Its pretty much both in this context. Cue meaning alert or tip, Queue meaning line up or start a line of people... given that cue is derived from queue, this is an abiguous use where both modern day definitions are suitable to the context.
Oh yeah, I can see how working and making money and not having to work towards a thesis would be a huge motivation towards returning to school, paying tuition, and being expected to work 1.5 times the hours that even demanding 9-5 jobs require.
Forget that, he should go for the degree now, and get on with it after.
I always wonder what the turnover is from these aquisitions. My experience with them is that the people who made the product strong usually leave at the time or not long after its aquired. Is Microsoft aquiring people here, or a codebase?
Speaking as a production game developer (ie, I work on game logic, not engine code) you're pretty much dead on. We've got a game in the pipeline that we're releasing at 30 FPS on the PS2.. runs on GC at 60 FPS, no problem. The main issue with the GC is that the ram is split between ram and aram, which leads to the requirement of micromanagement of ram use to ensure you're not wasting potential space. On cross-platform engines, its abit of a pain.
I agree with everything else tho. The GC was a shade less powerful than the Xbox, but as we've been shown again and again, its 20% hardware, and 80% how you use it. The Rev is plenty stronger than the Xbox.
> In business there's strong feedback to maximise profit, and cut waste.
In business, theres a strong tendancy for the people who are looking for profit and cutting waste are just about as clueless or self-serving (or well-intentioned or smart) as those who work in government. Ergo, pretty much makes that feedback aspect somewhat moot.
Speaking as a games programmer, thats a lot of work for a quick buck.
I really dislike how negative people are about this kind of thing. Its certainly not a quick buck. All that work, with no garauntee of any donations. If you want to talk about making a quick buck, you're probably better served talking to management of the company he's employed at.
Anybody with a rudimentary comprehention of art understands the idea that the medium of the work plays a huge role in its value. Museums would be out of business if seeing a painting in full relief (ie, with depth, texture) didn't impart a much greater appreciation and understanding of the accomplishment of the work than simply seeing a 2d representation.
> Would it be any less beautiful if it was created on a tablet PC?
Absolutely. Limited (or quantized) resolution, no texture, etc. Even more important however is the idea that everybody has eyes, and anybody can see it. If was created in a medium where you needed a 'reader' to decode it, that prevents a certain amount of the worlds population from being able to experience it.
I understand the spirit of your post, but medium is an extremely important subject when discussing art. All you're saying is "if somebody created something beautiful on Tablet PC, could it not be valued?" to which the answer is, of course it could be. But it is extremely dangerous to take an existing piece of art and suggest that the medium used to create it has no bearing on its worth. If your point is simply to say beautiful things can be created on medium X, then your post is pretty much moot because his point was more along the lines of you need nothing more than your eyes to see what is written on paper, where as when it comes to mediums encoded on formats that require technology to present in a visual form, there is a danger that the knowledge used to decode those forms may have been lost.
That to me is a very interesting subject, because if somebody 1000 years from now has a burning desire to figure out how to take a JPEG file and turn it into a visual representation, he has no way of confirming that he's done that correctly. The same thing could be said of colour restoration of faded paintings, etc, but when it comes to language, Shakespeares still adhere to the codified rules of writing today. What is far more pertinant to this discussion is that the appreciation of a game depends heavily on the hardware to play it, to control it, to interact with it. Where as the appreciation of a play depends heavily on very very different factors; the ability of the actors, director, set director, etc to re-create a passive experience based on a script that causes a sense of time well spent in those who attend the play. Its very difficult to compare the two because games depend on super-accurate interpretation of the original work by way of the console, and plays require adaptive interpretations of the original meaning and poinancy of the material. Paintings and visual art is pretty simple; in a perfect world, you'd see exactly what the arist stopped touching the minute it was placed on display.
If you believe that, its pretty obvious you've never worked at a large corperation. Theres a reason theres a term 'office politics' - its because the same bullshit *some* people seem to think only exists in politics also occurrs in capitalist organizations.
