Since we already know it's an area for rich people, it's likely that the land costs drive the price of the project up. Besides, if they're meant as rental properties, the idea won't be to get the money back immediately; the rental income and the theoretical dividends that it will pay back to the community will cover the costs in the long haul. Normally, the city would front some of that cost because there's value in that sort of diversity, but perhaps Lucas is shouldering a bunch of the costs that the city/developer normally would.

I guess that depends how key he was in the war in the first place. If the war hadn't have happened without his actions then yes, you can reasonably put the rest of the deaths at his doorstep.

Of course, that's a big if, and really, I think it can only ever be a subjective thing - different people will have different views.

A similar debate has been had about George Bush's actions in Iraq. Given that the whole war and destabilisation of the region resulted from his actions in 2003, is he or is he not (jointly?) responsible for the million+ deaths in Iraq that have happened as a result of that destabilisation ever since?

You could argue that it might have happened anyway without his actions, but you could similarly argue that might is irrelevant, we should only judge on what did happen rather than what might have happened.

So again, ultimately, the answer to that is going to be a very personal one with no objective right or wrong.

Depending on their acts, yes you can. It's called a war crime.

You see, just as individual people within a state don't get to determine the law against the will of the people around them when those acts affect them individual states don't get to determine the law against the will of the countries around them when they affect them either.

So if you're in charge of a country that starts a war and loses, you better damn well believe that those countries you lost to get to lay down the law on you. Just as you shouldn't commit murder against your neighbours and expect no consequences, you shouldn't wage a war against your neighbours and expect no consequences. Goebbels was a key actor in the losing side of a devastating war. The winning side declared him to be a war criminal and that's that. It's not like protection against libel or slander even exists for dead people in most countries anyway, so really, you can declare him whatever the fuck you want regardless.

Had his side won the war then yes, he could reasonably have been in a position to declare international law on the issue. He didn't, so he couldn't. The post-war establishment of international institutions for dealing with this sort of thing in a less ad-hoc manner led to courts such as the ECHR and more recently the ICC which have seen prosecutions of various war criminals.

"I don't really care one way or the other regarding the number, but I will never believe in any truth that comes with a prison sentence for nonbelievers."

Well it doesn't come with a prison sentence here in the UK, so does that mean you do believe it or what? Regardless, you're being overly dramatic all the same. There is no prison sentence in Europe for disputing the number of people who died in World War II, which is what the OP was talking about. What there are prison sentences for are for advocating Nazi ideology and propaganda in a handful of European states which isn't quite the same thing.

"As for evolution, you need to learn about science. It is a hypothesis I consider almost certainly correct, but it has never been observed."

Then it's not him that needs to learn about science, it's you. Evolution is neither a mere hypothesis, nor has it never been observed. You can observe evolution in various species of bacteria, and short lived creatures like fruit flies.

He's not demanding blind faith, he's just asking that you not be wilfully stupid. There's a wide gulf between the two things and you are very clearly guilty of wilful stupidity due to the fact you are so demonstrably wrong yet choose to persist with that.

Given that the numbers of people you have supposedly heard die in World War II are much lower than those commonly cited to have died, and given that you are spouting nonsense about an area of science you clearly do not know even the slightest thing about, have you perhaps considered that any persecution towards you real or perceived exists not because of your beliefs, but because of your ignorance and bullshit?

I suggest you look back even further, it's been going on at least 1000 years in Europe. See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

Judaism was the only religion at the time that allowed for loans with interest, Christianity did not. As such, the Jews were the only ones allowed to do this banking (and were largely persecute and blocked from other forms of employment, so did it because it was all they were often allowed to do).

As it became clear they were making a lot of money doing this, successive monarchs started to tax them more and more, until they were living in poverty once more before ultimately committing widespread massacres against them and expelling them from the UK.

It's not just in the last century that Jewish people have been pushed into markets like banking only to be persecuted when someone needed a scapegoat. It's been happening for at least 1000 years and what happened in Nazis Germany in the 1930s and 40s is a repeat of what happened in England in the 1200s.

Apparently we never learn.

It's just Battlefield 4 in the Star Wars universe. All of this including the great visuals already exist in Battlefield 4 since about 18 months ago.

The upside is this is star wars, which makes it awesome. Let's just hope that it actually works, unlike BF4 which was broken and buggy for months after release, and still to this day has some launch day bugs present in it.

Even BF3 before it had most of this stuff from a gameplay perspective so I don't really see anything new or groundbreaking here, but I'm happy it's being made, because I love BF3 and BF4 (well, when it works), and I love Star Wars.

The only downside to this game is no single player, and I don't think I've ever bought a multiplayer only game (excluding MMOs) and enjoyed it because no proper single player is typically just code for "Half-arsed game, we couldn't be arsed to put much effort into and want to make a quick buck from." - I've found this to so far be a universal truth, from Quake III to Titanfall. Let's hope this is the exception that breaks the rule.

