Vapymid

LOL! LoHE3wcMBO8 But this one's surely the best. The greatest parody on the socialist realism art, and created at the peak of the USSR's existence! Regards

I believe the correct term is "lazy" and that's the simple law of nature - you only do things which you need to do, and then spending minimum amount of effort at that. Which brings us to Necessity is the mother of invention. Unless faced with an imminent problem we will not attempt to solve that problem. Our progress is impossible without constant pressure from the environment, which, in the absence of specific catastrophic events (such as meteor strikes, GRBs etc.), is achieved by us expanding from the inside, exerting pressure against the environment (and thus the environment pressing back, according to Newton's 3rd law). Regards

Abstracting for a moment from the criminal aspects of this appeal let's imagine that they succeeded. Overthrown the Federal Government, disbanded the Congress, arrested the POTUS. What next? How are they then going to run the country, effect justice, keep the financial system working, honour international commitments, manage diplomatic relations? They don't seem to have provided a lot of details on that... Regards P.S. @ProHypster re: "Fuck that, you should live life always not just after 60." - That's the spirit!

From one of the best Yes albums (even though Anderson wasn't in that line up)... kHFbzaf8FX8 Regards

Thanks! LOL, must have been too absorbed in music... Regards

Regards

@Michael Archer: What you seem to have trouble to understand is that we are social creatures, we live in society, which is a complex, living, self-organised system. Look at is as a human body - it is not a random collection of cells, the cells are grouped into organs, organs are grouped into the whole body. The cells do their function, in exchange they are provided the necessary resources. People are like cells, like it or not. They must exist in a relationship with the rest of the people. If your hand decide it no longer needs the head or your dongle decides that it does not want to share its blood with those hairy legs, they are both in for a disappointment... If the complex relationship, which must include a degree of redistribution of wealth, breaks down, the society decomposes into chaos pretty much immediately. Remember New Orleans, immediately after Katrina - it took at most 24 hours of isolation for the civilisation to start collapsing there. Our modern society is too complex to rely on charity or voluntary actions to stay coherent. There must be predictability and reliability of social functions to avoid excessive waste of resources and productivity on unnecessary deaths, discontent and unrest among a great part of productive population. This predictability and reliability is provided by the state. There is no question that it is needed - the only question is where is enough and when it becomes too much. As for that girl, she looks like a typical spoiled teenager, full of romantic notions and hormones. It's an adventure for her (with the safe knowledge that at any moment she can come back to her loving family, free from want). In 10 years time she will be as conservative as anyone and will be calling the then protesters a bunch of lazy bastards who should pull their fingers out and go do something, like making a fortune on the stock market... Life. Regards

A rock, stumbling down a slope does not serve the force of gravity. It is just subject to the balance of gravity and friction and does what the laws of nature dictate it to do. If there is God, he created the laws of nature and you are forced to obey them. If the natural laws came into existence on their own, without a higher entity, you are still forced to obey them. The question of what came first - mind (=God) or matter is the fundamental question of Philosophy. As of this moment a definitive answer is impossible therefore this should be a matter of faith. About the free will and free choice I'd like to quote from a song "They say we are endowed with Free Will - at least that justifies our need for indecision. But between our instincts and the lust to kill we bow our heads in submission. They say that no man is an island but then they say our castles are our homes; it's felt the choice is ours, between peace and violence ...oh, yes, we choose, alone? " Regards

