Interesting Gaming News From Cnet

[Maximius]

http://news.com.com/Games+that+stick+it+to...l?tag=nefd.lede

[Ishtvan]

"Yours is a Very Bad Hotel"

 

http://digitaldownlow.net/take/doubletree.pdf

 

[sparhawk]

[Maximius]

Wait a minute, the chances of a stray star pulling us out of our solar system is around 7 times higher than winning the UK lottery?!?! 8^[

[Ishtvan]

Yeah I thought that was interesting too. I don't think they said what time frame that was over though, could have been millions of years. In any case, from now on, instead of playing the lottery, I'm going to bet all my friends that a stray star is going to pull us out of the solar system.

[Maximius]

Yeah I thought that was interesting too. I don't think they said what time frame that was over though, could have been millions of years. In any case, from now on, instead of playing the lottery, I'm going to bet all my friends that a stray star is going to pull us out of the solar system.

 

 

Right, It may be the odds of a stray star passing through our solar system are ,umm, astronomically small but if one does the odds of it yanking the Earth along are 1 in 2.2 million.

[OrbWeaver]

Yeah I thought that was interesting too. I don't think they said what time frame that was over though, could have been millions of years.

 

They never do. People always talk about the "chances of something happening" without realising that the probability depends on how long you wait.

 

As in, "it's a question of WHEN not IF there is a terror attack in London". Of course it is, if your time period is infinite.

[obscurus]

People all too rarely think about sample space when considering probability. The chances of an individual winning lotto might be miniscule, but so many tickets are sold that very often there will be more than one person with the winning number for any given lottery, sometimes so many winners that the individual prize recieved is a small fraction of what they hoped to win, even though they hit the jackpot. It is like rolling a die: roll it once, the chance of getting a six is 1/6. Roll it a thousand times, the chances of you getting a six are essentially almost 100% (in fact you would expect to get 166.7 sixes from an unbiased die thrown a thousand times).

 

But the probability and sample space for wandering stars kidnapping planets on the outer rim of the galaxy is such that it might never happen before the sun uses up all of its fuel, if at all. It is extremely unlikely, and I would take the statistics in that were presented in that pdf cum grano salis. A planet would be more likely to wander in though, as they are ejected form the orbit of their parent stars so frequently that the odds of it happening are much higher. Still rare though.

 

If you make the sample space big enough, you can say all kinds of unlikely things will happen with near 100% certainty, and similarly, improbable things happen far more often than people think because the sample space is small.

[Ishtvan]

It is extremely unlikely, and I would take the statistics in that were presented in that pdf cum grano salis.

Yes, or perhaps lingua in bucca.

[sparhawk]

As in, "it's a question of WHEN not IF there is a terror attack in London". Of course it is, if your time period is infinite.

 

So they use the same shitty phrases on you as well?

[Gildoran]

Yeah, and they use the same shitty phrases on us Americans too.

[Maximius]

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/44900

[sparhawk]

LOL

[Maximius]

The sad truth is that there is a grain of truth to this Onion article. I forget the exact figure but according to the U.S. mainstream media there have been like 4 or 5 Al Quaeda number two top men. The State Department keeps churning it out and the media keeps lapping it up.

 

Katrina broke through the veil, briefly. Reporters here were pissed, even some of the big time anchors, which didnt lead to much but at least it showed that they are capable of distinguishing some of the B.S. from reality. As Bush's popularity continues to slide, they will probably grow bolder. But not too bold. For example we still have major newspapers like the Philadelphia Inquirer trying to spin illegalities of the president into "democratic debates." One headline asked whether it was ok or not for the President to sidestep the Constitution in times of national emergency.

 

Of course, the answer is no, Congress can extend executive power in times of need ( and has done so happily in the past) but no one is ever above the law. No one debates this point, but the Inquirer asks these questions as if they were the legitimate boundaries of the debate. It keeps the average smuck thinking they are still involved in the Great Experiment called democracy and it diverts attention from what even the article was pointing out implicitly: the President broke the law of the land.

 

Well, the party is over in that respect. Judge after judge, academic after academic, from the Right to the Left, have condemned his domestic spying as being unconstitutional and impeachable. Even with the new powers hastily granted after 9/11 he is outside the law, he ignored it and went behind Congresses back. That fucking pig Attorney General Gonzales even admitted that when the Justice Department realized that Congress would not okay spying on citizens, they simply decided not to tell Congress. Blammo, thats a violent breach of the Constitution and a clear admission that this is a rouge Administration even by the standards of those whores in Washington.

 

But again, little discussion of this in the media, we get discussions of what Americans think about the President breaking the law, how they feel about the situation. Of course your average citizen knows nothing of the law or the situation or what the hell goes on in Washington behind closed doors. You may wonder why these people would be asked anything at all since they have nothing but uninformed opinion to offer. But such news is safe, it sells better than some droning law professor explaining why the law has been broken, and such issues are deep in the hearts of the editorial staffs of major media outlets. Sell more copy, rock no boats.

