Municipalities run it "as a business" rather than admitting it's a service, a public utility, and admitting that hey, we need to put in enough tax money to make it cover enough areas.
Of course, the problem there is that there's a horrible political stigma attached to public transportation. Anything "public" has for decades been considered "communist" and therefore "evil". We can't, as a people, pool our resources or share anything because "sharing" is for hippies. However, once you say, "we're pooling our resources in order to run a cut-throat business that will profit through amoral methods," well... that's ok then. Just make sure no morals creep in there.
I mean, I hate commies and hippies as much as the next guy, but can't we try to come up with efficient solutions for our society without getting too caught up in an ideology? Can we consider that people of a community pooling their money and talent for the common good might occasionally be worthwhile?
It's not like the city is really making a lot of money off the transit system. They're probably even spending a little of our tax dollars to make sure it keeps running smoothly, while making it affordable to use. Just think of the money involved in paying all the drivers, then all the money involved in keeping the buses going... if they have their own mechanics (most likely) they have to pay their wages plus parts cost (probably get wholesale discount and buy a lot at once) and either have to own a lot or rent/buy. There's also the lot to house buses not running at any particular moment. Not because they need repair but just because they're not running as many buses. Both lots probably have at least one building, which requires maintenance and possible electric/water/sewer/garbage costs. Then, think of how much the one-way and two-way or zone tickets are and then the monthly passes, yearly passes, etc. that they have. If the city makes money off the transit system, I doubt it's a lot. Now, before you go off saying that they have so many people paying this and it's only so much for me and my car, just remember: the buses I've seen for transit run on diesel. Diesel parts and fuel (unless you go bio on the fuel) are more expensive than normal combustion engines. Also, the train parts and fuel are more expensive, as well. With the US, anything government also has to go off of a contract. They get the lowest bidder but they are also allowed to not take a lowest bidder if they have had service from them before and such service was inferior. I know this because I used to own a business and contract with some government agencies (local libraries and forest services, to name a few). Also, minorities have a greater chance to win a bid than the actual lowest bidder (I'm a woman and have won some contracts just because of that). The government HAS to employ a certain percentage of minorities, by law, to be an equal opportunity employer. This goes above and beyond the lowest bidder thing. If the transit system is a company that's contracted from the government, they do have the option to pay for whatever services or parts they need to run the vehicles however they want to... however, getting expensive services/parts won't insure that they make money off their lowest bid they won.
Psssh, only fourty minutes to drive to a place of civilization? I lived in a place in Oregon that was near a hundred miles from anything that could be called civilization... More than one, really. Trust me, out in the middle of nowhere, if you order the pepperoni pizza and it's close to delivery week (aka: for them to get more meat, crust, cheese, etc.) you really DO get hot dogs on your pizza...
I lived in Oregon for a long time and definitely, even in rural places you can't make it 20 miles without seeing at least 1 farm house, even when you're in the desert of eastern oregon.
As for public transportation, Portland Oregon had it right. Light rails + very good bus system. This allows the speed of the train to be combined with the flexibility of useful bus routes.
Lightrail alone isn't useful, I wish more people would realise that.
Yeah, the Portland Metro area (not including Vancouver, WA) transportation was and I'm sure, still is good. If all I had to do was in that area (when I lived in the area) I would just take the bus/max. Vancouver, WA bus system SUCKED! Yes, it deserves all those capitals and that's putting it mildly. They actually had days they didn't run and Sunday really sucked... However, they always would make the bus free to ride on the hottest summer days... that was nice. The buses going into/out of Portland were very few and very far between. If I wanted to take the bus to work, I'd have to prepare myself for a three hour ride and most of that would be waiting at a bus stop or at the bus station (which is worse than a stop because there's nowhere to sit). Most of the time when I lived in Vancouver, I rode my bike or drove a car/rode in a car. I would ride my bicycle all the way across Vancouver, even. I wouldn't ride it to work in Portland, though. My brother and a friend of mine from work rode their bicycles on nice days but they're crazy.
