Ross Scott

I actually made that noise based on a sound in the movie "What About Bob?" when Richard Dreyfuss is having this puppet show talk with his daughter.

The MKV copy is up, sorry it took so long to get it out. It took me a while to research x264 encoding and I ran a ton of tests before I had some confidence with releasing public copies of it. I'm STILL figuring out settings I want to use for archive quality, but I'll probably stick with these for public releases.

The MKV copy is finally up, sorry for the wait on that. I think these settings should be relatively good for general release.

I'm unfamiliar with this book, but reading the wikipedia article it sounds like they were looking solely at the differences between exponential and linear growth, and weren't accounting for much beyond that. I don't know of any reputable scientists who made predictions back in the 70s that we would "run out" by 1992. One of the more respected ones in the oil industry was M. King Hubbert. Hubbert predicted we would start peaking in 1995, though that was about 10 years off (all evidence I've seen suggests we've been peaking since 2005). He also correctly predicted when the United States would start peaking in production. Here's some information about how some of the better educated guesses are made on this today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicting_the_timing_of_peak_oil Anyone who says we're going to "run out" of oil by a specific date doesn't know what they're talking about. Decline in production won't work that way. There will still be some oil around for the rest of our natural lives. What I think will happen however, is that once we start seeing a decline in production, it will have a massive, massive negative economic impact on our society, the United States is especially structured around having cheap oil and having the price double or triple would be extremely disruptive. I really don't think our society is prepared at all for this kind of transition, which unfortunately makes the situation that much worse.

I finally got around to watching this. I think around 2050 in the video, they get extremely speculative, but most of what they say before that sounds pretty plausible to me. I especially like how they also predict the beginning of oil problems in 2015 (like I do) and included some small segments with James Howard Kunstler, an author whom I think has some good predictions for where civilization headed: Vapymid: This isn't propaganda, the entire thing is a prediction based on our current observations. There's no guarantee any of this will be true from the get-go. I did think they were a little heavy-handed in their talk about solar power, but beyond that, they look a lot of different variables that are affecting the planet and I think some of their conclusions were pretty good. Doom Shepard: It wasn't created for Youtube, it was a production put out by ABC. But I agree that it's not really a documentary, but just a possible interpretation of the future.

Actually I have one more comment, a friend presented me with this question, that I think could have saved a lot of time figuring out everyone's morality: Let's say you ate a belladonna berry by accident, which is poisonous. I have a calabar bean, which is the antidote. However, I refuse to give you the calabar bean because you can't give me something in return. Is that unethical?

