Well, Chester, a simple google search on usury+middle+ages will get you "A major obstacle to the growth of banks in the Middle Ages was the Church's prohibition of usury" on the first hit. Please don't confuse the Catholic Church of the middle ages with any of the hundred branches of Christianity that presently exist. They weren't really all that interested in an accurate reading of the bible. It was a capital offense to have a version of it printed in the vernacular.
Odd. Last time I went into a university library, I wasn't a student and I was able to wander around freely. Even used the copier. Didn't try to check any books out, though.
Hey, it was even the University of Texas (at Dallas):)
Another factor was that loaning someone and charging them interest was usury, a mortal sin. It was only after Christianity got past that things started to pick up (and is a reason why all the really old banks in Europe are Jewish). Most Muslims still consider usury a big no-no.
Another interesting parallel is the Spanish Empire under the Inquisition propped up by the wealth of the New World, and the Middle East theocracies propped up by oil money.
There's nothing in the US Constitution that says we even *have* to have elections for anything other than Representatives. The state governments dictate how the electors in the Electoral College and Senators are chosen; they've chosen in all 50 states to let the electors and Senators be chosen by general election. If they wanted to, they could decide who gets the electoral votes by a good game of "Rock Paper Scissors".
True. When a casino notices that someone new is counting cards, they'll leave them alone and let them play, cause usually they suck and are still losing money. They'll only ban them when they start getting good.
Well, the easy answer to your question is that Space Ship One didn't have to use the atmosphere to slow down from ORBITAL VELOCITY, which is about 5 miles a freakin' second, or about 17 times the speed of sound. Space Ship One didn't endure anything remotely near the heat the shuttle does.
And the main fuel tank, well, that's for holding the fuel that gets them going 5 miles a second. Something Space Ship One doesn't even remotely come close to doing.
There's a HUGE difference between getting into space and getting into orbit.
I don't see anything in that article about them doing shielding research on the ISS. The only mention of the ISS is that occasionally the crewmembers have to spend time in the most heavily shielded part of the station because of solar activity. That's not research, it's survival.
The guy that killed him and took his shit sure as hell made real money off it. If you win a hundred bucks off a bookie and get mugged on the way home, the mugging is still a crime.
I don't think you're addressing the part about where they're *cheating*. Isn't that essentially what fraud and confidence games are? If in the game you can reasonable expect a MOB or another player to kill you and take your crap, you can't complain *if they do it by the rules*. It's when they *cheat* it should be illegal.
In the real world, if I run a con on you and you voluntarily give me money (usually in the expectation you'll get more back), it's illegal because I'm deceiving you. Just like using an unbeatable bot. You can't expect the operators of the game to perfectly police the game against bots just like you can't perfectly police the real world against con men.
If you'd bought the sword for $10,000 on eBay and somebody took it you because they were using unbeatable bots to make a living by cheating, wouldn't you be pissed? Or do you seriously expect them to make a game where it's *impossible* to cheat?
Hmm, which one would that be? England, France, and Germany using poison gas in WWI (or even earlier in the middle east)? Or Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war or against the Kurds? You're going to have to be more specific.
It's kinda like how a section of land can be 1 square mile or 5280*5280 square feet. The actual units don't matter. A square mile is a square mile, and C is C, whether you measure it in microns per millenium or lightyears per femtosecond. It all comes out in the wash; an energy of 1.21 gigajoules is the same as 1,210,000,000,000 millijoules.
Note that a Joule is a unit of energy. 1 Joule is 1 kg * meter^2 / sec^2. Enought to provide 1 Watt of power for one second, enough to lift 102 grams of mass 1 meter at standard Earth gravity (1 divided by "g", which is 9.8 m^2/s^2, is 0.102).
No harm done? He had virtual objects worth *real* money, and now he doesn't. Your credit card balance, your bank balance, hell your identity are just numbers in a database somewhere. Is it OK for someone to take them? How is someone hacking your credit card number different that using a bot to mug someone? Both cases someone has something of real value taken from them. What if the guy that was mugged had just purchased those items for real money on eBay? *If* the mugging had been done without a bot, and mugging by a "real" person in the game was an assumed risk that everyone took, then it'd be OK. The people running the game are no more capable of keeping every bot off than cops in the real world are at preventing every mugging.
If the developers of a banking system did a diligent job but still left holes that allowed someone to take your credity card info, who should be punished? The thief? The bank? Or should nobody be punished?
What they *should* do is tag the items with non-forgable IDs. Stolen goods (at least, stolen out of the proper context of the game) could be returned and the person who bought the stolen goods could go after the thief for fraud, because in that case there would be misrepresentation.
Native American horses weren't domesticated, they were hunted to extinction. When humans first came to North America 10,000 years ago or so, they were pretty advanced hunters (they crossed the Bering Strait during a friggin ice age) and the megafauna here had never seen a human and weren't afraid of them. All of them were exterminated.
