Doesn't the bible say spare the rod spoil the child? I am not a religous man, but I do believe in disciplining my child, because 1. look at all the lost cause's that weren't disciplined and 2 my mother did the same to me and I turned out to be a decent law abiding citizen with no quirks worth noting (note I'm not saying that ALL ppl that have been beat as a child grow up law abiding citizens, but a large portion due...and the oppsosite is true as well) There's a difference between discipline and beating. I don't confuse the two. While a spanking can sometimes be in order while raising a child (I got spanked growing up a few times, and deserved it I might add, and didn't come out any worse for wear), that isn't beating them. Beating them would be hitting them in the face as a method of saying hello (not necessarily that extreme, but you get my point about abuse being different from ordinary discipline).
Be a part of a non shitty orginization you say? Treated fairly from day 1? I call bullshit. Er... go ahead. It's still true. I have never joined a club, group of friends, started at a job, or whatever, where I wasn't treated like an equal from day 1. You have the right to not believe some random dude across the interweb, but I'm not just lying here.
NO job, then-now, here-there, big-small treats its new emmployees like its sessioned veterans REGARDLESS of experience....ever heard of new hire training? Yes, this may be a very weak example of a form a hazing, but yet it is... No, it is NOT. With any new job, it's obvious that you won't know the ins and outs of that job, even if you're a seasoned industry veteran. Recognizing that fact, however, does not mean you aren't being treated as an equal. Educating someone is different from hazing them, much as discipline is different from beating. When I start a new job, I (as well as any sane person) expect to be brought up to speed on the way things are done around there. That does not mean (and never has, for me) that my co-workers should look down on me, or treat me as an inferior, because I'm new. I'm their equal, merely one who doesn't know as much as they do yet. Their job is to teach me what I need to know, mine is to learn it. This is NOT hazing in any way, shape, or form.
Pay scales are another perfect example of a form of hazing that an ordinary person wouldn't classify as hazing-hell I dont...but yet it is, I've held at least 2 jobs in which my starting pay was reduced from what I should have been getting, and after a set amount of time (usually 30 days) went up... That's unfortunate, and wrong. I'm sorry that you were treated badly, and hope that your current employer treats you better (I mean that sincerely).
Any time your treatment as a "newbie" is different than your treatment were you otherwise...you've been hazed. Regardless of wether or not you feel you've been harassed/ridiculed, if someone else feels you have...you have. Not true. Training is the ultimate example of treatment as a "newbie" not being hazing. Moreover, you aren't being harassed if you don't feel you're being harassed, imo. I consider the target of "harassment" to be the ultimate arbiter of whether it was harassment or not. If they don't have a problem with it (whether or not they voice it), it's fine. It's only harassment, and a problem, if the person being affected by it feels it is.
hazing was, and still is, a very big part of belonging to almost ANY community. Er... be a part of non-shitty communities? Sorry, but any community I've ever been a part of didn't do stupid things like that. We treated people with respect and dignity from day 1, imagine that!
Regardless, the fact that it goes on still doesn't make it acceptable. By your logic, and Blkdeath's logic, beating your kids should be ok, because everyone does it, and one day they'll have their own kids to beat, and that'll make up for the fact that they got beat when they were kids.
Yes, you have to earn your stripes doing B.S. work which will include coffee and lunch runs, sweeping floors and all the other crap jobs that come along. But hey, some day you'll have your own apprentice to do the same exact thing. Everybody went through it, new people are no exception. That doesn't justify it, though. I don't have a problem in particular with a newbie doing BS work (usually they're too inexperienced to really handle much of anything, so there may not be a whole lot else for them to do), but the justification you gave is terrible. The fact that a) everyone else had to go through it, and b) you can put someone through it in the future is no excuse for treating people unreasonably.
How was it painful for Leela? I like the character, but seriously, she's kind of a bitch to Fry... how many times does she learn that she'd be very happy with him if she only gave him a chance?
Unfortunately, that's unavoidable due to the individuality of opinions. There are quite a few high-profile, highly-reviewed games I can think of off the top of my head that I couldn't stand, high reviews or not. In the end, I just move on, because there was realistically no way to have predicted that would have occurred. Most of the time, when a game gets a good review, I actually enjoy it. Once in a while, I hate it, for no apparent reason (it's not as if there's one reviewer who disagrees with me constantly).
I think you'll find that even with a different reviewer, he'll still disagree with you at least some of the time.
To all of the things you mentioned, the key word is yet. If Leopard is going to do as poorly as Vista (I don't use Macs, I can make no value judgement of it one way or the other), it's had nowhere near as long to build up an image of suck in people's minds. You're being unreasonable in saying that Leopard's lack of backlash proves a damn thing... there hasn't been enough time for any sort of real backlash to build up.
For the record, as long as I'm at it, I can just as easily say that people's Vista problems are specific to their machines, because I use Vista, and it runs like a dream. Stable, runs all my apps/games (except KOTOR) properly... nothing more to ask, really. And no, it doesn't run slower than Windows XP. There are other very satisfied Vista users, they've even posted on slashdot. So clearly, the people who are having problems are just having issues with their specific computers.
