I think it's really hard as humans to comprehend things we have no ways of describing in English.
Well besides the fact that there are other languages in the universe besides English, but it is really hard for the human mind to comprehend really small numbers and really large numbers.
So it simply visualizes anything extremely small as 0 and anything exceedingly large (like the universe) as infinite.
But even then, the human mind cannot truly visual infinity without an approximation nor can it visualize nothingness. Well because by definition nothing does not exist so therefore you can imagine big empty space in your brain, but that is still something... and something is not nothing... and then you get a headache from trying to visualize nothingness and infinity cause it really isn't possible... ARGH!
Even then... Try to visualize yourself sitting bored in a room for 60 minutes and then imagine yourself there but times that lenght of time by several hundred thousand billions and imaging yourself watch the sun spin by and mountains rise and fall and seas form and dry up... And you still haven't even gotten to close to the scale of the big bang.
Maybe after sitting bored for several million trillion hours (or however many hours 14 billion years contains) then and only then can you get the scope of this time lapse.
Of course I've given myself another head ache because humans were not built to comprehend time more than tens of years time frame and simply even try to comprehend 1,000 years start to make me feel fuzzy.
That being said... the U.S. government is remarkably inept at keeping secrets much less orchestrating a cover up of this size.
No one knew about the Manhattan project until they dropped the bomb. Not even Harry Truman knew that we had a bomb till FDR died.
If our government was theoretically capable of hiding a great secret, one of those requirements would be able to make people think they were to incapable of hiding one.
Not that I believe in an aliens conspiracy coverup, but I'm just saying if it were possible able to look incompetent would be a requirement.
On the ready bit, anyway. Just imagine the sheer force of the political shitstorm a First Contact would stir up. Anyone who could decode the garbage we eject into space would be smart enough to scope out the political situation - anywhere you put down, you're going to be politically validating whoever's collecting taxes on the ground you drop on.... and if you don't land in the US, you'll have the US military six feet up your ass muscling whoever else out of the way for first call on photo ops, resources, etc. Land in the middle east and you've not only brought that political shitstorm to a boil, you've also incited two of the world's major religions. Then there's the language thing.
Didn't stop the conquistadors with the Aztecs.
Look. If these people have the ability to travel halfway across the galaxy, then we are simple Aztec natives with clubs and bows and arrows to their muskets, diseases, and cannons.
If there were aliens around and want to do us in, they wouldn't even have to set foot on this planet. They'd drop an asteroid the size of Texas on us and call it a day.
If they wanted to do the hard way and keep us alive, they could simply ally themselves with one of the major factions (US, Russia, or China) and then give them just enough technology to subdue the other factions keeping a kill switch just in case their human allies turned on them. Remember, the conquistadors were not alone when they overthrew Montezuma. They had tens of thousands of locals that joined their side against him.
If they really wanted to do it without a stink they'd could just drop a retro-virus that makes our happiness hormones go crazy and we become compliant sheep when they show up.
The only reason this hasn't happened is because the aliens don't exist, haven't found us, or have decided against such measures.
It isn't because we aren't ready. Surely any beings set on saving all sentient life forms would have intervened by now to bring us whatever message. Perhaps they are beyond such things and have decided just to watch us suffer and conflict among ourselves.
But if that were the case they aren't saying "We aren't ready". No... If that is the case they'll never intervene, but watch us like a science experiment.
Okay, that's enough speculation. But I do think it's not THAT unlikely that other intelligent races would be bipedal, upright, large-brained, and endowed with fine manipulators on their upper appendages. Maybe they'd have evolved from catlike or doglike or birdlike creatures instead of apelike creatures, but...
And my second argument which I totally forgot is that we have totally discounted an alien race that has gone through a technological singularity. If a race of beings have technology sufficient enough transport matter faster than the speed of light (or maybe close to it and just spend lots of time in space), then why even bother with an organic body.
