Idk, kind of not in the spirit of the original game at all.

The whole thing with Doom was it was alarming to turn a corner and have a monster RIGHT THERE in your face. Gameplay was FAST too, which added to the feeling of immersion.

I hear the pew pew pew of this plasma rifle that's firing anything less than 20 rounds a second and weep digital tears.

Yeah, the comics are pretty good. Some of the Darth Vader stories have been really excellent.

There's a constant rumour of an Obi-wan movie with Ewan McGregor. That could work, but I'd like to see it as a smaller story.

There's an excellent comic that features Obi-wan on Tatooine, and it has this great line:
"As hard as it was to become a Jedi, it was even harder to stop being one.

But I did."

That's a movie I'd like to see.

Sorry, but this argument is nonsense.
CGI, colour grading and digital cameras aren't "ruining movies". All those tools can be used well.

What's ruining movies is dumb scripts and bad filmmaking.

Nice sift @enoch!

I discovered these guys a while ago on YT also. I don't usually care about watching reaction / review videos, but these guys are great. They are so enthusiastic and honest that it is almost like hearing the songs again for the first time myself.

Their reactions to Holy Wars (Megadeth), Master of Puppets, and One (both Metallica) are awesome for the thrash lover in me. And for other stuff, their vids for Killing in the Name (RATM), Digital Bath (Deftones), and Lateralus (Tool) are also all great.

from link:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/year-one-list-81-major-trump-achievements-11-obama-legacy-items-repealed/article/2644159

Below are the 12 categories and 81 wins cited by the White House.

Jobs and the economy

Passage of the tax reform bill providing $5.5 billion in cuts and repealing the Obamacare mandate.
Increase of the GDP above 3 percent.
Creation of 1.7 million new jobs, cutting unemployment to 4.1 percent.
Saw the Dow Jones reach record highs.
A rebound in economic confidence to a 17-year high.
A new executive order to boost apprenticeships.
A move to boost computer sciences in Education Department programs.
Prioritizing women-owned businesses for some $500 million in SBA loans.
Killing job-stifling regulations

Signed an Executive Order demanding that two regulations be killed for every new one creates. He beat that big and cut 16 rules and regulations for every one created, saving $8.1 billion.
Signed 15 congressional regulatory cuts.
Withdrew from the Obama-era Paris Climate Agreement, ending the threat of environmental regulations.
Signed an Executive Order cutting the time for infrastructure permit approvals.
Eliminated an Obama rule on streams that Trump felt unfairly targeted the coal industry.
Fair trade

Made good on his campaign promise to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Opened up the North American Free Trade Agreement for talks to better the deal for the U.S.
Worked to bring companies back to the U.S., and companies like Toyota, Mazda, Broadcom Limited, and Foxconn announced plans to open U.S. plants.
Worked to promote the sale of U.S products abroad.
Made enforcement of U.S. trade laws, especially those that involve national security, a priority.
Ended Obama’s deal with Cuba.
Boosting U.S. energy dominance

The Department of Interior, which has led the way in cutting regulations, opened plans to lease 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling.
Trump traveled the world to promote the sale and use of U.S. energy.
Expanded energy infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline snubbed by Obama.
Ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to kill Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
EPA is reconsidering Obama rules on methane emissions.
Protecting the U.S. homeland

Laid out new principles for reforming immigration and announced plan to end "chain migration," which lets one legal immigrant to bring in dozens of family members.
Made progress to build the border wall with Mexico.
Ended the Obama-era “catch and release” of illegal immigrants.
Boosted the arrests of illegals inside the U.S.
Doubled the number of counties participating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement charged with deporting illegals.
Removed 36 percent more criminal gang members than in fiscal 2016.
Started the end of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program.
Ditto for other amnesty programs like Deferred Action for Parents of Americans.
Cracking down on some 300 sanctuary cities that defy ICE but still get federal dollars.
Added some 100 new immigration judges.
Protecting communities

