Stragomagus
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Tip.it Article, Macros Uncovered.
Hello tip.it, I am Misfortune and I have spent many days researching and informing myself on RuneScape Marcroing Software. To start off this Article I would first off like to say that I, nor Tip.it use, or endorse the use of these macros. All Jagex rules apply and this was done for learning and experimental purposes only. During the researching I never used or downloaded any macroing programs. To gather this information, I visited different websites that I found through google and talked to users of these programs.
I spent an ample amount of time viewing and talking on the websites and forums of these programs. When I first started browsing through certain forums my perspectives changed. Before I started this research I drew the conclusion that people using these programs must be plain stupid. This changed as I realized most people on these forums are very smart and intelligent humans. Macroing software is created using a Programming language called Java. If you do research on this language you will notice that it is very complex.
After spending some time talking to people I decided that I needed to talk to the developers of these programs. To my surprise the developer of one of the biggest and most used macro is a 17 year old kid who started learning Java during computer science in the 10th grade. I asked him one specific question about his reasoning. This question was "Why create a program such as this to cheat on a game"? His reply surprised me and opened up a whole new topic for me to look into. He said and I quote "I do it for the money." At that our conversation was ended and I continued on my search to find information.
From what this developer said, I decided to research more about what he meant and the black-market of RuneScape. I looked at some statistics for this bot and was surprised to see the truth behind his words. There are many different bots which are available for purchase starting at around 7-8 USD. Considering that there are 60,000 people who purchase AT LEAST one of these bots per year, this developer would be making close to 500,000 USD per year! That is 10 times what the average american citizen makes! This made me want to take my research one step further to examine the black market.
Since the first few years of RuneScape's existence there has been groups of people who sell items or gold in game for money. These people use macro programs to collect massive amount of money and items in-game then sell it on the "black market". The Black Market is a group of people who run different websites and sell items, gold, and accounts for real money. These people are real-world trading which happens to be against the RuneScape rules. I was wondering what the point of selling items on this "Black Market" was. I QUICKLY found my answer. By using these macros, large sums of gold can be made very fast. People who do this are usually called Gold Farmers. There whole point is to sell RuneScape gold to players so they can get that party hat or bandos they wanted. Sadly, this is AGAINST THE RULES. That concludes my research on the black market so I continued with collecting information about these macro programs, this time from users themselves.
I went around a found a normal user who has been using these programs for nearly a year. I asked several questions which I will share with you as well as the users response. I first asked " Why do you macro?" His reply was "I macro because RuneScape is time consuming and getting those 99's feels so good!" I was curious how something that you earn by cheating could feel good so I asked him, "Why not earn these 99's yourself so you can feel a sense of accomplishment?" His reply "I do earn them somewhat myself, I just use these programs while I am sleeping or at school when I do not have time for RuneScape."
I was intrigued by how all of these people are so calm and proud of their accomplishments that they cheated to get. Thus, I conclude my research by saying that these people use macros out of laziness and greediness.
Thanks for reading,
Misfortune
I know you aren't going to like this, but beings as you are calling this research and that you are asserting some things as fact citations are needed in this article. I also need to mention that the actual research clearly shows that very little time was actually put into said "research." After saying this let me rip this to shreds.
First and foremost, there is a very clear difference between "Macros" and "Botting software". Macros are, at their very essence, nothing more than a set of keystrokes set to go off at the press of a button. What does this mean? Well, suppose that you wished to click and open one file while opening another in the same instant, this would be where a macro comes in. This brings us to botting software, which at its very essence is the automation of a task, and this is where people without the knowledge of computer programming get lost.
Here is a clear example of keystroke macros(have fun trying to learn to use it):
However, due to tip.it's rules, I cannot post botting software on this forum.
-*Please pm me the botting sites that you went to so as I can further read up on your sources.
Second, you can make macroing and botting software using any programming language. Java itself, though, is not as complex as many of it's counterparts in the list below, but to a non-programmer I will give you this point.
Here is a list of programming languages to peruse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_programming_languages
This is a side-note, but this bot-scriptor must have had a really good computer science program in his high-school to have been able to delve so deeply into it at such a young-age. I'm also going to say right now that money alone would not provide enough motivation to learn a programming language due to their general complexity.
Citing your source for this figure on how much they make from this botting software would actually be a good thing. Also, simple calculations do not take into account those that cancel their credit cards, renege on the agreed upon price, taxes, among other things. However, such a simple calculation would be useful for the buying and selling of raw goods. Taking a statistics class would also be beneficial.
Try to avoid redundancy in your article by eliminating the repeating of "it is against the rules of Runescape."
For the final sentence you have not established a correlation pertaining to "laziness and greediness".
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What about making the id numbers dynamic? So that the is numbers change each time the client is opened. I'm not a programmer so I can't go into detail how it could be done but surely its possible.
player cheater would just be forced to enter the ids of the objects manually. That wouldn't fix anything.
Every 6 hours account automatically logs out and that means IDs change. Cheater would have to check every 6 hours and change 30? IDs to get it working again, seems to me a pretty hard work. Also most botters are quite childish and want to bot 24/7, not spend many minutes every day trying to figure out ID changes and type them again. I would see this quite effective against most of botters, but not all.
scrape, copy, and paste back into code. Was that so hard? A few minutes work at best and then good for another 6 hours.
The main problem with a dynamic system that is random, when it comes to servers, is that syncing errors go way up in proportion to the amount of randomness. It is also considerably less overhead on the servers to have a static id system than to generate a whole new set for every person that logs in and then go ahead and change some of the ids every update.