Yeah, when I lived in Oregon and worked in Oregon, it was much better to take the Max, then the bus to work... not to mention less frustrating, faster and more cost effective. I think it took about two hours to drive to work from Beaverton to Portland (mostly on the freeway, too) and it only took half an hour for the max and the bus to get there. The monthly pass fee wasn't bad but I got it for free anyway because my work gave them out. Nice, huh? Well, when I lived in Washington state (just across the river) and still worked at the same place, I couldn't take the bus into work. There were no Southern Washington buses running at the times when I had to go to work or get home from work. The Portland buses ran 24/7 and fairly frequently but the buses in WA ran once each half hour at best and towards dinner time, it came more like to about once an hour, just like on Sundays. They didn't run at night at all(and on Sunday, they didn't run past dinner time)... I think it was eight or nine when they stopped running- tops. What's funny is that even living three times the distance away from work while in WA (three times the OR distance) it only took half an hour to get to work. That's traffic for ya... Granted, the bus system there is better than the one here. I think we have a bus that runs through the region once a week? Yeah, something like that... There's no sidewalks here, or very few. Also, the roads don't have much room on them for the motorized vehicles, let alone for someone to walk or ride a bicycle. A lot of roads here are at state route speeds, as well. Anyone trying to ride their bicycle on that would be crazy or foolish, to the least. Here, if you don't have a car or can't borrow one, you're up sh*t creek.
(snip) in a way it's sad that WoW buffed tank damage so that tanks do similar dps to the lower DPS classes because now every Joe F**kwad and his dog wants to be a tank (I say this as someone whose main is a prot warrior who pulls 2.5 - 2.8k dps in raids, my rogue only does ~2.4). Heals don't but (in WoW at least) they're buffed out the wazoo and don't need the encouragement ("lol roll a healer" is a common insult).
yeah, I'd have to say I like healing in the olden days better... you actually needed skill back then. It's so much easier now... Oh and on your tank thing... Yeah, they buffed the tanks to do more damage, so now everyone plays them... Omg, when the DK's came out... EVERYONE made a DK and EVERYONE believed they could tank on one. Yeah, I hated healing when DK first came out... It was just like back when ZF was new to players, only I couldn't find a glitch in the game to save us from a wipe because the mage tanked better... well, or me, as the priest healer (Aggroing on renew is really, really sad...)
You are a braver man than I am, I will not show my wife the older games and expect her to understand why they are important. Gaming history is perhaps the least important aspect of history.
So, how many women do know the older games? Geez, I remember my Commodore 64 (heck, or my Atari system) which eventually got the color monitor, printer, had the tape deck, etc. I loved the games I had on that thing and yeah, there's definitely some basis on the games we have now. Heck, what about the DOS games or the MUDDS?::sighs:: Sure, the graphics are better but is the immersion the same? Yeah, I've played WoW... actually one of the girls playing a girl (I've had it explained to me that MMORPG actually means Men Massively Online Role Playing Girls) and it was fun but easy and I don't think quite so immersive. It's not as easy to get into the story of the game in WoW as it was in the older games. Oh and as for history... I love history! It doesn't matter if it's gaming, clothing, how people lived, what they did, geologic, etc. Guess I'm a nerd...?
In 200 years people will boggle that we believed that most people in the late middle ages thought the Earth was flat.
Here, let me fix that for you:
If we don't get rid of the fundie influence on education, in 200 years people will believe that most people living in the twentieth century were living in the middle ages. With the dinosaurs. And some dude named Flintstone.
And that the fall of the dinosaurs was largely due to a dog named Scooby Doo?
Well that's probably better than having it near Clark College grounds in the old days. The college used to get their heat from Hudson's Bay High School's boiler room. Yeah... Well, when they changed the lights from the old, flourescent ones, the temperature radically dropped in all the buildings. Turns out that the lines coming from Hudson's Bay had leaks. Funny thing... for several years, you could see heat-pipe-shaped lines of melted snow on top of the grass. My biology lecture teacher mentioned how he was fairly certain you could grow an orange grove above the old heating lines. Talk about human error... maybe it was plain laziness? We always used to joke that if the dean couldn't walk out of his door without stepping on snow, it was dubbed a snow day...
(snip)Data can be off or altered, I remember a local weather channel use to use a point for the local temperature until they built a Dunkin Donuts next to it, and heat escaping the building or cars or something (it was a long time ago) raised the temperature 5 or 6 degrees warmer then the actual weather.(snip)
I was tossing decommissioned servers off the roof of my work back in 2000 and 2001. We just didn't have a Youtube to show off on.
There aren't many things (you can do at work) that are as satisfying as throwing an NT box off a roof...
Dude, I know a place where you're needed... Please, don't ask me how they network everything together because it boggles my mind, too. o.O The fancy computers the drafters and other people have, compared to the 286's or worse on the production floor...
You should take the same stand I do when people tell you to join... Find their worst nightmare and tell them to do it with a smile on their face the whole time and if they do, then you'll think about it. I NEVER joined that place... it seemed dubious to me from the get-go. Actually, sites like that, I wait and see what everyone says about it. No, I don't want to be the first on something... that doesn't really matter. I can wait a few months to put my life on the internet- perhaps even years... >.
