I can't speak for the GP but it works the same here in Saratoga county. After I signed the registration book the nice elderly lady shouted my party affiliation across the room and the fellow manning the both toggled the lever on the back of the machine.
That's odd. I was under the impression that the card requirement was actually part of the Election Law, which is generally pretty specific (sometimes to the point of absurdity) about the procedures that we have to use at the polling place. Guess I'll have to look that up when I get home later.
Maybe its just on account of us Upstaters being smarter.
Umm, I am an upstater, unless Binghamton doesn't qualify;)
I live in NY (still using the old level machines, which I love:) ), and consistently the people running the poles forget to switch the switch on the side of the machine to "enable" republican or democrat (depending on whose in the both last, and whose in it next). Heck, the people running the polls are usually retired, elderly, and volunteer.
What county do you live in? Here in Broome County they give us colored cards (green for the Democrats, pink for the Republicans) that we had out to the voters after signing them in. The voter then gives that card to the person operating the machine who sets the primary lever accordingly before hitting the entrance button that allows them to vote.
I've been running a polling place since 2004 and I've never had that mistake happen in a Primary Election. If you've seen it happen more then once or twice you should probably inform your local Board of Elections so they can address the problem. It just isn't supposed to happen that way......
Who in the hell named Digital Internet Access over POTS to Digital Subscriber Line?
Actually it's not "over POTS". DSL service and POTS have nothing in common other than the fact that they both come into your house on the same wire. DSL runs at a higher frequency than your POTS service (that's why you need filters installed on all your phones) and the two services don't interact with each other. DSL can also be provisioned without POTS service active on the same line (though whether or not your phone company allows this is another question).
Uploading isn't prohibited. Waiting for, accepting, and responding to incoming requests on any port is
Taken to the extreme and enforced to the 'letter of the law', that TOS policy would also prohibit DCC chats/file transfers on IRC (they listen for an incoming connection), file transfers on most IM clients, mIRC's ident daemon, FTP without PASV (as you pointed out), online gaming (if you are hosting the game you are accepting incoming connections) and a host of other useful applications.
If you can't find four (that's the size of the "group" I was referring to) like minded people willing to fight against an injustice in your hometown then I don't know what else to tell you.
And not ordinary people, but wealthy businessmen
Where did I say "wealthy"? It was a group of local business owners, hardly Donald Trump types.
So not just one person acting alone, and not someone poor like myself.
One person can still make a difference. Do you have a phone? Make phone calls. Do you have a car? Drive people to the polls and/or knock on doors prior to election day. Do you have friends? Convince them that your cause is just and get them to help you out.
I notice you support Barak Obama, who attends a "hate all whites" racist church.
*sigh*, I love how the inflammatory comments of one person get warped into "racist church".
Obama has already condemned those comments. His only mistake was not condemning them in the first place and acting like a standard issue politician (deny/distance/disavow) instead of the eloquent intellectual that lots of us have come to know and support.
I don't believe Rev Wright is a racist. While I don't know him personally, I have known other African-American preachers before and I can understand the context of those remarks even if I vehemently disagree with them. You grow up under Jim Crow in the lynching era as an African-American and tell me that you wouldn't have a chip on your shoulder. You walk down the street and see people lock their car doors because of your skin color and tell me that you wouldn't be pissed off about it. You have people in the workplace dismiss your accomplishments because of affirmative-action and tell me it wouldn't grate on you. You get pulled over (repeatedly) for driving-while-black and tell me you wouldn't be bitter towards authority as a result.
I obviously can't make you listen to Senator Obama and I doubt I can even change your mind about him if you've drawn that conclusion. I do think that you are doing yourself a disservice by dismissing him and his message though. Did you happen to watch his speech on Tuesday? He speaks far more eloquently than I can on this issue and I can't recall a similar speech in my lifetime. Hell, I can't even recall many other politicians talking to us like adults instead of children -- and that goes for any issue (not just racism).
