That is like saying I should kill you first because else you would kill me. And hey, since you want to kill me, I am justified in killing you. Hell, why not kill everyone and be really sure I am not going to killed by any of you? It is for my own protection.
Even by your logic, by your own nature do you judge others. Clearly apple fears patent trolls because it is one.
And finally, I HATE THAT CRAP, didn't that "software has to look like real things" die with MS Bob?
So, I can cut of your finger because if you don't let me, I will cut of your head.
Because of course, it ends there.
Oh no, now I want to cut of your hand, or I will cut of your head.
Now a leg, or I will cut of your head.
Now I cut of your torso. But hey, it is still better then having your head cut off.
Also, I wonder if you republicans heard of inflation? If you take a 8% cut and inflation is 3% then you really take a 11% cut because in NORMAL economies, salaries rise to compensate for inflation.
As you say, the management has been stealing everything that isn't nailed down, while the workers have had to agree to multiple cuts.
The reason to say NO and risk your job is because it isn't ONE pay cut, it is pay cut after pay cut. While the CEO's get raise after raise. A 20% paycut is HUGE for most people who already need to spend their entire paycheck. You are going to say to your kid, sorry, you got to come back home and stop university and get a job because the management considers their own raises more important then the future of the company?
And the next pay cut and the next? Because Hostess makes fucking awful products. As a European I took the oppotunity to buy some on a trip to see what this fabled snack was like. Twinkie, seen in so many movies.
IT IS GODDAMN AWFUL.
Europe sure has its share of cheap crap snacks that taste like a chemical experiment gone wrong but they are cheap. Twinkies ain't cheap.
I am not just talking elitist taste, I took some back and bought some "Euro shopper" (Dutch cheap brand in largest super market chain AH) cake snacks to compare. The filling might be the same as in negerzoenen (negrokisses) but isn't and the cake is just bad. Really cheap cake (1 euro for a full sized cake (length and width of a load of bread but not the height) tastes a million times better.
I have no idea about the other products, oddly enough, couldn't find them.I got the idea that while Americans know what they are they have gone from their mind. To me they seemed as something special because for decades I heard of them but never could get any but to Americans it just a not so good snack that is expensive and bad for you.
And so the company dies. And then the class war America is having breaks out, US Unions are unlike anywhere else... well unlike in Europe. The hostility seems insane. In Holland, the Big 11 (biggest employers) wanted the strong unions of a decade ago back because it gave them someone to deal with. The Polder Model is missed by both sides (except government, it was them that sabotaged it because they wanted to set the wages, rather then employees and employers agreeing to higher wages (really, in several sectors agreements were reached and then government insisted on wage freezes)).
I get the feeling that in the US because compromise is unheard of, the battle lines get so hardened neither backs down because both are totally convinced they are right. When you see Romney speaking when he doesn't know the world is listening, you can see half of it. But the unions too seem totally alien from a EU perspective.
Let them eat cake vs chopping the heads of everyone who isn't you. Two sides who can't compromise.
A CEO who destroys his company gets a HUGE compensation package by taking the golden parachute he setup and getting out before the company collapses. It has been done time and time again. Really kid, READ something. ANYTHING. Get a chewable book and improve your mind.
I had a blind cat once, adopted from a shelter. The previous abuser was one of those hippies who believe you can live on vegetables. Humans can do it with a strict diet (read: add lots of additives to replace meat) but cats can't, they are meat eaters and need it to be healthy.
Eatings less meat in the west wouldn't be a bad thing but vegans are so obsessed with their faith they ignore science and common sense. Look at your cat, does it look like a plant eater?
What made Sony once great is that the manager never stopped his engineers from trying anything and everything and it gave them a great range of products and a name for quality (Yes I know it popular to hate on Sony now but the company used to be very different when it was still a pure Japanese company). And gosh isn't that "do whatever you want and we see what comes out of it" just like Googles 20% idea except Sony had it at 100% (and because engineers are engineers, got 140%)?
Focussing on one product, one the core business is a great way to die slowly. It is something managers just don't get, which is why management should be restricted to bean counting, and stopped from running companies. The lower engineers should run the company, the CEO should just make sure that the money is accounted for and try not to steal to much of it.
MS is indeed an innovative company, they have a LOT of ideas. It just never materializes into products people can buy because MS keeps trying to maximize profits. Take gaming. Halo 4 was actually named in the same list of earners for MS as Windows and Office... that is quite a lot for single game. And is Halo 4 available for that Windows? No it is not. Because MS decided to maximize its profits by focussing on its console instead it is hurting its own OS by starving it of games. (If I don't need a PC for gaming I can run OSX just as easily, gaming is the one lockin remaining).
