If you don't want another dictatorship then don't vote for another dictator. If neo-nazis would have "eaten western germany for breakfast" then that obviously means a majority of your population wanted nazi leaders, and that your government defends its power against the direct will of the people. How is that protecting democracy?
Because this is about rooting out the underlying mindset. You cannot have such parties have any say in policy. Once such a party gains publicity, it continues to do so, possibly gathering more support. Hitler's Nazi party started out very small, and quickly gained influence thanks to Hitler who was viewed as a talented speaker. One of the Nazi guys was quoted as saying "My, does that guy have a big mouth!" even before they were popular. From then on, with much bullying, the party gained support and was elected properly in 1932. Hence the sentiment We Cannot Let This Happen Again. Every country can turn into a dictatorship pretty quickly if people are unhappy (the Financial Crisis of 1929 ff. being the reason at that time). That's why, I as a German, am all for these laws, and I wouldn't want it any other way.
The message at wikipedia.de explictly states "we're not allowed to link to de.wikipedia.org", hence anyone with half a brain can simply type the other address into the browser.
I've seen at least 3 distinct translated copies of the Qu'ran, despite the book says there must be only one Qu'ran text. So it might be possible there are multiple versions of it, some with a message of love, and others with a message of hate. The one at Submission.org appears quite positive, for instance. Two other copies I've seen were much different.
So, anyhow, I guess, anyone who preaches hate is under surveillance in Germany, and I hope they manage to lift that threat from us. I've seen as many positive Muslims as negative ones, and I guess it's our obligation as Christians to do something about it. After all, the Roman Catholic Church was full of hate-mongering bastards for centuries, and this need not happen all over again with Muslims.
He wants to hire a 6th. He'll never hire someone whom he dislikes because of race, so why not allow him to write that down?
Because that would be very popular among his racist buddies, and then, bam! Nazi Germany once more.
In fact, in the former GDR regions, companies of racists do already exist, and they spread like wildfire in some regions. This must be stopped as soon as possible. But I guess, they are already under surveillance by the Constitution Protection. We don't want a second Nazi Germany. And you neither, I guess.
These laws are necessary. Had they not existed after WWII, the Commies or the Nazis would've eaten Western Germany for breakfast.
Besides, the Axis Powers have had a say in the design of Basic Law (Grundgesetz).
Nonetheless, without those laws, we would've seen both right-wing and left-wing extremists in parliament. Thankfully, we were spared, thanks to the laws.
Those parties should realize that protecting democracy is a noble goal. We do not want any dictatorship ever again. We had enough of that, I guess.
Associating islam, an ideology stating DIRECTLY that "there must always be war" with war, that will get those laws invoked.
It's because not all Muslims are supportive of war, and they'll be the first to feel offended when hearing something like that.
An ideology with hate spewing mosques everywhere, the ideology of the most hate filled and intolerant places on this earth, complaining about that, that will get "anti-hate" laws invoked.
You should do some research into how many Muslim preachers have been imprisoned for inciting hatred against other people, and how many are under surveillance by the Constitution Protection.
Saying some unpopular group should get killed, like saying Americans should get slaughtered in Iraq, and another few 9/11's should happen, will be protected as "free speech" until death.
That would also constitute incitement of hatred.
BTW, I live in Germany and have never heard anyone saying something like that.
The USA is still immensely popular in Germany.
Indeed, that's what they said about transistors. Even in the early 80ies, we learnt in school that tubes were the non plus ultra and that transistors had an uncertain future!! A few years later, tube production was stopped everywhere.
I purchased and installed the two packages right away, without blinking an eyelid.:-) FINALLY this is possible (I have another license for Fluendo codecs on Fedora, BTW; for Fedora, they've been available since last year). And PowerDVD just rocks!! Crystal clear and smooth video, definitely worth every cent! (and nice user interface too!) I've been waiting for this for years!!:-) Finally, another reason less to use Windows!:-D
I certainly will never purchase an XBox 360. I'd take it if it were free, because then investing all that money in games wouldn't look all that bad. But Microsoft would then better fix my free XBox 360 if it were broken, free of charge, of course.
What percentage of people in the world do you think even know what a downloadable ISO is? It seems that most people who know what it is and would know how to use it are the same people who probably grabbed a pirated version online already anyway. And then complained that they don't like it.
