If you had actually paid attention to the discussion, you'd have noticed that the only people directly tying number of hurricanes to global warming are the talking heads on news shows. All scientists interviewed were actually very cagey about that, and offered all kinds of qualifiers and caveats (not directly linked, difficult to say, etc.). Furthermore, if you look at any chaotic system graphs (ANY graphs related to climate, whether it's CO2, temperature, salinity, etc), you'll notice that there is never a strictly linear graph. To assume that number of hurricanes being related to global warming implies a straight line up, year after year, is offering up a straw man of the worst kind.
That's what I thought I remembered from bio class as well. I'd have to dig into the articles to find out more though. Here's something else I remember though: hibernation periods are getting shorter, and migrations start earlier. And that's tied to temperatures, not daylight time.
Sigh. It always amazes me how quickly people pick up ideas that support their preconceptions, but are unable to actually investigate them to find out what really is going.
What you're referring to is thermohaline inversion - the process by which the North Atlantic current is thought to stop once enough sweet water is released into the ocean from melting ice in Greenland and the North Pole. It has not yet occurred. But there are signs that the current in question is slowing down, which is the start of the process. Cooling of the Western European countries (specifically Great Britain) will only occur once the current actually stops. Before that, effects will be negligible.
Are you asking me to provide data or reliable cites that prove a negative? I think we both know how that works.
You're confusing the philosophical problem of proving an absolute negative with the standard research practice of testing for the null hypothesis (i.e., that the data in question is random, or does not support the current hypothesis). The latter is part of any science study dealing with data sets. Not only that, but data sets can be tested for randomness and trends. Absence of trends is fairly easily shown via various methods, including PCA. As a result, it is entirely possible to use data to show that current temperature changes are merely random, and that no trend can be found. Which means I'll ask as well: where's your supporting data?
True - our current models will most likely change over the next couple of years. And yes, there is still quite some uncertainty on exactly what will happen. But let's ignore for a second the conclusions of the IPCC that global warming is fairly likely man-made, and that we just don't know what's going on. All we know is that it's been getting warmer in the last decade or so. Just check your local weather channel for temperatures. So it's getting warmer, but we don't quite know why, or where it's heading. Reason would argue that if we don't the outcome, the only probability we can assign it is 50/50. So know we have a 50/50 chance that it will get warmer, just as it has gotten warmer in the last decade or so. Now we know what happens when global average temperatures increase beyond 1 or 2 degrees (even Fahrenheit) - massive ecological changes, which will entail massive population changes (both in terms of population sizes as well as quality of living). Personally, faced with these odds, I'd rather hope for the best and prepare for the worst - i.e., make damn sure that the temperature increases have nothing to do with me.
Interesting. You manage to quote two people (two - out of a couple of thousand people who actually study this stuff), yet completely fail to acknowledge the subsequent discussion of McIntyre and McKitrick's critique. Furthermore, you present these as independent, when they are actually working for fields with a very heavy interest in presenting Global Warming as a farce (I'm sure you know which one's they are right? You'd never just take somebody's word for it). And I don't know where you get the idea that they're world-class statisticians. I can't find any papers they have written on statistics before this one. Care to point to some? Or did you just make that part up?
Finally, Mann isn't the only one who found a significant global warming that occurred in the past couple of decades. I won't bother with relinking the papers here, since I already posted them in reply to another one of your posts. But to claim that a) no one has talked about McIntyre's and McKitrick's critique, and b) Mann is the only one to have found a significant warming is ignorant at best. Considering the effort you expended in tracking down any and all critiques of one specific paper, but didn't bother continuing to find out whether the critiques were right, I can only assume that you are guilty of what you are accusing the rest of the world of: willfull ignorance. Oh, and nice personal insults, too. Idiot.
Besides the fact that you seem to think that the House Energy commission is somehow "independent", you're just plain wrong. Read the (peer-reviewed) articles at the bottom for your enlightment. Also, McIntyre and McKitrick are not statisticians, but simply people who work in the mining industry and as economists, with no known previous peer-reviewed articles related to climate change. Their critique of the PCA used by Mann et al has been widely dissected and found to be wanting by scientists who know PCA from a hole in the ground. In short, you seem to have readily swallowed the critique of the Mann paper, but never bothered to follow-up on what climatologists had to say about this entire deal.
