The government is here not to encourage or discourage anything. It is here to lay down a few absolutes (Life, Liberty, Property), and to make you aware of the consequences of infringing on those absolutes.
I would argue that informing the citenzry of the consequences (and perhaps enforcing the consequences) would constitute a form of encouragement (to stay with the rules) or discouragement (for breaking them).
If you are self-employed (e.g. doctor, lawyer) and buy a vehicle that weighs 6000 lbs or more (e.g H2), then you can write off the cost of the vehicle against your income as a business expense. Ok, I'm not a tax lawyer so I may have the precise wording or details wrong, but the end result is that you purchase the H2 for $50k and save $20k on income tax. You have to buy a lot of fuel for the government to get that $20k back.
Thirty feet long, 2 lanes wide, it's sixty-five tons of American Pride --- Canyonero!
1. We are concerned with the will of the people, not the candidates themselves.
Except in the case of a U.S. presidential election, where we are concerned about the will of the electoral college, not the will of the people.
Margins of error only apply to polls, not actual elections.
Any voting system will have an accurcy rate. Many have an accuracy rate of less than 100%. That is, the voting system will sometimes fail to accurately count the intended selection of a voter. Examples would be those infamous butterfly ballots which allegedly resulted in many voters accidentally voting for Buchanan when they did not want to, and punched card ballots in which "hanging chads" lead to question the intent of the voter.
So, given less than 100% accuracy it becomes impossible to state definitively what the will of the electorate (that showed up to vote) was without qualifying it with a probability. For example, in a close election one might say that "We are 95% confident that the results of the vote indicate that candidate X won."
It means that it was a lot more fun to take over and run a country with a huge budget surplus and a military that is not slogging through a protracted insurgency in a foreign country. Remember the good old days of 2000?
With the treasury plundering complete, and insufficient resources to invade any more countries for the forseeable future, the next 4 years just aren't going to be nearly as much fun as the first 4. So, it's a good time to ditch any responsibility for trying to fix the mess and cash in with some lucrative private sector job, perhaps in lobbying or something else that allows you to convert your legacy government connections to cash.
I believe in smaller government, less taxes, less intervention in people's lives (at home and abroad) by the government.
Republicans have shown themselves to be the opposite of that.
One theory is that the Republicans are trying to reduce the entitlement programs (like Medicare) by growing them (and other government spending) in an uncontrollable fashion while cutting taxes, to the point where force cutbacks across the board become mandatory. I doubt that it is intentional. I think that the Republicans are just incompetent fiscal managers.
Currently, the moderate vote is split between dems and repubs. So, a moderate Republican like McCain can't get nominated because his party is dominated by the more extremist fringe. But if all the moderate registered Democrats switched to the Republican party, wouldn't moderate Republicans have a better chance of getting nominated?
The phrases that come to mind are:
If you can't beat them, join them.
Embrace and extend (the Republican party into a more moderate future.)
Why don't they have a 2005 target? Why did they set the implementation date so far into the future? If reducing CO2 emissions is important, shouldn't those concerned start reducing today?
The answer, of course, is that many of the politicians who have signed on to Kyoto have done so for short term political gain. It makes everyone feel good that something is being done, while they don't actually have to do anything painful.
If push comes to shove and people are actually forced to curtail their lifestyle in 2012 in order to comply with the protocol, then you will see those people dropping out of it. After all, there are no penalties for dropping out. So, if you have to choose between spending billions of dollars to reduce C02 production, or buy CO2 credits from Russia for billions of dollars, or drop out and keep your money, which one will the voters choose?
The only way that Kyoto will be complied with is if technology improves (e.g. more fuel efficient vehicles and energy production) to the point where painful choices are not required. And that improvement will happen regardless of Kyoto.
one could change a few bytes in the ballot definition file and votes for the two major Presidential candidates would be swapped
If someone had swapped the counts in Ohio, would that have been such a bad thing?:-)
Or did they?! I guess we'll never know.
Seriously, I can't understand the intense desire to automate voting. Is the cost of voting such a large percentage of GNP that reducing the labor involved frees up a substantial number of workers to be involved in more productive endeavours? If not, then I would think that the loss of confidence in the process from having so much in the hands of machines rather than people would make automation be clearly the wrong choice.
Fourth you give the machines control of SkyNet......and the next thing you know you're strapped down in bed in a permanent dream state virtual reality with an army of robots harvesting your nervous system for energy!