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I think you may find this useful since you are delving directly into object-oriented programming right from the start.
[spoiler=Churchhilldowns.java]
Purpose/fucntion: Creates a Jframe that will allow the user to choose a post position as well as place a bet and then place the bet and post position into a ".dat" file for displaying in a JTable when the program is restarted. In addition, the program has JMenuBar items that will "Display" a preset text in a JTextField, a "Exit" selection for closing the program , and a final selection for clearing the program of any input. On top of that, the program has 2 JTextfields, 1 for the post position and the other for the bet, 5 JButtons, 4 buttons for the "post position", these buttons display their information in the first JTextField,and 1 for "Placing a Bet", and finally the program will have 1 JTable in which data from a ".dat" file will display text based upon what was input into the 2 Jtextfields and if nothing is in the ".dat" file nothing except the heading of the table will display; anything written to the ".dat" file will require a restart of the program before being displayed. */ import java.awt.*; import javax.swing.*; import java.awt.event.*; import java.util.*; import java.io.*; public class ChurchHillDowns extends JFrame implements ActionListener { private JTextField positionfield, betfield; private JButton postonebutton, posttwobutton, postthreebutton, postfourbutton, placebetbutton; private JLabel titleheading; private File file = new File("HorseBet.dat"); public static void main(String[] args) { //create a new instance of the ChurchHilldowns JFrame ChurchHillDowns mainframe = new ChurchHillDowns(); //set basic appearance configuration for mainframe mainframe.setVisible(true); mainframe.setTitle("Day at The Races"); mainframe.setBounds(100, 100, 650, 400); } public ChurchHillDowns() { try { File file = new File("HorseBet.dat"); boolean created = file.createNewFile(); if(created) { //not existing then exists } else { //existing then nothing } } catch(IOException e) { } TableLab tabby = new TableLab("HorseBet.dat"); //constructs the default close button and calls the method "buildingthemenu" setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); setJMenuBar(buildingthemenu()); //create the container Container cp = getContentPane(); cp.setLayout(new BorderLayout()); //create the topPanel and add a JTextField and JLabel to it JPanel topPanel = new JPanel(new GridLayout(2, 1)); titleheading = new JLabel("Welcome to Racing at Churchhill Downs", JLabel.CENTER); titleheading.setFont(new Font("Times New Roman", Font.BOLD, 22)); positionfield = new JTextField(55); topPanel.add(titleheading); topPanel.add(positionfield); //create the button panel and add postonebutton, posttwobutton, postthreebutton, and postfourbutton to it JPanel buttonpanel = new JPanel(); postonebutton = new JButton("Post position one"); postonebutton.setBackground(new Color(255, 193, 037)); postonebutton.addActionListener(this); posttwobutton = new JButton("Post position two"); posttwobutton.setBackground(new Color(255, 193, 037)); posttwobutton.addActionListener(this); postthreebutton = new JButton("Post position three"); postthreebutton.setBackground(new Color(255, 193, 037)); postthreebutton.addActionListener(this); postfourbutton = new JButton("Post position four"); postfourbutton.setBackground(new Color(255, 193, 037)); postfourbutton.addActionListener(this); buttonpanel.add(postonebutton); buttonpanel.add(posttwobutton); buttonpanel.add(postthreebutton); buttonpanel.add(postfourbutton); //create the bottom panel that will have the betfield and placebetbutton JPanel midpanel = new JPanel(new GridLayout(2,1)); betfield = new JTextField(55); placebetbutton = new JButton("Place your bet"); placebetbutton.addActionListener(this); midpanel.add(betfield); midpanel.add(placebetbutton); //create the panel that will house all the other panels JPanel contentpanel = new JPanel(new BorderLayout()); contentpanel.add(topPanel, BorderLayout.NORTH); contentpanel.add(buttonpanel, BorderLayout.CENTER); contentpanel.add(midpanel, BorderLayout.SOUTH); //add the panel and table to the container cp.add(contentpanel, BorderLayout.NORTH); cp.add(tabby, BorderLayout.CENTER); } public JMenuBar buildingthemenu() { //construct the JMenuBar items JMenuBar themenu = new JMenuBar(); JMenu filemenu = new JMenu("File"); JMenu editmenu = new JMenu("Edit"); //create the JMenu items JMenuItem displayitem = new JMenuItem("Display"); JMenuItem closeitem = new JMenuItem("Exit Program"); JMenuItem clearitem = new JMenuItem("Clear"); //add the JMenuItems and JMenuBar items top the MenuBar themenu.add(filemenu); themenu.add(editmenu); filemenu.add(displayitem); filemenu.add(closeitem); editmenu.add(clearitem); //set keyboard shortcuts filemenu.setMnemonic('F'); editmenu.setMnemonic('E'); displayitem.setMnemonic('D'); closeitem.setMnemonic('E'); clearitem.setMnemonic('C'); //add actionlisteners to the JMenuItem displayitem.addActionListener( new ActionListener() { public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) { positionfield.setText("Choose the post position of the horse in Race 1, enter the bet in lower field, and then press the bet button."); }//close actionPerformed }//close ActionListener ); closeitem.addActionListener( new ActionListener() { public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) { System.out.println("Enjoy the races!"); System.exit(0); }//close actionPerformed }//close actionlistener ); clearitem.addActionListener( new ActionListener() { public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent event) { positionfield.setText(""); betfield.setText(""); }//close actionPerformed }//close actionlistener ); return themenu; } public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) { //next four if statments check to see if any of the post buttons were clicked and sets the text of the JTextField to whatever matches if(e.getSource() == postonebutton) { positionfield.setText("Post position