So the biggest periods of accrued and unnecessary debts were during the Reagan years (81-89) and the Bush Jr years (2002-2007). Both militaristic Republicans.
I put it to you that you are already bankrupt from overspending for the past 30 years. If the USA wasn't a nation that can just keep printing more money when required, or spend itself trillions into the hole, it would have been bankrupt years ago.
The Military/Industrial Complex that Eisenhower was warning against, got into power, and its been reaping massive fortunes for its Corporate Owners for that entire time. Look at Haliburton most recently.
Blackwater - when did the US citizenry decide it was actually okay for the country to hire mercenaries, and in fact let them equip themselves with a private airforce etc? Billions lost there.
Its long since past time for these cuts to be made - and in fact if the system were forced to trim itself down to ensure the "Tooth" part of the equation is still effective it would probably be very effective still - but the US budget is firmly in the grasp of the corporations that are making billions in profits for their owners off of defense spending, and the Military who naturally want all the high-tech tools and manpower they can get so they can be as effective as possible. You are not going to break that grip, ever. The politicians who are in office, BELONG to those companies, and if they want to keep their jobs, must keep supporting them I am afraid.
* Sandals, with socks * Shorts with pockets * A T-Shirt preferably with a Tech related theme or something from popular culture. Sports themes are right out. * Beard - if you don't have one, try to cultivate one. If you are unable to grow one, try to grow a "soul patch" * Shaved head is optional * Shower only on days which have a T in the name
Now, you may be too young for this approach, but aim towards it, start (I would guess, as I *am* too old) with sk8t3r-chic and work your way into the above as best you can.
Just how right-wing the US is generally. Even your left-wing politicians are more rightwing in a lot of cases than the most rightwing politicians in some other countries. Our "Conservative" government up here in Canada gets along just fine with Obama's administration, and the association - like that with previous administrations in the States - continues to move Canadian politics to the right.
You folks have no idea what a normal political spectrum is I am afraid, the influence of the Republicans over the past 100 years or so seems to have skewed things greatly to me.
to be harvested amongst the people who don't understand Science, specifically Climate Changes. Its much easier to convince people its all conspiracy to waste their money and that they should oppose it, than it is to educate them in something extremely complex and involved - and which we are still figuring out. The Climate Change deniers can muster a lot of political capital by marshalling all the ignorant masses against making changes that might cost them money but are intended to be for the good of us all. Personally, I expect humanity will do precisely *nothing* that is effective to deal with climate change and that millions of people will have to die first before the rest of us accept the fact that our lifestyle and population growth has been writing checks we couldn't afford, and now the collection agency is here for their money. Lots of corporations owned by rich individuals have made trillions of dollars off of the world's resources without worrying about environmental impact - now we deal with it. Tons of damage has been done to the environment by those same companies and we are left to pay the bill. Our great grandchildren will *still* be paying that bill I expect, those that aren't dead that is. Do I want to see responsible research, yes of course. Will it happen? I am sure its happening now. Will the media report on it and the average human learn to understand it? No way. The Media has no interest in dispensing the truth, the average person is too stupid to understand, and doesn't want to hear anything that implies *they* have to make sacrifices and can't get the latest shiney. When enough humans have died that we no longer can cause global warming, thats when things will settle down again. Humanity is too stupid and shortsighted. Its much more important to figure out whats happening on America's Got Talent... Yes, I am a bit cynical and bitter today, what clued you in?:P
The last phrase quoted is likely the key one - Microsoft is very focused on providing as much DRM as possible, and if this codec has the most potential in that regard from their POV, thats likely why they are supporting it. I am sure the Entertainment industry has been talking to MS about this and urging them to keep pushing on DRM type solutions.
The Insurance companies more than likely have a deal with the manufacturers of that bulky, ugly equipment so that they get a kickback on any purchases they support. Insurance companies are not about providing a useful service to their customers, they are about making as much money as possible while paying out the least amount possible.
My wife and I are about to drop our cable, again. We signed up for it again so we could watch the Olympics (we live in Victoria, about 100m from Vancouver). We went to drop it, and the cable company (actually Telus, the Phone company) offered us 3 months free instead. We will likely drop it at the end of those 3 months though.
