Actually, the end goal is invalid too. Lots of research has been made into the many possible ways a communist state fully implemented would work if/when the dictatorial pre-communist transitional power structure were replaced by a democratic one. They all show that the thing just doesn't work, resulting in a progressive increase in poverty.
For an earlier but very good example of such studies, which unfortunately are not well known outside of scholarship circles, I suggest Ludwig von Mises book "Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis". It's available for download at the Mises Institute website:
By the way, keep in mind that althoug most anti-state libertarians see themselves as disciples of Mises, he himself was far from this extreme anti-statist rethorics. Reading Mises is an intellectual pleasure, a completely unrelated experience to what you "get" by reading a Lew Rockwell and the likes.
A small complement: A recent article in Scientific American Brazil (it was probably published in an earlier American edition, but I'm not sure) talked extensively on the new reprocessing techniques on discarded fission material, and how new nuclear plant projects are able to use those to produce energy, leaving in the end only harmless metal.
IIRC, current nuclear plants use only 5% of the energy actually present on fission material. When the material is discarded, about 95% is still available but unused, and those 95% are what makes this material harmfull to living beings. The new technology will revert this, using 95% and leaving 5% unused. The then discarded metal (the one with 5% radioactive energy) doesn't cause problems.
The most interesting point of the article is that the current discarded material can be used in these new plants. When it's all used up there won't rest any nuclear "waste".
Now a question remains: will ecofanatics ever stand up and say, as they should, "Er... yes, sorry, we were wrong all the time"? Yeah, sure...
Most people nowadays have a tendency to find much interest in questions like "what came before the Big Bang" and the like. I, too, think this is a nice field of research. However, this is far, very far away from the actual issue.
What came before what isn't an interesting subject per se. A simple catalog that says that event "a" happened before event "b" doesn't tells much, it's just raw data. The insteresting stuff is whether event "a" caused event "b" or not. And it's no wonder then that at the heart of any such study is the concept of "causality". And causalitu not as something that you "think", but as an actual reality.
So, if you say that the chain of causes and effects has 15 billion years, or 900 billion years, or 100 trillion years, this is simply a measurement of the "size" of causality. But no matter what's its size: knowing it perfectly won't tell you from where causality itself comes, nor what it is when taken as a whole.
Compared to this kind of metaphysical questioning ("metaphysics" means "that which goes along with physics", causality itself baing a good example of a metaphysical subject), things such as the size of the time dimension seem very secondary.
I think it's sad scientific journals don't put these subjects into discussion. Philosophical themes that are by nature linked to scientific research are very accessible if well presented, providing as much food for thought as the latest and greatest string theory. After all, what you learn there ends up being valid for everything else you'll study, including the most recent scientific researchs.
I'm using since some months a mod for WoW that makes females and males from the eight races, plus succubus, show everything (and I mean it) when unequipped. It's very fun to walk around the main game cities with this installed, since there's always one or more people running or dancing around without equipment. Should the ESRB then rate WoW "mature"? What a nonsense...
The rating system should be changed. Instead of a single "Teens", "Children", "Mature" etc. rating, this should be multi-layered system. The box should have something like this:
Puting into the parents hands the burden of deciding what is and isn't appropriate for their children.
In short: any kind of measurement must be somewhat precise. There's no precision at all in compressing these different dimensions into a generic "this is okay for teens, that isn't".
What? My god! Cuba trained and financed thousands of terrorists in the last decades. In the '60s and '70s many of those were fighting guerrila warfare in my country (Brazil) wishing to implement a proletariat dictatorship. And many others, including Che Guevara, were sent to lots of countries to help local terrorist movements.
Nowadays, Cuba is giving lots of *direct* help to Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chavez and to Colombia's narco-guerrila terrorists of the FARCS. The Comunist Party of Cuba, together with Brazilian's Workers Party, is also head country of the South American continental terrorist network "Forum de Sao Paulo", which includes, among more than 40 organizations, Colombia's FARCS itself and Chile's MIR.
And if that wasn't enough, Cuba is now in talks with Middle-Eastern islamic terrorist states to develop coordinated efforts whenever the opportunity arises.
Get your facts straight. Cuba is a terrorist state and deserves each and every restriction that's imposed upon it.
What I would like, but I know I won't get, is, first, perfect separation between a news piece data from its interpretation, with the data receiving uniform representation.
For example, instead of a biased news such as "Rep. X said blah, while the very, very conservative rep. Y said blah, showing he doesn't care for Z", the "data" part would simply say "In regards to Z, rep. X said blah, while rep. Y said blah", or, better yet, "In regards to Z, rep. X (x% liberal according to institute A's 2005 research in the representatives' voting patterns), said blah, while rep. Y (y% conservative), said blah."