It would be much more efficient to send an intelligent machine the size of a laptop halfway across the galaxy and much more safer. Organic bodies tend to not do well in harsh environments (aka dead space aliens due to a crash), but a machine could simply impact like a crater and get up and walk away after a few self repairs.
Maybe it is there way of communicating with us, but wouldn't it be more efficient instead of showing us dead aliens of their failed attempts to just have machines beam the information to us and back to them?
I dunno... If I were an alien race with advanced technology, I'd go about this whole space travel ordeal a bit differently.
I'd find the short story, but there was something a sci-fi writer wrote about aliens being offended that meat could be intelligent so the alien scientists decided to cover up what they found on earth and took it off the map.
Are you guys SURE you want the US federal government legislating this?
Not really, but unfortunately they have been legislating and funding the internet from the get go.
Most of the telcoms have basically been willing to take millions of dollars worth of tax breaks and tax payer money from back in the 90's when they were basically subsidizing fiber roll out.
So in reality, telcoms were and currently are basically government regulated monopolies.
If you don't like net neutrality, they the only real solution would be to tear down the barriers of entry, break up the telcoms (again) and make a rule they are never to merge never ever again under no circumstances under pain of death.
Then we can talk about no government regulation of the internet's backbone.
Until then... They are simply government mandated monopolies.
Your home-made bot that acts exactly like a normal player in terms of imperfect timing and lack of percievable omniscience isn't a terribly effective way of cheating.
Except for the fact he doesn't have to be there in person to reap the benefits of the bot at a later time. Otherwise known as gold farming...
There is no technological fix for this. Eventually, AI will be so good that it will be hard to tell if a player is human or AI. Since the AI will be another computer with a web came and keyboard inputs, there is no detection.
Unless you requite a Voight-Kampff test before being allowed to play online.
Eventually there might be an anti-cheat relying on TCPM sort of things, but eventually somebody will just make a TCPM-less version indistinguishable from the TCPM type by the server.
I can't seem to find the article somewhere, but I remember John Carmack said in an interview the only way to truly get rid of online cheating was to simply have the server generate the video feed and stream it to the client and had the client only send pure keyboard mouse controls.
I might be mistaken that he was alluding to the fact that online gaming will someday be like this, but only able to do this due to increased bandwidth and computing power sometime off in the far future.
Oops debunking a 64 bit platform in just 5 lines of text
Which leads me to believe that if they have a legitimate use for 64 bit Windows, they would have something like May3d or Photoshop up and running.
Which either means they shelled out a lot of money on computer hardware to listen to MP3s on a powerful work station or simply pirated everything anyways. If they intended to use this as a development platform for iPhone apps, I wondering what the heck for seeing you don't need a supercomputer to do so.
It is kind of like getting angry that your Zune didn't work on a 64-bit version of Linux.
The fact of the matter is that Apple makes good hardware and a good solid OS, but they really suck at making software run on things that isn't theirs. (I'm looking at you Quicktime!)
But to imply "Only in America..." Wait, *seriously*? You *HONESTLY BELIEVE THAT*? C'mon!
I think he meant in "Only in America..." in that money was the reason for freedom of speech being squashed.
Sure there are plenty of other countries that stomp all over freedom of speech for political and religious reasons, but no one ever censored someone in any other country for the sake of their shareholders.
And I suppose if you obediently believe every line that Moore has to tell you about the matter is the whole and honest extent of the truth, then there is no possibility that anything could counter it.
That's the problem with these things. When the truth gets a bad spokesperson, people discount it.
I for one would had to see Moore do a documentary on the Holocaust or the Sudanese Genocide. People would actually give the genocide deniers a legitimate platform in which to put forth a counter view just because Moore happened to be on the side of those telling the truth.
Especially considering they might never check that six month old post ever again.
You know what peeves me off. Obscure Windows OS and Application problems that the only results in Google are slew of 6 month old newsgroup posts with no replies.;)
And its usually the ones that fit my problem down to a T with the symptoms and error messages. The only consolation is the fact that some poor smuck out there has faced the same problem I am faced with now but with no solution.