That's the not the future I want. (Unless I'm rich and the chicks are all hot in said virtual reality.:)
When the government spends money, that money comes from taxpayers. Under Bush, U.S. government spending, including discretionary non-military non-security items, has grown dramatically. As a result, the amount of money that the U.S. Treasury needs to collect from taxpayers will be higher than if U.S. spending had been under control.
Bush has also chosen to pay for this spending by borrowing money. When you borrow money you have to pay back not just the principal, but also the interest, which raises government spending even more.
So, Bush has raised taxes. He has also redistributed the tax burden, primarily to taxpayers in future years but also from higher income earners to those with less. If you are planning on dying soon, leaving the country, or becoming richer then I suppose you could say that is a positive for you.
There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq during the month of January.....
Is this more "only American lives count" math? Or does it include the count of those liberated folks who were killed as "collateral damage" or deliberately by either the insurgents or coalition forces?
FDR...led us into World War II. Germany never attacked us
Wrong. Germany declared war on the U.S. on Dec. 11, 1941, before the U.S. congress had any plans to declare war on Germany. Germany then began unrestricted U-boat warfare against the U.S. off the east coast.
Clinton...went to war in Bosnia [...], Bosnia never attacked us.
Clinton got NATO to go to war in Bosnia for humanitarian reasons. UN efforts to protect civilians and stabilize Bosnia had been very unsuccessful (e.g. thousands of people massacred at Srebrenica, a UN declared safe-haven, under the noses of UN peackeepers). U.S. military casualties as a result of the operation: 0. Bosnia stabilized thanks to overwhelming military presence: Yes.
Compare that to Iraq. Months after the invasion, after WMD pretext is revealed to be false, Bush declares that purpose of war was humanitarian, and he would have invaded even if he knew there were no WMD. U.S. military casualties as a result of the invasion: 1100+ killed 8000+ wounded. Iraq stabilized thanks to underwhelming military presence: No, thousands of Iraqi civilians killed and injured, kidnapping and car bombs and assasinations are daily events.
The Kerry supporters are complaining about how long the war is taking, but...It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation.
What a nutty comparison. The Waco incident was a hostage situation in which (after the botched initial raid) the government tried for 50 days to negotiate with the Davidians to try to save as many people as possible. The final assault lasted maybe an hour of tear gas being injected into the buildings, at which point the Davidians set the buildings on fire and mostly burned themselves to death. Game over.
Iraq has been 18+ months, there are many insurgents still alive, and those that are willing to commit suicide like the Davidians generally try to take as many U.S. soldiers or cooperating Iraqis with them as possible.
Hitler declared war on the U.S. on Dec. 11, 1941. That was prior to any declaration of war on Germany by the U.S. If Hitler hadn't declared war, then the U.S. would have probably devoted the vast majority of its effort to defeating Japan, instead of adopting a "Germany first" war policy. End result probably would have been roughly the same (Roosevelt had been supporting Britain against Hitler for years with lend-lease military equipment), except that perhaps Dresden would have been A-bombed instead of Hiroshima and the dividing line between Soviet dominated Europe and the rest would have been further west.
Oh, and Korea would probably not have been split down the middle into North and South. It got split in half because the U.S. requested Soviet assistance against Japan at the tail end of WW2, which was possible because Germany was defeated so the Soviets had a large army available for use.
Completely agree. Voting and vote counting is too important to have machines doing the tallying. How much money is saved by using machines instead of hand counts? Given the risks (lots of litigation, accusations of stealing the election, loss of faith in the process, lack of a mandate for the 'victor') I think that the use of machines has made voting more expensive and less reliable.
The only time a machine should be used is as an aid to fill out a paper ballot. For example, a touchscreen machine could be used to input info and have it spit out a paper ballot, which the voter can then verify before putting it into a ballot box.
Re:Best EQ feature was discontinued a long time ag
on
Everquest 2 NDA Lifted
·
· Score: 0, Troll
It was hilarious and very creative.
Such accolades for something so trivial just demonstrates how pathetic MMORPG gameplay is.
Here is the synopsis of the life of an NPC in a MMORPG: 1. Spawn. 2. Wait around (minutes, hours, days) for some PC to show up. 3. PC assesses whether the risk/reward of killing you is acceptable, if not worthwhile then goto 2. 4. PC attacks and kills you and takes your stuff.
NPCs in MMORPGs are not substantially different from the dots in PacMan mazes from 20 years ago. The game creates lots of them, and you eat them up to get to the next level. I guess now the dots are 3D, wowzers.
