>> ^Wingoguy:

GREAT game. The first excellent RTS, paved the way for a genre. If you never played this, you missed out. The game was actually much deeper and well done than this trailer lets on.
You can get a freeware, modded version of the game here (but I can't vouch for it):
http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?gameid=1090


BTW, your link is broken.

@Porksandwich

Is your dad a short guy? All the guys I see doing flooring and roofing and shit when they're older are pretty small people. I work with my friend and his dad doing remodeling and misc smaller-scale building. His dad's pretty short...like 5'7" and he's still working at 67. Yeah he hasn't come through unscathed, but he's pretty limber for a guy who's been doing what he's been doing for 30 years.

My friend is like 6'2" and I'm 6'4"...we're both 30 and we've already got the kinds of problems he has. I think the bending and reaching and stuff is just harder on bigger people. Yeah we can do lots of stuff smaller guys can't, but we pay for it in the long run. I lift weights regularly and play sports as well and it doesn't really help. Luckily I don't plan to continue with this line of work. We just paved my buddy's driveway...wish we'd had one of these machines. Carrying 3-4 tons of bricks using brick tongs over a couple of days is a raw deal...haha.

Anybody who's doing labor for a living ought to plan on how they're gonna get out of the daily grind of it by 30 IMO. Hire your own crew...teach...inspect...change careers...whatever.

@Porksandwich @MarineGunrock

http://inhabitat.com/2010/11/15/amazing-brick-machine-rolls-out-roads-like-carpet/

Says the bricks are held together by gravity...as in the pattern along with the weight of the bricks above keeps them together. I'd like to see how you get that started. I assume they finish the end bits by hand.

It also looked like they were driving the thing over slag sand, which is ideal for any kind of paving job. It didn't look like the machine was dispensing and compacting the sand, but I'm sure it could. I can only hope they've got several inches of crushed stone under there as well.

The biggest advancement of this thing is the ergonomics...and given that the video is from the Netherlands, it's not surprising. I've studied some ergonomics and Northern Europe seems rather obsessed with the topic. Not hard to see why once you've done the hands and knees version of the paving job you see here or sat at a computer desk all day. Once you realize your labor is much more effective when they aren't physically broken for life at age 30, you can see the benefits of actually providing a comfortable work environment.

ok, listen up people, first of all, the guy didnt live in the city. if you live in the city you get police, fire, water, sewer. roads, snow plows, etc. ok? if you dont live in the city, and dont pay taxes. you dont get those services. the city doesnt just run out and pave your road for ya because your truck gets stuck.. see? so they offered people who lived outside the corp limit a very reasonable fee for fire protection. 75 bucks. to help pay for equipment etc. for the extra protection outside their jurisdiction. you cant even fill up the truck for 75 bucks. a modern tower truck costs 500.000 to 850,000 dollars. the trucks and the manpower and the water and the equipment belong to the citizens of the town they are from. the taxpayers. not the firemen. if i take a firetruck or ambulance and provide servie to someone outside my jurisdiction, and a taxpayer needs me or my men or my truck or ambulance. do you think the taxpayer will be pissed off?? oh yea he will, and ill get fired. the citizens made this guy an offer, he declined. ill bet you a million dollars this guy has been offered the chance to get into the city but didnt want to pay the water ,sewer, city tax etc. now the guys son is in jail because he assaulted the fire chief. idiots times 2.also, they set the house on fire burning trash outside. if they lived in town the fire dept would make them put that out.or put it out for them. but they dont want that , so they live outside of town. where they can burn brush if they damn well want to. see? the firemen were doing what the citizens told them to do. the citizens run the fire dept. the citizens own everything in the dept.

"The comforts and safety that you describe, are exactly the kinds of suburban trapping that give us the illusion that ours is the ideal life. Take away electricity, transport, water service and supermarket food supply and like the majority of suburban dwelling people on this planet, we're up the creek. That's not freedom-it's a thinly veiled dependence on a system that is in the throws of downfall. }

Naturally (no pun intended), I disagree with you on this assessment. A civilized society is far more resilient and able to recover from all types of disasters (man-made and natural) than a nomadic civilization has ever been at any time in history. Do you have any idea of the kind of destructive effort it would take to completely wipe out the power grid, uproot every road that has been paved, root out the entire plumbing network buried underground? The only point that I agree with you on is the far larger dependence upon food that massive (and they are truly massive compared to hunter-gatherers) civilizations have. But as I pointed out in my first post food is now a global industry, so again you are limited to world ending catastrophes when it comes finding enough firepower to bring down modern civilizations.

