You don't have to die waiting for surgery in countries with socialised health care.
Nevertheless, THOUSANDS do, each and every year. Far more than die under the US semi-free market system.
Mostly because the onerous taxes, regulations and laws required to support such a "great" system leave the bulk of the population so impoverished that they can't AFFORD to seek medical care outside the government system.
The very few doctors able to practice outside the system pretty much cater almost exclusively to the very rich and the government elites. The proles get to wait in line and die.
No thanks, I'd rather just work on making the US system more free via tort reform, easing existing regulations and new laws to preserve and enforce the "fee for service" model and increase choice via health savings account options for those who wish to opt out of insurance.
Rather than a system which works to the benefit of everyone by providing a job and source of income for Google, it's thousands of employees, their thousands of advertisers and their (collectively) Millions upon millions of employees, and the thousands of ad companies and their (collectively) millions and millions of employees and all the providers of goods and services to each and every one of those companies and people and the literal BILLIONS of dollars it generates and the great lifestyles for all involved that pays for (not to mention the fantastic economic benefits for the rest of us that pumping that much spread out capital into the economy creates)...
You'd rather just have a small handful of Washington pointy-headed bureaucrats TAKE the money in the form of a tax from everyone (including some people that don't even OWN a PC) just so people don't have to look at ads.
So, being able to have two or more harvests per season rather than just ONE due to genetically engineered plants that grow to maturity faster doesn't "significantly" impact the ability to farm eh?
Oh, and let's just leave out plants that can grow in poorer soil too. I mean, increasing the available arable land via genetically improved crops, that just doesn't help AT ALL.
And let's just forget about plants that are more disease resistant and insect resistant. I mean, what's a failed harvest from disease or pests going to really do to the overall ability to feed the population?
And modern refrigeration and preservation techniques? Why, those haven't been improved AT ALL since the days of salting meat! Why even bother, right?
Good God, you are a fucking idiot.
Oh, and appeals to authority via your Uncles and your (supposed) status as a country dweller (city slickers? Who says that anymore?) don't mean jack squat when you spout ignorant Luddite bullshit.
I'd like to see your uncles try and produce a good crop with seed stock that is genetically identical to seed stock from unmodified "natural and organic" plants. Oh and and NO modern pesticides or production methods, just machinery. THAT would be funny to see.
I have no doubt they would produce a "crop" but there wouldn't be much to sell.
Technology in ALL AREAS of food production has made our society what it is today. Ignoring that fact just makes you look like a moron.
I accept that one could argue that some genetically modified plants have some benefits overall, but I personally have a hard time to see them, after removing the whole PR-bullshit that surrounds them.
Soo..
- Plants that are more disease resistant, resulting in less failed crops.
- Plants that are more resistant to insects, resulting in less use of pesticides and a lower cost of production.
- Plants that produce more "fruit" (IE: more apples, oranges, ears of corn, wheat kernels, etc.) per plant.
- Plants that grow to maturity faster, making it possible to have multiple harvests per growing season.
- Plants that can yield a full crop in poor soil.
- Plants that are modified to be easier to harvest with machinery, resulting in (again) less cost to grow and quicker time from ripe to market.
NONE of these, all thanks to either traditional genetic engineering (IE: husbandry) or modern genetic engineering (IE: Labs) NONE OF THEM COUNT as far as you are concerned?
Of course, the better engineered food stocks which grow faster, are more disease resistant, and are as (or more) nutritionally rich as "organic" foods were ALSO provided by technology.
Point of fact: Our advanced society would be IMPOSSIBLE if not for the technological advances on food growing, harvesting, production, processing and packaging. Our ENTIRE society is completely dependent on our food production (as is any society) and the more and better food we can grow, the better the foundation for our society to grow on.
The fact that you ONLY attribute this growth to "machinery" shows that YOU are the ignorant one. Either that or you are so steeped in Luddite organic elitism that you can't see straight.
