We got a family Christmas present of a GPS and I introduced them to Geocaching and we've had many, many fun hours exploring and finding new places. We've even placed a couple caches ourselves.
Welcome to Switzerland! - Neutral in "all" political matters, controlling most of the international banking trade, and now the only country in the world that allows YOU to set up your company and actually do business without worrying about getting sued because you staple your papers on the upper-left side of the page (International Patent #4535788563421) or because you might use "a computer communications language that puts real-time messages into electronic signals", "store computer data in binary-coded, magnetic signals on a rotating platter", "one-click" purchasing, or perhaps the widely-licensed "using flourescent lighting while speaking through a communications device from 9AM to 5PM"! (International Patents #347568902304, #968747834, #235754267 and #96506845982374)
It's back to the good old days of business where you could blow your nose without asking your legal staff if you might be using a technique that would cost millions in licensing fees!
Sell products with the features that make competitive sense, instead of the features you can afford the patents to! Write the software the way you want, using the formulas and functions the most efficient and understandable way! Take advantage of advertising and internal company documents where every other word doesn't have to have (TM), (R), and footnotes listing that you have no actual connection or relationship to the intellectual property and trademark broker (IPTB) "Customer Satisfaction", "Cost-Savings", or "Product Benefits" Corporations!
Selling prime locations in the scenic slums of Geneva for the unbelievable bargain of a mere $10 million per square foot! Imagine what you'll save on lawsuits and licensing fees!
DISCLAIMER: Independents, entrepreneurs, and startup venture capital business worth less than $100 billion need not apply. Military escort through Berne Convention signatory countries not included.
It is well that the US does not sign it. Too much emphasis has been put on this treaty, not surprisingly from those who are effected least from it climatically (China/India/Mexico) and who are encouraging those to sign who it will impact the most (Russia/USA).
What is worse, it is designed with mandatory cuts based on emissions figures from over a decade ago that would make it even harder to comply with (IE- more damaging to industry) and at the same time exempt nations who emit far more greenhouse gasses from their industrial regions per capita.
Halo was intended to be a Mac game first and foremost
It was NEVER slated to be a Mac-only game. Steve Jobs begged the Bungie guys to intro it at the Mac World conference to boost the idea that the Mac was a gamer's platform.
Also Bungies' efforts to make a RTS game was short-lived. They quickly realized that it was going to be a FPS along the lines of the Marathon series.
Their original platforms for Halo, the FPS, were Mac, PC, and Playstation2.
When Microsoft bought Bungie, Bungie scrapped a lot of their engine work and rebuilt it to meet the XBox technical requirements. What was (much) later brought to the PC was a port of the XBox game and what was brought to the Mac was a port of the XBox game ported to the PC. In a word, it was pretty bad. However, if you ignored the pathetic nature of the port itself, the game rocked.
We can excuse Bungie because they didn't make either the PC or Mac ports, they made the XBox game... and it was as good as any FPS can be on a console.
I can only hope they work themselves on the PC/Mac port of Halo 2 so it will meet their high standards.
I'm so incredibly dispirited by the lack of creativity in games nowadays. Tolkien has done the world of fantasy irreperable harm. Orcs, Goblins, Elves, Men, Dwarves, even Gnomes...all of them in every game. They have become a shorthand for lazy game developers, the computer game equivalent of "Once upon a time".
While I disagree with your assessment of Tolkien doing harm, I agree that things have gotten stagnant. Of course, Tolkien only studied the great epics of the past to craft his work. Prior to him everything was minature- dwarfs, sprites, nymphs, leprechauns, etc. He made fantasy more approachable by making it more human. But it isn't his fault that no one since has been able to lift fantasy to the next level.
I will say that one game that was different and did relatively well is Bungie's Myth tactical series. (There were three of them, although the last one tanked, but it wasn't made by Bungie either so it doesn't really count.) The Myth series wrote its own storyline, races, characters, lands, languages, etc.... It was a blast to play too! There are humans and dwarves, but the humans do lots of things and the dwarves... well, they're mostly drunk and launch molotov cocktails and other explosive things.
I will forever remember fondly those slugfest king-of-the-hill matches with the zombie-like, slow-moving Thrall and a few well-placed dwarves chucking bombs causing massive amounts of limbs and other detritus to go flying around the screen. What a hoot!
Hah! That's a joke. It takes just as much time to learn Photoshop and Lightwave as it does to learn Gimp and Blender. People sometimes scoff at the new generation of F/OSS graphics software because it's not what they're used to.
The criticism of clifyt in this thread is very valid.
From someone who has worked with artists and layout specialists, and who is familiar with everyting from Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator, DreamWeaver on both Windows and Macs, to vim and gimp on Linux (I run Gentoo), let me assure you that it's a whole lot more than just a learning curve for the OSS. There are features that are completely missing, and other things that need to be done that are simply too hard and error-prone to ask the average user or artist to do.
Ever try to do GUI page-layout in OSS? That's a laugh. The likes of Pagemaker and Quark just don't exist... TeX doesn't count unless you want to code. Scribus is an interesting program, but it is hardly stable and took me hours just to get a working PDF that I could take to a printers to print out.