There is absolutely no reason for MS not to produce games that run on both Windows and its console and even encourage it. Instead it spends hard cash discouraging this. It is one manager trying to focus on one product and not the business as a whole.
It is the approach of trying to maximize everything in terms of profit that actually hurts MS badly. When it launched the Zune it launched it with a new DRM scheme and shop incompatible with what they had been selling to MP3 player makers before. Gosh... that is a HELL of a way to get them to buy into your stuff again. First you force them to adopt your scheme, then you launch a new one for your own player.
The Surface is another example. Google can do it because the Nexus are nice phones but bare ones. But the Surface is a full blown competitor except MS can afford to subsidize the hell out of it. OEM's can't and are already on razor thin margins to begin with. And in order to maximize MS sales, the expensive Surface doesn't even come with a full Office license, with Office being the only selling point the device has. It is understandable they want the extra cash but it is no way to market a product already perceived as behind before launch. Of course, if they did include a full office for "free" the OEM's would be even more upset, but you already upset them so why not go the whole way? (Remember that if you have office on your PC and on your tablet, you now have two licenses to pay for despite only using one at a time)
Windows 8 is another example. The simple fact is that Phones, Tablets, Consoles, PC's, Laptops are different devices. Trying to get people to use them all the same way is stupid. It would like fitting your bicycle with a steering wheel because well, your car has one? Why not a unified interface for all vehicles? It has been said time and time again, holding up your hand at above heart height is tiring. And for large desktop spaces, some of my monitors are actually out of reach.
Enabling touch for every interface means Fisher Pricing it to hell and back and desktops have always been about putting as much information as possible on it. I don't WANT huge buttons on my NON-touchscreen monitor just in case I might one day spend extra money just so I can have fingermarks on my screens.
But MS wants to focus on one product, one interface to rule them all and in darkness bind them... gosh and how did that end in Mordor? Oh yeah, but tying all your power into one focus point, you die along with it.
The Kinect is another great example. It is a very interesting product but NOT because MS wanted it to be. They jus
In general growth is seen as essential because the world grows. There are more and more computers in the world, if MS keeps selling the same amount of OS installs, they are not stagnant, they are shrinking as measured by market share.
If your customers grow and you do not, you are shrinking.
People say easily "I would want to die if I was like that" but when you are like that... quality of life is not hard set. When you get older, you know you are going downhill one way or another. Ask a youngster who says he rather be dead then in a wheelchair how he feels about a walker. To most young people, old age is a horror but when you get there, you find that there is more to live then perfect health. Would you want to see your grandchild even if both of you were in diapers? That is real life.
I can respect people who say "enough" and wish to die but until you are there, you cannot tell and you cannot speak for someone else. I had to sit by twice as someone died knowing that resuscitation was pointless and unwanted and I could see it was but I wanted them with me longer and people don't die easily even if they want it to end.
Until you are there, you just can't talk about it. And you can't make others understand because nobody wants to truly consider death. And I can't blame them.
You wouldn't need to say "expect" unless you knew you were a weasel trying to project YOUR opinion on "most" people (most is another weasel word).
It is simply not up to you and thank goodness for that. Their are no simple answers on this and most certainly not ones based on one persons opinion who isn't in that situation.
Of course, you can always make things worse theorizing but in this case, they guy can read and now also answer.
In a civilized country, he would just get an MRI machine since that is what he needs and we can affords it with our means. Oh wait, that is communism right. Yeah, the Romney thing is to let him suffer because euthanasia also isn't allowed.
It is not like providing a 2 million dollar/euro machine for every vegetative person is going to break any countries economy.
Oh and the concept is hardly original because the book was inspired by reading of the Prince of Wales visiting a real life soldier who had been similarly wounded.
Reality->Book -> Movie -> Song
Gosh, it is almost as if people get inspiration from other people. THIEFS!
Because if people haven't learned by the 3rd time, another soft sentence is going to teach them.
This guy PROFITED from copyright infringement. Not shared, profited. This isn't about using a track on youtube or sharing an album, he ran a business ripping content from others and selling it on. That is a crime in most peoples eyes and gosh, in a democracy, the majority rules.
Normal people have had it with revolving door criminals, people who just see light jail sentences as the cost of doing business. So, the three strikes rule combines "giving people another chance" with "if you fuck up we lock you up and throw away the key".
1 offence, another chance.
Offend again, another chance.
Offend again, no more chances.
It ain't that hard and is a decent enough balance between a system where people can better themselves and getting rid of those who can't.
A recent case in Holland showed a kickboxer who had already been convicted of a mass shooting in a school years ago now succeeding in killing someone in a shooting. The bleeding hearts of course see only two crimes but forget that in Holland, owning a gun is illegal. So, just how many micro-seconds did it take this person to break the law by getting a gun? And continue to break the law every second he had it on him? Including his probation rules?