Did you disable or uninstall the Microsoft add-on? I forget the name of it at the moment, but there is a Microsoft add-on installed into Firefox from a recent patch that basically makes Firefox as insecure as IE is. You have to disable (or if using 3.5, uninstall) the add on to get your security back.
The ironic part of it is, all the 9/11 terrorists had proper ID along with full and legal documentation. So even if every law enforcement officer in the US been given those orders BEFORE 9/11 happened, they still would not have caught the hijackers.
This just shows the general incompetence of government, and how the larger a government is the more likely it is to attract incompetents to it's rolls.
Just another argument for the conservative ideal of smaller, more local, limited government.
The problem with your point of view is that it does not take into account the political strategy called "Incrementalism".
That is; By restricting liberty in small and seemingly innocuous steps, that taken individually seem logical and generally harmless, one can slowly reduce a society under absolute tyranny and the majority of the people will say nothing until it is far too late to stop the change.
This is the strategy of the far left in most of the world. Having found that outright military takeover has only worked in a limited number of instances, and that military Juntas are notoriously unstable, far leftists such as William Ayers, author of "Rules for Radicals" (which outlines this very strategy) and a close personal friend of a certain American President, have decided that the Incremental strategy is far superior for slowly wiping out Liberty in the West and replacing it with Tyrannical Socialist government. Thus, you begin to see the loss of personal freedoms, talk of "hate speech" laws, "fairness" laws of varying kinds, etc. etc.
THIS is how a real life "1984" starts. Not through nuclear war and subsequent social collapse, but through slow small steps, each designed to not raise an alarm. Eventually Freedom as it once was is gone, replaced by total control by the State. We are already very far along this road, it may already be too late to go back. I pray we are not, but with Leftists in control in America, there is little to stop it.
While the sex shops and the classes are new-ish, the attitude isn't.
At least within the bounds of marriage, most Churches preach the motto of "Often, and with much Gusto" when it comes to sex.
Now, most Churches do tend to say "ONLY within the marriage of a man and a woman, and ONLY involving them, no third parties or critters allowed." when speaking of sex.
Also, I know the Catholic church (at least traditionally) is none too keen on masturbation, but I think they are the only ones.
Apparently the "qualifications" that most Churches put on sex leads some people to think Churches don't like sex AT ALL. Not sure where they get that though, unless they are just being obtuse.
well take a quick look around at other smart phones. some 80% of them are what? black.
there are silver ones and a few random other colours but most are black.
And now we see WHY black is the preferred color for smartphones. It's far less likely to discolor due to the heat the device puts out.
That, and sexy little things and cool things ALWAYS properly come in BLACK. Seriously, who has ever heard of the "sexy little WHITE dress", or "Back in WHITE" or "Always bet on WHITE"?
You want cool and sexy, go get a Palm Pre. It's Linux based you know. C'mon. You know you want one.
Although you can get MUCH closer to normal (normal = pre 3.0) URLbar behavior with 3.5 by setting various options in about:config.
Frankly, I still think it sucks. Even though it's better, they should have stuck with a normal URLbar. I'm waiting for someone to come out with a total conversion add-on that simply DELETES the "awesome bar" code from your install of FF 3.x and installs the old 2.0 code.
Not only would the browser be significantly faster, we might get a sane URL bar back again!
Actually, despite the ad hominem-ness of the post, his point stands: the "real world" still very much uses, and expects you to use, e-mail.
Indeed.
I don't know of any White Collar jobs that do NOT revolve around e-mail as a primary communication source, and even some Blue collar jobs are going that way.
In fact, in many companies the on-site use of "social networking" websites such as My Space and Facebook are strictly prohibited and/or filtered out using Websense or some such network product.
So truly, It sounds very much like nausea_malvarma's friends are all college kids about to get whacked by the reality of having to always use regular e-mail.
Oh, and one last thing, it isn't ad-hominem if it's both true and relevant to the discussion at hand.
we see no hampering of functionality on the Verizon Blackberries we own
Then you aren't looking very closely. Verizon cripples BOTH the wifi capabilities AND the GPS capabilities of the phone so that they ONLY work with Verizon apps.
