closed source. Imagine that flash was not just optional but required? That you could not install a media player on Linux without paying a fee for the DVD codec? Mp3 Codec? Linux is really big on "hidden" installs like for instance my logitech G19 keyboard. Do you REALLY think this would be the case if it required lots of closed source each with their own licensing and possible fees?
On the other hand, you got to be practical. With no MP3 and DVD support, desktop linux is completly dead.
So ideally, we the users want the purists to keep pushing for a completly opensource world where all codecs and such are free while we can use closed source from the pragmatists in the meantime.
But I think it is VERY IMPORTANT to remember that if we give in all the way to pragmatists that we would quickly end up with a linux that is no longer linux. Linux is not just another OS like Windows or OSX. Opensource is a different way to think of the way software is both developed and owned.
I just put together a grate, how would it be if the hammer and nails and the wood and the idea of a crate is patented? It would be a terrible mess.
But that is what is happening in closed source land.
MS LOVES to tell about the TCO of Windows vs Linux. They TOTALLY and completly forget to do the TCO of Closed source vs Opensource.
Imagine you had to PAY for ALL windows software. No 7zip. You pay for it. No open-office. You pay for it. No firefox (and you think that if IE had no competition, that it would be free?). For that matter if MS had no competition, do you think all the included programs with windows would be free? If so, look up the Plus packs for Win9X
The purists keep linux linux. The pragmatisits make linux usuable. We the user need both.
I use that line on all my dates (it is called suspension of disbelief people, just go with the flow of the narrative and don't let the plot holes distact you).
"Hey sweety, when you are dating me, you will look back fondly at the guy you dated before me".
Works wonders, one of these days. It gotta!
Seriously, MS needs to hire me as their PR checker. Anytime a MS employee wishes to say something he comes to me and I taser him. So what do I check? That the taser is fully charged.
This PR-statement is total drivel and is really an open goal. Come on, who read it and didn't immidiatly think "Just how bad is W7 going to be that I will look fondly back at Vista?"
You can of course choose to live in a dream world where everyone should be free and is free and that just works.
In reality, bars have two problems.
A: Minimum legal age for drinking in a bar. As a society we seem to want this enforced rather then leaving it up to the individual to handle their own freedom responsible. Crazy I know. Surely 12yr olds are mature enough? Because a law without bards has no meaning and we are to wishy washy to lock up underage drinkers we created a REALLY odd situation in that someone else has become responsible for stopping others from breaking the law. Think about it, are car-makers responsible for checking that drivers of their cars have a valid driving license?
So, bars have to make sure their patrons are of legal age and if they fail to check, they can be held accountable. This is odd. Say I am a drunk driver, I drive along and the police fails to spot me and then I kill someone because of being drunk. Is the police then fined for having failed to spot me? No. So why is a bar fined for having failed to spot I am not of legal age?
Over the years in holland the check in supermarkets for selling beer has gone from not at all (we kids were often send to return an empty crate, get a new one and we could keep the deposit money for candy) to a visual check of the person, to asking for ID if in doubt to IDing everyone presumed to be below 20 (minimum age is 16 and being raised to 18).
And how do you prove you asked for an ID and that you had reason to believe it was legit? By making a copy. How do you make a copy without taking down LOTS of private information? Clerks are not specialists on identification of legal documents. That is why they have a scanner to check for false money (which by the way wasn't neccesary when we still had our own money that was extremely hard to fake, thank you EU and Mr Zalm, who said we had to trust him and then became head of a bank that is now under investigation but that is different rant).
Either we want our freedom to not have to ID ourselves when getting a drink and ACCEPT that it is a teens own responsibility to not try to drink before they are legal (yeah right) or we give up our freedom in exchange for protecting teens from themselves.
B: Keeping out underiables. This sounds a lot like Big Brother but people forget what a Big Brother really is. Someone who keeps you save. At least, that is what I was often told to do as a big brother of my little sister. I was to watch out for her and for instance stop her from getting into trouble or crossing the street.
The anarchists would say we don't need Big Brother but what always confuses me about anarchists is why they ain't mass emigrating to Somalia and places like it where there are no nasty laws to restrict you.