Give him another chance? So next time he can kill two people?
You can see the extremes in Norway, mass murderer will walk free in a decade or two. Because he deserves another chance?
Fuck that. The average person is sick to dead of the bleeding hearts. Keep breaking the law and society is done with you.
If you know that with 2 previous convictions any offense is going to land you in jail for a long time and you STILL re-offend, there must be something seriously wrong with you.
Yeah, myth busters in a sim, where the "pilot" was not tired after a long shift and had to land the aircraft already put in line with the runway, was perfectly functional, with a perfect radio connection, with no real life pressure, could land it in perfect weather conditions.
Well, here is a fucking hint, I did that WITHOUT someone talking me through it. It is fucking easy! That they even managed to crash shows how stupid these guys really are. Anyone can try it themselves, you can play with high quality sims as "games" on the PC all you want and most come with scenario's that do put you in line with the runway and all you got to do is land. As long as you don't start freaking out and jerking the controller around, you will be able to land the plane pretty easily.
The problem in real life is that when shit happens, it happens in spade. Bad weather, confusing communication, failing instruments, high pressure, lack of sleep. THAT causes accidents, not having to land fresh on a sunny day with no wind on an wide open runway.
I mean END OF LIFE dead, reach lvl 50, go on end game epic quest, die/retire/ride into the sunset.
In D&D you did have resurrects BUT once you reach a silly high level you were supposed to roll a new character, not keep playing a lvl 20/40 character over and over.
So not dead because you fell of a bridge but dead because your hero's journey has com to an end.
And yes, I agree, MMO's are about grinds but if you keep begging for the grind, don't be suprised that is what you are going to get.
Be ready to let go of your lvl 80 blinged out alt if you want MMO's to change and become FUN again.
I have said it before but MMO's need to kill players. Well, their characters at least. D&D always had the issue that at max level, you were a god. And god isn't fun to play. Superman has this issue, he is unstoppable, so you have to keep coming up with their weirdest stuff to make him at least temporarily vulnerable.
In MMO's, the level cap keeps being raised, more content is tacked onto the end and the players despair of having to grind yet another set of gear, yet another factions reputation while all the fun has gone from the game.
D&D solved this, you are NOT supposed to keep the same character around for ages. Hell, most games fixed this. In the Sims, your characters age and die, in Sim City and Transport Tycoon and Civilization, you start a new game when you "won" the old one. Only in MMO's do you keep the same character and play with it long after you "finished" the game.
So, get rid of it. Create a game with a tutorial area, a mid level and an endgame that kills you. Then you restart the game, skip the tutorial and try a different path.
Expansions flesh out the middle, where everyone is playing. New players find a busy active world and not everyone huddled at the end game claiming they are bored.
It is a simple tried and tested mechanic but MMO's have become filled with people who want to wave their e-penis around no matter how much they hate the process of getting one, they want to show of their raid gear. Because putting in a hundred hours grinding makes them leet.
WoW is for those gamers, the rest have long since left. Not that most other MMO's dare to offer anything different. First Lotro introduced gated content, now GW2 is doing the same.
And all over, gamers are playing regular games with no grind, just for fun. Are MMO developers so insecure they feel they can't rely on the fun of their games rather then gated content and raid gear?
Really, this kinda stuff is code once, then forget about. And people who write game engines are not stupid, these are people who can do 3D calculations in their own head, they can handle an if/else construct. Two different video cards to set? My GOD!!! The HORROR!
This is a non-issue and kinda shows MS is running out of ideas, Vista didn't become an hit despite tying itself to DX10, why would a point update that only adds 3d support, do it? 3D support has been done for YEARS, without a directx api, they will just continue to use the existing methods.
DirectX only matters to amateurs who need their hand hold. For everyone else, if MS doesn't supply it, someone else will. Look at the loading screen of your game, you can see TONS of library providers. Look up openal, why would you need a 3rd party sound library under DirectX? Because it is better? More flexible? Gosh... so even when DirectX does provide support, some developers STILL choose other libraries. ODD!
A desktop, any desktop, is for using, not for admiring the same bloody animation over and over again. I use windows for gaming but have EVERYTHING turned off except the font options. Aero was disabled years ago. And I just tested it but my start menu shows instantly. A second? I would already be killing Ballmer with a rusty spoon if it took a tenth of a second. My life is worth more to me then wait a second everytime I want to do something.
You are aware that all these startup animations and such are completly useless?E17 had to articiially slow the loading process on Linux to be able to show off its animation effect of the loading screen. Nice... and disabled. What the fuck is the logic behind that?
My PC is not a movie prop. It doesn't have to look the part, it has a task to do and it should do its task as quickly as possible. Maybe if you disabled all the bling, your PC wouldn't need a full second to load a start menu.
