I have been here chicco, for many years in one iteration or another and have been ganged-up on by others like yourself-The only reason I would banned at this point is by those unwilling to see their reflection in the mirror, who would rather accuse than communicate, or burn bridges rather than build them.

I am not an enemy of anyone, or anybody on this site, sir. Deal with a reality through the eyes of your peers please rather than foment discord?? An humble and sincere request for change. I'm an amenable chap and always welcome two-sided conversations which you have continually and steadfastly avoided in exchange for continued dysfunctional cat-calls and attacks from the insulated comfort of your cozy computer-hole...

Agreed. They've great pedigree, just the wrong decisions lately. I loved DA:O. Didn't touch the sequel simply because they threw away the main element that made it great for me (character-player-centric story.). I might play this, but as all games, try before you buy.
I enjoyed Mass Effect also. I have to look past the extreme production values, but overall the game was fantastic. I have weird tastes though, and today the first of that series was my favorite, while I'd completely checked out by the third installment. (and thus, wasn't as offended by the ending. seems like it was building up to that all along!) Regardless, won't be playing any future iterations, but it was good while it lasted.

@enoch

I'd agree Friedman wasn't directly responsible, but served more as an academic influence and a proponent of a particular approach because many of the Chilean economists who influenced policy had studies in Chicago.

As far as exploiting a crisis, arguably the crisis itself warranted dramatic action. High levels of inflation caused by Allende's money printing to support wholesale nationalisation of industries pretty much required this.

As inflation is self perpetuation by its continuous expectation and can continue even after the original stimulus is gone, there was little choice here. After all it took Volker nearly half a decade of high interest rates to tame it in the US in the early 80s, to do that after an economic and political crisis in a undeveloped country was an entirely different scale of difficult.

Successive governments likely reversed some of the economic policies enacted under his regime, but the foundation I meant was particularly the budgetary position, free trade, and a competitive cadre of private sector exporters. The welfare, health and educational spending were all made possible by this. Without a credible tax base, trying to enact spending on this level while also raising the tax rises would have just precipitated another crisis.

Coming back to inflation and economics, I believe policies against inflation especially, are generally misunderstood in the short term and their benefits unrecognised in the long term. I would probably say the reverse of what you said, economic policy rarely shows tangible results in the short term but almost always in the long term.

It's certainly not perfect. After all economics has the unfavourable position of being the combination of social science, lacking the ability to test results in clinical conditions isolating a single factor and yet requiring highly specific answers to solve its questions. At its best, it offers answers based on the cumulative knowledge accrued from iterative policies, at each point being based on the 'best available knowledge at the time'.

But it has worked, as I like to often mention, with independent central banks, essentially the most technocratic and pure application of economic theory, inflation has become a thing of the past in those countries that have adopted it.

Then again I'm biased as I majored in it at uni

Here is a longer 18 minute video of more of Senator Burr's questions to the witnesses. I wish I could find the full hearing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1m0Gxtsz1A

It includes this little gem from Senator Burr, "The American system HAS access to healthcare for everybody, it's called the Emergency Room. Now we don't admit that because clearly we are lobbying for a particular angle, but every American can access healthcare."

Nice slight of hand there Senator, only difference is whenever I go to the emergency room (I live in Canada), I don't get a bill in the mail a few weeks later that I have to pay.

The average American ER visit costs $600 dollars in 2009, today it's probably well more than that, and that's just for simple problems. Anything more serious than a urinary tract infection and you are going to be paying thousands of dollars.

I'm a bit late to the party, but I'll give my 2 cents on my experiences with the Healthcare system in Quebec.

I use the public system and private system and constantly dabble between the two. Wait times can be long for sure. I've had a long running ankle problem since my teens, and to get my first appointment with an ankle specialist here took 1 year and 3 months!

My MRI was covered by private insurance, so it only took a couple days to have the scan done. I was put on a surgery waiting list for just over 2 years. The Dr let me know that he operated at a private clinic in Montreal. I could have had the surgery in only 2 weeks, at a cost of around $5000, but because my pain was minimal and I could still walk, I opted to wait.

Post surgery access to follow up appointments was swift. I could easily see the Dr in a week or two, with very little advanced notice. Follow up MRI's weren't covered by my new private insurance, so I had to wait for an MRI scan, which took around 2 months. I was supposed to have an MRI arthrogram, but the waiting list for that procedure is about twice as long, so the Dr just opted for a regular MRI. Cost for an MRI arthrogram is $875 in private. Again I just waited it out.

I've only needed to go to the emergency room twice, since I've been here, both times I was in and out in under an hour and a half.

I've been to many walk-in clinic's. These are a crapshoot, sometimes they're incredibly fast, sometimes incredibly slow.