Jones, P.D., K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett and S.F.B. Tett, High-resolution palaeoclimatic records for the last millennium: Integration, interpretation and comparison with General Circulation Model control run temperatures, Holocene, 8, 455-471, 1998.
Esper, J., E.R. Cook and F.H. Schweingruber, Low-frequency signals in long tree-line chronologies for reconstructing past temperature variability, Science, 295, 2250-2253, 2002.
Soon, W., and S. Baliunas, Proxy climatic and environmental changes over the past 1000 years, Climate Research, 23, 89-110, 2003.
Soon, W., S. Baliunas, C, Idso, S. Idso and D.R. Legates, Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, Energy and Environment, 14, 233-296, 2003.
And you know who's to blame for that? You. That's right. Everytime you don't challenge your newspaper about a story, you're a willing participant in the charade. Everytime you turn on TV and watch a broadcast-and-run story that is patently false, you support the channel. How do you fix? Get your news from trustworthy sources. Oh, wait. You probably dont know how to determine if a source is trustworthy. Sorry, I can't help you there. Critical thinking is not something I'm willing to teach in the course of a slashdot post.
Actually, a lot of the art and science that came out of the Soviet Block is absolutely fascinating and engaging. Check out some of the short films that were made there (not the government propaganda crap, but actual movies by actual people). They might not be as slick as MI:III, but they certainly have meaning and soul. Or, if you are into science, check out their space agencies, aircraft, mathematicians and papers published. There is a reason why the Progress 21 module is the official supplier of the ISS.
Come to think of it, I'm starting to like the idea of a centralized economy for art and science. It seems to produce quite a bit of stuff that we don't get. Then again, we aren't really a free economy either.
Check out the job postings for Blizzard. They are (or at least, were) looking for an RTS level designer. Since WCIII level design has basically ceased.... I let you make your own conclusions.
Disclaimer - I am not a patent engineer. But I know bullshit when I see it.
Actually, yes, it does mean we should do away with a whole class of patents. Specifically, because your counter-argument for point 1) confuses two completely different things: math and physical objects. Without so much as explaining why, you lumped together mathematical equations (ideas) and physical objects (subject to laws of nature), and concluded from that if patents for ideas like mathematical equations are invalidated, all patents would be invalidated. Quite honestly, my head hurts just trying to figure out how you came up with this. For a very good discussion on the difference between the two and how patent law could accomodate the differences, check out this article on Michel Rocard's report.
This is how you would distinguish between the two, and this is how you would make sure that patent's on ideas don't completely stifle innovation, and make solely the domain of large corporations.
As for your comment that copyright doesn't protect ideas, you seem to be under the misguided impression that patents on ideas are righteous. Quite frankly, the mere thought of it disgusts me. Besides the fact that the free exchange of ideas is what lead to the explosion of knowledge in the last 200 years, there's the problem that ideas are a dime a dozen, and that the devil is in the detail (to abuse cliches). Anybody can have ideas. Hey, here's an idea: let's create a device that creates energy from hot air! Great, ain't it? Now who should get credit for it - the guy (or girl) who dreams up the idea, or the one who implements it? In my not so humble opinion, the one who dreams it up should get a slap across the face for even asking for compensation. It is infinitely harder to create something that works than it is to dream something up. Putting a lock-down on ideas is nothing but the wet dream of lazy asses who want to get paid millions for breathing.
On a side note, I've talked to a few patent lawyers, and I find it fascinating the amount of work they put into crap justifications. I've heard everything from "I protect the little guy" (never mind that the little guy can't compete with a corporation that is willing to spend millions on a lawsuit) to "I protect people from theft" (see above for an idea on where I stand on that).
What's more - MS already has $30 billion in cash in the bank. They don't need to borrow mega-billions, because they already have them. Besides, what the hell would MS do with the Mega-billions? Buy Apple? Oracle? The US government? This article is trash - though it does give an interesting insight into why companies are bought and sold: short-term profit.