There are power users like me who paid good money for a license only to find out that every change to the hardware brings you closer to phone-only activation. Say, your mainboard died and you purchase a new one, and in good faith re-activate Windows, and after a few days it dies again, and you get a new mainboard and re-activate Windows on that, and then after a few weeks, a hard disk dies and then you install a new one, re-install Windows and suddenly have to wrestle with the people at Microsoft's phone activation service.
That did not only happen with Vista, it happened with XP as well. Both OSes are incredibly bad, I get rashes just by thinking about them, and I'm a software developer!! I wonder how these OSes passed QA in the first place. Microsoft shouldn't charge anything for Windows, at least for the entry level versions. Unix systems (like Linux) are worlds away, far away in another universe, unreachable for Microsoft. Clarity and elegance in an operating system is just as important as utility, ruggedness, and power, of which Windows possesses nothing.
Or the "middlers" declare the genius a heretic and have him marginalized or killed.
In fact, not being recognized as a genius is the problem of most of such people (and there are far more geniuses around than people think). If they don't grow up in the right environment, people will not comprehend their talent and therefore not use it. Even if someone has a personality that gives rashes to everyone around, they should be put into an envrionment that can support their ideas. We're still in the Dark Ages. We slow down our own progress artificially. Progress could be up to a hundred times faster.
Once in a while a genius will do something that no number of middlers could ever have accomplished...which is nice...but once the genius has done it, the rest of us can follow suit. So, while we may need the occasional genius, we really don't need very many of them...whereas large numbers of middlers are the foundation of stable technological progress.
How do you define "genius" and "middler"? Most people have facets of genius in them, in one way or the other. Having these facets recognized is quite a different matter... to just brush all people over the same comb is wrong, IMO. Brilliance and genius is everywhere you look. And even if you're a true and complete genius, if there's no-one to follow you, what use is it? This kid is really lucky for growing up in the right environment in which his ideas are fostered, supported and taken advantage of. Other people are not that lucky.
Portal isn't the only non-violent game, there are plenty of adventure and puzzle games etc.; most of the action adventures, however, involve some kind of violence (and adventure games even). That's so boring! Beat up or kill X, then beat up or kill Y, rinse and repeat. Same old shit around the clock. I've played computer games for 25 years, and nothing new under the sun. We have still all the same game concepts as in the 1980ies. Very little experimentation.
Why put so much violence in a game in the first place? There's an abundance of FPS out there. Wouldn't it be better to come up with some smart and witty game concepts?
I think it might just be the beginning of a $300,000,000 story arc,
Man, don't remind me of that, what a waste of money! It would've been better invested in Windows development, or generally, in software (or other) development.
many of whom might not be so rabid anti-ms weenies.
My weenie went limp when I saw that ad...
My primary gripe with Windows as a user is that Vista always dies when you try doing something useful with it (like multi-booting with various types of UNIX). God, they fucked even that up.
My gripe with it as a software developer is that the sheer number and complexity of its APIs has increased so much that it's impossible to be a complete programming expert for Windows anymore. Most people either do a bit of Win32 or.NET, but seeing the big picture of Windows programming has become increasingly difficult in the past decades.
Fuck that, I'm using UNIX-type systems only now, whenever possible, they're clean, clear and logical compared to Windows, and in some aspects far easier to program. Especially when it comes to speed.
The GNU project should launch an ad about GNU/Linux: You see something like a city and black things are flitting about almost too fast to see them. Nothing else happens. Then, the ground quakes, and a giant dinosaur slowly stomps into the scene, observing it. Then the view starts to slow down, and you recognize that all the black things flitting about were actually Tuxes, the Linux mascot. And then the dinosaur says with a slow voice: "Damn, I didn't think they would be so fast!"
I couldn't stop laughing after seeing that commercial!! Bill Gates in a circus (as if to say "it's all a big show, you know, being rich and famous is mainly useful for the press"), and if we want something nice and chewy, the answer is Bill Gates' ass! And Windows!
(BTW, perhaps that meant to say "kiss my ass, I'm not working for Microsoft anymore, I spend my time shopping now.")
I'll give Gates a couple of smart points for doing that ad, but it certainly won't make me buy Windows now... only a flawless, well-designed OS can. I hope I'll live to see that. Aah, a nice delicious, bug-free Windows... the stuff of dreams...
