You are assuming a singular linear progress. In that case, I agree. However, most games of any complexity are not that linear. While you are trying to regain, say, 50 gold you lost, you will not be doing the exact same things that you were the first time around. You'll be doing different things, and those can be exciting.
In any game of some complexity, progress isn't singular. You suffer a setback in your valuables, but your skills don't suffer, and the exploration of the game world has not been reset and neither has your quest status.
If getting back what was lost were interesting and challenging, not many people would mind all that much. In fact, quite a few books and movies are, if you reduce the story to the bare minimum, about just that. But very, very, very few books and movies go "harvest tree. harvest tree. harvest tree (20 more pages). bring wood to storage. repair axe. return to forest. harvest tree. harvest tree. harvest tree (20 more pages..)".
I'm halfway a casual and halfway a hardcore gamer - due to job and hobbies, my time for a game is pretty limited, but when I like it, I put my teeth into it and my satisfaction is getting as much or more return in a few hours as a lot of the "hardcore" kids with unlimited time on their hands get in playing all day.
Most of the laid-back people that I play with don't mind losing progress. What they do mind is the constant grieving that goes along with it. Many of the thieves, PKers, robbers and yes, cheaters and exploiters in those games are not taking from your character to progress themselves. Heck, I've heard so many stories about thieves immediately destroying their stolen goods that it would fill a book. They're doing it because they can and because they enjoy annoying other people. Typical behaviour for a certain part of the 13-15 age bracket.
Casual gamers are usually adults. They've been there, done that, realized a few later how dumb and asine it all was, and cringe when they see it in others because it still is dumb and asine plus it reminds them of their own faults back then.
The other part that comes with it is why, in fact, for some cases many people do (contrary to my words above) hate losing progress: The stupid grinding to get it back. If there were less grind and more fun in progress, it would matter less if your progress is from 15 to 16 or from 14 to 15 - again. But since in most MMOs, losing progress or starting over means doing the same boring thing again, yes that is why losing progress sucks.
I'm playing (well, trying to, it's laggy and buggy) the open beta of Mortal Online, and I've followed Darkfall a little, as well as playing EVE and a bunch of others MMOs. What I've learnt there is it is very, very hard to balance a game that allows players to act against each other freely.
Most MMOs restrict PvP to zones, disallow looting, etc. etc. - all those restrictions are mostly there because they make balancing a TON easier. Just read the Mortal Online forums and you can see how difficult it is to get thieving right. If it's too difficult, nobody will use it and you can just as well leave it out. If it is too easy, it attracts all the griefers and assholes who don't steal from people to advance their own character, but merely to annoy other players.
It is unbelievably difficult to find the correct balance once your game has a certain amount of complexity, because all those features interact with each other. EVE did one thing right, and that's why they are still top dog. By setting things into space and a SciFi setting, they eliminated a lot of complexities. The seperation of the game world into solar systems is a natural seperation that players accept. It solves a ton of technical issues without the disturbing portals of other games. The whole cloning and insurance system covers the looting, death and resurrection part from a believable angle that gives the designers lots of freedom in tweaking things. And finally, having security ratings from 1.0 to 0.0 with a smooth transition from "carebear space" to "free for all hardcore space" is a brilliant idea.
Any MMO that doesn't learn from EVE is doomed to fail, I say. And I don't play EVE any more, it's not my game. But they made a good number of brilliant design decisions and have the ability to learn from their mistakes. Kudos for that. Now if you look back at the failed or failure-in-progress games, you will often see devs fanatically defending an original vision that turned out to be impossible to implement. Those who can not adapt, fail.
I still hope MO turns out to be right, but my hopes are fading.
The european government consists of two elements - the commission and the parliament.
What you need to know in short:
The commission is appointed, completely undemocratic, and holds most of the power and does most of the actual activity. It also bends over backwards whenever the US wants something. It was the commission who gave away our flight data, our personal data, our Internet data and now our banking data.
The parliament is elected, is the democratic body, and has very limited powers (though they have shifted around a bit with the last reform). It isn't exactly a mecca of reason, but it more often than not stops the worst excesses of the commission.
So once again, I applaud the parliament. They're fighting uphill battles against the commission all the time.
