Oh please. What is with you hippies trying to call a thing what it isn't? Look, we all know the Steve was the son of a carpenter, and in fact Jobs was the Steve. Now, what's up for debate is whether or not Jobs actually had reality-warping powers enough to have risen from death not once, but twice; and, indeed, even if the concept of the Steve as given is a load of dingos' kidneys in the first place. But we all know that your "Apple Era" just means "yeah, we don't want to say that the world revolves around the life of one man, but it does;" let's call it what it is, huh?
Yes, but I don't want a police officer standing on every corner, peering into every window, inside every bar, checking my phone every time I send a text, reading my e-mail, and randomly pulling me over to search my car and person. Police officers also cost money, and rapid response is prohibitively expensive. Often violent crimes are over and done before the police know it's happening; so someone could be raped, hospitalized, or dead before there's even police awareness, much less response.
Do you honestly think people should unilaterally rely on some external entity to protect them? A self-policing society is a side-effect of self defense: you are not obligated to help anyone, and nobody is obligated to help you; yet there are many who, given the strength of spirit, will not stand for these things happening around them. Some people will feel strongly like something must be done, but are too scared and weak to protect themselves, much less anyone else; other people, when strong and confident, just won't give a shit. Making those scared and weak people strong and confident has the natural consequence of making them first responders, since they already feel that someone must do something and thus will do it themselves if they feel they're cut for it.
In short, people aren't entitled to anything and nobody will come and save you; that somebody actually does come and save you is a matter of chance, and of strangeness. I want to intentionally load the dice of chance. This is not what the police do; the police provide administration and structure, not defense. Like in a military, generals vs armor: the generals try to devise minimal-casualty, maximum-success battle plans, but you can't go wrong with some bullet proof plate vests on top of it.
It's more of a culture thing. A strong self defense philosophy and a feeling of responsibility for the community creates a culture where people turn their guns against criminals who threaten them. They are willing and able to violently respond to threats to themselves and those around them. If your culture tries to suppress all violent tendencies, it necessarily removes your only means to defend yourself and others, and thus encourages a culture of cowards who do nothing to protect those around them from the few resistant violent criminals. If your culture instills no sense of community and no moral compass that leads you to those ends, it becomes an arms race between bullies that all stand alone.
Notice the need for balance. All things require balance. A culture that generally desires an honest, peaceful life and has no tolerance for violent disruptions and a will to protect its own with violent response will suppress crime. Both the desire for peace and the will to wage war when necessary are embraced. Most humans cannot experience a perfect harmony of these; those that can may only ever get a fleeting moment, when pressured to war, when giving mercy to their enemy, just once in their life when they truly experience the deep desire to end conflict the moment the opportunity presents itself. Still, the desire to roughly refrain from conflict does not conflict with the will to enter battle when deemed necessary; only the ability of the individual to correctly judge where it is time to raise arms and where it is safe to put them down wavers, and even those who strongly seek peace will be momentarily caught up in bloodlust at both borders.
My original point was that our complete "Violence Is Bad(TM)" culture is a total failure and encourages small-time crime. I still hold this to be true, despite the existence of other failure modes.
Look no further than the recent riots in Vancouver. More than one good person (one was a large bouncer-looking guy) tried defusing a situation or defending something from being smashed, and the crowd overwhelmed and viciously beat them down for their efforts. And they did this knowing there were live TV and personal/cell cameras all around them.
That's exactly my intended result, but wrong context. It's the many against the one, and only the one stupid person made the attempt. Unfortunately, in this case, the many were violent rioters and the one was the innocent; but if the one had been a mugger and the many had been everyone who showed up when a passerby glanced down the alley and yelled, "HEY! THIS GUY IS BEATING THIS KID WITH A SOCK FULL OF NICKELS!"... perhaps muggery would be not such a great career choice.
Groups of people... group psychology is a strange and mystical thing, really. Large groups best self-regulate the small problems.
Violence is not bad; it is the solution to most problems, and in fact the only solution to all problems caused by violence.
People need to learn to use the threat of violence effectively. Properly, I guess; but that's a lost cause, based in personal philosophy. Fortunately, the threat of violence is strangely powerful: if being a violent asshole is likely to end badly for you, then you will probably be disinclined from being a violent asshole.
That's why we should have strong personal self defense values. People need to feel that they can stand up to violence; otherwise a few people will realize they can just pound someone's face in and take what they want, and most people will just cower and be good little slaves for fear of being pounded too.