Neither insightful, nor even interesting. Just plain wrongThe Dreamcast was strong technologically (to the point that the PS2, released a year later, had trouble bettering its graphics) and had great games. Why did it fail? Lots of reasons, all of which had nothing to do with the quality of the console or of its games. The same can be said of the NEC console, and a few others.... Whether a console is a hit or a miss from a business perspective hinges on marketing, word-of-mouth, business decisions, operations, production, retail channels and more, just as much as it hinges on games and plain quality.
Behavior like this is exactly why I DON'T buy from people with 100% ratings. It is exceedingly unlikely that a seller (or buyer) never had any problems whatsoever. Instead, it is far more likely that the users arrived at that type of rating through fraud.
As a result, I only buy from people who have a high, but not perfect rating. And I make sure I read the bad comments. Very often you can tell when someone just got pissed off and left negative feedback for the purpose of leaving negative feedback.
In my opinion, what's broken is not the feedback system. It's the people who think that 100% positive feedback is worth something who don't understand how the system should work.
Looks like you've never done scientific research. If scientists are supposed to run after every implausible claim (time cube, anyone), there wouldn't be any scientists left to do real science. There are just too many idiotic claims out there to investigate every last of them. So yes - even scientists use (and should use) the smell-o-factor when deciding what claims to investigate.
... that there are too many negative Sony stories being posted in 3 - 2 - 1... Oops, I guess I'm too late.
Hey, I like my weekly updates on Sony problems. I need to know whether there'll still be any idiots during launch who will be willing to pay 3 times retail price on Ebay.
Since when is getting a desired judgment proof (your words, not mine) of cherry-picking? It could just as easily be proof of the ACLU actually having a good case. And one article, which, by the way, is completely devoid of legal analysis, does not make a decision be "widely criticised".
Quite honestly, I'd like the lawyer-equivalent of a second opinion on this, and will follow this as much as I can in the future. But to dismiss it outhand as bad, with zero legal backup for that statement, is rather inane.
What character are you playing? I'm essentially a maxed out archer at level 21, with little profiency in anything but agility. I've heard that mages can become completely overpowered, as can certain close combat fighters.
Unfortunately, I have the XBox 360 version. My PC is about 5 years old, and therefore utterly unable to play the game. As a result, no mods, even though they really seem to be key to properly enjoy the game.
No. The game IS boring. And it's got nothing to do with what you mentioned. The reason Oblivion is boring (and why I stopped playing after having put about 100 hours into sidequests alone) is that nothing. really. happens. Become arena champion? Mud crabs can still kick your butt (I'm playing that gimp of all classes, archer thief). Save children, families, farms? They briefly will mention it when you come back, but otherwise, nothing. Wipe out entire villages, restore rightful leaders to their position, save entire cities? Some characters might change what they say, but otherwise, nothing. As you get more powerful, your enemies get more powerful, which means you're just as sucky as you were 10 minutes into the game. Except you wear more shiny. And don't get me started on the leveling scheme. The more you advanced, the better you got - until the enemies caught up with you, at which point you sucked again. This was a system that actually rewarded munchkins - no, it basically made it necessary for my poor archer.
Someone likened playing Oblivion to paddling in the middle of the Ocean. You do stuff, you exert yourself, it looks like stuff is changing.... but really, nothing's changing significantly. The reason I loved Baldur's Gate, or even Skies of Arcadia, was that stuff changed. Things got wiped out. Enemies that would chew me up within seconds at the beginning would at some point fall to my attacks. There was a feeling that the world was changing based on what I did. In Oblivion.... well, sometimes guards would attack me. Sometimes they wouldn't. Other than that.... it was like reading a giant book. Where it would take 10 minutes to turn one page, and where each story would be 1.5 pages.
yeah, I plunked 100 hours into a game that I decided sucked. Unfortunately, it took that long for me to realize that the initial problem would never go away. And that the side quests did nothing to help the main problem of pacing and actual story. Yeah, there's some cool moments in there. I'd say I've seen about 30 minutes total of them. That's just too much filler to qualify as a good game.
