Yup, it's a shame they lost. Now another bucketful of My Tax Dollars(tm) is going to be given to Marvel as "reimbursment" for all those mistakenly levied tariffs.
And the chance that any of that money goes to people who actually paid the tariffs, the ones who bought the no-longer-dolls off the shelf? Zero.
Go to your channel setup and uncheck Discovery. 99% of the data Tivo gets from home, including the ads, are sucked off the Discovery Channel in the wee hours. It will make the daily phone call longer, since it can't get program data the easy way, but if you've got it using ethernet and broadband anyway, who cares.
Yeah, and it's the reliance on the calculator that has caused many of our teachers to be unable to do multi-digit addition in their heads. If we took a couple old grannies and let them add prices, they'd have the solution in a snap. Let an average 20 year try that, and they'll sit there and ponder where the calculator is.
But ask the granny about some simple calculus and she'll be lost, while the 20 year old will have no trouble, because the calculator means he didn't have to spend years learning how to do things like roots by hand, and could move on to other subjects.
Not that any of these skills is useful. Any math encountered in normal life can be easily done by a machine, being able to do any of it by hand is a parlor trick. You might as well learn to catch and kill your own food, you might actually need that one some day (however unlikely).
Don't talk bollocks. Try setting your goal as working alone or with a single partner. Try setting you goal as ridding the world of monsters or evil or whatever; can't be done.
Simcity was a really shitty game, I couldn't tank rush other cities to collect all the pieces of the Triforce!
Of course the set of possible goals of limited by the framework of the game, that doesn't mean it's a small set by any means. Some people want to level to 65, others want to do their epic quest, or cap out a trade skill, kill this or that dragon, be the best whatever on the server... Everquest is a very big game, and it is what you make of it.
Best RPG in recent memory is Planescape: Torment, no contest. An unconventional setting, incredible storyline, intriguing characters... Even bearable combat, the Baldur's Gate engire was at least good for that.
I was hooked from the moment the bartender gave me back my eye. Fantastic game.
Or just set up a season pass on another channel. I wouldn't even know the Showcase stuff existed if not for stories like this, at 3am my TiVo is recording Law & Order reruns on A&E, not infomercials.
Jesus Christ, how about a spoiler warning next time? I don't think it's even shown on the west coast yet, much less for the international folks or TiVo addicts like myself...
In his game, the optimal strategy was to sit in the left corner and only shoot at a special ship that came by periodically (just hold the fire button down), and ignore all everything else. There was a contest with a money prize after a couple of weeks for high score. Not one player in his test found the strategy; they all got confused and ran amok shooting worthless stuff.
Perhaps no one used the "optimal strategy" because it was boring?
Yes, repetition is effective. It's the same way in all games with some form of character advancement, even just point scores like your friend's. Find one thing that works and do it over and over again... But you know what? You don't have to do that if you don't want to.
I've been playing EQ for about a year and a half now, and it's very rare to find me in one of the standard mindless grind or camp areas. It may be the effective way to "win", but I'd rather enjoy the journey than reach the destination quickly.
Everquest is a totally mindless game.
Only if you want it to be. Everquest is what you make of it.
We ignored creationism for decades, and it became a powerful enough force to start rewriting our grade school science textbooks. Creationism is completely irrelevant to science, but anything people believe in carries political pressure, and politics affects everybody.
I'd present a historical argument against this, if science is still working on the real one.
A few hundred years ago, God was creating organisms. Then, through the magic of vivisection (ugh), we started to understand conception and development and the scientific explanation of how a organism comes to be. So God made the jump to creating species, and Creationism has been in retreat ever since. Did God hand-make species? No, that's natural selection. Species types? Dig some more through the fossil record... and that's still natural selection. Hmm, so what about natural selection itself? Inheritable characterists, surely such a transfer of essence bears the mark of the divine? No again, genetics turns out to be a relatively straightforward molecular process. Ah hah, molecules! God created the complex molecules! And if the response to that is "We'll get back to you, give us a few decades.", well so?
