3. Lack of parental involvement in their children's education. This may be one of the most important reasons that education is failing in the US. With both parents needing to work just to make ends meet because the average income level has declined while costs have increased, it makes it difficult for parents to spend the proper amount of time with their kids education.
Until these issues are addressed, we will continue to see a decline in education in the US.
This is not what they read out of the OECD report which by the way condemns all western post-industialized nations. I've read a lot of navel-gazing newspaper commentaries in 3 languages and they all echo one thing. If your parents are not well educated then you propably are, too. Both parents at work is not a new thing. The stay-at-home mum was an ideal of the middle-class and is the wet dream of conservatives in all nations. You always had to be reasonably well off to have only one adult doing the bread-winning trick.
In Germany for instance the conservatives thought it was a very good idea to subsidize families who didn't send their kids to day-care. But of course the money given to them isn't enough to recreate that old 19th century illusion of the ideal family. So those who need to have to adults working won't benefit of it and those who can afford to have one parent staying at home already can afford it. So much for that.
If the state wants to have an educated populace then it will have to get hold of the kids as soon as possible and as intensely as possible. Otherwise you will have to rely on the parents who became so by only rubbing their genitals against each other in a meaningful way. And you need to keep education universal. You need to teach problem-solving. You need to teach how to communicate. And you need to teach how to analyze. Instead we have parents who pressure against books they consider harmful and ideas that don't match their own. Well, tough. They shouldn't have too much say in these matters.
Parents are ideally there to encourage at home but in the worst case they will stifle it. You don't have to worry about the ideal but about the worst case and not rely on the parents.
Those countries who did well are often criticized for not teaching understanding or problem solving but brute force repetition. So perhaps the methodology of the OECD test is flawed, too. I dunno. Fact is the US is at the bottom rungs. Fact is it's got a lot of company down there. Fact is also that we need to take a look at what portions of the population are off worst and do something about them without dumbing down education for everybody else. I'd wager you will not find that the conservative wet dream of working husband, stay-at-home mum and 2.32 kids and 1.89 cars will not be represented highly.
Yep, I also read that interview.
It seems like he made it onto some blacklist. They won't tell him why and how he'd get off of it. This is really kafkaesk.
United States of America: avoid. How do they expect to attract the best and the brightest for conferences, university lectures or basically anything? And I'm not talking about those tech worker visas the industry loves to abuse. I'm talking about experts in their field. Of which there is only a couple of dozen.
The US seems to be hellbent on stopping any outside intellectual influx.
No, the discussion on universal health care started with the worker's movement in the late 19ieth century. In 1881 the German red socialist Emperor William issued the order to introduce a healthcare scheme for workers. The leftie Marxist Otto von Bismarck saw to it that it got implemented in 1883. They didn't come up with that since it had been a popular request for a much longer time. The rest of Europe either already was there or followed suit soon after.
So much for your heads up.
As I said, the US got dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century.
Interestingly, Mike Huckabee said the exact same thing yesterday.
Did he? Thankfully the usual talking heads don't reach my neck of the woods. Europe only watches in amazement the results of this absolute idiotic shutdown.
I think most countries plan to try not to be invaded rather than plan for being invaded.
I know that's the case here in the UK, we generally focus our efforts on keeping invaders out rather than worrying about them getting in.
But I guess we have the benefit of being an island which means we have a somewhat better natural protection against invasion which makes that easier I suppose.
You feel safe now, but just you wait. UKIP has uncovered an insidious plan! Apparently ALL Dutch citizens have been issued drinking straws to drink the North Sea empty so they can safely walk over to you and install their own king. Again.
They are only waiting for an extra large shipment of Kool-Aid.
Nigel Farage came to me in a dream dressed like a pixie and told me only I could prevent this by voting for him.
The good news is that the Republican party is about to explode. The bad news is that there is going to be a lot of collateral damage when it finally does.
In general I do agree with you. A GOP split doesn't seem unlikely. But apart from the financial reputation and the cost of the shutdown there will be no big damage. Even the standing reputation of US politics will remain intact. Reinforced even.
If the US is too big to fail, who will bail it out?
Representation in government has been co-opted by the political parties. They no longer represent the people in their districts, only their parties agenda.
If congress want to repeal Obamacare then they could, and should, try and pass a bill doing so
They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results.
