Summer Solstice
It’s the longest day of the year. Go forth and enjoy it!
Indignant Desert Birds
Class Warfare and Video Games
It’s the longest day of the year. Go forth and enjoy it!
The thing about healthcare is that there are many, many ways of doing it. Ours is about the worst. I mean, maybe not the worst possible, but certainly the worst we’re likely to see and still have a whole ton of very competent doctors. (In order to get worse, you pretty much have to be Cuba.)
How do we improve? Well, you’d want minimum care standards. And a dedicated funding stream. The idea is that it should be paid for by the government so that it’s not paid for by an employer– and so that you don’t lose care if you lose your job. After all, in this country, cancer is the number on cause of bankruptcy.
What would make the system perfect? Well, I’m not wild about the idea of the government running the health care system– I do like the idea of private actors competing for customers. Ezra Klein has more: part 1, part 2, and part 3
Maniakes: I’d love to get your take on this…
NASA announces they have found water on Mars. This is a fantastic bit of news that makes colonization that much closer…
So: In the US, it is not illegal to be a monopoly, nor to hold monopoly over a kind of good or service. In order to be illegal, you must actively and provably work against a consumer. If, say, you shut your competition out of the market, and then immediately raise your prices by 70% while ceasing to innovate on your product, that would definitely be grounds for a suit.
In order to win such a suit, a litigant would have to prove that innovation or price drops would have happened had their been competition, a tough call to make! Nevertheless, the suit against EA is more than
an interesting spasm against an intractable corporate juggernaut, made more so given that EA now finds itself under the FTC magnifying glass as a result of its struggle to swallow Take-Two Interactive.
It’s a legitimate complaint. I look forward to seeing it’s progression.
Update: Ron Coleman tells me that “I don’t think the rule of reason says monopolies are always ok unless you can show a negative effect on consumers. I think you can show a negative effect on competition and meet the standard”
So I guess I’m wrong. Not so wrong that it destroys my argument, but definitely wrong enough that you don’t want me as your lawyer…
So: firefox 3 is out. It is _not_ the official position of this blog that Firefox R0x and everything else is teh sux. Because that’s childish. Also, 1/3 of us Birdies work for Microsoft.
Nonetheless, Firefox 3 is out. Go get it 
Update: had to keep the leet lingo fresh, yo!
I have a can of coke on my desk, and on one side of the can the logo appear to read “Koka-Kona”. The fine print below the logo reads:
OLYMPIC GAMES COLLECTOR SERIES
1 OF 5
In Russia, Coca-Cola uses this logo. Inside, enjoy the same create taste. Experience the world at mycoke.com
Am I alone in thinking it should read:
OLYMPIC GAMES COLLECTOR SERIES
1 OF 5
In Russia, Coca-Cola logo uses YOU!
32 Days ago the California Supreme Court looked at our State’s constitution and found enough protections for gays within that document that any restrictions on the rights of gays would have to meet “Strict Scrutiny” tests. legislative Bans on marriage did not meet that test and were therefore illegal. At 5:01pm, PDT, the paperwork was handed out, and about a nanosecond later, the first legalizable ceremonies took place.
It is fascinating to me the ways that human beings want to get married. The forms of marriage differ across time and culture, but the fact of it is universal. A society such as ours should have the broadest, most inclusive terms possible. Allowing more people, more couples to formalize their roots within the community makes us all that much better off.
For too long man kept apart what the gods had joined. Yesterday we began correcting that mistake.
Although I don’t really have a particularly fully-formed opinion yet, I did get a chance to play MGS4: Guns of the Patriots over the weekend. First, everyone should keep in mind that I have never played another Metal Gear game. I’ve watched people play, and had absolutely no desire to cultivate an interest in that particular series. This is mostly because, from what I remember, it was people having to follow very particular steps in order to sneak around random characters to accomplish their goals. The trial-and-error feeling to the game always made me feel like it would be terribly boring.
Obviously the first thing that caught my eye were the “commercials”. This was actually particularly exciting for me because I am a HUGE fan of mixed-media sorts of art especially in video games. It was done very well in Myst and its sequels, and then ignored henceforth. Anyway, it was really exciting.
The game itself caught my attention fairly quickly because of the portrayal of war, that is, rather than being idealized and glorified, it was seen as particularly gruesome and unpleasant. I compared it to Gears of War in my head, which is, in my opinion, a glorification of war.
The sneaking around is okay, and I was pleased to find that I don’t necessarily have to have an exact map of the area in my head and where exactly to go next to play the game. I really prefer to run in guns blazing (once again, compare it to GoW, other than maybe the flanking).
However, once you are caught by someone, the system seems to completely fall apart and you have to helplessly button mash, which really only makes him have a seizure and get killed. I never really figured out how to use the stun knife, but maybe this is my own fault. I am of the opinion that some melee weapon should to attached to ONE of the keys, anyway, but I’m assuming there had to be some equipping and then using going on which didn’t really coincide with my frantic buttonmashing.
This really is nothing like a review, honestly, since I hardly played through it at all, but I think it’s enough of a compliment for me to say that despite not really liking the genre, I would like to give MGS4 some more playtime.
