...obviously people playing it are going to have a favorable impression of the military because the consequences in a game are losing the game, not dying/losing a leg/etc.
By that logic, obviously people playing GTA3 will have a favorable impression of murder, theft, assault, and battery, because the consequences in a game are losing the game, not dying, going to prison, being seriously injusred, et cetera....
well the comment was more about the PERCEPTION of what military work is, the perception that the young people have is easily affected by games like americas army....
Does that apply to other video games, or just the ones the military stamps out?
These people have not decided to go into the military yet, but are already being trained to see it as harmless play, when in truth it is far from that.
Errr, so when it's GTA3, we vociferously object to anyone criticizing it - after all, it's "just a game" - but when it's a military simulation, we assume that same ability to differentiate between fantasy/simulation and reality is nowhere to be found?
Not to say that you specifically do this, but speaking generally, you can't have it both ways - if people can understand why GTA3 and the like are not accurate reflections of reality, why assume that their critical faculties fail when presented with this?
A far better means of training is what we've been doing for years.
That's not an either/or situation either - you've inserted your own false dichotomy now. Obviously it's not a good idea to entirely replace live-fire exercises or OPFOR exercises in the field with simulations, but as a complement to such things, I don't see why it's a particularly bad idea.
Yes, they get to play with cool weapons, kill people and all at no risk of injury or death to themselves.
You would prefer to send them into harm's way with no training or preparation for what they're going to encounter? If you Read The Fine Article, you'd see that the simulations under discussion are intended to train soldiers who are already likely to head to the CZ anyway, and I really can't fathom why someone would object to training that potentially allows them to do a better job by reducing the risks to themselves and to innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. Whether we care for it or not, the raison d'etre for a military in the first place is to fight when needed, and I can't fault them too terribly much for wanting to do their jobs as well and as safely as possible.
If you don't itemize, they instead tax you a percentage of that year's income for online purchases.
Yeah, I got burned there too on last year's return. On the other hand, I was filling it out from out of state, as my very last tax return ever for the state of New York, so let me thank Pataki and Shelly Silver and Joe Bruno for giving me one last confirmation that I made the right decision to leave;)
The whole world revolves around shitheads like you who don't give a flying fuck about the environment. Want to call me anti-social and a shut-in if I avoid this kind of shit. Well get all up in my face in this physical world we live in and I'll show you just how *anti-social* I can be! =)
Really! TRY ME!!!
I almost forgot - anger management therapy may be helpful as well.
Because as the previous poster points out, this kind of behavior tends to be self-reinforcing - it turns into an obsession, concentrating on eliminating every possible odor that could possibly be given off by any object whatsoever. Essentially, what you're suggesting is that this person should not treat the real problem, but should indulge it and nurture it. It makes obsessive-compulsive people feel better temporarily every time they wash their hands, but that doesn't mean the solution to the problem is to buy them 50-gallon drums of hand soap and encourage them to wash more often - the solution is to treat the underlying cause of the discomfort.
Seriously, no flamebait or trolling intended, but the world just isn't geared towards indulging this sort of predilection. What are you going to do, live life as a total shut in, in your glass and sheet-metal room? From the minute you're born to the minute you die, you're awash in organics every moment of your life, and there's nothing you can do about, nor is there generally any reason to do anything about it.
I think I stopped taking this kind of thing very seriously when I read a study where self-identified MCS sufferers were intentionally exposed to chemicals in a blind test - expose them to chemicals with no detectable odor, and they have no reaction. Expose them to harmless chemicals with a noticeable odor, and they immediately have a "reaction".
I hate to be a bastard, but I think that for the vast majority of "sufferers", the underlying problem is far more likely to be psychological than physiological. Perhaps you should approach it from that perspective.
I never said what you said I said, not once, not ever.
I think I'll let the record stand for itself as to who is misreading whom here.
I am under no obligation to share the same delusions you do.
If it pleases you to deny objective reality by firmly and fully believing that the sun rises in the west, what do I care? Time is on my side.
Re:Where is the "-1, Wrong" moderation?
