All Republican leaders are remembered as being virtual saints, since their supporters can't seem to shut up about how wonderful they were - or the astroturfers hired to maintain the myth of republican superiority and maintain the level of anti-democrat vitriol. Reagan was horrible, Thatcher was horrible, and a lot of the current situation we find ourselves in these days is due to their leadership. The left side of the equation is hardly perfect mind you but I am sure sick of the saccharine praise for the right I see everywhere these days. The "first world" is rapidly becoming more of the third world and a lot of it is due to the economic policies promulgated by right wing leaders of the past few decades. Ensuring the rich get richer at the expense of the average person is not in the interests of the general public.
Absolutely my favourite film critic, he will be missed heavily. I didn't always agree with his reviews but there were almost always more well thought out and articulated than any other critic I can think of. I trusted his evaluation of movies and I think the world is lessened with his loss.
I have massive respect for those who serve their country. I don't think most people would disagree with that either. Its not the service people that are at blame at all here. What I have a problem with is the people who send those service people overseas to fight in wars not to benefit the country but to benefit the bottom line of the people who are hiding their money mentioned in this article. A lot of the wars the US has been involved in have been for the benefit of US corporate interests in large part, not the benefit of the US population or its security or its freedoms. In fact many of those freedoms have been eroded in the name of national security because of perceived threats that really are perceived threats to economic interests. In other words its the politicians who serve the rich and the large corporations and send people into harms way to benefit the same that I have a problem with.
Those millions often end up in the hands of the companies doing the research - or in the hands of the universities doing the research which is then given to those companies. Either way its just another way of providing more money to powerful corporations - our money. More power to India if it can break the medical patent system and provide much needed drugs or treatments to those in need, and not just those who are rich and in need. We have been fed the line that the exclusive patents are needed or no research would be done on any new drugs. Do you honestly think that is true? That researchers won't do any research suddenly? that all that money collected to help pay for research won't actually be collected any more? All that will happen is that Big Pharma will make less billions than it does now, and more people will live longer and happier than they do now.
I wonder if anyone can calculate the environmental impact of sending all those DDOS packets? Overall can it be claimed that spam and botnets are having an appreciable impact on the economy by wasting all that energy required to transmit all those pointless packets?
The cellphone companies rely on their customers being stupid enough to opt for a subsidized phone though, and so far most people are more than happy to be stupid enough to do so. That way we can pay far more in the end for the same phone than we would if we bought it up front. I sincerely hope we get a reasonable company up here in Canada but until then we are stuck with the established oligarchy and their ridiculous/criminal pricing schemes.
Well no, I really had an item like the portable GPS I have plugged into my lighter socket in mind mostly. Obviously you wouldn't buy anything to work with the glasses if you weren't buying the glasses. They call them Accessories. You know, like the cellphone stands that people stick to their dash etc.
Does this mean it would run OS/X as well? I mean, I must have hung onto that stack of install floppies for a reason right? I just can't bring myself to throw it all away....:P
I am quite serious when I say that if I hum another tune to clear my head - the other tune becomes the new earworm stuck in my head. Almost any music I hear can result in another snippet stuck in my head. I spend probably 60% of my waking hours with some annoying thing stuck in my head. Worse yet I tap them out with my fingers or hum them outloud. It can often be nothing more than the same 2-4 bars of a song without the lyrics - off and on for say 10 hours. Every time I think its gone it will show up again a few hours later.
I do not generally listen to music at all these days, but I may have to take up Sudoku or something, sigh:P
Just mandate an in-car device that detects a google glass headset and redirects all of the display to the car's HUD/device screen instead. Thus your vision is not obscured by the output, but the possible utility of the device is not compromised either.
Where I am its illegal to operate a cell-phone while driving, unless you have a car mounted hands-free cellphone etc. This would be little different
Also worth noting: you buy one of the new hybrids, and after 5 years or so you need to replace all the batteries - at a cost in the many thousands of dollars. So you reduce the air pollution you produce while driving the thing, but at the end of 5 years or so you introduce a large pile of batteries that have to be specially disposed of. As well the production impact for those batteries on the environment is supposed to be pretty heavy as well. The used car market for hybrids will likely be pretty damn small too, once people figure out they have to spend more on new batteries than they did on buying the used car. I am in favor of finding ways to make currently existing older vehicles more fuel efficient and less polluting. I will never, ever be buying a new vehicle. Every vehicle I have ever owned has been at least 10 years old when I got it. I drive the living crap out of them and replace them when the cost of maintaining them gets higher than the cost of buying another beater. I would be happy to consider investing in fixes to a used vehicles motor or exhaust that might provide less environmental impact and better fuel efficiency if it was affordable. Unfortunately a lot of the "Environmentally Conscious" solutions offered to various problems are also prohibitively expensive and obviously being produced with the bucks in mind more than helping the environment.
