Journalists write stories to get attention it's not about the truth, its about advertising dollars or subscription money or promulgating a specific point of view.
"Science" is as only good as the technology of the time is able to see, detect and investigate the world around us. I have no beef with science but if you take one look at the science and the scientists of the last few hundred years it (or even the last 50) they all look woefully ignorant by todays standards. The problem is the same people today will look woefully ignorant 100 and even 1000 years from now.
Science is so dependent on technology its not funny, its never the people that really do anything, its always a combination of people and the engineers developing technology to detect and see even more of the environment around us.
Hence we see why competition in capitalistic system can only go so far, comeptition is really an illusion. There is only so far you can go in a race to the bottom without driving all of the comeptitors out of business.
Many of those points sounds like the majority of american presidents... Who'd of thought it?
Some people like more of the same...
on
Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 1
Just remember how easily entertained you were when you were younger, lots of games that we treasured in our youth look like (and play like) utter crap today. Lets not get myopic.
Some people are easily entertained especially young people and people who like more of the same.
QUOTE: " No matter what your personal opinions on the subject, Halo 2 is unarguably one of the most polished and destined to be one of the most enjoyed games of the year. Microsoft didn't buy that with their ads, Bungee bought that with their sweat. And good for them: Bungee has always released quality games and deserves success."
Of course they forgot the quality with the PC version of Halo which was released TWO god damn years after Xbox halo, how hard is it to fucking get it righ with TWO YEARS of an already finished game? Then gearbox ends up releasing, Halo custom edition anyone because of the framerate issues and poor multiplayer networking?
The guys at bungie are no iD or epic IMHO, they are babes in multiplayer FPS land.
Re:Here is what all the hype was about.
on
Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 1
What are you talking about? The PC version of Halo had massive framerate and other outstanding gameplay issues. So much so they made Halo custom edition, if thats not bad development, what is??
Halo is far from original in any way, it was all about the execution. We've had better FPS games for a long time now. I think people just easily forget how good half-life was for the time it was released. Halo was your standard "we're fighting the aliens, they found a superweapon of another alien race that can kick are ass, we got to control it / destroy it." My god when the captain said the "covenenant would learn everything, troup, weapon deployments, etc..." and then he said "EARTH" I was like "puh-leeeze!!".
The best thing about halo was the gameplay and even that was not original lots of the levels sucked ass hardcore and were extremely repetitive towards the end. Legendary difficulty was a joke they just upped the hitpoints of the enemies.
Doom (or was it Doom2?) death sequences!!
on
Humor in Games?
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· Score: 1
My god, does no one remember multiplayer LAN'd doom 2 with the hilarious animation death sequences for the marine? My god I remember having the most fun times of my life playing Doom 2 over the lan and hitting someone with a rocket before I see them and watch their body slide into view as the marine holds onto his throat while dying and his body falls apart/to the ground. So god damn hilarious too with the "drive by" shotgunnings where you are running towards one another and get stuck on one another and then you shotgun teh other guy really quick and he disappears "under the hood" so to speak, lol.
They have many more people then western countries, their population is over a billion so of course they are going to advance faster then nations with less people and hence less talent and economic power. People are the engines of the economy, assuming you have enough landmass and resources to support such populations and the infrastructure of those economies.
Like "No shit!", they have they practically have a billion people more then the united states and canada combined. They're geniuses really, they are outbreeding us all!
Problem is Jesus and the apostles believed moses was a real person, then Jesus and adam get mentioned in the same sentence as real and historical persons, then you see the sham for what "non literalists" really are, non christians. Christianity died when we discovered the age of the earth and the fact that man was not speciall created. The problem is, without disobedience by literal people in the garden story there is no such a thing as sin and you negate the reason the character christ said he came.
Believes moses wrote the old testament bible:
Mark 10:5 "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. (Whole Chapter: Mark 10 In context: Mark 10:4-6)
Mark 12:19 "Teacher," they said, "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother.
Luke 20:28 "Teacher," they said, "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother.
