Wow way to make baseless generalizations about all Apple users. Who the fuck do you think you are?
I am a techy type. I have been working with computers and as a developer for the past 18 years off and on. I have run Windows in various versions, Linux, FreeBSD, and of course Mac OS/X. I don't generally attend parties, I do have a facebook account (and I access it at least once every couple of months when family members post some pictures etc. Personally I have no use for it).
The reasons I am using an iMac desktop computer are quite simple: * I got very tired of reinstalling windows drivers on a regular basis, and having something fuck up that I had to fix. Likewise I got very tired of Windows crashing, locking up, you name it. I spent a measurable amount of my time fixing something with the OS, or with the programs I was running. * I got very tired of needing to upgrade some piece of kit in my PC. * I got very tired of the clunky and inconsistent Windows UI. * Essentially I just wanted to be using my computer, not fixing something.
With my iMac, I use the computer, not fix it. I still have some problems of course, nothing is perfect, but its a damn sight closer overall. I spend almost zero time worrying about why something isn't working properly or at all. The UI is more or less intuitive, and the programs are perfectly functional. If I need to boot into XP to play a game, I can do so, but all of the games I have been playing in the last while are Mac compatible so I haven't actually booted to XP in several months. I don't miss it at all.
The whole "fanboi" dismissal crap is old. If someone likes a product because it works and they can afford to buy it, more power to them. If you can't afford to spend money in their league, then calling them a fanboi so you can dismiss them out of hand is just pathetic (not that you used that term that I noticed, but your post has the same dismissive air).
Yes, my product supports IPv6. Its also a full UNIX, supports X11, I am running Apache/PHP/Mysql for doing some local development on a website, and its all working just fine thank you.
The reason that Apple products are popular and building a growing market share is simply that they are overall very good, both as hardware and in the OS that they are running. Better than the competition from the average user's perspective. Thats all.
Legislate in such a way that its mandatory for Intel to desalinate ocean water on site, and they will make a token effort at doing so, then pay bribes to the right politicians so they can get away without doing so. Capitalism works on the principle that whatever makes the most money for the corporate owners - regardless of how many people die or are forced to suffer - is the preferred choice. Rationalization to make the corporate lackey's feel like they are acting morally comes afterwords. Capitalism isn't exactly evil, but its sure as hell not a good thing from the point of someone who doesn't own any shares. I would like to see a change to reign in Corporations and make them morally responsible, but I don't expect it to ever happen.
Unfortunately, the "elected officials" you can choose from differ only in which corporate backers they represent as front men. The Corporations have the real influence and power when they want it. The politicians are just talking heads.
Why, yes, I am a bit cynical about democracy as a system, and I do feel that Corporations are inherently amoral, and thus often (small e) evil, why do you ask?
I think we need some very radical changes in the way politicians are financed, elected and observed while in office. Absolutely no corporate financing (even by proxy) might be a good start, but its unrealistic.
First off, I don't think this will catch on, because it requires users to learn something, and in order to be really popular it needs to be so simple that they pick it up almost intuitively. Having to learn a few hundred symbols sorted into only 8 categories is likely to be a problem with adoption. That said, it brings some of the power of Chinese style writing to other languages.Its been a while since I studied Linguistics, but if I recall correctly: * China has 5 basic language groups (Mandarin, Cantonese, Han, Wu and some other one I can't recall), and over 1 million different dialects, yet any newspaper or other written materials created anywhere in the country can be read by anyone else anywhere else, because the writing system being symbolic means the readers are free to pronounce the words in their own way. The meaning is attached to the symbols (usually in pairs I believe). Thats a very great invention for a writing system. * The problem is that as a young student, you need to learn thousands of symbols to be able to write with the system. The learning curve is not trivial.
iConji would seemingly have the potential to let people who speak different languages manage to communicate at least at a basic level about simple subjects. I might be entering the symbols with the English language version turned on, but you interpret the message with Spanish turned on because thats your native language. * One problem they face if it becomes popular is the need for expanded vocabulary of a specific nature. Using Basic English, you can get by with about 800 words apparently, but the moment you want to discuss anything technical you had better star learning the full language. Assuming this caught on, they would need a central repository for creating and disseminating new symbols for specialized words used in technical fields for instance. Then they need to develop some pretty specific icons. Whats a good symbol for "load bearing wall", or "object oriented development"? Now imagine your iPad iConji interface filling up with 100,000 or so technical terms that are required for all the different professions. Try to imagine keeping up with that as well. * They were idiots to not involve someone formally trained in Linguistics I think. Without a solid basis in the way we use languages, this will end up being a house of cards if it gleans any fans. Language is not simple, even if it seems like it is because you speak one fluently. Trying to produce a system that is able to work effectively with different languages (some of which use radically different grammars etc) is going to be a real headache. Sure, English->German and vice versa might work, but how is Inuit->Khosa going to work down the road?