I clicked on that article, and it cited another article, which said this: "At issue for the Republicans is the fact that an estimated 46% of Americans don't owe any federal income tax. That's because many of them earn so little that the standard deduction and personal exemption absolve them of liability." While I'm sure a few of them are parasites, my guess is the majority of them are not. If somebody works as a janitor 40 hours a week (or better yet, like some jobs I've had, 35 hours a week so they can work you almost full time without providing benefits), but can barely pay for his rent and groceries, but after filing his taxes, owes nothing to the IRS because he earns so little, do you think he's a parasite to society, even with the work he's doing? This sounds kind of bigoted. When you say "I know why" talking about someone else, assuming everyone else's views are really the same as yours, you don't really achieve any understanding that way. That would be like me saying that I know why some people listen to jazz; it's because deep down, they know metal is awesome, but they're too afraid they can't handle it. Personally, I think capitalism in its modern form produces great things, but has also become extremely harmful to the middle class and unregulated I think is dangerous to the well-being of society. As for the government, I feel like its been infiltrated by lobbyists and is a limp duck in a lot of areas or an enabler to what would have previously been illegal practices in the past. Exchange of goods isn't everything, force is necessary. I WANT the government to force companies not to do something like dump mercury into the river. If someone is making 100 million dollars a year, I WOULD like the government to take some of that money and use it to benefit people have almost nothing. So if they earn 80 million that year instead of 100 million, yes, they are being "robbed" for operating in the country they live in, but my guess is that money can improve the lives of an incredible number of people than it would in the hands of the individual. Well I'm sure he does work hard, though $350,000 or more of gross income a year makes it far easier to provide all those things than the vast majority of families, many of which likely work just as hard as he does. An example of hard work is fine, but I'm willing to bet the average blue collar worker works a hell of a lot harder than the average family member who inherits millions. I'm WELL within the 99% myself and was born into it, but I think my views wouldn't change if my income ever did. And yet this woman could earn more income from trust funds than your entire family combined. But if you're consistent with your ideology, I'm assuming you think it's more of a crime that she is charged any taxes from her trust fund income than to have the government force a percentage of it go towards scholarships for poorer families. No, I'm referring to everyone who lives within a civilization. This includes hard workers, but it also includes homeless drunks, and it includes upper income earners like the woman in your picture. Well if something immensely benefits thousands or millions of individuals and inconveniences a few individuals, I consider that generally a good thing. So if you earn 100 million dollars and the government takes 20 million from you, yeah, I guess that sucks that you don't get every last dollar, although you still have 80 million dollars, which is more money than 99% of people will ever see in their lives. Then if you turnaround and that money goes and benefits 20,000 people by providing schools for children, dental work for people who can't afford it, shelters for battered women, etc., I consider that a pretty good tradeoff for society overall, even if the individual would rather have his extra 20 million dollars. If it's easier, imagine it's the woman in the picture who's earning 100 million dollars each year from trust funds. Are there any projections this would actually work without a LOT of people being left on the wayside? America has both welfare and private charities and we still have about 44 million people in poverty. If there wasn't any welfare, that number would almost certainly be higher, more on that below. At least with a government "forcing" some things you can have some guarantees of some services, however shoddy they might be. Well again, according to wikipedia we have about 44 million in poverty in America. So 100 billion would mean about $22 per person in poverty on average. But even if you want to factor in every other charity, I think the math still doesn't add up. from 2000 - 2010 the Bush tax cuts saved about 2.7 trillion dollars in tax cuts, yet the poverty rate increased by 4-5%, with 11 million more in poverty. Even before the 2008 economy problems, the poverty level was rising steadily. So if your theory was true, that means that poverty should have gone DOWN because private charities would have had more money, because the government was taking less from taxes. Instead, it went up. Just relying on the kindness of people I think doesn't cut it, I think it would leave way too many people suffering or dead that wouldn't be with more socialized benefits. I think the government currently spends around 800 billion on welfare and we still have tons of people in poverty. I don't understand how we would have LESS poverty if welfare suddenly disappeared. Charity would have to raise at least an additional 800 billion just to have similar numbers to what we have today. I can't imagine any charity worker who thinks people do NOT have a right to something like a place to sleep or food. Well assume in this scenario you're living comfortably from your salary and this is not a case of triage, where by denying him you're saving someone else's life. If you still would like society to ALLOW you to let him die in your position, I think this discussion is over; your morality is simply different from mine. I think you value no compromise whatsoever to the rights of the individual, at any cost, including the lives of people who are less fortunate.

I think there's some important stuff here to focus on, otherwise the rest of this debate is pointless: The simple version of what I think you're saying is that the government shouldn't enforce anything that infringes on what other people wish to do (short of obvious illegal things, like theft, murder, etc.). I can understand that mentality, but in practice, I think this creates more of an "every man for himself" society. So if you're too poor to afford housing or regular meals, that's your problem. If you're injured or uneducated and can't find work, that's your problem. If you're ill or elderly and can't afford healthcare, that's again, your problem and nobody else's (unless they choose to make it theirs). Is this a correct conclusion of what you're advocating? If it is, I think that's immoral and rather brutal towards people, provided a society has the means to provide for everyone. So if so, I fundamentally disagree with what you're saying, sorry. As long as a society has the resources to do so, I don't think anyone should not be provided basic needs in order to survive, regardless of their situation. If that's not what you're saying, then who provides for all those types of people under the system you're describing? Well let's go back to my above examples in this post. Who exactly are the "robbers?" Does it include the person who is homeless on the street who wants somewhere to live and food to eat because he doesn't have these things and can't currently provide for himself?

