The criteria for including a gospel in the Bible was simple really, it had to have been penned by someone who actually knew Jesus. Only 4 gospels met this criteria. This makes sense really, as in a court of law a first hand account is trusted over a second hand account, or "hearsay".
Most of the "gospels" not included were actually written long after the time when Jesus walked the Earth. The "Gospel of Judas", for example, was written around 200 A.D., around 200 years after the fact. While I realize that 200 A.D. was 1800 years ago and seems awfully close to 30 A.D., in reality the author was no closer to Jesus than I am to say, George Washington.
Don't you wish that every government and corporation on the planet would adopt this policy, and bluntly remind/inform you when they are monitoring you?
Find it ironic or not; The Daily Show is the single most factual source of political news and commentary in the US.
My ideal news program would be one where I couldn't tell the political leanings of the commentators because any political malfeasance finds the guilty party's feet being held to the fire. Unfortunately that has definitely not been the case with the Daily Show / Colbert Report. They've done a better job than most, yet there is still political bias at play in their shows.
Perhaps if a Democrat is elected as the next U.S. President they will have an opportunity to convince me that they are out to hold everyone equally accountable. Until then, having a liberal-moderate hold the right accountable and a liberal-moderate pretending to be a far-right holding the left accountable but really just skewering the right some more is not my idea of unbiased news reporting.
But I will give them props for holding the right accountable and on occasion (albeit irregularly) holding the left accountable.
The study's model is not only theoretically accurate, but also predictive.
Think of it this way: If every consumer product in the world suddenly lowered their cost to $0.00, I don't see people changing their purchasing patterns in any way. That Lamborghini is suddenly free? No thanks, I'll stick with my Toyota. Console games suddenly cost nothing? I'll continue to buy 1 every other month. I don't really have time to play more than that anyways.
So you see, the study's assumptions are 100% accurate.
You must be referring to the "Right To Wear A Paper Bag Over Your Head To Ensure Your Movements In Public Remain Safely Anonymous". Sorry, that right didn't quite make it into the Bill of Rights.
For the record, the "right to privacy" you keep referring to actually states:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Hmmm... that doesn't sound like the founding fathers were trying to accomplish anything resembling your suggestions. So evidently there IS NO freedom from being observed while in public.
In the '50's, "The Flintstones" and "I Love Lucy" episodes had animated cigarette commercials embedded into them -- and they were shown prime time. "I Love Lucy" even had Philip Morris cigarettes product placement.
You're right, the parents in the 50's made no effort to protect their children from cigarette adds, and there was no real ill effect on their children. I mean, other than the fact that in the US, smoking causes 1 of every 5 deaths. So other than the 1,200 Americans every day - 420,000 Americans each year - that die from cigarettes, these commercials had no real ill affect on our children.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion on "Parenting in America", brought to you by 20-somethings everywhere who have never, actually, you know, raised any children of their own. Tune in tomorrow, when we bring you top software design tips provided by people who have never actually programmed anything in their lives, but have lots of advice to offer you software engineers out there because they are super opinionated about everything. Plus, they're Americans, so they MUST have a super informed opinion about subjects they've never actually studied.
The truth is that an immense number of programming jobs are being created in America every year, and foreign universities aren't graduating enough programmers for outsourcing to even scratch the surface of that need.
Thus far, the outsourcing "crisis" has only had the effect of very artificially driving down labor costs when they should really be rising, and a lot of very greedy business owners have capitalized by contracting programmers on the cheap. I wouldn't be surprised if this article was just another effort to continue that trend, by creating yet another artificial scare so that the programmers in this country will not realize that 100,000 programming jobs are going unfilled annually.
The industry is only shooting themselves in the foot, however, since the "crisis" not only lowered salary expectations, but also managed to scare a significant number of future computer scientists into choosing a different major.
I'm assuming he means it is biased in regards to the large dotted line that appears smack dab in the middle of the political spectrum, midway between the hardcore liberal and the ultra conservative points of view. Unfortunately you have to be a moderate to see it, because both hardcore liberals and ultra conservatives believe that they are already occupying the middle ground and that everyone who disagrees with them is simply foolish/deceived/ignorant.