The problem is getting people to adopt this system. Either it catches on and becomes wildly popular or it goes the way of Blisssymbols and fades into non-existence. Like it or not English is becoming the defacto Lingua Franca (oh the irony), and replacing the rest of the world's languages over time.
We are losing hundreds of languages a year I recall reading. Each one is a unique way in which a human can experience and describe reality, a unique way of thinking (if you believe in Sapir-Whorf), and once its gone its more or less irreplaceable. What we are doing is slowly reducing ourselves to a handful of means of expression. I expect the winners to be Mandarin and English (in that order) 200 years from now, unless something radical happens to split us up into smaller communities again.
My ire is directed at your government and the media companies that seem to control it, not at the average American, or indeed at the incredible social experiment that is your country. I have quite literally never met an American who didn't seem to be nice - I know you aren't all that way but that's my experience. My rant was written while I was exhausted and just got off work...
We Canadians are abiding by our laws just as well as any other country in the world, including the US. Its just that the US Media conglomerates have not succeeded in shoving their idea of strict IP laws down our throats yet, despite their best efforts at bribing our officials. As a result, we see entirely biased bullshit like this announced.
I am sure that in China there is a problem with recognizing the rediculous way that patents and IP are being treated. People are copying technology and selling it and thats probably a real problem for US companies that rely on obedience to US laws to enforce their business models. I can imagine that some of the same is going on in Russia. But Canada? What is the possible origin of lumping Canada in there? Could it be that we have a (gasp) different understanding of fair use and so far (despite our "Conservative" government) have stuck to our guns and maintained our stance? I pay an extra few bucks every time I buy data CDs - why? Because that money is (theoretically at least) being collected to compensate Canadian artists should I choose to do something that infringes on their rights - even if all I actually do is, you know, use them to store data/do backups. Its legal in Canada to download music you don't own I am told (I don't listen to more than a few songs a year on my computer and I think I have a total of 12 mp3s on my system), its just illegal to upload it. I suspect that our stance on fair use, and unwillingness to just roll over and take it up the ass from US companies is the origin of the inclusion of Canada on this list. Well fuck them then.
As someone else pointed out above, it seems the well was damaged weeks before the explosion - and it was the explosion safety equipment that was damaged. Despite this, TransOcean (working for BP), decided to carry on with the drilling.
If this is true, then BP is to blame for not watching over TransOcean sufficiently but TransOcean should be charged with criminal misconduct or whatever the equivalent legal term would be.
The reason: its worth gambling something bad won't happen to ensure the company makes more money. Something bad happened, and now the citizens of those countries boarding on the ocean region the well is in get to pay the price.
Corporations have no inherent morality, nor any incentive to behave morally. Profits are the only motive. This is an excellent indication of this. Its time to change this I think. The world can no longer afford these large corporations and the destruction they wreak on our environment. Of course, we need to learn to do with fewer luxuries if the environment can't afford them too.
Its not as if there are many programs worth watching surely? I can easily go a week without turning on the TV and I don't feel like I missed much. There are some exceptions of course. I like "Castle", I watch TV shows from Britain (where they still make high quality TV), but overall - at least for me - 99% of the stuff across all the channels is a complete waste of time.
Moreover, the amount of advertising drives me away from watching anything. When you watch an hour of TV and 20mins of it is advertising, whats the point? Particularly if its an old show they are repeating and had to butcher to fit in the extra advertisements.
I buy shows on DvD and watch them without ads. Its far more enjoyable that way, and I control the "broadcast" times.
People need to get some perspective on what a "niche" MMO is. When UO scored 250,000 players, or DAOC got up to comparable numbers, or EQ got to 500,000 subscribers - those were MAJOR SUCCESSES. No one could believe how popular those games were, with subscriber numbers like that, they were assured of long lives (and in fact DAOC is still hanging on by its fingernails, barely).
WOW came along and completely transformed the market. 11 Million subscribers as a base has so totally distored the market - and new player's understanding of what "successful" means, that now the old numbers cannot be seen in the correct perspective. Now, they look like "niche" games with barely acceptable numbers to people.
When Warhammer Online came out, people were saying if it didn't get at least 1m subscribers, it was a complete failure. I believe it got up to around 800,000 (in other words about as many subscribers as the original EQ and Starwars Galaxies ever had, at their peaks, combined). It was labeled a massive failure on the forums. People started saying they were leaving because it was a failure.
What changed? Just player's expectations, distorted by the juggernaut that is World of Warcraft. WOW has been so successful that the old stats from old games cannot be used when making measurements. The market increased in size immensely with WOW. A better way to look at things (but less immediately recognizable to readers) is to use market shares. Then at least the size of the total market pre-WOW and post-WOW is irrelevant.
EVE is doing just fine from what I can see. They identified a market, produced a game for that market, and they have 300,000 intensely loyal, paying customers. I am not sure what the subscription rate is, but assuming the standard $15 or so, that's about 4.5m a month. I dunno bout you but $54m per year looks pretty decent to me, and not very niche to be honest.
