Valsuelm

I disagree. I've played Nethack and the IE games extensively over the years, Nethack being the one game I dust off almost every year since around 1988. Caution pays off in IE games as much as in Nethack. That is if you're like me and go for minimal reloads or even an ironman (something I don't expect to do with PoE on the first playthrough; and no one ascended on their first playthrough of Nethack either).

Those have existed pretty much since motion detectors were invented.

Right, people not driving cars are doing what they're doing because they're lazy. Speaking of "getting it wrong"... Touché and my bad. I corrected my oversight. It was a response to two people saying they were 'tired' and wanted to 'nap', so I mistakenly didn't include the better reasons one may not want to drive in my response.

The guy who wrote that article is an idiot. Starting right off with his first sentence he's getting it wrong and proves he is too lazy to or incapable or correctly reading the very data he is citing, and not surprisingly after that grand opening of stupidity goes on to show how little he thinks by basically just writing an advertisement for self driving cars, though perhaps that's intentional. In all the years cited, no year had less than 32,000 people die, and most years were thousands more than number. This guy isn't ready for marshmallows, he's got marshmallows between his ears, and is looking forward to his further enslavement. [interestingly the NHTSA data and the CDC data I linked in another thread don't jive with one another; of course some of the NHTSA data is just plain made up, ie: total number of miles driven, and the other data extrapolated from that number] Robot driven cars present more problems than they solve. I'll mention just one that I'll wager most of the folks here haven't considered: the more computerized the car the more it's hackable. Modern non-robot cars have already been hacked, and some have theorized already used as a manner to kill people, ie: Michael Hastings. Though there is no known case that I've seen where this has definitely happened yet, it's probably one of the best ways to kill someone if you're so inclined to right now as the majority of those who investigate accidents won't even think to look for evidence of a hack, let alone be capable of determining for certain if a hack occurred even if they suspect one. If you're too lazy to drive or have a burning need to be doing something other than driving yourself during your commute, take the train, bus, plane, carpool, taxi, etc. Keep your Orwellian (oh you probably didn't consider that aspect either) autos off the roads I drive please.

So many comments made in ignorance and a few revolting ones. Seriously, you 'Darwin'/'she deserved it' people are disgusting. Despicable. What happened was an accident. Tragic. Tragic things happen where people get killed accidentally in various ways every day somewhere in a nation of 300+ million people. Some of things are extremely unusual. Many of them because someone made a simple mistake, be it mental or physical in origin. If you think you're immune to making such mistakes you're foolish at best. Accidental deaths are the 5th leading cause of death across all ages nearly every year, and are the leading cause of death amongst the younger age groups. It's near certain that at least a couple of the people reading this will eventually check out via an accident of some kind, and all of us have the potential to. And honestly, to anyone who thinks this is any kind of gun issue or that this is even a remotely common way to accidentally die, the fact is that deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm accounted for approximately 1 in 200 of all accidental deaths nationwide in 2010 as recorded by the CDC, and these stats really don't change much from year to year. You are more than 6 times more likely to accidentally drown, almost 5 times as likely to accidentally die as the result of a fire, almost 55 times more likely to die of accidental poisoning, 58 times more likely to die in a car accident, 42 times more likely to die as the result of a fall, etc. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr62/nvsr62_06.pdf This story isn't news. It's not relevant to any rational argument for or against guns. This story is just sad.

Never have, and likely never will. Ordinarily not my thing, and I don't find it appealing. But to each their own. However, I was once tempted to. I was propositioned as I was leaving my hotel by an absolutely drop dead gorgeous 10 blonde girl while in Montreal for work. This girl could have put many of the Victoria Secret models to shame (Montreal has the best looking prostitutes in North America from what I've seen in general but his girl was just wow). My tour bus was leaving momentarily, and was only a dozen yards or so away when she asked. Not getting on it meant my job. She was so smoking hot though that I seriously considered it. Had I not had the majority of the band's cash in a bag I was carrying I might have said @()#$ the job, I'm staying in Montreal a little while. But I liked those guys and didn't want to screw them over. Alas, if only I'd run into her earlier. I regret not asking for her number to hit her up when next I was in town.

