MGS4 was the epic story. It was also too self-referential.
GTA4 was the grand sandbox. But it could've used a solid anchoring experience in the middle somewhere.
Fable 2 was the accessible lovable. But it could've used a pinch more depth.
Fallout 3 was the total mood and setting. But it wasn't quite as satisfying as its predecessors.
World of Goo was the great cheap date. So was Braid. Braid was the cheap arthouse-and-museum date, Goo was the beer-and-pizza date.
And if you were a hardcore Japanese RPG fan, there was Persona 4. And if you were the outgoing, social tagalong, then you had Left 4 Dead. And if you're one of the rare Wii holdouts, you had Super Smash Bros Brawl.
Y'know, some years, Game of the Year awards are tough. But this year, it's going to be nothing but arguments. There was no single flawless game (enthusiasm for the consistently high-rated GTA4 seemed to fall off precipitously at a certain point), but there was an "excellent" game in every category. This was the year of, choose your own damned best game of the year.
Now, please excuse me. I'm going to go play some more Rock Band 2.
Web-based e-mail users can continue to access their e-mail at the Verizon Web site until Feb. 6. After that date, Fastiggi said users will need to log on to www.MyFairPoint.net. Customers then click on Web mail and type in their existing user name@myfairpoint.net and existing password.
AOL, Yahoo! and MSN subscribers will continue to have access to content but will no longer be able to access their e-mail through the third party Web site. Instead, Yahoo! and other third party e-mail will be accessed directly at the MyFairPoint.net portal.
This is all rather vague. What is this "access to content" that I'll still have without having "access to e-mail?"
Also, since many newspapers are little more than repackaged AP and Reuters news, looking at the NY Times for guidance - I don't know what their value proposition is supposed to be.
I've heard at least one pundit suggest that maybe some newspapers should become like the AP - disassociate themselves from the publishing side of things. Stop publishing their newspapers themselves and instead become a subscription service that sells local coverage of their news to other newspapers. Whether it would actually work is beyond me, but it's an interesting theory.
Buddy, knowing what I know now, if I was given the choice between going into video game development and going into plumbing, I'd have made more money and been more satisfied with my career 99 times out of 100 learning to fix a pipe and pretending I was Mario while doing it.
You know, if you're going into the games market - or ANY entertainment market, music, movies, books - and expect it to be your career, then you're going to be disappointed unless you really have good contacts and really know what you're doing. This is all kind of tangent to the original article, but the similarity is that figuring out this stuff really isn't that easy. It's not that easy to pitch to your shareholders and executive and marketing that everything will be better if you just don't bother trying to stop pirates, and if you're a company that hasn't had this conversation or innately believes that piracy is wrong in every branch of your organization, then you're probably not big enough to make the Top 100 Dowloads list on thepiratebay.
Building on what the parent suggests, here, publishers like EA deserve to be excoriated for some of their DRM antics, but just like piracy goes up when the prices of goods goes up, so does the worth of anti-piracy efforts go up when the profits goes down. Do you think that the big conspiracy efforts like Steam to stop people from being able to re-sell their games on the used market would exist if Gamestop hadn't made the used game industry such a serious force? Would piracy really be as much of a bother if it took more than just a Google search to crack a game's copy protection? Lord knows a lot of people would rather just pony up the 99 cents on iTunes than spend days on Limewire trying to find a half-decent quality version of a song for free.
The only easy thing that can be said about the issue is that there's no flat easy answer. We're still gonna be bitching about this thing a decade from now.
But you're talking about the price of transporting the fuel versus the price of transporting the actual components of the plant. Transporting the "iron" for the windmills would be like asking about the cost of transporting the bricks and machinery to build the coal power plant. And then, while the coal power plant needs to constantly have new fuel shipped into it - even by efficient means - you don't need to consistently ship sunlight in to the solar plant.
Do you also then take into account the amount of transport cost for the materials for building the coal power plant? And the transport cost for constantly shipping in fresh coal? (Or uranium?)