Go ahead, try and use Google Maps with a Verizon blackberry. Oh, Google maps works, but the location info is gleaned from the closest cell tower. NOT the GPS. So it can be as much as a MILE off.
AT&T does not do this, and I don't think Sprint does either (although I'm not certain on that one)
Meanwhile, does anyone actually want one of these phones?
Well, the fact that no Sprint or Best Buy can keep them in stock might be a clue to their popularity. The waiting list at the Niagara Falls Blvd. store in Amherst NY is two weeks long.
Thankfully I work in downtown Buffalo. The Sprint store on Main Street there apparently has received (and has been promised) the single largest stock of Palm Pre's of ANY store in the continental United States (according to the store owner, who happened to be in the store the day I visited) and THEY can't keep them in stock for more than a day at a time.
Sales are so brisk that it takes an hour and a half just to enable the phone as Sprint's activation servers are so backed up with Pre activations.
So yeah, I'd say sales are brisk, and lots of people want the Pre.
Oh, and I am absolutely LOVING my Pre, although I have no plans to set up tethering. I frankly don't need it with the internet capabilities of the Pre.
Most mind boggling experience so far? Listening to Pandora radio jacked into my Jeep stereo while driving home today. Just... freaky cool!
The problem with the "RMT Creates runaway inflation" argument is that it does not take into account several things:
1) In the game, the economy is in a generally deflationary period which it has been in since game launch.
2) RMT's have been around for well over a year and not only has the general deflationary cycle NOT stopped, it has sped up, with prices dropping rapidly. Observe the cost of T2 parts and ships and compare against before RMT. Generally speaking, T2 is cheaper now.
3) Many many many many other factors drive the economic cycles in EvE, RMT is a vanishingly small one of them.
The thing that the "RMT = inflation" people seem to forget is that there is NO NEW ISK being added to the economy when RMT's are used. The ISK is simply moved from one player's wallet to another within the game. So since no new ISK is added to the general supply, no inflation can occur.
The argument, as made above, that RMT encourages people to just make piles of ISK is specious at best. Many Trader players play just simply for the joy of being "virtually" rich. That is, they make the ISK for the sake of making the ISK. RMT just allows them to play as they enjoy without having to pay out any of their own hard-earned real money to do it.
On top of that there are people who make ISK to collect items with. I know of a couple players who run as traders simply so they can buy at least one of every item in the game.
There are MANY others who run VERY profitable trader-alts to supply their primary fighter accounts. Many of these players do so well with the trader alts that they have ISK to burn.
And that really is the crux of the problem for the "RMT = inflation" argument. The vast majority of really wealthy players who buy RMT's WOULD HAVE MADE THE ISK ANYWAY. The RMT's are just another avenue to burn the ISK pile they have amassed. An avenue that helps along players that are not good at making ISK but have the real money to use on the game.
So no, RMT's have not and CANNOT cause in-game inflation. To try and argue they do is to show a complete lack of economics, the state of the eve economy, and general human behavior.
What about those of us that use both? I am currently on my XP desktop, but my T60 laptop is Ubuntu.
During the work week I post on/. from the Ubuntu laptop. (I avoid personal surfing on my heavily monitored work machine) During the weekends I post from the XP desktop or the laptop, depending on whether I'm inside or out on the patio.
Of course, I try to avoid regurgitating too much anti-Microsoft pap. So I guess it's all even anyway.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Then you sounded retarded for nothing as your post is WAY down the list. ;)
But yes, always great to see free FPS oriented stuff for the PC platform.
Too bad it's on Steam(ing pile of shit). Oh well, I'm sure I'll be able to pirate it in short order, just like the rest of my Valve collection.
SOYLENT GAMES ARE PEOPLE! THEY'RE PEOPLE!
You don't have to die waiting for surgery in countries with socialised health care.
Nevertheless, THOUSANDS do, each and every year. Far more than die under the US semi-free market system.