Second, multiple interpretations for the same data. This way, one might click "Liberal Opinion" and read "This shows the very strong conservatism of rep. Y, and how he doesn't care for Z, which any progressive knows is absolutely needed because of blah". Or click "Conservative Opinion" and read "As expected, rep. X shows his strong liberal commitment for Z, which goes against our decades old traditions in blah". Or even click "Libertarian Opinion" and read "Both rep. X and Y show, in regards to Z, that they don't care for freedom, since both support strong governmental intervention where the free market blah".
Funnily enough, I'm Brazilian but I also didn't know that RG numbers ("xx.xxx.xxx-x") could be not unique. Thanks for the information! Now I understand why many documents into which you must inform your RG number also ask which government department issued it, and to which state it belongs.
On the other hand, if we consider the department plus state acronym (for example, mine is "SSP/SP") attached to the RG number as being part of the number itself (in the form "xx.xxx.xxx-x yyy/zz"), then in practice the thing becomes a unique national identifier. Hmm...
Not really. For instance, in World of Warcraft you have the option of choosing a role-playing server, where there're strict behavioural rules enforced by Blizzard's staff. Also, even if within the rules you find some other kind of idiot there, you can easily "/ignore" him for good. And if both things aren't enough, there're tons of addons you can install to increase even more the immersion experience. Other than those, don't forget to enter a "strict role-playing" guild if you wanna full immersion, or an "in character prefered" one if 100% isn't required. Ask around and you'll find many good ones.
A problem with the studies that affirm global warming is that they're either very speculative or based on too a very narrow data "cut".
In the first case, they're reports on the results of computation using this or that climate model, where the different climate factors, such as percent of CO2 in the atmosphere, receive very arbitrary weights. If, for instance, you attribute different weights to these factors or add more factors, such as the likelihood we're entering a new Ice Age (in the '70s tons of studies focused on this), the results vary a lot. One such calculation might conclude that no matter what humans do the world will end very cold. Other might conclude that our warming actions might actually conter balance the cold, keeping the temperatures as they are. And others will say that our actions are warming the world. Currently these last are favoured, because their results seem to coincide more or less with actual collected data, but it's possible to argue that in others, "global cooling" models, a small temperature increase for some years followed by a sharp decrease in temperature isn't unlikely. So, how can we say which of these models, weights, factors etc. are the correct ones? I don't think it's possible without many centuries of measurements.
In the second case, the studies are based on the behaviour of this or that factor when everything else is excluded. So, if you go study what happens in a lab experiment when there's an increase in the percent of CO2, it becomes absolutely clear that it's a warming effect, no doubt about that. But how does this effect relates with all the other climate-changing effects is difficult to say, which takes us to the above problem of the models.
Furthermore, when one takes this problem from the scientific field to the political, another question arises: a global warming is really a bad thing? I mean, from the point of view of agriculture, more CO2 means, AFAIK, correct me if I'm wrong, bigger crops, bigger vegetables and the like, and so more food. And more food means less hungry people in the world. So, one might ask, without any ill intent, whether the benefits aren't worth the trouble of increased sea levels and some more extinguished species. Are they?
The above points, plus some others I haven't mentioned, don't allow me to buy the whole idea of cutting greenhouse gases as being The Obvious Good ThingTM. There're tons of questions that should be answered, and very well answered, before we're sure that going forward into changing the whole industrial world is really needed. What if we actually do it, causing all the unemplyment and lowering of living standards it'll mean, only to discover in a few decades that the whole effort wasn't needed? Who'd pay the needy for all the social troubles this move will have caused them?
This, IMHO, is a question most people who write on the subject forget to ask.
Okay, not the same meaning of "western" as in the article, but I surely would love to see a Western MMORPG. Better yet, a Dark Tower MMORPG.
From having read volumes 1 to 5, let me see what such a game would have:
a) Battles with guns, swords, knifes, light-sabers, throwing disks, machine guns, bows and bahs;
b) Vehicles, ranging from horses and cows to (mad) trains, tubes, cars, trucks and even nazi aircrafts.
c) Dimensional travel with at least 12 different versions os the United States, plus some non-Earth-related settings, and even distorted versions of classical fairy tales settings.
d) Time travel embracing at least 3 "ages": the '60s, '70s and '80s.
e) Last-day cowboy-knights descending from King Arthur or some alternate-reality version of him.
f) Giant bio-mechanical robots, human-sized robots, animal-shaped robots, and small robots.
g) Brain-eating mutants with psychic powers.
h) Vampires (3 types), "men in yellow", witches and dark mages.
There's a silly assumption here in Brazil that the USA is "evil". And let me be clear about this: the assumption is that each and every thing made by Americans is "evil", be it in politics (no matter whether Republicans or Democratic), in commerce, or even in international charity efforts. Furthermore, this "USA is evil" view is backed by Brazilian big media, which covers with richness of detail everything bad about USA that appears on USA's own big media (New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek etc.), while dismissing or at most publishing in footnote size everything good, plus lots of conspiracy theories made by ourselves. One example of these theories is that lots of Brazilians believe that USA wants to conquer the Amazon Forest and so will, sooner or later, have marines invading Brazil from Colombia...