Go watch that speech if you want to know why I'm supporting him. Go watch his address at the Democratic National Convention from 2004. Obama appeals to our best instincts (hope, optimism, compassion). His opponents are running campaigns of FUD and trying to appeal to our worst inclinations.
I now question the validity of your thought processes if you support such a man.
Even if I accepted your opinion of Senator Obama's church, what does that have to do with the 'validity' of my 'thought processes' as it relates to the original discussion in this thread, i.e: getting people involved in local politics? Are you honestly going to walk away from a dialog with someone because they support someone who goes to a church which had an inflammatory Pastor (since retired)? Isn't that type of reaction part of the problem and not a solution?
I'm fairly certain that it's against federal law (telecom act of '96? IANAL) for cities to negotiate with cable companies over tier pricing or content. So, it's not like the local politicians have a seat at the table anyway.
I honestly don't know if that's true or not but it doesn't really matter. The original complaint was about Government issued monopolies to cable outfits. For that you have no one to blame but your state and/or local Governments.
In my area it's even worse then that -- the last time the franchise was up for renewal the city asked Time Warner to freeze their rate increases -- TW basically told the city that they would charge whatever they want and if you don't want to renew the agreement we'll just take our hundreds of jobs and go somewhere else. The city folded like a cheap suit after that, which pissed quite a few of us off (what, a new cable company isn't going to employ people?)
Yes, because the 1.3 minutes it takes to complain on Slashdot is all it would take to get the crooks out of local government.
My point (which you apparently missed or ignored in favor of sarcasm) was that there are actually productive things that you could be doing to change the situation. Posting on/. is not one of them, unless you happen to know a lot of people from Lancaster that hang out around here;)
Your presumption that the 2nd place candidate represented a change from the status quo with regard to the topic at hand is absurd. Usually, you'll find that the guy who wants to throw Comcast out on its collective ear is the guy who came in 5th or 6th, right after the guy who wants to legalize drugs.
So get off your ass and run yourself. Or find someone willing to run who agrees with your views. Your original claim was that Comcast is bribing local officials to obtain favorable treatment. If that's actually the case and provable then I have a hard time seeing the people involved managing to stay in power if these issues are brought into the public discourse.
We had a Village Trustee in my hometown that was fond of using his connections with village/county officials to secure favorable Government contracts for his friends. Said home town was 70% Republican and conventional wisdom would lead you to believe that he was unbeatable come election day -- hell, the last two elections he ran unopposed.
Anyway, a group of business owners that had been shut out of the bidding process for said contracts decided to challenge him -- one of them ran against him in the next election (as a Democrat) and the rest of them campaigned/drove voters to the polls/recruited other volunteers. The race was too close to call on election night but after the absentee ballots were counted said Trustee was defeated by 25 votes out of some 1,200 cast. Nobody thought it was possible but a small group of dedicated people were able to pull it off.
Honestly, if you are too apathetic to even try to affect change at the local level than I think you forfeit your right to complain about things that you disagree with. Local politics is one of the few areas left where individuals can make a meaningful difference and millions of bucks aren't required to run a legitimate campaign.
I don't think it's unreasonable to compare the Whole United States to the Whole of the European Union.
It might not be unreasonable but it masks several legitimate differences between the state of broadband in both areas. Like the fact that most Europeans have a number of providers to choose from vs. no more than two for most Americans (if you are lucky). Or the fact that several areas in Europe have access to broadband options that blow anything in the states out of the water (can you get a 100/100 connection anywhere in the US for $45/mo? I doubt it).
We have similar levels of technology & lifestyle & culture.
Umm, have you ever been to Europe? I'll grant you the technology bit but there are huge cultural differences between Europe and the United States. Ditto for lifestyle -- urban sprawl and a lifestyle that revolves around the automobile would be a foreign concept to many Europeans.
We have a similar system of government (federalism)
Umm, how the hell do you figure that? If the United States was that similar to the EU you'd see New York and California having veto votes on the UN security council and each state would be free to implement it's own foreign policy. You've also overlooked the fact that Europe has an entirely different legal system (civil law instead common law) than we do (with the exception of the UK).
