The better question to ask is: "Are random searches effective in keeping everyone safe?"
No, in this case, that's not the better question to ask. I'm of the opinion that truly random screenings are stupid (78 yr old grandmas from Illinois and US congressmen aren't going to bomb our planes, people), and I'm sure Homeland Security feels the same way.
Still, if you're not doing truly random screenings, have the balls to say so and take the PR lump on the chin rather than lying to your own people even more than you already do.
Whether random screenings are more effective than profiling isn't a particularly interesting question. Since it only takes one or two flights to figure out the search procedures, a truly dangerous terrorist isn't likely to be caught by such a simple measure. On the other hand, any time our government lies to us is something we should be interested in, despite the fact it seems to be a daily occurence now.
1) Rogues are gimpy. If they're even close to my level I can drop them with pretty much any class, whether they get the jump on me or not. Even if I'm fighting a mob or two at the time. If you can't do that... well, improve. It's widely acknowledged that the once-overpowered rogue is basically a joke now. My holy priest, who can't grind to save his life, crushes 60 rogues in tier 2 gear with ease.
2) You've never been able to talk in World Defense without having a certain PvP ranking. That rank is pretty low (I don't remember which exactly), but the fact is Local Defense is fine for trying to get help with gankers. The biggest gank zones (STV, Plaguelands, Tanaris) are always crawling with 60s anyway. No need to bother the whole world for a local problem. Better yet, get a guild and ask them for help. Or go get a snack and come back in 10 minutes when your ganker has left. Or spirit rez and go do something else. Or reroll PvE. Point is, you've got options.
3) The hunter dead zone is balanced and easy to work with. Mages might blink+FN you, just scattershot them (or intimidation if you're one of those BM dorks, they've already burned blink) after a couple seconds, FD+trap on their feet, drop back and 2-shot them. Warlocks are harder, but warlocks are hard for anybody, it's not a hunter problem.
4) That holy priest I mentioned is a godly PvP healer. Stack some stamina (that means no PvP healing in raid gear), put some friendly players between yourself and the enemy, and exploit the range of your 40 yard heals, and you'll be fine. Being a PvP healer is one of the most challenging things to do in the game, especially against organized opponents, but it's also one of the most rewarding, and healing is without a doubt the most powerful thing any class can bring to the PvP table. The winning group in 95% of BGs is the one with the better heals.
This is all kind of OT, I just think you've got kind of a misguided view of the game you're using for your examples.
Indeed. WoW, for whatever problems it has with a lack of decent PvP and server instability, is an amazing game. Any new MMO that comes out is either going to have to be equally amazing in its own right, which will be hard given the talent Blizzard has and the extremely long time they had to work on the game; or should really just steal as many ideas as possible from WoW and fix the problems.
WAR appears to be taking that route, and I'll definitely drop my WoW account to play it if it can deliver what it's promising.
They've been systematically reviewing each class almost since the game came out. Most of the changes have been in the talent trees. Rogues had their review in the 1.12 patch, and their talents were changed.
This is different. This is the addition of new, higher tier (up to 41 point required) talents to coincide with the release of the expansion and the increasing of the level cap to 70.
It takes 72+ hours to get to 60 in WoW, minimum. That's the shortest amount of playtime I'm aware of, and it was done with a group of people specifically trying to see how fast they could get someone to 60. Powerlevelling in the traditional sense just doesn't really work in WoW. Solo grinding is pretty much the fastest way to level, disregarding the fact that you'll get ganked quite a bit if you solo grind in populated places on PvP servers.
Experienced players mostly get to 60 in about 7 days of playtime (when they're questing and grinding for the most part, but taking time to do instance dungeons for gear once in a while as well), while first timers generally take about twice that.
Having done it several times I'll say that, while I'd never pay money for someone to play a game for me, the pre-60 portions of the game do get old. I'd skip them when starting new alts if I could.
One likely incentive for that migration will be reduced storage costs. Microsoft claims that file sizes for the new Office 2007 XML-based formats are up to 75 percent less than existing Office formats.
You know your file format is bloated when the same document can be described in XML and be 75% smaller.
Well, you most likely have a lot more money than you would have if you kept a woman around to take care of that monkey for you. Of course, that's usually not the primary motivation for such things...
I wasn't so much saying the IBM guy is wrong, than I'm saying he's the wrong person to be pointing it out.