I have long thought that when they started allowing an increase in the number of TV Channels, the quality started to drop. This makes perfect sense to me because there is essentially a fixed amount of advertising revenue to be had, and thats what pays for the quality TV development. More channels means less revenue per channel, and as a result less budget for each show overall. The end result is absolute shit like Survivor and the other low budget "reality tv" shows - that bear no relationship to reality whatsoever, and are missing the quality part of the content. I know those shows are insanely popular with deeply stupid people, and there are a lot of those deeply stupid people, but there are a lot of us who think shit is shit.
As well, the amount of time per TV hour that is actually advertising not show, has increased exponentially. If you are watching a repeat of an older show - or something from say, The BBC (where quality still exists) - you are seeing less and less of it as it gets chopped up to allow for more advertising.
Actually within the last year and half or so, ALL of the TV shows my wife and I watch tend to come from the BBC. I am sure the BBC has crap too, but we get the cream over here for the most part. The rest can be viewed via the web by some means or another. Shows like Top Gear (my favourite I think), Wire in the Blood are miles above anything I see coming from North America in terms of entertainment.
Now, someone above mentioned "The Wire", and having watched that on DvD, I have to agree that that series was an amazing TV production. One of the best TV Series I have ever seen in fact. Obviously quality is possible when the network wants to produce it, its just that with so much time to fill up, the tendency is to produce cheap crap as filler.
For the most part, I would rather spend my time playing an MMO than watching most TV content. At least the later is somewhat mentally engaging, whereas TV is essentially passive.
Well now, define important. To the US and its Corporate Entertainment controllers, the IP legislation issue is the most important thing. To the Conservatives, remaining in power after the corruption scandal that's currently hit the presses rolls on through their reputation, so that they can remain in power and Harper can continue to suck up to the USA is likely more important. Its always so embarrassing for Government when the corruption that everyone expects is going on daily actually gets exposed and everyone has to backpedal like mad. No, I don't think the Liberals would be any better to be honest. The NDP perhaps, but Jack Leighton? Seriously?
In the meantime though I hope the US Entertainment industry will stay the fuck out of my country. No one else wants the draconian legislation they are trying to shove down the world's throats it seems, but because the US is the biggest and nastiest dog in the scrapyard, everyone else is caving in. They don't want to get beaten up and they want their share of the bone, so everyone else seems to be Finlandizing sadly.
In the US the Big Corporations control the Government so its much the same thing. Lobbyists are just the grease between those Corporations and the people they put in office:P
I think they took away the "initiative to find a way to get the password to the right person in a secure manner" when they locked him up in jail and left him there. He evidently requested to see the mayor, and when the mayor arrived, gave him the password. Unless that isn't the way it went, I don't really see what else he could have done.
Again though, I haven't read a good article that had significant details in it, just crappy links from/. and short articles that had few details. I want a time line, a copy of the relevant rules, links to a transcript of the court sessions etc:P
I think I would want to draft up a very clear - and legally binding - agreement that I would want my superiors in management to sign on behalf of the company. It would spell out in specific details, the security policies, security review process, enforcement etc. It would absolve me from prosecution unless I violated any of the very specific rules that were listed. If my superior changed, they would have to sign the document when they took up their position etc.
I wouldn't likely get the job, they'd hire someone who wasn't so paranoid, but I don't think I would want to take a job where if someone in management decided to break the rules, and I tried to apply those rules for the sake of ensuring I didn't violate the trust that had been placed in me, then I wasn't liable for prosecution either way, like Childs was.
Now, he could have handled things differently I am sure, but he might have been prosecuted either way from what I have read so far. I would like more details in an objective report on the situation.
Every PvP focused MMO that I can think of has died. As vocal as PvPers are, the majority of players who will subscribe to an MMO don't enjoy getting gang-ganked by assholes who play 16 hours a day. Here are the ones I can think of:
* Shadowbane - tried it, it sucked, it died. * Pirates of the Burning Sea - at first it had tremendous potential, then the ganker assholes got ahold of it and the game became unfun for anyone who wasn't willing to play like a dickhead. Down to a few servers I believe * Age of Conan - still exists but is not doing well from what I understand. Should have been called "Age of Endless Instance Zoning" from what I could see, hated it, didn't make it past day 2 of attempting play. * Warhammer Online - all the knowledge they could have drawn from DAOC was available to them, and they completely missed what worked about DAOC and this resulted instead. Uninspiring and ultimately boring and pointless.