Your missing the point that the reason we associate bunny rabbits and easter eggs and all that is due to the original pagan influences for the pagan celebration held at the same time roughly. Thats all I meant by that.
And I am in my 50's, have had no cable TV for the past few years, and do not miss it at all. I watch TV shows that have either been downloaded, or which come to me online via Netflix. The stuff I download I frequently transfer to my BB Playbook to watch during breaks at work or while I am doing something else on my computer. I have a crappy smartphone that I use mostly to make phone calls. The rest of your points we are the same pretty much. I do have a Twitter account though: I think I have tweeted twice in the past 3 years or so:P By all that I mean you are not necessarily typical in all regards.
When you elect politicians based on the promises they make combined with the money they can generate from large corporations, and not really based on their experience and knowledge (you got rid of Clinton - a Roads Scholar - because of an overblown sex scandal, but kept Bush for a 2nd term), of course its doubtful that those making the decisions will be informed or aware of the details and consequences of their decisions. Politicians who have more concern about getting re-elected so they can better change things for their sponsors/owners are not the best people to make such decisions. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a better system:( The military personnel will hopefully be quite knowledgeable and aware of their capabilities and responsibilities and can advise the politicians appropriately. However that said, The Military are sadly rather slow to adapt to change.
Up here in Canada we use the Litres per 100 Km metric too. My assumption was that it was intended to obscure just how much gas you are going through, and thus obscure the price you are paying for it as well. Its much harder to compare miles per gallon to litres per 100km that it would be if it was a straight translation of kilometers per litre. Since the price of gas seems to fluctuate by as much as 25% on a seemingly random basis, I think its in the interests of the Oil companies to keep us as confused as possible. I think the latest jump in gas prices here was probably due to the fact that they were still selecting the next pope. Gas prices seem to reflect international crises (up whenever anything that could be construed as "tense" is happening), and of course season/time (up before a long weekend, down on the weekend, up again Sunday night when everyone refuels for the next work day). Oil companies are a remora sucking the life out of modern civilization.
I am well aware of the meaning of Christmas, I am not that fucking stupid. Because its not the same day - or name - as Yule, I didn't mention it. Also it has a fixed date. Easter on the otherhand does not have a fixed date. The only reasons I mentioned it is because Samhain has a fixed date, and Easter does not. I also jokingly mentioned it had been coopted solely because of the name Easter which might come from a European Pagan Horse goddess named Eostre and that made it a tad relevant. My point was that Samhain was an idiotic festival to include as an example, and that Easter might have been a better and more logical choice. You seem to have missed that though in your zeal to slam me over something I didn't say:P
Its not only that. In order to do a review of a game, you need to be able to play it, or at least an advance beta of it. Review sites that do not give a company good reviews, stop receiving advance copies so they can review them. Any game review that is online or in print media is likely bullshit if the reviewer is talking about a brand new game. The pressure to write as good a review as you possibly can is pretty intense.
Why pick Samhain as being difficult to determine? Whats hard about Oct 31st-Nov 1st? Its celebrated as one day changes to the next (the start of the Celtic new year), and as far as I know never wavers. Its an old Pagan festival.
Easter on the other hand is calculated by some obscure and much more complex system ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter ). Also an old Pagan festival suborned by Christianity quite possibly, but then thats true of a lot of them:P
Very odd choice for the summary, although as we all know the/. summary sometimes bears only a passing resemblance to the actual subject:P
There's power in subscriptions, power in demand Power in the hands of the player But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand There is power in a Union.
Now the games of the past were all riddled through with bugs The mistakes of the devs that we must pay for From modern games and consoles to ancient text-based MUDs Rushed out code has always been the bosses way, sir
The Union forever defending our rights Down with the bugfest, all players unite With our brothers and our sisters from across the internet There is power in a Union
Now I long for the beta that they realize Crappy, untested code cannot be sold us But who'll defend the players who cannot organize When they shove it out the door and try to cheat us?
