I had a brain storm about an idea for a sci-fi short story in which a team of college grads figure out a way to turn their dna into computers. This would enable them to form huds in their mind and use their brains for neural computers instead of say... Cybernetic implants...
Then one student learns how to break the code and then start to modify all his DNA and becomes a superbeast consuming all life and then the good guy nerd transforms into some physic dragon ball-esque character (who can also modify his dna to turn into a female supermodel) and fights it out in an anti-clamtic battle and then my story goes down hill from there... So I sort of never bothered to even to try to start writing down the story.
I hate to sound like a fogey, but I'm in my mid-thirties, I grew up using computers, and trust me, it won't help.
I'd disagree with you, but I think you misunderstood the grandparent. I think what he is saying is that productivity will increase for corporations in general when the "general workforce" is computer savy.
Sure, it won't make the high skilled techs any better since they grew up with computers, but I think he is talking about the grunts who work with excel all day, make presentations, and write word documents and do other things than computer work (you know... like people in marketing, sales, and other groups that one normally thinks that they don't have any knowledge with computers)
You know... When every child in grade school that grew up with a computer in their home and used aim, email and installed applications now grows up and gets into college and then goes on to the corporate world.
I'd have to agree because I've done tech support and computer related jobs for almost 10 years now (god knows I don't know how) and I get less calls on "What's a start button?" and "what is right click?" these days than I did when I first started in this line of profession.
Now it's more of the lines of "How can I install 'X' application?" or "How can I setup VPN from how to get my corp emails?" etc etc
Sure I'll run into someone everyone now and then, but it's strangley rare these days and seeing that most of the people will be in the corporate workforce and they won't be bothering IT with basic head banging on the desk irritating calls on how to save a file, how to print, or even copy and paste.
Phone rings -- "yes, hello?.. no.. sorry.. yes.. i understand.. no i can't help you with that right now... ok.. i promise i'll look at it in a second."
[back to task]
Instant message -- "Dude!!! HRPROD22-NA01 is down, WTF?" "I know, I know, but I'm working on something else right now, it's next in the queue, i promise you."
Look. I don't mean to be harsh, but either the person in charge of the servers has to be more competant (as in making sure they stay up) or they need to hire more staff.
If the IT desks phone is ringing off the hook and people are emailing you that stuff is going down, then either you need a better IT Admins or you need more of them.
That or better vendors...
If those IM, email, and phone technologies weren't available, it is safe to say those people would get up from their desk and come to your door and tell you those things are down or they need help with something. If they can't do their job, I'm pretty sure they are going to find some way of contacting you to try to find out why you aren't doing yours.
The fact, they could spend 60 or less seconds to do this instead of the 5 minutes required to go down to IT and back to their desk means more productivity for the company (which means the less chance they'll go out of business and you get to keep you server admin job).
Distraction is part of the 21st century corporate job.
It's almost impossible to come up with legitimate puzzle-solving missions that won't be listed on websites with full, step-by-step solutions 20 minutes after they go live.
Random Content
Or AI generated content.
But this might be a few years before we get to that point. We've got to have computers be able to solve logic problems before they are able to create them.
Right, but he was head of 989 Studio, who turned into Verant (who developed Everquest), and then went to SOE as its president when it aquired Verant. (source)
So yeah... He was kind of responsible for that game too.
You know... Like it would be incomplete if say... A company came along and made a MMOG about Star Wars without including that space battles part... And maybe say patched it in maybe years as an expansion pack... Oh wait...
That was a historical aberration and there's no economic policy that will bring it back.
I'd have to disagree. Mostly, because I believe economics and technology is hard to predict. We might see somthing similar in the 2020's if Nanotech took off or neural interfaced VR etc. Heck, we might a second bubble in the 2010's with robotics.
All our current college degrees and current certificates might be worthless when a new technology pardigm comes along and shatters our current economic mode.
The internet boom from 1999 to 2001 was unpredicted and unexpected. It was a shock to the current economic system today and changed all our lives. This is of course the nature of accelerated changes in technology growth.
To sit back and say "This won't ever happen again." is kind of a 'head in the sand' kind of mentality. Personally, I know it may never happen, but I am keenly aware of the fact that if I fail to constantly update my skills and be willing to learn, I might miss out on future oportunities and in worse case scenario also face a pink slip because my skills and degree are no longer valid.
This article points out the obvious fact that we are insanely addicted to technology.
I dunno. Saying we are addicted to technology is like saying we are addicted to air and clean drinking water.
