And why is that even necessary? There isn't this massive learning curve for PC developers. Yes, they have to learn a few new tricks and features here and there to better optimize the juice from the newest gen of hardware, but it doesn't take them two or three years to get up to speed on the latest NVIDIA or ATI card.
Do console developers seriously need to re-invent every aspect of the wheel for each generation? They can't make them a bit more modular and just iteratively improve the existing systems throughout their lifespan?
There has to be some other model that can be used in console gaming that doesn't involve one fresh generation every decade, with a slowly deteriorating experience with each passing year (in comparison to other gaming options like a PC).
Of course, this isn't much use for those of us who aren't young kids still. But it's nice to know the next generation will have this sort of information at their fingertips early enough that they can make meaningful use of it in their lives. For the rest of us, it's merely a curiosity (if we actually are curious about it). Not knowing one half of my parental heritage, it would have been nice to have had this a decade or two ago so you know what you might be at risk for (since obviously you only know the history of one half of yourself). But again, timing is everything.
I wonder how many people will really use it, though. I mean, people still smoke and drink and do countless other things that damage their bodies in the long term as it is. I think we'd still see our future laid out from the test and say "I should keep that in mind and start doing something about it some day" while never actually doing it.
And still, I say that if they're going to archive everyone's DNA they might as well compensate us with a free analysis.
Unfortunately, there's one little hitch. Changing policy requires that many other people agree with you. Perhaps you've had your head in the sand the last few years, but it's a huge effort just to find a lot of people who don't agree that it's a sweet deal to trade some of their liberties and freedoms for perceived security.
You can spin your wheels for a large part of your life, but at some point you have to accept that you are at the mercy of the masses, no matter how just your ideas and efforts.
Okay, I know there are some twenty ways to spell our name. I kid, I kid.
Also, I know . . . Seamus McNalley died a few years ago. I'm glad positive things continue to be done in his name.
By the way, it'd be awesome if more of these independent games could reach XBOX Live and PS3 systems. It seems that when those companies talk about their online markets being a venue for indie game producers, they mean "companies with a few million bucks and dedicated development".
So what we have now is as good as it is going to get for the next five to ten years? That's unfortunate. That's where the PC gaming will always be superior. PCs were already outperforming consoles by the time the newest gen of consoles were released. And while my console systems will be performing about the same in five or ten years as they were last year, my PC will be performing perhaps twice as well next year as it is this year.
Console gaming companies need to come out with a different model. These are videogame systems; not car stereos toasters. Perhaps they need to introduce some sort of leasing model where gamers lease the consoles and then they come out with a more advanced console (or upgrade the current ones) after a year or two. It obviously isn't reasonable to release a $500 console every other year because gamers won't spend $500 every year (per gaming system) just for the hardware.
I really have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that a gaming system that provides essentially the same experience and quality is sufficient for five or ten years. I mean, think about it -- would you want to have been gaming in 2000 on a rig that was built in 1995 or even 1990?!
I'll be all for it once the government wants to pay for it. The telco companies violated numerous laws to "aide" the government in "hunting for terrorists". Government homeland security agent used database information to harass and threaten his ex girlfriend. Google and Yahoo! work with just about any government to do whatever they want against their people, in the interest of better corporate relations with their governments.
So why exactly should I not expect my DNA information to be archived, cataloged and given to the government at-whim? And since we KNOW that is going to happen, why in the fuck should I spend a thousand bucks for that? As long as they're going to violate me, they might as well at least PAY for it.
I don't see how difficult this is. If you do not want something on the internet, don't put it on the internet. It's not like Google is going out there and signing into a paying account and indexing paid-for content. In fact, how many times have you found something on google, clicked it -- only to find that all you can read is one paragraph before the site (NYT, etc) throws you a sales pitch to pay $5 or $20 if you want to read the rest?
My opinion? Good riddance to the lot of them. Please take all the "yahoo answers" and "mahalo" results that show up in various searches with you.