The end result of this nonsense are news such as the one published above. See the pattern: Google is an USA corporation, so it is evil by itself. Also, it is "obviously" serving USA's interest in Amazon's richness by providing this information. As a side note, this also "proves" (to those who believe in the idea, of course) that the future marines invasion is on the horizon. Go figure...
What might happen after this disaster is that George Lucas will edit episode IV again, this time entirely replacing the first scenes with Luke Skywalker, putting flashbacks of the TV series or something like that in place of them.
Then he'll edit the ending of episode III, and the whole episode I, to show the new Tattoine. After all, who said Luke has grown on a farm? Or that Tattoine is a desert planet? In a CG age everything can change.
And be prepared to only be able to purchase this new version (in BD/HD-DVD), since the old, deprecated "sandy", "boring", "teen-farmer" Luke version won't be available anywhere anymore.
Hmm... it has been some 3 or 4 years since I used Linux, but I remember that at the time I thought KDE had a better "look" than Gnome. After reading this article I've searched for screenshots of the most recent versions of both desktop managers and it seems to me that KDE still looks better than Gnome.
I don't want to start a flamewar, after all I don't know how both compare in terms of usability, but I'm still curious: those of you who have used both Gnome and KDE but now prefer one over the other, do you do this based on looks or on other factors? In other words, if I were to start using a Linux distribution right now, and did not mind choosing Gnome or KDE, what would be the advantages of one over the other, looks aside?
Just a question: does DDO provide support for addons as much as WoW (or at all)?
I ask that because, for me, trying new addons is almost 50% of the fun I see on playing WoW. So far I have around 100 to 200 addons installed that I use (and update) regularly, plus 50 or so in testing at each time, most of which get deleted very fast, but some of which end up in my "permanent" list. And the list only grows.
A non-fully customizable & scriptable UI is nowadays something I feel unaceptable for a complex MMORPG. I'll only try DDO (or any other MMORPG) if this feature is present. Otherwise, no way. After all, as my brother once said, WoW is actually a pretty good OS.;)
It's simply not allowed by the EULA. The EULA states that the only situation where you, being the owner of an account, is allowed to let others play it, is when you're a grow up purchasing an account for your children to play. In this case the account can be shared between you and him/her, and that's all.
Of course, most people don't give a damn about this. I myself have a shared account with my brother.:) Anyway, Blizzard has the right to terminate my account if they so which. I don't think they'll do it because that would mean $15 less for them each month, but the possibility surely exists.
Not true, because the farmers will be competing among themselves, what drops the prices to market levels. What you describe would happen if they united in a cartel. But even so, a cartel in a free market works only so far as no new non-cartelized merchants enter it, for when this happens it's very that they won't put items at a little lower price than the one practiced by the cartel. After a while the cartel breaks due to lower sales and full blown competition returns. Were Blizzard to allow only 'x' gold farmers per server, all registered, and no more than those, and a self-sustaining cartel would surely arise, increasing prices without end. With a random number of gold farmers this is simply impossible: the market wins.
In short, it's very hard to disrupt the offer vs. demand curve, even in a MMORPG. The game manufacturer might create this, for it would work as a government, with the powers of government. But other than that, there's no way for that to happen.
Paying for someone to transfer you gold accumulated by him is no different than, let's say, paying someone to sit at your home computer using your own char to farm for items and gold while you work.
Granted, WoW's EULA forbids your from both purchasing gold from a 3rd party and allowing someone else to play your account, even your brother (the account is considered exclusive and non-transferable). Also, it's obvious that any online "gold" is Blizzard's possession, not the player's possesion. But other than that, I surely don't see why farming, leveling service and gold selling is bad.
By the way, the argument that gold farmers disrupt the server economy would be valid if they farmed only for gold, with the offer of goods remaining the same. This, by standard monetary inflation rules, would push prices up. But the actual fact is that they also obtain lots of items, many of which end up in the Auction House, what by the same logic makes prices go down. Actually, if those tons of itens did not go into the AH, the farmers wouldn't obtain lots of gold in the first place. So, things end up in a more or less balanced state, and the gold farmers interference in the economy isn't all that big.
The only thing that some gold farmers do that is very wrong is to cause social disruption (read: spam). Other than that, their presence is almost inocuous and hardly noticeable.
Blizzard and other MMORPG manufacturers would do well if they simply regulated this market so that it wouldn't be a black one anymore. If done right it might become a new profit source for them, a way to not discourage casual players who're unable to farm by themselves, and a means to make farmers behave in a more appropriate way.