It's all about strategies. For many years (before it started with its entertainment division), MS essentially followed the opposite strategy. It made windos so obiquituous in business that people were expected to know it if they wanted a job, so lots of people bought a computer for home, which of course (thanks to OEM deals) came with windos. Closed ecosystem.
Apple approaches the same thing from the opposite direction, it assumes that even corporations are made up out of humans and that it is humans who make the decisions. So people who enjoy Macs at home bring them into the company - I've seen that happen on many occasions.
btw: You can get enterprise support for Mac hardware and software. Just not from Apple directly, but many of their partners will be happy to fill that niche.
Contrary to popular opinion, people do change. Their friends, their habits, but also their browsers.
How do I know? I've been running this website for the past eight or so years. As soon as it got the first CSS bits like six years ago, I decided to not support IE at all, no version of it. Instead, I captured IE users and told them when they were about to access a page that wouldn't work on their browser, told them why (e.g. no support for transparent PNGs, buggy CSS implementation, whatever) and gave them a link to access it anyways (e.g. in case they were using a real browser just masquerading as IE).
My browser statistics show that usage of IE dropped sharply, while user count has steadily increased. Since this is a trend constant over several years (IE is currently at 15.7%) it isn't an anomaly, either.
The summary of it is that if you give people a reason to change, they will. Most people use IE because they are lazy. It came with the system and they aren't really familiar with this com-pu-ter thing, so installing a different browser frightens them somewhat, no matter how easy it is. But give them an incentive and they'll do it.
I'm certain the same holds true for moving them from IE6/7 to IE8 (or any alternative).
But you seem to be arguing that it is good, but the wrong good, and thus bad.
Not quite. Imagine you are in a plane that is currently falling towards earth because the engines blew up. There's a pretty much 0% chance that you'll survive past the next 20 minutes. In addition, you have a terrible cold. If in that situation someone came along with a helicopter, and offered you a handkerchief and some Aspirin for the headache - would you thank him or tell him to either throw you a rope or go to hell?
Dropping in, giving a shot, and disappearing is about the most we should get involved unless we go in with 100,000+ troops for a 5+ year period to end the warlords, install corruption-free democracy, and jump-start the local economy. You are claiming there is something in the middle. There may be, but the last time we tried for that, we made it worse. So we are going back for more simple and gentle nudges.
Yes, good summary. Except that I'm not even claiming there is something in the middle - I said I don't know. What I am claiming is that I believe these specific "simple and gentle nudges" will backfire just like the feeding did before. I believe it is caused not by a serious and rationale analysis of the consequences, including unintended side-effects. I believe it is caused by too much empathy and the inability of certain people to watch others suffer and their desire to do something about it.
And yes, I'm "cold" enough to rather see people die - if the alternative is making it even worse.
And quite frankly, in countries with mortality rates as high as they are, anything that lets people live longer so they can have more children who then inherit said mortality rate is simply cruelty by proxy.
Now, with the Adobe customers, etc. having mostly migrated to Windows
[citation needed]
may be a local issue, though. But I've not seen this over here in Germany. If anything, the other way around. I know a graphics designer who uses windos - he knows that he's such a strange animal that he points that fact out almost every time he speaks about his occupation.
Nearly all Apple gear can be classified as "optional" in life and more often it is simply extravagant. PCs and (I can't believe I am saying this) and Windows is "necessary" in contrast.
I'll bite (and whoever modded this troll up should get his head checked).
What, pray tell, is the difference between one set of Intel CPU, Nvidia graphics card, some hard disk, display, etc. and the other set of practically the same things, with a different logo on top?
A PC is no more "necessary" in any sense of the word supported by a dictionary than a Mac is. Depending on your likes and environment, one or the other may be preferable for the tasks at hand, but "necessary" vs. "optional"? That's a strange world you are living in.
Apple is built around some pretty interesting ideas and concepts, but the moment they place limits on things, they immediately stop their growth and development.
Those "pretty interesting ideas" have turned Apple into one of the largest technology companies on the continent. I wonder who you are to pass judgement on that, do you even have 1% of the same success?
Not likely, because you are so far off the mark, you've probably hit the target of some other shooting range. See, Apple isn't built around "pretty interesting ideas". It is built around one concept - "design for the user". Almost all of those "limits" you and I and all the other geeks and nerds spot are most welcome by almost all non-techie customers. There is a tyranny in too much choice and options and configurability. And there are huge advantages in consistency and limitations in design. Ever asked yourself why no car manufacturer gives you the option to choose betwen 20 different steering wheel designs, 5 ways the doors could open and 200 different layouts of the console?
