Well.. that's the real problem. The elections wouldn't be so close if politicians didn't race to co-opt each other. I mean.. the difference between Obama and McCain appears to be a few trivial details in their massive wealth redistribution plans.
If they'd.. y'know... stand for something...different, then people would have an actual reason to decide something. There might be mandates even.
I think he's trying to say that leveling is kind of a cop-out. You get some of the benefits of an improvement system, but the resource overhead (in programmer time, designer time, etc.) is pretty small. It's basically "get points for clicking something" -> points reach threshold, advance level by 1. It's like playing a several months long game of freakin' space invaders, and you're playing as the invaders...
If you're weak enough that you have to be clever to kill something in WoW, at least, you end up having to have a lot of recovery time between kills, which makes your XP/S rate go down. You're actually rewarded for NOT being clever...
Now, if you do away with levels and instead had some kind of zero-sum XP game where.. say.. if you spend all your time sitting around town "crafting" you get better at it, but your character gets fat and can't run very fast, or you learn magic, but your muscles get weak from using magic fr everything, etc...
If every gain had a trade-off, there might be some interesting effects. Do you dry your darndest to stay average at everything? Do you spend all your time in the library reading spellbooks until you're an epic caster but you have to pay someone to carry you around?
WoW is a good game, especially all the little jokes. (it's a lot like Futurama in that respect: layers of jokes that you might not even realize were there the first time around) But the great thing about WoW was that they didn't set out to steal users from Everquest. Their plan was to grow the market. And grow it they did.
In 2005, The top 10% paid a little under 70% of the income tax burden. If they receive only 30-40% of the benefits, then they're getting a raw deal. If they earned only 30-40% of the income, they'd be getting an even raw-er deal, though their actual income share of 47% is not much better.
And, I find it really, really unlikely that they would be getting that much benefit. At least, directly. Sure, schools and such benefit everyone, not just the students, in some way, but it's a bit disingenuous to double-count the benefit that way, don't you think?
And besides, if income tax really was a good proxy for the cost of services, it would make even more sense to just do away with it entirely and charge fees for those services directly.
So Obama is pretty much centrist, although leans a bit far to the right.
Um.. what positions are you referring to there? I'm curious as to what Europeans (and I'm assuming here, based on what you stated, that you are one) think are "far right positions" that Americans would be ignorant of.
Or, if not positions, then the non-position reasons.
It's all well and good to call someone ignorant, but it's really quite a sin to allow that condition to continue if you have access to the very thing that will relieve it.
Hook up an S-meter to a cell phone vibrator and install them in a set of brass knuckles. If there is a jammer, just use the light buzzing to guide your fist to the proper location.
As we discovered last year, it does *not*. It might have in the late 19th century, when only businesses had to be lit, or something, but it doesn't make sense any more.
Further, you're conserving the wrong thing. Instead of evvverrybody just all going in an hour earlier, we need to spread it out more. I'd lay odds you waste more energy in stop & go traffic in one morning commute alone than weeks of wasting an hour's worth of lighting per day.
We've still got prohibition. Just not booze. Well.. and booze, too...
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.
on
The Walking House
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· Score: 1
I've done it. It's.. well, depending on which way the wind is blowing, and how hard, it's not too bad. Especially with a boat that small: you can just have your friend run up to the bow and kick the other boats if you get too close.
The marina should be somewhat protected from wind, or you can reef. And with a boat that size, and the sail down, you can hoist yourself with the anchor, row it from a dinghy, pull it from the dock like a canoe, scull with the tiller, push off the other boats with your feet...
150 years ago, people did it all the time. In much bigger boats. I think of it as a challenge to improve my seamanship.
Maybe we should figure out how to exploit Antarctica first. If we can't even settle one somewaht chilly continent with plenty of water that's easy (by comparison) to get to, Mars probably shouldn't be on the table.
Why would a power station need a physicist? I'm a little concerned that the generator might not be quite up to the level of just training some technicians to perform the major tasks, maintenance, emergency procedures, etc. Are there theoretical issues that still need to be resolved?
Re:blah the emporer has his new clothes on again.
on
The Walking House
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· Score: 1
Mechanical propulsion, when needed, is provided by a small outboard which consumes only 1/4 gallon/hour at full speed.
I recommend you get the sails fixed. They use even less fuel per hour.
Not to mention, "Yet Another Giant Snake Movie" or my personal favorite, when they pasted the "who wants to be a superhero" winner into "Crappy Snake Film III: Michael Shanks phones it in!"
Is it too much to ask, for twice every decade or so, for some channel to air a nice, cheap, Gamra marathon instead of making an abysmal only-air-once cookie-cutter monster flick.
Oh, well. At least they'd never resort to airing fake wrestling soap opera like USA and Spike.
And THAT'S why you don't ban different types of research: you don't always know where it's going.
If you only care about the results, then yeah, but in the real world, that's actually an incredibly sticky question of medical ethics.