I'm a little sketchy on this one, can they actually do this? I mean, the users signed up under the expectation that copyright law would be honored. I don't think that they actually have a legal leg to stand on here. You can change the TOS so that new material uploaded will be owned by Facebook, but changing the TOS and expecting that to change the copyright on a lot of media retroactively? I only pray that this is what kills facebook so I can stop hearing people rant about how great it is and how I should join.
My mom got one of those... only the steering locked up while she was driving a really curvy, downhill, busy part of the freeway during winter while there was ice on the road. Oh yeah, it locked up while she was steering to avoid the current collision that was there. I think the steering wheel wanted her to run the car under the police car... Yeah, she never bought a small car ever again.
Really, my friend bought a car on his American Express while in college
My sister did this (but it was Visa).
Her car died, and she needed a new one. My dad checked out a Hyundai at the local dealer (this was back in the '80s when they had just come to the US), and told her to get one -- He figured she'd finance it and he'd send her a check (didn't believe in credit).
Instead, she put it on his Visa card (it was the minimal $4995 model). My dad paid it off in full, but had a bit of a surprise there.
Only a really 'special' girl is going to be impressed by this. The only thing a girl wants you to make for Valentines day is a dinner reservation.
Meh, I'd rather cook... I'm pretty good at it. Of course, I could go out to dinner so I could see if there's something new I could learn to make. I would rather receive something from my SO that's from him, though. You know, either something that's what he does or something that he put thought into... something that shows that he pays attention to me. Of course, when I do gifts, I make them but I'm into a lot of arts/crafts. The last gift I made was a sterling silver and peacock blue enamelled copper bracelet (I cut the silver into jump rings but the copper wire was already cut and enamelled). Bracelets/necklaces always go over well. Check mailleartisans.org if you want to see weaves. Easy to do, easy to bring with you, easy to learn, etc.
You know, high school sucked for me. All the kids in their cliques was stupid and they kept putting me on normal stuff for my grade. Every frigging year, I'd work through three books for math and english. Heck, even in eighth grade, they (thankfully) had me in Algebra instead of the normal curriculum and I was bored out of my skull. Lol, this one preppie guy hated me because I didn't do any homework at all and still got an A in the class. Actually, I think he hated me more because I got every single thing on the tests right, including the extra credit. Yeah, he always got something wrong. We were allowed a calculator but I'd look at the teacher and pointedly put my calculator on her desk, then go to my seat to do my test. I was so glad at 16 when the state offered to take high school students and put them into college... finally, I got to learn something! I don't think I learned anything new in high school. Actually, Mr. Meade taught us well. We learned a ton of new things from him and we even ate pizza and watched the Three Stooges! That proves that some monkeying around never hurts, I suppose...
Even the dullest high school student has a memory that makes us adults seem slow. There is exactly one way to motivate teenagers: tell them they are not "ready", although telling them they are "not allowed" has a similar effect. With that in mind I recommend you give one or two of them a copy of All the Mathematics You Missed But Need to Know for Graduate School, and suggest they pass it onto someone else if they find it "too hard". It's a great book that gives a quick skim over all the different fields of mathematics that a graduate student in mathematics is expected to know. A typical college student will read this book, shake their head and decide that maybe graduate school isn't for them. A typical high school student, even one not interested in math, will read this book and decide that mathematics is awesome and maybe they should pay attention in class, because if they can't grasp differential linear equations then they're never going to understand Lebesgue integration and infinite Fourier series.
You know, I never knew how true those tests were until I got into college. I was at a college level math on the placement test in fifth grade... The stuff I took in middle school was very similar to the stuff I took in college. Of course, that's at the 100 level. The 200's are different, of course. I really felt that the 100 level courses were an "intro to college"...
It's normally taught as an upper-division college class but the only real prerequisite is 2nd-year high school algebra and a mind that can think abstractly.
Students will find it different enough from trig and calculus to be fresh and knowing they can do "college math" can be a real ego-boost.
By the way, if you know any elementary or middle school teachers, many of the concepts in abstract algebra can be taught to those age groups as well. Being able to do "adult math" can be a real point of pride and inspiration at those ages.
First grade isn't too early. Anyone who can add or subtract time already has the basics for abstract algebra addition and subtraction.