What is it called after you attempt the same thing fourty-two times ?
I think I'll have to try this new tea party bargaining method. See I have the keys to the office. I can refuse to let anyone in the building unless *I* get a raise and they agree to get rid of the healthy snacks in the vending machines.
...and that Supreme Court ruling...
Most of the developed western countries have something like universal healthcare. And yet for some reason this is a huge problem in the US. Obama seems to be hell-bent to drag the US into the twentieth century. Kicking and screaming. And even has to be considered a progress. The current discussion(which is very much over and resolved) is so ninetieth century it's not even funny anymore.
want to blame the Republicans but in reality it takes two tango and the Democrats don't want to negotiate
Sorry dude, but I can give you countless examples over the last four years in which the Democrats moved quite a bit to the right during legislative negotiations while the Republicans moved exactly nothing. In fact in some cases further to the right after the first Democratic entreaties, there is at least one case in which Obama adopted the Republican proposal to the letter only for the GOP to say no.
Also Obamacare is already the product of negotiation. And the GOP has already made very clear there is no middle ground. And Boehner has zero room for negotiation.
The GOP is at the moment paralyzed by the success of the Tea Party. They are effectively holding the entire GOP hostage.
There are only three ways this can end:
The US defaults on its obligations. Which is bad. Terrifying bad. There will be movement before that as only the extreme right wing of the GOP seems to think this is acceptable.
A constitutional crisis. The head of the state(which for whatever stupid reason is also the head of the executive branch) declares the houses unable to do their job. I don't know if the US has a plan for such a case but this would propably lead to elections. Which would take longer than the 3 weeks left.
Members of the GOP who don't think to irrepably damage the US financially over Obamacare vote against the party line. Which will damage the GOP. Potentially tear it apart.
I don't see a short/mid/longterm winning scenario for the GOP.
Obama can't budge. There will be a constitutional crisis before he does.
A country does not always get the government it needs, but it always gets the one it deserves....
The "people" need to stop pretending they are not to blame for this.
The problem is that a large population of voters follows the hysteria that's been going on in US politics for some time. Just to remind you what's been going on the last few years:
Death panels
Obama was born in Kenya
Climate change isn't happening
Evolution is not a thing
Homosexuality is contagious ...
The people who subscribe to this vote for people who support their beliefs by means which at best can only be described as populistic. And this is a fraction of the GOP that holds the rest of the party hostage. They have a weak chief negotiator who fears for his post if he budges just one bit. The rest of the party also doesn't want to be "that guy". So negotiations are nearly impossible. And the major issue of contention is something that's been done by a majority of developed countries for decades, in some cases over a century.
The momentary shutdown is expected to cost more than Katrina. People can't pay their bills, contractors don't get payed, things go untended. This is already bad. If it indeed comes to a US credit default then the US will suffer for decades to come. All this over a bill that has been discussed in both houses, that's been drafted and redrafted to make it acceptable to be passed. It already is a reasonable compromise. And yet it gets blocked by a minority of a party that bullied the other bits of the party to vote against it. Meanwhile the rest of the world watches the US becoming a failed state.
This is insane and the result will be the GOP tearing itsself to pieces as in the following weeks members will not follow the party line dictated by a bunch of crazies. This is what you get when you embrace the lunatics to get some more seats in the vain hope to dominate the house. In reality they don't even have power over their own affairs.
I think bfandreas's premise was supposed to be that a significant fraction of mobile gamers are likely to already own a PlayStation 3 console and the controller that was bundled with it. Support in Android games for the Dual Shock 3 will satisfy PS3 owners but not people who own an Xbox 360 (which uses proprietary RF instead of Bluetooth) or a Wii (whose remote Google broke in Android 4.2) instead of a PS3.
Everybody who considers himself a gamer most likely has a controller.
I never really understood that "PC master race" reasoning that has been thrown around for a couple of years. We bought peripherals by the dozen back in the day. I bought a Soundblaster and a joystick for the original Wing Commander. I got a CH Flightstick for the original X-Wing and a fully fledged HOTAS system for Jane's F15. And yet people have a problem with buying a controller even if they like games that require two analogue controls.
Chances are most of us have a lot of boxes full with cables, controllers, keyboards and whatnot. That's what it's like to own a PC.