For what it's worth, I encountered minor stuttering on CCCP (though I used CCCP 2 years ago on XP without any problems), K-Lite, and the CoreAVC trial on MPC-HC when doing testing . The only solution I've found so far that's worked (thanks to a viewer helping me out) was using MPC-HC with the MadVR renderer, and even THEN after unchecking the "present several frames in advance" option or it. As he explained it to me, this has to do with some Direct3D functions and how they're called. It's likely Nvidia's drivers are a culprit in this, I'm just glad I was able to sort it out. I'll check out Potplayer though and do some tests on it to see how it performs, I hadn't heard of that one before.

Hey everybody, I have a small update for Halloween. I don't have any new videos, but I'm far enough along with the encoding process to release the MKV copies of some of the earlier videos. My original plan was to release "Diary of A Zombie", "Halloween Safety", and "The Tunnel" for a Halloween-themed release in high-quality x264 MKV format, so you could see all the detail. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the revised audio back from the finalists in time for Diary of a Zombie, Halloween Safety gave me an error when trying to open the original source file in Windows 7, but The Tunnel worked! So below here is a re-release of The Tunnel: Download "Civil Protection: The Tunnel" 1280x720 MKV (250MB) So not as Halloween-ish as I hoped, but 1 out of 3 I guess is better than nothing. I think the quality is quite good on this copy, however I ran into some minor errors for EVERY method I tried for x264 encoding when using VLC Player to play it back. The setting I decided on resulted in the least amount of visual errors, but there still are some small ones when using that player. I'll be slowly rolling out MKV copies of other videos (including the past 2 FM episodes) as I get around to it. I'm pretty impressed with the visual quality from x264 encoding, so if you don't like the format, I recommend checking the forums to see if anyone wants to convert these to other formats. In other news, my throat is mostly healed, so I plan to start again on the next Freeman's Mind soon, and I also hope to get the sound editing contest resolved soon as well. Beyond that, everything I work on feels like a giant spinner I turn to figure out what I'll do next.

Well the problem with oil sands is that the EROEI is way lower than normal oil extraction. Even if we removed all obstacles and extracted as much as possible, it would never meet even our daily level of consumption. It will buy some time, but it's nothing resembling a solution. The most immediate energy problem we'll be facing will be from oil, not from electric power generation. The majority (about 2/3) of oil goes towards fuel. What I think is likely to happen is we could start having a real oil crisis because of a decline in production, but still have the ability to produce plenty of electricity. Not that electricity generation in the future isn't an issue, but I consider it a separate and less immediate one.

Actually everything I've read indicates that even if the electricity is being produced via coal, the amount of pollution from an electric car is less than or roughly equal to what would be produced via gasoline. And this is a worst-case scenario coal plant, not one with secondary scrubbers, etc. Regardless, I see the pollution as a secondary issue. The larger one is that our society is incredibly dependent on oil and I think we'll start seeing a decline for it in a few years, with not having any real solution in sight. Having a giant switch to electric cars isn't an end-all solution, but it could buy a lot of time.

While I'm not a parkour expert or anything, I've done a lot of climbing before. If you climb up by giving yourself a vertical jump boost as you're doing it, it will help push most of your weight up (so you don't have to lift your entire weight) assuming the gripping point is low enough. Once you can get up enough to have your stomach over the point, you can kind of scramble upright from that carefully. The only space you really "need" is for one foot and at least the side for one hand. Regardless, what I wanted to do was just stack the dog containers, but the game wouldn't let me move them.