one"); } if(e.getSource() == posttwobutton) { positionfield.setText("Post position two"); } if(e.getSource() == postthreebutton) { positionfield.setText("Post position three"); } if(e.getSource() == postfourbutton) { positionfield.setText("Post position four"); } //check to see if the placebetbutton was clicked and then calls upon the betting() function if(e.getSource() == placebetbutton) { betting(); } } private void betting() { try { String position = positionfield.getText(), bet = betfield.getText(); double vbet = Double.parseDouble(bet); BufferedWriter outer = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("HorseBet.dat", true)); //makes sure that the user doesn't try to click the "Place a bet" button with 0, 1, > 19, and < 16 characters if(position.length() == 0 || position.length() > 19 || position.length() == 1 || position.length() < 16) { JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this, "Please click one of the post buttons!"); } //sends data to the file if nothing is wrong as well as sets the text of the positionfield else { positionfield.setText("You have placed $" + bet + " on the horse in " + position + ". Hope your horse wins!" ); outer.write("$" + bet + " on the horse in " + position); outer.newLine(); outer.close(); } } //checks to make sure that the bet field has a number entered into it catch(NumberFormatException e) { JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this, "The bet field must be numeric."); } //standard Input/Output Stream error prevention catch(IOException e) { JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(this, "File Input error!"); } } } class TableLab extends JPanel { TableLab(String dataFilePath) { JTable table; TableModel model; setLayout(new BorderLayout()); model = new TableModel(dataFilePath); table = new JTable(); table.setModel(model); table.createDefaultColumnsFromModel(); JScrollPane scrollpane = new JScrollPane(table); add(scrollpane); } }[spoiler=TableModel.java]
import javax.swing.*; import javax.swing.table.*; import javax.swing.event.*; import java.io.*; import java.util.*; public class TableModel extends AbstractTableModel { protected Vector<Object> data; protected Vector<Object> columnNames; protected String datafile; public TableModel(String f) { datafile = f; initVectors(); } public void initVectors() { String aLine; data = new Vector<Object>(); columnNames = new Vector<Object>(); try { FileInputStream fin = new FileInputStream(datafile); BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(fin)); columnNames.addElement("Bet"); //extract data while((aLine = br.readLine()) != null) { StringTokenizer st1 = new StringTokenizer(aLine, "|"); while(st1.hasMoreTokens()) data.addElement(st1.nextToken()); } br.close(); } catch(Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } public int getRowCount() { return data.size() / getColumnCount(); } public int getColumnCount() { return columnNames.size(); } public String getColumnName(int columnIndex) { String colName = ""; if(columnIndex <= getColumnCount()) colName = (String)columnNames.elementAt(columnIndex); return colName; } public boolean isCellEditable(int rowIndex, int columnIndex) { return false; } public Object getValueAt(int rowIndex, int columnIndex) { return (String)data.elementAt( (rowIndex * getColumnCount()) + columnIndex); } }[spoiler=TableLab.java]
import javax.swing.*; import java.awt.event.*; import java.awt.*; import java.io.*; import java.util.*; public class TableLab extends JPanel { public TableLab(String dataFilePath) { JTable table; TableModel model; setLayout(new BorderLayout()); model = new TableModel(dataFilePath); table = new JTable(); table.setModel(model); table.createDefaultColumnsFromModel(); JScrollPane scrollpane = new JScrollPane(table); add(scrollpane); } public Dimension getPreferredSize() { return new Dimension(600,300); } public static void main(String[] args) { JFrame frame = new JFrame("Wonderland Horse Farm"); TableLab panel = new TableLab("Horse.dat"); frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.DO_NOTHING_ON_CLOSE); frame.setForeground(Color.black); frame.setBackground(Color.lightGray); frame.getContentPane().add(panel,"Center"); frame.setSize(panel.getPreferredSize()); frame.setVisible(true); frame.addWindowListener(new WindowCloser()); } } class WindowCloser extends WindowAdapter { public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) { Window win = e.getWindow(); win.setVisible(false); System.exit(0); } } -
[spoiler=quote chain]
But yeah America especially has a bad democracy (no offense) in the way it works. People don't really get any say at all.
Where do you get that idea from?
The fact that you only have two political parties with any chance to get in. My friend telling me about it, can't remmber now was one of those nights in the pub.. But basically your parties have to be massivley funded by shady people with more than fairness at heart to be heard at all. In UK every party gets airtime on BBC (I think). Also the fact you have the supreme court.. err wuite a lot of things. It's quite obviously not a great democract, anywhere were those only democrat or republic (right, or far-right) is pretty bad democracy wise IMO.
Tell me if I'm wrong?
And to post abovce
^^^
You were on topic, Japan is off topic lol! :P
Well now that you've proven you don't know anything about America, I can stop taking your argument seriously.
Dude i know you have other parties but there's no chance oif them getting in power whatsoever. I don't know the details of your political system, why the [bleep] would I? I dont care, i dont really know my own that much. most people don't.
But any country that has aligned TV station and two parties, isn't very democratic :)
If you don't know much about it, stop trying to talk about it. You just said yourself you don't know what you're talking about. There is chances of other parties getting in. Theree's a newer party that's becoming more and more popular that's not one of the big two (Republican and Democrat). If you wish to talk down on America, know what you're talking about first.
