Your arguement is kinda flawed. It would be like me saying, well I tried to sell bags of doorknobs in a pizza shop, but no one bought any, therefore one one wants doorknobs.
The fact is there isn't a lot of scanned books via p2p, so therefore why would anyone search for it there?
p2p in my experiance is used exactly for 3 things: Porn, Music, Software (probably in that order).
So unless things change drastically, unless you are offering those 3 commodities, odds are no one is going there to look for it and thus will not search for it, and thus will not download it.
If however you renamed your boring books from "Trevanian.doc" or whatever it is to "Porn Tits Ass Metallica Madonna Trevanian.mpg or.mp3" it will fly off your computer like hotcakes. You will however invoke the ire of some pretty confused people.
To summerize I don't try and buy (or even ask) to buy a 12 of beer at Toys R' Us, as I know they don't have any.
I have commented on this before, as it is something that ticked me off. I work for a large company, in which they recently (last several years) changed their security policy (no idea why, just out of the blue). So now not only do I have a ton of passwords, they also have to change every stupid month, and cannot be the same or like the previous passwords. Talk about a nightmare. I have accounts all over for various networks, different corporate application, etc... I have little spidery arms out everywhere in IT, and it is hard enough to remember them all. I tried to explain to the IT people (I work with IT, but not for the people who are in change of our networks or IT security policies), that this sort of policy while you think you are doing good is really very very bad. Where I had a handfull of passwords that I used to use, I was very protective of them and they were quite good. Now everyone is contantly forgeting their passwords so they end up calling the stupid help desk to get their password reset or released to them. Worse is people finally just get fed up and write them on a sticky note and stick it to their computer. Yeah, good policy in action there.
Well seeing as no one heeded my warning, I found a fun way to protest:
Many of my Passwords now are something of this flavor: StupidRandomPass#19 or ITSecurityPolicySucks, or JustAnotherPass#11, IT&SecurityEqual0, etc.... So every time I forget a password, I get a little laugh when I have to contact the smuck at the Help desk to get my password.... ah fun times. (note none of those are are my passwords)
Buisness speek mixed with IT jargon, mixed with government anachronisms. Thats my job.
I remember this one meeting (it was a SCIM (pronounced like skim milk though of course) meeting, see they even use anachoranisms for meething names! I know the last two are Information Managment, S is probably service, anyway lame). I I found myself at mid meeting trying I VERY hardest not to laugh out loud, as it was just so silly and absurd. It really was a different language they were speaking. Mix in the usual IT anachornisms, like IT, IIS, html, cpu, ATA, etc... add a dab of Government sections like, ITSB, SSB, OSS, etc... then some programs like, LIDS, OLID, etc... then add some applications names, NRVIS, LIS, etc... then add some OTHER buisness names like BLT, etc.... and finally as a coup de grace start spouting sentances that make no sense like "thats a straw dog" and other phrases that are useless. Mix this up with a healthy dose of nomal biz-speak with words like "action items" and "synergy" (which I think is my least favorite word in the enitre world, as soon as someome utters that word at me, I assume whatever else follows is total bullshit, and disregard whatever that person says), or proactive, deliverables, realign, horizontal this and vertical that, blah blah blah..... Now mix that all together and puke it out for a 3 hour meeting, and wonder how you are still sane.
Thats my rant.
on a side note, I got a email from a friend at work, it only consisted of 3 sentances. It contained over 17 anachronisms. I did LOL for that one. The scary thing was that she wasn't trying to be funny.
Well I think you are right about one thing, the nukes that is. Whenever I think of Enviromentalists, the first thing that comes to mind are nutjobs, hippies, and the like. That may sound like a right wing thing to say (I am actually pretty leftist), if you think about it there is no requirement for an "Enviromentalist" to actaully be any kind of "Scientist", if fact most are not, but yet will regergatate whatever information seems to agree with them, ignoring all else. There are nutjob Scientists as well, but I think they are rather the minority (though perhaps loud, with perhaps vested interest, grants etc...).
As mentioned previously anything that can be done to reduce the oil consumption of the US is probably a good thing, but I also agree that trying to regulate MPG is probably a waste of time. A better use would be to raise the tax on oil, and then use part of that money collected to subsidize more enviro friendly transportation such as mass transport and hybrid cars (which are really too expensive to be economical), etc... That way sure you can go buy a Hummer and suck down 10mpg, buy you pay for it. It would also make the decision to be enviromentally friendly "easier"....
A larger problem than oil I think is general energy production. In the US COAL is the domminate form, as it is (to a larger extent) in China. Both the US and China are the largest users of Coal, and thus the biggest polluters in the world (no wonder neither wish to sign the Koyoto Protocals, it is all negitive for them). Why use coal, well because it is both plentiful and cheap is both countries. I mean REALLY cheap. Its really dirty also. Coal plants probably pollute about as much as all oil consumption (or close to it, but I am really guessing here). Problem is, if NOT coal then what, the US and others gots to have power! Here is where the enviromentalists come in... I have had so many arguements it makes me sick. They would have you believe between Hydro, Solar, and Wind all the power we could ever need could be produced... Yeah, and the bunnies and dolphins and puppies can all play together is fields of candy. Fact is Hydro is limited to certain areas, and has its own enviromental effects, Wind and Solar are just too inefficent right now to be of any use (though every bit helps, the idea of tax breaks for residentual, and commercial buildings who intergrate these would be great). That leaves but one source of energy. No I am not talking Geothermal, unless you live in a place like Iceland.... I am taking Nukes.
