Slashdot Mirror

Nooo...it was so that you didn't raise others offspring instead of your own, thus ensuring the survival of your DNA. this is why many creatures actually have penises designed to remove the sperm of potential rivals, thus ensuring that THEY get to reproduce.

While I agree that religion has caused lots of BS in this world monogamy isn't one of them. It is simply natural selection to try to keep your potential source of replication out of the hands of rivals.

Now as for TFA? Considering the huge amount of crap people put on their FB and Twitter pages? frankly it wouldn't surprise me if people would be happy to have that info shred. hell they share everything else so much its the source of jokes so why not this too? I do predict though that this company will be sued out of business by the first one caught cheating, after all this is America and we sue anybody for anything here. Its the American way!

no, no, no! this is the canonical reference: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/4/23/ :)

Taking a dump is a normal human function too. I'm not sure that I'd like people to be able to google my every bowel movement.

Some might disagree.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/11/25/

HAY GUYZ, its Alex again, the full retard that even after being given example after example after example of why retailers like me refuse to carry his product, or how even Torvalds the great says Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans! written in nice little words small enough for his little mind to understand all he can do is clutch his Tux blankie and go "Waah! He won't drink the kooliad! Waaah, he won't accept fucked up drivers and give them to his customers! Waahhh he must part of the global conspiracy!

.

But what can you expect from a koolaid drinking freetard, that has completely accepted the "shit sandwich" design, as in "Here is a shit sandwich and since its free you have NO RIGHT to complain about the smell! Or the taste! Errr..or the fact that its a shit sandwich!" This is why there is a whole website dedicated To his bullshit and excuses and those like them. He reminds me of a small child that sticks his fingers in his ears and goes "La la la I can't hear you" as everytime this little Lintard troll shows up following me I post link after link proving my point and ALL he can say is that I must secretly be getting giant checks from MSFT. This is why even Penny Arcade writes cartoons about him and his pals.

Want to know why retailers won't carry your product, even though it is "free" and would save us licensing fees? Feel free to look at the above links, or Lintards like Alex who REALLY doesn't help your case any with their "La la la everything works and ur a shill!" kiddie bullshit. No go compile something sonny the men are trying to talk here

Hey look everybody it is Alex a KNOWN DOUCHEBAG! See how easy that is to make insults, especially when one has NO DEFENSE to what is being written? I love how the average Linux users acts like a 8 year old going "Nigger faggot" to everyone that doesn't kiss his ass, only instead of nigger and faggot it is shill and astroturfer.

For your info Mr Douche, I'm your worst fucking nightmare...I'm a retailer. I actually have REAL WORLD CUSTOMERS not some kids in their basements trying to stick it to "teh man". I have people that COUNT on their machines to...oh what is the word?....oh yeah ACTUALLY WORK not shit themselves and die because torvalds decided to Goatse the kernel again.

So you go wrap yourself in your little Tux blankie and pretend it is all just a conspiracy, Pretend that all those retailers in the entire USA don't avoid your crap because...well its driver model is crap...no it must be a secret cabal involving Bill Gates and the Illuminati. oh and don't forget to write M$ so you can be just like this guy which is who you sound like.

Run along pup, the grown ups have real work to do. Hey why don't you go compile something or send your pics of your "leet Linux desktop yo!" to KDELook and let the real men talk, okay junior?

Absolutely. Even Penny arcade agrees
from the article on PA:

Like the electronic smash and grab at Sony, I think the endgame here is better security at the places we trust with our data. It’s been an education for me, to be sure: custom passwords everywhere, now, 2-step where available, and when I need a new password I let my daughter go fucking crazy nuts on the keyboard. And then I say who’s my little hash function? Who is it? She knows who.

Focusing on harming lulzsec is really ignoring that people are really fucking stupid with passwords. Why is government so pissed off? Because they are the worst offenders outside of specific very technical groups.

The thing I've always liked about a monthly/quarterly/yearly subscription model, is that at least the costs are known, and fixed, up front. I always figure "Free To Play" is an attempt to try to nickle-and-dime me for far more money than I'd pay in the subs model. With "micro-transactions", they can try to milk you for more money. Of course you don't *have* to pay it; hopefully most people have good impulse control, and additionally have some sense of whether they're being scammed.

I think Penny Arcade recently ran a pretty good strip exploring this issue:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/6/10/

I think the biggest barrier for entry for women gamers isn't the games themselves, but the gaming community. We all know of The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, but women get presented an even uglier side of online gaming. This site has some good examples: http://fatuglyorslutty.com/

It seems the moment a female gamer reveals her gender she's automatically the target of the most vile and despicable comments the online community has to offer. Granted, most gamers are thick skinned and can brush this stuff off. But it makes me wonder how many women have tried playing a game, had an experience similar to the ones at the site above, and gave up entirely. It would be nice if the online community were a little friendlier. We would all have more fun that way, regardless of gender.