John 1:45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote-Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
Jesus speaking now:
John 5:46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.
And the pen-ultimate killer of compromised versions of christianity that accept evolution and adam and the old testament stories as not historical in fact or character.
Romans 5:14- Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
Note he includes MOSES and ADAM and said death reigned over them both, death can't reign over mythological characters who jesus thought to be real (i.e. especially moses as I have shown). And if you're a trinitarian, if you dont believe what God (jesus) believes then there are some major issues, since jesus is a higher authority then subjective personal interpretations. It's this inconsistent use of authority and drawing teachings that annoys any clear thinking person.
Compromise christians (non-literalists) accept that god is real, the promise of life is real, and other doctrines as real and historical. But not when god is making plain statements about his belief in moses or the apostles (who had equivalent authority with jesus) said they believed in a literal adam and eve and the snake and all that.
Simmons: "Seriously though why are we out here? As far as I can tell it's just a box canyon in the middle of nowhere. No way in or out."
Simmons:"The only reason we set up a red base here is because they have a blue base over there. And the only reason they have a blue base there is because we have a red base here."
Griff:"Yeah, that's because we are fighting each other."
Simmons:"No no but I mean even if we were to pull out today and they would've come take our base, they would have two bases in the middle of a box canyon. Woop-dee-fuckin-doo."
I dont reject evolution I was just driving home the point that, natural vs. supernatural definition of events is a word game. Many religious or religious type people believe "natural" events are supernaturally existent / sustained, and even then its a word game depending on how one defines "natural" and how one even knows such things *are* natural. Last time I looked there are still plenty of contradictory natural laws that don't fit together in a nice logical and self-consistent manner but we dont reject science because it has contradictions and/or poor understandings of things, we just take them with a less fundamentalist mindset.
Evolution defined as changes in species over time, I agree with. The fact is darwin did not have the evidence to support his views at the time he espoused his theory. Most of the evidence he did produce was adverse to them but he road on the coat-tails of geologists and other naturalists of the time on a more hard science. It wasn't until later that we discovered more and we're still discovering we have by no means exhausted the mechanisms.
I have no sympathy for creationists I'm just trying to show you there are other ways of "defining" / describing reality without contradicting scientific experiments and known facts. I'm not saying that events are uncaused I'm saying that they can either be caused by pre-existing things in the environment or they can be caused by outside influences. i.e. if we all died tomorrow and an alien race showed up on our planet the rational thing would not be to conclude all of our structures and technological artifacts evolved through just purely random and/or law based chemical reactions of the forces of nature.
It has nothing to do with appealing to imaginary facts, much knowledge in science is provisional. The current evolutionary theory of life stands or falls by the amount of time available to it compared against known processes *in biology* and compared against the age of the earth.
Time is it's main prop, remember we can calculate the likelihood of events given a set period of known time when we have all the facts at hand. If we take away time there's no mechanism for evolution at all. Evolution works by random small blind steps, its as likely to move forward as it is to move backward.
No one knows whether natural events are at all natural, its a word game. If the bible or insert favorite holy book didn't flatly contradict history at all, you could bet science and history would look a lot different then it does now, if holy book X said "God evolved the universe and the earth and life over billions of years", you could bet religion wouldn't be looked down upon since it would be in agreement with history.
Darwin "won" not on the basis of evidence but that his was the best of a poor lot of prior historical explanations. That and it co-incided with geology and the great ages of the earth. Evolution just piggy backs on the age of the earth, if we discovered the earth was 100,000 years old, you could bet people would still argue evolution occured but at a "rapid rate". This explains why humanity has had many different versions of history, evolution could be just one of those many stages we pass through. The 6000 year old world myth equally applies to naturalism... A tornado hit my junkyard and assembled that 747 in my back yard. Or a quantum fluctuation caused the universe and all life to pop into existance at a "mature" state 6000 years ago.
Even crick (a respected scientist) entertained the idea of panspermia.
>> Black Parrot: Yeah, you should go ahead and die while you've got some left to take with you.