The Tea Party, I presume? That's even worse. Now we have three parties. One in the middle, one on the right, and one on the radical bat[cabbage] insane right.
And that proves america is undemocratic how? The democrats/republicans do a pretty good job representing the majority of the population, and the tea party represents the idiotic part of the population. Explain what part of the population is not represented through the political system, or how members in the House and president aren't under the direct control of the people (president is basically determined by popular vote, bush was a rare exception).
While the political system has a huge bias towards preserving the status quo, which does result in massive inefficiencies and maintenance of incumbent political figures, neither prove it's undemocratic, but rather a necessary consequence of democracy and representation in government.
First Bold: Currently in the United States political climate neither the poor or other denominations of the working class have any representation in either congress or house of representatives. The mere fact it takes millions of dollars only goes to prove the point.
Case 1 to prove the point is what has happened in Wisconsin recently via revocation of bargaining rights(it didn't just apply to teachers you know).
Second bold: No, in no way shape or form is the president of the United States elected via popular vote. Instead, that position is decided by the electoral college which often does go with the popular vote, but the two are not dependent on each other as there are a few cases where they decided not to go with the majority vote(and one where they had the electoral and still was not elected president).
[spoiler=Electoral]In 1824 Andrew Jackson received a plurality of the popular (inasmuch as we actually have records of it at that time) and the electoral vote, but was not elected President.
In 1876, Samuel Tilden beat Rutherford B. Hayes by 3% in the popular vote (though somebody in another thread said that was mainly because he suppressed the black vote in southern states), and lost the EC by 1 vote -- Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina were all extremely close, and the board appointed to examine them was composed of 7 Dems, 7 Reps, and 1 Independent; however, the Independent resigned and was replaced by a Republican, so the board ruled that all three states had voted for Hayes.
In 1888, Grover Cleveland was the incumbent President, and barely lost his home state and the election to Benjamin Harrison, who lost the popular vote by less than 1%.
Third Bold: What the Supreme Court of the United States did there was actually unconstitutional as the constitution expressly leaves the electing of the president to the electoral college. If in the event of a tie, in the electoral and majority, then Congress decides the final vote.
In terms of the actual topic of the thread.
In terms of actual greed, I would say that the federal government is still stuck in its' imperialist days from the 1800s and early 1900s, while on the other hand I can easily say that the majority of the common folk in the US are not as greedy as one would think; or rather as much as any other human.
There are people in congress that represents the poor working class. You're just wrong there. The entire democratic party attempts to cater to lower income people, well at least more than the republican party. Unions do too. No group in the US is necessarily represented any more than the other in the government, rich or poor.
Each representative in the electoral college has always followed the decision of the citizen's state, hence the reason presidents have to appeal to the public and win the votes of the majority in each state. Bush was an exception because of an incident in florida, but the electoral college (although not forced to), always follows the decision of the people in it's state.
First bold: Name one that has the track record to prove it.
Second bold: Unions may have had their hayday back in the 1920's and 1930's. but ever since then their power has been waning which has resulted in the Wisconsin ordeal.
Third Bold: Right now, in the US, 400 people have greater than 50% of the wealth, which translates to them being richer than over 155 million Americans. In addition to that, nearly all of that wealth is not even being put back into the economy and in effect has been removed. My point still stands that if you do not have the support of Msnbc, CNN, Fox, and the other big mainstream outlets you do not have a chance of becoming president of the United States and that requires 10s of millions of dollars; if you are in a party outside of the democrats or republicans this is double true. To further add insult to injury, most if not all of the House representatives and Congressmen have come from already wealthy backgrounds.
Fourth Bold: The recount was legitimate and I did provide a few examples where the electoral did not go with the citizens.
I'm not sure how any of your points prove America isn't democratic. Wealth =/= political power, and the wealth distribution is wholly irrelevant to the characterization of a democracy. Most of the top 400 richest people in America do not have any political power . The media is not biased towards those that have more wealth. They didn't buy off media, more attention is just focused on the incumbent candidate and the political system just favors the status quo more than change. You have a flawed misconception in how people get elected - the winning candidate gets does tend to get more funding and funding does play into who gets elected, but the funding rarely ever comes from any personal budget, they get funded from outside PAC groups.
The examples you are citing are literally more than a century old. The electoral votes are basically determined by how the people in a certain state vote in the present day.
First: Don't put words into my mouth as I never said America wasn't democratic, but the country is a Representative Republic(democratic on the town, city, state, and congressional levels, but not when it comes to positions in the government itself outside of those particular positions(SCOTUS is a prime example)).
Let me ask you this. Who are the ones that tend to be in political positions the most: the poor, the middle class, or the upper class?
Second: Are you kidding me? Having that much wealth allows you to have a much greater impact on the politics of a country than you realize. This is especially true if any of those happen to be friends of those in govermental roles.
Third: I also did not say they bought off media, but having far more money than your political rival allows one to drown out the others message by getting more airtime via Tv, radio, flyers, etc. I am well aware of " PAC" groups, but as you may have glossed over the SCOTUS recently ruled that corporate entities can give directly to a political fund(federal level).
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=e303e3b6-25cc-4d71-b3f7-87ef6a6e199f
Fourth: Whether they are recent or not does not exclude the fact that the electoral could go against the majority vote.