If news outlets and publishers had their way, google would have to pay them for the privilege to index their sites. And then every time their site's link appeared in a google results page, they'd charge google again. It's a pathetic attempt to try to wrangle some revenue out of a failing concept.
I'm not a konqueror fan, because it doesn't feel right, to me. I'm a fan of one excellent tool to do one thing extremely well. Not one giant kitchen sink of a tool that does a thousand things.
Of course, I also don't prefer Konqueror as a web browser, so it could be that I'd appreciate it all much more if I weren't fused to firefox.
Of course, I use krusader anyway, so it doesn't much matter to me. Dolphin presents some things in a bit of a krusader style, but with far less functionality.
By the way, anyone who remembers that one Appl II game from grade school will remember that Dolphins will some day rule the country as our president.
Then again, monkeys already do, so that's not a leap of imagination.
Don't forget that Comcast is supposedly quadrupling their bandwidth (according to recent news and some comments here in this page). Some people see that as a great thing. On the other hand, I just see it as them giving me more potential bandwidth so they can ban me from their service for a year for exceeding their secret limitations -- but now they'll be able to do it 400% faster!
Or, at least, bandwidth will be competition-based . . . . as soon as tax-payer supported monopoly grants are done away with so there can be some competition . . . on which to have a company and sector be . . . uh . . . competition-based.:)
Uh. I live in a city with over a million people with massive Intel campuses and Nike Headquarters and considered one of the most wired/wireless cities in the nation. I can choose between comcast or . . . uh . . . yeah, just comcast.
Speaking of the shitty Comcast HD/DVR stuff, here is what I hate about them:
I told it I wanted to record a series. I told it to record only NEW episodes of the series.
Every day, I go into the DVR menu and there are four, six - maybe eight - episodes of the series. ALL THE SAME EPISODE, recorded over the previous 24hrs. It is such a hassle to deal with that I simply stopped recording such series and I don't even watch those shows anymore. I don't want to be obligated to check the DVR every day just to make sure I haven't hit the 100% limit with 40 copies of the same two shows in the last day or two and I don't want to spend five or ten minutes deleting one show at a time.
Not to mention, the machine is SLOW. You can press a button and it will sometimes respond immediately. Other times it may take 30 seconds for it to register. It makes it really fun trying to seek a point in a recording. You press FF and then hit play, because you're at the point you want to watch . . . . and you wait . . . . and it keeps fast forwarding . . . . and by the time it finally registers that you pressed 'Play', it has forwarded thirty minutes beyond the point you wanted to watch.
I coudl go with Tivo, but I don't care to spend $300+ on a box, plus a monthly fee, PLUS still have to pay $10 to comcast for the CableCARD. Especially since I hear there are still a lot of difficulties with HD Tivo's on cable services.
The slashdot submission suggests that Comcast and possibly other cable services are going to become sloth-like old giants that nobody uses anymore, because of supposedly poor customer service, slow speeds, mucking with applications and protocols and iffy-secret-limitations.
The point is -- NONE OF THAT MATTERS. For the same reason people are going to pay five, six or ten dollars a gallon for gas (because they need gas and there's only one source of it), people will continue using Comcast and other cable providers, no matter how terrible the service might be. Why? Because they have no other choice. Unless you're in Tampa or a couple other select areas around the country, you have precisely two options for broadband: Fast-ish comcast (if it's available -- it's not always available in all parts of a zip code) or slower DSL (if it's available - and chances are unless you live just down the street from the CO, it isn't).
The entire problem with monopolies is that there is no competition, so performance and custome service are moot points.
What are human rights and free speech compared to corporate monetary gain? How dare anyone suggest that Yahoo! or Youtube or any other money-making entity should be forced to suffer potential revenue loss (due to lack of wheel-greasing by officials in countries that might be upset at them allowing their own citizens to undermine them through these services)!
