Y'know, i have visited peole in hospitals time and again, who were not related to me. You simply stroll into the hospital like you know where you are going, and walk into the fucking room. Following rules is for fucking idiots, I'm sorry-The fact that this issue ever came to the presidents desk, is mind-bogglin'.

Imagine a woman, being told that she is not related therefore, not allowed to visit a dying friend. She slinks into depression over a road-block, rather than taking imediate action against an absurd restriction/policy/etc.

This woman apparently had no skills to be able to get her way, and make the hospital staff BOW TO HER FUCKING DETERMINATION!. The way to deal with bullshit is civil disobediance. Enough people make noise, somethings gotta give-This is not insensitivity to the womans plight, she simply needed to drop a nut at key moments in the process.

The solution to problems is not more rules. There is only one rule. Love Under Will.

Oh and gay marriage?? Many more homosexuals who have been in monogamous relationships with their partners for years prior to all the activism associated with changing the marriage laws of states, would rather things stay they way they are-You don't need sanctions to live/love together, and the tax breaks are insignificant.

I used to love Final Fantasy games, but for me it started going downhill after whatever FF3 for SNES was in the Japanese numbering... 5? 6?

However, I won't fall into the trap of claiming that FF3(6?) was actually better than the more recent endeavors -- the real difference is that I personally grew out / away from them. Some of that stems from my being roughly 10-15 years old when I was massively intrigued with FF2 and FF3, but I don't want to overstate that and suggest that an older player can't enjoy the series. What I really grew dissatisfied with is the leveling system that is so prominently featured in JRPGs, and to a certain extent western RPGs as well.

My specific problem is this: I start out as a level 1 peon, with 100 health points. My level 1 stick of smiting does 10 points of damage, and the imps I am fighting have about 50 health points each. I grind away for a while, slowly being spoonfed a storyline that isn't exactly Pulitzer material.

Pretty soon, I bask in my own splendor at having reached level 10. At level 10, I have 1000 health points. I now have an iron sword which does 100 damage, and I'm now fighting ogres that have 500 health points each.

By the time I reach the final boss (or actually in the case of FF games, only after spending some significant grind time after that point) I'm up to a godly level 100, and I now have a massive 10,000 health points. My heavenly sword of deadliness hits for a staggering 1000 damage, but the drakes I am fighting are up to a beefy 5000 hp each.

What's wrong with this picture? Only the fact that the entire leveling system is completely meaningless. The proportions between my level, health, damage, and enemy strength remain essentially constant. At the end of the game, I'm basically doing the exact same things to win a battle that I was at the start. All of the flashy new skills, spells, etc. that I have access to provide me with very brief moments of new gameplay experiences that merely serve to emphasize how consistent and predictable 99% of the rest of the game is.

My foes are visually much more impressive and intimidating by the end of the game, but those looks can't really hide the fact that inside they are just a level 1/10/100 "angry bag" that functions in basically the same way from start to finish. There are exceptions, but not in any truly profound way.

Practically every RPG falls prey to this problem, but the ones that annoy me the most are those that utilize leveling that results in characters that are statistically orders of magnitude more powerful at their final level than they were at the start. Growing to be ten times more effective in combat after training / battle experience? Maybe, depending on where you place the baseline / "level 1". 100 times? I doubt it. 1000 times? Um, no.

Skills-based leveling limits this problem. Sometimes. But really, I'd love to see an RPG where a max-level veteran is statistically only 3-5 times stronger than a completely fresh noob. But realistically, I know that the only way that system can work is in an open-world sandbox style game, and those seem to be rapidly falling out of favor. A pity, at least to my tastes.

>> ^Psychologic:


Automation will create jobs as well. The big fear back in the 80s was the robots replacing factory workers on assembly lines. I say good. I've worked an assembly line, and it's no fucking picnic. It's monotonous and I don't believe any man should suffer that fate. But, that's just a personal opinion, and in no way am I trying to take a political stance for or against assembly lines.

The robotics industry still needs employees. Sure, the factory worker lost his job, but a technician gained a job to fix the robot, and the software engineers needed to program these automations. It's a tradeoff. The factory becomes more efficient, and higher paying jobs are created where skilled human labor is needed. I do feel bad for those uneducated workers with little to no skills, but progress in the marketplace doesn't sit idly worrying about the sum of all its parts.

I do fairly well programming Flash sites and games. You think that will be a career I could hang my hat on for the rest of my life? Hell no. At some point I will need to progress and try to find another way to make a living. It wouldn't be fair to anyone if Flash programmers unionized and demanded tech benchmarks that prohibited the tech industry from advancing beyond Flash 8 AS2 (an older benchmark for Flash programmers) so to best make the market fair and to ensure the majority of programmers keep their jobs. I know this isn't exactly what you were talking about, but I wanted to go off on a tangent. Sue me.