Yes, when violent persecution ends, that's what remains. Just observe the usual reaction a lesbian have to a man who shows interest in her. It's the same behavioural rule, only reversed.
Many things are a reaction to something else. You see GLBT identity as the core problem, but you don't propose a solution. How do you propose to eradicate the societal pressures that created GLBT identity in the first place?
There's no solution, that's the point. What GLBT pressure groups do right is to denounce violence and demand the criminals to be punished. That works because that's an act upon another act. What they do wrong is to demand other people to accept "GLBTness" per se, which is just outright impossible.
Just take the figures: a straight man who talks to a women is pretty sure she won't reject them simply because he's a man, for 97% of people is straight so chances of "hiting" an homosexual woman are pretty small. Of course she might reject him because he's fat, or ugly, or dumb, and so on, but such rejections operate on a different scale than that of imediate biological crudity. On the other hand, an homosexual gay man who talks to another man has a 97% chance of being rejected simply because he's a man, no matter whether the other guy found him to have a good body, to be smart etc.
This reject proportion (3:100 vs. 97:100) is an irredutible biological fact. It's coded in basic human instict. There's absolutely no social solution to it. So, the desire for absolutely equal treatment simply cannot be reached. Socially you can go only up to a point, that of "live and let live", but that's all. Trying to trespass it equals imposing your opinion upon others by force, what doesn't work, and there's no avoiding it.
Unless the GLBT pressure groups, as well as GLBT themselves, recognize the above, there's no end to the strugle. If you fight for something that cannot be reached, but you don't recognize it cannot be reached, you'll just keep fighting a useless fight. To recognize there's some irredutible things in life is the first step for you to start solving the solvable problems, since you'll be able to focus them.
I have nothing to disagree with what you said. I'd like to add only that what people should understand is that what you are shouldn't be more important that what you do. What you are is a given, and as such is neither something for you to be ashamed off nor for you to have pride about. What you do upon what you are is what to base any shame or pride in, nothing else.
For instance, if the GLBT guild does better than mine in WoW-PvP, that's something for which to have pride! After all, other than that, what's the matter?;)
Yes, I'm straight, but fon't take me wrong. I'm all for punishing any act of violence and for ostracizing those who commit discrimination. But there's a difference between demanding to be treated like everyone else, which is fair and just, and demanding to be treated better than everyone else, which is turning the whole thing upside down.
By the way, I know many homosexuals, and none of them suffered any of these things you mention. The most common reaction they tell me they "suffer" is people looking odd at them. The cases you mention are at an extreme of the scale, and if you overemphasize them it's obvious you'll conclude that only an extreme reaction will do, which isn't the case.
Oh, and just for the sake of clarity, let me add that I don't believe there's something that might be called "normal sexual behaviour". What exists is, AFAIK, a statistical distribution of behaviours. I'm on one bin of the statistical chart, you're on other, other people fill other bins, and that's all.
Does this mean I can create a guild for straights and sympathizer only and advertise it on public chat?
This whole subject is completely ridiculous, and Blizzard is making it even more ridiculous. What's next? A Blacks Only guild? Or should we be PC and say African-Americans Only guild, never minding this would exclude non-American blacks from joining it? Maybe that could be followed by a Whites Only guild too. Or would this one be too un-PC?
The whole problem, actually, is GLBTs using their "GLBTness" as a defining characteristic of their personalities. This is as much absurd as a straight proclaiming his straightness as being the important aspect of himself. Sex is just a like/dislike thing, one among many. It's not worth this central role people, specially GLBTs, see in it.
I have no problem with purchasing ebooks, and do this all the time from either Fictionwise or eReader to read on my Palm Zire (yes, the older one), which I upgraded to 8 MB. And I use to read many hours on it without any problem.
Before I began reading ebooks I did some research and found eReader's DRM scheme to be very nice, unlike others. The ebook comes encrypted with your name and the number of the credit card you used to purchase it as the decryption key. In other words, the ebook isn't device-locked, so I can open it in any Windows, Mac, Palm, Pocket PC and/or Symbian machine (no Linux version so far) I have access to. Also, the standard versions of the reader software are freeware, and the purchaseable Pro ones also aren't device-locked, so I install and reinstall them anywhere. Thus, so far I've purchase both Windows and Palm eReader Pro. And the Fictionwise store has the advantage of also having DRM-free copyrighted ebooks. These don't come nicely formatted as the DRM'ed ones, but they are as readable as any Project Gutenberg text file, so no big deal there.
However, the main advantage I see on ebooks is that they're much cheaper to purchase than printed versions, at least for me who don't live in USA. The shipping charges practiced on online stores such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble to send printed books to Brazil are outrageous, while on ebooks they're $0.