Running from a fight isn't always the right thing to do. And if you think Iraq is a fiasco, look at how many people died from not standing up to Hitler early enough. Hint: it's not measured in thousands, but TENS of MILLIONS.
Hey if you want to play history theoretics, here is one for non-intervention:
Had Woodrow Wilson not got the US involved in WWI, then Imperial Germany would have won with decent terms. This would have resulted in the Wiemar republic never happening and Hitler never coming to power. The irony is that the Kaiser's government was just as about democratic as the British Imperial one and that more than not (given its hold on the Ukraine) it would have defeated any Bolshevik's attempts for expansion west.
So we've just killed two birds with one stone... No Hitler. No Stalinist occupation of Eastern Europe after 1945.
And all this from minding our own businesses and not getting into other people's wars.
Again... This is all theory and may not have happened the way I put it, but the fact of the matter is that if Neville did stand up to Hitler then there would have never an Operation Barbarossa which meant we would have had a full scale Soviet invasion of western Europe some time after 1942 when they got their T-34 production built up.
Keep in mind the T-34 tank was designed to run on paved roads at high speeds which oddly enough there were so little of those roads in Soviet Russia. Nope... They were gunning for Europe and had Hitler not been around to fight Stalin then we would have to have taken Stalin on ourselves.
The first is the ole' terrorism card where we can't have people that might be terrorists casing targets and what not.
Which leads me to wonder, when was the last time anyone of us saw terrorists with tripods?
I mean... If you want to be a terrorist, you just strap on a vest of C4 and walk into the nearest crowd. Its not like the terrorists had to take pictures of the area first to plan their "get away" after the fact.
In addition, the Bibles recording of the Jews as leaving KMT with Moses (A KMT name) is odd because the people of the Nile were meticulous record keepers. If so many people had departed as suggested in the Bible, then many critical tasks would have gone undone or would have been performed poorly due to low staffing or unskilled workers performing the tasks in the place of the slaves.
There are some suggestions that the "Egypt" of the Old Testament, is not the same "Egypt" that history refers too. Possibly, due to the fact that ancient Hebrew has no vowels and certain things had to be interpreted by oral context.
Ranges go from either just local kingdoms in Syria/Jordan, to Turkey to Persia, and to really far fetched like Japan.
Is there anything we can do if we live outside of the USA? Will our voice/concerns even matter? We want to help in any way we can if it's all at possible.
Well you can start by listening to radio stations outside of the USA.
I've played all three of those games and never heard of this guild.
If my memory serves me correct, LLTS or the Syndicate was an Atlantic shard which I played on a lot back in 1997 to 2000.
I wasn't a member, but I PK'd a few of them and vice versa during some major guild wars. Of course seeing they just about let anyone join their guild and were the biggest guild on Atlantic and it was hard not to miss them.
Of course with a guild that big, it their structure was kind of diluted and we even had a few guild members infiltrate their ranks for some castle raids. I could be thinking of another guild and I didn't play that much with the guild politics other than my guild buddies messaging me on ICQ that they were going on a "Orange PK" raid on Vesper.
Heck... I don't even remember the guild I was in (Technically my name or Malinox was used, but was played by some one else under another account whom I gave and then I rejoined as another player as Mr. Unhappy Man)
Still I remember them... I heard they all went to EQ while a few of us played Siege Perilous, but beyond that...
If you didn't play on Atlantic, then I can understand why you haven't heard of them.
But if they start pushing information onto anyone-can-edit-Wikipedia, some of the authority is lost.
Huh? If a UFO/JFK conspiracy mag publishes Einsteins papers on theory of relativity, then Einstein's papers and theories haven't lost their authority. Now, I might question the fact that someone said that Einstein's paper in this magazine said that E equals magic fairy dust and that Einstein hung out with little green men from mars, but that wouldn't degrade the authority of his original work
Authority works in one direction only. Not the other way around.
Retail Home variants of Vista also aren't licensed for virtualization. Where do you think that support comes from?