-
[spoiler=quote chain]
But yeah America especially has a bad democracy (no offense) in the way it works. People don't really get any say at all.
Where do you get that idea from?
The fact that you only have two political parties with any chance to get in. My friend telling me about it, can't remmber now was one of those nights in the pub.. But basically your parties have to be massivley funded by shady people with more than fairness at heart to be heard at all. In UK every party gets airtime on BBC (I think). Also the fact you have the supreme court.. err wuite a lot of things. It's quite obviously not a great democract, anywhere were those only democrat or republic (right, or far-right) is pretty bad democracy wise IMO.
Tell me if I'm wrong?
And to post abovce
^^^
You were on topic, Japan is off topic lol! :P
Well now that you've proven you don't know anything about America, I can stop taking your argument seriously.
Dude i know you have other parties but there's no chance oif them getting in power whatsoever. I don't know the details of your political system, why the [bleep] would I? I dont care, i dont really know my own that much. most people don't.
But any country that has aligned TV station and two parties, isn't very democratic :)
If you don't know much about it, stop trying to talk about it. You just said yourself you don't know what you're talking about. There is chances of other parties getting in. Theree's a newer party that's becoming more and more popular that's not one of the big two (Republican and Democrat). If you wish to talk down on America, know what you're talking about first.
The Tea Party, I presume? That's even worse. Now we have three parties. One in the middle, one on the right, and one on the radical bat[cabbage] insane right.
And that proves america is undemocratic how? The democrats/republicans do a pretty good job representing the majority of the population, and the tea party represents the idiotic part of the population. Explain what part of the population is not represented through the political system, or how members in the House and president aren't under the direct control of the people (president is basically determined by popular vote, bush was a rare exception).
While the political system has a huge bias towards preserving the status quo, which does result in massive inefficiencies and maintenance of incumbent political figures, neither prove it's undemocratic, but rather a necessary consequence of democracy and representation in government.
First Bold: Currently in the United States political climate neither the poor or other denominations of the working class have any representation in either congress or house of representatives. The mere fact it takes millions of dollars only goes to prove the point.
Case 1 to prove the point is what has happened in Wisconsin recently via revocation of bargaining rights(it didn't just apply to teachers you know).
Second bold: No, in no way shape or form is the president of the United States elected via popular vote. Instead, that position is decided by the electoral college which often does go with the popular vote, but the two are not dependent on each other as there are a few cases where they decided not to go with the majority vote(and one where they had the electoral and still was not elected president).
[spoiler=Electoral]In 1824 Andrew Jackson received a plurality of the popular (inasmuch as we actually have records of it at that time) and the electoral vote, but was not elected President.
In 1876, Samuel Tilden beat Rutherford B. Hayes by 3% in the popular vote (though somebody in another thread said that was mainly because he suppressed the black vote in southern states), and lost the EC by 1 vote -- Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina were all extremely close, and the board appointed to examine them was composed of 7 Dems, 7 Reps, and 1 Independent; however, the Independent resigned and was replaced by a Republican, so the board ruled that all three states had voted for Hayes.
In 1888, Grover Cleveland was the incumbent President, and barely lost his home state and the election to Benjamin Harrison, who lost the popular vote by less than 1%.
Third Bold: What the Supreme Court of the United States did there was actually unconstitutional as the constitution expressly leaves the electing of the president to the electoral college. If in the event of a tie, in the electoral and majority, then Congress decides the final vote.
In terms of the actual topic of the thread.
In terms of actual greed, I would say that the federal government is still stuck in its' imperialist days from the 1800s and early 1900s, while on the other hand I can easily say that the majority of the common folk in the US are not as greedy as one would think; or rather as much as any other human.
There are people in congress that represents the poor working class. You're just wrong there. The entire democratic party attempts to cater to lower income people, well at least more than the republican party. Unions do too. No group in the US is necessarily represented any more than the other in the government, rich or poor.
Each representative in the electoral college has always followed the decision of the citizen's state, hence the reason presidents have to appeal to the public and win the votes of the majority in each state. Bush was an exception because of an incident in florida, but the electoral college (although not forced to), always follows the decision of the people in it's state.
First bold: Name one that has the track record to prove it.
Second bold: Unions may have had their hayday back in the 1920's and 1930's. but ever since then their power has been waning which has resulted in the Wisconsin ordeal.
Third Bold: Right now, in the US, 400 people have greater than 50% of the wealth, which translates to them being richer than over 155 million Americans. In addition to that, nearly all of that wealth is not even being put back into the economy and in effect has been removed. My point still stands that if you do not have the support of Msnbc, CNN, Fox, and the other big mainstream outlets you do not have a chance of becoming president of the United States and that requires 10s of millions of dollars; if you are in a party outside of the democrats or republicans this is double true. To further add insult to injury, most if not all of the House representatives and Congressmen have come from already wealthy backgrounds.
Fourth Bold: The recount was legitimate and I did provide a few examples where the electoral did not go with the citizens.
-
But yeah America especially has a bad democracy (no offense) in the way it works. People don't really get any say at all.
Where do you get that idea from?
The fact that you only have two political parties with any chance to get in. My friend telling me about it, can't remmber now was one of those nights in the pub.. But basically your parties have to be massivley funded by shady people with more than fairness at heart to be heard at all. In UK every party gets airtime on BBC (I think). Also the fact you have the supreme court.. err wuite a lot of things. It's quite obviously not a great democract, anywhere were those only democrat or republic (right, or far-right) is pretty bad democracy wise IMO.
