This is the first time I've ever read a news report that shows Greenpeace doing something besides political grandstanding.
That's probably because you don't pay much attention to what Greenpeace is doing. The organisation was originally founded to draw attention to specific threats to nature (whaling was the first), so it should come as no surprise that Greenpeace is still very publicity oriented, but they do a lot more nowadays. They fund lots of research, they subsidise environmental projects, they even invest in (or start their own) industries when they are viable and better than the current alternatives.
Now here comes Greenpeace, who has proven that they would rather see populations starve to death than have them eat GM foods
Have you actually read the article you're linking to? It's not Greenpeace calling the shots there, it's the government of Zambia that refuses GE food. Greenpeace is quoted in that article saying:
"If the choice really was between GE grain and starvation then clearly any food is the preferable option"
Problem is, it's GE grain is not the only option, but US companies need to create a market for their GE stuff. Europe doesn't want it, and with good reason. Why should Africa accept it? There are plenty of viable alternatives that aren't being tried because US companies have stuff to sell and need to create a market.
It just seems to me that Greenpeace is following the formula of the religions - find something that is mysterious and unsettling to the average person, vilify it, then profit.
The only problem is that Greenpeace is a non-profit organisation. I'd like to see more data too, but until then, I'm more inclined to believe a non-profit organisation that concerns itself with the health of the entire world than with a profit oriented multinational corporation with a history of power mongering and bribery[*].
[*] Not in Europe or the US ofcourse, but in Africa, where bribing officials to get them to force the regular farmers do you bidding, is quite acceptable.
From my understanding of Eastern European history and the conditions in Eastern Bloc countries after the war, I really think you should reword that to say "defeat Germany" rather than "liberate Europe."
I considered putting quotes around "liberate", but I figured that the (real) liberation of western Europe was also helped quite a lot by the exhausting war at the eastern front. So even though the USSR's intention was to conquer instead of to liberate, I think their effort to defeat Germany did actually help the liberation of those countries that were liberated.
They are linear, but they shouldn't be. When we talk about real RPGs, we don't say "we've made it past foo", we say "we're still looking for the library of Cara Fahd, to get rid of that curse. We think we know where it is, but it's flooded and we can't get in, but a couple of sessions ago we found this magical pump, which we hope can be used to get the water out. Unfortunately we got a bit derailed by a siege, and now we have to travel to the other side of Barsaive to escort an invisible army of Orcs. Oh well, the library isn't going anywhere, but I hope it's going to be our next stop." (This is from a real campaign.) See, real RPGs aren't linear. They're a tangled mess, and you didn't make it past foo, you've been to foo, bar and baz and now you're working on something completely different but... etc.
And a few CRPGs are like that too. Not the otherwise brilliant Torment, unfortunately, but I'm currently playing Morrowind, and it is sort of true there. See, I joined house Hlaalu, and not any of the other houses, and I'm trying to help the Thieves' Guild get the Camonna Tong out of the Fighters' Guild, instead of blindly obeying the boss of the Fighter's Guild. And I just visited a Daedra Shrine, but got out after my first fight because it's clearly a bit too dangerous for me. I do plan to finish my quests for the Blades, but at the moment I'm a bit too busy with other stuff, and the old skooma addict can afford to wait.
See? That's not linear at all. Problem is, I have to create my own story, since there's no GM to do it for me, it's not hard wired into the game. What would be really cool is a clever AI module that keeps track of what you're doing, what you have done and what you plan to do, and creates a nice story around you. Unfortunately that's not anywhere within the capabilities of current AI yet. Even human GMs have a hard enough time to get this right.
That's because you play RPGs to win. Personally, I play them to experience a story. In that case, any path you choose is valid.
Exactly! I'd mod you up if I could.
To expand on the grandparent's example, suppose you're on your way to save the world and a village asks you for help with some unrelated problem. The choice here isn't about what gets you the biggest advantage later in the game, it's about what kind of character you're playing. Are you playing someone who only cares about the final goal, or are you someone who helps people because that's the right thing to do? Even if it risks your final goal?
In the end, roleplaying isn't just adventuring and overcoming obstacles, it's also about exploring the role you're playing. That's why Torment was so brilliant, while the protagonist of Baldur's Gate 1 was little more than a collection of stats that the rest of the party gathered around.
