Yes, but do I, as an adult, still have the right to buy it for myself if stores don't carry it (can't risk being prosecuted if a register jockey decides he doesn't care or a 17-year-old comes in with a fake ID), leading to game publishers deciding that it's not worth the expense of creating games that stores won't carry? Oh, wait - it doesn't matter whether I have the right to buy it or not if it doesn't exist.
When's the last time you saw a sexually-themed game with good production values (no cheesy low-grade graphics or barely-interactive movies that claim to be "games") which doesn't just treat sex as a topic for crude attempts at juvenile humor (sorry, Leisure Suit Larry, you don't count either)? They're generally not made. The sort of bill described in the article, if passed into law and not struck down, would consign graphically violent games to the same obscurity as graphically sexual games.
It's not something I've ever looked at, but I kind of doubt that encrypted backups are likely to be popular enough at the "serious backup" level for the simple reason that tape manufacturers advertise the (average) compressed capacity of the tape, with compression being done in hardware by the drive. This has generally been about twice the actual raw, uncompressed capacity of the tape. (It may be higher now; it's been a couple years since I went to virtual tapes.) Well-encrypted data is uncompressible, or very close to it (as in "about as likely to get bigger when compressed as it is to get smaller"). So how long do you think a publisher of encrypted backup software is going to last when corporate execs start to notice that, when they use the encrypted backup software, they can only get 200G onto their 400G tapes?
That all sounds great in theory, but falls flat in practice. Trying to suppress sexuality enhances its appeal and incites sexual thoughts far more than treating it as something normal and natural does.
Just grabbing the first document I could find on google which talks about international rates of teen pregnancy, we find that "Adolescent pregnancy, birth, abortion and sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates are much higher in the United States than in most other developed countries" and that Sweden - a country stereotypically considered to be very open about sex - has a teen pregnancy rate of less than a quarter of that in the US[1], despite having higher levels of sexual activity[2]. The rates of sexually transmitted diseases are also lower in Sweden.[3]
So, no, I can't say that the evidence supports your claim that censoring sexuality does anything to prevent people from "having sex and getting into trouble" when the actual numbers show that more open policies substantially reduce rates of the quantifiable forms of "trouble" which you cited. ("Damaged psyches" isn't really quantifiable, but I submit that, when they result from sex, it is due to either feeling exploited or to societal censure (e.g., being seen as "a slut", whether by yourself or by others) - and both of these would be substantially reduced if sexuality were treated in a more open fashion rather than being suppressed.)
[1] "The proportion of women aged 20-24 who had a child before age 20 is a useful summary indicator that reflects the differences in teenage birthrates by country. This proportion is lowest in Sweden (4%)... and highest in the United States (22%)."
[2] "The proportion of women aged 20-24 who had first intercourse before age 20 varies from 75% in Canada to 86% in Sweden, with the United States (81%), France (83%) and Great Britain (85%) having intermediate levels", "Data on the proportion of all 18-19-year-olds who are currently sexually active (i.e., who had sex in the last three months) are available for four countries. The United States has the lowest proportion (59%), with France and Great Britain (62-64%) having somewhat higher levels, and Sweden (79%) having the highest level"
[3] "The incidence of chlamydia among adolescents in the United States (1,132 cases per 100,000) is nearly twice that in Canada and Sweden", "The annual incidence of gonorrhea among all U.S. adolescents (572 cases per 100,000) is 10 or more times the level in the other four countries."
You're assuming the decisions are the developers'.
Back around '98-'99, I worked for a company which assigned me to develop a real-time data collection system based on DCOM for communication between the data collectors and the database server. I did so, it shipped, and the support guys promptly started coming to me with questions about hosts not being able to talk to each other. After much research, we failed to come up with any better solution than "*shrug* Try reinstalling the software and maybe DCOM will work this time."
DCOM wasn't my decision, but I suppose experiencing its effects did have an impact on me... When I quit that job, I knew that I never wanted to work with technology whose source was unavailable to me again. I've been working with (primarily) Linux ever since.
Look at how lazy programmers PERL code looks. It's looks like crap becasue there are so interested in saving time NOW that they don't develop code that saves them time overall.
What you speak of is false laziness. True laziness seeks to minimize work by doing it once, getting it right the first time, and documenting it such that there will never be need to explain it to anyone else. An impossible goal, to be sure, but just as surely a goal which is not served by slapping something unmaintainable together which will cause you much pain and wasted time in the future.
but you clearly got screwed on the holidays. Just about everybody I know gets holidays from day 2 on the job.
That's true of permanent positions, definitely, but the GP was talking about a temp job. In my experience both with temp agencies long ago and consulting agencies more recently[1], they all seem to have policies that you have to work at least X days for them in the immediately preceding 6-12 months to be eligible for holiday pay or vacation time.
[1] I'm subcontracting with one right now to fill time between clients, but they're so used to people being agency employees that they keep giving me fliers about their benefit programs, even though they don't apply to me.
Based on my read of TFA, piratpartiet is affiliated with piratbyrån and some of piratbyrån's servers were also seized in the raid, simply because they happened to be nearby. Assuming that's correct, piratpartiet is involved in the event, even if they have no direct ties to TPB itself.
15 minutes on google has failed to find a single page referring to squibs and the WTC collapse which refers to them in any context other than that of a controlled demolition scenario. I have heard many experts cited both for and against the plausibility of controlled demolition vs. plane crashes given the available video records of the event. Their comments can be ultimately synthesized into a single statement: The puffs from the sides of the towers may be consistent with either plane crashes or controlled demolition, depending on what you interpret them to be. There is no consensus of experts one way or the other regarding their significance and I don't have the expertise myself to evaluate the competing claims.