And it's worth noting that many internships can turn permanent once you get out of school. "Oh, so, your internship is over. It's been nice having you. Hey, Steve, could you go put a new posting up for an intern on the website. Oh, by the way, also put up a listing for that second-rank programmer that needs a year's experience and preferably knows something about the kind of systems we use. Gee, where are we gonna find someone like that-- Oh, hey!"
Yeah, government monopolized services tend to suck. Like, I heard that in Europe, the government owns the cable lines and only leases them out to ISPs, and they only get triple our bandwidth with more competition in one area! What a freaking waste!
A while ago, I told a programmer friend that I was thinking of teaching myself a little programming, maybe go back to school for it sooner or later, and I asked him if he could recommend a beginner's book. He does most of his work in C++, so he gave me an old-version copy of Beginning C++ Game Programming / Michael Dawson. He teaches basic CompSci classes still at a local colleges and is quite fond of the book. It's a pretty solid book that teaches almost all through direct examples, using short games as a framework for the examples.
When I'd finished that book, I asked him what he thought I should pick up next. He suggested maybe I should get something on data structures. So I ended up picking up a used book off of the net for data structures, one that advertised itself as being very simple to read and using lots of examples. This "simple" book was less like a book of real-world theory and more like an algebra book. All of the uses of the various structures were presented in a "When X, cout Y" format, and I found myself reading and re-reading a lot of things just to figure out what all of the abstraction meant and what its purpose was.
You're going to be teaching kids that are currently taking a lot of classes that feel like just filler to them, that are just taking up time to fill out their credits. IMHO, try not to clutter them up with just another "memorization class" - try to find material that engages or amuses them rather than just throwing facts and language at them.
First, if McCain had chosen Romney, he would have greatly pleased fiscal conservatives and proven that he could mend ties in the fractured Republican party. If he had chosen Kay Hutchinson, he would have just as well "energized his base" in proving that he could pick an interesting VP, but would have avoided the experience issue. Why he chose Palin when he had other choices that didn't carry such a negative connotation is mind-boggling.
Number two - there are two kinds of "disgruntled Clinton voters." The first kind are the ones who were Republican in the last election, who switched tickets to try and vote her into office, and who are going back to the Republican side now that she's lost. He already has these women, and they aren't all that much. The other group of Clinton voters are liberals, and if you're telling me that a woman with 2% of Clinton's experience and passion with completely opposing views on liberal issues is going to somehow steal back Clinton voters... Yeah, there may be a few, but if you wanted Clinton voters that badly, KAY HUTCHINSON.
This is the other incredible argument here - that just putting a woman on his ticket means that he appeals to Clinton voters. This is, quite brutally, a sexist argument. It is the belief that women will vote for another woman, no matter what their issues are. It is a belief that the women who voted for Clinton will turn around and vote for another woman with completely opposite beliefs, that they cared nothing about Clinton's policies and only about her gender. It is the belief that Clinton's voters were shallow and stupid. It is a thinly disguised sexist argument.
So you're saying that the number two spot doesn't matter? That she wasn't hired to actually do anything on the job. To say that it doesn't matter that Palin is less experienced is to say that the VP is a position with no meaning and no sway, so it doesn't matter if experience doesn't matter. It's an admission that Palin was put on the ticket for one reason - not because of her strengths, not because of what she brings to the White House, only because she's a woman. We don't expect her to actually do anything, so it's okay that she has no experience.
I repeat - if McCain, the older man with bouts with disease should fall ill to old age, then this woman becomes president. Not number two, but number one. McCain has come out and said that this woman with almost no experience is actually experienced enough to be understudy to the most powerful position in the land. McCain is either short-sighted of having delusion of immortality.
And that doesn't matter? That doesn't matter that the "Experience is Everything!" campaign just decided that experience doesn't mean squat for the NUMBER TWO POSITION in the country?! Can you imagine Palin inheriting the number one spot? Is that something that the experience-loving McCain fans would be able to handle?
Yes, we know. We know Obama is running for president. We know he's inexperienced. You keep saying that. You were saying it last month, last week, yesterday, you kept saying it. So why, why now, have you given us the least bit of ability to say it about McCain?! Why would you do that? We know what you think of Obama - why would you give us the chance to change what people think about McCain?!
This whole thing just absolutely boggles my mind! I do not for the slightest moment understand the least bit of logic behind it!
