And you entirely missed his point. His point was, what do you do once those storyline quests are done? There is only so much content you can create as a game developer, and with thousands or millions of players, it won't take long for that content to be totally completed if it's done like that. For there to always be quests means they would all have to be repeated anyway, and in that case, you invalidate the entire idea of the world being dynamically changed by quest outcomes.
It's entirely unfair to not have the entire storyline exposed to all players - yes, this means there will be an element of "unrealism" for the players, but it will at least be equally enjoyable for all concerned.
It's far too late in the cycle to move to a totally different system. But it's certainly never too late to move to the backup system. There IS a backup system, right? If not, we should be quite vociferously going after the officials who made that mistake.
Not that I'm advocating destruction of property or anything, but what happens if all those fancy schmancy electronic voting machines suddenly were all to be catastrophically destroyed or damaged beyond use? There has to be a backup plan for that, right? Hrmph.
This is not China. Our servicemen and women are volunteers, not conscripts. Soldiers here are not executed immediately for failure to comply with unethical orders, and a real, organized revolution would not bring about the US military deciding they don't care about the people they're supposed to protect.
And if it truly did come to that? We the people outnumber the entire US military both in people and arms and would be far more dedicated to our cause than they would be.
Yes there is. It's called a Constitutional Convention. I would hope it does not come to that, but there may well be a day in my lifetime that the system becomes so completely broken and the existing Constitution so thoroughly butchered and bypassed that we the people are left with no other options but to start over.
Emergency law?? No such thing. If it has time to clear Congress, it is not an emergency.
What you're thinking of is an Executive Order, which is designed for situations like this. I can think of only a handful of REAL emergencies where violation of the constitution is legitimately the best response. A wide-scale biological warfare attack being one (all interstate travel would have to be completely shut down and blocked by the military to stop the spread, even if it meant killing anyone who attempted to leave town), or perhaps a military invasion by China or some other power. Those are emergencies that I could accept such violations for, so long as once the immediate situation was corrected, the Executive Order expired. The 9/11 attacks represented, at best, a one week emergency. Air travel was completely shut down, the stock markets were closed, and quite frankly, everybody was a bit scared - was it the precursor to something bigger? Was it just a bunch of suicidal terrorists who got really lucky? We didn't know at first. Within a week, it became clear that it wasn't the start of World War III, and although there was still tremendous uncertainty about our future, we knew that any further attacks were going to be really really tough to pull off. Everyone was more vigilant (paranoid, really), and it was universally agreed amongst Americans that if a terrorist tried to hijack another plane, we'd not even hesitate to fight back. So, the markets reopened and air travel resumed on 9/17 (if memory serves). During that week, I'd have understood, and perhaps even begrudgingly accepted if massive wiretapping had occurred (though I'd have fully expected a very thorough and public Senate inquiry into such an Executive Order afterwords). The Patriot Act was not signed into law until 10/26, more than six weeks after the attacks. The "emergency" period was over. Hell, by that time, US special forces were in Afghanistan, coordinating with the rebels and preparing for the domino collapse of the Taliban.
As for your assertion that a few months or a year would have been needed, I beg you to more carefully consider that view. Why would you sacrifice a year of your freedom to prevent a terrorist attack? If by some magic, giving up one year of freedom would prevent any and all future terrorist attacks, I'd be fine with that. But it's a delusion of grandeur to believe that the world works that way. Taking away the freedoms of a people is a wonderful way to inspire terrorism. The laws in place allowed for more than enough protection from 9/11 - the problem wasn't with the laws, it was with the poor budget and management of our intelligence organizations, combined with a bit of luck on the part of the perpetrators and the shear audacity of the plan.
How the hell is that a poor point? The entire idea behind scientific research into fusion is to eventually provide a useful means of energy generation for the world. If it can't be repeated by others, it can't be used towards that purpose.