I read somewhere that the LDS has branches devoted to this, and that they are so heavily into genealogy because they believe they can baptize dead people by proxy. Thats what some elements of the Church of LDS are actively engaged in, baptizing our dead ancestors into their church so that come Judgement day, they all get to go to heaven (or whatever they actually believe happens, I am not sure). Mind you its no odder than those BA Christians who are actively hoping that Israel will go to war with the Palestinians because if they do it might herald the Second Coming.
Personally, I can't help think the world would be a far better, more peaceful and saner place if all those people who follow religions "of the book" were gone from the Earth.
Between that and the Anti-Choice movement folks who post abortion doctors home addresses and schedules on websites, just in case any of their viewers want to go sniping that day. Hatred is hatred, and just as unacceptable for Christians as it is in Muslims.
And thats the best reason for not supporting executions, or indefinite confinement without due process of law etc. It might be rare that a person convicted of a crime who did 20 years or whatever is eventually exonerated but it does happen. Not only does that mean they were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, but it also means that whoever did commit the crime has gone free for the same period. If they simply executed people who were confined for "life", they would never end up looking into those old cases and find the mistakes that have been made etc.
I believe I recall reading that the OSS did this during WWII to people who were a security risk and whom they felt couldn't be trusted not to blab. I can't find a source for this though so it may be fiction or rumour.
Ah I miss BBSing immensely. I ran several different ones in different locations at various times. Each one was a joy to create and to see users visit. Door games were of course one of the major attractions. I still have my licenses for my last used BBS software (Roboboard), and my most popular door games (Trade Wars, LoRD, etc). I would have to say that BBSes are what originally got me into being interested in computers and computing. I didn't start programming much until after that though.
Oh you misunderstand. I am in fact Pagan by religious preference, so I am perfectly happy to celebrate Yule, have a tree etc. I just didn't mention that in my earlier comments because it tends to get people focused on my religion, not on my comments concerning religion in general or in this case Christianity. I don't expect people to treat my religion seriously - and when you see some of the lunatics that call themselves Pagan I don't blame them - but I also don't want to have the conversation devolve into "you will burn in hell" type comments either. All i wanted was a rational discussion free of religious overtones - something many Christians have a very hard time accepting it seems (and no, I haven't spent any time discussing things with members of the Jewish faith or Muslims to make any comparison). From what I recall reading, the birth of Jesus was originally celebrated at a different time of the year, then moved to Christmas at a later date.
"Some commentators have attempted to establish the date of birth by identifying the Star of Bethlehem with some known astronomical or astrological phenomenon.[6] There are many possible phenomena and none seems to match the Gospel account.[7] Many scholars regard the star as a literary invention of the author of the Gospel of Matthew, to claim fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy (Numbers 24:17).[8]."
Which would seem to say that many scholars agree with the Star of Bethlehem being a later addition to the story, and possibly with my assertion that the story was altered to make it fit the prophecies.
As for the day of his birth, the article has these comments:
"The New Testament provides no information regarding the date of the birth of Jesus.[10] The traditional date is 25 December, which is mid-winter in Judea. Because the Luke account says that shepherds were outdoors with their flocks it has sometimes been suggested that this implies a summer or autumn date.[11] However, the climate of Palestine is quite mild and in fact sheep are allowed to forage even in December.[11][12]
Early Christians sought to calculate the date of Christ's birth based on the idea that Old Testament prophets died either on an anniversary of their birth or of their conception. They reasoned that Jesus died on an anniversary of his conception, so the date of his birth was nine months after the date of Good Friday, either December 25 or January 6."
Which would be best summarized as "No one knows when he was born, and Dec 25th is based solely on numerological calculations". On the other hand Dec 25th is just as good a choice as any other day of the year:P
I was trying my best to raise my opinion on something someone else pointed out without causing offense as best I could - but for many people the story of Jesus is too close to their hearts for them to take a rational and logical point of view on it and have a fact related discussion. I didn't want to offend those people, and hoped to find those who would be capable of discussing things without breaking out their firearms and heading north for my apartment up here in Canada:P People take the story of Jesus as (pun intended) Gospel Truth. They don't question it, they don't examine it etc. Now, I know there are thousands of Biblical scholars out there doing exactly that of course, but the common person in North American society - whether they are actually Christian or not - never gives a seconds thought to how valid/substantiated the story of Jesus is. To me its pure Myth, but there is nothing wrong with that IMHO either. Its just not my myth. Lots of folks are incapable of raising any discussion of the subject whatsoever and feel threatened by the possibility that someone else might have a different opinion.
