Actually, the pertinent truth is that she is being sued, and if her lawyers are doing their jobs, they've advised her not to say anything publically that would jeapordise her case.
Eventually, the case will be over, and win or lose, she'll say plenty about it then. And, being Oprah, plenty of people will listen.
We'll see. I would tend to think she doesn't need the negative publicity, and she certainly has plenty of money to just pay the guy to go away.
How is being the victim of an abusive lawsuit "negative publicity"? She could have paid to make the "beef libel" lawsuit go away, too, instead she moved her show to accommodate the trial, fought it, and won, and turned it into plenty of positive publicity.
the current one though, due to reasons I'm still puzzling over, many state governments are low on cash right now and are asking employees to stay home w/o pay for unknown periods of time. The federal government though hasn't told anyone to stay home w/o pay as far as I know.
The credit crisis means that it is harder and more expensive than normal for states to borrow money (for a number of reasons, their debt is seen as risky while federal debt is seen as essentially risk-free); the housing bust has blown a huge hole in property tax revenues, and the usual wage and spending effects of the recession have blown huge holes in consumption and income tax revenues, and most states have balanced budget provisions in their state constitutions which, even if they could afford to borrow money freely, make it much more difficult for them to do so quickly than it is for the federal government, which can borrow money essentially at will (at right now, at almost no cost.) Consequently, while the federal government is both increasing spending and looking at further spending increases along with tax cuts, hoping to stimulate the economy, states are working against the federal government's stimulus efforts by cutting spending and in some cases even discussing raising taxes to deal with the revenue situation.
Effective security should stop attacks in the planning stages when the terrorists realize their plan cannot work, not at the last possible moment.
And how are secret measures that it takes a herculean effort even to reveal exist going to do that, especially when combined with the much more well publicized failures of DHS components (e.g., TSA) to do basic thinks like spot images of bombs on baggage screening scanners?
Heck, even if these measures were publicized, its hard to see how they would help: terrorists, particularly suicide terrorists, aren't going to be particularly concerned that after they blow up the plane they are on, DHS might figure out who they were and where they bought their ticket.
Someone living on $500 a month whose only option for education is to have material broadcast over the air to her television set?
A parent with one or more children (particularly with poor transportation options) may have lots of problems attending classes in person, which may leave distance learning as the best option; while classes-via-TV aren't the only distance learning option, (there are internet and mail correspondence options out there), it may be the best option for some learners.
What I want to know is, does any sane person think that overall price deflation isn't terrible for the economy?
No.
It's crushing to anyone in any significant amount of debt (i.e. anyone who holds a mortgage).
Pedantically, the person who holds the mortgage (also known as the mortgagee) isn't the one in any debt in the mortgage relationship, they are the creditor. The debtor is the person who gives the mortgage (also known as the mortgagor).
"Computers routinely include wireless technology to plug into the ever-present worldwide network, providing reliable, instantly available, very-high-bandwidth communication."
Wrong, we don't have ever-present worldwide network.
We have something pretty close to it, and popular portable computing devices (e.g., modern multifunction cellphones including smartphones, and even notebook computers with appropriate adapters) pretty routinely connect to it wirelessly.
Even finding 'hot-spots' are hard.
And likely to get harder as people who want connectivity for portable devices connect more the more widespread networks and rely less on public WLAN hotspots.
"Communication between components, such as pointing devices, microphones, displays, printers, and the occasional keyboard, uses short-distance wireless technology."
Mouse/keyboard is about it. Display won't be wireless.
Mouse/keyboard certainly isn't "about it", wireless printers or wired printers connected to wireless print servers are fairly popular in terms of traditional computers; for portable computing devices (phones, again) wireless audio i/o (bluetooth headsets, car systems) are ubiquitous and wireless displays (as in some car systems) aren't all that uncommon. Wireless display for more traditional computers is an available though somewhat pricey option currently, and has found some niches in particular industries.
Someone living on $500 a month has bigger things to deal with than television.
Someone living on $500 a month may well be relying in part on classes delivered by local colleges via television to try to get the skills to stop having to living on $500 a month; IOW, it may be part of dealing with the bigger things.
Broadcast TV isn't just for entertainment, even if that's the primary use that is made of it.
The problem is that game-art often must be done specifically for a game.
That depends on how exactly one defines a "game", but, yes, art, level design (even from a gameplay, rather than art, perspective), etc., are things that apply to a more specific unit than a basic game engine does.