Its gota bad rap and enviromentalists hate it for some reason, that even they I don't think quite understand. The only problem as I see it, is they are extreemly expensive to get started (and take a long time to build). So getting governments to switch from cheap, pleantiful, yet dirty coal, to Nukes would take some real pressure and detirmnation and willingness...
Anyway really profs have been doing this since students started bringing them to class in the first place. Heck I remember back in my 1st year, Acadia University (Nova Scotia, Canada) was one the the first to entirely wire there campus, every chair in every lecture hall had an ethernet port, and every 1st year student was issued a IBM thinkpad as part of their package (yes they had some of the highest tution in the country for undergrad)... This started two spin offs. 1)Wanna laptop, just go steal one, drunk students don't lock their doors anyway, and 2)Profs started getting their collective panties in a bunch and banning the laptops (The university Admin loved this, totally wired, but not allowed!).... as students weren't as in TFA taking notes and not thinking, but rather checking e-mail, IM chatting, hell playing LAN games, normal games, and everything but hearing what said prof had to say... not to mention the infernal clickity clack of keyboards while they were trying to speak.... that was back in '95..... Mmmm carry the one.... OVER A DECADE AGO! Yes this sure is news to be posted to a news service on the "cutting edge" of technology etc... Anyway kinda funny...
Norway's economy is heavily dependant on oil? That I would not have guessed. Is it mostly off shore operations? I don't seem to remember them having huge oil fields or sands.
As I mention I figured there would be problems, as there are here in Canada (which are perpetually trying to fix), a common one is lengh of waiting for service. However it is somewhat of a comfort to know that if you do get seriously sick, you can get help. It may take longer than you might like, but it will happen. As I said not a perfect system, but one that seems to keep on running.
To my knowlege if the same thing happend in the USA, you either don't get treatment EVER (as opposed to waiting a year or so), and die, or you go so far into debt to afford the treatment, that when you are better you might wish you had died, as you will be finicially destroyed for the rest of your days....
While I don't see Norway, neither do I see the USA in those lists either... However I see Canada, and Finland, and Netherlands.... I also see China, Korea, and Japan... and Liechtenstein so I am not sure if that really means anything by itself.
Note you only have two examples, which are both extreem left socialist COMMUNIST states.
I think what the parent post was trying to say is that socalist leaning socities are better in general. He admitted to being from Canada (as do I) which is a socialist democratic federation (if I had to discribe it, I didn't look this up somewhere). So the parent is looking at MODERATE socialist contries and their governments such as Sweden.
It is a pretty long streach (ie. stupid) to compare Sweden to either China or old school Russia (in fact China probably has way more in common with the USA than it does with other socialist states, #1 the make up of its economey and trade, #2 guess who ranks #1 and #2 for state sponsored exacutions?, #3 both contries improsion people without trial, or reason, and doesn't always abide with international law in this respect.... etc...).
A better compairson would be to look at other moderated socialist states and see how they are doing these days. Check this link out: Best places to live in the world...
See the top 3? Norway, Sweden, Canada.... all are moderate socialist states (hell Norway's tax is like 50% or something crazy but everyone gets free school and medical, so everyone likes), same can be said for Sweden and Canada. Problems with all systems of course but they seem to be trundleing along pretty good none the less...
In fact look at the entire list, I see 5 right away that could be in the same category.... I would guess the ONLY reason the USA is even there at all is it has the highest GDP by far of all those listed. However with how things are being run these days you have to wonder how long that will hold up (from my point of view you can only aquire so much debt before you start running into finicial trouble...)
LOL TW2002.... I used to love that game! along with all the other turn based "door" games located on various BBS's back in the day... Getting a 2400bps modem also forced my parents to get a 2nd phone line... Parents were constantly picking up line upstairs, and getting the "WIIIRRRR SCCCCHHHHHKKKKKK GAAAHHHHH" noise on the phone, while they could here me or my sister saying "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screeming as we get kicked off whatever we were doing... They never quite got why we HAD to logon at a certain time of day (to get our turns in).
I also started on the TRS "Trash" 80, even got the 64k (!!!!) extra memory, and the tape drive (that we could never get to work properly)... We also briefly had a VIC20 for awhile, but It wasn't very impressive, particulary when I had a friend that had a C64... which was more of a console to us than a real computer, all we did was play video games on it constantly. The first "Real" computer I would say I got was a 286 clone, as it was the first computer that you could really do stuff with! We used a dos shell with it, and later upgrated the amber monitor to a color one. We had a dot matrix printer with it, and a 2400 baud modem, that that was what got me interested in computers really. Was A) going onto BBS's and B) trying to get games to run on the stupid thing (Remember EMS and XMS memory, and all the crazy bat files etc...) I distinctly remember downloading this one game that was OVER 500k in size, and that was like amazinly huge! TW2002 was like WOW today I think.....