The moderates see very bright thinkers on both sides of the aisle, and realize that very intelligent people can very passionately disagree even about very fundamentally basic ideas.
But yes, to everyone else, the large dotted line marking the middle ground is most definitely invisible. Except perhaps to Hillary. Her amazing techno-color "progressive" sunglasses may enable her to see the dotted line as well.
Oh yeah, the line also appears in many political textbooks, although most dismiss it as a misprint.
I agree, yet at the same time wonder if today's "Now With Less Evil Than The Other Providers" Google isn't tomorrow's "Greed is Good" AT&T. Our nation has seen a lot of great first generation companies morph into 3rd generation "We Pride Ourselves On Keeping Our Customers In A Headlock" companies.
Let's say we can grab say one-tenth of a walker's energy without them caring.
Walking takes about 1/20th of a horsepower.
So we're getting 1/200th of a horsepower from each person.
If we assume there's 1000 people walking by, that's two horsepower.
About 1500 watts.
That's about ten cents an hour. Given the variability of traffic, maybe a dollar a day.
Assuming the mechanism costs a measly $100,000, at a dollar a day you can't even pay the interest on the loan.
Plus it probably needs more than $1 a day of maintenance.
Not a good idea.
Why are you applying reason and logic to our attempts to save the planet? Don't you realize the planet can detect good hearted attempts at conservation versus everyday pollution and thus garner emotional healing and moral support from our efforts?
What? You want a plan that not only SOUNDS plausible but is also economically AND scientifically viable? What exactly would THAT accomplish?
This, of course, begs the question of how long it will take for the on-line casinos to start putting poker playing bots into the mix to skew the odds even further to the house.
This is what has always baffled me about players willing to play poker online. How do you know the house isn't already rigging the program in their favor? You have absolutely no guarantees, and no way to know if the house is stacking the deck or changing cards not yet revealed, or really doing whatever is necessary to ensure 1 or 2 "players" win a good portion of the pots.
I've never heard of it before either. I suspect someone will be stopping by my cubicle at any moment to whiteout the "Applications Engineer" title on my business cards.
The goals of terrorists are to get us to be terrified and to allow our Governments to continue the erosion of our privacy and Civil Liberties.
The terrorists don't give a damn about your civil liberties. If tomorrow the U.K. declared itself a dictatorship the terrorists would still be hell bent on destroying your nation. The only valid form of government to them is a Muslim Theocracy. So grow up and educate yourself and get past your association complex.
That seems to be a common thread with you however, doesn't it? Everything by association. You live in a nation of education, so every thought that crosses your cerebral cortex must be loaded with wisdom and insight. You (supposedly) had numerous relatives win the Bronze Star, so somehow this grants you a special understanding and appreciation of freedom that no one else can grasp. You live in a nation that has undergone a few terror attacks, so you "live in terror".
Try this one on for size, if you value freedom so much that any affront to it makes you angry, then try putting your money where your mouth is and serve 3 years in the military or police force that guards your freedom. I wonder if then your opinions might change?
Until then, feel entitled to complain about something that is so enormously important to you that you will... stand around and whine in defense of it. I'm sure the/. crowd will continue to be enormously impressed.
"Living in a state of terror" is both beyond the comprehension of most westerners and a slander to those who died so that we could be largely ignorant of what it is we enjoy every day of our lives. If you live in the UK or US then you have probably never experienced many MOMENTS of terror, let alone LIVED in terror. So while we should be vigilant we also should be thankful for the freedoms we have, grateful to those who died so that we could have them, and honor those who sacrifice so much to maintain them even to this day.
Also, if you truly believe that police monitoring TRAFFIC cameras in the UK was one of the goals of the terrorists then I want to have words with your teachers. They have sadly let you down in both your education and critical thinking skills.
Why does everyone assume that any alien craft that arrive at earth would be manned by aliens?
It's far more likely that if an alien race was going to send a craft on the 1 million year trip to earth, they would send an unmanned probe. That it arrived and crashed was of no consequence, because the civilization that sent it destroyed itself nearly 999,990 years ago.