I wish Apple would change its ways before the larger consuming public sees Apple for what it is. It's not "exclusive" any more -- it's just limited.
Apple is extremely exclusive. And will remain as long as windos and Linux put the desires of the developers before those of the users (each in their own ways) and Nokia et al purchase the user-interface design of their phones at firesales.
Various types of ammunition have different shock, stop and kill values. Police ammo maximizes the stopping power while minimizing the killing power (suspect or innocent bystander, it doesn't matter, you rather want them alive). Hunting ammo maximizes the killing power (it sucks if the deer suffers for a minute before it keels over, but rather that then having a wounded-but-alive deer running around).
Wait. So if they lack shoes, and you give them shoes, you are in favor of that. But if they are missing shoes and gloves and a coat, then a shoe maker donating shoes and expecting someone else to donate gloves and coats is somehow evil on the part of the shoe maker.
It's a bit more complicated than that, is it not? The "shoemaker" in this example could invest his money into more than just shoes. Maybe not all of the problem, but at least a subset that actually makes a difference.
There's no point in vaccinating starving people is my point. Vaccinate and feed them and you're starting to get somewhere.
I'd say it's best to send people over and administer the vaccines directly, and fly out, taking security and not leaving them for local distribution.
Agree on that.
The last time starvation was addressed, it made the problem worse.
Exactly my point! I believe we're in for a repeat performance.
Imagine a parliament filled only with independents. Then having to form a true consensus about an issue with a real debate!
I prefer - and I have found that proven in my personal experiences as chairman of a democratically elected council full of independent candidates (no parties in this context) - that the debate is less important than having knowledge of the facts. You know, the one thing that our politics lack most. Knowledge, understanding, facts, objectivity - call it what you will.
I've found out time and time again that once you have all the required information on the table, the debate is short. Because once you agree on the facts, there is either only one reasonable solution, or a set of solutions where the choice is a matter of personal taste and belief (e.g. some people prefer the high-risk-high-gain and some the low-risk-low-gain option, and when they're mathematical identical, the choice is subjective).
But politics in the parliaments seldom revolves around facts, rational thought or - god forbid - critical examination of the claims made. In fact, to my great astonishment I find that even the concept of a review is alien to politicians. "What, check whether that law we passed last year has actually done what we claimed it would do? What kind of witchcraft is that?"
In the US, you're fucked. In pretty much all European countries, large parties grow and shrink even though they rarely fall completely.
I am from Europe and I feel the same about our parties. So you have 5 parties instead of 2. Does it really make a difference? Will you put your vote somewhere else because of one issue? Even if you do, does it make a difference when the party you voted for instead then forms a coalition with the party you wanted to punish?
Please, as if the number of parties would matter. Germany has a 5-party system at this time (used to be four). So? The peace party voted for the Yugoslavia war. The social democrats orchestrated the largest dissolution of the social system in this countries history. I could go on.
In multi-party systems, you usually have ruling coalitions. So you switch your vote from the old party you used to vote for but now don't want to anymore because they support issue X that you are opposed to. You will most likely switch to the next party that's close to your beliefs. Which, incidentally, will usually be a good coalition partner for your old party due to the small distance between them (same rules apply to you and them, remember). So, in essence, you've aided, not hindered, your old party to stay or come to power.
And very few people change their votes over one issue, even if they feel strongly about it.
As long as we have party systems, no matter if 2, 5 or 10, only the most important and media-hyped issues have potential to matter. And I've become cynical enough to think that it is no accident just which issues the media plays up.
You miss the point. If shoes were what these people lacked, or even what they lacked most, I'd certainly be in favour of giving them shoes.
My point is that malaria is certainly a very serious problem. But it is not the only and not the major problem. If you are beset by a number of problems (say, malaria, starvation and war), each of which is individually deadly, then solving one of them while ignoring the others has zero net benefit. The only effect is that it changes the cause of death.
And then comes the interdependencies. How blind do you have to be to repeat the mistakes of the first foreign aid programs and ignore the unintended consequences?
These aren't shoes we're talking about, the real world is a good bit more complicated than shoes.
I'm lucky enough to live in Germany with its 300Km/h trains, which for journeys of 3-4 hours is now offering real competition.
