the complaint is meritless. Cryptic Studios is confident that the District Court will reject all of Marvel's claims and fully vindicate Cryptic Studios in all respects."
Does Marvel has a copywrite on characters wearing blue and yellow spandex? If so, there goes all my weekend outfits.
Despite being clearly marked, numerous stores have begun selling HL2.
It says not to display them, not to avoid selling them to the people who pre-ordered. It makes no difference since they can't play anyway.
This guy even got a phone call from EB telling him to pickup his pre-order, so he did what any one would do - He picked it up.
It makes sense, why not sell them to the pre-order people now, then on the games release day you don't run into the issue of having the game on hand but not being able to sell x amount of copies to the people that didn't pre-order.
If they can't play the game anyway, what difference do the physical CD's make?
G4TechTV is unwatchable - only the imports from TechTV had any merit and now that's changing.
Heh, and to me even TechTV was mostly unwatchable. A lot of the good shows from when it was ZDTV were taken off the air (Silicon Spin, and Big Thinkers come to mind) while all the helpdesk shows stayed.
Then it happened -- Maxis was moved to EA redwood shores. Drawn into the mothership. I didn't want to move so I gave them a huge list of "must-have" things or I wouldn't move. They wanted me badly and met all of those desires. They made extra-sure to keep me quiet about what I got because the deal was one of the top 10 for the studio (we're talking above six figures here just for the relocation package...).
So this guy was paid over $100,000 to move for his job? How many tech people nowadays would get over $100,000 to relocate?
Coincidentally, when the move happened they cancelled SimCity again, and put me on another project (The Urbz). And I do mean PUT me on -- I was never consulted, talked to, or anything.
Oh shit! Poor baby! You mean they paid you over $100,000 to relocate and they actually expected to be able to TELL you what work they wanted done? How silly of them! That kinda stuff never happens to other programmers! We nevvvvvvvvver get projects cancelled or end up doing shit work.
One day my new manager came over, told me he was my new manager and gave me a pile of work...
OMG! You ended up with a new manager and you weren't informed by the higher ups? And he expected you to WORK? Wow, you better form a union! In all the IT departments where I worked, if anyone was replaced they told everyone in the department all the way down to the helpdesk guys. Hell, they even checked with the janitors sometimes.
Now, I was peeved this happened, at least they could've asked me to go on the project........More whining snipped
Look, if you work in the video game industry as a programmer (or anything else for that matter) your job is fun and in demand. It's pretty much expected that you are going to have to work long hours during crunch time. There are plenty of People who would put in 12-14 hours a day to get to work on a game that ships from EA so just stop your bitching and step aside if you can't hack it or if your over $100,000 relocation fee and salary aren't enough. If you want more time with your family get a 9-5 job as a secratary or something. Better yet maybe your wife can work and you can stay home and clean. You see Joe, programmers, especially video game programmers are hardcore men of steel, not pussies that whine about shit like overtime.
People like Joe straitiff give the American Worker a bad name.
A few years back when Unreal Tournament came out, they used NGStats as their ranking system. As others have mentioned, this was an in depth stat tracking system. It could tell you what your kill to death ratio was for each weapon, how many games you won and lost, and what your overall rank was, among other things.
I started UT as a CTF Player, and became quite good. I played about 30-35 hours a week, and I was in the top 100. I would look at the stats to see what weapons I was effective with, and just what was going on in my games in general. The win loss percentage of my teams was very impressive. I started to notice that players in the top 10 would have good kill/death ratios and a lot of points, but their teams would lose a lot. Then I watched them ingame and saw what they were doing..
Instead of defending their base, they would let players from the other team sneak in, and grab the flag. They would camp out somewhere near the flag and once the enemy took it, they would try to kill them. This resulted in a +5 points rather than +1 for a normal kill. This is clearly a less effective way of defending in the overall scheme of the game, but players would do this just for the stats.
I adapted, and upped my playing time for a week, and of course I was ranked #1.
In Mortal Kombat Deception for PS2, I'm currently ranked in the top 10. I can tell you that the #1 player is padding his stats (No, I wont tell you how but it's fairly obvious) and I can tell you that I will take #1 probably this weekend since I figured out what he is doing and how to do it in a more efficent manner.
In closing, I can tell you overall stats are bullshit, the only way to settle who is the best is VIA tournament play or ladders. I played in the 1v1 OGL UT league and worked my way up to play the #1 ranked player on that ladder, and the players on there were 100x better than any of the stat whores could ever hope to be.
Stats are nice to help your gaming skill though. Knowing that you die 70% of the time with the Chaingun as compared to 30% of all the other weapons can quickly make you realize fairly quickly that you shouldn't use it or that you are using it in the incorrect situations.
I'd like to see online games in the future have built in ladder or tournament systems rather than plain out stats, since in my experence purely statistical systems are always exploited.
I'm the network admin for a school. I've been doing this for seven years and have been teaching computer classes for five. I teach the 7th grade how to do simple programming in LOGO
People are still teaching LOGO? Holy 1982 Batman! Do they use a mouse to move the turtle nowadays?
Exactly how will this stop a dirty bomb from going off on Manhattan?
Nothing can really stop a dirty bomb from going off in Manhattan. There are bigger threats out there though, a dirty bomb in Manhattan might wipe out a few buildings and throw some fallout around. The number of people that would be killed would be fairly low. A ICBM in the wrong hands however could kill millions.