If the man can't provide clear enough directions for anyone else to repeat his research, it is useless. Modding me a troll for pointing this out is pretty ridiculous, but I guess there are some moderators who have their heads too far up their ass to see the bigger goal of all this sort of research here.
It probably costs money because he's using prepaid cellular service instead of monthly. I have to wonder about the economics of prepaid cellular plus a landline - is that really cheaper than going with just a monthly cell phone?
If it can't be replicated by others, it is useless to the world. After all this time, for him to not have been able to demonstrate it for others, means he is full of crap. End of story.
I think the only way I'd be willing to accept telecom immunity is if all those involved in issuing the requests were prosecuted for it. Of course, that'll never happen...
The technology required to scale up production of bio fuels to sufficient levels to replace the world's oil consumption isn't there yet. The number of algae farms required is substantial, and even if the technology were fully developed at this point, the money required for that kind of production effort is incredibly huge, and wouldn't happen without government help. Now, I'm all for replacing oil with something homegrown and renewable, and would be overjoyed to see the US lead the way on this so that we could become a net exporter of biofuel rather than importing oil. With time and a lot of money (some from the government, the rest from smart, long-term investors), this will happen.
Getting back to the subject of the article, it's a little disturbing that we're within a decade of all those elements being essentially used up. It's one thing to know they're going to run out (obviously they are), but so soon? Best solution to this, in my mind, is to dump billions upon billions into the space program. This rock isn't going to support us indefinitely, especially with the way the Chinese and Indian economies are growing - adding another 2.5 billion Western-style consumers will rapidly dry up the planets resources of not just these elements listed in the article, but even things like iron. I don't mean to sound like a doomsday-spouter, but the writing is on the wall. It will happen eventually, it's just a question of when.
Their OS dominance has NOTHING to do with a merger with Yahoo. Even combined they'd have quite a bit less than 50% of the search engine/advertising market.
I'm not entirely surprised that so many people here are willing to accept a Google monopoly on the grounds that Microsoft was once convicted of being a monopolist in the OS market. Really, what is it that keeps Google in check if they have no competition anymore? While they may presently be driving forward with innovation, what is the motivation to continue? Some day they might not see a reason to keep spending money on improving their services. I expect there will be antitrust issues raised with a Yahoo/Google partnership anyway.
Did they even *test* the game before putting that number out? I refuse to believe it is playable with so little ram on Vista. Let me rephrase. I'm sure it's possible to load up the game with only 768MB, but you wouldn't actually want to play it like that. You wouldn't even want to play Freecell on Vista like that.
If PDAs and phones were still separate things, that'd be fine. But they're not. If a place I wanted to attend tried enforcing a ban like this, I wouldn't attend. My phone is a smartphone, and if I need to make/receive a call, fuck them for trying to say I can't simply because it has more functionality to it than that.
This is a stupid policy, and one that in no way benefits their customers. If someone chooses to pay the money to come to an amusement park and then uses their PDA/smartphone the entire time, that is their choice. In what way does that really hurt the park? They're still making their money. The customer is still having a good time (and if they're not, it's their own fault).
I could understand if they wanted to ban all cell phones (though again, I'd totally disagree with that policy and not attend), but to ban only certain types of phones seems the height of failure to understand the policy you're implementing.
Tough luck? As a major shareholder, he has voting rights. And he's using those rights to challenge Yahoo's board over their failure to seriously consider the offer. Anyone who believes that letting Microsoft walk away was going to increase shareholder value is an idiot. The $33/share offer was probably the highest value any Yahoo shareholder will ever again see for their stock.
Yahoo's board screwed up big time by trying to stay independent. Guess what? Google owns internet advertising and search. Neither Yahoo or Microsoft can really make much of a dent in it alone. Quite frankly, I'd much rather see a merger between them give Google some actual competition, because alone neither one is going anywhere. There is of course no guarantee that a combined company would actually be more competitive, but I find that more likely than Yahoo's fortunes suddenly doing a 180.