You totally missed the bigger points, my parents want to leave money for their children when they die. They don't want to burn through all the wealth they acquired just paying medical bills trying to prevent their inevitable deaths.
The point is, some of the medication and medicine out there is not even that good with the state of knowledge of the times. People fork out ungodly amounts for medicine, who's scientific understanding of their conditions is barely passing their infancy mark if even that for many conditions.
My mother has thyroid problems and the doctors don't know what's wrong with my dad. They've checked his veins for clots all they know is that 'he's had strokes'. Well gee, that tells us a lot, captain obvious! I can understand peoples frustration with medicine because our science is not as advanced as people might want to make it out to be. Case in point: Anti-depressants will probably be known as the snake-oil of yesterday as history goes along, along with many other so-called 'medications'.
And people charging insane prices (relative to the income/country) is moral? I'm sorry but the way capitalist idealogy is used is the farthest thing from moral.
Exploit people and take them for how much they are worth then move on and do it again. Bootlegging is just reverse capitalism, we profit at the profiteer's expense. Which IMHO is immoral for a corrupt economic system which loves disparity and where the amount of money you have = political power and exploitive power over your fellow man.
Does britney really deserve those millions of dollars while people are barely getting by? I don't buy the argument that people can be better then what nature has endowed them with if only they had been "educated" there are a limited number of seats and ways to make profits. Most big companies monopolize everything they can get their hands on to keep growing which keeps most little guys out of the system. Soon such systems will make it impossible to enter the market because it will take years of training/education just to get to that point, if not even more resources.
Because medicine is not that profitable, in fact you can waste your life savings just trying to stay alive. My parents shell out an ungodly amount of money for medications for their conditions every month I wonder how they even manage to pay the bills, my mother has $300+ worth of medication just for herself, my dad has even more then that.
Just look at the people who pay through the nose for drugs, they can't all afford the R&D costs under a capitalistic system. So that means people get left out but *everyone* (at least in canada) wants everyone to be able to afford health care. Just look at the drug importing from Canada to the US right now.
In my opinion women are more social then guys are. That and video games are mostly about action, look at the list of games and you see that at least 80-90% of them are action oriented games. I hate to be stereotypical but I think women crave socializing more then they do staring for hours in front of a TV or a computer. I'd think most women gamers know when to give games a rest where guys take their gaming more seriously and spend more time doing it.
I'll use my sister as an example, it takes her *forever* to finish an RPG. While it takes my brother and I less then a few days of hardcore playing on weekends and whatnot. My sister can't stand being alone or away from people, even just to have you in the same room as her and not even talking to her, she has this insane craving to be around people. Maybe it's that guys desire less social interaction then women? I think you also have to think about responsibilities and the real working world too.
But when I was in highschool almost no girls found video games terribly interesting to the point where it became their main hobby. They could play it on and off for a few hours with their boyfriends or whatnot but in my experience they would rather be outside or inside (parties, etc) doing something other then videogaming.
Sorry to burst everyones bubble but the simple answer is efficiency.
Many programmers are less efficient in some area then programmers in another country (mainly monetary cost). So you have a few options either 1) Move to a low cost country or 2) Stay in your home country where companies consider you and your skills too expensive.
It's this simple people, why do you think blacksmiths and a whole host of "blue collar" jobs have disappeared over time? It was inevitable it would happen to the "elite" and the "smart" I can't wait until they invent AI and robotics develops to a point where *everyone* is replacable, just think of the *class struggle* then, between human 1.0's and AI's that advance infinitely faster then the human race that created them.
Linux is not mass market in regards to games. I believe you misread the context. What I mean is it needs susbtantial userbase of paying customers. Linux is OSS, which means most of your customers are used to getting free software, which means they are cheap. Just look at linux gaming 'companies' most have struggled and theres a good reason why.
I'd like to get rid of the floppy, but I want to get somethign that can be boot off of and will last (like a floppy). Can you format/system USB devices? I have no experience with them. I take it, that is an affirmative. But I'm not sure what kind of "standard" product would be a good start?