Download 848x480 MKV (108MB) Here is the much-delayed episode 39. I like this one if just for the fact that it finally ends the seemingly never-ending factory sections (for now anyway). For some reason, I started having a lot more ideas once I got out of the factory section of the game. For those that haven't played the game before, the upcoming episodes will have a lot more of the environment to "interact" with, so that makes things easier for me. While the filming is more or less done, voicework won't resume on Episode 40 until my throat gets better. Also it looks like the color got skewed on Youtube again, it feels like a dice toss these days as to how that will turn out, but the downloadable copy should look correct once I encode that.

People have protested (or revolted rather) for centuries, before corporations existed. It doesn't make the protest possible, but I agree the irony is pretty thick, I like that picture. How about a situation where you have two major competitors for a single product, but both are so powerful, neither can really overtake the other. So instead of competing, they enter an agreement where they'll both raise prices on their products by 15%, thus making their profits much higher. Do you consider this ethical? Some countries have laws against price fixing like this, others don't. When it happens, it's hands-down a very effective way to maximize profit over normal competition. There's loads of real-life scenarios similar to this, generally look at cities that had a large manufacturing industry about 30 years ago. Places like Detroit, Cleveland, Grand Rapids, have all been hit very hard economically because of manufacturing industries pulling out. Yes, the demand gets met, but it gets met in other countries where labor laws are more lax and thus the average standard of living for employees of the company goes down. Well this part is easy, sure, pull out of the town, but wherever they open up, have equal working conditions as to where they pulled out of. So if you were paying the robotics guy $15 an hour and gave him health coverage, then give the Mexican workers $15 an hour and health coverage. Yes there are, here are some objective "goods" for society: -Access to clean water -Access to affordable housing -Access to affordable food -Access to affordable waste disposal / sewage -Access to affordable heating / lighting / electricity -Access to affordable health care -Access to affordable education -Protection against crime -Some sort of safety net for people unable to work or find work -Being able to afford leisure time There's plenty of others, but the things people need to survive and services / comforts that a modern civilization can easily afford its citizens is a good place to start. Since the government doesn't provide all those things, many people depend on wages to try and achieve them. By lowering the standards for workers, it jeopardizes more people from having all of these things. As for whom and what it's good for, it's good for the happiness and survival of the entire population living in an area. All these things are frequently NOT always good for maximizing profit margins. If you think these are subjective goods and not objective ones, I would love to hear who you think should NOT be entitled to those things. It's a contributor to his problems, but I'd say it's easily not the source of them. I think the source is that he can't afford all those societal "goods" I discussed before for his family, and that's with he, his wife, and later his children all being very hard workers and spending almost their entire waking lives working. For me, "The Jungle" represents largely unbridled capitalism. In the book, interference from the government with business is minimal (I don't remember any at all, but I read it two years ago), there's competing industries, and they all offer equally shitty conditions, management is far, far wealthier than the working class, and the populace is largely in poverty and engaged in wage slavery. I'd say it's a paradise for pure capitalists; you have cheap, cheap labor, a fair market to compete on, and there's basically no regulation for how you operate your business. I said UNBRIDLED Capitalism, in other words, capitalism with basically no limits other than the free market. Taken to extremes, it doesn't FORCE things directly, but it can directly impact and incentivize the majority of a population to work harder for less money, thus lowering the standard of living and quality of life for the majority. Now granted, quality of life is subjective, but I think we can agree that it's better to get paid $9 an hour (assuming the company can EASILY afford it) than 30 cents an hour, and better to have the option of working 8 hours a day or less, than only 12 or more. Alright, let's focus on water companies then. Suppose the government no longer is in charge of water purification. A company moves into a town and sets up a water purification service, based on demand. After they're established, they do market research to determine that they will maximize profits if they charge prices that only 90% of the local population can afford. Other companies look at this region, but decide to dismiss it, because while they could open up a competing facility at lower prices, the initial overhead would lead to a profit loss for at least 10 years, so they all decide it's not worth it since the existing company is already there. So 90% of the population has water to drink, and the remaining 15% have to use the river, which is polluted. How does privatization provide for these bottom 10%? Are they simply on their own and don't receive clean drinking water? I can listen to the audio when I run, but I won't be doing that until I'm no longer sick. It was mainly the dialogue in Atlas Shrugged that drove me crazy, the rest I figured was worth reading since it's such a famous book.