Thanks for the reply, all the more so for it being informative and not dismissive. I am far from a Biblical scholar of course - first off because I am not Christian, Jewish nor Muslim in any sense - but whether or not they were focusing on converting members of existing Jewish communities or not, I don't see that that necessarily limits their ability to borrow from other mythological traditions that were present in the area at the time. The myth of death and resurrection was a common theme in the middle east as far back as the Egyptians at least, and I think it likely that that was borrowed so to speak from other religious traditions. Many elements of Mithracism are common with Christianity if I am not mistaken, and it ended up being one of the major rivals for the dominant religion in the Roman Empire I believe. After all if John is the earliest account of the birth of Christ, it was written at least 100 years after the actual event - assuming Jesus existed at all - and that is plenty of time for the event to have received some embellishment in the retelling. Understand, I am not saying that someone deliberately rewrote history to include key elements like the virgin birth, the star over his birthplace etc, just that in retelling a tale over 100 years its entirely possible for it to be embellished with elements that were common to comparable religious mythology in other religions. A sort of religious keeping up with the Joneses so to speak. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth_of_Jesus), the book of John begins to cover the life of Christ when he was baptized by John the Baptist. The other gospels which do cover his birth and earlier years are of later origin apparently. Now, a good deal of Jesus life seems to have consisted of him fulfilling various prophecies that indicated he was the Messiah of Jewish tradition. It seems to me that Jesus went out of his way to ensure that he fulfilled those key prophetic requirements (elaborate preparations so he could ride into Jerusalem on an ass etc). Giving him a virgin birth and having a star appear overhead - if those were prophesied by earlier Jewish Prophets - would seem to me to be essential elements of his story that would be shoehorned in (if they didn't already exist) by later writers - particularly if they were attempting to convert existing Jewish communities.
I only mention all of the above because it was mentioned that this "star overhead" element was apparently popular in Pagan traditions in Europe and the Middle East. I believe the stories of Christianity (and other religious traditions of course) should be given the same treatment as any mythology of non-"People of the Book" type religions get. All to often we in western culture seem to sneer at Roman or Greek (or Norse etc) mythology and religion and treat them less seriously than we do Christianity, Judaism or Islam, and seem to forget that for those people, their religion offered the same solace, strength and morals that later religions that displaced them do today. Just because something is a myth doesn't make it any less valid in religious terms IMHO. Myths have been the cornerstones of religion and culture for centuries. Its really only in the last two millennia that we have had religions that insisted their version was the only truth to be had, and that killing people for denying that was a moral value.
I know this is going to offend some people, but since most of the mythology around Jesus Christ is already borrowed from other mythological traditions, I expect that this is the origin of the Star of Bethlehem that is supposed to have appeared over Joshua Bar Joseph's birthplace when he was born. It would make sense for early Christians to have borrowed this story as well if it would help make their religion more popular with the Romano-Graecian population in the near east.
about us as customers. This should be a surprise to anyone? Most companies see their customers as a demographic that produces money. That demographic is there to be manupulated, massaged, or blackmailed into producing more money on demand. If the company is big enough they can get away with behaviour that should see their customers revolt. There are companies who care, even if they are large monstrosities, but I am afraid they seem like the rarity these days. Now, I don't buy console games. I have owned an XBOX, a PS3 and Wii in the past, and with the exception of the Wii (which offered experiences that were different from my PC gaming), none of them equaled my experience with PC games. I remain a devoute PC gamer, although these days I tend to play MMOs mostly so I am paying the game company for my continued entertainment ($15/mo on City of Heroes and a Lifetime subscription to LOTRO for $100 is still cheaper than paying for cable TV once a couple of months have passed).
Its a shame that gamers as a whole don't have the wits/willpower to organize enough to let games companies know they can't keep pulling off this sort of shit and continue to have those gamers as customers. Sadly though, we are generally focused on the latest shiney and can't see past it to predict future behaviour of the publisher based on past behaviour.
I could be entirely wrong but it seems to me that a large part of Blizzard's success has been that they don't screw over their customers.
Come on! Think of this as a Hollywood movie. The first one - placed by the military - has to fail so as to up the tension. The second nuke, which is placed just in time by the team of geeks/misfits no one expected to succeed, is the one that will go off without a hitch in the last few minutes. It will save the lives of all the evacuees that were forced to leave their homes in the now-just-recovering New Orleans. There will be great irony as they see the bright flash on the horizon and know they are saved. There will be a few "Stop, Drop and Roll" and "Big Bang" jokes with sexual innuendo. Has no one learned yet that Hollywood really does portray reality as it is?
I would agree, but the only people following me are random strangers - possibly because I signed up for Twitter, sent one tweet as a test, and haven't been back again. I just don't see the point if you aren't a celebrity who wants to get more publicity.
Slashdot Mirror
sucking Hollywood's cock. They keep trying to ram this shit through, I guess the bribes are still being paid in full.
I sincerely hope my fellow Canadians wake up and elect anyone other than Harper and his cronies. Anyone would be better, even Ignatieff.
"We need a term to describe things which appear to be science but in fact which are not."