Secondly, business is like war. Those with the most resources and better technology win (or go home with the bigger stock options). A company that doesn't have a competant IT staff and workers skilled in using computers and is competing with a company that does, is like a band of spear men going against a tank in a war game.
Sure, if you throw enough spear men at a tank, you can beat it like in Civilization II, but your basically bleeding more money than a drunken VC at a Phantom Console shareholders meeting.
No one wants to be sent on a Bi-Plane with machine guns against a guy with Stealth bombers and guided missles. The same goes for a guy with a hand crank calculator and a peice of paper going against a guy with a copy of excel and a laser printer.
But when the _only_ purpose of a server is to link to illegal content, you have to be retarded to think it's just for research, or study or for the sake that it's not illegal.
Thus, begs the question... (OK not really begging the question but)
Why is this content illegal? Who made it illegal? What was their motivation?
Re:I thought we settled this with hyperlinking?
on
Razorback2 Servers Seized
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm not an international lawyer or anything, but it occurs to me that the law might be different outside the U.S.
That is what biased extradition laws and CIA kidnappings are for.;)
In response, Germany and Japan both came out to fight. The small handful of terrorists are in hiding.
Well, obviously.
But we shouldn't call it a damn war then. Call it a man hunt and put a team of 1,000 special agents on the case, but we don't need a mobilization of an entire nation and changes to our way of life to hunt down 5 guys in a cave.
Without the games, there would have been no motivation to work on computers. As a kid, I'd be hard pressed to make a boot disk on my own violition to tinker with MS Word on windows 3.1
I can't see cellphone companies embracing technology that effectively ruins their subscription based market. Allowing users to store gigabytes of pictures, music, video, or text might get people to buy the cell phone, but cellular service providers won't want to carry a phone that doesn't force the end user to buy into some subscription or pay-per-use service.
Last I checked, my manufacture of my cell phone is not the same as my cell phone service provider. Sure, it says SprintPCS on the phone, but it's just painted on by Toshiba.
Does Toshiba cell phone service? Not to my knowledge. Do they make money me directly when I download ring tones? Not directly. The only money they made is when I paid $50 for the phone and Sprint gave them a rebte cut of about $150 when I signed a two year contract.
Even T-Mobile and Verizon do not make their phones. You've got Erikson, Nokia, Samsung, Keyocera, and various other companies who make the phones. They make the hard ware and in theory you can get a branded phone to work on another service provider if you get the correct ID car put it in. (not that they are going to give you hell about it and the first 3 sales reps you talk to know nothing about this but they can do it)
So... Sure the cell phone makers make money by selling cheap ass phones to the providers who in turn give money directly to the manufactures, but the cell phone makers are competing with each other and in order to remain competative they are having to put more features on their phones.
The providers may not like and ask if they can make it so you have to go through them to get content out of the box, but there are ways of transfering content to and from your cell phone through 3rd party sources.
In fact, with the introduction of VoIP wifi phones, I'd say we'll stop seeing content lock in as hard core as it is now.
Work's work. If you could dictate the asthetics of your work environment, I bet you'd have quite a different set of coworkers.
Right, but I don't have to sit at my coworkers cubicle nor do I have to use their desktop scheme.
Every company I've worked for has let their employees decorate their cubicle. Chances are if you go through any office that has geeks you'll see printed dilbert, penny arcade, and various other cartoons printed out with posters, toys, plants, and god knows what else.
This usually makes productivity go up in which the employee feels like they aren't actually at work (slave labor) and feel less grumpy about having to get out of bed to deal with life.
The only other option would be to have company mandated beatings, until moral improves.
Other than that it always lets the guys with the coffee cups wander around the office and make unwarranted comments about your printed comics or objects you have displayed while you are trying to multi-task.
I think the saying goes, "If you are being shown around an office during a hiring interview and you see too many Dilbert cartoons, consider your options in case of a company wide downsizing. If you see no Dilbert cartoons... RUN LIKE HELL!"
As a parent, you try to do what is best for you children.
I think the word "supposed to try" is supposed to fit in that statement.
Growing up I knew plenty of people who don't love their kids. People I grew up with whose parents didn't give a crap whether they lived or die and then later in life friends who had kids that shouldn't.
I distinctly remember a friend about 5 years ago who always wanted to barrow money to drink beer and smoke pot and then always hang out at my place and play video games. This guy already had 3 kids and was 18.
I told the guy "You know... You have 3 kids by 3 different people... Why don't you spend more time with them instead of bothering me all the time."