Nothing speaks like money, or walking away When will they learn that we decide what plays? What a comfort to the gamer, a delight to the child There is power in a Union
The Union forever defending our rights Down with the bugfest, all players unite With our brothers and our sisters from across the internet There is power in a Union
It should only *really* matter if it represents a significant loss of actual income. Something that has yet to be shown to be true, but I believe has shown false in a number of studies. "IP" is such a nebulous concept to begin with, but thanks to Hollywood and the Big Media lobby, the penalties for violating their rules are far far in excess of what is justified.
Its worth noting that while we know the Vikings for their raiding and pillaging, they were in fact some of the most successful traders in Europe at the time. They were also very good and competent craftsmen. What we get is the Evil Vikings (tm) version as related by the Christian Church, from when they were (gasp) Pagans and not subject to the rule of that church. Once they had been forced at sword-point to convert to Christianity they became more acceptable. Not that old Norse religion was anything to be particularly happy about mind you. My point is that the Vikings sailed their ships around Europe down into the Mediterranean, conquered Russia (the Rus were effectively Norseman), served as the Imperial Bodyguard for the Byzantine Empire etc. They didn't just destroy and pillage - and most of the other peoples in Europe did a lot of the same thing anyways. The Sunstone is a neat idea if true though. I would have bet the Norse navigated mostly by the stars myself, and that they tended to stick to being within sight of land most of the time as most people did prior to the invention of modern navigation.
It may be a balance of providing enough server and network support to let the majority of players get in and play, while providing enough of a wait list and delay to let players know its a popular title. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the marketing people *want* lineups just enough to reassure people that tons of other players are also playing the game. If everything went completely smoothly, might you not suspect that not many other people actually bought the game?
Slashdot Mirror
All Republican leaders are remembered as being virtual saints, since their supporters can't seem to shut up about how wonderful they were - or the astroturfers hired to maintain the myth of republican superiority and maintain the level of anti-democrat vitriol.
Reagan was horrible, Thatcher was horrible, and a lot of the current situation we find ourselves in these days is due to their leadership. The left side of the equation is hardly perfect mind you but I am sure sick of the saccharine praise for the right I see everywhere these days.
The "first world" is rapidly becoming more of the third world and a lot of it is due to the economic policies promulgated by right wing leaders of the past few decades. Ensuring the rich get richer at the expense of the average person is not in the interests of the general public.
Absolutely my favourite film critic, he will be missed heavily. I didn't always agree with his reviews but there were almost always more well thought out and articulated than any other critic I can think of. I trusted his evaluation of movies and I think the world is lessened with his loss.
I have massive respect for those who serve their country. I don't think most people would disagree with that either. Its not the service people that are at blame at all here.
What I have a problem with is the people who send those service people overseas to fight in wars not to benefit the country but to benefit the bottom line of the people who are hiding their money mentioned in this article. A lot of the wars the US has been involved in have been for the benefit of US corporate interests in large part, not the benefit of the US population or its security or its freedoms. In fact many of those freedoms have been eroded in the name of national security because of perceived threats that really are perceived threats to economic interests. In other words its the politicians who serve the rich and the large corporations and send people into harms way to benefit the same that I have a problem with.
Those millions often end up in the hands of the companies doing the research - or in the hands of the universities doing the research which is then given to those companies. Either way its just another way of providing more money to powerful corporations - our money.
More power to India if it can break the medical patent system and provide much needed drugs or treatments to those in need, and not just those who are rich and in need. We have been fed the line that the exclusive patents are needed or no research would be done on any new drugs.
Do you honestly think that is true? That researchers won't do any research suddenly? that all that money collected to help pay for research won't actually be collected any more?
All that will happen is that Big Pharma will make less billions than it does now, and more people will live longer and happier than they do now.
Yeah, how does that gibe with the fact that the source code was apparently released to the public under the GPL in 1999?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_source_ports
If its GPLed can someone still claim IP rights to the code? or does it mean the code itself but not the content is released to the public?
I wonder if anyone can calculate the environmental impact of sending all those DDOS packets? Overall can it be claimed that spam and botnets are having an appreciable impact on the economy by wasting all that energy required to transmit all those pointless packets?