There are 2 attributes of today's MMORPGs that keep people playing them: player interaction (e.g. chat) and acquisition of xp/loot to unlock content. The implementation of "Project M" allowed you to play an NPC with: 1. NO CHAT and 2. NO ACQUISITION OF XP/LOOT. So the gameplay is even lamer than regular MMORPG play. Are you really suggesting that this was some sort of breakthrough?
Someone could take it further and offer the XP only upon the monster's death, offer additional XP for "initiating" the attack (so KSers don't get that bonus), etc.
Wouldn't a KSer just initiate attacks on everything an instant before a group hits it, so that the KSer gets the bonus? Any kludge like you propose will be exploited in some way, it just may take the players a few days to figure out how to exploit it.
The root of the problem is the whole "kill critters to get xp" mentality of game design. That makes the whole game revolve around killing things. After all, the only persistent effect that you can have on the world is to acquire xp and loot for your character.
Someone needs to try to innovate a bit. How about your character is trying to change the world, and may have to kill some critters at some point to achieve his objective? Killing the critters is worth 0 xp, so you don't actively seek out combat all the time. Every player is not forced to roleplay a psychopathic mass murderer.
The gaming community really doesn't need yet another killthingsandtaketheirstuff leveling treadmill.
Yeah, it flies in the face of realism, but, it's a game. Realism is just a tool. If realism gets in the way of having fun, then it should be ignored.
I agree with the premise, that realism is secondary. However, a key distinguishing characteristic of MMORPG is player interaction. When the game is separating players in ways that inhibit interaction, it detracts from what the MMORPG could be.
If the players are adventuring in their own private 'instances' then they might as well be playing NWN for free.
Is there some simple (metal?) case that you could slip your RFID-equipped license into that would block snoopers from scanning you until you deliberately removed the license from the case?
We have to remember that we are all immigrants or the children of immigrants, with, of course, the exception of the Native people of this continent.
Scientific theory suggests that the "Native" people of the Americas are descended from immigrants who crossed the Bering Sea land bridge about the time of the last ice age (10,000 years ago). Mr. Cobb, where do you believe that the Native people came from?
Also, do you believe that a person should be treated by the government as a unique individual, irrespective of their ancestry? Or, do you believe that the government should give special preferences to a person based solely upon his or her ancestry?
With UN approval for the creation of a Kurdish state out of northern Iraq, where the Kurds have been holding elections and governing themselves for the last decade, Turkey would not invade said state because of the negative repercussions which would include: 1. Economic sanctions imposed by UN for aggression against a sovereign state. 2. Making the Americans (important strategic partners of Turkey) very upset. 3. Reducing chances of joining EU to zero.
Slashdot Mirror
I would argue that informing the citenzry of the consequences (and perhaps enforcing the consequences) would constitute a form of encouragement (to stay with the rules) or discouragement (for breaking them).
So the government shouldn't encourage citizens to vote?
Getting an education is legal. Working is legal. The government shouldn't encourage citizens to get an education or a job?
I must be misreading your point somehow, or am I a commie nutcase?
If you are self-employed (e.g. doctor, lawyer) and buy a vehicle that weighs 6000 lbs or more (e.g H2), then you can write off the cost of the vehicle against your income as a business expense. Ok, I'm not a tax lawyer so I may have the precise wording or details wrong, but the end result is that you purchase the H2 for $50k and save $20k on income tax. You have to buy a lot of fuel for the government to get that $20k back.
Thirty feet long, 2 lanes wide, it's sixty-five tons of American Pride --- Canyonero!
Except in the case of a U.S. presidential election, where we are concerned about the will of the electoral college, not the will of the people.
Margins of error only apply to polls, not actual elections.
Any voting system will have an accurcy rate. Many have an accuracy rate of less than 100%. That is, the voting system will sometimes fail to accurately count the intended selection of a voter. Examples would be those infamous butterfly ballots which allegedly resulted in many voters accidentally voting for Buchanan when they did not want to, and punched card ballots in which "hanging chads" lead to question the intent of the voter.
So, given less than 100% accuracy it becomes impossible to state definitively what the will of the electorate (that showed up to vote) was without qualifying it with a probability. For example, in a close election one might say that "We are 95% confident that the results of the vote indicate that candidate X won."
It means that it was a lot more fun to take over and run a country with a huge budget surplus and a military that is not slogging through a protracted insurgency in a foreign country. Remember the good old days of 2000?
With the treasury plundering complete, and insufficient resources to invade any more countries for the forseeable future, the next 4 years just aren't going to be nearly as much fun as the first 4. So, it's a good time to ditch any responsibility for trying to fix the mess and cash in with some lucrative private sector job, perhaps in lobbying or something else that allows you to convert your legacy government connections to cash.