...must be Bush, Rumsfeld, Rove, Ashcroft, and Oreilly. Successful reentry is not required to receive your prize.
Yes, but with those people in the Rocket, successful re-entry is likely since they are very succssful people. Now, if you are shooting for failure try putting in Kerry, Edwards, Gore, Nader and Sharpton
Cost effective Wind Power (Kilowatts/Construction costs) would mean the end of middle east conflict, global warming, rural poverty in developing countries, lung disease in Beiging.
It would also bring peace on earth, and 6 acres a mule for everyone. Just kidding. But seriously, it would bring an end of the petrodollar which would fuck the American economy to no end.
1. It's not a GW thing. Neither his father, nor reagan actually shrank government. They both talked a great game and then continued to grow the fed to monstrous proportions.
Reagan did shrink the parts of the government that were not needed. He cut social programs and lowered taxes. The reason government spending didn't shrink was because Reagan was busy fighting (and winning) the cold war. GW Bush is doing the same thing, cutting domestic programs while spending on the War on Terror. I'll take the Republicans cut and spend over the Democrats spend and spend any day. Plus the Federal governments job is national defense, not socialist programs. (that is my personal belief anyway)
In fact, the slowest growth of government has occurred under Clinton in recent memory.
For a few reasons, such as a republican congress that pushed for welfare reform.
It was during Clintons terms that the Republican Congress actually shut down because they were upset at Clinton for what they felt was over-spending. The Clinton white house smeared them, and Republicans have been scared to push fiscal issues too hard ever since.
2. Abortion is still legal because of the supreme court. And GW wants real bad to change it.
Really? Did I miss GW actually trying this? Or are you referring to partial birth abortion, where they crack the child's skull, and suck it's brains out with a vaccum? Yes, GW is against that, as many reasonable people are.
Your little comment about
What makes it little, the fact that you don't agree with it?
"primary birth control" shows that you too have been buying the RR's propaganda.
Or maybe I'm a human being with the ability to reason and I can clearly see how abortion is promoted in America.
Well done. There is no prohibition of moments of silence, only group prayer by state run institutions.
Uhh, yes there is.
- Wallace v. Jaffree (1985), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an Alabama "moment of silence" law was unconstitutional. It had allowed public schools in the state to start each classroom day with a moment "for meditation or voluntary prayer." The court decided 6 to 3 that the legislature's sole purpose in passing the law was to promote religion. Their ruling "cited several statements from legislative records that revealed a desire to sponsor prayer in the state's public school system." In addition, the preamble to the law stated that the purpose of the law was to circumvent the ban on school prayer
So like I said in the grandparent post, it is a battle just to allow a molment of silence in public schools.
3. The RR inflates the anti-gay numbers dramatically. I think you understimate how many religious people are out there. If any significant proportion of non-religious people agreed with them on the issue, the numbers would be and are large.
Look at the number of people that voted against gay marriage in the referendums, there is no way they are all from the christian religious right.
4. They havent' succeeded at too much in the way of moral leglislation, except pushing abstinence only teaching programs
A good idea regardless of faith.
and funding religious groups under the "faith based initiatives". However GW wants a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BASED ON MORAL ISSUES, you noticed that? Stem cells, ring a bell? You don't think these things point to a mindset of leglislating morality? Head, meet sand.
Limiting Stem cell research is also based on ethical values, not just religious. You have this idea that anyone opposed to your viewpoints must be religious, and I have to tell you that you are wrong. I can tell you from experence because I know republicans personally who are atheists.
5. Intolerance is intolerance. Gays, blacks, what have you, it's all rooted in the same shit. Republicans orchestrated, among other things, toug
From a stratigic standpoint because had they voted 60% against the Republican party it might have been an electoral landslide for Bush. Take NJ for example where African Americans make up 14% of the vote. Kerry won by 7%. Had the African American vote been anywhere close to split evenly the Republicans would have a shot at a highly democratic state. Never mind the motivation factors, I run into NJ Republicans who always say they don't bother going to the polls because they know they can't win.
Another reason is I believe they are voting against the Republicans for the wrong reasons. If they understood the platform I doubt 88% of them would be against it. I really do believe that a large percentage of that 88% will vote against a republican for the simple fact that they perceive them as racist.
Focus on the Hispanics who gave the Republicans more support this election - they've at least got a chance there.
As hispanics work their way into the middle and upper middle class they will vote Republican as most ethnic groups have done historically. This isn't happening with African Americans though, and Republicans should put serious effort into figuring out why and trying to turn that around.
You know, the first time I checked out the county-by-county maps, one thing stood out to me and I found it quite interesting. The whole time I've been seeing state-by-state maps New York has always been a "blue" state. So I figured that the majority of the state was pro-Kerry. But when you look at the county-by-county maps of New York, you see that while Kerry did get the majority of the New York votes, that geographically most of the state is actually pro-Bush.
New Jersey is the same way, all of the counties were either weak for Bush or weak for Kerry. However two counties in NJ put Kerry over the top, Essex and Camden.
Demographically, they are mostly African American which voted 88% for Kerry this time around.
The Republicans simply need a way to ajust their platform to appeal to African American voters to at least get the split to 60/40 and then they would have a shot at pulling some blue states. I have no idea in hell how they would pull it off but they can not afford to write off 13% of the population, especially 13% of the population that tends to live in the states with the most electoral votes.
And, today's republicans are a completely different breed than the republicans of yesteryear.
Agreed, on many levels.