How about GUI HTML layout? Again, not much there to compare with the features of DreamWeaver. Some who make web-pages with a text browser may scoff- but try utilizing the HTML-savvy search and replace capabilities where DreamWeaver can intelligently search through attributes in tags, or using the GUI to do a complex mock-up while watching it generate nice, clean HTML that can easily be edited later. This functionality just doesn't exist in OSS. Quanta is interesting but it isn't WYSIWYG yet.
Even simple things like getting fonts working is far harder in Linux than it needs to be with font servers, X fonts, postscript vs. other imaging models, font config, gnome fonts, etc. Yikes! And I thought getting Windows fonts working used to be hard!
Don't even start me on the fact that there IS NO workable database OSS GUI (no, web PHP interfaces don't count and neither do command-line interfaces). Yes, I can code in raw SQL (I've worked with MSSQL, MySQL, and PostgreSQL), but more often I open FileMaker Pro in Wine to build those quick databases with interfaces I want users to be able to manipulate (like our Marketing department).
The problem with OSS is that those who create the objectives of the project are also those who code the project. This leads to one mindset when designing interfaces and it isn't for the graphic artist!
Apple and others who are good at interface design understand that you have one group of coders working on the back-end code and a whole other group of coders working on the interface, and even then, only with strict UI guidelines and a bunch of non-technical testers to make sure you've got it right.
After all, the techies can just drop into a bash shell when we need to get something done that the GUI can't do, right?
These congressman... are all corrupt because the system is about lobbying(which needs to be outlawed).
Do you really want to have to require that each citizen lobby their representatives individually?
I myself am a member of various professional and political organizations and know that my concerns are being looked after by lobbyists who represent my views.
I tend to agree that lobbying isn't wrong, it's just that the Federal Government has become too large by an ever increasing size of government and scope of its reach.
Of course, the modern incarnation of Marathon is Halo- which rocks, but the story aspect isn't done nearly as well. Still, it inherits many cool things from Marathon.
Re:What have you done to discuss gov. corruption?2
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Sorry, haven't had time to continue this discussion, nor do I think we will ever agree on this.
However, you might be interested in this story.
It appears no US companies will be directly rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure. This probably doesn't make you less suspicious of our intentions though.
Oh, and they'll be building a GSM network. That's incompatible with most of the US cellular equipment manufacturers.
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Whose message is flamebait? Mine or yours? I suppose you consider me anti-American but that's ok with me. As Noam Chomsky once remarked, calling someone anti-American is a trait of totalitarian regimes. That's what the Soviets and the Nazis used to use. The Soviets wouldn't call you anti-Communist, they would call you anti-Soviet! It is almost unheard of in democracy-like countries. Ever heard anyone say anti-Canadian? Anti-German? Anti-Chinese?
I don't think you're anti-American, just misinformed. Perhaps flamebait is too strong a word. What I meant was, this is a conversation that cannot be resolved in this forum and will create an endless string of replies and counter-replies.
Anti-Americanism only means something if you believe that- A. America is something special or deserves special regard, or B. America is somehow specially persecuted or criticized. This is similar to "Anti-Israeli". If you don't believe either of the two, then it just means, you don't like America, or more specifically, the US.
The point isn't the "negotiations" (BTW, your so-called negotiation is nothing more than gunpoint diplomacy). The point isn't even that Saddam is a dictator (which I'm sure we all agree). The real question is: what gives YOU the authority in invade another country unilaterally? You attempt to legitimize it by involving the international community and the UN, but they were against an involvement. Only around 20 countries supported the invasion and many of them only did so under US bribes (that's why they are all little countries).
If they were against an involvement, why did we get unanimous consent in the Security Council on a very strongly worded condemnation of Iraq's actions in UN resolution 1441? Wars have been started with less severe wording. What do you think the "Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations" means?
This reminds me of the current Presidential hopefuls fielded by the Democrat Party (who are anything but Democratic) who voted for authority for President Bush to attack Saddam, but then later criticized him and said they didn't want this to happen.
On top of all this, there wasn't even any evidence Iraq had WMD. USA was the one that kicked out the weapons inspectors. Now, even they can't find it.
This is really funny. The UN themselves said that Iraq had WMD. The UN stated that Iraq had not properly disposed of them. They had TONS of biological and chemical agents that were unaccounted for. So, if they didn't have them, that means that Saddam kept nearly 10 years of sanctions, all the while claiming he had the weapons publicly, even after destroying them years ago without letting anyone know. How ridiculous is that?
The inspectors left themselves after they realized that action would not continue to be stalled against Iraq continuing to block inspections as they had for over ten years. The US didn't "kick out the weapons inspectors".
Your support of unilateral pre-emptive strikes will further destabilize the world. I suppose that is ok with you... And Rumsfeld's notion that the front on terror is in Iraq is utter nonsense. Wait until Al-Qaida strikes USA or some other (non-Iraqi) target. Then we'll see how central Iraq is to the "war" on terror.
Though I realize it will likely happen at some point in the future, interestingly enough we have not had another major terrorist attack since September 11, 2001. Many countries have started to crack down on terrorist groups operating within their countries due to the "Bush doctrine". In fact, it may be the biggest inhibitor of terrorist actions to date.