What I think is of more interest is the result of that.
#1 You said 40years at CURRENT consumption. I think that is a very conservative number, I think it is more like 20 years before they are done. More countries are using more oil, countries that are not westren. India and China to name two heavies. Think of their oil consumption in say 5 or 10 years. Also it isn't a factor of when their wells run dry, its a factor of how profitable it is to extract that oil, once you drop below a certain threshold, its isn't worth the bother anymore. Combine this with the fact that most of those contries total GDP and economy are HEAVILLY dependant upon that resourse, how much would it take to destablise their economies so much as to make a working relationship impossable.
So total economic faliure and poverty. Hmmm I wonder how happy those Muslim's will be then? More peace loving or more violent? I am thinking the later.
What I think some of the religious muslim leaders have to realise is that perhaps issueing a fatwa and condeming someting isn't enough. If your religion is the cause for some pretty wide spread chaos like it has in the past you better be ready to stand up and defend you religion against it. Otherwise people will start taking REAL offence after awhile. While the west is the target now (for whatever reason), it seems europe isn't immune either.
I know there are a lot of Musilms out there. I also know they are probably in most countries. I also know most are probably very nice people. I however also know that there are a LOT more non-muslims out there in the world (I am pretty sure there are more non-muslims in China and India). All this violent action that has been taken on behalf of the "Muslim" religion has not endeared many people.
So in summary, unless THEY do something about it the end result is that your centers of Muslim religion will be African (I am pretty sure it is the dominate religion, I could be wrong here), who is poor now, and unless something drastically changes will be poor in the future. Middle-eastern, when the oil is gone, very poor, and unstable, and I believe there is a bunch in South Asia like Indonesiea etc... So they will be poor, and vastly outnumbered (unless they start converting people like mad in the west, europe, india, china), and generally not very well liked, or trusted. Not a very good situation to be in. Many of those factors are not anyones fault (just current trends, that being poverty in Africa, and oil consumptions), however when in that situation it is probably in the best interst to be well liked rather than not.
I of course made some pretty sweeping generalizations so before I get flamed to death, I am only talking in very general terms. Yes I do realise that some African contries are economically quite sound, I also know some are the same in the Middle-East and not all are dependant upon oil, etc... I also know that between now and then much can happen. I am only saying that generally speaking, extrapolating from what is the current situation, and sentiment, unless something is done the Muslim religion I think will be in a lot of trouble. Which of course is only a opinion, and I am often wrong.
my vote is for Gnapster! Bc that is what the evil purple smurfs say... "GNAP!" Somehow poetic justice for the company that said "Do no evil" and now that statement seems a bit dubious with the censorship in china etc.... Perhaps they were bitten "GNAP!"
Actually I think you are wrong. I know in Canada this interpretation of the law has been around a long time. Back in the days before the internet for me, when it was only available in Universities etc... I used to go on BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) all the time and I noticed the first few legal cases surrounding that medium.
I would agree with the idea that you could host 10 million mp3's on a ftp site and so long as no one downloads them you are ok. However as soon as someone does you could potentially get into trouble.
What it comes down to is "INTENT". Did you host 10 million mp3's with the INTENT of distrabution or not. If you are hosting an FTP site with 10 million mp3's it would be very hard to argue in any court of law that you intent was not to freely distribute that material. The difference here is say having a bunch of songs on your computer and someone hacks in and steals your mp3's, then your INTENT was not to distribute, and thus would not get into trouble.
So your analogy of someone who has CD's in their house, and someone breaks in, doesn't quite stand up. That would be like my last example. Hosting an FTP site with mp3's is like leaving your door open and then advertising in the paper that you have free CD's for the taking inside your house and everyone is welcome to them. If you put a disclaimer you MIGHT get away with it (haveing an FTP with mp3's and a note saying don't download these please), but I doubt it.
I know back in the day when they were (in Canada anyway) first trying to figure out copyright(i am pretty sure of this anyway), and electronic files on BBS's there USED to be the provision that if your didn't make a profit from it then it technically wasn't pricary or stealing. So if I hosted a BBS and had a copy of Windowns 3.0 or something for download, so long as I didn't make any money any way off the download of that, then it wasn't considered illegal. This I know changed pretty quickly (probably due to the proliferation of hobby BBS hosting tons of free software for anyone to download).
In closing, if the prosocutor can prove that your INTENT was to distribute copyrighted material, your sunk. The key would be to defend saying it was a mistake, that the ftp was not supposed to be left open. Be aware that upon doing something like that, the onus shifts to you to put adaquite protection (passwords, typical security) to secure your files. If someone were to break your security however, well thats another matter, it wouldn't be your fault, or your intent, so not guilty.