I must've not been clear. Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on consoles, you're absolutely correct. What I meant is that on their own console, Microsoft has an absolute monopoly with everything. Thus, they can charge for Live because if you want to play 360 games online, you have no other option. I didn't mean that Microsoft has a true monopoly.
The difference, of course, between Microsoft and Blizzard/Square-Enix is that they actually provide servers! I understand the justification in charging for those games, because you're paying for them to maintain the servers 24/7 (well, not counting scheduled downtime or things breaking), and keep a persistent world. I don't think it makes sense to charge for any other game.
We live in a time where everyone feels "entitled" to things. I think that's sad. Perhaps. My beef has nothing to do with entitlement, though. Microsoft is charging, and if I feel their services aren't worth what they charge, I have every right to be dissatisfied (and no, I don't pay for Xbox Live). That's not entitlement, that's simply business. Microsoft is also going into a market, and trying to get people to pay for something typically offered for free. It should be no surprise that there's resistance.
You're right that you probably won't convince me, but that has more to do with the fact that I don't consider the things you listed (so far) to have anything to do with playing games online. They don't help my enjoyment at all, so I don't consider them adequate value for my money. Not to mention that the downloadable content has nothing to do with having an XBL subscription. All you need is an account, paid or free, to get that stuff. But meh, in the end, I have no problem with it if you want to pay Microsoft for XBL, it's your right after all... I just think it's a huge rip-off.
Yes, any company is free to create dedicated servers. Yes, $5/month isn't much. The point is... what, exactly, is Microsoft providing us with in exchange for our money (however little or much it may be)? As far as I can tell, the answer is... nothing. They're taking our money because they can. That's the absurd thing, and I'll get worked up about that whether it's $50/year or $.50/year! When I provide money to a company, I expect something in return for my payment, not abuse of a monopoly position.
If I were you, having such a bleak outlook on the future, I'd kill myself. But hey, do whatever you think is necessary, including preaching about how doomed we are. It's not that damn bad, and it's not gonna be that damn bad in 2031, sorry.
And you complain about social security. Did your parents not accept social security checks when they retired? I bet they did -- which makes them a part of that "ponzi scheme." And when you retire, will you not accept social security checks? After all, you don't want to be associated with a ponzi scheme. Your logic is flawed, sir. If I spent my whole life putting checks into SS, no matter how much I disagree with it, I'm going to take the checks that come my way when I retire: it's my damn money coming back to me. You aren't given the option to opt-out of the whole system, so of course people aren't going to turn it down... why the hell would you turn away your own money coming back to you, even if it's much worse than something else you could've done with that money, given the choice?
If Microsoft isn't using your money to provide dedicated servers... what on earth are they providing in exchange for said money? Seems to me that they're taking it because they can, ie, fucking absurd.
Errrr.... no. They're all good licenses, with different goals behind them. Choose the one that's right for you. But don't criticize others because they happen to have different goals to you. Well, considering that Stallman apparently considers linking to a library to be making a derivative work, thus subjecting you to the terms of the GPL, I'd say the GPL is definitely shit. It seems completely glaringly obvious to me that using a library is not derivation in any way. Certainly you should be required to distribute the source of the library with your app, but GPL'ing the whole app? That's ridiculous.
It is when you aren't getting anything in return for it (that you shouldn't be getting for free). Paying for online access isn't wrong... paying for online access, when Microsoft doesn't even go so far as to host dedicated servers, is fucking absurd. At that point, it's devolved into "We're Microsoft, and we take your money just cause we can!".
WTF? 1 gig? Dude, I ran Windows XP on a damn laptop with 512 MB, played games on it, etc, etc, etc (and yes, I did have lots of stuff open at once), and never had any performance issues (discounting FPS issues brought on by my GeForce 2 video card). 512 MB is quite sufficient for any XP machine, only gamers should need 1 GB.
Personal opinions about Mac OS aside, there's a huge problem with your plan: you need to buy a Mac, and last I checked, the hardware was stupidly underpowered (mini), badly designed (G5 iMac), or expensive, albeit awesome (PowerMac). Until such day as that is no longer the case, I can't recommend Apple hardware to anyone.
If Jobs had not made so many proclamations about the ability of the iPhone to walk in water, then maybe people wouldn't be picking on the reception issues, which all new products might seem to suffer as they enter new markets. QFT. To be fair, the Apple fanboys were also proclaiming this even louder than Jobs. I was so glad when the iPhone launched, because we could stop hearing about how it was going to revolutionize the whole phone landscape. This story is only newsworthy because of how much ridiculous amounts of hype the damn phone got.
Are you serious? I mean, I love Star Wars. I think it's one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made. The story, however, is bloody awful. I don't know if it's even possible to come up with a more cliche story than "boy goes from farm kid to world savior, defeating his evil father along the way". There are a lot of valid criticisms of the prequel trilogy, but at least it had a genuinely interesting premise. The slow decline of a good character into an evil one was a damn good subject to work on. The ORIGINAL trilogy is the one with the plot issues.