You're an idealist, and as such, you'll always be far from the truth when using critical analysis becuase the axioms of your arguments simply don't exist in the real world.
Vista will definately suck in many ways, but its a tribute to the success of microsoft that its most energic opponants are so absolutely off-base and clueless. You're just helping MS by mkaing MS-bashers looks rediculously clueless.
The true MS opponant knows Windows isn't a steaming pile of crap. It works, its fine, its just that MS the *company* is evil. Their technology is not really that bad; I wish more people just begrudgingly accepted that their OS is decent but their market tactics are unfair.
For disclosure, I'm a C programmer with 6 years experience of programming on Unix and half a year experience with PS2 and Gamecube.
Yeah but the supply in this case is mostly fake. Its inflated value due to artificial scarcity, and its absolutely gut-busting to watch people who've done the work and paid the money to be forced to defend a 'position' you wouldn't have to have if you'd have bought it in a transparent free market.
Its hilarious. I'm not sayin the 360 is a piece of junk, it clearly has some power, and hopefully some decent games will come out for it, but for a company with that much money and market sway, to think the rarity of the console is due to genuine supply issues is a joke. They bought the game-industry hype, swallowed it hook line and sinker, and wanted a launch-date to some-date period of scarcity to drive up the perceived value of the system. But they've gotten more bad press than good press; it looks like its backfiring. The real war will be between Sony's do-all console and Nintendos Revolution with the fucked up but really promising controller.
On a cool side-note, and for full disclosure, I'm currently working on one of the launch titles for the Nintendo Revolution. Pretty excited about that as a guy who values interesting games over pretty-graphics sequels.
> Is that they never get out - see the sun or get excercise. 30 minutes a day wards off all types of ailments, including depression (when was the last time a psychologist prescribed this?)
Why, oh why, must people take one or two people from their life and form an opinion based on anecdotal evidence on a planet with 6 billion folks. Trust me, excercise and sun does not cure a depressed person. Not leaving the house and not talking to people will help you become drepessed, but sun and fitness sure as hell aint the cure for the vast majority of people who suffer from depression.
I wish I could sit down with a 40oz with you (or whatever drug makes me credible in your mind) and tell you just how wierd, irrelevant, and completely moot a statement like that is.
> Does my hypocrisy invalidate my claim that murder is immoral?
Of course it doesn't.
However, it does make your opinion irrelevant, because if you don't act according to your own morals, you don't deserve to have your argument heard.
You're right in that it doesn't make the *point* wrong, but in a world full of people and not computers, it goes a long way towards convincing humans (not computers) that your point was wrong. Why? Because actions are louder than words. People always react more strongly towards a living example than some intellectual point written on paper, and I dont see any reason why thats a fault of human behaviour.
You take jabs at your own institutions, countries, religions, freedoms, or whatever the fuck liferaft you need to hang from to feel good about yourself as some kind of inference that the other person hasn't been through what you've been through.
Nobody has been through what you've been through, and its downright depressing that none of it yet has taught you not to be so high and mighty when it comes to assuming others havn't been through a hell of alot worse and still disagree with you. You'll live and die, and maybe be happy or sad through out, but to implicitly generalize that others you've never met are younger or more idealistic than you is the kind of automoton mentality that absolutely garauntees nobody outside of your immediate family or friends will ever remember you spent one minute on this planet after you die. You're one of millions of voices saying the same thing over and over so you can sleep at night, in countries all over the world, races all over this planet. Its beautiful that you believe in something, but so ironic that the way you choose to frame your devotion and faith only garauntees that somebody you disagree with out there only becomes more motivated to prove you wrong. The simple mindedness... the microcosmic view of people like you astounds me. It totally awes me. The people who had the most influence and power on the formation of the society and country you so dearly love would bitch slap you if they had the chance.
"he best mix of economic, political, social, and religious freedom"
"while the US has the most heterogenous mix in any country on the Earth."