Anyway I looked into this a lot when I was younger as I was into that sort of thing for awhile.
Mr. President,
Our most recent intelligence reports here: http://www.indexmundi.com/en/commodities/minerals/ copper/copper_t20.html
erm... I mean here: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ ci.html
CLEARLY indicate that Augusto PINOCHET left WMD's laying around (you know before he left/exiled)as he wasn't a very nice person. I recommend that we invade post haste to prevent these WMD's from falling into terrorist hands. Of course we will be doing the entire WORLD a HUGE favor in doing so, and thus it would be justified if we help the pooor Chilies "Restructure" their economy, it will probably smooth the transitional process if we get some good wholesom USA companies like Haliburton behind the rebuilding process, you know, to help. Of course they will need to make a profit, as that is the American way right?
So its all set right? We'll go get those WMD right away! Oh your at the ranch that weekend, how about July 17? No thats your Vacation time isn't it....Hmmm Septemberish? Good! USA HO!
Another challenge as I see it is dialoge in the book. An awful lot of the book is esientially Ender the boy genius talking to himself in his head (or thinking to himself). How the hell is that going to translate into movie form? I see only 2 ways to do it and both have the potential to just look stupid if not handeled correctly.
One way is a la Dune and basically whisper throught dialoge during scenes, though this has to be timed correctly and you need gaps in real dialoge to do it. It worked in Dune as everyone was doing this sort of thinking dialoge, with Ender it is mostly just him, so how are you going to shoot it, Ender staring off and zoneing while other people are waiting to for him to finish his internal monologue (I guess it would all be call monologue as there is only Ender). That would probably make him look like a retard rather than a genius.
The Second way I think is even worse, and that is to use the naritive perspective (as if he is recalling the story later for someone), a la wonder years. I aways hated that show, and part of the reason why is I aways thought that way of presenting the show to be awful. Though this perhaps would be the only way to do it. Perhaps use the premis of Val reading Ender's story on the New bugger Planet and proof reading it before sending it home to the nets (or ender doing the same thing), but then you would have to do the begining of the movie differently (before sent away to battleroom place), or only do it from Ender's perspective and ingore Val's and Peter's.
Anyway just one more problem to translate this book to bigscreen...
I am just waiting for a version of hack (or Moria, or rogue, or whatever you want to call it) to go MMORPG. I bet the overhead would be a lot less.:You kill helpless begger:you rob helpless begger:you eat moldy slime...MOre...:Moldy slime is posion, you die.
ah memories....
I can just see the menu screen.... Pick your avatar:
Thats your DM's fault then... unless you hardly got together to play at all, there is no way you should have level 3-4 players after 3 years of playing. If anything DM's have to watch players leveling too quickly and too powerful items, than the oppsite. Was he the stingyest xp DM ever, after killing 10 beholders did he give you like 100xp total to split among your 10 party group or something!
I know after I played for 3 years I had a level 49 Necromancer/Mindslayer who had a multibarreled wand of mega-death...
Well not quite that bad, but I did have multiple players, one of which was pretty retardedly powerful, near the end of my gaming days it got pretty silly (Level 20 Fire Wizard with BOTH the Staff of Magi, and Staff of Power, and I constructed a level 9 spell that let me cast an enhanced fireball spell as well as discharge both staffs at the same time triangulating it all into one great big thermonuclear fireball where I essientially took all the d6 dice I had (it was like 30 or 40), and kill just about anything. I was, fortunatly immune to fire, but unfortunatly for the rest of my party they were not:) We also got into tons of fights together. My favorite was my buddy was a Paladin and he would smite me all the time, knowing that I couldn't do anything about it as he was immune up to a certain level Wizard. One day he smote me but forgot what level I was and reduced him to ash (well he had a life amulate so he was ok in the end). We also had two scheeming thieves, that would be constanting passing notes to each other, and to the DM, stealing our treasure, and trying to position them selves to backstab the rest of us, nasty buggers those.
Anyway the long story short about D&D is the game is made by the DM, so if you have a good on the game can be great, but if you have a poor one it can be a big waste of time.
Wow its amazing how much of this crap I remember, I am so so ashamed!:( (Maybe I shoudl post Anon? Nah!)
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one who while reading this heard a sarcastic comic book guy voice instead of the probably inteded sweet valley high teen...
Your arguement is kinda flawed. It would be like me saying, well I tried to sell bags of doorknobs in a pizza shop, but no one bought any, therefore one one wants doorknobs.
.mp3" it will fly off your computer like hotcakes. You will however invoke the ire of some pretty confused people.
The fact is there isn't a lot of scanned books via p2p, so therefore why would anyone search for it there?
p2p in my experiance is used exactly for 3 things: Porn, Music, Software (probably in that order).
So unless things change drastically, unless you are offering those 3 commodities, odds are no one is going there to look for it and thus will not search for it, and thus will not download it.