Sure you can. After all, unless you are playing Nethack eventually you will kill the monster and go home to live happily ever after. With any RPG I have ever played it was never a question of whether or not I would win, but how long it would take, and how many twists and turns would I encounter on the way. Seriously, how is that different from a book?
If I want to read a book, I'd really much rather read a book than play a video game. Books are better written, tend to have more complex and interesting storylines, unexpected twists, and don't involve so much tedious hack and slash as filler. The whole point of a RPG is that it's not like a book. What it does have in common, though, is that it's not about winning. You don't win a story, you experience it. Perhaps you finish it. But winning and RPGs? Those two concepts don't belong together. It not about reaching the goal, it's about how you get there. And simply getting there by following the yellow brick road and not thinking about it isn't too exciting.
The only place true non-linearity fits is when it's the primary selling point of the game. Sandbox games like the GTA series or world-based MMORPGs require non-linearity by their very nature (Of course, they also have storylines but those clearly aren't the main selling points). RPGs, though, are meant to be story-driven, and a story is primarily linear, since that's the way we humans experience time.
I have always learned that RPGs are not about blindly following a story, but about "what would you (or actually the character you're playing) do in that situation?". In a linear story, there's only a right way and a wrong way, not a different way. There's no way to make the story really mine. It's just interactive fiction, not a real RPG.
By the way, there are ways to give players choice while still having everybody visit the same places. Planescape:Torment allows you to run loose in Sigil before arriving at all the vital points you'll eventually end up at, and if I recall correctly, you'll make some deep, philosophical choices during the course of the game. The end is very linear (apart from some choice at the end, I believe?), but even at the start, everybody still mostly visits the same places and follows the same story, but they do so in their very own way.
Knights of the Old Republic had something somewhat similar: firstly you can choose in what order to visit the various planets, and secondly you'll have to choose between the light side and the dark side at some point, which has a profound effect on some encounters and on the ending, but you still visit the same places. The outdoor locations and the various cities are still infinitely more limited than a really open CRPG like Morrowind (or Oblivion I assume), though. There you can really go anywhere, and to what extend you follow the actual story, which factions you join, and how you eventually resolve the verious plot lines is entirely your own responsibility. The stories are still there, but you have the freedom to ignore them.
Morrowind (and Oblivion?) are pretty extreme in their openness, but I think Torment and KotOR are pretty close to the goldilocks zone. Ofcourse despite Torment's brilliant writing, they're still not quite real RPGs.
So because the US is bigger, France has to obey blindly? Alliances don't work like that. The US has the biggest voice in NATO, but other nations also still have a voice. What you want is probably more like the Warschaw Pact where the biggest member calls all the shots.
No true leftist/progressive/socialist believes in -individual- civil liberties.
Could you be any more wrong? Many true leftists believe in individual liberties. And many rightists don't. See, the thing is, the liberty-authority scale is completely orthogonal to the left-right (socialism-capitalism) scale. While communist Russia was a good example of a leftist state without individual rights, many capitalist systems don't respect individual either. Ever heard of Pinochet? One of the most extreme laissez-faire capitalists ever, yet at the same time one of the most brutal dictators with a penchant for having anyone who tries to excercise any individual rights "disapppear". For more recent (though less extreme) examples, consider the US PATRIOT Act or modern state-capitalist Russia. The fight for individual liberties started at the left wing of the spectrum, and still continues there.
t seems to me that US victories are either
a) Against enemy that has already exhausted their forces fighting others (WW1 and WW2)
or
b) Against overwhelmingly inferior enemy
France, on the other hand, stomped all over Europe for about 20 years two centuries ago, and it required an alliance of all European powers (including Russia) to bring them down.
Right or wrong, France has a poor ally to the United States
That's not quite true. France has had a pretty valuable ally in the US. And vice versa. The problem is that France refuses to become a lackey, and wants to be an ally on equal footing, while the US in recent years has mostly been looking for lackeys.
"Do you know how many French citizens died fighting the Nazi invasion? "
Compared with the Russians, Poles, British and Americans, hardly any.
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? The war was already going on for a couple of years before the US finally joined in. Yes, France lost "hardly any" lives compared to Germany or Russia, but it lost more lives than the US. And it lost a lot more lives than the US lost in Europe.