Is your life that devoid of meaning that it needs the soothing animation effect to make it tolerable? It is like people who complain about a tearing effect when they move a window around... who the fuck cares? I select a window, drag it to where I want it and I want it done as fast possible and not as nice as possible. I guess there are people who really do have all the compiz options on for more then the 1 minute it takes to get utterly tired of them.
Maybe I am just wrong in thinking an OS is about its applications, not about its bling.
Considering the Windows 7 guy was fired and the Windows 8 and Office girl was promoted, I am starting to feel very alone.
Steve Jobs vowed to destroy Android, Steve Ballmer did the same with Google and threw chairs. THAT is what corporations are like, they aren't run by a hive mind or a robot, they are run by people who we wouldn't like to be with.
Boba Fett was the original movies Jar Jar. He is the bumbling sidekick who magically manages to capture the sidekick, then dies a funny quick death at the first turn beside all the other goons temporarily blocking the hero's path while rescuing said sidekick.
Only in fan fiction is he turned into something else then a moron who get funnily whacked by the blind sidekick of the hero.
The above is the kind of often repeated comment made by a wanna-be movie expert who knows he will be laughed out of the room if he just says Star Wars is crap so he tries to dress it up by saying the 2nd movie was okay because of (never actually specify because that takes knowledge) and the 1st was just popular.
And it is a LOAD OF BULL.
Star Wars was HUGE and not just with 10 years old. There is little point in comparing it with anything else because little else had such impact. Beauty and the Beast (the disney animation) and the Lion King are ALMOST there because they were the only kids movies parents didn't dread having to watch but Star Wars was NOT a kid movie, it was a movie for all ages and ALL ages saw it, on their own AND with each other.
The acting and the story, they are not important to the impact a movie has on history. (one of) The first movie I believe was of a train coming to the camera and scared the shit out of viewers. It has no story but it is important because it was the first time anybody had done anything like it. Some classic movies are now practically unwatchable because our tastes changed but some stood the test of time and are movies that divide the world in those who haven't seen it and those who have and those who haven't can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
"I never seen Star Wars" is a TV show, it isn't called "I never seen Firefly". Loads of people never seen that, it might be a better story it might have better special effects (or not, never seen it) but not having seen it isn't anything special. But Star Wars, EVERYONE has seen. That is part of what makes it big.
Complaining that the special effects are outdated is only said by people who would color Casablanca.
If you write a book about movie history and indeed, popular western culture in the last century, you have to include Star Wars. You can skip over hundreds of movies with far better plots with fewer plotholes and better acting because while those movies were enjoyable, they just did not have the impact Star Wars did. And no, again, not just to kids. My mother was as big a fan as me and countless adults enjoyed it just as much as their kids and as teenagers.
And this was in an age when a lot of movies were getting darker and darker, grittier and nastier and BAM there was one movie made on a shoe string budget by a virtual unknown and EVERYONE was back into Flash Gordon. And yes, thank you, EVERYONE knows the story wasn't the least bit original. That was partly the point, the pundits knew people wanted more substance and George Lucas proved them wrong, this was straight back to the beginning of movie making. Skip the talking and give us ACTION!
And few would get it. Lucas and Spielberg would OWN movies for years to come even as others tried with The Black Hole and Battle Star Galactica. With no real success.
Empire Strikes Back was technically a better movie but it was a sequel to. It never had the same impact, it was amazingly succesful but it was riding on the tails of a far greater movie. Not because the first was the best but because it was the first.
It is the difference between when Hillary went up Mount Everest and when a modern team does it. And if you don't get that, then you are a very sad person.
As for all the hating on Ewoks, that just become a meme for people to scared of getting beat up by nerds if they dish Star Wars to hate on something popular. Hating Star Wars for Ewoks is like hating Star Trek for Spocks Brain.
Read the article, the guy has different companies for each patent. That is one of the signs to recognize a patent troll, create a shell company with no assets and no product so if you loose, you loose nothing and they can't counter sue because you have no product so nothing that can infringe.
Many big companies just consider this the cost of doing business and just pay up, thereby feeding the leech to become ever stronger. But fighting it would gain you nothing except a warm feeling.
mind you, most of the big companies are jealous they didn't think of it first. Apple sued by a patent troll? Awh!
Slashdot Mirror
That is like saying I should kill you first because else you would kill me. And hey, since you want to kill me, I am justified in killing you. Hell, why not kill everyone and be really sure I am not going to killed by any of you? It is for my own protection.
Even by your logic, by your own nature do you judge others. Clearly apple fears patent trolls because it is one.
And finally, I HATE THAT CRAP, didn't that "software has to look like real things" die with MS Bob?
So, I can cut of your finger because if you don't let me, I will cut of your head.
Because of course, it ends there.