"have social or economic costs that are unbearable"
Your whole post just proves my point. The US is so fixed on being "the best" that they've forgetten that the number of people who attend a movie does not make it "the best movie". It doesn't mean it isn't, but the sales figures prove nothing. Canada is as equally ethnically deiverse. I will avoid trying to post links to studies of it being the most diverse, because thats the very fight I refuse to get into and the very point I'm trying to make. Get over yourself; the USA is an awesome country, but it isn't the best, because your definition of the best, or most diverse, or best for people to move to, or most full of grains of slightly off brown sand is different than anybody elses, including your own fellow citizens. I've met any Americans, from all walks of life, all races, all economic backgrounds that both agree with you and disagree. Patriotism is saying, "I love my country," not "My country is the best." Its a subtle distinction to me that is an important marker in determine who is capable of rational thought versus a desire to frame things in a black and white context.
"the same mix of personal freedom, ease of integration, social support, economic advancement, religious liberty, and political influence and stability."
Only your last line makes sense, and even then, it only proves my point. Nobody provides the same mix, but to think it is the best is simple minded. Nobody knows, man. Not one single person on this planet is justified in making that assertion. I'm happy for you that it gives you satisfcation to think so, but a little put off that you feel you're qualified in making that call.
Believe you me, out of 250+ countries, I wasn't talking about oppresive regimes; I was talking about the dozens of other democratic, free countries you can live in. 99% Americans/British/Europeans don't have a concept of how lucky they are, because that number is hyperbole. Many many many more than 1% do (although not nearly enough.) Even then, Britian, one country, America. Europe, many countries! NZ, Australia, many south asian countries, etc etc. There are tons of countries which offer equal amounts of freedom with varying political and social restrictions and freedoms. I know people who live in them, and have visited some of them, before you assume I'm havn't talked to people who've lived *those* places first hand.
Yes, the majority of humans live in conditions which are unimaginable, unenviable, and beyond unfair. That does not invalidate the point that the USA does not deserve the image of the defacto 'free society' it is so adamant in giving itself.
I don't have a hate on for the USA, nor do I not appreciate just how lucky I am. I've been to a fair amount of diverse places on this planet, and being Canadian, I dont neccessarily feel like Canada is any more or less free than many of the other countries I've been to like Costa Rica or New Zealand, nor do I think that people in countries which have paid the price of global war, oppresive regimes, famine, over population can simply "move".
I don't know where you pulled this anti-communist bullshit from your ass from; what you say is true, but its not at all relevant to the assertion that democratic capitalist countries with similar amounts of freedom exist beyond the borders of the USA. I could not have made my point any clearer, by beginning my post with "any civilized country". By your own argument, many countries are not, and I'm not sure why you would infer that I was referring to those countries with my post.
Sheesh dude. Get over it, the world blows and more people are poor, not in love, hate life, dying of famine, infected with disease, being abused or abusing somebody, corrupting a system, etc etc etc. That does not mean you need to defend that one place, country, cool guy or girl, movie, etc that is the exception to the rule. If anything, it'd be nice if somebody pointed out for a change that multiple counter-examples exist rather than defending the one who gets all the credit. Its more positive that way, and helps people understand that the planet doesn't have to put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. Share the love, share the credit, share the hope. Don't just fucking go, "Hey man, if you dont like the USA, you could live in the middle of the cambodian jungle." That was my whole goddamn point.
> Just don't come complaining when you realize that you go other places in the world, even other Europeon countries, and don't enjoy the same freedoms.
Yep, the whole world sucks except for America!
Or you could be moderately intelligent and undersand the point he's making. EVERY civilized country reduces freedom, rather than simply being unable to enforce granting all, for the sake of whatever the fuck you define 'civility'. If you like what civility is in your country, stay there. If you don't, vote or leave. But don't, for a moment, think that any country allows the ultimate ideal in freedoms. Millions upon millions of people on this planet prefer the style of freedoms and restrictions granted by their government over Americas, and its retarded to actually place one's personal beliefs as the measure of what the right balance is. Its reverse phychology dude.. no matter how old you are, anybody who suggests that free will exists and that you're incapable of regonizing how to take maximum advantage of it will piss you off. Don't fall for it, it just makes you look juvinile.