I know that a lot of people love their kids (including my parents who I almost see an exception to everyone else I grew up with) and unconditionally love them. Maybe I grew up in a crappy place in the states where teen pregnancy and poverty (trailer park city) was rampant, but I know from first hand experience that unconditional love is not guaranteed and many people see their children as a nuisance rather than as their children.
I think this is of course the issue with the parent rather than the child themselves. There are certain things you can and cannot control, but unconditional love is one of those things you certainly can control as a parent regardless of your education or you being forced to work all the time to make a living.
Being able to boot a game and click a mouse is hardly tech-savviness.
You couldn't be more wrong. I learned 99% of what I know about computers before I went to college by playing games. I would have to say in from 1985 to 1995 I had to invest a great deal of time and effort in getting computer games to work.
My dad got me an IBM PC jr in 1985 and I basically had to teach myself dos commands to learn how to boot Kings Quest II and make copies (err... for backup and not my friends) and how to print things etc.
Later in life I got an IBM PS1. My dad got me a CD-Rom kit and could not offer any assistance because he hadn't the slightest clue on how to install it and it turned out that many games would not run out of the box. I got a demo copy of Doom 1 and it turns out it would not play because I could not get enough Ram loaded (the box only had 4mb ram).
I had played Wolf3d a few years earlier and I really wanted to play Doom because the pictures on the package looked so cool. So I went down to Babbage's one day with my mom and asks the sales clerk. He scribbled out instructions on how to make a boot disk and gave some tips about DOS=High and various other config.sys and autoexcec.bat
A short while later and struggling (I actually disconnected the CD Rom to get enough ram), I got doom up and running. I think it was only a short time later when I discovered how to get the sound drivers loaded with the boot disk and that some games like EMM type of memory vs the other type.
Yeah, I know some of you out there are saying... OMG this 12 year old in 1993 was playing doom with all that blood, satanic imagery, and violence was corrupting his mind. But you know what... When I went to college I was able to take my skills and advanced on them. Later in life I got an A+ certification and got jobs repairing computer. Over 13 years later, I would have to say that, yeah, computer games gave me 90% of the skills I needed to expand on computer technology.
Look, these days aren't as complicated and you don't need boot discs but being able to play the latest and greatest games teaches more technical skills than a console will ever.
If you get your kid a computer to play games, make sure to not get them a super computer but a budget machine. Make them suffer and find work around to limitation. Let them know about upgrading ram and installing better video drivers. Make them repair their own computer and make them spend their own money for upgrades.
And for God's sake, don't let them log on as Administrator.
I would do it like a tribal coming of age when he turns 13. I'd hand my son a Linux CD and an a laptop with a formatted hard drive and say "Son, if you can get this installed and get the wireless working. You can browse the internet all you want without supervison."
"And no...You may not use my computer to read google groups on how to do it."
Fallout 2 was one of, if not the, best open ended RPGs out there. I never did finish it though. The farthest I got with with a pugilist (I poured points into Hand to Hand),
Actually, I'm 100% sure you could not beat Fallout 2 with H2H combat. I didn't really try, but the two options to beat the game were to use speach skills to talk a group of soldiers into defecting and fighting the last boss for you... Or... Fighting the boss with every know weapon to mankind. Mostly rockets, grenades, and anything else that caused infinite (almost) amount of damage before he would shrurg off the attack to rip you a new one.
Truth be told, the first time I beat the game, I did it by accident because of a bug and the boss got stuck in a door and I snipered him to death. I thought it was too easy and went back and discovered it wasn't supposed to be like that.
Is there any doubt that we have lost the war on terror?
Well put it this way...
WWII: 1941-1945 War On Terror: 2001-2006(+)
If we can defeat two of the most powerful nations on earth in 4 years, but can't beat a handful of men in 5 years, then we are doing pretty badly as a nation.
If I hear the words "War On Terror" in 2011 out of a politicians mouth, I'm going to very pissed.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember that saying: "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades?"
Well close only counts with black holes, neutron stars, and galactic explosions.
I mean if a neutron star passed within a hundred million miles of us, we'd be f**ked.
I had a brain storm about an idea for a sci-fi short story in which a team of college grads figure out a way to turn their dna into computers. This would enable them to form huds in their mind and use their brains for neural computers instead of say... Cybernetic implants...
