Yup, new technology. Specifically, new technology that isn't designed (by Microsoft) to run on Linux. Luckily, there is the Moonlight project from the same people who brought us Mono.
But if you want to play the high-horse battle... Gnome 2.24 sucks because it wont install on my PC-Dos operating system!
Yup, the Democratic National Convention site is Silverlight. The bandwidth isn't quite as impressive as it was while the event was going on. But flip through the site and check out the functionality.
As someone who has developed a bit with the beta Silverlight tools, I have to say it is an amazing platform. And I'm quite excited about using it in the future.
A good warning. I haven't flown internationally since the 90's, so I have no idea on customs. But in my flights since 9/11, the embarasing bag trick has reduced my average 'departure interview' (or what ever they are calling them now) times significantly.
Ehh, you can white-list their email accounts so that only friends and family can get through to them. Easy enough to do through Hotmail, I would assume that gMail has similar functionality.
1) Wrong. Student was not 'outside of the school environment'.
Yes, he was. Provided he did not make the post from the school, he did not use school resources to make the post, he did not publish the post in the school, and he did not market the post while at school.
Your example is flawed. The correlation would be to the kid throwing rocks at the Principal's house, not at the school. Do you feel that a Principal should be able to suspend/expel the kid from school for throwing rocks at his house?
2. False dilemma. There is a third alternative
I disagree. The Principal of a public school is an agent of the state. The 1st amendment(and 200+ years of case law) protects citizens from the government infringing on their right to free speech. The Principal is there for constitutionally barred from punishing a student due to their speech. There are exceptions to this obviously. If a student is speaking in such a way that disrupts the educational environment, threatens or endangers another student, teacher, or faculty member, etc... they can be silenced (detention, suspended, or expelled). The students speech, while morally reprehensible, did not have any effect what so ever on the educational environment.
3. False dilemma. The correct alternative, which you did not mention, is "kid (and parents) can accept their responsibility for their actions and take the punishment which has been given to them".
Did you read what I wrote? Specifically the "3) Kid and parents can choose to take their lumps and get on with life" part. I'm all for a debate on the merits of the argument, but making false assertions because you disagree with me is rather petty.
4. False dilemma. Given that the parents wrongfully sued the principle, the only real alternative for the school is to defend the principle's actions as a means for maintaining the integrity of the school system.
So suing the State because they infringed on their rights guaranteed by the 1st amendment is wrong? We have rights, but they must be constantly guarded against those who would test them. If anything, these parent are true patriots for taking the significantly harder road just to ensure that the 1st amendment does not get further abridged.
Parents cannot and should not dictate the behaviors of school officials.
Are you familiar with the functioning of the School Board? Which often includes members who are parents of children in the local schools and is required to meet in public so that Parents and local citizens can comment and direct the actions of the board. The school officials are absolutely responsible to the parents of the children they oversee, the local tax payers, and the state and federal laws and regulations that bind them.
Punishments as metered out by the school need to be accepted and respected by parents and students
I agree with you entirely on that point. Parents and students need to respect the school. And at the same time, Teachers and faculty need to respect their students and the law. I come from a family of teachers. I am thankful that all I know of my teaching family members performances is highly regarded in the local area. But I have seen other teachers that are completely abusive. I've seen a kid get pinned to a wall and called a 'little shit' for an insignificant infraction, I saw a student get detention for sitting on a teachers imaginary pet, I even had a friend who got a suspension for standing up to a bully. Giving teachers and schools a blank check for the discipline of our children is not wise. Monitoring their decisions, respecting those that are just and challenging those that are not is our duty as parents.
Also, I think it's pretty lame to categorize the school's actions as "pissing your and my money down the drain."
Wierd, since the head start launch, my wife and I have crashed to desktop a grand total of 3 times. 2 of those times were due to a bug in leaving scenarios and was patched before the head start ended. The 3 time was running around Altdorf, which I can only compare to running around Ironforge 3 years ago. No idea what your problem is, but I'd double check on those drivers, audio and video are the biggies, but make sure your NIC and mobo drivers are up to date as well.
Next question: When will Steam start selling music?
I mean, imagine if you could hop in your car in the morning, with a nano-ITX PC w/ WiFi, hit up steam and download a new play list that you picked out and paid for the night before. You head out of the drive way, switch over to offline mode and enjoy a new play list with out any of the hassles of ripping disks, transferring files, or anything, just a few push buttons and done./joy
I would disagree. The whole situation has degenerated into a pissing match, which is ideally doing nothing more than wasting tax payer money. As such, I would fault the School.
There are a whole lot of bad decisions being made:
1) Student screws up out side of the school environment, should have chosen not to, but kids will be kids.