If I were comcast, I would just completely block P2P uploading as it violates the TOS. Not a popular answer I know, but my terms do say that I cannot run a server on my residential connection. P2P seeding should qualify as a file server
Actually, it's only a server (in the classical sense) if it accepts incoming connections and most P2P apps (Bittorrent included) will function just fine without this ability, albeit with a reduced number of peers that it can reach.
And being a monopoly, Comcast can do whatever they want (like block access to Itunes) as long as Comcast keeps bribing the Lancaster politicians to keep quiet.
If they are really doing that then why don't you stop posting on/. and start working to get those local politicians out of office?
Local politics actually makes it possible for individuals/small dedicated groups to make a difference. You don't need millions of dollars to get started. In my time as an elections worker I haven't seen a local race that was decided by more than a few hundred votes -- and I've seen some (our recent County Legislative elections) with single digit margins of victory.
Really? So going from the option of being able to choose between multiple CLECs, the ILEC and the cable company to being able to choose between the ILEC and the cable company isn't reducing your choice of providers?
If you take all the European Union states and compare them to the United States (as a whole region), you will discover that they are essentially equal
Aren't you being a little selective with your "whole region" argument? Many people in the United States only have dialup or comparatively slow (768kbps - 1.5mbps) DSL as an option. Many other people can only choose between dialup or a cable provider that may or may not be friendly towards their customers. Furthermore your "whole region" argument glosses over the fact that in some EU countries (Sweden) you can obtain 100mbit connections.
I'm lucky enough to have a cable provider that isn't (yet) trying to screw over it's customers (though there's been rumblings....) so I can actually get broadband service at a decent speed (8.0/512). My only other option is DSL at 1.5/384, which isn't really fast enough to stream (decent quality) video in real time, so I'd have to give up a service that I've come to enjoy if I left the local cable monopoly.
Anyway, the point is that many (most?) American's don't really have any "choice" when it comes to broadband service.
Quite a few people, actually, but that's not the point (POTS is available on FiOS, albeit without line power). The point is that by cutting out the copper lines to your address you lose the option of switching to a CLEC for DSL or POTS services, i.e: your choices of internet/telephone service providers are reduced.
But that's complete bullshit, Comcast has been granted monopolies in the cable market, so they HAVE meddled with the free market
And the people to bitch to about that would be your state and/or local politicians, because that's who granted the monopolies in the first place. I've never heard of a Federal cable franchise agreement......
I'm sick of the politics-driven promotion of hemp as a cure-all
I honestly don't know enough about hemp to know if it's truly as useful as it's proponents claim. The little bit I have read suggests that it would be more useful for soil replenishment than anything else and that some of the industrial uses may be better met with other products. Regardless of it's merits though, I think that it's pretty stupid to outlaw/regulate it. Even if you agree with a policy of marijuana prohibition, why should a potentially useful product suffer as a result? Especially when most industrial strains have little to no psychoactive potential. Especially when most of the rest of the world is using it and a marketplace exists for it -- a marketplace that we've decided to exclude ourselves from.
FWIW, I also don't think the pro-legalization crowd is solely at fault here. They might be exaggerating their claims of how useful hemp could be but consider the propaganda put out in support of the War on Drugs. Claims like marijuana "supports terrorism" are a lot more harmful to constructive dialog than anything I've heard come out of the pro-legalization and/or pro-hemp crowd.
For the record, I oppose the drug war.
I'm honestly not sure how I feel about prohibition of hard drugs. I do think prohibition of marijuana is a foolish policy though. It's a plant that makes you lazy and dumb. It's clearly less harmful than tobacco and likely (all things considered) less harmful than alcohol. The worst thing you can say about marijuana is that it saps your motivation. Not a good thing (especially if badly abused) but hardly something worth shredding our civil liberties over.