Uh? I live in Germany and until last year I travelled on business constantly. For a 3 hour journey by train, you will almost always be faster using the train. For most 4 hour trips, that's still true. It's all because there are a lot more train stations than there are airports, and most train stations are in the middle of the city while most airports are at the outskirts. If you not only consider waiting times at the airport, security theatre and checkin, but also the travel times from and to the airport, you need to be have a trip of about 6 hours before the plane beats the train.
Add in that you have more comfort on a train, can bring your stuff with you, don't get searched and humiliated, and can more easily get up and walk around, not to mention visit a small restaurant instead of getting what they call "food" only on an airplane, then you're a lot better off on all but the longest journeys.
The only thing that the trains lack is proper service. First class travel is pretty ok, but in the second/economy class on the train you pretty much get the same experience that you get from airport security - that you're cattle and your presence is barely tolerated.
There's more in the video than just that. For example, how you can buy stuff in the drug store that will burn through a planes skin, at quantities that you are allowed to take on the plane. Ok, maybe you should put it in a baby powder box or something.:-)
Also, not everything was in his jacket. He also hid something in his mouth and strapped to his calf.
hopefully both major parties will get a reminder come the polls on March 20.
That's some heavy stuff you're smoking there, you sure it's legal?
The political system of the west is built to let blunders of this kind disappear. Because you can not vote on issues, only on parties. And if party X has 90% of your opinion, you're going to vote for it rather than party Y which only has 60% of your opinions.
Until something like that Pirate Parties "liquid democracy" becomes a reality, that's the way it is and the major parties can pretty much fuck you in the ass as long as they make sure you don't have any realistic alternatives to vote for instead.
Slashdot Mirror
You are assuming a singular linear progress. In that case, I agree. However, most games of any complexity are not that linear. While you are trying to regain, say, 50 gold you lost, you will not be doing the exact same things that you were the first time around. You'll be doing different things, and those can be exciting.
In any game of some complexity, progress isn't singular. You suffer a setback in your valuables, but your skills don't suffer, and the exploration of the game world has not been reset and neither has your quest status.
Which is why I say balancing this correctly will make or break Mortal Online.
It already broke Darkfall.
I don't think we disagree very much.
If getting back what was lost were interesting and challenging, not many people would mind all that much. In fact, quite a few books and movies are, if you reduce the story to the bare minimum, about just that. But very, very, very few books and movies go "harvest tree. harvest tree. harvest tree (20 more pages). bring wood to storage. repair axe. return to forest. harvest tree. harvest tree. harvest tree (20 more pages..)".
I claim you are wrong.
I'm halfway a casual and halfway a hardcore gamer - due to job and hobbies, my time for a game is pretty limited, but when I like it, I put my teeth into it and my satisfaction is getting as much or more return in a few hours as a lot of the "hardcore" kids with unlimited time on their hands get in playing all day.
Most of the laid-back people that I play with don't mind losing progress. What they do mind is the constant grieving that goes along with it. Many of the thieves, PKers, robbers and yes, cheaters and exploiters in those games are not taking from your character to progress themselves. Heck, I've heard so many stories about thieves immediately destroying their stolen goods that it would fill a book. They're doing it because they can and because they enjoy annoying other people. Typical behaviour for a certain part of the 13-15 age bracket.
Casual gamers are usually adults. They've been there, done that, realized a few later how dumb and asine it all was, and cringe when they see it in others because it still is dumb and asine plus it reminds them of their own faults back then.
The other part that comes with it is why, in fact, for some cases many people do (contrary to my words above) hate losing progress: The stupid grinding to get it back. If there were less grind and more fun in progress, it would matter less if your progress is from 15 to 16 or from 14 to 15 - again. But since in most MMOs, losing progress or starting over means doing the same boring thing again, yes that is why losing progress sucks.
It also works if you don't lose all your progress, but only a part that you can quickly recover.
I'm playing (well, trying to, it's laggy and buggy) the open beta of Mortal Online, and I've followed Darkfall a little, as well as playing EVE and a bunch of others MMOs. What I've learnt there is it is very, very hard to balance a game that allows players to act against each other freely.