Of course I personally subscribe to the theory that if our government possessed alien tech, then they could not restrain themselves from using it. So my theory is that some classified test vehicle crashed, and the lowly P.R. guy without a high enough security clearance was assigned to cover it up with the weather balloon theory. He invented the alien story to explain to himself what he saw.
I think it's great that there are games like GW and Diablo, where players can accomplish everything the game has to offer while maintaining a casual play style. The guild in question however (Syndicate) has participated in games like EQ and WOW, where a pretty intense play style is required to even attempt some of the content - content that is required to obtain the best equipment in game - equipment being the only method of advancing your character past certain level hard caps.
So what you see in those games is the exact opposite of the more casual friendly games - you have long surviving guilds with pretty intense play schedules. As a completely unscientific poll based upon my college and work place associates, I would say the hardcore players I know get online right after dinner and play until bedtime. So from 6ish to midnight. That's 30 hours of game time a week, plus whatever hours they play on the weekend. So now we are talking about a time commitment that roughly equates to a second full-time job.
The stories I hear from coworkers whose children play are even worse. Some have children who maintained a 3.8 GPA in high school who have sat at home for 2 years after graduating and played 18 hours a day. The parents can usually get little out of the kids, but one thing they seem to have in common is they are all part of the largest, longest running, uberest guild around. And no, they don't all belong to the same guild.
Bravo, leaders of Syndicate, you have provided an environment that has enabled many of your "hundreds" of members to toss their futures away. Bravo.
Perhaps your endeavors have proved successful enough whereby you can offer these brave souls some form of monthly retirement for all of their hard work on your behalf?
Let's see, the ability to keep 20 individuals on task, showing up on time for their raid (let's call it a shift), replacing lost raiders (let's call it hiring new workers), handling interpersonal issues, and metering out limited resources (let's call it raises) between workers. Sounds like your guild leadership is qualified to be the assistant manager at their local fast food joint. Of course, that assistant manager is being paid for their work and is probably working fewer hours than your typical guild leader.
Listen, the business world doesn't care how much potential you may possess, they want to know what you have accomplished with what you have, and the judgment you exercised when balancing the priorities you wished to accomplish. It's why colleges don't just look at GPA, but also extra curricular activities.
In the case of MMO's, investing 1000's of hours of your most limited resource (your time) into a video game while ignoring family, friends, & career/school in the process demonstrates a serious lack of judgment and good decision making ability. This is completely different from the individual who plays the game as a normal hobby.
I am not saying this represents all guild leadership. There are many smaller guilds that probably require much smaller time commitments, and probably a very few large guilds that leave the larger guild decisions in the hands of more casual players who perhaps have a more balanced approach to life, but I suspect those are rare.
All in all, however, I am simply not buying the concept that leaders of large MMO guilds have somehow accomplished something significant. At best they are Don Quixote jousting windmills and calling them dragons, at worse they really are talented enough to direct a company of thousands, and thus spending their life locked into a video game is nothing short of tragic.
The ironic thing when it comes to many MMO guilds and "leadership" is that the individuals often viewed as great leaders in MMOs are the same individuals who would probably be viewed as completely lacking leadership qualities in real life.
This is because in MMOs, the main criteria for "leadership" is often simply the sum of hours one is willing to commit to pursuing goals in a video game, with other leadership qualities becoming secondary considerations. Oftentimes the sheer willingness to dedicate inhumane hours in pursuit of virtual accomplishments is viewed by other players as a player having the "drive" or "determination" to overcome every obstacle, including the "obstacle" of real life responsibilities to family and career.
So what you usually see is a progression of 16 to 25 year olds in leadership positions, while the older gamers who fulfill actual leadership positions in real life find themselves sitting on the sidelines for the sin of being too "casual".
Admittedly the sum of my knowledge on the Syndicate is from a college classmate who was a member. He was busy slaying dragons while the rest of us were attending boring classes and doing other mundane tasks (such as graduating). So based on that I would hazard a guess that what you have is an individual who put real life responsibilities on hold to continue their string of virtual "accomplishments", and has now written a book to justify their all consuming life focus on video games.