So it could be said that our military is not only protecting us from terrorists and imaginary weapons of mass destruction, but from evil corporations as well now?
You obviously didn't understand the meaning of my comment at all. I'm not talking about any intentional move by anyone to make a drunk driving simulator in GTA IV that would result in a reduction in drunk driving through learning of the dangers. However, I would think that 13-year-old Johnny playing the game would enjoy the simulation, but have that first (hopefully) impression of drunk driving as being rather dangerous, and thus realizing that calling the cab would probably be a better decision. With any luck, the first time he finds himself drunk and thinking about driving home, the image of him being unable to properly control his car in GTA will come to mind. If you don't believe that people learn anything from playing games, you're being naive. Of course, there's no doubt many people won't learn that lesson, but some will.
Also, I rather resent that you think I work for MADD. Just because I'm not so stupid as to believe that simulating drunk driving would result in people being able to better control real drunk driving doesn't mean I'm part of any group like that. You simply can't improve your ability to control a car while intoxicated in any way beyond reducing how much you drink or improving your alcohol tolerance (even then, you will still not be able to drive properly). Drunk driving sims won't help that, because you physically are not drunk, and thus still have your normal reaction times (even if these are modified by the game).
I'm sure at some point I'll get around to trying out GTA IV and I'm sure I'll enjoy the drunk driving part for the mindless entertainment.
"We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are an inch and half away from ass holes. I don't know much about this crazy, crazy world, but I do know this: If you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!"
Your analogy is a bit off base. More accurate might be to hope that spammers wouldn't abuse the accessibility loopholes in the same vein that criminals don't park in handicap spaces while they're inside robbing the store. Oh wait, they probably do.
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And you entirely missed his point. His point was, what do you do once those storyline quests are done? There is only so much content you can create as a game developer, and with thousands or millions of players, it won't take long for that content to be totally completed if it's done like that. For there to always be quests means they would all have to be repeated anyway, and in that case, you invalidate the entire idea of the world being dynamically changed by quest outcomes.
It's entirely unfair to not have the entire storyline exposed to all players - yes, this means there will be an element of "unrealism" for the players, but it will at least be equally enjoyable for all concerned.
It's far too late in the cycle to move to a totally different system. But it's certainly never too late to move to the backup system. There IS a backup system, right? If not, we should be quite vociferously going after the officials who made that mistake.
Not that I'm advocating destruction of property or anything, but what happens if all those fancy schmancy electronic voting machines suddenly were all to be catastrophically destroyed or damaged beyond use? There has to be a backup plan for that, right? Hrmph.
This is not China. Our servicemen and women are volunteers, not conscripts. Soldiers here are not executed immediately for failure to comply with unethical orders, and a real, organized revolution would not bring about the US military deciding they don't care about the people they're supposed to protect.
And if it truly did come to that? We the people outnumber the entire US military both in people and arms and would be far more dedicated to our cause than they would be.
Yes there is. It's called a Constitutional Convention. I would hope it does not come to that, but there may well be a day in my lifetime that the system becomes so completely broken and the existing Constitution so thoroughly butchered and bypassed that we the people are left with no other options but to start over.
Emergency law?? No such thing. If it has time to clear Congress, it is not an emergency.