"As far as freedom to move goes, I think the fact that if you step outside your door and walk into your neighbor's yard without permission, you're considered trespassing, shows how hemmed-in we really are. So long as we are paid customers, we have a right to be somewhere, otherwise we'd better stick to public places, or face the consequences."

Personally, I think that literal direction freedom is a paltry definition of what true freedom really is. I will gladly take the paved road and all those "restrictions" for all the benefits that I get from having that taken space actively and productively contributing to the advancement and well-being of humanity. I will drive around a massive hospital that's blocking me from going "as the crow flies" quicker than a crow can fly.

Every inch of space that is denied to me is in some way indirectly or directly contributing. Can you say that a plain of scrubs and rocks is providing the same amount of benefits to nomads as they walk in whatever direction they want over it? What about cumulatively?

"If you want to know how free you really are, try doing something really outrageous or subversive and see how many people are ready to block you. Try walking 10,000 km across your country, camping out where there's a drinkable water supply, for starters..."

Let me ask you a question then, why did you walk 10,000km in any direction? What was your goal? Did you need food, water, because you could? What tangible benefit have you derived from the endeavor you just undertook?

If you are so "truly" free why can't you walk to the Moon?

Ahh, Netrunner you have clarified that it does indeed seem that my knowledge is quite an antiquatedly incorrect thought process. Well the statistics from the New York Times definitely seems to make more sense of it all, and no I don't think we should abandon paved roads.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^aimpoint:
There is something that deeply disturbs me about this
There are 2 issues that have been brought up, Social Security and Extending the Bush Tax Cuts
This video implies a guilt by association by associating the Social Security problems with the Bush Tax Cuts. The Bush Tax Cuts is an easy stab at the Republicans, but the video is tying it together with Social Security to imply something more sinister like a "Rich stealing from the poor" scenario.
Umm, it's not guilt by association. If the topic you want to discuss is the deficit, the right says "cut Social Security and Medicare" while the left says "let the Bush tax cuts expire" to which the right says "taxes can't be raised, even if the tax cuts we passed exploded the deficit, not Social Security!"
That literally is a sinister plot to steal from the poor and give it to the rich. Cut taxes on the rich, and create a huge budget deficit, and then propose fixing the budget problems by cutting benefits to the lower and middle classes.
>> ^aimpoint:
The problem with Social Security is that people live longer, not something that was taken into account when it was first passed.
Wrong and wrong.

>> ^aimpoint:
Putting more money into it creates a situation where a larger share of money per paycheck will be required keep another program at status quo. Essentially its an added tax with No Benefit, say for if its not payed then money will be needed from other programs so if you don't pay up someone is gonna lose something.
The price of asphalt has doubled in recent years. Taxes will likely have to go up to continue maintaining roads. That's not an added tax with "no benefit", that's the cost of something that people depend on going up.
Perhaps you're in the camp that thinks we should abandon paved roads?
>> ^aimpoint:
The other situation involves Taking more money from Elsewhere and putting it into social security,
Like marinara said, not until 2037 would this be required. The social security trust fund has plenty of money in it, and social security is still running a net surplus, without changing anything.
Eliminating the cap on the payroll tax essentially fixes the entire projected budget shortfall -- the trust fund might run out just short of the end of the 21st century, assuming our projections about the economy 80+ years in the future are anywhere near correct (and that's a huge assumption).
>> ^aimpoint:
But the effectiveness of working 70 year-olds is unknown to me.

This is really the key issue with raising retirement ages into the 70's. Talking with people I work with, most of them find that headhunters and recruiters stop approaching them the second they hit 50. I kinda can't imagine what kinds of hoops someone would have to jump through to get a new job at 68 or so.
Back when people kept the same job for their entire working lifetime, maybe raising the retirement age made sense, especially with real honest to god company pensions still being around. Nowadays, companies treat their employees as disposable, and it's simply expected that people will change jobs every couple of years or so.
I'm kinda afraid of what the job market will look like when I hit 50, I can't even imagine having to compete against 30 year-olds for jobs when I'm nearly 70.