That's readly amazing. While I haven't tried my wireless 360 controller with my tablet I have had no trouble whatsoever plugging in a USB receiver for some no-name wirless keyboard and mouse.
As on OS Android is very complete. Even if it has a couple of problems.
You may find that while the US and Canada are not the market majority when it comes to mobile computing. It is at best tied with Europe. Asia will in fact be the biggest market. Due to the lousy network coverage the US still is considered a developing country compared to Europe.
Also I didn't have to buy a controller for my tablet since my PS3 controller connects to it via Bluetooth. All I had to do was to connect it once per USB and now it is registered with my tablet.
The only problem you get with Android gaming is iOS ports. Those typically don't properly support controllers.
So please excuse me for laughing at you while playing Amiga games with a stock PS3 controller on my tablet wherever I go.
...or you connect a simple PS3 controller like I just did. I felt the urge to beat my Riptide GP highscores just this afternoon. So I hooked up ma tablet to my TV and connected my PS3 controller via Bluetooth to it.
Whenever I read of somebody who complains about mobile devices only being capable of touch controls I really read of some bloody idiot who hasn't even tried. PS3 controllers work on Android at least since 4.0. No root required.
Given that they are currently working on reducing input latency I would suggest that it is a bit more than that. Seems like they are losing the X server. Which on a dedicated OS makes a TON of sense. Also they are getting rid of a lot of OS overhead. If they succeed then we will all win since they said they will release the source soon. But I don't quite see them tinkering on the kernel. They are propably busy in the userland stack so they won't invoce the wrath of Linus.
Would have been cool, tho. A fight between Linus and The Gabe would have been highly entertaining.
SteamOS is propably pretty X-less. AMD has just announced a new low-level API(they seem to be supported by DICE/EA on this one) and NVIDIA just this week have been falling over each other in their rush to announce proper Linux drivers.
Valve has a lot of weight to throw around and it seems like they did just this. I'm not convinced by the controller design since it seems to lack the haptic feedback of twin stick, but I'm actually quite intrigued by this whole Steam OS thing. If they price their SteamBox right and actually pull off that streaming thing it might just be my thing. At the moment I'm considering a 20m HDMI and USB extension from my PC to my TV. Some games I prefer to play with a controller and then I might just as well do that on my TV, on my couch, in my living room.
She was charged with insider trading, yes. But that got thrown out pretty soon.
Her broker got wind the CEO of another company was selling all of his shares. Neither Stewart nor her broker knew why. These were the facts as accepted by the court. And on that basis they concluded that insider trading laws didn't apply to her actions.
While you ARE entitled to an opinion you should take proper care to know at least a little bit. Otherwise you are an easy mark for populist opinion forming processes. I'm pretty convinced that's not who you want to be. So please take some care. Wikipedia would have been sufficient in this case. If you want to know more I can point you to the legal analysis.
Nope. The judge threw out the insider trading charges first thing in the morning.
She got jailed for Obstruction Of Justice(aka we caught you at a dishonesty while investigating you for a non-crime). Whenever you read charges like Obstruction, Wire/Mail Fraud, Consiparcy,... in a federal case then you read about the DoJ being a dick. They ain't got nothing, count on jury stupidity and plea bargains. Whatever DA gets results that way is not fit to run for a higher office since he took a huge dump on what justice is supposed to be all about.
This one is a bit different. The owner who knows nothing about software development made frequent change requests and whoever stood up to him got fired. Small wonder management was a direction- and spineless set of bastards. In the end they only made Star Wars games for that one-trick retard.
But at least he got them to squeal like little piggies.
Yes, well, to found a new nation you will need to find a new continent. Otherwise all the space in Africa, Europe and Asia has been already covered by nations.
My point is that wether you found a new nation on principles or your change your nation ofer the centuries towards those principles doesn't make too much of a difference. the bottom line is the same.
Also I wouldn't turn towards the Anglo-Saxons to find human rights principles. There's a reason why we call these the dark ages. And given how often England and by extension Britain has been conquered it is very hard to pinpoint when that nation has been founded. The only thing that really remained from them is leadership and kingship by consent. Whoever tried to establish an absolutistic monarchy in the French style either found himself without a head or didn't last too long(notable exception being Henry VIII). Even Edward the First had to deal with a parliament to fund his war against the Scots/Welsh/Irish.