Believe it or not, some kids actually grow up, raise a family (by raise I mean mentor and spend quality time with), start a career, invent the longer-lasting light bulb, and somewhere along the way actually benefit someone other than just themselves.
Then there are those who lock themselves in computer rooms every evening of the year for hours on end, sleepwalking through the rest of their life until they can get back to the business of killing virtual monsters in a virtual game for virtual rewards.... and consider themselves Julius-freaking-Caesar because of this.
This is the worrisome development in democratic nations today - that no one notices the exact moment when they slip into plutocracy.
Take America for example. The only legislation that Republicans and Democrats have agreed upon in 3 years is the newest form of Immigration Reform, which coincidentally is opposed by ~80% of Americans (you know, the 'people' in "We the people"). Yet still the politicians are urgently trying to pass the legislation.
But don't mind me, I'm still trying to figure out the last immigration bill, where Congress apparently extended citizenship to corporations. I mean, they had to have, right? Why else would politicians dedicate so much time to the interests of corporations over citizens? Our own Supreme Court upheld corporate political donations as "free speech", and so if corporations are now entitled to the same Bill of Rights as American citizens are, then they must be citizens as well.
Considering that several of the video games in question actually consulted with psychological professionals during the creation of their games in order to make them more appealing to play and more difficult to stop playing... I'd say we were at least in a gray zone here.
Sure, this happens in other areas of our lives as well, but usually those are self limiting areas such as books, movies, or television shows. The most modern video games can be played indefinitely. There is no ending point.
I was thinking along the same lines. Ancient Rome had huge map libraries where the maps were organized into rooms, shelves, and bins (a database, so to speak) according to the geographic location being sought (i.e. the Africa map room, the Cairo shelf, the XYZ city location bin).
I was left with the same question: does adding a computer to the equation fundamentally change the idea?
I just don't see the same alarmist reaction for similar subjects.
"Apparently June is national 'Highway Safety' month. The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution urging Americans to 'learn more about being safe on our nation's highways.' And what counts as a danger? Reckless speeding, drunk driving, or giving rides to people you don't know in real life. The resolution's extreme negativity is disappointing. But remember -- it passed unanimously.
From the tech article: 'It's not just a resolution. A few corporations are actually trying to cash in on this misguided disinformation campaign, including Graco Baby Products, a Philadelphia, PA company which markets a child safety seat. (I wonder if it's one of the ones where 80% of grade schoolers can unstrap the seat belt mechanism themselves...) Their CEO has an encouraging message for parents about safety on highways. "This is an ongoing battle to keep our children safe while traveling our nation's highways and interstates." And keeping your children 'safe' will cost you a mere $150 per car seat...'"
Cue the concerned slashdotters complaining that the use of a child safety seat will encourage parents to drive recklessly and ignore other important options to protect their children while riding in vehicles.
Why does the mere mention of the internet as a "dangerous place" stir up so much angst from the slashdot crowd? News flash! From having their computer hijacked for a bot-net, their credit card info stolen, or their child lured into a real life meeting with a sexual predator, the internet IS a dangerous place. When entering (or connecting to) it, people should be cautious, aware, and on their guard.
So what, you're faulting parents for even making the attempt to keep their children safe while surfing the net? Does parental vigilance somehow threaten you?
My oldest is currently headed into 2nd grade this fall. He already uses the computer a great deal for homework, and it is sometimes (oftentimes) challenging to safeguard him on the internet from things that are simply inappropriate for a 7 YEAR OLD. Personally I welcome any help I can get in this battle. We keep our computer in the living room so we can keep an eye on what he is looking at. Can we 100% monitor what he is looking at? No, we have other children who sometimes fall or require attention or simply need a diaper change. Sometimes the phone rings and you have to pick it up. Things happen to distract you. Would I consider BSafe as a solo solution for guarding him? Absolutely not. But it may play a part in our overall solution.
I guess what I fail to understand is why slashdotters are so reactionary to such stories. I would think as advocates of "freedom" everyone here would be all for services such as BSafe, because the choices here are to either protect your child to a reasonable level, or to simply pull the plug and declare that my children cannot use the internet because the risks are to prevalent.