You're right, I overlooked some aspects of this example, but it's a common scenario and I think one that illustrates how the class divide can larger. I put a "small" number for the CEO since the majority of the income boost is likely to go to shareholders. But even then, that I think moves the overall wealth more towards the upper end of the spectrum, I was able to find an article that shows the divide: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/11/17/who-owns-the-stock-market.aspx Upper class earners almost certainly see benefits from larger stock values, middle class earners, perhaps. Most of the middle class isn't involved with stocks directly, though some may have retirement funds, pensions, or some limited stock options given to them from their employers. The working class is lucky to have any excess cash at all, let alone to be thinking about stocks, so they don't see much if any benefit from that. There are many, many variables at work in a situation like this, but I think you can make a strong case that a practice like this leads to a shrinking middle class, a richer upper class, and harsher working conditions for the average global employee.

Hey, you can take the Craig Mengel challenge! Craig (voice of Dave on CP) is a political science major, working towards his Master's degree, and he challenges any anarchists out there to play the computer game STALKER then afterwards still say you support anarchy. While it does have fictional things like mutants and anomalies, he considers it a great anarchy simulator.

Michael Archer: I seem to be getting this vibe from you that if you're a business or corporation, and you obey the letter of the law, you can do no wrong. If I'm misunderstanding, let me know. Some of the scenarios I've described I would consider unethical behavior, even if they're 100% legal. What sort of behavior by a corporation would you consider unethical, even if they're perfectly within their rights / the law to do it? I think this might better help me understand your perspective. Well Exxon-Mobil made 15 billion in 2009, and paid no U.S. income tax General Electric made almost 11 billion in 2010 and also paid no U.S. income tax but I agree, just saying "more" doesn't really help anything. I think they're implying that currently the 99% have LESS rights than the highest-earning 1%. I personally believe a substantial portion of our Congress has more loyalty to lobbyists supplying millions to their campaign than it does to actual voters. It makes sense in a way, since without all that money, it's difficult to get elected, but I think it's become more of a mess It seems to me that they want socialism, with all the benefits of capitalism i.e. they want government support for the 99% and they want the corporations to be heavily regulated and taxed (i.e. punished for being good), but they still want the jobs and the products that the corporations make. Well there's a difference between creating wealth and extracting it. In my scenario, I believe it's being extracted (explained below). Creating wealth would be something like working a mine and discovering a mineral deposit, or working a tract of land and using it to grow crops. In those cases, wealth is genuinely being created. And I totally understand your point regarding workers and it's valid, but I think there are other factors to consider as well. I agree that there shouldn't be a right to a job, but I also think it's important to consider the motivations in this scenario. If a corporation is based and founded in the USA and has been in operation in a town like that for some 30 years, it could be argued that there's some sense of dependence of the town on the company. While that's nothing sacred, it's worth considering. What I think is more important, is if this shift in workers is done during a time when the company is having record profits. So by closing the American factories and moving things to Mexico, the money saved goes straight to the upper management. The company may save 350 million, the CEO gets a 10 million dollar bonus, etc. So the rich get richer. I have no problem with that if that's ALL it means, but this isn't a vacuum. The workers in that town are largely ruined financially, so they all get poorer. In Mexico, it's true the workers have gained some prosperity, but now the standards have changed. The company now only has to pay them a third of what they were paying the workers in the U.S. They may not need to provide health care or other benefits anymore. The workers may now be required to work 12+ hours instead of 8. This is exactly how the middle class is eroded. Look at the net result of this scenario: -A small number of already wealthy people in upper management get even richer -the company becomes even more valuable -thousands of people get economically devastated -a lesser number of people (since they won't need to hire as many now) do have better lives, since their previous conditions were likely very impoverished -the standard of living for workers overall has been lowered From a utilitarian perspective, the amount of societal "good" has been lowered. While I think the Mexicans are just as deserving as Americans, I also feel the standards for working for the company should also be the same. If you've ever read or are familiar with "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair, this illustrates the problem I have with complete unbridled capitalism. It has a tendency to marginalize workers' rights so that the only people of value are those that will work their absolute hardest for the lowest amount of pay. Well this is a more radical perspective, but I can understand that. Let me ask though, where should the funding come from for having clean water, a fire department, a police department, public schools, public roads, etc. if it's not coming from taxes? I guess this wasn't the best example. What I was really thinking of is when millions (or billions) of dollars of profit come at the expense of finding ways that people should NOT be given health care coverage (excluding fraud obviously) this system strikes me as harmful to people overall. I think you might be missing what I'm saying. I'm not talking about Starbucks opening up a store next to them and competing that way, that's perfectly fair. I'm talking about a Starbucks management decision where they decide this area is very valuable, but they can't compete with this local store on quality or price, but because they're bigger, they open a cluster of 4 stores around them, all of which are operating at a loss, with the sole goal of putting this local store out of business. The local store can hold out, but with 4 Starbucks all around them, only the most loyal customers will support them, which isn't enough for them to survive long-term. Eventually, the local store goes out of business. Afterwards, Starbucks shuts down the other 3 stores, since they're unprofitable and their only real purpose was to weaken the competing store. It's not a matter of the company being "better", it's a matter of them being more powerful. Well the blackmail portion would be that vendors would not receive the massive discount if they also sold AMD cpu's. Really it's a different flavor of the starbucks situation, not winning because your product or service is better / cheaper, but because you're more powerful.