All in all, my ebook reading experience, with both DRM'ed, DRM-free copyrighted and public domain ebooks, has been almost excelent. I've around 200 ebooks and will keep purchasing them no matter what.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the end goal is invalid too. Lots of research has been made into the many possible ways a communist state fully implemented would work if/when the dictatorial pre-communist transitional power structure were replaced by a democratic one. They all show that the thing just doesn't work, resulting in a progressive increase in poverty.
x
For an earlier but very good example of such studies, which unfortunately are not well known outside of scholarship circles, I suggest Ludwig von Mises book "Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis". It's available for download at the Mises Institute website:
http://www.mises.org/books/socialism/contents.asp
By the way, keep in mind that althoug most anti-state libertarians see themselves as disciples of Mises, he himself was far from this extreme anti-statist rethorics. Reading Mises is an intellectual pleasure, a completely unrelated experience to what you "get" by reading a Lew Rockwell and the likes.
A small complement: A recent article in Scientific American Brazil (it was probably published in an earlier American edition, but I'm not sure) talked extensively on the new reprocessing techniques on discarded fission material, and how new nuclear plant projects are able to use those to produce energy, leaving in the end only harmless metal.
IIRC, current nuclear plants use only 5% of the energy actually present on fission material. When the material is discarded, about 95% is still available but unused, and those 95% are what makes this material harmfull to living beings. The new technology will revert this, using 95% and leaving 5% unused. The then discarded metal (the one with 5% radioactive energy) doesn't cause problems.
The most interesting point of the article is that the current discarded material can be used in these new plants. When it's all used up there won't rest any nuclear "waste".
Now a question remains: will ecofanatics ever stand up and say, as they should, "Er... yes, sorry, we were wrong all the time"? Yeah, sure...
Most people nowadays have a tendency to find much interest in questions like "what came before the Big Bang" and the like. I, too, think this is a nice field of research. However, this is far, very far away from the actual issue.
What came before what isn't an interesting subject per se. A simple catalog that says that event "a" happened before event "b" doesn't tells much, it's just raw data. The insteresting stuff is whether event "a" caused event "b" or not. And it's no wonder then that at the heart of any such study is the concept of "causality". And causalitu not as something that you "think", but as an actual reality.
So, if you say that the chain of causes and effects has 15 billion years, or 900 billion years, or 100 trillion years, this is simply a measurement of the "size" of causality. But no matter what's its size: knowing it perfectly won't tell you from where causality itself comes, nor what it is when taken as a whole.
Compared to this kind of metaphysical questioning ("metaphysics" means "that which goes along with physics", causality itself baing a good example of a metaphysical subject), things such as the size of the time dimension seem very secondary.
I think it's sad scientific journals don't put these subjects into discussion. Philosophical themes that are by nature linked to scientific research are very accessible if well presented, providing as much food for thought as the latest and greatest string theory. After all, what you learn there ends up being valid for everything else you'll study, including the most recent scientific researchs.
The rating system should be changed. Instead of a single "Teens", "Children", "Mature" etc. rating, this should be multi-layered system. The box should have something like this:
Puting into the parents hands the burden of deciding what is and isn't appropriate for their children.
In short: any kind of measurement must be somewhat precise. There's no precision at all in compressing these different dimensions into a generic "this is okay for teens, that isn't".
What? My god! Cuba trained and financed thousands of terrorists in the last decades. In the '60s and '70s many of those were fighting guerrila warfare in my country (Brazil) wishing to implement a proletariat dictatorship. And many others, including Che Guevara, were sent to lots of countries to help local terrorist movements.
Nowadays, Cuba is giving lots of *direct* help to Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chavez and to Colombia's narco-guerrila terrorists of the FARCS. The Comunist Party of Cuba, together with Brazilian's Workers Party, is also head country of the South American continental terrorist network "Forum de Sao Paulo", which includes, among more than 40 organizations, Colombia's FARCS itself and Chile's MIR.
And if that wasn't enough, Cuba is now in talks with Middle-Eastern islamic terrorist states to develop coordinated efforts whenever the opportunity arises.
Get your facts straight. Cuba is a terrorist state and deserves each and every restriction that's imposed upon it.
What I would like, but I know I won't get, is, first, perfect separation between a news piece data from its interpretation, with the data receiving uniform representation.
For example, instead of a biased news such as "Rep. X said blah, while the very, very conservative rep. Y said blah, showing he doesn't care for Z", the "data" part would simply say "In regards to Z, rep. X said blah, while rep. Y said blah", or, better yet, "In regards to Z, rep. X (x% liberal according to institute A's 2005 research in the representatives' voting patterns), said blah, while rep. Y (y% conservative), said blah."
Second, multiple interpretations for the same data. This way, one might click "Liberal Opinion" and read "This shows the very strong conservatism of rep. Y, and how he doesn't care for Z, which any progressive knows is absolutely needed because of blah". Or click "Conservative Opinion" and read "As expected, rep. X shows his strong liberal commitment for Z, which goes against our decades old traditions in blah". Or even click "Libertarian Opinion" and read "Both rep. X and Y show, in regards to Z, that they don't care for freedom, since both support strong governmental intervention where the free market blah".