But that's not the point. The US have neither invented those ideas, nor were they the first to build those into their society or even apply then universally and without exception. We are still waiting for the last one. I would gladly relocate to any place that gets that one right. In the meantime I'll stick with where I am even if it is as flawed as the rest. And that includes the US. This "exceptionalism" halo is neither deserved nor is it of any use.
Your definition is also off.
The OP had it right with their definition of American Exceptionalism.
In human history, The United States of America is the first country founded with the concept of inherent human rights and a government that is intended to protect those rights, as opposed to providing wealth/power to the governing body.
By that definition that claim would have to go to England 500 years before the US were founded. Although one could argue the Provisions of Oxford were about civil rights as was the Magna Carta.
The idea of human rights is quite a bit older. A lot in fact. The first thing that springs to mind is the rule of Cyrus the Great. Even if the major philosophical underpinnings of how we understand them today were done in the Age of Enlightenment they still remembered that one.
The US is only the first country where it stuck to some extent. With the caveat that you'd better be rich and your skin had the right hue. The idea was there but the execution was a bit half-assed.
If that is supposed to be the basis of the US Exceptionalism then it does disregard a couple of thousands of years of human history, the history of the US and only reinforces the profound fact that it is puerile nonsense.
Maemo wasn't multi-touch capable. Which was a very big deal back then. In fact it already was a big deal when they started working on it. Nokia simply came too late. After the iPhone became a success they didn't immediately and wholeheartedly upgrade/change their platforms. Maemo was deficient in many aspects, lacked direction and was too late. It would have been revolutionary 5-10 years before. But then it was simply a geeky tech demo. I watched every demonstration video they had. And when I finally gave up my disgust and had somebody show me an actual iPhone I realized that Nokia was doomed.
We had been saying that Nokia was in decline while they still made a killing with feature phones in emerging markets. Their problem was that the company was deeply dysfunctional on a middle-management level and they were already very dead when Elop took over.
I would take the downfall of Nokia as a cautionary tale about market leaders who spend 10 years not taking risks and not watching if its corporate structure and culture are productive. At one point they could have easily shoveled hundreds of millions into some new and shiny before or after the.com crash but they played it safe and let the corporate culture of warring tribes continue without showing that doing so would be benefitial. Inertia as a motivation kills.
Elop was quite right in his warring plattforms memo.
The only thing unique about the United States is the resources. That is what is so sad about this: the entire idea of "American Exceptionalism" is the notion that the United States stands alone as a country; Unique in it's respect for freedom and human rights. The NSA's violation of every honor code existing in TCP/IP has demonstrated the United States to be equally mediocre as any other country, where virtue and abuse of power are concerned.
Any country claims to be excellent in some way. Even the best. Problem is, there can only be one best and bugger me if I'd know which one it is.
Once you lose your credibility you can never get it back. Its actions have left the entire internet community in search for new social & technological methods for enforcing these basic tenets of privacy that were previously easy to support via a fragile honor system: the United States promised to not be a dick and molest other people's cake as it got passed to the left.
The reputation of the US has been so thoroughly ruined during the last 50 years that hardly anybody notices the the UK is the worst offender in this. The GCHQ has been far more aggressive in its snooping and the way the UK deals with it(ie not at all) is a bit of a concern. In contrast the US has been quite open on admitting things they had been caught with and are promising to work on the oversight. That may only be lip service but at least they take the time to pull the wool over our face instead of telling us nothing.
If we wanted an unsnoopable internet then we would have to make sure that no data enters the sovereign soil of anybody we don't quite trust. Which nowadays is basically everyone. Simply cutting the Yanks out of the picture will achieve absolutely nothing since they are only part of the problem. And they haven't even created it.
And turned brass was everywhere. I loved the puzzles, the incredible transport monorails, the sheer quiet brilliance. And quiet it was, and cerebral. Still looking for something quite that good again.
To me it was overproduced insubstantial pap. And exactly that is its legacy.
Our mainstream games today are best compared to the FMV interactive movies from the mid nineties. Only that the railroaded stuff is now rendered on your machine which offers a little bit more freedom. Designers then wished they were Hollywood directors and designers now think they are Hollywood directors.
Slashdot Mirror
3. Lack of parental involvement in their children's education. This may be one of the most important reasons that education is failing in the US. With both parents needing to work just to make ends meet because the average income level has declined while costs have increased, it makes it difficult for parents to spend the proper amount of time with their kids education.