Oh no, now I want to cut of your hand, or I will cut of your head.
Now a leg, or I will cut of your head.
Now I cut of your torso. But hey, it is still better then having your head cut off.
Also, I wonder if you republicans heard of inflation? If you take a 8% cut and inflation is 3% then you really take a 11% cut because in NORMAL economies, salaries rise to compensate for inflation.
As you say, the management has been stealing everything that isn't nailed down, while the workers have had to agree to multiple cuts.
The reason to say NO and risk your job is because it isn't ONE pay cut, it is pay cut after pay cut. While the CEO's get raise after raise. A 20% paycut is HUGE for most people who already need to spend their entire paycheck. You are going to say to your kid, sorry, you got to come back home and stop university and get a job because the management considers their own raises more important then the future of the company?
And the next pay cut and the next? Because Hostess makes fucking awful products. As a European I took the oppotunity to buy some on a trip to see what this fabled snack was like. Twinkie, seen in so many movies.
IT IS GODDAMN AWFUL.
Europe sure has its share of cheap crap snacks that taste like a chemical experiment gone wrong but they are cheap. Twinkies ain't cheap.
I am not just talking elitist taste, I took some back and bought some "Euro shopper" (Dutch cheap brand in largest super market chain AH) cake snacks to compare. The filling might be the same as in negerzoenen (negrokisses) but isn't and the cake is just bad. Really cheap cake (1 euro for a full sized cake (length and width of a load of bread but not the height) tastes a million times better.
I have no idea about the other products, oddly enough, couldn't find them.I got the idea that while Americans know what they are they have gone from their mind. To me they seemed as something special because for decades I heard of them but never could get any but to Americans it just a not so good snack that is expensive and bad for you.
And so the company dies. And then the class war America is having breaks out, US Unions are unlike anywhere else... well unlike in Europe. The hostility seems insane. In Holland, the Big 11 (biggest employers) wanted the strong unions of a decade ago back because it gave them someone to deal with. The Polder Model is missed by both sides (except government, it was them that sabotaged it because they wanted to set the wages, rather then employees and employers agreeing to higher wages (really, in several sectors agreements were reached and then government insisted on wage freezes)).
I get the feeling that in the US because compromise is unheard of, the battle lines get so hardened neither backs down because both are totally convinced they are right. When you see Romney speaking when he doesn't know the world is listening, you can see half of it. But the unions too seem totally alien from a EU perspective.
Let them eat cake vs chopping the heads of everyone who isn't you. Two sides who can't compromise.
Sad.
A CEO who destroys his company gets a HUGE compensation package by taking the golden parachute he setup and getting out before the company collapses. It has been done time and time again. Really kid, READ something. ANYTHING. Get a chewable book and improve your mind.
I had a blind cat once, adopted from a shelter. The previous abuser was one of those hippies who believe you can live on vegetables. Humans can do it with a strict diet (read: add lots of additives to replace meat) but cats can't, they are meat eaters and need it to be healthy.
http://www.essentialvegetarian.com/2007/07/08/7-reasons-why-your-cat-cannot-be-vegetarian/
Eatings less meat in the west wouldn't be a bad thing but vegans are so obsessed with their faith they ignore science and common sense. Look at your cat, does it look like a plant eater?
What made Sony once great is that the manager never stopped his engineers from trying anything and everything and it gave them a great range of products and a name for quality (Yes I know it popular to hate on Sony now but the company used to be very different when it was still a pure Japanese company). And gosh isn't that "do whatever you want and we see what comes out of it" just like Googles 20% idea except Sony had it at 100% (and because engineers are engineers, got 140%)?
Focussing on one product, one the core business is a great way to die slowly. It is something managers just don't get, which is why management should be restricted to bean counting, and stopped from running companies. The lower engineers should run the company, the CEO should just make sure that the money is accounted for and try not to steal to much of it.
MS is indeed an innovative company, they have a LOT of ideas. It just never materializes into products people can buy because MS keeps trying to maximize profits. Take gaming. Halo 4 was actually named in the same list of earners for MS as Windows and Office... that is quite a lot for single game. And is Halo 4 available for that Windows? No it is not. Because MS decided to maximize its profits by focussing on its console instead it is hurting its own OS by starving it of games. (If I don't need a PC for gaming I can run OSX just as easily, gaming is the one lockin remaining).
There is absolutely no reason for MS not to produce games that run on both Windows and its console and even encourage it. Instead it spends hard cash discouraging this. It is one manager trying to focus on one product and not the business as a whole.
It is the approach of trying to maximize everything in terms of profit that actually hurts MS badly. When it launched the Zune it launched it with a new DRM scheme and shop incompatible with what they had been selling to MP3 player makers before. Gosh... that is a HELL of a way to get them to buy into your stuff again. First you force them to adopt your scheme, then you launch a new one for your own player.