You're essentially asking us to believe that the British (and Canadians) could have liberated Europe without the U.S., but that the U.S. could not have done so alone. Without U.S. involvement, the invasion of Europe would not have happened. Could the U.S. have done it alone? Almost certainly.
Actually, most of the work to liberate Europe was done by Russia. The entire western front pales in comparison to the scale and the number of casualties on the eastern front. For several years, Russia bore nearly the entire brunt of the German attack. It's the eastern front that exhausted the German war machine. Could the US have accomplished anything without Russia being there? I sincerely doubt it. Could Russia have done it without the US? Very probably (although lend-lease certainly helped).
But back to the comparison of the US and the UK. Could the US have staged an invasion like Normandy without England as a jumping-off point? I have my doubts.
Part of the reason why the US joined in the war was not just to defeat Germany, but to make sure it was defeated by the West. Without them, a much larger part of Europe would have come under Russian influence, and Russia would have emerged as the ruling world power instead of the US. And I'm really grateful for that. Without the US, my country probably wouldn't have been liberated by Canadians, but by Russians. Just don't think WW2 was simply the US versus Germany. The war was much more complicated than that.
would hazard to say less French might have died if they had decided to fight from the beginning and not just after the occupation in a clandestine manner.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. France did fight from the beginning. They just weren't prepared for Germany's new strategies and overwhelming force.
I personally find it amazing that America bailed them out of both World Wars and yet France continues to be a tacit enemy of the United States.
Excuse me? Do you know who America's biggest allies in Afghanistan are? France is in the top 3 of countries that provide the most troops in Afghanistan. The US is attacked, its allies are there to help them out. What France criticised was the US's attack on a country that didn't attack the US, and wasn't in any way a threat to US souvereignty.
I personally find it amazing that France was the first to support the US in its war of independence and has continued to be America's ally throughout its existence, and yet some Americans continue to be a tacit enemy of France.
They should have put more of that anti-American sentiment to good use against the Germans.
They did. France and Germany have fought plenty of wars over the last couple of centuries. Now what are you gonna do about that anti-French sentiment in the US? How come US politicians were talking about "punishing" its oldest ally? Do Americans have any sense of history at all?
Cons:
-Crashes so much that I'm tempted at times to switch back to windows. Of course this might just be Fedora that I'm using, but I've noticed KDE and GNOME both to be pretty unstable.
Really? I've never had any Gnome instability problems in Ubuntu. I can't recall having *any* crashes *ever*, actually. Only with Windows, or with older linux distros.
-Software installation is improving with the likes of yum, but many software packages still require endless reading of documents and setting flags for configuration files etc.
On Ubuntu, I had a problem installing firefox 2 (which doesn't come in a.deb package), but I've never had any trouble whatsoever with anything in a.deb.
My advice: give Ubuntu a try if Fedora isn't working for you.
blockquote>
And here you have stated the problem perfectly.... Linux is for the guy who has no problem spending a few HOURS to get something working. People who want the machine to just do it with a minimal amount of effort use something else.
Not true. Ubuntu installs very smoothly, and if you don't mind paying for Cedega, Cedega and the games it supports also install very quickly, easily and smoothly. Installing firefox was a lot harder. Or installing WinXP. Or those very same games on Windows, even. Seriously, for gaming, Ubuntu+Cedega is as easy as you could hope for, annd it gives you a lot more control than you'd have in Windows.
Sure. Oh, you meant ones that do not suck greasy cocks... no, sorry; it only does ugly amateur console-games like Natheck and Hangman.
Install Cedega. It's not Open Source, but it does come in a nice and friendly.deb package, and it runs a reasonable number of my favourite games perfectly. In a way, the installation, starting the game and running it in a window instead of a stupid fullscreen mode, works even easier and smoother than on Windows.
For some games, that is. Others just don't install or install but don't work properly.
The other thing that's very Taoist is being unable to explain. "The Tao that can be spoken (of) is not the Tao".
This is not the first time I've seen christianity compared to taoism. I don't know a lot aboout taoism, but every time I read or hear about it, it reminds me of the teachings of Jesus himself. It seems like the only real difference is that the Tao is an abstract force, while God has personality.