I think I spent about an hour on the phone with Linksys being bounced between customer support and tech support to find whether my router model was positively charged or negatively charged because the only AC adapter that's I found for sale here that supplied the correct power (without spending $75) is... adaptable in many ways. It has several tips and you could plug in the tip for positively charged or negatively charged electronics but if you set it up for positively charged and your electronic is negatively charged, you could burn the item up. You could also set it up for anything between 3 and 12 volts. I did notice while I was setting the thing up that it had USB plug-in capability. you know, it's already starting...
it's not everyday that 63 municipal police, 39 municipal government officials, and 7 government contractors are accused of conspiracy and corruption.
I guess you've never heard of Chicago.
Omg... I've never been there but I've worked in OR with a guy who came from there. He wanted to set up a marijuana ring that transported it over to Chicago from OR. Then, he went on about how everything in OR/WA is absolutely perfect for growing the stuff- like I didn't know lol! I mean, Piety Island near Detroit, OR is well-known as Marijuana Island. When the Forest Service police need more ticket money or whatever, they just do a raid on that island...
You know, there are some lights I know of that seem to be rigged. The yellow is so short! It's like yellowred. Of course, without proof that it's intentional, no one can be accounted for it. I'm sure a video sent to the branch of government that deals with the lighting systems would fix it, though.
About a month ago, I was stuck at a forever red. Lol, the light was red for a whole week and it was two busy streets! Yeah, nothing gets fixed here very quickly... I mean, they're still doing a three month construction that's been taking them two years to do!
unless you're really THAT upset with the practice of windshield fliering in the first place.
Yes, I am. There are certain behaviors everyone should know are asshattery. Being a "poor college student" does not make it okay to take a job being a total jerk (telemarketing, spammer, virus writer, and the person who sprays people unasked with perfume).
Omg, I can't stand the perfume sprayers! You know, some people are allergic to that crap... One time, I walked out of a store with little, teeny, red dots all over me. It was like I got chewed to death by a puppy or something... only REALLY itchy!
Do you think the people putting these flyers on cars are the real authors. i could just as easily pay some little kid 40 bux worth of weed to go around that parking lot of that nice corporate office over there and put these flyers out:P
Aaaaannnddd the police can get out of said kid who gave them the money to do it. The younger, the easier.
I hope they wore gloves while they handled the papers or they're going to be in jail sooner than they think!:o Well, actually, I don't hope they used gloves because I'd rather they were in jail sooner than they thought lol...
Hanford isn't that bad of a problem---yet. The important thing to note is that Hanford is proximate to the Columbia River, a major watershed for the Pacific Northwest. Currently the stored (highly radioactive) waste is leaking into the groundwater, but has not yet reached the river. Once that happens, well, things won't be very pretty downriver. Portland is known for being a fairly "green" city, and that trend can be expected to continue. Possibly it'll be a glowing, radioactive green city...
Lol, did you see the news article on the tests that were done on the Sandy River? From what it showed, the fish were hopped up on caffeine, drugged to within an inch of their lives and at least slightly poisoned. I think they did figure out it was due to dumpings, though. It's probably much better now...
You are correct about the long-range bomber... and yeah, the Japanese did eventually wage a different war with us. They're like lawyers... every time we make a law about things brought into our country from another, they find a way around it to the best of their advantage. Japan as a whole is a very cunning country...
Why is it that everyone focuses on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, completely ignoring the months of fire raids that preceeded Fatman and Littleboy? Those raids caused far more devastation than both atom bombs put together. The effects were made infinitely more dramatic because of the Japanese habit of building their homes out of what was essentially paper.
Furthermore, after having been burned to a crisp, they still wouldn't grant an unconditional surrender. The only thing left was a bloody ground assault... or The Bomb. So we nuked them. Then, after absorbing not one but two nukings, the Japanese military still wouldn't surrender! it was Hirohito himself who had to finally call a halt.
Your history is a bit... off. The GP is correct: if you don't want a war (or want to stop one) you eliminate the enemy's capacity to wage it. The truth is, World War II changed the face of war forever, and it wasn't the atom bomb that did it. It was the long-range bomber. All major conflicts leading up to the Big One were fought with little ability to affect the other side's manufacturing base. You could cut his lines of supply... but there was no way to reach out and attack his means of production. That meant that most conflicts were between military personnel and involving military targets. Civilian areas could be occupied or overrun, but were generally not blown to pieces.
The long-range bomber allowed direct attacks upon factories, transportation hubs, storage facilities and other paraphenalia of a modern industrial economy. This had the effect of involving the civilian population, who had previously remained distant from actual warfare (until a nation's defenses were overrun and an occupation began.) Germany and Japan both built their military machines using civilian workers and production facilities, who became legitimate targets once the ability to hit them was available.