Sure, there are stock models and textures, but these are for decorations only, or get processed (sometimes rather heavily).
Sure, to get to a polished game, you need to do that (this is pretty similar to the area of UI design for non-game project.) OTOH, there is no reason that their needs to be particularly tight coordination between the people building the engine, the people doing models and the textures for them, and the people doing the levels and the art for them.
So, development of a game is necessarily more monolithic than your typical open source project, which can reuse tons of code.
Sure, a typical open source project might reuse tons of code -- but plenty write lots and lots of new code -- but code isn't the only part of non-game open source projects either. There is lots of design, both in the sense or UI design and resources and usability design, that is needed to get a polished end-user app (rather than system tool) in any field, isn't entirely reusable between different apps, and take skills that are completely different than coding. OTOH, that's also an area where lots (but far from all) open source apps fall down.
I still think the problem is more that many open source projects tend to be run by programmers who are not as good, from a social and organizational perspective, at attracting and incorporating non-programmer talent to contribute more than it is a problem of money.
Of course, throwing money at talent -- programmers, artist, or otherwise -- can mitigate some of the social and organizational problems.
Around 4 percent of the country is ALWAYS employed, generally due to some chronic issue (can't or won't work for some reason) or just due to normal between-job transitions.
A person who can't or won't work for some reason, rather than one who is actively searching for work, is not counted in the headline unemployment rate at all; they are not considered part of the work force.
And balancing is donen by a designer, not a programmer. How many opensource coders exist who are competent game designers as well?
Probably few, but that's a bit of a different problem than the art problem. Its in the same broad class of problem, in that it boils down to, on one level, "you need talent other than programming talent", but I don't think its fundamentally the same issue. I think for game designers, it is probably more of an organizational problem than a money problem. OTOH, that may not be as different from art as I started out thinking -- I don't know if open source projects currently are good at incorporating artists, which may be as important as paying them. Its hardly as if programmers are generally free assets outside of the open source world, either.
You mentioned FreeCiv. It has been in development since 1996 and is one of the few examples of actually finished open source games. Note that its game art is rather simple, compared to today's games. As a result, many tilesets exist.
I don't think simple (in quality terms) gameart is necessary to get lots of sets of art assets: plenty of commercial games have lots of free, fan-generated, high-quality additional/alternative graphic assets. But I do think you are right that it is a contributing factor: I think the two big factors are the simplicity of making usable assets and the popularity of the base game. (I think ideally you would want an open source game to make it simple to make usable assets but have the game support fairly complex assets, that way you make it easy to put together a usable, playable package that can get out to players and content creators, but still give creators plenty that they can do with the game.)
But since the complexity of game assets and design for something like Deus Ex, Half-Life 1 & 2, Halo, System Shock, Starcraft etc. is orders of magnitude higher, I highly doubt such games will ever exist as opensource.
Perhaps nothing like that, especially as a single project that does everything. OTOH, part of the beauty of open source is that one project doesn't have to do everything.
Except that requires adding new directories to $PATH and other environment variables (for example, the Java paths if needed) for every single product installed and removing them with each and every uninstall.
Uh, why do games need to be on your path? The launcher for the game, of course, needs to be added to the appropriate menu in whatever menu system you use, and it may need to add entries to the environment for the anything it launches, but there is no reason to change system level environment variables for most game installs.
Unfortunately, the game art problem allows only FPS games to be done as open source...
How so? The art asset requirements for an FPS aren't less than those for other genres. (And, of course, its not true; there are plenty of non-FPS open source games...FreeCiv comes to mind.)
Really? What is incoherent about "everyone leaves everyone else alone, and anyone who tries to violate another's rights is subject to government force?"
The first clause is contradicted by the second clause, for one thing.
And it is meaningless without a precise definition of what people's "rights" are. With most actual definitions for "rights", it becomes even more problematic.
No, they come in at least three at the stores I shop at (e.g., Home Depot). As they are typically labelled: "Soft White", "Bright White", and "Daylight". Looking at Wikipedia, there's also a "Cool White" between "Bright White" and "Daylight", but I've never seen any in that category.
(I've yet to see any light, no matter the technology, that looks better than Daylight CFLs do.)
That sentence had a first part as well, something about thinking that you're helping the environment.
Unless the incandescents are made closer, the fact that the flourescents are made in China has little to nothing to do with whether or not the perception that they are helping the environment is true.