Justice announced grants of $98 million to fund 802 new cops.
Justice worked with Central American nations to arrest and charge 4,000 MS-13 members.
Homeland rounded up nearly 800 MS-13 members, an 83 percent one-year increase.
Signed three executive orders aimed at cracking down on international criminal organizations.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions created new National Public Safety Partnership, a cooperative initiative with cities to reduce violent crimes.
Accountability

Trump has nominated 73 federal judges and won his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
Ordered ethical standards including a lobbying ban.
Called for a comprehensive plan to reorganize the executive branch.
Ordered an overhaul to modernize the digital government.
Called for a full audit of the Pentagon and its spending.
Combatting opioids

First, the president declared a Nationwide Public Health Emergency on opioids.
His Council of Economic Advisors played a role in determining that overdoses are underreported by as much as 24 percent.
The Department of Health and Human Services laid out a new five-point strategy to fight the crisis.
Justice announced it was scheduling fentanyl substances as a drug class under the Controlled Substances Act.
Justice started a fraud crackdown, arresting more than 400.
The administration added $500 million to fight the crisis.
On National Drug Take Back Day, the Drug Enforcement Agency collected 456 tons.

Helping veterans

Signed the Veterans Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act to allow senior officials in the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire failing employees and establish safeguards to protect whistleblowers.
Signed the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act.
Signed the Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act, to provide support.
Signed the VA Choice and Quality Employment Act of 2017 to authorize $2.1 billion in additional funds for the Veterans Choice Program.
Created a VA hotline.
Had the VA launch an online “Access and Quality Tool,” providing veterans with a way to access wait time and quality of care data.
With VA Secretary Dr. David Shulkin, announced three initiatives to expand access to healthcare for veterans using telehealth technology.
Promoting peace through strength

Directed the rebuilding of the military and ordered a new national strategy and nuclear posture review.
Worked to increase defense spending.
Empowered military leaders to “seize the initiative and win,” reducing the need for a White House sign off on every mission.
Directed the revival of the National Space Council to develop space war strategies.
Elevated U.S. Cyber Command into a major warfighting command.
Withdrew from the U.N. Global Compact on Migration, which Trump saw as a threat to borders.
Imposed a travel ban on nations that lack border and anti-terrorism security.
Saw ISIS lose virtually all of its territory.
Pushed for strong action against global outlaw North Korea and its development of nuclear weapons.
Announced a new Afghanistan strategy that strengthens support for U.S. forces at war with terrorism.
NATO increased support for the war in Afghanistan.
Approved a new Iran strategy plan focused on neutralizing the country’s influence in the region.
Ordered missile strikes against a Syrian airbase used in a chemical weapons attack.
Prevented subsequent chemical attacks by announcing a plan to detect them better and warned of future strikes if they were used.
Ordered new sanctions on the dictatorship in Venezuela.
Restoring confidence in and respect for America

Trump won the release of Americans held abroad, often using his personal relationships with world leaders.
Made good on a campaign promise to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Conducted a historic 12-day trip through Asia, winning new cooperative deals. On the trip, he attended three regional summits to promote American interests.
He traveled to the Middle East and Europe to build new relationships with leaders.
Traveled to Poland and on to Germany for the G-20 meeting where he pushed again for funding of women entrepreneurs.


see link above for more complete

@ChaosEngine --

I've only seen one other piece by this dude, so I can't claim that I definitely "get" what he's going for, but... To me, his shtick is: "I wanted to be a rockstar / guitar hero when I was growing up, but my parents made me learn the piano instead of guitar. So, I'm going to live that rockstar dream via the piano instead of guitar, partially because I enjoy it, partially to stick it to mom and dad, and partially because other people seem to enjoy it as evidenced by views / likes / comments, etc." (And importantly, he can't play the guitar, so he uses the skill that he has available.)