[Vadrosaul]

Do you think it would be better to remove the fixed length terms, Max? for example here in Canada we do not have fixed length terms, and when a major scam by our then in power Liberal party government came into the spotlight, it fueled the call for a federal election, which we just had, and now the Conservatives are the government.

[Maximius]

Do you think it would be better to remove the fixed length terms, Max? for example here in Canada we do not have fixed length terms, and when a major scam by our then in power Liberal party government came into the spotlight, it fueled the call for a federal election, which we just had, and now the Conservatives are the government.

 

Let me take that in two directions, vadrosaul. On one level, I think such a thing would be a good thing in a general way, the ability to "throw the bums out" instead of waiting for the rest of their terms to run out. Who could argue against that in principle? That wont happen here for a long time if ever, at least at the Federal level I would bet.

 

But then this idea supposes at least a degree of real democratic activity, something that is in short supply everywhere and here worst than most. Its little good to toss out bums when more bums walk in behind them. Heres an example: Governer Gray Davis of California and Arnie "TouchyFeely" Swarcheneggar (sp).

 

California has the ability to recall its governors after a referendum vote, a special vote similar to the one you Canadians have to kick out a government. So a few years back, the GOP (Republican party) got together with the energy industry to plot and plan on how to get Gray Davis out of office. California is the worlds 6th largest economy and consumes a godawful amount of energy. Tampering with the supply leads to social discomfort, to say the least. To make a very complicated story short:

 

1. Big energy (Halliburton,Enron ring a bell?) + G.O.P. = plan to boot Davis as well as crank California for energy $$$ (Enron would use money stolen from Cali to attempt to make up for failed investment schemes and sinking stock values, a separate story: http://www.againstthegrain.org/audio1.31.06.mp3 )

 

2. Big energy announces rolling blackouts across Cali, the famous energy crisis 2000 I think, even though their own records show plenty of available energy and no unusually acute consumer demands. Public begins to demand answers but no one can explain

 

3. California public is furious and hungry for the blood of whoevers sitting in power. (Studies have shown a strong correlation between energy prices, especially gasoline, and the mood of the voting public.)Campaign begins to recall Davis, part of the argument is his mishandling of energy crisis along with the usual crying about having to pay taxes. Craploads of money are dumped into the campaign and all of it is targetting Davis. A figure is needed to take his place in office, who better than Gollywood Stuporstar Arnie who can walk in as a saviour figure, as he has so many times on DvD and VideoTape. Bonus: He has no political background to hide and is free to attack Davis as business as usual while Davis can only weakly chirp that he has no experience for the job. Plus the whole GOP is backing him. Bye bye Gray.

 

Theres a lot more to the story of course, if anyones interested I can provide the links to archives and such. But you see my point Vadro, in such a climate a recall election is as easily turned on the citizenry as any other trick in the bag. Removing the set term limits and making it possible to remove a current government before its alotted time only changes the rules by which powerful and influential elite groups get to play and the U.S. has the MOST powerful and elite groups in the world on its stage.

[sxotty]

Max, you are oversimplifying it.

 

Grey Davis made an incredibly stupid decision. He decided that he would contorl how much consumers could be charged for electricity. That sounds nice right?

 

Well what happened is that power companies had little incentive to provide an increase in power b/c they would not pay for it in the low power times and in the high power demand times they could charge a huge amount if there was a shortage.

 

Wait you say, how could they charge a huge amount?

 

B/c the power companies did not sell it to consumers, they sold it to middlemen who then sold it to consumers. And the consumers prices did not increase. The middlemen either had to pay exorbitant prices and sell low or they had to quit buying. (But many of the middlemen, were not forprofit companies, and therefore had to buy it.)

 

To make matters worse the power companies realized how much money they could make and kept scheduling "maintanance" at the times of peak demand. It was known as the hockey stick phenomenom because the price followed that pattern, pretty flat until demand reached a certain point and then it exponentially grew.

 

Many people do assume the power companies were in collusion, but as it turns out the price jumped so much they could actually make money by shutting down 5% of their own capacity. Thus it was in all their best interest to shut down plants. Whether there was any conspiracy between them was never shown, and whether there was some vast political consipracy was definitely not shown, but it did show why disconnecting consumers from the price of the good they consume is a silly idea. The same would happen if we subsidized the price of gas demand would exceed supply and everyone would drive around in the super duper SUV truck that got 2 mpg b/c they could...

[Maximius]

Thank you for your comments sxotty. Yes I am oversimplifying and no doubt missing important linkages. I certainly do not think that political tampering was the ONLY cause of the shortages. But my basic premise stills stands and there is evidence of collusion both to cause the shortages as well as using as a lever against Davis. Im collecting sources, give me a day or two to respond.