>> ^aimpoint:

There is something that deeply disturbs me about this
There are 2 issues that have been brought up, Social Security and Extending the Bush Tax Cuts
This video implies a guilt by association by associating the Social Security problems with the Bush Tax Cuts. The Bush Tax Cuts is an easy stab at the Republicans, but the video is tying it together with Social Security to imply something more sinister like a "Rich stealing from the poor" scenario.

Umm, it's not guilt by association. If the topic you want to discuss is the deficit, the right says "cut Social Security and Medicare" while the left says "let the Bush tax cuts expire" to which the right says "taxes can't be raised, even if the tax cuts we passed exploded the deficit, not Social Security!"

That literally is a sinister plot to steal from the poor and give it to the rich. Cut taxes on the rich, and create a huge budget deficit, and then propose fixing the budget problems by cutting benefits to the lower and middle classes.

>> ^aimpoint:
The problem with Social Security is that people live longer, not something that was taken into account when it was first passed.

Wrong and wrong.


>> ^aimpoint:

Putting more money into it creates a situation where a larger share of money per paycheck will be required keep another program at status quo. Essentially its an added tax with No Benefit, say for if its not payed then money will be needed from other programs so if you don't pay up someone is gonna lose something.

The price of asphalt has doubled in recent years. Taxes will likely have to go up to continue maintaining roads. That's not an added tax with "no benefit", that's the cost of something that people depend on going up.

Perhaps you're in the camp that thinks we should abandon paved roads?

>> ^aimpoint:

The other situation involves Taking more money from Elsewhere and putting it into social security,

Like marinara said, not until 2037 would this be required. The social security trust fund has plenty of money in it, and social security is still running a net surplus, without changing anything.

Eliminating the cap on the payroll tax essentially fixes the entire projected budget shortfall -- the trust fund might run out just short of the end of the 21st century, assuming our projections about the economy 80+ years in the future are anywhere near correct (and that's a huge assumption).

>> ^aimpoint:
But the effectiveness of working 70 year-olds is unknown to me.


This is really the key issue with raising retirement ages into the 70's. Talking with people I work with, most of them find that headhunters and recruiters stop approaching them the second they hit 50. I kinda can't imagine what kinds of hoops someone would have to jump through to get a new job at 68 or so.

Back when people kept the same job for their entire working lifetime, maybe raising the retirement age made sense, especially with real honest to god company pensions still being around. Nowadays, companies treat their employees as disposable, and it's simply expected that people will change jobs every couple of years or so.

I'm kinda afraid of what the job market will look like when I hit 50, I can't even imagine having to compete against 30 year-olds for jobs when I'm nearly 70.

^tsquire1:
I take this as a prime example of the degradation of human spirit and will. We could be so beautiful, but the systematic alienation and oppression of our species by our species leads to shit like this. Its not that she is just 'a wacko', but there should be no McDonalds, no broken home she is a part of, and no substitution for soul by McNuggets. We have to understand that actions and situations like this are INHERENT given the relationships we have to each other as well as the means of production for our society
Underneath the paving stones, the beach!


Yeah.

Or maybe she's just a crazy bitch.

I take this as a prime example of the degradation of human spirit and will. We could be so beautiful, but the systematic alienation and oppression of our species by our species leads to shit like this. Its not that she is just 'a wacko', but there should be no McDonalds, no broken home she is a part of, and no substitution for soul by McNuggets. We have to understand that actions and situations like this are INHERENT given the relationships we have to each other as well as the means of production for our society

Underneath the paving stones, the beach!

The advance of mankind is always paved with the blood of innocents.

If you look at most freeways, they gradually slope across the surface for water drainage. So no they are not perfectly flat, but the goal for people preparing subgrades is to make the surface as even as possible while maintaining the desired grade. If the surface is really even, that means there will be the minimum amount of overage on materials when it comes to asphalt. If they prepare it properly, the machine can be set at 2-3-4 inches thick and lay all day at that depth, and when they move over to the next lane, they can lay the same thickness and maintain the grade without having to adjust. That's the goal, it meets the specs of the job and doesn't cost them in overages on material....and if they are majorly over...someone screwed up.

