The CNet article authors didn't quite do all their homework. The bill is S. 1348, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, and was first introduced by Harry Reid on May 9, including a form of the EEVS language. Its cosponsors are Kennedy, Leahy, Menendez, and Salazar.
Kennedy offered a substitute amendment 1150 (the draft with the unofficial title "Secure Borders" etc. etc.), and that amendment includes EEVS language as well, although it has been heavily modified. Arlen Specter is listed as a cosponsor. However, this substitute is apparently the recent bipartisan compromise that's been abuzz in the media the past few days.
Anyway, if you like or dislike this part of the bill - section 302 in the amendment, and section 301 in the original - complaining about it here won't help. Write (or better yet, call) your Senator.
Rather than using the "throwing X under the bus" analogy, I prefer this one:
It's like going to a flea market, kicking everyone in the balls, and then buying a few moldy baseball cards from that one guy in the corner so you can claim you're a legitimate patron.
The quote actually reads, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." It's also unclear whether Franklin was the original author of this quote, but that's beside the point.
Anyway, not only did you misquote Franklin (amusing given your criticism of folks not reading their history), but you also fail to explain whether and why it is an essential liberty to not be photographed in public. (Or, for that matter, the other various alleged infringements on civil liberties by us Yanks - though I'll happily admit that at least some of the powers we've given our government recently, or that our government has chosen to appropriate for itself, go too far.)
Part of the problem is that online advertising has for a long time essentially been one gigantic circle-jerk, and in these cases, the original advertisers end up cleaning up the mess. Companies pay other companies to source advertising, who pay other affiliate networks and other websites a pittance to carry the advertising. There are enough middle men to make one's head spin. The original advertisers end up having no idea who they're dealing with.
Less outsourcing, and contracts that demand less second-degree outsourcing, would help the advertisers tremendously. I doubt that it would do much for the spyware victims, though, because there'll always be another scam right around the corner.
The big problem this summer is refining capacity. We've already seen the spike in oil prices into the $60/bbl range caused by increased Chinese demand for oil, and that hasn't really budged a whole lot since last year. Oil inventories have been good since then. The reason prices are so high right now is because of gasoline supply concerns, i.e., post-refining, and while I'm in favor of expanding drilling operations into both the eastern Gulf of Mexico and ANWR to offset worldwide demand increases (and thereby obtain price relief from increases over the last couple of years), this year's gasoline increases have nothing to do with that.
There were already a number of scheduled refinery maintenance shutdowns, and then BP had a major refinery go down for "unscheduled maintenance". Personally, I'm a bit suspicious of any unscheduled refinery maintenance. One of Enron's tactics to manipulate the electricity market was to create artificial shortages by calling up power plants and asking them to shut down temporarily. Hopefully, that's what Congressional hearings will be looking into. If there are no shenanigans going on at that level, then really there's nothing punitive they can do about it. What you're seeing is simple supply and demand combined with smart moves by speculators who bought gasoline low and are now selling it high. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some gasoline retailers are buying a small portion of their supply at higher-than-retail just to keep their gas stations in stock.
Refiners are stuck with expanding current operations, which is generally limited to technology updates and expanding into whatever surrounding land they have available. Unfortunately, it's late enough in the game now that refiners are going to resist the urge to build new large-scale refining capacity even if they could get a license to, because ethanol is starting to gear up, and by the time the refiners could actually get a new plant built (including the years upon years of environmental impact studies), the demand for gasoline will already be dropping in favor of alternative fuels (probably increased ethanol-gasoline blends, but that's still less gasoline being needed).
"I also see that you've gotten yourself a new guard dog, and it'll probably bite my testicles off if I don't leave your house immediately. Just know that if it does, I'll sue the breeder."
My point is that The Matrix Online is pretty much unrecoverable in terms of floppiness. If SOE had wanted to do something with the game, they would have by now. They'd have given it the storytelling and development resources that its original designers had envisioned for it. Plus, the hype that came with the movies was tremendous, but unless they release a sequel/prequel movie, they're never going to have that opportunity again.
