Humans are not particularly violent. It's just that humans are so remarkably talented at everything we do that our violence is accordingly far more spectacular.
Theoretically? They already have a "Just for You" feature that's telling me that, for instance, I would probably enjoy buying a Dream Theater album because I have a large collection of Rush.
Sure you can, just like you can copyright any other passage of text. It's just that the copyright only applies to your specific text and not to the meaning of the text.
You're talking about Spore, currently in development by Maxis. Develop life from the cellular stage up through biological evolution to a sentient race, where there's a tribal stage, a city stage, a civilization stage, and then a galactic stage.
Actually, by forcing your non-mouse hand to stay on the keyboard where it can hit the control key, it speeds up transition time and allows you to hit some left-handed command-key combinations without taking your hand off the mouse. So overall you *are* vaster control-clicking than right-clicking.
"I already know the ending, it's the part that makes your face implode.
I don't know what makes your face implode, but that's the way the movie ends." --They Might Be Giants, "Experimental Film"
I never said Microsoft was going to hire them. My point was that we have private armies already. Most of them work for our government but some of them work for other governments.
but building roads and additional infrastructure would have to be done at a local level
In the 1950's, the federal government commissioned the Interstate Highway System. Any expansion of highway infrastructure could be commissioned federally along the same lines. If you have to lay down rail, then you're going to be laying down rail lines, which are as land-intensive as roads and additionally limited only to trains that are built for that rail. Roads on the other hand are compatible with any wheeled vehicle. Then there's the problems of running the train, planning the train schedule, etc.
I have no idea what the feasability is, but why not expand highways three-dimensionally in congested areas by building an overpass-like road above and parallel to the main road, effectively doubling capacity without consuming significantly more land?
In the long run, I still maintain that the *best* way to solve the problem is to circumvent it by abolishing the commute by allowing workers to either work out of their homes or live close to where they work.
Building automobiles that don't use petroleum as a fuel source that can nonetheless use the same roads and infrastructure, solving any potential issues with backward compatibility, while expanding and rebuilding the highway infrastucture.
Building an entirely new rail infrastructure and designing trains to run on this infrastructure that don't use petroleum.
The first solution can be put into place nationally or even internationally. The second solution can only be put into place locally. Which do you think is bettter? Admittedly, another option is reducing the need for transportation--after all, people only began commuting to work in the industrial revolution, previously almost all work took place at home. Moving back to that sort of arrangement for more of the population (telecommuting, home offices, etc) would be a nice way of circumventing the problem entirely.
I was at a Rona recently getting some bags of gravel for a project. A gentleman walking by saw my gravel, at this point 9 bags on my cart, and suddenly decided that he needed gravel. It was obvious that he didn't intend to buy gravel, but seeing me buying gravel made him believe that there was something interesting about this gravel, and he should follow.
You didn't think a light bulb went off in his head and he thought "Gravel, I could use that for..."? I don't think many people are such dumbasses that they buy gravel just to mimic other gravel-purchasers.
You must have missed the part where I said an investment in space would take decades to pay off, then. Things like asteroid mining and zero-g manufacturing come to mind.
Your conception of reality is pretty whacked out, by the way. The overall cost in lives from the protracted insurgency is ridiculously low compared to the entire history of warfare. Besides, at this point in time, disregarding the sunk costs, a couple more years of occupation is a small price to pay for a stable Iraq. The vast majority of Iraqis don't want to kill the infidels, they want to live their lives just like you and I do. I don't think the war in Iraq was the best idea, and there's certainly a very high risk to it, but there's still a pretty high potential return and a realistic chance of achieving it.
As for trains, they work great for densely populated areas like Japan and western Europe, but in North America, there's no room for them between airlines (which are better for hopping from coast to coast), automobiles (for a daily commute, and which have incredible advantages over any centralized transport system), and public transportation (for daily commute in urban areas). Public transportation could use some improvement in many US cities, but that's far from what we were talking about (a national train system). The idea makes a great deal more sense in the vast Boston to DC urban expanse, but even there you're working with a smaller scale of investment, something that could be funded by the states involved and wouldn't necessarily need any federal attention (aside from DC itself of course).