Well, he managed to get that seven thousand year old document in an obscure language translated into almost every modern language and become the most reproduced document of all time.
It appears that the IKEA catalogue has recently surpassed the bible as the most printed book of all time. Make of that you will.
As most christians seem to forget lucifer/devil was an angel. So the very same place you call heaven is the same place that created evil and the devil.
As most non-christians seem to forget, Dante's Inferno was never actually part of the bible. But even if it was, then he was still not created evil. Evil was his choice, just like it is our choice. If you're upset about the existence of evil, blame mankind, not God.
I'm sick of this "Hell is a separation from god" line that Christians have been using more and more.
Hell is vividly described in the bible as a place of torture and pain.
Pain, possibly, but I'd love to see a quote from the bible that describes hell as inflicted torture (instead of chosen suffering). You do know that the whole idea of hell as hot, firey and full of torture comes from Dante, right? Inferno is not actually part of the bible, although a lot of people seem to think it is.
Easier said than done. Yeah, you may find out that player NoobSauce isn't very good, since his gear sucks and his talent trees are a mess. But how the heck are you going to find him? For all you know, he's not even logged in or playing the game anymore. It doesn't help even in the reverse situation. For example, you notice Legolaughs is guarding the flag in a Battleground. Are you really going to ALT-TAB out, launch a web browser, go look up his talent spec, ALT-TAB back, then go to town? Of course not.
Ofcourse you've got the web browser open on the right page already. Just switch to that window, type the name, and you're done. And if you run WoW at less than fullscreen (I don't know if that's possible on Windows, but it's definitely possible in Cedega on linux) or you've got a second screen for your browser, you'd even be able to read the info while continuing to play the game.
Slashdot Mirror
That's probably because you don't pay much attention to what Greenpeace is doing. The organisation was originally founded to draw attention to specific threats to nature (whaling was the first), so it should come as no surprise that Greenpeace is still very publicity oriented, but they do a lot more nowadays. They fund lots of research, they subsidise environmental projects, they even invest in (or start their own) industries when they are viable and better than the current alternatives.
Have you actually read the article you're linking to? It's not Greenpeace calling the shots there, it's the government of Zambia that refuses GE food. Greenpeace is quoted in that article saying:
Problem is, it's GE grain is not the only option, but US companies need to create a market for their GE stuff. Europe doesn't want it, and with good reason. Why should Africa accept it? There are plenty of viable alternatives that aren't being tried because US companies have stuff to sell and need to create a market.
The only problem is that Greenpeace is a non-profit organisation. I'd like to see more data too, but until then, I'm more inclined to believe a non-profit organisation that concerns itself with the health of the entire world than with a profit oriented multinational corporation with a history of power mongering and bribery[*].
[*] Not in Europe or the US ofcourse, but in Africa, where bribing officials to get them to force the regular farmers do you bidding, is quite acceptable.
I considered putting quotes around "liberate", but I figured that the (real) liberation of western Europe was also helped quite a lot by the exhausting war at the eastern front. So even though the USSR's intention was to conquer instead of to liberate, I think their effort to defeat Germany did actually help the liberation of those countries that were liberated.
They are linear, but they shouldn't be. When we talk about real RPGs, we don't say "we've made it past foo", we say "we're still looking for the library of Cara Fahd, to get rid of that curse. We think we know where it is, but it's flooded and we can't get in, but a couple of sessions ago we found this magical pump, which we hope can be used to get the water out. Unfortunately we got a bit derailed by a siege, and now we have to travel to the other side of Barsaive to escort an invisible army of Orcs. Oh well, the library isn't going anywhere, but I hope it's going to be our next stop." (This is from a real campaign.) See, real RPGs aren't linear. They're a tangled mess, and you didn't make it past foo, you've been to foo, bar and baz and now you're working on something completely different but... etc.
And a few CRPGs are like that too. Not the otherwise brilliant Torment, unfortunately, but I'm currently playing Morrowind, and it is sort of true there. See, I joined house Hlaalu, and not any of the other houses, and I'm trying to help the Thieves' Guild get the Camonna Tong out of the Fighters' Guild, instead of blindly obeying the boss of the Fighter's Guild. And I just visited a Daedra Shrine, but got out after my first fight because it's clearly a bit too dangerous for me. I do plan to finish my quests for the Blades, but at the moment I'm a bit too busy with other stuff, and the old skooma addict can afford to wait.