I am not a PvP-Rulez-All type. I like PvP gameplay but only when I am playing with people who have a sense of sportsmanship. Most PvPers I have met couldn't spell "Sportsmanship" let alone discover what it means. The exceptions are a joy to play with.
I have enjoyed the PvP in Dark Age of Camelot (still the best MMO ever produced in my opinion, sadly down to 1 server I believe), and Star Wars (as a Bounty Hunter hunting Jedi before the NGE).
Now, EVE has done a great job in their design, but its not exclusively PvP. You can operate in safe space if you want to and play the game for months from what I understand. You only risk getting ganked by asshats if you go into a low security zone. By the time you get there you should have equipped yourself properly and learned how to be an asshat yourself or you will be disappointed.
Playing PvP games with PvPers has convinced me that I no longer want to play PvP games. I met a few excellent people who were great to play beside or against - I met thousands of them in DAOC - but those people have been buried in a sea of people named "IPhukUup" whose greatest joy is to kill a level 1 newbie with a max level character.
Ah, as the guy introducing and narrating the video said, doing this research *is* helping with development of prosthetic limbs, so you should be happy. They are working in that area, if a bit indirectly.
I think this is cool generally, even if it seems comparable to the already existing ASIMO. Robotics will become more important and I am glad to see more research being done on it outside of Japan.
Now, if they could only combine the results of this development with the products of the RealDoll company (http://www.realdoll.com/), we might be heading somewhere:P
I am sorry if it seems overly shallow, but looking at the (awful) Flash demo, the UI design hasn't been upgraded at all from the last time I ran OS/2. I was hoping they had someone spend some time getting rid of the Win 3.1 look and feel, or are they hoping for some upswelling of nostalgia for the old look and feel?
I should be open-mindedly welcoming the return of an old friend, and looking at the functionality available, but I am afraid I can't look past the awful look and feel of the UI long enough to find out. It just looked terrible - at least as long as the terrible flash demo ran before the whole thing seized up on me and I gave up.
I *loved* OS/2 when I used it, it was superior to Win 3.1, allowed me to run DOS programs (like my BBS software) in the background while I ran something else in the foreground, etc etc. It had an amazing future - until IBM dropped the ball and completely failed to promote it. I would far rather than modern OS design had drawn more from OS/2 as a heritage than from MS Windows, but its a tad late now.
Now, I am sure there is a market for this - all those POS software packages that look like DOS and are still used all over in small stores, ATM applications that are similarly primitive etc - but I can't see it having much appeal beyond the legacy support type environment.
Now, if the arrival of eCommstation heralds the return of BBSing, I might be inclined to buy it. I loved the old BBS days prior to the availability of the Intertubes, but I don't think anything is going to bring that back:(
Yep, Christians are just as capable of being cold blooded murderers and terrorists as fanatical members of Islam are. The problem isn't Islam, its religious extremism, period. Sure, Islam is in the news the most right now - and doing the most harm, no question, but there are fanatical Christian Extremists out there who are just as dangerous and deserve the same treatment.
The problem is that some of those fanatical religious extremists (or at least their supporters) are in Government here in North America, and in the Media.
I am far more afraid of Rightwing Fanatical Christians and what they can do to affect my life than I am of radical muslim extremists.
A nuclear powered electrostatic ion thruster means that even slowly we could go anywhere, it would just take thousands of years. Ok well humans only live 100 years... so you freeze a few hundred thousand embryos, and you crew a large vessel with women, and only women. They each have one child (or two, if the crew loses a member unexpectedly) all the children will be girls. After many hundreds (or thousands) of generations, they land on an M Class planet, give birth to some boys, and start a colony. Food will be an issue but it is not an unsolvable problem, not even with our current tech.
While some aspect of the male in me would be entertained by the thought of thousands of beautiful Lesbians (because after the first generation had died, they wouldn't have much choice in their preferences), sailing around on a ship and eventually arriving at another star system in hopes of colonizing it (and ratings for the TV show might be pretty high), what is the actual reasoning for excluding any males from being bred in your theory? What about the first generation that includes males, but has to adjust to their existence in a culture that doesn't know what to do with them and has no male traditions per se. I think this would place a lot of unnecessary stress on the colonizing generation, don't you?