Until these issues are addressed, we will continue to see a decline in education in the US.
This is not what they read out of the OECD report which by the way condemns all western post-industialized nations. I've read a lot of navel-gazing newspaper commentaries in 3 languages and they all echo one thing. If your parents are not well educated then you propably are, too. Both parents at work is not a new thing. The stay-at-home mum was an ideal of the middle-class and is the wet dream of conservatives in all nations. You always had to be reasonably well off to have only one adult doing the bread-winning trick.
In Germany for instance the conservatives thought it was a very good idea to subsidize families who didn't send their kids to day-care. But of course the money given to them isn't enough to recreate that old 19th century illusion of the ideal family. So those who need to have to adults working won't benefit of it and those who can afford to have one parent staying at home already can afford it. So much for that.
If the state wants to have an educated populace then it will have to get hold of the kids as soon as possible and as intensely as possible. Otherwise you will have to rely on the parents who became so by only rubbing their genitals against each other in a meaningful way. And you need to keep education universal. You need to teach problem-solving. You need to teach how to communicate. And you need to teach how to analyze. Instead we have parents who pressure against books they consider harmful and ideas that don't match their own. Well, tough. They shouldn't have too much say in these matters.
Parents are ideally there to encourage at home but in the worst case they will stifle it. You don't have to worry about the ideal but about the worst case and not rely on the parents.
Those countries who did well are often criticized for not teaching understanding or problem solving but brute force repetition. So perhaps the methodology of the OECD test is flawed, too. I dunno. Fact is the US is at the bottom rungs. Fact is it's got a lot of company down there. Fact is also that we need to take a look at what portions of the population are off worst and do something about them without dumbing down education for everybody else. I'd wager you will not find that the conservative wet dream of working husband, stay-at-home mum and 2.32 kids and 1.89 cars will not be represented highly.
Yep, I also read that interview.
It seems like he made it onto some blacklist. They won't tell him why and how he'd get off of it. This is really kafkaesk.
United States of America: avoid. How do they expect to attract the best and the brightest for conferences, university lectures or basically anything? And I'm not talking about those tech worker visas the industry loves to abuse. I'm talking about experts in their field. Of which there is only a couple of dozen.
The US seems to be hellbent on stopping any outside intellectual influx.
No, the discussion on universal health care started with the worker's movement in the late 19ieth century. In 1881 the German red socialist Emperor William issued the order to introduce a healthcare scheme for workers. The leftie Marxist Otto von Bismarck saw to it that it got implemented in 1883. They didn't come up with that since it had been a popular request for a much longer time. The rest of Europe either already was there or followed suit soon after.
So much for your heads up.
As I said, the US got dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century.
Interestingly, Mike Huckabee said the exact same thing yesterday.
Did he? Thankfully the usual talking heads don't reach my neck of the woods. Europe only watches in amazement the results of this absolute idiotic shutdown.
I think most countries plan to try not to be invaded rather than plan for being invaded.
I know that's the case here in the UK, we generally focus our efforts on keeping invaders out rather than worrying about them getting in.
But I guess we have the benefit of being an island which means we have a somewhat better natural protection against invasion which makes that easier I suppose.
You feel safe now, but just you wait. UKIP has uncovered an insidious plan! Apparently ALL Dutch citizens have been issued drinking straws to drink the North Sea empty so they can safely walk over to you and install their own king. Again.
They are only waiting for an extra large shipment of Kool-Aid.
Nigel Farage came to me in a dream dressed like a pixie and told me only I could prevent this by voting for him.
The good news is that the Republican party is about to explode. The bad news is that there is going to be a lot of collateral damage when it finally does.
In general I do agree with you. A GOP split doesn't seem unlikely. But apart from the financial reputation and the cost of the shutdown there will be no big damage. Even the standing reputation of US politics will remain intact. Reinforced even.
If the US is too big to fail, who will bail it out?
Representation in government has been co-opted by the political parties. They no longer represent the people in their districts, only their parties agenda.
Read more about the Hastert rule and find out where the fault really lies and stop spreading talking points .
Oh my god! Is that even constitutional? This seems to be a gross misuse of office.
If congress want to repeal Obamacare then they could, and should, try and pass a bill doing so
They say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results.