...It opens complex M$ Office documents and

This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me.

Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.

Well, that's why it's called "free to play".

Nobody forces you to pay for it. Unlike WoW or EVE, I can create a LotR:O account for free. And play all I want, day after day after day. Nobody is going to force me to pay for anything.

But there are some nice things you get if you pay money. And, of course, the things are nice enough to make you want to pay for them. That's the whole idea.

And another PA one

This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me.

Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.

League of Legends is one of the worst examples out there. I have played the shit out of this game without paying a single penny. The benefits of paying for the game and at the store are almost exclusively aesthetic and provide no advantage whatsoever when fighting against a skilled player. Practically all of the game content (apart from champion skins) can be unlocked by playing the game normally.

Gotta give Riot Games some credit for giving the F2P users an equal experience. And if you really love the game, you'll end up spending money on it anyway.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/5/11/

just read this last night and fished it out of history.

This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me. Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.

My strategy to work around this problem is simple and (I think) effective:
Don't buy the extra stuff that costs money.

They're only more expensive than an upfront retail product if you actually spend that much money on them - the choice is yours.

This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me.

Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.

Some F2P games like LOTR I completely agree with you. The -only- thing that you can buy with real money in League of Legends that you can't buy with points earned from playing is: new skins. So paying customers and non-paying customers are on the exact same level in terms of what they can accomplish.

This Penny Arcade strip pretty much sums it up for me.

Mainly because it's simply not free, yes you can enjoy the games to a certain extent without paying a penny, but they are designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible and in the long term are far more expensive than purchasing a retail product upfront.

"hypocrite oath"

I thought that was the right to be free to change one's beliefs whenever it's convenient: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/01/10/

This is as relevant now as it was then...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/30/

They want their cake, and they want to sell you the cake and then they want to eat *both* cakes!

Haven't you heard of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory? Railing against it is futile, I think -- better just to mod the fuckwad to oblivion and move on with your life.

You reminded me of a penny arcade comic.

Lunch

I dunno how this one hasn't been posted yet.

Rob

And this boys and girls is a PERFECT example of Greater Internet Theory and why one shouldn't allow ACs. At the very least make them spend the whole 2 minutes to make an account like everyone else as you'd be surprised how short of an attention span and how great the need for instant gratification is in the average troll.

Now as for Win 8 from what I've read the "WinPhone" style interface will NOT be the default UNLESS the device is touch enabled, such as tablets and convertibles. Is your PC touch enabled? No? Then who bloody cares about the touch screen. Hell even if you DO have a touch enabled devices it is a single checkbox away from having the standard Win 7 interface, just as you can go back to a classic style that looks as fugly and gray as Win98.

Now as for Macs? They're toast, sorry fanboys. Steve is notorious for liking small lines with VERY few devices, and it wouldn't be the first time he has killed a line while it was still profitable. After all IIRC the Newton was actually selling decently if not spectacularly when old Steve pulled the plug. The simple fact is the margins on iOS are huge, the margins on Mac? Not so much.

If you look back at the history of Apple and Jobs (history repeats you know) you'll see that Jobs never really was "general purpose" guy, that was Woz. Jobs like to carve out niches and OWN them, even when he was doing computers at NeXT he was aiming for specific niches such as college R&D. With Mac he doesn't really control the platform, after all anybody can just install software without needing the app store, he has limited control over the direction of the hardware since Intel isn't gonna bend over backwards to design chips for Jobs when the PC market is so much larger, for a good example look at how the BS with Nvidia getting fucked caused Steve to have to stick with older chips for WAAAY longer than he would have liked because the Intel IGP is shit, and with the iOS platform he controls it all, from the chip design to what software goes on it.

Whether you like it or not (I personally like having more control and ability to fiddle, but I can see how many would like the whole "it just works never fiddle with anything" route) Steve has always been about control, going all the way to that Apple that you had to drop to reseat the chips because Steve didn't like the sound of fans (Apple III?) and thanks to ARM Steve has complete control of the whole smash, top to bottom and everything in between. So my guess is you'll see a slow phase out of the Mac line, starting with the low end consumer models and working their way up. Their ass raping prices on the Mac Pro lines means I doubt they are moving many on that front anyway, so that line will probably just be quietly killed.