We have one: Fox News :P
Wow way to make baseless generalizations about all Apple users. Who the fuck do you think you are?
I am a techy type. I have been working with computers and as a developer for the past 18 years off and on. I have run Windows in various versions, Linux, FreeBSD, and of course Mac OS/X. I don't generally attend parties, I do have a facebook account (and I access it at least once every couple of months when family members post some pictures etc. Personally I have no use for it).
The reasons I am using an iMac desktop computer are quite simple:
* I got very tired of reinstalling windows drivers on a regular basis, and having something fuck up that I had to fix. Likewise I got very tired of Windows crashing, locking up, you name it. I spent a measurable amount of my time fixing something with the OS, or with the programs I was running.
* I got very tired of needing to upgrade some piece of kit in my PC.
* I got very tired of the clunky and inconsistent Windows UI.
* Essentially I just wanted to be using my computer, not fixing something.
With my iMac, I use the computer, not fix it. I still have some problems of course, nothing is perfect, but its a damn sight closer overall. I spend almost zero time worrying about why something isn't working properly or at all. The UI is more or less intuitive, and the programs are perfectly functional.
If I need to boot into XP to play a game, I can do so, but all of the games I have been playing in the last while are Mac compatible so I haven't actually booted to XP in several months. I don't miss it at all.
The whole "fanboi" dismissal crap is old. If someone likes a product because it works and they can afford to buy it, more power to them. If you can't afford to spend money in their league, then calling them a fanboi so you can dismiss them out of hand is just pathetic (not that you used that term that I noticed, but your post has the same dismissive air).
Yes, my product supports IPv6. Its also a full UNIX, supports X11, I am running Apache/PHP/Mysql for doing some local development on a website, and its all working just fine thank you.
The reason that Apple products are popular and building a growing market share is simply that they are overall very good, both as hardware and in the OS that they are running. Better than the competition from the average user's perspective. Thats all.
Legislate in such a way that its mandatory for Intel to desalinate ocean water on site, and they will make a token effort at doing so, then pay bribes to the right politicians so they can get away without doing so. Capitalism works on the principle that whatever makes the most money for the corporate owners - regardless of how many people die or are forced to suffer - is the preferred choice. Rationalization to make the corporate lackey's feel like they are acting morally comes afterwords. Capitalism isn't exactly evil, but its sure as hell not a good thing from the point of someone who doesn't own any shares. I would like to see a change to reign in Corporations and make them morally responsible, but I don't expect it to ever happen.
Unfortunately, the "elected officials" you can choose from differ only in which corporate backers they represent as front men. The Corporations have the real influence and power when they want it. The politicians are just talking heads.
Why, yes, I am a bit cynical about democracy as a system, and I do feel that Corporations are inherently amoral, and thus often (small e) evil, why do you ask?
I think we need some very radical changes in the way politicians are financed, elected and observed while in office. Absolutely no corporate financing (even by proxy) might be a good start, but its unrealistic.
First off, I don't think this will catch on, because it requires users to learn something, and in order to be really popular it needs to be so simple that they pick it up almost intuitively. Having to learn a few hundred symbols sorted into only 8 categories is likely to be a problem with adoption.
That said, it brings some of the power of Chinese style writing to other languages.Its been a while since I studied Linguistics, but if I recall correctly:
* China has 5 basic language groups (Mandarin, Cantonese, Han, Wu and some other one I can't recall), and over 1 million different dialects, yet any newspaper or other written materials created anywhere in the country can be read by anyone else anywhere else, because the writing system being symbolic means the readers are free to pronounce the words in their own way. The meaning is attached to the symbols (usually in pairs I believe). Thats a very great invention for a writing system.
* The problem is that as a young student, you need to learn thousands of symbols to be able to write with the system. The learning curve is not trivial.
iConji would seemingly have the potential to let people who speak different languages manage to communicate at least at a basic level about simple subjects. I might be entering the symbols with the English language version turned on, but you interpret the message with Spanish turned on because thats your native language.
* One problem they face if it becomes popular is the need for expanded vocabulary of a specific nature. Using Basic English, you can get by with about 800 words apparently, but the moment you want to discuss anything technical you had better star learning the full language. Assuming this caught on, they would need a central repository for creating and disseminating new symbols for specialized words used in technical fields for instance. Then they need to develop some pretty specific icons. Whats a good symbol for "load bearing wall", or "object oriented development"? Now imagine your iPad iConji interface filling up with 100,000 or so technical terms that are required for all the different professions. Try to imagine keeping up with that as well.
* They were idiots to not involve someone formally trained in Linguistics I think. Without a solid basis in the way we use languages, this will end up being a house of cards if it gleans any fans. Language is not simple, even if it seems like it is because you speak one fluently. Trying to produce a system that is able to work effectively with different languages (some of which use radically different grammars etc) is going to be a real headache. Sure, English->German and vice versa might work, but how is Inuit->Khosa going to work down the road?
