I wouldn't think so. At least not any more then a speaker can be considered to create negative sound when it is used for phase cancellation in noise canceling headphones. Or that one truck can be said to have a negative velocity when it impacts an other truck heading in the other direction and they both stop dead. But then this is just my personal opinion YMMV.

May want to look into it more then. Freezing to death is one of the more pleasant ways to go. It does suck for a bit as you start getting too cold, but then after a while you start to feel warm again. At this point you start to feel rather detached and dreamy. Most people that have been brought back from cold water drownings or hypothermia report the same things. Having nearly frozen to death on a hike I can confirm just how pleasant it was, up to the point that it finally sank into my head I was freezing to death and managed to get to warmth. Now, I'm not recommending it to folks, even if I do know a few that would benefit from it... But, as far as death goes, it is one of the more comfortable ones.

Interesting analogy. Frankly, I do feel that way if a film I pay to see turns out to be crap. I lost the money I could have put to better use and I lost time that could also have been better used. That's why I seldom see a movie opening day and wait to hear if it's worth seeing or worth missing. What i find most interesting is that the people that 'lost' the money/ships aren't whining about it for the most part. How many other things in life have you seem the group of people that could claim to have been screwed looking on and saying 'Wow, that sucks. Ah well, guess we'll use a different tactic next time, see you soon.' rather then whining and pitching a fit? That's why I rather enjoy Eve, it has a much higher percentage of mature players that take responsibility for them selves. Sure, there are a few whining, but read the posts. I've noticed that most of the folks that seem to be whining here, and on the Eve sites, are people that didn't take part and are just trying to provoke a reaction, ie, trolls. It's a rather refreshing thing after reading about other MMOs and how the people in them act.

Personally, I found that I could make a diff in a battle by the first month. And now that I know what I am doing, I could make a new CHR and make that diff a positive one for my side ;). I took a group of new players, 1 to 4 months in the game, and with just 2 weeks of helping them pick skills and learn to work as a team, a group of 4 noobies were able to annihilate a 3 year old player in a tech 3 ship using tech 2 fittings. On your own as a new person, it's ruff. But, get together and a hand full of new folks can hand one or two older folks their heads, quite unexpectedly. CCP did some amazing things in the balancing of the game. It's true you'll need an older player to point it out and organize, but new players are far from powerless and can do far more then I see in other MMOs. As for favoring BoB, that was a few bad folks in CCP, and folks got fired over it. Sadly, there are bad people in every corp and every game, it happens. It is good to know that on average the Eve players are adult enough to know that and be able to deal with it. Fly safe.

Quite right. Any one that /wants/ a political office is by definition exactly the sort you don't want in the office. They pay is not great, the hours are ludicrous as while the office hours aren't bad you are likely to be hounded 24/7 by lobbyists. You have to cater to a group uninformed loudmouths that all want different things and either try to suck up to you or blame you for everything they dislike about life depending on who they are talking to. What advantages are there? Power, the ability to control other people's lives and prevent some folks from messing with your own. Any one that wants power over others will use it for their own ends not yours. The lottery idea I saw mentioned looks like a reasonable option. Sadly I think it's the only one likely to change the corruption, short of giving miss use of political office a mandatory death sentence that must be carried out with in 1 week of conviction. Figure with the 1 week rule it'll prevent the courts being tied up forever by appeals. Though perhaps forfeiture of all rights, property and public humiliation could be adequate for those that dislike the death penalty. But frankly, it is high treason and should be treated as such. So long as it's accepted it will continue.

I hear you and feel your pain. I'm still looking for a way around grinding IRL. Get up, eat, go to work, come home, eat, get a little time to play and have fun, then sleep so I can get up and grind out the next day. Can't even find a good macro for it. I'm starting to suspect that grind is rather hard to get out of anything that permits improving in any way. But if a way is ever found, it'll make a lot of cash.