I want a society of people who will stand together, who will see this brutal face-pounding and all crowd around to liberate the poor defenseless sap from this vicious beating and put the unruly whelp up against a dozen other people who aren't afraid to use their fists either. Instead you get a crowd that prevents the guy getting beat to death from running, and they all cheer for the chance to watch a good beating; or they just slink away and hide, 'cause sorry kid, you're on your own. No help from the cowards that call themselves men.
The global sphere has, unfortunately, got it right. On a personal level this isn't a problem because, well, you know, fists; but on a political level we're shaking nukes in each others' faces. Somebody actually created a bomb that would destroy all life on the planet back around WW2 era... that's why they stopped getting bigger. They looked at the yield estimates and said, "... we can't do this, we could just set it off in our own front yard and it'd still nuke the other side of the planet. There's no use for this. We'd destroy ourselves." We stick with boosted devices big enough to pretty much end Japan in one shot, and that's it.... ~_~
That's why they all play nice. You launch one nuke and 50 other countries obliterate you from the face of the planet, completely, immediately. I don't get how tactical Mutually Assured Destruction never keyed anyone off about the social benefits of Mutually Assured Asskicking. Still, I'd prefer we did this with smaller bombs; just like I'd prefer (won't happen) clubs and swords to assault rifles on the street. Too bad people on the street play risk; they can get assault rifles, but they don't want to deal with the massive police force that will be chasing them down, or the huge jail penalties for possession. That's also why some criminals are found with guns on them when they're arrested for robbing a store at knife-point: it's at least 15 years jail time here for gun crime, but possession is maybe an added 2 year penalty. They won't use a gun unless someone is shooting at them, because they want to be in and out of jail in a year or three.
Once in a while, a nut with a 500 round fully auto shows up and starts killing people. The only defense is to snipe 'em from far off (or grenades). A handgun versus quick reflex is surprisingly feasible (poor, often painful, but largely survivable and winnable); but all the judo in the world won't protect you from an AK-47 in rock-and-roll mode. I accept gun control for these things neither because they're dangerous nor because we can legislate them away (neither is strictly true); I know it does reduce (not eliminate) the likelihood of possession and use, and hell a good rifle is just as effective against a belt-feeder as another belt-feeder. Even a Derringer one-shot pistol can take the guy out if you're close enough to get the bullet to his face.
First things first: You, and the person you replied to, are what is wrong with the world today. Highly polarized, closed-minded, hating opposing viewpoints with generalities, getting nothing done. Congratulations.
Are you a chick? I want to sleep with you. You're one of like four people in the world that understands polarized politics are fail. That's where Hitler came from.
Because liberals realise that the things we take for granted have to be paid for by someone.
That doesn't mean they have a good collection plan. Before the war (which was a horrible economic disaster), Bush's tax cuts cost the federal government about 1/10 of 1% of its income overall. The tax cuts were rather significant, on the order of 5% of federal income; but there was a 20% growth in economic activity (GDP), which somehow doesn't amount to a 20% growth of federal income...
Then there was war, and Goldman Sachs' banking plan finally taking its toll, and all the other shit. If we had cruised on a decent economy without hitting all these damn potholes, Bush's tax cuts would have created enough stimulation that the 0.1% income loss would have become a 10% income gain by the end of his term, with lower taxes.
I can't say how the numbers would crank out in the current economy, but massive tax cuts would definitely improve GDP and private economic health; however, the federal government is so fucked up at the moment with wars and bail-outs and other stupid spending glut that it can't take the hit.
This creates a Morton's Fork. Honestly, even if you support ObamaCare, this was the wrong time to do it: economy is too much shit and you're just overburdening it with more entitlements. The argument that a "weak economy means people need it even more" just indicates a death struggle where a panicked society starts thrashing ineffectively as it slowly suffocates, getting itself tangled up more and more as it chokes to death.
Every entitlement that goes through in this wrecked economy is exactly the same: horrible conditions cause X, the people need to be saved by Y, but doing Y will trash the economy and make the situation worse. Can't win. Or at least, you can't save everyone. In Go, you make small sacrifices to gain an advantage; if you don't, eventually you have to make huge sacrifices to try to aggressively regain your footing, and often this only leads to complete and total failure anyway. We're in that "huge sacrifices" phase, the point where trying to win can only make you lose worse.