I like his stuff (well, the 2 videos I've seen of his). This one is pretty reliant on bends, and to nitpick I think he should have used an analog pitch bender for that instead of the fancy touch digital one he had. On the other hand, it isn't too critical, and he seems to go for playing by ear without a lot of (maybe *any*?) practice run-throughs which would definitely be required to nail those bend sections perfectly. So, the imperfect on-hand equipment (digital vs analog) and imperfect execution don't detract much from the performance for me.

You're also correct that he played the wrong notes a few times, but in a musically acceptable way -- he was still playing chord notes in the scale and key of the song, but not exactly the same ones as in the original. So while I noticed it, that also doesn't really detract much from the performance for me either.

Taking a piece for another instrument and adapting it to a different one as opposed to trying to "imperfectly" emulate the original can also be very cool. Youtube covers of rock songs on a Korean Gayageum come to mind. BUT, I also get a kick out of my interpretation of this guy's shtick, and don't feel like he's trying to do the musical equivalent of forcing a round peg into a square hole or anything.

Definitely all subjective though.

@JustSaying and @draebor --

I was aware of the ban on Nazi symbols / flags / etc. in Germany, and (wrongly) assumed that meant that the country was just kind of trying to "gloss over" that part of history; not talk about it in schools, etc. A sifter (can't remember who offhand) set me straight a few years ago.

However, this does remind me of a thought that I had then: what about piracy?

Any games featuring Nazis have to be heavily edited to get a legal German release. But are there any extra considerations for piracy, or even people that buy the original versions of such games outside of the country and them bring them in?

The internet is really ramping up the speed of globalization, and it seems like it would be essentially impossible to enforce the ban on Nazi imagery in the digital realm. The best a government can hope to control such things is to try to keep them out of the mainstream. But the world is full of examples of failures to control such things -- lots of cracks in the Great Firewall of China, El Paquete in Cuba, etc.

So I'm curious if Germany even makes any attempt to add any additional measure to try to prevent piracy of media containing those things, and/or circumventing region-blocked access to such things in legitimate distributors like Steam.

I didn't like doing proofs either. That doesn't make them less math.
That's proofs....not idiocy. Training your brain to see different routes to the correct answer makes more difficult math far easier.
People learn (or don't) at different rates. I took AP B/C Calculus while some friends were in remedial math. My cousin graduated (waldorf) and can't add double digit numbers. Now, if you can't place out of remedial math, that's a problem, but the fact that they don't just give up on 11th graders that still don't know the basics is a good thing.

Har har har.

I went through every calculus class my uni offered, so not so much.

Mayhaps I didn't explain the example given in enough length. The simple operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division all have a single correct answer. Insisting that students find multiple methods of performing those operations and demonstrate multiple different learning methods for them is mental masturbation. You could spend that same time actually moving on to the more advanced stuff that is supposed to 'in theory' prepare them for.

Another example was solving a double digit multiplication problem like 37*86. The marking example showed a student using the old school vertical method and showing their work to arrive at the correct answer. The provincial grading system declared that as WRONG. The student was 'falling back' on the algorithm and should have demonstrated the use of multiple methods of solving the problem. That is idiocy.

Basic add/subtract/multiply/division isn't MATH it's arithmetic and it's a basic operation with a single answer and so long as you use a correct method to arrive at the correct answer you are good to go. Teach students that foundation and then move on to teaching them actual MATH. Read through our provincial curriculum, they are STILL teaching add/subtract/multiply/division at the Grade 11 level in the curriculum on the premise that students are still 'mastering' something that should've been a given by junior high.

This has been bugging me since I first watched it. In fact, I've seen the topis pop up several times since seeing it the first time.

I went to the BBC website, and they show the Digital Blackface video, with absolutely no place for comments or viewer interaction. We are just expected at accept it.

It's my honest opinion that this Digital Blackface segment does nothing but insight more bigotry. It takes something that was never racist and and makes it racist. How are we ever going to eliminate the separation gap, if there's always someone there to push us further apart.