The problem is getting people to adopt this system. Either it catches on and becomes wildly popular or it goes the way of Blisssymbols and fades into non-existence. Like it or not English is becoming the defacto Lingua Franca (oh the irony), and replacing the rest of the world's languages over time.
We are losing hundreds of languages a year I recall reading. Each one is a unique way in which a human can experience and describe reality, a unique way of thinking (if you believe in Sapir-Whorf), and once its gone its more or less irreplaceable. What we are doing is slowly reducing ourselves to a handful of means of expression. I expect the winners to be Mandarin and English (in that order) 200 years from now, unless something radical happens to split us up into smaller communities again.
My ire is directed at your government and the media companies that seem to control it, not at the average American, or indeed at the incredible social experiment that is your country. I have quite literally never met an American who didn't seem to be nice - I know you aren't all that way but that's my experience.
My rant was written while I was exhausted and just got off work...
We Canadians are abiding by our laws just as well as any other country in the world, including the US. Its just that the US Media conglomerates have not succeeded in shoving their idea of strict IP laws down our throats yet, despite their best efforts at bribing our officials. As a result, we see entirely biased bullshit like this announced.
I am sure that in China there is a problem with recognizing the rediculous way that patents and IP are being treated. People are copying technology and selling it and thats probably a real problem for US companies that rely on obedience to US laws to enforce their business models. I can imagine that some of the same is going on in Russia. But Canada? What is the possible origin of lumping Canada in there? Could it be that we have a (gasp) different understanding of fair use and so far (despite our "Conservative" government) have stuck to our guns and maintained our stance? I pay an extra few bucks every time I buy data CDs - why? Because that money is (theoretically at least) being collected to compensate Canadian artists should I choose to do something that infringes on their rights - even if all I actually do is, you know, use them to store data/do backups. Its legal in Canada to download music you don't own I am told (I don't listen to more than a few songs a year on my computer and I think I have a total of 12 mp3s on my system), its just illegal to upload it. I suspect that our stance on fair use, and unwillingness to just roll over and take it up the ass from US companies is the origin of the inclusion of Canada on this list.
Well fuck them then.
As someone else pointed out above, it seems the well was damaged weeks before the explosion - and it was the explosion safety equipment that was damaged. Despite this, TransOcean (working for BP), decided to carry on with the drilling.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7129225.ece
If this is true, then BP is to blame for not watching over TransOcean sufficiently but TransOcean should be charged with criminal misconduct or whatever the equivalent legal term would be.
The reason: its worth gambling something bad won't happen to ensure the company makes more money. Something bad happened, and now the citizens of those countries boarding on the ocean region the well is in get to pay the price.
Corporations have no inherent morality, nor any incentive to behave morally. Profits are the only motive. This is an excellent indication of this.
Its time to change this I think. The world can no longer afford these large corporations and the destruction they wreak on our environment. Of course, we need to learn to do with fewer luxuries if the environment can't afford them too.
Its not as if there are many programs worth watching surely? I can easily go a week without turning on the TV and I don't feel like I missed much. There are some exceptions of course. I like "Castle", I watch TV shows from Britain (where they still make high quality TV), but overall - at least for me - 99% of the stuff across all the channels is a complete waste of time.
Moreover, the amount of advertising drives me away from watching anything. When you watch an hour of TV and 20mins of it is advertising, whats the point? Particularly if its an old show they are repeating and had to butcher to fit in the extra advertisements.
I buy shows on DvD and watch them without ads. Its far more enjoyable that way, and I control the "broadcast" times.
People need to get some perspective on what a "niche" MMO is. When UO scored 250,000 players, or DAOC got up to comparable numbers, or EQ got to 500,000 subscribers - those were MAJOR SUCCESSES. No one could believe how popular those games were, with subscriber numbers like that, they were assured of long lives (and in fact DAOC is still hanging on by its fingernails, barely).
WOW came along and completely transformed the market. 11 Million subscribers as a base has so totally distored the market - and new player's understanding of what "successful" means, that now the old numbers cannot be seen in the correct perspective. Now, they look like "niche" games with barely acceptable numbers to people.
When Warhammer Online came out, people were saying if it didn't get at least 1m subscribers, it was a complete failure. I believe it got up to around 800,000 (in other words about as many subscribers as the original EQ and Starwars Galaxies ever had, at their peaks, combined). It was labeled a massive failure on the forums. People started saying they were leaving because it was a failure.
What changed? Just player's expectations, distorted by the juggernaut that is World of Warcraft. WOW has been so successful that the old stats from old games cannot be used when making measurements. The market increased in size immensely with WOW. A better way to look at things (but less immediately recognizable to readers) is to use market shares. Then at least the size of the total market pre-WOW and post-WOW is irrelevant.