Between OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, and their work with GNOME, Sun has made plenty of solid contributions to OSS. Now they're supposedly opening the source for Java, which is the one thing everyone's been screaming about for the past five years and -- IMHO -- the only thing that keeps Sun relevant anymore.
I don't give a rat's ass about Sun, but they seem to be trying. Some douche from IBM doesn't need to be getting in their face because their OS code isn't open enough when IBM won't put AIX or OS/2 out there at all.
And the comment about there only being room for one open source OS is total bullshit. I hope his opinion doesn't represent the majority of IBM's staff.
My last job used everything you mentioned, save SQL Server. That was actually used too, just outside of my particular department. Of course, the company was large enough that we had dedicated DBAs that specialized in one or two of the systems, but you still needed to know your way around in case you were on call and something broke at 4am.
That's a shame, because I'm actually a huge fan of both Apple and Mac OS X. I just want Leopard to be better--much better--than the OS that Steve Jobs and company described this week
So what does he want? Apple seems to have pretty much everything Microsoft was planning to ship (and probably some of the stuff they ended up dropping) with Vista covered. He's long on criticism for Apple's mountains-out-of-molehills marketing, which is completely valid, but he doesn't say what they're missing at all.
He explains right off why Apple has to be grandiose about their software. They're trying to get attention for their computer business. They're trying to increase that tiny sliver of market share they have, and if they just hop up on stage and say "Hey guys, we got a couple new features in here. Hope you buy our computers," nobody's going to go for it.
Microsoft can afford to be more reserved and dismissive of Apple and their other competitors. They're the 800lb gorilla. Even admitting Apple exists is probably more than they'd like, because more people will hear that than all the Apple shouting from the rooftops in the world.
After the smashing success of the NGage, Nokia couldn't help but go after the one manufacturer that owns its market more than Nintendo owns portable game systems. I see nothing but success in their future, and -- god willing -- the triumphant return of sidetalkin'.
Slashdot Mirror
... by a civilization that's gone. Maybe not the best role model.
No, in this case, that's not the better question to ask. I'm of the opinion that truly random screenings are stupid (78 yr old grandmas from Illinois and US congressmen aren't going to bomb our planes, people), and I'm sure Homeland Security feels the same way.
Still, if you're not doing truly random screenings, have the balls to say so and take the PR lump on the chin rather than lying to your own people even more than you already do.
Whether random screenings are more effective than profiling isn't a particularly interesting question. Since it only takes one or two flights to figure out the search procedures, a truly dangerous terrorist isn't likely to be caught by such a simple measure. On the other hand, any time our government lies to us is something we should be interested in, despite the fact it seems to be a daily occurence now.
A hammer for hitting myself over the head, and a bottle of whiskey to numb the pain... of dealing with HTML.
It's pretty sad when the first person you associate with three poor excuses for invading citizens' privacy is our president.
Wait a second, I'm a nerd. Where do I sign up for my mean steak?
Mmmm.. steak.
After all, everyone fits in at Mardi Gras.
Aye, just like they did at St. Andrews.
1) Rogues are gimpy. If they're even close to my level I can drop them with pretty much any class, whether they get the jump on me or not. Even if I'm fighting a mob or two at the time. If you can't do that... well, improve. It's widely acknowledged that the once-overpowered rogue is basically a joke now. My holy priest, who can't grind to save his life, crushes 60 rogues in tier 2 gear with ease.
2) You've never been able to talk in World Defense without having a certain PvP ranking. That rank is pretty low (I don't remember which exactly), but the fact is Local Defense is fine for trying to get help with gankers. The biggest gank zones (STV, Plaguelands, Tanaris) are always crawling with 60s anyway. No need to bother the whole world for a local problem. Better yet, get a guild and ask them for help. Or go get a snack and come back in 10 minutes when your ganker has left. Or spirit rez and go do something else. Or reroll PvE. Point is, you've got options.
3) The hunter dead zone is balanced and easy to work with. Mages might blink+FN you, just scattershot them (or intimidation if you're one of those BM dorks, they've already burned blink) after a couple seconds, FD+trap on their feet, drop back and 2-shot them. Warlocks are harder, but warlocks are hard for anybody, it's not a hunter problem.