Mod me -1, Troll, Insightful.
I believe in smaller government, less taxes, less intervention in people's lives (at home and abroad) by the government.
Republicans have shown themselves to be the opposite of that.
One theory is that the Republicans are trying to reduce the entitlement programs (like Medicare) by growing them (and other government spending) in an uncontrollable fashion while cutting taxes, to the point where force cutbacks across the board become mandatory. I doubt that it is intentional. I think that the Republicans are just incompetent fiscal managers.
The phrases that come to mind are:
If you can't beat them, join them.
Embrace and extend (the Republican party into a more moderate future.)
The answer, of course, is that many of the politicians who have signed on to Kyoto have done so for short term political gain. It makes everyone feel good that something is being done, while they don't actually have to do anything painful.
If push comes to shove and people are actually forced to curtail their lifestyle in 2012 in order to comply with the protocol, then you will see those people dropping out of it. After all, there are no penalties for dropping out. So, if you have to choose between spending billions of dollars to reduce C02 production, or buy CO2 credits from Russia for billions of dollars, or drop out and keep your money, which one will the voters choose?
The only way that Kyoto will be complied with is if technology improves (e.g. more fuel efficient vehicles and energy production) to the point where painful choices are not required. And that improvement will happen regardless of Kyoto.
If someone had swapped the counts in Ohio, would that have been such a bad thing? :-)
Or did they?! I guess we'll never know.
Seriously, I can't understand the intense desire to automate voting. Is the cost of voting such a large percentage of GNP that reducing the labor involved frees up a substantial number of workers to be involved in more productive endeavours? If not, then I would think that the loss of confidence in the process from having so much in the hands of machines rather than people would make automation be clearly the wrong choice.
Second you let machines count the votes...
...and the next thing you know you're strapped down in bed in a permanent dream state virtual reality with an army of robots harvesting your nervous system for energy!
Third you give the machines shotguns...
Fourth you give the machines control of SkyNet...
That's the not the future I want. (Unless I'm rich and the chicks are all hot in said virtual reality.:)
...New Robot Army?
...Luke used his Jedi powers to levitate 3PO over the Ewoks in order to convince them not to cook and eat him and Leia.
All the problems created in the last few years won't suddenly disappear, but at least we won't be digging the hole deeper.
When the government spends money, that money comes from taxpayers. Under Bush, U.S. government spending, including discretionary non-military non-security items, has grown dramatically. As a result, the amount of money that the U.S. Treasury needs to collect from taxpayers will be higher than if U.S. spending had been under control.
Bush has also chosen to pay for this spending by borrowing money. When you borrow money you have to pay back not just the principal, but also the interest, which raises government spending even more.
So, Bush has raised taxes. He has also redistributed the tax burden, primarily to taxpayers in future years but also from higher income earners to those with less. If you are planning on dying soon, leaving the country, or becoming richer then I suppose you could say that is a positive for you.
Is this more "only American lives count" math? Or does it include the count of those liberated folks who were killed as "collateral damage" or deliberately by either the insurgents or coalition forces?
FDR...led us into World War II. Germany never attacked us
Wrong. Germany declared war on the U.S. on Dec. 11, 1941, before the U.S. congress had any plans to declare war on Germany. Germany then began unrestricted U-boat warfare against the U.S. off the east coast.
Clinton...went to war in Bosnia [...], Bosnia never attacked us.
Clinton got NATO to go to war in Bosnia for humanitarian reasons. UN efforts to protect civilians and stabilize Bosnia had been very unsuccessful (e.g. thousands of people massacred at Srebrenica, a UN declared safe-haven, under the noses of UN peackeepers). U.S. military casualties as a result of the operation: 0. Bosnia stabilized thanks to overwhelming military presence: Yes.
Compare that to Iraq. Months after the invasion, after WMD pretext is revealed to be false, Bush declares that purpose of war was humanitarian, and he would have invaded even if he knew there were no WMD. U.S. military casualties as a result of the invasion: 1100+ killed 8000+ wounded. Iraq stabilized thanks to underwhelming military presence: No, thousands of Iraqi civilians killed and injured, kidnapping and car bombs and assasinations are daily events.
The Kerry supporters are complaining about how long the war is taking, but...It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation.
What a nutty comparison. The Waco incident was a hostage situation in which (after the botched initial raid) the government tried for 50 days to negotiate with the Davidians to try to save as many people as possible. The final assault lasted maybe an hour of tear gas being injected into the buildings, at which point the Davidians set the buildings on fire and mostly burned themselves to death. Game over.