Personally I would prefer to allow my children as much freedom as possible, and services that help me protect my children, while not perfect, certainly help me to do that.
Seems to me that if a society decides that paranoia is required in order to "earn" privacy...
Except in this case, it is the individual themselves who is the custodian of their own privacy. If they have something to hide, they should use a email account that no one else is aware of.
Not that I sympathize with the original poster, who is arguing for privacy rights simply as an avenue of deceiving someone who is in a close, personal relationship with them. I believe the founding fathers concept of privacy was closer to "protecting your spouse from being forced to reveal your private thoughts to a jury" than in "protecting your infidelity from being discovered by your spouse".
Slashdot Mirror
The criteria for including a gospel in the Bible was simple really, it had to have been penned by someone who actually knew Jesus. Only 4 gospels met this criteria. This makes sense really, as in a court of law a first hand account is trusted over a second hand account, or "hearsay".
Most of the "gospels" not included were actually written long after the time when Jesus walked the Earth. The "Gospel of Judas", for example, was written around 200 A.D., around 200 years after the fact. While I realize that 200 A.D. was 1800 years ago and seems awfully close to 30 A.D., in reality the author was no closer to Jesus than I am to say, George Washington.
Don't you wish that every government and corporation on the planet would adopt this policy, and bluntly remind/inform you when they are monitoring you?
My ideal news program would be one where I couldn't tell the political leanings of the commentators because any political malfeasance finds the guilty party's feet being held to the fire. Unfortunately that has definitely not been the case with the Daily Show / Colbert Report. They've done a better job than most, yet there is still political bias at play in their shows.
Perhaps if a Democrat is elected as the next U.S. President they will have an opportunity to convince me that they are out to hold everyone equally accountable. Until then, having a liberal-moderate hold the right accountable and a liberal-moderate pretending to be a far-right holding the left accountable but really just skewering the right some more is not my idea of unbiased news reporting.
But I will give them props for holding the right accountable and on occasion (albeit irregularly) holding the left accountable.
The study's model is not only theoretically accurate, but also predictive.
Think of it this way: If every consumer product in the world suddenly lowered their cost to $0.00, I don't see people changing their purchasing patterns in any way. That Lamborghini is suddenly free? No thanks, I'll stick with my Toyota. Console games suddenly cost nothing? I'll continue to buy 1 every other month. I don't really have time to play more than that anyways.
So you see, the study's assumptions are 100% accurate.
This is why your parents warned you about choosing your friends carefully.
I prefer the ones who don't get me busted incidentally.
For the record, the "right to privacy" you keep referring to actually states:
Hmmm... that doesn't sound like the founding fathers were trying to accomplish anything resembling your suggestions. So evidently there IS NO freedom from being observed while in public.
You're right, the parents in the 50's made no effort to protect their children from cigarette adds, and there was no real ill effect on their children. I mean, other than the fact that in the US, smoking causes 1 of every 5 deaths. So other than the 1,200 Americans every day - 420,000 Americans each year - that die from cigarettes, these commercials had no real ill affect on our children.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion on "Parenting in America", brought to you by 20-somethings everywhere who have never, actually, you know, raised any children of their own. Tune in tomorrow, when we bring you top software design tips provided by people who have never actually programmed anything in their lives, but have lots of advice to offer you software engineers out there because they are super opinionated about everything. Plus, they're Americans, so they MUST have a super informed opinion about subjects they've never actually studied.
The truth is that an immense number of programming jobs are being created in America every year, and foreign universities aren't graduating enough programmers for outsourcing to even scratch the surface of that need.
Thus far, the outsourcing "crisis" has only had the effect of very artificially driving down labor costs when they should really be rising, and a lot of very greedy business owners have capitalized by contracting programmers on the cheap. I wouldn't be surprised if this article was just another effort to continue that trend, by creating yet another artificial scare so that the programmers in this country will not realize that 100,000 programming jobs are going unfilled annually.
The industry is only shooting themselves in the foot, however, since the "crisis" not only lowered salary expectations, but also managed to scare a significant number of future computer scientists into choosing a different major.
