I'm not sure that always holding drivers responsible for accidents with bikes in every situation is a good idea if you're at first trying to encourage cycling without a supporting infrastructure; it might be better to actually encourage better use of the roads on both sides before cycling is a common form of transportation in a particular area. While I've had a friend clipped a couple of times by cars (who often like to then just flee the scene), I've seen far more situations where the only reason the cyclist was not sent off of their bike was because of either sheer dumb luck or a particularly good set of brakes on the car that actually had the right of way (I usually see cyclists run a red light roughly once every week or two, and stop signs basically multiple times per day, regardless of what's actually happening at that intersection). Unfortunately with cycling as a main form of transportation being uncommon, while many drivers are unaware of how they should react many cyclists are also unaware of what they should be doing for basic safety and tend to treat riding on the road like riding on the sidewalk.
If my city had better bike lane coverage-- it isn't bad, but it's spotty and sometimes lazy-- it probably wouldn't be a bad idea, but when you're still at the point you need to be concerned about bikes going down the yellow between rows of cars (another thing I see not infrequently one some of the one-way streets) and speeding out into intersections from spots that are difficult to see from *both* sides of oncoming traffic I don't believe that sort of law would be appropriate. It's frustrating, though, when cyclists who are actually well-mannered and make excellent use of the don't seem to be getting the kind of protection (or respect from other cars) that they need.
A site I use (one which I would like to have a strong password) has an interesting system where they have very specific password requirements (uppercase, some numbers, letter, punctuation) which is all well and good... but then they only allow 8-12 characters. In the meantime, the username (which also requires a number in it, for some reason), is 6-20 characters.
I cannot fathom why they allow longer usernames but don't allow longer passwords.
Local brick and mortar stores already get my business far, far more often for one primary reason: convenience. OK, a second reason too: shipping costs often drive the cost of goods up to what an item would probably cost with a sales tax anyway. The time when it's really useful to buy an item online is when it's a generic item being sold without the massive markup certain things get in physical stores (cabling, I'm looking at you). Local small businesses have much more to fear from chain retailers than they do from the internet.
Sales tax is a particularly frustrating tax, as it's fairly regressive and I'd personally rather see property taxes and the like be the big way to raise money for local government. Unfortunately, my state is one of the states in which the voters shortsightedly decided to cap property taxes.
Except that City of Heroes/Villains rarely costs more than $30 for most of the boxes I can think of. They almost always come with a free month, which is $15 off. Oh, and there are no paid expansions, so once someone buys the original box, that's all they're going to really have to buy. After that, revenue is either:
A. Optional packs of small costume items or temp powers they sell (usually around $10).
B. Codes for stuff from special boxed versions. While these tend to cost $20, they come with a free month once again, so they effectively cost $5.
Oh, and you can just buy access to City of Heroes/Villains online and download the client. It's $20.
I should also mention that when I bought my copy way back when, it came with several free things like maps and toys. It's pretty obvious that they're not making a huge amount from box sales (in fact, I think one of the developers has actually stated this on the forum).
Uh, done? City of Heroes pretty much fits that bill, newer loot system aside. If you're really picky, Enhancements might be considered gear, but if you plan on ignoring the invention system (which is actually pretty easy to do, and you can sell the drops for it for cash) you'll have the ability to use the most powerful types of enhancements by level 22, and the game goes up to 50. From there on, your character gets more powerful by you choosing new powers and adding slots to those powers which you drop in enhancements as needed. Definitely a different feel from a gear system.
If you decide you want to participate in the invention system, it's still fairly unlike gear. The difference in effectiveness between stuff you get at level 30 and level 50 isn't that large once you've started stacking it due to constraints on how much aspects of your powers can be directly improved.
Interestingly, due to the particular comments modded high enough for me to see, I managed to read
I suppose it could go both ways, the first way with Peter Jackson doing a great job of tying the two books together and leading straight into the LOTR trilogy, the other with Peter Jackson unzipping and urinating on JRR Tolkien's masterpieces. followed immediately by
He actually did. There is an enormous amount of material he wrote that was summarized in the Silmarillion. You can buy large volumes of books containing his notes. and suddenly had a very odd mental image.
