Played it with commentary on, tried (and have not succeeded yet) all the challenge maps, and then downloaded some additonal challenge maps from the 'Net. And yet, it still seemed like a game that was way too short.
I really loved this game, possibly better than anything else I have tried in years. So it was slightly disappointing that it only took me a few hours to get through it the first time, and subsequently takes less than an hour. (I am a slow player)
You answered your own question from a point of ignorance. You can't understand why USians are crying about petrol at $5 per US gallon because I don't think you understand what it is like to live here. #1, most of the US population does not live within metropolitan areas well served by public transportation. Most of us *can't* put the car in the garage because it is easier or quicker on the train. The trains don't exist. Moving from the suburbs/country to the city is not easy. It is much easier to whine about the cost of fuel.
If you only need a car that can accelerate from 0 - 90 in a reasonable time (why 90? Don't you know that traveling at a slower speed is more fuel efficient? How wasteful of you!) then I propose that we need no more new cars. Heck, even a VW Golf from 1978 had that type of performance and got 35 miles per gallon.
Anyway, you don't need transportation. But there are plenty of people who do, or at least think they do. Infrastructure doesn't spring up overnight, and given the distances in this country, it is unlike to be a 100% solution when it gets here, but if fuel prices continue to rise I think there will be more public transporation.
BTW, I started taking the bus to work a few months ago. I drive 6 miles roundtrip per day to a commuter lot, then spend 45 minutes on a bus each way. Overall my commute time is 30 minutes longer per day but infinitely more enjoyable. So I agree in concept that people would be better off finding a mass transit option, if one exists, and pushing for one where it doesn't.
Take a look at the rate of deforestation in Brazil, you know that pesky little Amazon basin rainforest that helps moderate the earth's climate/CO2 levels. The expansion of the Brazilian economy *and* its reliance upon a land-intensive fuel source (methanol) will only continue to eat away at the edges of the rainforest. Unfortunately, there is no way to compensate the Brazilian's for something that is necessary and desirable for the health of the entire human population. Ecotourism ain't it either.
Always when I run out of my 15 mod points I come across posts like this. I would have modded you funny just for fun, but then again I just spent the last 30 minutes modding everyone down who said some version of "moderators, don't mod this down".:-)
Would you mind sharing the rest of the NoScript settings? I find, like the AC you responded to, that most websites break at the first visit. I don't have FlashBlock installed because I (horrors!) visit YouTube and LiveLeak. And still, I have to allow JavaScript in order to play the videos otherwise I get a "you need Flash version 9 to view this site" error.
Similarly, just about any site stops working, particularly the menus since so many sites are JS dependent. Once I get NoScript used to my browsing, and have established a whitelist of trusted sites, it gets less intrusive. But the first few weeks were pretty painful.
Your #2 example does not compute. Saltwater doesn't freeze that easily because the freezing point of saltwater is so much lower than the freezing point of freshwater. As my 10 year old daughter pointed out to me this weekend, that is why they put salt on the roads in the winter time. This does not correlate to the cooling efficiency of saltwater, though there could be other explanations why saltwater is less efficient (I do not know if it is or not).
Yep. I took aim at the bird sitting in the tree and pulled the trigger of my BB Gun. I went over to the bird and saw it was still alive. I reloaded and put a BB through its head. Since then I have never purposefully killed another animal, the distaste for killing something that was looking at me through labored breathing stuck with me that strongly.
[note]I am not a vegan or anything else, I will happily eat meat etc. There is just something about me killing something that was happily skipping along one second and then dead the next. That said, I still shoot guns and would have absolutely no problem killing a "living breathing" human trying to invade my home. Not every gun nut is a hunter.[/note]
The thing is, the $400 used laptop often comes with XP pre-installed, and in many cases has the Office program in there also. You can also buy cheap desktops (I have an eMachines that has been great) that come preloaded with it.
I have just been through an experience restoring a profile on my copy of XP. I corrupted it after accessing the partition from my Ubuntu (I dual boot). I just can't get rid of the XP partition because I occasionally like to play games. Most of the time lately I have been going into Ubuntu, but for the most part I still book into XP by default (my boot loader has XP as default, if I don't choose in the 1st 5 seconds that is where I go) since I will usually play UT2K4 or Portal for a 1/2 hour a few nights per week. UT2K4 works in Linux pretty well, but Portal does not.
Just look at Billy Joel, Rik Ocasek (Cars), Bill Gates and many others. They were definitely not cool before becoming rich. People look past the uncoolness at a certain wealthiness level.
So how does this compare, to BMW for example, where their German workforce is also highly unionized? Have they essentially done the same thing as the U.S. automakers, essentially shipping jobs away from heavy regulations in favor of lighter ones?