They also realise that Amazon affiliates have a state-granted advantage over local brick and mortar businesses and has decided to remove that advantage.
Actually, Amazon's base price is lower. People keep talking about sales tax "equalizing the price," which is strange when the brick and mortar has to charge 14% on $35 and Amazon has to charge 14% on $20. It's not $20 + 14% vs $35; Amazon is still cheaper. Amazon also doesn't have to pay the tax themselves, they just collect it from the consumer.
You say that on Slashdot, where people laud World of Goo while cursing Nintendo's annoying policies on getting games into the Wiiware store BECAUSE there could be more successful indie games if the Wii was a more accessible developer platform...
Re:Always show your work
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He's not Japanese and hasn't trained with a Soroban.
Re:really scraping the bottom of the barrel
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We have working with half the radius of the circle or twice the circumference given its diameter. Radius makes little sense, and it's 1/2 diameter...
If you were going to buy it for $60 and resell it to Gamestop for $20 who'd resell it for $30 then Capcom can simply start the new game price at $40 and get the first sale ($60-$20).
Uh, Gamestop takes games that are selling for $50 new, gives you $10 for them, and resells the used game for $45. This is why I stopped trading in games or buying used games. Also, I've noticed that games never seem to come down from their release-date price anymore....
"Reproduce" is not "Create." It costs very little to "Reproduce" a high-end Porsche; but the engineering that went into the car originally was an extremely difficult expense. Porsche created some novel motor concepts, just like Benz sunk tons of research money into airbags.
Here's the blueprint, spend $10M putting this together; we already spent $1.3Bn creating it.
GIllette Mach 3 razor took $830M or so to engineer. Ergonomics in the handle right down to the exact angle of the blades, the bevel angle, the thickness, everything. By the way, some people still have original stock Mach3 blade heads. Tests done between available blade heads and original stock ones show that the original stock ones perform much better; new stock is crippled. Thanks, Proctor & Gamble (they bought Gillette after the Mach 3... maybe right after the Fusion, I don't recall; I use a straight razor).
You like music? Put together a band and go release 7 albums. GOOD albums. Do the sound engineering yourself, too; I expect properly mastered tracks.
No? Why not?
Oh, you want Windows 7? Well, why don't you go help the guys at ReactOS reimplement it? That version's free.
What do you mean, you can't do that? They've got tons of people to help. It should be easy to whip together. Won't cost you anything.
See, to create music or software, you need "talent" and "Knowledge" and "skill" and "time." All of this costs money. To distribute it, you need to pay for distribution. To recover those costs, you must charge for distribution and production. After that, it's all profit.
And yet you missed an entire paragraph containing a bunch of rhetoric questions preceded by a crucial sentence:
The problem, however, isn't one of speed; tell me why cars are hitting bicycles in the first place.
As well as 80% of the content of the essay, which lead in with an opening point about how bicyclists want to shrink speed limits as much as possible, and then continued on to discuss other, more complete options that improve the general transit system in a more balanced way rather than simply impeding motor traffic for the sake of cyclists who think they own the road. The closing statement about speed and safety was also rather complete.
And you took all of this as "Cars should slow down because they hit bikes!" You drew this conclusion despite a section about how to make the road safer for bicycles in areas where cars may continue to travel at high speeds (40+mph).
You also apparently failed to frame the context properly at all, as we're discussing things that are large, visible, brightly colored, and continuously present in the road, rather than animals or pedestrians suddenly appearing out of nowhere to cross the street (a different problem; cyclists shouldn't be taking drivers by surprise, or they're doing it wrong). This context is well-known, and important when considering issues of
why cars are hitting bicycles in the first place.
because it's the same context as why cars are hitting cars stopped at lights; pulling into other lanes where other cars already exist; or failing to heed traffic control measures (lights, signs).
Why should everyone in the US be a computer programmer? It makes no sense. Who cares? I want automechanics and skilled artisans, not programmers; we have enough programmers, and the steady spiral downward might be because they're rolling out of college and taking up beggary due to the lack of programming jobs.
Stupid single-minded one-dimensional gits trying to "fix" education...
And sadly, when people try to fix it, they make it worse. They put in road humps, lower speed limits, and otherwise screw up traffic, making traffic more dense and increasing the chances of crashing.
Bicyclists often cite studies of death rates and note that death in crashes over 40mph is sharply higher... it's asymptotic with a point of inflection there. The chance of death under about 40mph when hit by a car is relatively low, and under 30mph is even lower, but just over 40mph it's suddenly EXTREMELY HIGH.
