I just treat it as another password for me to come up with. I never put in the 'correct' answer to those things. I just run mkpasswd a few more times, then enter the results in my master password file.
The best way to illustrate cognitive dissonance is via the classic experiment: you assign someone (e.g., a student) a Homer Simpson-esque job that's boring him to tears. Then you one day say he can stop doing it, you have something better to do with him. But you ask him if he can find a replacement for that previous crap job. You even offer a dollar if he does. So he'll go try to convince someone else that it's a great job to take. The fun thing is, after a while he'll have convinced himself too that it's a great job.
This isn't necessarily cognative dissonance though. Some boring, repetitive jobs seem like crap at first, but once you get used to it and it can be done without thinking, some people can get into a bit of a zen state and it can be a comforting task. (MMO players who need to "farm" monster kills know what I mean) It doesn't necessarily mean that the person is deluding himself, lying to himself, or misrepresenting himself when he says it's a good job. It's just that it might grow on you over time.
So funnily enough, there is no more rabid, say, XBox fanboy, than one who was a PS2 fanboy and felt betrayed by Sony and had to let their whole "Sony for ever!!!" model crash. And viceversa.
I used to be that Sony fanboy. But instead of going rabidly to the other camp I just... stopped caring, I guess. But aside from me, I've seen your point to be pretty accurate, especially with the rabidness of the "born again" crowd.
You people?!?!? What do you mean by that?!? Just kidding.
He means "you people," who refuse to give Bush an inch even when he makes the right decision for the right reasons. I suppose you could call them the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the left.
But it's not, they're saying "No, because you can't tell the president what to do."
And he's right, and they shouldn't be able to. It's the whole point behind the separation of powers in the US Constitution. Am I still angry at Bush for his earlier power grabs? Yes I am, and even right-wingers should be too. But this decision is a response to the unjustified meddling of Congress in the affairs of the executive branch, and that's just as important a consideration as "this requirement is a waste of time." You don't fix earlier bad precidents by setting more.
Different fields have varying ways of protecting trade secrets/patents. You can make the formula for Coke a secret. But what if you invent a better widget. Maybe a different design of car engine. By distributing that engine, you're breaking the trade secret, since anyone could look at it to see what you did (and in fact, mechanics may need to know quite a bit about that engine to work on it). The only protection in that case would be a patent.
Trade secrets make sense in some fields, but not in others.
I must apologize for not responding to the main of your argument, but in truth I have no quarrel with most what you say. The point at which I take exception is your reference to the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings as an act of war.
The attacks of 11 September 2001 were criminal acts, not a deliberate attack by a sovereign nation. They were not accompanied by a declaration of war, and there is no reason to believe that any sovereign nation was involved in the planning or execution of these attacks.
Wait, didn't you know? "war" is no longer something only waged between sovereign nations. Now you can declare war on an idea or tactic (and logically it can declare war on you). 9/11 was "terrorism" and terrorist groups declaring war on America.
Not that I believe any of that bullshit is valid, but that's how the concept of war has changed in the new millenium.
As I say, I don't think the Neocons orchestrated the twin tower thing themselves, but they certainly wasted no time in using it to their advantage with a level of cynical hypocrisy at least as repellent as the attack itself.
Yes, but this isn't really a 9/11 Truther argument. The Truth Movement argues that the Neocons pulled off the attacks. But no one argues against the idea that 9/11 gave them the political power to implement their policies.
My company doesn't ban gmail, but we have pretty strong warnings against using it to transfer files in-house. And pretty strong warnings about transferring any files out of the company in fact. Be careful there.
My house near San Francisco doesn't have air conditioning. It almost never goes above 80F here, and humidity is low when it's warm. So.. why would we ever turn on the AC?
She did get dumped for WoW. Like you said, it might have been something else, sure. But it wasn't. She got dumped, not because of WoW but because of issues; but this doesn't change the fact instead of telling her something like "I'm sorry, but you're nuts, and I can't take it. I'm leaving" he chose to hide behind something else.
I don't think you can blame WoW or claim it's the game's fault though. Guys and girls have been lying to each other about the real reasons for breakups since the advent of communication.