This is the failing here. The experience argument is not Obama's argument - it's McCain's argument. What are you baiting Obama into here? Into talking about experience? Two weeks ago, McCain was talking about Obama's experience. He was talking about it constantly. McCain is experienced, and Obama is not. That was his constant line. That was a central point of his theme.
Now, after the Palin pick, what changes about the McCain strategy? He still calls Obama inexperienced. He still says that he represents the best leadership.
But... what about the other side of this? For the past two weeks, Democrats have constantly said, "We respect McCain's experience, but..." before saying anything attacking him. McCain had the experience angle so locked up that no one could speak against it except to try and discredit experience as a whole. But now, suddenly, there's a very inexperienced candidate sharing the ticket with McCain. From now on, whenever McCain shouts, "Experience!" the Dems will respond, "So why is there a two-year governor on your ticket? Why is your second-in-command even younger than Obama? If you claim experience matters, then what is Palin doing on your ticket?"
This is what I cannot understand about this pick. Falling "prey" to it? What do you mean? We already were prey to it! You were winning that one! You had the experience argument locked up! You could talk about Obama's experience all day long! It's probably the number one reason McCain is so close to Obama in the polls, even though so many people favor kicking the Republicans out now!
Why in the world would you hand this to the Democrats? Why would McCain give himself a weakness like this? McCain is now no longer the solemn voice of experience! We now have the spectre that if McCain should die naturally of old age, then this woman becomes president! McCain has just weakened his own number one argument! Why in the world would he DO something like this?!
"If Obama with all of his credentials had been white?" I dunno. If McCain, with all of his credentials, had never been a POW? If he'd just fought in the war and come home? Maybe. But this, one way or another, no matter how you slice it, this is an incredible pick for VP. This woman is going to have to debate Joe Biden in the VP debates. It's unimaginable that this woman was chosen to have a strong presence in the White House after the election (whereas Biden would almost certainly help to craft policy and twist arms in the Senate). What was this woman brought in for? Could it seriously have just been because she was a woman, with no other factors considered?
You're right - a lot of the attacks used against Obama will also be used against Palin. Those attacks would have continued to be used against Obama if McCain had chosen Kay Hutchinson, or Condoleeza Rice, or even Mitt Romney. But instead, McCain chose the option that allows those attacks to also come against himself. I truly, truly want to know - who in McCain's campaign made this decision?
Oh, so you mean she was born in a less wealthy household but managed to prove herself in order to go to an established college to learn law, spent a great deal of time overseas and has a strong understanding of the foreign experience, and has spent years in a politically dangerous city honing her skills as a practical, strong rabble-rouser?
Go ahead, keep pushing that meme. Keep saying that she's just as experienced as Obama is. Keep saying that it's all right that the Candidate of Experience (TM) just decided that if he should become indisposed then the commander-in-chief will be a woman with no foreign policy experience and spent most of her life in a state with a total population less than the city of Chicago, but it doesn't matter because Obama has less experience than she does. I'm sure that those independent voters will totally buy that meme.
Wait a minute. A conservative. A woman who is not a strong candidate - a woman who has been much more passive and has much less political experience. A woman who does not believe in abortion. The half-term governor of a red state.
Are you honestly implying that this is going to make the feminists happy?
I mean, seriously, not just the regular soccer mom public, many of whom were Republicans who voted in the Democratic primary at a chance at getting Clinton elected. You're seriously implying that FEMINISTS, that women who are interested in women's rights and choices are going to see this as a reason to vote for McCain?
If I were going to be making bets, I'd be laying odds that in the next few days, you're going to be seeing a lot of blog posts by some very pissed-off feminists who feel insulted that this is how McCain decided to try and win them over, that he thought he could bring in some of the women who were supporting one of the most powerful women in American political history by offering them an unexperienced, unnoticeable woman who disagrees with them on most "women's" issues. You keep using that word "feminist" - I don't think that word means what you think it means.
To quote a blogger on National Review, if this person with all of her credentials and history had been a man, would she have gotten nominated? If you think that this pick didn't have anything to do with trying to pander to disgruntled Hillary Clinton voters, then I've got a bridge to nowhere in Alaska to sell you.