As a result, cyclists tend to like lower speed limits because we have too many inattentive drivers. Bike lanes make the problem worse by some magic; so do bike paths that cross the road at points, and riding on the side walk is even more dangerous (you're 80% more likely to get hit by a car, and about 3 times as likely if you're riding against traffic but on the sidewalk).
Really, I tend to be more a proponent for a variety of changes to accommodate cycling traffic safely. Bike lanes? 60% wider right hand traffic lane with a shared traffic arrow indicating the whole freaking lane may be used by cars or bicyclists. Bicyclists shouldn't ride right against the curb or too close to parked cars; debris, curb impacts, close passes (idiot drivers), and parked car doors all pose major threats that may force a cyclist to maneuver in some way. A wide, shared lane allows a cyclist to maintain adequate clearance at high speeds (20, 30, 40mph) while also giving adequate room for cyclists to overtake each other and to move right to allow cars (which must give 3 feet of clearance when passing) to pass safely.
On top of this, segregated bike paths do make sense in certain areas (anywhere with a long-running, low-visibility, generally dangerous road with few intersections is a prime candidate for a barrier-segregated path). Sidewalk riding is dangerous; cyclists move almost as fast as cars and should not mix with pedestrians, besides being unpredicted by cars when they cross legally at intersections. Motorists on cell phones... I don't want to jump on the band wagon, but I've noticed they fixate straight ahead, they lose their ability to reason, their reaction time is fucked... hands-free only, the physical handset draws too much attention. Even that may be too much; inattentive drivers are a serious danger to themselves, other drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians.
Speed kills. If you're hit by a car going 60mph when you're walking or biking, you will probably die. 30mph is nothing, you'll bang up the car. The problem, however, isn't one of speed; tell me why cars are hitting bicycles in the first place. Is the cyclist riding around like a jackass? Is he taking so-called "safety" too far, or rejecting it entirely? Or is the driver screwing up here? Is he texting? Is he trying to race around the cyclist? Did he near-miss the bike and then cream a pedestrian being an aggressive asshat? Is it partially the fault of everyone involved, because they're all being dicks? Why is this happening at all?
There is a safe speed of travel. 20mph is not safe if you cannot reasonably avoid vehicular collisions at 20mph; 60mph is safe if you can reasonably guarantee that maybe 1 car out of every 10 million passed is probably going to hit something at 60mph that wouldn't have hit it at 20mph. If the road is flat unsafe, the safe speed will be extremely low; fix the road. If the road is safe, it's only safe for a certain traffic load at a certain speed (notice rush hour traffic is slow?). Find these values, add a large margin of error, fix the road if the resulting speed is too slow for traffic load to proceed, and then plop a speed limit sign that says whatever number you came up with into the ground. Beyond that, you have other problems to solve to make the roads safer.
Actually I can tell the difference between my q=4 Ogg Vorbis and my FLAC, but only on good equipment. Monster speakers or headphones or whatnot with golden cables don't do shit; but shitty speakers, poor sound cards, and the like really do degrade quality. I put a $10 Sound Blaster Audigy2 into my computer and I have decent speakers I paid $50 for and it made a huge difference; I want some Klipsch or whatever the brand is, I love their shit.
It's notable that q=4 Ogg Vorbis doesn't sound muddy, suppressed, or weird... no notable artifacts. But when you play it against the FLAC, it does sound a little suppressed. The FLAC is obviously clearer, more dynamic, and has more depth. This is less important today, unfortunately, than it was 20 years ago; I have 20 year old CDs, and they're a lot quieter, with a much better dynamic range. High dynamic range is really noticeable when slapped down next to a fucked up compressed master.
But, on a standard RealTek AC97 built-in sound card, even on my decent speakers, you can't tell. The difference is non-existent. The audio hardware just sucks. Same with an iPod. My shitty motorola cliq cell phone is horrible, but the sound chipset is GODLY and when I swapped to it instead of an iPod for a media player I was seriously surprised.
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Oh please. What is with you hippies trying to call a thing what it isn't? Look, we all know the Steve was the son of a carpenter, and in fact Jobs was the Steve. Now, what's up for debate is whether or not Jobs actually had reality-warping powers enough to have risen from death not once, but twice; and, indeed, even if the concept of the Steve as given is a load of dingos' kidneys in the first place. But we all know that your "Apple Era" just means "yeah, we don't want to say that the world revolves around the life of one man, but it does;" let's call it what it is, huh?