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Vive La Loafing!
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Population below poverty line:
Poverty is a relative measure. Why not examine the standard of living for the people the government defines as "poor", to see how they stack up to the rest of the world - I think you'll find that it's hardly an exaggeration to say that America has the richest poor people in the world, and that their standard of living compares quite favorably to middle-class folks virtually anywhere else in the world. Just as an example, the average American poor household lives in a dwelling that averages 1200 square feet. The average European household - not the average European poor household, but the average household - lives in a dwelling that averages 1000 square feet. If France or Italy were states in the United States, they'd rank fifth from the bottom in terms of wealth, and that's a fact.
If you failed to have some foresight about setting up multiple partitions at install time, then yes, you pay the penalty of buying a third-party tool like Partition Magic to resize the system partition;)
It's wasteful, inefficient, expensive, and discriminatory.
It's not particularly discriminatory, but other than that, in case you didn't notice the Clinton health care fiasco of '94, nobody around here really cares. There's no incentive to change because the expense is spread out among so many payers - across my lifetime, for every dollar that's spent on my health, I'll only pay about $0.18 of it out of my own pocket. In the mean time, the BC health care system is gradually going bankrupt in an attempt to keep its doctors and nurses from fleeing for the greener pastures to the south - say what you will about the US system, but it's not likely to collapse the way BC's will eventually.
Personally, I think it would be very interesting to listen to a few poor people who are fscked by HMOs on a regular basis because they can't afford to pay for their own health insurance.
I deal with the poor all day long in my job, and I see how they live and how they spend their money. As you're contemplating the plight of the poverty-stricken in America, though, you might stop to wonder why it is that the average American poor person is nearly as well-off, materially speaking, as the average European....
Relatively rich societies like the US can afford to be more wasteful than relatively poor ones like Canada. It's that simple. It's too bad you weren't around Detroit and Buffalo back in 1999 and 2000 - you could have explained to Canadian cancer patients about how being sent to the US for treatment by the absurdly backlogged Ontario government was actually a sign of the superiority of the Canadian system. I would have liked to have heard that story.
If you think I've been arguing that Walmart is a monopoly in Germany, you haven't been paying attention.
I think it's more a case of you not posting what you meant to say, but there you go.;)
I'm arguing that preventing that from happening is precisely the goal of these laws that are getting in the way of Walmart acting the way it does in the US.
Fine, so long as you understand that the price is a lower standard of living and a poorer society than would otherwise come to be. As long as you walk into that choice with eyes wide open, who am I to complain? What do I care?
Re:Where is the "-1, Wrong" moderation?
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Vive La Loafing!
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Good... and what's your share of the pie?
What difference does that make?
BTW, last week I got an antibiotic paid by the italian health system because of a little flu; cost? A couple euros for the prescription although the pricetag read 35...
Good for you. Just by coincidence, I picked up an antibiotic for my daughter on the way home. Cost? $3.
Of course, I'm not so silly as to think that it really only cost $3 total to me. How about you? Do you really think that a few euros out of your pocket represents the total of what you paid for that prescription?
(and I've read blogs by US citizens ripping their knee tendons and living with 'em because they were uninsured).
In my numerous encounters with non-Americans, I've discovered that there appears to be an oddly common belief among them - namely, that the uninsured are (more or less) dying in the streets on a daily basis over here. Curious, but I guess it just goes to show that parochialism and ignorance are universal conditions. I'll wager that your mystery bloggers have a few details of their story that are being omitted from your one-sentence summary.
Listen USians... in the seventies many of you folks could afford a decent home, schooling and medical care off a single wage.
Errr, lots of people still do.
oday a family is skitting just abouve poverty with two fulltime jobs, no vacations and just make shure you don't catch a cold or else: there goes an income and 2-300 bucks for meds...
I assume you're describing life on Mars or some such, since what you just described bears precious little resemblance to life here in the US. I'm happy that you feel good about where you're living, and that you're happy with your way of life, but the numbers don't lie - whenever you're ready to move to a place where the people are wealthier than they are in Italy, the state of Alabama is waiting. But don't take my word for it - read what a couple of Swedish guys had to say...