I can't imagine this helping EDS, An HP Company to re-win the contract.
I can't imagine it hurting, since Halliburton got dinged for doing the same thing (with Iraq and Libya, and, IIRC, directly, not through a cut-out) in the 1990s, and it didn't hurt its subsequent military contracts.
The cold hard math is that Capitalism has brought more people (might I even use the term "Billions") out of poverty than any other socioeconomic system
Er, no, its not.
Mixed economies that include elements of both capitalism and socialism have; crediting the results to capitalism is no more accurate than crediting the results to socialism.
Africa is stuck in sociostatism
"Sociostatism" isn't an economic system. I'm not even sure its a word: the only use of it I can find is in reference to Keynesian policy responses, and it seems to be an unusual and perhaps invented term there. Nor does Africa have a dominant "economic system", much of the continent featuring failed an failing states that aren't able to effectively implement any particular economic system.
and the eastern block tried 60+ years of "pure" socialism.
No, the eastern block tried about 40 years of Soviet-style Communism, which is very much not the same thing. (The Soviet Union itself tried over 70 years of that; but the Eastern block didn't exist until after WWII and had largely ceased to exist by 1990, which makes it hard for it to try 60+ years of anything without bending time and space.)
How many people in the USA lack food and shelter because of circumstances beyond their control, and how many of them lack food and shelter as a direct result of their own choices?
Very few fall cleanly into either category. Most have a contribution from both their own choices and factors beyond their control.
For instance, people may be unable to afford the existing shelter because of their own poor decisions, but decisions made beyond their control to protect the property values, aesthetic sense, etc. of those better off than they are prevent them from erecting or occupying the shelter they can afford.
Is it right to take resources from productive people in order to allow other people to survive the consequences of their bad decisions?
Since we deny freedoms to the "other people" to support the interests of the "productive people", its not entirely unfair to ask the "productive people" to pay something to care for the "other people".
And if we don't get the deficit under control soon, the U.S. government is probably going to be looking at bankruptcy somewhere around 2020.
No, its not. The US Government literally cannot go bankrupt. Nor is there any particularly well-justified reason to expect a crisis of any kind due to government finance around 2020.
The "aggregator" had to acquire this capital at some point -- by working for it.
False in any system which has inheritance, and especially perniciously false in any system in which it is possible for a chain of inheritance to trace back before the establishment of most of the basic rights being defended in the present system.
Show that in a truly private, laissez-faire system, business would be interested only in "immediate profitability" - note that I am not talking about our mixed economy, in which the snap of the fingers of someone in political power (such as a Fed chairman, or a committee) can sway the whole economy.
Its impossible to do so, because a "truly private, laissez-faire system" is an incoherent concept, a jumble of words that doesn't actually mean anything coherent.
OTOH, its rather trivial to show that in a market with a very particular set of assumptions (mostly, complete liquidity, so that assets are never "trapped"), the best course to maximizing long-term results is to maximize the immediate results of each decision at each decision point, since any other choice would allow a strictly better result by maximizing the result at the non-maximized decision point.
Justify the rights violation that come with funding such programs.
This is certainly true, at least of what I've read, of Locke, who philosophized in the abstract about natural law and its application in the political realm. It is considerably less true of Marx, though if all you've read of Marx is the Communist Manifesto -- written, as its name suggests, as a political platform -- I can see where you would get that idea.
I'd also like to see us make serious use of the press and make our move back to the Moon and eventually to Mars as much as an event as the original Mercury-Gemini-Apollo missions.
I, OTOH, am happier not having the government spend public funds to lobby the public to support pouring more public funds into projects, and instead spend public funds producing results from those projects which will then either justify, or not justify, spending more public funds on the projects.
I mean, really, you think the problem is that the government isn't putting enough into propaganda?
Instead of raising taxes in a tough economy, how about you do what everyone else is doing and tighten belt and reduce spending? Nah, you're right, that will never work...
Neither raising taxes nor reducing spending in tight economy has good rationally expected results; they are, economically speaking, just about equivalent in taking money out of the economy.
Slashdot Mirror
Eventually, the case will be over, and win or lose, she'll say plenty about it then. And, being Oprah, plenty of people will listen.
How is being the victim of an abusive lawsuit "negative publicity"? She could have paid to make the "beef libel" lawsuit go away, too, instead she moved her show to accommodate the trial, fought it, and won, and turned it into plenty of positive publicity.