Do I really buy the argument that a bunch of random dorks in the comment section of Slashdot know something that the people who actually worked on the study have no idea about? That these so-called scientists were too stupid to consider something so basic?
...I dunno, but it sure is funny trolling you guys! TFY! LOL!
So wouldn't that mean the cows would always be pointing Northwest at 0900 at pointing Northeast at 1600? Wouldn't they only be pointing due North at high noon?
Huge variations in the wind direction and sunlight in the areas where the beasts were found meant that the scientists were able to rule out those factors as being responsible for the direction they were facing.
Thanks for playing our game! Please accept this consolation prize - RTFA: The Home Game! Now you can play RTFA right from the comfort of your own television set!
If you have to make a post asking about whether or not third-party games are finally coming into their own... that's a pretty good pointer that you have a problem with third-party games. I don't recall anyone ever asking, "Are the Atari Jaguar third-party games finally coming into their own?!"
It depends on the amount of traffic the site is getting. If you're on a larger forum, then no matter how much restraint that you personally show, there will always be other people on the site that will take the bait and bite. What's more, if you, as the moderator, do not step in at some point, then the troll recognizes the lack of authority being exercised and understands that it's open season for whatever games he wants to play.
As for the original post, however... it's odd that that's the post that started a discussion about trolling. The OP seems to be the only one who responded to the guy. Reading the post, I get the idea that this guy believed the words he was saying in argument, but that he his opinion was heavily clouded by personal prejudice, lack of experience, and quoting of imperfect sources. (For more on that topic, read, oh, any thread on class balance at forums.worldofwarcraft.com.)
If you're running a site for a specific limited interest, then you should have the right to say, I'm locking threads that I deem should be reasonably locked. I'm not giving you a specific list of what is considered reasonable debate or constructive criticism and what is considered trolling. If you're trolling or bullying, then I'm locking the thread. If you do it more than once, I'm tempbanning your nick. And the regular, friendly users of your site will understand your intentions.
In the case of the post in the OP, I'm not sure it was so bad. The site's author took the time to read the guy's sources, but realized that they were bogus. I think the major advice I would give to the OP is: trust your gut. If someone sounds like they're just whining and ranting without having much basis for their opinion, then they probably are.
Is that possible? Well... Say, didn't we used to have an auto industry in the U.S.? And why are we bailing out all of these financial institutions all of a sudden?
What seems to be so interesting about this development is that it's not just some crazy new technology that needs a better implementation. Rather, they've developed a new implementation of the old technology, a way that could simply say, "Oh, we can just use the old solar cells - we just route light to them differently." That makes it a much more interesting development than the constant minutiae of small advances in the technology and gives quite a bit more hope that the stuff could actually see the market.
Senator Barack Obama said Thursday that he might âoerefineâ his plans for a phased withdrawal from Iraq after meeting with military commanders there later this summer. But later, he hastily held a second news conference: to emphasize his commitment to withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.
I've read a couple of other commentaries on this issue - as well as, y'know, the article itself. Let me sum this up for you:
Obama: I want to get our troops out of Iraq within 16 months.
Republicans: Oh my God, what an idiot! That'll cause chaos!
Obama: I will, however, continue to listen our commanders and refine our plan on the project.
Republicans: Ha! See?! He really ISN'T pulling out! He's flip-flopping!
Obama: Uh, no, I still want our troops out in 16 months. I just reserve the right to make small changes to that plan where necessary.
You did read the article, yes? He's not backing away on it. He says, right there in the article, twice after the original comment, that he wants the troops out of Iraq, that he wants it to happen during his presidency. The reason he had to make a hasty second press conference on the issue was that he admitted to not knowing 100% what was going to happen, and his opponents lept on it as an admission of imperfection.
"(He) secretly doesn't want to get saddled with a quick withdrawal." Which is why he advocates for a withdrawal over the course of 16 months and he's going to listen to advice from his commanders on how to make the plan run smoothly. I fail to see the issue here.
Slashdot Mirror
MGS4 was the epic story. It was also too self-referential.
GTA4 was the grand sandbox. But it could've used a solid anchoring experience in the middle somewhere.