You know, there is a way to address some of the culture concerns. I'm in the US, though I have traveled a lot of the world. I for one would /love/ to see local shows from all over the world accessible through the net. Want your culture to get support and be known? Open it up and show the world. It looks like NZ may be doing this by their local TV corps putting their shows on-line, I just hope they don't lock it to local viewers only. Canada offers many of it's local shows as well, but sadly locked them to prevent non Canadians from seeing them and learning your culture. The US is swamping the world with our culture because we are spewing it out at a level that makes it nearly impossible to avoid, despite the actions of the RIAA and MPAA. I think the entire world would benefit from all countries opening up their local entertainment for the world to see and share in the way that we used to do, rather then following the self isolating and self destructive examples we have been displaying of late. I love my country and I love my culture, and I am fully aware that both came into being only because of the people and culture that came from other countries. It's an interesting world, don't let corporate greed and fear get in the way of discovering it.

Well, some times it is. There's no telling what folks will put in to cut drugs, that's why there is so much risk. Prohibition showed how well it works to try to block what people want. It simply doesn't work, and ends up putting money in the hands of those you don't want to have money, and hurting far more people then if it was legal.

Not a bad idea... Cource, the #1 password would then become 'TINSTAAFL'.

You seem to have a high opinion of your self there. To assume that any one that thinks differently couldn't have looked at the same thing you have is not exactly solid footing for your argument. The fact is, they removed some possesses from start up and basically reniced some of the start up so that you get priority rather then the BG getting it, so that you can start using it sooner. This is hardly new to systems, other then Windows. All quite good steps, but hardly a 'new OS'. Windows 7 is what Vista was supposed to be on launch, which allows for quite a bit of improvement but doesn't make it a different OS. As for your comment about them fooling folks, from what I see, not many folks are being fooled. They are still throwing money at good reviews by people that they payed last time for good reviews. The only real difference at all is that finally, some of those reviews are correct. Though with the cloud of distrust, and their clear attempt to delude people as to what it is, one must ask if finally making good on their promises will be enough. Then there are all the people that did buy Vista and got shafted, how will they feel at seeing MS finally releasing what they said Vista was, and asking them to pay again? MS had best offer a near free upgrade for them or there will be a lot of ill will.

It's simple as to why folks are looking at Windows 7 as just a patched Vista. The installation for it claims it's Vista if you look in the info windows, it's being rolled out in the same formats as Vista, basic, home, yadda yadda, and it uses almost all of the same code as vista. This makes it reasonable to assume that it is Vista, with a few patches added. The idea that they are suddenly changing their normal beta patterns indicates that it has already gotten quite a bit more testing that is accounted for, unless you work from the point of, it's vista with a service patch and dome new eye candy. When you look at it like that, it make perfect sense to skip much of the normal beta steps as it was done long ago.

Heh, I remember that time. Way back in the days of 'What? It installed perfectly the first time? Take it out and try again, something went wrong and you just missed it.'. Ah, those were the days, back when a real geek could chant the ones and zeros at about the same speed the modem sent them. Linux and even Windows has come a long way since then. Honestly, my true biggest complaint about windows is that MS keeps trying to lock the user/owner out of the system. More and more you use it only at their sufferance and if you don't like it, too bad. MS could serve the masses and the geeks, but they chooses only to serve the masses and put quite a bit of effort into locking the geeks out. You can do more with a Vista system from the computer next to it then you can at it's keyboard. The local user is the one they want to control and limit, while the remote user is unbothered by much of the security. Yes, this is because the remote user hacked in to the backdoors MS has left for them selves and the police, but still, many of the attacks can only be used remotely and fail if used locally. That seems rather odd to me. It reminds me of an other bit of humor from back in the day 'Root is a security risk, we need to remove that account'. Seems MS is working on it.

Um, not true in Germany, as I understand it. I seem to recall a story here about law firms taking legal action on behalf of companies they had no relations or contact with, and were able to do so under German law even though the company holding the rights had no interest in legal action. I suspect that any law firm in Germany can do the same things for this, and make a tidy profit for them selves, and some for OO.o as well.