Where is the "-1, Wrong" moderation?
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Vive La Loafing!
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· Score: 1
The French and Germans have loads of holidays compared to North Americans, and yet their productivity per capita is actually higher than in the USA.
Har har har - that must be why per-capita GDP in the US is 40% higher than in France and Germany.
With Windows (even XP) you can't do that. NTFS partitions cannot be resized in the Logical Disk Manager (Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management).
Absolutely yes you can - you just need to create dynamic disks instead of basic volumes. You can resize dynamic volumes, mirror them, or span them across multiple physical drives if you like. You don't even need to reboot:)
Monopolistic practices, such as the ones Walmart tries using that are thwarted by German laws....
Monopoly is a matter of market share, or more precisely, when one entity has exclusive or near-exclusive control of the production or distribution of some good(s) or service(s). Which, it hardly needs noting, Wal Mart does not have in Germany. With that in mind, you're putting the cart before the horse - how exactly do you have monopolistic practices in the absence of a monopoly? Is building large stores a monopolistic practice in and of itself, regardless of the level of control the builder exerts over the retail market? If so, at what square footage, roughly, does a large store constitute a monopolistic practice?
In the long run they stagnate in comparasin to markets where the competition is more flatly equal.
Your conclusion is suspect as a result of your faulty premise - the idea of Wal Mart's monopolistic control of the German retail market is, thus far, wholly imaginary. Instead of restraining a monopolist and thereby promoting competition, the extant system creates global inefficiency by stifling price competition in the retail market. Every extra Deutsche mark that gets spent at Aldi because lower-priced competitors were prevented from operating is a Deutsche mark that can't be spent on other things - that opportunity cost is quite real, I assure you. This is not promotion of competition, it is reduction of competition, and results not in efficient markets, but inefficient ones.
Re:That's not a software giant, THIS is a ...
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Seems like you're rooting for the away team to me...
Same deal. Once again, describing Wal Mart as a formidable competitor - who can deny it? - implies neither approval or disapproval of that fact, and is neither a statement of approbation nor of castigation. Or do you really believe that if I say "Josef Stalin was a formidable opponent for his political rivals," I therefore approve of Stalin and everything he did?
Similarly, suggesting that if the laws were different, the outcome in Germany would be different, is simply a logical conclusion based on the facts on the ground, and does not imply that the conclusion is either desirable or undesirable. If I suggest that if Hitler had not attempted to fight a two-front war, Germany would likely still control most of western Europe, does that mean that I am "rooting for" Hitler?
I think that, for whatever reason, you have read far more into my posts than you can reasonably justify. Perhaps you ought to step back and consider whether you are objective enough to discuss the subject rationally.
When trying to make a point that it is unethical to discriminate against a certain thing...
You may be on to something there. You may be, that is, given that it's not actually a point that I have made here, so if you want to argue that such laws are unethical, be my guest.
"Unethical" is probably not how I would cast it, though, but you can probably make a solid argument that such laws cause economic inefficiency and waste, and that they likely contribute to a lowered standard of living. As a result, it's probably not how I'd do it, if I made the laws. Of course, I'm not German, so if the Germans are willing to live with the consequences of such laws, what do I care? I merely point out that these laws exist and that they have certain observable effects - what the Germans do with that information is up to them.
As a matter of fact, given that I suspect that the aggregate effect of such inefficiencies is to reduce the international competitiveness of German industry, as an American, I'm perfectly happy to see such laws in place - in Germany. It makes my life that much easier when others are thoughtful enough to handicap themselves voluntarily, and I therefore wholeheartedly encourage the German people to continue to pass such laws. Keep up the good work, I say;)
Re:That's not a software giant, THIS is a ...
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What I have read of you so far leads me to conclude that you are on the defensive over an American Business Practice vs. State Law (Germany).