Yes, the "coalition" enemies are camouflaged. Is this anything new? They are waging a guerilla war (in addition to a bunch of terrorists waging a terrorist campaign). You can't excuse yourself for that. Did you even read my article that I referenced? There are thousands of Iraqis dying (almost hu
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Sorry, let's try that again as a text document-
This is just flame-bait anyway, but here-goes-
Point: Well, I guess if you don't mind being killed then it's perfectly ok. Sure, you'll "solve" the problem. But you'll also end up being killed. Ever wonder why police attempts to mediate first in hostage situations? According to your view, they should go in guns-blazing first. The disgruntled employee or whoever that is holding the hostages is going to kill people if you just go in attacking. Sure, you'll "solve" the problem in the sense that the hostage taker will be killed; but so will many others...
Counterpoint: We negotiated for months, even years through the UN. Saddam broke every treaty every time. There was little hope of overcoming this through negotiation. Saddam defied the International Community, the UN, and the US.
Point: No doubt that many of them are criminals. But A LOT of them are also innocent civilians. US military actually shoots people first--they won't wait to be shot at. It's not that the soldiers want to kill innocent people; it's just that they are not sure who is innocent and not
Counterpoint: The US military is trained to fire only when threatened. They do not, as a rule, file into unarmed crowds. The problem is that terrorists and former Iraqi militants disguise themselves as civilians and fire at troops from public crowds. This is a dispicable act, and yes, mistakes are made and civilians are killed. Comparitively, though, the numbers are very small. We're talking about around a quarter-million troops and a country of several million. There were casualties before the war even began due to accidents on the side of the US. Casualties will happen. However, is this worse or better than hundreds of thousands killed under Saddam's rule?
Point: I CLIAM that USA will never bring Iraq, or Afghanistan, or any of its future targets (Iran?) to the level of Germany after WWII. Why? Because Germany (and Japan too) was a developed, industrialized country during WWII. There was very little nation building there. There were functioning courts there before, they had a plutocracy, they had voting, more egalitarian than Iraq is now, etc. If USA DOES manage to bring any of its targets in the Middle East to the level of Germany and Japan, I will personally COMMEND you. Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. Also, it seems that USA doesn't want to stick around for 10 years and absorb more than $500billion in costs (although oil will pay for all of this if it can get it).
Counterpoint: This is speculation. The United States has a pretty good record with its efforts to help rebuild nations. We'll see what happens.
Point: Yes the infrastructure wasn't exactly in great shape. But it was in better shape before the war. Why do you think there are daily protests? The basic necessities aren't at an acceptable level. Maybe it will be fixed in the future--the question is when. Don't forget that Iraq is a fairly "rich" country, even under Saddam and UN sanctions. It was better off than most Asian, South American and African countries.
Counterpoint: There are daily protests, but it is largely due to many not having jobs. Electricity is flowing in most of Iraq and 85% of the schools have opened, many with furniture they did not have under Saddam Hussein. Read this article about the Iraqi infrastructure and status- http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/26_09_03_d.asp from the Daily Star in Lebanon.
Point: The fact that you still think this has to eliminating a dictator shows you lack of information. I hope you do realize that this has nothing to do with that (if it did, why didn't USA invade Liberia, which needs help? Or some other African country?). As far as the bloodless war comment is concerned, well I guess if you count lives by numbers, sure. Although, with your 10-year rebuilding plan, I suspect more American soldiers and more Iraqi civilians will die in this war than any war in the last 50 years (not couting Vietnam and Corea)
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This is just flame-bait anyway, but here-goes-
Point: Well, I guess if you don't mind being killed then it's perfectly ok. Sure, you'll "solve" the problem. But you'll also end up being killed. Ever wonder why police attempts to mediate first in hostage situations? According to your view, they should go in guns-blazing first. The disgruntled employee or whoever that is holding the hostages is going to kill people if you just go in attacking. Sure, you'll "solve" the problem in the sense that the hostage taker will be killed; but so will many others...
Counterpoint: We negotiated for months, years. Saddam broke every treaty every time. Little hope of overcoming this through negotiation.
Point: No doubt that many of them are criminals. But A LOT of them are also innocent civilians. US military actually shoots people first--they won't wait to be shot at. It's not that the soldiers want to kill innocent people; it's just that they are not sure who is innocent and not:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Sectio nID=40&ItemID=4208
Counterpoint: The US military is trained to fire only when threatened. They do not, as a rule, file into unarmed crowds. The problem is that terrorists and former Iraqi militants disguise themselves as civilians and fire at troops from public crowds. This is a dispicable act, and yes, mistakes are made and civilians are killed. Comparitively, though, the numbers are very small. We're talking about around a quarter-million troops and a country of several million. There were casualties before the war even began due to accidents on the side of the US. Casualties will happen. However, is this worse or better than hundreds of thousands killed under Saddam's rule?
Point: I CLIAM that USA will never bring Iraq, or Afghanistan, or any of its future targets (Iran?) to the level of Germany after WWII. Why? Because Germany (and Japan too) was a developed, industrialized country during WWII. There was very little nation building there. There were functioning courts there before, they had a plutocracy, they had voting, more egalitarian than Iraq is now, etc. If USA DOES manage to bring any of its targets in the Middle East to the level of Germany and Japan, I will personally COMMEND you. Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. Also, it seems that USA doesn't want to stick around for 10 years and absorb more than $500billion in costs (although oil will pay for all of this if it can get it).
Counterpoint: This is speculation. The United States has a pretty good record with its efforts to help rebuild nations. We'll see what happens.