In case you haven't noticed, small government isn't really on their plate anymore,
This seems to be a G.W. Bush thing more than a republican platform. He claims that he is going to cut government in his second term with the exception of national defense/the war on terror.
and they've been co-opted by the religious right's agenda,
I really don't agree here. Where has the religious right's agenda been passed into law? Abortion is still legal, hell abortion is still being used as a primary form of birth control by many women. Religion isn't even allowed mention in public schools, it's a battle just to allow students a minute of silence where they can pray or reflect before starting the day. Porn, and obcene material which the religious right would want taken off the shelves is abundant (I'm not complaining).
which includes intolerance to homosexuals
This isn't just an issue of the religious right, if you look at the poll results where homosexual marriage was on the ballots the results were shockingly against it. 75% to 25% in some cases. I find it hard to believe any state other than Utah has a population that 75% of it could be considered the religious right.
and a need to legislate "morality" that includes said intolerance, judgement, restriction, what have you.
Please give examples of these from the last four years, I don't see it.
If the republicans could just get off their religious right addiction.... then they would start to shake the bigot label.
Huh? The grandparent was about the African American vote, and the perception that Republicans are racist against African Americans. It had nothing to do with Gays. Do you think that African Americans believe that Republicans are racist because a segment of their party is against gay marriage?
Also, as for the republican "religious right addiction" two of the most popular speakers at the RNC were pro-abortion moderates. Where was the anti-abortion candidate at the DNC? Or are the Democrats stuck on their "Abortion as birth control and on demand" addiction?
This is not a PR coup.
I would say it is. The republican party is far from racist.
Welcome to your party. moderates to the right, bible beaters further to the right please, move along now.
It's silly to think that all conservatives, or republicans are bible beaters. It would be like saying all democrats are feminists. One constiuancy doesn't make a party.
In the Electoral College, the vote of the majority (people living in cities) is diluted to give people living in the suburbs, and Southern Slave Owners, an increased vote.
There were no suburbs when the electoral college was created, and when it was created one of the ideas behind it was to take away the voting power of slave owners The electoral college was simply a compromise between the states with a large population and the states with a small population to elect a president.
Since we no longer have slave owners, it's kind of moot to continue having the Electoral College.
That isn't why the EC was created.
If you read the Federalist Papers, you'll discover that the founding fathers weren't real keen on giving Joe Schmoe
No, they weren't. They were of the belief that you should be a land owning male to vote. Those were very different times though.
a vote, and if you read History, you'll find that slave owners wanted their slaves to count as three-fifths of a person for voting purposes, but had no intention of giving them the right to vote.
Indeed, the southern slave owners had no intentions of allowing their slaves to vote. Howevver, they wanted their slaves to have a full vote! Not three fifths of a vote! Three fifths of a vote was another compromise made between the north and the south. Most of the founding fathers were against slavery, but if they wanted to form a union with the southern states it was a necessary evil. They did not want the south to have the voting power to continue slavery forever, so the north was against the slaves being able to vote (since their masters would be the ones really voting for them) and that is how they came up with the three fifths compromise which everyone looks to today and calls 'racist' when it was in fact an example of the original desire of the founding fathers to limit the powers of the south and eventually destroy slavery.
For someone who writes things like 'if you read History' you sure have a distorted view of it.
The point of a Democracy is that the majority of the people get to determine things. If you do anything to dilute the power of the majority (Electoral College, Aparthied, for example), then you're not living in a Democracy.
We don't live in a true direct democracy where the people determine things. It's a good thing too since the majority of people are not always right. If the majority of people voted tommorow for Apartheid to be reinstated would that be right simply because it was come to in a democratic process?
when I feel it is totally legitimate to ask. Has anyone ever looked at intelligence/education as a factor for party affiliation?
College Graduates (26% of the vote) Voted for Bush 52% to 46%, Postgrads (16% of the vote) voted for Kerry 55% to 41%.
In France there was a very racist party (Front National) and the people who would vote for them were on average less educated than people who voted for other parties.
You shouldn't call a party racist because they are interested in preserving their language, culture and borders. That does not make them racists.
al Qaeda attacked. Not Afghanistan, and certainly not Iraq. But if it had been possible to stop them before 9/11, sure, that would have been great.
So what you are saying is, if Iraq had been planning an attack, they should have been stopped to save American lives? Correct?
On the other hand, Iraq was never a threat to the United States. Let me repeat that -- Iraq was never a threat to the United States.
Was President Putin lying then when he said Iraq was planning terrorist strikes on the US? Did you ever stop and think that maybe, just maybe the president has better intellegence reports and might get information that both you and the media don't have?
Even when they were lying about the WMD, the Bush regime never claimed they were a Clear and Present Danger. They said they were working on WMD and might pose a threat later. That turned out to be a lie.
There is still no proof they DIDN'T have WMD's. Since the story of the explosives being smuggled out of Iraq into Syria before the war broke, didn't you ever think maybe they smuggled other weapons there?
It's fairly obvious Saddam had biological weapons, he used them on his own people and in the war against Iran. I wouldn't be surpised if we gave them to him at some point. I could care less either way, all I really care about is that Iraq was a problem and now it's being solved.