Most MMOs restrict PvP to zones, disallow looting, etc. etc. - all those restrictions are mostly there because they make balancing a TON easier. Just read the Mortal Online forums and you can see how difficult it is to get thieving right. If it's too difficult, nobody will use it and you can just as well leave it out. If it is too easy, it attracts all the griefers and assholes who don't steal from people to advance their own character, but merely to annoy other players.
It is unbelievably difficult to find the correct balance once your game has a certain amount of complexity, because all those features interact with each other. EVE did one thing right, and that's why they are still top dog. By setting things into space and a SciFi setting, they eliminated a lot of complexities. The seperation of the game world into solar systems is a natural seperation that players accept. It solves a ton of technical issues without the disturbing portals of other games. The whole cloning and insurance system covers the looting, death and resurrection part from a believable angle that gives the designers lots of freedom in tweaking things. And finally, having security ratings from 1.0 to 0.0 with a smooth transition from "carebear space" to "free for all hardcore space" is a brilliant idea.
Any MMO that doesn't learn from EVE is doomed to fail, I say. And I don't play EVE any more, it's not my game. But they made a good number of brilliant design decisions and have the ability to learn from their mistakes. Kudos for that. Now if you look back at the failed or failure-in-progress games, you will often see devs fanatically defending an original vision that turned out to be impossible to implement. Those who can not adapt, fail.
I still hope MO turns out to be right, but my hopes are fading.
The european government consists of two elements - the commission and the parliament.
What you need to know in short:
The commission is appointed, completely undemocratic, and holds most of the power and does most of the actual activity. It also bends over backwards whenever the US wants something. It was the commission who gave away our flight data, our personal data, our Internet data and now our banking data.
The parliament is elected, is the democratic body, and has very limited powers (though they have shifted around a bit with the last reform). It isn't exactly a mecca of reason, but it more often than not stops the worst excesses of the commission.
So once again, I applaud the parliament. They're fighting uphill battles against the commission all the time.
It's all about strategies. For many years (before it started with its entertainment division), MS essentially followed the opposite strategy. It made windos so obiquituous in business that people were expected to know it if they wanted a job, so lots of people bought a computer for home, which of course (thanks to OEM deals) came with windos. Closed ecosystem.
Apple approaches the same thing from the opposite direction, it assumes that even corporations are made up out of humans and that it is humans who make the decisions. So people who enjoy Macs at home bring them into the company - I've seen that happen on many occasions.
btw: You can get enterprise support for Mac hardware and software. Just not from Apple directly, but many of their partners will be happy to fill that niche.
Finally, a government with humor. What a great satire on itself, you can't buy tha... uh, wait... they're serious and you can buy them. Doh.
Contrary to popular opinion, people do change. Their friends, their habits, but also their browsers.
How do I know? I've been running this website for the past eight or so years. As soon as it got the first CSS bits like six years ago, I decided to not support IE at all, no version of it. Instead, I captured IE users and told them when they were about to access a page that wouldn't work on their browser, told them why (e.g. no support for transparent PNGs, buggy CSS implementation, whatever) and gave them a link to access it anyways (e.g. in case they were using a real browser just masquerading as IE).
My browser statistics show that usage of IE dropped sharply, while user count has steadily increased. Since this is a trend constant over several years (IE is currently at 15.7%) it isn't an anomaly, either.
The summary of it is that if you give people a reason to change, they will. Most people use IE because they are lazy. It came with the system and they aren't really familiar with this com-pu-ter thing, so installing a different browser frightens them somewhat, no matter how easy it is. But give them an incentive and they'll do it.
I'm certain the same holds true for moving them from IE6/7 to IE8 (or any alternative).
But you seem to be arguing that it is good, but the wrong good, and thus bad.
Not quite.
Imagine you are in a plane that is currently falling towards earth because the engines blew up. There's a pretty much 0% chance that you'll survive past the next 20 minutes. In addition, you have a terrible cold. If in that situation someone came along with a helicopter, and offered you a handkerchief and some Aspirin for the headache - would you thank him or tell him to either throw you a rope or go to hell?
Dropping in, giving a shot, and disappearing is about the most we should get involved unless we go in with 100,000+ troops for a 5+ year period to end the warlords, install corruption-free democracy, and jump-start the local economy. You are claiming there is something in the middle. There may be, but the last time we tried for that, we made it worse. So we are going back for more simple and gentle nudges.
