Comment Wow. (Score 3, Funny) 107
Neat idea, but shouldn't they be concentrating on the game and not playing "Learning my ABCs with Mickey"?
He's named some names. Those five innocent American muslims who were spied on, at least one of them illegally. And according to Greenwald there's "more to come."
The general pattern the Snowden leaks have taken is to put something out, let people be outraged, then wait for the PTB to lie "Well, we might have done bad thing X, but we haven't done terrible worse thing Y!" And then release the evidence that they also did terrible thing Y. So my guess is they release evidence that the NSA was illegally spying on innocent Americans, but people will say "Oh, well that's all right because TEH MOOSLEMS!" And then they'll drop the next story, which is that in addition to mulsims, they spied on...I wonder. My guess is Occupy leaders. And then people will say, "Well, they're dissident troublemakers!" And then it'll turn out they were listening to phone calls from congressmen, too.
Just wait. There's more to come...
"Abundance for all" is unlikely. However, "guaranteed subsistence for all" is easily doable. We have more empty, foreclosed on homes than we have homeless people. We're paying farmers not to grow food while people go hungry. We insist everyone have a job in order to have access to food and shelter, yet there are not enough jobs for everyone to do, and a large portion of the jobs we do have are make-work. There is enough for everyone's basic needs to be met but resources are poorly distributed.
Over the last 40 years per capita GDP in the US doubled but real median income has fallen. The American worker is the most productive motherfucker on the planet. They're generating twice as much wealth as they were 40 years ago, and yet they are keeping less of it. Where did that wealth go? If it didn't go to the workers, the only other place it can go is to the owners. The system is designed to concentrate wealth at the top and it's done a very good job of that.
I'm not advocating for a forced redistribution of wealth. I don't know what the answer is. But the problem is pretty easy to spot.
As game designers, Nintendo is absolutely willing to be creative and take risks. As a business, they are absolutely not. I did some consulting work for them last summer as they were trying to roll out a new ERP system and data warehouse. Their corporate culture was...unfortunate. Everything was very top-down controlled with every little thing you wanted to do, tiny change you wanted to make, had to be presented with Word documents and screenshots and impact cases and blah blah blah that had to go through four levels of higher-up approval. And they claimed to be doing Agile development! This was their third attempt to get this system off the ground and it failed, too. It could have succeeded, it was almost ready, but Japan corporate refused because it wasn't already perfect. Of course it's impossible to be perfect when the requirements are constantly changing.
Like I said, third attempt, with their third set of contractors. It's kind of like going on a date with a girl and she keeps talking about how shitty her last boyfriend was, and the failed relationship before that and before that and at some point you have to say, "You know what all these relationship horror stories have in common? You." That was the impression I got of Nintendo's corporate culture (from my tiny cube at the bottom of the pile as a coder, subcontracted by the subcontractor of one of the subcontractors subcontracted by the contractor).
Point is, I don't see them making any grand sweeping changes to their business strategy. Game design? Console design? Yes. Business strategy? Nooooo ho ho ho.
The big problem I have with their "test" is that they did it at atmospheric pressure. So, they're supposing the force is pushing off quantum vacuum virtual plasma. That's one possibility. The other possibility is it's pushing off THE FREAKING AIR IN THE CHAMBER.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a reactionless drive. A reactionless drive could get us to the stars. But it generally involves violating conservation of momentum, and that's unlikely.
We haven't had an election since the spying scandal broke. We haven't seen what kind of impact candidates' stances on spying will have on their electability. We also haven't seen the resolution of the EFF and ACLU lawsuits now that the leaks have provided standing.
There are four boxes to use in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Right now we're still on soap. That's what we're doing right now. Bitching about it on the internet is our duty. We'll find out how well ballot works with regards to this legislation and the 2014 and 2016 elections. Jury is just getting ramped up. Patience. The system is supposed to work slowly.
They can probably get really good deals on student versions of those products. AutoDesk, certainly, would like as many young people to grow up using their software as possible, so when they're out in industry as adults they can tell their boss to buy big-boy AutoCAD.
The F-35 is not an air superiority craft. I imagine the F-22s will clear the way, absolutely obliterating anything in front of them. There is nothing today that even approaches the air-to-air lethality of the F-22.
I live in Florida. Yesterday I had to call the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. All I had to do was wait for the option to press '1' for spanish to expire and I was connected immediately to a real person who answered my slightly complicated question easily, clearly and quickly.
I also own a business (and have owned two) in Florida, and every time I've had to deal with the Florida Department of Revenue (sometimes I got busy and forgot to pay my sales taxes) they have been friendly and helpful.
I wish, wish Cox Cable had the kind of friendly and expedient service Florida's government entities do.
better to deliver it to where it's needed (i.e. Phoenix) than sell it to southern California or let it flow into Mexico unused.
Because God forbid we actually let those dirty beaners get the water we promised to them by treaty, right?
What the gods would destroy they first submit to an IEEE standards committee.