The credit crisis means that it is harder and more expensive than normal for states to borrow money (for a number of reasons, their debt is seen as risky while federal debt is seen as essentially risk-free); the housing bust has blown a huge hole in property tax revenues, and the usual wage and spending effects of the recession have blown huge holes in consumption and income tax revenues, and most states have balanced budget provisions in their state constitutions which, even if they could afford to borrow money freely, make it much more difficult for them to do so quickly than it is for the federal government, which can borrow money essentially at will (at right now, at almost no cost.) Consequently, while the federal government is both increasing spending and looking at further spending increases along with tax cuts, hoping to stimulate the economy, states are working against the federal government's stimulus efforts by cutting spending and in some cases even discussing raising taxes to deal with the revenue situation.
And how are secret measures that it takes a herculean effort even to reveal exist going to do that, especially when combined with the much more well publicized failures of DHS components (e.g., TSA) to do basic thinks like spot images of bombs on baggage screening scanners?
Heck, even if these measures were publicized, its hard to see how they would help: terrorists, particularly suicide terrorists, aren't going to be particularly concerned that after they blow up the plane they are on, DHS might figure out who they were and where they bought their ticket.
A parent with one or more children (particularly with poor transportation options) may have lots of problems attending classes in person, which may leave distance learning as the best option; while classes-via-TV aren't the only distance learning option, (there are internet and mail correspondence options out there), it may be the best option for some learners.
No.
Pedantically, the person who holds the mortgage (also known as the mortgagee) isn't the one in any debt in the mortgage relationship, they are the creditor. The debtor is the person who gives the mortgage (also known as the mortgagor).
We have something pretty close to it, and popular portable computing devices (e.g., modern multifunction cellphones including smartphones, and even notebook computers with appropriate adapters) pretty routinely connect to it wirelessly.
And likely to get harder as people who want connectivity for portable devices connect more the more widespread networks and rely less on public WLAN hotspots.
Mouse/keyboard certainly isn't "about it", wireless printers or wired printers connected to wireless print servers are fairly popular in terms of traditional computers; for portable computing devices (phones, again) wireless audio i/o (bluetooth headsets, car systems) are ubiquitous and wireless displays (as in some car systems) aren't all that uncommon. Wireless display for more traditional computers is an available though somewhat pricey option currently, and has found some niches in particular industries.
Someone living on $500 a month may well be relying in part on classes delivered by local colleges via television to try to get the skills to stop having to living on $500 a month; IOW, it may be part of dealing with the bigger things.
Broadcast TV isn't just for entertainment, even if that's the primary use that is made of it.
That depends on how exactly one defines a "game", but, yes, art, level design (even from a gameplay, rather than art, perspective), etc., are things that apply to a more specific unit than a basic game engine does.
Sure, to get to a polished game, you need to do that (this is pretty similar to the area of UI design for non-game project.) OTOH, there is no reason that their needs to be particularly tight coordination between the people building the engine, the people doing models and the textures for them, and the people doing the levels and the art for them.
Sure, a typical open source project might reuse tons of code -- but plenty write lots and lots of new code -- but code isn't the only part of non-game open source projects either. There is lots of design, both in the sense or UI design and resources and usability design, that is needed to get a polished end-user app (rather than system tool) in any field, isn't entirely reusable between different apps, and take skills that are completely different than coding. OTOH, that's also an area where lots (but far from all) open source apps fall down.
I still think the problem is more that many open source projects tend to be run by programmers who are not as good, from a social and organizational perspective, at attracting and incorporating non-programmer talent to contribute more than it is a problem of money.
Of course, throwing money at talent -- programmers, artist, or otherwise -- can mitigate some of the social and organizational problems.
A person who can't or won't work for some reason, rather than one who is actively searching for work, is not counted in the headline unemployment rate at all; they are not considered part of the work force.
Probably few, but that's a bit of a different problem than the art problem. Its in the same broad class of problem, in that it boils down to, on one level, "you need talent other than programming talent", but I don't think its fundamentally the same issue. I think for game designers, it is probably more of an organizational problem than a money problem. OTOH, that may not be as different from art as I started out thinking -- I don't know if open source projects currently are good at incorporating artists, which may be as important as paying them. Its hardly as if programmers are generally free assets outside of the open source world, either.