I think your crystal ball needs a good polishing. I have done nothing more than make an observation of fact, and yet you persist in assigning motives to the act of observing - a less generous person might suggest that you are projecting your own defensiveness on to me. In any case, I was unaware that objective reality required any sort of "defense" in the first place - considering that you have yet to challenge my observation, preferring instead to examine what might have created that situation, I see nothing to disabuse me of that notion, nor any reason to become defensive.
Maybe, as you seem to desire, Germany can learn something from America after all...
I'm sorry, I haven't the faintest idea what on earth you're talking about. Then again, I get the impression that my participation in this discussion is not really a requirement for you, insofar as my posts appear to be nothing more that a convenient springboard for you to launch into some sort of prepared diatribe on the nature of corporate power and the law, or whatever it is that you happen to be especially animated about.
Carry on if you must, but kindly remember that simply observing some aspect of reality does not imply either approval or disapproval of the fact in question. It is a fact that German law prevents Wal Mart from engaging in some of the business practices that have made it successful elsewhere - anything further that you infer from that observation alone about the law, Germans, Wal Mart, or me personally is entirely your own handiwork.
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By that logic, obviously people playing GTA3 will have a favorable impression of murder, theft, assault, and battery, because the consequences in a game are losing the game, not dying, going to prison, being seriously injusred, et cetera....
Does that apply to other video games, or just the ones the military stamps out?
Errr, so when it's GTA3, we vociferously object to anyone criticizing it - after all, it's "just a game" - but when it's a military simulation, we assume that same ability to differentiate between fantasy/simulation and reality is nowhere to be found?
Not to say that you specifically do this, but speaking generally, you can't have it both ways - if people can understand why GTA3 and the like are not accurate reflections of reality, why assume that their critical faculties fail when presented with this?
That's not an either/or situation either - you've inserted your own false dichotomy now. Obviously it's not a good idea to entirely replace live-fire exercises or OPFOR exercises in the field with simulations, but as a complement to such things, I don't see why it's a particularly bad idea.
You would prefer to send them into harm's way with no training or preparation for what they're going to encounter? If you Read The Fine Article, you'd see that the simulations under discussion are intended to train soldiers who are already likely to head to the CZ anyway, and I really can't fathom why someone would object to training that potentially allows them to do a better job by reducing the risks to themselves and to innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. Whether we care for it or not, the raison d'etre for a military in the first place is to fight when needed, and I can't fault them too terribly much for wanting to do their jobs as well and as safely as possible.
Yeah, I got burned there too on last year's return. On the other hand, I was filling it out from out of state, as my very last tax return ever for the state of New York, so let me thank Pataki and Shelly Silver and Joe Bruno for giving me one last confirmation that I made the right decision to leave ;)
I almost forgot - anger management therapy may be helpful as well.
Because as the previous poster points out, this kind of behavior tends to be self-reinforcing - it turns into an obsession, concentrating on eliminating every possible odor that could possibly be given off by any object whatsoever. Essentially, what you're suggesting is that this person should not treat the real problem, but should indulge it and nurture it. It makes obsessive-compulsive people feel better temporarily every time they wash their hands, but that doesn't mean the solution to the problem is to buy them 50-gallon drums of hand soap and encourage them to wash more often - the solution is to treat the underlying cause of the discomfort.
I think I stopped taking this kind of thing very seriously when I read a study where self-identified MCS sufferers were intentionally exposed to chemicals in a blind test - expose them to chemicals with no detectable odor, and they have no reaction. Expose them to harmless chemicals with a noticeable odor, and they immediately have a "reaction".
I hate to be a bastard, but I think that for the vast majority of "sufferers", the underlying problem is far more likely to be psychological than physiological. Perhaps you should approach it from that perspective.
Unable to select database
What a great review - now where can I get my hands on this thing? :)
I think I'll let the record stand for itself as to who is misreading whom here.
I am under no obligation to share the same delusions you do.
If it pleases you to deny objective reality by firmly and fully believing that the sun rises in the west, what do I care? Time is on my side.