Now, back to the real world...
Funnily enough, I'm Brazilian but I also didn't know that RG numbers ("xx.xxx.xxx-x") could be not unique. Thanks for the information! Now I understand why many documents into which you must inform your RG number also ask which government department issued it, and to which state it belongs.
On the other hand, if we consider the department plus state acronym (for example, mine is "SSP/SP") attached to the RG number as being part of the number itself (in the form "xx.xxx.xxx-x yyy/zz"), then in practice the thing becomes a unique national identifier. Hmm...
Not really. For instance, in World of Warcraft you have the option of choosing a role-playing server, where there're strict behavioural rules enforced by Blizzard's staff. Also, even if within the rules you find some other kind of idiot there, you can easily "/ignore" him for good. And if both things aren't enough, there're tons of addons you can install to increase even more the immersion experience. Other than those, don't forget to enter a "strict role-playing" guild if you wanna full immersion, or an "in character prefered" one if 100% isn't required. Ask around and you'll find many good ones.
Yeah, shame on then for having ended slavery and for removing dictators from power. An evil party like no other, no doubt about it.
A problem with the studies that affirm global warming is that they're either very speculative or based on too a very narrow data "cut".
In the first case, they're reports on the results of computation using this or that climate model, where the different climate factors, such as percent of CO2 in the atmosphere, receive very arbitrary weights. If, for instance, you attribute different weights to these factors or add more factors, such as the likelihood we're entering a new Ice Age (in the '70s tons of studies focused on this), the results vary a lot. One such calculation might conclude that no matter what humans do the world will end very cold. Other might conclude that our warming actions might actually conter balance the cold, keeping the temperatures as they are. And others will say that our actions are warming the world. Currently these last are favoured, because their results seem to coincide more or less with actual collected data, but it's possible to argue that in others, "global cooling" models, a small temperature increase for some years followed by a sharp decrease in temperature isn't unlikely. So, how can we say which of these models, weights, factors etc. are the correct ones? I don't think it's possible without many centuries of measurements.
In the second case, the studies are based on the behaviour of this or that factor when everything else is excluded. So, if you go study what happens in a lab experiment when there's an increase in the percent of CO2, it becomes absolutely clear that it's a warming effect, no doubt about that. But how does this effect relates with all the other climate-changing effects is difficult to say, which takes us to the above problem of the models.
Furthermore, when one takes this problem from the scientific field to the political, another question arises: a global warming is really a bad thing? I mean, from the point of view of agriculture, more CO2 means, AFAIK, correct me if I'm wrong, bigger crops, bigger vegetables and the like, and so more food. And more food means less hungry people in the world. So, one might ask, without any ill intent, whether the benefits aren't worth the trouble of increased sea levels and some more extinguished species. Are they?
The above points, plus some others I haven't mentioned, don't allow me to buy the whole idea of cutting greenhouse gases as being The Obvious Good ThingTM. There're tons of questions that should be answered, and very well answered, before we're sure that going forward into changing the whole industrial world is really needed. What if we actually do it, causing all the unemplyment and lowering of living standards it'll mean, only to discover in a few decades that the whole effort wasn't needed? Who'd pay the needy for all the social troubles this move will have caused them?
This, IMHO, is a question most people who write on the subject forget to ask.
Okay, not the same meaning of "western" as in the article, but I surely would love to see a Western MMORPG. Better yet, a Dark Tower MMORPG.
:)
From having read volumes 1 to 5, let me see what such a game would have:
a) Battles with guns, swords, knifes, light-sabers, throwing disks, machine guns, bows and bahs;
b) Vehicles, ranging from horses and cows to (mad) trains, tubes, cars, trucks and even nazi aircrafts.
c) Dimensional travel with at least 12 different versions os the United States, plus some non-Earth-related settings, and even distorted versions of classical fairy tales settings.
d) Time travel embracing at least 3 "ages": the '60s, '70s and '80s.
e) Last-day cowboy-knights descending from King Arthur or some alternate-reality version of him.
f) Giant bio-mechanical robots, human-sized robots, animal-shaped robots, and small robots.
g) Brain-eating mutants with psychic powers.
h) Vampires (3 types), "men in yellow", witches and dark mages.
i) Mad cults.
j) Policemen and gangsters.
Yeah, that would be cool!
There's a silly assumption here in Brazil that the USA is "evil". And let me be clear about this: the assumption is that each and every thing made by Americans is "evil", be it in politics (no matter whether Republicans or Democratic), in commerce, or even in international charity efforts. Furthermore, this "USA is evil" view is backed by Brazilian big media, which covers with richness of detail everything bad about USA that appears on USA's own big media (New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek etc.), while dismissing or at most publishing in footnote size everything good, plus lots of conspiracy theories made by ourselves. One example of these theories is that lots of Brazilians believe that USA wants to conquer the Amazon Forest and so will, sooner or later, have marines invading Brazil from Colombia...
