Or the opposite like in Oblivion where the hardness is simply adjusted to your power everywhere you go but lets you go wherever you want (mostly).
Scaling everything up to the player's level is the easy way out. It allows for sloppy world creation, and results in a dull experience in which the game is playing you. In my opinion, hard places should be available from the start, and you SHOULD NOT GO THERE. Creating worlds in which one can progress so that they can tackle the tough bits when they are ready is far more difficult than just making everything ok hard at every level.
A couple of games I think that does this relatively well are X2 and X3. If you try to go too far too fast, you'll be in for a shock. They're far from perfect, but they are great games.
Very true, an I can't believe your comment was the first I read here that said that. Levels are a _good_ thing for most games, be they direct or contrived. I will not ever generally save in the middle of a firefight in a FPS or other game, because I'm playing it right now, and it's a dumb time to save. No one wants a game that is 100% action throughout for 24 hours plus (I think). Levels are also analogous to time dependent events in lots of games - it's harder to describe World War II if the player has to play through 6 years of a game (less if you're American obviously;))
I made a similar point about this a while ago - Why do console titles always place save points immediately prior to dangerous sections? The obvious reason is that people can save and reload and try again, and don't have to worry about dying. In game characters dying is par for the course nowadays - people expect to die loads of times. I personally think that games haven't got easier (I think games have generally got a lot tougher), but games have introduced save/reload as a required feature.
I also personally _love_ Angband and its variants. My favourite two are Zangband and TOME
Ok... where to start. I'm assuming you're using RAID 1 (mirroring) rather than RAID 0 (striping). If not, I'm confused. Also, the first six months of any drive's life is the 6 months in which it is _most_ likely to fail, no matter how old it is. By always having new drives, you are increasing the likelihood that one of them will fail. It may not be intuitive that older drives are more reliable than brand spanking new ones, but it's true.
I absolutely _hate_ the term metamaterial. I know about its use and the reasons for its creation, but metamaterial is a stupid word, which does not mean what it says. Structure, for a long long time has been more important than composition. Carbon is a fun example. It is absolutely oxymoronic in my opinion to claim something above a material while using that material as an example...
I actually only meant that almost was a poor term, since it implies less than, in the original comment. I even said "It's close to the same area as the US", so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
What would Canada's land area be without the bunch of bodies of water? I'm genuinely curious here, since I've always thought Canada was the second biggest country in the world.
I also said grammar because of your use of except. The way you used it your sentence didn't make any sense whatsoever. I don't think "except for" means what you think it means. I know I'm being picky, and most people will understand anyway, but the sentence doesn't parse. If you replaced "except for" with "remove", it would work.
Anyway, I'm being a complete grammar nazi now, I've been looking at/. too long, and I should have better things to do, so I'll stop.:P
My point really was that corporations have to take at least most of the blame. Numpties who screw up will occur in any organisation, no matter how well it is run. However, the corporation needs to have a system in place to either not let them screw up, or minimise the damage when they do. Many corporations just blame the current numpty, and then go and hire another one.
Corporations are more and more less restricted by national boundaries - Individual government regulations do not work very well for multinationals.
Canada is larger than the US - 2nd largest country in the world. It's close to the same area as the US, it's not almost the same area.
Ethnic differences can lead to conflict, but they do not necessarily. Many countries have ethnically diverse populations without conflict.
Carrying arms is not significant, as I see it. I'd be interested to see any kind of examples in which a democracy was railroaded by others because they had the weapons. The US population has lots of arms, yet those with them have a lot more government intrusion than some other countries.
Back to the article in question. It seems to me that these politicians in England, who are so well known for other fine working legislation (gun control, now knife control, myriad cameras covering every angle and yet robberies and home invasions are supposed to be at an all time high in London alone, and fear of "gun crime" is at a high, despite the fact that everyone who could be disarmed HAS been disarmed of everything but their teeth, fists and shoes, and cops are shooting disarmed and subdued Brazilian electricians in the head repeatedly... forget the queen, God save England:) With lawmakers and enforcers like that, who needs enemies? No surprise though, they're going to make yet ANOTHER Malum Prohibitum, and nobody's going to stop them, cuz "Goddamit they're English and they're Damn Proud Of It!!"
What on earth is your problem with England? This is just a hate filled rant with content randomly thrown in, lots of which is wrong. Your characterization of Queen loving, shoot before asking questions Brits is just weird. Have you ever met anyone from England?