Poverty is a relative measure. Why not examine the standard of living for the people the government defines as "poor", to see how they stack up to the rest of the world - I think you'll find that it's hardly an exaggeration to say that America has the richest poor people in the world, and that their standard of living compares quite favorably to middle-class folks virtually anywhere else in the world. Just as an example, the average American poor household lives in a dwelling that averages 1200 square feet. The average European household - not the average European poor household, but the average household - lives in a dwelling that averages 1000 square feet. If France or Italy were states in the United States, they'd rank fifth from the bottom in terms of wealth, and that's a fact.
If you failed to have some foresight about setting up multiple partitions at install time, then yes, you pay the penalty of buying a third-party tool like Partition Magic to resize the system partition ;)
It's not particularly discriminatory, but other than that, in case you didn't notice the Clinton health care fiasco of '94, nobody around here really cares. There's no incentive to change because the expense is spread out among so many payers - across my lifetime, for every dollar that's spent on my health, I'll only pay about $0.18 of it out of my own pocket. In the mean time, the BC health care system is gradually going bankrupt in an attempt to keep its doctors and nurses from fleeing for the greener pastures to the south - say what you will about the US system, but it's not likely to collapse the way BC's will eventually.
Personally, I think it would be very interesting to listen to a few poor people who are fscked by HMOs on a regular basis because they can't afford to pay for their own health insurance.
I deal with the poor all day long in my job, and I see how they live and how they spend their money. As you're contemplating the plight of the poverty-stricken in America, though, you might stop to wonder why it is that the average American poor person is nearly as well-off, materially speaking, as the average European....
Relatively rich societies like the US can afford to be more wasteful than relatively poor ones like Canada. It's that simple. It's too bad you weren't around Detroit and Buffalo back in 1999 and 2000 - you could have explained to Canadian cancer patients about how being sent to the US for treatment by the absurdly backlogged Ontario government was actually a sign of the superiority of the Canadian system. I would have liked to have heard that story.
I think it's more a case of you not posting what you meant to say, but there you go. ;)
I'm arguing that preventing that from happening is precisely the goal of these laws that are getting in the way of Walmart acting the way it does in the US.
Fine, so long as you understand that the price is a lower standard of living and a poorer society than would otherwise come to be. As long as you walk into that choice with eyes wide open, who am I to complain? What do I care?
What difference does that make?
BTW, last week I got an antibiotic paid by the italian health system because of a little flu; cost? A couple euros for the prescription although the pricetag read 35...
Good for you. Just by coincidence, I picked up an antibiotic for my daughter on the way home. Cost? $3.
Of course, I'm not so silly as to think that it really only cost $3 total to me. How about you? Do you really think that a few euros out of your pocket represents the total of what you paid for that prescription?
(and I've read blogs by US citizens ripping their knee tendons and living with 'em because they were uninsured).
In my numerous encounters with non-Americans, I've discovered that there appears to be an oddly common belief among them - namely, that the uninsured are (more or less) dying in the streets on a daily basis over here. Curious, but I guess it just goes to show that parochialism and ignorance are universal conditions. I'll wager that your mystery bloggers have a few details of their story that are being omitted from your one-sentence summary.
Listen USians... in the seventies many of you folks could afford a decent home, schooling and medical care off a single wage.
Errr, lots of people still do.
oday a family is skitting just abouve poverty with two fulltime jobs, no vacations and just make shure you don't catch a cold or else: there goes an income and 2-300 bucks for meds...
I assume you're describing life on Mars or some such, since what you just described bears precious little resemblance to life here in the US. I'm happy that you feel good about where you're living, and that you're happy with your way of life, but the numbers don't lie - whenever you're ready to move to a place where the people are wealthier than they are in Italy, the state of Alabama is waiting. But don't take my word for it - read what a couple of Swedish guys had to say...
Har har har - that must be why per-capita GDP in the US is 40% higher than in France and Germany.
Don't take my word for it - go look it up.
One caveat, though - you cannot resize or span the boot or system partitions. Anything else is fair game.