The cellphone companies rely on their customers being stupid enough to opt for a subsidized phone though, and so far most people are more than happy to be stupid enough to do so. That way we can pay far more in the end for the same phone than we would if we bought it up front.
I sincerely hope we get a reasonable company up here in Canada but until then we are stuck with the established oligarchy and their ridiculous/criminal pricing schemes.
Yeah I usually prefer a higher INT score unless I am rolling a Cleric :P
Well no, I really had an item like the portable GPS I have plugged into my lighter socket in mind mostly. Obviously you wouldn't buy anything to work with the glasses if you weren't buying the glasses. They call them Accessories.
You know, like the cellphone stands that people stick to their dash etc.
Does this mean it would run OS/X as well? I mean, I must have hung onto that stack of install floppies for a reason right? I just can't bring myself to throw it all away.... :P
I have this in its most extreme form :(
I am quite serious when I say that if I hum another tune to clear my head - the other tune becomes the new earworm stuck in my head. Almost any music I hear can result in another snippet stuck in my head. I spend probably 60% of my waking hours with some annoying thing stuck in my head. Worse yet I tap them out with my fingers or hum them outloud. It can often be nothing more than the same 2-4 bars of a song without the lyrics - off and on for say 10 hours. Every time I think its gone it will show up again a few hours later.
I do not generally listen to music at all these days, but I may have to take up Sudoku or something, sigh :P
Just mandate an in-car device that detects a google glass headset and redirects all of the display to the car's HUD/device screen instead. Thus your vision is not obscured by the output, but the possible utility of the device is not compromised either.
Where I am its illegal to operate a cell-phone while driving, unless you have a car mounted hands-free cellphone etc. This would be little different
I am more alarmed at the Eighteen Kilometre wide sidewalks. Imagine just trying to cross the street :P
Also worth noting: you buy one of the new hybrids, and after 5 years or so you need to replace all the batteries - at a cost in the many thousands of dollars. So you reduce the air pollution you produce while driving the thing, but at the end of 5 years or so you introduce a large pile of batteries that have to be specially disposed of. As well the production impact for those batteries on the environment is supposed to be pretty heavy as well. The used car market for hybrids will likely be pretty damn small too, once people figure out they have to spend more on new batteries than they did on buying the used car.
I am in favor of finding ways to make currently existing older vehicles more fuel efficient and less polluting. I will never, ever be buying a new vehicle. Every vehicle I have ever owned has been at least 10 years old when I got it. I drive the living crap out of them and replace them when the cost of maintaining them gets higher than the cost of buying another beater. I would be happy to consider investing in fixes to a used vehicles motor or exhaust that might provide less environmental impact and better fuel efficiency if it was affordable.
Unfortunately a lot of the "Environmentally Conscious" solutions offered to various problems are also prohibitively expensive and obviously being produced with the bucks in mind more than helping the environment.
Your missing the point that the reason we associate bunny rabbits and easter eggs and all that is due to the original pagan influences for the pagan celebration held at the same time roughly. Thats all I meant by that.
And I am in my 50's, have had no cable TV for the past few years, and do not miss it at all. I watch TV shows that have either been downloaded, or which come to me online via Netflix. The stuff I download I frequently transfer to my BB Playbook to watch during breaks at work or while I am doing something else on my computer. I have a crappy smartphone that I use mostly to make phone calls. The rest of your points we are the same pretty much. I do have a Twitter account though: I think I have tweeted twice in the past 3 years or so :P
By all that I mean you are not necessarily typical in all regards.
When you elect politicians based on the promises they make combined with the money they can generate from large corporations, and not really based on their experience and knowledge (you got rid of Clinton - a Roads Scholar - because of an overblown sex scandal, but kept Bush for a 2nd term), of course its doubtful that those making the decisions will be informed or aware of the details and consequences of their decisions. Politicians who have more concern about getting re-elected so they can better change things for their sponsors/owners are not the best people to make such decisions. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a better system :(
The military personnel will hopefully be quite knowledgeable and aware of their capabilities and responsibilities and can advise the politicians appropriately. However that said, The Military are sadly rather slow to adapt to change.
Up here in Canada we use the Litres per 100 Km metric too. My assumption was that it was intended to obscure just how much gas you are going through, and thus obscure the price you are paying for it as well. Its much harder to compare miles per gallon to litres per 100km that it would be if it was a straight translation of kilometers per litre.