Legalize it and treat it the same as alcohol. If individuals abuse it than let them suffer the consequences at work or in school -- the same as happens if people abuse alcohol.
Can you see how one can get sick of the politics-driven promotion of hemp as a cure-all?
I'm curious: Are you sick of the tactics that you think are being used or are you sick of the attempts to advocate against the War on Drugs? Both? Neither?
If by "had a shot" you mean we could have annexed the whole country after defeating them in the Mexican-American war, then yes, we "had a shot". Your assumption that racism is the sole reason that we opted not to do so seems a bit far-fetched. Quite a few hawks (Sam Houston) encouraged Polk to consider annexing the whole country but such a course of action would have found little support from the Whig party (which had opposed the war) and was never one of Polk's objectives.
Have you ever looked into why Mexico isn't a US state? Let's just way that we were and still are bigoted. It's the people that make the country.
What the hell does racism have to do with Mexico not being a US state? If a lack of bigotry is the only thing it takes to merge sovereign nation-states then when does Canada become the 51st state?
Could it be that there are actual historical and cultural differences between the United States and her neighbors and that the real situation is somewhat more complicated than "We were and still are bigoted"?
But the bottom line we all have to remember here is that EA is a company that makes mass-market games. That's what they do. They make mass-market games and frankly they're not terrible at it.
And/.: Remember, EA makes games for the mass audience. That may or may not cater directly to you, but it doesn't mean EA sucks. It just means they make games that aren't catered to you.
I never claimed they sucked because they make "mass market" games. In fact I don't think I ever came out and said that they sucked in my original post. Personally, I do think they suck but that has more to do with their labor practices then with the quality (or lack thereof) of their product.
In fact, your "mass market game" term is somewhat ironic -- the first image that popped into my head when I read that was Wally World, which is actually a pretty decent analogy for EA, IMHO. Mass marketed crap combined with labor practices that previously (still?) bordered on sweatshop conditions.
Personally, I think EA's games would be much, much better if they A) lenghtened their dev cycles and B) gave more ownership to the artists, to make the games they envision...
Again, my greatest criticism about the way EA makes games is that they just don't take enough time to do it.
EA's devs are among the brightest and most talented in the world, but they just aren't given enough space to make the games they could.
Sounds like you've basically summarized a lot of the reasons why they do suck;)
The Sims is the far and away the best-selling PC game franchise in history. Every year since "The Sims" was released in 2000, a Sims product (sometimes more than one!) has held a top 5 spot in PC sales, and according to Wikipedia it's sold more than 70 million units as of January 2007.
Now I'm not saying it's the best game in world, but it's certainly a success.
If sales is your sole metric of software success then Windows is far and away the best operating system ever;)
Being serious though, I won't deny that the Sims has been a financial success for EA. I just don't see the appeal in it though. To each their own I suppose.... I look back on memories of Sim City 2000 fondly -- the few times I played 'The Sims' I can't recall anything more then tedious boredom, broken up by occasional amusing moments of figuring out ways to murder the Sims (swimming pools and kitchen fires came in handy....) when they got on my nerves.
Well actually Sim City 4 was, and still is, a solid effort from them. They expanded the ability to users to modify aspects of the game and there is still an active community creating user content 5 years after it came out. Many people complained that the game was becoming too complicated and thus didn't garner widespread success. But seriously to summarize the Sim City franchise and not include Sim City 4 does not do the game justice.
To be honest, I've never played Sim City 4. I found it pretty hard to justify giving EA any of my money after the disaster that was Sim City 3000 (combined with their questionable business/employment practices). I have heard some good things about Sim City 4 but I still think the franchise was largely ruined with all the focus on 'The Sims' and the bloatware/disaster that was Sim City 3000.
Perhaps part of that is nostalgia -- I grew up playing the original Sim City on SNES and Sim City 2000 was my first introduction to computers as a kid -- used to spend hours upon hours playing it at the local library before we got a computer. Nothing that has come since has seemed anywhere near as good. FWIW I feel the same way about Civilization -- I still think the best one was Civ2, though at least with that franchise they never sold out to the likes of EA and the new titles are actually playable and well made.