The Surface is another example. Google can do it because the Nexus are nice phones but bare ones. But the Surface is a full blown competitor except MS can afford to subsidize the hell out of it. OEM's can't and are already on razor thin margins to begin with. And in order to maximize MS sales, the expensive Surface doesn't even come with a full Office license, with Office being the only selling point the device has. It is understandable they want the extra cash but it is no way to market a product already perceived as behind before launch. Of course, if they did include a full office for "free" the OEM's would be even more upset, but you already upset them so why not go the whole way? (Remember that if you have office on your PC and on your tablet, you now have two licenses to pay for despite only using one at a time)
Windows 8 is another example. The simple fact is that Phones, Tablets, Consoles, PC's, Laptops are different devices. Trying to get people to use them all the same way is stupid. It would like fitting your bicycle with a steering wheel because well, your car has one? Why not a unified interface for all vehicles? It has been said time and time again, holding up your hand at above heart height is tiring. And for large desktop spaces, some of my monitors are actually out of reach.
Enabling touch for every interface means Fisher Pricing it to hell and back and desktops have always been about putting as much information as possible on it. I don't WANT huge buttons on my NON-touchscreen monitor just in case I might one day spend extra money just so I can have fingermarks on my screens.
But MS wants to focus on one product, one interface to rule them all and in darkness bind them... gosh and how did that end in Mordor? Oh yeah, but tying all your power into one focus point, you die along with it.
The Kinect is another great example. It is a very interesting product but NOT because MS wanted it to be. They jus
It will be American wine to American drinkers in Texas. I can't see how taste matters at all.
American wine has no taste, Americans have no taste and living in Texas is tasteless.
Do people really worry what wine goes well with hamburgers?
In general growth is seen as essential because the world grows. There are more and more computers in the world, if MS keeps selling the same amount of OS installs, they are not stagnant, they are shrinking as measured by market share.
If your customers grow and you do not, you are shrinking.
People say easily "I would want to die if I was like that" but when you are like that... quality of life is not hard set. When you get older, you know you are going downhill one way or another. Ask a youngster who says he rather be dead then in a wheelchair how he feels about a walker. To most young people, old age is a horror but when you get there, you find that there is more to live then perfect health. Would you want to see your grandchild even if both of you were in diapers? That is real life.
I can respect people who say "enough" and wish to die but until you are there, you cannot tell and you cannot speak for someone else. I had to sit by twice as someone died knowing that resuscitation was pointless and unwanted and I could see it was but I wanted them with me longer and people don't die easily even if they want it to end.
Until you are there, you just can't talk about it. And you can't make others understand because nobody wants to truly consider death. And I can't blame them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly
probably based on this, book written by author in this state.
You wouldn't need to say "expect" unless you knew you were a weasel trying to project YOUR opinion on "most" people (most is another weasel word).
It is simply not up to you and thank goodness for that. Their are no simple answers on this and most certainly not ones based on one persons opinion who isn't in that situation.
Of course, you can always make things worse theorizing but in this case, they guy can read and now also answer.
In a civilized country, he would just get an MRI machine since that is what he needs and we can affords it with our means. Oh wait, that is communism right. Yeah, the Romney thing is to let him suffer because euthanasia also isn't allowed.
It is not like providing a 2 million dollar/euro machine for every vegetative person is going to break any countries economy.
Book -> Movie -> Song
Oh and the concept is hardly original because the book was inspired by reading of the Prince of Wales visiting a real life soldier who had been similarly wounded.
Reality->Book -> Movie -> Song
Gosh, it is almost as if people get inspiration from other people. THIEFS!
Because if people haven't learned by the 3rd time, another soft sentence is going to teach them.
This guy PROFITED from copyright infringement. Not shared, profited. This isn't about using a track on youtube or sharing an album, he ran a business ripping content from others and selling it on. That is a crime in most peoples eyes and gosh, in a democracy, the majority rules.
Normal people have had it with revolving door criminals, people who just see light jail sentences as the cost of doing business. So, the three strikes rule combines "giving people another chance" with "if you fuck up we lock you up and throw away the key".
1 offence, another chance.
Offend again, another chance.
Offend again, no more chances.
It ain't that hard and is a decent enough balance between a system where people can better themselves and getting rid of those who can't.
A recent case in Holland showed a kickboxer who had already been convicted of a mass shooting in a school years ago now succeeding in killing someone in a shooting. The bleeding hearts of course see only two crimes but forget that in Holland, owning a gun is illegal. So, just how many micro-seconds did it take this person to break the law by getting a gun? And continue to break the law every second he had it on him? Including his probation rules?
Give him another chance? So next time he can kill two people?