Two points. 1) Racial profiling is bad not only because it is morally reprehensible and a massive slippery slope. It's also bad because it is terrible at preventing future attacks. At some point, Al-Qaeda will figure out that all its dark-skinned muslim friends are being picked up for thorough questioning. So it will simply recruit light-skinned muslims. Or dark-skinned people who don't look like muslim (what does a muslim look like, anyway?). Or anybody who doesn't fit the current racial profile. Like Jose Padilla, maybe. And then, we're fucked, because we'd be looking for the wrong people. Again - racial profiling sucks because it will make you less safe than if you were not using racial profiling.
2) I see the neocons got to you in your terminology. There is no such thing as an Islamofascist. A fascist, as per wikipedia, is a totalitarian who combines corporatism, nationalism and general conservative rhethoric into one package. Al-Qaeda is about as far removed from that concept as you can possibly be. They are anti-corporations, pan-nationalistic and more communist than conservative. The only thing they have in common with conservatives is a strong belief in religion. Islamofascist is a term coined by the same people who came up with the Axis of Evil: it's completely wrong on a literal level, implies things that are patently wrong and is only designed to elicit an emotional response from the public. The association of Muslims with Nazis is a nice bonus.
What we're up against a religious extremists. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Using any other term clouds the discussion and only distracts from the real problems and potential solutions.
I'm sorry - the problem here isn't either that the Nazis did this before WW2, or that the current propaganda is being finally exposed. The news is that our fucking government, which is all high and mighty about truth and justice and democracy, is employing the same fucking methods used by Nazis, Stalinists, Maoists and other wonderful forms of government to dissipate their views. If it doesn't piss you off that the US government is becoming less and less distinguishable from what we've been fighting against for the last 200 years, I don't know what will - or what you think a decent government should look like.
I know that for some odd fucking reason, it's unhip to be outraged by the transgressions of governments and corporations. But I'd rather complain now than complain when it all goes down a shit hole and your cozy little life will be interrupted by some grossly unconstitutional search, corporate ass-reaming or other unpleasantness.
I would like to point out though that the different PBS stations are very different. I've listened to about half a dozen PBS stations in different states, as well as PBS on satellite radio, and the quality, as well as the content, differ dramatically. Most pretentious and gratingly self-righteous: Santa Cruz. Biggest snooze fest: satellite. Least amount of content: Portland. Favorite station: San Francisco.
I haven't heard any east-coast PBS stations, but I would imagine that they'd be very different as well. While I won't deny that the quality of the different stations is very hit-and-miss, I'd attribute that rather to local tastes, rather than corporate buy-outs. A listener-supported medium pretty much requires that a station adapts to the leanings of its audience. If the audience just happens to be largely bible-thumpers, I'm sure I'll get to hear about how atheists might not be able to have a morality.
The world record for the marathon is currently 2:04:55. Most people, I believe, would have a very hard time getting there even with extraordinary training.
I think we can safely say that it's a fact that only one person ever got to that time.:) I do agree that there's a lot of whining going on when some people can't meet their goals. Sometimes though, that's just plain realism. The only thing I would disagree with is with statements like "we all" and some of the exact numbers. But, I would say that that's a different discussion...
Ah - the common American/Protestant fallacy that all you need to be great is hard work. While you certainly can't be great anymore without hard work (whether through better motivation or just more effort), to argue that that's all you need is ludicrous. I have competed against some of the best triathletes and skiers in the world. I can tell you without a doubt that I could put in the 150 mile training rides, the 8 hours on the slope, and I still would not be able to compete with the world's best. The same way that I'll never get the fine motor skills necessary to become a world-class violinist.
In these areas, I can get to a certain level through rigorous training - but basic genetics prevents me from competing with the world's best. The same applies to a lot of intellectual areas. I can become a competent physicist - but from interacting with other physics students, I know that I lack the ease of insight necessary to actually build something new.
In short, just hard work can get you to a certain level of competency and fluency. To go beyond that requires more - that certain genius, that spark that comes out of nowhere. To argue that Einstein, Jordan, Mozart or Newton were merely hard workers is to underestimate their achievements to the point of being insulting. I've seen genius (both physical as well as mental) at work, and it's a thing of beauty. Yes, they worked hard, very hard. But there was a lot more to them than just that. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I've also seen people of average intelligence achieve success through incredible hard work. But they will never be confused with genius.