I'm pretty sure a company designer put together a few ideas and Jobs chose the one he liked more. He only created iMac or any other Apple products to the same extent as, say, the CEO of Colgate-Palmolive creates a new formula of toothpaste. Firstly, in your previous post you were defending price-fixing as an intrinsic right of a capitalist, and not a general right of inventors or creators of a product to take credit for it (few people would argue against the latter). Price-fixing is as incompatible with capitalism as you can ever get for reasons I explained. Secondly, you can only say "your child" to indicate the parental link. You don't own your child and you cannot do anything you like with him. Also, you can't take any credit for making a child, only for upbringing him/her and even then, normally the credit is shared among many people (your spouse, teachers, doctors, your parents, in-laws). Again, a few things here. a) I hope you don't for a minute think that, say, Cheney or Rumsfeld or George W gave a flying f*ck for the rights of any eyeraqy individuals when they've made a decision to start the war. Nor should there be any doubt about Tony Blair's motivation either... Whatever is was, the human rights or dictatorial oppression never played a part in it. b) A history of attacking Israel? So what? Does Israel somehow have a special status of a country that cannot be attacked under any circumstances? Egypt, Syria, Jordan all attacked Israel in the past, so did Britain (well there was no Israel then as such, but...) But you just argued that individuals should not have certain rights yourself, how is that consistent? Well, it's not, of course. All you are saying is -"if someone wants to deny people the rights *I* think they should have - it's bad, if I want to deny people the rights *I* think they should not have - it's good". There is an analogy here with the EU. There is more productive North, more relaxed but indebted South. The South is not happy to be called to terms by the North, the North cannot tolerate the South endangering their monetary system. Something has to give. Now, Greece is heading for secession with all the money it borrowed from the North. Spain and Portugal are watching with eager eyes. Italy has an ambition to be considered as part of the North but cannot escape being a bit of a Southern type. It's a mess and cannot go on like that. Socialism v Capitalism? In Europe in general hard right is way too left for the US, so shouldn't really compare... Regards

My sentiments exactly. I should save this for posterity. You'll be amazed to see how your attitude will change by the time your first child is born... Regards

A primer on the meaning of life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life Before too much time is spent on repeating the arguments which have already been made many times before Regards

CKJWGH0LchU Regards

Yeah, money seems to be the main problem Regards

I saw a report on BBC few days ago where they said that if you move all 7 billion to a place with population density of a modern city, such as Paris, the whole lot will fit within the territory of France. Puts things in perspective...

It may be a total coincidence but such coincidence would be more surprising and unlikely than if Alfonso Cuaron was simply influenced by Half-Life 2 - only he can say which was it. Either way, CoM still remains the movie closest to HL2, visually and plot-wise, at least to me. Regards

But the film came out in 2006. Just watch it - arrival at Bexhill assylum, Syd-the-cop (as a corrupt Barney), the uprising fighting sequence, the rebels clothes. It's full of references to the game. In the absence of an official licensed HL2 action movie this comes as close as it can get. Just look at this sequence alone: CiyA70jAL14 Regards

This... qhO94FPfb0w Then this (eventually I could land *across* a runway) WseiwkKXvWU And this ( )j1xEB9pD00E And also this _zyQ_OVyhNE And, of course, this C00n4rDUMNo Regards

Syberia can be a good base for a movie... Also, the original DOOM (the fist episode) can be made into a hell of a movie (pun?). Some notes on already released movies based on other games mentioned: L4D - Zombieland, quite a good fun. HL2 - Children Of Men, obviously inspired by the game, a must see. Dark Space - animated films, Downfall and Aftermath, did not watch them myself yet. Silent Hill - Silent Hill, quite OK IMHO. Regards

You are right. And all I would like to see is for it to continue like this. Both Britain and the Continent will benefit from that IMHO. Regards

You are overreacting a bit. I was not really criticising anyone but simply stating the fact - if you have a single currency you have to have a single treasury. If you have a single treasury you must have a single government, to enforce the treasury policy. Otherwise it's like giving all your relatives credit cards covered from your account - when the bills come all you can do is shut up and pay up. Never ever allow separation of control from responsibility! Now, Greece is really pushing for it. They are bringing it to the point where they will probably be kicked out of the Eurozone and have the EU put sanctions against them. The only alternative is military intervention. Is that possible? As far as the UK is concerned, it cannot join the Eurozone and become a state within the EU federal structure (if it will come to that). The cultural differences with the continent are simply too great. It can only end up in tears. But note that I'm saying about the Eurozone - the single currency union - not the EU in a wider sense as a trade organisation. Regards