Absolutely yes you can - you just need to create dynamic disks instead of basic volumes. You can resize dynamic volumes, mirror them, or span them across multiple physical drives if you like. You don't even need to reboot :)
Monopoly is a matter of market share, or more precisely, when one entity has exclusive or near-exclusive control of the production or distribution of some good(s) or service(s). Which, it hardly needs noting, Wal Mart does not have in Germany. With that in mind, you're putting the cart before the horse - how exactly do you have monopolistic practices in the absence of a monopoly? Is building large stores a monopolistic practice in and of itself, regardless of the level of control the builder exerts over the retail market? If so, at what square footage, roughly, does a large store constitute a monopolistic practice?
In the long run they stagnate in comparasin to markets where the competition is more flatly equal.
Your conclusion is suspect as a result of your faulty premise - the idea of Wal Mart's monopolistic control of the German retail market is, thus far, wholly imaginary. Instead of restraining a monopolist and thereby promoting competition, the extant system creates global inefficiency by stifling price competition in the retail market. Every extra Deutsche mark that gets spent at Aldi because lower-priced competitors were prevented from operating is a Deutsche mark that can't be spent on other things - that opportunity cost is quite real, I assure you. This is not promotion of competition, it is reduction of competition, and results not in efficient markets, but inefficient ones.
Same deal. Once again, describing Wal Mart as a formidable competitor - who can deny it? - implies neither approval or disapproval of that fact, and is neither a statement of approbation nor of castigation. Or do you really believe that if I say "Josef Stalin was a formidable opponent for his political rivals," I therefore approve of Stalin and everything he did?
Similarly, suggesting that if the laws were different, the outcome in Germany would be different, is simply a logical conclusion based on the facts on the ground, and does not imply that the conclusion is either desirable or undesirable. If I suggest that if Hitler had not attempted to fight a two-front war, Germany would likely still control most of western Europe, does that mean that I am "rooting for" Hitler?
I think that, for whatever reason, you have read far more into my posts than you can reasonably justify. Perhaps you ought to step back and consider whether you are objective enough to discuss the subject rationally.
You may be on to something there. You may be, that is, given that it's not actually a point that I have made here, so if you want to argue that such laws are unethical, be my guest.
"Unethical" is probably not how I would cast it, though, but you can probably make a solid argument that such laws cause economic inefficiency and waste, and that they likely contribute to a lowered standard of living. As a result, it's probably not how I'd do it, if I made the laws. Of course, I'm not German, so if the Germans are willing to live with the consequences of such laws, what do I care? I merely point out that these laws exist and that they have certain observable effects - what the Germans do with that information is up to them.
As a matter of fact, given that I suspect that the aggregate effect of such inefficiencies is to reduce the international competitiveness of German industry, as an American, I'm perfectly happy to see such laws in place - in Germany. It makes my life that much easier when others are thoughtful enough to handicap themselves voluntarily, and I therefore wholeheartedly encourage the German people to continue to pass such laws. Keep up the good work, I say ;)
I think your crystal ball needs a good polishing. I have done nothing more than make an observation of fact, and yet you persist in assigning motives to the act of observing - a less generous person might suggest that you are projecting your own defensiveness on to me. In any case, I was unaware that objective reality required any sort of "defense" in the first place - considering that you have yet to challenge my observation, preferring instead to examine what might have created that situation, I see nothing to disabuse me of that notion, nor any reason to become defensive.
Maybe, as you seem to desire, Germany can learn something from America after all ...
I'm sorry, I haven't the faintest idea what on earth you're talking about. Then again, I get the impression that my participation in this discussion is not really a requirement for you, insofar as my posts appear to be nothing more that a convenient springboard for you to launch into some sort of prepared diatribe on the nature of corporate power and the law, or whatever it is that you happen to be especially animated about.
Carry on if you must, but kindly remember that simply observing some aspect of reality does not imply either approval or disapproval of the fact in question. It is a fact that German law prevents Wal Mart from engaging in some of the business practices that have made it successful elsewhere - anything further that you infer from that observation alone about the law, Germans, Wal Mart, or me personally is entirely your own handiwork.