Yes, good summary. Except that I'm not even claiming there is something in the middle - I said I don't know. What I am claiming is that I believe these specific "simple and gentle nudges" will backfire just like the feeding did before. I believe it is caused not by a serious and rationale analysis of the consequences, including unintended side-effects. I believe it is caused by too much empathy and the inability of certain people to watch others suffer and their desire to do something about it.
And yes, I'm "cold" enough to rather see people die - if the alternative is making it even worse.
And quite frankly, in countries with mortality rates as high as they are, anything that lets people live longer so they can have more children who then inherit said mortality rate is simply cruelty by proxy.
Now, with the Adobe customers, etc. having mostly migrated to Windows
[citation needed]
may be a local issue, though. But I've not seen this over here in Germany. If anything, the other way around. I know a graphics designer who uses windos - he knows that he's such a strange animal that he points that fact out almost every time he speaks about his occupation.
Nearly all Apple gear can be classified as "optional" in life and more often it is simply extravagant. PCs and (I can't believe I am saying this) and Windows is "necessary" in contrast.
I'll bite (and whoever modded this troll up should get his head checked).
What, pray tell, is the difference between one set of Intel CPU, Nvidia graphics card, some hard disk, display, etc. and the other set of practically the same things, with a different logo on top?
A PC is no more "necessary" in any sense of the word supported by a dictionary than a Mac is. Depending on your likes and environment, one or the other may be preferable for the tasks at hand, but "necessary" vs. "optional"? That's a strange world you are living in.
Apple is built around some pretty interesting ideas and concepts, but the moment they place limits on things, they immediately stop their growth and development.
Those "pretty interesting ideas" have turned Apple into one of the largest technology companies on the continent. I wonder who you are to pass judgement on that, do you even have 1% of the same success?
Not likely, because you are so far off the mark, you've probably hit the target of some other shooting range. See, Apple isn't built around "pretty interesting ideas". It is built around one concept - "design for the user". Almost all of those "limits" you and I and all the other geeks and nerds spot are most welcome by almost all non-techie customers. There is a tyranny in too much choice and options and configurability. And there are huge advantages in consistency and limitations in design. Ever asked yourself why no car manufacturer gives you the option to choose betwen 20 different steering wheel designs, 5 ways the doors could open and 200 different layouts of the console?
I wish Apple would change its ways before the larger consuming public sees Apple for what it is. It's not "exclusive" any more -- it's just limited.
Apple is extremely exclusive. And will remain as long as windos and Linux put the desires of the developers before those of the users (each in their own ways) and Nokia et al purchase the user-interface design of their phones at firesales.
Another variable to consider: Ammo.
Various types of ammunition have different shock, stop and kill values. Police ammo maximizes the stopping power while minimizing the killing power (suspect or innocent bystander, it doesn't matter, you rather want them alive). Hunting ammo maximizes the killing power (it sucks if the deer suffers for a minute before it keels over, but rather that then having a wounded-but-alive deer running around).
Wait. So if they lack shoes, and you give them shoes, you are in favor of that. But if they are missing shoes and gloves and a coat, then a shoe maker donating shoes and expecting someone else to donate gloves and coats is somehow evil on the part of the shoe maker.
It's a bit more complicated than that, is it not? The "shoemaker" in this example could invest his money into more than just shoes. Maybe not all of the problem, but at least a subset that actually makes a difference.
There's no point in vaccinating starving people is my point. Vaccinate and feed them and you're starting to get somewhere.
I'd say it's best to send people over and administer the vaccines directly, and fly out, taking security and not leaving them for local distribution.
Agree on that.
The last time starvation was addressed, it made the problem worse.
Exactly my point! I believe we're in for a repeat performance.
N.B. this could probably be better / more accurately documented by a German speaker; I'm just going by what I saw.
I'm german. That's why I chimed in. And yes, that in his mouth was the fuse.
Not in the USA. We vote for individuals, not Parties. Which is why,
...we hear all these good news about all those refreshing independent senators and governors? ;-)
Imagine a parliament filled only with independents. Then having to form a true consensus about an issue with a real debate!
I prefer - and I have found that proven in my personal experiences as chairman of a democratically elected council full of independent candidates (no parties in this context) - that the debate is less important than having knowledge of the facts. You know, the one thing that our politics lack most. Knowledge, understanding, facts, objectivity - call it what you will.