Yes, so they did. But will they? It is solely down to their goodwill and discretion, and an ability to do it in the future. None of that can be taken as a given. Regards

That implies existence of competition. The problem with price fixing is that when it happens there is no competition - either your corporation already is a monopoly or it makes a cartel agreement with other major players (the actual "fixing" bit). None of this is in any way ethical, normal or good for society. In fact, if you want the ultimate example of how price-fixing economy works take a look at the socialist economic model of the USSR period (100% price fixing with 100% monopolisation of production). Of course they don't have any right to exist for themselves. Their function is to organise labour and concentrate finance to produce product which can be exchanged for a value. They have to compete with other similar producers to achieve the best combination of quality v value. If they fail to do that they must die, their assets to be eaten by others. If they use anti-competitive ways to maintain the value of their product the key incentive for them to produce product efficiently disappears. The value they claim is inflated which diminishes the value of all other products and of money itself. This is a disease and it must be fought rigorously whenever detected. Yes, but rights cannot exist without responsibilities. You are correct in saying that if you are being granted a right by the society then you must expect something to be demanded of you in return. Welfare and healthcare - a modern society simply cannot exist without those. It is too expensive not to have them - the cost of bringing up a child, education, training, all wasted if he dies of hunger or appendicitis while going through a bad patch (which may be weeks, may be months, who knows, before he could regain employment, recover, turn around). The question is in the balance - yes, there clearly must not be an entitlement to live one's entire life on benefits but you must have a safety net. It's like insurance - you pay your taxes and you should expect some help back if needed, but not indefinitely and not in unlimited amount... Regards

I am no social democrat but I believe it is naive for anyone to think that he/she can claim credit for single-handed creation of wealth. No matter what you do you are doing it having the benefit of the entire civilisation building knowledge and infrastructure for you so that you could use it to "create wealth". If you are a carpenter - your tools are made by someone, your furniture is needed (and paid for by someone), if you are a financial trader - you are using computer and networks created by other people, your data is someone else's effort, your financial model is the result of centuries of mathematical development... Most successful people are not specialists in anything, they are organisers - and they need geniuses and hard-working people to organise in order to achieve their success. This is may be digressing from the original thread but I would like to say that robots will continue to lack free-will for not very much longer. Dumb robots are inefficient because they need humans to hard-program their every task. The more complex your robot's job is, the more tedious is the programming and the higher the probability of making an error (bug). Therefore, you will see that more and more the science of robotics will be pushing for AI, self-learning, fuzzy algorithms, decision making etc. So, back to OP, communism will not be possible even with robots This is not so. Even mob rule is not random. Just like the evolution, there clearly are objective rules which govern development of the society. There also probably is a gradient, a vector of development, which is directed by the fundamental laws of nature. Ever since I have been introduced to thermodynamics in my student days I am amazed how many parallels there are with the collective behaviour of humans. It is at a similar stage as the US was just before the Civil War. It is no longer possible to avoid deciding on key aspects of the union. The countries must either form a centrally governed federation or break the eurozone (and de-facto the EU) apart. I personally hope they will unite on the continent with the UK staying well out of it. Regards

But for what? What is the purpose of bringing the next generation into life? Regards

The bigger a company is the faster it burns money. A slip up in revenues because of a flopped product or competition and all of a sudden you are in a liquidity crisis. It is just as easy for a big one to go bust as for a small grocery shop. All it takes is a lawyer-CEO or Gabe Newell run over by a tram... But there is a larger issue here. I could not care less about Sierra going bust - my Half-Life 1, Opposing Force and Blue Shift are on CDs and all I need to install them is a CD-key. For HL2 etc, which is Steam-based it's not enough to have a copy of the game. You always have to ask daddy for permission and when the daddy's gone so is your HL2. This is the price you pay when you trade physical possession for DRMs. Regards