You know what? We deduce the existence of peace because there are intervals between wars. Peace is an ideal, and like most ideals it is rarely, if ever, fully realized. Not for long, anyway. You're also wrong about why we never had future attacks from Japan. They'd have done it if they could... we just wouldn't let them arm themselves, made them allies, and we provided for their defense. Some allies they turned out to be, using the capabilities we gave them to successfully attack our manufacturing sector. Don't underestimate the Japanese: yes, we rebuilt their their industrial engine after the War (just as we did for Germany) but our generosity came back to haunt us.
BTW, figures are fatal U.S. military casualties only
I think that's exactly the problem with this line of discussion.
Yeah... just think of the mass of people from other countries killed. Maybe they're just showing U.S. deaths to show that point, though. Hmm... I think that works better for WWI than WWII. In the latter, there were so many casualties among the innocents. WWI was more of a gentleman's war in that it followed some guidelines and codes of conduct.
I'm not sure why parent was modded Flamebait but he's right. The soldiers being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are just as dead as those killed in WWII or any other war or"police action." Believe me, all states of war are equal when you're on the wrong end of an enemy weapon.
Yeah... unfortunately, lesser-developed countries are reaching that phase we were in back in WWII and the U.S. seems to have to help them in their endeavors. Why can't we stick to feeding the hungry?
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Municipalities run it "as a business" rather than admitting it's a service, a public utility, and admitting that hey, we need to put in enough tax money to make it cover enough areas.
Of course, the problem there is that there's a horrible political stigma attached to public transportation. Anything "public" has for decades been considered "communist" and therefore "evil". We can't, as a people, pool our resources or share anything because "sharing" is for hippies. However, once you say, "we're pooling our resources in order to run a cut-throat business that will profit through amoral methods," well... that's ok then. Just make sure no morals creep in there.
I mean, I hate commies and hippies as much as the next guy, but can't we try to come up with efficient solutions for our society without getting too caught up in an ideology? Can we consider that people of a community pooling their money and talent for the common good might occasionally be worthwhile?
It's not like the city is really making a lot of money off the transit system. They're probably even spending a little of our tax dollars to make sure it keeps running smoothly, while making it affordable to use. Just think of the money involved in paying all the drivers, then all the money involved in keeping the buses going... if they have their own mechanics (most likely) they have to pay their wages plus parts cost (probably get wholesale discount and buy a lot at once) and either have to own a lot or rent/buy. There's also the lot to house buses not running at any particular moment. Not because they need repair but just because they're not running as many buses. Both lots probably have at least one building, which requires maintenance and possible electric/water/sewer/garbage costs. Then, think of how much the one-way and two-way or zone tickets are and then the monthly passes, yearly passes, etc. that they have. If the city makes money off the transit system, I doubt it's a lot. Now, before you go off saying that they have so many people paying this and it's only so much for me and my car, just remember: the buses I've seen for transit run on diesel. Diesel parts and fuel (unless you go bio on the fuel) are more expensive than normal combustion engines. Also, the train parts and fuel are more expensive, as well. With the US, anything government also has to go off of a contract. They get the lowest bidder but they are also allowed to not take a lowest bidder if they have had service from them before and such service was inferior. I know this because I used to own a business and contract with some government agencies (local libraries and forest services, to name a few). Also, minorities have a greater chance to win a bid than the actual lowest bidder (I'm a woman and have won some contracts just because of that). The government HAS to employ a certain percentage of minorities, by law, to be an equal opportunity employer. This goes above and beyond the lowest bidder thing. If the transit system is a company that's contracted from the government, they do have the option to pay for whatever services or parts they need to run the vehicles however they want to... however, getting expensive services/parts won't insure that they make money off their lowest bid they won.
Psssh, only fourty minutes to drive to a place of civilization? I lived in a place in Oregon that was near a hundred miles from anything that could be called civilization... More than one, really. Trust me, out in the middle of nowhere, if you order the pepperoni pizza and it's close to delivery week (aka: for them to get more meat, crust, cheese, etc.) you really DO get hot dogs on your pizza...
I lived in Oregon for a long time and definitely, even in rural places you can't make it 20 miles without seeing at least 1 farm house, even when you're in the desert of eastern oregon.
As for public transportation, Portland Oregon had it right. Light rails + very good bus system. This allows the speed of the train to be combined with the flexibility of useful bus routes.
Lightrail alone isn't useful, I wish more people would realise that.