The fact that Bush was elected isn't an endorsement that what he did in Iraq was right, it's a testament to the fear he managed to instill in people,
WHAT FEAR? The south for the most part elected him. The states that were attacked on 9/11 voted for Kerry! I don't think it was fear, it had more to do with moral values and having the right man to fight the war on terror.
and the misinformation his campaign managed to spread. A philosopher you must admire once said:
Whenever Hitler comes up, that is when you know the other side has lost their arguement. The Idea that I would 'admire' Hitler is a joke. My belief system says we would have put Hitler on trial and to death. What does yours say? Life in prison with chance of Parole in 20 years? you probably think he shouldn't even do that, he did have a troubled childhood you know....If he were being tried today I could hear the left spewing..."we should feel soooorrry for him, it is after all society's fault.....the German village didn't raise the child right!"
I don't know what the fundie phrase
I'm far from a fundamentalist, I don't even practice.
"culture of death and murder" means, but I guess it's code for the birth control procedure called abortion.
I have a problem with killing children, yes. I see a logical difference between using a condom, or birth control pills and crushing a childs skull and sucking their brains out.
If you don't like the idea of killing something which can think and feel pain, I assume you're a vegan, right?
Har Har Har, No unlike many 'vegans' who would promote abortion while 'saving only the cute animals' I see human life as greater than that of an animal.
Anyhow, nobody said anything about killing children. We're talking about abortion -- you know, the killing of zygotes? Zygotes aren't children or are you actually arguing that a zygote is a child?
You can try to de-humanize abortion by calling them fertilized eggs, but if you watch video of a few of them rather than spewing feminist propaganda maybe you would be able to see the difference.
Most of the country doesn't think that the government should have a say in what form of birth control they choose to use.
birth control != abortion. Sorry man.
Most of the country also thinks that adding discrimination into the US constitution is abhorrent.
I would say it's more than half. More than half voted for Bush. The last time a liberal was elected with more than half the vote was in the 70's.
Half of us want to attack countries when they may be a threat to us at some point in the future. Half of us don't.
I would say that more than half the people would want our president to act in self defense if it would prevent American citizens from being attacked. If 9/11 could have been stopped by attacking Afghanistan on 9/10 would it have been the right thing to do? Most people think it would have been. The fact that the Iraq war is going poorly and people still re-elected Bush just goes to show how much support there is for the Bush doctrine.
Half of us want "strong moral values" imposed on everybody, the other half thinks the government should keep its nose out of our personal lives.
No, most of us DONT want a culture of death and murder imposed on us by a minority of the people in this country. We don't want abortion as birth control, or homosexual marriage. Look at the polls, it didn't pass in ANY state. It didn't even pass in Oregon where the homosexual lobbiest poured millions of dollars into advertising.
Half of us see no problem with supporting the death penalty while opposing abortion, the other half doesn't believe zygotes are children, and believes all sentient human lives are valuable.
More than half of us can see the logic behind killing someone if the have commited a crime worthy of death (ie murder). More than half of us realize that a fetus can think and feel pain as a doctor recently testified to in court. We realize that killing innocent children is wrong while killing evil murders is right. Unlike those of you in the minority who believe that murders need to be protected and children killed on the whim of the mother.
All of us think the media and Hollywood is biased. Some think it's biased towards the left. Some think it's biased towards the right.
Anyone who thinks the media is biased to the right is on crack.
Some think it's biased towards profits.
Which is the most likely scenario.
In 4 years time, we'll see what wonders a Republican president who doesn't have to worry about re-election, a Republican senate and a Republican congress can do.
Actually, it's only 2 years until the next set of elections. It will be interesting to see.
Might as well start sending your taxes directly to their corporate sponsors.
Would you deny that the democratic party has just as many special interests if not more than the Republicans?
What this election says to the world, especially Europe is a big "FUCK YOU" from America.
We will attack countries when they are a threat to us, or our self interests outweigh the possible losses.
We will continue to be the economic and military superpower of the world, and no you can not stop us
We don't need the corrupt UN, we are even getting to the point where we don't want it
We have seen the population statistics in Europe, and we will not embrace your culture of death. We want a culture of strong moral values, where things such as homosexuality and abortion are tolerated but not encouraged.
We see clearly now the bias that exists in the Media, Hollywood and the colleges and we reject their ideology of socialism and death.
We still believe America is the land of rugged independance rather than a nanny state.
We will never bow to internation pressure, or terrorists to select out president. If you think there is something you can do about it, try it. Otherwise GO FUCK YOURSELVES.
yea but I didn't even bother voting because I have to do a absentee abllot and lets face it my vote for Bush wasn't gonna do a thing to change NJ, now if i Lived in Ohio, Flordia.... then yes i would of voted.
Ya know, I live in NJ also and you really should go out and vote even if it is a lost cause.
When voters in mass don't turn out, even if they know their side is going to lose you are sending a message to the losing party that the state is hopeless. NJ was basically lost by 200,000 votes (7%) in a state with a population of 8 million people. Had it been lost by 3% the Republicans might have really tried to make a play for it in the next election. Nevermind the fact that 200,000 with a population of 8,000,000 is a very low number.
Slashdot Mirror
the complaint is meritless. Cryptic Studios is confident that the District Court will reject all of Marvel's claims and fully vindicate Cryptic Studios in all respects."
Does Marvel has a copywrite on characters wearing blue and yellow spandex? If so, there goes all my weekend outfits.
I'll move from Manhattan to somewhere in hicksville for a job in no time. Fresh air, no subways, no bums. I'm down. Where do I sign up?
Despite being clearly marked, numerous stores have begun selling HL2.