Tell me if I'm wrong?
And to post abovce
^^^
You were on topic, Japan is off topic lol! :P
Well now that you've proven you don't know anything about America, I can stop taking your argument seriously.
Dude i know you have other parties but there's no chance oif them getting in power whatsoever. I don't know the details of your political system, why the [bleep] would I? I dont care, i dont really know my own that much. most people don't.
But any country that has aligned TV station and two parties, isn't very democratic :)
If you don't know much about it, stop trying to talk about it. You just said yourself you don't know what you're talking about. There is chances of other parties getting in. Theree's a newer party that's becoming more and more popular that's not one of the big two (Republican and Democrat). If you wish to talk down on America, know what you're talking about first.
The Tea Party, I presume? That's even worse. Now we have three parties. One in the middle, one on the right, and one on the radical bat[cabbage] insane right.
And that proves america is undemocratic how? The democrats/republicans do a pretty good job representing the majority of the population, and the tea party represents the idiotic part of the population. Explain what part of the population is not represented through the political system, or how members in the House and president aren't under the direct control of the people (president is basically determined by popular vote, bush was a rare exception).
While the political system has a huge bias towards preserving the status quo, which does result in massive inefficiencies and maintenance of incumbent political figures, neither prove it's undemocratic, but rather a necessary consequence of democracy and representation in government.
First Bold: Currently in the United States political climate neither the poor or other denominations of the working class have any representation in either congress or house of representatives. The mere fact it takes millions of dollars only goes to prove the point.
Case 1 to prove the point is what has happened in Wisconsin recently via revocation of bargaining rights(it didn't just apply to teachers you know).
Second bold: No, in no way shape or form is the president of the United States elected via popular vote. Instead, that position is decided by the electoral college which often does go with the popular vote, but the two are not dependent on each other as there are a few cases where they decided not to go with the majority vote(and one where they had the electoral and still was not elected president).
[spoiler=Electoral]In 1824 Andrew Jackson received a plurality of the popular (inasmuch as we actually have records of it at that time) and the electoral vote, but was not elected President.
In 1876, Samuel Tilden beat Rutherford B. Hayes by 3% in the popular vote (though somebody in another thread said that was mainly because he suppressed the black vote in southern states), and lost the EC by 1 vote -- Louisiana, Florida, and South Carolina were all extremely close, and the board appointed to examine them was composed of 7 Dems, 7 Reps, and 1 Independent; however, the Independent resigned and was replaced by a Republican, so the board ruled that all three states had voted for Hayes.
In 1888, Grover Cleveland was the incumbent President, and barely lost his home state and the election to Benjamin Harrison, who lost the popular vote by less than 1%.
Third Bold: What the Supreme Court of the United States did there was actually unconstitutional as the constitution expressly leaves the electing of the president to the electoral college. If in the event of a tie, in the electoral and majority, then Congress decides the final vote.
In terms of the actual topic of the thread.
In terms of actual greed, I would say that the federal government is still stuck in its' imperialist days from the 1800s and early 1900s, while on the other hand I can easily say that the majority of the common folk in the US are not as greedy as one would think; or rather as much as any other human.
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Crusty, do you not understand the base definition of abstract?
Clearly not as here is an example.
I have an object with 3 sides, therefore I shall call it a "Triangle". <---- notice what I do here to the next one.
I have an object with 3 sides, therefore I shall call it a "Square". <---- If you can't find the difference don't reply.
But the thing is, we didn't. For all intents and purposes, in our world, a triangle has three-sides. A "triangle" cannot have anything more or less than three sides. The whole point I'm trying to get at is this: It is physically impossible for something to have three sides and four sides at the same time. Now why can't this apply to other fields of knowledge?
I was working under the assumption that you could deal with implied redefining.
Here is what I did:
1. tossed out the old meaning for "tri"
2. This in turn tossed out the old definition for triangle.
3. Which then replaced the old definition of "4-sided" with "3-sided"
4. Thus I now have "square" for the new definition of "triangle".
I thought further clarification would be needed.
For any 2-dimensional object there is no possible way for there to be any single object having simultaneously 3-sides and 4-sides. However, once you hit the 3-dimensional plane this is tossed out the window.
So in 3-dimensional space we would just attach 2 triangles and 3 squares to each other. one side has just 3 points, while another side simultaneously has 4 points.
Did I mention it gets even worse above 3-dimensions?
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Crusty, do you not understand the base definition of abstract?
Clearly not as here is an example.
I have an object with 3 sides, therefore I shall call it a "Triangle". <---- notice what I do here to the next one.
I have an object with 3 sides, therefore I shall call it a "Square". <---- If you can't find the difference don't reply.
But the thing is, we didn't. For all intents and purposes, in our world, a triangle has three-sides. A "triangle" cannot have anything more or less than three sides. The whole point I'm trying to get at is this: It is physically impossible for something to have three sides and four sides at the same time. Now why can't this apply to other fields of knowledge?
I was working under the assumption that you could deal with implied redefining.
Here is what I did:
1. tossed out the old meaning for "tri"
2. This in turn tossed out the old definition for triangle.
3. Which then replaced the old definition of "4-sided" with "3-sided"
4. Thus I now have "square" for the new definition of "triangle".
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Just as there is no evidence for a god outside of any divine text(circular reasoning) or outside the mind of mankind for that matter, there also is no evidence to support a pink unicorn flying around my head.