Well think about it: You want to run games on linux made for windows, but who's developers did not design it (explicitly) to run on linux or 'the best' on linux.
No rebooting would be good, but thats why I mentioned switching between TWO os's in realtime as if you were switching between applications, then there would be no need for emulation under another OS because switching to windows OS would take less then a few seconds ideally.
Really having to run games on linux is just pandering to whining gamers. If you want to game dedicate a machine exclusively to gaming and one exclusively to linux. God knows the hardware is cheap enough. I know this doesn't apply to all cases where one might want to play games on linux but if you do most of your gaming at home and have a job I don't see what the problem is.
... to develop a "wrapper" (forgive my bad terminology if its wrong, I couldn't think of the name!) so that you could run two OS's at the same time and task switch between them like you do with windows programs?
I never got the whole "linux bit" windows is Mass market, linux will never be MASS MARKET! I'm sorry it just wont at least not for a long time. It may become mass market in emerging markets and developing countries but Consoles come first, then windows, then if you're lucky linux gets the scraps. Why anyone would want to run games on - non-native systems does not make very much sense to me, can't you just dual boot?? Is it really that difficult to wait reboot, and wait ~20-40 seconds for XP to load and run the game? If this is your leisure time you waste all of maybe 2 minutes, 1 going into windows, 1 rebooting and going back into linux.
I think gaming is good, a tremendous stress reliever if you dont take it too seriously. Some people are not good losers and unforunately thats their problem they must have to deal with. I never get moody or mad when I play FPS online. I may get frustrated by idiots buts it not like you dont have tonnes of servers to find a better group of people or check out IRC for people that love equal teams and friendly competition.
I used to play competitively on the ladders in Quake3 we were one of the #1 teams. And it was always refreshing have to try to hold #1 while it switched places back and forth. It can be stressful only if you allow winning and losing to be the goal of the game instead of playing, trying your best and having fun. Winning is not everything especially in a game where you know many of the best opponents spend huge quantities of their time honing their skills so it's not like you need to worry about it. People do what they will and to take anything too seriously is bad for ones health.
I'm wondering if they're forseeing making older GBA's and GB's on upcoming consoles to really start taking advantage of the "connectivity" features that they started on the cube? For instance take FF chronicles and Zelda fourswords, who here wanted to spend money to buy a GBA:SP to hook up to their cube for "GBA enabled games"? Not many of us without friends who have GBA's.
I'm wondering if time goes on if they will become a little or about as expensive as a wavebird controller, or is the cost of production/materials just too much?
1. Get some self respect and a backbone, stop the self-loathing, if you don't love or like yourself you're easy prey into conning yourself that your not worth anything and that you don't have ability to accomplish great things.
2. Excercise and eat right, it will make a huge difference in how you feel about yourself, your self esteem and your motivation--it feeds off itself in and endless loop, success breeds success. (Plus you'll attract way more girls if you're not the pillsbury doughboy).
3. Stand up for yourself (whether it be students or teachers doing childish things)
4. If you see a woman (or guy friends/acquaintences) being exploited or fucked with/picked on get some of your friends/quality comrades together immediately and stop the bullshit, do it with tact, not violence, no one likes suspension/criminal record. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)
5. Stick with it, take a "no holds barred" approach to your life and your goals... you come first put NO ONE first before you in your life. Do not get caught up in putting too much emphasis on finding women/relationships and petty false images that other people are living 'funner' lives then you. If you spend too much time thinking about chicks or spending your time entertaining yourself your life will suffer for it later, best to develop your personality, soul and interests now then get too caught up in distractions. This does not mean you shouldn't socialize but you dont have to "milk college for all its worth", most people over-rate the college experience. Anyone worth his salt and intelligence will tell you that.
6. Older People's college nostalgia tends to obscure, color their exagerrate their views. Don't buy it. You can be just as happy forgetting about your college days being successful and independent as long as you don't neglect improving yourself and expanding your horizons, stagnancy kills the soul.