Iraq has been 18+ months, there are many insurgents still alive, and those that are willing to commit suicide like the Davidians generally try to take as many U.S. soldiers or cooperating Iraqis with them as possible.
Hitler declared war on the U.S. on Dec. 11, 1941. That was prior to any declaration of war on Germany by the U.S. If Hitler hadn't declared war, then the U.S. would have probably devoted the vast majority of its effort to defeating Japan, instead of adopting a "Germany first" war policy. End result probably would have been roughly the same (Roosevelt had been supporting Britain against Hitler for years with lend-lease military equipment), except that perhaps Dresden would have been A-bombed instead of Hiroshima and the dividing line between Soviet dominated Europe and the rest would have been further west.
Oh, and Korea would probably not have been split down the middle into North and South. It got split in half because the U.S. requested Soviet assistance against Japan at the tail end of WW2, which was possible because Germany was defeated so the Soviets had a large army available for use.
You've just created the perfect system for my EVIL TWIN to ruin my life, again! :)
Completely agree. Voting and vote counting is too important to have machines doing the tallying. How much money is saved by using machines instead of hand counts? Given the risks (lots of litigation, accusations of stealing the election, loss of faith in the process, lack of a mandate for the 'victor') I think that the use of machines has made voting more expensive and less reliable.
The only time a machine should be used is as an aid to fill out a paper ballot. For example, a touchscreen machine could be used to input info and have it spit out a paper ballot, which the voter can then verify before putting it into a ballot box.
Thank you, come again, eh?
Such accolades for something so trivial just demonstrates how pathetic MMORPG gameplay is.
Here is the synopsis of the life of an NPC in a MMORPG: 1. Spawn. 2. Wait around (minutes, hours, days) for some PC to show up. 3. PC assesses whether the risk/reward of killing you is acceptable, if not worthwhile then goto 2. 4. PC attacks and kills you and takes your stuff.
NPCs in MMORPGs are not substantially different from the dots in PacMan mazes from 20 years ago. The game creates lots of them, and you eat them up to get to the next level. I guess now the dots are 3D, wowzers.
There are 2 attributes of today's MMORPGs that keep people playing them: player interaction (e.g. chat) and acquisition of xp/loot to unlock content. The implementation of "Project M" allowed you to play an NPC with: 1. NO CHAT and 2. NO ACQUISITION OF XP/LOOT. So the gameplay is even lamer than regular MMORPG play. Are you really suggesting that this was some sort of breakthrough?
Wouldn't a KSer just initiate attacks on everything an instant before a group hits it, so that the KSer gets the bonus? Any kludge like you propose will be exploited in some way, it just may take the players a few days to figure out how to exploit it.
The root of the problem is the whole "kill critters to get xp" mentality of game design. That makes the whole game revolve around killing things. After all, the only persistent effect that you can have on the world is to acquire xp and loot for your character.
Someone needs to try to innovate a bit. How about your character is trying to change the world, and may have to kill some critters at some point to achieve his objective? Killing the critters is worth 0 xp, so you don't actively seek out combat all the time. Every player is not forced to roleplay a psychopathic mass murderer.
The gaming community really doesn't need yet another killthingsandtaketheirstuff leveling treadmill.
I agree with the premise, that realism is secondary. However, a key distinguishing characteristic of MMORPG is player interaction. When the game is separating players in ways that inhibit interaction, it detracts from what the MMORPG could be.
If the players are adventuring in their own private 'instances' then they might as well be playing NWN for free.
Is there some simple (metal?) case that you could slip your RFID-equipped license into that would block snoopers from scanning you until you deliberately removed the license from the case?
Scientific theory suggests that the "Native" people of the Americas are descended from immigrants who crossed the Bering Sea land bridge about the time of the last ice age (10,000 years ago). Mr. Cobb, where do you believe that the Native people came from?
Also, do you believe that a person should be treated by the government as a unique individual, irrespective of their ancestry? Or, do you believe that the government should give special preferences to a person based solely upon his or her ancestry?
With UN approval for the creation of a Kurdish state out of northern Iraq, where the Kurds have been holding elections and governing themselves for the last decade, Turkey would not invade said state because of the negative repercussions which would include:
1. Economic sanctions imposed by UN for aggression against a sovereign state.
2. Making the Americans (important strategic partners of Turkey) very upset.
3. Reducing chances of joining EU to zero.