Well, dangerous metaphor. Do the people drinking the water *know* it has lead in it? I dont think its applicable or servicable, as a metaphor.
None the less, I agree with you. We have "Trade Secrets" and the like, and/. is usually opposed to them. Thats much more applicable, to me. Its the idea that, there IS information you could have, but not having it is for your own good and for the greater good of society. See Diebold, as a perfect case study.. which is better.. favouring a private enterprise an advange in capitalism, which helps competition, apparently, or people being able to verify that elections are being held and counted properly? You can probably guess my view, but that doesn't stop me from recognizing the value of asking the question and coming to a consus on an appropriate answer. In my mind, people are easily placated in that sense, including westerners like me; if you knew the information contained therein, you may be educated enough to feel differently about the policy of somebody withholding the information from you in the first place. That to me is the real meat of the matter. Knowing you're not allowed to know something doesn't help you figure out if you *shout* agree with the decision or not.
> Sorry, but man is innovative, and in almost all of history we have only become better at doing everything the previous generation did.
%100 incorrect.
While your comment *may* be correct in the sense that *eventually* we get better at doing something we used to do well, history is littered with slips back into inferior methods of farming, irrigation and technology in general.
On the flip side, the better we get at something implies that getting good at something is implicitly benificial. Civilizations have gotten so good at something (fishing, farming, etc) that they essentially ruined their local egosystem and quickly wiped out anywhere from 30% to 80% of their maximum population over the course of a civilizations rise and fall.
The question is; as our civilization becomes global and essentially one instead of many, these slips back and self imposed ecological or civilogical disasters suddendly affect *all* humans that exist, not just one civilization out of a group of many on the planet.
It is for this reason that we should be far more concerned about how 'good' we get at something today than we used to; its entirely possibly we get so good at doing something that by the time its negative effects are felt (short of a crystal ball, nobody can EVER predict the long term effects of the use of a technology) that we cause a reduction of earths population by a massive amount.
I'm not sayin the sky is falling, but its absolutely rediculous to assume history is not full of documented, well researched situations that we totally farmed/mined ourselves out of a sustainable land. Now that land his earth; we cant just move onto the next continent like the past survivors of civilizations used to.
It is those who are reaping the benifits of the bleeding edge farming/manufacturing technology (a relatively small portion of the entire population of the earth) who are the last to believe it, and yet, tragically the ones who are most empowered to do something about it. Although usually, as history again depicts, we stick our fingers in our ears, sing nah-nah-nah and build a larger temple, a faster jet.. just about anything that won't actually help us.
The lack of any belief in the value of self control and moderation in the face of a staggering amount of empirical data that suggests that its a dangerous course of action defies description. The 'value' of technology and the implicit belief that more efficient methods of farming and mining is implicitly better for humanity is indistinguishable from religious faith, if you ask me.
> I know people complain about this a lot, and I'm just fanning the flames, but when you start asking people to pay you a regular fee, you may want to try and make it appear that money is being used in a responsible way to better your service, not make people feel like it's just thrown on a big pile while the "status quo" is maintained.
If you want to use run on sentences like that, you should be *forced* to pay a fee. Be happy we can all evolve/abuse the english language for free. Clearly you're not paying for the fee, so what on earth are you complaining about?
Youre weak in the head, because somebody who is dead != somebody who hasn't passed on their genes. Such a simple concept, its ironic those who make the same mistake you do somehow feel exempt from all this natural selection based on intelligence stupidity.
Toothbrushes were invented LONG LONG before they were in widespread use.
As were seatbelts.
Youre making the point about invention. Private sector is good for that. Not so good at taking a monetary loss to convince consumers to create a market for it.
Slashdot Mirror
Its pretty much both in this context. Cue meaning alert or tip, Queue meaning line up or start a line of people ... given that cue is derived from queue, this is an abiguous use where both modern day definitions are suitable to the context.