Nearly everyone in England thinks that the lack of prosecution of the police in the Jean Charles de Menezes case was wrong. The police should have been brought to justice.
Most people don't care about CCTV everywhere. That's because most people realise that public places are public places, and know that it is _anyone's_ right to film them in public places, including the government. (Many people think the CCTV is basically a waste of public resources though).
Robberies and home invasions are actually down, last time I checked. I'm not sure what your point was about London alone.
Police in England are generally much more approachable than in other countries I've been to. From what I've seen and heard of US police (I've never been there), there is no comparison. Normal people are not scared of the police here (yet).
You missed pertinent points that would support your rant too, for example it's not just fear of gun crime that has increased since the ban on hand guns, gun crime itself has about doubled since the ban on hand guns in 1997.
Anyway, screw god, screw the queen, I'm just English. I didn't vote vote for the current government, and am still proud to be English.
Back to the actual discussion, and your main point... Making individuals pay for poor corporate policies does not change corporate policies. Punishing the corporations when their poor corporate policies lead to problems such as this does. Corporations don't really care about their employees most of the time - if they can make a scapegoat of someone who makes a small mistake, they will. They won't change the way they work until it starts hitting them financially. That's how corporations work.
If they made US based online gaming legal...those would be easily tracked for tax income, just like B&M casinos.
This is what is at the root of the problem. Allowing only US based online gambling would go _directly_ against WTO treaties. The US can't simply say fuck it, since the US relies on the WTO to regulate their exports, one example of which being their copyrights etc. Currently the WTO are claiming the US is breaking fair trade treaties since they do allow gambling, but do not allow other countries to compete. Allowing US online casinos would make the issue much more clear cut.
Also, if they allowed all online gambling to be legal, they wouldn't be able to tax the US companies much, because then overseas companies would be much more competitive.
It's already been done : IBM apparently filed this patent in April 2006. It was reported on/. but I can't seem to find the story right now. Truth is stranger than fiction, and all that...
One of the reasons people call Bush stupid is his complete and total lack of eloquence. Like it or not, people often associate intelligence with ability to form coherent sentences most of the time. I'm not sure how intelligent Bush really is, partially because he never proves his intelligence with decent argument or debate. Others do.
It's a voluntary process. No one is forcing you into anything. Better systems are good, yes, but it's not a right to not be scared by medical processes. They are scary a lot of the time, but their point is not to not be scary, it's to do you good. If you don't like them, don't have them.
ps. I'm pretty scared of loads of work that might need being done on my body... I hate the dentist, even though I've never had any major work done.
As the previous poster said, this study is _not_ about preferring one thing already tested over another not tested. This study is about preferring something not seen and avoiding something already avoided, with _no_ experience of the thing avoided except for the avoidance.
I don't want to be harsh, but please do not post 3 paragraphs on a relatively simple topic without reading what it is about. You sounded so authoritative too.
I'm not sure what your point is - my nomenclature may be off, I meant the Stanley cup finals. Anyway, ice hockey is IMO probably the biggest and most international sport originating outside of the UK (I nearly put England there and forgot golf;P). Hockey is definitely my favorite sport from across the pond. I can listen to it free, too, though this has unintended drawbacks - if I ever go across the Atlantic to Toronto, I'll have somewhere to pick up my home security. Alaaaaarm force! (I even remember the number)
Much of the money that the pharmaceutical industry gains is from overseas sales. It is a net gain for the country that the industry is in, and a net loss for the country it is not. Cutting out the middle man might work if exports were not taken into consideration. As it is, unless we get a multinational agreement not to allow commercial drug companies (haha), they will always be around somewhere.
I do agree with your sentiments, and do believe that government funded medical research should be a higher priority.
Most democracies don't have your problem at all - upset at the president not getting the popular vote looks weird. I don't remember the last time a party (and therefore their leader) in the UK got more than 50% of the vote.
One easy way to break the duopoly is to enable proportional representation. It's obvious, easy and democratic. No politicians will ever agree to it though. An alternative is partial proportional representation, partial area representation.
I don't know exactly how the US system works. In the UK, the system works entirely on area representation, like the US. However, in the UK the voters vote directly for their member of parliament, and the constituencies are much much smaller than in the US. You get independent MPs voted in. From what I see, you don't get that in the US, at all.
The main advantage I see of our system than that in the US is the smaller constituency size.
