No, I sure don't think we'd be here. I also don't think that Saddam would be in a cell; he'd be finding new ingenious methods of genocide, more effective techniques for his torture chambers, and better ways to hand off money to terrorists who aren't as restrained and can actually strike out at the United States on our own turf.
We all know that litigation is SCOG's primary profit center right now. Considering that, and considering the fact that they DO have significant resources and some good minds at their disposal, why did they come up with something so pathetically easy to take down?
I'm still convinced that not everyone over at SCOG is mentally retarded. They've got some intelligent folks over there. All the same, it took a volunteer paralegal 24 hours to come up with overwhelming evidence against their latest claims. Certainly they could have at least come up with something more substantial, or in lieu of that, more vague.. to base their claims on.
So what are they trying to pull? There's more involved here, and I think that it might be really important to understand what it is before they show their hand.
This is an odd place to ask a question of this nature. However, you folks seem knowledgeable and sympathetic. I'm here at 10:45 am instead of at work because I called in sick to get some more sleep. I can't sleep very well during the week. This is a relatively new development for me.
In November, I broke my arm in a motorcycle accident and got the flu immediately following that. I was low on funds and my wife had serious health problems, and we had no medical insurance, and naturally I was missing work. I got really stressed out about all of that and became *seriously* sick. I would get ready for work in the morning and be so exhausted from walking up and down the stairs twice that I felt like I would puke. The doctor said he thought it was stress or depression related, didn't give any advice or medications, but just understanding that gave me the insight required to improve. Smart doctor, imo. So I got over that, but now I can't seem to get to sleep until I'm really really tired- like 2 am. My mind races too much, and stuff. I get up at 5:30 am.
I went two weeks without caffine, getting up at around 5:30-6:00 am. I was still horribly groggy in the mornings and after lunch, and still wide awake at night. So I use caffine now (one cup of coffee) to get myself going in the mornings, a caffinated soda to help myself past lunchtime if I need it. So about midweek I crash and sleep in, then finish up the week.
I've read the threads here and seen a lot of symptoms that I have. I always thought it would be cool to have insomnia; now I look at it as pretty much the worst thing in the world.
So, I suppose my questino is this: Will I get worse? Should I be doing something to avoid it?
Common sense tells me that I should get up in the morning and go to work even though I won't be productive when I'm that tired, but common sense rarely prevails when my mind is so exhausted. If I really thought that dropping caffine for a longer period of time would help, I suppose I could do that. It's sure miserable. I do programming in the day, and I'm not a programmer, so I have to do a whole lot more creative thinking than most in order to be productive.
Any advice for me? I don't feel like I have any real serious issue yet, but I sure don't want it to develop any further. It's not a lot of fun.
Funny that Veritas would be one of those mentioned. Their software is overly cumbersome, they have a poor selection of information online, the cost of support has increased every year. Unfortunately, there isn't much in the way of competition- they have a lot of features that nobody else offers.
I really haven't decided what I think about the whole radio/tv censoring thing. We had a DJ here who was super popular with 13-17 year old kids, because he was by far the most perverted thing on the air. Just perversion for perversion's sake. He didn't make money for his station from the adults, he made it from the kids. We finally got rid of him because of the content of his radio show. I was very happy. Was this the wrong thing to do?
This is the first instance of "prior art" that I've seen brought up which actually covers the features that Microsoft claims are unique in it's patent. The parent's example is the one to follow up on.
A high powered rig *will* make you perform better in a resource intensive game such as Dark Age of Camelot, where the computer must render hundreds of characters and effects simultaniously at a high framerate to keep you in the battle. I play on a 3GHz P4 with a gig of ram and a Radeon 9800 pro, and I still have some trouble in certain situations with a large number of players. And yes, my system is *very* clean.
You totally missed the point. It's more like the department making up signs for a restaurant posted "You can make our pizza at home! Here's how:" and then decided to sue everyone who used the recipe.
Treat people like sheep, and they will respond as sheep. You absolutely must trust your kids at school or they will not be trustworthy. If my parents had done this, my first thought would be that I could now make sure that my cell phone went to the right place at the right time and I'd have proof that I was there. My parents had no reason not to trust me. I was allowed to wander all day, and you know what? I stayed out of trouble. The kids with strict parents were the ones who got caught doing stupid things. I didn't care about doing stupid things, because I could do whatever I wanted and I knew that *I* would be responsible for the consequences.
Same thing applies to gun control, DRM, employee productivity...