What you're thinking of is an Executive Order, which is designed for situations like this. I can think of only a handful of REAL emergencies where violation of the constitution is legitimately the best response. A wide-scale biological warfare attack being one (all interstate travel would have to be completely shut down and blocked by the military to stop the spread, even if it meant killing anyone who attempted to leave town), or perhaps a military invasion by China or some other power. Those are emergencies that I could accept such violations for, so long as once the immediate situation was corrected, the Executive Order expired. The 9/11 attacks represented, at best, a one week emergency. Air travel was completely shut down, the stock markets were closed, and quite frankly, everybody was a bit scared - was it the precursor to something bigger? Was it just a bunch of suicidal terrorists who got really lucky? We didn't know at first. Within a week, it became clear that it wasn't the start of World War III, and although there was still tremendous uncertainty about our future, we knew that any further attacks were going to be really really tough to pull off. Everyone was more vigilant (paranoid, really), and it was universally agreed amongst Americans that if a terrorist tried to hijack another plane, we'd not even hesitate to fight back. So, the markets reopened and air travel resumed on 9/17 (if memory serves). During that week, I'd have understood, and perhaps even begrudgingly accepted if massive wiretapping had occurred (though I'd have fully expected a very thorough and public Senate inquiry into such an Executive Order afterwords). The Patriot Act was not signed into law until 10/26, more than six weeks after the attacks. The "emergency" period was over. Hell, by that time, US special forces were in Afghanistan, coordinating with the rebels and preparing for the domino collapse of the Taliban.
As for your assertion that a few months or a year would have been needed, I beg you to more carefully consider that view. Why would you sacrifice a year of your freedom to prevent a terrorist attack? If by some magic, giving up one year of freedom would prevent any and all future terrorist attacks, I'd be fine with that. But it's a delusion of grandeur to believe that the world works that way. Taking away the freedoms of a people is a wonderful way to inspire terrorism. The laws in place allowed for more than enough protection from 9/11 - the problem wasn't with the laws, it was with the poor budget and management of our intelligence organizations, combined with a bit of luck on the part of the perpetrators and the shear audacity of the plan.
How the hell is that a poor point? The entire idea behind scientific research into fusion is to eventually provide a useful means of energy generation for the world. If it can't be repeated by others, it can't be used towards that purpose.
If the man can't provide clear enough directions for anyone else to repeat his research, it is useless. Modding me a troll for pointing this out is pretty ridiculous, but I guess there are some moderators who have their heads too far up their ass to see the bigger goal of all this sort of research here.
It probably costs money because he's using prepaid cellular service instead of monthly. I have to wonder about the economics of prepaid cellular plus a landline - is that really cheaper than going with just a monthly cell phone?
If it can't be replicated by others, it is useless to the world. After all this time, for him to not have been able to demonstrate it for others, means he is full of crap. End of story.
But what about the Martians who might gaze upon it?
And any pilot with half a brain knows that a cabin full of dead people is still better than a plane and building full of dead people.
I think the only way I'd be willing to accept telecom immunity is if all those involved in issuing the requests were prosecuted for it. Of course, that'll never happen...
The technology required to scale up production of bio fuels to sufficient levels to replace the world's oil consumption isn't there yet. The number of algae farms required is substantial, and even if the technology were fully developed at this point, the money required for that kind of production effort is incredibly huge, and wouldn't happen without government help. Now, I'm all for replacing oil with something homegrown and renewable, and would be overjoyed to see the US lead the way on this so that we could become a net exporter of biofuel rather than importing oil. With time and a lot of money (some from the government, the rest from smart, long-term investors), this will happen.
Getting back to the subject of the article, it's a little disturbing that we're within a decade of all those elements being essentially used up. It's one thing to know they're going to run out (obviously they are), but so soon? Best solution to this, in my mind, is to dump billions upon billions into the space program. This rock isn't going to support us indefinitely, especially with the way the Chinese and Indian economies are growing - adding another 2.5 billion Western-style consumers will rapidly dry up the planets resources of not just these elements listed in the article, but even things like iron. I don't mean to sound like a doomsday-spouter, but the writing is on the wall. It will happen eventually, it's just a question of when.
The insurance companies will see to it that such a thing never happens, because it would drive costs up way too high.
XP has far far lower memory requirements than Vista, so 512MB is believable. Can't speak for OSX though.
How is 1GB the same as 768MB? It's not. That extra 256MB makes a real difference with Vista.
Their OS dominance has NOTHING to do with a merger with Yahoo. Even combined they'd have quite a bit less than 50% of the search engine/advertising market.