Most normal people resent cops/bouncers and their meddling but also wouldn't visit a place without cops/bouncers. Go ahead, proof me wrong, book a flight to Mogadishu.
Systems like this are designed to keep a record of people so that know undesirables can be kept out. For several decades this was considered not done. The right didn't want to spend the money and the left believed all people are basically decent and don't need to be constantly policed. Shortish example: Amsterdam light rail, no conductors for several decades. You could enter and exit legally through any door and there were no ticket checks of any kind. The dream world: people would pay for their tickets regardless. Yeah right. The conductor is back and it was very funny to see how empty the first trams with conductors were when the switch occured.
You can run a bar without a bouncer and trust on the decency of your customers and you might get lucky. Until you attract some anti-social people. They might even be good customers but their actions turn away your other patrons. Seen this happen to a local eatery, wrong kids started to use it as their base, within a year nobody else came there anymore and it went out of business.
When you are
the majority of crimes are commited by whites...
Perhaps because they are the majority?
The capatalist United States spends more on social security then the socialist Netherlands. Well duh, 360 million people vs 16 million.
You can make numbers say almost anything if you are not careful.
If say morocans (the dutch problem minority) commit 100.000 crimes and the dutch commit 1.000.000 then you would foolishly claim that the dutch are more criminal. Two problems. The dutch figure would include some morocans as A: dutch police does not record ethnicity for its statistics B: some dutch are also morocans.
But the real killer is that morocans are less then 5% of the population. So, lets say there are 1 million muslims in holland and you would have accurate figures saying that they commitied 100.000 crimes. You would also know that there are 15 million non-muslims and they commited 1.000.000 crimes. Then you could totally tell the truth and say that non-muslims commit more crimes... but that ain't the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
In fact, recent studies have shown that crime figures in holland are indeed higher. Of course, these figures were disputed but again, the figures themselves don't tell the whole story. For instance, police are not allowed to collect racial information for their statistics. So, if you report a crime and say the person was black and the crime is never solved, that crime does NOT show in statisics. Oh and you can argue till you are blue in the face about racism, but since most anti-racist seem destperate to stop any attempt to finding out what is REALLY happening, we are now stuck with a world-wide perception that ALL immigrants are trouble and the powers-that-be are unwilling to do anything about.
And that sir, is damned close to what happened at the beginning of last century. The fact and figures might be different but the sentiments are the same.
And NO, you are NOT helping. The anti-racists need to start talking TRUTH rather then try to push their dream world onto everyone else.
because the simple truth about immigrant crime figures is this: They corrolate 100% with poverty based crime figures.
The immigrant areas are just new names for the slum areas. I am old enough to remember when the bad sections of towns were white. The residents also spoke their own language (slang if you like) only then it was "plat amsterdams" ("flat old amsterams"). The effect was the same, if you were born on the wrong side of town, it was hard to move out and crime was often an easy option.
The white moves up and the immigrants moved into the vacant spot taking up the jobs left vacant. Cleaner, hooker, thief.
Go ahead, look up the figures and you will see this is true.
Of course there is one problem, this problem can't be solved. Raise the living standards of the current immigrants and more will move in. Partly because society needs people to be at the bottom (where else are you going to get your 10 dollar car radio) and partly because no matter how bad it might seem to us, the western bottom is still better then the bottom in a lot of the rest of the world.
So the truth is, these crime figures are part of life and you can't do anything about it. Not a message either left or right can use in an election.
It is about TRUST. As a reader I got to trust that a leaked document has not been falsified in anyway. Throwing it through a filter will definitly remove that trust. If you changed the meaning of words... well how do I know exactly what you have changed? var x "I helped my uncle Jack of a horse."; document.write(x.toLowerCase());
Intelligent design is simple, everything can be explained because a god decided it had to be so. So our eyes work the way they work because god said so and you can't go questioning god. However god is not perfect. Why are some men color-blind while some women can perceive an extra color? Why can't we see ultra-violet? Why is that other animals have 4 or even 5 cones while we got only 3? It doesn't sit well with the ID idea that birds and fish got far better vision then we do.