I don't think simple (in quality terms) gameart is necessary to get lots of sets of art assets: plenty of commercial games have lots of free, fan-generated, high-quality additional/alternative graphic assets. But I do think you are right that it is a contributing factor: I think the two big factors are the simplicity of making usable assets and the popularity of the base game. (I think ideally you would want an open source game to make it simple to make usable assets but have the game support fairly complex assets, that way you make it easy to put together a usable, playable package that can get out to players and content creators, but still give creators plenty that they can do with the game.)
Perhaps nothing like that, especially as a single project that does everything. OTOH, part of the beauty of open source is that one project doesn't have to do everything.
Uh, why do games need to be on your path? The launcher for the game, of course, needs to be added to the appropriate menu in whatever menu system you use, and it may need to add entries to the environment for the anything it launches, but there is no reason to change system level environment variables for most game installs.
How so? The art asset requirements for an FPS aren't less than those for other genres. (And, of course, its not true; there are plenty of non-FPS open source games...FreeCiv comes to mind.)
The first clause is contradicted by the second clause, for one thing.
And it is meaningless without a precise definition of what people's "rights" are. With most actual definitions for "rights", it becomes even more problematic.
No, they come in at least three at the stores I shop at (e.g., Home Depot). As they are typically labelled: "Soft White", "Bright White", and "Daylight". Looking at Wikipedia, there's also a "Cool White" between "Bright White" and "Daylight", but I've never seen any in that category.
(I've yet to see any light, no matter the technology, that looks better than Daylight CFLs do.)
Unless the incandescents are made closer, the fact that the flourescents are made in China has little to nothing to do with whether or not the perception that they are helping the environment is true.
I can't imagine it hurting, since Halliburton got dinged for doing the same thing (with Iraq and Libya, and, IIRC, directly, not through a cut-out) in the 1990s, and it didn't hurt its subsequent military contracts.
Er, no, its not.
Mixed economies that include elements of both capitalism and socialism have; crediting the results to capitalism is no more accurate than crediting the results to socialism.
"Sociostatism" isn't an economic system. I'm not even sure its a word: the only use of it I can find is in reference to Keynesian policy responses, and it seems to be an unusual and perhaps invented term there. Nor does Africa have a dominant "economic system", much of the continent featuring failed an failing states that aren't able to effectively implement any particular economic system.
No, the eastern block tried about 40 years of Soviet-style Communism, which is very much not the same thing. (The Soviet Union itself tried over 70 years of that; but the Eastern block didn't exist until after WWII and had largely ceased to exist by 1990, which makes it hard for it to try 60+ years of anything without bending time and space.)
Very few fall cleanly into either category. Most have a contribution from both their own choices and factors beyond their control.
For instance, people may be unable to afford the existing shelter because of their own poor decisions, but decisions made beyond their control to protect the property values, aesthetic sense, etc. of those better off than they are prevent them from erecting or occupying the shelter they can afford.
Since we deny freedoms to the "other people" to support the interests of the "productive people", its not entirely unfair to ask the "productive people" to
pay something to care for the "other people".
No, its not. The US Government literally cannot go bankrupt. Nor is there any particularly well-justified reason to expect a crisis of any kind due to government finance around 2020.
False in any system which has inheritance, and especially perniciously false in any system in which it is possible for a chain of inheritance to trace back before the establishment of most of the basic rights being defended in the present system.
Its impossible to do so, because a "truly private, laissez-faire system" is an incoherent concept, a jumble of words that doesn't actually mean anything coherent.
OTOH, its rather trivial to show that in a market with a very particular set of assumptions (mostly, complete liquidity, so that assets are never "trapped"), the best course to maximizing long-term results is to maximize the immediate results of each decision at each decision point, since any other choice would allow a strictly better result by maximizing the result at the non-maximized decision point.
What "rights violations"?
This is certainly true, at least of what I've read, of Locke, who philosophized in the abstract about natural law and its application in the political realm. It is considerably less true of Marx, though if all you've read of Marx is the Communist Manifesto -- written, as its name suggests, as a political platform -- I can see where you would get that idea.
I, OTOH, am happier not having the government spend public funds to lobby the public to support pouring more public funds into projects, and instead spend public funds producing results from those projects which will then either justify, or not justify, spending more public funds on the projects.
I mean, really, you think the problem is that the government isn't putting enough into propaganda?
Neither raising taxes nor reducing spending in tight economy has good rationally expected results; they are, economically speaking, just about equivalent in taking money out of the economy.