Oh yeah, I can see how working and making money and not having to work towards a thesis would be a huge motivation towards returning to school, paying tuition, and being expected to work 1.5 times the hours that even demanding 9-5 jobs require.
Forget that, he should go for the degree now, and get on with it after.
I always wonder what the turnover is from these aquisitions. My experience with them is that the people who made the product strong usually leave at the time or not long after its aquired. Is Microsoft aquiring people here, or a codebase?
About 10 years ago, April Fools used to be a time to try and fool people. Now its a time to insult people's intelligence with self-indulgent humour.
Woe is me.
Speaking as a production game developer (ie, I work on game logic, not engine code) you're pretty much dead on. We've got a game in the pipeline that we're releasing at 30 FPS on the PS2 .. runs on GC at 60 FPS, no problem. The main issue with the GC is that the ram is split between ram and aram, which leads to the requirement of micromanagement of ram use to ensure you're not wasting potential space. On cross-platform engines, its abit of a pain.
I agree with everything else tho. The GC was a shade less powerful than the Xbox, but as we've been shown again and again, its 20% hardware, and 80% how you use it. The Rev is plenty stronger than the Xbox.
> In business there's strong feedback to maximise profit, and cut waste.
In business, theres a strong tendancy for the people who are looking for profit and cutting waste are just about as clueless or self-serving (or well-intentioned or smart) as those who work in government. Ergo, pretty much makes that feedback aspect somewhat moot.
Speaking as a games programmer, thats a lot of work for a quick buck.
I really dislike how negative people are about this kind of thing. Its certainly not a quick buck. All that work, with no garauntee of any donations. If you want to talk about making a quick buck, you're probably better served talking to management of the company he's employed at.
Anybody with a rudimentary comprehention of art understands the idea that the medium of the work plays a huge role in its value. Museums would be out of business if seeing a painting in full relief (ie, with depth, texture) didn't impart a much greater appreciation and understanding of the accomplishment of the work than simply seeing a 2d representation.
> Would it be any less beautiful if it was created on a tablet PC?
Absolutely. Limited (or quantized) resolution, no texture, etc. Even more important however is the idea that everybody has eyes, and anybody can see it. If was created in a medium where you needed a 'reader' to decode it, that prevents a certain amount of the worlds population from being able to experience it.
I understand the spirit of your post, but medium is an extremely important subject when discussing art. All you're saying is "if somebody created something beautiful on Tablet PC, could it not be valued?" to which the answer is, of course it could be. But it is extremely dangerous to take an existing piece of art and suggest that the medium used to create it has no bearing on its worth. If your point is simply to say beautiful things can be created on medium X, then your post is pretty much moot because his point was more along the lines of you need nothing more than your eyes to see what is written on paper, where as when it comes to mediums encoded on formats that require technology to present in a visual form, there is a danger that the knowledge used to decode those forms may have been lost.
That to me is a very interesting subject, because if somebody 1000 years from now has a burning desire to figure out how to take a JPEG file and turn it into a visual representation, he has no way of confirming that he's done that correctly. The same thing could be said of colour restoration of faded paintings, etc, but when it comes to language, Shakespeares still adhere to the codified rules of writing today. What is far more pertinant to this discussion is that the appreciation of a game depends heavily on the hardware to play it, to control it, to interact with it. Where as the appreciation of a play depends heavily on very very different factors; the ability of the actors, director, set director, etc to re-create a passive experience based on a script that causes a sense of time well spent in those who attend the play. Its very difficult to compare the two because games depend on super-accurate interpretation of the original work by way of the console, and plays require adaptive interpretations of the original meaning and poinancy of the material. Paintings and visual art is pretty simple; in a perfect world, you'd see exactly what the arist stopped touching the minute it was placed on display.
> where people are fired for wasting money
If you believe that, its pretty obvious you've never worked at a large corperation. Theres a reason theres a term 'office politics' - its because the same bullshit *some* people seem to think only exists in politics also occurrs in capitalist organizations.