2) Principal can either follow the law or abuse his power to take action. He chose to abuse the power of his position, albeit likely with good intentions. He may have felt that a suspension instead of a lawsuit would be easier for all parties involved, but that doesn't mean it isn't an abuse of power. A civil lawsuit over liable would have been more of a PITA, but it would have been completely legal.
3) Kid and parents can choose to take their lumps and get on with life, or take the principal to court because he is abusing his power. Likely teaching the kid that if you abuse your power, you'll get called on it. I'm not sure why you think this would teach the kid 'entitlement' other then the kid being 'entitled' to the full protection under the law and the 1st amendment? His parents are teaching him/her that it is important to fight for your rights and stand up for them, even when the easy answer is to do nothing.
4) Principal/School board can choose to either drop the suspension and get the charges dropped, allowing the Principal to continue his action in civil court, or they can fight the charges, wasting tax payer resources and attempting to increase the school's scope of power. They chose to fight the charges, and are pissing your and my money down the drain.
In the end, everyone loses. Ideally, this ruling will get overturned so there is no confusion on the limits of schools' power. Costing the tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, lawyer fees, lost time from the school employees, and the time that the court could have been using on important matters. Worst case, the tax payers are still out all that money AND the government gets more money.
I totally agree that a suspension is an easy break for the kid, but...
Look at the precedence. If this ruling goes unchallenged, what's to prevent a school from suspending any student they like for posting something on their my-space page? A student could post a valid, non-libel complaint about one of their instructors, and get suspended for it even though the comment was made off school grounds/times and was not in violation of the law. And what if it gets into even more heated topics. A white girl in a southern Georgia town post pictures of her date with her new black boyfriend to a social networking site and gets a 3 day suspension from School, why? Because the principal is a racist. Take it to court, and he'll site this case as precedence. Given power and time someone will abuse it.
This is a pretty significant power grab being made by the school that dramatically shifts the existing boundaries of power. As a quasi-conservative, I can't fathom why anyone would want to have such a result. I mean, I entrust the school system with my son during the day. I expect that they will keep an eye on him and make sure he performs well and integrates with society. When he leaves school, he is my responsibility, not theirs. And if he posts some crap like this on the internet, it is MY job to discipline him, not the school's. If the Principal wants to be responsible for disciplining my son for things that happen out side of the school environment, he can talk to me, or he can talk to a lawyer.
You obviously lack the ability to discern rhetoric and vague language from actual policy commitments
It's an election site, it's marketing, not research. The GP was correct, the new version of the page still focuses on Obama's commitment to net-neutrality, it just does so in a more concise way for people to digest.
As for Palin's policies, I can't say I'm familiar with any of them save the, "I can see X from my house, so I am qualified to do Y" stance. Which is a joke with a lot of miles to it;)
Thus far it has been probably the most solid MMO launch ever as for stability.
They are still running patches every other day, but I haven't heard of any zone or server crashes (there was 1 server crash in open beta when a CSR sent a badly formed command to a server and it choked.
Client side is pretty darn stable too. In the head start my wife and I both crashed to desktop once, and the next morning they had a patch out that has all but eliminated that CTD in scenarios issue.
The population problems they managed to come up with a cool way around too. Instead of forcing people into long queues or server transfers, the cloned all of the characters on over populated servers onto lower population servers. So that guilds could choose to relocate to the other server to avoid the queues. All guild info, titles, gold, items, everything was copied, not moved, copied. So they could pick which server to keep playing on, heck, you can even keep playing on both server.
I usually give MMO's a 3 month window. But with Mythic's track record and my growing boredom with WoW, I figured it was worth a risk. And thus far I have been quite pleased with the outcome.
The Tome of Knowledge really rocks. You get tome unlocks for encountering new things, and as mentioned above, killing, killing multiples, and getting killed by different PCs and NPCs.
For instance, a few nights back I was killed by a Squig Herder. I unlocked two new tomb entries, one for encountering a Squig Herder, and another for being killed by a Squig Herder. Being killed by a Squig Herder unlocked a new title too! So now I am running around as "Ebenthorin ".
You can get titles for lots of different tome unlocks. For looting 10 things, 100 things, etc... For dieing to each of the PC classes in RvR. For killing 25 of each PC class in RvR. For doing 10, 100,... quests. For getting your crafting skills up. For gaining rep with the factions in different chapters. All sorts of fun titles to unlock.
To WoW's fault, WoW PvP was as after thought crammed into a PvE game.
To War's defense, War RvR was the fundamental of the game, PvE seems more like it is there to give you a story and 'down time' progression and another option of game play.