They will get back to you, eventually. And the Creationists, if they wish, can move the bar again. God can keep getting smaller and smaller, that's in His nature, and there will always be a scientific frontier, that's its nature. You can point to it and say "God is there!", and no one will be able to say otherwise. For a few years anyway, until it ceases to be the frontier.
Creationism will never be fully disproven, but how many times does the same basic theory have to be debunked and rewritten before you get the idea?
Those wiretaps J. Edgar Hoover had done on "suspected communists" weren't admissable in court either. I'm sure he never had any intention of using them that way...
Except you actually have 45 differenct circles. President, congressman, senator, state rep and state senator, mayor, city council, school board, property appraiser, election supervisor, judicial retention, popular referendums...
Re:Welcome to the Post-Internet Age
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I believe there's only one DSL provider left, the also-bankrupt Covad. Well, unless you count the Bells...
That statement from the Bible "Give a man a fish he eats for a day, Teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime," holds true here.
And yet, remarkably, the supermarket down the street does a brisk business in salmon steaks. I don't like to fish and don't want to learn how, I'm more than happy to pay someone else to do it for me. Yes, even though it means I'll never eat a decent mullet. For better or worse, a lot of folks feel the same way about computers.
I'm a rather avid gamer, and I'm quite fond of Linux -- but I can't fathom a single, rational reason to run Direct3D games under Wine on Linux.
My biggest complaint with Windows games is that they completely seize control of the computer, and if I didn't want to multitask I'd still be using DOS. With Wine, or a Linux-native port, I can switch to another VT to do email or look something up on the web or make it look like I'm working.
It's true, clean, ultimate, complicated, advanced programming either way, but the goals and methods are different.
You may be able to create fire when dropped naked into the wilderness, but that doesn't mean you're qualified to control a blast furnace. I did both the bare metal and the really high level stuff in college (CE degree) and loved them both, but they're not interchangable, and neither one prepares you well for the other.
On Dec 12th Congress MUST BY LAW (CONSTUTUTIONALY) certify the electorial college. If there are no clear cut rulings, they MUST
take the Fla. Certified count and electors.... If this drags out another 8 days Bush wins.
Huh? On Dec. 12 the Florida legislature may step in and name electors on it's own (maybe). The electoral college votes must be delivered to Washington by Dec 27 or so. In early January Al Gore will count the electoral college votes and deliver the results to the new Congress, who will then accept or reject them as it sees fit.
They went by number in Miami Dade. The precincts already counted went 74% for Gore. The county as a whole went 53% for Gore. It's very
unlikely that the remaining precincts would have given proportionally similar votes to Gore.
"We can't enfranchise these 9,000 voters, so we'll disenfranchise 10,000." What kind of arguement is that?
McCain should have beat Bush in the primary. I'd have voted for McCain.
But the real right wing wouldn't have. If McCain had been nominated, we would have been talking about Buchanan, not Nader, and Gore would have won easily.
Consider Ballard County, for example. The manual recount reviewing team consists of two democrats and one republican. It took a consensus of two of the team members to make establish the intent of the voter. If all team members are honest (lets assume they are), then partisanship should not be a factor. But, if partisanship does come into play, the republican will almost always be overridded and the results favor the democratic
candidate (in this case, Gore).
That's Broward County, and the commision was one Democrat, one Republican, and a nonpartisan, a county judge, as the chair. The Republican later resigned citing health reasons, and was replaced with another judge.
Thirdly, consider that there are sixty seven counties in the total ballot pool. Selecting three counties known to be highly democratic only introduces additional statistical bias and will futher skew the results.
That 67 number is a bit disingenuous. It may be a small fraction of the land mass, but it covers 2 million of the 6 million total votes cast.
From a scientific perspective, one has to conclude that the election is a statistical dead heat with no clear winner when using the hand recount method. Yet, if the automated method of counting is utilized, a clear winner is determined in a uniform, non-partisan way. In this case, machine counting has introduced a statistically small margin of error when compared to the subjective manual recount method.
A small margin of error, perhaps, but still larger than the margin of victory. The error is also weighted against Gore, because his counties are the ones using punch cards. The Republican areas mostly use optical systems.
The fact that somebody didn't understand how to cast their ballot correctly (nor did they ask for assistance) or to verify that they did, in fact, cast correctly, is not a reason to assume omnipotent powers and determine their will for them.