You're an idealist, and as such, you'll always be far from the truth when using critical analysis becuase the axioms of your arguments simply don't exist in the real world.
Vista will definately suck in many ways, but its a tribute to the success of microsoft that its most energic opponants are so absolutely off-base and clueless. You're just helping MS by mkaing MS-bashers looks rediculously clueless.
The true MS opponant knows Windows isn't a steaming pile of crap. It works, its fine, its just that MS the *company* is evil. Their technology is not really that bad; I wish more people just begrudgingly accepted that their OS is decent but their market tactics are unfair.
For disclosure, I'm a C programmer with 6 years experience of programming on Unix and half a year experience with PS2 and Gamecube.
Yeah but the supply in this case is mostly fake. Its inflated value due to artificial scarcity, and its absolutely gut-busting to watch people who've done the work and paid the money to be forced to defend a 'position' you wouldn't have to have if you'd have bought it in a transparent free market.
Its hilarious. I'm not sayin the 360 is a piece of junk, it clearly has some power, and hopefully some decent games will come out for it, but for a company with that much money and market sway, to think the rarity of the console is due to genuine supply issues is a joke. They bought the game-industry hype, swallowed it hook line and sinker, and wanted a launch-date to some-date period of scarcity to drive up the perceived value of the system. But they've gotten more bad press than good press; it looks like its backfiring. The real war will be between Sony's do-all console and Nintendos Revolution with the fucked up but really promising controller.
On a cool side-note, and for full disclosure, I'm currently working on one of the launch titles for the Nintendo Revolution. Pretty excited about that as a guy who values interesting games over pretty-graphics sequels.
> Is that they never get out - see the sun or get excercise. 30 minutes a day wards off all types of ailments, including depression (when was the last time a psychologist prescribed this?)
Why, oh why, must people take one or two people from their life and form an opinion based on anecdotal evidence on a planet with 6 billion folks. Trust me, excercise and sun does not cure a depressed person. Not leaving the house and not talking to people will help you become drepessed, but sun and fitness sure as hell aint the cure for the vast majority of people who suffer from depression.
Sheesh.
> God exists so we can't destroy the earth
I wish I could sit down with a 40oz with you (or whatever drug makes me credible in your mind) and tell you just how wierd, irrelevant, and completely moot a statement like that is.
Any drug, really, I like alot of them.
> Does my hypocrisy invalidate my claim that murder is immoral?
Of course it doesn't.
However, it does make your opinion irrelevant, because if you don't act according to your own morals, you don't deserve to have your argument heard.
You're right in that it doesn't make the *point* wrong, but in a world full of people and not computers, it goes a long way towards convincing humans (not computers) that your point was wrong. Why? Because actions are louder than words. People always react more strongly towards a living example than some intellectual point written on paper, and I dont see any reason why thats a fault of human behaviour.
You take jabs at your own institutions, countries, religions, freedoms, or whatever the fuck liferaft you need to hang from to feel good about yourself as some kind of inference that the other person hasn't been through what you've been through.
... the microcosmic view of people like you astounds me. It totally awes me. The people who had the most influence and power on the formation of the society and country you so dearly love would bitch slap you if they had the chance.
Nobody has been through what you've been through, and its downright depressing that none of it yet has taught you not to be so high and mighty when it comes to assuming others havn't been through a hell of alot worse and still disagree with you. You'll live and die, and maybe be happy or sad through out, but to implicitly generalize that others you've never met are younger or more idealistic than you is the kind of automoton mentality that absolutely garauntees nobody outside of your immediate family or friends will ever remember you spent one minute on this planet after you die. You're one of millions of voices saying the same thing over and over so you can sleep at night, in countries all over the world, races all over this planet. Its beautiful that you believe in something, but so ironic that the way you choose to frame your devotion and faith only garauntees that somebody you disagree with out there only becomes more motivated to prove you wrong. The simple mindedness
"he best mix of economic, political, social, and religious freedom"
"while the US has the most heterogenous mix in any country on the Earth."
