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User: damburger

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  1. Re:So whats the big deal? on Final Fantasy XIII Is Coming To Xbox 360 · · Score: 1

    I did not latch onto 7 to start a flame war, it is honestly the only one I bought (when I was told to go play these games, it was the one prominently on sale). I accept that people have different opinions to me I am just surprised that someone could be almost religiously devoted to a game I personally found at most diverting.

    I should also mention I played the PC version, I don't know if this had a impact on my experience.

    If the opportunity arises I shall play one of the installments you mention, but I am not shelling out any more cash until one of the games demonstrates the awesomeness others seem to see.

  2. So whats the big deal? on Final Fantasy XIII Is Coming To Xbox 360 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I realise I am throwing myself into a pit of rabid fanboys here, but here goes.

    I've played around on some of the FF games, and I can't say they've ever impressed me. I even bought on once (FF VII) and gave up playing it quite quickly because it just didn't grab me.

    So where is the appeal of this series? The action is dull, the RPG elements are poorly conceived and don't make much sense. The pace is plodding. Why are these games so raved about? I just don't get it...

  3. Re:Frankly on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes, I've heard something along the lines of 'the Republican party say that government doesnt work, and when they get elected they try to prove it'

  4. Re:Frankly on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Then why do colleges produce innovations? How do colleges get teaching done (my university certainly manages)? Taking longer to do a task isn't necessarily a sign of laziness - it can be a sign of thoroughness. This is why the private sector notoriously fails at big projects such as infrastructure and space travel. Market forces breed the patience of a 5 year old with ADHD. If you can't do something RIGHT NOW they will find someone who can - or at least *claims* they can.

  5. Re:Frankly on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, I'm sorry then, but it did sound like you were making an extreme market argument.

    The idea of a middle ground between conflicting positions though is a position in itself. Its one that tends towards a maintainence of the status quo and can if over-applied stop a society making the changes it needs to in order to adapt and survive.

  6. Re:Frankly on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 1

    It was an almost rhetorical question, but that is a nice answer, and puts a lot of things in context for me;

    The Magna Carta was never about giving rights to all men, it was about giving power to the barons, but it was presented as a document of liberty. The same appears to be happening now down the centuries - one elite (the rich) spreads propaganda implying that another elite (the politically powerful) must be bought down for the good of the people - when really their motive is just to eliminate the competition for control of society.

    So the state-hatred is a mugs game. You are being suckered into doing the dirty work of ambitious rich buggars.

  7. Re:Frankly on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 1

    Are you seriously trying to convince me private sector managers don't do the exact same thing? Business is, in fact, worst for cost cutting because of the bottom line. The behaviour you describe is clearly a result of someone trying to impose 'market discipline' onto that public service. Trying to run such a service as a business gets you the same kind of ill-advised cost cutting measures as a business.

  8. Re:Got to love damage assessments on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're quick to play the fear card, aren't you? Even considered a position in the Bush administration?

    You can't use 'what ifs' to try and pin a more serious crime on someone. Its tyrannical, because essentially your 'what ifs' are subjective and thus you are using your own opinions to override the law.

  9. Re:Frankly on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the scenario you descibre, the streets would become choked with dirty, unsafe buses and traffic would grind to a halt. This, in fact, happens.

    Like so many market fundamentalists, you just can't see how easily your ideology falls flat on its face in the real world, or you would've seen the flaw in your own argument.

    You are essentially laying all inefficiency at the feet of the 'state' - i.e. any actor that isn't an entrepreneur - and then using that as 'proof' that the entrepreneur is more efficient. This is what people smarter than you refer to as 'circular logic'.

    Perhaps, when you've grown up, experienced the real world a bit and stopped reading Ayn Rands bullshit, you might get a clue.

  10. Re:Frankly on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A reputation, based on people with a serious ideological axe to grind. Blind faith in the market producing magical efficiency gains is contrary to everything I have seen during my professional life, both in the public and private sector. From my perspective, I have never seen one bit of evidence to show there is any truth to it outside the imaginations of Tory politicians.

    Furthermore, people like you who are so besotted with 'market forces' did attempt to introduce them to public services in the UK, and it has been an unmitigated disaster. The inability of internal prices to truly reflect the quality of services has resulted in huge waste, massive bureaucracy and a decline of standards. Now, the ideologues are at it again trying to push for a new round of 'targets' in the NHS. They never learn.