H3H3 is so On Point here. *promote


I have so much to say here, but most is covered in the video - watch it.

Your video, BBC Introduces "Digital Blackface", has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

That is what I thought the fade out was for, it allowed better overlap of going from song A to song B on the radio. I also figured it might have to do with physical records, making it easier to go from song A to song B, but couldn't figure out a really reasonable reason on why they'd have to do that, so figured most of it was for radio reasons.

It does sound very odd to have a hard stop and start to a song, and without the fade out, you manually have to move the volume of the songs on the mixer... of course most sons on the radio are done via digital methods, so they can setup an automatic fade, and automatic gain if needed. That or you add a second of silence between tracks.

15:05-15:30: you tell Mr and Mrs Front-Porch that your loonie of 1871 cannot be compared to your loonie of 2013 (year of this interview). You went off the gold standard in '33, you abandoned the peg in '70, and your currency has been free-floating ever since. Yes, the ratio of debt to GDP has some importance, but so does the nature of your currency. Just look at Greece and Japan, where the former uses a foreign currency and the latter uses its own, sovereign, free-floating currency.

Pay back the national debt -- have you thought that through?

First, the Bank of Canada is the monopolist currency issuer for the loonie, so explain to me in detail just how the issuer of the currency is supposed to borrow the currency from someone else? If you're the issuer of the currency, you spend it into existence, and use taxation as a means to create demand for your currency, and to free resources for the government to acquire, because you can only ever buy what is for sale.

Second, every government bond is someone else's asset. An interest-bearing asset. A very safe asset, in the case of Canada, the US, the UK, Japan, etc. "Paying back the debt" means putting a bullet into just about every pension fund in the world that doesn't rely exlusively on private equity or other sorts of volatile toilet paper.

There's a distributional issue with these bonds (they are concentrated in the hands of the non-working class, aka the rich), no doubt about it. But most of the other issues are strictly political, not economical.

What if the interest rate rises 1%? The central bank can lower the interest rate to whatever it damn well pleases, because nobody can ever outbid the currency issuer in its own currency. Remember, the central banks were the banks of the treasuries. The whole notion of an independent central bank was introduced to stop these pesky leftists from spending resources on plebs. That's why central banks were often removed from democratic control and handed over to conservative bankers. If the Treasury wants an interest rate of 2% on its bonds, it tells its central bank to buy any excess that haven't been auctioned off at this rate. End of story.

What if the market stops buying government bonds? Then the central bank buys the whole lot. However, government bonds are safe assets, and regulations demand a certain percentage of safe assets in certain portfolios, so there is always demand for the bonds. Just look at the German Bundesanleihen. You get negative real rates on 10 year bonds, and they are still in very high demand. It's a safe asset in a world of shitty private equity vaporware.

But, but.... inflation! Right, the hyperinflation of 2006 is still right around the corner. Just like Japan hasn't been stuck near deflation for two decades, and all the QE by the BoE and the ECB has thrown both the UK and the Eurozone into double-digit inflation territory. Not! None of these economies are running near maximum capacity/full employment, and very little actual spending (the scary, scary "fiscal policy") has been done.

But I'm going off track here, so.... yeah, you can pay back your public debt. Just be very aware of what exactly that entails.

As for the poster-child Latvia: >10% of the population left the country.

Here's a different poster-child instead, with the hindsight of another 4 years of austerity in Europe after this interview: Portugal. The Portuguese government told Master of Coin Schäube to take a hike, and they are now in better shape than the countries who just keep on slashing.

On a different note: Marx was wrong about the proletariat. Treating them like shit doesn't make them rebellious, it makes them lethargic. Otherwise goons like Mario Rajoy would have had their comeuppance by now.

PS: Blyth's book on Austerity is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in its history or its current effects in particularly the Eurozone.

I know very little about this but logic has me thinking the frequency range of blue tooth has nothing to do with the frequency range of the final sound produced as it's just transmitting a digital signal.

amiright?