Shutting the mouths of all those "Leave Earth alone!!!" nutcases arguing that it is humanity's duty to reduce it's numbers until it is not a burden to the planet?

That, and being actual... you know... science.
Instead of... you know... a straw man troll in the same vein as "Why is this news for nerds?"

In ALL cases, every single one, EVER - victims became victims cause nobody heard or acted upon their cries for help.
Victims are acutely aware of that.

And they are aware of how valuable and invaluable it is to just have someone tell their story to the world.
Even if it is told badly. Like with "Mississippi Burning".
Which beats almost every single movie about Vietnam war - a war that was totally only about Americans and how THEY suffered.

Which again beats every single movie NOT made about Jeju uprising, regarding the mass executions, burning of villages, rape and the following coverup which lasted for some 60 years.
In a friendly, forward thinking, western democracy of South Korea.
Just like the Bodo League massacre and systematic mass execution of hundreds of thousands of "communist sympathizers".
Covered up for over 40 years... and clearly not considered a big deal.
Not big enough to warrant a movie, anyway.

Movies, like books, are primarily works of CULTURE AND ART AND STORYTELLING - and neither of those can ultimately belong to one person or a group of persons any more than the works of Shakespeare or the Bible or the Greek myths do.
Someone can own a block of wood with a Mona Lisa painted on it - but no one can own Mona Lisa no more than anyone can own the letter 'A'.

That's why we have copyright laws.
To assure that those who create/produce that cultural wealth FOR EVERYONE get paid something in exchange for their effort in creating something that is only valuable if everyone has free access to it.
Because you can't stop someone from seeing a movie or hearing a song - not if you ever want to make money out of showing them a movie or playing them a song.
It must be free and available to everyone so you could charge money for it.
Jerry Lewis can't charge people money for "The Day the Clown Cried". Even if he wanted to. Or if they did. And though they do.

Human art is designed to be appreciated and experienced and absorbed by other humans.
If it wasn't so easy for humans to experience that art and culture without paying or even trying (just quiz yourself about a movie you are not at all interested in - like Twilight or 50 Shades of Gray) no regulation would be needed.
Hell... you can chase down a thief and make him either burn up the calories in that apple he stole from you, beat it out of him or make him throw it up.
No amount of force or persuasion can make someone unwatch a movie or unhear a song. Sadly, in many cases.

So we have laws to try to make sure that at least some people pay for what they willingly experience.

BUT... as those laws are about monetary compensation to the creators of that art, we are fed a story that it is "all about the money" and that the movies are "just business".
Which is not true even for the most commercial of all art - pornography.
We can joke that it does not matter as long as there's sex in it - but we can't ignore the fact that there are porn STARS, and then there are "others".

Meaning that even with a movie that is so cheap to produce, both artistically and monetarily, where actor's skills are down to simple physical attributes and looks, and which is produced to satisfy such a base need - people will demand more than just a "recording of two people fucking for money".

And people will favor those who produce more than just a "recording" - thus creating popularity and fame for those performers who do "more than just recording".
That favoritism will not create MORE money though. It will only cut out of the picture those who produce only "recordings".

Even in such an utterly commercial field of film making, the goal is towards more than just money and money earned alone does not equal success nor is it the ultimate and only goal of producing the movie.

Movies are about art and culture and telling stories...
And that is where the victims of massacres and crimes get "compensated" - their story gets told.
Even if told badly, at least it allows them the opportunity to criticize the story told and instead tell their version to the world - who is now primed to listen.

Cause it is not about the money for the victims either. You can't pay someone back for a genocide or rape or dead and murdered relatives.
You CAN tell their story though.

So say I'm searching for something with really common words in it. I can't think of anything specifically right now, but this is my most common search failure.

I get back a bunch of results. They have all the words I'm looking for, but they're all about two or three more popular topics. I'd like to be able to select a search result and tell the engine that results like this are incorrect for some semantic reason. Maybe it's a band name and I'm looking for a book titleâI should be able to say I don't want anything related to music. No bands, albums or songs. I'd be willing to tag results with some context to provide hints to the algorithm.

Things like 'windows' tend to mess up results; Google assumes that I either mean the Microsoft kind or the house kind, but sometimes I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with a particular application window. I run into this sort of thing surprisingly often.

Yeah, and Microsoft and Blackberry had phones YEARS before Apple did. Just because you've been doing it for a long time doesn't mean it's better than what Apple's done. Just because Apple's been working on it for a couple years doesn't mean it'll be perfect out of the box. This is a first generation product, and it suffers from everything a first gen does. Nobody escapes that.

Apple nailed a couple things with the watch, from all accounts. The watch looks good--which is critical if you want to sell it to non-nerds, the HR monitoring is good, you can use it with Apple Pay. Give it a couple years. All sorts of tech needs to advance and have something like this watch driving it to be good at exactly what they need.

"He pushed them aside by killing development systems (VB6,FoxPro)"

Except VB6 and Foxpro were never really developer tools. They were tools for non-developers to get basic programming tasks done. That was kind of exactly why they were developed- things like Visual C++ were always the tools targeted at professional developers.