I take it you haven't worked in support at the different levels. There is a thing we call the blame game merry go round:
1. If you are Microsoft, you blame the hardware vendor. 2. If you are the hardware vendor, you blame the ISP. 3. If you are the ISP, you blame Microsoft.
In the end you'll probably buy a brand new computer helping (both Microsoft and the hardware vendor) and won't be able to find a way to cancel your ISPs subscription anyways because they'll still charge your card even if you have called to cancel for the 50th time.
But on a more serious note, this is who most of the industry works... I've worked for OEM computer distributors, ISPs, and even corporate help desk. If what you calling in for support with even remotely is not their product (routers, firewalls, 3rd party USB hardware) you will immediately get denied support.
I worked for a large ISP who implicitly told us if we tried to troubleshoot common routers like Linksys, unless we sold it to them through a "home networking plan" that we would get terminated. I've seen OEM companies who requires their help to immediately have a customer calling about a internet problem to contact their ISP even if it was obviously a bad NIC. And I've had seen plenty of times Microsoft (even after a customer paid them $90 just to talk with them) would throw up their hands and say they couldn't help them when it was obviously an OS issue.
So no... Microsoft is not afraid of supporting this products. It can say... "Oh... Its on a virtual computer? Its not on the system requirements on the box! Sorry can't help you! Bye!"
No, its something else besides support. Could be Apple... Could be because you can use it to get around DRM of the OS.
Whatever it is... Its not support. They already deny a lot of that already.
Even if you bought the non-OEM version of windows.
However, CDs sound better on a decent system than MP3s, and SA-CDs no doubt sound better, but the refusal to support SA-CD killed it. Digital audio is damned convenient, busy moving my old CD-Jukebox (400 disc, takes forever to change CDs if you want to mix up tracks) to a lossless media server, but there was no reason for the studios not to make that a reality, other than laziness and a fear of change.
I think you are blaming the wrong fox. Teenagers are the ones who buy the most music and not adults. However, teenagers usually have less money than adults to spend on music and on audio equipment.
More often than not teenagers aren't too concerned about audio quality (I'm sure some are, but not the majority of them) but rather what they can get for less money of the most popular items.
Where it gets really interesting is this: suppose that every basic need of every human being could be met. Would it happen? If it did happen, what would it mean for somebody to be wealthy? Or free for that matter?
I've debated with this on a singularity forum once... Which said technology you could simply jack in and have a 1,000 year orgasm with not much else accomplished. You could simply will yourself un-bored and sit there for 10,000 years and not notice anything or care.
However, that wouldn't be much of an existence which leads me to be when this does happen, humans will entertain themselves by playing simulations and video games. Basically, in order to not become a 10,000 year cyber neuro drug addict, you must set yourself in a game with a set of rules. Including physics rules and various other game play rules. You have some sort of goal and something else going on.
Sometimes this isn't as much as a game as one would be creating a movie for themselves and anyone else who is interested. You could simply relive WWII or any other historical war if you are into war games or you could relive the renaissance if you are into art. Hey, you could even live in an Anime simulation or some other fantasy simulation. Heck... You could even alter your memories so that the simulation seems real (I suppose you could even create a simulation about living in the 21st century about someone who posts on slashdot and never know that you are simply a brain in a jar tended to by machines)
For those who aren't created, I suppose you could watch TV for eternity. Other than that... Unless humans have integrated themselves into machines themselves or were killed off by the machines, then there isn't much else for us to do other than to entertain ourselves.
Given enough imagination that isn't hard to do. The only thing we have to worry about is that the machines figure out some way to avoid the death of our sun and eventually heat death of the universe.
But I'll leave that to a computer with a brain the size of Jupiter to figure that one out.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's really hard as humans to comprehend things we have no ways of describing in English.
Well besides the fact that there are other languages in the universe besides English, but it is really hard for the human mind to comprehend really small numbers and really large numbers.