If however you renamed your boring books from "Trevanian.doc" or whatever it is to "Porn Tits Ass Metallica Madonna Trevanian.mpg or
To summerize I don't try and buy (or even ask) to buy a 12 of beer at Toys R' Us, as I know they don't have any.
I have commented on this before, as it is something that ticked me off. I work for a large company, in which they recently (last several years) changed their security policy (no idea why, just out of the blue). So now not only do I have a ton of passwords, they also have to change every stupid month, and cannot be the same or like the previous passwords. Talk about a nightmare. I have accounts all over for various networks, different corporate application, etc... I have little spidery arms out everywhere in IT, and it is hard enough to remember them all. I tried to explain to the IT people (I work with IT, but not for the people who are in change of our networks or IT security policies), that this sort of policy while you think you are doing good is really very very bad. Where I had a handfull of passwords that I used to use, I was very protective of them and they were quite good. Now everyone is contantly forgeting their passwords so they end up calling the stupid help desk to get their password reset or released to them. Worse is people finally just get fed up and write them on a sticky note and stick it to their computer. Yeah, good policy in action there.
Well seeing as no one heeded my warning, I found a fun way to protest:
Many of my Passwords now are something of this flavor: StupidRandomPass#19 or ITSecurityPolicySucks, or JustAnotherPass#11, IT&SecurityEqual0, etc.... So every time I forget a password, I get a little laugh when I have to contact the smuck at the Help desk to get my password.... ah fun times. (note none of those are are my passwords)
Buisness speek mixed with IT jargon, mixed with government anachronisms. Thats my job.
I remember this one meeting (it was a SCIM (pronounced like skim milk though of course) meeting, see they even use anachoranisms for meething names! I know the last two are Information Managment, S is probably service, anyway lame). I I found myself at mid meeting trying I VERY hardest not to laugh out loud, as it was just so silly and absurd. It really was a different language they were speaking. Mix in the usual IT anachornisms, like IT, IIS, html, cpu, ATA, etc... add a dab of Government sections like, ITSB, SSB, OSS, etc... then some programs like, LIDS, OLID, etc... then add some applications names, NRVIS, LIS, etc... then add some OTHER buisness names like BLT, etc.... and finally as a coup de grace start spouting sentances that make no sense like "thats a straw dog" and other phrases that are useless. Mix this up with a healthy dose of nomal biz-speak with words like "action items" and "synergy" (which I think is my least favorite word in the enitre world, as soon as someome utters that word at me, I assume whatever else follows is total bullshit, and disregard whatever that person says), or proactive, deliverables, realign, horizontal this and vertical that, blah blah blah..... Now mix that all together and puke it out for a 3 hour meeting, and wonder how you are still sane.
Thats my rant.
on a side note, I got a email from a friend at work, it only consisted of 3 sentances. It contained over 17 anachronisms. I did LOL for that one. The scary thing was that she wasn't trying to be funny.
Well I think you are right about one thing, the nukes that is. Whenever I think of Enviromentalists, the first thing that comes to mind are nutjobs, hippies, and the like. That may sound like a right wing thing to say (I am actually pretty leftist), if you think about it there is no requirement for an "Enviromentalist" to actaully be any kind of "Scientist", if fact most are not, but yet will regergatate whatever information seems to agree with them, ignoring all else. There are nutjob Scientists as well, but I think they are rather the minority (though perhaps loud, with perhaps vested interest, grants etc...).
As mentioned previously anything that can be done to reduce the oil consumption of the US is probably a good thing, but I also agree that trying to regulate MPG is probably a waste of time. A better use would be to raise the tax on oil, and then use part of that money collected to subsidize more enviro friendly transportation such as mass transport and hybrid cars (which are really too expensive to be economical), etc... That way sure you can go buy a Hummer and suck down 10mpg, buy you pay for it. It would also make the decision to be enviromentally friendly "easier"....
A larger problem than oil I think is general energy production. In the US COAL is the domminate form, as it is (to a larger extent) in China. Both the US and China are the largest users of Coal, and thus the biggest polluters in the world (no wonder neither wish to sign the Koyoto Protocals, it is all negitive for them). Why use coal, well because it is both plentiful and cheap is both countries. I mean REALLY cheap. Its really dirty also. Coal plants probably pollute about as much as all oil consumption (or close to it, but I am really guessing here). Problem is, if NOT coal then what, the US and others gots to have power! Here is where the enviromentalists come in... I have had so many arguements it makes me sick. They would have you believe between Hydro, Solar, and Wind all the power we could ever need could be produced... Yeah, and the bunnies and dolphins and puppies can all play together is fields of candy. Fact is Hydro is limited to certain areas, and has its own enviromental effects, Wind and Solar are just too inefficent right now to be of any use (though every bit helps, the idea of tax breaks for residentual, and commercial buildings who intergrate these would be great). That leaves but one source of energy. No I am not talking Geothermal, unless you live in a place like Iceland.... I am taking Nukes.