Seriously though, if you want to> see a great game in development, one that will become the new Sim City, check out Cities Unlimited, http://cuplanet.com/. Monte Cristo is taking in a lot of public input on their forums for the new game and by all accounts it looks like the new Sim City that people have been waiting for.
I'll have to give that a look. I've been somewhat bored lately and haven't really found any decent (modern) game titles that remotely interest me. The last game title that interested me enough to actually pay for and play was an independent homage to Wargames called DEFCON.
But still, I hope that EA doesn't take hold of them. EA's gaining way too much influence on gaming, and considering how they run things into the ground and churn out mediocre games on the backs of good games makes me worried that they'll grab as many companies as they can, and run them and their brands right into the ground.
I watch them to do this to Maxis after they bought them out. We went from an absolutely great concept (Sim City) that was implemented nearly perfectly in Sim City 2000 (given the technological limitations of the time) to unstable bloated garbage that cared more about pretty graphics (Sim City 3000) then gameplay and required Google's server farm to run at a decent speed....
And don't even get started on 'The Sims'. Even if I thought it was a good concept (which it might be -- but it's no Sim City, IMHO) WTF is up with twenty thousand different "expansion" packs? They neglected a great franchise (Sim City) in favor of using the brand name to push a crappy product that they sold in 30 different parts.
Espionage and subversion against your own government used to be called treason
With respect and the disclaimer that I have no lost love for the CoS, what possesses you to make the leap to 'treason' with regards to Scientology?
Treason as defined in the US Constitution consists solely of "levying war against the United States, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort". What has the CoS done that would fit into this definition?
This guy arguably committed treason. But where is the foreign power assisted by the CoS?
Slashdot Mirror
That's odd. I was under the impression that the card requirement was actually part of the Election Law, which is generally pretty specific (sometimes to the point of absurdity) about the procedures that we have to use at the polling place. Guess I'll have to look that up when I get home later.
Maybe its just on account of us Upstaters being smarter.Umm, I am an upstater, unless Binghamton doesn't qualify ;)
What county do you live in? Here in Broome County they give us colored cards (green for the Democrats, pink for the Republicans) that we had out to the voters after signing them in. The voter then gives that card to the person operating the machine who sets the primary lever accordingly before hitting the entrance button that allows them to vote.
I've been running a polling place since 2004 and I've never had that mistake happen in a Primary Election. If you've seen it happen more then once or twice you should probably inform your local Board of Elections so they can address the problem. It just isn't supposed to happen that way......
Actually it's not "over POTS". DSL service and POTS have nothing in common other than the fact that they both come into your house on the same wire. DSL runs at a higher frequency than your POTS service (that's why you need filters installed on all your phones) and the two services don't interact with each other. DSL can also be provisioned without POTS service active on the same line (though whether or not your phone company allows this is another question).
Taken to the extreme and enforced to the 'letter of the law', that TOS policy would also prohibit DCC chats/file transfers on IRC (they listen for an incoming connection), file transfers on most IM clients, mIRC's ident daemon, FTP without PASV (as you pointed out), online gaming (if you are hosting the game you are accepting incoming connections) and a host of other useful applications.
If you can't find four (that's the size of the "group" I was referring to) like minded people willing to fight against an injustice in your hometown then I don't know what else to tell you.
And not ordinary people, but wealthy businessmenWhere did I say "wealthy"? It was a group of local business owners, hardly Donald Trump types.
So not just one person acting alone, and not someone poor like myself.One person can still make a difference. Do you have a phone? Make phone calls. Do you have a car? Drive people to the polls and/or knock on doors prior to election day. Do you have friends? Convince them that your cause is just and get them to help you out.
I notice you support Barak Obama, who attends a "hate all whites" racist church.*sigh*, I love how the inflammatory comments of one person get warped into "racist church".