EVE is doing just fine from what I can see. They identified a market, produced a game for that market, and they have 300,000 intensely loyal, paying customers. I am not sure what the subscription rate is, but assuming the standard $15 or so, that's about 4.5m a month. I dunno bout you but $54m per year looks pretty decent to me, and not very niche to be honest.
I read somewhere that the LDS has branches devoted to this, and that they are so heavily into genealogy because they believe they can baptize dead people by proxy. Thats what some elements of the Church of LDS are actively engaged in, baptizing our dead ancestors into their church so that come Judgement day, they all get to go to heaven (or whatever they actually believe happens, I am not sure).
Mind you its no odder than those BA Christians who are actively hoping that Israel will go to war with the Palestinians because if they do it might herald the Second Coming.
Personally, I can't help think the world would be a far better, more peaceful and saner place if all those people who follow religions "of the book" were gone from the Earth.
Between that and the Anti-Choice movement folks who post abortion doctors home addresses and schedules on websites, just in case any of their viewers want to go sniping that day. Hatred is hatred, and just as unacceptable for Christians as it is in Muslims.
And thats the best reason for not supporting executions, or indefinite confinement without due process of law etc.
It might be rare that a person convicted of a crime who did 20 years or whatever is eventually exonerated but it does happen. Not only does that mean they were wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, but it also means that whoever did commit the crime has gone free for the same period. If they simply executed people who were confined for "life", they would never end up looking into those old cases and find the mistakes that have been made etc.
I believe I recall reading that the OSS did this during WWII to people who were a security risk and whom they felt couldn't be trusted not to blab. I can't find a source for this though so it may be fiction or rumour.
Ah I miss BBSing immensely. I ran several different ones in different locations at various times. Each one was a joy to create and to see users visit.
Door games were of course one of the major attractions. I still have my licenses for my last used BBS software (Roboboard), and my most popular door games (Trade Wars, LoRD, etc). I would have to say that BBSes are what originally got me into being interested in computers and computing. I didn't start programming much until after that though.
I have no desire to ridicule anyone's religion. That wasn't my purpose. no.
Oh you misunderstand. I am in fact Pagan by religious preference, so I am perfectly happy to celebrate Yule, have a tree etc. I just didn't mention that in my earlier comments because it tends to get people focused on my religion, not on my comments concerning religion in general or in this case Christianity. I don't expect people to treat my religion seriously - and when you see some of the lunatics that call themselves Pagan I don't blame them - but I also don't want to have the conversation devolve into "you will burn in hell" type comments either. All i wanted was a rational discussion free of religious overtones - something many Christians have a very hard time accepting it seems (and no, I haven't spent any time discussing things with members of the Jewish faith or Muslims to make any comparison).
From what I recall reading, the birth of Jesus was originally celebrated at a different time of the year, then moved to Christmas at a later date.
Now back to data drawn from Wikipedia, I found the following: (here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Jesus)
"Some commentators have attempted to establish the date of birth by identifying the Star of Bethlehem with some known astronomical or astrological phenomenon.[6] There are many possible phenomena and none seems to match the Gospel account.[7] Many scholars regard the star as a literary invention of the author of the Gospel of Matthew, to claim fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy (Numbers 24:17).[8]."
Which would seem to say that many scholars agree with the Star of Bethlehem being a later addition to the story, and possibly with my assertion that the story was altered to make it fit the prophecies.
As for the day of his birth, the article has these comments:
"The New Testament provides no information regarding the date of the birth of Jesus.[10] The traditional date is 25 December, which is mid-winter in Judea. Because the Luke account says that shepherds were outdoors with their flocks it has sometimes been suggested that this implies a summer or autumn date.[11] However, the climate of Palestine is quite mild and in fact sheep are allowed to forage even in December.[11][12]
Early Christians sought to calculate the date of Christ's birth based on the idea that Old Testament prophets died either on an anniversary of their birth or of their conception. They reasoned that Jesus died on an anniversary of his conception, so the date of his birth was nine months after the date of Good Friday, either December 25 or January 6."
Which would be best summarized as "No one knows when he was born, and Dec 25th is based solely on numerological calculations". On the other hand Dec 25th is just as good a choice as any other day of the year :P
I was trying my best to raise my opinion on something someone else pointed out without causing offense as best I could - but for many people the story of Jesus is too close to their hearts for them to take a rational and logical point of view on it and have a fact related discussion. I didn't want to offend those people, and hoped to find those who would be capable of discussing things without breaking out their firearms and heading north for my apartment up here in Canada :P People take the story of Jesus as (pun intended) Gospel Truth. They don't question it, they don't examine it etc. Now, I know there are thousands of Biblical scholars out there doing exactly that of course, but the common person in North American society - whether they are actually Christian or not - never gives a seconds thought to how valid/substantiated the story of Jesus is. To me its pure Myth, but there is nothing wrong with that IMHO either. Its just not my myth. Lots of folks are incapable of raising any discussion of the subject whatsoever and feel threatened by the possibility that someone else might have a different opinion.