Since the price of gas seems to fluctuate by as much as 25% on a seemingly random basis, I think its in the interests of the Oil companies to keep us as confused as possible. I think the latest jump in gas prices here was probably due to the fact that they were still selecting the next pope. Gas prices seem to reflect international crises (up whenever anything that could be construed as "tense" is happening), and of course season/time (up before a long weekend, down on the weekend, up again Sunday night when everyone refuels for the next work day).
Oil companies are a remora sucking the life out of modern civilization.
I am well aware of the meaning of Christmas, I am not that fucking stupid. Because its not the same day - or name - as Yule, I didn't mention it. Also it has a fixed date. :P
Easter on the otherhand does not have a fixed date. The only reasons I mentioned it is because Samhain has a fixed date, and Easter does not. I also jokingly mentioned it had been coopted solely because of the name Easter which might come from a European Pagan Horse goddess named Eostre and that made it a tad relevant.
My point was that Samhain was an idiotic festival to include as an example, and that Easter might have been a better and more logical choice.
You seem to have missed that though in your zeal to slam me over something I didn't say
Its not only that. In order to do a review of a game, you need to be able to play it, or at least an advance beta of it. Review sites that do not give a company good reviews, stop receiving advance copies so they can review them.
Any game review that is online or in print media is likely bullshit if the reviewer is talking about a brand new game. The pressure to write as good a review as you possibly can is pretty intense.
Why pick Samhain as being difficult to determine? Whats hard about Oct 31st-Nov 1st? Its celebrated as one day changes to the next (the start of the Celtic new year), and as far as I know never wavers. Its an old Pagan festival.
Easter on the other hand is calculated by some obscure and much more complex system ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter ). Also an old Pagan festival suborned by Christianity quite possibly, but then thats true of a lot of them :P
Very odd choice for the summary, although as we all know the /. summary sometimes bears only a passing resemblance to the actual subject :P
THERE IS POWER IN A UNION
(to the tune by the same name by Billy Bragg, with apologies)
Original: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KO90EdKB-g
Filked by Warren Grant
There's power in subscriptions, power in demand
Power in the hands of the player
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand
There is power in a Union.
Now the games of the past were all riddled through with bugs
The mistakes of the devs that we must pay for
From modern games and consoles to ancient text-based MUDs
Rushed out code has always been the bosses way, sir
The Union forever defending our rights
Down with the bugfest, all players unite
With our brothers and our sisters from across the internet
There is power in a Union
Now I long for the beta that they realize
Crappy, untested code cannot be sold us
But who'll defend the players who cannot organize
When they shove it out the door and try to cheat us?
Nothing speaks like money, or walking away
When will they learn that we decide what plays?
What a comfort to the gamer, a delight to the child
There is power in a Union
The Union forever defending our rights
Down with the bugfest, all players unite
With our brothers and our sisters from across the internet
There is power in a Union
There is power in a Union
It should only *really* matter if it represents a significant loss of actual income. Something that has yet to be shown to be true, but I believe has shown false in a number of studies.
"IP" is such a nebulous concept to begin with, but thanks to Hollywood and the Big Media lobby, the penalties for violating their rules are far far in excess of what is justified.
Its worth noting that while we know the Vikings for their raiding and pillaging, they were in fact some of the most successful traders in Europe at the time. They were also very good and competent craftsmen.
What we get is the Evil Vikings (tm) version as related by the Christian Church, from when they were (gasp) Pagans and not subject to the rule of that church. Once they had been forced at sword-point to convert to Christianity they became more acceptable. Not that old Norse religion was anything to be particularly happy about mind you. My point is that the Vikings sailed their ships around Europe down into the Mediterranean, conquered Russia (the Rus were effectively Norseman), served as the Imperial Bodyguard for the Byzantine Empire etc. They didn't just destroy and pillage - and most of the other peoples in Europe did a lot of the same thing anyways.
The Sunstone is a neat idea if true though. I would have bet the Norse navigated mostly by the stars myself, and that they tended to stick to being within sight of land most of the time as most people did prior to the invention of modern navigation.
It may be a balance of providing enough server and network support to let the majority of players get in and play, while providing enough of a wait list and delay to let players know its a popular title. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the marketing people *want* lineups just enough to reassure people that tons of other players are also playing the game. If everything went completely smoothly, might you not suspect that not many other people actually bought the game?