Mage and druid catered to? Druids in pvp, maybe. Mages in pvp or pve, catered to? Are you high? Sure, mages might be crying a lot now, but they have valid reason to.
I'll admit though, as of about a year ago, the druid class was the most unreasonably-whiny class in the game. Even the generally reasonable druids that were in my guild admitted as much.
You're running Sunwell REPEATEDLY to get the loot you want. Same content, over and over.
I can go to 50 different locations in UO and have exactly the same chances of getting exactly the same loot.
I would have agreed with you on this for the level 60 game, with Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraj, and Naxxramas pretty much a straight progression line. You didn't skip any of those steps, at least not
WoW at level 70 seems quite a bit different. You have multiple high-end instances that drop the same level loot (Serpentshrine, Tempest Keep, Zul'Aman all drop Tier 5-level gear, and Mount Hyjal and Black Temple all drop Tier 6-level gear), and the Badge of Justice system allows you to turn in tokens gained in any heroic five-man dungeon, karazhan... any heroic or better instance for loot that's Tier 5 or 6 level, depending on how many of those badges you want to spend. No, you're not going to fill every item slot through badge rewards, but you can still outfit your character with extremely good gear by doing any of the many endgame instances available for you. For heroics, the instance daily quests encourage players to visit different instances instead of the same/"best" one over and over again as well.
Granted, none of that is Sunwell loot, but only a very very small fraction of the players in the game are far enough along to be taking down those bosses anyway. To me, Sunwell is like Diablo II's cow level. It's a cute extra.
I see, so your opinion about this game that you don't enjoy and don't play is incredibly relevant.
Trust me, it's pretty relevant to Blizzard. You can see the GP's points addressed with every casual-friendly content patch to give the non-hardcore people something new to do as well.
Now, the GP's point pretty much only applies to the solo-content part of the game and the early 70 experience.. Once you get into the raiding/pvp aspect of the game, the "all you do is push one button, get loot" argument (mostly) goes out the window.
Go ahead and jot down an exception next to my name too. For me the gear has always been tools to a greater goal.
This is the attitude of most "good" raiders as well. A number of folks get into it to feel superior to other people people standing on Awesome Hill in Orgrimmar (back at 60), but those folks often don't last that long in the raiding environment. When you treat epics as tools to progression rather than personal trophies you end up avoiding a good chunk of the loot drama out there as well..
Wonderful. I love progress that involves government supporting a monopoly instead of non-proprietary, open standards.
Technically, the Democrat and Republican parties are not government bodies. They are private organizations whose chief members are trying to get elected to government office or are already elected.
All the hotels I've been to in the UK do allow port 22 access. They also allow port 1723, which I think is pretty essential for most business travellers.
I was pretty disappointed that all of the wireless networks available at the Philadelphia and SFO airports only let through port 80 (and probably 443, something I ought to exploit). It seems common for public-access wireless networks to allow only web access.
No, the advertisement authority did the right thing here. "The entire internet" is a lofty claim, and Apple isn't living up to it. I don't give a damn if 99% of the population doesn't care about the entire internet, Apple is still responsible for being factual in their claims.
Wait a minute. A company was making exaggerated claims in an advertisement? My world-view is shattered.:(
It should really be troll rather than flamebait. As far as "wasting" mod points though: AC or otherwise, modding the crap down is as important as modding the good stuff up. And come on, you get 15 of the fuckers these days, you can spare 1 to put a troll in his place.
Aye, I never use all of my mod points now. I'm rarely using a third of them, since I'm usually so tempted to chime in on any story I'm reading.
Slashdot Mirror
Games back in the Apple/C64/IBM were also far simpler, smaller, and easier to support as well. What worked then won't necessarily work now.
And where do those numbers come from? I've never met another person who has played Runescape. Is it a game popular in China or Korea but not the US?
And thank god that WoW isn't PvP-centric. It's one of the big reasons that I've stayed away from Conan and to a lesser extent, Warhammer.
I just treat it as another password for me to come up with. I never put in the 'correct' answer to those things. I just run mkpasswd a few more times, then enter the results in my master password file.