Like it or not Apple isn't really a computer company anymore, they are a consumer device manufacturer. They make several orders of magnitude more on the iPod and iPad lines than they EVER did on Mac and while the iOS devices have been selling like mad and has all the buzz last numbers I saw had OSX devices growing at a much smaller rate. Steve has never been about small, when it comes to desire for control and dominance of a market he could teach old Billy a thing or two, and with his "less is more" policy I just don't see OSX fitting into his long term "ruling the consumer market the way Windows rules the desktop" plans.

I was thinking about this one: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/11/28/

PA sure loves them some controller jokes.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/03/25/

obligatory penny-arcade? http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/4/18/

For just one low payment of $35 (Canadians add $10 S&H) you can get this SPECIAL flashlight (retail value 54.95!!) that can, uh... "run up and down mathematical equations". If you program a chip. Which you could probably do with any flashlight if you know how to do that. I kinda feel bad for all the exploited nerds funding this...

Oblig. Penny Arcade on Kickstarter

Riiiight, and if the protocol was completely open like SIP we wouldn't have the problems with Robodialers like SIP because? The problem with mass communication protocols is there are plenty of assholes in legal nowherelands that can and WILL use anything and everything they can get their slimy hands on to hack, harass, spam, and generally act like giant fucking douchebags without regards to anyone but themselves.

One should never forget the universal truth that is Gabriel's Greater Internet Theory and then add in the ones that would be acting like douchebags because they could make money doing so ON TOP of the ones just being dicks for the sheer fun of being a fucktwit? It would be a damned mess and you KNOW this. The reason why everyone uses Skype is that it "just works" without having to worry about your video chat window suddenly popping up with someone's junk in it or getting called every two seconds from some automated voice trying to sell you herbal Viagra. While I think FOSS is fine in some places, in others it would be a BAD idea, and I'd say this here is one of the latter.

Google went about social networking all wrong. With Buzz, the idea is to build a network of contacts, and post updates to them. As Facebook has shown us, social networking is really all about recommending "friends" you've never met, showing how many thousand people think they might know you from somewhere, and bombarding users with trivial accomplishments in thoughtless games.

Social networking isn't about being social. It's about filling bars.

Wow, I'm really liking this move, and I think it makes sense. Still, quite admirable that they don't leave the DRM on there for longer.
The first few weeks is when a game is most at risk of being pirated. Nonetheless, this game is already on several torrent sites, so it's not as if the DRM worked in the first place.

Anyhows, this is sortof obligatory: Penny Arcade's view on The Witcher :-D

My guess is they haven't figured out how to include ads into the translation services. It may have led to some interesting translations if they did.

A whole new perspective on the world!

Damn Whiners they could have it worse, just like this guy! http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/8/11/

Oblig Penny Arcade:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/5/2/

In other horse related Duke Nukem news ...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/9/8/wager/

And here I was always told that cell phones, laptop computers and personal electronics would crash the plane, if used in JUST the wrong, mysterious manner.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/10/30/

The person to whom you were responding was speaking of fundamental issues in Ubuntu's update cycle. Ubuntu is targeted at regular users. Therefore, issues with Ubuntu must be addressed in a manner that accommodates the needs of regular users, and thus your suggestions are inappropriate remedies; moreover they are unnecessarily labour-intensive, which is antithetical to user experience programming?

Or, as Gabe and Tycho so neatly summarise: sometimes you need to punch the Internet

Are afraid little man? can't actually answer so all you can do is try to deflect? How fucking sad. And you expect your broke ass shit to be compared to quality? BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA...damn man, that is some funny shit! That is why all the major retailers avoid your shit like the black death, the 'quality" scares them, HA HA HA HA HA!

So lets see you put your ass with your mouth is buddy, step up! Remove ALL access to the CLI for just 6 months I DARE YOU.. but of course you won't, you know why? Because LINUX IS BROKE ASS SHIT that shits itself and dies without CLI and YOU KNOW IT! Just admit it, you know this is true! Hell just look up "Broke drivers" or any variation thereof on Ubuntu, the "Linux for humans" forum. I did recently and quit counting at over 14 THOUSAND hits! Now for an OS that is less than 1/4 of 1 percent, which IIRC is what the Ubuntu numbers are, it is fucking pathetic! Your entire driver model is a piss poor joke!

But you stick your head in the sand little man, you pretend it is all a global conspiracy by the evil M$ to keep your "quality" away from the masses when in reality the masses have spoken in a loud single voice and said "DO NOT WANT to your broke ass driver clusterfuck and CLI jerking off. Oh and BTW here's YOUR sign dumbass please enjoy how we laugh at your "quality". Yeah about as much quality as a taco fart by one of the unwashed at your LUG maybe.

Yaoi? I think you're really going to like it.

Has to be linked at some point I guess.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/4/11/

Ehh, hyperlinks are good . . . Sakuracon

And parents have also been predators. Your point?