I think it becomes everyone's responsibility in life to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, if you pardon my cliche - including the purchasing of health care. And, as I do agree we need health care reform, I don't believe government involvement is the system we need. I hate the current corporate system, and I'd love to see corporations die on their knees as much as the next man, but not by way of the government gun.

A new system is necessary. I just don't know what that system could be. I'd like to start with the government not recognizing corporations, therefore they'd lose their teeth, and people could use the courts to regulate a market instead of relying on the bureaucratic government morass that's terribly ineffectual and completely unfair. Point in case, Smithfield's pork industry in NC is ruining the land and getting the loc
als sick. Their hands are tied from suing Smithfield's unless they want to go way of Class Action, which is a joke. The EPA stepped up to correct the injustice and fined Smithfield's less than 1% of their yearly sales. The EPA in turn gave Smithfield's an award for environmentalism!

These government is part of the problem. We don't want them further ruining something that's already broken thanks to their collusion. We want them out. And, we want to use the court system to keep these corporations honest, which would lead to less denials of claims if there wasn't such thing as a goddamn insurance commission to protect them.

>> ^MarineGunrock:
This guy obviously has no skill with customer service representatives.
Remember, kids: The squeaky wheel gets the grease.



Yeah, I can't imagine a wheel getting much more squeaky than 1.3 Million hits on Youtube in a week.

This music video is going to cost United Air a lot more money than simply offering good service in the first place.

This guy obviously has no skill with customer service representatives.

Remember, kids: The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

1v1 combat games are so much better when played with your opponent sitting next to you.

When a friend started using a Noob Saibot combo that virtually leaves me helpless as he knocks the crap out of me on MK, I could simply slap him to get him to stop.

No skill at all in this video. Just one move, over and over again.

It's not a long article. I'll just post it and save you guys the click:

Obama is Stoking Racial Antagonism
by Rush Limbaugh

I understand the rough and tumble of politics. But Barack Obama -- the supposedly postpartisan, postracial candidate of hope and change -- has gone where few modern candidates have gone before.

Mr. Obama's campaign is now trafficking in prejudice of its own making. And in doing so, it is playing with political dynamite. What kind of potential president would let his campaign knowingly extract two incomplete, out-of-context lines from two radio parodies and build a framework of hate around them in order to exploit racial tensions? The segregationists of the 1950s and 1960s were famous for such vile fear-mongering.

Here's the relevant part of the Spanish-language television commercial Mr. Obama is running in Hispanic communities:

"They want us to forget the insults we've put up with . . . the intolerance . . . they made us feel marginalized in this country we love so much."

Then the commercial flashes two quotes from me: ". . . stupid and unskilled Mexicans" and "You shut your mouth or you get out!"

And then a voice says, "John McCain and his Republican friends have two faces. One that says lies just to get our vote . . . and another, even worse, that continues the policies of George Bush that put special interests ahead of working families. John McCain . . . more of the same old Republican tricks."

Much of the media that is uninterested in Mr. Obama's connections to unrepentant 1970s Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright have so far gone along with the attempt to tie me to Mr. McCain. But Mr. McCain and I have not agreed on how to address illegal immigration. While I am heartened by his willingness to start by securing the borders, it is no secret that we have fundamental differences on illegal immigration.

And more to the point, these sound bites are a deception, and Mr. Obama knows it. The first sound bite was extracted from a 1993 humorous monologue poking fun at the arguments against the North American Free Trade Agreement. Here's the context:

"If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job is going south. Skilled workers, educated people are going to do fine 'cause those are the kinds of jobs Nafta is going to create. If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do -- let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work."

My point, which is obvious, was that the people who were criticizing Nafta were demeaning workers, particularly low-skilled workers. I was criticizing the mind-set of the protectionists who opposed the treaty. There was no racial connotation to it and no one thought there was at the time. I was demeaning the arguments of the opponents.

As for the second sound bite, I was mocking the Mexican government's double standard -- i.e., urging open borders in this country while imposing draconian immigration requirements within its own borders. Thus, I took the restrictions Mexico imposes on immigrants and appropriated them as my own suggestions for a new immigration law.

Here's the context for that sound bite: "And another thing: You don't have the right to protest. You're allowed no demonstrations, no foreign flag waving, no political organizing, no bad-mouthing our president or his policies. You're a foreigner: shut your mouth or get out! And if you come here illegally, you're going to jail."

At the time, I made abundantly clear that this was a parody on the Mexican government's hypocrisy and nobody took it otherwise.