What is it called after you attempt the same thing fourty-two times ?
I think I'll have to try this new tea party bargaining method. See I have the keys to the office. I can refuse to let anyone in the building unless *I* get a raise and they agree to get rid of the healthy snacks in the vending machines.
...and that Supreme Court ruling...
Most of the developed western countries have something like universal healthcare. And yet for some reason this is a huge problem in the US. Obama seems to be hell-bent to drag the US into the twentieth century. Kicking and screaming. And even has to be considered a progress. The current discussion(which is very much over and resolved) is so ninetieth century it's not even funny anymore.
want to blame the Republicans but in reality it takes two tango and the Democrats don't want to negotiate
Sorry dude, but I can give you countless examples over the last four years in which the Democrats moved quite a bit to the right during legislative negotiations while the Republicans moved exactly nothing. In fact in some cases further to the right after the first Democratic entreaties, there is at least one case in which Obama adopted the Republican proposal to the letter only for the GOP to say no.
Also Obamacare is already the product of negotiation. And the GOP has already made very clear there is no middle ground. And Boehner has zero room for negotiation.
The GOP is at the moment paralyzed by the success of the Tea Party. They are effectively holding the entire GOP hostage.
There are only three ways this can end:
The US defaults on its obligations. Which is bad. Terrifying bad. There will be movement before that as only the extreme right wing of the GOP seems to think this is acceptable.
A constitutional crisis. The head of the state(which for whatever stupid reason is also the head of the executive branch) declares the houses unable to do their job. I don't know if the US has a plan for such a case but this would propably lead to elections. Which would take longer than the 3 weeks left.
Members of the GOP who don't think to irrepably damage the US financially over Obamacare vote against the party line. Which will damage the GOP. Potentially tear it apart.
I don't see a short/mid/longterm winning scenario for the GOP.
Obama can't budge. There will be a constitutional crisis before he does.
... the laughing stock of the western world, right? No other country has such an idiotic system (or as much partisan bickering).
Italy is in a very similar situation.
Never a truer word was spoken...
A country does not always get the government it needs, but it always gets the one it deserves....
The "people" need to stop pretending they are not to blame for this.
The problem is that a large population of voters follows the hysteria that's been going on in US politics for some time. Just to remind you what's been going on the last few years:
...
Death panels
Obama was born in Kenya
Climate change isn't happening
Evolution is not a thing
Homosexuality is contagious
The people who subscribe to this vote for people who support their beliefs by means which at best can only be described as populistic. And this is a fraction of the GOP that holds the rest of the party hostage. They have a weak chief negotiator who fears for his post if he budges just one bit. The rest of the party also doesn't want to be "that guy". So negotiations are nearly impossible. And the major issue of contention is something that's been done by a majority of developed countries for decades, in some cases over a century.
The momentary shutdown is expected to cost more than Katrina. People can't pay their bills, contractors don't get payed, things go untended. This is already bad. If it indeed comes to a US credit default then the US will suffer for decades to come. All this over a bill that has been discussed in both houses, that's been drafted and redrafted to make it acceptable to be passed. It already is a reasonable compromise. And yet it gets blocked by a minority of a party that bullied the other bits of the party to vote against it. Meanwhile the rest of the world watches the US becoming a failed state.
This is insane and the result will be the GOP tearing itsself to pieces as in the following weeks members will not follow the party line dictated by a bunch of crazies. This is what you get when you embrace the lunatics to get some more seats in the vain hope to dominate the house. In reality they don't even have power over their own affairs.
I think bfandreas's premise was supposed to be that a significant fraction of mobile gamers are likely to already own a PlayStation 3 console and the controller that was bundled with it. Support in Android games for the Dual Shock 3 will satisfy PS3 owners but not people who own an Xbox 360 (which uses proprietary RF instead of Bluetooth) or a Wii (whose remote Google broke in Android 4.2) instead of a PS3.
Everybody who considers himself a gamer most likely has a controller.
I never really understood that "PC master race" reasoning that has been thrown around for a couple of years. We bought peripherals by the dozen back in the day. I bought a Soundblaster and a joystick for the original Wing Commander. I got a CH Flightstick for the original X-Wing and a fully fledged HOTAS system for Jane's F15. And yet people have a problem with buying a controller even if they like games that require two analogue controls.