I personally _hate_ the form of democracy we have now - I don't think it works well, and needs to be replaced. I think that small scale pyramidal representation is the answer. A person, along with 10 others chooses their representative. They, along with others chosen choose theirs. All the way up to the top (only 9 steps for any country). At any point people can vote out their representative.
Violent fantasies are a natural part of growing up in most people. I had fantasies of becoming all powerful and punishing those who disagreed with me when I was younger. Someone who is bullied will often have violent fantasies of becoming stronger and kicking the ass of those who are bullying them. These are not things that are not normal. Everyone has fantasies that give them more power than is normal.
You missed a fifth option : Accept your desire but realise it cannot be realised, you can't satiate your desire. Many people go through life wanting billions of dollars, but know that they're never going to get it. Just because you want something doesn't mean you are going to act on that desire, or do something stupid when they can't get it. That is not repression of anything, that is just realism. I'd like to fuck a nice eighteen year old now, doesn't mean I'm going to act on that impulse and rape the next 18 year old who walks past.
That's one thing that confuses me completely. They don't have _any_ of my money. However, I watched the world series live this year completely legally, without adverts. How did I do this? I live in the UK, and channel 5 aired them all in full. When the US broadcast goes to adverts, in the UK we get local commentary on the game.
Channel 5 is a free to view channel that relies on advertising for it's revenue. It is not affiliated with the BBC or has anything to do with the license fee. I doubt they could get a huge amount of money with advertising at the time most US sports show anyway (all the world series games started at about 1am here). However, _somebody_ is paying for channel 5 to air MLB, and it isn't me.
My best guess on who is paying for MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL (yes, we get the others too) to be aired on five is the MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL. I can't imagine channel 5 are paying much, if anything, since they do not air adverts during the games.
This is mostly a rant on how where you live affects what you can watch, and how in some cases the MLB does not care who watches their games for free. Restrictions will only apply to the populace who wants it most - if the populace doesn't want it, there is no need for restrictions. We have the same thing in the UK - it costs an arm and a leg to watch any football on TV (excluding events in law that must be on standard tv, that is the FA cup, the world cup, and England's competitive home games iirc). Anyone who wants to follow their own club on TV has to pay through the nose... though I'm not often affected by this because I support Colchester United:P. (though Colchester are now riding high and are on TV now and again)
Just to clarify - channel 5 generally only show four US sports events a week - on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, they have crap phone in game shows on (which presumably net them more profit). They have shown the MLB world series in full for at least a few years, they show the Stanley cup in full. The Superbowl goes to ITV (channel 3, also commercial) who generally do a god awful job of covering it with random rugby celebrities. The NBA I'm not as interested in, but I think it goes somewhere else in finals too.
Wow... this must be nearly my longest/. post, and I've not really made a pertinent point. Oh, DRM is crap. There you go.
You're not seriously suggesting that all female astronauts should not have sex prior to them going into space are you? Because, as others have pointed out, no form of contraception is flawless. Asking married women not to have sex with their husbands months before their mission is completely heartless, and I would think would be counterproductive too. Abstaining from sex within a previously sexually active relationship is difficult, and cannot be monitored either.
Refraining from becoming pregnant is not as easy as it sounds. I know several people who were conceived while their parents were using very high percentage based contraception (no, not just the pill).
I'd agree with this. I'm 6'6, and about 225, giving me a BMI of just over 25, ie overweight. Just about anyone who judges me would say I'm about average build for my height. I'm not a stick insect, but I'm definitely not fat. One thing that has changed over the past 8 years or so (I'm just coming up to 30, 6 days away:P), is my body shape though. I've got so much flabbier and so much less healthy, and so much worse looking without changing my weight at all. It has fluctuated over these years though (I've been as low as 200 and as high as 240). My waist size used to be 32, now it's up to 36, without putting weight on.
One thing I do win though is the easiest to calculate BMI. I'm 2 metres tall and weigh (currently just over) 100kg. 100/2^2 isn't that tough:).
I just can't believe I got all the way down to this comment before I realised why I'd clicked on the RSS link in the first place. Then I remembered why I clicked on the link, and was sad that I wasn't going to get to read about our new developer-targeting lego-like robot overlords:(.
Everyone knows China as the world's foremost assholes already
No, everyone does not know this. The US and the UK invaded Iraq at the cost of hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. I am not defending China here, but from where I am sitting, they're not invading and killing as much.