"the Win32 API, to slowly become more irrelevant with endless layers of cruft built on top"

Win32 API became irrelevant, because it's become increasingly irrelevant. Why on earth would you want to keep an outdated API that's now decades old in it's design and origins as your primary development target when no one is using it? That just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It doesn't make sense to maintain something that's inefficient to develop with, and I say this as someone who cut my teeth on Windows development with C and Win32 API many years ago. I have fond memories of it but I've no idea why you'd give a shit about it in this day and age.

Your argument is classic of someone incapable of dealing with change, which, in the world of technology is probably one of the least desirable traits you can have. You can boil your argument down even further when you talk about layers of cruft, you can say using C with the Win32 API is in itself a layer of cruft built on top of just doing everything in pure assembly, which is a layer of cruft on top of just doing everything directly with machine code and fuck the APIs.

"Ballmer wasn't bad; his jumping around on stage shouting "Developers!" showed that he knew what the true value of Windows was: the external developers who wrote Win32 code for retail products or company-internal developers."

Except no one's actually done that for the best part of two decades now. Even before .NET really took off it was far and away MFC that was used for the majority of Windows development. Win32 API development was already largely dead when Gates left for all but the most basic things like setting up a message processing stub to get a DirectX or OpenGL program going.

"However, his middle-empire stage was a shift to focusing on selling to enterprise customers. This isn't a bad things by itself, but by taking his eye off the "Developer!" ball and focusing elsewhere, he guaranteed that plenty of developers went elsewhere."

So what? The enterprise became more important, fat client applications gave way to web applications. Ballmer doubled the profits of Microsoft during his tenure, so it looks like his focus change was exactly what the majority of businesses and developers needed. The fact there's a handful of luddites that bemoan the decrease in usage of Win32 API is meaningless because you're such an irrelevance in the grand scheme of things- most people can deal with change and follow necessary trends, even if you cannot. That's not a problem with Ballmer or Microsoft, that's a problem with you. You can't blame Ballmer's capability for pursuing necessary change for your inability to change.

People shifted to Java because it was a paradigm that gained a lot of hype in both business and academic circles and had a 6 year headstart on .NET and that happened well under Gates' reign not Ballmer's. Mis-steps such as VisualJ++ were the reason for that. By the time Gates stepped down as CEO, .NET hadn't even been released so Ballmer's tenure was the one that was responsible for taking all those devs lost during Gates' reign back because a combination of a far more competitive .NET, and Oracle's screwing of Java has helped grow the .NET community massively.

"It's interesting to see how Nadella is shifting the focus again and broadening it (Windows 10 on Raspberry Pi, for example). Time will tell if Nadella is simply being an anti-Ballmer or if this glasnost is signs of a more fundamental shift in the way Microsoft does business. I hope it's the latter."

It's neither. It's a continuation of the status quo, or did you completely miss that Ballmer also pushed Windows 8 on ARM? This increase in scope of platform support, and move to open sourcing of APIs started well within Ballmer's years. Nadella is just continuing what was already started. It's not a change in direction, it's business as usual as it has been for some time now.

Yeah, just not one stored in Hatton Garden, London.

Not my experience. Every time I've loaded a project done with spaces, it's inevitable that there is a space too many here, or a space too few there.

I don't see how this is any different to a stray tab quite frankly.

No one owes any website a business. If you setup a sign based on the premise that you need all ad-revenue to survive, profit, and make a living then you're one of that sizeable statistic of people whose businesses fail for the simple fact that you were hopeless at business.

It's like saying you should feel guilty for not bothering to look at adverts in free newspapers and skimming right past them. No you shouldn't. If someone is giving access to something with no upfront payment they have no expectation of payback. If the business model doesn't work, it doesn't work, tough luck.

I don't buy the doomsday scenario of there being no useful sites on the internet if we all have this attitude because I remember the internet from long before ads were commonplace. There was still equally as good information about, in fact, I learnt much of what I know about programming in that era, the only difference is it was all less bloated by presentation.

There should be zero guilt in blocking ads because accessing URL is NOT a contract implicit or explicit that you will accept all content from that URL, nor that you will read every aspect of it. If either of these things were true we'd be legally obliged to download malware, and legally obliged to read every last disclaimer and copyright notice on every site. There is no such obligation, and ads are not special cases, we neither have to read them or receive them, and no one should feel guilty for refusing them.

If a site shuts down because it couldn't afford to run because of ad revenue yet people visited with ad blockers then all that tells us is that there was a business model for the content if free, but not if ad sponsored. Sites with such small viewership typically used to be hosted by bundled ISP hosting. Those large enough to justify proper hosting are large enough to make enough from those that don't use ad blockers or to run as subscription sites.

A business is either viable, or it's not, if it's not, then no one should feel guilty about it's demise.

You think he'd have a soapbox in prison? I rather think not. He'd be in solitary and that would be that.