The end result of this nonsense are news such as the one published above. See the pattern: Google is an USA corporation, so it is evil by itself. Also, it is "obviously" serving USA's interest in Amazon's richness by providing this information. As a side note, this also "proves" (to those who believe in the idea, of course) that the future marines invasion is on the horizon. Go figure...
"No one crosses the Shadow Thieves... and LIVES!!!"
"Silence, dog! Your only purpose is to die by MY hand!"
What might happen after this disaster is that George Lucas will edit episode IV again, this time entirely replacing the first scenes with Luke Skywalker, putting flashbacks of the TV series or something like that in place of them.
Then he'll edit the ending of episode III, and the whole episode I, to show the new Tattoine. After all, who said Luke has grown on a farm? Or that Tattoine is a desert planet? In a CG age everything can change.
And be prepared to only be able to purchase this new version (in BD/HD-DVD), since the old, deprecated "sandy", "boring", "teen-farmer" Luke version won't be available anywhere anymore.
OMG, what a nightmare!!!
Hmm... it has been some 3 or 4 years since I used Linux, but I remember that at the time I thought KDE had a better "look" than Gnome. After reading this article I've searched for screenshots of the most recent versions of both desktop managers and it seems to me that KDE still looks better than Gnome.
I don't want to start a flamewar, after all I don't know how both compare in terms of usability, but I'm still curious: those of you who have used both Gnome and KDE but now prefer one over the other, do you do this based on looks or on other factors? In other words, if I were to start using a Linux distribution right now, and did not mind choosing Gnome or KDE, what would be the advantages of one over the other, looks aside?
Just a question: does DDO provide support for addons as much as WoW (or at all)?
;)
I ask that because, for me, trying new addons is almost 50% of the fun I see on playing WoW. So far I have around 100 to 200 addons installed that I use (and update) regularly, plus 50 or so in testing at each time, most of which get deleted very fast, but some of which end up in my "permanent" list. And the list only grows.
A non-fully customizable & scriptable UI is nowadays something I feel unaceptable for a complex MMORPG. I'll only try DDO (or any other MMORPG) if this feature is present. Otherwise, no way. After all, as my brother once said, WoW is actually a pretty good OS.
It's simply not allowed by the EULA. The EULA states that the only situation where you, being the owner of an account, is allowed to let others play it, is when you're a grow up purchasing an account for your children to play. In this case the account can be shared between you and him/her, and that's all.
:) Anyway, Blizzard has the right to terminate my account if they so which. I don't think they'll do it because that would mean $15 less for them each month, but the possibility surely exists.
Of course, most people don't give a damn about this. I myself have a shared account with my brother.
Not true, because the farmers will be competing among themselves, what drops the prices to market levels. What you describe would happen if they united in a cartel. But even so, a cartel in a free market works only so far as no new non-cartelized merchants enter it, for when this happens it's very that they won't put items at a little lower price than the one practiced by the cartel. After a while the cartel breaks due to lower sales and full blown competition returns. Were Blizzard to allow only 'x' gold farmers per server, all registered, and no more than those, and a self-sustaining cartel would surely arise, increasing prices without end. With a random number of gold farmers this is simply impossible: the market wins.
In short, it's very hard to disrupt the offer vs. demand curve, even in a MMORPG. The game manufacturer might create this, for it would work as a government, with the powers of government. But other than that, there's no way for that to happen.
Paying for someone to transfer you gold accumulated by him is no different than, let's say, paying someone to sit at your home computer using your own char to farm for items and gold while you work.
Granted, WoW's EULA forbids your from both purchasing gold from a 3rd party and allowing someone else to play your account, even your brother (the account is considered exclusive and non-transferable). Also, it's obvious that any online "gold" is Blizzard's possession, not the player's possesion. But other than that, I surely don't see why farming, leveling service and gold selling is bad.
By the way, the argument that gold farmers disrupt the server economy would be valid if they farmed only for gold, with the offer of goods remaining the same. This, by standard monetary inflation rules, would push prices up. But the actual fact is that they also obtain lots of items, many of which end up in the Auction House, what by the same logic makes prices go down. Actually, if those tons of itens did not go into the AH, the farmers wouldn't obtain lots of gold in the first place. So, things end up in a more or less balanced state, and the gold farmers interference in the economy isn't all that big.
The only thing that some gold farmers do that is very wrong is to cause social disruption (read: spam). Other than that, their presence is almost inocuous and hardly noticeable.
Blizzard and other MMORPG manufacturers would do well if they simply regulated this market so that it wouldn't be a black one anymore. If done right it might become a new profit source for them, a way to not discourage casual players who're unable to farm by themselves, and a means to make farmers behave in a more appropriate way.