I've found the reviews to be largely reliable in my time there. The games they absolutely hate tend to absolutely suck. I think they missed the ball on their adoration of Assassin's Creed (a 9?! REALLY?! You must have been playing a less sucky print of the game than I did!), but they usually fit into the same ballpark.
They also show other game site's average review scores of the game as well as user scores. While I would not doubt this current story, it would be rather obvious if Gamespot went around rating games an 8, 9 and 10 while all the gamers and other game sites rated the same games a 2, 3 and 4.
I subscribe to Gamespot, because IGN's website is incredibly obnoxious and cluttered and I want a place to keep up with all the videos (in decent hd quality), so it has been worth the $20/yr to me. And sometimes the reviews and scores help guide me in what games to absolutely stay away from and what to absolutely give a shot. Kane and Lynch is one I was going to buy on release day. Then I waited a little to see the review and was glad I did. After the review, I decided to find it demo-ing somewhere so I could try it and I couldn't stand it.
I doubt someone would be dumped because of a single review that pissed off a publisher. Multiple occurrences, perhaps but surely they knew one bad review resulting in a canning would be terribly obvious.
Anyway, if that's the case, I'll be canceling my subscription (even though it JUST renewed).
Here is a tried and tested way to almost gaurantee you have a smart child:
- Start reading to them VERY YOUNG. I was reading on my own before the age of three and have had a life long adoration for literature. How did I learn to read? Simple. My mom read a book to me EVERY NIGHT as far back as I can remember (and then even before that) and let me follow along with her as she pointed to each word she read. Eventually, I didn't need her to do that anymore and I would toddle off into a corner with a stack of books on my own.
- Read books yourself. If your child sees you reading books for enjoyment and paying attention to the newspaper, your child is more likely to do the same.
- Allow your children to engage you in intellectual conversations. The worst thing you can do is, when your child starts a conversation or asks questions or wants to give you their thoughts on a topic, is slough it off or reply with only the vaguest of attention. No, you can't give your child constant un-divided attention. Your child needs to know that talking and debating and sharing thoughts and opinions and information is valued, encouraged and important. If all you engage each other in is conversations about last night's episode of your favorite sit-com, your kid is going to learn that consuming entertainment and keeping your mouth shut is what matters.
- Give your child freedom. I was able to bicycle and walk around the neighborhood (and beyond) when I was seven and eight years old. I was able to take the bus about fifteen miles into downtown Portland to explore the city, hang out at Powell's City of Books and practically live at the central library. I has a yard bigger than a postage stamp that you could almost get lost in. I built tree forts with my friends, invented games, dug giant holes and tunnels under ground. Played with my grandfathers carpentry tools to make stuff. Had a chemistry set. Had a library card. Had time to myself. Today, kids have their whole life planned and structured, are often restricted to a small area of freedom, can't roam anywhere on their own, and can't play with anything sharper than a spoon. As a kid, I smashed my fingers, sprained my hand and foot, cut my finger to the bone (and would have needed stitches, if we weren't camping 200 miles from the closest city at the time), hammered my finger, burned myself, cut myself with a handsaw and lots of other stuff. At twelve, I went down to the local car body shop and they let me have a chunk of steel. A simple rectangular block of it that I ground, sanded and shaped into an actual knife all on my own. Then I learned how to make a handle and rivet it all together, including using an expensive (and maybe dangerous) heavy duty drill press. Did I do lots of dumb stuff? Did I probably avoid serious harm many times, just by the skin of my teeth? Probably. But god damned, if I didn't learn a lot in the process and develop a lot of character through my inquisitiveness.
I agree. Ron Paul is the only candidate who would possibly give any real thought to protecting the internet along with any other form of free speech. Everyone else is for free speech, freedom of assembly, privacy, etc -- as long as it's in support of things they want to say or to. But they're against the privacy, speech and assembly of anyone that disagrees with them. Or more importantly, that they disagree with.