War is NOT a WoW PvP server. On the core servers, you can voluntarily flag for PvP at any time. You are only involuntarily flagged if you enter a RvR area. When you enter an RvR area, if you are below rank ?8 you will be bolstered to rank ?8 (for instance, a rank 12 person in the T2 content will get stats like a rank 18 person) to even the playing field. If you enter an RvR area that is a tier of content lower then you (say a rank 15 person, should be in T2, heads to T1 thinking they'll gank some newbies), you are immediately turned into a chicken. You have 0 armor and 1 hit point. All you can do it run around squawking at people until they kill you, or you leave the RvR area.
So you can still level in peace, and it goes pretty fast. I think at 4 hours played I was rank 8. And the faction grinds are a breeze. Gone are the 4 week grind fests of WoW where you had to grind instances and the same 2 camps of mobs for butt feathers or toad nards to get to exalted. For the most part, if you complete 2 public quests in a chapter, you'll be exalted. And since there is great gear to be had doing PQ's, it's totally worth it to run 'em once or twice, and there are usually 1-4 PQs per chapter.
The game still needs some polish. Crafting is a bit of a pita, talismans are so-so, the mail box functionality needs improvement, no loot linking over chat... but its all just polish stuff. RvR and PvE are both solid in performance and entertainment.
"Regular solar cells are only 2D and only allow light interaction once," he said.
If this means what I think it means, it would seem to indicate that he has worked out some type of translucent PV cell that allows him to either stack cells or to mirror the light to cause it to travel through multiple cells.
If you could create a translucent PV cell that still performed on par with today's leading PV cells, and you put it on top of a mirror, and then you put a semi-translucent mirror on top of the PV cell, you might be able to increase the efficiency of a single cell with out increasing the silicone. You'd still be losing some energy to heat, but from the lay-mans arm chair, it would seem to be worth a shot. And completely concievable as something a 12 year old who is good with math and science could figure out on paper (determine amount of energy input and the amount of energy transferred/lost to heat for each pass through the PV cell, and the reflection/refraction rates for the mirrors.
Anyway, that's my first thought after reading what scant details were mentioned.
Um, not even close. Your answer was to just not send them to war.
Negative ghost rider. My answer was to not send them to war unnecessarily. PTSD is a very serious issue. I work for an R&D firm with a bunch of doctors who lead the field in depression, anxiety, OCD, dimentia and other related mental health conditions. We have been lobbying hard to get one of our IVR based mental health screening systems in with the VA so that we can help identify the vets who are most at risk and get them immediate attention. None of this fill out a pamphlet and wait 6 months BS.
Whoah there buddy! Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Iraqi agents were involved in the 93 WTC attack, the 95 OKC attack, and probably the 98 Embassy bombing. They were far from "no threat."
I think someone has been feeding you some bunk information.
The '98 Embassy bombing was carried out by alQueda. al Queda is a Sunni Islamic terror organization with no ties to the country of Iraq or its disposed leader Saddam. al Queda, under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, actually offered its assistance to the king of Saudi Arabia in the 90's as a military force to push Saddam out of Kuwait (The Saudis declined the offer in favor of US intervention). So to claim that al Queda was in bed with Saddam, the same man they were offering to assassinate only a few years prior, is absolutely silly.
The 95 Oklahoma City bombing was entirely funded and performed by US citizens, to claim that Iraq/Saddam was some how involved is on the same level of conspiracy nut-job-ism as the people who claim that the US air force launched a missile at the pentagon and that wasn't really an airplane crash on 9/11.
The '93 WTC bombing also had absolutely no ties to Iraq/Saddam. One of the perpetrators had a false Iraqi passport, but he was actually from Kuwait. They had ties to the blind sheik and to people with ties to al Queda, but no ties to Iraq. Just a few months ago the Pentagon posted a report on it saying that after combing through all of the documentation they found after disposing Saddam, they discovered no proof of any ties between the 93 bombing and Iraq.
I'll say it again: Iraq posed no threat to the US. In fact, I would go so far as to say that US citizens, the country, and our allies were SAFER in the world when Saddam was in power in Iraq.
So what you are saying is that PTSD is okay so long as our troops and Marines are happy while they are in theater?
I'm not saying we shouldn't send our military into conflicts, I'm not saying our young men and women are idiots for signing up (hell, I did my 4), what I am saying is that we are currently engaged in two internation policing actions with the military. 1 of these actions is the result of a government sponsored terrorist attack that killed thousands of Americans. 1 of these actions is the result of a misinformation campaign designed to pursue a political agenda in the Middle East, specifically in a country that was of no threat to the USA.