You'll have to take that up with our state legislature from the mid-80s. They invested that power in the county canvassing commision, and we can't change the rules now.
Their ballots, in the election for president, should not be counted UNLESS the entire ballot pool is counted in EXACTLY the same manner. This would incure a state-wide, or more appropriately, as nation-wide recount. Neither state nor federal allows for this. Neither does the Constitution.
Nationwide? The contested election involves Florida's delegation to the electoral college, and Florida may handle it in whatever manner we chose (persuant to the Constitution and what federal law there is, of course). If the election crossed a state line, you could argue for more federal intervention, but it does not.
Now, consider the military absentee ballots. Federal law allows military members to send mail without a postmark. Yet, Florida election law requires them so many are rejected despite the voters intent being clearly descerable. A technicality? Yes. But, isn't Federal law supposed to override state law when a conflict arrises?
The only one claiming otherwise is Bush, who has said error is no reason for a recount. Clearly those ballots have already been counted, and anybody who is stupid to work an absentee ballot doesn't deserve to vote. Yeesh. Incidently, about 10 counties have gone back and recounted, and Bush has 5 more lawsuits pending on the matter, with no complaint from Gore.
Yet, "dimpled" ballots are given merit when no State or Federal law or standard exists to validate their acceptance (at least in Florida). To say "Texas allows them" is irrelevant...there is no Florida law allowing them or specifying what is a valid vote.
Nor is there a law saying they are not valid votes. It's up to the discretion of the county canvassing board.
Ironic that the Gore, if he becomes the president elect, wants to alienate the armed forces for which he would their Commander-In-Chief. In this regard, Bush has the upper hand. He will command the respect of the military which Gore will be despised.
Proof that money trumps principle every time. Promise enough military pork and they'll choose the deserter over the Viet Nam veteran.
Expect to see many resignations and
lower enlisted retention than normal over the next four years if Gore becomes president.
That's because the economy is so good under Clinton-Gore that there's more money in the private sector. Besides, we need a smaller military anyway.
Finally, all this aside, I pity whoever becomes president.
at least not Palm Beach and Broward County, which didn't count dimpled ballots going back to 1990.
Palm Beach hasn't, and they didn't count them this time around either. That's one of the charges on Gore's contest action.
It far more important that the Florida counties not change their rules after the elections. Palm Beach clearly didn't count dimples at least since 1990. Recounting them now would change the rules.
Executive order, no matter how old, cannot override state law. The PBC election supervisor says don't count dimples, the law says the commision must determine the intent of the voter to the best of their abilities. Catagorically denying dimpled ballots is an abuse of discretion.
My governor (Marc Racicot or Montana) went to florida and told them how to run their elections. Would some politician from Florida please consider coming to montana in the next election cycle and accuse us of commiting fraud and of being incompetent please I bet the people of montana would love that!.
We can send Broward County's new election supervisor to second guess your new governor. She did get about 50% more votes than him...
The news channel decision desks then decided to announce Gore was winning about 15 minutes before the polls closed in the eastern time zone part of florida and 75 minutes before the polls closed in the western timezone.
You're off by an hour. It was called at 7:45pm EST, 15 minutes before the western polls closed and 45 minutes after the (much larger) eastern section closed.
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Yup, it's a shame they lost. Now another bucketful of My Tax Dollars(tm) is going to be given to Marvel as "reimbursment" for all those mistakenly levied tariffs.
And the chance that any of that money goes to people who actually paid the tariffs, the ones who bought the no-longer-dolls off the shelf? Zero.
Go to your channel setup and uncheck Discovery. 99% of the data Tivo gets from home, including the ads, are sucked off the Discovery Channel in the wee hours. It will make the daily phone call longer, since it can't get program data the easy way, but if you've got it using ethernet and broadband anyway, who cares.
Yeah, and it's the reliance on the calculator that has caused many of our teachers to be unable to do multi-digit addition in their heads. If we took a couple old grannies and let them add prices, they'd have the solution in a snap. Let an average 20 year try that, and they'll sit there and ponder where the calculator is.