But evolution is NOT a perfect replacement. We humans are detectors of patterns. That is why we see a face on mars or jezus on toast. Simple test. Imagine me holding something between my fingers. You see a short squared long white piece of wood of perhaps 4mm x 4mm x 3cm. What am I holding? Be honest, you think it is a match isn't it? It is a fair guess. You KNOW that most pieces of wood shaped like this are matches because that is really one of the only reasons to shape wood like this. And you might be right EXCEPT I might ALSO be holding a would be match that hasn't yet had its head put on OR a "toothpick" used by dentist to wedge teeth apart.
As pattern seekers we like to think that everything has a reason and evolution does not. Evolution just is. In this case, there were a dozen sapplings some of which had leaves that the bird didn't see and which were eaten. The ones that weren't, survived to reproduce. With the bird gone, the selector is gone but not the reason for the change. Over time more and more of the leaves might change and since now there is no bird to eat them, they might survive. It could well be that the leaves we see now are FAR less good at camoflage then the leaves 500 years ago, but with no selecting taking place anymore, all the plants are surviving.
that is evolution. Random minor variations that result in different species if the enviroment forces a selection of what variation survives till reproduction.
But there is no goal to it. The plant did not choose to have a certain colored leave. Just random mutation. Some work, some don't. But unless someone causes you to be eaten for a mutation, then there is nothing wrong with it and if you can attract a female with it, then you reproduce.
the original article btw never implies that the plant should have changed back. Just the "editors" that picked the story up.
It is hard to upgrade. Since every browser has to implement, you have to rely on every browsers implementation of it. If say Chome introduced javascript++ it would only run in Chrome. That is the reason googles api has a TON of IE specific fixes. So that dcvelopers can code for a good browser and have their library convert it for MS software.
It is hard to extend. More classical languages rely on a ton of libraries, for javascript these libraries have to be supplied with the program, this means extra data to be send along. The various javascript libraries use all kinds of tricks to keep themselves small and even be shared but still, this development is fairly recent and for years it means that every kb of javascript code had to be downloaded over dialup.
The DOM is a beast and while manipulating it can be done efficiently for years IE was the lead browser and boths its javascript engine and DOM model were completly horrible.
Your ideas of javascript are the same as those that let java to be rejected. In tbe beginning we had ton of HUGE java applets that gobbled up MB's of memory for their virtual machine all to display some animated horizontal break. Or a mirror effect beneath images. Fantastic! But back in the day computers had barely enough memory for the browser let alone some virtual machine coded by someone working from a book.
Javascript done right with a modern browser (anything not from MS) is en entirely different beast. LEARN to use it properly (it is NOT a classical language like C or Java but far more advanced) and it flies.
No, it will never be as fast as an optimized native C program but that is like saying bash scripts ain't as fast or powerful as a full language. Doesn't stop them from having their own very useful role.
Javascript is the language for working in a browser. All others, JAVA, Flash, SilverLight have tried to replace it but have failed to really replace it.
Really, use some javascript not written by some guy who knows a classical language and thinks he can do javascript without learning it.
Because recently (granted in northern ireland which is controlled by the brits) immigrants were chased from their houses and forced to flee. And this follows years of troubles in which thousands were killed for belonging to a certain church.
Yeah, Ireland is different alright. How exactly?
Just asking. I note you don't say. Should I presume that the amount has similar negative qualities?
In security be it police, firemen, ambulance there really is only ONE right response. EVEYTHING. Sadly, that is expensive but still, what if this crazy kid HAD acted on it? It is trivial to cirumvent airport security and even if it works, they got to be right every single time while an attacker only has to get lucky once.
think back to all the big scares, IF only someone had responded earlier with excessive force, then they would be labelled as using excessive force because we would never have seen what would have happened if they didn't.
The security guard who stopped 10/11 is still paid minimum wage. (and if you never heard of 10/11, that is my entire point)
So you taste test a live wire?
Glad to know I am not alone.
So you taste test a live wire?
Glad to know I am not alone.
So you taste test a live wire?
Glad to know I am not alone.
So you taste test a live wire?
Glad to know I am not alone.
So you taste test a live wire?
Glad to know I am not alone.
So you taste test a live wire?
Glad to know I am not alone.
Ooh shiny!
Laws have to writter and this means somebody has to have thought of what could happen. This hostage taking by the court is supposed to convince you to comply. Most people do. The only people who often refuse are journalists out of principles that most of would support.