Did I mention that the pink unicorn is just as omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent as yours is?
What do the two have in common?
One is something that has been around ages, while the other I just made off the top of my head. Does this make the former anymore true(ignoring the fallacy when one answers "Yes") just because the other is more recent?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitheism (pay close attention to the following links and see if your definition of atheist still holds true). Anti is the same as saying "In direct opposition to"
http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismatheiststheism/a/AntiTheism.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism <---- 1
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/atheism <------ 2
http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_us1223551#m_en_us1223551 <------ 3
belief
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/belief <--- I like this only half as much as this next one.
http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|en&q=belief&hl=en
http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_us1225787#m_en_us1225787
evidence
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/evidence
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evidence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evidence/ <---- I think this one is a dissertation for someone's PH.D.
Again Y_Guy, you can hold all the beliefs you want on the subject matter that Atheists are genocidal, but until you have something to assert as fact keep it in your head unless you want to be lain into. What little you have delved into(probably just excerpts in a wikipedia article and a little bit from US history books) is not enough to constitute even a basic understanding of the underlaying factors behind the fall of Soviet Russia.
If you really wish to understand communism then read "Karl Marxs'" book on the matter(he created the term afterall). It is apparent you haven't based on what has been said so far.
Capitalism is in direct opposition to Communism. In other words the anti-thesis.
By the way, Stalin was raised catholic just as Adolf Hitler was(read Mein Kampf).
Do you know what the two have in common in their ideologies, besides both being raised in such a way?
Absolutely nothing aside from the dogmatic beliefs they used, that religions in general use, to manipulate the masses. One just happened to be Atheist and the other was Catholic(Christian). Do you see a trend here?
I never said atheism causes people to become genocidal. What I do believe is that atheism allows people to become genocidal. <--- watch what I do to your argument here
I never said theism causes people to become genocidal. What I do believe is that theism allows people to become genocidal.
Any argument I make that atheism is responsible for criminal actions is no more fallacious(indeed, markedly less so) then the common atheist arguments that religion itself is evil and immoral. <---and again.
Any argument I make that theism is responsible for criminal actions is no more fallacious(indeed, markedly less so) then the common theist arguments that atheism itself is evil and immoral.
"There can be many purposes of discussion...in general I think most people, when entering into a debate, hope to persuade the opposing side that their argument is correct or at least valid. I haven't seen any attempt from anyone to clear up misconceptions on this thread."
The problem here though is that you choose to cherry-pick everything.
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Since you very clearly are a troll See_All1 this will be all you get from me.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=evolutionary+biology&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C18&as_sdtp=on
Abiogenesis - relates to the origin of life.
Evolution - Relates only to the diversity of life.
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Crusty, do you not understand the base definition of abstract?
Clearly not as here is an example.
I have an object with 3 sides, therefore I shall call it a "Triangle". <---- notice what I do here to the next one.
I have an object with 3 sides, therefore I shall call it a "Square". <---- If you can't find the difference don't reply.
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Quote
Then present some. I've presented some of evolutionary theory in this thread, so why not present whatever it is that supports your theory?
It's just hard to believe that there is going to be any sort of valid argument in these books. I didn't need to read a book to learn about evolution so why do I need to read a book to hear the arguments for god?
Then how, I wonder, did you learn about evolution? I assume you were taught, or educated yourself in some way. The reason I don't quote these arguments is because, like I've said, it takes a book length dissertation to properly do so.
There is absolutely no reason not to disclose your sources for the arguments you are presenting. Not doing doing so is tantamount, in my view at least, to their actual validity as doing so would actually help your argument if they are logically sound.
QuoteOn the contrary, many of your arguments seem to be "I just don't think it is possible...I mean, how could life be unguided?" This is an argument from personal incredulence. The basis of your argument is that the alternatives sound "too random". I think this sounds like some of your main points are argued just because you find the alternative hard to deal with.
Absolutely - I personally am incredulous that you're attempting to argue something can come from nothing. The logical assumption, given no evidence, is to assume something has a creator (as per what we see in our lives) rather then an evidence-less straying from the norm.
You are putting words in his mouth as he has clearly said that neither you nor science has the answer to the creation of the universe via this line(somewhat paraphrased) "We do yet know what happened before the big bang"
You have also committed the fallacy of "Argument to Logic"
View PostMyweponsg00d, on 16 February 2011 - 06:33 AM, said:"It's too random" is not an argument. It is a logical fallacy. And also, nobody is making the claim "Evolution was unguided." The idea is that we have no reason to think that it was guided. Nobody is saying that the evolution evidence we have should convince you that it is unguided. The evidence for evolution tells you that it happened. The lack of evidence for guided evolution is why we don't think it was guided.
You misunderstand my basic logic. Nothing can be "too random". It either is random, or it is not. There's no logical fallacy there.
If there is no God or creative force, the creation of the universe must have been completely self-initiated, with no outside influence of any kind, and thus, random. Not "too random", not "a bit random", not "realistically random", just random. Since random does not exist in our universe (I've asked you to prove me wrong in this regard which you've failed to do) it stands to reason that the universe could not have been created randomly - therefore some kind of rudimentary causality or creative force is required.
Why do you choose to think evolution was unguided, if, in your own words, there is no evidence in either direction?
He was referring to the logical fallacy of boiling the process down to only two outcomes when there could be more than 2.
Example of this fallacy is "you are either with us or against us".