Fable 2 was the accessible lovable. But it could've used a pinch more depth.
Fallout 3 was the total mood and setting. But it wasn't quite as satisfying as its predecessors.
World of Goo was the great cheap date. So was Braid. Braid was the cheap arthouse-and-museum date, Goo was the beer-and-pizza date.
And if you were a hardcore Japanese RPG fan, there was Persona 4. And if you were the outgoing, social tagalong, then you had Left 4 Dead. And if you're one of the rare Wii holdouts, you had Super Smash Bros Brawl.
Y'know, some years, Game of the Year awards are tough. But this year, it's going to be nothing but arguments. There was no single flawless game (enthusiasm for the consistently high-rated GTA4 seemed to fall off precipitously at a certain point), but there was an "excellent" game in every category. This was the year of, choose your own damned best game of the year.
Now, please excuse me. I'm going to go play some more Rock Band 2.
Web-based e-mail users can continue to access their e-mail at the Verizon Web site until Feb. 6. After that date, Fastiggi said users will need to log on to www.MyFairPoint.net. Customers then click on Web mail and type in their existing user name@myfairpoint.net and existing password.
AOL, Yahoo! and MSN subscribers will continue to have access to content but will no longer be able to access their e-mail through the third party Web site. Instead, Yahoo! and other third party e-mail will be accessed directly at the MyFairPoint.net portal.
This is all rather vague. What is this "access to content" that I'll still have without having "access to e-mail?"
Also, since many newspapers are little more than repackaged AP and Reuters news, looking at the NY Times for guidance - I don't know what their value proposition is supposed to be.
I've heard at least one pundit suggest that maybe some newspapers should become like the AP - disassociate themselves from the publishing side of things. Stop publishing their newspapers themselves and instead become a subscription service that sells local coverage of their news to other newspapers. Whether it would actually work is beyond me, but it's an interesting theory.
Buddy, knowing what I know now, if I was given the choice between going into video game development and going into plumbing, I'd have made more money and been more satisfied with my career 99 times out of 100 learning to fix a pipe and pretending I was Mario while doing it.
You know, if you're going into the games market - or ANY entertainment market, music, movies, books - and expect it to be your career, then you're going to be disappointed unless you really have good contacts and really know what you're doing. This is all kind of tangent to the original article, but the similarity is that figuring out this stuff really isn't that easy. It's not that easy to pitch to your shareholders and executive and marketing that everything will be better if you just don't bother trying to stop pirates, and if you're a company that hasn't had this conversation or innately believes that piracy is wrong in every branch of your organization, then you're probably not big enough to make the Top 100 Dowloads list on thepiratebay.
Building on what the parent suggests, here, publishers like EA deserve to be excoriated for some of their DRM antics, but just like piracy goes up when the prices of goods goes up, so does the worth of anti-piracy efforts go up when the profits goes down. Do you think that the big conspiracy efforts like Steam to stop people from being able to re-sell their games on the used market would exist if Gamestop hadn't made the used game industry such a serious force? Would piracy really be as much of a bother if it took more than just a Google search to crack a game's copy protection? Lord knows a lot of people would rather just pony up the 99 cents on iTunes than spend days on Limewire trying to find a half-decent quality version of a song for free.
The only easy thing that can be said about the issue is that there's no flat easy answer. We're still gonna be bitching about this thing a decade from now.
But you're talking about the price of transporting the fuel versus the price of transporting the actual components of the plant. Transporting the "iron" for the windmills would be like asking about the cost of transporting the bricks and machinery to build the coal power plant. And then, while the coal power plant needs to constantly have new fuel shipped into it - even by efficient means - you don't need to consistently ship sunlight in to the solar plant.
Do you also then take into account the amount of transport cost for the materials for building the coal power plant? And the transport cost for constantly shipping in fresh coal? (Or uranium?)
And it's worth noting that many internships can turn permanent once you get out of school. "Oh, so, your internship is over. It's been nice having you. Hey, Steve, could you go put a new posting up for an intern on the website. Oh, by the way, also put up a listing for that second-rank programmer that needs a year's experience and preferably knows something about the kind of systems we use. Gee, where are we gonna find someone like that-- Oh, hey!"