This turned out to not be a good thing, as they didn't have any animals left that could be domesticated (other than dogs) and they were stuck in hunter-gatherer mode. Until the white man showed up. "Guns, Germs, and Steel". Should be required reading in high schools.
Same thing happened 40,000 years ago in Australia when the ancestors of the Aborigines got there. All the big animals went extinct about then. 40,000 years ago the Aborigines were crossing multiple 50 mile wide stretches of ocean, and Europeans were still trying to figure out pointy sticks.
I only personally know of two people that died of AIDs. Both from blood transfusions. They sure as hell weren't drug users. Are you talking just to feel your bowels vibrate?
The point I was trying to make was that cigarette and liquor companies market to minors not so much as to make money, but to get them hooked when they are young and impressionable.
When I was in grade school (early 70's) we got free candy cigarettes. They didn't make money off that.
And there's plenty of free porn on the net. Many sites post "advertising" pics and videos to usenet, and I'd be willing to bet that there's no shortage of teens that know way more about usenet than their parents. You can get all the porn you want without paying a dime. Granted, most of it isn't put out there by the porn sites, but some of it is.
And if you don't think a 14 year old boy can figure out how to hide porn on a computer, well, either it's been a while since you were 14, you have a bad memory, or you're female:) A lot easier than sticking a playboy under the mattress.
Actually, I think that there *should* be a priviledged chamber. A nation has to be a (real) democracy to have a seat at the grownup's table. Representation based on population/GDP/how much they fund the UN.
Moving the UN to, say, Fargo, North Dakota would probably cut down the UN workforce to people that are actually trying to accomplish something. At least they'd have an excuse to drive drunk.
And if you want to compare Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib to the things that North Korea do, or Cuba for that matter, feel free. And I didn't demand the US should lead the Human Rights Commission. There's no shortage of countries that could be on the commission that aren't, say, Libya.
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Well, Chester, a simple google search on usury+middle+ages will get you "A major obstacle to the growth of banks in the Middle Ages was the Church's prohibition of usury" on the first hit. Please don't confuse the Catholic Church of the middle ages with any of the hundred branches of Christianity that presently exist. They weren't really all that interested in an accurate reading of the bible. It was a capital offense to have a version of it printed in the vernacular.
Odd. Last time I went into a university library, I wasn't a student and I was able to wander around freely. Even used the copier. Didn't try to check any books out, though.
:)
Hey, it was even the University of Texas (at Dallas)
Yeah. I have my parent's player and disks. Nice to have a laserdisk where Han shoots first...
Another factor was that loaning someone and charging them interest was usury, a mortal sin. It was only after Christianity got past that things started to pick up (and is a reason why all the really old banks in Europe are Jewish). Most Muslims still consider usury a big no-no.
Another interesting parallel is the Spanish Empire under the Inquisition propped up by the wealth of the New World, and the Middle East theocracies propped up by oil money.
There's nothing in the US Constitution that says we even *have* to have elections for anything other than Representatives. The state governments dictate how the electors in the Electoral College and Senators are chosen; they've chosen in all 50 states to let the electors and Senators be chosen by general election. If they wanted to, they could decide who gets the electoral votes by a good game of "Rock Paper Scissors".
True. When a casino notices that someone new is counting cards, they'll leave them alone and let them play, cause usually they suck and are still losing money. They'll only ban them when they start getting good.
Well, the easy answer to your question is that Space Ship One didn't have to use the atmosphere to slow down from ORBITAL VELOCITY, which is about 5 miles a freakin' second, or about 17 times the speed of sound. Space Ship One didn't endure anything remotely near the heat the shuttle does.
And the main fuel tank, well, that's for holding the fuel that gets them going 5 miles a second. Something Space Ship One doesn't even remotely come close to doing.
There's a HUGE difference between getting into space and getting into orbit.
It's easier to incrementally improve throwaway rockets, both in reliability and cost. The shuttle just gets less reliable and more expensive.
I don't see anything in that article about them doing shielding research on the ISS. The only mention of the ISS is that occasionally the crewmembers have to spend time in the most heavily shielded part of the station because of solar activity. That's not research, it's survival.
The guy that killed him and took his shit sure as hell made real money off it. If you win a hundred bucks off a bookie and get mugged on the way home, the mugging is still a crime.
I don't think you're addressing the part about where they're *cheating*. Isn't that essentially what fraud and confidence games are? If in the game you can reasonable expect a MOB or another player to kill you and take your crap, you can't complain *if they do it by the rules*. It's when they *cheat* it should be illegal.
In the real world, if I run a con on you and you voluntarily give me money (usually in the expectation you'll get more back), it's illegal because I'm deceiving you. Just like using an unbeatable bot. You can't expect the operators of the game to perfectly police the game against bots just like you can't perfectly police the real world against con men.