I mean, take Mengele's research, for instance. Would you allow it because you didn't know where it was leading? What about the rest of the Nazi research? Some of it had the potential to save many lives, but would you have allowed it to take place just to get to the result? How about the Tuskegee experiment? The list is, sadly, not short.
Would you allow all of that because you don't know what good might come of it?
Some research is not worth the price: The ethical taint it puts on *all of us*. Even if the results are beneficial. The question is, as it's always been, what's ok and what isn't.
If you come to the table having already decided that jews, or blacks, or the poor aren't really people, you're not going to have much empathy for people who think we shouldn't experiment on them. You might even object to analogies to groups you have decided are people, but whom have had tragedies inflicted upon them in the name of research, as specious or as "straw-men."
Stick a thermometer in it. Read the number off. Now, granted, this is mostly due to rad exchange, but it still satisfies the thermodynamic definition.*
I've seen schemes presented to slashdot that would appear to solve the anonymity and verifiability problem. But I haven't seen any that are simple enough for the average voter to understand well enough to be confident that that has occurred.
I say that as an average voter, who's read some of the plans, and after a good deal of thinking couldn't find any holes, but also wasn't positive I just wasn't smart enough to think of 'em.
only one of "them" is wrong. The other might be wrong, but you can't tell from the information given. Fortunately, the author has provided some helpful hints to evaluate his screed:
bourgeois
This is a "code word" that means "straw-man for discrediting [capitalism | libertarianism | laissez faire | any economic theory that takes any amount of inspiration from Adam Smith.]"
Hard drive manufacturers use SI nomenclature. Nomenclature that's in countless other industries and projects. How does that make them the arrogant ones?
As a gross generalization, CFLs have a nearly unlimited number of operating hours, but a limited number of starts, while incandescent bulbs tend to have a limited number of operating hours, no matter how many times you flip them.
So, in a bathroom, where you only spend five minutes at a time in there, many times throughout the day, you're going to go through CFLs a lot faster than in other areas of the house. Enough that you might be better off (for the environment) to not bother with the CFLs in the bathroom.
Video cameras are small and inexpensive now, too. Even "HD" video cameras. (though.. you don't seem to be able to get an HD version of a miniDV camera, which would be good for editing. Considering how much space is available on the camera hard disks, It's baffling as to why the output is *more* compressed than the miniDVs.)
Regardless, when you're recording vacation video at 14 gigs per hour, you're gonna need a lot of space if you want to keep it all.
Slashdot Mirror
Well.. that's the real problem. The elections wouldn't be so close if politicians didn't race to co-opt each other. I mean.. the difference between Obama and McCain appears to be a few trivial details in their massive wealth redistribution plans.
If they'd.. y'know... stand for something...different, then people would have an actual reason to decide something. There might be mandates even.
I think he's trying to say that leveling is kind of a cop-out. You get some of the benefits of an improvement system, but the resource overhead (in programmer time, designer time, etc.) is pretty small. It's basically "get points for clicking something" -> points reach threshold, advance level by 1. It's like playing a several months long game of freakin' space invaders, and you're playing as the invaders...
If you're weak enough that you have to be clever to kill something in WoW, at least, you end up having to have a lot of recovery time between kills, which makes your XP/S rate go down. You're actually rewarded for NOT being clever...
Now, if you do away with levels and instead had some kind of zero-sum XP game where.. say.. if you spend all your time sitting around town "crafting" you get better at it, but your character gets fat and can't run very fast, or you learn magic, but your muscles get weak from using magic fr everything, etc...
If every gain had a trade-off, there might be some interesting effects. Do you dry your darndest to stay average at everything? Do you spend all your time in the library reading spellbooks until you're an epic caster but you have to pay someone to carry you around?
WoW is a good game, especially all the little jokes. (it's a lot like Futurama in that respect: layers of jokes that you might not even realize were there the first time around) But the great thing about WoW was that they didn't set out to steal users from Everquest. Their plan was to grow the market. And grow it they did.
In 2005, The top 10% paid a little under 70% of the income tax burden. If they receive only 30-40% of the benefits, then they're getting a raw deal. If they earned only 30-40% of the income, they'd be getting an even raw-er deal, though their actual income share of 47% is not much better.
And, I find it really, really unlikely that they would be getting that much benefit. At least, directly. Sure, schools and such benefit everyone, not just the students, in some way, but it's a bit disingenuous to double-count the benefit that way, don't you think?
And besides, if income tax really was a good proxy for the cost of services, it would make even more sense to just do away with it entirely and charge fees for those services directly.
Um.. what positions are you referring to there? I'm curious as to what Europeans (and I'm assuming here, based on what you stated, that you are one) think are "far right positions" that Americans would be ignorant of.
Or, if not positions, then the non-position reasons.
It's all well and good to call someone ignorant, but it's really quite a sin to allow that condition to continue if you have access to the very thing that will relieve it.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around a description of Obama as "Centrist."
I doubt it. In any event, you'd have to be richer than Bill Gates to find out.
Ah, but it's your own, personal bus, isn't it.