If we had gone to only Afghanistan, and focused our attention there, we would have had less casualties, less wasteful spending, and significantly less PTSD affected members of the military. THAT is the point. Marines get into harm's way, that's what we're good at. But puting Marines in harm's way for some BS political action that anyone with a minor in political science could tell you was a bad idea is vile.
Of course, if the armchair/. people have other methods that have been empirically backed by a number of excellent studies, I'm sure that these people would be all ears. They're really just doing their best to help, and would love some more.
I've got one... don't send our young men and women into wars unnecesarily.
PTSD is a lot less impacting if you never have to experience the traumatic part.
know, saying they're too old (even though the Democratic VP is only six years younger),
Average healthy life span for men in the US is under 70 years. 6 years puts Bidden on the green side of the average and McCain on the high side. Not that there is anything wrong with that in particular, but I think a lot of moderates would have been more inclined to stick with him if he hadn't selected such a rabidly right wing nobody as a running mate.
too rich (even though Obama is richer than McCain),
Is this one of those philisophical answers? Obama is richer because he has a loving wife, adoring children, and leads a good life of caring for those less fortunate? That kind of rich? Because I'm pretty sure that if you check out their reported net worths, McCain's $36.4 million is more than Obama's $799,000. Unless you're using that silly Bushian math where $800,000 is greator than $36 million.
too inexperienced (even though said Republican VP is at least as experienced as the Democratic Presidential candidate), etc.
So Palin's 20 months as Govener to one of the least populated states in the country, and 2 years of mayoring a tiny city (which was a pretty rough go at it if you look at the condition of the city apon her exit) is supose to compete against Obama's 8 years in the state legislature and 4 years in the senate. 12 years public service vs less than 4. I can see how that is "as least" the same... err not really. Heck, to use McCain's own attack, Palin has never even been to Iraq! She took a pit stop in Kuwait once, but never crossed the boarder or toured any active combat zones. She has the international afairs experience of an inbread hick from the mountains of south carolina. She even claimed that Alaska's proximity to Russia was her big claim to fame on the international front. They're even sticking her in the cheap seats at the UN meetings just so she can get a crash course with cliff notes on international afairs.
I have nothing against McCain, I would have gladly taken him over Bush in 2000 AND 2004. But at this point he has squandered all of that political capital he built up in the middle/independants in favor of aligning with the republican party to secure the primary and motivate the base. His age IS an issue at this point, and it has been acutely raised by the selection of an inexperienced VP with a religious and political leaning so far to the right that there are even moderate republicans who are voting Obama.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of this conversation, anytime someone says "pig" or "lipstick" to me, I'll remember Angelyne from/. and how she would have been offended...
So if the card has just and ID on it, that means that there is a database somewhere that contains all of your personal info, not a big shocker. But the ID is usable at every land/sea boarder access point in the US. So given nothing more than a series of numbers, a boarder patrol employee at one of those locations could pull up data on anyone at any time, with out a warrant.
Call me paranoid, but I'm not a big fan of the government having better records of my life than I do. I'm even less of a fan of that information being widely available through out the government. And last but definitely not least, I and not a fan of trusting that information in the hands of each and every single government employee.
So my question is, does this actually make me any more safe? Or is it just another example of wasteful spending, erosion of civil liberties, and a theater of defense?
That's interesting. Up here in the arctic north, uppity is a term used commonly enough to describe upper class or wanna be upper class people mingling with us common people.
For example, not far from where I grew up, on a small farm surrounded by more farms and lower/middle class country folks, a golf course was built. Along with the golf course came a number of really high end houses and people with significantly more money than anyone in the area.
Some of these people were cool enough and well off. While others were uppity snobs. We even had one couple attempt to sue the township, their neighbor, and their realitor because they bought the land in the fall and saw the house get built over the winter. Come spring/summer, the farmers in the area fertilized their fields and the smell was a bit much for them.
I have to admit though, my travelings in the south eastern US are limited. I spent a fair bit of time along the coast in VA and north, and a little bit of time in coal mining country in VA/WV, and a few trips into the mountains of SC, along with the quintessential childhood family trips to Florida. But I haven't had a chance to visit Alabama and Georgia, other then stops for gas and scenic stops.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn many of the things we take for common insults up here in the north have racial undertones in the south, but with my lack of experience in the culture down there, I would have no idea what words would be so charged.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, new technology. Specifically, new technology that isn't designed (by Microsoft) to run on Linux. Luckily, there is the Moonlight project from the same people who brought us Mono.
But if you want to play the high-horse battle... Gnome 2.24 sucks because it wont install on my PC-Dos operating system!
-Rick
http://gallery1.demconvention.com/
Yup, the Democratic National Convention site is Silverlight. The bandwidth isn't quite as impressive as it was while the event was going on. But flip through the site and check out the functionality.
