Bay 12 Games Forum

Hyperdefense thing not actually complicated, smj. Cold War.

I've heard that people with low income were having very big problems paying Obamacare. As it is, it was a flat tax - flat because everyone pays or is supposed to pay the exact same amount. It's obviously quite a bad thing for poor people.

Eh? The fine is flat, iirc, but that's not exactly a tax. Near as I can recall most people with low income, particularly those with very low income, have been at the absolute least no worse off than they were previously so far as paying goes. There are exceptions, but they're exceptions rather than significant trends. And the effect the ACA has generally had on healthcare inflation's been good (in the sense of it being better than things would have been without it, at minimum) for a lot of poorer folks, to say nothing of the non-monetary aspects. There's the occasional hullabaloo saying otherwise, but near as I've noticed just about every one of those turned out to be bullshit to one degree or another.

The provision for very poor people is they don't pay the fine whatsit, at the absolute least in the states where their governance didn't accept further aid. Once you're over the income threshold, assistance starts kicking in up until a relatively comfortable point, so far as I can recall of the last time (last year, year before, something like that)I looked into the thing on a personal level.

Eehhh, I wouldn't entirely agree that consoles are competing with PCs, exactly, particularly in the same way they are with other consoles. Bit more complicated than that, given the amount of overlap involved between the markets. They want more to increase the overlap rather than push PCs out, and trying to out compete them latter hardware wise isn't likely to really help that much.

Honestly don't really expect their way forward so far as competitiveness goes will be hardware advantages, at least performance wise, though. Meeting a minimum'll still be important, but what'll win things is more ease of use (UI, integrated and painless shops, ergonomics, maintenance related stuff, etc.) and mobility. Consoles don't really have reason to be too worried about PCs so far as future sales go,* and the same's fairly true in reverse. They've both got a much bigger worry building up steam, heh, particularly as more and more people switch partially or fully to mobiles and tablets and whatnot.

... though again, I wouldn't be comfortable claiming full backwards compatibility/emulator implementation would be gaining the console makers money or opportunities. There's fairly significant fiscal risks involved with that, and a questionable amount of return from it. Both the possibility of the emulators getting loose, and the increase of people playing older (cheaper, possibly disconnected from in-production franchises) games rather than newer ones makes the proposition somewhat dubious. The market for the older stuff would have to be a lot larger than it seems to be. It's definitely something I'd be happy about (I'm not saying it's because of those emulators shortly getting loose, but...), but I can see a number of reasons why console makers haven't been going that direction. They're mostly pretty good ones from their perspective, imo.

*Most of what's been getting the PC somewhat of an advantage in recent years has nothing to do with hardware and everything to do with differences in pricing and distribution, which consoles are slowly catching up on near as I can recall.

Doubtful, considering they'd been drinking non alcoholic stuff beforehand

Honestly, it's behavior I've seen before, it'd just been a while since I paid much attention to it. It's not majorly impairing, but the degradation in physical coordination and decision-making is very much noticeable, particularly with something like gaming. One beer definitely has an effect, and it didn't/doesn't take a whole one before it kicked/kicks in.

... will just kinda' throw it out there, but I'm pretty sure this'un has the best octoroks in the franchise. Possibly the most annoying and/or dangerous ones, too. Maybe not the best looking, but the fighty little artillery bastards are just kinda' great.

Eh, I could probably agree B5 trumps trek so far overall plot quality goes. Not really sure that's necessarily saying much, though. Trek's great for all sorts of reasons by coherent series-wide plot isn't exactly one of them, heh.

Not actually sure I'd call B5 the best of its time, though. One of, definitely, but my memory's telling me there's one or two other, some of the ones that aren't just underrated, but straight up forgotten, sci-fi shows around that time that were pretty damn good.

... I just can't remember what they were or their contents :V

Eh? Nah, dosh related stuff just takes someone getting some porkbarrel on a ineffective project. No need for foreigner related malfeasance, just good ol' fashion arms industry corruption. Not like that's the only possible reason, mind. Misdirection, testing platform for some other bit(s) of technology, R&D with intent to get working whatever in later, buncha' crap. Going ahead with a project ain't enough on its own to prove some part of it works, basically. Definitely a potential point of evidence for proving that, but not sufficient on its own. Probably not necessary, either, really.

Quote from: Frumple on March 05, 2017, 07:32:52 pm

Quote from: Baffler on March 05, 2017, 07:19:02 pm

By the way, the investigation turned up nothing.

Just to check, but you do realize that article is not saying that, right?

Quote

Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government.

Seems to pretty clearly be nothing to me.

Might want to read it a few more times, then. Unsourced "law enforcement officials" pointedly not mentioning the existence of not yet conclusive or indirect links is very, very far from the FBI or investigators directly involved stating on the record that the investigations found nothing. That the closest thing in that article to something like that (the bit specifying no direct connection to russian election operations, which is again very different from "nothing") was very specifically worded, also implies something (that the writer was spinning things for something very specific,* at the absolute least).

Also probably worth noting the article was from back in October, when the media in general was in full fuckery mode. It shows. Title completely unsupported by content, nebulous claims trying to insinuate more than they're actually saying, digressions littered throughout about shit that had little to nothing to do with the specific subject, all the usual mess trying to blow something up far beyond what they have grounds to actually do. FTFE

*And no, I'm not saying they were trying to spin things in one way or another political bias wise. Reader attention and article dissemination, though...