I know it's American to think that hard work is the only thing that stands between you and a life of greatness, but that's just the protestant roots talking. I hate to tell you this, but some people really are destined to be merely average.
Slashdot Mirror
If you had actually paid attention to the discussion, you'd have noticed that the only people directly tying number of hurricanes to global warming are the talking heads on news shows. All scientists interviewed were actually very cagey about that, and offered all kinds of qualifiers and caveats (not directly linked, difficult to say, etc.). Furthermore, if you look at any chaotic system graphs (ANY graphs related to climate, whether it's CO2, temperature, salinity, etc), you'll notice that there is never a strictly linear graph. To assume that number of hurricanes being related to global warming implies a straight line up, year after year, is offering up a straw man of the worst kind.
That's what I thought I remembered from bio class as well. I'd have to dig into the articles to find out more though. Here's something else I remember though: hibernation periods are getting shorter, and migrations start earlier. And that's tied to temperatures, not daylight time.
Sigh. It always amazes me how quickly people pick up ideas that support their preconceptions, but are unable to actually investigate them to find out what really is going.
What you're referring to is thermohaline inversion - the process by which the North Atlantic current is thought to stop once enough sweet water is released into the ocean from melting ice in Greenland and the North Pole. It has not yet occurred. But there are signs that the current in question is slowing down, which is the start of the process. Cooling of the Western European countries (specifically Great Britain) will only occur once the current actually stops. Before that, effects will be negligible.
You're confusing the philosophical problem of proving an absolute negative with the standard research practice of testing for the null hypothesis (i.e., that the data in question is random, or does not support the current hypothesis). The latter is part of any science study dealing with data sets. Not only that, but data sets can be tested for randomness and trends. Absence of trends is fairly easily shown via various methods, including PCA. As a result, it is entirely possible to use data to show that current temperature changes are merely random, and that no trend can be found. Which means I'll ask as well: where's your supporting data?
True - our current models will most likely change over the next couple of years. And yes, there is still quite some uncertainty on exactly what will happen. But let's ignore for a second the conclusions of the IPCC that global warming is fairly likely man-made, and that we just don't know what's going on. All we know is that it's been getting warmer in the last decade or so. Just check your local weather channel for temperatures. So it's getting warmer, but we don't quite know why, or where it's heading. Reason would argue that if we don't the outcome, the only probability we can assign it is 50/50. So know we have a 50/50 chance that it will get warmer, just as it has gotten warmer in the last decade or so. Now we know what happens when global average temperatures increase beyond 1 or 2 degrees (even Fahrenheit) - massive ecological changes, which will entail massive population changes (both in terms of population sizes as well as quality of living). Personally, faced with these odds, I'd rather hope for the best and prepare for the worst - i.e., make damn sure that the temperature increases have nothing to do with me.
Interesting. You manage to quote two people (two - out of a couple of thousand people who actually study this stuff), yet completely fail to acknowledge the subsequent discussion of McIntyre and McKitrick's critique. Furthermore, you present these as independent, when they are actually working for fields with a very heavy interest in presenting Global Warming as a farce (I'm sure you know which one's they are right? You'd never just take somebody's word for it). And I don't know where you get the idea that they're world-class statisticians. I can't find any papers they have written on statistics before this one. Care to point to some? Or did you just make that part up?
Finally, Mann isn't the only one who found a significant global warming that occurred in the past couple of decades. I won't bother with relinking the papers here, since I already posted them in reply to another one of your posts. But to claim that a) no one has talked about McIntyre's and McKitrick's critique, and b) Mann is the only one to have found a significant warming is ignorant at best. Considering the effort you expended in tracking down any and all critiques of one specific paper, but didn't bother continuing to find out whether the critiques were right, I can only assume that you are guilty of what you are accusing the rest of the world of: willfull ignorance. Oh, and nice personal insults, too. Idiot.