Problem with this, though. You're not everyone. Personally, for the next month or so, I'm going to feel tired and lethargic all the time since I'm shifting my actual sleep schedule off. During the summer, it will be light until 10 PM or so, which will further screw with my sense of time. In the short-term, this morning for example, I had to wake up, turn on the heat and turn on lights. Today was warmer than it has been in the last while, but waking up earlier forced me to heat up my apartment a bit before it was comfortable. I also got to leave for work when it was still just barely after sunrise, instead of when it was nice and sunny. If you're living somewhere where you don't have light in the summer evening hours, consider moving a bit; I personally feel irritated as hell right now and will feel a bit off until DST ends, from past experience.
I can say that, as a usually fairly casual gamer, high-definition gaming is interesting, but not required. After actually managing to get a pair of component cables for the Gamecube (it's really, really frustrating that these are so hard to get ahold of; I think Nintendo really dropped the ball on this one), I can honestly say that, after playing several games on the systems of the Gamecube's generation, it looks the best. Games on the XBox are generally (even at 480p, which is the highest any of the games we felt like playing supported; I'm sure 720p games would probably look pretty good) not any more attractive than a regular SDTV, and obviously more pixelated. The PS2, aside from a few games that actually look nice, tends to look a bit crappy (disclaimer: this is an older PS2; the newer slim models might be better). The Gamecube? We've played several different games on it now, and every response has been something along the lines of "That's so pretty".
Going into the next generation, assuming the Wii looks as good with its games, there shouldn't be much to complain about on either an HDTV or SDTV. However, there *have* been complaints about games on the 360 not looking right on SDTVs, which, even if they'll be going out of style, are still going to be used for a good number of gamers for a few years to come; that's only going to hurt it. Perhaps the PS3 will be better, though. I probably won't know for a while, however, since I don't know anyone who wants to actually buy one.
That's only a threat if you really want to look at it like one. It looks more like he's trying to get across that what they're doing has had some really messed-up consequences before, not that he's planning to go shooting up his school. It's likely that the part you quotes was written *after* the school district went out of its way (very far out of its way) to be overbearing. It's likely the kid is extremely frustrated by that point, and he's *right* that it might start a community backlash. That part doesn't even resemble a threat. Additionally, how old is this kid? 16? 17? Columbine probably happened when he was in elementary school; I doubt it has the same impact on him that it did on people who were in high school at the time. Even still, it just looks like he's making a point. Or trying and failing due to a lacking education in debate techniques.
Furthermore, this was done *at home*, with no school equipment, persons, resources, etc. being involved. The school has no right to try to punish a kid for doing something like this. If they had gone to the police and they police had suggested it, it *might* be slightly more reasonable. Even still, it would be a matter for the police to handle then, not the school. Schools, even while I was in high school, were trying their best to overstep their bounds in and out of school, and they need no more encouragement.
Does it seem to anyone else lately that tech writers seem to have run out of ideas and are simply rolling dice with phrases on them to come up with stories?
"Microsoft... and Apple... are teaming up... to write native applications... for Linux."
While it'd be interesting to see Apple pull this off, I think this would be something that might be "discovered" by rumor sites far in advance of it coming out. It's not something simple to do, and there would be a lot of build-up involved.
Actually, I wouldn't mind a set of those dice. "Oracle... will sue... Bill Gates... for trade secrets violations."
I'm ashamed of whoever moderated this funny! This poor person has a real problem, and all you can do is laugh! He ought to seek treatment for what is obviously a facehugger with poor aim.
Although I somewhat agree with the 500 word limit (though not that low; sometimes there are things which require a lot of description to make them unambigious), your other two ideas are almost frighteningly abusable. Think, for a moment, about how much power this would give the determined. A party could start trying to propose as many laws as they could, knowing full well that they wouldn't pass, and use this to take down other laws. Not only that, if anyone wanted to try to negotiate which laws would be removed, there would inevitably be times when good, useful laws would be removed to save other slightly more useful ones.
Same deal with spending. Guess where that $2 cut might come from. Military? Nope. Government works? Unlikely? Medical care, welfare, or other public benefits? Probably.
I'm all for trying to reduce government spending and trying to cut down on some of the absolutely useless laws we have, but that's like giving the less-than-scrupulous members of Congress a free present.