It says not to display them, not to avoid selling them to the people who pre-ordered. It makes no difference since they can't play anyway.
This guy even got a phone call from EB telling him to pickup his pre-order, so he did what any one would do - He picked it up.
It makes sense, why not sell them to the pre-order people now, then on the games release day you don't run into the issue of having the game on hand but not being able to sell x amount of copies to the people that didn't pre-order.
If they can't play the game anyway, what difference do the physical CD's make?
G4TechTV is unwatchable - only the imports from TechTV had any merit and now that's changing.
Heh, and to me even TechTV was mostly unwatchable. A lot of the good shows from when it was ZDTV were taken off the air (Silicon Spin, and Big Thinkers come to mind) while all the helpdesk shows stayed.
Ok, lets look at what this guy said in his post..
.......More whining snipped
Then it happened -- Maxis was moved to EA redwood shores. Drawn into the mothership. I didn't want to move so I gave them a huge list of "must-have" things or I wouldn't move. They wanted me badly and met all of those desires. They made extra-sure to keep me quiet about what I got because the deal was one of the top 10 for the studio (we're talking above six figures here just for the relocation package...).
So this guy was paid over $100,000 to move for his job? How many tech people nowadays would get over $100,000 to relocate?
Coincidentally, when the move happened they cancelled SimCity again, and put me on another project (The Urbz). And I do mean PUT me on -- I was never consulted, talked to, or anything.
Oh shit! Poor baby! You mean they paid you over $100,000 to relocate and they actually expected to be able to TELL you what work they wanted done? How silly of them! That kinda stuff never happens to other programmers! We nevvvvvvvvver get projects cancelled or end up doing shit work.
One day my new manager came over, told me he was my new manager and gave me a pile of work...
OMG! You ended up with a new manager and you weren't informed by the higher ups? And he expected you to WORK? Wow, you better form a union! In all the IT departments where I worked, if anyone was replaced they told everyone in the department all the way down to the helpdesk guys. Hell, they even checked with the janitors sometimes.
Now, I was peeved this happened, at least they could've asked me to go on the project.
Look, if you work in the video game industry as a programmer (or anything else for that matter) your job is fun and in demand. It's pretty much expected that you are going to have to work long hours during crunch time. There are plenty of People who would put in 12-14 hours a day to get to work on a game that ships from EA so just stop your bitching and step aside if you can't hack it or if your over $100,000 relocation fee and salary aren't enough. If you want more time with your family get a 9-5 job as a secratary or something. Better yet maybe your wife can work and you can stay home and clean. You see Joe, programmers, especially video game programmers are hardcore men of steel, not pussies that whine about shit like overtime.
People like Joe straitiff give the American Worker a bad name.
A few years back when Unreal Tournament came out, they used NGStats as their ranking system. As others have mentioned, this was an in depth stat tracking system. It could tell you what your kill to death ratio was for each weapon, how many games you won and lost, and what your overall rank was, among other things.
I started UT as a CTF Player, and became quite good. I played about 30-35 hours a week, and I was in the top 100. I would look at the stats to see what weapons I was effective with, and just what was going on in my games in general. The win loss percentage of my teams was very impressive. I started to notice that players in the top 10 would have good kill/death ratios and a lot of points, but their teams would lose a lot. Then I watched them ingame and saw what they were doing..
Instead of defending their base, they would let players from the other team sneak in, and grab the flag. They would camp out somewhere near the flag and once the enemy took it, they would try to kill them. This resulted in a +5 points rather than +1 for a normal kill. This is clearly a less effective way of defending in the overall scheme of the game, but players would do this just for the stats.
I adapted, and upped my playing time for a week, and of course I was ranked #1.
In Mortal Kombat Deception for PS2, I'm currently ranked in the top 10. I can tell you that the #1 player is padding his stats (No, I wont tell you how but it's fairly obvious) and I can tell you that I will take #1 probably this weekend since I figured out what he is doing and how to do it in a more efficent manner.
In closing, I can tell you overall stats are bullshit, the only way to settle who is the best is VIA tournament play or ladders. I played in the 1v1 OGL UT league and worked my way up to play the #1 ranked player on that ladder, and the players on there were 100x better than any of the stat whores could ever hope to be.
Stats are nice to help your gaming skill though. Knowing that you die 70% of the time with the Chaingun as compared to 30% of all the other weapons can quickly make you realize fairly quickly that you shouldn't use it or that you are using it in the incorrect situations.
I'd like to see online games in the future have built in ladder or tournament systems rather than plain out stats, since in my experence purely statistical systems are always exploited.
Burt Rutan accepted the Ansari X Prize money, along with a 150-pound trophy,
And then used the money to buy Doom3 and a system that can actually run it. Carmack always wins.
I'm the network admin for a school. I've been doing this for seven years and have been teaching computer classes for five. I teach the 7th grade how to do simple programming in LOGO
People are still teaching LOGO? Holy 1982 Batman! Do they use a mouse to move the turtle nowadays?
Exactly how will this stop a dirty bomb from going off on Manhattan?
Nothing can really stop a dirty bomb from going off in Manhattan. There are bigger threats out there though, a dirty bomb in Manhattan might wipe out a few buildings and throw some fallout around. The number of people that would be killed would be fairly low. A ICBM in the wrong hands however could kill millions.
"The Guardian reports
Then it MUST be true! Especially if it's demonizing the United States!
...must be Bush, Rumsfeld, Rove, Ashcroft, and Oreilly. Successful reentry is not required to receive your prize.