Yeah, the Portland Metro area (not including Vancouver, WA) transportation was and I'm sure, still is good. If all I had to do was in that area (when I lived in the area) I would just take the bus/max. Vancouver, WA bus system SUCKED! Yes, it deserves all those capitals and that's putting it mildly. They actually had days they didn't run and Sunday really sucked... However, they always would make the bus free to ride on the hottest summer days... that was nice. The buses going into/out of Portland were very few and very far between. If I wanted to take the bus to work, I'd have to prepare myself for a three hour ride and most of that would be waiting at a bus stop or at the bus station (which is worse than a stop because there's nowhere to sit). Most of the time when I lived in Vancouver, I rode my bike or drove a car/rode in a car. I would ride my bicycle all the way across Vancouver, even. I wouldn't ride it to work in Portland, though. My brother and a friend of mine from work rode their bicycles on nice days but they're crazy.
Yeah, when I lived in Oregon and worked in Oregon, it was much better to take the Max, then the bus to work... not to mention less frustrating, faster and more cost effective. I think it took about two hours to drive to work from Beaverton to Portland (mostly on the freeway, too) and it only took half an hour for the max and the bus to get there. The monthly pass fee wasn't bad but I got it for free anyway because my work gave them out. Nice, huh? Well, when I lived in Washington state (just across the river) and still worked at the same place, I couldn't take the bus into work. There were no Southern Washington buses running at the times when I had to go to work or get home from work. The Portland buses ran 24/7 and fairly frequently but the buses in WA ran once each half hour at best and towards dinner time, it came more like to about once an hour, just like on Sundays. They didn't run at night at all(and on Sunday, they didn't run past dinner time)... I think it was eight or nine when they stopped running- tops. What's funny is that even living three times the distance away from work while in WA (three times the OR distance) it only took half an hour to get to work. That's traffic for ya... Granted, the bus system there is better than the one here. I think we have a bus that runs through the region once a week? Yeah, something like that... There's no sidewalks here, or very few. Also, the roads don't have much room on them for the motorized vehicles, let alone for someone to walk or ride a bicycle. A lot of roads here are at state route speeds, as well. Anyone trying to ride their bicycle on that would be crazy or foolish, to the least. Here, if you don't have a car or can't borrow one, you're up sh*t creek.
(snip) in a way it's sad that WoW buffed tank damage so that tanks do similar dps to the lower DPS classes because now every Joe F**kwad and his dog wants to be a tank (I say this as someone whose main is a prot warrior who pulls 2.5 - 2.8k dps in raids, my rogue only does ~2.4). Heals don't but (in WoW at least) they're buffed out the wazoo and don't need the encouragement ("lol roll a healer" is a common insult).
yeah, I'd have to say I like healing in the olden days better... you actually needed skill back then. It's so much easier now... Oh and on your tank thing... Yeah, they buffed the tanks to do more damage, so now everyone plays them... Omg, when the DK's came out... EVERYONE made a DK and EVERYONE believed they could tank on one. Yeah, I hated healing when DK first came out... It was just like back when ZF was new to players, only I couldn't find a glitch in the game to save us from a wipe because the mage tanked better... well, or me, as the priest healer (Aggroing on renew is really, really sad...)
I maintain the similarities are there
They are.
You are a braver man than I am, I will not show my wife the older games and expect her to understand why they are important. Gaming history is perhaps the least important aspect of history.
So, how many women do know the older games? Geez, I remember my Commodore 64 (heck, or my Atari system) which eventually got the color monitor, printer, had the tape deck, etc. I loved the games I had on that thing and yeah, there's definitely some basis on the games we have now. Heck, what about the DOS games or the MUDDS? ::sighs:: Sure, the graphics are better but is the immersion the same? Yeah, I've played WoW... actually one of the girls playing a girl (I've had it explained to me that MMORPG actually means Men Massively Online Role Playing Girls) and it was fun but easy and I don't think quite so immersive. It's not as easy to get into the story of the game in WoW as it was in the older games. Oh and as for history... I love history! It doesn't matter if it's gaming, clothing, how people lived, what they did, geologic, etc. Guess I'm a nerd...?
In 200 years people will boggle that we believed that most people in the late middle ages thought the Earth was flat.
Here, let me fix that for you:
If we don't get rid of the fundie influence on education, in 200 years people will believe that most people living in the twentieth century were living in the middle ages. With the dinosaurs. And some dude named Flintstone.
And that the fall of the dinosaurs was largely due to a dog named Scooby Doo?