See? That's not linear at all. Problem is, I have to create my own story, since there's no GM to do it for me, it's not hard wired into the game. What would be really cool is a clever AI module that keeps track of what you're doing, what you have done and what you plan to do, and creates a nice story around you. Unfortunately that's not anywhere within the capabilities of current AI yet. Even human GMs have a hard enough time to get this right.
Exactly! I'd mod you up if I could.
To expand on the grandparent's example, suppose you're on your way to save the world and a village asks you for help with some unrelated problem. The choice here isn't about what gets you the biggest advantage later in the game, it's about what kind of character you're playing. Are you playing someone who only cares about the final goal, or are you someone who helps people because that's the right thing to do? Even if it risks your final goal?
In the end, roleplaying isn't just adventuring and overcoming obstacles, it's also about exploring the role you're playing. That's why Torment was so brilliant, while the protagonist of Baldur's Gate 1 was little more than a collection of stats that the rest of the party gathered around.
If I want to read a book, I'd really much rather read a book than play a video game. Books are better written, tend to have more complex and interesting storylines, unexpected twists, and don't involve so much tedious hack and slash as filler. The whole point of a RPG is that it's not like a book. What it does have in common, though, is that it's not about winning. You don't win a story, you experience it. Perhaps you finish it. But winning and RPGs? Those two concepts don't belong together. It not about reaching the goal, it's about how you get there. And simply getting there by following the yellow brick road and not thinking about it isn't too exciting.
I have always learned that RPGs are not about blindly following a story, but about "what would you (or actually the character you're playing) do in that situation?". In a linear story, there's only a right way and a wrong way, not a different way. There's no way to make the story really mine. It's just interactive fiction, not a real RPG.
By the way, there are ways to give players choice while still having everybody visit the same places. Planescape:Torment allows you to run loose in Sigil before arriving at all the vital points you'll eventually end up at, and if I recall correctly, you'll make some deep, philosophical choices during the course of the game. The end is very linear (apart from some choice at the end, I believe?), but even at the start, everybody still mostly visits the same places and follows the same story, but they do so in their very own way.
Knights of the Old Republic had something somewhat similar: firstly you can choose in what order to visit the various planets, and secondly you'll have to choose between the light side and the dark side at some point, which has a profound effect on some encounters and on the ending, but you still visit the same places. The outdoor locations and the various cities are still infinitely more limited than a really open CRPG like Morrowind (or Oblivion I assume), though. There you can really go anywhere, and to what extend you follow the actual story, which factions you join, and how you eventually resolve the verious plot lines is entirely your own responsibility. The stories are still there, but you have the freedom to ignore them.
Morrowind (and Oblivion?) are pretty extreme in their openness, but I think Torment and KotOR are pretty close to the goldilocks zone. Ofcourse despite Torment's brilliant writing, they're still not quite real RPGs.
So because the US is bigger, France has to obey blindly? Alliances don't work like that. The US has the biggest voice in NATO, but other nations also still have a voice. What you want is probably more like the Warschaw Pact where the biggest member calls all the shots.
Could you be any more wrong? Many true leftists believe in individual liberties. And many rightists don't. See, the thing is, the liberty-authority scale is completely orthogonal to the left-right (socialism-capitalism) scale. While communist Russia was a good example of a leftist state without individual rights, many capitalist systems don't respect individual either. Ever heard of Pinochet? One of the most extreme laissez-faire capitalists ever, yet at the same time one of the most brutal dictators with a penchant for having anyone who tries to excercise any individual rights "disapppear". For more recent (though less extreme) examples, consider the US PATRIOT Act or modern state-capitalist Russia. The fight for individual liberties started at the left wing of the spectrum, and still continues there.
France, on the other hand, stomped all over Europe for about 20 years two centuries ago, and it required an alliance of all European powers (including Russia) to bring them down.
That's not quite true. France has had a pretty valuable ally in the US. And vice versa. The problem is that France refuses to become a lackey, and wants to be an ally on equal footing, while the US in recent years has mostly been looking for lackeys.