I was born crosseyed. They did corrective surgery that meant I was no longer crosseyed but it failed in lining up my vision. I have lived so long with my left eye not looking at what my right eye looks at, that I am right-eye dependent, and I am told that if they did more surgery, it would just screw up my vision entirely because my brain is used to using one eye primarily. So, I see with my right eye, and my left is essentially peripheral vision. It means I have limited depth perception, and things like 3D are completely lost on me.
I have zero interest in this whole latest 3D fad. I sincerely hope it goes away. Its been tried many times before and failed each time more or less. It seems like its a case of Hollywood focusing (no pun intended) on improvements to technology and presentation because they can do so, and ignoring the more intangible elements of story and acting.
Give the US its due. Many of its citizens have learned to speak the Queen's English with fairly good results, its just on the spelling front that they apparently have problems. Sadly, up here in Canada a lot of people are adopting the US spellings it seems. I presume this is due to so many spell checkers defaulting to the mangled US spellings for words (if they offer the correct spelling as an option at all).
Yes, but just try to apply the moral standards of say Germany or Holland over here in North America. They seem to be much better adjusted about human sexuality over in Europe. In North America (Canada/US) we are positively out to lunch about sexuality, and completely accepting of violence. Its okay for a child to watch someone get murdered on TV, but considered completely unacceptable if they should see a naked breast - let alone a naked human body. I recall a woman in a local coffee shop, unobtrusively deciding to breastfeed her baby - and some American tourists got up and complained to the management - even though she was not in their view unless they strained to look. I was shocked anyone would object to breastfeeding, not that she was doing it (what could be more natural?). I think our whole western culture has gotten so grossly twisted up over issues of sexuality that it gives rise to a lot of our problems. Granted there has to be some limits - Pedophilia is a great example, completely unacceptable - but we seem intent on enforcing limits that are very very extreme in a lot of cases, and yet, as I said above, we gloss over violence in film and television and accept it as perfectly natural and acceptable. Christianity is at the heart of the matter in my opinion. Our currently accepted moral standards are based on a religion that most of us ostensibly Christian people pay no heed to.
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So the biggest periods of accrued and unnecessary debts were during the Reagan years (81-89) and the Bush Jr years (2002-2007). Both militaristic Republicans.
I put it to you that you are already bankrupt from overspending for the past 30 years. If the USA wasn't a nation that can just keep printing more money when required, or spend itself trillions into the hole, it would have been bankrupt years ago.
The Military/Industrial Complex that Eisenhower was warning against, got into power, and its been reaping massive fortunes for its Corporate Owners for that entire time. Look at Haliburton most recently.
Blackwater - when did the US citizenry decide it was actually okay for the country to hire mercenaries, and in fact let them equip themselves with a private airforce etc? Billions lost there.
Its long since past time for these cuts to be made - and in fact if the system were forced to trim itself down to ensure the "Tooth" part of the equation is still effective it would probably be very effective still - but the US budget is firmly in the grasp of the corporations that are making billions in profits for their owners off of defense spending, and the Military who naturally want all the high-tech tools and manpower they can get so they can be as effective as possible. You are not going to break that grip, ever. The politicians who are in office, BELONG to those companies, and if they want to keep their jobs, must keep supporting them I am afraid.
The uniform is:
* Sandals, with socks
* Shorts with pockets
* A T-Shirt preferably with a Tech related theme or something from popular culture. Sports themes are right out.
* Beard - if you don't have one, try to cultivate one. If you are unable to grow one, try to grow a "soul patch"
* Shaved head is optional
* Shower only on days which have a T in the name
Now, you may be too young for this approach, but aim towards it, start (I would guess, as I *am* too old) with sk8t3r-chic and work your way into the above as best you can.
Just how right-wing the US is generally. Even your left-wing politicians are more rightwing in a lot of cases than the most rightwing politicians in some other countries. Our "Conservative" government up here in Canada gets along just fine with Obama's administration, and the association - like that with previous administrations in the States - continues to move Canadian politics to the right.
You folks have no idea what a normal political spectrum is I am afraid, the influence of the Republicans over the past 100 years or so seems to have skewed things greatly to me.
to be harvested amongst the people who don't understand Science, specifically Climate Changes. Its much easier to convince people its all conspiracy to waste their money and that they should oppose it, than it is to educate them in something extremely complex and involved - and which we are still figuring out. :P
The Climate Change deniers can muster a lot of political capital by marshalling all the ignorant masses against making changes that might cost them money but are intended to be for the good of us all.