What rankles me is the fact that on flip side, you have your own share of nuts. And your nuts write the textbooks used our schools use today. The things that have been published as fact are absolutely hilarious. Everything about evolutionary theory has changed hugely over the last few decades. The things that were published and introduced in our classrooms (again, as fact) are scoffed at even by the evolutionist camp today. Why they think they can do the same thing with the new set of possible processes through which this might have taken place is beyond me. Next year, it'll all change again. I think it's all wrong to begin with. I think that rather than look for a way to validate the answer, we should look at the question again.
Our textbooks that teach evolutionary theory as fact are a perfect example of this. Textbooks with "facts" that have been proved innacurate as early as the mid 90s that are still being used to this day.
Apparently, you've never met the real Christian Right. My parents were the most conservative Christian parents you could ask for; I had access to pretty much anything I wanted. In my area, I was one of the first on the net- using a unix shell account. I was a usenet addict before that. I was a book nut, and I read science books from the library because they interested me. When I came up with different ideas from text books on evolutionary theory/big bang theory/etc, my dad would explain why he disagreed. I think you're confusing the Christian right with the nuts. I *am* the right wing extremist.
3. Will you be able to take girls out on a date on such a thing? Possibly but no girl will agree to such an arraingement so effectively the answer is NO
Actually, I would imagine a segway would be a great pick up vehicle.. since 99.9999998% of the girls out there have never seen one before. C'mon, admit it.. you'd jump at the chance to try out a segway. Most girls would probably jump at the chance to ride a segway with you, as long as you weren't particularly creepy or smelly or huge. Huge being the most important one, since it might make it physically impossible....
You obviously don't understand the complexity of mastering a good multiplayer level in a 1st person shooter. It's not just running around shooting. The shooting becomes something your hand just does, the same way rotating your L shaped piece and dropping it into place isn't really what you're thinking about when you play Tetris. It's setting up for the takedown in both games that requires thought and tactical skill. For a good player, Quake3 is a whole lot more in depth. And besides, rockets are cool. So there!
I think you've misunderstood the author of the previous post. I don't believe he was lauding his ability to exert physical force over some random individual. I think he was talking about his ability to use DEADLY force if one of the "schoolyard bullies" threated his family with their physical force.
I've been a gamer on and off all my life. I played MUDs on local BBS systems with my 2400 baud modem, followed the FPS rage from Wolfenstein to Quake, RTS games from Command & Conquer to Age of Empires. Now I'm fairly active with Dark Age of Camelot. I would say that I'm addicted. But I would honestly say that I was addicted to snowboarding at the same time, until my second snowboarding accident. I was addicted to movies for a long time as well. It's easy for me to get caught up in something that I enjoy. The real question for me is not whether it's healthy or not. The real question is what actually matters to me. Is it more important to lead my online friends on a 6 hour raid to push the enemy back from our frontier, or storm the fort with my paintball gun and some buddies at my back? Or take some friends out for coffee and a movie? Is my time better spent practicing with my band or instructing a lower level guild member on realm vs realm fighting techniques?
As a Christian, the question means nil to me when when it's brought up in that way. I'm here to serve my God. My best friend died while serving in Bolivia; but unlike a lot of my friends, I'm not called to serve in a 3rd world country or be a preacher. I'm here to help my friends who have problems with their marriages, employment, health etc... I'm here to be a living example of God's love. Some of my closest friends now are people I've met through Dark Age of Camelot. I was a very intraverted child; I used to communicate better via my computer than I did face to face. That's changed as I've grown older, but I still have the ability to talk to someone heart to heart over the internet.
The average person will not run into an extreme case of addiction playing games online. Perhaps they'll neglect a class or two, big deal. It happens. I missed over a week of work both times that I broke my arm snowboarding. Was that better than the time I stayed up til 6 am leading 150 people in a raid and didn't come in to work til 10? Perhaps. It still hurts to raise my arm above my head... and the burning sensation in my eyes from looking at my monitor for 12 hours straight will go away in a day or two, I'm sure of it.
Murder with guns is not the stastic you should be looking at; look at the overall homicide rate. In a country where guns are less prevelant, there will of course be less death by shooting. However, if someone is determined to kill another person they will do it with whatever tool they can find for the job. Regardless of my personal preferance of dying to a gunshot as opposed to a knife wound, I would much rather face an opponent if we were both armed with guns as opposed to knives. I'm not an very athletic individual, but anyone can learn to be proficient with a gun. But, that doesn't statistically prove anything. The original web site that I got my statistics from does not have good references; if work ever slows down here I'll try to come up with my own statistics. I'd encourage you to do the same. Compare the gun ownership rates in a country or region with the violent crime and/or homicide rates in that same region. I did a similiar study in high school, but I don't have any of my references from that one either.