Slashdot Mirror
Journalists write stories to get attention it's not about the truth, its about advertising dollars or subscription money or promulgating a specific point of view.
"Science" is as only good as the technology of the time is able to see, detect and investigate the world around us. I have no beef with science but if you take one look at the science and the scientists of the last few hundred years it (or even the last 50) they all look woefully ignorant by todays standards. The problem is the same people today will look woefully ignorant 100 and even 1000 years from now.
Science is so dependent on technology its not funny, its never the people that really do anything, its always a combination of people and the engineers developing technology to detect and see even more of the environment around us.
Hence we see why competition in capitalistic system can only go so far, comeptition is really an illusion. There is only so far you can go in a race to the bottom without driving all of the comeptitors out of business.
Many of those points sounds like the majority of american presidents ... Who'd of thought it?
Just remember how easily entertained you were when you were younger, lots of games that we treasured in our youth look like (and play like) utter crap today. Lets not get myopic.
Some people are easily entertained especially young people and people who like more of the same.
QUOTE: " No matter what your personal opinions on the subject, Halo 2 is unarguably one of the most polished and destined to be one of the most enjoyed games of the year. Microsoft didn't buy that with their ads, Bungee bought that with their sweat. And good for them: Bungee has always released quality games and deserves success."
Of course they forgot the quality with the PC version of Halo which was released TWO god damn years after Xbox halo, how hard is it to fucking get it righ with TWO YEARS of an already finished game? Then gearbox ends up releasing, Halo custom edition anyone because of the framerate issues and poor multiplayer networking?
The guys at bungie are no iD or epic IMHO, they are babes in multiplayer FPS land.
What are you talking about? The PC version of Halo had massive framerate and other outstanding gameplay issues. So much so they made Halo custom edition, if thats not bad development, what is??
Halo is far from original in any way, it was all about the execution. We've had better FPS games for a long time now. I think people just easily forget how good half-life was for the time it was released. Halo was your standard "we're fighting the aliens, they found a superweapon of another alien race that can kick are ass, we got to control it / destroy it." My god when the captain said the "covenenant would learn everything, troup, weapon deployments, etc..." and then he said "EARTH" I was like "puh-leeeze!!".
The best thing about halo was the gameplay and even that was not original lots of the levels sucked ass hardcore and were extremely repetitive towards the end. Legendary difficulty was a joke they just upped the hitpoints of the enemies.
My god, does no one remember multiplayer LAN'd doom 2 with the hilarious animation death sequences for the marine? My god I remember having the most fun times of my life playing Doom 2 over the lan and hitting someone with a rocket before I see them and watch their body slide into view as the marine holds onto his throat while dying and his body falls apart/to the ground. So god damn hilarious too with the "drive by" shotgunnings where you are running towards one another and get stuck on one another and then you shotgun teh other guy really quick and he disappears "under the hood" so to speak, lol.
They have many more people then western countries, their population is over a billion so of course they are going to advance faster then nations with less people and hence less talent and economic power. People are the engines of the economy, assuming you have enough landmass and resources to support such populations and the infrastructure of those economies.
:P
Like "No shit!", they have they practically have a billion people more then the united states and canada combined. They're geniuses really, they are outbreeding us all!
"Hail to our new Chinese overlords!"
Problem is Jesus and the apostles believed moses was a real person, then Jesus and adam get mentioned in the same sentence as real and historical persons, then you see the sham for what "non literalists" really are, non christians. Christianity died when we discovered the age of the earth and the fact that man was not speciall created. The problem is, without disobedience by literal people in the garden story there is no such a thing as sin and you negate the reason the character christ said he came.
Believes moses wrote the old testament bible:
Mark 10:5
"It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied.
(Whole Chapter: Mark 10 In context: Mark 10:4-6)
Mark 12:19
"Teacher," they said, "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother.
Luke 20:28
"Teacher," they said, "Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother.
John 1:45
Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote-Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."
Jesus speaking now:
John 5:46
If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.