As someone who has developed a bit with the beta Silverlight tools, I have to say it is an amazing platform. And I'm quite excited about using it in the future.
-Rick
A good warning. I haven't flown internationally since the 90's, so I have no idea on customs. But in my flights since 9/11, the embarasing bag trick has reduced my average 'departure interview' (or what ever they are calling them now) times significantly.
-Rick
I've had the same experience. A few sex toys in the carry on will greatly expedite any terminal searches you wind up going through.
-Rick
Ehh, you can white-list their email accounts so that only friends and family can get through to them. Easy enough to do through Hotmail, I would assume that gMail has similar functionality.
-Rick
1) Wrong. Student was not 'outside of the school environment'.
Yes, he was. Provided he did not make the post from the school, he did not use school resources to make the post, he did not publish the post in the school, and he did not market the post while at school.
Your example is flawed. The correlation would be to the kid throwing rocks at the Principal's house, not at the school. Do you feel that a Principal should be able to suspend/expel the kid from school for throwing rocks at his house?
2. False dilemma. There is a third alternative
I disagree. The Principal of a public school is an agent of the state. The 1st amendment(and 200+ years of case law) protects citizens from the government infringing on their right to free speech. The Principal is there for constitutionally barred from punishing a student due to their speech. There are exceptions to this obviously. If a student is speaking in such a way that disrupts the educational environment, threatens or endangers another student, teacher, or faculty member, etc... they can be silenced (detention, suspended, or expelled). The students speech, while morally reprehensible, did not have any effect what so ever on the educational environment.
3. False dilemma. The correct alternative, which you did not mention, is "kid (and parents) can accept their responsibility for their actions and take the punishment which has been given to them".
Did you read what I wrote? Specifically the "3) Kid and parents can choose to take their lumps and get on with life" part. I'm all for a debate on the merits of the argument, but making false assertions because you disagree with me is rather petty.
4. False dilemma. Given that the parents wrongfully sued the principle, the only real alternative for the school is to defend the principle's actions as a means for maintaining the integrity of the school system.
So suing the State because they infringed on their rights guaranteed by the 1st amendment is wrong? We have rights, but they must be constantly guarded against those who would test them. If anything, these parent are true patriots for taking the significantly harder road just to ensure that the 1st amendment does not get further abridged.
Parents cannot and should not dictate the behaviors of school officials.
Are you familiar with the functioning of the School Board? Which often includes members who are parents of children in the local schools and is required to meet in public so that Parents and local citizens can comment and direct the actions of the board. The school officials are absolutely responsible to the parents of the children they oversee, the local tax payers, and the state and federal laws and regulations that bind them.
Punishments as metered out by the school need to be accepted and respected by parents and students
I agree with you entirely on that point. Parents and students need to respect the school. And at the same time, Teachers and faculty need to respect their students and the law. I come from a family of teachers. I am thankful that all I know of my teaching family members performances is highly regarded in the local area. But I have seen other teachers that are completely abusive. I've seen a kid get pinned to a wall and called a 'little shit' for an insignificant infraction, I saw a student get detention for sitting on a teachers imaginary pet, I even had a friend who got a suspension for standing up to a bully. Giving teachers and schools a blank check for the discipline of our children is not wise. Monitoring their decisions, respecting those that are just and challenging those that are not is our duty as parents.
Also, I think it's pretty lame to categorize the school's actions as "pissing your and my money down the drain."
When the State of MI attempted to ban violent vid
Is that sarcasm? Or do you really think it is absurd for a Parent to believe that they are responsible for disciplining their own child?
If not the parent, then who? The school? The state? Some board of child discipline control who was selected from the community by elected officials?
-Rick
Wierd, since the head start launch, my wife and I have crashed to desktop a grand total of 3 times. 2 of those times were due to a bug in leaving scenarios and was patched before the head start ended. The 3 time was running around Altdorf, which I can only compare to running around Ironforge 3 years ago. No idea what your problem is, but I'd double check on those drivers, audio and video are the biggies, but make sure your NIC and mobo drivers are up to date as well.
-Rick
I play, and I like it.
-Rick
Next question: When will Steam start selling music?
I mean, imagine if you could hop in your car in the morning, with a nano-ITX PC w/ WiFi, hit up steam and download a new play list that you picked out and paid for the night before. You head out of the drive way, switch over to offline mode and enjoy a new play list with out any of the hassles of ripping disks, transferring files, or anything, just a few push buttons and done. /joy
-Rick
I would disagree. The whole situation has degenerated into a pissing match, which is ideally doing nothing more than wasting tax payer money. As such, I would fault the School.