Now....I'm pointing out flaws in this roadway because if they were to use his design and it failed miserably there would be less chance of them ever doing it again. So what's the fault in putting it in applications where it would see more extreme conditions in a lower traffic zone to get a proof of concept? Or hell even put it on a bike path or sidewalk, if it holds up superbly for a few years......move onto a military base to see how well it holds up to extreme abuse of their heavy machinery.

Just slapping it down on a highway because that would be cool is a sure fire way to kill this prospect dead in it's tracks for a long time to come. Prove it lasts, prove it provides savings, and prove it's as safe as or better than current materials under all possible road conditions. Highways may be the goal, but it isn't the first step on an unproven concept.

Personally I think if they did this on bike paths, they'd have more luck pushing it forward..because bike paths are all about the green initiative...so if they can also kick some energy savings back to the city while testing their product. No one loses there if the materials work, and if they don't.....at least it's just a bike path that needs re-surfaced.



>> ^Payback:

Most of you keep talking about how the road needs to be perfectly flat. Well, they don't. Otherwise the concrete pads of the interstates would need to be perfectly flat. These are 3x3 squares. Every video game character you play is made up of squares and triangles. A spiked ridge between the LED/P-V "pucks" would take care of any water caused splipping.
Just because you can find fault with the guy's "ultimate" roadway, a ton of the ideas could be implemented without full conversion.
How about using those LED/P-V pucks on highways to merely to show where the lanes are at night? They could "pave" the centre and shoulder areas to provide power for streetlights and not affect the traffic surface.

>> ^Payback:

Most of you keep talking about how the road needs to be perfectly flat. Well, they don't. Otherwise the concrete pads of the interstates would need to be perfectly flat. These are 3x3 squares. Every video game character you play is made up of squares and triangles. A spiked ridge between the LED/P-V "pucks" would take care of any water caused splipping.
Just because you can find fault with the guy's "ultimate" roadway, a ton of the ideas could be implemented without full conversion.
How about using those LED/P-V pucks on highways to merely to show where the lanes are at night? They could "pave" the centre and shoulder areas to provide power for streetlights and not affect the traffic surface.


You could also have dynamic road deployment and redeployment. Need to rewire your entire highways system for an evacuation? No problem, reconfigure all signage and postings to make all available roads outgoing only, now, short of the likely bottlenecks, you have doubled your outbound traffic ability. Really, the sky is the limit. Any level of smartness to the roads brings with in untold innovation. The physical problems seem very manageable and knowable, but the benefits are easily hidden and largely unrealized. The potential is mind blowing though. Solar powered streets and buildings just makes to much since not to try and make work. So much free energy in these already used places, we just need the means to effectively harvest it, and this seems like a great idea, in any final form it takes. It is worth mentioning that glass is non-crystalline. Meaning it can flex and bend over time. Look at any old house and the windows are thicker on the bottom then the top. So it can deal with gradual gradient changes, how well is a matter of engineering.

Most of you keep talking about how the road needs to be perfectly flat. Well, they don't. Otherwise the concrete pads of the interstates would need to be perfectly flat. These are 3x3 squares. Every video game character you play is made up of squares and triangles. A spiked ridge between the LED/P-V "pucks" would take care of any water caused splipping.

Just because you can find fault with the guy's "ultimate" roadway, a ton of the ideas could be implemented without full conversion.

How about using those LED/P-V pucks on highways to merely to show where the lanes are at night? They could "pave" the centre and shoulder areas to provide power for streetlights and not affect the traffic surface.

I think the problem with your extreme version of capitalism is the same with the Soviet Union's extreme version of socialism; they become increasingly harder to maintain the bigger they get, until they eventually come to contradict everything they stood for in the first place. I know your road to a laissez faire utopia is paved with good intentions, but it's so light on practicality and specifics and there are no success stories to point to.

1. Deregulate the market
2. ?
3. Utopia

It's faith, not science (IMO).