Jones, P.D., K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett and S.F.B. Tett, High-resolution palaeoclimatic records for the last millennium: Integration, interpretation and comparison with General Circulation Model control run temperatures, Holocene, 8, 455-471, 1998.
Esper, J., E.R. Cook and F.H. Schweingruber, Low-frequency signals in long tree-line chronologies for reconstructing past temperature variability, Science, 295, 2250-2253, 2002.
Soon, W., and S. Baliunas, Proxy climatic and environmental changes over the past 1000 years, Climate Research, 23, 89-110, 2003.
Soon, W., S. Baliunas, C, Idso, S. Idso and D.R. Legates, Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years, Energy and Environment, 14, 233-296, 2003.
And you know who's to blame for that? You. That's right. Everytime you don't challenge your newspaper about a story, you're a willing participant in the charade. Everytime you turn on TV and watch a broadcast-and-run story that is patently false, you support the channel. How do you fix? Get your news from trustworthy sources. Oh, wait. You probably dont know how to determine if a source is trustworthy. Sorry, I can't help you there. Critical thinking is not something I'm willing to teach in the course of a slashdot post.
Actually, a lot of the art and science that came out of the Soviet Block is absolutely fascinating and engaging. Check out some of the short films that were made there (not the government propaganda crap, but actual movies by actual people). They might not be as slick as MI:III, but they certainly have meaning and soul. Or, if you are into science, check out their space agencies, aircraft, mathematicians and papers published. There is a reason why the Progress 21 module is the official supplier of the ISS.
Come to think of it, I'm starting to like the idea of a centralized economy for art and science. It seems to produce quite a bit of stuff that we don't get. Then again, we aren't really a free economy either.
Check out the job postings for Blizzard. They are (or at least, were) looking for an RTS level designer. Since WCIII level design has basically ceased.... I let you make your own conclusions.
Actually, yes, it does mean we should do away with a whole class of patents. Specifically, because your counter-argument for point 1) confuses two completely different things: math and physical objects. Without so much as explaining why, you lumped together mathematical equations (ideas) and physical objects (subject to laws of nature), and concluded from that if patents for ideas like mathematical equations are invalidated, all patents would be invalidated. Quite honestly, my head hurts just trying to figure out how you came up with this. For a very good discussion on the difference between the two and how patent law could accomodate the differences, check out this article on Michel Rocard's report.
This is how you would distinguish between the two, and this is how you would make sure that patent's on ideas don't completely stifle innovation, and make solely the domain of large corporations.
As for your comment that copyright doesn't protect ideas, you seem to be under the misguided impression that patents on ideas are righteous. Quite frankly, the mere thought of it disgusts me. Besides the fact that the free exchange of ideas is what lead to the explosion of knowledge in the last 200 years, there's the problem that ideas are a dime a dozen, and that the devil is in the detail (to abuse cliches). Anybody can have ideas. Hey, here's an idea: let's create a device that creates energy from hot air! Great, ain't it? Now who should get credit for it - the guy (or girl) who dreams up the idea, or the one who implements it? In my not so humble opinion, the one who dreams it up should get a slap across the face for even asking for compensation. It is infinitely harder to create something that works than it is to dream something up. Putting a lock-down on ideas is nothing but the wet dream of lazy asses who want to get paid millions for breathing.
On a side note, I've talked to a few patent lawyers, and I find it fascinating the amount of work they put into crap justifications. I've heard everything from "I protect the little guy" (never mind that the little guy can't compete with a corporation that is willing to spend millions on a lawsuit) to "I protect people from theft" (see above for an idea on where I stand on that).
What's more - MS already has $30 billion in cash in the bank. They don't need to borrow mega-billions, because they already have them. Besides, what the hell would MS do with the Mega-billions? Buy Apple? Oracle? The US government? This article is trash - though it does give an interesting insight into why companies are bought and sold: short-term profit.
Neither insightful, nor even interesting. Just plain wrongThe Dreamcast was strong technologically (to the point that the PS2, released a year later, had trouble bettering its graphics) and had great games. Why did it fail? Lots of reasons, all of which had nothing to do with the quality of the console or of its games. The same can be said of the NEC console, and a few others.... Whether a console is a hit or a miss from a business perspective hinges on marketing, word-of-mouth, business decisions, operations, production, retail channels and more, just as much as it hinges on games and plain quality.