Mostly because the onerous taxes, regulations and laws required to support such a "great" system leave the bulk of the population so impoverished that they can't AFFORD to seek medical care outside the government system.
The very few doctors able to practice outside the system pretty much cater almost exclusively to the very rich and the government elites. The proles get to wait in line and die.
No thanks, I'd rather just work on making the US system more free via tort reform, easing existing regulations and new laws to preserve and enforce the "fee for service" model and increase choice via health savings account options for those who wish to opt out of insurance.
So let me get this straight tizan:
Rather than a system which works to the benefit of everyone by providing a job and source of income for Google, it's thousands of employees, their thousands of advertisers and their (collectively) Millions upon millions of employees, and the thousands of ad companies and their (collectively) millions and millions of employees and all the providers of goods and services to each and every one of those companies and people and the literal BILLIONS of dollars it generates and the great lifestyles for all involved that pays for (not to mention the fantastic economic benefits for the rest of us that pumping that much spread out capital into the economy creates)...
You'd rather just have a small handful of Washington pointy-headed bureaucrats TAKE the money in the form of a tax from everyone (including some people that don't even OWN a PC) just so people don't have to look at ads.
Wow. You're a dick.
unless you have an unlimited plan.
What about the Pre?
Nothing about that in the article.
So, being able to have two or more harvests per season rather than just ONE due to genetically engineered plants that grow to maturity faster doesn't "significantly" impact the ability to farm eh?
Oh, and let's just leave out plants that can grow in poorer soil too. I mean, increasing the available arable land via genetically improved crops, that just doesn't help AT ALL.
And let's just forget about plants that are more disease resistant and insect resistant. I mean, what's a failed harvest from disease or pests going to really do to the overall ability to feed the population?
And modern refrigeration and preservation techniques? Why, those haven't been improved AT ALL since the days of salting meat! Why even bother, right?
Good God, you are a fucking idiot.
Oh, and appeals to authority via your Uncles and your (supposed) status as a country dweller (city slickers? Who says that anymore?) don't mean jack squat when you spout ignorant Luddite bullshit.
I'd like to see your uncles try and produce a good crop with seed stock that is genetically identical to seed stock from unmodified "natural and organic" plants. Oh and and NO modern pesticides or production methods, just machinery. THAT would be funny to see.
I have no doubt they would produce a "crop" but there wouldn't be much to sell.
Technology in ALL AREAS of food production has made our society what it is today. Ignoring that fact just makes you look like a moron.
Soo..
- Plants that are more disease resistant, resulting in less failed crops.
- Plants that are more resistant to insects, resulting in less use of pesticides and a lower cost of production.
- Plants that produce more "fruit" (IE: more apples, oranges, ears of corn, wheat kernels, etc.) per plant.
- Plants that grow to maturity faster, making it possible to have multiple harvests per growing season.
- Plants that can yield a full crop in poor soil.
- Plants that are modified to be easier to harvest with machinery, resulting in (again) less cost to grow and quicker time from ripe to market.
NONE of these, all thanks to either traditional genetic engineering (IE: husbandry) or modern genetic engineering (IE: Labs) NONE OF THEM COUNT as far as you are concerned?
Seriously?
Wow. Stupid.
And Machinery was created via...
Oh yeah; TECHNOLOGY!
Of course, the better engineered food stocks which grow faster, are more disease resistant, and are as (or more) nutritionally rich as "organic" foods were ALSO provided by technology.
Point of fact: Our advanced society would be IMPOSSIBLE if not for the technological advances on food growing, harvesting, production, processing and packaging. Our ENTIRE society is completely dependent on our food production (as is any society) and the more and better food we can grow, the better the foundation for our society to grow on.
The fact that you ONLY attribute this growth to "machinery" shows that YOU are the ignorant one. Either that or you are so steeped in Luddite organic elitism that you can't see straight.
Personally, I suspect both.
Ok, found the link to it on Slashdot. HERE it is.