Chances are most of us have a lot of boxes full with cables, controllers, keyboards and whatnot. That's what it's like to own a PC.
That's readly amazing. While I haven't tried my wireless 360 controller with my tablet I have had no trouble whatsoever plugging in a USB receiver for some no-name wirless keyboard and mouse.
As on OS Android is very complete. Even if it has a couple of problems.
You may find that while the US and Canada are not the market majority when it comes to mobile computing. It is at best tied with Europe. Asia will in fact be the biggest market. Due to the lousy network coverage the US still is considered a developing country compared to Europe.
Also I didn't have to buy a controller for my tablet since my PS3 controller connects to it via Bluetooth. All I had to do was to connect it once per USB and now it is registered with my tablet.
The only problem you get with Android gaming is iOS ports. Those typically don't properly support controllers.
So please excuse me for laughing at you while playing Amiga games with a stock PS3 controller on my tablet wherever I go.
...or you connect a simple PS3 controller like I just did. I felt the urge to beat my Riptide GP highscores just this afternoon. So I hooked up ma tablet to my TV and connected my PS3 controller via Bluetooth to it.
Whenever I read of somebody who complains about mobile devices only being capable of touch controls I really read of some bloody idiot who hasn't even tried. PS3 controllers work on Android at least since 4.0. No root required.
Given that they are currently working on reducing input latency I would suggest that it is a bit more than that. Seems like they are losing the X server. Which on a dedicated OS makes a TON of sense. Also they are getting rid of a lot of OS overhead. If they succeed then we will all win since they said they will release the source soon. But I don't quite see them tinkering on the kernel. They are propably busy in the userland stack so they won't invoce the wrath of Linus.
Would have been cool, tho. A fight between Linus and The Gabe would have been highly entertaining.
SteamOS is propably pretty X-less. AMD has just announced a new low-level API(they seem to be supported by DICE/EA on this one) and NVIDIA just this week have been falling over each other in their rush to announce proper Linux drivers.
...and no, I'm not interested in a console.
Valve has a lot of weight to throw around and it seems like they did just this.
I'm not convinced by the controller design since it seems to lack the haptic feedback of twin stick, but I'm actually quite intrigued by this whole Steam OS thing. If they price their SteamBox right and actually pull off that streaming thing it might just be my thing. At the moment I'm considering a 20m HDMI and USB extension from my PC to my TV. Some games I prefer to play with a controller and then I might just as well do that on my TV, on my couch, in my living room.
She was charged with insider trading, yes. But that got thrown out pretty soon.
Her broker got wind the CEO of another company was selling all of his shares. Neither Stewart nor her broker knew why. These were the facts as accepted by the court. And on that basis they concluded that insider trading laws didn't apply to her actions.
While you ARE entitled to an opinion you should take proper care to know at least a little bit. Otherwise you are an easy mark for populist opinion forming processes. I'm pretty convinced that's not who you want to be. So please take some care. Wikipedia would have been sufficient in this case. If you want to know more I can point you to the legal analysis.
Nope. The judge threw out the insider trading charges first thing in the morning.
She got jailed for Obstruction Of Justice(aka we caught you at a dishonesty while investigating you for a non-crime). Whenever you read charges like Obstruction, Wire/Mail Fraud, Consiparcy,... in a federal case then you read about the DoJ being a dick. They ain't got nothing, count on jury stupidity and plea bargains. Whatever DA gets results that way is not fit to run for a higher office since he took a huge dump on what justice is supposed to be all about.
This one is a bit different. The owner who knows nothing about software development made frequent change requests and whoever stood up to him got fired. Small wonder management was a direction- and spineless set of bastards. In the end they only made Star Wars games for that one-trick retard.
But at least he got them to squeal like little piggies.
Yes, well, to found a new nation you will need to find a new continent. Otherwise all the space in Africa, Europe and Asia has been already covered by nations.
My point is that wether you found a new nation on principles or your change your nation ofer the centuries towards those principles doesn't make too much of a difference. the bottom line is the same.
Also I wouldn't turn towards the Anglo-Saxons to find human rights principles. There's a reason why we call these the dark ages. And given how often England and by extension Britain has been conquered it is very hard to pinpoint when that nation has been founded. The only thing that really remained from them is leadership and kingship by consent. Whoever tried to establish an absolutistic monarchy in the French style either found himself without a head or didn't last too long(notable exception being Henry VIII). Even Edward the First had to deal with a parliament to fund his war against the Scots/Welsh/Irish.