Then one student learns how to break the code and then start to modify all his DNA and becomes a superbeast consuming all life and then the good guy nerd transforms into some physic dragon ball-esque character (who can also modify his dna to turn into a female supermodel) and fights it out in an anti-clamtic battle and then my story goes down hill from there... So I sort of never bothered to even to try to start writing down the story.
I hate to sound like a fogey, but I'm in my mid-thirties, I grew up using computers, and trust me, it won't help.
I'd disagree with you, but I think you misunderstood the grandparent. I think what he is saying is that productivity will increase for corporations in general when the "general workforce" is computer savy.
Sure, it won't make the high skilled techs any better since they grew up with computers, but I think he is talking about the grunts who work with excel all day, make presentations, and write word documents and do other things than computer work (you know... like people in marketing, sales, and other groups that one normally thinks that they don't have any knowledge with computers)
You know... When every child in grade school that grew up with a computer in their home and used aim, email and installed applications now grows up and gets into college and then goes on to the corporate world.
I'd have to agree because I've done tech support and computer related jobs for almost 10 years now (god knows I don't know how) and I get less calls on "What's a start button?" and "what is right click?" these days than I did when I first started in this line of profession.
Now it's more of the lines of "How can I install 'X' application?" or "How can I setup VPN from how to get my corp emails?" etc etc
Sure I'll run into someone everyone now and then, but it's strangley rare these days and seeing that most of the people will be in the corporate workforce and they won't be bothering IT with basic head banging on the desk irritating calls on how to save a file, how to print, or even copy and paste.
Phone rings -- "yes, hello? .. no.. sorry.. yes.. i understand.. no i can't help you with that right now... ok.. i promise i'll look at it in a second."
[back to task]
Instant message -- "Dude!!! HRPROD22-NA01 is down, WTF?"
"I know, I know, but I'm working on something else right now, it's next in the queue, i promise you."
Look. I don't mean to be harsh, but either the person in charge of the servers has to be more competant (as in making sure they stay up) or they need to hire more staff.
If the IT desks phone is ringing off the hook and people are emailing you that stuff is going down, then either you need a better IT Admins or you need more of them.
That or better vendors...
If those IM, email, and phone technologies weren't available, it is safe to say those people would get up from their desk and come to your door and tell you those things are down or they need help with something. If they can't do their job, I'm pretty sure they are going to find some way of contacting you to try to find out why you aren't doing yours.
The fact, they could spend 60 or less seconds to do this instead of the 5 minutes required to go down to IT and back to their desk means more productivity for the company (which means the less chance they'll go out of business and you get to keep you server admin job).
Distraction is part of the 21st century corporate job.
Any time lawyers make money, it must be good for the economy. i.e.: Class action lawsuits, patent infringements, antitrust cases, etc....
;)
Its not like the lawyers are hording the money.
I mean, think of all those poor hookers that would be out of a job if we didn't have all that litigation money going into the lawyer's pockets.
It's almost impossible to come up with legitimate puzzle-solving missions that won't be listed on websites with full, step-by-step solutions 20 minutes after they go live.
Random Content
Or AI generated content.
But this might be a few years before we get to that point. We've got to have computers be able to solve logic problems before they are able to create them.
When the U.S. lifted the prohibition against alcohol manufacture and consumption, people were not jailed for not being drunks.
It would make the world a better place though.
Has anyone sued the phone maker, text message service, or anyone else they can think of getting money from?
If people could sue for sore thumbs, Nintendo would have gone out of business years ago.
Right, but he was head of 989 Studio, who turned into Verant (who developed Everquest), and then went to SOE as its president when it aquired Verant. (source)
So yeah... He was kind of responsible for that game too.
Define: Incomplete
You know... Like it would be incomplete if say... A company came along and made a MMOG about Star Wars without including that space battles part... And maybe say patched it in maybe years as an expansion pack... Oh wait...
That was a historical aberration and there's no economic policy that will bring it back.
I'd have to disagree. Mostly, because I believe economics and technology is hard to predict. We might see somthing similar in the 2020's if Nanotech took off or neural interfaced VR etc. Heck, we might a second bubble in the 2010's with robotics.
All our current college degrees and current certificates might be worthless when a new technology pardigm comes along and shatters our current economic mode.
The internet boom from 1999 to 2001 was unpredicted and unexpected. It was a shock to the current economic system today and changed all our lives. This is of course the nature of accelerated changes in technology growth.
To sit back and say "This won't ever happen again." is kind of a 'head in the sand' kind of mentality. Personally, I know it may never happen, but I am keenly aware of the fact that if I fail to constantly update my skills and be willing to learn, I might miss out on future oportunities and in worse case scenario also face a pink slip because my skills and degree are no longer valid.