>> ^Stormsinger:

I couldn't have said it better myself, gwiz665. I see this as a perfect case for applying the statement we all grew up hearing, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/berticus" title="member since April 18th, 2007" class="profilelink">berticus, I don't think Jung was nearly as bad as Freud. Freud was a flat-out obsessive nut. While Jung at least can retreat into the meaningless shadows of philosophy and pose as a playful game of "what if".


bingo!
finally got some commentary going.
usually it is only qwiz coming out to play.
let me preface this a bit so my words wont be misconstrued based on prejudices.
1.i am not a "god of gaps" person (lookin at you qwiz),i do not hide behind unknowns and claim that this is proof positive of a creators existence.
2.i find it intellectually dishonest to dismiss a persons entire lifes work based on either personal opinion or other arbitrary factors i.e:he was a paranoid coke-addled obsessive.so?he also was able to define,correctly i might add,a large part of our collective consciousness.carl jung believed in the divine,the spirit, does this belief negate ALL of his work and observations based on a single belief he had?one that you may disagree with?
think about that..i have talked to every one of you who has commented on this post and "stupid" is not a word i would use to define any of you.
3.give rougy a bit of slack.while i do not wish to speak for him..i am going to anyways.
while his statement "If you don't get it, there's no use explaining.

It's...wasted breath." may seem a bit like a slight or derogatory..it is not..it just comes across that way.
at its heart he is correct.if you dont understand or see things this way, any attempt to convey or explain will only lead to confusion or worse.
a good example is having a woman explain childbirth to a man.while the man may make a noble attempt to understand the intricacies of childbirth he will ultimately always fall short.
why?..he does not have a uterus.

and this leads me to why i respect jung and also my perplexion at why others here do not.jung questioned the unquantifiable.he searched and poked and prodded into a part of us he strongly suspected existed yet there is no actual evidence.what he found was strong coincidental evidence which shaped his thoughts and ideas concerning the divine/spirit/soul.let us add to this mans struggle the fact that he was dealing with a public which was still heavily influenced by theocracy and his ideas were actually pointing in a direction which would make theocracy not only definatively wrong but irrelevent.

this of course leads me to ask something that i am curious about.i understand you all may disagree with jung and that is your right.i also fully understand your dismissal of the spirit/divine/soul.here is what i do not understand:carl jung asked the hard questions and spent his life trying to not only to find the answers but understand the question better.
where are YOUR questions?
because i always see the dismissal.
i see the disagreement and many (thanks qwiz) actually post the reasons.
but WHERE ARE YOUR QUESTIONS?
at least jung had the balls to ask them.disagree with his conclusions all you wish but even he understood that at the end of the day...he could be wrong.
this is why i admire him so much,because while i may believe and feel my paradigm is correct i HAVE to leave room that not only may i be incorrect on some points,i may be totally wrong.i have to accept the fact that there may come a day when all that i think i know,believe, may have to be flushed down the toilet.

i do not see anyone here asking the questions.i see many residing safely in their preconceived ideologies that were propagated by others.(i am speaking in general,not directly at you guys).it is real easy to sit in such a safe corner and feel that your understanding of things is embedded in stone.a solid ground paved by others where everybody is all sitting in their armchairs looking down at those who question the established norms.this is not only intellectually dishonest but intellectually lazy.

i love discussing with qwiz.
why?he is an atheist..a rabid atheist.
i do the same with dag.
why?well if you ask both of them and others i have conversed with you would know that i have never attempted to convert,co-opt or coerce him into feeling believing anything other than who they are.
jung pushed the envelope.he pushed against barriers and asked the QUESTIONS.
r.d. lang did also but even i found lang a bit...out there.but i respected lang for pushing barriers and ignoring precedent.

i am rambling here so i will end this on this note:
disagree with jung all you wish but respect the fact that this man pushed the envelope.asked the questions that have no solid or easy answers and attempted to define consciousness.
where is YOUR contribution to this?
where are YOUR questions?
and would you have the courage to put your ideas out into the public arena?
or will you stay in the relative safety of your own certitude?

ask yourself.
WHO are YOU?
WHY are YOU here?
i do not care the answer because it is the question that reveals so much more.
and that my friends,is where poetry resides.