On the other hand, Vanguard still has a chance to be evolutionary (though admittedly not revolutionary) in terms of expanding gameplay possibilities with its detailed crafting system and the diplomacy system. Time will tell whether SOE will let it flop. It's clear that it hasn't lived up to the hype and probably won't in the future, but the difference between hype and reality isn't quite as huge as you say, and if SOE bothers to support the game, that difference will diminish over time.
BTW, I thought about mentioning WW2OL but didn't, because the staggering drop in subscribership in TMO after its release indicates that a lot more people were interested in the concept but couldn't deal with its execution, while WW2OL has always had low subscriber numbers, but those subscribers have stuck with it. Actually, The Sims Online would be a better example than either of those, but the gameplay there is different enough that I didn't know whether it should truly be counted as a MMOG or not.
Web apps are the wave of the future, right? Well, eventually, Google's going to come out with GFox, the web app web browser, thus ending the browser wars once and for all.
It's obvious that you're a C programmer, since a C++ programmer would have immediately recognized the difference between a class and an instance of that class.
Plug-in hybrids would be the "killer app" (bingo, sir!) that would really start to move the country (and perhaps much of the world) away from petroleum dependence. The significantly increased demand for electric power would be exactly what's needed to finally spur the government and the utilities to start building more nuclear and other non-fossil-fuel power plants and updating the distribution network. Development of agriculturally-produced fuels could continue alongside this, of course, since they'd be hybrids.
Slashdot Mirror
Kneel before Zod!!
And God said, let there be digital photography. And there was digital photography.
And God saw the resolution, that it was high: and God plugged in His 128MB memory stick.
Actually, she prefers her photos chiseled into stone slabs. Do you know what it's like trying to find a prehistoric bird with a USB port?
Customer: How much memory comes with this model, and can I upgrade that?
Assistant Manager: Uhhh... we have chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla.
The CNet article authors didn't quite do all their homework. The bill is S. 1348, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, and was first introduced by Harry Reid on May 9, including a form of the EEVS language. Its cosponsors are Kennedy, Leahy, Menendez, and Salazar.
Kennedy offered a substitute amendment 1150 (the draft with the unofficial title "Secure Borders" etc. etc.), and that amendment includes EEVS language as well, although it has been heavily modified. Arlen Specter is listed as a cosponsor. However, this substitute is apparently the recent bipartisan compromise that's been abuzz in the media the past few days.
Anyway, if you like or dislike this part of the bill - section 302 in the amendment, and section 301 in the original - complaining about it here won't help. Write (or better yet, call) your Senator.
Rather than using the "throwing X under the bus" analogy, I prefer this one:
It's like going to a flea market, kicking everyone in the balls, and then buying a few moldy baseball cards from that one guy in the corner so you can claim you're a legitimate patron.
The quote actually reads, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." It's also unclear whether Franklin was the original author of this quote, but that's beside the point.
Anyway, not only did you misquote Franklin (amusing given your criticism of folks not reading their history), but you also fail to explain whether and why it is an essential liberty to not be photographed in public. (Or, for that matter, the other various alleged infringements on civil liberties by us Yanks - though I'll happily admit that at least some of the powers we've given our government recently, or that our government has chosen to appropriate for itself, go too far.)
Part of the problem is that online advertising has for a long time essentially been one gigantic circle-jerk, and in these cases, the original advertisers end up cleaning up the mess. Companies pay other companies to source advertising, who pay other affiliate networks and other websites a pittance to carry the advertising. There are enough middle men to make one's head spin. The original advertisers end up having no idea who they're dealing with.
Less outsourcing, and contracts that demand less second-degree outsourcing, would help the advertisers tremendously. I doubt that it would do much for the spyware victims, though, because there'll always be another scam right around the corner.
Maybe they should turn this over to their intrepid band of lawyers.
That's ANWR, not "ANOIR".
The big problem this summer is refining capacity. We've already seen the spike in oil prices into the $60/bbl range caused by increased Chinese demand for oil, and that hasn't really budged a whole lot since last year. Oil inventories have been good since then. The reason prices are so high right now is because of gasoline supply concerns, i.e., post-refining, and while I'm in favor of expanding drilling operations into both the eastern Gulf of Mexico and ANWR to offset worldwide demand increases (and thereby obtain price relief from increases over the last couple of years), this year's gasoline increases have nothing to do with that.