There will always be exceptions to the rule. There will always be someone who believes that they are invincible. And the truth is, whether or not they have access to a gun they will still find a weapon and commit murder. It will happen. I think we should discourage that by giving people the right to defend themselves with lethal force. Everyone respects that.
I would never argue that in the case of a robbery everyone would be safer if they had weapons. Pulling a gun is the easiest way to get yourself killed. However, if the would-be-robber knows that the people around him are armed they will be far less likely to try a robbery. This has been proven statistically. The Third International Crime Victimization Survey (ICVS) shows that crimes of all sorts, including murder, are lowest in the states with the highest rates of gun ownership. Burgularies in Canada are more than four times as likely to occur when the residents are home as they are in the US. The highest incident of violent crime in the industrialized world has been in England and Wales- as opposed to countries like Switzerland and Italy, where people own assult rifles and violent crime is at an all time low.
Stastically, we are better off when we allow (and encourage) our citizens to arm themselves for self defence. I personally do not own a firearm because I don't want that responsibility at this point. When I am married later this year, I will carry a weapon because feel that it is my responsiblity to protect my wife and family.
Don't treat people like sheep and expect them to do stupid things; if you do, they will respond accordingly. Treat them like intelligent human beings and they will rise to meet the challenge. This has also been proven statistically; note the declining public school system in the United States. But that is an entirely different argument.
I disagree. That's not a bad statistic. Nobody is going to arrest these people and throw them in jail for looking like a terrorist; they'll most likely be taken aside and checked out. It's not a big deal, they do that randomly anyhow. I'd much rather have 99.9% targeted people. Less people are hassled and more of the right people are caught.
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No, I sure don't think we'd be here. I also don't think that Saddam would be in a cell; he'd be finding new ingenious methods of genocide, more effective techniques for his torture chambers, and better ways to hand off money to terrorists who aren't as restrained and can actually strike out at the United States on our own turf.
I agree, that's a great thing. But why play such a weak hand so publicly? I think it was intentional.
We all know that litigation is SCOG's primary profit center right now. Considering that, and considering the fact that they DO have significant resources and some good minds at their disposal, why did they come up with something so pathetically easy to take down?
I'm convinced that they did it intentionally.
I'm still convinced that not everyone over at SCOG is mentally retarded. They've got some intelligent folks over there. All the same, it took a volunteer paralegal 24 hours to come up with overwhelming evidence against their latest claims. Certainly they could have at least come up with something more substantial, or in lieu of that, more vague.. to base their claims on.
So what are they trying to pull? There's more involved here, and I think that it might be really important to understand what it is before they show their hand.
This is an odd place to ask a question of this nature. However, you folks seem knowledgeable and sympathetic. I'm here at 10:45 am instead of at work because I called in sick to get some more sleep. I can't sleep very well during the week. This is a relatively new development for me.
In November, I broke my arm in a motorcycle accident and got the flu immediately following that. I was low on funds and my wife had serious health problems, and we had no medical insurance, and naturally I was missing work. I got really stressed out about all of that and became *seriously* sick. I would get ready for work in the morning and be so exhausted from walking up and down the stairs twice that I felt like I would puke. The doctor said he thought it was stress or depression related, didn't give any advice or medications, but just understanding that gave me the insight required to improve. Smart doctor, imo. So I got over that, but now I can't seem to get to sleep until I'm really really tired- like 2 am. My mind races too much, and stuff. I get up at 5:30 am.
I went two weeks without caffine, getting up at around 5:30-6:00 am. I was still horribly groggy in the mornings and after lunch, and still wide awake at night. So I use caffine now (one cup of coffee) to get myself going in the mornings, a caffinated soda to help myself past lunchtime if I need it. So about midweek I crash and sleep in, then finish up the week.
I've read the threads here and seen a lot of symptoms that I have. I always thought it would be cool to have insomnia; now I look at it as pretty much the worst thing in the world.
So, I suppose my questino is this: Will I get worse? Should I be doing something to avoid it?
Common sense tells me that I should get up in the morning and go to work even though I won't be productive when I'm that tired, but common sense rarely prevails when my mind is so exhausted. If I really thought that dropping caffine for a longer period of time would help, I suppose I could do that. It's sure miserable. I do programming in the day, and I'm not a programmer, so I have to do a whole lot more creative thinking than most in order to be productive.