Return on investment, largely. Investments made in a rail system might deliver some return, but the cost/benefit isn't good enough. With Iraq, on the other hand, you have two things:
Opening a country to peaceful trade has historically led to very high returns. Rebuilding Europe and Japan after World War II were some of the largest investments ever made, but they paid off very well. The United States is wealthier for having robust first-world economies to trade with instead of post-apocalyptic bombed-out ruins of once-great civilizations. While the gain for opening up Iraq isn't as great, neither are the costs.
The return isn't entirely financial, it's also moral, in taking the opportunity to end a brutal regime for relatively little cost in life and money. There's also the military advantage of being able to keep troops right in the middle of the Middle East, and of having a friendly democratic government there.
I understand that there's a lot of controversy over the war in Iraq, but in terms of cost/benefit, the potential benefits are pretty high, moreso than an improved rail network. (Long-term, of course, the money might be better spent on something like the space program, but democratic governments are overturned periodically, so they're less than ideal vehicles for long-term projects that take decades to pay off.)
Only problem I see with it is that it doesn't explain how the Oracle created Agent Smith, when the series pretty strongly indicates that the "rogue" agent was a consquence of Neo's absorption of Smith in the first movie.
Yeah, but before that happened, Neo ate one of the Oracle's cookies, and Matrix food can contain code.
Slashdot Mirror
Humans are not particularly violent. It's just that humans are so remarkably talented at everything we do that our violence is accordingly far more spectacular.
Theoretically? They already have a "Just for You" feature that's telling me that, for instance, I would probably enjoy buying a Dream Theater album because I have a large collection of Rush.
You can not copyright the rules to a game.
Sure you can, just like you can copyright any other passage of text. It's just that the copyright only applies to your specific text and not to the meaning of the text.
You can be a good Catholic and gay, you just have to be celibate. It's the behavior, not the preference, that's discriminated against.
No they didn't. It was widely rumored for all five years that they "hid it".
Oh, and if they pull this on Wal-Mart, they'll just pull the plug, Wal-Mart won't play along.
So the solution to corporate assholery is....corporate assholery?
Yes, but it doesn't fit in the dock itself.
You're talking about Spore, currently in development by Maxis. Develop life from the cellular stage up through biological evolution to a sentient race, where there's a tribal stage, a city stage, a civilization stage, and then a galactic stage.
Actually, by forcing your non-mouse hand to stay on the keyboard where it can hit the control key, it speeds up transition time and allows you to hit some left-handed command-key combinations without taking your hand off the mouse. So overall you *are* vaster control-clicking than right-clicking.
"combined with a form of fusion"
As I recall, some speculative forms of fusion use batteries, a problem for which people are an unnecessarily complex but suitable solution for.
"I already know the ending, it's the part that makes your face implode.
I don't know what makes your face implode, but that's the way the movie ends." --They Might Be Giants, "Experimental Film"
God forbid that one voice be allowed to speak without needing to ask the consent of thousands of others.
But doesn't all that selective breeding lead to decreased genetic variation and all of the problems that entails? I've always wondered about that.
Thank you, Admiral Ackbar.
Yeah, but why is work centralized in dense urban areas, and why does it have to be? Explain me that.
I never said Microsoft was going to hire them. My point was that we have private armies already. Most of them work for our government but some of them work for other governments.
but building roads and additional infrastructure would have to be done at a local level
In the 1950's, the federal government commissioned the Interstate Highway System. Any expansion of highway infrastructure could be commissioned federally along the same lines. If you have to lay down rail, then you're going to be laying down rail lines, which are as land-intensive as roads and additionally limited only to trains that are built for that rail. Roads on the other hand are compatible with any wheeled vehicle. Then there's the problems of running the train, planning the train schedule, etc.