The protests are a gathering place for everybody who's mad about anything at all. They have no cohesive or coherent message, according to their own website. They're still looking for a consensus on "what we should think." They're not going to find one. Some of them are probably more damaging to the cause than others: http://www.cracked.com/blog/3-types-wall-street-protesters-hurting-their-own-cause/ That cracked.com article is well written. I like the links at the beginning, since that hones back more to the points I was making, but the rest of the article also points out the downfalls; I didn't realize the protests as a whole were as incoherent as they were. This isn't a matter of random people just complaining and there not being a real issue, it's that the legitimate points behind it may be getting thoroughly muddied by the catch-all "supporters." Like the author, I also thought it was odd that this was focused on wall street and not in Washington D.C.

I have news on several items. First off, I JUST received the audio back from Otto for the next Freeman's Mind episode. I still have to do final processing on everything, but I'm pretty sure I can have it completed and sent to Machinima.com in the next 24 hours. After that it will go up whenever it works out for their scheduling. My apologies this episode took so long. It took me a while, it took Otto a while, then I didn't get as far ahead on the next episode as I intended. Second, while I'm guessing some of you may not believe me due to the timing, I've come down sick with something in the past day or two that's gone after my throat. It's currently painful for me to speak for more than a few seconds, making more voice recording not an option right now. I'll resume recording on the next FM as soon as my throat is better. Third, things may not be so great on the code end of things for the Source engine (again). I did get in contact with Valve, and the last email I received from them said that while it would take them a while to release a bug fix of the code officially, they could hook me up with a part of the code that fixes the stuttering of animations during demo playback. Unfortunately that was over a month ago. I've been sending them a check-in email each week since then, with no reply. While I suppose I'm the last person to criticize others of being late on emails (considering my current backlog), if someone is emailing me once a week as a reminder about something I already said I would help them with, I would almost certainly respond in a more timely manner. Anyway, I hope the employee I'm in touch with is just busy and will get back to me, but I may have to figure out alternatives in the meantime. Fourth, I still have plenty of other things to catch up on. Round two of reviewing the sound editing contestants, finalizing the MKV tests, getting more things (like broken links) fixed on the website, and catching up on emails. The next post here will likely be the sound contest winners or else FM #39.

I recently acquired a copy of the soundtrack to The Man With One Red Shoe if you're interested. This one is rare as hell, you can't even buy it; I have no idea how the guy I got in touch with got a copy of it.