Yes, but with those people in the Rocket, successful re-entry is likely since they are very succssful people. Now, if you are shooting for failure try putting in Kerry, Edwards, Gore, Nader and Sharpton
Cost effective Wind Power (Kilowatts/Construction costs) would mean the end of middle east conflict, global warming, rural poverty in developing countries, lung disease in Beiging.
It would also bring peace on earth, and 6 acres a mule for everyone. Just kidding. But seriously, it would bring an end of the petrodollar which would fuck the American economy to no end.
1. It's not a GW thing. Neither his father, nor reagan actually shrank government. They both talked a great game and then continued to grow the fed to monstrous proportions.
Reagan did shrink the parts of the government that were not needed. He cut social programs and lowered taxes. The reason government spending didn't shrink was because Reagan was busy fighting (and winning) the cold war. GW Bush is doing the same thing, cutting domestic programs while spending on the War on Terror. I'll take the Republicans cut and spend over the Democrats spend and spend any day. Plus the Federal governments job is national defense, not socialist programs. (that is my personal belief anyway)
In fact, the slowest growth of government has occurred under Clinton in recent memory.
For a few reasons, such as a republican congress that pushed for welfare reform.
It was during Clintons terms that the Republican Congress actually shut down because they were upset at Clinton for what they felt was over-spending. The Clinton white house smeared them, and Republicans have been scared to push fiscal issues too hard ever since.
2. Abortion is still legal because of the supreme court. And GW wants real bad to change it.
Really? Did I miss GW actually trying this? Or are you referring to partial birth abortion, where they crack the child's skull, and suck it's brains out with a vaccum? Yes, GW is against that, as many reasonable people are.
Your little comment about
What makes it little, the fact that you don't agree with it?
"primary birth control" shows that you too have been buying the RR's propaganda.
Or maybe I'm a human being with the ability to reason and I can clearly see how abortion is promoted in America.
Well done. There is no prohibition of moments of silence, only group prayer by state run institutions.
Uhh, yes there is. - Wallace v. Jaffree (1985), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an Alabama "moment of silence" law was unconstitutional. It had allowed public schools in the state to start each classroom day with a moment "for meditation or voluntary prayer." The court decided 6 to 3 that the legislature's sole purpose in passing the law was to promote religion. Their ruling "cited several statements from legislative records that revealed a desire to sponsor prayer in the state's public school system." In addition, the preamble to the law stated that the purpose of the law was to circumvent the ban on school prayer So like I said in the grandparent post, it is a battle just to allow a molment of silence in public schools.
3. The RR inflates the anti-gay numbers dramatically. I think you understimate how many religious people are out there. If any significant proportion of non-religious people agreed with them on the issue, the numbers would be and are large.
Look at the number of people that voted against gay marriage in the referendums, there is no way they are all from the christian religious right.
4. They havent' succeeded at too much in the way of moral leglislation, except pushing abstinence only teaching programs
A good idea regardless of faith.
and funding religious groups under the "faith based initiatives". However GW wants a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT BASED ON MORAL ISSUES, you noticed that? Stem cells, ring a bell? You don't think these things point to a mindset of leglislating morality? Head, meet sand.
Limiting Stem cell research is also based on ethical values, not just religious. You have this idea that anyone opposed to your viewpoints must be religious, and I have to tell you that you are wrong. I can tell you from experence because I know republicans personally who are atheists.
5. Intolerance is intolerance. Gays, blacks, what have you, it's all rooted in the same shit. Republicans orchestrated, among other things, toug
If they vote 88% against the Republicans, why?
From a stratigic standpoint because had they voted 60% against the Republican party it might have been an electoral landslide for Bush. Take NJ for example where African Americans make up 14% of the vote. Kerry won by 7%. Had the African American vote been anywhere close to split evenly the Republicans would have a shot at a highly democratic state. Never mind the motivation factors, I run into NJ Republicans who always say they don't bother going to the polls because they know they can't win.
Another reason is I believe they are voting against the Republicans for the wrong reasons. If they understood the platform I doubt 88% of them would be against it. I really do believe that a large percentage of that 88% will vote against a republican for the simple fact that they perceive them as racist.
Focus on the Hispanics who gave the Republicans more support this election - they've at least got a chance there.
As hispanics work their way into the middle and upper middle class they will vote Republican as most ethnic groups have done historically. This isn't happening with African Americans though, and Republicans should put serious effort into figuring out why and trying to turn that around.
You know, the first time I checked out the county-by-county maps, one thing stood out to me and I found it quite interesting. The whole time I've been seeing state-by-state maps New York has always been a "blue" state. So I figured that the majority of the state was pro-Kerry. But when you look at the county-by-county maps of New York, you see that while Kerry did get the majority of the New York votes, that geographically most of the state is actually pro-Bush.
New Jersey is the same way, all of the counties were either weak for Bush or weak for Kerry. However two counties in NJ put Kerry over the top, Essex and Camden.
Demographically, they are mostly African American which voted 88% for Kerry this time around.
The Republicans simply need a way to ajust their platform to appeal to African American voters to at least get the split to 60/40 and then they would have a shot at pulling some blue states. I have no idea in hell how they would pull it off but they can not afford to write off 13% of the population, especially 13% of the population that tends to live in the states with the most electoral votes.
And, today's republicans are a completely different breed than the republicans of yesteryear.
Agreed, on many levels.