There are a whole lot of bad decisions being made:
1) Student screws up out side of the school environment, should have chosen not to, but kids will be kids.
2) Principal can either follow the law or abuse his power to take action. He chose to abuse the power of his position, albeit likely with good intentions. He may have felt that a suspension instead of a lawsuit would be easier for all parties involved, but that doesn't mean it isn't an abuse of power. A civil lawsuit over liable would have been more of a PITA, but it would have been completely legal.
3) Kid and parents can choose to take their lumps and get on with life, or take the principal to court because he is abusing his power. Likely teaching the kid that if you abuse your power, you'll get called on it. I'm not sure why you think this would teach the kid 'entitlement' other then the kid being 'entitled' to the full protection under the law and the 1st amendment? His parents are teaching him/her that it is important to fight for your rights and stand up for them, even when the easy answer is to do nothing.
4) Principal/School board can choose to either drop the suspension and get the charges dropped, allowing the Principal to continue his action in civil court, or they can fight the charges, wasting tax payer resources and attempting to increase the school's scope of power. They chose to fight the charges, and are pissing your and my money down the drain.
In the end, everyone loses. Ideally, this ruling will get overturned so there is no confusion on the limits of schools' power. Costing the tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, lawyer fees, lost time from the school employees, and the time that the court could have been using on important matters. Worst case, the tax payers are still out all that money AND the government gets more money.
-Rick
I totally agree that a suspension is an easy break for the kid, but...
Look at the precedence. If this ruling goes unchallenged, what's to prevent a school from suspending any student they like for posting something on their my-space page? A student could post a valid, non-libel complaint about one of their instructors, and get suspended for it even though the comment was made off school grounds/times and was not in violation of the law. And what if it gets into even more heated topics. A white girl in a southern Georgia town post pictures of her date with her new black boyfriend to a social networking site and gets a 3 day suspension from School, why? Because the principal is a racist. Take it to court, and he'll site this case as precedence. Given power and time someone will abuse it.
This is a pretty significant power grab being made by the school that dramatically shifts the existing boundaries of power. As a quasi-conservative, I can't fathom why anyone would want to have such a result. I mean, I entrust the school system with my son during the day. I expect that they will keep an eye on him and make sure he performs well and integrates with society. When he leaves school, he is my responsibility, not theirs. And if he posts some crap like this on the internet, it is MY job to discipline him, not the school's. If the Principal wants to be responsible for disciplining my son for things that happen out side of the school environment, he can talk to me, or he can talk to a lawyer.
-Rick
You obviously lack the ability to discern rhetoric and vague language from actual policy commitments
It's an election site, it's marketing, not research. The GP was correct, the new version of the page still focuses on Obama's commitment to net-neutrality, it just does so in a more concise way for people to digest.
As for Palin's policies, I can't say I'm familiar with any of them save the, "I can see X from my house, so I am qualified to do Y" stance. Which is a joke with a lot of miles to it ;)
-Rick
Is it that republicans are more fearful, or is it that when people are driven to fear they are more likely to vote republican?
-Rick
Thus far it has been probably the most solid MMO launch ever as for stability.
They are still running patches every other day, but I haven't heard of any zone or server crashes (there was 1 server crash in open beta when a CSR sent a badly formed command to a server and it choked.
Client side is pretty darn stable too. In the head start my wife and I both crashed to desktop once, and the next morning they had a patch out that has all but eliminated that CTD in scenarios issue.
The population problems they managed to come up with a cool way around too. Instead of forcing people into long queues or server transfers, the cloned all of the characters on over populated servers onto lower population servers. So that guilds could choose to relocate to the other server to avoid the queues. All guild info, titles, gold, items, everything was copied, not moved, copied. So they could pick which server to keep playing on, heck, you can even keep playing on both server.
I usually give MMO's a 3 month window. But with Mythic's track record and my growing boredom with WoW, I figured it was worth a risk. And thus far I have been quite pleased with the outcome.
-Rick
The Tome of Knowledge really rocks. You get tome unlocks for encountering new things, and as mentioned above, killing, killing multiples, and getting killed by different PCs and NPCs.
For instance, a few nights back I was killed by a Squig Herder. I unlocked two new tomb entries, one for encountering a Squig Herder, and another for being killed by a Squig Herder. Being killed by a Squig Herder unlocked a new title too! So now I am running around as "Ebenthorin ".
You can get titles for lots of different tome unlocks. For looting 10 things, 100 things, etc... For dieing to each of the PC classes in RvR. For killing 25 of each PC class in RvR. For doing 10, 100, ... quests. For getting your crafting skills up. For gaining rep with the factions in different chapters. All sorts of fun titles to unlock.