I'm assuming he means it is biased in regards to the large dotted line that appears smack dab in the middle of the political spectrum, midway between the hardcore liberal and the ultra conservative points of view. Unfortunately you have to be a moderate to see it, because both hardcore liberals and ultra conservatives believe that they are already occupying the middle ground and that everyone who disagrees with them is simply foolish/deceived/ignorant.
The moderates see very bright thinkers on both sides of the aisle, and realize that very intelligent people can very passionately disagree even about very fundamentally basic ideas.
But yes, to everyone else, the large dotted line marking the middle ground is most definitely invisible. Except perhaps to Hillary. Her amazing techno-color "progressive" sunglasses may enable her to see the dotted line as well.
Oh yeah, the line also appears in many political textbooks, although most dismiss it as a misprint.
I agree, yet at the same time wonder if today's "Now With Less Evil Than The Other Providers" Google isn't tomorrow's "Greed is Good" AT&T. Our nation has seen a lot of great first generation companies morph into 3rd generation "We Pride Ourselves On Keeping Our Customers In A Headlock" companies.
Why are you applying reason and logic to our attempts to save the planet? Don't you realize the planet can detect good hearted attempts at conservation versus everyday pollution and thus garner emotional healing and moral support from our efforts?
What? You want a plan that not only SOUNDS plausible but is also economically AND scientifically viable? What exactly would THAT accomplish?
This is what has always baffled me about players willing to play poker online. How do you know the house isn't already rigging the program in their favor? You have absolutely no guarantees, and no way to know if the house is stacking the deck or changing cards not yet revealed, or really doing whatever is necessary to ensure 1 or 2 "players" win a good portion of the pots.
I've never heard of it before either. I suspect someone will be stopping by my cubicle at any moment to whiteout the "Applications Engineer" title on my business cards.
The terrorists don't give a damn about your civil liberties. If tomorrow the U.K. declared itself a dictatorship the terrorists would still be hell bent on destroying your nation. The only valid form of government to them is a Muslim Theocracy. So grow up and educate yourself and get past your association complex.
That seems to be a common thread with you however, doesn't it? Everything by association. You live in a nation of education, so every thought that crosses your cerebral cortex must be loaded with wisdom and insight. You (supposedly) had numerous relatives win the Bronze Star, so somehow this grants you a special understanding and appreciation of freedom that no one else can grasp. You live in a nation that has undergone a few terror attacks, so you "live in terror".
Try this one on for size, if you value freedom so much that any affront to it makes you angry, then try putting your money where your mouth is and serve 3 years in the military or police force that guards your freedom. I wonder if then your opinions might change?
Until then, feel entitled to complain about something that is so enormously important to you that you will... stand around and whine in defense of it. I'm sure the
"Living in a state of terror" is both beyond the comprehension of most westerners and a slander to those who died so that we could be largely ignorant of what it is we enjoy every day of our lives. If you live in the UK or US then you have probably never experienced many MOMENTS of terror, let alone LIVED in terror. So while we should be vigilant we also should be thankful for the freedoms we have, grateful to those who died so that we could have them, and honor those who sacrifice so much to maintain them even to this day.
Also, if you truly believe that police monitoring TRAFFIC cameras in the UK was one of the goals of the terrorists then I want to have words with your teachers. They have sadly let you down in both your education and critical thinking skills.
Why does everyone assume that any alien craft that arrive at earth would be manned by aliens?
It's far more likely that if an alien race was going to send a craft on the 1 million year trip to earth, they would send an unmanned probe. That it arrived and crashed was of no consequence, because the civilization that sent it destroyed itself nearly 999,990 years ago.
Of course I personally subscribe to the theory that if our government possessed alien tech, then they could not restrain themselves from using it. So my theory is that some classified test vehicle crashed, and the lowly P.R. guy without a high enough security clearance was assigned to cover it up with the weather balloon theory. He invented the alien story to explain to himself what he saw.
I think it's great that there are games like GW and Diablo, where players can accomplish everything the game has to offer while maintaining a casual play style. The guild in question however (Syndicate) has participated in games like EQ and WOW, where a pretty intense play style is required to even attempt some of the content - content that is required to obtain the best equipment in game - equipment being the only method of advancing your character past certain level hard caps.