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? The war was already going on for a couple of years before the US finally joined in. Yes, France lost "hardly any" lives compared to Germany or Russia, but it lost more lives than the US. And it lost a lot more lives than the US lost in Europe.
Actually, most of the work to liberate Europe was done by Russia. The entire western front pales in comparison to the scale and the number of casualties on the eastern front. For several years, Russia bore nearly the entire brunt of the German attack. It's the eastern front that exhausted the German war machine. Could the US have accomplished anything without Russia being there? I sincerely doubt it. Could Russia have done it without the US? Very probably (although lend-lease certainly helped).
But back to the comparison of the US and the UK. Could the US have staged an invasion like Normandy without England as a jumping-off point? I have my doubts.
Part of the reason why the US joined in the war was not just to defeat Germany, but to make sure it was defeated by the West. Without them, a much larger part of Europe would have come under Russian influence, and Russia would have emerged as the ruling world power instead of the US. And I'm really grateful for that. Without the US, my country probably wouldn't have been liberated by Canadians, but by Russians. Just don't think WW2 was simply the US versus Germany. The war was much more complicated than that.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. France did fight from the beginning. They just weren't prepared for Germany's new strategies and overwhelming force.
Excuse me? Do you know who America's biggest allies in Afghanistan are? France is in the top 3 of countries that provide the most troops in Afghanistan. The US is attacked, its allies are there to help them out. What France criticised was the US's attack on a country that didn't attack the US, and wasn't in any way a threat to US souvereignty.
I personally find it amazing that France was the first to support the US in its war of independence and has continued to be America's ally throughout its existence, and yet some Americans continue to be a tacit enemy of France.
They did. France and Germany have fought plenty of wars over the last couple of centuries. Now what are you gonna do about that anti-French sentiment in the US? How come US politicians were talking about "punishing" its oldest ally? Do Americans have any sense of history at all?
Really? I've never had any Gnome instability problems in Ubuntu. I can't recall having *any* crashes *ever*, actually. Only with Windows, or with older linux distros.
On Ubuntu, I had a problem installing firefox 2 (which doesn't come in a .deb package), but I've never had any trouble whatsoever with anything in a .deb.
My advice: give Ubuntu a try if Fedora isn't working for you.
Not true. Ubuntu installs very smoothly, and if you don't mind paying for Cedega, Cedega and the games it supports also install very quickly, easily and smoothly. Installing firefox was a lot harder. Or installing WinXP. Or those very same games on Windows, even. Seriously, for gaming, Ubuntu+Cedega is as easy as you could hope for, annd it gives you a lot more control than you'd have in Windows.
Install Cedega. It's not Open Source, but it does come in a nice and friendly .deb package, and it runs a reasonable number of my favourite games perfectly. In a way, the installation, starting the game and running it in a window instead of a stupid fullscreen mode, works even easier and smoother than on Windows.
For some games, that is. Others just don't install or install but don't work properly.
This is not the first time I've seen christianity compared to taoism. I don't know a lot aboout taoism, but every time I read or hear about it, it reminds me of the teachings of Jesus himself. It seems like the only real difference is that the Tao is an abstract force, while God has personality.
It appears that the IKEA catalogue has recently surpassed the bible as the most printed book of all time. Make of that you will.
As most non-christians seem to forget, Dante's Inferno was never actually part of the bible. But even if it was, then he was still not created evil. Evil was his choice, just like it is our choice. If you're upset about the existence of evil, blame mankind, not God.
Pain, possibly, but I'd love to see a quote from the bible that describes hell as inflicted torture (instead of chosen suffering). You do know that the whole idea of hell as hot, firey and full of torture comes from Dante, right? Inferno is not actually part of the bible, although a lot of people seem to think it is.
Ofcourse you've got the web browser open on the right page already. Just switch to that window, type the name, and you're done. And if you run WoW at less than fullscreen (I don't know if that's possible on Windows, but it's definitely possible in Cedega on linux) or you've got a second screen for your browser, you'd even be able to read the info while continuing to play the game.
And since we're flaming spelling anyway, the 'h' goes before the 't'.
My personal favourite, nay, my personal motto, is:
"One hand full of rest is better than two fists full of labor and striving after wind." (Ecclesiastes 4:6)