Wait... mom and pop ISPs exist?
Yeah, government monopolized services tend to suck. Like, I heard that in Europe, the government owns the cable lines and only leases them out to ISPs, and they only get triple our bandwidth with more competition in one area! What a freaking waste!
A while ago, I told a programmer friend that I was thinking of teaching myself a little programming, maybe go back to school for it sooner or later, and I asked him if he could recommend a beginner's book. He does most of his work in C++, so he gave me an old-version copy of Beginning C++ Game Programming / Michael Dawson. He teaches basic CompSci classes still at a local colleges and is quite fond of the book. It's a pretty solid book that teaches almost all through direct examples, using short games as a framework for the examples.
When I'd finished that book, I asked him what he thought I should pick up next. He suggested maybe I should get something on data structures. So I ended up picking up a used book off of the net for data structures, one that advertised itself as being very simple to read and using lots of examples. This "simple" book was less like a book of real-world theory and more like an algebra book. All of the uses of the various structures were presented in a "When X, cout Y" format, and I found myself reading and re-reading a lot of things just to figure out what all of the abstraction meant and what its purpose was.
You're going to be teaching kids that are currently taking a lot of classes that feel like just filler to them, that are just taking up time to fill out their credits. IMHO, try not to clutter them up with just another "memorization class" - try to find material that engages or amuses them rather than just throwing facts and language at them.
First, if McCain had chosen Romney, he would have greatly pleased fiscal conservatives and proven that he could mend ties in the fractured Republican party. If he had chosen Kay Hutchinson, he would have just as well "energized his base" in proving that he could pick an interesting VP, but would have avoided the experience issue. Why he chose Palin when he had other choices that didn't carry such a negative connotation is mind-boggling.
Number two - there are two kinds of "disgruntled Clinton voters." The first kind are the ones who were Republican in the last election, who switched tickets to try and vote her into office, and who are going back to the Republican side now that she's lost. He already has these women, and they aren't all that much. The other group of Clinton voters are liberals, and if you're telling me that a woman with 2% of Clinton's experience and passion with completely opposing views on liberal issues is going to somehow steal back Clinton voters... Yeah, there may be a few, but if you wanted Clinton voters that badly, KAY HUTCHINSON.
This is the other incredible argument here - that just putting a woman on his ticket means that he appeals to Clinton voters. This is, quite brutally, a sexist argument. It is the belief that women will vote for another woman, no matter what their issues are. It is a belief that the women who voted for Clinton will turn around and vote for another woman with completely opposite beliefs, that they cared nothing about Clinton's policies and only about her gender. It is the belief that Clinton's voters were shallow and stupid. It is a thinly disguised sexist argument.
So you're saying that the number two spot doesn't matter? That she wasn't hired to actually do anything on the job. To say that it doesn't matter that Palin is less experienced is to say that the VP is a position with no meaning and no sway, so it doesn't matter if experience doesn't matter. It's an admission that Palin was put on the ticket for one reason - not because of her strengths, not because of what she brings to the White House, only because she's a woman. We don't expect her to actually do anything, so it's okay that she has no experience.
I repeat - if McCain, the older man with bouts with disease should fall ill to old age, then this woman becomes president. Not number two, but number one. McCain has come out and said that this woman with almost no experience is actually experienced enough to be understudy to the most powerful position in the land. McCain is either short-sighted of having delusion of immortality.
And that doesn't matter? That doesn't matter that the "Experience is Everything!" campaign just decided that experience doesn't mean squat for the NUMBER TWO POSITION in the country?! Can you imagine Palin inheriting the number one spot? Is that something that the experience-loving McCain fans would be able to handle?
Yes, we know. We know Obama is running for president. We know he's inexperienced. You keep saying that. You were saying it last month, last week, yesterday, you kept saying it. So why, why now, have you given us the least bit of ability to say it about McCain?! Why would you do that? We know what you think of Obama - why would you give us the chance to change what people think about McCain?!
This whole thing just absolutely boggles my mind! I do not for the slightest moment understand the least bit of logic behind it!