So what you see in those games is the exact opposite of the more casual friendly games - you have long surviving guilds with pretty intense play schedules. As a completely unscientific poll based upon my college and work place associates, I would say the hardcore players I know get online right after dinner and play until bedtime. So from 6ish to midnight. That's 30 hours of game time a week, plus whatever hours they play on the weekend. So now we are talking about a time commitment that roughly equates to a second full-time job.
The stories I hear from coworkers whose children play are even worse. Some have children who maintained a 3.8 GPA in high school who have sat at home for 2 years after graduating and played 18 hours a day. The parents can usually get little out of the kids, but one thing they seem to have in common is they are all part of the largest, longest running, uberest guild around. And no, they don't all belong to the same guild.
Bravo, leaders of Syndicate, you have provided an environment that has enabled many of your "hundreds" of members to toss their futures away. Bravo.
Perhaps your endeavors have proved successful enough whereby you can offer these brave souls some form of monthly retirement for all of their hard work on your behalf?
Let's see, the ability to keep 20 individuals on task, showing up on time for their raid (let's call it a shift), replacing lost raiders (let's call it hiring new workers), handling interpersonal issues, and metering out limited resources (let's call it raises) between workers. Sounds like your guild leadership is qualified to be the assistant manager at their local fast food joint. Of course, that assistant manager is being paid for their work and is probably working fewer hours than your typical guild leader.
Listen, the business world doesn't care how much potential you may possess, they want to know what you have accomplished with what you have, and the judgment you exercised when balancing the priorities you wished to accomplish. It's why colleges don't just look at GPA, but also extra curricular activities.
In the case of MMO's, investing 1000's of hours of your most limited resource (your time) into a video game while ignoring family, friends, & career/school in the process demonstrates a serious lack of judgment and good decision making ability. This is completely different from the individual who plays the game as a normal hobby.
I am not saying this represents all guild leadership. There are many smaller guilds that probably require much smaller time commitments, and probably a very few large guilds that leave the larger guild decisions in the hands of more casual players who perhaps have a more balanced approach to life, but I suspect those are rare.
All in all, however, I am simply not buying the concept that leaders of large MMO guilds have somehow accomplished something significant. At best they are Don Quixote jousting windmills and calling them dragons, at worse they really are talented enough to direct a company of thousands, and thus spending their life locked into a video game is nothing short of tragic.
The ironic thing when it comes to many MMO guilds and "leadership" is that the individuals often viewed as great leaders in MMOs are the same individuals who would probably be viewed as completely lacking leadership qualities in real life.
This is because in MMOs, the main criteria for "leadership" is often simply the sum of hours one is willing to commit to pursuing goals in a video game, with other leadership qualities becoming secondary considerations. Oftentimes the sheer willingness to dedicate inhumane hours in pursuit of virtual accomplishments is viewed by other players as a player having the "drive" or "determination" to overcome every obstacle, including the "obstacle" of real life responsibilities to family and career.
So what you usually see is a progression of 16 to 25 year olds in leadership positions, while the older gamers who fulfill actual leadership positions in real life find themselves sitting on the sidelines for the sin of being too "casual".
Admittedly the sum of my knowledge on the Syndicate is from a college classmate who was a member. He was busy slaying dragons while the rest of us were attending boring classes and doing other mundane tasks (such as graduating). So based on that I would hazard a guess that what you have is an individual who put real life responsibilities on hold to continue their string of virtual "accomplishments", and has now written a book to justify their all consuming life focus on video games.
Believe it or not, some kids actually grow up, raise a family (by raise I mean mentor and spend quality time with), start a career, invent the longer-lasting light bulb, and somewhere along the way actually benefit someone other than just themselves.
Then there are those who lock themselves in computer rooms every evening of the year for hours on end, sleepwalking through the rest of their life until they can get back to the business of killing virtual monsters in a virtual game for virtual rewards.... and consider themselves Julius-freaking-Caesar because of this.
This is the worrisome development in democratic nations today - that no one notices the exact moment when they slip into plutocracy.