"have social or economic costs that are unbearable"
Your whole post just proves my point. The US is so fixed on being "the best" that they've forgetten that the number of people who attend a movie does not make it "the best movie". It doesn't mean it isn't, but the sales figures prove nothing. Canada is as equally ethnically deiverse. I will avoid trying to post links to studies of it being the most diverse, because thats the very fight I refuse to get into and the very point I'm trying to make. Get over yourself; the USA is an awesome country, but it isn't the best, because your definition of the best, or most diverse, or best for people to move to, or most full of grains of slightly off brown sand is different than anybody elses, including your own fellow citizens. I've met any Americans, from all walks of life, all races, all economic backgrounds that both agree with you and disagree. Patriotism is saying, "I love my country," not "My country is the best." Its a subtle distinction to me that is an important marker in determine who is capable of rational thought versus a desire to frame things in a black and white context.
"the same mix of personal freedom, ease of integration, social support, economic advancement, religious liberty, and political influence and stability."
Only your last line makes sense, and even then, it only proves my point. Nobody provides the same mix, but to think it is the best is simple minded. Nobody knows, man. Not one single person on this planet is justified in making that assertion. I'm happy for you that it gives you satisfcation to think so, but a little put off that you feel you're qualified in making that call.
Believe you me, out of 250+ countries, I wasn't talking about oppresive regimes; I was talking about the dozens of other democratic, free countries you can live in. 99% Americans/British/Europeans don't have a concept of how lucky they are, because that number is hyperbole. Many many many more than 1% do (although not nearly enough.) Even then, Britian, one country, America. Europe, many countries! NZ, Australia, many south asian countries, etc etc. There are tons of countries which offer equal amounts of freedom with varying political and social restrictions and freedoms. I know people who live in them, and have visited some of them, before you assume I'm havn't talked to people who've lived *those* places first hand.
Yes, the majority of humans live in conditions which are unimaginable, unenviable, and beyond unfair. That does not invalidate the point that the USA does not deserve the image of the defacto 'free society' it is so adamant in giving itself.
I don't have a hate on for the USA, nor do I not appreciate just how lucky I am. I've been to a fair amount of diverse places on this planet, and being Canadian, I dont neccessarily feel like Canada is any more or less free than many of the other countries I've been to like Costa Rica or New Zealand, nor do I think that people in countries which have paid the price of global war, oppresive regimes, famine, over population can simply "move".
I don't know where you pulled this anti-communist bullshit from your ass from; what you say is true, but its not at all relevant to the assertion that democratic capitalist countries with similar amounts of freedom exist beyond the borders of the USA. I could not have made my point any clearer, by beginning my post with "any civilized country". By your own argument, many countries are not, and I'm not sure why you would infer that I was referring to those countries with my post.
Sheesh dude. Get over it, the world blows and more people are poor, not in love, hate life, dying of famine, infected with disease, being abused or abusing somebody, corrupting a system, etc etc etc. That does not mean you need to defend that one place, country, cool guy or girl, movie, etc that is the exception to the rule. If anything, it'd be nice if somebody pointed out for a change that multiple counter-examples exist rather than defending the one who gets all the credit. Its more positive that way, and helps people understand that the planet doesn't have to put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak. Share the love, share the credit, share the hope. Don't just fucking go, "Hey man, if you dont like the USA, you could live in the middle of the cambodian jungle." That was my whole goddamn point.
> Just don't come complaining when you realize that you go other places in the world, even other Europeon countries, and don't enjoy the same freedoms.
.. no matter how old you are, anybody who suggests that free will exists and that you're incapable of regonizing how to take maximum advantage of it will piss you off. Don't fall for it, it just makes you look juvinile.
Yep, the whole world sucks except for America!