Personally, I expect humanity will do precisely *nothing* that is effective to deal with climate change and that millions of people will have to die first before the rest of us accept the fact that our lifestyle and population growth has been writing checks we couldn't afford, and now the collection agency is here for their money. Lots of corporations owned by rich individuals have made trillions of dollars off of the world's resources without worrying about environmental impact - now we deal with it. Tons of damage has been done to the environment by those same companies and we are left to pay the bill. Our great grandchildren will *still* be paying that bill I expect, those that aren't dead that is.
Do I want to see responsible research, yes of course. Will it happen? I am sure its happening now. Will the media report on it and the average human learn to understand it? No way. The Media has no interest in dispensing the truth, the average person is too stupid to understand, and doesn't want to hear anything that implies *they* have to make sacrifices and can't get the latest shiney.
When enough humans have died that we no longer can cause global warming, thats when things will settle down again. Humanity is too stupid and shortsighted. Its much more important to figure out whats happening on America's Got Talent...
Yes, I am a bit cynical and bitter today, what clued you in?
The last phrase quoted is likely the key one - Microsoft is very focused on providing as much DRM as possible, and if this codec has the most potential in that regard from their POV, thats likely why they are supporting it. I am sure the Entertainment industry has been talking to MS about this and urging them to keep pushing on DRM type solutions.
The Insurance companies more than likely have a deal with the manufacturers of that bulky, ugly equipment so that they get a kickback on any purchases they support. Insurance companies are not about providing a useful service to their customers, they are about making as much money as possible while paying out the least amount possible.
My wife and I are about to drop our cable, again. We signed up for it again so we could watch the Olympics (we live in Victoria, about 100m from Vancouver). We went to drop it, and the cable company (actually Telus, the Phone company) offered us 3 months free instead. We will likely drop it at the end of those 3 months though.
I have long thought that when they started allowing an increase in the number of TV Channels, the quality started to drop. This makes perfect sense to me because there is essentially a fixed amount of advertising revenue to be had, and thats what pays for the quality TV development. More channels means less revenue per channel, and as a result less budget for each show overall. The end result is absolute shit like Survivor and the other low budget "reality tv" shows - that bear no relationship to reality whatsoever, and are missing the quality part of the content. I know those shows are insanely popular with deeply stupid people, and there are a lot of those deeply stupid people, but there are a lot of us who think shit is shit.
As well, the amount of time per TV hour that is actually advertising not show, has increased exponentially. If you are watching a repeat of an older show - or something from say, The BBC (where quality still exists) - you are seeing less and less of it as it gets chopped up to allow for more advertising.
Actually within the last year and half or so, ALL of the TV shows my wife and I watch tend to come from the BBC. I am sure the BBC has crap too, but we get the cream over here for the most part. The rest can be viewed via the web by some means or another. Shows like Top Gear (my favourite I think), Wire in the Blood are miles above anything I see coming from North America in terms of entertainment.
Now, someone above mentioned "The Wire", and having watched that on DvD, I have to agree that that series was an amazing TV production. One of the best TV Series I have ever seen in fact. Obviously quality is possible when the network wants to produce it, its just that with so much time to fill up, the tendency is to produce cheap crap as filler.
For the most part, I would rather spend my time playing an MMO than watching most TV content. At least the later is somewhat mentally engaging, whereas TV is essentially passive.
Well now, define important. To the US and its Corporate Entertainment controllers, the IP legislation issue is the most important thing. To the Conservatives, remaining in power after the corruption scandal that's currently hit the presses rolls on through their reputation, so that they can remain in power and Harper can continue to suck up to the USA is likely more important. Its always so embarrassing for Government when the corruption that everyone expects is going on daily actually gets exposed and everyone has to backpedal like mad. No, I don't think the Liberals would be any better to be honest. The NDP perhaps, but Jack Leighton? Seriously?
In the meantime though I hope the US Entertainment industry will stay the fuck out of my country. No one else wants the draconian legislation they are trying to shove down the world's throats it seems, but because the US is the biggest and nastiest dog in the scrapyard, everyone else is caving in. They don't want to get beaten up and they want their share of the bone, so everyone else seems to be Finlandizing sadly.