Its gota bad rap and enviromentalists hate it for some reason, that even they I don't think quite understand. The only problem as I see it, is they are extreemly expensive to get started (and take a long time to build). So getting governments to switch from cheap, pleantiful, yet dirty coal, to Nukes would take some real pressure and detirmnation and willingness...
Anyway thats my rant on energy...
Like omfg!111!!!
Anyway really profs have been doing this since students started bringing them to class in the first place. Heck I remember back in my 1st year, Acadia University (Nova Scotia, Canada) was one the the first to entirely wire there campus, every chair in every lecture hall had an ethernet port, and every 1st year student was issued a IBM thinkpad as part of their package (yes they had some of the highest tution in the country for undergrad)... This started two spin offs. 1)Wanna laptop, just go steal one, drunk students don't lock their doors anyway, and 2)Profs started getting their collective panties in a bunch and banning the laptops (The university Admin loved this, totally wired, but not allowed!).... as students weren't as in TFA taking notes and not thinking, but rather checking e-mail, IM chatting, hell playing LAN games, normal games, and everything but hearing what said prof had to say... not to mention the infernal clickity clack of keyboards while they were trying to speak.... that was back in '95..... Mmmm carry the one.... OVER A DECADE AGO! Yes this sure is news to be posted to a news service on the "cutting edge" of technology etc... Anyway kinda funny...
Rant. Rant. Rant. [[[[END TRANSMISSION]]]]
Norway's economy is heavily dependant on oil? That I would not have guessed. Is it mostly off shore operations? I don't seem to remember them having huge oil fields or sands.
As I mention I figured there would be problems, as there are here in Canada (which are perpetually trying to fix), a common one is lengh of waiting for service. However it is somewhat of a comfort to know that if you do get seriously sick, you can get help. It may take longer than you might like, but it will happen. As I said not a perfect system, but one that seems to keep on running.
To my knowlege if the same thing happend in the USA, you either don't get treatment EVER (as opposed to waiting a year or so), and die, or you go so far into debt to afford the treatment, that when you are better you might wish you had died, as you will be finicially destroyed for the rest of your days....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4073753.stm
While I don't see Norway, neither do I see the USA in those lists either... However I see Canada, and Finland, and Netherlands.... I also see China, Korea, and Japan... and Liechtenstein so I am not sure if that really means anything by itself.
Note you only have two examples, which are both extreem left socialist COMMUNIST states.
t m
I think what the parent post was trying to say is that socalist leaning socities are better in general. He admitted to being from Canada (as do I) which is a socialist democratic federation (if I had to discribe it, I didn't look this up somewhere). So the parent is looking at MODERATE socialist contries and their governments such as Sweden.
It is a pretty long streach (ie. stupid) to compare Sweden to either China or old school Russia (in fact China probably has way more in common with the USA than it does with other socialist states, #1 the make up of its economey and trade, #2 guess who ranks #1 and #2 for state sponsored exacutions?, #3 both contries improsion people without trial, or reason, and doesn't always abide with international law in this respect.... etc...).
A better compairson would be to look at other moderated socialist states and see how they are doing these days. Check this link out: Best places to live in the world...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2149799.s
See the top 3? Norway, Sweden, Canada.... all are moderate socialist states (hell Norway's tax is like 50% or something crazy but everyone gets free school and medical, so everyone likes), same can be said for Sweden and Canada. Problems with all systems of course but they seem to be trundleing along pretty good none the less...
In fact look at the entire list, I see 5 right away that could be in the same category.... I would guess the ONLY reason the USA is even there at all is it has the highest GDP by far of all those listed. However with how things are being run these days you have to wonder how long that will hold up (from my point of view you can only aquire so much debt before you start running into finicial trouble...)
Anyway thats my two cents....
That depends... are we still taking China here or the US?
Most other big hardware sellers will do buisness with Canadians (Tiger Direct etc...), why won't Newegg? It's because they hate us isn't it!
LOL TW2002.... I used to love that game! along with all the other turn based "door" games located on various BBS's back in the day... Getting a 2400bps modem also forced my parents to get a 2nd phone line... Parents were constantly picking up line upstairs, and getting the "WIIIRRRR SCCCCHHHHHKKKKKK GAAAHHHHH" noise on the phone, while they could here me or my sister saying "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screeming as we get kicked off whatever we were doing... They never quite got why we HAD to logon at a certain time of day (to get our turns in).
I also started on the TRS "Trash" 80, even got the 64k (!!!!) extra memory, and the tape drive (that we could never get to work properly)... We also briefly had a VIC20 for awhile, but It wasn't very impressive, particulary when I had a friend that had a C64... which was more of a console to us than a real computer, all we did was play video games on it constantly. The first "Real" computer I would say I got was a 286 clone, as it was the first computer that you could really do stuff with! We used a dos shell with it, and later upgrated the amber monitor to a color one. We had a dot matrix printer with it, and a 2400 baud modem, that that was what got me interested in computers really. Was A) going onto BBS's and B) trying to get games to run on the stupid thing (Remember EMS and XMS memory, and all the crazy bat files etc...) I distinctly remember downloading this one game that was OVER 500k in size, and that was like amazinly huge! TW2002 was like WOW today I think.....