So it simply visualizes anything extremely small as 0 and anything exceedingly large (like the universe) as infinite.
But even then, the human mind cannot truly visual infinity without an approximation nor can it visualize nothingness. Well because by definition nothing does not exist so therefore you can imagine big empty space in your brain, but that is still something... and something is not nothing... and then you get a headache from trying to visualize nothingness and infinity cause it really isn't possible... ARGH!
Even then... Try to visualize yourself sitting bored in a room for 60 minutes and then imagine yourself there but times that lenght of time by several hundred thousand billions and imaging yourself watch the sun spin by and mountains rise and fall and seas form and dry up... And you still haven't even gotten to close to the scale of the big bang.
Maybe after sitting bored for several million trillion hours (or however many hours 14 billion years contains) then and only then can you get the scope of this time lapse.
Of course I've given myself another head ache because humans were not built to comprehend time more than tens of years time frame and simply even try to comprehend 1,000 years start to make me feel fuzzy.
Thanks for the link! Thats actually a good short story.
That being said... the U.S. government is remarkably inept at keeping secrets much less orchestrating a cover up of this size.
No one knew about the Manhattan project until they dropped the bomb. Not even Harry Truman knew that we had a bomb till FDR died.
If our government was theoretically capable of hiding a great secret, one of those requirements would be able to make people think they were to incapable of hiding one.
Not that I believe in an aliens conspiracy coverup, but I'm just saying if it were possible able to look incompetent would be a requirement.
On the ready bit, anyway. Just imagine the sheer force of the political shitstorm a First Contact would stir up. Anyone who could decode the garbage we eject into space would be smart enough to scope out the political situation - anywhere you put down, you're going to be politically validating whoever's collecting taxes on the ground you drop on.... and if you don't land in the US, you'll have the US military six feet up your ass muscling whoever else out of the way for first call on photo ops, resources, etc. Land in the middle east and you've not only brought that political shitstorm to a boil, you've also incited two of the world's major religions. Then there's the language thing.
Didn't stop the conquistadors with the Aztecs.
Look. If these people have the ability to travel halfway across the galaxy, then we are simple Aztec natives with clubs and bows and arrows to their muskets, diseases, and cannons.
If there were aliens around and want to do us in, they wouldn't even have to set foot on this planet. They'd drop an asteroid the size of Texas on us and call it a day.
If they wanted to do the hard way and keep us alive, they could simply ally themselves with one of the major factions (US, Russia, or China) and then give them just enough technology to subdue the other factions keeping a kill switch just in case their human allies turned on them. Remember, the conquistadors were not alone when they overthrew Montezuma. They had tens of thousands of locals that joined their side against him.
If they really wanted to do it without a stink they'd could just drop a retro-virus that makes our happiness hormones go crazy and we become compliant sheep when they show up.
The only reason this hasn't happened is because the aliens don't exist, haven't found us, or have decided against such measures.
It isn't because we aren't ready. Surely any beings set on saving all sentient life forms would have intervened by now to bring us whatever message. Perhaps they are beyond such things and have decided just to watch us suffer and conflict among ourselves.
But if that were the case they aren't saying "We aren't ready". No... If that is the case they'll never intervene, but watch us like a science experiment.
Okay, that's enough speculation. But I do think it's not THAT unlikely that other intelligent races would be bipedal, upright, large-brained, and endowed with fine manipulators on their upper appendages. Maybe they'd have evolved from catlike or doglike or birdlike creatures instead of apelike creatures, but...
And my second argument which I totally forgot is that we have totally discounted an alien race that has gone through a technological singularity. If a race of beings have technology sufficient enough transport matter faster than the speed of light (or maybe close to it and just spend lots of time in space), then why even bother with an organic body.
It would be much more efficient to send an intelligent machine the size of a laptop halfway across the galaxy and much more safer. Organic bodies tend to not do well in harsh environments (aka dead space aliens due to a crash), but a machine could simply impact like a crater and get up and walk away after a few self repairs.