I obviously can't make you listen to Senator Obama and I doubt I can even change your mind about him if you've drawn that conclusion. I do think that you are doing yourself a disservice by dismissing him and his message though. Did you happen to watch his speech on Tuesday? He speaks far more eloquently than I can on this issue and I can't recall a similar speech in my lifetime. Hell, I can't even recall many other politicians talking to us like adults instead of children -- and that goes for any issue (not just racism).
Go watch that speech if you want to know why I'm supporting him. Go watch his address at the Democratic National Convention from 2004. Obama appeals to our best instincts (hope, optimism, compassion). His opponents are running campaigns of FUD and trying to appeal to our worst inclinations.
I now question the validity of your thought processes if you support such a man.Even if I accepted your opinion of Senator Obama's church, what does that have to do with the 'validity' of my 'thought processes' as it relates to the original discussion in this thread, i.e: getting people involved in local politics? Are you honestly going to walk away from a dialog with someone because they support someone who goes to a church which had an inflammatory Pastor (since retired)? Isn't that type of reaction part of the problem and not a solution?
I honestly don't know if that's true or not but it doesn't really matter. The original complaint was about Government issued monopolies to cable outfits. For that you have no one to blame but your state and/or local Governments.
In my area it's even worse then that -- the last time the franchise was up for renewal the city asked Time Warner to freeze their rate increases -- TW basically told the city that they would charge whatever they want and if you don't want to renew the agreement we'll just take our hundreds of jobs and go somewhere else. The city folded like a cheap suit after that, which pissed quite a few of us off (what, a new cable company isn't going to employ people?)
My point (which you apparently missed or ignored in favor of sarcasm) was that there are actually productive things that you could be doing to change the situation. Posting on /. is not one of them, unless you happen to know a lot of people from Lancaster that hang out around here ;)
Your presumption that the 2nd place candidate represented a change from the status quo with regard to the topic at hand is absurd. Usually, you'll find that the guy who wants to throw Comcast out on its collective ear is the guy who came in 5th or 6th, right after the guy who wants to legalize drugs.So get off your ass and run yourself. Or find someone willing to run who agrees with your views. Your original claim was that Comcast is bribing local officials to obtain favorable treatment. If that's actually the case and provable then I have a hard time seeing the people involved managing to stay in power if these issues are brought into the public discourse.
We had a Village Trustee in my hometown that was fond of using his connections with village/county officials to secure favorable Government contracts for his friends. Said home town was 70% Republican and conventional wisdom would lead you to believe that he was unbeatable come election day -- hell, the last two elections he ran unopposed.
Anyway, a group of business owners that had been shut out of the bidding process for said contracts decided to challenge him -- one of them ran against him in the next election (as a Democrat) and the rest of them campaigned/drove voters to the polls/recruited other volunteers. The race was too close to call on election night but after the absentee ballots were counted said Trustee was defeated by 25 votes out of some 1,200 cast. Nobody thought it was possible but a small group of dedicated people were able to pull it off.
Honestly, if you are too apathetic to even try to affect change at the local level than I think you forfeit your right to complain about things that you disagree with. Local politics is one of the few areas left where individuals can make a meaningful difference and millions of bucks aren't required to run a legitimate campaign.
It might not be unreasonable but it masks several legitimate differences between the state of broadband in both areas. Like the fact that most Europeans have a number of providers to choose from vs. no more than two for most Americans (if you are lucky). Or the fact that several areas in Europe have access to broadband options that blow anything in the states out of the water (can you get a 100/100 connection anywhere in the US for $45/mo? I doubt it).
We have similar levels of technology & lifestyle & culture.Umm, have you ever been to Europe? I'll grant you the technology bit but there are huge cultural differences between Europe and the United States. Ditto for lifestyle -- urban sprawl and a lifestyle that revolves around the automobile would be a foreign concept to many Europeans.