This article points out the obvious fact that we are insanely addicted to technology.
I dunno. Saying we are addicted to technology is like saying we are addicted to air and clean drinking water.
Secondly, business is like war. Those with the most resources and better technology win (or go home with the bigger stock options). A company that doesn't have a competant IT staff and workers skilled in using computers and is competing with a company that does, is like a band of spear men going against a tank in a war game.
Sure, if you throw enough spear men at a tank, you can beat it like in Civilization II, but your basically bleeding more money than a drunken VC at a Phantom Console shareholders meeting.
No one wants to be sent on a Bi-Plane with machine guns against a guy with Stealth bombers and guided missles. The same goes for a guy with a hand crank calculator and a peice of paper going against a guy with a copy of excel and a laser printer.
But when the _only_ purpose of a server is to link to illegal content, you have to be retarded to think it's just for research, or study or for the sake that it's not illegal.
Thus, begs the question... (OK not really begging the question but)
Why is this content illegal?
Who made it illegal?
What was their motivation?
I'm not an international lawyer or anything, but it occurs to me that the law might be different outside the U.S.
;)
That is what biased extradition laws and CIA kidnappings are for.
In response, Germany and Japan both came out to fight. The small handful of terrorists are in hiding.
Well, obviously.
But we shouldn't call it a damn war then. Call it a man hunt and put a team of 1,000 special agents on the case, but we don't need a mobilization of an entire nation and changes to our way of life to hunt down 5 guys in a cave.
Without the games, there would have been no motivation to work on computers. As a kid, I'd be hard pressed to make a boot disk on my own violition to tinker with MS Word on windows 3.1
I can't see cellphone companies embracing technology that effectively ruins their subscription based market. Allowing users to store gigabytes of pictures, music, video, or text might get people to buy the cell phone, but cellular service providers won't want to carry a phone that doesn't force the end user to buy into some subscription or pay-per-use service.
Last I checked, my manufacture of my cell phone is not the same as my cell phone service provider. Sure, it says SprintPCS on the phone, but it's just painted on by Toshiba.
Does Toshiba cell phone service? Not to my knowledge. Do they make money me directly when I download ring tones? Not directly. The only money they made is when I paid $50 for the phone and Sprint gave them a rebte cut of about $150 when I signed a two year contract.
Even T-Mobile and Verizon do not make their phones. You've got Erikson, Nokia, Samsung, Keyocera, and various other companies who make the phones. They make the hard ware and in theory you can get a branded phone to work on another service provider if you get the correct ID car put it in. (not that they are going to give you hell about it and the first 3 sales reps you talk to know nothing about this but they can do it)
So... Sure the cell phone makers make money by selling cheap ass phones to the providers who in turn give money directly to the manufactures, but the cell phone makers are competing with each other and in order to remain competative they are having to put more features on their phones.
The providers may not like and ask if they can make it so you have to go through them to get content out of the box, but there are ways of transfering content to and from your cell phone through 3rd party sources.
In fact, with the introduction of VoIP wifi phones, I'd say we'll stop seeing content lock in as hard core as it is now.
Work's work. If you could dictate the asthetics of your work environment, I bet you'd have quite a different set of coworkers.
Right, but I don't have to sit at my coworkers cubicle nor do I have to use their desktop scheme.
Every company I've worked for has let their employees decorate their cubicle. Chances are if you go through any office that has geeks you'll see printed dilbert, penny arcade, and various other cartoons printed out with posters, toys, plants, and god knows what else.
This usually makes productivity go up in which the employee feels like they aren't actually at work (slave labor) and feel less grumpy about having to get out of bed to deal with life.
The only other option would be to have company mandated beatings, until moral improves.
Other than that it always lets the guys with the coffee cups wander around the office and make unwarranted comments about your printed comics or objects you have displayed while you are trying to multi-task.
I think the saying goes, "If you are being shown around an office during a hiring interview and you see too many Dilbert cartoons, consider your options in case of a company wide downsizing. If you see no Dilbert cartoons... RUN LIKE HELL!"
As a parent, you try to do what is best for you children.
I think the word "supposed to try" is supposed to fit in that statement.
Growing up I knew plenty of people who don't love their kids. People I grew up with whose parents didn't give a crap whether they lived or die and then later in life friends who had kids that shouldn't.