  11. Re:Got to love damage assessments on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 5, Interesting

    he will probably get a sentence more than a rapist but less than a murderer. The state considers screwing with it the highest crime, far more so than the plebs killing each other, but there is a limit to what they can get away with if they want a quiet life.

  12. Re:A San Francisco public employee? on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 1

    Socialist city? WTF? Why does an issue like this have to become another talking point for your tiresome ideologies?

  13. Re:Frankly on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why the hate towards the public sector? I have found the exact same shit going on in private companies, many of them quite successful.

  14. Re:This is why... on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is holding his possessions captive in such a way legal? Its certainly arseholey.

  15. Its the end of the world!!! on Mother Sues After Bebo Story Hits Press · · Score: 1

    Newspapers will have to verify what they print!? How the hell will they be able to lie their arses off all the time? Oh noes!

  16. Damburgers wacky idea #345633 on Internet Based Political "Meta-Party" For Massachusetts · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why not have artificially intelligent avatars represent you?

    You know what your overall objectives in voting are, but don't have time to pursue them on every single issue. You can't trust a human representative (who certainly has his own agenda) so you program an AI with parameters reflecting your personal preferences and it tries to emulate your vote on every issue that comes up, and if it comes across something it can't handle, alerts you so you can vote in person.

  17. I'm going to get shot for this on Blizzard-Activision Merger Official · · Score: 1

    Will this mean that the new entities games will support Macs nicely like Blizzard tend to do, or ignore them as Activision prefers?

  18. Re:How come? on Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement · · Score: 1

    It'll probably be a publicity stunt for the olympics, but given how much development of Shenzhou has slowed down recently, I'd say the CPC leadership has kind of lost interest.

  19. Re:Seems foolish on Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement · · Score: 1

    If you indeed work for Astrium (I will give you the benefit of the doubt of course) then could you say anything more about the plans for a manned ATV/CSTS? Is it actually happen or are the politicians going to send it the way of Hermes?

  20. Re:Decadence on Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Behind the joke is a serious point.

    At the risk of being modded flamebait, I think I can say that Americas education system has never produced the quantity and quality of talent necessary for real innovation in space. The US has always relied on immigrants. Your victory in the space race was in part due to the fact that World War 2 drove the best rocket scientists out of Europe. Once they had retired and died, there wasn't the kind of people you needed coming out of your home grown education system, and no great cataclysm in countries with good education system to scatter geniuses for you to scoop up.

    Your latest administration isn't helping matters either. Pushing widespread hostility towards evolution and climate change, leaning on NASA scientists to misreport results, and generally acting like a dangerous theocracy in many ways means that you'll have a harder time attracting the talent you are unable or, more likely, unwilling to develop at home.

  21. Re:Huhh? on Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement · · Score: 1

    You are right; and thats why making big solids is tricky. The shuttle SRBs are a notable exception of course - but being solids they were simple enough to send up without much testing. Hybrids are complicated enough to require testing, but still require most of the engine to be assembled for a test. Also, like the SRBs, changing the amount of fuel involved changes the design of the motor entirely.

  22. Re:They did on Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement · · Score: 2, Funny

    I believe at this point Lenin is supposed to break out of his glass case and zombie "MUST CRUSH CAPITALISM"

  23. Re:Seems foolish on Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Here is the paradox though. They just don't see the connection. There are people who lap up the advances of science and technology then piss on scientists and engineers. It always bugs me when creationists spew their garbage using TV and the Internet. If it were up to those sort of people, there would be no TV or Internet.

  24. Re:Best laid plans of mice and men on Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement · · Score: 1, Insightful

    They are quite willing to cooperate with us Euros (although the countries allowing US interceptor bases and radar aren't on their Christmas card list at the moment). Most of the acrimony in our relationship with Russia is frankly America's fault. Or more precisely - its our fault for aligning ourselves so doggedly with America when it isn't America we have to live next door to and buy lots of gas off.

    I would like to see congenial relations and cooperation on manned space flight with Russia (both of which they have made more positive moves towards than we have) - but my government seems intent on using this isle as a bloody aircraft carrier for a neocon American administration openly and aggressively trying to encircle Russia.

  25. Re:crying shame on Nasa Details Shuttle's Retirement · · Score: 1

    NASA was created to get America to the Moon first, but once it had achieved that it was perceived as a bloated, inefficient government program, and promptly gutted and intentionally mismanaged by those with an interest in proving that 'government doesnt work'