4) That holy priest I mentioned is a godly PvP healer. Stack some stamina (that means no PvP healing in raid gear), put some friendly players between yourself and the enemy, and exploit the range of your 40 yard heals, and you'll be fine. Being a PvP healer is one of the most challenging things to do in the game, especially against organized opponents, but it's also one of the most rewarding, and healing is without a doubt the most powerful thing any class can bring to the PvP table. The winning group in 95% of BGs is the one with the better heals.
This is all kind of OT, I just think you've got kind of a misguided view of the game you're using for your examples.
Indeed. WoW, for whatever problems it has with a lack of decent PvP and server instability, is an amazing game. Any new MMO that comes out is either going to have to be equally amazing in its own right, which will be hard given the talent Blizzard has and the extremely long time they had to work on the game; or should really just steal as many ideas as possible from WoW and fix the problems.
WAR appears to be taking that route, and I'll definitely drop my WoW account to play it if it can deliver what it's promising.
They've been systematically reviewing each class almost since the game came out. Most of the changes have been in the talent trees. Rogues had their review in the 1.12 patch, and their talents were changed.
This is different. This is the addition of new, higher tier (up to 41 point required) talents to coincide with the release of the expansion and the increasing of the level cap to 70.
That was twice as funny as the prank, or the post describing it. Well done.
It takes 72+ hours to get to 60 in WoW, minimum. That's the shortest amount of playtime I'm aware of, and it was done with a group of people specifically trying to see how fast they could get someone to 60. Powerlevelling in the traditional sense just doesn't really work in WoW. Solo grinding is pretty much the fastest way to level, disregarding the fact that you'll get ganked quite a bit if you solo grind in populated places on PvP servers.
Experienced players mostly get to 60 in about 7 days of playtime (when they're questing and grinding for the most part, but taking time to do instance dungeons for gear once in a while as well), while first timers generally take about twice that.
Having done it several times I'll say that, while I'd never pay money for someone to play a game for me, the pre-60 portions of the game do get old. I'd skip them when starting new alts if I could.
You know your file format is bloated when the same document can be described in XML and be 75% smaller.
Die pally scum!
(Sorry... reflex.)
Well, you most likely have a lot more money than you would have if you kept a woman around to take care of that monkey for you. Of course, that's usually not the primary motivation for such things...
I believe an "Oh snap!" is in order.
I wasn't so much saying the IBM guy is wrong, than I'm saying he's the wrong person to be pointing it out.
Between OpenOffice, OpenSolaris, and their work with GNOME, Sun has made plenty of solid contributions to OSS. Now they're supposedly opening the source for Java, which is the one thing everyone's been screaming about for the past five years and -- IMHO -- the only thing that keeps Sun relevant anymore.
I don't give a rat's ass about Sun, but they seem to be trying. Some douche from IBM doesn't need to be getting in their face because their OS code isn't open enough when IBM won't put AIX or OS/2 out there at all.
And the comment about there only being room for one open source OS is total bullshit. I hope his opinion doesn't represent the majority of IBM's staff.
It's more open than AIX, that's for sure.
My last job used everything you mentioned, save SQL Server. That was actually used too, just outside of my particular department. Of course, the company was large enough that we had dedicated DBAs that specialized in one or two of the systems, but you still needed to know your way around in case you were on call and something broke at 4am.
You obviously don't work for Oracle.
I'm sure you get the rectal probe if your skin is brown.
So what does he want? Apple seems to have pretty much everything Microsoft was planning to ship (and probably some of the stuff they ended up dropping) with Vista covered. He's long on criticism for Apple's mountains-out-of-molehills marketing, which is completely valid, but he doesn't say what they're missing at all.
He explains right off why Apple has to be grandiose about their software. They're trying to get attention for their computer business. They're trying to increase that tiny sliver of market share they have, and if they just hop up on stage and say "Hey guys, we got a couple new features in here. Hope you buy our computers," nobody's going to go for it.
Microsoft can afford to be more reserved and dismissive of Apple and their other competitors. They're the 800lb gorilla. Even admitting Apple exists is probably more than they'd like, because more people will hear that than all the Apple shouting from the rooftops in the world.
After the smashing success of the NGage, Nokia couldn't help but go after the one manufacturer that owns its market more than Nintendo owns portable game systems. I see nothing but success in their future, and -- god willing -- the triumphant return of sidetalkin'.
I'm just tickled you got modded "Informative" for clarifying that you were, in fact, talking about your wang.
A moonbase by 2030... real original, Japan. We both know that building a moonbase by 2030 was my plan. Way to steal my idea. ... jerks.