You also committed the fallacy of "argument from ignorance"
Simply because your argument has not been refuted does not make it automatically true by default.
His fallacy call about incredulity still stands as you committed it again.
At this point in the thread I have counted well over 100 logical fallacy occurrences(including the trolls).
All fallacies are bolded.
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Well, you completely forgot C# + ASP.NET...
What a loss.
*runs*
I really didn't want to include them for the sole fact that, if Microsoft ever goes under, those languages will go the way of the dinosaur.
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True, I'll update it.
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It may be subjective, but those are the main languages used outside of in house languages.
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It really does depend on what part of the programming industry you plan on going into.
For web design I would first obtain a book on one of these languages: PHP, javascript, python, and ASP.net in conjunction with HTML and css(though it may go away with HTML 5).
Next I would use this site for general usage: http://www.w3schools.com/
For industry standard languages in general computing I would go with one of these languages: java, Visual Basic, in conjunction with C and C++.
Here are some sites for those specific languages:
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/index.html
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/
http://www.java2s.com/ (I have never seen such a complete tutorial before)
For research institution type languages you would need to learn these: Cobol, ADA, Fortran, and others like it.
For the video-game industry it depends on what you plan on developing on(these will be listed from least powerful to most powerful).
PHP - mostly made for server side development
javascript - meant for website development
FLASH - entirely internet based.
ruby, python and equivalents
java - only has 3 major mmos going for it at the moment (i.e. Minecraft, Runescape, Wyvern). So...little actual ground in it compared to c and c++.
c - Well established and the industry standard(consoles, handhelds, PC).
c++ - Industry standard and acts as a full extension of the c language and more. Also has the plus of having 100s of languages based off it with one example being Lua.
In other words, it really depends on the platform you want to develop for. My first recommendation though, is that whatever platform you want to develop for get the books on the language as they will have more concrete examples than the online sites. One other thing is to become a member of a dedicated programming forum.
Windows platform specific:
C#
Examples include:
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Thanks. This will be very useful when I need to do something like this again.
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I have this clock that I am making and was wondering if it was possible for java to randomly access any file, and open, that the user types in the pathing for. I am using this for the alarm portion of the clock so that an user can easily make a folder within one folder and then have the program open any music file located within it when the alarm goes off.
example:
Folder path was c:\desktop\blah
- Desktop - blah - hig - file - file - fri - file - file - die - file - file
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Like the title description says, I am trying to get a Kodak ESP 3250 to center any page printed, but am currently having trouble finding threads with the same problem. A more annoying problem is that it has been cutting off some of the prints on the right-side. This is just regular printing and not photos.
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Um....By beginning do you mean your first month or have you been at this for awhile. Also, is this your first programming language?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oPhiAtLPUc&feature=sub&videos=tjMHuo8vpZQ
I thought this might be useful for the thread.
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'Jagex trying to make other companies look bad so people forget about how they screw up them selfs all the time.
Clever Jagex, clever.
EA and activision aren't exactly known for stellar mmo's. or even online games for that matter. still waiting for someone to muster up the balls to tell of Blizzard
Uhm... EA = The Old Republic
Activision = World of Warcraft
just because blizzard is a part of activision doesn't mean activision influences them. blizzard does their own developing and publishing for their games.
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16458
Just thought you would like to know.
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#include<iostream> #include<string> using namespace::std; class NonIntegerException : public runtime_error { private: string nonIntegerData; public: NonIntegerException(string); string getNonIntegerData(); }; NonIntegerException::NonIntegerException(string s) : runtime_error("Non-integer data") { nonIntegerData = s; } string NonIntegerException::getNonIntegerData() { return nonIntegerData; } int getInt(string prompt) { int integer; string badData; cout << prompt; if(!(cin >> integer)) { cin.clear(); cin >> badData; [b]NonIntegerException e(badData); throw e;[/b] } return integer; } int main() { int age; try { age = getInt("Enter your age "); } catch(NonIntegerException) { cout <<[b] e.what()[/b] << endl; cout << "The entered value was " <<[b] e.getNonIntegerData();[/b] cout << "Age is being set to 0" << endl; age = 0; } return 0; }The problem areas are bolded and also here are the errors that are popping up:
1>.\Customexception.cpp(59) : error C2065: 'e' : undeclared identifier
1>.\Customexception.cpp(59) : error C2228: left of '.what' must have class/struct/union
1> type is ''unknown-type''
1>.\Customexception.cpp(60) : error C2228: left of '.getNonIntegerData' must have class/struct/union
1> type is ''unknown-type''
1>Build log was saved at "file://c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\Customexception\Customexception\Debug\BuildLog.htm"
1>Customexception - 3 error(s), 0 warning(s)
The thing is here, I know that e is defined.
Nevermind, Figured out that the problem was that I left out the "e" in the catch parentheses.
The small stuff always throws you for a loop......
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I wasn't aware of the deposit box there, I have been gone for 5 months, and thought this had finally made gathering them viable that way.
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With the introduction of dungeoneering, Free-to-play has gained one additional free teleport in addition to the one from the explorers' ring. My question is this, has fishing for swordfish/tuna and lobster now become a viable option for exp?
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Yeah, it seems to be a classpath problem. Did you happen to install textpad first and then the JDK, because if you did textpad doesn't detect it automatically, but if you didn't then disregard this and use this to set it.
Shortcut Shutdowns :wall:
in Tech and Computers
Posted
Did you forget the double quotes around the message? (visual basic requires strings to have double quotes around them.)