My god.... all three of those videos are bad. Best? How about near worst. 2014 was a little lacking in amazing videos. At least in the creative and entertainment department. I could link some good informational videos, as well as some good music videos, but there's no Psy, Numa Numa, or Leeroy this year. That said, you can always count on Schmoyoho for some good stuff:

I actually looked this one up as I almost couldn't believe it was real; thought maybe it was a spoof trailer. It looks bad, which is a shame too because there's so much potential for a good movie about the Silk Road, but I'll see it, and only because it's got John Cusack in it. He's one of a small handful of actors I'll give anything he's in a watch. Here's to hoping the trailer isn't doing it justice and it's the next Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

Hmmm they have release the movie, it's a success because people believe it's their patriotic duty to see it. These are people who would not have gone to see it otherwise. Hmmm... the conspiracy theory doesn't sound as nuts as it did a week ago. It seems the day has come and gone where it's anyone's patriotic duty to see a Rogen/Franco movie. That's gotta be a step above hell freezing over. The end of the world can't be far off now.

Sheen is an amateur. Pros don't **** their heads up to the point they think they're 'winning' a losing game. @OP: Get off your ass, step away from the computer, go outside and do something. Fresh air does wonders. Perhaps find yourself a If you're Pro like that guy then maybe you could get yourself songified. Either way, the journey is worth it if you make it.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/24/no-north-korea-didn-t-hack-sony.html This article sums up what pretty much everyone out there with a modicum or more of tech knowledge is saying. There's zero evidence in the public domain that North Korea is responsible, and what evidence there is points in an entirely different direction. That doesn't stop the main steam media from pushing the North Korea is responsible narrative though. One should ask themselves why that is.

Requiring the average policeman to have a college degrees would generally be a waste of resources, and see very little to no improvement in the behavior of the police. Just as there is generally very little to no improvement amongst employee group X for job X that requires a college degree. In fact, it could be argued that requiring a college degree and other certifications is actually detrimental to the quality of the potential employee pool. Certainly this is true of some professions out there (though I wouldn't generally count police among them). The university system in the U.S. has by and large been watered down in terms of quality. Just in my few decades on this planet this is discernible, let alone if you look to the earlier part of the 20th century and the 19th. Anon, as that's a much larger subject. A couple things to keep in mind 213374U. - While it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, in general police compensation is really good in the U.S.. In fact better than average in many ways than a great number of other sectors of employment, including those with college degrees. ie: Where I live, police get to retire with full benefits (and those benefits are really good) after 20 years (something pretty much unheard of with any other job, and something that is frankly BS imo as a taxpayer). - Generally cops with a 4 year college degree are not under-earners at all. They tend to be detectives, work on some kind of special task force, work for the State Police (NY and other states generally require a college degree for their State Police), work for the FBI, work for another government policing agency, etc. - Pretty much anything and everything done by or associated with the Rand Corporation is slanted evil in some manner and is often pure BS. The last link you posted above is Rand. I started reading it and got as far as 'decreasing resources' in the Preface before alarms bells blasted in my head. Then I scrolled up to see that it was Rand. Why did alarm bells go off in my head? Because while there might be a few police departments out there that have fewer resources than they had in the past (and that's not necessarily a bad thing) the vast majority of departments have money rained upon them from the State and Federal government levels. Oh, and the Rand Corporation is instrumental in that happening as it's one of the entities out there pushing for the militarization of the police. No doubt as it also happens to have direct, deep, and intimate ties with those who build military hardware. Rand also happens to be pro pretty much every war the U.S. has been in and puts out propaganda to encourage more military spending and more war. - Statistics. More often than not they don't tell the whole story. Most certainly this is true of the ones you linked. A college degree definitely does not necessarily equate to more pay these days. You're smart, think about it. If everyone has a college degree, where does the money come from to magically pay them all more? Nowhere. If we take employee pool X doing a certain job, and replace them all with people with college degrees, where does the money to pay them more come from? Nowhere. And that's one of the reasons that the value of a college degree has tanked in the last two decades, and also one of the reasons that student debt in the U.S. has reached insane levels. While certainly some degrees will see you likely get more pay than others, it's not really the degree that gets you that higher pay, it's the job. A degree just may open the door to get that job. If we want to attract 'better people' to become police officers then the nature of the job needs to change, not the payscale. If we want to curb some of the police brutality and corruption out there, there are a few things we can do. But for the most part they're all moot unless the police that actually brutalize citizens and are corrupt are held accountable. More often than not, they are not, and that problem trumps all others.