To answer the question... it never did. The movies made today are every bit as high-quality as the movies of yesterday, and in some cases (Episode 3), much better. I have a hard time finding Star Wars fans who dislike the new movies, who aren't also the idiotic "omg Han Shot first that changes eeeeverythiiiiiing omg" type. My sense of logic tells me that there must be some of them, but my luck is apparently bad.
When they bring it up needlessly, yes. If a woman has a baby, that's her choice, same for if she gets an abortion. However, if, in a discussion on, say, the finer points of naming children, this woman said, "As a pro-lifer, I find it amusing that you abortionists don't know the etymology of the name Amanda," that would be acting "better" than the others. This would be for two reasons: a) she brought it into a discussion where it was completely needless to do so (as is the case in this thread), and b) she used a condescending tone in her speech (as is the case in this thread.
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Regardless, the fact that it goes on still doesn't make it acceptable. By your logic, and Blkdeath's logic, beating your kids should be ok, because everyone does it, and one day they'll have their own kids to beat, and that'll make up for the fact that they got beat when they were kids.
How was it painful for Leela? I like the character, but seriously, she's kind of a bitch to Fry... how many times does she learn that she'd be very happy with him if she only gave him a chance?
I think you'll find that even with a different reviewer, he'll still disagree with you at least some of the time.
Argh! You got my hopes up, but I couldn't find it! :(
For the record, as long as I'm at it, I can just as easily say that people's Vista problems are specific to their machines, because I use Vista, and it runs like a dream. Stable, runs all my apps/games (except KOTOR) properly... nothing more to ask, really. And no, it doesn't run slower than Windows XP. There are other very satisfied Vista users, they've even posted on slashdot. So clearly, the people who are having problems are just having issues with their specific computers.
The difference, of course, between Microsoft and Blizzard/Square-Enix is that they actually provide servers! I understand the justification in charging for those games, because you're paying for them to maintain the servers 24/7 (well, not counting scheduled downtime or things breaking), and keep a persistent world. I don't think it makes sense to charge for any other game.
You're right that you probably won't convince me, but that has more to do with the fact that I don't consider the things you listed (so far) to have anything to do with playing games online. They don't help my enjoyment at all, so I don't consider them adequate value for my money. Not to mention that the downloadable content has nothing to do with having an XBL subscription. All you need is an account, paid or free, to get that stuff. But meh, in the end, I have no problem with it if you want to pay Microsoft for XBL, it's your right after all... I just think it's a huge rip-off.
Yes, any company is free to create dedicated servers. Yes, $5/month isn't much. The point is... what, exactly, is Microsoft providing us with in exchange for our money (however little or much it may be)? As far as I can tell, the answer is... nothing. They're taking our money because they can. That's the absurd thing, and I'll get worked up about that whether it's $50/year or $.50/year! When I provide money to a company, I expect something in return for my payment, not abuse of a monopoly position.
If I were you, having such a bleak outlook on the future, I'd kill myself. But hey, do whatever you think is necessary, including preaching about how doomed we are. It's not that damn bad, and it's not gonna be that damn bad in 2031, sorry.
If Microsoft isn't using your money to provide dedicated servers... what on earth are they providing in exchange for said money? Seems to me that they're taking it because they can, ie, fucking absurd.
I don't pay for Xbox Live. That doesn't mean I don't want it, and shouldn't complain about its shortcomings.
Oh, get over yourself. Being nerds doesn't mean that we aren't lazy, and willing to have discussions about things we don't fully understand.
It is when you aren't getting anything in return for it (that you shouldn't be getting for free). Paying for online access isn't wrong... paying for online access, when Microsoft doesn't even go so far as to host dedicated servers, is fucking absurd. At that point, it's devolved into "We're Microsoft, and we take your money just cause we can!".
WTF? 1 gig? Dude, I ran Windows XP on a damn laptop with 512 MB, played games on it, etc, etc, etc (and yes, I did have lots of stuff open at once), and never had any performance issues (discounting FPS issues brought on by my GeForce 2 video card). 512 MB is quite sufficient for any XP machine, only gamers should need 1 GB.
Personal opinions about Mac OS aside, there's a huge problem with your plan: you need to buy a Mac, and last I checked, the hardware was stupidly underpowered (mini), badly designed (G5 iMac), or expensive, albeit awesome (PowerMac). Until such day as that is no longer the case, I can't recommend Apple hardware to anyone.
Sounds like there was an error in the chair-keyboard interface when you wrote that. ;)
To answer the question... it never did. The movies made today are every bit as high-quality as the movies of yesterday, and in some cases (Episode 3), much better. I have a hard time finding Star Wars fans who dislike the new movies, who aren't also the idiotic "omg Han Shot first that changes eeeeverythiiiiiing omg" type. My sense of logic tells me that there must be some of them, but my luck is apparently bad.
When they bring it up needlessly, yes. If a woman has a baby, that's her choice, same for if she gets an abortion. However, if, in a discussion on, say, the finer points of naming children, this woman said, "As a pro-lifer, I find it amusing that you abortionists don't know the etymology of the name Amanda," that would be acting "better" than the others. This would be for two reasons: a) she brought it into a discussion where it was completely needless to do so (as is the case in this thread), and b) she used a condescending tone in her speech (as is the case in this thread.