Maybe it is there way of communicating with us, but wouldn't it be more efficient instead of showing us dead aliens of their failed attempts to just have machines beam the information to us and back to them?
I dunno... If I were an alien race with advanced technology, I'd go about this whole space travel ordeal a bit differently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_chauvinism
I'd find the short story, but there was something a sci-fi writer wrote about aliens being offended that meat could be intelligent so the alien scientists decided to cover up what they found on earth and took it off the map.
Are you guys SURE you want the US federal government legislating this?
Not really, but unfortunately they have been legislating and funding the internet from the get go.
Most of the telcoms have basically been willing to take millions of dollars worth of tax breaks and tax payer money from back in the 90's when they were basically subsidizing fiber roll out.
So in reality, telcoms were and currently are basically government regulated monopolies.
If you don't like net neutrality, they the only real solution would be to tear down the barriers of entry, break up the telcoms (again) and make a rule they are never to merge never ever again under no circumstances under pain of death.
Then we can talk about no government regulation of the internet's backbone.
Until then... They are simply government mandated monopolies.
Your home-made bot that acts exactly like a normal player in terms of imperfect timing and lack of percievable omniscience isn't a terribly effective way of cheating.
Except for the fact he doesn't have to be there in person to reap the benefits of the bot at a later time. Otherwise known as gold farming...
Marry that with software that can "look" at the screen data and recognize patterns, and you'd have yourself an automated player.
Already done.
There is no technological fix for this. Eventually, AI will be so good that it will be hard to tell if a player is human or AI. Since the AI will be another computer with a web came and keyboard inputs, there is no detection.
Unless you requite a Voight-Kampff test before being allowed to play online.
Eventually there might be an anti-cheat relying on TCPM sort of things, but eventually somebody will just make a TCPM-less version indistinguishable from the TCPM type by the server.
I can't seem to find the article somewhere, but I remember John Carmack said in an interview the only way to truly get rid of online cheating was to simply have the server generate the video feed and stream it to the client and had the client only send pure keyboard mouse controls.
I might be mistaken that he was alluding to the fact that online gaming will someday be like this, but only able to do this due to increased bandwidth and computing power sometime off in the far future.
Oops debunking a 64 bit platform in just 5 lines of text
Which leads me to believe that if they have a legitimate use for 64 bit Windows, they would have something like May3d or Photoshop up and running.
Which either means they shelled out a lot of money on computer hardware to listen to MP3s on a powerful work station or simply pirated everything anyways. If they intended to use this as a development platform for iPhone apps, I wondering what the heck for seeing you don't need a supercomputer to do so.
Isn't one of Apples 'soundbites' "It just works?"
Well it does on OS X.
It is kind of like getting angry that your Zune didn't work on a 64-bit version of Linux.
The fact of the matter is that Apple makes good hardware and a good solid OS, but they really suck at making software run on things that isn't theirs. (I'm looking at you Quicktime!)
But to imply "Only in America..." Wait, *seriously*? You *HONESTLY BELIEVE THAT*? C'mon!
I think he meant in "Only in America..." in that money was the reason for freedom of speech being squashed.
Sure there are plenty of other countries that stomp all over freedom of speech for political and religious reasons, but no one ever censored someone in any other country for the sake of their shareholders.
And I suppose if you obediently believe every line that Moore has to tell you about the matter is the whole and honest extent of the truth, then there is no possibility that anything could counter it.
That's the problem with these things. When the truth gets a bad spokesperson, people discount it.
I for one would had to see Moore do a documentary on the Holocaust or the Sudanese Genocide. People would actually give the genocide deniers a legitimate platform in which to put forth a counter view just because Moore happened to be on the side of those telling the truth.
Especially considering they might never check that six month old post ever again.
;)
You know what peeves me off. Obscure Windows OS and Application problems that the only results in Google are slew of 6 month old newsgroup posts with no replies.
And its usually the ones that fit my problem down to a T with the symptoms and error messages. The only consolation is the fact that some poor smuck out there has faced the same problem I am faced with now but with no solution.