Any advice for me? I don't feel like I have any real serious issue yet, but I sure don't want it to develop any further. It's not a lot of fun.
Funny that Veritas would be one of those mentioned. Their software is overly cumbersome, they have a poor selection of information online, the cost of support has increased every year. Unfortunately, there isn't much in the way of competition- they have a lot of features that nobody else offers.
I really haven't decided what I think about the whole radio/tv censoring thing. We had a DJ here who was super popular with 13-17 year old kids, because he was by far the most perverted thing on the air. Just perversion for perversion's sake. He didn't make money for his station from the adults, he made it from the kids. We finally got rid of him because of the content of his radio show. I was very happy. Was this the wrong thing to do?
This is the first instance of "prior art" that I've seen brought up which actually covers the features that Microsoft claims are unique in it's patent. The parent's example is the one to follow up on.
Has anyone tested Dark Age of Camelot/Trials of Atlantis on Winex4 yet? I would be able to make the switch 100% if I could run DAoC.
A high powered rig *will* make you perform better in a resource intensive game such as Dark Age of Camelot, where the computer must render hundreds of characters and effects simultaniously at a high framerate to keep you in the battle. I play on a 3GHz P4 with a gig of ram and a Radeon 9800 pro, and I still have some trouble in certain situations with a large number of players. And yes, my system is *very* clean.
You totally missed the point. It's more like the department making up signs for a restaurant posted "You can make our pizza at home! Here's how:" and then decided to sue everyone who used the recipe.
You had a real photo of ENIAC? And multiple vacuum tubes!!??!!? You were obviously not middle income.. and I thought I had it easy!
Treat people like sheep, and they will respond as sheep. You absolutely must trust your kids at school or they will not be trustworthy. If my parents had done this, my first thought would be that I could now make sure that my cell phone went to the right place at the right time and I'd have proof that I was there. My parents had no reason not to trust me. I was allowed to wander all day, and you know what? I stayed out of trouble. The kids with strict parents were the ones who got caught doing stupid things. I didn't care about doing stupid things, because I could do whatever I wanted and I knew that *I* would be responsible for the consequences.
Same thing applies to gun control, DRM, employee productivity...
Appreciate the reply.
What rankles me is the fact that on flip side, you have your own share of nuts. And your nuts write the textbooks used our schools use today. The things that have been published as fact are absolutely hilarious. Everything about evolutionary theory has changed hugely over the last few decades. The things that were published and introduced in our classrooms (again, as fact) are scoffed at even by the evolutionist camp today. Why they think they can do the same thing with the new set of possible processes through which this might have taken place is beyond me. Next year, it'll all change again. I think it's all wrong to begin with. I think that rather than look for a way to validate the answer, we should look at the question again.
Our textbooks that teach evolutionary theory as fact are a perfect example of this. Textbooks with "facts" that have been proved innacurate as early as the mid 90s that are still being used to this day.
Apparently, you've never met the real Christian Right. My parents were the most conservative Christian parents you could ask for; I had access to pretty much anything I wanted. In my area, I was one of the first on the net- using a unix shell account. I was a usenet addict before that. I was a book nut, and I read science books from the library because they interested me. When I came up with different ideas from text books on evolutionary theory/big bang theory/etc, my dad would explain why he disagreed. I think you're confusing the Christian right with the nuts. I *am* the right wing extremist.
I agree with the way you summed your post up.
It seems to me that the no brainer use for a technology like this would be for breaking strong encryption.
I believe you, and I believe they're cool... but the test is, do they talk back to you? :)
3. Will you be able to take girls out on a date on such a thing? Possibly but no girl will agree to such an arraingement so effectively the answer is NO
Actually, I would imagine a segway would be a great pick up vehicle.. since 99.9999998% of the girls out there have never seen one before. C'mon, admit it.. you'd jump at the chance to try out a segway. Most girls would probably jump at the chance to ride a segway with you, as long as you weren't particularly creepy or smelly or huge. Huge being the most important one, since it might make it physically impossible....
You obviously don't understand the complexity of mastering a good multiplayer level in a 1st person shooter. It's not just running around shooting. The shooting becomes something your hand just does, the same way rotating your L shaped piece and dropping it into place isn't really what you're thinking about when you play Tetris. It's setting up for the takedown in both games that requires thought and tactical skill. For a good player, Quake3 is a whole lot more in depth. And besides, rockets are cool. So there!