I want to think and do and say as I fuckin feel like, within the limits of law
Don't you realise they're just different laws? Many people in Europe think it's repressive to require women to cover their breasts on the beach. Many people in America think it's repressive to require women to cover their faces in the street.
Freedom is far from absolute. People are quick to jump on something that they consider wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Scaling everything up to the player's level is the easy way out. It allows for sloppy world creation, and results in a dull experience in which the game is playing you. In my opinion, hard places should be available from the start, and you SHOULD NOT GO THERE. Creating worlds in which one can progress so that they can tackle the tough bits when they are ready is far more difficult than just making everything ok hard at every level.
A couple of games I think that does this relatively well are X2 and X3. If you try to go too far too fast, you'll be in for a shock. They're far from perfect, but they are great games.
Very true, an I can't believe your comment was the first I read here that said that. Levels are a _good_ thing for most games, be they direct or contrived. I will not ever generally save in the middle of a firefight in a FPS or other game, because I'm playing it right now, and it's a dumb time to save. No one wants a game that is 100% action throughout for 24 hours plus (I think). Levels are also analogous to time dependent events in lots of games - it's harder to describe World War II if the player has to play through 6 years of a game (less if you're American obviously ;))
I made a similar point about this a while ago - Why do console titles always place save points immediately prior to dangerous sections? The obvious reason is that people can save and reload and try again, and don't have to worry about dying. In game characters dying is par for the course nowadays - people expect to die loads of times. I personally think that games haven't got easier (I think games have generally got a lot tougher), but games have introduced save/reload as a required feature.
I also personally _love_ Angband and its variants. My favourite two are Zangband and TOME
Ok... where to start. I'm assuming you're using RAID 1 (mirroring) rather than RAID 0 (striping). If not, I'm confused. Also, the first six months of any drive's life is the 6 months in which it is _most_ likely to fail, no matter how old it is. By always having new drives, you are increasing the likelihood that one of them will fail. It may not be intuitive that older drives are more reliable than brand spanking new ones, but it's true.
I absolutely _hate_ the term metamaterial. I know about its use and the reasons for its creation, but metamaterial is a stupid word, which does not mean what it says. Structure, for a long long time has been more important than composition. Carbon is a fun example. It is absolutely oxymoronic in my opinion to claim something above a material while using that material as an example...
I actually only meant that almost was a poor term, since it implies less than, in the original comment. I even said "It's close to the same area as the US", so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
What would Canada's land area be without the bunch of bodies of water? I'm genuinely curious here, since I've always thought Canada was the second biggest country in the world.
I also said grammar because of your use of except. The way you used it your sentence didn't make any sense whatsoever. I don't think "except for" means what you think it means. I know I'm being picky, and most people will understand anyway, but the sentence doesn't parse. If you replaced "except for" with "remove", it would work.
Anyway, I'm being a complete grammar nazi now, I've been looking at /. too long, and I should have better things to do, so I'll stop. :P
My point really was that corporations have to take at least most of the blame. Numpties who screw up will occur in any organisation, no matter how well it is run. However, the corporation needs to have a system in place to either not let them screw up, or minimise the damage when they do. Many corporations just blame the current numpty, and then go and hire another one.
Corporations are more and more less restricted by national boundaries - Individual government regulations do not work very well for multinationals.
Canada is larger than the US - 2nd largest country in the world. It's close to the same area as the US, it's not almost the same area.
Ethnic differences can lead to conflict, but they do not necessarily. Many countries have ethnically diverse populations without conflict.
Carrying arms is not significant, as I see it. I'd be interested to see any kind of examples in which a democracy was railroaded by others because they had the weapons. The US population has lots of arms, yet those with them have a lot more government intrusion than some other countries.
What on earth is your problem with England? This is just a hate filled rant with content randomly thrown in, lots of which is wrong. Your characterization of Queen loving, shoot before asking questions Brits is just weird. Have you ever met anyone from England?
Nearly everyone in England thinks that the lack of prosecution of the police in the Jean Charles de Menezes case was wrong. The police should have been brought to justice.
Most people don't care about CCTV everywhere. That's because most people realise that public places are public places, and know that it is _anyone's_ right to film them in public places, including the government. (Many people think the CCTV is basically a waste of public resources though).
Robberies and home invasions are actually down, last time I checked. I'm not sure what your point was about London alone.
Police in England are generally much more approachable than in other countries I've been to. From what I've seen and heard of US police (I've never been there), there is no comparison. Normal people are not scared of the police here (yet).