This is the failing here. The experience argument is not Obama's argument - it's McCain's argument. What are you baiting Obama into here? Into talking about experience? Two weeks ago, McCain was talking about Obama's experience. He was talking about it constantly. McCain is experienced, and Obama is not. That was his constant line. That was a central point of his theme.
Now, after the Palin pick, what changes about the McCain strategy? He still calls Obama inexperienced. He still says that he represents the best leadership.
But... what about the other side of this? For the past two weeks, Democrats have constantly said, "We respect McCain's experience, but..." before saying anything attacking him. McCain had the experience angle so locked up that no one could speak against it except to try and discredit experience as a whole. But now, suddenly, there's a very inexperienced candidate sharing the ticket with McCain. From now on, whenever McCain shouts, "Experience!" the Dems will respond, "So why is there a two-year governor on your ticket? Why is your second-in-command even younger than Obama? If you claim experience matters, then what is Palin doing on your ticket?"
This is what I cannot understand about this pick. Falling "prey" to it? What do you mean? We already were prey to it! You were winning that one! You had the experience argument locked up! You could talk about Obama's experience all day long! It's probably the number one reason McCain is so close to Obama in the polls, even though so many people favor kicking the Republicans out now!
Why in the world would you hand this to the Democrats? Why would McCain give himself a weakness like this? McCain is now no longer the solemn voice of experience! We now have the spectre that if McCain should die naturally of old age, then this woman becomes president! McCain has just weakened his own number one argument! Why in the world would he DO something like this?!
"If Obama with all of his credentials had been white?" I dunno. If McCain, with all of his credentials, had never been a POW? If he'd just fought in the war and come home? Maybe. But this, one way or another, no matter how you slice it, this is an incredible pick for VP. This woman is going to have to debate Joe Biden in the VP debates. It's unimaginable that this woman was chosen to have a strong presence in the White House after the election (whereas Biden would almost certainly help to craft policy and twist arms in the Senate). What was this woman brought in for? Could it seriously have just been because she was a woman, with no other factors considered?
You're right - a lot of the attacks used against Obama will also be used against Palin. Those attacks would have continued to be used against Obama if McCain had chosen Kay Hutchinson, or Condoleeza Rice, or even Mitt Romney. But instead, McCain chose the option that allows those attacks to also come against himself. I truly, truly want to know - who in McCain's campaign made this decision?
Oh, so you mean she was born in a less wealthy household but managed to prove herself in order to go to an established college to learn law, spent a great deal of time overseas and has a strong understanding of the foreign experience, and has spent years in a politically dangerous city honing her skills as a practical, strong rabble-rouser?
Go ahead, keep pushing that meme. Keep saying that she's just as experienced as Obama is. Keep saying that it's all right that the Candidate of Experience (TM) just decided that if he should become indisposed then the commander-in-chief will be a woman with no foreign policy experience and spent most of her life in a state with a total population less than the city of Chicago, but it doesn't matter because Obama has less experience than she does. I'm sure that those independent voters will totally buy that meme.
Wait a minute. A conservative. A woman who is not a strong candidate - a woman who has been much more passive and has much less political experience. A woman who does not believe in abortion. The half-term governor of a red state.
Are you honestly implying that this is going to make the feminists happy?
I mean, seriously, not just the regular soccer mom public, many of whom were Republicans who voted in the Democratic primary at a chance at getting Clinton elected. You're seriously implying that FEMINISTS, that women who are interested in women's rights and choices are going to see this as a reason to vote for McCain?
If I were going to be making bets, I'd be laying odds that in the next few days, you're going to be seeing a lot of blog posts by some very pissed-off feminists who feel insulted that this is how McCain decided to try and win them over, that he thought he could bring in some of the women who were supporting one of the most powerful women in American political history by offering them an unexperienced, unnoticeable woman who disagrees with them on most "women's" issues. You keep using that word "feminist" - I don't think that word means what you think it means.
To quote a blogger on National Review, if this person with all of her credentials and history had been a man, would she have gotten nominated? If you think that this pick didn't have anything to do with trying to pander to disgruntled Hillary Clinton voters, then I've got a bridge to nowhere in Alaska to sell you.