Yes, but I don't want a police officer standing on every corner, peering into every window, inside every bar, checking my phone every time I send a text, reading my e-mail, and randomly pulling me over to search my car and person. Police officers also cost money, and rapid response is prohibitively expensive. Often violent crimes are over and done before the police know it's happening; so someone could be raped, hospitalized, or dead before there's even police awareness, much less response.
Do you honestly think people should unilaterally rely on some external entity to protect them? A self-policing society is a side-effect of self defense: you are not obligated to help anyone, and nobody is obligated to help you; yet there are many who, given the strength of spirit, will not stand for these things happening around them. Some people will feel strongly like something must be done, but are too scared and weak to protect themselves, much less anyone else; other people, when strong and confident, just won't give a shit. Making those scared and weak people strong and confident has the natural consequence of making them first responders, since they already feel that someone must do something and thus will do it themselves if they feel they're cut for it.
In short, people aren't entitled to anything and nobody will come and save you; that somebody actually does come and save you is a matter of chance, and of strangeness. I want to intentionally load the dice of chance. This is not what the police do; the police provide administration and structure, not defense. Like in a military, generals vs armor: the generals try to devise minimal-casualty, maximum-success battle plans, but you can't go wrong with some bullet proof plate vests on top of it.
They're plated with no oxygen layer between, so they can't possibly corrode.
It's more of a culture thing. A strong self defense philosophy and a feeling of responsibility for the community creates a culture where people turn their guns against criminals who threaten them. They are willing and able to violently respond to threats to themselves and those around them. If your culture tries to suppress all violent tendencies, it necessarily removes your only means to defend yourself and others, and thus encourages a culture of cowards who do nothing to protect those around them from the few resistant violent criminals. If your culture instills no sense of community and no moral compass that leads you to those ends, it becomes an arms race between bullies that all stand alone.
Notice the need for balance. All things require balance. A culture that generally desires an honest, peaceful life and has no tolerance for violent disruptions and a will to protect its own with violent response will suppress crime. Both the desire for peace and the will to wage war when necessary are embraced. Most humans cannot experience a perfect harmony of these; those that can may only ever get a fleeting moment, when pressured to war, when giving mercy to their enemy, just once in their life when they truly experience the deep desire to end conflict the moment the opportunity presents itself. Still, the desire to roughly refrain from conflict does not conflict with the will to enter battle when deemed necessary; only the ability of the individual to correctly judge where it is time to raise arms and where it is safe to put them down wavers, and even those who strongly seek peace will be momentarily caught up in bloodlust at both borders.
My original point was that our complete "Violence Is Bad(TM)" culture is a total failure and encourages small-time crime. I still hold this to be true, despite the existence of other failure modes.
Look no further than the recent riots in Vancouver. More than one good person (one was a large bouncer-looking guy) tried defusing a situation or defending something from being smashed, and the crowd overwhelmed and viciously beat them down for their efforts. And they did this knowing there were live TV and personal/cell cameras all around them.
That's exactly my intended result, but wrong context. It's the many against the one, and only the one stupid person made the attempt. Unfortunately, in this case, the many were violent rioters and the one was the innocent; but if the one had been a mugger and the many had been everyone who showed up when a passerby glanced down the alley and yelled, "HEY! THIS GUY IS BEATING THIS KID WITH A SOCK FULL OF NICKELS!" ... perhaps muggery would be not such a great career choice.
Groups of people ... group psychology is a strange and mystical thing, really. Large groups best self-regulate the small problems.
Violence is not bad; it is the solution to most problems, and in fact the only solution to all problems caused by violence.
People need to learn to use the threat of violence effectively. Properly, I guess; but that's a lost cause, based in personal philosophy. Fortunately, the threat of violence is strangely powerful: if being a violent asshole is likely to end badly for you, then you will probably be disinclined from being a violent asshole.
That's why we should have strong personal self defense values. People need to feel that they can stand up to violence; otherwise a few people will realize they can just pound someone's face in and take what they want, and most people will just cower and be good little slaves for fear of being pounded too.
I want a society of people who will stand together, who will see this brutal face-pounding and all crowd around to liberate the poor defenseless sap from this vicious beating and put the unruly whelp up against a dozen other people who aren't afraid to use their fists either. Instead you get a crowd that prevents the guy getting beat to death from running, and they all cheer for the chance to watch a good beating; or they just slink away and hide, 'cause sorry kid, you're on your own. No help from the cowards that call themselves men.