They'll see the truth when some aliens come along, say, "ooo, nice planet" and destroy mankind within a couple of microseconds.;-)
Who knows, perhaps they've already snatched us off of Earth and put us into one of their computer simulations?;-)
Wow!! That's a fairly awesome collection of game ideas!:-)... Anyhow, any game that spans multiple scenarios would be very interesting. That's the stuff that made games like StarCraft popular: Three races with different technology, history, ideology and so on. So, it isn't that far fetched. Until algorithmically generated worlds become possible (as in Spore or Infinity, just more complex), having more than a handful of races is not really feasible, unless you can get hundreds of designers together. I've been working on a framework for algorithmically generated games that could be used to generate planets with complete cities (including all implications, like buildings, languages, writing systems, libraries of books containing generated content, technologies, evolutionary deviances, and so on) on the fly while navigating through them (as was partially implemented in Infinity). My approach was titled "The Infinite Game", perhaps I'll get to implement it someday. Generating meshes from code proved to be a stumbling stone. Spatial Delauney Triangularization from a couple of points would be ideal, but possible consumes too much CPU power. Perhaps I'll have a look at Infinity someday and see if I can help out with generating cities etc.
Yup, open-sourcing is the way to go. The FOSS world is a big playground of great ideas, and new things have a bigger chance there than with the establishment. If an open-source game becomes popular, and many people use it, the people who made it are more likely to get attention.
Everyone has an idea for a game. Here's an example. It just doesn't work like that.
That guy's idea is fairly awesome; however, it's not implementable. To make that many characters, places, and sceneries would take eons. Even algorithmically generated meshes would probably not work, unless someone can come up with an algorithm to generate clothing, weapons, styles etc. of every eon.
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If you don't want another dictatorship then don't vote for another dictator. If neo-nazis would have "eaten western germany for breakfast" then that obviously means a majority of your population wanted nazi leaders, and that your government defends its power against the direct will of the people. How is that protecting democracy?
Because this is about rooting out the underlying mindset. You cannot have such parties have any say in policy. Once such a party gains publicity, it continues to do so, possibly gathering more support. Hitler's Nazi party started out very small, and quickly gained influence thanks to Hitler who was viewed as a talented speaker. One of the Nazi guys was quoted as saying "My, does that guy have a big mouth!" even before they were popular. From then on, with much bullying, the party gained support and was elected properly in 1932. Hence the sentiment We Cannot Let This Happen Again. Every country can turn into a dictatorship pretty quickly if people are unhappy (the Financial Crisis of 1929 ff. being the reason at that time). That's why, I as a German, am all for these laws, and I wouldn't want it any other way.
The hippies are winning :)
Read up on history, man. The hippies were those that brought you pornography and freedom of sexuality in the first place.
The message at wikipedia.de explictly states "we're not allowed to link to de.wikipedia.org", hence anyone with half a brain can simply type the other address into the browser.
I've seen at least 3 distinct translated copies of the Qu'ran, despite the book says there must be only one Qu'ran text. So it might be possible there are multiple versions of it, some with a message of love, and others with a message of hate. The one at Submission.org appears quite positive, for instance. Two other copies I've seen were much different. So, anyhow, I guess, anyone who preaches hate is under surveillance in Germany, and I hope they manage to lift that threat from us. I've seen as many positive Muslims as negative ones, and I guess it's our obligation as Christians to do something about it. After all, the Roman Catholic Church was full of hate-mongering bastards for centuries, and this need not happen all over again with Muslims.
He wants to hire a 6th. He'll never hire someone whom he dislikes because of race, so why not allow him to write that down?
Because that would be very popular among his racist buddies, and then, bam! Nazi Germany once more. In fact, in the former GDR regions, companies of racists do already exist, and they spread like wildfire in some regions. This must be stopped as soon as possible. But I guess, they are already under surveillance by the Constitution Protection. We don't want a second Nazi Germany. And you neither, I guess.
I don't think anyone's really surprised that this came out of Germany. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Germany#Freedom_of_Speech It's scary really. I said only a few days ago that I would never visit or stop over in Germany.