In the US the Big Corporations control the Government so its much the same thing. Lobbyists are just the grease between those Corporations and the people they put in office :P
The originator of Boobquake, collected the results and posted an analysis on the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/29/boobquake-earthquake-immodest-dress-iran#
I think they took away the "initiative to find a way to get the password to the right person in a secure manner" when they locked him up in jail and left him there. He evidently requested to see the mayor, and when the mayor arrived, gave him the password. Unless that isn't the way it went, I don't really see what else he could have done.
Again though, I haven't read a good article that had significant details in it, just crappy links from /. and short articles that had few details. I want a time line, a copy of the relevant rules, links to a transcript of the court sessions etc :P
I think I would want to draft up a very clear - and legally binding - agreement that I would want my superiors in management to sign on behalf of the company. It would spell out in specific details, the security policies, security review process, enforcement etc. It would absolve me from prosecution unless I violated any of the very specific rules that were listed. If my superior changed, they would have to sign the document when they took up their position etc.
I wouldn't likely get the job, they'd hire someone who wasn't so paranoid, but I don't think I would want to take a job where if someone in management decided to break the rules, and I tried to apply those rules for the sake of ensuring I didn't violate the trust that had been placed in me, then I wasn't liable for prosecution either way, like Childs was.
Now, he could have handled things differently I am sure, but he might have been prosecuted either way from what I have read so far. I would like more details in an objective report on the situation.
Every PvP focused MMO that I can think of has died. As vocal as PvPers are, the majority of players who will subscribe to an MMO don't enjoy getting gang-ganked by assholes who play 16 hours a day. Here are the ones I can think of:
* Shadowbane - tried it, it sucked, it died.
* Pirates of the Burning Sea - at first it had tremendous potential, then the ganker assholes got ahold of it and the game became unfun for anyone who wasn't willing to play like a dickhead. Down to a few servers I believe
* Age of Conan - still exists but is not doing well from what I understand. Should have been called "Age of Endless Instance Zoning" from what I could see, hated it, didn't make it past day 2 of attempting play.
* Warhammer Online - all the knowledge they could have drawn from DAOC was available to them, and they completely missed what worked about DAOC and this resulted instead. Uninspiring and ultimately boring and pointless.
I am not a PvP-Rulez-All type. I like PvP gameplay but only when I am playing with people who have a sense of sportsmanship. Most PvPers I have met couldn't spell "Sportsmanship" let alone discover what it means. The exceptions are a joy to play with.
I have enjoyed the PvP in Dark Age of Camelot (still the best MMO ever produced in my opinion, sadly down to 1 server I believe), and Star Wars (as a Bounty Hunter hunting Jedi before the NGE).
Now, EVE has done a great job in their design, but its not exclusively PvP. You can operate in safe space if you want to and play the game for months from what I understand. You only risk getting ganked by asshats if you go into a low security zone. By the time you get there you should have equipped yourself properly and learned how to be an asshat yourself or you will be disappointed.
Playing PvP games with PvPers has convinced me that I no longer want to play PvP games. I met a few excellent people who were great to play beside or against - I met thousands of them in DAOC - but those people have been buried in a sea of people named "IPhukUup" whose greatest joy is to kill a level 1 newbie with a max level character.
Ah, as the guy introducing and narrating the video said, doing this research *is* helping with development of prosthetic limbs, so you should be happy. They are working in that area, if a bit indirectly.
I think this is cool generally, even if it seems comparable to the already existing ASIMO. Robotics will become more important and I am glad to see more research being done on it outside of Japan.
Now, if they could only combine the results of this development with the products of the RealDoll company (http://www.realdoll.com/), we might be heading somewhere :P
I am sorry if it seems overly shallow, but looking at the (awful) Flash demo, the UI design hasn't been upgraded at all from the last time I ran OS/2. I was hoping they had someone spend some time getting rid of the Win 3.1 look and feel, or are they hoping for some upswelling of nostalgia for the old look and feel?
I should be open-mindedly welcoming the return of an old friend, and looking at the functionality available, but I am afraid I can't look past the awful look and feel of the UI long enough to find out. It just looked terrible - at least as long as the terrible flash demo ran before the whole thing seized up on me and I gave up.
I *loved* OS/2 when I used it, it was superior to Win 3.1, allowed me to run DOS programs (like my BBS software) in the background while I ran something else in the foreground, etc etc. It had an amazing future - until IBM dropped the ball and completely failed to promote it. I would far rather than modern OS design had drawn more from OS/2 as a heritage than from MS Windows, but its a tad late now.