Haven't seen Shoot 'em up, and I'm skeptical that a movie starring Clive Owen would be better than John Wick, as even though John Wick isn't the greatest movie ever (it is a better than good action flick) it's better than every movie I've ever seen with Clive Owen in it of any genre. And Taken really isn't just an action flick, though I'd rate John Wick higher as a movie overall even though it's lighter on plot. The last decade really hasn't had much good in the way of action flicks. Then again, the last decade hasn't had much good in the way of any genre of flicks. More good movies came out in almost any given year of probably from around 1930 to sometime in the late 1990s, than we've seen in the entire last decade.

Yeah, I checked and wages for cops are higher than the national average, and high in relative terms considering that there is no higher education requirement... but that's kind of the point. An increase in job requirements must entail an increase in wages. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000 That doesn't solve the demand for more black cops in black neighborhoods though. Are there programs to help police officers get through college? Like in the military? I really don't want to hijack this thread, but he's right. Formally the monarchy is powerless, but in reality the royal family is still very influential and their word carries a lot of weight, especially with business circles. A member of the family has been accused of money laundering and fiscal fraud in one of the many high-profile cases of corruption we have going on, and the whole process is a disgrace. The prosecutor acting as a defense attorney, pressure being applied on the judge by higher judiciary organs, etc. Consider that the previous king was appointed by Franco before his death and as such a lot of the social and political elite have seen a sort of continuity of power, that is evidenced by the fact that the party currently in power is the heir of Franco's single party, after some facelifting. We really are a much more backward country than it would seem (if that's even possible). But surely you'd agree that the primary power holders are generally the major capitalists in the country and if the crown is among them its because of its economic power more than anything else. And the US ambassador of course. Anyway, I've never heard of a parliamentary "democracy" that hasn't been steeped in corruption to the utmost degree. And completely divorced from the "people". And one in which elections matter or change anything substantial. Frankly after years of studies and a course in comparative politics I see political labels such as "democracy" "autocracy" etc. as ideological products. In my eyes there is little difference between Kim Jong Un's North Korea, Obama's USA or Spain or Sweden therefore I can't relate to Valsuelm's nostalgic stories of liberty and freedom in any way. Looking at USA's history, built on exterminating the natives, slave labor, aggressive expansion and wars of conquest I wonder where the the libery and freedom are... and for whom. People tend to think their country is the worst merely because all the **** is in their faces for the better part of their lives and the "grass must be greener" somewhere else. But as I've lived abroad, it has been my experience that the grass isn't greener and that things are pretty much the same everywhere. I almost replied in depth to this. But then Namu pretty much summed it up as the bolded and underlined could only be stated by someone lacking in cognitive ability or a very ignorant person. There are very large differences between all four nations you mention, politically and in other ways. If you only see 'little difference', arguing with you is akin to arguing what color something is with a blind person. Your 'years of studies' haven't yielded you much. You are right on one thing though. Parliamentary 'democracy' is usually a sham, more often than not (depending on the nation of course) set up by power brokers to give the serfs the illusion they have a say. It's no coincidence that this is generally the preferred form of government in most of the nations out there where their nobility/royalty/occupiers etc supposedly granted their subjects power and freedom out of the goodness of their hearts at some unspecified mythical time in the past. Of all the governments out there that advertise themselves to be for freedom and liberty it is the worst designed to accomplish government by and for the people, and best designed to be prone to corruption and manipulation from behind the scenes.

Ah.. for some reason I had the impression you lived a little further east where there are a couple of nations with at least some semblance and appreciation for freedom. I was actually aware of Spain's oppression and the second article you linked, but I was unaware of anything new in the last couple of weeks. It was a sad day when your nation allowed Juan back on the throne. That family is involved in many an evil thing, and worldwide too, not just Spain. I hold no illusions as to the state of things in the EU. The EU itself (not the nations within it) is an organization that is anathema to individual liberty. When you have a nation of people that accept a monarchy, one cannot expect much in the way of freedom, as it's populace has embraced serfdom. I feel for those there who actually truly appreciate liberty, and all those who sacrificed in order to try and achieve it for all Spaniards in the many struggles in the past. Unfortunately they didn't do what the French did and off some heads, so the local parasitic infection bloomed again. Beautiful country from all accounts I've ever heard though; one of these days I hope to make it there for a visit.