The malignant aspect of this is that Mr. Obama and his advisers know exactly what they are doing. They had to listen to both monologues or read the transcripts. They then had to pick the particular excerpts they used in order to create a commercial of distortions. Their hoped-for result is to inflame racial tensions. In doing this, Mr. Obama and his advisers have demonstrated a pernicious contempt for American society.

We've made much racial progress in this country. Any candidate who employs the tactics of the old segregationists is unworthy of the presidency.

>> ^Lumm:
>> ^thepinky:
Give me a break, you guys. Obama pulled the same stuff on McCain. Remember that Spanish language ad that slandered Rush Limbaugh, took his words out of context, and tied him to John McCain? The ad makes a pitiful attempt to make McCain seem like a bigot, when we all know that he is not. That's hate-mongering if I've ever seen it. There are others but I'm going to take a nap instead of finding them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkzvFAOcw6I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLa5EeLNUSk
And here's Bill slamming both of them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S417X0RsHks
I don't love O'Reilly or McCain or Limbaugh, I'm just pointing out that Obama has gotten his hands just as dirty as McCain. Ugh. I hate these presidential candidates more than any others I've seen in my lifetime.

Here's the "context" from Mr. Limbaugh himself:
"If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job is going south. Skilled workers, educated people are going to do fine 'cause those are the kinds of jobs Nafta is going to create. If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do -- let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work."
Actually, that still sounds pretty bigoted to me. Quote is from Limbaugh's Wall Street Journal piece:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178554189155003.html


Even though I'm right, your comment got a vote and mine got downvoted. It's almost laughable.

Speaking of taking things out of context, did you read the paragraph after the one that you quoted? He says:

"My point, which is obvious, was that the people who were criticizing Nafta were demeaning workers, particularly low-skilled workers. I was criticizing the mind-set of the protectionists who opposed the treaty. There was no racial connotation to it and no one thought there was at the time. I was demeaning the arguments of the opponents."

This time go back and read the entire article and not just the parts that will help you win your argument, m'kay?

Why can't you just admit that Obama's ad was sleazy and stupid? I can admit that McCain's ads have been. OPEN YOUR MIND.

>> ^thepinky:
Give me a break, you guys. Obama pulled the same stuff on McCain. Remember that Spanish language ad that slandered Rush Limbaugh, took his words out of context, and tied him to John McCain? The ad makes a pitiful attempt to make McCain seem like a bigot, when we all know that he is not. That's hate-mongering if I've ever seen it. There are others but I'm going to take a nap instead of finding them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkzvFAOcw6I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLa5EeLNUSk
And here's Bill slamming both of them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S417X0RsHks
I don't love O'Reilly or McCain or Limbaugh, I'm just pointing out that Obama has gotten his hands just as dirty as McCain. Ugh. I hate these presidential candidates more than any others I've seen in my lifetime.


Here's the "context" from Mr. Limbaugh himself:

"If you are unskilled and uneducated, your job is going south. Skilled workers, educated people are going to do fine 'cause those are the kinds of jobs Nafta is going to create. If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people, I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do -- let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work."

Actually, that still sounds pretty bigoted to me. Quote is from Limbaugh's Wall Street Journal piece:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178554189155003.html

But if you happen to be attacked by a pack of drunkards, or dumb guys from a disco, well, I guess if you are well trained you can defeat any number of them.

I completely disagree with you. You are honestly underestimating how much of a difference an extra man in a fight can make. Anybody who thinks they can reasonably take on two men and have a better chance of winning than losing is delusional, or Fedor Emelianenko.

It's not too hard for one guy to run in, bear hug you, then pull you to the ground and keep you there while the other guy kicks your face in from the side. Takes no skill, takes no particular courage, just two bozos who are sufficiently motivated to injure you. And that's just with two guys. What happens when you add a third? Or a fourth? Or, as Ryjkyj seems to believe, an eighth?

C'mon, be reasonable.

If you're going to be poor all your life and have no skills, yes, there are better countries to live in. Otherwise, the US has the highest GDP per capita for any large nations, the most dynamic economy etc.

Firing a full automatic machine guns is simply male testosterone fulfillment. I think it's a stupid activity personally because there is no skill involved bar pulling and holding on for dear life.

Amateur weekend warriors.

you can tell he's an American soldier. lads got no skill on the ball.

....uhhhh, go figure, poorest of the poor, kids with no skills,home,etc.....this story is played out daily, all over and under your world...gasoline, Pam, Modeling glue, petroleum distillates get you fucked up......all the companies we buy shit from....make human rats.

I'm all for public vandalism if it's good work. But those fuckers that tagged my office door last week had no skill and should be shot. You know who you are... I'm comin for you with pliers and blow torch bitches....