I'd be quite happy to see more episodes of Futurama (I'd probably even get cable service to watch the new episodes), but I do have to wonder if they'll be able to get all of the original cast back. One of the reasons (true or not) that I've heard about why the show wasn't getting back together was that the cast was mostly elsewhere and unavailable. Has this changed? The voices really work with the characters, and it'd be rather jarring to have them change.
On another note, one thing Futurama did a lot of was somewhat dated humor; the celebrities they used were popular while the show was going, which makes it seem slightly out of date now (but only in certain episodes). While this can make for a very funny show (who else here would like to see certain current political figures come up as heads-in-jars?), I wonder if they'd continue the practice? Not that it really matters; some of my favorite episodes involved little to no influence of "historical" figures.
As a note, quite a few of the "unusual" configuration options are actually documented in KDE. Seeing them is relatively simple, in fact... if you've set up your Window Decorations correctly. Go in, modify your Window Decorations, and add a small button called "Help". It looks like a question mark. For most options, you can click that, and then click on the option and see an explanation. It's very helpful, and it even explains the "focus follows mouse" "focus under mouse" and "focus strictly under mouse" options. However, it's also incredibly stupid that you have to modify Window Decorations to add it in. It should be a default item, and one that is specifically highlighted when you first log in to KDE. It may be default on some configurations that I've not seen, but in my experience I've always had to add it there manually. In any case, aside from a few still-undocumented options, it makes the KDE configurations choices a lot simpler to use.
I think the best part of his response is in the last paragraph, where he appears to threaten the Florida Bar Association:
If The Bar proceeds with any of these, it does so at its own peril. The Bar paid me once. I am certainly willing it pay me again, along with others.
In addition to this, he is generally insulting to everyone involved. I think Penny Arcade had it right when they said, "Wow. He must be an incredible lawyer."
No, I haven't filed any bug reports or enhancement reports or even at least checked that it's in the pipeline, or used any other means to inform the developers about a damn thing, because [b]I've got better shit to do and it's not my God damn job.[/b]
No, what makes you a troll (or troll-like) is that you seem to think that the developers should be able to fix something they may not know about. Since you seem to be a student, let me put it this way: expecting developers to fix bugs if people don't report them is akin to your professor or teaching assistants giving you a low grade on a project then refusing to tell you what you did wrong, but expecting you to fix everything.
The key to making things work better is taking five minutes to figure out what went wrong and tell the person who can fix it about the problem. I'm not saying you don't have a right to complain if you don't do this, however, you complaints are going to look a lot less valid if you refuse to even try to explain them.
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I'm not sure that always holding drivers responsible for accidents with bikes in every situation is a good idea if you're at first trying to encourage cycling without a supporting infrastructure; it might be better to actually encourage better use of the roads on both sides before cycling is a common form of transportation in a particular area. While I've had a friend clipped a couple of times by cars (who often like to then just flee the scene), I've seen far more situations where the only reason the cyclist was not sent off of their bike was because of either sheer dumb luck or a particularly good set of brakes on the car that actually had the right of way (I usually see cyclists run a red light roughly once every week or two, and stop signs basically multiple times per day, regardless of what's actually happening at that intersection). Unfortunately with cycling as a main form of transportation being uncommon, while many drivers are unaware of how they should react many cyclists are also unaware of what they should be doing for basic safety and tend to treat riding on the road like riding on the sidewalk.
If my city had better bike lane coverage-- it isn't bad, but it's spotty and sometimes lazy-- it probably wouldn't be a bad idea, but when you're still at the point you need to be concerned about bikes going down the yellow between rows of cars (another thing I see not infrequently one some of the one-way streets) and speeding out into intersections from spots that are difficult to see from *both* sides of oncoming traffic I don't believe that sort of law would be appropriate. It's frustrating, though, when cyclists who are actually well-mannered and make excellent use of the don't seem to be getting the kind of protection (or respect from other cars) that they need.
A site I use (one which I would like to have a strong password) has an interesting system where they have very specific password requirements (uppercase, some numbers, letter, punctuation) which is all well and good... but then they only allow 8-12 characters. In the meantime, the username (which also requires a number in it, for some reason), is 6-20 characters.
I cannot fathom why they allow longer usernames but don't allow longer passwords.