If you'd bought the sword for $10,000 on eBay and somebody took it you because they were using unbeatable bots to make a living by cheating, wouldn't you be pissed? Or do you seriously expect them to make a game where it's *impossible* to cheat?
Hmm, which one would that be? England, France, and Germany using poison gas in WWI (or even earlier in the middle east)? Or Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war or against the Kurds? You're going to have to be more specific.
It's kinda like how a section of land can be 1 square mile or 5280*5280 square feet. The actual units don't matter. A square mile is a square mile, and C is C, whether you measure it in microns per millenium or lightyears per femtosecond. It all comes out in the wash; an energy of 1.21 gigajoules is the same as 1,210,000,000,000 millijoules.
Note that a Joule is a unit of energy. 1 Joule is 1 kg * meter^2 / sec^2. Enought to provide 1 Watt of power for one second, enough to lift 102 grams of mass 1 meter at standard Earth gravity (1 divided by "g", which is 9.8 m^2/s^2, is 0.102).
Plenty of things travel at the speed of light. Just no things with mass != 0.
No harm done? He had virtual objects worth *real* money, and now he doesn't. Your credit card balance, your bank balance, hell your identity are just numbers in a database somewhere. Is it OK for someone to take them? How is someone hacking your credit card number different that using a bot to mug someone? Both cases someone has something of real value taken from them. What if the guy that was mugged had just purchased those items for real money on eBay? *If* the mugging had been done without a bot, and mugging by a "real" person in the game was an assumed risk that everyone took, then it'd be OK. The people running the game are no more capable of keeping every bot off than cops in the real world are at preventing every mugging.
If the developers of a banking system did a diligent job but still left holes that allowed someone to take your credity card info, who should be punished? The thief? The bank? Or should nobody be punished?
What they *should* do is tag the items with non-forgable IDs. Stolen goods (at least, stolen out of the proper context of the game) could be returned and the person who bought the stolen goods could go after the thief for fraud, because in that case there would be misrepresentation.
Because that's when the first humans came to North America and killed off damn near all the megafauna.
Native American horses weren't domesticated, they were hunted to extinction. When humans first came to North America 10,000 years ago or so, they were pretty advanced hunters (they crossed the Bering Strait during a friggin ice age) and the megafauna here had never seen a human and weren't afraid of them. All of them were exterminated.
This turned out to not be a good thing, as they didn't have any animals left that could be domesticated (other than dogs) and they were stuck in hunter-gatherer mode. Until the white man showed up. "Guns, Germs, and Steel". Should be required reading in high schools.
Same thing happened 40,000 years ago in Australia when the ancestors of the Aborigines got there. All the big animals went extinct about then. 40,000 years ago the Aborigines were crossing multiple 50 mile wide stretches of ocean, and Europeans were still trying to figure out pointy sticks.
Whole new meaning to the phrase "Eat me".
Aren't there vegans who fry up and eat placentas? Mmmm. Chicken-fried afterbirth. My wife had twins, so I can have seconds.
I only personally know of two people that died of AIDs. Both from blood transfusions. They sure as hell weren't drug users. Are you talking just to feel your bowels vibrate?
Depends. Do I have a spacesuit?
The point I was trying to make was that cigarette and liquor companies market to minors not so much as to make money, but to get them hooked when they are young and impressionable.
:) A lot easier than sticking a playboy under the mattress.
When I was in grade school (early 70's) we got free candy cigarettes. They didn't make money off that.
And there's plenty of free porn on the net. Many sites post "advertising" pics and videos to usenet, and I'd be willing to bet that there's no shortage of teens that know way more about usenet than their parents. You can get all the porn you want without paying a dime. Granted, most of it isn't put out there by the porn sites, but some of it is.
And if you don't think a 14 year old boy can figure out how to hide porn on a computer, well, either it's been a while since you were 14, you have a bad memory, or you're female
Actually, I think that there *should* be a priviledged chamber. A nation has to be a (real) democracy to have a seat at the grownup's table. Representation based on population/GDP/how much they fund the UN.
When I referred to it being risky, I didn't mean dangerous. I meant I doubt that the damn thing could be made to work in the next 50 years.
:)
There's still some technology work to be done to make fusion commercially feasible, too
Moving the UN to, say, Fargo, North Dakota would probably cut down the UN workforce to people that are actually trying to accomplish something. At least they'd have an excuse to drive drunk.
And if you want to compare Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib to the things that North Korea do, or Cuba for that matter, feel free. And I didn't demand the US should lead the Human Rights Commission. There's no shortage of countries that could be on the commission that aren't, say, Libya.
Yeah. Sure. And cigarette companies don't want minors smoking. And liquor companies don't want minors drinking.