Of course, as a politician, Ron Paul (if he even actually had a chance), would become just another bullshit politician, so it's all a moot point. You don't become a viable candidate unless you have the support of the establishment (aristocrats, other politicians, corporations, religious organizations and unions). So no matter who you are or what side you supposedly are on or what you purport to be your values, the only viable and successful candidates are the ones who will do the bidding of the aforementioned groups. One may perform the duties of one organization or another slightly more than another candidate, but the degree of variation is minor (which of course is why there is nearly no difference between the two parties -- or even most official independent candidates).
But of course, people have this misguided believe that all they have to do to change the world is place a vote. Why, if you place a vote, it will ALL change. Bullshit candidates will somehow become viable, despite shirking the establishment and they'll stay true to their word and everyone else will side with them, even though they don't push the agreed upon religious or union agendas. Of course, that's why things will never change. You and I are taught from birth that the bullshit which has been constant for generations is somehow only a vote away from changing. That we have the true power. That, why, one vote can suddenly stop the massive waves of people on the left and right who want to control every aspect of our lives and our thoughts.
And as long as we buy into that -- and as long as we care more about the next episode of a show where someone dances with famous people or a bunch of nattering hens on a daily morning show or the success of our commercial sports team that share our exact . . . um . . . zip code -- we'll continue to get what we've always gotten. And continue to believe that we're somehow making things change, when they're staying the same.
Injections already ARE painless. Needles only hurt if you get a nurse who is too stupid to hit a vein the first twenty tries. Sometimes they blame the patient and "you have hard to find veins", but if it's so hard, why can most of the OTHER nurses do it in one shot?
Also, this patch is evil. This is just going to end up being a more convenient way to deliver brain-number drugs to the masses, so they'll be more pliable.
Slashdot Mirror
And why is that even necessary? There isn't this massive learning curve for PC developers. Yes, they have to learn a few new tricks and features here and there to better optimize the juice from the newest gen of hardware, but it doesn't take them two or three years to get up to speed on the latest NVIDIA or ATI card.
Do console developers seriously need to re-invent every aspect of the wheel for each generation? They can't make them a bit more modular and just iteratively improve the existing systems throughout their lifespan?
There has to be some other model that can be used in console gaming that doesn't involve one fresh generation every decade, with a slowly deteriorating experience with each passing year (in comparison to other gaming options like a PC).
Of course, this isn't much use for those of us who aren't young kids still. But it's nice to know the next generation will have this sort of information at their fingertips early enough that they can make meaningful use of it in their lives. For the rest of us, it's merely a curiosity (if we actually are curious about it). Not knowing one half of my parental heritage, it would have been nice to have had this a decade or two ago so you know what you might be at risk for (since obviously you only know the history of one half of yourself). But again, timing is everything.
I wonder how many people will really use it, though. I mean, people still smoke and drink and do countless other things that damage their bodies in the long term as it is. I think we'd still see our future laid out from the test and say "I should keep that in mind and start doing something about it some day" while never actually doing it.
And still, I say that if they're going to archive everyone's DNA they might as well compensate us with a free analysis.
Unfortunately, there's one little hitch. Changing policy requires that many other people agree with you. Perhaps you've had your head in the sand the last few years, but it's a huge effort just to find a lot of people who don't agree that it's a sweet deal to trade some of their liberties and freedoms for perceived security.
You can spin your wheels for a large part of your life, but at some point you have to accept that you are at the mercy of the masses, no matter how just your ideas and efforts.
You spelled it wrong, ass!
Okay, I know there are some twenty ways to spell our name. I kid, I kid.
Also, I know . . . Seamus McNalley died a few years ago. I'm glad positive things continue to be done in his name.
By the way, it'd be awesome if more of these independent games could reach XBOX Live and PS3 systems. It seems that when those companies talk about their online markets being a venue for indie game producers, they mean "companies with a few million bucks and dedicated development".
I've been wanting to play Psychonauts for a very long time, but I could not find a copy anywhere.