Local brick and mortar stores already get my business far, far more often for one primary reason: convenience. OK, a second reason too: shipping costs often drive the cost of goods up to what an item would probably cost with a sales tax anyway. The time when it's really useful to buy an item online is when it's a generic item being sold without the massive markup certain things get in physical stores (cabling, I'm looking at you). Local small businesses have much more to fear from chain retailers than they do from the internet.
Sales tax is a particularly frustrating tax, as it's fairly regressive and I'd personally rather see property taxes and the like be the big way to raise money for local government. Unfortunately, my state is one of the states in which the voters shortsightedly decided to cap property taxes.
As far as I can tell, most crime-fighting is funded with heavy hyperbole, poor logic and appeals to emotion instead of sound thinking.
Except that City of Heroes/Villains rarely costs more than $30 for most of the boxes I can think of. They almost always come with a free month, which is $15 off. Oh, and there are no paid expansions, so once someone buys the original box, that's all they're going to really have to buy. After that, revenue is either: A. Optional packs of small costume items or temp powers they sell (usually around $10). B. Codes for stuff from special boxed versions. While these tend to cost $20, they come with a free month once again, so they effectively cost $5. Oh, and you can just buy access to City of Heroes/Villains online and download the client. It's $20. I should also mention that when I bought my copy way back when, it came with several free things like maps and toys. It's pretty obvious that they're not making a huge amount from box sales (in fact, I think one of the developers has actually stated this on the forum).
Uh, done? City of Heroes pretty much fits that bill, newer loot system aside. If you're really picky, Enhancements might be considered gear, but if you plan on ignoring the invention system (which is actually pretty easy to do, and you can sell the drops for it for cash) you'll have the ability to use the most powerful types of enhancements by level 22, and the game goes up to 50. From there on, your character gets more powerful by you choosing new powers and adding slots to those powers which you drop in enhancements as needed. Definitely a different feel from a gear system.
If you decide you want to participate in the invention system, it's still fairly unlike gear. The difference in effectiveness between stuff you get at level 30 and level 50 isn't that large once you've started stacking it due to constraints on how much aspects of your powers can be directly improved.
Problem with this, though. You're not everyone. Personally, for the next month or so, I'm going to feel tired and lethargic all the time since I'm shifting my actual sleep schedule off. During the summer, it will be light until 10 PM or so, which will further screw with my sense of time.
In the short-term, this morning for example, I had to wake up, turn on the heat and turn on lights. Today was warmer than it has been in the last while, but waking up earlier forced me to heat up my apartment a bit before it was comfortable. I also got to leave for work when it was still just barely after sunrise, instead of when it was nice and sunny.
If you're living somewhere where you don't have light in the summer evening hours, consider moving a bit; I personally feel irritated as hell right now and will feel a bit off until DST ends, from past experience.
I can say that, as a usually fairly casual gamer, high-definition gaming is interesting, but not required. After actually managing to get a pair of component cables for the Gamecube (it's really, really frustrating that these are so hard to get ahold of; I think Nintendo really dropped the ball on this one), I can honestly say that, after playing several games on the systems of the Gamecube's generation, it looks the best. Games on the XBox are generally (even at 480p, which is the highest any of the games we felt like playing supported; I'm sure 720p games would probably look pretty good) not any more attractive than a regular SDTV, and obviously more pixelated. The PS2, aside from a few games that actually look nice, tends to look a bit crappy (disclaimer: this is an older PS2; the newer slim models might be better). The Gamecube? We've played several different games on it now, and every response has been something along the lines of "That's so pretty".
Going into the next generation, assuming the Wii looks as good with its games, there shouldn't be much to complain about on either an HDTV or SDTV. However, there *have* been complaints about games on the 360 not looking right on SDTVs, which, even if they'll be going out of style, are still going to be used for a good number of gamers for a few years to come; that's only going to hurt it. Perhaps the PS3 will be better, though. I probably won't know for a while, however, since I don't know anyone who wants to actually buy one.
That's only a threat if you really want to look at it like one. It looks more like he's trying to get across that what they're doing has had some really messed-up consequences before, not that he's planning to go shooting up his school. It's likely that the part you quotes was written *after* the school district went out of its way (very far out of its way) to be overbearing. It's likely the kid is extremely frustrated by that point, and he's *right* that it might start a community backlash. That part doesn't even resemble a threat. Additionally, how old is this kid? 16? 17? Columbine probably happened when he was in elementary school; I doubt it has the same impact on him that it did on people who were in high school at the time. Even still, it just looks like he's making a point. Or trying and failing due to a lacking education in debate techniques.