Or you could be moderately intelligent and undersand the point he's making. EVERY civilized country reduces freedom, rather than simply being unable to enforce granting all, for the sake of whatever the fuck you define 'civility'. If you like what civility is in your country, stay there. If you don't, vote or leave. But don't, for a moment, think that any country allows the ultimate ideal in freedoms. Millions upon millions of people on this planet prefer the style of freedoms and restrictions granted by their government over Americas, and its retarded to actually place one's personal beliefs as the measure of what the right balance is. Its reverse phychology dude
Well, dangerous metaphor. Do the people drinking the water *know* it has lead in it? I dont think its applicable or servicable, as a metaphor.
/. is usually opposed to them. Thats much more applicable, to me. Its the idea that, there IS information you could have, but not having it is for your own good and for the greater good of society. See Diebold, as a perfect case study .. which is better .. favouring a private enterprise an advange in capitalism, which helps competition, apparently, or people being able to verify that elections are being held and counted properly? You can probably guess my view, but that doesn't stop me from recognizing the value of asking the question and coming to a consus on an appropriate answer. In my mind, people are easily placated in that sense, including westerners like me; if you knew the information contained therein, you may be educated enough to feel differently about the policy of somebody withholding the information from you in the first place. That to me is the real meat of the matter. Knowing you're not allowed to know something doesn't help you figure out if you *shout* agree with the decision or not.
None the less, I agree with you. We have "Trade Secrets" and the like, and
> Sorry, but man is innovative, and in almost all of history we have only become better at doing everything the previous generation did.
.. just about anything that won't actually help us.
%100 incorrect.
While your comment *may* be correct in the sense that *eventually* we get better at doing something we used to do well, history is littered with slips back into inferior methods of farming, irrigation and technology in general.
On the flip side, the better we get at something implies that getting good at something is implicitly benificial. Civilizations have gotten so good at something (fishing, farming, etc) that they essentially ruined their local egosystem and quickly wiped out anywhere from 30% to 80% of their maximum population over the course of a civilizations rise and fall.
The question is; as our civilization becomes global and essentially one instead of many, these slips back and self imposed ecological or civilogical disasters suddendly affect *all* humans that exist, not just one civilization out of a group of many on the planet.
It is for this reason that we should be far more concerned about how 'good' we get at something today than we used to; its entirely possibly we get so good at doing something that by the time its negative effects are felt (short of a crystal ball, nobody can EVER predict the long term effects of the use of a technology) that we cause a reduction of earths population by a massive amount.
I'm not sayin the sky is falling, but its absolutely rediculous to assume history is not full of documented, well researched situations that we totally farmed/mined ourselves out of a sustainable land. Now that land his earth; we cant just move onto the next continent like the past survivors of civilizations used to.
It is those who are reaping the benifits of the bleeding edge farming/manufacturing technology (a relatively small portion of the entire population of the earth) who are the last to believe it, and yet, tragically the ones who are most empowered to do something about it. Although usually, as history again depicts, we stick our fingers in our ears, sing nah-nah-nah and build a larger temple, a faster jet
The lack of any belief in the value of self control and moderation in the face of a staggering amount of empirical data that suggests that its a dangerous course of action defies description. The 'value' of technology and the implicit belief that more efficient methods of farming and mining is implicitly better for humanity is indistinguishable from religious faith, if you ask me.
Well, at least not until the aggresor launched a surprise attack on Poland Harbour. ;)
> I know people complain about this a lot, and I'm just fanning the flames, but when you start asking people to pay you a regular fee, you may want to try and make it appear that money is being used in a responsible way to better your service, not make people feel like it's just thrown on a big pile while the "status quo" is maintained.
If you want to use run on sentences like that, you should be *forced* to pay a fee. Be happy we can all evolve/abuse the english language for free. Clearly you're not paying for the fee, so what on earth are you complaining about?
Youre weak in the head, because somebody who is dead != somebody who hasn't passed on their genes. Such a simple concept, its ironic those who make the same mistake you do somehow feel exempt from all this natural selection based on intelligence stupidity.
thats what we like to call a nerdcliff!
Toothbrushes were invented LONG LONG before they were in widespread use.
As were seatbelts.
Youre making the point about invention. Private sector is good for that. Not so good at taking a monetary loss to convince consumers to create a market for it.