Behavior like this is exactly why I DON'T buy from people with 100% ratings. It is exceedingly unlikely that a seller (or buyer) never had any problems whatsoever. Instead, it is far more likely that the users arrived at that type of rating through fraud.
As a result, I only buy from people who have a high, but not perfect rating. And I make sure I read the bad comments. Very often you can tell when someone just got pissed off and left negative feedback for the purpose of leaving negative feedback.
In my opinion, what's broken is not the feedback system. It's the people who think that 100% positive feedback is worth something who don't understand how the system should work.
Looks like you've never done scientific research. If scientists are supposed to run after every implausible claim (time cube, anyone), there wouldn't be any scientists left to do real science. There are just too many idiotic claims out there to investigate every last of them. So yes - even scientists use (and should use) the smell-o-factor when deciding what claims to investigate.
... that there are too many negative Sony stories being posted in 3 - 2 - 1... Oops, I guess I'm too late.
Hey, I like my weekly updates on Sony problems. I need to know whether there'll still be any idiots during launch who will be willing to pay 3 times retail price on Ebay.
Since when is getting a desired judgment proof (your words, not mine) of cherry-picking? It could just as easily be proof of the ACLU actually having a good case. And one article, which, by the way, is completely devoid of legal analysis, does not make a decision be "widely criticised".
Quite honestly, I'd like the lawyer-equivalent of a second opinion on this, and will follow this as much as I can in the future. But to dismiss it outhand as bad, with zero legal backup for that statement, is rather inane.
What character are you playing? I'm essentially a maxed out archer at level 21, with little profiency in anything but agility. I've heard that mages can become completely overpowered, as can certain close combat fighters.
Unfortunately, I have the XBox 360 version. My PC is about 5 years old, and therefore utterly unable to play the game. As a result, no mods, even though they really seem to be key to properly enjoy the game.
No. The game IS boring. And it's got nothing to do with what you mentioned. The reason Oblivion is boring (and why I stopped playing after having put about 100 hours into sidequests alone) is that nothing. really. happens. Become arena champion? Mud crabs can still kick your butt (I'm playing that gimp of all classes, archer thief). Save children, families, farms? They briefly will mention it when you come back, but otherwise, nothing. Wipe out entire villages, restore rightful leaders to their position, save entire cities? Some characters might change what they say, but otherwise, nothing. As you get more powerful, your enemies get more powerful, which means you're just as sucky as you were 10 minutes into the game. Except you wear more shiny. And don't get me started on the leveling scheme. The more you advanced, the better you got - until the enemies caught up with you, at which point you sucked again. This was a system that actually rewarded munchkins - no, it basically made it necessary for my poor archer.
Someone likened playing Oblivion to paddling in the middle of the Ocean. You do stuff, you exert yourself, it looks like stuff is changing.... but really, nothing's changing significantly. The reason I loved Baldur's Gate, or even Skies of Arcadia, was that stuff changed. Things got wiped out. Enemies that would chew me up within seconds at the beginning would at some point fall to my attacks. There was a feeling that the world was changing based on what I did. In Oblivion.... well, sometimes guards would attack me. Sometimes they wouldn't. Other than that.... it was like reading a giant book. Where it would take 10 minutes to turn one page, and where each story would be 1.5 pages.
yeah, I plunked 100 hours into a game that I decided sucked. Unfortunately, it took that long for me to realize that the initial problem would never go away. And that the side quests did nothing to help the main problem of pacing and actual story. Yeah, there's some cool moments in there. I'd say I've seen about 30 minutes total of them. That's just too much filler to qualify as a good game.
Two points.
:)
1) Racial profiling is bad not only because it is morally reprehensible and a massive slippery slope. It's also bad because it is terrible at preventing future attacks. At some point, Al-Qaeda will figure out that all its dark-skinned muslim friends are being picked up for thorough questioning. So it will simply recruit light-skinned muslims. Or dark-skinned people who don't look like muslim (what does a muslim look like, anyway?). Or anybody who doesn't fit the current racial profile. Like Jose Padilla, maybe. And then, we're fucked, because we'd be looking for the wrong people. Again - racial profiling sucks because it will make you less safe than if you were not using racial profiling.