You missed pertinent points that would support your rant too, for example it's not just fear of gun crime that has increased since the ban on hand guns, gun crime itself has about doubled since the ban on hand guns in 1997.
Anyway, screw god, screw the queen, I'm just English. I didn't vote vote for the current government, and am still proud to be English.
Back to the actual discussion, and your main point... Making individuals pay for poor corporate policies does not change corporate policies. Punishing the corporations when their poor corporate policies lead to problems such as this does. Corporations don't really care about their employees most of the time - if they can make a scapegoat of someone who makes a small mistake, they will. They won't change the way they work until it starts hitting them financially. That's how corporations work.
I hope you checked your spelling and grammar in that message to your Rep ;)
If they made US based online gaming legal...those would be easily tracked for tax income, just like B&M casinos.
This is what is at the root of the problem. Allowing only US based online gambling would go _directly_ against WTO treaties. The US can't simply say fuck it, since the US relies on the WTO to regulate their exports, one example of which being their copyrights etc. Currently the WTO are claiming the US is breaking fair trade treaties since they do allow gambling, but do not allow other countries to compete. Allowing US online casinos would make the issue much more clear cut.Also, if they allowed all online gambling to be legal, they wouldn't be able to tax the US companies much, because then overseas companies would be much more competitive.
It's already been done : IBM apparently filed this patent in April 2006. It was reported on /. but I can't seem to find the story right now. Truth is stranger than fiction, and all that...
One of the reasons people call Bush stupid is his complete and total lack of eloquence. Like it or not, people often associate intelligence with ability to form coherent sentences most of the time. I'm not sure how intelligent Bush really is, partially because he never proves his intelligence with decent argument or debate. Others do.
It's a voluntary process. No one is forcing you into anything. Better systems are good, yes, but it's not a right to not be scared by medical processes. They are scary a lot of the time, but their point is not to not be scary, it's to do you good. If you don't like them, don't have them.
ps. I'm pretty scared of loads of work that might need being done on my body... I hate the dentist, even though I've never had any major work done.
As the previous poster said, this study is _not_ about preferring one thing already tested over another not tested. This study is about preferring something not seen and avoiding something already avoided, with _no_ experience of the thing avoided except for the avoidance.
I don't want to be harsh, but please do not post 3 paragraphs on a relatively simple topic without reading what it is about. You sounded so authoritative too.
I'm not sure what your point is - my nomenclature may be off, I meant the Stanley cup finals. Anyway, ice hockey is IMO probably the biggest and most international sport originating outside of the UK (I nearly put England there and forgot golf ;P). Hockey is definitely my favorite sport from across the pond. I can listen to it free, too, though this has unintended drawbacks - if I ever go across the Atlantic to Toronto, I'll have somewhere to pick up my home security. Alaaaaarm force! (I even remember the number)
Much of the money that the pharmaceutical industry gains is from overseas sales. It is a net gain for the country that the industry is in, and a net loss for the country it is not. Cutting out the middle man might work if exports were not taken into consideration. As it is, unless we get a multinational agreement not to allow commercial drug companies (haha), they will always be around somewhere.
I do agree with your sentiments, and do believe that government funded medical research should be a higher priority.
Most democracies don't have your problem at all - upset at the president not getting the popular vote looks weird. I don't remember the last time a party (and therefore their leader) in the UK got more than 50% of the vote.
One easy way to break the duopoly is to enable proportional representation. It's obvious, easy and democratic. No politicians will ever agree to it though. An alternative is partial proportional representation, partial area representation.
I don't know exactly how the US system works. In the UK, the system works entirely on area representation, like the US. However, in the UK the voters vote directly for their member of parliament, and the constituencies are much much smaller than in the US. You get independent MPs voted in. From what I see, you don't get that in the US, at all.
The main advantage I see of our system than that in the US is the smaller constituency size.
I personally _hate_ the form of democracy we have now - I don't think it works well, and needs to be replaced. I think that small scale pyramidal representation is the answer. A person, along with 10 others chooses their representative. They, along with others chosen choose theirs. All the way up to the top (only 9 steps for any country). At any point people can vote out their representative.
Violent fantasies are a natural part of growing up in most people. I had fantasies of becoming all powerful and punishing those who disagreed with me when I was younger. Someone who is bullied will often have violent fantasies of becoming stronger and kicking the ass of those who are bullying them. These are not things that are not normal. Everyone has fantasies that give them more power than is normal.