(snip)Data can be off or altered, I remember a local weather channel use to use a point for the local temperature until they built a Dunkin Donuts next to it, and heat escaping the building or cars or something (it was a long time ago) raised the temperature 5 or 6 degrees warmer then the actual weather.(snip)
I was tossing decommissioned servers off the roof of my work back in 2000 and 2001. We just didn't have a Youtube to show off on. There aren't many things (you can do at work) that are as satisfying as throwing an NT box off a roof...
Dude, I know a place where you're needed... Please, don't ask me how they network everything together because it boggles my mind, too. o.O The fancy computers the drafters and other people have, compared to the 286's or worse on the production floor...
I'm a little sketchy on this one, can they actually do this? I mean, the users signed up under the expectation that copyright law would be honored. I don't think that they actually have a legal leg to stand on here. You can change the TOS so that new material uploaded will be owned by Facebook, but changing the TOS and expecting that to change the copyright on a lot of media retroactively? I only pray that this is what kills facebook so I can stop hearing people rant about how great it is and how I should join.
Heck, I'm just glad they're finally telling the truth. Everyone knew that their stuff never left when they quit, even when the ToS said it would go...
Really, my friend bought a car on his American Express while in college
My sister did this (but it was Visa).
Her car died, and she needed a new one. My dad checked out a Hyundai at the local dealer (this was back in the '80s when they had just come to the US), and told her to get one -- He figured she'd finance it and he'd send her a check (didn't believe in credit).
Instead, she put it on his Visa card (it was the minimal $4995 model). My dad paid it off in full, but had a bit of a surprise there.
Only a really 'special' girl is going to be impressed by this. The only thing a girl wants you to make for Valentines day is a dinner reservation.
Meh, I'd rather cook... I'm pretty good at it. Of course, I could go out to dinner so I could see if there's something new I could learn to make. I would rather receive something from my SO that's from him, though. You know, either something that's what he does or something that he put thought into... something that shows that he pays attention to me. Of course, when I do gifts, I make them but I'm into a lot of arts/crafts. The last gift I made was a sterling silver and peacock blue enamelled copper bracelet (I cut the silver into jump rings but the copper wire was already cut and enamelled). Bracelets/necklaces always go over well. Check mailleartisans.org if you want to see weaves. Easy to do, easy to bring with you, easy to learn, etc.
Even the dullest high school student has a memory that makes us adults seem slow. There is exactly one way to motivate teenagers: tell them they are not "ready", although telling them they are "not allowed" has a similar effect. With that in mind I recommend you give one or two of them a copy of All the Mathematics You Missed But Need to Know for Graduate School, and suggest they pass it onto someone else if they find it "too hard". It's a great book that gives a quick skim over all the different fields of mathematics that a graduate student in mathematics is expected to know. A typical college student will read this book, shake their head and decide that maybe graduate school isn't for them. A typical high school student, even one not interested in math, will read this book and decide that mathematics is awesome and maybe they should pay attention in class, because if they can't grasp differential linear equations then they're never going to understand Lebesgue integration and infinite Fourier series.
It's normally taught as an upper-division college class but the only real prerequisite is 2nd-year high school algebra and a mind that can think abstractly.
Students will find it different enough from trig and calculus to be fresh and knowing they can do "college math" can be a real ego-boost.
By the way, if you know any elementary or middle school teachers, many of the concepts in abstract algebra can be taught to those age groups as well. Being able to do "adult math" can be a real point of pride and inspiration at those ages.
First grade isn't too early. Anyone who can add or subtract time already has the basics for abstract algebra addition and subtraction.
I think I spent about an hour on the phone with Linksys being bounced between customer support and tech support to find whether my router model was positively charged or negatively charged because the only AC adapter that's I found for sale here that supplied the correct power (without spending $75) is... adaptable in many ways. It has several tips and you could plug in the tip for positively charged or negatively charged electronics but if you set it up for positively charged and your electronic is negatively charged, you could burn the item up. You could also set it up for anything between 3 and 12 volts. I did notice while I was setting the thing up that it had USB plug-in capability. you know, it's already starting...
it's not everyday that 63 municipal police, 39 municipal government officials, and 7 government contractors are accused of conspiracy and corruption.
I guess you've never heard of Chicago.
Omg... I've never been there but I've worked in OR with a guy who came from there. He wanted to set up a marijuana ring that transported it over to Chicago from OR. Then, he went on about how everything in OR/WA is absolutely perfect for growing the stuff- like I didn't know lol! I mean, Piety Island near Detroit, OR is well-known as Marijuana Island. When the Forest Service police need more ticket money or whatever, they just do a raid on that island...