Point: Yes the infrastructure wasn't exactly in great shape. But it was in better shape before the war. Why do you think there are daily protests? The basic necessities aren't at an acceptable level. Maybe it will be fixed in the future--the question is when. Don't forget that Iraq is a fairly "rich" country, even under Saddam and UN sanctions. It was better off than most Asian, South American and African countries.
Counterpoint: There are daily protests largely due to not having jobs. Electricity is flowing in most of Iraq and 85% of the schools have opened, many with furniture they did not have under Saddam Hussein. Read this article about the Iraqi infrastructure and status- http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/26_09_03_d.asp from the Daily Star in Lebanon.
Point: The fact that you still think this has to eliminating a dictator shows you lack of information. I hope you do realize that this has nothing to do with that (if it did, why didn't USA invade Liberia, which needs help? Or some other African country?). As far as the bloodless war comment is concerned, well I guess if you count lives by numbers, sure. Although, with your 10-year rebuilding plan, I suspect more American soldiers and more Iraqi civilians will die in this war than any war in the last 50 years (not couting Vietnam and Corea). It's bloodless all right...At one time, bloodless actually meant NO blood is spilled (as in bloodless coup) but I guess times have
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Government corruption is not going to be as obvious as the things you are pointing out, and I think you're mislead or wrong about a few things.
I hate point-by-point refutations, but well "it IS something..."
1. Violence is a good way to end violence.
If a criminal has a gun to your head, talking to him or bribing him isn't going to improve the situation.
2. Americans should kill Iraqis to make them more peaceful.
We're not killing all Iraqis; we're rounding up the criminals. These criminals have tortured, murdered, and raped. If they shoot at us, we shoot back.
3. Before Saddam Hussein, there was no violence in Iraq. When Mr. Hussein is no longer in power, Iraq will become a peaceful place.
It took over ten years after WWII to make Germany a peaceful, self-sustaining state. Why do we think Iraq can be changed in a year or two?
4. Killing Iraqis and destroying the infrastructure of that very poor country will have simple consequences.
The infrastructure was- A. Already in very poor shape with large portions of the country not receiving regular power or water. B. Rebuilding the infrastructure has been complicated by criminals and terrorists from out of the country sabotaging the infrastructure. C. Even though this is true, we now having continuous power and water in most of the country.
5. Killing people is an entirely clean social event, like on TV. Killing people has no effect on future relationships, or on the trust people put in those relationships.
I'm not sure where you got this. No one here wants to kill people just for the fun of it. However, again, if a criminal has a gun to your head, or if a despot has a gun to the head of his people, how do you resolve this? Even so, this was probably one of the most bloodless wars ever fought.
We gave Saddam months to back down on any one of a number of issues, but he chose not to.
6. Americans are superior people who should decide the way the world should be run.
I guess we should have let the Nazi's run Europe and Saddam to continue raping his citizens; And hey, if he's trying get the weapons to nuke Israel, that's okay too.
7. Private oil companies should be allowed to take on unprofitable operations if U.S. taxpayers can be convinced to pay part of the cost so that the oil companies can make money.
Private firms don't invest expertise and capital where they can't make money. Government firms cannot and should not run large, nationalized industries- doing so creates the environment that encourages despots to abuse power. Those moneys being spent are- A. Helping the Iraqi people rebuild their country. And B. Helping generate jobs for the coalition countries. I think it's a wise use of money myself. If we were to abandon the country without spending money to help rebuild parts of the infrastructure we would have utter chaos. This serves no one but the terrorists.
I recently wrote Perl script to download multiple congregation church membership directories from our churches website and manipulate them into comma-delimited, tab-delimited, and nicely formatted OpenOffice Calc (spreadsheet) and Writer (word-processor) formats directly from the Perl script. Because the Microsoft formats are closed, I could not output into those formats directly from the script, nor do I feel like reverse engineering the formats to figure out how.
I then used OpenOffice to save the files as Word and Excel formats for those who don't have access to OpenOffice, but I included a reminder that OpenOffice is free and included a link to the website.
This would have been impossible without OpenOffice, and I thank them for their work. The final output has headers, footers, special formatting and prints out like a professional document, not roughly formatted text output in courier.
Why would they need to to starve or freeze to death? Robots could produce food and maintain electrical plants at very low cost.
Wealth and poverty would have a very different meaning in this kind of future. All wealth would get you is greater access to resources for entertainment and self-actualization. Extreme poverty wouldn't cause death, but would create a consumer of cheap food, products, and media.
Hmmm, this doesn't sound all that different from today.
I disagree. Apple did try this and nearly died in the attempt. Remember Power Computing?
http://www.lowendmac.com/power/index.shtml
This and other cloners ("PowerMax") took good-sized chunks of Apple marketshare selling Macintosh-compatible hardware (that was very PC-like, low-cost, and had PCI slots) with Apple's Mac OS. Apple couldn't stop hemmoraging large amounts of cash until they bought the company at a loss and started innovating again.
Even through all this, Apple's sales plus the sales of all the clones did not increase the Macintosh marketshare. It just canabalized Apple's base.
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I have two teenagers and I had this problem too.
We got a family Christmas present of a GPS and I introduced them to Geocaching and we've had many, many fun hours exploring and finding new places. We've even placed a couple caches ourselves.