You can see the extremes in Norway, mass murderer will walk free in a decade or two. Because he deserves another chance?
Fuck that. The average person is sick to dead of the bleeding hearts. Keep breaking the law and society is done with you.
If you know that with 2 previous convictions any offense is going to land you in jail for a long time and you STILL re-offend, there must be something seriously wrong with you.
Yeah, myth busters in a sim, where the "pilot" was not tired after a long shift and had to land the aircraft already put in line with the runway, was perfectly functional, with a perfect radio connection, with no real life pressure, could land it in perfect weather conditions.
Well, here is a fucking hint, I did that WITHOUT someone talking me through it. It is fucking easy! That they even managed to crash shows how stupid these guys really are. Anyone can try it themselves, you can play with high quality sims as "games" on the PC all you want and most come with scenario's that do put you in line with the runway and all you got to do is land. As long as you don't start freaking out and jerking the controller around, you will be able to land the plane pretty easily.
The problem in real life is that when shit happens, it happens in spade. Bad weather, confusing communication, failing instruments, high pressure, lack of sleep. THAT causes accidents, not having to land fresh on a sunny day with no wind on an wide open runway.
I mean END OF LIFE dead, reach lvl 50, go on end game epic quest, die/retire/ride into the sunset.
In D&D you did have resurrects BUT once you reach a silly high level you were supposed to roll a new character, not keep playing a lvl 20/40 character over and over.
So not dead because you fell of a bridge but dead because your hero's journey has com to an end.
And yes, I agree, MMO's are about grinds but if you keep begging for the grind, don't be suprised that is what you are going to get.
Be ready to let go of your lvl 80 blinged out alt if you want MMO's to change and become FUN again.
I have said it before but MMO's need to kill players. Well, their characters at least. D&D always had the issue that at max level, you were a god. And god isn't fun to play. Superman has this issue, he is unstoppable, so you have to keep coming up with their weirdest stuff to make him at least temporarily vulnerable.
In MMO's, the level cap keeps being raised, more content is tacked onto the end and the players despair of having to grind yet another set of gear, yet another factions reputation while all the fun has gone from the game.
D&D solved this, you are NOT supposed to keep the same character around for ages. Hell, most games fixed this. In the Sims, your characters age and die, in Sim City and Transport Tycoon and Civilization, you start a new game when you "won" the old one. Only in MMO's do you keep the same character and play with it long after you "finished" the game.
So, get rid of it. Create a game with a tutorial area, a mid level and an endgame that kills you. Then you restart the game, skip the tutorial and try a different path.
Expansions flesh out the middle, where everyone is playing. New players find a busy active world and not everyone huddled at the end game claiming they are bored.
It is a simple tried and tested mechanic but MMO's have become filled with people who want to wave their e-penis around no matter how much they hate the process of getting one, they want to show of their raid gear. Because putting in a hundred hours grinding makes them leet.
WoW is for those gamers, the rest have long since left. Not that most other MMO's dare to offer anything different. First Lotro introduced gated content, now GW2 is doing the same.
And all over, gamers are playing regular games with no grind, just for fun. Are MMO developers so insecure they feel they can't rely on the fun of their games rather then gated content and raid gear?
Really, this kinda stuff is code once, then forget about. And people who write game engines are not stupid, these are people who can do 3D calculations in their own head, they can handle an if/else construct. Two different video cards to set? My GOD!!! The HORROR!
This is a non-issue and kinda shows MS is running out of ideas, Vista didn't become an hit despite tying itself to DX10, why would a point update that only adds 3d support, do it? 3D support has been done for YEARS, without a directx api, they will just continue to use the existing methods.
DirectX only matters to amateurs who need their hand hold. For everyone else, if MS doesn't supply it, someone else will. Look at the loading screen of your game, you can see TONS of library providers. Look up openal, why would you need a 3rd party sound library under DirectX? Because it is better? More flexible? Gosh... so even when DirectX does provide support, some developers STILL choose other libraries. ODD!
A desktop, any desktop, is for using, not for admiring the same bloody animation over and over again. I use windows for gaming but have EVERYTHING turned off except the font options. Aero was disabled years ago. And I just tested it but my start menu shows instantly. A second? I would already be killing Ballmer with a rusty spoon if it took a tenth of a second. My life is worth more to me then wait a second everytime I want to do something.
You are aware that all these startup animations and such are completly useless?E17 had to articiially slow the loading process on Linux to be able to show off its animation effect of the loading screen. Nice... and disabled. What the fuck is the logic behind that?
My PC is not a movie prop. It doesn't have to look the part, it has a task to do and it should do its task as quickly as possible. Maybe if you disabled all the bling, your PC wouldn't need a full second to load a start menu.