You know, there are some lights I know of that seem to be rigged. The yellow is so short! It's like yellowred. Of course, without proof that it's intentional, no one can be accounted for it. I'm sure a video sent to the branch of government that deals with the lighting systems would fix it, though. About a month ago, I was stuck at a forever red. Lol, the light was red for a whole week and it was two busy streets! Yeah, nothing gets fixed here very quickly... I mean, they're still doing a three month construction that's been taking them two years to do!
Omg, I can't stand the perfume sprayers! You know, some people are allergic to that crap... One time, I walked out of a store with little, teeny, red dots all over me. It was like I got chewed to death by a puppy or something... only REALLY itchy!
Do you think the people putting these flyers on cars are the real authors. i could just as easily pay some little kid 40 bux worth of weed to go around that parking lot of that nice corporate office over there and put these flyers out :P
Aaaaannnddd the police can get out of said kid who gave them the money to do it. The younger, the easier.
I hope they wore gloves while they handled the papers or they're going to be in jail sooner than they think! :o Well, actually, I don't hope they used gloves because I'd rather they were in jail sooner than they thought lol...
Hanford isn't that bad of a problem---yet. The important thing to note is that Hanford is proximate to the Columbia River, a major watershed for the Pacific Northwest. Currently the stored (highly radioactive) waste is leaking into the groundwater, but has not yet reached the river. Once that happens, well, things won't be very pretty downriver. Portland is known for being a fairly "green" city, and that trend can be expected to continue. Possibly it'll be a glowing, radioactive green city...
Lol, did you see the news article on the tests that were done on the Sandy River? From what it showed, the fish were hopped up on caffeine, drugged to within an inch of their lives and at least slightly poisoned. I think they did figure out it was due to dumpings, though. It's probably much better now...
Why is it that everyone focuses on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, completely ignoring the months of fire raids that preceeded Fatman and Littleboy? Those raids caused far more devastation than both atom bombs put together. The effects were made infinitely more dramatic because of the Japanese habit of building their homes out of what was essentially paper. Furthermore, after having been burned to a crisp, they still wouldn't grant an unconditional surrender. The only thing left was a bloody ground assault ... or The Bomb. So we nuked them. Then, after absorbing not one but two nukings, the Japanese military still wouldn't surrender! it was Hirohito himself who had to finally call a halt.
Your history is a bit ... off. The GP is correct: if you don't want a war (or want to stop one) you eliminate the enemy's capacity to wage it. The truth is, World War II changed the face of war forever, and it wasn't the atom bomb that did it. It was the long-range bomber. All major conflicts leading up to the Big One were fought with little ability to affect the other side's manufacturing base. You could cut his lines of supply ... but there was no way to reach out and attack his means of production. That meant that most conflicts were between military personnel and involving military targets. Civilian areas could be occupied or overrun, but were generally not blown to pieces.
The long-range bomber allowed direct attacks upon factories, transportation hubs, storage facilities and other paraphenalia of a modern industrial economy. This had the effect of involving the civilian population, who had previously remained distant from actual warfare (until a nation's defenses were overrun and an occupation began.) Germany and Japan both built their military machines using civilian workers and production facilities, who became legitimate targets once the ability to hit them was available.
You know what? We deduce the existence of peace because there are intervals between wars. Peace is an ideal, and like most ideals it is rarely, if ever, fully realized. Not for long, anyway. You're also wrong about why we never had future attacks from Japan. They'd have done it if they could ... we just wouldn't let them arm themselves, made them allies, and we provided for their defense. Some allies they turned out to be, using the capabilities we gave them to successfully attack our manufacturing sector. Don't underestimate the Japanese: yes, we rebuilt their their industrial engine after the War (just as we did for Germany) but our generosity came back to haunt us.
BTW, figures are fatal U.S. military casualties only
I think that's exactly the problem with this line of discussion.
Yeah... just think of the mass of people from other countries killed. Maybe they're just showing U.S. deaths to show that point, though. Hmm... I think that works better for WWI than WWII. In the latter, there were so many casualties among the innocents. WWI was more of a gentleman's war in that it followed some guidelines and codes of conduct.
I'm not sure why parent was modded Flamebait but he's right. The soldiers being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are just as dead as those killed in WWII or any other war or"police action." Believe me, all states of war are equal when you're on the wrong end of an enemy weapon.
Yeah... unfortunately, lesser-developed countries are reaching that phase we were in back in WWII and the U.S. seems to have to help them in their endeavors. Why can't we stick to feeding the hungry?