I distinctly remember a friend about 5 years ago who always wanted to barrow money to drink beer and smoke pot and then always hang out at my place and play video games. This guy already had 3 kids and was 18.
I told the guy "You know... You have 3 kids by 3 different people... Why don't you spend more time with them instead of bothering me all the time."
I know that a lot of people love their kids (including my parents who I almost see an exception to everyone else I grew up with) and unconditionally love them. Maybe I grew up in a crappy place in the states where teen pregnancy and poverty (trailer park city) was rampant, but I know from first hand experience that unconditional love is not guaranteed and many people see their children as a nuisance rather than as their children.
I think this is of course the issue with the parent rather than the child themselves. There are certain things you can and cannot control, but unconditional love is one of those things you certainly can control as a parent regardless of your education or you being forced to work all the time to make a living.
Being able to boot a game and click a mouse is hardly tech-savviness.
You couldn't be more wrong. I learned 99% of what I know about computers before I went to college by playing games. I would have to say in from 1985 to 1995 I had to invest a great deal of time and effort in getting computer games to work.
My dad got me an IBM PC jr in 1985 and I basically had to teach myself dos commands to learn how to boot Kings Quest II and make copies (err... for backup and not my friends) and how to print things etc.
Later in life I got an IBM PS1. My dad got me a CD-Rom kit and could not offer any assistance because he hadn't the slightest clue on how to install it and it turned out that many games would not run out of the box. I got a demo copy of Doom 1 and it turns out it would not play because I could not get enough Ram loaded (the box only had 4mb ram).
I had played Wolf3d a few years earlier and I really wanted to play Doom because the pictures on the package looked so cool. So I went down to Babbage's one day with my mom and asks the sales clerk. He scribbled out instructions on how to make a boot disk and gave some tips about DOS=High and various other config.sys and autoexcec.bat
A short while later and struggling (I actually disconnected the CD Rom to get enough ram), I got doom up and running. I think it was only a short time later when I discovered how to get the sound drivers loaded with the boot disk and that some games like EMM type of memory vs the other type.
Yeah, I know some of you out there are saying... OMG this 12 year old in 1993 was playing doom with all that blood, satanic imagery, and violence was corrupting his mind. But you know what... When I went to college I was able to take my skills and advanced on them. Later in life I got an A+ certification and got jobs repairing computer. Over 13 years later, I would have to say that, yeah, computer games gave me 90% of the skills I needed to expand on computer technology.
Look, these days aren't as complicated and you don't need boot discs but being able to play the latest and greatest games teaches more technical skills than a console will ever.
If you get your kid a computer to play games, make sure to not get them a super computer but a budget machine. Make them suffer and find work around to limitation. Let them know about upgrading ram and installing better video drivers. Make them repair their own computer and make them spend their own money for upgrades.
Those will be lessons worth learning.
And for God's sake, don't let them log on as Administrator.
I would do it like a tribal coming of age when he turns 13. I'd hand my son a Linux CD and an a laptop with a formatted hard drive and say "Son, if you can get this installed and get the wireless working. You can browse the internet all you want without supervison."
"And no...You may not use my computer to read google groups on how to do it."
Forget replicating the look of the TV show... focus on building a decent game.
That would be kind of like releasing an MMOG about Star Wars without the space battles... Oh wait...
Fallout 2 was one of, if not the, best open ended RPGs out there. I never did finish it though. The farthest I got with with a pugilist (I poured points into Hand to Hand),
Actually, I'm 100% sure you could not beat Fallout 2 with H2H combat. I didn't really try, but the two options to beat the game were to use speach skills to talk a group of soldiers into defecting and fighting the last boss for you... Or... Fighting the boss with every know weapon to mankind. Mostly rockets, grenades, and anything else that caused infinite (almost) amount of damage before he would shrurg off the attack to rip you a new one.
Truth be told, the first time I beat the game, I did it by accident because of a bug and the boss got stuck in a door and I snipered him to death. I thought it was too easy and went back and discovered it wasn't supposed to be like that.
Theoretically, you elected the majority of our current government (directly or indirectly).
Hello. Meet my friend Electoral College.
We don't need no stinking direct elections.
Is there any doubt that we have lost the war on terror?
Well put it this way...
WWII: 1941-1945
War On Terror: 2001-2006(+)
If we can defeat two of the most powerful nations on earth in 4 years, but can't beat a handful of men in 5 years, then we are doing pretty badly as a nation.
If I hear the words "War On Terror" in 2011 out of a politicians mouth, I'm going to very pissed.