Do I really buy the argument that a bunch of random dorks in the comment section of Slashdot know something that the people who actually worked on the study have no idea about? That these so-called scientists were too stupid to consider something so basic?
...I dunno, but it sure is funny trolling you guys! TFY! LOL!
So wouldn't that mean the cows would always be pointing Northwest at 0900 at pointing Northeast at 1600? Wouldn't they only be pointing due North at high noon?
Huge variations in the wind direction and sunlight in the areas where the beasts were found meant that the scientists were able to rule out those factors as being responsible for the direction they were facing.
Thanks for playing our game! Please accept this consolation prize - RTFA: The Home Game! Now you can play RTFA right from the comfort of your own television set!
If you have to make a post asking about whether or not third-party games are finally coming into their own... that's a pretty good pointer that you have a problem with third-party games. I don't recall anyone ever asking, "Are the Atari Jaguar third-party games finally coming into their own?!"
It depends on the amount of traffic the site is getting. If you're on a larger forum, then no matter how much restraint that you personally show, there will always be other people on the site that will take the bait and bite. What's more, if you, as the moderator, do not step in at some point, then the troll recognizes the lack of authority being exercised and understands that it's open season for whatever games he wants to play.
As for the original post, however... it's odd that that's the post that started a discussion about trolling. The OP seems to be the only one who responded to the guy. Reading the post, I get the idea that this guy believed the words he was saying in argument, but that he his opinion was heavily clouded by personal prejudice, lack of experience, and quoting of imperfect sources. (For more on that topic, read, oh, any thread on class balance at forums.worldofwarcraft.com.)
If you're running a site for a specific limited interest, then you should have the right to say, I'm locking threads that I deem should be reasonably locked. I'm not giving you a specific list of what is considered reasonable debate or constructive criticism and what is considered trolling. If you're trolling or bullying, then I'm locking the thread. If you do it more than once, I'm tempbanning your nick. And the regular, friendly users of your site will understand your intentions.
In the case of the post in the OP, I'm not sure it was so bad. The site's author took the time to read the guy's sources, but realized that they were bogus. I think the major advice I would give to the OP is: trust your gut. If someone sounds like they're just whining and ranting without having much basis for their opinion, then they probably are.
Are they *all* wrong about their business?
Quite possible. That's how an industry dies.
Is that possible? Well... Say, didn't we used to have an auto industry in the U.S.? And why are we bailing out all of these financial institutions all of a sudden?
Except that TFA says that it's old technology. The point is that they've figured out how to make it work by studying advances in lasers and the like.
What seems to be so interesting about this development is that it's not just some crazy new technology that needs a better implementation. Rather, they've developed a new implementation of the old technology, a way that could simply say, "Oh, we can just use the old solar cells - we just route light to them differently." That makes it a much more interesting development than the constant minutiae of small advances in the technology and gives quite a bit more hope that the stuff could actually see the market.
Senator Barack Obama said Thursday that he might âoerefineâ his plans for a phased withdrawal from Iraq after meeting with military commanders there later this summer. But later, he hastily held a second news conference: to emphasize his commitment to withdrawing all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.
I've read a couple of other commentaries on this issue - as well as, y'know, the article itself. Let me sum this up for you:
Obama: I want to get our troops out of Iraq within 16 months.
Republicans: Oh my God, what an idiot! That'll cause chaos!
Obama: I will, however, continue to listen our commanders and refine our plan on the project.
Republicans: Ha! See?! He really ISN'T pulling out! He's flip-flopping!
Obama: Uh, no, I still want our troops out in 16 months. I just reserve the right to make small changes to that plan where necessary.
You did read the article, yes? He's not backing away on it. He says, right there in the article, twice after the original comment, that he wants the troops out of Iraq, that he wants it to happen during his presidency. The reason he had to make a hasty second press conference on the issue was that he admitted to not knowing 100% what was going to happen, and his opponents lept on it as an admission of imperfection.
"(He) secretly doesn't want to get saddled with a quick withdrawal." Which is why he advocates for a withdrawal over the course of 16 months and he's going to listen to advice from his commanders on how to make the plan run smoothly. I fail to see the issue here.