A quick Google search http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=bmw+unionization+U.S.+plants tells me that the U.S. plant is non-unionized but pays competitive wages. What this doesn't say is how their non-wage costs, benefits and retirement for example, compare with their unionized force in German and with the Big 3.
I work in an office that specifically included the pointer thing as a specification. There are thousands of laptops in use here and I'd say 30% or more of the people use the pointer stick. In fact, when they decided what software to let us use when locking down the systems, they left us the option of turning the trackpad off (which I have done, both the pad and the buttons). I hate the trackpad, so inefficient to go from one side of the screen to the other wiping your finger multiple times across it.
Which, of course, is unrelated to the mass migration of people from New Orleans into Texas after Katrina, many of whom (surprise, including Doctors!) stayed rather than return.
Last year I traveled over 50,000 air miles across the United States, making more than 30 trips through security before they found my Leatherman inside my briefcase. The thing is, in all that time I had forgotten it was there, next to my flashlight. It has a functional knife, cork screw and lots of other doodads that should have make someone wonder.
I was really pissed when they found it, since it was a gift from a co-worker and they confiscated it. Now I am much more careful to check - I usually clip a Swiss Army knife to my briefcase that my grandfather gave me and I would be heart-broken if I had that confiscated. Fortunately now they are more reliable about letting you go back out of the terminal to mail it to yourself (in a nice $10 package, of course, capitalism at its best).
Good on ya mate for making the move. As a dual citizenship holder myself (United Kingdom by birth, United States by naturalization), I will tell you that it is somewhat overrated. Apart from being able to get in the shorter customs line at the airport, having citizenship from a country closely aligned politically with the U.S. does not prove to be a bonus elsewhere.
I keep my U.S. passport current and travel on it. However if I were to travel on my British passport I'd get the same reactions as when I travel on my U.S. passport. There are few places in this world that recognize any difference between the two. I suspect, unless things change between our countries in the next 20 years, that your son will find the same. If things do change, however, it is very nice to think you have options.
The Grand Canyon is perhaps in 'Olde Mexico' but it is very much inside the borders of the current United States. It is only a short helicopter ride from Las Vegas, Nevada... which is hundreds (thousands?) of miles from the U.S./Mexico border itself.
9 out of 10 health issues people have a related to lifestyle. Most cases of type II diabetes (adult onset diabetes) are the result of poor diet and limited exercise. Same with congestive heart failure and COPD. And yet, as a person who makes healthier decisions I still have to pay higher insurance premiums (or taxes in a single payor system) to accomodate the "personal decisions" that so many people make.
Dr. Steven Aldana, at http://www.wellsteps.com/ is a well renowned researcher that wrote a book "The Culprit and The Cure". If you get a chance, read it. One of the most powerful devices he uses is a cost comparison at death for those who are healthy versus those who are sick. Paraphrasing badly, he argues that we cannot avoid death. And those who live healthy tend to die very quickly, though not necessarily at an old age. It is typically those who have poor lifestyle choices that have long term health issues that cost whatever system you believe in an awful lot of money. On top of that, on average those who have longer term health issues tend to have lingering, painful deaths. Reading this was my wakeup call.
There is a ton of other research out there, much of it pioneered by Dr. Dee Eddington, University of Michigan, pointing to the benefits of early intervention for those at risk of chronic disease. Most of those diseases are preventable by making different lifestyle choices.
So tell me why I should continue to subsidize the smoker next door, or the 300lb 18 year old girl across my street? I don't think I should when I know they could be eating better or not smoking.
one can send unlimited outgoing SMS for as low as Rs. 3 (USD 0.04) per day.
Let me guess where all this incoming SMS spam is coming from. On my plan I have to pay for incoming and outgoing text messages, about $.08 USD for each one.
I take exception to your characterization of the current gas prices as "horrific". C'mon, I mean the Holocaust was horrific, the beheading on the bus in Canada yesterday was horrific. Gas prices making a tank of gas for an SUV almost $100 is not horrific.
As far as I am concerned, the less driving we do the better off we are. That is why I opposed recent moves in Connecticut to lower the state gas tax (doing what I can, by writing my state lawmakers). Lowering prices a few cents only puts $0.20 a week per $.01 drop in price, hardly something to raise my taxes elsewhere to cover.
Who needs Usenet when there is access to it via Google Groups? When I am home, I am fortunate enough to get access through my regular ISP, including the binaries (which I don't use). When I am at work, during lunch, I visit it through Google Groups. In fact, I just posted a question on comp.lang.python.
Don't bother reading the article. It is a non-interesting opinion/blog piece with very little supporting data.
My own little anecdote, I was on usenet (rec.windsurfing) earlier today. If it wasn't for the overwhelming spam, I'd continue to use some of the other groups as the people who are left are a pretty committed and knowledgable group.
Slashdot Mirror
Played it with commentary on, tried (and have not succeeded yet) all the challenge maps, and then downloaded some additonal challenge maps from the 'Net. And yet, it still seemed like a game that was way too short.