The global sphere has, unfortunately, got it right. On a personal level this isn't a problem because, well, you know, fists; but on a political level we're shaking nukes in each others' faces. Somebody actually created a bomb that would destroy all life on the planet back around WW2 era... that's why they stopped getting bigger. They looked at the yield estimates and said, "... we can't do this, we could just set it off in our own front yard and it'd still nuke the other side of the planet. There's no use for this. We'd destroy ourselves." We stick with boosted devices big enough to pretty much end Japan in one shot, and that's it. ... ~_~
That's why they all play nice. You launch one nuke and 50 other countries obliterate you from the face of the planet, completely, immediately. I don't get how tactical Mutually Assured Destruction never keyed anyone off about the social benefits of Mutually Assured Asskicking. Still, I'd prefer we did this with smaller bombs; just like I'd prefer (won't happen) clubs and swords to assault rifles on the street. Too bad people on the street play risk; they can get assault rifles, but they don't want to deal with the massive police force that will be chasing them down, or the huge jail penalties for possession. That's also why some criminals are found with guns on them when they're arrested for robbing a store at knife-point: it's at least 15 years jail time here for gun crime, but possession is maybe an added 2 year penalty. They won't use a gun unless someone is shooting at them, because they want to be in and out of jail in a year or three.
Once in a while, a nut with a 500 round fully auto shows up and starts killing people. The only defense is to snipe 'em from far off (or grenades). A handgun versus quick reflex is surprisingly feasible (poor, often painful, but largely survivable and winnable); but all the judo in the world won't protect you from an AK-47 in rock-and-roll mode. I accept gun control for these things neither because they're dangerous nor because we can legislate them away (neither is strictly true); I know it does reduce (not eliminate) the likelihood of possession and use, and hell a good rifle is just as effective against a belt-feeder as another belt-feeder. Even a Derringer one-shot pistol can take the guy out if you're close enough to get the bullet to his face.
If species need video games as a trigger for sexual activity, outlook bleak.
If it's John Dvorak and it involves computers, it's probably wrong.
First things first: You, and the person you replied to, are what is wrong with the world today. Highly polarized, closed-minded, hating opposing viewpoints with generalities, getting nothing done. Congratulations.
Are you a chick? I want to sleep with you. You're one of like four people in the world that understands polarized politics are fail. That's where Hitler came from.
Because liberals realise that the things we take for granted have to be paid for by someone.
That doesn't mean they have a good collection plan. Before the war (which was a horrible economic disaster), Bush's tax cuts cost the federal government about 1/10 of 1% of its income overall. The tax cuts were rather significant, on the order of 5% of federal income; but there was a 20% growth in economic activity (GDP), which somehow doesn't amount to a 20% growth of federal income...
Then there was war, and Goldman Sachs' banking plan finally taking its toll, and all the other shit. If we had cruised on a decent economy without hitting all these damn potholes, Bush's tax cuts would have created enough stimulation that the 0.1% income loss would have become a 10% income gain by the end of his term, with lower taxes.
I can't say how the numbers would crank out in the current economy, but massive tax cuts would definitely improve GDP and private economic health; however, the federal government is so fucked up at the moment with wars and bail-outs and other stupid spending glut that it can't take the hit.
This creates a Morton's Fork. Honestly, even if you support ObamaCare, this was the wrong time to do it: economy is too much shit and you're just overburdening it with more entitlements. The argument that a "weak economy means people need it even more" just indicates a death struggle where a panicked society starts thrashing ineffectively as it slowly suffocates, getting itself tangled up more and more as it chokes to death.
Every entitlement that goes through in this wrecked economy is exactly the same: horrible conditions cause X, the people need to be saved by Y, but doing Y will trash the economy and make the situation worse. Can't win. Or at least, you can't save everyone. In Go, you make small sacrifices to gain an advantage; if you don't, eventually you have to make huge sacrifices to try to aggressively regain your footing, and often this only leads to complete and total failure anyway. We're in that "huge sacrifices" phase, the point where trying to win can only make you lose worse.
They also realise that Amazon affiliates have a state-granted advantage over local brick and mortar businesses and has decided to remove that advantage.