Illegal to record the police? Where was this abhorred law passed?

"This web page is on the list of websites with dubious reputation or websites with potentially unwanted content." is the ESET message. Hence ESET blocks it, like many other AVs will do to sites known to have sometimes contained bad things, or to contain things that the company behind the AV is contracted to block (ie: sites that contain pirated things). Though so far as I've ever seen ESET doesn't do the latter (which is one of the prime reasons I use it), unlike some of the more popular AVs. The site is probably perfectly safe so long as you wear your internet condoms, like all others.

Time for some The Beautiful South, a band with some of the best lyrics out there in my humble opinion. A somewhat explicit but great tune containing advice some men will one day have wished they took:

Falco is the shiz, and he'd likely win my award for coolest Austrian ever. Loved his music. Here's another great Austrian song:

I just played two games of DotA 2 with Kim Jong-un. I queued up for a solo run and lo and behold there was The Supreme Leader. I was just... 'Wow.. this is a pretty cool surprise'. He really seems like a good chap. Had a very good handle on English and is very friendly. He said had nothing to do with the recent fiasco but did find it all very amusing. Said he's too busy doing important things like pwning noobs to bother with the likes of Rogen, and was actually looking forward to the movie. (I don't understand his fascination with Rodman either, but to each their own, then again if two of Hollywood's biggest idiots made a bad movie about me I'd probably be interested in watching it too). He actually said he's not looking forward to the headache of trying to figure out what to do with his newly found controlling interest in SONY Pictures that someone has seen to give him. For the curious, he played Windrunner and Gyrocopter. And while the second game was a tough one that ran over 80 minutes as we were up against the best Techies I've seen in years, we were victorious both games.

That's actually not factual. What bad reporter wrote that article? And who links a .png for a source? The judge refused to fully dismiss (he did partially dismiss) the case stating that the decision of whether the theater is liable or not should be left up to a jury. The judge really isn't setting any precedent here. The jury however can. The case hasn't gone to trial yet, and even if a jury ultimately finds Cinemark liable, which is unlikely, it will only set precedent in Colorado. Other jurisdictions might look to that precedent but they will not be legally bound to adhere to it nor even consider it. It's likely going to take a monumental failure of a defense team and jury that puts their sympathy for the victims above reality and that of the company for Cinemark to be found liable. That said, there is one aspect of the case that could prove very interesting and where I can see a jury might find Cinemark liable, and that's if one or more of the plaintiffs makes the case that the 'gun free zone' policy of the theater contributed to the victims losing their rights and full ability to defend themselves versus the perpetrator. If that is brought up in court the case could set some very interesting precedent indeed, and the 'abolish the gun free zones' movement would gain a lot of traction. However, it's very possible that Cinemark and the plaintiffs would just settle the case before trial, in which case no legal precedent whatsoever will be set. And all of that said, the case really has no bearing on any rational theater owner's decision to not show the film. Unlike the Colorado shooting there is a clear threat made that something bad may happen. Ignoring that would make theaters liable in the eyes of many folks, no matter what the Colorado jury ultimately determines in the Aurora case. And regardless of liability I'm sure the owners of the various theaters aren't looking to have to rebuild them or have anyone get hurt either, employees or patrons.

Which case was that?

The last good Arnuuuulllld movie was over 20 years ago: Terminator 2. There's been a couple since that were mildly amusing, like True Lies, but they weren't good. There are many good ones prior to T2 though.

A legion of stoners did too.

Might be a publicity stunt, might be some kind of false flag, might be just some hackers screwing with Sony et al for fun or to get a little vengeance for the actions of the MPAA, RIAA, etc, might be corporate warfare, might be something else, but It's more than likely not actually the North Korean government doing this. Based on all the info out so far, I'm leaning towards the publicity stunt. If some folks actually start having 'accidents' maybe I'll change my mind.