Running from a fight isn't always the right thing to do. And if you think Iraq is a fiasco, look at how many people died from not standing up to Hitler early enough. Hint: it's not measured in thousands, but TENS of MILLIONS.
Hey if you want to play history theoretics, here is one for non-intervention:
Had Woodrow Wilson not got the US involved in WWI, then Imperial Germany would have won with decent terms. This would have resulted in the Wiemar republic never happening and Hitler never coming to power. The irony is that the Kaiser's government was just as about democratic as the British Imperial one and that more than not (given its hold on the Ukraine) it would have defeated any Bolshevik's attempts for expansion west.
So we've just killed two birds with one stone... No Hitler. No Stalinist occupation of Eastern Europe after 1945.
And all this from minding our own businesses and not getting into other people's wars.
Again... This is all theory and may not have happened the way I put it, but the fact of the matter is that if Neville did stand up to Hitler then there would have never an Operation Barbarossa which meant we would have had a full scale Soviet invasion of western Europe some time after 1942 when they got their T-34 production built up.
Keep in mind the T-34 tank was designed to run on paved roads at high speeds which oddly enough there were so little of those roads in Soviet Russia. Nope... They were gunning for Europe and had Hitler not been around to fight Stalin then we would have to have taken Stalin on ourselves.
The first is the ole' terrorism card where we can't have people that might be terrorists casing targets and what not.
Which leads me to wonder, when was the last time anyone of us saw terrorists with tripods?
I mean... If you want to be a terrorist, you just strap on a vest of C4 and walk into the nearest crowd. Its not like the terrorists had to take pictures of the area first to plan their "get away" after the fact.
In addition, the Bibles recording of the Jews as leaving KMT with Moses (A KMT name) is odd because the people of the Nile were meticulous record keepers. If so many people had departed as suggested in the Bible, then many critical tasks would have gone undone or would have been performed poorly due to low staffing or unskilled workers performing the tasks in the place of the slaves.
There are some suggestions that the "Egypt" of the Old Testament, is not the same "Egypt" that history refers too. Possibly, due to the fact that ancient Hebrew has no vowels and certain things had to be interpreted by oral context.
Ranges go from either just local kingdoms in Syria/Jordan, to Turkey to Persia, and to really far fetched like Japan.
Being able to have realistic sex play is probably far more desirable and beneficial to the their health and wellbeing.
I'm pretty sure this could be used for plenty of Hentai Games over at J-List.
*coughs*
Not that I would know anything about that.
Is there anything we can do if we live outside of the USA? Will our voice/concerns even matter? We want to help in any way we can if it's all at possible.
Well you can start by listening to radio stations outside of the USA.
I've played all three of those games and never heard of this guild.
If my memory serves me correct, LLTS or the Syndicate was an Atlantic shard which I played on a lot back in 1997 to 2000.
I wasn't a member, but I PK'd a few of them and vice versa during some major guild wars. Of course seeing they just about let anyone join their guild and were the biggest guild on Atlantic and it was hard not to miss them.
Of course with a guild that big, it their structure was kind of diluted and we even had a few guild members infiltrate their ranks for some castle raids. I could be thinking of another guild and I didn't play that much with the guild politics other than my guild buddies messaging me on ICQ that they were going on a "Orange PK" raid on Vesper.
Heck... I don't even remember the guild I was in (Technically my name or Malinox was used, but was played by some one else under another account whom I gave and then I rejoined as another player as Mr. Unhappy Man)
Still I remember them... I heard they all went to EQ while a few of us played Siege Perilous, but beyond that...
If you didn't play on Atlantic, then I can understand why you haven't heard of them.
But if they start pushing information onto anyone-can-edit-Wikipedia, some of the authority is lost.
Huh? If a UFO/JFK conspiracy mag publishes Einsteins papers on theory of relativity, then Einstein's papers and theories haven't lost their authority. Now, I might question the fact that someone said that Einstein's paper in this magazine said that E equals magic fairy dust and that Einstein hung out with little green men from mars, but that wouldn't degrade the authority of his original work
Authority works in one direction only. Not the other way around.