So what we have now is as good as it is going to get for the next five to ten years? That's unfortunate. That's where the PC gaming will always be superior. PCs were already outperforming consoles by the time the newest gen of consoles were released. And while my console systems will be performing about the same in five or ten years as they were last year, my PC will be performing perhaps twice as well next year as it is this year.
Console gaming companies need to come out with a different model. These are videogame systems; not car stereos toasters. Perhaps they need to introduce some sort of leasing model where gamers lease the consoles and then they come out with a more advanced console (or upgrade the current ones) after a year or two. It obviously isn't reasonable to release a $500 console every other year because gamers won't spend $500 every year (per gaming system) just for the hardware.
I really have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that a gaming system that provides essentially the same experience and quality is sufficient for five or ten years. I mean, think about it -- would you want to have been gaming in 2000 on a rig that was built in 1995 or even 1990?!
I'll be all for it once the government wants to pay for it. The telco companies violated numerous laws to "aide" the government in "hunting for terrorists". Government homeland security agent used database information to harass and threaten his ex girlfriend. Google and Yahoo! work with just about any government to do whatever they want against their people, in the interest of better corporate relations with their governments.
So why exactly should I not expect my DNA information to be archived, cataloged and given to the government at-whim? And since we KNOW that is going to happen, why in the fuck should I spend a thousand bucks for that? As long as they're going to violate me, they might as well at least PAY for it.
I don't see how difficult this is. If you do not want something on the internet, don't put it on the internet. It's not like Google is going out there and signing into a paying account and indexing paid-for content. In fact, how many times have you found something on google, clicked it -- only to find that all you can read is one paragraph before the site (NYT, etc) throws you a sales pitch to pay $5 or $20 if you want to read the rest?
My opinion? Good riddance to the lot of them. Please take all the "yahoo answers" and "mahalo" results that show up in various searches with you.
If news outlets and publishers had their way, google would have to pay them for the privilege to index their sites. And then every time their site's link appeared in a google results page, they'd charge google again. It's a pathetic attempt to try to wrangle some revenue out of a failing concept.
I'm not a konqueror fan, because it doesn't feel right, to me. I'm a fan of one excellent tool to do one thing extremely well. Not one giant kitchen sink of a tool that does a thousand things.
Of course, I also don't prefer Konqueror as a web browser, so it could be that I'd appreciate it all much more if I weren't fused to firefox.
Of course, I use krusader anyway, so it doesn't much matter to me. Dolphin presents some things in a bit of a krusader style, but with far less functionality.
By the way, anyone who remembers that one Appl II game from grade school will remember that Dolphins will some day rule the country as our president.
Then again, monkeys already do, so that's not a leap of imagination.
I can't wait to start buying their games and various swag -- all emblazoned with the new Blactavision logos!
Yeah, well . . . *INSERT AUTOMOBILE ANALOGY HERE*.
You and your language of choice just got SERVED, sir! *grin*
Don't forget that Comcast is supposedly quadrupling their bandwidth (according to recent news and some comments here in this page). Some people see that as a great thing. On the other hand, I just see it as them giving me more potential bandwidth so they can ban me from their service for a year for exceeding their secret limitations -- but now they'll be able to do it 400% faster!
Or, at least, bandwidth will be competition-based . . . . as soon as tax-payer supported monopoly grants are done away with so there can be some competition . . . on which to have a company and sector be . . . uh . . . competition-based. :)
Uh. I live in a city with over a million people with massive Intel campuses and Nike Headquarters and considered one of the most wired/wireless cities in the nation. I can choose between comcast or . . . uh . . . yeah, just comcast.
Speaking of the shitty Comcast HD/DVR stuff, here is what I hate about them:
I told it I wanted to record a series.
I told it to record only NEW episodes of the series.