These laws are necessary. Had they not existed after WWII, the Commies or the Nazis would've eaten Western Germany for breakfast. Besides, the Axis Powers have had a say in the design of Basic Law (Grundgesetz). Nonetheless, without those laws, we would've seen both right-wing and left-wing extremists in parliament. Thankfully, we were spared, thanks to the laws. Those parties should realize that protecting democracy is a noble goal. We do not want any dictatorship ever again. We had enough of that, I guess.
Associating islam, an ideology stating DIRECTLY that "there must always be war" with war, that will get those laws invoked.
It's because not all Muslims are supportive of war, and they'll be the first to feel offended when hearing something like that.
An ideology with hate spewing mosques everywhere, the ideology of the most hate filled and intolerant places on this earth, complaining about that, that will get "anti-hate" laws invoked.
You should do some research into how many Muslim preachers have been imprisoned for inciting hatred against other people, and how many are under surveillance by the Constitution Protection.
Saying some unpopular group should get killed, like saying Americans should get slaughtered in Iraq, and another few 9/11's should happen, will be protected as "free speech" until death.
That would also constitute incitement of hatred. BTW, I live in Germany and have never heard anyone saying something like that. The USA is still immensely popular in Germany.
Indeed, that's what they said about transistors. Even in the early 80ies, we learnt in school that tubes were the non plus ultra and that transistors had an uncertain future!! A few years later, tube production was stopped everywhere.
I purchased and installed the two packages right away, without blinking an eyelid. :-) FINALLY this is possible (I have another license for Fluendo codecs on Fedora, BTW; for Fedora, they've been available since last year). And PowerDVD just rocks!! Crystal clear and smooth video, definitely worth every cent! (and nice user interface too!) I've been waiting for this for years!! :-) Finally, another reason less to use Windows! :-D
I certainly will never purchase an XBox 360. I'd take it if it were free, because then investing all that money in games wouldn't look all that bad. But Microsoft would then better fix my free XBox 360 if it were broken, free of charge, of course.
What percentage of people in the world do you think even know what a downloadable ISO is? It seems that most people who know what it is and would know how to use it are the same people who probably grabbed a pirated version online already anyway. And then complained that they don't like it.
There are power users like me who paid good money for a license only to find out that every change to the hardware brings you closer to phone-only activation. Say, your mainboard died and you purchase a new one, and in good faith re-activate Windows, and after a few days it dies again, and you get a new mainboard and re-activate Windows on that, and then after a few weeks, a hard disk dies and then you install a new one, re-install Windows and suddenly have to wrestle with the people at Microsoft's phone activation service.
That did not only happen with Vista, it happened with XP as well. Both OSes are incredibly bad, I get rashes just by thinking about them, and I'm a software developer!! I wonder how these OSes passed QA in the first place. Microsoft shouldn't charge anything for Windows, at least for the entry level versions. Unix systems (like Linux) are worlds away, far away in another universe, unreachable for Microsoft. Clarity and elegance in an operating system is just as important as utility, ruggedness, and power, of which Windows possesses nothing.
Or the "middlers" declare the genius a heretic and have him marginalized or killed.
In fact, not being recognized as a genius is the problem of most of such people (and there are far more geniuses around than people think). If they don't grow up in the right environment, people will not comprehend their talent and therefore not use it. Even if someone has a personality that gives rashes to everyone around, they should be put into an envrionment that can support their ideas. We're still in the Dark Ages. We slow down our own progress artificially. Progress could be up to a hundred times faster.
Once in a while a genius will do something that no number of middlers could ever have accomplished...which is nice...but once the genius has done it, the rest of us can follow suit. So, while we may need the occasional genius, we really don't need very many of them...whereas large numbers of middlers are the foundation of stable technological progress.
How do you define "genius" and "middler"? Most people have facets of genius in them, in one way or the other. Having these facets recognized is quite a different matter ... to just brush all people over the same comb is wrong, IMO. Brilliance and genius is everywhere you look. And even if you're a true and complete genius, if there's no-one to follow you, what use is it? This kid is really lucky for growing up in the right environment in which his ideas are fostered, supported and taken advantage of. Other people are not that lucky.
Duh, my parents never helped me with my homework!!