Now, I am sure there is a market for this - all those POS software packages that look like DOS and are still used all over in small stores, ATM applications that are similarly primitive etc - but I can't see it having much appeal beyond the legacy support type environment.
Now, if the arrival of eCommstation heralds the return of BBSing, I might be inclined to buy it. I loved the old BBS days prior to the availability of the Intertubes, but I don't think anything is going to bring that back :(
Yep, Christians are just as capable of being cold blooded murderers and terrorists as fanatical members of Islam are. The problem isn't Islam, its religious extremism, period. Sure, Islam is in the news the most right now - and doing the most harm, no question, but there are fanatical Christian Extremists out there who are just as dangerous and deserve the same treatment. The problem is that some of those fanatical religious extremists (or at least their supporters) are in Government here in North America, and in the Media. I am far more afraid of Rightwing Fanatical Christians and what they can do to affect my life than I am of radical muslim extremists.
A nuclear powered electrostatic ion thruster means that even slowly we could go anywhere, it would just take thousands of years. Ok well humans only live 100 years... so you freeze a few hundred thousand embryos, and you crew a large vessel with women, and only women. They each have one child (or two, if the crew loses a member unexpectedly) all the children will be girls. After many hundreds (or thousands) of generations, they land on an M Class planet, give birth to some boys, and start a colony. Food will be an issue but it is not an unsolvable problem, not even with our current tech.
While some aspect of the male in me would be entertained by the thought of thousands of beautiful Lesbians (because after the first generation had died, they wouldn't have much choice in their preferences), sailing around on a ship and eventually arriving at another star system in hopes of colonizing it (and ratings for the TV show might be pretty high), what is the actual reasoning for excluding any males from being bred in your theory? What about the first generation that includes males, but has to adjust to their existence in a culture that doesn't know what to do with them and has no male traditions per se. I think this would place a lot of unnecessary stress on the colonizing generation, don't you?
I was born crosseyed. They did corrective surgery that meant I was no longer crosseyed but it failed in lining up my vision. I have lived so long with my left eye not looking at what my right eye looks at, that I am right-eye dependent, and I am told that if they did more surgery, it would just screw up my vision entirely because my brain is used to using one eye primarily. So, I see with my right eye, and my left is essentially peripheral vision. It means I have limited depth perception, and things like 3D are completely lost on me.
I have zero interest in this whole latest 3D fad. I sincerely hope it goes away. Its been tried many times before and failed each time more or less. It seems like its a case of Hollywood focusing (no pun intended) on improvements to technology and presentation because they can do so, and ignoring the more intangible elements of story and acting.
That was my first thought too. Watching the video does make me want to play with a Segway though.
Give the US its due. Many of its citizens have learned to speak the Queen's English with fairly good results, its just on the spelling front that they apparently have problems. Sadly, up here in Canada a lot of people are adopting the US spellings it seems. I presume this is due to so many spell checkers defaulting to the mangled US spellings for words (if they offer the correct spelling as an option at all).
Yes, but just try to apply the moral standards of say Germany or Holland over here in North America. They seem to be much better adjusted about human sexuality over in Europe. In North America (Canada/US) we are positively out to lunch about sexuality, and completely accepting of violence.
Its okay for a child to watch someone get murdered on TV, but considered completely unacceptable if they should see a naked breast - let alone a naked human body.
I recall a woman in a local coffee shop, unobtrusively deciding to breastfeed her baby - and some American tourists got up and complained to the management - even though she was not in their view unless they strained to look. I was shocked anyone would object to breastfeeding, not that she was doing it (what could be more natural?).
I think our whole western culture has gotten so grossly twisted up over issues of sexuality that it gives rise to a lot of our problems. Granted there has to be some limits - Pedophilia is a great example, completely unacceptable - but we seem intent on enforcing limits that are very very extreme in a lot of cases, and yet, as I said above, we gloss over violence in film and television and accept it as perfectly natural and acceptable.
Christianity is at the heart of the matter in my opinion. Our currently accepted moral standards are based on a religion that most of us ostensibly Christian people pay no heed to.
Yo
Yes, Hearn just posted a link to it on Amazon (and a link to his PhD Thesis which is free) in a conversation above your post
Yes, she is very hot, as only a redhead with a Scots accent can be:)