Every day, I go into the DVR menu and there are four, six - maybe eight - episodes of the series. ALL THE SAME EPISODE, recorded over the previous 24hrs. It is such a hassle to deal with that I simply stopped recording such series and I don't even watch those shows anymore. I don't want to be obligated to check the DVR every day just to make sure I haven't hit the 100% limit with 40 copies of the same two shows in the last day or two and I don't want to spend five or ten minutes deleting one show at a time.
Not to mention, the machine is SLOW. You can press a button and it will sometimes respond immediately. Other times it may take 30 seconds for it to register. It makes it really fun trying to seek a point in a recording. You press FF and then hit play, because you're at the point you want to watch . . . . and you wait . . . . and it keeps fast forwarding . . . . and by the time it finally registers that you pressed 'Play', it has forwarded thirty minutes beyond the point you wanted to watch.
I coudl go with Tivo, but I don't care to spend $300+ on a box, plus a monthly fee, PLUS still have to pay $10 to comcast for the CableCARD. Especially since I hear there are still a lot of difficulties with HD Tivo's on cable services.
The slashdot submission suggests that Comcast and possibly other cable services are going to become sloth-like old giants that nobody uses anymore, because of supposedly poor customer service, slow speeds, mucking with applications and protocols and iffy-secret-limitations.
The point is -- NONE OF THAT MATTERS. For the same reason people are going to pay five, six or ten dollars a gallon for gas (because they need gas and there's only one source of it), people will continue using Comcast and other cable providers, no matter how terrible the service might be. Why? Because they have no other choice. Unless you're in Tampa or a couple other select areas around the country, you have precisely two options for broadband: Fast-ish comcast (if it's available -- it's not always available in all parts of a zip code) or slower DSL (if it's available - and chances are unless you live just down the street from the CO, it isn't).
The entire problem with monopolies is that there is no competition, so performance and custome service are moot points.
Saying Perl isn't readable is like saying English isn't readable. It depends on whose hand the pen is in.
What are human rights and free speech compared to corporate monetary gain? How dare anyone suggest that Yahoo! or Youtube or any other money-making entity should be forced to suffer potential revenue loss (due to lack of wheel-greasing by officials in countries that might be upset at them allowing their own citizens to undermine them through these services)!
I've found the reviews to be largely reliable in my time there. The games they absolutely hate tend to absolutely suck. I think they missed the ball on their adoration of Assassin's Creed (a 9?! REALLY?! You must have been playing a less sucky print of the game than I did!), but they usually fit into the same ballpark.
They also show other game site's average review scores of the game as well as user scores. While I would not doubt this current story, it would be rather obvious if Gamespot went around rating games an 8, 9 and 10 while all the gamers and other game sites rated the same games a 2, 3 and 4.
I subscribe to Gamespot, because IGN's website is incredibly obnoxious and cluttered and I want a place to keep up with all the videos (in decent hd quality), so it has been worth the $20/yr to me. And sometimes the reviews and scores help guide me in what games to absolutely stay away from and what to absolutely give a shot. Kane and Lynch is one I was going to buy on release day. Then I waited a little to see the review and was glad I did. After the review, I decided to find it demo-ing somewhere so I could try it and I couldn't stand it.
I doubt someone would be dumped because of a single review that pissed off a publisher. Multiple occurrences, perhaps but surely they knew one bad review resulting in a canning would be terribly obvious.
Anyway, if that's the case, I'll be canceling my subscription (even though it JUST renewed).
(I kid, I kid.
Here is a tried and tested way to almost gaurantee you have a smart child:
- Start reading to them VERY YOUNG.
I was reading on my own before the age of three and have had a life long adoration for literature. How did I learn to read? Simple. My mom read a book to me EVERY NIGHT as far back as I can remember (and then even before that) and let me follow along with her as she pointed to each word she read. Eventually, I didn't need her to do that anymore and I would toddle off into a corner with a stack of books on my own.
- Read books yourself. If your child sees you reading books for enjoyment and paying attention to the newspaper, your child is more likely to do the same.