-Rick
To WoW's fault, WoW PvP was as after thought crammed into a PvE game.
To War's defense, War RvR was the fundamental of the game, PvE seems more like it is there to give you a story and 'down time' progression and another option of game play.
War is NOT a WoW PvP server. On the core servers, you can voluntarily flag for PvP at any time. You are only involuntarily flagged if you enter a RvR area. When you enter an RvR area, if you are below rank ?8 you will be bolstered to rank ?8 (for instance, a rank 12 person in the T2 content will get stats like a rank 18 person) to even the playing field. If you enter an RvR area that is a tier of content lower then you (say a rank 15 person, should be in T2, heads to T1 thinking they'll gank some newbies), you are immediately turned into a chicken. You have 0 armor and 1 hit point. All you can do it run around squawking at people until they kill you, or you leave the RvR area.
So you can still level in peace, and it goes pretty fast. I think at 4 hours played I was rank 8. And the faction grinds are a breeze. Gone are the 4 week grind fests of WoW where you had to grind instances and the same 2 camps of mobs for butt feathers or toad nards to get to exalted. For the most part, if you complete 2 public quests in a chapter, you'll be exalted. And since there is great gear to be had doing PQ's, it's totally worth it to run 'em once or twice, and there are usually 1-4 PQs per chapter.
The game still needs some polish. Crafting is a bit of a pita, talismans are so-so, the mail box functionality needs improvement, no loot linking over chat... but its all just polish stuff. RvR and PvE are both solid in performance and entertainment.
-Rick
"Regular solar cells are only 2D and only allow light interaction once," he said.
If this means what I think it means, it would seem to indicate that he has worked out some type of translucent PV cell that allows him to either stack cells or to mirror the light to cause it to travel through multiple cells.
If you could create a translucent PV cell that still performed on par with today's leading PV cells, and you put it on top of a mirror, and then you put a semi-translucent mirror on top of the PV cell, you might be able to increase the efficiency of a single cell with out increasing the silicone. You'd still be losing some energy to heat, but from the lay-mans arm chair, it would seem to be worth a shot. And completely concievable as something a 12 year old who is good with math and science could figure out on paper (determine amount of energy input and the amount of energy transferred/lost to heat for each pass through the PV cell, and the reflection/refraction rates for the mirrors.
Anyway, that's my first thought after reading what scant details were mentioned.
-Rick
Um, not even close. Your answer was to just not send them to war.
Negative ghost rider. My answer was to not send them to war unnecessarily. PTSD is a very serious issue. I work for an R&D firm with a bunch of doctors who lead the field in depression, anxiety, OCD, dimentia and other related mental health conditions. We have been lobbying hard to get one of our IVR based mental health screening systems in with the VA so that we can help identify the vets who are most at risk and get them immediate attention. None of this fill out a pamphlet and wait 6 months BS.
Whoah there buddy! Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Iraqi agents were involved in the 93 WTC attack, the 95 OKC attack, and probably the 98 Embassy bombing. They were far from "no threat."
I think someone has been feeding you some bunk information.
The '98 Embassy bombing was carried out by alQueda. al Queda is a Sunni Islamic terror organization with no ties to the country of Iraq or its disposed leader Saddam. al Queda, under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, actually offered its assistance to the king of Saudi Arabia in the 90's as a military force to push Saddam out of Kuwait (The Saudis declined the offer in favor of US intervention). So to claim that al Queda was in bed with Saddam, the same man they were offering to assassinate only a few years prior, is absolutely silly.
The 95 Oklahoma City bombing was entirely funded and performed by US citizens, to claim that Iraq/Saddam was some how involved is on the same level of conspiracy nut-job-ism as the people who claim that the US air force launched a missile at the pentagon and that wasn't really an airplane crash on 9/11.
The '93 WTC bombing also had absolutely no ties to Iraq/Saddam. One of the perpetrators had a false Iraqi passport, but he was actually from Kuwait. They had ties to the blind sheik and to people with ties to al Queda, but no ties to Iraq. Just a few months ago the Pentagon posted a report on it saying that after combing through all of the documentation they found after disposing Saddam, they discovered no proof of any ties between the 93 bombing and Iraq.
I'll say it again: Iraq posed no threat to the US. In fact, I would go so far as to say that US citizens, the country, and our allies were SAFER in the world when Saddam was in power in Iraq.
-Rick
So what you are saying is that PTSD is okay so long as our troops and Marines are happy while they are in theater?
I'm not saying we shouldn't send our military into conflicts, I'm not saying our young men and women are idiots for signing up (hell, I did my 4), what I am saying is that we are currently engaged in two internation policing actions with the military. 1 of these actions is the result of a government sponsored terrorist attack that killed thousands of Americans. 1 of these actions is the result of a misinformation campaign designed to pursue a political agenda in the Middle East, specifically in a country that was of no threat to the USA.