Thanks for the reply, all the more so for it being informative and not dismissive. I am far from a Biblical scholar of course - first off because I am not Christian, Jewish nor Muslim in any sense - but whether or not they were focusing on converting members of existing Jewish communities or not, I don't see that that necessarily limits their ability to borrow from other mythological traditions that were present in the area at the time. The myth of death and resurrection was a common theme in the middle east as far back as the Egyptians at least, and I think it likely that that was borrowed so to speak from other religious traditions. Many elements of Mithracism are common with Christianity if I am not mistaken, and it ended up being one of the major rivals for the dominant religion in the Roman Empire I believe.
After all if John is the earliest account of the birth of Christ, it was written at least 100 years after the actual event - assuming Jesus existed at all - and that is plenty of time for the event to have received some embellishment in the retelling.
Understand, I am not saying that someone deliberately rewrote history to include key elements like the virgin birth, the star over his birthplace etc, just that in retelling a tale over 100 years its entirely possible for it to be embellished with elements that were common to comparable religious mythology in other religions. A sort of religious keeping up with the Joneses so to speak.
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth_of_Jesus), the book of John begins to cover the life of Christ when he was baptized by John the Baptist. The other gospels which do cover his birth and earlier years are of later origin apparently. Now, a good deal of Jesus life seems to have consisted of him fulfilling various prophecies that indicated he was the Messiah of Jewish tradition. It seems to me that Jesus went out of his way to ensure that he fulfilled those key prophetic requirements (elaborate preparations so he could ride into Jerusalem on an ass etc). Giving him a virgin birth and having a star appear overhead - if those were prophesied by earlier Jewish Prophets - would seem to me to be essential elements of his story that would be shoehorned in (if they didn't already exist) by later writers - particularly if they were attempting to convert existing Jewish communities.
I only mention all of the above because it was mentioned that this "star overhead" element was apparently popular in Pagan traditions in Europe and the Middle East. I believe the stories of Christianity (and other religious traditions of course) should be given the same treatment as any mythology of non-"People of the Book" type religions get. All to often we in western culture seem to sneer at Roman or Greek (or Norse etc) mythology and religion and treat them less seriously than we do Christianity, Judaism or Islam, and seem to forget that for those people, their religion offered the same solace, strength and morals that later religions that displaced them do today. Just because something is a myth doesn't make it any less valid in religious terms IMHO. Myths have been the cornerstones of religion and culture for centuries. Its really only in the last two millennia that we have had religions that insisted their version was the only truth to be had, and that killing people for denying that was a moral value.
I know this is going to offend some people, but since most of the mythology around Jesus Christ is already borrowed from other mythological traditions, I expect that this is the origin of the Star of Bethlehem that is supposed to have appeared over Joshua Bar Joseph's birthplace when he was born. It would make sense for early Christians to have borrowed this story as well if it would help make their religion more popular with the Romano-Graecian population in the near east.
about us as customers. This should be a surprise to anyone? Most companies see their customers as a demographic that produces money. That demographic is there to be manupulated, massaged, or blackmailed into producing more money on demand. If the company is big enough they can get away with behaviour that should see their customers revolt.
There are companies who care, even if they are large monstrosities, but I am afraid they seem like the rarity these days.
Now, I don't buy console games. I have owned an XBOX, a PS3 and Wii in the past, and with the exception of the Wii (which offered experiences that were different from my PC gaming), none of them equaled my experience with PC games. I remain a devoute PC gamer, although these days I tend to play MMOs mostly so I am paying the game company for my continued entertainment ($15/mo on City of Heroes and a Lifetime subscription to LOTRO for $100 is still cheaper than paying for cable TV once a couple of months have passed).
Its a shame that gamers as a whole don't have the wits/willpower to organize enough to let games companies know they can't keep pulling off this sort of shit and continue to have those gamers as customers. Sadly though, we are generally focused on the latest shiney and can't see past it to predict future behaviour of the publisher based on past behaviour.
I could be entirely wrong but it seems to me that a large part of Blizzard's success has been that they don't screw over their customers.
Come on! Think of this as a Hollywood movie. The first one - placed by the military - has to fail so as to up the tension. The second nuke, which is placed just in time by the team of geeks/misfits no one expected to succeed, is the one that will go off without a hitch in the last few minutes. It will save the lives of all the evacuees that were forced to leave their homes in the now-just-recovering New Orleans. There will be great irony as they see the bright flash on the horizon and know they are saved. There will be a few "Stop, Drop and Roll" and "Big Bang" jokes with sexual innuendo.
Has no one learned yet that Hollywood really does portray reality as it is?
Those were software glitches in the robot they used to replace him :P
I would agree, but the only people following me are random strangers - possibly because I signed up for Twitter, sent one tweet as a test, and haven't been back again. I just don't see the point if you aren't a celebrity who wants to get more publicity.