We have a similar system of government (federalism)Umm, how the hell do you figure that? If the United States was that similar to the EU you'd see New York and California having veto votes on the UN security council and each state would be free to implement it's own foreign policy. You've also overlooked the fact that Europe has an entirely different legal system (civil law instead common law) than we do (with the exception of the UK).
Actually, it's only a server (in the classical sense) if it accepts incoming connections and most P2P apps (Bittorrent included) will function just fine without this ability, albeit with a reduced number of peers that it can reach.
If they are really doing that then why don't you stop posting on /. and start working to get those local politicians out of office?
Local politics actually makes it possible for individuals/small dedicated groups to make a difference. You don't need millions of dollars to get started. In my time as an elections worker I haven't seen a local race that was decided by more than a few hundred votes -- and I've seen some (our recent County Legislative elections) with single digit margins of victory.
Really? So going from the option of being able to choose between multiple CLECs, the ILEC and the cable company to being able to choose between the ILEC and the cable company isn't reducing your choice of providers?
Aren't you being a little selective with your "whole region" argument? Many people in the United States only have dialup or comparatively slow (768kbps - 1.5mbps) DSL as an option. Many other people can only choose between dialup or a cable provider that may or may not be friendly towards their customers. Furthermore your "whole region" argument glosses over the fact that in some EU countries (Sweden) you can obtain 100mbit connections.
I'm lucky enough to have a cable provider that isn't (yet) trying to screw over it's customers (though there's been rumblings....) so I can actually get broadband service at a decent speed (8.0/512). My only other option is DSL at 1.5/384, which isn't really fast enough to stream (decent quality) video in real time, so I'd have to give up a service that I've come to enjoy if I left the local cable monopoly.
Anyway, the point is that many (most?) American's don't really have any "choice" when it comes to broadband service.
Quite a few people, actually, but that's not the point (POTS is available on FiOS, albeit without line power). The point is that by cutting out the copper lines to your address you lose the option of switching to a CLEC for DSL or POTS services, i.e: your choices of internet/telephone service providers are reduced.
And the people to bitch to about that would be your state and/or local politicians, because that's who granted the monopolies in the first place. I've never heard of a Federal cable franchise agreement......
I honestly don't know enough about hemp to know if it's truly as useful as it's proponents claim. The little bit I have read suggests that it would be more useful for soil replenishment than anything else and that some of the industrial uses may be better met with other products. Regardless of it's merits though, I think that it's pretty stupid to outlaw/regulate it. Even if you agree with a policy of marijuana prohibition, why should a potentially useful product suffer as a result? Especially when most industrial strains have little to no psychoactive potential. Especially when most of the rest of the world is using it and a marketplace exists for it -- a marketplace that we've decided to exclude ourselves from.
FWIW, I also don't think the pro-legalization crowd is solely at fault here. They might be exaggerating their claims of how useful hemp could be but consider the propaganda put out in support of the War on Drugs. Claims like marijuana "supports terrorism" are a lot more harmful to constructive dialog than anything I've heard come out of the pro-legalization and/or pro-hemp crowd.
For the record, I oppose the drug war.I'm honestly not sure how I feel about prohibition of hard drugs. I do think prohibition of marijuana is a foolish policy though. It's a plant that makes you lazy and dumb. It's clearly less harmful than tobacco and likely (all things considered) less harmful than alcohol. The worst thing you can say about marijuana is that it saps your motivation. Not a good thing (especially if badly abused) but hardly something worth shredding our civil liberties over.
Legalize it and treat it the same as alcohol. If individuals abuse it than let them suffer the consequences at work or in school -- the same as happens if people abuse alcohol.
I'm curious: Are you sick of the tactics that you think are being used or are you sick of the attempts to advocate against the War on Drugs? Both? Neither?
If by "had a shot" you mean we could have annexed the whole country after defeating them in the Mexican-American war, then yes, we "had a shot". Your assumption that racism is the sole reason that we opted not to do so seems a bit far-fetched. Quite a few hawks (Sam Houston) encouraged Polk to consider annexing the whole country but such a course of action would have found little support from the Whig party (which had opposed the war) and was never one of Polk's objectives.