If we had gone to only Afghanistan, and focused our attention there, we would have had less casualties, less wasteful spending, and significantly less PTSD affected members of the military. THAT is the point. Marines get into harm's way, that's what we're good at. But puting Marines in harm's way for some BS political action that anyone with a minor in political science could tell you was a bad idea is vile.
-Rick
Of course, if the armchair /. people have other methods that have been empirically backed by a number of excellent studies, I'm sure that these people would be all ears. They're really just doing their best to help, and would love some more.
I've got one... don't send our young men and women into wars unnecesarily.
PTSD is a lot less impacting if you never have to experience the traumatic part.
-Rick
know, saying they're too old (even though the Democratic VP is only six years younger),
Average healthy life span for men in the US is under 70 years. 6 years puts Bidden on the green side of the average and McCain on the high side. Not that there is anything wrong with that in particular, but I think a lot of moderates would have been more inclined to stick with him if he hadn't selected such a rabidly right wing nobody as a running mate.
too rich (even though Obama is richer than McCain),
Is this one of those philisophical answers? Obama is richer because he has a loving wife, adoring children, and leads a good life of caring for those less fortunate? That kind of rich? Because I'm pretty sure that if you check out their reported net worths, McCain's $36.4 million is more than Obama's $799,000. Unless you're using that silly Bushian math where $800,000 is greator than $36 million.
too inexperienced (even though said Republican VP is at least as experienced as the Democratic Presidential candidate), etc.
So Palin's 20 months as Govener to one of the least populated states in the country, and 2 years of mayoring a tiny city (which was a pretty rough go at it if you look at the condition of the city apon her exit) is supose to compete against Obama's 8 years in the state legislature and 4 years in the senate. 12 years public service vs less than 4. I can see how that is "as least" the same... err not really. Heck, to use McCain's own attack, Palin has never even been to Iraq! She took a pit stop in Kuwait once, but never crossed the boarder or toured any active combat zones. She has the international afairs experience of an inbread hick from the mountains of south carolina. She even claimed that Alaska's proximity to Russia was her big claim to fame on the international front. They're even sticking her in the cheap seats at the UN meetings just so she can get a crash course with cliff notes on international afairs.
I have nothing against McCain, I would have gladly taken him over Bush in 2000 AND 2004. But at this point he has squandered all of that political capital he built up in the middle/independants in favor of aligning with the republican party to secure the primary and motivate the base. His age IS an issue at this point, and it has been acutely raised by the selection of an inexperienced VP with a religious and political leaning so far to the right that there are even moderate republicans who are voting Obama.
-Rick
Unfortunately, due to the nature of this conversation, anytime someone says "pig" or "lipstick" to me, I'll remember Angelyne from /. and how she would have been offended...
Sorry :(
-Rick
So if the card has just and ID on it, that means that there is a database somewhere that contains all of your personal info, not a big shocker. But the ID is usable at every land/sea boarder access point in the US. So given nothing more than a series of numbers, a boarder patrol employee at one of those locations could pull up data on anyone at any time, with out a warrant.
Call me paranoid, but I'm not a big fan of the government having better records of my life than I do. I'm even less of a fan of that information being widely available through out the government. And last but definitely not least, I and not a fan of trusting that information in the hands of each and every single government employee.
So my question is, does this actually make me any more safe? Or is it just another example of wasteful spending, erosion of civil liberties, and a theater of defense?
-Rick
That's interesting. Up here in the arctic north, uppity is a term used commonly enough to describe upper class or wanna be upper class people mingling with us common people.
For example, not far from where I grew up, on a small farm surrounded by more farms and lower/middle class country folks, a golf course was built. Along with the golf course came a number of really high end houses and people with significantly more money than anyone in the area.
Some of these people were cool enough and well off. While others were uppity snobs. We even had one couple attempt to sue the township, their neighbor, and their realitor because they bought the land in the fall and saw the house get built over the winter. Come spring/summer, the farmers in the area fertilized their fields and the smell was a bit much for them.
I have to admit though, my travelings in the south eastern US are limited. I spent a fair bit of time along the coast in VA and north, and a little bit of time in coal mining country in VA/WV, and a few trips into the mountains of SC, along with the quintessential childhood family trips to Florida. But I haven't had a chance to visit Alabama and Georgia, other then stops for gas and scenic stops.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn many of the things we take for common insults up here in the north have racial undertones in the south, but with my lack of experience in the culture down there, I would have no idea what words would be so charged.
-Rick