In case you haven't noticed, small government isn't really on their plate anymore,
This seems to be a G.W. Bush thing more than a republican platform. He claims that he is going to cut government in his second term with the exception of national defense/the war on terror.
and they've been co-opted by the religious right's agenda,
I really don't agree here. Where has the religious right's agenda been passed into law? Abortion is still legal, hell abortion is still being used as a primary form of birth control by many women. Religion isn't even allowed mention in public schools, it's a battle just to allow students a minute of silence where they can pray or reflect before starting the day. Porn, and obcene material which the religious right would want taken off the shelves is abundant (I'm not complaining).
which includes intolerance to homosexuals
This isn't just an issue of the religious right, if you look at the poll results where homosexual marriage was on the ballots the results were shockingly against it. 75% to 25% in some cases. I find it hard to believe any state other than Utah has a population that 75% of it could be considered the religious right.
and a need to legislate "morality" that includes said intolerance, judgement, restriction, what have you.
Please give examples of these from the last four years, I don't see it.
If the republicans could just get off their religious right addiction.... then they would start to shake the bigot label.
Huh? The grandparent was about the African American vote, and the perception that Republicans are racist against African Americans. It had nothing to do with Gays. Do you think that African Americans believe that Republicans are racist because a segment of their party is against gay marriage?
Also, as for the republican "religious right addiction" two of the most popular speakers at the RNC were pro-abortion moderates. Where was the anti-abortion candidate at the DNC? Or are the Democrats stuck on their "Abortion as birth control and on demand" addiction?
This is not a PR coup.
I would say it is. The republican party is far from racist.
Welcome to your party. moderates to the right, bible beaters further to the right please, move along now.
It's silly to think that all conservatives, or republicans are bible beaters. It would be like saying all democrats are feminists. One constiuancy doesn't make a party.
In the Electoral College, the vote of the majority (people living in cities) is diluted to give people living in the suburbs, and Southern Slave Owners, an increased vote.
There were no suburbs when the electoral college was created, and when it was created one of the ideas behind it was to take away the voting power of slave owners The electoral college was simply a compromise between the states with a large population and the states with a small population to elect a president.
Since we no longer have slave owners, it's kind of moot to continue having the Electoral College.
That isn't why the EC was created.
If you read the Federalist Papers, you'll discover that the founding fathers weren't real keen on giving Joe Schmoe
No, they weren't. They were of the belief that you should be a land owning male to vote. Those were very different times though.
a vote, and if you read History, you'll find that slave owners wanted their slaves to count as three-fifths of a person for voting purposes, but had no intention of giving them the right to vote.
Indeed, the southern slave owners had no intentions of allowing their slaves to vote. Howevver, they wanted their slaves to have a full vote! Not three fifths of a vote! Three fifths of a vote was another compromise made between the north and the south. Most of the founding fathers were against slavery, but if they wanted to form a union with the southern states it was a necessary evil. They did not want the south to have the voting power to continue slavery forever, so the north was against the slaves being able to vote (since their masters would be the ones really voting for them) and that is how they came up with the three fifths compromise which everyone looks to today and calls 'racist' when it was in fact an example of the original desire of the founding fathers to limit the powers of the south and eventually destroy slavery.
For someone who writes things like 'if you read History' you sure have a distorted view of it.
The point of a Democracy is that the majority of the people get to determine things. If you do anything to dilute the power of the majority (Electoral College, Aparthied, for example), then you're not living in a Democracy.
We don't live in a true direct democracy where the people determine things. It's a good thing too since the majority of people are not always right. If the majority of people voted tommorow for Apartheid to be reinstated would that be right simply because it was come to in a democratic process?
Because the peaks are due to population
I'd say they have more to do with African American population, since 88% of them voted democratic which is by far the largest margin in any racial grouping. 88% of African Americans also live in metropolitan areas according to the 2000 census.
The Republican party must find a way to reach out to these people or at least somehow counter the perception that Republicans are racists.
when I feel it is totally legitimate to ask. Has anyone ever looked at intelligence/education as a factor for party affiliation?
College Graduates (26% of the vote) Voted for Bush 52% to 46%, Postgrads (16% of the vote) voted for Kerry 55% to 41%.
In France there was a very racist party (Front National) and the people who would vote for them were on average less educated than people who voted for other parties.
You shouldn't call a party racist because they are interested in preserving their language, culture and borders. That does not make them racists.
al Qaeda attacked. Not Afghanistan, and certainly not Iraq. But if it had been possible to stop them before 9/11, sure, that would have been great.
So what you are saying is, if Iraq had been planning an attack, they should have been stopped to save American lives? Correct?
On the other hand, Iraq was never a threat to the United States. Let me repeat that -- Iraq was never a threat to the United States.
Was President Putin lying then when he said Iraq was planning terrorist strikes on the US? Did you ever stop and think that maybe, just maybe the president has better intellegence reports and might get information that both you and the media don't have?
Even when they were lying about the WMD, the Bush regime never claimed they were a Clear and Present Danger. They said they were working on WMD and might pose a threat later. That turned out to be a lie.
There is still no proof they DIDN'T have WMD's. Since the story of the explosives being smuggled out of Iraq into Syria before the war broke, didn't you ever think maybe they smuggled other weapons there?
It's fairly obvious Saddam had biological weapons, he used them on his own people and in the war against Iran. I wouldn't be surpised if we gave them to him at some point. I could care less either way, all I really care about is that Iraq was a problem and now it's being solved.