Furthermore, this was done *at home*, with no school equipment, persons, resources, etc. being involved. The school has no right to try to punish a kid for doing something like this. If they had gone to the police and they police had suggested it, it *might* be slightly more reasonable. Even still, it would be a matter for the police to handle then, not the school. Schools, even while I was in high school, were trying their best to overstep their bounds in and out of school, and they need no more encouragement.
Does it seem to anyone else lately that tech writers seem to have run out of ideas and are simply rolling dice with phrases on them to come up with stories?
"Microsoft... and Apple... are teaming up... to write native applications... for Linux."
While it'd be interesting to see Apple pull this off, I think this would be something that might be "discovered" by rumor sites far in advance of it coming out. It's not something simple to do, and there would be a lot of build-up involved.
Actually, I wouldn't mind a set of those dice. "Oracle... will sue... Bill Gates... for trade secrets violations."
I'm ashamed of whoever moderated this funny! This poor person has a real problem, and all you can do is laugh! He ought to seek treatment for what is obviously a facehugger with poor aim.
From the top of the Wikipedia page: This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
I think I'll decline to try to help expanding a list of failed assassination attempts, if you get my drift.
Although I somewhat agree with the 500 word limit (though not that low; sometimes there are things which require a lot of description to make them unambigious), your other two ideas are almost frighteningly abusable. Think, for a moment, about how much power this would give the determined. A party could start trying to propose as many laws as they could, knowing full well that they wouldn't pass, and use this to take down other laws. Not only that, if anyone wanted to try to negotiate which laws would be removed, there would inevitably be times when good, useful laws would be removed to save other slightly more useful ones.
Same deal with spending. Guess where that $2 cut might come from. Military? Nope. Government works? Unlikely? Medical care, welfare, or other public benefits? Probably.
I'm all for trying to reduce government spending and trying to cut down on some of the absolutely useless laws we have, but that's like giving the less-than-scrupulous members of Congress a free present.
I'd be quite happy to see more episodes of Futurama (I'd probably even get cable service to watch the new episodes), but I do have to wonder if they'll be able to get all of the original cast back. One of the reasons (true or not) that I've heard about why the show wasn't getting back together was that the cast was mostly elsewhere and unavailable. Has this changed? The voices really work with the characters, and it'd be rather jarring to have them change.
On another note, one thing Futurama did a lot of was somewhat dated humor; the celebrities they used were popular while the show was going, which makes it seem slightly out of date now (but only in certain episodes). While this can make for a very funny show (who else here would like to see certain current political figures come up as heads-in-jars?), I wonder if they'd continue the practice? Not that it really matters; some of my favorite episodes involved little to no influence of "historical" figures.
As a note, quite a few of the "unusual" configuration options are actually documented in KDE. Seeing them is relatively simple, in fact... if you've set up your Window Decorations correctly. Go in, modify your Window Decorations, and add a small button called "Help". It looks like a question mark. For most options, you can click that, and then click on the option and see an explanation. It's very helpful, and it even explains the "focus follows mouse" "focus under mouse" and "focus strictly under mouse" options.
However, it's also incredibly stupid that you have to modify Window Decorations to add it in. It should be a default item, and one that is specifically highlighted when you first log in to KDE. It may be default on some configurations that I've not seen, but in my experience I've always had to add it there manually.
In any case, aside from a few still-undocumented options, it makes the KDE configurations choices a lot simpler to use.
No, I haven't filed any bug reports or enhancement reports or even at least checked that it's in the pipeline, or used any other means to inform the developers about a damn thing, because [b]I've got better shit to do and it's not my God damn job.[/b]
No, what makes you a troll (or troll-like) is that you seem to think that the developers should be able to fix something they may not know about. Since you seem to be a student, let me put it this way: expecting developers to fix bugs if people don't report them is akin to your professor or teaching assistants giving you a low grade on a project then refusing to tell you what you did wrong, but expecting you to fix everything.
The key to making things work better is taking five minutes to figure out what went wrong and tell the person who can fix it about the problem. I'm not saying you don't have a right to complain if you don't do this, however, you complaints are going to look a lot less valid if you refuse to even try to explain them.