Take America for example. The only legislation that Republicans and Democrats have agreed upon in 3 years is the newest form of Immigration Reform, which coincidentally is opposed by ~80% of Americans (you know, the 'people' in "We the people"). Yet still the politicians are urgently trying to pass the legislation.
But don't mind me, I'm still trying to figure out the last immigration bill, where Congress apparently extended citizenship to corporations. I mean, they had to have, right? Why else would politicians dedicate so much time to the interests of corporations over citizens? Our own Supreme Court upheld corporate political donations as "free speech", and so if corporations are now entitled to the same Bill of Rights as American citizens are, then they must be citizens as well.
Considering that several of the video games in question actually consulted with psychological professionals during the creation of their games in order to make them more appealing to play and more difficult to stop playing... I'd say we were at least in a gray zone here. Sure, this happens in other areas of our lives as well, but usually those are self limiting areas such as books, movies, or television shows. The most modern video games can be played indefinitely. There is no ending point.
I was thinking along the same lines. Ancient Rome had huge map libraries where the maps were organized into rooms, shelves, and bins (a database, so to speak) according to the geographic location being sought (i.e. the Africa map room, the Cairo shelf, the XYZ city location bin).
I was left with the same question: does adding a computer to the equation fundamentally change the idea?
I just don't see the same alarmist reaction for similar subjects.
"Apparently June is national 'Highway Safety' month. The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution urging Americans to 'learn more about being safe on our nation's highways.' And what counts as a danger? Reckless speeding, drunk driving, or giving rides to people you don't know in real life. The resolution's extreme negativity is disappointing. But remember -- it passed unanimously.
From the tech article: 'It's not just a resolution. A few corporations are actually trying to cash in on this misguided disinformation campaign, including Graco Baby Products, a Philadelphia, PA company which markets a child safety seat. (I wonder if it's one of the ones where 80% of grade schoolers can unstrap the seat belt mechanism themselves...) Their CEO has an encouraging message for parents about safety on highways. "This is an ongoing battle to keep our children safe while traveling our nation's highways and interstates." And keeping your children 'safe' will cost you a mere $150 per car seat...'"
Cue the concerned slashdotters complaining that the use of a child safety seat will encourage parents to drive recklessly and ignore other important options to protect their children while riding in vehicles.
Why does the mere mention of the internet as a "dangerous place" stir up so much angst from the slashdot crowd? News flash! From having their computer hijacked for a bot-net, their credit card info stolen, or their child lured into a real life meeting with a sexual predator, the internet IS a dangerous place. When entering (or connecting to) it, people should be cautious, aware, and on their guard.
So what, you're faulting parents for even making the attempt to keep their children safe while surfing the net? Does parental vigilance somehow threaten you?
My oldest is currently headed into 2nd grade this fall. He already uses the computer a great deal for homework, and it is sometimes (oftentimes) challenging to safeguard him on the internet from things that are simply inappropriate for a 7 YEAR OLD. Personally I welcome any help I can get in this battle. We keep our computer in the living room so we can keep an eye on what he is looking at. Can we 100% monitor what he is looking at? No, we have other children who sometimes fall or require attention or simply need a diaper change. Sometimes the phone rings and you have to pick it up. Things happen to distract you. Would I consider BSafe as a solo solution for guarding him? Absolutely not. But it may play a part in our overall solution.
I guess what I fail to understand is why slashdotters are so reactionary to such stories. I would think as advocates of "freedom" everyone here would be all for services such as BSafe, because the choices here are to either protect your child to a reasonable level, or to simply pull the plug and declare that my children cannot use the internet because the risks are to prevalent.
Personally I would prefer to allow my children as much freedom as possible, and services that help me protect my children, while not perfect, certainly help me to do that.
Except in this case, it is the individual themselves who is the custodian of their own privacy. If they have something to hide, they should use a email account that no one else is aware of.
Not that I sympathize with the original poster, who is arguing for privacy rights simply as an avenue of deceiving someone who is in a close, personal relationship with them. I believe the founding fathers concept of privacy was closer to "protecting your spouse from being forced to reveal your private thoughts to a jury" than in "protecting your infidelity from being discovered by your spouse".
Infidelity isn't cool.