You missed a fifth option : Accept your desire but realise it cannot be realised, you can't satiate your desire. Many people go through life wanting billions of dollars, but know that they're never going to get it. Just because you want something doesn't mean you are going to act on that desire, or do something stupid when they can't get it. That is not repression of anything, that is just realism. I'd like to fuck a nice eighteen year old now, doesn't mean I'm going to act on that impulse and rape the next 18 year old who walks past.
That's one thing that confuses me completely. They don't have _any_ of my money. However, I watched the world series live this year completely legally, without adverts. How did I do this? I live in the UK, and channel 5 aired them all in full. When the US broadcast goes to adverts, in the UK we get local commentary on the game.
Channel 5 is a free to view channel that relies on advertising for it's revenue. It is not affiliated with the BBC or has anything to do with the license fee. I doubt they could get a huge amount of money with advertising at the time most US sports show anyway (all the world series games started at about 1am here). However, _somebody_ is paying for channel 5 to air MLB, and it isn't me.
My best guess on who is paying for MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL (yes, we get the others too) to be aired on five is the MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL. I can't imagine channel 5 are paying much, if anything, since they do not air adverts during the games.
This is mostly a rant on how where you live affects what you can watch, and how in some cases the MLB does not care who watches their games for free. Restrictions will only apply to the populace who wants it most - if the populace doesn't want it, there is no need for restrictions. We have the same thing in the UK - it costs an arm and a leg to watch any football on TV (excluding events in law that must be on standard tv, that is the FA cup, the world cup, and England's competitive home games iirc). Anyone who wants to follow their own club on TV has to pay through the nose... though I'm not often affected by this because I support Colchester United :P. (though Colchester are now riding high and are on TV now and again)
Just to clarify - channel 5 generally only show four US sports events a week - on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday and Saturday, they have crap phone in game shows on (which presumably net them more profit). They have shown the MLB world series in full for at least a few years, they show the Stanley cup in full. The Superbowl goes to ITV (channel 3, also commercial) who generally do a god awful job of covering it with random rugby celebrities. The NBA I'm not as interested in, but I think it goes somewhere else in finals too.
Wow... this must be nearly my longest /. post, and I've not really made a pertinent point. Oh, DRM is crap. There you go.
You're not seriously suggesting that all female astronauts should not have sex prior to them going into space are you? Because, as others have pointed out, no form of contraception is flawless. Asking married women not to have sex with their husbands months before their mission is completely heartless, and I would think would be counterproductive too. Abstaining from sex within a previously sexually active relationship is difficult, and cannot be monitored either.
Refraining from becoming pregnant is not as easy as it sounds. I know several people who were conceived while their parents were using very high percentage based contraception (no, not just the pill).
I'd agree with this. I'm 6'6, and about 225, giving me a BMI of just over 25, ie overweight. Just about anyone who judges me would say I'm about average build for my height. I'm not a stick insect, but I'm definitely not fat. One thing that has changed over the past 8 years or so (I'm just coming up to 30, 6 days away :P), is my body shape though. I've got so much flabbier and so much less healthy, and so much worse looking without changing my weight at all. It has fluctuated over these years though (I've been as low as 200 and as high as 240). My waist size used to be 32, now it's up to 36, without putting weight on.
One thing I do win though is the easiest to calculate BMI. I'm 2 metres tall and weigh (currently just over) 100kg. 100/2^2 isn't that tough :).
I just can't believe I got all the way down to this comment before I realised why I'd clicked on the RSS link in the first place. Then I remembered why I clicked on the link, and was sad that I wasn't going to get to read about our new developer-targeting lego-like robot overlords :(.
Everyone knows China as the world's foremost assholes already
No, everyone does not know this. The US and the UK invaded Iraq at the cost of hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. I am not defending China here, but from where I am sitting, they're not invading and killing as much.
I want to think and do and say as I fuckin feel like, within the limits of law
Don't you realise they're just different laws? Many people in Europe think it's repressive to require women to cover their breasts on the beach. Many people in America think it's repressive to require women to cover their faces in the street.
Freedom is far from absolute. People are quick to jump on something that they consider wrong.
If China do decide to buy land off of Russia, is it not a good thing by your argument?
Also, China has been _far_ less involved with recent wars than major western powers have. Major western powers are the main threat here, not China.