Did you disable or uninstall the Microsoft add-on? I forget the name of it at the moment, but there is a Microsoft add-on installed into Firefox from a recent patch that basically makes Firefox as insecure as IE is. You have to disable (or if using 3.5, uninstall) the add on to get your security back.
The ironic part of it is, all the 9/11 terrorists had proper ID along with full and legal documentation. So even if every law enforcement officer in the US been given those orders BEFORE 9/11 happened, they still would not have caught the hijackers.
This just shows the general incompetence of government, and how the larger a government is the more likely it is to attract incompetents to it's rolls.
Just another argument for the conservative ideal of smaller, more local, limited government.
The problem with your point of view is that it does not take into account the political strategy called "Incrementalism".
That is; By restricting liberty in small and seemingly innocuous steps, that taken individually seem logical and generally harmless, one can slowly reduce a society under absolute tyranny and the majority of the people will say nothing until it is far too late to stop the change.
This is the strategy of the far left in most of the world. Having found that outright military takeover has only worked in a limited number of instances, and that military Juntas are notoriously unstable, far leftists such as William Ayers, author of "Rules for Radicals" (which outlines this very strategy) and a close personal friend of a certain American President, have decided that the Incremental strategy is far superior for slowly wiping out Liberty in the West and replacing it with Tyrannical Socialist government. Thus, you begin to see the loss of personal freedoms, talk of "hate speech" laws, "fairness" laws of varying kinds, etc. etc.
THIS is how a real life "1984" starts. Not through nuclear war and subsequent social collapse, but through slow small steps, each designed to not raise an alarm. Eventually Freedom as it once was is gone, replaced by total control by the State. We are already very far along this road, it may already be too late to go back. I pray we are not, but with Leftists in control in America, there is little to stop it.
God help us all.
While the sex shops and the classes are new-ish, the attitude isn't.
At least within the bounds of marriage, most Churches preach the motto of "Often, and with much Gusto" when it comes to sex.
Now, most Churches do tend to say "ONLY within the marriage of a man and a woman, and ONLY involving them, no third parties or critters allowed." when speaking of sex.
Also, I know the Catholic church (at least traditionally) is none too keen on masturbation, but I think they are the only ones.
Apparently the "qualifications" that most Churches put on sex leads some people to think Churches don't like sex AT ALL. Not sure where they get that though, unless they are just being obtuse.
Which Church? I know plenty of churches that actually offer sex courses for married couples to help them spice up their love life.
Heck, there are even Christian sex shops on the Intertubes, so I REALLY don't know what you are on about. Christians LOVE sex.
And now we see WHY black is the preferred color for smartphones. It's far less likely to discolor due to the heat the device puts out.
That, and sexy little things and cool things ALWAYS properly come in BLACK. Seriously, who has ever heard of the "sexy little WHITE dress", or "Back in WHITE" or "Always bet on WHITE"?
You want cool and sexy, go get a Palm Pre. It's Linux based you know. C'mon. You know you want one.
Nope.
Although you can get MUCH closer to normal (normal = pre 3.0) URLbar behavior with 3.5 by setting various options in about:config.
Frankly, I still think it sucks. Even though it's better, they should have stuck with a normal URLbar. I'm waiting for someone to come out with a total conversion add-on that simply DELETES the "awesome bar" code from your install of FF 3.x and installs the old 2.0 code.
Not only would the browser be significantly faster, we might get a sane URL bar back again!
Indeed.
I don't know of any White Collar jobs that do NOT revolve around e-mail as a primary communication source, and even some Blue collar jobs are going that way.
In fact, in many companies the on-site use of "social networking" websites such as My Space and Facebook are strictly prohibited and/or filtered out using Websense or some such network product.
So truly, It sounds very much like nausea_malvarma's friends are all college kids about to get whacked by the reality of having to always use regular e-mail.
Oh, and one last thing, it isn't ad-hominem if it's both true and relevant to the discussion at hand.
Then you aren't looking very closely. Verizon cripples BOTH the wifi capabilities AND the GPS capabilities of the phone so that they ONLY work with Verizon apps.