Ahhhhh good times.....
Mmmmm can't wait to add the 129$ Starwars Trilogy: Blue-Ray Edition... to my collection.
"But since the riots in Sydney over the lawful arrest and conviction of some criminals, how can anyone possibly defend Australians?"
:)
Crimnals in a former prison colony? Go figure eh?
OK I kid I kid! Sorry! Yes I know I am going to hell...
I love Aussie's!
What I think is of more interest is the result of that.
#1 You said 40years at CURRENT consumption. I think that is a very conservative number, I think it is more like 20 years before they are done. More countries are using more oil, countries that are not westren. India and China to name two heavies. Think of their oil consumption in say 5 or 10 years. Also it isn't a factor of when their wells run dry, its a factor of how profitable it is to extract that oil, once you drop below a certain threshold, its isn't worth the bother anymore. Combine this with the fact that most of those contries total GDP and economy are HEAVILLY dependant upon that resourse, how much would it take to destablise their economies so much as to make a working relationship impossable.
So total economic faliure and poverty. Hmmm I wonder how happy those Muslim's will be then? More peace loving or more violent? I am thinking the later.
What I think some of the religious muslim leaders have to realise is that perhaps issueing a fatwa and condeming someting isn't enough. If your religion is the cause for some pretty wide spread chaos like it has in the past you better be ready to stand up and defend you religion against it. Otherwise people will start taking REAL offence after awhile. While the west is the target now (for whatever reason), it seems europe isn't immune either.
I know there are a lot of Musilms out there. I also know they are probably in most countries. I also know most are probably very nice people. I however also know that there are a LOT more non-muslims out there in the world (I am pretty sure there are more non-muslims in China and India). All this violent action that has been taken on behalf of the "Muslim" religion has not endeared many people.
So in summary, unless THEY do something about it the end result is that your centers of Muslim religion will be African (I am pretty sure it is the dominate religion, I could be wrong here), who is poor now, and unless something drastically changes will be poor in the future. Middle-eastern, when the oil is gone, very poor, and unstable, and I believe there is a bunch in South Asia like Indonesiea etc... So they will be poor, and vastly outnumbered (unless they start converting people like mad in the west, europe, india, china), and generally not very well liked, or trusted. Not a very good situation to be in. Many of those factors are not anyones fault (just current trends, that being poverty in Africa, and oil consumptions), however when in that situation it is probably in the best interst to be well liked rather than not.
I of course made some pretty sweeping generalizations so before I get flamed to death, I am only talking in very general terms. Yes I do realise that some African contries are economically quite sound, I also know some are the same in the Middle-East and not all are dependant upon oil, etc... I also know that between now and then much can happen. I am only saying that generally speaking, extrapolating from what is the current situation, and sentiment, unless something is done the Muslim religion I think will be in a lot of trouble. Which of course is only a opinion, and I am often wrong.
I know once i've had a few drinks I usually feel no pain.... Hic!
my vote is for Gnapster! Bc that is what the evil purple smurfs say... "GNAP!" Somehow poetic justice for the company that said "Do no evil" and now that statement seems a bit dubious with the censorship in china etc.... Perhaps they were bitten "GNAP!"
Wouldn't that be Chuck Norris Design (I hesitate to insert intelligence in there)...
Actually I think you are wrong. I know in Canada this interpretation of the law has been around a long time. Back in the days before the internet for me, when it was only available in Universities etc... I used to go on BBS's (Bulletin Board Systems) all the time and I noticed the first few legal cases surrounding that medium.
I would agree with the idea that you could host 10 million mp3's on a ftp site and so long as no one downloads them you are ok. However as soon as someone does you could potentially get into trouble.
What it comes down to is "INTENT". Did you host 10 million mp3's with the INTENT of distrabution or not. If you are hosting an FTP site with 10 million mp3's it would be very hard to argue in any court of law that you intent was not to freely distribute that material. The difference here is say having a bunch of songs on your computer and someone hacks in and steals your mp3's, then your INTENT was not to distribute, and thus would not get into trouble.
So your analogy of someone who has CD's in their house, and someone breaks in, doesn't quite stand up. That would be like my last example. Hosting an FTP site with mp3's is like leaving your door open and then advertising in the paper that you have free CD's for the taking inside your house and everyone is welcome to them. If you put a disclaimer you MIGHT get away with it (haveing an FTP with mp3's and a note saying don't download these please), but I doubt it.
I know back in the day when they were (in Canada anyway) first trying to figure out copyright(i am pretty sure of this anyway), and electronic files on BBS's there USED to be the provision that if your didn't make a profit from it then it technically wasn't pricary or stealing. So if I hosted a BBS and had a copy of Windowns 3.0 or something for download, so long as I didn't make any money any way off the download of that, then it wasn't considered illegal. This I know changed pretty quickly (probably due to the proliferation of hobby BBS hosting tons of free software for anyone to download).