2) I see the neocons got to you in your terminology. There is no such thing as an Islamofascist. A fascist, as per wikipedia, is a totalitarian who combines corporatism, nationalism and general conservative rhethoric into one package. Al-Qaeda is about as far removed from that concept as you can possibly be. They are anti-corporations, pan-nationalistic and more communist than conservative. The only thing they have in common with conservatives is a strong belief in religion. Islamofascist is a term coined by the same people who came up with the Axis of Evil: it's completely wrong on a literal level, implies things that are patently wrong and is only designed to elicit an emotional response from the public. The association of Muslims with Nazis is a nice bonus.
What we're up against a religious extremists. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Using any other term clouds the discussion and only distracts from the real problems and potential solutions.
Other than that, I agree with your post.
I'm sorry - the problem here isn't either that the Nazis did this before WW2, or that the current propaganda is being finally exposed. The news is that our fucking government, which is all high and mighty about truth and justice and democracy, is employing the same fucking methods used by Nazis, Stalinists, Maoists and other wonderful forms of government to dissipate their views. If it doesn't piss you off that the US government is becoming less and less distinguishable from what we've been fighting against for the last 200 years, I don't know what will - or what you think a decent government should look like.
I know that for some odd fucking reason, it's unhip to be outraged by the transgressions of governments and corporations. But I'd rather complain now than complain when it all goes down a shit hole and your cozy little life will be interrupted by some grossly unconstitutional search, corporate ass-reaming or other unpleasantness.
I would like to point out though that the different PBS stations are very different. I've listened to about half a dozen PBS stations in different states, as well as PBS on satellite radio, and the quality, as well as the content, differ dramatically. Most pretentious and gratingly self-righteous: Santa Cruz. Biggest snooze fest: satellite. Least amount of content: Portland. Favorite station: San Francisco.
I haven't heard any east-coast PBS stations, but I would imagine that they'd be very different as well. While I won't deny that the quality of the different stations is very hit-and-miss, I'd attribute that rather to local tastes, rather than corporate buy-outs. A listener-supported medium pretty much requires that a station adapts to the leanings of its audience. If the audience just happens to be largely bible-thumpers, I'm sure I'll get to hear about how atheists might not be able to have a morality.
I think we can safely say that it's a fact that only one person ever got to that time. :) I do agree that there's a lot of whining going on when some people can't meet their goals. Sometimes though, that's just plain realism. The only thing I would disagree with is with statements like "we all" and some of the exact numbers. But, I would say that that's a different discussion...
Ah - the common American/Protestant fallacy that all you need to be great is hard work. While you certainly can't be great anymore without hard work (whether through better motivation or just more effort), to argue that that's all you need is ludicrous. I have competed against some of the best triathletes and skiers in the world. I can tell you without a doubt that I could put in the 150 mile training rides, the 8 hours on the slope, and I still would not be able to compete with the world's best. The same way that I'll never get the fine motor skills necessary to become a world-class violinist.
In these areas, I can get to a certain level through rigorous training - but basic genetics prevents me from competing with the world's best. The same applies to a lot of intellectual areas. I can become a competent physicist - but from interacting with other physics students, I know that I lack the ease of insight necessary to actually build something new.
In short, just hard work can get you to a certain level of competency and fluency. To go beyond that requires more - that certain genius, that spark that comes out of nowhere. To argue that Einstein, Jordan, Mozart or Newton were merely hard workers is to underestimate their achievements to the point of being insulting. I've seen genius (both physical as well as mental) at work, and it's a thing of beauty. Yes, they worked hard, very hard. But there was a lot more to them than just that. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I've also seen people of average intelligence achieve success through incredible hard work. But they will never be confused with genius.
I know it's American to think that hard work is the only thing that stands between you and a life of greatness, but that's just the protestant roots talking. I hate to tell you this, but some people really are destined to be merely average.