I'm not entirely surprised that so many people here are willing to accept a Google monopoly on the grounds that Microsoft was once convicted of being a monopolist in the OS market. Really, what is it that keeps Google in check if they have no competition anymore? While they may presently be driving forward with innovation, what is the motivation to continue? Some day they might not see a reason to keep spending money on improving their services. I expect there will be antitrust issues raised with a Yahoo/Google partnership anyway.
Did they even *test* the game before putting that number out? I refuse to believe it is playable with so little ram on Vista. Let me rephrase. I'm sure it's possible to load up the game with only 768MB, but you wouldn't actually want to play it like that. You wouldn't even want to play Freecell on Vista like that.
That would be 6 of 14 or 6 and 8.
If PDAs and phones were still separate things, that'd be fine. But they're not. If a place I wanted to attend tried enforcing a ban like this, I wouldn't attend. My phone is a smartphone, and if I need to make/receive a call, fuck them for trying to say I can't simply because it has more functionality to it than that.
This is a stupid policy, and one that in no way benefits their customers. If someone chooses to pay the money to come to an amusement park and then uses their PDA/smartphone the entire time, that is their choice. In what way does that really hurt the park? They're still making their money. The customer is still having a good time (and if they're not, it's their own fault).
I could understand if they wanted to ban all cell phones (though again, I'd totally disagree with that policy and not attend), but to ban only certain types of phones seems the height of failure to understand the policy you're implementing.
Tough luck? As a major shareholder, he has voting rights. And he's using those rights to challenge Yahoo's board over their failure to seriously consider the offer. Anyone who believes that letting Microsoft walk away was going to increase shareholder value is an idiot. The $33/share offer was probably the highest value any Yahoo shareholder will ever again see for their stock.
Yahoo's board screwed up big time by trying to stay independent. Guess what? Google owns internet advertising and search. Neither Yahoo or Microsoft can really make much of a dent in it alone. Quite frankly, I'd much rather see a merger between them give Google some actual competition, because alone neither one is going anywhere. There is of course no guarantee that a combined company would actually be more competitive, but I find that more likely than Yahoo's fortunes suddenly doing a 180.
So it could be said that our military is not only protecting us from terrorists and imaginary weapons of mass destruction, but from evil corporations as well now?
*salute*
Yes, because figures from 16 months ago are useful to this discussion.
You obviously didn't understand the meaning of my comment at all. I'm not talking about any intentional move by anyone to make a drunk driving simulator in GTA IV that would result in a reduction in drunk driving through learning of the dangers. However, I would think that 13-year-old Johnny playing the game would enjoy the simulation, but have that first (hopefully) impression of drunk driving as being rather dangerous, and thus realizing that calling the cab would probably be a better decision. With any luck, the first time he finds himself drunk and thinking about driving home, the image of him being unable to properly control his car in GTA will come to mind. If you don't believe that people learn anything from playing games, you're being naive. Of course, there's no doubt many people won't learn that lesson, but some will.
Also, I rather resent that you think I work for MADD. Just because I'm not so stupid as to believe that simulating drunk driving would result in people being able to better control real drunk driving doesn't mean I'm part of any group like that. You simply can't improve your ability to control a car while intoxicated in any way beyond reducing how much you drink or improving your alcohol tolerance (even then, you will still not be able to drive properly). Drunk driving sims won't help that, because you physically are not drunk, and thus still have your normal reaction times (even if these are modified by the game).
I'm sure at some point I'll get around to trying out GTA IV and I'm sure I'll enjoy the drunk driving part for the mindless entertainment.
"We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies can be so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are an inch and half away from ass holes. I don't know much about this crazy, crazy world, but I do know this: If you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!"
I think that's what you meant to say?
Your analogy is a bit off base. More accurate might be to hope that spammers wouldn't abuse the accessibility loopholes in the same vein that criminals don't park in handicap spaces while they're inside robbing the store. Oh wait, they probably do.