And the pen-ultimate killer of compromised versions of christianity that accept evolution and adam and the old testament stories as not historical in fact or character.
Romans 5:14- Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
Note he includes MOSES and ADAM and said death reigned over them both, death can't reign over mythological characters who jesus thought to be real (i.e. especially moses as I have shown). And if you're a trinitarian, if you dont believe what God (jesus) believes then there are some major issues, since jesus is a higher authority then subjective personal interpretations. It's this inconsistent use of authority and drawing teachings that annoys any clear thinking person.
Compromise christians (non-literalists) accept that god is real, the promise of life is real, and other doctrines as real and historical. But not when god is making plain statements about his belief in moses or the apostles (who had equivalent authority with jesus) said they believed in a literal adam and eve and the snake and all that.
Simmons: "Seriously though why are we out here? As far as I can tell it's just a box canyon in the middle of nowhere. No way in or out."
Simmons:"The only reason we set up a red base here is because they have a blue base over there. And the only reason they have a blue base there is because we have a red base here."
Griff:"Yeah, that's because we are fighting each other."
Simmons:"No no but I mean even if we were to pull out today and they would've come take our base, they would have two bases in the middle of a box canyon. Woop-dee-fuckin-doo."
I dont reject evolution I was just driving home the point that, natural vs. supernatural definition of events is a word game. Many religious or religious type people believe "natural" events are supernaturally existent / sustained, and even then its a word game depending on how one defines "natural" and how one even knows such things *are* natural. Last time I looked there are still plenty of contradictory natural laws that don't fit together in a nice logical and self-consistent manner but we dont reject science because it has contradictions and/or poor understandings of things, we just take them with a less fundamentalist mindset.
Evolution defined as changes in species over time, I agree with. The fact is darwin did not have the evidence to support his views at the time he espoused his theory. Most of the evidence he did produce was adverse to them but he road on the coat-tails of geologists and other naturalists of the time on a more hard science. It wasn't until later that we discovered more and we're still discovering we have by no means exhausted the mechanisms.
I have no sympathy for creationists I'm just trying to show you there are other ways of "defining" / describing reality without contradicting scientific experiments and known facts. I'm not saying that events are uncaused I'm saying that they can either be caused by pre-existing things in the environment or they can be caused by outside influences. i.e. if we all died tomorrow and an alien race showed up on our planet the rational thing would not be to conclude all of our structures and technological artifacts evolved through just purely random and/or law based chemical reactions of the forces of nature.
It has nothing to do with appealing to imaginary facts, much knowledge in science is provisional. The current evolutionary theory of life stands or falls by the amount of time available to it compared against known processes *in biology* and compared against the age of the earth.
Time is it's main prop, remember we can calculate the likelihood of events given a set period of known time when we have all the facts at hand. If we take away time there's no mechanism for evolution at all. Evolution works by random small blind steps, its as likely to move forward as it is to move backward.
No one knows whether natural events are at all natural, its a word game. If the bible or insert favorite holy book didn't flatly contradict history at all, you could bet science and history would look a lot different then it does now, if holy book X said "God evolved the universe and the earth and life over billions of years", you could bet religion wouldn't be looked down upon since it would be in agreement with history.
Darwin "won" not on the basis of evidence but that his was the best of a poor lot of prior historical explanations. That and it co-incided with geology and the great ages of the earth. Evolution just piggy backs on the age of the earth, if we discovered the earth was 100,000 years old, you could bet people would still argue evolution occured but at a "rapid rate". This explains why humanity has had many different versions of history, evolution could be just one of those many stages we pass through. The 6000 year old world myth equally applies to naturalism... A tornado hit my junkyard and assembled that 747 in my back yard. Or a quantum fluctuation caused the universe and all life to pop into existance at a "mature" state 6000 years ago.
Even crick (a respected scientist) entertained the idea of panspermia.
>> Black Parrot: Yeah, you should go ahead and die while you've got some left to take with you.