I don't have a family Dr, so I opt to go to a Dr at a private clinic for my annual checkups. Even private clinics are a grey zone sometimes, as some services are covered by the provincial plans, so visits to the GP cost out of pocket, but visits to specialists within the same clinic are free.

Finding a family Dr is definitely plausible, it just involves phoning around every clinic and/or Dr in Montreal asking if they have space, but I just haven't invested the time yet. Some people get lucky this way, but even then, getting an appointment with your family Dr can take many weeks, appointment times can be inconvenient (mid afternoon, etc), so I'd rather make the investment of seeing someone at a private clinic, where I can have an appointment at 8:30am within a couple days.

I contrast all this with the fact that I was born and lived in South Africa well into my mid 20's. South Africa has abysmal public healthcare, and being born into a white middle class family, thanks to my parents I had access to private healthcare.

Private insurance in South Africa is less exploitative than in the U.S. Much less fighting with insurers to pay for coverage etc. Access to most Dr's is swift, and most procedure's are well covered. Obviously the overall experience compared to Canadian healthcare was much better, but the S.A private system only barely covers 20% of the population's needs and even with the disparity in wait times for service, the Canadian healthcare system at 100% coverage feels like an undeniable success, and a model that needs to be improved and iterated upon.

The debate around healthcare is tough here. Health issues and frustration with waiting can easily escalate the egocentric side of our human nature, but even with my negative experiences I would never denounce this system, because the broader social contract that has been written is valiant, and the price paid for this is worth it.

Nobody should be financially ruined because of health issues.

Life requires constant iteration, despite the human brain tiring of the process every step of the way. The ideas which are overdone are the mountains and the things not done enough are valleys and plains.

I think it's unavoidable as a pattern in all things, and potentially a requirement to advance past thought. Building up, building up, building up; like a levvy about to flood over and destroy the city so that it can be rebuilt with better ideas.

Don't fight the pattern, learn to manipulate it and iterate within the boundaries of society in a meaningful way. To complain about what is and always will be is pointless.

They missed several iterations of attempting to fix the problem, only for the problem to remain, until one of them solves the problem by discussing the unrelated-sub-plot-problem-which-just-happens-to-contain-the-perfect-metaphor-for-fixing-the-main-problem.

At which point, they will rush back to the main problem and yell "do not do that thing we hand planned to do to fix the problem! It will only make the problem worse! Do this thing instead!" at the last minute. At which point the problem will be solved, and everyone has a beer.

So these thingy-dealies won't contaminate ground water if they gusplode? (He really would make a lovely he-she though, and Chloe with a flapper-cut, a fettishing boy)

Someone's physical androgynous characteristics has nothing to do with their sexuality, does it? merely an observation...similar to the one I made based in my 'ignace' of nuclear power, and all her fucked iterations.

I've been anti-nuclear from the git-go, always will be-
I also must maintain that the power that will push the planet into the next exponential blast (if numb, distracted peeps don't let asshole humans turn the place into a dystopian shit hole) won't come from an energy source that uses radioactive anything-It's gonna be something else that creates the energy needed for whatever sustainable future awaits.

my instincts is all I'm going on, but this cat's gonna get snatched-up by insect-keepers for profit and mayhem...Or fuck me, maybe he's gonna be another Nicole Tesla-(pun-intended, the kids cute)

sexuality my ass.....

I'll take this one: Bjork is in a category of Bjork all her own-Her vocal styling was unusual, maverick for the time-She's a multi-instrumentalist ( heard Gaga play the piano and sing acapella?... not very good) T

Iceland: Not many bands form there anyhow, and she was showcased at 11 on the ONLY Icelandic radio station at the behest of her....classical piano teacher-The girl worked her ass off in several iterations, always changing and pushing the innovative envelope.

Gaga writes trite pop tunes and dances around (quite un-coordinately so) in some pretty tasteless gear while claiming some mastery of taste and style, the same based ENTIRELY in her pop persona. Can't stand her taste in fashion and her music blows sell-out-show, chunks.

At least with Bjork the journey has some changing scenery-Gaga will age like the cheap vintages of Madonna or Mariah Carey, the latter of which has more talent in her wardrobe than Gaga has in her songwriting and musical ability.

At least Carey has a range and some control, gaga sounds like she's grunting when she sings. When you want that, pull out a frikkin' Throbbing Gristle LP!

I know....can't stand modern pop culture-very played, very tired.

Apple's strategy appears to be progressive in releasing new products and conservative in making iterations.

It's particularly obvious on the iPhone. (1) On screen size they've barely budged while competitors have offered options varying widely from 3-7 inches. While some would argue phones larger than 5 inches are ungainly, it's very much a personal preference and where there's clearly demand say for Samsung's Note series, the option should be available. (2) The UI may have also been revamped but compared to the customisability of Android, it's still immensely basic and locked down, (3) File access continues to be restricted through iTunes which keeps transferring files, and sharing them between apps a massive pain. Apple's bandaid solution to this is to stick a 'share' button everywhere, but this is hardly a real solution.