Welcome to Switzerland! - Neutral in "all" political matters, controlling most of the international banking trade, and now the only country in the world that allows YOU to set up your company and actually do business without worrying about getting sued because you staple your papers on the upper-left side of the page (International Patent #4535788563421) or because you might use "a computer communications language that puts real-time messages into electronic signals", "store computer data in binary-coded, magnetic signals on a rotating platter", "one-click" purchasing, or perhaps the widely-licensed "using flourescent lighting while speaking through a communications device from 9AM to 5PM"! (International Patents #347568902304, #968747834, #235754267 and #96506845982374)
It's back to the good old days of business where you could blow your nose without asking your legal staff if you might be using a technique that would cost millions in licensing fees!
Sell products with the features that make competitive sense, instead of the features you can afford the patents to! Write the software the way you want, using the formulas and functions the most efficient and understandable way! Take advantage of advertising and internal company documents where every other word doesn't have to have (TM), (R), and footnotes listing that you have no actual connection or relationship to the intellectual property and trademark broker (IPTB) "Customer Satisfaction", "Cost-Savings", or "Product Benefits" Corporations!
Selling prime locations in the scenic slums of Geneva for the unbelievable bargain of a mere $10 million per square foot! Imagine what you'll save on lawsuits and licensing fees!
DISCLAIMER: Independents, entrepreneurs, and startup venture capital business worth less than $100 billion need not apply. Military escort through Berne Convention signatory countries not included.
While I agree that we should all work to improve the environment and reduce the environmental impact of global industry, President Bush and the Kyoto Protocol hardly have anything to do with increased hurricane activity, it is astonishing to see such psuedo science bantered around as fact.
Well, maybe not so astonishing on slashdot...
The Kyoto protocol is an unfair and unlikely-to-succeed treaty that will cost the US jobs while failing to accomplish exactly what it is written to do.
It is well that the US does not sign it. Too much emphasis has been put on this treaty, not surprisingly from those who are effected least from it climatically (China/India/Mexico) and who are encouraging those to sign who it will impact the most (Russia/USA).
What is worse, it is designed with mandatory cuts based on emissions figures from over a decade ago that would make it even harder to comply with (IE- more damaging to industry) and at the same time exempt nations who emit far more greenhouse gasses from their industrial regions per capita.
It was NEVER slated to be a Mac-only game. Steve Jobs begged the Bungie guys to intro it at the Mac World conference to boost the idea that the Mac was a gamer's platform.
Also Bungies' efforts to make a RTS game was short-lived. They quickly realized that it was going to be a FPS along the lines of the Marathon series.
Their original platforms for Halo, the FPS, were Mac, PC, and Playstation2.
When Microsoft bought Bungie, Bungie scrapped a lot of their engine work and rebuilt it to meet the XBox technical requirements. What was (much) later brought to the PC was a port of the XBox game and what was brought to the Mac was a port of the XBox game ported to the PC. In a word, it was pretty bad. However, if you ignored the pathetic nature of the port itself, the game rocked.
We can excuse Bungie because they didn't make either the PC or Mac ports, they made the XBox game... and it was as good as any FPS can be on a console.
I can only hope they work themselves on the PC/Mac port of Halo 2 so it will meet their high standards.
I'm so incredibly dispirited by the lack of creativity in games nowadays. Tolkien has done the world of fantasy irreperable harm. Orcs, Goblins, Elves, Men, Dwarves, even Gnomes...all of them in every game. They have become a shorthand for lazy game developers, the computer game equivalent of "Once upon a time".
While I disagree with your assessment of Tolkien doing harm, I agree that things have gotten stagnant. Of course, Tolkien only studied the great epics of the past to craft his work. Prior to him everything was minature- dwarfs, sprites, nymphs, leprechauns, etc. He made fantasy more approachable by making it more human. But it isn't his fault that no one since has been able to lift fantasy to the next level.
I will say that one game that was different and did relatively well is Bungie's Myth tactical series. (There were three of them, although the last one tanked, but it wasn't made by Bungie either so it doesn't really count.) The Myth series wrote its own storyline, races, characters, lands, languages, etc.... It was a blast to play too! There are humans and dwarves, but the humans do lots of things and the dwarves... well, they're mostly drunk and launch molotov cocktails and other explosive things.
I will forever remember fondly those slugfest king-of-the-hill matches with the zombie-like, slow-moving Thrall and a few well-placed dwarves chucking bombs causing massive amounts of limbs and other detritus to go flying around the screen. What a hoot!
Hah! That's a joke. It takes just as much time to learn Photoshop and Lightwave as it does to learn Gimp and Blender. People sometimes scoff at the new generation of F/OSS graphics software because it's not what they're used to.
The criticism of clifyt in this thread is very valid.
From someone who has worked with artists and layout specialists, and who is familiar with everyting from Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator, DreamWeaver on both Windows and Macs, to vim and gimp on Linux (I run Gentoo), let me assure you that it's a whole lot more than just a learning curve for the OSS. There are features that are completely missing, and other things that need to be done that are simply too hard and error-prone to ask the average user or artist to do.
Ever try to do GUI page-layout in OSS? That's a laugh. The likes of Pagemaker and Quark just don't exist... TeX doesn't count unless you want to code. Scribus is an interesting program, but it is hardly stable and took me hours just to get a working PDF that I could take to a printers to print out.