But that's not the point. The US have neither invented those ideas, nor were they the first to build those into their society or even apply then universally and without exception. We are still waiting for the last one. I would gladly relocate to any place that gets that one right. In the meantime I'll stick with where I am even if it is as flawed as the rest. And that includes the US. This "exceptionalism" halo is neither deserved nor is it of any use.
Your definition is also off. The OP had it right with their definition of American Exceptionalism. In human history, The United States of America is the first country founded with the concept of inherent human rights and a government that is intended to protect those rights, as opposed to providing wealth/power to the governing body.
By that definition that claim would have to go to England 500 years before the US were founded. Although one could argue the Provisions of Oxford were about civil rights as was the Magna Carta.
The idea of human rights is quite a bit older. A lot in fact. The first thing that springs to mind is the rule of Cyrus the Great. Even if the major philosophical underpinnings of how we understand them today were done in the Age of Enlightenment they still remembered that one.
The US is only the first country where it stuck to some extent. With the caveat that you'd better be rich and your skin had the right hue. The idea was there but the execution was a bit half-assed.
If that is supposed to be the basis of the US Exceptionalism then it does disregard a couple of thousands of years of human history, the history of the US and only reinforces the profound fact that it is puerile nonsense.
Maemo wasn't multi-touch capable. Which was a very big deal back then. In fact it already was a big deal when they started working on it. Nokia simply came too late. After the iPhone became a success they didn't immediately and wholeheartedly upgrade/change their platforms. Maemo was deficient in many aspects, lacked direction and was too late. It would have been revolutionary 5-10 years before. But then it was simply a geeky tech demo. I watched every demonstration video they had. And when I finally gave up my disgust and had somebody show me an actual iPhone I realized that Nokia was doomed.
.com crash but they played it safe and let the corporate culture of warring tribes continue without showing that doing so would be benefitial. Inertia as a motivation kills.
We had been saying that Nokia was in decline while they still made a killing with feature phones in emerging markets. Their problem was that the company was deeply dysfunctional on a middle-management level and they were already very dead when Elop took over.
I would take the downfall of Nokia as a cautionary tale about market leaders who spend 10 years not taking risks and not watching if its corporate structure and culture are productive. At one point they could have easily shoveled hundreds of millions into some new and shiny before or after the
Elop was quite right in his warring plattforms memo.
The only thing unique about the United States is the resources. That is what is so sad about this: the entire idea of "American Exceptionalism" is the notion that the United States stands alone as a country; Unique in it's respect for freedom and human rights. The NSA's violation of every honor code existing in TCP/IP has demonstrated the United States to be equally mediocre as any other country, where virtue and abuse of power are concerned.
Any country claims to be excellent in some way. Even the best. Problem is, there can only be one best and bugger me if I'd know which one it is.
Once you lose your credibility you can never get it back. Its actions have left the entire internet community in search for new social & technological methods for enforcing these basic tenets of privacy that were previously easy to support via a fragile honor system: the United States promised to not be a dick and molest other people's cake as it got passed to the left.
The reputation of the US has been so thoroughly ruined during the last 50 years that hardly anybody notices the the UK is the worst offender in this. The GCHQ has been far more aggressive in its snooping and the way the UK deals with it(ie not at all) is a bit of a concern. In contrast the US has been quite open on admitting things they had been caught with and are promising to work on the oversight. That may only be lip service but at least they take the time to pull the wool over our face instead of telling us nothing.
If we wanted an unsnoopable internet then we would have to make sure that no data enters the sovereign soil of anybody we don't quite trust. Which nowadays is basically everyone. Simply cutting the Yanks out of the picture will achieve absolutely nothing since they are only part of the problem. And they haven't even created it.
And turned brass was everywhere. I loved the puzzles, the incredible transport monorails, the sheer quiet brilliance. And quiet it was, and cerebral. Still looking for something quite that good again.
To me it was overproduced insubstantial pap. And exactly that is its legacy.
Our mainstream games today are best compared to the FMV interactive movies from the mid nineties. Only that the railroaded stuff is now rendered on your machine which offers a little bit more freedom. Designers then wished they were Hollywood directors and designers now think they are Hollywood directors.