The best way to illustrate cognitive dissonance is via the classic experiment: you assign someone (e.g., a student) a Homer Simpson-esque job that's boring him to tears. Then you one day say he can stop doing it, you have something better to do with him. But you ask him if he can find a replacement for that previous crap job. You even offer a dollar if he does. So he'll go try to convince someone else that it's a great job to take. The fun thing is, after a while he'll have convinced himself too that it's a great job.
This isn't necessarily cognative dissonance though. Some boring, repetitive jobs seem like crap at first, but once you get used to it and it can be done without thinking, some people can get into a bit of a zen state and it can be a comforting task. (MMO players who need to "farm" monster kills know what I mean) It doesn't necessarily mean that the person is deluding himself, lying to himself, or misrepresenting himself when he says it's a good job. It's just that it might grow on you over time.
So funnily enough, there is no more rabid, say, XBox fanboy, than one who was a PS2 fanboy and felt betrayed by Sony and had to let their whole "Sony for ever!!!" model crash. And viceversa.
I used to be that Sony fanboy. But instead of going rabidly to the other camp I just... stopped caring, I guess. But aside from me, I've seen your point to be pretty accurate, especially with the rabidness of the "born again" crowd.
And 9/11 was pulled off by a bunch of pissed-off Muslims. What're you, retarded?
Hey, 25% of the population is retarded.
You people?!?!? What do you mean by that?!? Just kidding.
He means "you people," who refuse to give Bush an inch even when he makes the right decision for the right reasons. I suppose you could call them the Limbaughs and Hannitys of the left.
But it's not, they're saying "No, because you can't tell the president what to do."
And he's right, and they shouldn't be able to. It's the whole point behind the separation of powers in the US Constitution. Am I still angry at Bush for his earlier power grabs? Yes I am, and even right-wingers should be too. But this decision is a response to the unjustified meddling of Congress in the affairs of the executive branch, and that's just as important a consideration as "this requirement is a waste of time." You don't fix earlier bad precidents by setting more.
Changing water into wine, making scads of fish and loaves of bread, getting up after he was dead?!?
Not to mention he slept for a solid three days after he got all his stuff done.
Yeah, but old people actually go out and vote, not just say they support somebody when they get a phone call.
Oh damn, I wish I could mod this up to 5. The disaffected "oh.. I don't think I'll vote after all" Hillary supporters are disgusting.
Different fields have varying ways of protecting trade secrets/patents. You can make the formula for Coke a secret. But what if you invent a better widget. Maybe a different design of car engine. By distributing that engine, you're breaking the trade secret, since anyone could look at it to see what you did (and in fact, mechanics may need to know quite a bit about that engine to work on it). The only protection in that case would be a patent.
Trade secrets make sense in some fields, but not in others.
Oil is the icing. The cake is building nations that are loyal to us.
Better yet, building nations loyal to us that are close to Russia.
I must apologize for not responding to the main of your argument, but in truth I have no quarrel with most what you say. The point at which I take exception is your reference to the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings as an act of war.
The attacks of 11 September 2001 were criminal acts, not a deliberate attack by a sovereign nation. They were not accompanied by a declaration of war, and there is no reason to believe that any sovereign nation was involved in the planning or execution of these attacks.
Wait, didn't you know? "war" is no longer something only waged between sovereign nations. Now you can declare war on an idea or tactic (and logically it can declare war on you). 9/11 was "terrorism" and terrorist groups declaring war on America.
Not that I believe any of that bullshit is valid, but that's how the concept of war has changed in the new millenium.
As I say, I don't think the Neocons orchestrated the twin tower thing themselves, but they certainly wasted no time in using it to their advantage with a level of cynical hypocrisy at least as repellent as the attack itself.
Yes, but this isn't really a 9/11 Truther argument. The Truth Movement argues that the Neocons pulled off the attacks. But no one argues against the idea that 9/11 gave them the political power to implement their policies.
My company doesn't ban gmail, but we have pretty strong warnings against using it to transfer files in-house. And pretty strong warnings about transferring any files out of the company in fact. Be careful there.
My house near San Francisco doesn't have air conditioning. It almost never goes above 80F here, and humidity is low when it's warm. So.. why would we ever turn on the AC?
Heating, however.. is a different story.