- Allow your children to engage you in intellectual conversations. The worst thing you can do is, when your child starts a conversation or asks questions or wants to give you their thoughts on a topic, is slough it off or reply with only the vaguest of attention. No, you can't give your child constant un-divided attention. Your child needs to know that talking and debating and sharing thoughts and opinions and information is valued, encouraged and important. If all you engage each other in is conversations about last night's episode of your favorite sit-com, your kid is going to learn that consuming entertainment and keeping your mouth shut is what matters.
- Give your child freedom. I was able to bicycle and walk around the neighborhood (and beyond) when I was seven and eight years old. I was able to take the bus about fifteen miles into downtown Portland to explore the city, hang out at Powell's City of Books and practically live at the central library. I has a yard bigger than a postage stamp that you could almost get lost in. I built tree forts with my friends, invented games, dug giant holes and tunnels under ground. Played with my grandfathers carpentry tools to make stuff. Had a chemistry set. Had a library card. Had time to myself. Today, kids have their whole life planned and structured, are often restricted to a small area of freedom, can't roam anywhere on their own, and can't play with anything sharper than a spoon. As a kid, I smashed my fingers, sprained my hand and foot, cut my finger to the bone (and would have needed stitches, if we weren't camping 200 miles from the closest city at the time), hammered my finger, burned myself, cut myself with a handsaw and lots of other stuff. At twelve, I went down to the local car body shop and they let me have a chunk of steel. A simple rectangular block of it that I ground, sanded and shaped into an actual knife all on my own. Then I learned how to make a handle and rivet it all together, including using an expensive (and maybe dangerous) heavy duty drill press. Did I do lots of dumb stuff? Did I probably avoid serious harm many times, just by the skin of my teeth? Probably. But god damned, if I didn't learn a lot in the process and develop a lot of character through my inquisitiveness.
Like most politicians, Obama will support the internet policies that his lobbiests tell him to support.
I agree. Ron Paul is the only candidate who would possibly give any real thought to protecting the internet along with any other form of free speech. Everyone else is for free speech, freedom of assembly, privacy, etc -- as long as it's in support of things they want to say or to. But they're against the privacy, speech and assembly of anyone that disagrees with them. Or more importantly, that they disagree with.
Of course, as a politician, Ron Paul (if he even actually had a chance), would become just another bullshit politician, so it's all a moot point. You don't become a viable candidate unless you have the support of the establishment (aristocrats, other politicians, corporations, religious organizations and unions). So no matter who you are or what side you supposedly are on or what you purport to be your values, the only viable and successful candidates are the ones who will do the bidding of the aforementioned groups. One may perform the duties of one organization or another slightly more than another candidate, but the degree of variation is minor (which of course is why there is nearly no difference between the two parties -- or even most official independent candidates).
But of course, people have this misguided believe that all they have to do to change the world is place a vote. Why, if you place a vote, it will ALL change. Bullshit candidates will somehow become viable, despite shirking the establishment and they'll stay true to their word and everyone else will side with them, even though they don't push the agreed upon religious or union agendas. Of course, that's why things will never change. You and I are taught from birth that the bullshit which has been constant for generations is somehow only a vote away from changing. That we have the true power. That, why, one vote can suddenly stop the massive waves of people on the left and right who want to control every aspect of our lives and our thoughts.
And as long as we buy into that -- and as long as we care more about the next episode of a show where someone dances with famous people or a bunch of nattering hens on a daily morning show or the success of our commercial sports team that share our exact . . . um . . . zip code -- we'll continue to get what we've always gotten. And continue to believe that we're somehow making things change, when they're staying the same.
Injections already ARE painless. Needles only hurt if you get a nurse who is too stupid to hit a vein the first twenty tries. Sometimes they blame the patient and "you have hard to find veins", but if it's so hard, why can most of the OTHER nurses do it in one shot?
Also, this patch is evil. This is just going to end up being a more convenient way to deliver brain-number drugs to the masses, so they'll be more pliable.