You underestimate the Internet, and how it easily allows bad people from all over the world to do something. There's no web police, after all. That's why we have tons of spam to deal with, and botnets.

Remember: normal person + anonimity + audience = total fuckwad (source: Penny Arcade).

I do! He is Google's Chief Internet Evangelist for Google and gasp! surprise! he doesn't like Google's competition. I Mean seriously, what are the odds? I mean he and the company that pays him big fat checks actually agree! Of course the fact he cooked up a good idea 40 years ago makes him an expert on competition now, just as Senator McSellout and the rest of congress keep passing those *.A.A written laws because they really have the people's interests at heart and those big fat bribes....err...campaign contributions, are just a lovely coincidence!

C'mon dude, next you're gonna try to sell us that Ballmer is an expert on Linux code and we should take his word on Linux infringement because the guy has no reason to bullshit, right?

The reason the whole antitrust bullshit don't matter is VERY simple, okay? MSFT rules the desktop and most likely always will but the world isn't just desktops anymore just as once upon a time the world revolved around the IBM mainframe and while IBM still owns the mainframe market (hell are there even any other mainframe builder left?) that market is just a small slice to a MUCH bigger pie.

So frankly I'm glad its about to be over, maybe then MSFT can start bundling an AV instead of every OEM coming with trialware crap. Hell even in my little shop in the middle of nowhere the hot thing that everyone is asking about ain't laptops or desktops, but those CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) Cruz Micro 4Gb pads I just started picking up. They're cheap, have easier to read screens than a phone, simple to use, sure they ain't setting speed records but for web surfing they are fine and most importantly they are fun and a hell of a lot easier to carry around than a netbook.

MSFT missed the boat, the fat lady is down the street looking up where to get a sandwich or her new pad. Acting like they are the big bad is like saying the market is controlled by IBM. Hey maybe this means Linux guys can stop writing "M$" and acting like it is 1998? ...Naaah

Then there's the other extreme, I worked in a company where nobody gave a shit when I came or went, as long as I don't wear a shirt and a tie 'cause nobody takes a techie serious in a suit. I guess it was the first and only time I was asked to change my attire TO ThinkGeek t-shirts and jeans. There was no project management reports, no time schedule, no 2-hour-meetings, nothing that could remotely record progress on projects.

Organization levels were, oddly, also higher in this company. Don't ask me why, but we accomplished feats that I'd deem impossible in the company I work for now.

Holy shit, you worked for Penny Arcade Inc?

I'm only half kidding. For those that haven't seen it, Penny Arcade: The Series on PATV is a real eye-opener on how ruthlessly efficient and motivated a company can be even in an incredibly open and informal environment.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/

A tracphone is $20, has no info about you, you can even shitcan it afterward if you like. Again it isn't like someone at MSFT is going "OMFG He is calling on a Tracphone! He must be like OBL's nephew or something!".

The guys getting paid to man the phones frankly don't give a shit, all the care about is the key. If you want to be paranoid just use a Tracphone and chunk it afterward, but I'm willing to bet my last dollar the only "logging" they do on those minimum wage help lines is the classic "this call may be monitored for quality assurance" to make sure the dude at the desk ain't making dirty comments or hitting on the females.

Believe me as I had to set up the PCs for one of those help desks once. Frankly those places only care about metrics, how many customers you can run through the system, and how professional the workers are acting. That is why nearly every helpdesk jockey will say "thanks for calling have a nice day" because they know they get dinged if they don't and they check the call for quality assurance.

But if you truly believe the minimum wage jockey at MSFT giving you the activation could is secretly triangulating you then may I say this is for you and you might want to contact RMS to find out where he got that uber rare Loongson netbook that he says is the only "free" system on the planet, because you may be a loonie.

Not to mention it has been...what? 11 years now? If there were gonna do something they would have done it when Vista was stinkin up the joint. It just goes to prove that this stereotype is sadly all too true when it comes to many in the community.

> that would enable us to do all the things we want to do on the web in a way that preserves our privacy.

In that person X wants to track you while preserving his privacy, and you want to "not be tracked" while preserving YOUR privacy, I see a conflict inherent in your statement that can only be resolved by

a) defining a "them" as different from "us"
b) limiting "all the things we want to do"
or c) redefining "privacy"

Note that (a) fails immediately: if you can distinguish "us" from "them", privacy has not been preserved.

NOT implementing (b) has negative social results.

That doesn't leave a lot left, to be honest.

I thought he was referring to the obligatory Penny Arcade, iChoke-U: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/8/1/

It wasn't until very recently that I encountered the Bash.org quote you mentioned. I'm curious which predates which, but I'm guessing it's the IRC quote rather than the comic.