Retail Home variants of Vista also aren't licensed for virtualization. Where do you think that support comes from?
I take it you haven't worked in support at the different levels. There is a thing we call the blame game merry go round:
1. If you are Microsoft, you blame the hardware vendor.
2. If you are the hardware vendor, you blame the ISP.
3. If you are the ISP, you blame Microsoft.
In the end you'll probably buy a brand new computer helping (both Microsoft and the hardware vendor) and won't be able to find a way to cancel your ISPs subscription anyways because they'll still charge your card even if you have called to cancel for the 50th time.
But on a more serious note, this is who most of the industry works... I've worked for OEM computer distributors, ISPs, and even corporate help desk. If what you calling in for support with even remotely is not their product (routers, firewalls, 3rd party USB hardware) you will immediately get denied support.
I worked for a large ISP who implicitly told us if we tried to troubleshoot common routers like Linksys, unless we sold it to them through a "home networking plan" that we would get terminated. I've seen OEM companies who requires their help to immediately have a customer calling about a internet problem to contact their ISP even if it was obviously a bad NIC. And I've had seen plenty of times Microsoft (even after a customer paid them $90 just to talk with them) would throw up their hands and say they couldn't help them when it was obviously an OS issue.
So no... Microsoft is not afraid of supporting this products. It can say... "Oh... Its on a virtual computer? Its not on the system requirements on the box! Sorry can't help you! Bye!"
No, its something else besides support. Could be Apple... Could be because you can use it to get around DRM of the OS.
Whatever it is... Its not support. They already deny a lot of that already.
Even if you bought the non-OEM version of windows.
However, CDs sound better on a decent system than MP3s, and SA-CDs no doubt sound better, but the refusal to support SA-CD killed it. Digital audio is damned convenient, busy moving my old CD-Jukebox (400 disc, takes forever to change CDs if you want to mix up tracks) to a lossless media server, but there was no reason for the studios not to make that a reality, other than laziness and a fear of change.
I think you are blaming the wrong fox. Teenagers are the ones who buy the most music and not adults. However, teenagers usually have less money than adults to spend on music and on audio equipment.
More often than not teenagers aren't too concerned about audio quality (I'm sure some are, but not the majority of them) but rather what they can get for less money of the most popular items.
Where it gets really interesting is this: suppose that every basic need of every human being could be met. Would it happen? If it did happen, what would it mean for somebody to be wealthy? Or free for that matter?
I've debated with this on a singularity forum once... Which said technology you could simply jack in and have a 1,000 year orgasm with not much else accomplished. You could simply will yourself un-bored and sit there for 10,000 years and not notice anything or care.
However, that wouldn't be much of an existence which leads me to be when this does happen, humans will entertain themselves by playing simulations and video games. Basically, in order to not become a 10,000 year cyber neuro drug addict, you must set yourself in a game with a set of rules. Including physics rules and various other game play rules. You have some sort of goal and something else going on.
Sometimes this isn't as much as a game as one would be creating a movie for themselves and anyone else who is interested. You could simply relive WWII or any other historical war if you are into war games or you could relive the renaissance if you are into art. Hey, you could even live in an Anime simulation or some other fantasy simulation. Heck... You could even alter your memories so that the simulation seems real (I suppose you could even create a simulation about living in the 21st century about someone who posts on slashdot and never know that you are simply a brain in a jar tended to by machines)
For those who aren't created, I suppose you could watch TV for eternity. Other than that... Unless humans have integrated themselves into machines themselves or were killed off by the machines, then there isn't much else for us to do other than to entertain ourselves.
Given enough imagination that isn't hard to do. The only thing we have to worry about is that the machines figure out some way to avoid the death of our sun and eventually heat death of the universe.
But I'll leave that to a computer with a brain the size of Jupiter to figure that one out.