Go ahead, try and use Google Maps with a Verizon blackberry. Oh, Google maps works, but the location info is gleaned from the closest cell tower. NOT the GPS. So it can be as much as a MILE off.
AT&T does not do this, and I don't think Sprint does either (although I'm not certain on that one)
Verizon cripples everything they touch.
Well, the fact that no Sprint or Best Buy can keep them in stock might be a clue to their popularity. The waiting list at the Niagara Falls Blvd. store in Amherst NY is two weeks long.
Thankfully I work in downtown Buffalo. The Sprint store on Main Street there apparently has received (and has been promised) the single largest stock of Palm Pre's of ANY store in the continental United States (according to the store owner, who happened to be in the store the day I visited) and THEY can't keep them in stock for more than a day at a time.
Sales are so brisk that it takes an hour and a half just to enable the phone as Sprint's activation servers are so backed up with Pre activations.
So yeah, I'd say sales are brisk, and lots of people want the Pre.
Oh, and I am absolutely LOVING my Pre, although I have no plans to set up tethering. I frankly don't need it with the internet capabilities of the Pre.
Most mind boggling experience so far? Listening to Pandora radio jacked into my Jeep stereo while driving home today. Just... freaky cool!
Between that comment and this one:
I'm wondering just precisely what topic we are discussing here...
Ugh. That last sentence should have been:
"To try and argue they do is to show a complete lack of UNDERSTANDING OF economics, the state of the eve economy, and general human behavior."
The sad part? I proofread it and STILL missed that until after hitting submit.
*sigh*
The problem with the "RMT Creates runaway inflation" argument is that it does not take into account several things:
1) In the game, the economy is in a generally deflationary period which it has been in since game launch.
2) RMT's have been around for well over a year and not only has the general deflationary cycle NOT stopped, it has sped up, with prices dropping rapidly. Observe the cost of T2 parts and ships and compare against before RMT. Generally speaking, T2 is cheaper now.
3) Many many many many other factors drive the economic cycles in EvE, RMT is a vanishingly small one of them.
The thing that the "RMT = inflation" people seem to forget is that there is NO NEW ISK being added to the economy when RMT's are used. The ISK is simply moved from one player's wallet to another within the game. So since no new ISK is added to the general supply, no inflation can occur.
The argument, as made above, that RMT encourages people to just make piles of ISK is specious at best. Many Trader players play just simply for the joy of being "virtually" rich. That is, they make the ISK for the sake of making the ISK. RMT just allows them to play as they enjoy without having to pay out any of their own hard-earned real money to do it.
On top of that there are people who make ISK to collect items with. I know of a couple players who run as traders simply so they can buy at least one of every item in the game.
There are MANY others who run VERY profitable trader-alts to supply their primary fighter accounts. Many of these players do so well with the trader alts that they have ISK to burn.
And that really is the crux of the problem for the "RMT = inflation" argument. The vast majority of really wealthy players who buy RMT's WOULD HAVE MADE THE ISK ANYWAY. The RMT's are just another avenue to burn the ISK pile they have amassed. An avenue that helps along players that are not good at making ISK but have the real money to use on the game.
So no, RMT's have not and CANNOT cause in-game inflation. To try and argue they do is to show a complete lack of economics, the state of the eve economy, and general human behavior.
Now, Who wants to buy my PLEX?
What about those of us that use both? I am currently on my XP desktop, but my T60 laptop is Ubuntu.
During the work week I post on /. from the Ubuntu laptop. (I avoid personal surfing on my heavily monitored work machine) During the weekends I post from the XP desktop or the laptop, depending on whether I'm inside or out on the patio.
Of course, I try to avoid regurgitating too much anti-Microsoft pap. So I guess it's all even anyway. ;)
Aside from the oooohs and aaaahs, good sex sounds like "gluck, gluck, gluck..."
Really?
I've always thought it sounded more like "Shlorp, shlorp, shlorp." But maybe my wife and I are wetter/sloppier than most. ;)