Edited February 11, 2006 by Maximius

[Maximius]

I got the timeline wrong, Enron (not Haliburton though) was already cranking California before Arnie came along. But as to the relationship between Arnie and Ken Lay/Enron and the recall effort, check out the first one especially it has a bibliography of its sources at the head:

 

http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/13.html

 

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0817-07.htm

 

Heres a good book about the mess which I havent read:

 

"Conspiracy of Fools" by Kurt Eichenwald

 

A webcast about a new documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room":

 

http://www.againstthegrain.org/audio1.31.06.mp3

 

Here are some more sources dealing primarily with the energy shortages themselves. One is a private study done by some energy consulting firm that lays at least some of the blame on market manipulation:

 

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/us/ca/How_We_Go...ergy_Crisis.pdf

 

The others are journalistic sources:

 

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1062

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/01/...ain620626.shtml

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...1455EDT0645.DTL

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1972574.stm

 

Im going to post one last article by Paul Krugman after this post, its a NY Times article and I cant find the link anymore.

 

So I maintain that there was a political conspiracy, yes a >>conspiracy<<, people meeting in secret to discuss things which are illegal and immoral, as well as a conspiracy to jack energy rates in California. It seems that Reliant energy was an even bigger player than Enron, Halliburton I did not find a mention of though. And the source of the blackouts was hardly attributable to Davis attempting to regulate the market, de-regulation had plunged it into chaos a few years before it. If Im reading your response correctly you are arguing that his tampering killed "incentive" for the energy companies to sell because they would fail to make enough profits. I would argue that they already WERE making record profits and Davis was attempting to reign in a run away train. Not that Im a fan of Davis, Im sure he is a shit bag.

Edited February 12, 2006 by Maximius

[Maximius]

And the last article, sorry about the length admins :

New York Times

March 28, 2003

 

Delusions of Power

 

By PAUL KRUGMAN

 

They considered themselves tough-minded realists, and regarded doubters as fuzzy-minded whiners. They silenced those who questioned their premises, even though the skeptics included many of the government's own analysts. They were supremely confident and yet with shocking speed everything they had said was proved awesomely wrong.

 

No, I'm not talking about the war; I'm talking about the energy task force that Dick Cheney led back in 2001. Yet there are some disturbing parallels. Right now, pundits are wondering how Mr. Cheney who

confidently predicted that our soldiers would be "greeted as liberators" could have been so mistaken. But a devastating new report on the California energy crisis reminds us that Mr. Cheney has been

equally confident, and equally wrong, about other issues.

 

In spring 2001 the lights were going out all over California. There were blackouts and brownouts, and the price of electricity was soaring. The Cheney task force was convened in the midst of that crisis. It concluded, in brief, that the energy crisis was a long-term problem caused by meddling bureaucrats and pesky who weren't letting big companies do what needed to be done. The solution? Scrap environmental rules, and give the energy industry multibillion-dollar subsidies.

 

Along the way, Mr. Cheney sneeringly dismissed energy conservation as a mere "sign of personal virtue" and scorned California officials who called for price controls and said the crisis was being exacerbated by

market manipulation. To be fair, Mr. Cheney's mocking attitude on that last point was shared by almost everyone in politics and the media and yes, I am patting myself on the back for getting it right.

 

For we now know that everything Mr. Cheney said was wrong.

 

In fact, the California energy crisis had nothing to do with environmental restrictions, and a lot to do with market manipulation. In 2001 the evidence for manipulation was basically circumstantial. But now we have a new report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which until now has discounted claims of market manipulation. No more: the new report concludes that market manipulation was pervasive, and offers a mountain of direct evidence, including phone conversations, e-mail and memos. There's no longer any

doubt: California's power shortages were largely artificial, created by energy companies to drive up prices and profits.

 

Oh, and what ended the crisis? Key factors included energy conservation and price controls. Meanwhile, what happened to that long-term shortage of capacity, which required scrapping environmental rules and providing lots of corporate welfare? Within months after the Cheney report's release, stock analysts were downgrading energy companies because of a looming long-term-capacity glut.

 

In short, Mr. Cheney and his tough-minded realists were blowing smoke: their report described a fantasy world that bore no relation to reality. How did they get it so wrong?

 

One answer is that Mr. Cheney made sure that his task force included only like-minded men: as far as we can tell, he didn't consult with anyone except energy executives. So the task force was subject to what

military types call "incestuous amplification," defined by Jane's Defense Weekly as "a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation."

 

Another answer is that Mr. Cheney basically drew his advice about how to end the energy crisis from the very companies creating the crisis, for fun and profit. But was he in on the joke? We may never know what really went on in the energy task force since the Bush administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep us from finding out. At first the nonpartisan General Accounting Office, which is supposed to act as an internal watchdog, seemed determined to pursue the matter. But after the midterm election, according to the

newsletter The Hill, Congressional Republicans approached the agency's head and threatened to slash his budget unless he backed off.

 

And therein lies the broader moral. In the last two years Mr. Cheney and other top officials have gotten it wrong again and again on energy, on the economy, on the budget. But political muscle has insulated them from any adverse consequences. So they, and the country, don't learn from their mistakes and the mistakes keep getting bigger.

 

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

 

 

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Edited February 12, 2006 by Maximius