Actually, Amazon's base price is lower. People keep talking about sales tax "equalizing the price," which is strange when the brick and mortar has to charge 14% on $35 and Amazon has to charge 14% on $20. It's not $20 + 14% vs $35; Amazon is still cheaper. Amazon also doesn't have to pay the tax themselves, they just collect it from the consumer.
So no, this won't remove any sort of advantage.
You say that on Slashdot, where people laud World of Goo while cursing Nintendo's annoying policies on getting games into the Wiiware store BECAUSE there could be more successful indie games if the Wii was a more accessible developer platform ...
He's not Japanese and hasn't trained with a Soroban.
We have working with half the radius of the circle or twice the circumference given its diameter. Radius makes little sense, and it's 1/2 diameter...
If you were going to buy it for $60 and resell it to Gamestop for $20 who'd resell it for $30 then Capcom can simply start the new game price at $40 and get the first sale ($60-$20).
Uh, Gamestop takes games that are selling for $50 new, gives you $10 for them, and resells the used game for $45. This is why I stopped trading in games or buying used games. Also, I've noticed that games never seem to come down from their release-date price anymore....
Japanese developers like Nintendo?
I gave up Ocarina of Time when I got my hands on Master Quest. I've beaten Sonic 3 & Knuckles all the way through hundreds of times.
The most useful software package in the making of Shrek ... was GIMP.
LOGICAL FALLACY: Equivocation.
"Reproduce" is not "Create." It costs very little to "Reproduce" a high-end Porsche; but the engineering that went into the car originally was an extremely difficult expense. Porsche created some novel motor concepts, just like Benz sunk tons of research money into airbags.
Here's the blueprint, spend $10M putting this together; we already spent $1.3Bn creating it.
GIllette Mach 3 razor took $830M or so to engineer. Ergonomics in the handle right down to the exact angle of the blades, the bevel angle, the thickness, everything. By the way, some people still have original stock Mach3 blade heads. Tests done between available blade heads and original stock ones show that the original stock ones perform much better; new stock is crippled. Thanks, Proctor & Gamble (they bought Gillette after the Mach 3... maybe right after the Fusion, I don't recall; I use a straight razor).
You like music? Put together a band and go release 7 albums. GOOD albums. Do the sound engineering yourself, too; I expect properly mastered tracks.
No? Why not?
Oh, you want Windows 7? Well, why don't you go help the guys at ReactOS reimplement it? That version's free.
What do you mean, you can't do that? They've got tons of people to help. It should be easy to whip together. Won't cost you anything.
See, to create music or software, you need "talent" and "Knowledge" and "skill" and "time." All of this costs money. To distribute it, you need to pay for distribution. To recover those costs, you must charge for distribution and production. After that, it's all profit.
And yet you missed an entire paragraph containing a bunch of rhetoric questions preceded by a crucial sentence:
The problem, however, isn't one of speed; tell me why cars are hitting bicycles in the first place.
As well as 80% of the content of the essay, which lead in with an opening point about how bicyclists want to shrink speed limits as much as possible, and then continued on to discuss other, more complete options that improve the general transit system in a more balanced way rather than simply impeding motor traffic for the sake of cyclists who think they own the road. The closing statement about speed and safety was also rather complete.
And you took all of this as "Cars should slow down because they hit bikes!" You drew this conclusion despite a section about how to make the road safer for bicycles in areas where cars may continue to travel at high speeds (40+mph).
You also apparently failed to frame the context properly at all, as we're discussing things that are large, visible, brightly colored, and continuously present in the road, rather than animals or pedestrians suddenly appearing out of nowhere to cross the street (a different problem; cyclists shouldn't be taking drivers by surprise, or they're doing it wrong). This context is well-known, and important when considering issues of
why cars are hitting bicycles in the first place.
because it's the same context as why cars are hitting cars stopped at lights; pulling into other lanes where other cars already exist; or failing to heed traffic control measures (lights, signs).
Reading comprehension FAIL.
If you are "pissed," you are taking yourself too seriously. Chill out, egoman.
Why should everyone in the US be a computer programmer? It makes no sense. Who cares? I want automechanics and skilled artisans, not programmers; we have enough programmers, and the steady spiral downward might be because they're rolling out of college and taking up beggary due to the lack of programming jobs.
Stupid single-minded one-dimensional gits trying to "fix" education...
We really need to improve the school system in Alaska; your reading comprehension is horrible.