Is your life that devoid of meaning that it needs the soothing animation effect to make it tolerable? It is like people who complain about a tearing effect when they move a window around... who the fuck cares? I select a window, drag it to where I want it and I want it done as fast possible and not as nice as possible. I guess there are people who really do have all the compiz options on for more then the 1 minute it takes to get utterly tired of them.
Maybe I am just wrong in thinking an OS is about its applications, not about its bling.
Considering the Windows 7 guy was fired and the Windows 8 and Office girl was promoted, I am starting to feel very alone.
Steve Jobs vowed to destroy Android, Steve Ballmer did the same with Google and threw chairs. THAT is what corporations are like, they aren't run by a hive mind or a robot, they are run by people who we wouldn't like to be with.
Japan
Small (Max. 10cm, 20g), US$264
Medium (Max. 15cm, 50g), US$403
Large (Max. 20cm, 200g), US$528
American
Small (Max. 10cm, 40g), US$264
Medium (Max. 15cm, 100g), US$403
Large (Max. 20cm, 400g), US$528
Boba Fett was the original movies Jar Jar. He is the bumbling sidekick who magically manages to capture the sidekick, then dies a funny quick death at the first turn beside all the other goons temporarily blocking the hero's path while rescuing said sidekick.
Only in fan fiction is he turned into something else then a moron who get funnily whacked by the blind sidekick of the hero.
I think she could be made to change her mind.
Lets face it, she could name any number and it couldbe payed, if this movie is actually going to be any good.
Mind you, Zahn? Wasn't that the guy who turned the series into 30 something?
You thought ONE kid was bad, the Solo's have 3.
The above is the kind of often repeated comment made by a wanna-be movie expert who knows he will be laughed out of the room if he just says Star Wars is crap so he tries to dress it up by saying the 2nd movie was okay because of (never actually specify because that takes knowledge) and the 1st was just popular.
And it is a LOAD OF BULL.
Star Wars was HUGE and not just with 10 years old. There is little point in comparing it with anything else because little else had such impact. Beauty and the Beast (the disney animation) and the Lion King are ALMOST there because they were the only kids movies parents didn't dread having to watch but Star Wars was NOT a kid movie, it was a movie for all ages and ALL ages saw it, on their own AND with each other.
The acting and the story, they are not important to the impact a movie has on history. (one of) The first movie I believe was of a train coming to the camera and scared the shit out of viewers. It has no story but it is important because it was the first time anybody had done anything like it. Some classic movies are now practically unwatchable because our tastes changed but some stood the test of time and are movies that divide the world in those who haven't seen it and those who have and those who haven't can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
"I never seen Star Wars" is a TV show, it isn't called "I never seen Firefly". Loads of people never seen that, it might be a better story it might have better special effects (or not, never seen it) but not having seen it isn't anything special. But Star Wars, EVERYONE has seen. That is part of what makes it big.
Complaining that the special effects are outdated is only said by people who would color Casablanca.
If you write a book about movie history and indeed, popular western culture in the last century, you have to include Star Wars. You can skip over hundreds of movies with far better plots with fewer plotholes and better acting because while those movies were enjoyable, they just did not have the impact Star Wars did. And no, again, not just to kids. My mother was as big a fan as me and countless adults enjoyed it just as much as their kids and as teenagers.
And this was in an age when a lot of movies were getting darker and darker, grittier and nastier and BAM there was one movie made on a shoe string budget by a virtual unknown and EVERYONE was back into Flash Gordon. And yes, thank you, EVERYONE knows the story wasn't the least bit original. That was partly the point, the pundits knew people wanted more substance and George Lucas proved them wrong, this was straight back to the beginning of movie making. Skip the talking and give us ACTION!
And few would get it. Lucas and Spielberg would OWN movies for years to come even as others tried with The Black Hole and Battle Star Galactica. With no real success.
Empire Strikes Back was technically a better movie but it was a sequel to. It never had the same impact, it was amazingly succesful but it was riding on the tails of a far greater movie. Not because the first was the best but because it was the first.
It is the difference between when Hillary went up Mount Everest and when a modern team does it. And if you don't get that, then you are a very sad person.
As for all the hating on Ewoks, that just become a meme for people to scared of getting beat up by nerds if they dish Star Wars to hate on something popular. Hating Star Wars for Ewoks is like hating Star Trek for Spocks Brain.
Read the article, the guy has different companies for each patent. That is one of the signs to recognize a patent troll, create a shell company with no assets and no product so if you loose, you loose nothing and they can't counter sue because you have no product so nothing that can infringe.
Many big companies just consider this the cost of doing business and just pay up, thereby feeding the leech to become ever stronger. But fighting it would gain you nothing except a warm feeling.
mind you, most of the big companies are jealous they didn't think of it first. Apple sued by a patent troll? Awh!