Portal isn't the only non-violent game, there are plenty of adventure and puzzle games etc.; most of the action adventures, however, involve some kind of violence (and adventure games even). That's so boring! Beat up or kill X, then beat up or kill Y, rinse and repeat. Same old shit around the clock. I've played computer games for 25 years, and nothing new under the sun. We have still all the same game concepts as in the 1980ies. Very little experimentation.
I would much rather people play out their fantasies, no matter how unacceptable in the real world, in video games.
Sure, but what's next? Rape and murder, sex and splatter games?
And FWIW, where are the sex games then? Isn't sex per se more harmless than violence?
Why put so much violence in a game in the first place? There's an abundance of FPS out there. Wouldn't it be better to come up with some smart and witty game concepts?
I think it might just be the beginning of a $300,000,000 story arc,
Man, don't remind me of that, what a waste of money! It would've been better invested in Windows development, or generally, in software (or other) development.
many of whom might not be so rabid anti-ms weenies.
My weenie went limp when I saw that ad ...
.NET, but seeing the big picture of Windows programming has become increasingly difficult in the past decades.
My primary gripe with Windows as a user is that Vista always dies when you try doing something useful with it (like multi-booting with various types of UNIX). God, they fucked even that up.
My gripe with it as a software developer is that the sheer number and complexity of its APIs has increased so much that it's impossible to be a complete programming expert for Windows anymore. Most people either do a bit of Win32 or
Fuck that, I'm using UNIX-type systems only now, whenever possible, they're clean, clear and logical compared to Windows, and in some aspects far easier to program. Especially when it comes to speed.
The GNU project should launch an ad about GNU/Linux: You see something like a city and black things are flitting about almost too fast to see them. Nothing else happens. Then, the ground quakes, and a giant dinosaur slowly stomps into the scene, observing it. Then the view starts to slow down, and you recognize that all the black things flitting about were actually Tuxes, the Linux mascot. And then the dinosaur says with a slow voice: "Damn, I didn't think they would be so fast!"
I couldn't stop laughing after seeing that commercial!! Bill Gates in a circus (as if to say "it's all a big show, you know, being rich and famous is mainly useful for the press"), and if we want something nice and chewy, the answer is Bill Gates' ass! And Windows!
... only a flawless, well-designed OS can. I hope I'll live to see that. Aah, a nice delicious, bug-free Windows ... the stuff of dreams ...
(BTW, perhaps that meant to say "kiss my ass, I'm not working for Microsoft anymore, I spend my time shopping now.")
I'll give Gates a couple of smart points for doing that ad, but it certainly won't make me buy Windows now
They'll see the truth when some aliens come along, say, "ooo, nice planet" and destroy mankind within a couple of microseconds. ;-)
Who knows, perhaps they've already snatched us off of Earth and put us into one of their computer simulations? ;-)
Wow!! That's a fairly awesome collection of game ideas! :-) ... Anyhow, any game that spans multiple scenarios would be very interesting. That's the stuff that made games like StarCraft popular: Three races with different technology, history, ideology and so on. So, it isn't that far fetched. Until algorithmically generated worlds become possible (as in Spore or Infinity, just more complex), having more than a handful of races is not really feasible, unless you can get hundreds of designers together. I've been working on a framework for algorithmically generated games that could be used to generate planets with complete cities (including all implications, like buildings, languages, writing systems, libraries of books containing generated content, technologies, evolutionary deviances, and so on) on the fly while navigating through them (as was partially implemented in Infinity). My approach was titled "The Infinite Game", perhaps I'll get to implement it someday. Generating meshes from code proved to be a stumbling stone. Spatial Delauney Triangularization from a couple of points would be ideal, but possible consumes too much CPU power. Perhaps I'll have a look at Infinity someday and see if I can help out with generating cities etc.
Very interesting!! Keep working on it! :-)
Perhaps someone can make a stab at implementing it one day!!
Yup, open-sourcing is the way to go. The FOSS world is a big playground of great ideas, and new things have a bigger chance there than with the establishment. If an open-source game becomes popular, and many people use it, the people who made it are more likely to get attention.
Everyone has an idea for a game. Here's an example. It just doesn't work like that.
That guy's idea is fairly awesome; however, it's not implementable. To make that many characters, places, and sceneries would take eons. Even algorithmically generated meshes would probably not work, unless someone can come up with an algorithm to generate clothing, weapons, styles etc. of every eon.