There were already a number of scheduled refinery maintenance shutdowns, and then BP had a major refinery go down for "unscheduled maintenance". Personally, I'm a bit suspicious of any unscheduled refinery maintenance. One of Enron's tactics to manipulate the electricity market was to create artificial shortages by calling up power plants and asking them to shut down temporarily. Hopefully, that's what Congressional hearings will be looking into. If there are no shenanigans going on at that level, then really there's nothing punitive they can do about it. What you're seeing is simple supply and demand combined with smart moves by speculators who bought gasoline low and are now selling it high. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if some gasoline retailers are buying a small portion of their supply at higher-than-retail just to keep their gas stations in stock.
Refiners are stuck with expanding current operations, which is generally limited to technology updates and expanding into whatever surrounding land they have available. Unfortunately, it's late enough in the game now that refiners are going to resist the urge to build new large-scale refining capacity even if they could get a license to, because ethanol is starting to gear up, and by the time the refiners could actually get a new plant built (including the years upon years of environmental impact studies), the demand for gasoline will already be dropping in favor of alternative fuels (probably increased ethanol-gasoline blends, but that's still less gasoline being needed).
Add to that:
"I also see that you've gotten yourself a new guard dog, and it'll probably bite my testicles off if I don't leave your house immediately. Just know that if it does, I'll sue the breeder."
Ah, so it doubles as a career chip!
Been playing 'em since 1999.
My point is that The Matrix Online is pretty much unrecoverable in terms of floppiness. If SOE had wanted to do something with the game, they would have by now. They'd have given it the storytelling and development resources that its original designers had envisioned for it. Plus, the hype that came with the movies was tremendous, but unless they release a sequel/prequel movie, they're never going to have that opportunity again.
On the other hand, Vanguard still has a chance to be evolutionary (though admittedly not revolutionary) in terms of expanding gameplay possibilities with its detailed crafting system and the diplomacy system. Time will tell whether SOE will let it flop. It's clear that it hasn't lived up to the hype and probably won't in the future, but the difference between hype and reality isn't quite as huge as you say, and if SOE bothers to support the game, that difference will diminish over time.
BTW, I thought about mentioning WW2OL but didn't, because the staggering drop in subscribership in TMO after its release indicates that a lot more people were interested in the concept but couldn't deal with its execution, while WW2OL has always had low subscriber numbers, but those subscribers have stuck with it. Actually, The Sims Online would be a better example than either of those, but the gameplay there is different enough that I didn't know whether it should truly be counted as a MMOG or not.
Web apps are the wave of the future, right? Well, eventually, Google's going to come out with GFox, the web app web browser, thus ending the browser wars once and for all.
Or something.
Vanguard now has become the biggest flop vs hype in MMO history.
I'll take it you've never heard of The Matrix Online.
In some very minor way, it also depends on what your definition of "?" is.
Why can't I just have a phone that lets me place and receive phone calls?
That's why God invented NoScript.
It's obvious that you're a C programmer, since a C++ programmer would have immediately recognized the difference between a class and an instance of that class.
Plug-in hybrids would be the "killer app" (bingo, sir!) that would really start to move the country (and perhaps much of the world) away from petroleum dependence. The significantly increased demand for electric power would be exactly what's needed to finally spur the government and the utilities to start building more nuclear and other non-fossil-fuel power plants and updating the distribution network. Development of agriculturally-produced fuels could continue alongside this, of course, since they'd be hybrids.
The kind of turf war seen in the real world by drug gangs
Until I actually RTFA, I thought they meant that botnet gangs were finding the people running opposing botnets and killing them.
Or maybe I was just secretly hoping.
Name me one voyage that lasted longer than even one year without having to dock in some fashion.
I dunno... do you count "running aground on the shore of an uncharted desert isle" as docking?
sorry if I'm being age-ist and am unfairly criticizing somebody who hasn't yet covered that in school.
Teach me more, Grandpa!
This is like putting a chocolate coating on a cyanide pill. Go ahead, eat it, it tastes great!
Metronet, huh? Is that like an Internet for really well-groomed straight guys?