I really loved this game, possibly better than anything else I have tried in years. So it was slightly disappointing that it only took me a few hours to get through it the first time, and subsequently takes less than an hour. (I am a slow player)
Nope. The mice didn't order those kind of fossils to be buried.
As an American, I am shocked at the functions you give to your government to run on your behalf.
You answered your own question from a point of ignorance. You can't understand why USians are crying about petrol at $5 per US gallon because I don't think you understand what it is like to live here. #1, most of the US population does not live within metropolitan areas well served by public transportation. Most of us *can't* put the car in the garage because it is easier or quicker on the train. The trains don't exist. Moving from the suburbs/country to the city is not easy. It is much easier to whine about the cost of fuel.
If you only need a car that can accelerate from 0 - 90 in a reasonable time (why 90? Don't you know that traveling at a slower speed is more fuel efficient? How wasteful of you!) then I propose that we need no more new cars. Heck, even a VW Golf from 1978 had that type of performance and got 35 miles per gallon.
Anyway, you don't need transportation. But there are plenty of people who do, or at least think they do. Infrastructure doesn't spring up overnight, and given the distances in this country, it is unlike to be a 100% solution when it gets here, but if fuel prices continue to rise I think there will be more public transporation.
BTW, I started taking the bus to work a few months ago. I drive 6 miles roundtrip per day to a commuter lot, then spend 45 minutes on a bus each way. Overall my commute time is 30 minutes longer per day but infinitely more enjoyable. So I agree in concept that people would be better off finding a mass transit option, if one exists, and pushing for one where it doesn't.
Take a look at the rate of deforestation in Brazil, you know that pesky little Amazon basin rainforest that helps moderate the earth's climate/CO2 levels. The expansion of the Brazilian economy *and* its reliance upon a land-intensive fuel source (methanol) will only continue to eat away at the edges of the rainforest. Unfortunately, there is no way to compensate the Brazilian's for something that is necessary and desirable for the health of the entire human population. Ecotourism ain't it either.
Always when I run out of my 15 mod points I come across posts like this. I would have modded you funny just for fun, but then again I just spent the last 30 minutes modding everyone down who said some version of "moderators, don't mod this down". :-)
Would you mind sharing the rest of the NoScript settings? I find, like the AC you responded to, that most websites break at the first visit. I don't have FlashBlock installed because I (horrors!) visit YouTube and LiveLeak. And still, I have to allow JavaScript in order to play the videos otherwise I get a "you need Flash version 9 to view this site" error.
Similarly, just about any site stops working, particularly the menus since so many sites are JS dependent. Once I get NoScript used to my browsing, and have established a whitelist of trusted sites, it gets less intrusive. But the first few weeks were pretty painful.
How about we name one of similar size and construction?
Your #2 example does not compute. Saltwater doesn't freeze that easily because the freezing point of saltwater is so much lower than the freezing point of freshwater. As my 10 year old daughter pointed out to me this weekend, that is why they put salt on the roads in the winter time. This does not correlate to the cooling efficiency of saltwater, though there could be other explanations why saltwater is less efficient (I do not know if it is or not).
Yep. I took aim at the bird sitting in the tree and pulled the trigger of my BB Gun. I went over to the bird and saw it was still alive. I reloaded and put a BB through its head. Since then I have never purposefully killed another animal, the distaste for killing something that was looking at me through labored breathing stuck with me that strongly.
[note]I am not a vegan or anything else, I will happily eat meat etc. There is just something about me killing something that was happily skipping along one second and then dead the next. That said, I still shoot guns and would have absolutely no problem killing a "living breathing" human trying to invade my home. Not every gun nut is a hunter.[/note]
The thing is, the $400 used laptop often comes with XP pre-installed, and in many cases has the Office program in there also. You can also buy cheap desktops (I have an eMachines that has been great) that come preloaded with it.
I have just been through an experience restoring a profile on my copy of XP. I corrupted it after accessing the partition from my Ubuntu (I dual boot). I just can't get rid of the XP partition because I occasionally like to play games. Most of the time lately I have been going into Ubuntu, but for the most part I still book into XP by default (my boot loader has XP as default, if I don't choose in the 1st 5 seconds that is where I go) since I will usually play UT2K4 or Portal for a 1/2 hour a few nights per week. UT2K4 works in Linux pretty well, but Portal does not.
Just look at Billy Joel, Rik Ocasek (Cars), Bill Gates and many others. They were definitely not cool before becoming rich. People look past the uncoolness at a certain wealthiness level.
I predict that it will be really hard to overstate my satisfaction!
So how does this compare, to BMW for example, where their German workforce is also highly unionized? Have they essentially done the same thing as the U.S. automakers, essentially shipping jobs away from heavy regulations in favor of lighter ones?