You totally missed the bigger points, my parents want to leave money for their children when they die. They don't want to burn through all the wealth they acquired just paying medical bills trying to prevent their inevitable deaths.
The point is, some of the medication and medicine out there is not even that good with the state of knowledge of the times. People fork out ungodly amounts for medicine, who's scientific understanding of their conditions is barely passing their infancy mark if even that for many conditions.
My mother has thyroid problems and the doctors don't know what's wrong with my dad. They've checked his veins for clots all they know is that 'he's had strokes'. Well gee, that tells us a lot, captain obvious! I can understand peoples frustration with medicine because our science is not as advanced as people might want to make it out to be. Case in point: Anti-depressants will probably be known as the snake-oil of yesterday as history goes along, along with many other so-called 'medications'.
And people charging insane prices (relative to the income/country) is moral? I'm sorry but the way capitalist idealogy is used is the farthest thing from moral.
Exploit people and take them for how much they are worth then move on and do it again. Bootlegging is just reverse capitalism, we profit at the profiteer's expense. Which IMHO is immoral for a corrupt economic system which loves disparity and where the amount of money you have = political power and exploitive power over your fellow man.
Does britney really deserve those millions of dollars while people are barely getting by? I don't buy the argument that people can be better then what nature has endowed them with if only they had been "educated" there are a limited number of seats and ways to make profits. Most big companies monopolize everything they can get their hands on to keep growing which keeps most little guys out of the system. Soon such systems will make it impossible to enter the market because it will take years of training/education just to get to that point, if not even more resources.
Because medicine is not that profitable, in fact you can waste your life savings just trying to stay alive. My parents shell out an ungodly amount of money for medications for their conditions every month I wonder how they even manage to pay the bills, my mother has $300+ worth of medication just for herself, my dad has even more then that. Just look at the people who pay through the nose for drugs, they can't all afford the R&D costs under a capitalistic system. So that means people get left out but *everyone* (at least in canada) wants everyone to be able to afford health care. Just look at the drug importing from Canada to the US right now.
In my opinion women are more social then guys are. That and video games are mostly about action, look at the list of games and you see that at least 80-90% of them are action oriented games. I hate to be stereotypical but I think women crave socializing more then they do staring for hours in front of a TV or a computer. I'd think most women gamers know when to give games a rest where guys take their gaming more seriously and spend more time doing it.
I'll use my sister as an example, it takes her *forever* to finish an RPG. While it takes my brother and I less then a few days of hardcore playing on weekends and whatnot. My sister can't stand being alone or away from people, even just to have you in the same room as her and not even talking to her, she has this insane craving to be around people. Maybe it's that guys desire less social interaction then women? I think you also have to think about responsibilities and the real working world too.
But when I was in highschool almost no girls found video games terribly interesting to the point where it became their main hobby. They could play it on and off for a few hours with their boyfriends or whatnot but in my experience they would rather be outside or inside (parties, etc) doing something other then videogaming.
Sorry to burst everyones bubble but the simple answer is efficiency. Many programmers are less efficient in some area then programmers in another country (mainly monetary cost). So you have a few options either 1) Move to a low cost country or 2) Stay in your home country where companies consider you and your skills too expensive. It's this simple people, why do you think blacksmiths and a whole host of "blue collar" jobs have disappeared over time? It was inevitable it would happen to the "elite" and the "smart" I can't wait until they invent AI and robotics develops to a point where *everyone* is replacable, just think of the *class struggle* then, between human 1.0's and AI's that advance infinitely faster then the human race that created them.
Linux is not mass market in regards to games. I believe you misread the context. What I mean is it needs susbtantial userbase of paying customers. Linux is OSS, which means most of your customers are used to getting free software, which means they are cheap. Just look at linux gaming 'companies' most have struggled and theres a good reason why.
I'd like to get rid of the floppy, but I want to get somethign that can be boot off of and will last (like a floppy). Can you format/system USB devices? I have no experience with them. I take it, that is an affirmative. But I'm not sure what kind of "standard" product would be a good start?