I have no idea what the feasability is, but why not expand highways three-dimensionally in congested areas by building an overpass-like road above and parallel to the main road, effectively doubling capacity without consuming significantly more land?
In the long run, I still maintain that the *best* way to solve the problem is to circumvent it by abolishing the commute by allowing workers to either work out of their homes or live close to where they work.
- Building automobiles that don't use petroleum as a fuel source that can nonetheless use the same roads and infrastructure, solving any potential issues with backward compatibility, while expanding and rebuilding the highway infrastucture.
- Building an entirely new rail infrastructure and designing trains to run on this infrastructure that don't use petroleum.
The first solution can be put into place nationally or even internationally. The second solution can only be put into place locally. Which do you think is bettter? Admittedly, another option is reducing the need for transportation--after all, people only began commuting to work in the industrial revolution, previously almost all work took place at home. Moving back to that sort of arrangement for more of the population (telecommuting, home offices, etc) would be a nice way of circumventing the problem entirely.Apparently you haven't heard of "private military contractors".
I was at a Rona recently getting some bags of gravel for a project. A gentleman walking by saw my gravel, at this point 9 bags on my cart, and suddenly decided that he needed gravel. It was obvious that he didn't intend to buy gravel, but seeing me buying gravel made him believe that there was something interesting about this gravel, and he should follow.
You didn't think a light bulb went off in his head and he thought "Gravel, I could use that for..."? I don't think many people are such dumbasses that they buy gravel just to mimic other gravel-purchasers.
You must have missed the part where I said an investment in space would take decades to pay off, then. Things like asteroid mining and zero-g manufacturing come to mind.
Your conception of reality is pretty whacked out, by the way. The overall cost in lives from the protracted insurgency is ridiculously low compared to the entire history of warfare. Besides, at this point in time, disregarding the sunk costs, a couple more years of occupation is a small price to pay for a stable Iraq. The vast majority of Iraqis don't want to kill the infidels, they want to live their lives just like you and I do. I don't think the war in Iraq was the best idea, and there's certainly a very high risk to it, but there's still a pretty high potential return and a realistic chance of achieving it.
As for trains, they work great for densely populated areas like Japan and western Europe, but in North America, there's no room for them between airlines (which are better for hopping from coast to coast), automobiles (for a daily commute, and which have incredible advantages over any centralized transport system), and public transportation (for daily commute in urban areas). Public transportation could use some improvement in many US cities, but that's far from what we were talking about (a national train system). The idea makes a great deal more sense in the vast Boston to DC urban expanse, but even there you're working with a smaller scale of investment, something that could be funded by the states involved and wouldn't necessarily need any federal attention (aside from DC itself of course).
I dunno, Jon Rubenstein doesn't seen the money-swimming type.
- Opening a country to peaceful trade has historically led to very high returns. Rebuilding Europe and Japan after World War II were some of the largest investments ever made, but they paid off very well. The United States is wealthier for having robust first-world economies to trade with instead of post-apocalyptic bombed-out ruins of once-great civilizations. While the gain for opening up Iraq isn't as great, neither are the costs.
- The return isn't entirely financial, it's also moral, in taking the opportunity to end a brutal regime for relatively little cost in life and money. There's also the military advantage of being able to keep troops right in the middle of the Middle East, and of having a friendly democratic government there.
I understand that there's a lot of controversy over the war in Iraq, but in terms of cost/benefit, the potential benefits are pretty high, moreso than an improved rail network. (Long-term, of course, the money might be better spent on something like the space program, but democratic governments are overturned periodically, so they're less than ideal vehicles for long-term projects that take decades to pay off.)Only problem I see with it is that it doesn't explain how the Oracle created Agent Smith, when the series pretty strongly indicates that the "rogue" agent was a consquence of Neo's absorption of Smith in the first movie.
Yeah, but before that happened, Neo ate one of the Oracle's cookies, and Matrix food can contain code.
Apparently the last few times they decided not to rape your dog. By the way, you have some really bizarre fears and insecurities.