And sadly, when people try to fix it, they make it worse. They put in road humps, lower speed limits, and otherwise screw up traffic, making traffic more dense and increasing the chances of crashing.
Bicyclists often cite studies of death rates and note that death in crashes over 40mph is sharply higher ... it's asymptotic with a point of inflection there. The chance of death under about 40mph when hit by a car is relatively low, and under 30mph is even lower, but just over 40mph it's suddenly EXTREMELY HIGH.
As a result, cyclists tend to like lower speed limits because we have too many inattentive drivers. Bike lanes make the problem worse by some magic; so do bike paths that cross the road at points, and riding on the side walk is even more dangerous (you're 80% more likely to get hit by a car, and about 3 times as likely if you're riding against traffic but on the sidewalk).
Really, I tend to be more a proponent for a variety of changes to accommodate cycling traffic safely. Bike lanes? 60% wider right hand traffic lane with a shared traffic arrow indicating the whole freaking lane may be used by cars or bicyclists. Bicyclists shouldn't ride right against the curb or too close to parked cars; debris, curb impacts, close passes (idiot drivers), and parked car doors all pose major threats that may force a cyclist to maneuver in some way. A wide, shared lane allows a cyclist to maintain adequate clearance at high speeds (20, 30, 40mph) while also giving adequate room for cyclists to overtake each other and to move right to allow cars (which must give 3 feet of clearance when passing) to pass safely.
On top of this, segregated bike paths do make sense in certain areas (anywhere with a long-running, low-visibility, generally dangerous road with few intersections is a prime candidate for a barrier-segregated path). Sidewalk riding is dangerous; cyclists move almost as fast as cars and should not mix with pedestrians, besides being unpredicted by cars when they cross legally at intersections. Motorists on cell phones... I don't want to jump on the band wagon, but I've noticed they fixate straight ahead, they lose their ability to reason, their reaction time is fucked... hands-free only, the physical handset draws too much attention. Even that may be too much; inattentive drivers are a serious danger to themselves, other drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians.
Speed kills. If you're hit by a car going 60mph when you're walking or biking, you will probably die. 30mph is nothing, you'll bang up the car. The problem, however, isn't one of speed; tell me why cars are hitting bicycles in the first place. Is the cyclist riding around like a jackass? Is he taking so-called "safety" too far, or rejecting it entirely? Or is the driver screwing up here? Is he texting? Is he trying to race around the cyclist? Did he near-miss the bike and then cream a pedestrian being an aggressive asshat? Is it partially the fault of everyone involved, because they're all being dicks? Why is this happening at all?
There is a safe speed of travel. 20mph is not safe if you cannot reasonably avoid vehicular collisions at 20mph; 60mph is safe if you can reasonably guarantee that maybe 1 car out of every 10 million passed is probably going to hit something at 60mph that wouldn't have hit it at 20mph. If the road is flat unsafe, the safe speed will be extremely low; fix the road. If the road is safe, it's only safe for a certain traffic load at a certain speed (notice rush hour traffic is slow?). Find these values, add a large margin of error, fix the road if the resulting speed is too slow for traffic load to proceed, and then plop a speed limit sign that says whatever number you came up with into the ground. Beyond that, you have other problems to solve to make the roads safer.
Actually I can tell the difference between my q=4 Ogg Vorbis and my FLAC, but only on good equipment. Monster speakers or headphones or whatnot with golden cables don't do shit; but shitty speakers, poor sound cards, and the like really do degrade quality. I put a $10 Sound Blaster Audigy2 into my computer and I have decent speakers I paid $50 for and it made a huge difference; I want some Klipsch or whatever the brand is, I love their shit.
It's notable that q=4 Ogg Vorbis doesn't sound muddy, suppressed, or weird ... no notable artifacts. But when you play it against the FLAC, it does sound a little suppressed. The FLAC is obviously clearer, more dynamic, and has more depth. This is less important today, unfortunately, than it was 20 years ago; I have 20 year old CDs, and they're a lot quieter, with a much better dynamic range. High dynamic range is really noticeable when slapped down next to a fucked up compressed master.
But, on a standard RealTek AC97 built-in sound card, even on my decent speakers, you can't tell. The difference is non-existent. The audio hardware just sucks. Same with an iPod. My shitty motorola cliq cell phone is horrible, but the sound chipset is GODLY and when I swapped to it instead of an iPod for a media player I was seriously surprised.
You can "forensically undelete" a file in the recycle bin easily: it's not deleted.