How about GUI HTML layout? Again, not much there to compare with the features of DreamWeaver. Some who make web-pages with a text browser may scoff- but try utilizing the HTML-savvy search and replace capabilities where DreamWeaver can intelligently search through attributes in tags, or using the GUI to do a complex mock-up while watching it generate nice, clean HTML that can easily be edited later. This functionality just doesn't exist in OSS. Quanta is interesting but it isn't WYSIWYG yet.
Even simple things like getting fonts working is far harder in Linux than it needs to be with font servers, X fonts, postscript vs. other imaging models, font config, gnome fonts, etc. Yikes! And I thought getting Windows fonts working used to be hard!
Don't even start me on the fact that there IS NO workable database OSS GUI (no, web PHP interfaces don't count and neither do command-line interfaces). Yes, I can code in raw SQL (I've worked with MSSQL, MySQL, and PostgreSQL), but more often I open FileMaker Pro in Wine to build those quick databases with interfaces I want users to be able to manipulate (like our Marketing department).
The problem with OSS is that those who create the objectives of the project are also those who code the project. This leads to one mindset when designing interfaces and it isn't for the graphic artist!
Apple and others who are good at interface design understand that you have one group of coders working on the back-end code and a whole other group of coders working on the interface, and even then, only with strict UI guidelines and a bunch of non-technical testers to make sure you've got it right.
After all, the techies can just drop into a bash shell when we need to get something done that the GUI can't do, right?
And let's not forget how unbiased the other media outlets are...
These congressman ... are all corrupt because the system is about lobbying(which needs to be outlawed).
Do you really want to have to require that each citizen lobby their representatives individually?
I myself am a member of various professional and political organizations and know that my concerns are being looked after by lobbyists who represent my views.
I tend to agree that lobbying isn't wrong, it's just that the Federal Government has become too large by an ever increasing size of government and scope of its reach.
Of course, the modern incarnation of Marathon is Halo- which rocks, but the story aspect isn't done nearly as well. Still, it inherits many cool things from Marathon.
Whoops wrong link, sorry-
, 39020348,39116980,00.htm
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/wireless/0
Sorry, haven't had time to continue this discussion, nor do I think we will ever agree on this.
3 75,39116970,00.htm
However, you might be interested in this story.
It appears no US companies will be directly rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure. This probably doesn't make you less suspicious of our intentions though.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020
Oh, and they'll be building a GSM network. That's incompatible with most of the US cellular equipment manufacturers.
Whose message is flamebait? Mine or yours? I suppose you consider me anti-American but that's ok with me. As Noam Chomsky once remarked, calling someone anti-American is a trait of totalitarian regimes. That's what the Soviets and the Nazis used to use. The Soviets wouldn't call you anti-Communist, they would call you anti-Soviet! It is almost unheard of in democracy-like countries. Ever heard anyone say anti-Canadian? Anti-German? Anti-Chinese?
I don't think you're anti-American, just misinformed. Perhaps flamebait is too strong a word. What I meant was, this is a conversation that cannot be resolved in this forum and will create an endless string of replies and counter-replies.
Anti-Americanism only means something if you believe that- A. America is something special or deserves special regard, or B. America is somehow specially persecuted or criticized. This is similar to "Anti-Israeli". If you don't believe either of the two, then it just means, you don't like America, or more specifically, the US.
The point isn't the "negotiations" (BTW, your so-called negotiation is nothing more than gunpoint diplomacy). The point isn't even that Saddam is a dictator (which I'm sure we all agree). The real question is: what gives YOU the authority in invade another country unilaterally? You attempt to legitimize it by involving the international community and the UN, but they were against an involvement. Only around 20 countries supported the invasion and many of them only did so under US bribes (that's why they are all little countries).
If they were against an involvement, why did we get unanimous consent in the Security Council on a very strongly worded condemnation of Iraq's actions in UN resolution 1441? Wars have been started with less severe wording. What do you think the "Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its obligations" means?
This reminds me of the current Presidential hopefuls fielded by the Democrat Party (who are anything but Democratic) who voted for authority for President Bush to attack Saddam, but then later criticized him and said they didn't want this to happen.
On top of all this, there wasn't even any evidence Iraq had WMD. USA was the one that kicked out the weapons inspectors. Now, even they can't find it.
This is really funny. The UN themselves said that Iraq had WMD. The UN stated that Iraq had not properly disposed of them. They had TONS of biological and chemical agents that were unaccounted for. So, if they didn't have them, that means that Saddam kept nearly 10 years of sanctions, all the while claiming he had the weapons publicly, even after destroying them years ago without letting anyone know. How ridiculous is that?
The inspectors left themselves after they realized that action would not continue to be stalled against Iraq continuing to block inspections as they had for over ten years. The US didn't "kick out the weapons inspectors".
Your support of unilateral pre-emptive strikes will further destabilize the world. I suppose that is ok with you... And Rumsfeld's notion that the front on terror is in Iraq is utter nonsense. Wait until Al-Qaida strikes USA or some other (non-Iraqi) target. Then we'll see how central Iraq is to the "war" on terror.
Though I realize it will likely happen at some point in the future, interestingly enough we have not had another major terrorist attack since September 11, 2001. Many countries have started to crack down on terrorist groups operating within their countries due to the "Bush doctrine". In fact, it may be the biggest inhibitor of terrorist actions to date.