Yes, when violent persecution ends, that's what remains. Just observe the usual reaction a lesbian have to a man who shows interest in her. It's the same behavioural rule, only reversed.
There's no solution, that's the point. What GLBT pressure groups do right is to denounce violence and demand the criminals to be punished. That works because that's an act upon another act. What they do wrong is to demand other people to accept "GLBTness" per se, which is just outright impossible.
Just take the figures: a straight man who talks to a women is pretty sure she won't reject them simply because he's a man, for 97% of people is straight so chances of "hiting" an homosexual woman are pretty small. Of course she might reject him because he's fat, or ugly, or dumb, and so on, but such rejections operate on a different scale than that of imediate biological crudity. On the other hand, an homosexual gay man who talks to another man has a 97% chance of being rejected simply because he's a man, no matter whether the other guy found him to have a good body, to be smart etc.
This reject proportion (3:100 vs. 97:100) is an irredutible biological fact. It's coded in basic human instict. There's absolutely no social solution to it. So, the desire for absolutely equal treatment simply cannot be reached. Socially you can go only up to a point, that of "live and let live", but that's all. Trying to trespass it equals imposing your opinion upon others by force, what doesn't work, and there's no avoiding it.
Unless the GLBT pressure groups, as well as GLBT themselves, recognize the above, there's no end to the strugle. If you fight for something that cannot be reached, but you don't recognize it cannot be reached, you'll just keep fighting a useless fight. To recognize there's some irredutible things in life is the first step for you to start solving the solvable problems, since you'll be able to focus them.
I have nothing to disagree with what you said. I'd like to add only that what people should understand is that what you are shouldn't be more important that what you do. What you are is a given, and as such is neither something for you to be ashamed off nor for you to have pride about. What you do upon what you are is what to base any shame or pride in, nothing else.
;)
For instance, if the GLBT guild does better than mine in WoW-PvP, that's something for which to have pride! After all, other than that, what's the matter?
Yes, I'm straight, but fon't take me wrong. I'm all for punishing any act of violence and for ostracizing those who commit discrimination. But there's a difference between demanding to be treated like everyone else, which is fair and just, and demanding to be treated better than everyone else, which is turning the whole thing upside down.
By the way, I know many homosexuals, and none of them suffered any of these things you mention. The most common reaction they tell me they "suffer" is people looking odd at them. The cases you mention are at an extreme of the scale, and if you overemphasize them it's obvious you'll conclude that only an extreme reaction will do, which isn't the case.
Oh, and just for the sake of clarity, let me add that I don't believe there's something that might be called "normal sexual behaviour". What exists is, AFAIK, a statistical distribution of behaviours. I'm on one bin of the statistical chart, you're on other, other people fill other bins, and that's all.
Does this mean I can create a guild for straights and sympathizer only and advertise it on public chat?
This whole subject is completely ridiculous, and Blizzard is making it even more ridiculous. What's next? A Blacks Only guild? Or should we be PC and say African-Americans Only guild, never minding this would exclude non-American blacks from joining it? Maybe that could be followed by a Whites Only guild too. Or would this one be too un-PC?
The whole problem, actually, is GLBTs using their "GLBTness" as a defining characteristic of their personalities. This is as much absurd as a straight proclaiming his straightness as being the important aspect of himself. Sex is just a like/dislike thing, one among many. It's not worth this central role people, specially GLBTs, see in it.
I have no problem with purchasing ebooks, and do this all the time from either Fictionwise or eReader to read on my Palm Zire (yes, the older one), which I upgraded to 8 MB. And I use to read many hours on it without any problem.
:)
Before I began reading ebooks I did some research and found eReader's DRM scheme to be very nice, unlike others. The ebook comes encrypted with your name and the number of the credit card you used to purchase it as the decryption key. In other words, the ebook isn't device-locked, so I can open it in any Windows, Mac, Palm, Pocket PC and/or Symbian machine (no Linux version so far) I have access to. Also, the standard versions of the reader software are freeware, and the purchaseable Pro ones also aren't device-locked, so I install and reinstall them anywhere. Thus, so far I've purchase both Windows and Palm eReader Pro. And the Fictionwise store has the advantage of also having DRM-free copyrighted ebooks. These don't come nicely formatted as the DRM'ed ones, but they are as readable as any Project Gutenberg text file, so no big deal there.
However, the main advantage I see on ebooks is that they're much cheaper to purchase than printed versions, at least for me who don't live in USA. The shipping charges practiced on online stores such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble to send printed books to Brazil are outrageous, while on ebooks they're $0.
All in all, my ebook reading experience, with both DRM'ed, DRM-free copyrighted and public domain ebooks, has been almost excelent. I've around 200 ebooks and will keep purchasing them no matter what.