This guy ain't somekind of hero. If he really didn't have the money, he could have fought that in court, but he didn't. Me thinks he got the money and an enormous stick up his ass that made him act this way.
The entire world relies on the fact that people more or less follow the rules. Someone who doesn't can seriouysly upset the system. Take serial killers. One of the "rules" of society is that you kill loved ones, not random strangers. Most murders are solved but serial killings are the major exception because it is very difficult for the system to deal with someone who works outside it.
Say a person is standing in front of your door. Doesn't go away when asked, doesn't go away when it rains or snows. If arrested resists, if released goes right back. If sent to jail, the moment he is out is right back. Year in, year out. What can the system do? NOTHING!
The system relies on people, even criminals, to obey the rules. If you really just don't, the system falls apart.
Just as countless women are killed by abusive husbands despite restraining orders and jailtime because if an abuser just does not listen, well the only cure then is the death penalty or he will go back and kill his ex.
We can more or less live without fear until the day we are on the wrong end of someone who just doesn't follow the rules.
This guy broke the rules and got trapped in a grey area where society doesn't work anymore. Nobody has any answer for somebody NOT complying with a court order other then prison and/or death.
Proof? 14 yrs and no proof the money ain't there or a payment.
Opium of the masses is a COMMUNIST stance.
Mind you, I think I should translate english to american for you:
Capatalist: Someone who does NOT pay taxes on 1+ million dollar salaries but expect the goverment to give them a social security check, oops sorry, bailout when they screw up.
Socialist: Someone who pays their illegal a wage that is enough to avoid immidiate starvation with 120 hours work per week.
Pinko: Someone who dares to suggest that for people who work a normal job making a normal salery without ever having a real chance to become superrich, it is kinda silly to worry about the tax rate for the superrich. Or indeed, to ask why any who already has more money they can ever spend to worry about a small increase on their taxes. Gosh someone with a million+ dollar income is going to go in the poor house from a 10$ increase.
Radical: Someone who dares to ask why you can't say fuck, show a titty or teach kids about safe sex, but everyone should be allowed to carry a machine gun and see torture morders on tv.
Commie: Someone who think thats paying taxes to the goverment is just like paying someone for services rendered and that you should worry less about how much you pay in taxes and more about what you actually get as a society for said taxes.
Theres nothing wrong with that though. Now, if you actually -do- any of those things, yes it is wrong. But talking about it? No one gets hurt so therefore it should not be prohibited.
South Africa, last year. Incitement to hatred against immigrants: result, countless attacks and weeks of unrest as the locals attacked immigrants and forced them to flee for their lives.
Rwanda, several years ago. Incitement to hatred against one "race": result, 1 million dead, many hacked to bits as they sought shelter. In a few weeks they killed then half a year of all the concentration camps of WW2.
Germany, Crystal Night. incitement to hatred against jews. Result: several dead, buildings burned and the prelude to the holocaust.
There are lots of other examples, and you DARE to say that incitement to hatred should not be a crime.
That is EXACTLY the same as saying that offering a contract on someones life should not be a crime because it is only words.
Read a book. Any book. Just once and grow up mate.
I always eat my greens :P
Forking sounds very nice but for this situation it would require NOT just for people to be willing to DO the fork but then to keep the fork up-to-date.
Remember MS sale technique. The first one is free. What if they release the base module as GPL, then put everything you are going to need once you started to use it as closed source? MS owns the code after all, so they GPL'ed this version but can keep any future version closed source just as long as they keep other peoples code out.
Read up on exactly WHAT Embrace, Extend, Extinguish means and remember that MS has NEVER EVER played nice. It will even hurt it self it thinks it can spite its customers. Look at the Zune. Why did it bend over backwards to introduce all kinds of restrictions? To appease who? The music industry? Why? The iPod didn't and Apple does just fine with the music industry. No, MS did it because MS will ALWAYS try to squeeze the last bit of money out of anything.
I personally do not believe for a SECOND that MS will NOT introduce some sort of tierd service that somehow is going to screw anyone who is going to build their business on this tech. Just as MS did with the MP3 companies that build their business on MS music store only to not enable its own tech in its own player.