Yes, the "coalition" enemies are camouflaged. Is this anything new? They are waging a guerilla war (in addition to a bunch of terrorists waging a terrorist campaign). You can't excuse yourself for that. Did you even read my article that I referenced? There are thousands of Iraqis dying (almost hu
Sorry, let's try that again as a text document-
This is just flame-bait anyway, but here-goes-
Point: Well, I guess if you don't mind being killed then it's perfectly ok. Sure, you'll "solve" the problem. But you'll also end up being killed. Ever wonder why police attempts to mediate first in hostage situations? According to your view, they should go in guns-blazing first. The disgruntled employee or whoever that is holding the hostages is going to kill people if you just go in attacking. Sure, you'll "solve" the problem in the sense that the hostage taker will be killed; but so will many others...
Counterpoint: We negotiated for months, even years through the UN. Saddam broke every treaty every time. There was little hope of overcoming this through negotiation. Saddam defied the International Community, the UN, and the US.
Point: No doubt that many of them are criminals. But A LOT of them are also innocent civilians. US military actually shoots people first--they won't wait to be shot at. It's not that the soldiers want to kill innocent people; it's just that they are not sure who is innocent and not
Counterpoint: The US military is trained to fire only when threatened. They do not, as a rule, file into unarmed crowds. The problem is that terrorists and former Iraqi militants disguise themselves as civilians and fire at troops from public crowds. This is a dispicable act, and yes, mistakes are made and civilians are killed. Comparitively, though, the numbers are very small. We're talking about around a quarter-million troops and a country of several million. There were casualties before the war even began due to accidents on the side of the US. Casualties will happen. However, is this worse or better than hundreds of thousands killed under Saddam's rule?
Point: I CLIAM that USA will never bring Iraq, or Afghanistan, or any of its future targets (Iran?) to the level of Germany after WWII. Why? Because Germany (and Japan too) was a developed, industrialized country during WWII. There was very little nation building there. There were functioning courts there before, they had a plutocracy, they had voting, more egalitarian than Iraq is now, etc. If USA DOES manage to bring any of its targets in the Middle East to the level of Germany and Japan, I will personally COMMEND you. Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. Also, it seems that USA doesn't want to stick around for 10 years and absorb more than $500billion in costs (although oil will pay for all of this if it can get it).
Counterpoint: This is speculation. The United States has a pretty good record with its efforts to help rebuild nations. We'll see what happens.
Point: Yes the infrastructure wasn't exactly in great shape. But it was in better shape before the war. Why do you think there are daily protests? The basic necessities aren't at an acceptable level. Maybe it will be fixed in the future--the question is when. Don't forget that Iraq is a fairly "rich" country, even under Saddam and UN sanctions. It was better off than most Asian, South American and African countries.
Counterpoint: There are daily protests, but it is largely due to many not having jobs. Electricity is flowing in most of Iraq and 85% of the schools have opened, many with furniture they did not have under Saddam Hussein. Read this article about the Iraqi infrastructure and status- http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/26_09_03_d.asp from the Daily Star in Lebanon.
Point: The fact that you still think this has to eliminating a dictator shows you lack of information. I hope you do realize that this has nothing to do with that (if it did, why didn't USA invade Liberia, which needs help? Or some other African country?). As far as the bloodless war comment is concerned, well I guess if you count lives by numbers, sure. Although, with your 10-year rebuilding plan, I suspect more American soldiers and more Iraqi civilians will die in this war than any war in the last 50 years (not couting Vietnam and Corea)
This is just flame-bait anyway, but here-goes- Point: Well, I guess if you don't mind being killed then it's perfectly ok. Sure, you'll "solve" the problem. But you'll also end up being killed. Ever wonder why police attempts to mediate first in hostage situations? According to your view, they should go in guns-blazing first. The disgruntled employee or whoever that is holding the hostages is going to kill people if you just go in attacking. Sure, you'll "solve" the problem in the sense that the hostage taker will be killed; but so will many others... Counterpoint: We negotiated for months, years. Saddam broke every treaty every time. Little hope of overcoming this through negotiation. Point: No doubt that many of them are criminals. But A LOT of them are also innocent civilians. US military actually shoots people first--they won't wait to be shot at. It's not that the soldiers want to kill innocent people; it's just that they are not sure who is innocent and not: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Sectio nID=40&ItemID=4208 Counterpoint: The US military is trained to fire only when threatened. They do not, as a rule, file into unarmed crowds. The problem is that terrorists and former Iraqi militants disguise themselves as civilians and fire at troops from public crowds. This is a dispicable act, and yes, mistakes are made and civilians are killed. Comparitively, though, the numbers are very small. We're talking about around a quarter-million troops and a country of several million. There were casualties before the war even began due to accidents on the side of the US. Casualties will happen. However, is this worse or better than hundreds of thousands killed under Saddam's rule? Point: I CLIAM that USA will never bring Iraq, or Afghanistan, or any of its future targets (Iran?) to the level of Germany after WWII. Why? Because Germany (and Japan too) was a developed, industrialized country during WWII. There was very little nation building there. There were functioning courts there before, they had a plutocracy, they had voting, more egalitarian than Iraq is now, etc. If USA DOES manage to bring any of its targets in the Middle East to the level of Germany and Japan, I will personally COMMEND you. Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. Also, it seems that USA doesn't want to stick around for 10 years and absorb more than $500billion in costs (although oil will pay for all of this if it can get it). Counterpoint: This is speculation. The United States has a pretty good record with its efforts to help rebuild nations. We'll see what happens. Point: Yes the infrastructure wasn't exactly in great shape. But it was in better shape before the war. Why do you think there are daily protests? The basic necessities aren't at an acceptable level. Maybe it will be fixed in the future--the question is when. Don't forget that Iraq is a fairly "rich" country, even under Saddam and UN sanctions. It was better off than most Asian, South American and African countries. Counterpoint: There are daily protests largely due to not having jobs. Electricity is flowing in most of Iraq and 85% of the schools have opened, many with furniture they did not have under Saddam Hussein. Read this article about the Iraqi infrastructure and status- http://www.dailystar.com.lb/opinion/26_09_03_d.asp from the Daily Star in Lebanon. Point: The fact that you still think this has to eliminating a dictator shows you lack of information. I hope you do realize that this has nothing to do with that (if it did, why didn't USA invade Liberia, which needs help? Or some other African country?). As far as the bloodless war comment is concerned, well I guess if you count lives by numbers, sure. Although, with your 10-year rebuilding plan, I suspect more American soldiers and more Iraqi civilians will die in this war than any war in the last 50 years (not couting Vietnam and Corea). It's bloodless all right...At one time, bloodless actually meant NO blood is spilled (as in bloodless coup) but I guess times have
Government corruption is not going to be as obvious as the things you are pointing out, and I think you're mislead or wrong about a few things.
