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In Canada, if you aren't using a cloth/reusable bag, you're just that fucking dude who didn't bring a bag. Almost everywhere asks and charges before handing you one. The only exception, as others have pointed out, is if you just need garbage bags and want them cheap.

Any particular reason this was tagged with 'global warming'?

What's a fake choice? Do you mean the outcomes are not different enough? Or that you don't care about the stories enough in the first place? Is your problem that you just don't like stories in general? What is your problem?

Maybe your problem is that you haven't played the Mass Effect series? Or maybe you are just curmudgeonly?

Really? What about, you know, the actual game part where you control a person, their actions and solve puzzles and perform tasks? What more do you want?

I hear people bitching without any constructive criticism.

In movies I can't choose if the main character will save the day as a paragon or a renegade, nor can I choose who the main character will pursue a romance with. In a movie I can't explore new places nor spend down time geeking out on stats. And I don't think that my options in these matters have been systematically curtailed since early games. If anything, game freedom and interactivity has progressed as quickly as graphics technology.

While I understand the argument that some AAA games are becoming Hollywoodized, we should all keep in mind that stories with characters are very fundamental to human art and entertainment. It is very natural that artists in a new medium would want to try to tell stories in it. Also, I think that in the last decade, there have been some monumental achievements on this front; games with great mechanics, stories too rich for a film and full of beautiful art, music and writing. Why are we complaining about this?

And, if someone has the next direction for video games in their back pocket, they aren't bitching here, they are making it.

...They all got up and made successful internet startups or car companies or space companies? Is that where the middle class went?

Or do you mean they no longer exist because they all stopped working at North American factories like Tesla or SpaceX?

Or do you mean they went somewhere else because they were no longer were inspired to be entrepreneurial because no-one had the spirit anymore or could prove it was possible to grow a successful business?

Well I thought this was funny, AC.

Actually, this is nothing new. Most consoles, at launch, would lose on paper to their counter-part mid-range PC at launch. So what?

1.) There's more to hardware than the listed specs. For instance, Xbox360 had lots of architectural features that made it a poor choice for general computing but excellent for a typical gaming load. One example was a cache architecture tuned for streaming data (i.e. reading of a disc or streaming in geometry and textures). Also, consoles typically require less overhead in terms of things like OS footprint, etc. than PCs. Thus, despite the numbers, consoles are typically able to keep up with PCs that out match them in terms of specs alone.

2.) Developers can focus their efforts on a single architecture when developing for consoles. This entails huge performance gains from various optimizations that would not be feasible when developing for the heterogeneous PC architecture landscape. (Certainly there are exceptions to this i.e. Game A gets optimized code for GPU B, but this is certainly not a guarantee when buying the game). Furthermore, developers have much longer to find particular optimizations for the hardware given that the console life-cycle is typically 5 - 10 years. Notice how much better the last titles in a console generation look compared to those at launch.

Finally, $300 to $400 doesn't buy you much in terms of a gaming rig. I know, I just tried to build one on that budget.

Mexican criminals have guns because they so easy to obtain in the US.

If it were more difficult to buy, sell and trade guns in the US you can be sure that there would be a lot less gun violence in Mexico.

If you instead had used European countries as examples of the effectiveness of gun control, your argument would be much harder to make.

This is why prediction results are basically meaningless without sensitivity and specificity numbers...

No

Is the era of headings written as questions over?
Unfortunately, also no.

How do you define mainstream ideology? Views held by a majority of said population? How would you determine this? With polls? Where are the numbers to back this statement? What is the distribution among nations and other demographics? I can't believe that Slashdot, a community that champions science, would hold this statement up as insightful.

Everyone should be critical of your statement because it is generalizing, not supported with accompanying facts, and potentially damning to hundreds of millions of people. Bold statements require significant, scientifically sound evidence.

Furthermore, this argument is contrary to what I know from my daily life. All of the Muslims I know are very tolerant, peaceful people. Thus, I would need very compelling evidence to convince me that their world view was a threat. (A threat to who, by the way?)

If you read one of the papers, from Florida Atlantic University, referenced on the site, the author claims that the advantage comes from an 'intrinsic favorable flexure mode." Basically, he is saying that the flex at the joint of the Z shape creates a smoother ride and higher torque at specific angles (not peak torque however).

While I find it unlikely that the effect is as positive as stated in the article, it is plausible that there is a small second-order effect due to non-rigid behavior of the crank. It is claimed in the article that this effect was tested independently, however I can't see how a flex in the pedal would produce any other effect than to steal energy away from the peddler.

Besides, if you want more torque while biking, just use clip-ins.

I would just like to point out that the headline of this post is posed as a question.

Hah! What environmentalist flys around in a private jet? Environmentalists I know prefer not to fly, and when they do, many pay the carbon tax (by buying an offset):
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/publications/resources/2009/purchasing-carbon-offsets/?gclid=CLuRyLjgi7QCFcN_Qgodi1QA_w

Besides, what sway should the behaviour of a rich "elite type" have on your choices? Why do you care what they do?

And actually, if families, communities, nations used less energy and were able to generate some of their own energy (roof mounted solar panels, personal wind generators) they would be more financially independent. Same goes for growing your own food in a garden, composting much of your own waste, etc.

Sure McDonalds is cheap but home grown food is cheaper. Sure, your old beater car is cheap, but the bus is cheaper. Sure, coal is cheap, but when global warming ends up turning all our crop lands into deserts, there are going to be a lot more hungry lower class people around.

btw, here's how true environmentalists live: http://noimpactproject.org/experiment/