A quick Google search http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=bmw+unionization+U.S.+plants tells me that the U.S. plant is non-unionized but pays competitive wages. What this doesn't say is how their non-wage costs, benefits and retirement for example, compare with their unionized force in German and with the Big 3.
I work in an office that specifically included the pointer thing as a specification. There are thousands of laptops in use here and I'd say 30% or more of the people use the pointer stick. In fact, when they decided what software to let us use when locking down the systems, they left us the option of turning the trackpad off (which I have done, both the pad and the buttons). I hate the trackpad, so inefficient to go from one side of the screen to the other wiping your finger multiple times across it.
Same here on my T30, well, except Sleep and Hibernate modes. So on second thought, not quite everything.
Which, of course, is unrelated to the mass migration of people from New Orleans into Texas after Katrina, many of whom (surprise, including Doctors!) stayed rather than return.
Last year I traveled over 50,000 air miles across the United States, making more than 30 trips through security before they found my Leatherman inside my briefcase. The thing is, in all that time I had forgotten it was there, next to my flashlight. It has a functional knife, cork screw and lots of other doodads that should have make someone wonder.
I was really pissed when they found it, since it was a gift from a co-worker and they confiscated it. Now I am much more careful to check - I usually clip a Swiss Army knife to my briefcase that my grandfather gave me and I would be heart-broken if I had that confiscated. Fortunately now they are more reliable about letting you go back out of the terminal to mail it to yourself (in a nice $10 package, of course, capitalism at its best).
Good on ya mate for making the move. As a dual citizenship holder myself (United Kingdom by birth, United States by naturalization), I will tell you that it is somewhat overrated. Apart from being able to get in the shorter customs line at the airport, having citizenship from a country closely aligned politically with the U.S. does not prove to be a bonus elsewhere.
I keep my U.S. passport current and travel on it. However if I were to travel on my British passport I'd get the same reactions as when I travel on my U.S. passport. There are few places in this world that recognize any difference between the two. I suspect, unless things change between our countries in the next 20 years, that your son will find the same. If things do change, however, it is very nice to think you have options.
The Grand Canyon is perhaps in 'Olde Mexico' but it is very much inside the borders of the current United States. It is only a short helicopter ride from Las Vegas, Nevada... which is hundreds (thousands?) of miles from the U.S./Mexico border itself.
9 out of 10 health issues people have a related to lifestyle. Most cases of type II diabetes (adult onset diabetes) are the result of poor diet and limited exercise. Same with congestive heart failure and COPD. And yet, as a person who makes healthier decisions I still have to pay higher insurance premiums (or taxes in a single payor system) to accomodate the "personal decisions" that so many people make.
Dr. Steven Aldana, at http://www.wellsteps.com/ is a well renowned researcher that wrote a book "The Culprit and The Cure". If you get a chance, read it. One of the most powerful devices he uses is a cost comparison at death for those who are healthy versus those who are sick. Paraphrasing badly, he argues that we cannot avoid death. And those who live healthy tend to die very quickly, though not necessarily at an old age. It is typically those who have poor lifestyle choices that have long term health issues that cost whatever system you believe in an awful lot of money. On top of that, on average those who have longer term health issues tend to have lingering, painful deaths. Reading this was my wakeup call.
There is a ton of other research out there, much of it pioneered by Dr. Dee Eddington, University of Michigan, pointing to the benefits of early intervention for those at risk of chronic disease. Most of those diseases are preventable by making different lifestyle choices.
So tell me why I should continue to subsidize the smoker next door, or the 300lb 18 year old girl across my street? I don't think I should when I know they could be eating better or not smoking.
Let me guess where all this incoming SMS spam is coming from. On my plan I have to pay for incoming and outgoing text messages, about $.08 USD for each one.
I take exception to your characterization of the current gas prices as "horrific". C'mon, I mean the Holocaust was horrific, the beheading on the bus in Canada yesterday was horrific. Gas prices making a tank of gas for an SUV almost $100 is not horrific.
As far as I am concerned, the less driving we do the better off we are. That is why I opposed recent moves in Connecticut to lower the state gas tax (doing what I can, by writing my state lawmakers). Lowering prices a few cents only puts $0.20 a week per $.01 drop in price, hardly something to raise my taxes elsewhere to cover.
Who needs Usenet when there is access to it via Google Groups? When I am home, I am fortunate enough to get access through my regular ISP, including the binaries (which I don't use). When I am at work, during lunch, I visit it through Google Groups. In fact, I just posted a question on comp.lang.python.
Don't bother reading the article. It is a non-interesting opinion/blog piece with very little supporting data.
My own little anecdote, I was on usenet (rec.windsurfing) earlier today. If it wasn't for the overwhelming spam, I'd continue to use some of the other groups as the people who are left are a pretty committed and knowledgable group.