I think you've misunderstood the author of the previous post. I don't believe he was lauding his ability to exert physical force over some random individual. I think he was talking about his ability to use DEADLY force if one of the "schoolyard bullies" threated his family with their physical force.
I've been a gamer on and off all my life. I played MUDs on local BBS systems with my 2400 baud modem, followed the FPS rage from Wolfenstein to Quake, RTS games from Command & Conquer to Age of Empires. Now I'm fairly active with Dark Age of Camelot. I would say that I'm addicted. But I would honestly say that I was addicted to snowboarding at the same time, until my second snowboarding accident. I was addicted to movies for a long time as well. It's easy for me to get caught up in something that I enjoy. The real question for me is not whether it's healthy or not. The real question is what actually matters to me. Is it more important to lead my online friends on a 6 hour raid to push the enemy back from our frontier, or storm the fort with my paintball gun and some buddies at my back? Or take some friends out for coffee and a movie? Is my time better spent practicing with my band or instructing a lower level guild member on realm vs realm fighting techniques?
As a Christian, the question means nil to me when when it's brought up in that way. I'm here to serve my God. My best friend died while serving in Bolivia; but unlike a lot of my friends, I'm not called to serve in a 3rd world country or be a preacher. I'm here to help my friends who have problems with their marriages, employment, health etc... I'm here to be a living example of God's love. Some of my closest friends now are people I've met through Dark Age of Camelot. I was a very intraverted child; I used to communicate better via my computer than I did face to face. That's changed as I've grown older, but I still have the ability to talk to someone heart to heart over the internet.
The average person will not run into an extreme case of addiction playing games online. Perhaps they'll neglect a class or two, big deal. It happens. I missed over a week of work both times that I broke my arm snowboarding. Was that better than the time I stayed up til 6 am leading 150 people in a raid and didn't come in to work til 10? Perhaps. It still hurts to raise my arm above my head... and the burning sensation in my eyes from looking at my monitor for 12 hours straight will go away in a day or two, I'm sure of it.
Murder with guns is not the stastic you should be looking at; look at the overall homicide rate. In a country where guns are less prevelant, there will of course be less death by shooting. However, if someone is determined to kill another person they will do it with whatever tool they can find for the job. Regardless of my personal preferance of dying to a gunshot as opposed to a knife wound, I would much rather face an opponent if we were both armed with guns as opposed to knives. I'm not an very athletic individual, but anyone can learn to be proficient with a gun. But, that doesn't statistically prove anything. The original web site that I got my statistics from does not have good references; if work ever slows down here I'll try to come up with my own statistics. I'd encourage you to do the same. Compare the gun ownership rates in a country or region with the violent crime and/or homicide rates in that same region. I did a similiar study in high school, but I don't have any of my references from that one either.
There will always be exceptions to the rule. There will always be someone who believes that they are invincible. And the truth is, whether or not they have access to a gun they will still find a weapon and commit murder. It will happen. I think we should discourage that by giving people the right to defend themselves with lethal force. Everyone respects that.
I would never argue that in the case of a robbery everyone would be safer if they had weapons. Pulling a gun is the easiest way to get yourself killed. However, if the would-be-robber knows that the people around him are armed they will be far less likely to try a robbery. This has been proven statistically. The Third International Crime Victimization Survey (ICVS) shows that crimes of all sorts, including murder, are lowest in the states with the highest rates of gun ownership. Burgularies in Canada are more than four times as likely to occur when the residents are home as they are in the US. The highest incident of violent crime in the industrialized world has been in England and Wales- as opposed to countries like Switzerland and Italy, where people own assult rifles and violent crime is at an all time low.
Stastically, we are better off when we allow (and encourage) our citizens to arm themselves for self defence. I personally do not own a firearm because I don't want that responsibility at this point. When I am married later this year, I will carry a weapon because feel that it is my responsiblity to protect my wife and family.
Don't treat people like sheep and expect them to do stupid things; if you do, they will respond accordingly. Treat them like intelligent human beings and they will rise to meet the challenge. This has also been proven statistically; note the declining public school system in the United States. But that is an entirely different argument.
I disagree. That's not a bad statistic. Nobody is going to arrest these people and throw them in jail for looking like a terrorist; they'll most likely be taken aside and checked out. It's not a big deal, they do that randomly anyhow. I'd much rather have 99.9% targeted people. Less people are hassled and more of the right people are caught.