The problem is Apple's slow pace of change means they're losing their competitive advantage. I'd argue the big change that has kept the iPhone successful even as Android was beginning to catch up several years after the first iPhone was the (1) all metal design that came with the iPhone 4 & (2) the smoothness of their UI. Now with phones like the HTC One, the durable/water resistant series from Sony and the rumor that Samsung is going all metal with its next generation, the first advantage is going. The second went with Android Jelly Bean which mostly fixed Android's laginess. I just don't see anything coming along that will significantly differentiate them in the future, both the iPhone 5 and 5S really didn't offer anything as compelling as the build quality of the 4.

The iPhones main remaining advantages are its user friendliness and the relative strength of its app store. I'd argue the first is over-exaggerated, and even if it is such a large factor, the sheer fact that it has already seen sizable portions of the older generation being enticed into smartphones makes the next step of moving to a new UI a relative cinch. Effectively Android phone makers/Google can capitalize on the market Apple helped create. With the build quality gap diminishing and Android device prices coming down, while iPhone prices remain largely unchanged I think the incentive to switch will rise.

The App Store's strength is largely a factor of the revenue that it brings in for app creators. Yes, no doubt iOS apps are generally pricier and it's users more willing to pay. But with the dominance in market share for Android in developing markets, even if their consumers are poorer, it's only a matter of time before at the very least app makers move from the iOS first, Android second model to a simultaneous release. From there I think it will be a steady decline for iOS.

Looks like this iteration of the series will require an upgrade of my hardware, so I suppose Rebirth is quite a good fit as a name.

That'll be the end of the longest stretch without an upgrade since 1991. The current setup did its job since shortly after the release of Age of Conan in May of 2008. That's 64 months at 10+ hours a day, slaving away as a gaming rig and HTPC. It was the 8th CPU since '91, the 12th video card -- and they're still running just as smooth as ever.

Maybe I'll get some more Cat 5 and use this box as a dedicated HTPC...

Well, I don't believe people have a soul, and miraculously, I've made it almost 36 years so far with an acceptable level of murder (i.e. none). Not that I haven't wanted to kill some people at times, but there's that whole annoying morality thing that I developed for myself.

That said, here's an interesting point. I don't have a problem gunning down hordes of beautifully rendered avatars because they have no sentience.

But what happens when that changes? At what point on the AI curve is it no longer acceptable to drop entities into a virtual world to experience fear and be slaughtered?

Iain M. Banks called it the simulation problem. Let's say you have a noble goal: you want to determine what economic methodologies will produce the best outcome for your citizens. So you develop a model of the countries economy, and in order to simulate it as accurately as possible you make each citizen an intelligent agent with needs, fears, desires, etc. You then subject them to a few million iterations with everything from fascism to communism and all stops in between. Right now? not a big deal. But in the future as computing power grows exponentially, the possibility of modelling those citizens as self ware becomes greater.

I don't mind killing a realistic avatar for fun. I wouldn't even mind if I knew that that avatar was controlled by a human doing the same. But I'd have a real problem killing an AI that could think and feel.

Saw Adam Savage speak live about his gloriously nerdist/geek tendencies in making movie props last month---30 years making three iterations of the Blade Runner gun, for example.
This video is accordingly, glorious.

Worth noting that the US created the Muslim threat by deliberately arming and radicalizing the Afghani Taliban in order to give the Russians 'their own Vietnam'? Bin laden & 911 come directly from there and so the current iteration of the Red threat (Brown threat) is a direct construction of previous US governments which included the senior management of Fox news..

All this noise about the constitution is like a madman stood over a pile of murdered bodies refusing to give up his gun because he is terribly afraid people now want to shoot him. So he kills more out of fear. And Fletch is right and can join the Fremen.

There are men, somewhere, quietly hoping that without Swartz's articulate voice, the next iteration of internet censorship will eek through before it gets noticed.

Around 5:45 Julian says that free-form strategy games cannot guarantee that the player will always have something interesting to do, and that, in his view at least, you couldn't get away with that sort of game anymore today.

Paradox Interactive with their Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis and Victoria franchises are still up and running. Hearts of Iron 3, in particular, seems more popular than ever, after the release of the third add-on, "Their Finest Hour". And if anything, HOI3 is even more of a sandbox than the original XCOM.

Similarly, Bohemia Interactive's Arma series as a comparable counterpart in the field of first person shooters is gaining massive popularity as well, even though it incorporates extensive "downtimes" for players.

You can't churn out annual iterations and expect AAA-rate numbers of sold copies, but the community is still large enough to warrent a couple of these franchises.