In closing, if the prosocutor can prove that your INTENT was to distribute copyrighted material, your sunk. The key would be to defend saying it was a mistake, that the ftp was not supposed to be left open. Be aware that upon doing something like that, the onus shifts to you to put adaquite protection (passwords, typical security) to secure your files. If someone were to break your security however, well thats another matter, it wouldn't be your fault, or your intent, so not guilty.
Anyway I looked into this a lot when I was younger as I was into that sort of thing for awhile.
Cheers,
DarthVain
Ok, I shouldn't have laughed at that, but I did.
Mr. President,/ copper/copper_t20.html/ ci.html
Our most recent intelligence reports here:
http://www.indexmundi.com/en/commodities/minerals
erm... I mean here:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
CLEARLY indicate that Augusto PINOCHET left WMD's laying around (you know before he left/exiled)as he wasn't a very nice person. I recommend that we invade post haste to prevent these WMD's from falling into terrorist hands. Of course we will be doing the entire WORLD a HUGE favor in doing so, and thus it would be justified if we help the pooor Chilies "Restructure" their economy, it will probably smooth the transitional process if we get some good wholesom USA companies like Haliburton behind the rebuilding process, you know, to help. Of course they will need to make a profit, as that is the American way right?
So its all set right? We'll go get those WMD right away! Oh your at the ranch that weekend, how about July 17? No thats your Vacation time isn't it....Hmmm Septemberish? Good! USA HO!
Fool me once shame on you
Fool me twice shame on me
Fool me thrice erm well I forget this thing, but you get the idea...
Another challenge as I see it is dialoge in the book. An awful lot of the book is esientially Ender the boy genius talking to himself in his head (or thinking to himself). How the hell is that going to translate into movie form? I see only 2 ways to do it and both have the potential to just look stupid if not handeled correctly.
One way is a la Dune and basically whisper throught dialoge during scenes, though this has to be timed correctly and you need gaps in real dialoge to do it. It worked in Dune as everyone was doing this sort of thinking dialoge, with Ender it is mostly just him, so how are you going to shoot it, Ender staring off and zoneing while other people are waiting to for him to finish his internal monologue (I guess it would all be call monologue as there is only Ender). That would probably make him look like a retard rather than a genius.
The Second way I think is even worse, and that is to use the naritive perspective (as if he is recalling the story later for someone), a la wonder years. I aways hated that show, and part of the reason why is I aways thought that way of presenting the show to be awful. Though this perhaps would be the only way to do it. Perhaps use the premis of Val reading Ender's story on the New bugger Planet and proof reading it before sending it home to the nets (or ender doing the same thing), but then you would have to do the begining of the movie differently (before sent away to battleroom place), or only do it from Ender's perspective and ingore Val's and Peter's.
Anyway just one more problem to translate this book to bigscreen...
I am just waiting for a version of hack (or Moria, or rogue, or whatever you want to call it) to go MMORPG. I bet the overhead would be a lot less. :You kill helpless begger :you rob helpless begger :you eat moldy slime...MOre... :Moldy slime is posion, you die.
ah memories....
I can just see the menu screen....
Pick your avatar:
K: Knight
T: Thief
P: Priest
W: Wizard
gold I tell you. GOLD!
Thats your DM's fault then... unless you hardly got together to play at all, there is no way you should have level 3-4 players after 3 years of playing. If anything DM's have to watch players leveling too quickly and too powerful items, than the oppsite. Was he the stingyest xp DM ever, after killing 10 beholders did he give you like 100xp total to split among your 10 party group or something!
:) We also got into tons of fights together. My favorite was my buddy was a Paladin and he would smite me all the time, knowing that I couldn't do anything about it as he was immune up to a certain level Wizard. One day he smote me but forgot what level I was and reduced him to ash (well he had a life amulate so he was ok in the end). We also had two scheeming thieves, that would be constanting passing notes to each other, and to the DM, stealing our treasure, and trying to position them selves to backstab the rest of us, nasty buggers those.
:( (Maybe I shoudl post Anon? Nah!)
I know after I played for 3 years I had a level 49 Necromancer/Mindslayer who had a multibarreled wand of mega-death...
Well not quite that bad, but I did have multiple players, one of which was pretty retardedly powerful, near the end of my gaming days it got pretty silly (Level 20 Fire Wizard with BOTH the Staff of Magi, and Staff of Power, and I constructed a level 9 spell that let me cast an enhanced fireball spell as well as discharge both staffs at the same time triangulating it all into one great big thermonuclear fireball where I essientially took all the d6 dice I had (it was like 30 or 40), and kill just about anything. I was, fortunatly immune to fire, but unfortunatly for the rest of my party they were not
Anyway the long story short about D&D is the game is made by the DM, so if you have a good on the game can be great, but if you have a poor one it can be a big waste of time.
Wow its amazing how much of this crap I remember, I am so so ashamed!
Hey what happens under the ice.... STAYS under the ice!