Well think about it: You want to run games on linux made for windows, but who's developers did not design it (explicitly) to run on linux or 'the best' on linux.
No rebooting would be good, but thats why I mentioned switching between TWO os's in realtime as if you were switching between applications, then there would be no need for emulation under another OS because switching to windows OS would take less then a few seconds ideally.
Really having to run games on linux is just pandering to whining gamers. If you want to game dedicate a machine exclusively to gaming and one exclusively to linux. God knows the hardware is cheap enough. I know this doesn't apply to all cases where one might want to play games on linux but if you do most of your gaming at home and have a job I don't see what the problem is.
... to develop a "wrapper" (forgive my bad terminology if its wrong, I couldn't think of the name!) so that you could run two OS's at the same time and task switch between them like you do with windows programs?
I never got the whole "linux bit" windows is Mass market, linux will never be MASS MARKET! I'm sorry it just wont at least not for a long time. It may become mass market in emerging markets and developing countries but Consoles come first, then windows, then if you're lucky linux gets the scraps. Why anyone would want to run games on - non-native systems does not make very much sense to me, can't you just dual boot?? Is it really that difficult to wait reboot, and wait ~20-40 seconds for XP to load and run the game? If this is your leisure time you waste all of maybe 2 minutes, 1 going into windows, 1 rebooting and going back into linux.
I think gaming is good, a tremendous stress reliever if you dont take it too seriously. Some people are not good losers and unforunately thats their problem they must have to deal with. I never get moody or mad when I play FPS online. I may get frustrated by idiots buts it not like you dont have tonnes of servers to find a better group of people or check out IRC for people that love equal teams and friendly competition.
I used to play competitively on the ladders in Quake3 we were one of the #1 teams. And it was always refreshing have to try to hold #1 while it switched places back and forth. It can be stressful only if you allow winning and losing to be the goal of the game instead of playing, trying your best and having fun. Winning is not everything especially in a game where you know many of the best opponents spend huge quantities of their time honing their skills so it's not like you need to worry about it. People do what they will and to take anything too seriously is bad for ones health.
I'm wondering if they're forseeing making older GBA's and GB's on upcoming consoles to really start taking advantage of the "connectivity" features that they started on the cube? For instance take FF chronicles and Zelda fourswords, who here wanted to spend money to buy a GBA:SP to hook up to their cube for "GBA enabled games"? Not many of us without friends who have GBA's.
I'm wondering if time goes on if they will become a little or about as expensive as a wavebird controller, or is the cost of production/materials just too much?
1. Get some self respect and a backbone, stop the self-loathing, if you don't love or like yourself you're easy prey into conning yourself that your not worth anything and that you don't have ability to accomplish great things.
2. Excercise and eat right, it will make a huge difference in how you feel about yourself, your self esteem and your motivation--it feeds off itself in and endless loop, success breeds success. (Plus you'll attract way more girls if you're not the pillsbury doughboy).
3. Stand up for yourself (whether it be students or teachers doing childish things)
4. If you see a woman (or guy friends/acquaintences) being exploited or fucked with/picked on get some of your friends/quality comrades together immediately and stop the bullshit, do it with tact, not violence, no one likes suspension/criminal record. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)
5. Stick with it, take a "no holds barred" approach to your life and your goals... you come first put NO ONE first before you in your life. Do not get caught up in putting too much emphasis on finding women/relationships and petty false images that other people are living 'funner' lives then you. If you spend too much time thinking about chicks or spending your time entertaining yourself your life will suffer for it later, best to develop your personality, soul and interests now then get too caught up in distractions. This does not mean you shouldn't socialize but you dont have to "milk college for all its worth", most people over-rate the college experience. Anyone worth his salt and intelligence will tell you that.
6. Older People's college nostalgia tends to obscure, color their exagerrate their views. Don't buy it. You can be just as happy forgetting about your college days being successful and independent as long as you don't neglect improving yourself and expanding your horizons, stagnancy kills the soul.
... god knows more people need them.