What the hell does racism have to do with Mexico not being a US state? If a lack of bigotry is the only thing it takes to merge sovereign nation-states then when does Canada become the 51st state?
Could it be that there are actual historical and cultural differences between the United States and her neighbors and that the real situation is somewhat more complicated than "We were and still are bigoted"?
I never claimed they sucked because they make "mass market" games. In fact I don't think I ever came out and said that they sucked in my original post. Personally, I do think they suck but that has more to do with their labor practices then with the quality (or lack thereof) of their product.
In fact, your "mass market game" term is somewhat ironic -- the first image that popped into my head when I read that was Wally World, which is actually a pretty decent analogy for EA, IMHO. Mass marketed crap combined with labor practices that previously (still?) bordered on sweatshop conditions.
Personally, I think EA's games would be much, much better if they A) lenghtened their dev cycles and B) gave more ownership to the artists, to make the games they envision... Again, my greatest criticism about the way EA makes games is that they just don't take enough time to do it. EA's devs are among the brightest and most talented in the world, but they just aren't given enough space to make the games they could.Sounds like you've basically summarized a lot of the reasons why they do suck ;)
If sales is your sole metric of software success then Windows is far and away the best operating system ever ;)
Being serious though, I won't deny that the Sims has been a financial success for EA. I just don't see the appeal in it though. To each their own I suppose.... I look back on memories of Sim City 2000 fondly -- the few times I played 'The Sims' I can't recall anything more then tedious boredom, broken up by occasional amusing moments of figuring out ways to murder the Sims (swimming pools and kitchen fires came in handy....) when they got on my nerves.
To be honest, I've never played Sim City 4. I found it pretty hard to justify giving EA any of my money after the disaster that was Sim City 3000 (combined with their questionable business/employment practices). I have heard some good things about Sim City 4 but I still think the franchise was largely ruined with all the focus on 'The Sims' and the bloatware/disaster that was Sim City 3000.
Perhaps part of that is nostalgia -- I grew up playing the original Sim City on SNES and Sim City 2000 was my first introduction to computers as a kid -- used to spend hours upon hours playing it at the local library before we got a computer. Nothing that has come since has seemed anywhere near as good. FWIW I feel the same way about Civilization -- I still think the best one was Civ2, though at least with that franchise they never sold out to the likes of EA and the new titles are actually playable and well made.
Seriously though, if you want to> see a great game in development, one that will become the new Sim City, check out Cities Unlimited, http://cuplanet.com/. Monte Cristo is taking in a lot of public input on their forums for the new game and by all accounts it looks like the new Sim City that people have been waiting for.I'll have to give that a look. I've been somewhat bored lately and haven't really found any decent (modern) game titles that remotely interest me. The last game title that interested me enough to actually pay for and play was an independent homage to Wargames called DEFCON.
I watch them to do this to Maxis after they bought them out. We went from an absolutely great concept (Sim City) that was implemented nearly perfectly in Sim City 2000 (given the technological limitations of the time) to unstable bloated garbage that cared more about pretty graphics (Sim City 3000) then gameplay and required Google's server farm to run at a decent speed....
And don't even get started on 'The Sims'. Even if I thought it was a good concept (which it might be -- but it's no Sim City, IMHO) WTF is up with twenty thousand different "expansion" packs? They neglected a great franchise (Sim City) in favor of using the brand name to push a crappy product that they sold in 30 different parts.
Why'd ya have to sell out Will?
With respect and the disclaimer that I have no lost love for the CoS, what possesses you to make the leap to 'treason' with regards to Scientology?
Treason as defined in the US Constitution consists solely of "levying war against the United States, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort". What has the CoS done that would fit into this definition?
This guy arguably committed treason. But where is the foreign power assisted by the CoS?
Fights during the hockey game don't count ;)
Good. That'll make it easier for us to take you out with this bad boy ;)
Move along citizen, nothing to see here....