But ask the granny about some simple calculus and she'll be lost, while the 20 year old will have no trouble, because the calculator means he didn't have to spend years learning how to do things like roots by hand, and could move on to other subjects.
Not that any of these skills is useful. Any math encountered in normal life can be easily done by a machine, being able to do any of it by hand is a parlor trick. You might as well learn to catch and kill your own food, you might actually need that one some day (however unlikely).
Don't talk bollocks. Try setting your goal as working alone or with a single partner. Try setting you goal as ridding the world of monsters or evil or whatever; can't be done.
Simcity was a really shitty game, I couldn't tank rush other cities to collect all the pieces of the Triforce!
Of course the set of possible goals of limited by the framework of the game, that doesn't mean it's a small set by any means. Some people want to level to 65, others want to do their epic quest, or cap out a trade skill, kill this or that dragon, be the best whatever on the server... Everquest is a very big game, and it is what you make of it.
Best RPG in recent memory is Planescape: Torment, no contest. An unconventional setting, incredible storyline, intriguing characters... Even bearable combat, the Baldur's Gate engire was at least good for that.
I was hooked from the moment the bartender gave me back my eye. Fantastic game.
That's not a mistake, Rhode Island just doesn't deserve to be a state.
Or just set up a season pass on another channel. I wouldn't even know the Showcase stuff existed if not for stories like this, at 3am my TiVo is recording Law & Order reruns on A&E, not infomercials.
Jesus Christ, how about a spoiler warning next time? I don't think it's even shown on the west coast yet, much less for the international folks or TiVo addicts like myself...
In his game, the optimal strategy was to sit in the left corner and only shoot at a special ship that came by periodically (just hold the fire button down), and ignore all everything else. There was a contest with a money prize after a couple of weeks for high score. Not one player in his test found the strategy; they all got confused and ran amok shooting worthless stuff.
Perhaps no one used the "optimal strategy" because it was boring?
Yes, repetition is effective. It's the same way in all games with some form of character advancement, even just point scores like your friend's. Find one thing that works and do it over and over again... But you know what? You don't have to do that if you don't want to.
I've been playing EQ for about a year and a half now, and it's very rare to find me in one of the standard mindless grind or camp areas. It may be the effective way to "win", but I'd rather enjoy the journey than reach the destination quickly.
Everquest is a totally mindless game.
Only if you want it to be. Everquest is what you make of it.
Yes, but the rainbow isn't where you see it.
We ignored creationism for decades, and it became a powerful enough force to start rewriting our grade school science textbooks. Creationism is completely irrelevant to science, but anything people believe in carries political pressure, and politics affects everybody.
I'd present a historical argument against this, if science is still working on the real one.
A few hundred years ago, God was creating organisms. Then, through the magic of vivisection (ugh), we started to understand conception and development and the scientific explanation of how a organism comes to be. So God made the jump to creating species, and Creationism has been in retreat ever since. Did God hand-make species? No, that's natural selection. Species types? Dig some more through the fossil record... and that's still natural selection. Hmm, so what about natural selection itself? Inheritable characterists, surely such a transfer of essence bears the mark of the divine? No again, genetics turns out to be a relatively straightforward molecular process. Ah hah, molecules! God created the complex molecules! And if the response to that is "We'll get back to you, give us a few decades.", well so?
They will get back to you, eventually. And the Creationists, if they wish, can move the bar again. God can keep getting smaller and smaller, that's in His nature, and there will always be a scientific frontier, that's its nature. You can point to it and say "God is there!", and no one will be able to say otherwise. For a few years anyway, until it ceases to be the frontier.
Creationism will never be fully disproven, but how many times does the same basic theory have to be debunked and rewritten before you get the idea?
Cannot be used as evidence?
Those wiretaps J. Edgar Hoover had done on "suspected communists" weren't admissable in court either. I'm sure he never had any intention of using them that way...
Except you actually have 45 differenct circles. President, congressman, senator, state rep and state senator, mayor, city council, school board, property appraiser, election supervisor, judicial retention, popular referendums...
I believe there's only one DSL provider left, the also-bankrupt Covad. Well, unless you count the Bells...