The fact that Bush was elected isn't an endorsement that what he did in Iraq was right, it's a testament to the fear he managed to instill in people,
WHAT FEAR? The south for the most part elected him. The states that were attacked on 9/11 voted for Kerry! I don't think it was fear, it had more to do with moral values and having the right man to fight the war on terror.
and the misinformation his campaign managed to spread. A philosopher you must admire once said:
Whenever Hitler comes up, that is when you know the other side has lost their arguement. The Idea that I would 'admire' Hitler is a joke. My belief system says we would have put Hitler on trial and to death. What does yours say? Life in prison with chance of Parole in 20 years? you probably think he shouldn't even do that, he did have a troubled childhood you know....If he were being tried today I could hear the left spewing..."we should feel soooorrry for him, it is after all society's fault.....the German village didn't raise the child right!"
I don't know what the fundie phrase
I'm far from a fundamentalist, I don't even practice.
"culture of death and murder" means, but I guess it's code for the birth control procedure called abortion.
I have a problem with killing children, yes. I see a logical difference between using a condom, or birth control pills and crushing a childs skull and sucking their brains out.
If you don't like the idea of killing something which can think and feel pain, I assume you're a vegan, right?
Har Har Har, No unlike many 'vegans' who would promote abortion while 'saving only the cute animals' I see human life as greater than that of an animal.
Anyhow, nobody said anything about killing children. We're talking about abortion -- you know, the killing of zygotes? Zygotes aren't children or are you actually arguing that a zygote is a child?
You can try to de-humanize abortion by calling them fertilized eggs, but if you watch video of a few of them rather than spewing feminist propaganda maybe you would be able to see the difference.
Most of the country doesn't think that the government should have a say in what form of birth control they choose to use.
birth control != abortion. Sorry man.
Most of the country also thinks that adding discrimination into the US constitution is abhorrent.
Discrimination? Who is
I'm waiting for the creationists to explain how god did this one.
;)
Obviously it was the work of satan! God was busy working to get GWB elected.
have never cared about misspellings before but everytime Americans takl
That just says it all.
It's more like half.
I would say it's more than half. More than half voted for Bush. The last time a liberal was elected with more than half the vote was in the 70's.
Half of us want to attack countries when they may be a threat to us at some point in the future. Half of us don't.
I would say that more than half the people would want our president to act in self defense if it would prevent American citizens from being attacked. If 9/11 could have been stopped by attacking Afghanistan on 9/10 would it have been the right thing to do? Most people think it would have been. The fact that the Iraq war is going poorly and people still re-elected Bush just goes to show how much support there is for the Bush doctrine.
Half of us want "strong moral values" imposed on everybody, the other half thinks the government should keep its nose out of our personal lives.
No, most of us DONT want a culture of death and murder imposed on us by a minority of the people in this country. We don't want abortion as birth control, or homosexual marriage. Look at the polls, it didn't pass in ANY state. It didn't even pass in Oregon where the homosexual lobbiest poured millions of dollars into advertising.
Half of us see no problem with supporting the death penalty while opposing abortion, the other half doesn't believe zygotes are children, and believes all sentient human lives are valuable.
More than half of us can see the logic behind killing someone if the have commited a crime worthy of death (ie murder). More than half of us realize that a fetus can think and feel pain as a doctor recently testified to in court. We realize that killing innocent children is wrong while killing evil murders is right. Unlike those of you in the minority who believe that murders need to be protected and children killed on the whim of the mother.
All of us think the media and Hollywood is biased. Some think it's biased towards the left. Some think it's biased towards the right.
Anyone who thinks the media is biased to the right is on crack.
Some think it's biased towards profits.
Which is the most likely scenario.
In 4 years time, we'll see what wonders a Republican president who doesn't have to worry about re-election, a Republican senate and a Republican congress can do.
Actually, it's only 2 years until the next set of elections. It will be interesting to see.
Might as well start sending your taxes directly to their corporate sponsors.
Would you deny that the democratic party has just as many special interests if not more than the Republicans?
What this election says to the world, especially Europe is a big "FUCK YOU" from America.
We will attack countries when they are a threat to us, or our self interests outweigh the possible losses.
We will continue to be the economic and military superpower of the world, and no you can not stop us
We don't need the corrupt UN, we are even getting to the point where we don't want it
We have seen the population statistics in Europe, and we will not embrace your culture of death. We want a culture of strong moral values, where things such as homosexuality and abortion are tolerated but not encouraged.
We see clearly now the bias that exists in the Media, Hollywood and the colleges and we reject their ideology of socialism and death.
We still believe America is the land of rugged independance rather than a nanny state.
We will never bow to internation pressure, or terrorists to select out president. If you think there is something you can do about it, try it. Otherwise GO FUCK YOURSELVES.
yea but I didn't even bother voting because I have to do a absentee abllot and lets face it my vote for Bush wasn't gonna do a thing to change NJ, now if i Lived in Ohio, Flordia.... then yes i would of voted.
:)
Ya know, I live in NJ also and you really should go out and vote even if it is a lost cause.
When voters in mass don't turn out, even if they know their side is going to lose you are sending a message to the losing party that the state is hopeless. NJ was basically lost by 200,000 votes (7%) in a state with a population of 8 million people. Had it been lost by 3% the Republicans might have really tried to make a play for it in the next election. Nevermind the fact that 200,000 with a population of 8,000,000 is a very low number.
Vote damn you!