I've found out time and time again that once you have all the required information on the table, the debate is short. Because once you agree on the facts, there is either only one reasonable solution, or a set of solutions where the choice is a matter of personal taste and belief (e.g. some people prefer the high-risk-high-gain and some the low-risk-low-gain option, and when they're mathematical identical, the choice is subjective).
But politics in the parliaments seldom revolves around facts, rational thought or - god forbid - critical examination of the claims made. In fact, to my great astonishment I find that even the concept of a review is alien to politicians. "What, check whether that law we passed last year has actually done what we claimed it would do? What kind of witchcraft is that?"
In the US, you're fucked. In pretty much all European countries, large parties grow and shrink even though they rarely fall completely.
I am from Europe and I feel the same about our parties. So you have 5 parties instead of 2. Does it really make a difference? Will you put your vote somewhere else because of one issue? Even if you do, does it make a difference when the party you voted for instead then forms a coalition with the party you wanted to punish?
Please, as if the number of parties would matter. Germany has a 5-party system at this time (used to be four). So? The peace party voted for the Yugoslavia war. The social democrats orchestrated the largest dissolution of the social system in this countries history. I could go on.
In multi-party systems, you usually have ruling coalitions. So you switch your vote from the old party you used to vote for but now don't want to anymore because they support issue X that you are opposed to. You will most likely switch to the next party that's close to your beliefs. Which, incidentally, will usually be a good coalition partner for your old party due to the small distance between them (same rules apply to you and them, remember). So, in essence, you've aided, not hindered, your old party to stay or come to power.
And very few people change their votes over one issue, even if they feel strongly about it.
As long as we have party systems, no matter if 2, 5 or 10, only the most important and media-hyped issues have potential to matter. And I've become cynical enough to think that it is no accident just which issues the media plays up.
I googled on liquid democracy but did not find much detail.
You'll find lots of german sites on the topic, if you can read german, here's a few links:
http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Liquid_Democracy
http://wiki.liqd.net/Main_Page
You miss the point. If shoes were what these people lacked, or even what they lacked most, I'd certainly be in favour of giving them shoes.
My point is that malaria is certainly a very serious problem. But it is not the only and not the major problem. If you are beset by a number of problems (say, malaria, starvation and war), each of which is individually deadly, then solving one of them while ignoring the others has zero net benefit. The only effect is that it changes the cause of death.
And then comes the interdependencies. How blind do you have to be to repeat the mistakes of the first foreign aid programs and ignore the unintended consequences?
These aren't shoes we're talking about, the real world is a good bit more complicated than shoes.
I'm lucky enough to live in Germany with its 300Km/h trains, which for journeys of 3-4 hours is now offering real competition.
Uh? I live in Germany and until last year I travelled on business constantly. For a 3 hour journey by train, you will almost always be faster using the train. For most 4 hour trips, that's still true. It's all because there are a lot more train stations than there are airports, and most train stations are in the middle of the city while most airports are at the outskirts. If you not only consider waiting times at the airport, security theatre and checkin, but also the travel times from and to the airport, you need to be have a trip of about 6 hours before the plane beats the train.
Add in that you have more comfort on a train, can bring your stuff with you, don't get searched and humiliated, and can more easily get up and walk around, not to mention visit a small restaurant instead of getting what they call "food" only on an airplane, then you're a lot better off on all but the longest journeys.
The only thing that the trains lack is proper service. First class travel is pretty ok, but in the second/economy class on the train you pretty much get the same experience that you get from airport security - that you're cattle and your presence is barely tolerated.
There's more in the video than just that. For example, how you can buy stuff in the drug store that will burn through a planes skin, at quantities that you are allowed to take on the plane. Ok, maybe you should put it in a baby powder box or something. :-)
Also, not everything was in his jacket. He also hid something in his mouth and strapped to his calf.
hopefully both major parties will get a reminder come the polls on March 20.
That's some heavy stuff you're smoking there, you sure it's legal?
The political system of the west is built to let blunders of this kind disappear. Because you can not vote on issues, only on parties. And if party X has 90% of your opinion, you're going to vote for it rather than party Y which only has 60% of your opinions.
Until something like that Pirate Parties "liquid democracy" becomes a reality, that's the way it is and the major parties can pretty much fuck you in the ass as long as they make sure you don't have any realistic alternatives to vote for instead.