I hate point-by-point refutations, but well "it IS something..."
1. Violence is a good way to end violence.
If a criminal has a gun to your head, talking to him or bribing him isn't going to improve the situation.
2. Americans should kill Iraqis to make them more peaceful.
We're not killing all Iraqis; we're rounding up the criminals. These criminals have tortured, murdered, and raped. If they shoot at us, we shoot back.
3. Before Saddam Hussein, there was no violence in Iraq. When Mr. Hussein is no longer in power, Iraq will become a peaceful place.
It took over ten years after WWII to make Germany a peaceful, self-sustaining state. Why do we think Iraq can be changed in a year or two?
4. Killing Iraqis and destroying the infrastructure of that very poor country will have simple consequences.
The infrastructure was- A. Already in very poor shape with large portions of the country not receiving regular power or water. B. Rebuilding the infrastructure has been complicated by criminals and terrorists from out of the country sabotaging the infrastructure. C. Even though this is true, we now having continuous power and water in most of the country.
5. Killing people is an entirely clean social event, like on TV. Killing people has no effect on future relationships, or on the trust people put in those relationships.
I'm not sure where you got this. No one here wants to kill people just for the fun of it. However, again, if a criminal has a gun to your head, or if a despot has a gun to the head of his people, how do you resolve this? Even so, this was probably one of the most bloodless wars ever fought.
We gave Saddam months to back down on any one of a number of issues, but he chose not to.
6. Americans are superior people who should decide the way the world should be run.
I guess we should have let the Nazi's run Europe and Saddam to continue raping his citizens; And hey, if he's trying get the weapons to nuke Israel, that's okay too.
7. Private oil companies should be allowed to take on unprofitable operations if U.S. taxpayers can be convinced to pay part of the cost so that the oil companies can make money.
Private firms don't invest expertise and capital where they can't make money. Government firms cannot and should not run large, nationalized industries- doing so creates the environment that encourages despots to abuse power. Those moneys being spent are- A. Helping the Iraqi people rebuild their country. And B. Helping generate jobs for the coalition countries. I think it's a wise use of money myself. If we were to abandon the country without spending money to help rebuild parts of the infrastructure we would have utter chaos. This serves no one but the terrorists.
I recently wrote Perl script to download multiple congregation church membership directories from our churches website and manipulate them into comma-delimited, tab-delimited, and nicely formatted OpenOffice Calc (spreadsheet) and Writer (word-processor) formats directly from the Perl script. Because the Microsoft formats are closed, I could not output into those formats directly from the script, nor do I feel like reverse engineering the formats to figure out how.
I then used OpenOffice to save the files as Word and Excel formats for those who don't have access to OpenOffice, but I included a reminder that OpenOffice is free and included a link to the website.
This would have been impossible without OpenOffice, and I thank them for their work. The final output has headers, footers, special formatting and prints out like a professional document, not roughly formatted text output in courier.
Why would they need to to starve or freeze to death? Robots could produce food and maintain electrical plants at very low cost.
Wealth and poverty would have a very different meaning in this kind of future. All wealth would get you is greater access to resources for entertainment and self-actualization. Extreme poverty wouldn't cause death, but would create a consumer of cheap food, products, and media.
Hmmm, this doesn't sound all that different from today.
I disagree. Apple did try this and nearly died in the attempt. Remember Power Computing?
http://www.lowendmac.com/power/index.shtml
This and other cloners ("PowerMax") took good-sized chunks of Apple marketshare selling Macintosh-compatible hardware (that was very PC-like, low-cost, and had PCI slots) with Apple's Mac OS. Apple couldn't stop hemmoraging large amounts of cash until they bought the company at a loss and started innovating again.
Even through all this, Apple's sales plus the sales of all the clones did not increase the Macintosh marketshare. It just canabalized Apple's base.