Quark's Bar was, by far, the best place in Vegas to have a party with friends.
Those Warp Core Breaches were pretty good...
She did get dumped for WoW. Like you said, it might have been something else, sure. But it wasn't. She got dumped, not because of WoW but because of issues; but this doesn't change the fact instead of telling her something like "I'm sorry, but you're nuts, and I can't take it. I'm leaving" he chose to hide behind something else.
I don't think you can blame WoW or claim it's the game's fault though. Guys and girls have been lying to each other about the real reasons for breakups since the advent of communication.
Mage and druid catered to? Druids in pvp, maybe. Mages in pvp or pve, catered to? Are you high? Sure, mages might be crying a lot now, but they have valid reason to.
I'll admit though, as of about a year ago, the druid class was the most unreasonably-whiny class in the game. Even the generally reasonable druids that were in my guild admitted as much.
That's the same thing.
You're running Sunwell REPEATEDLY to get the loot you want. Same content, over and over.
I can go to 50 different locations in UO and have exactly the same chances of getting exactly the same loot.
I would have agreed with you on this for the level 60 game, with Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraj, and Naxxramas pretty much a straight progression line. You didn't skip any of those steps, at least not
WoW at level 70 seems quite a bit different. You have multiple high-end instances that drop the same level loot (Serpentshrine, Tempest Keep, Zul'Aman all drop Tier 5-level gear, and Mount Hyjal and Black Temple all drop Tier 6-level gear), and the Badge of Justice system allows you to turn in tokens gained in any heroic five-man dungeon, karazhan... any heroic or better instance for loot that's Tier 5 or 6 level, depending on how many of those badges you want to spend. No, you're not going to fill every item slot through badge rewards, but you can still outfit your character with extremely good gear by doing any of the many endgame instances available for you. For heroics, the instance daily quests encourage players to visit different instances instead of the same/"best" one over and over again as well.
Granted, none of that is Sunwell loot, but only a very very small fraction of the players in the game are far enough along to be taking down those bosses anyway. To me, Sunwell is like Diablo II's cow level. It's a cute extra.
I stopped playing WOW about a year ago.
I see, so your opinion about this game that you don't enjoy and don't play is incredibly relevant.
Trust me, it's pretty relevant to Blizzard. You can see the GP's points addressed with every casual-friendly content patch to give the non-hardcore people something new to do as well.
Now, the GP's point pretty much only applies to the solo-content part of the game and the early 70 experience.. Once you get into the raiding/pvp aspect of the game, the "all you do is push one button, get loot" argument (mostly) goes out the window.
Go ahead and jot down an exception next to my name too. For me the gear has always been tools to a greater goal.
This is the attitude of most "good" raiders as well. A number of folks get into it to feel superior to other people people standing on Awesome Hill in Orgrimmar (back at 60), but those folks often don't last that long in the raiding environment. When you treat epics as tools to progression rather than personal trophies you end up avoiding a good chunk of the loot drama out there as well..
Pvp has a larger range of attitudes.
Wonderful. I love progress that involves government supporting a monopoly instead of non-proprietary, open standards.
Technically, the Democrat and Republican parties are not government bodies. They are private organizations whose chief members are trying to get elected to government office or are already elected.
All the hotels I've been to in the UK do allow port 22 access. They also allow port 1723, which I think is pretty essential for most business travellers.
I was pretty disappointed that all of the wireless networks available at the Philadelphia and SFO airports only let through port 80 (and probably 443, something I ought to exploit). It seems common for public-access wireless networks to allow only web access.
No, the advertisement authority did the right thing here. "The entire internet" is a lofty claim, and Apple isn't living up to it. I don't give a damn if 99% of the population doesn't care about the entire internet, Apple is still responsible for being factual in their claims.
Wait a minute. A company was making exaggerated claims in an advertisement? My world-view is shattered. :(
It should really be troll rather than flamebait. As far as "wasting" mod points though: AC or otherwise, modding the crap down is as important as modding the good stuff up. And come on, you get 15 of the fuckers these days, you can spare 1 to put a troll in his place.
Aye, I never use all of my mod points now. I'm rarely using a third of them, since I'm usually so tempted to chime in on any story I'm reading.