Fortunately, the solution is obvious.
Hook up an S-meter to a cell phone vibrator and install them in a set of brass knuckles. If there is a jammer, just use the light buzzing to guide your fist to the proper location.
As we discovered last year, it does *not*. It might have in the late 19th century, when only businesses had to be lit, or something, but it doesn't make sense any more.
Further, you're conserving the wrong thing. Instead of evvverrybody just all going in an hour earlier, we need to spread it out more. I'd lay odds you waste more energy in stop & go traffic in one morning commute alone than weeks of wasting an hour's worth of lighting per day.
We've still got prohibition. Just not booze. Well.. and booze, too...
I've done it. It's.. well, depending on which way the wind is blowing, and how hard, it's not too bad. Especially with a boat that small: you can just have your friend run up to the bow and kick the other boats if you get too close.
The marina should be somewhat protected from wind, or you can reef. And with a boat that size, and the sail down, you can hoist yourself with the anchor, row it from a dinghy, pull it from the dock like a canoe, scull with the tiller, push off the other boats with your feet...
150 years ago, people did it all the time. In much bigger boats. I think of it as a challenge to improve my seamanship.
Maybe we should figure out how to exploit Antarctica first. If we can't even settle one somewaht chilly continent with plenty of water that's easy (by comparison) to get to, Mars probably shouldn't be on the table.
Why would a power station need a physicist? I'm a little concerned that the generator might not be quite up to the level of just training some technicians to perform the major tasks, maintenance, emergency procedures, etc. Are there theoretical issues that still need to be resolved?
I recommend you get the sails fixed. They use even less fuel per hour.
Are we suggesting that Joe spends a couple hours at the track every day, rain or shine, or are we saying that he just drinks a lot?
Isn't stadia plural for the distance measurement, rather than for the discrete arena count?
Not to mention, "Yet Another Giant Snake Movie" or my personal favorite, when they pasted the "who wants to be a superhero" winner into "Crappy Snake Film III: Michael Shanks phones it in!"
Is it too much to ask, for twice every decade or so, for some channel to air a nice, cheap, Gamra marathon instead of making an abysmal only-air-once cookie-cutter monster flick.
Oh, well. At least they'd never resort to airing fake wrestling soap opera like USA and Spike.
If you only care about the results, then yeah, but in the real world, that's actually an incredibly sticky question of medical ethics.
I mean, take Mengele's research, for instance. Would you allow it because you didn't know where it was leading? What about the rest of the Nazi research? Some of it had the potential to save many lives, but would you have allowed it to take place just to get to the result? How about the Tuskegee experiment? The list is, sadly, not short.
Would you allow all of that because you don't know what good might come of it?
Some research is not worth the price: The ethical taint it puts on *all of us*. Even if the results are beneficial.
The question is, as it's always been, what's ok and what isn't.
If you come to the table having already decided that jews, or blacks, or the poor aren't really people, you're not going to have much empathy for people who think we shouldn't experiment on them. You might even object to analogies to groups you have decided are people, but whom have had tragedies inflicted upon them in the name of research, as specious or as "straw-men."
The way temperature is defined: yes.
Stick a thermometer in it. Read the number off. Now, granted, this is mostly due to rad exchange, but it still satisfies the thermodynamic definition.*
*if you've got a perfectly gray thermometer.
I've seen schemes presented to slashdot that would appear to solve the anonymity and verifiability problem. But I haven't seen any that are simple enough for the average voter to understand well enough to be confident that that has occurred.
I say that as an average voter, who's read some of the plans, and after a good deal of thinking couldn't find any holes, but also wasn't positive I just wasn't smart enough to think of 'em.
The first will not be a headline, even if it occurs. The second might be, even if it doesn't, but it will be largely ignored anyway (even if true).
only one of "them" is wrong. The other might be wrong, but you can't tell from the information given. Fortunately, the author has provided some helpful hints to evaluate his screed:
This is a "code word" that means "straw-man for discrediting [capitalism | libertarianism | laissez faire | any economic theory that takes any amount of inspiration from Adam Smith.]"
Hard drive manufacturers use SI nomenclature. Nomenclature that's in countless other industries and projects. How does that make them the arrogant ones?
As a gross generalization, CFLs have a nearly unlimited number of operating hours, but a limited number of starts, while incandescent bulbs tend to have a limited number of operating hours, no matter how many times you flip them.
So, in a bathroom, where you only spend five minutes at a time in there, many times throughout the day, you're going to go through CFLs a lot faster than in other areas of the house. Enough that you might be better off (for the environment) to not bother with the CFLs in the bathroom.
Video cameras are small and inexpensive now, too. Even "HD" video cameras. (though.. you don't seem to be able to get an HD version of a miniDV camera, which would be good for editing. Considering how much space is available on the camera hard disks, It's baffling as to why the output is *more* compressed than the miniDVs.)
Regardless, when you're recording vacation video at 14 gigs per hour, you're gonna need a lot of space if you want to keep it all.