However, one of the experts who I have heard interviewed stated that, for controlled demolition to have been the cause, substantial explosive charges would have had to be placed on exposed structural elements and this would have been readily visible to anyone working on those floors of the building. This statement may be either true or false, but, unlike the puffs of smoke/debris/squibs, it is not subject to personal interpretation. It also makes sense to this layman, and it came from a man with extensive experience in building demolition, therefore I accept it as probably true.
Nobody has said, either before or after the event, that they saw any such charges (or exposed supporting structures, for that matter). Therefore, in the absence of a solid theory to explain how a controlled demolition could have occurred without the use of demolition charges, I believe controlled demolition to be effectively disproven.
Now, if you're advocating a squib-based theory that isn't controlled demolition (or that explains how controlled demolition could be carried out without the use of demolition charges), I'd love to hear it.
Unfortunately, the time for laymen to seek out their own answers (without first becoming experts) appears to be long past, as my attempts to locate sources which clearly and fairly present all viewpoints have proved fruitless. Every single source of information I have found is either presenting a specific alternative theory of how the towers were destroyed or debunking one or more such theories, but none do a good job of even appearing to be objective. They are all clearly aimed at persuading the reader to adopt the author's beliefs rather than presenting the facts in an accessible form such that the reader can form his own opinion.
I'm always tempted to answer that question by calling them simply a way of grabbing near-unlimited power, nothing more, nothing less.
Realistically, though, I think it's much more likely that the folks in government are so worried about not looking "soft" or being seen as not doing anything that they're just rushing out and doing something that looks like it might help without being too concerned about whether it's the right thing to do or even whether it will be truly effective. The sheer number of laws out there that only restrict the law-abiding, have little to no effect on criminals, and thus end up doing nothing about the problems they were claimed to be aimed at solving suggests that this is business as usual for government (at least in the US; I don't know whether other governments behave similarly or not) and the War on Terror only serves to make it play out on a larger scale by increasing the urgency to be seen as doing something about it.
The 9/11 hijackers had perfectly valid travel papers and would have been most likely granted entry even had these rules been in place.
Some of them entered the US with perfectly valid travel papers. As I recall, the 9/11 Commission Report mentioned that two of them entered with obviously-forged passports, but, for some reason, the customs guys at the border decided to let it slide. Others were already known terrorists and should not have been issued visas in the first place.
You're absolutely right that all the new laws since then probably wouldn't have kept these guys out, but everyone seems to overlook the reverse of that argument: The laws already in place on Sept. 10, 2001 would have been sufficient to catch at least half of these guys - and, more likely than not, to prevent the attack entirely - if only they had been properly enforced.
I also agree that US involvement in the mideast (and, specifically, our dogmatic insistence on supporting Israel, no matter what) is the root issue and needs to be addressed if we're ever to get a true resolution to our terrorist problems.
It's a nice theory but, if the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition as I assume you're suggesting, then that raises other hard questions such as "Where were the explosive charges which should have been attached to exposed structural elements that are normally covered?" and "How were the charges triggered, given that there have been no reports of unusual cables running through the building, nor of any likely radio-controlled detonation signal?"
There are lots of experts supporting each side of the question of what the destruction was or was not consistent with, but, to me, the kicker is the lack of anyone having seen anything to indicate that demolition charges or the means of detonating them were in place prior to the event.
Definite agreement on our own government being a bigger threat than any terrorist, though.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for mentioning that... It's one of my pet peeves as well.
"Sex" is a biological attribute. "Gender" is a grammatical or social construct; it has also recently come to be widely used to refer to sexual identity. Nonetheless, unless you somehow know whether an unborn baby is heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, etc., you have no idea what its sexual identity (i.e., gender) is. (Even if you could see into the future to determine what its ultimate sexuality would be, I would still question the term on the basis that it really doesn't have any identity yet, sexual or otherwise.) You only know its sex.
Even after owning it for a year, I couldn't skip songs or navigate the content without grabbing it and looking at it.
Granted, I can skip songs on my iPod without looking, but, even after owning it for a year, I can't navigate the content without looking at it, thanks to their godawful "it looks just like a 4-way directional pad, but it functions absolutely nothing like one" control scheme.
Listening to music in the car and want to switch to a different playlist? Good luck watching the road while you do it - dragging your thumb an eigth of the way around the pad will sometimes move you down one spot, sometimes three. There's no way to know unless you're either looking at it or have it set to make obnoxious "beep - beep - beep"s every time it moves by an item. Even when I am looking at it, I overshoot more often than not and then have to sit there playing hopscotch with it as the cursor jumps back and forth over the option I want, without ever actually stopping on it.
But, hey, that's the perfect interface, because just pressing once on the bottom of the pad to move down one item is too complicated or something, I guess. It's much more intuitive for "down" to mean "toggle between play and pause". Just like, when they show a little arrow pointing right to indicate there's a submenu, it's more intuitive to press the button in the center than to press the right edge of the pad (you know, in the direction the arrow is pointing).
Sorry, everyone, but I really don't see what's supposed to be so wonderful about the iPod interface.
(Nothing actually specific to your post, anagama, yours was just the first one I saw referencing specific defects in other mp3 players' interfaces, so it seemed the most natural place to put my rant about the iPod interface in an attempt to offset all the posts raving about how absolutely wonderful it is.)
You forgot the related question: How persistent is the customization?
My phone is a Motorola V600 and the one non-basic feature I use on it is Bluetooth. Unfortunately, it has a habit of occasionally deciding that the reason it can no longer see a Bluetooth device is not because the device has been turned off or gone out of range, but rather that the phone's own Bluetooth hardware has failed, so it shuts that part of itself off and any attempt to turn it back on is met with the error "BLUETOOTH MODULE NOT ATTACHED". The only way to get it working again is to do a "Master Reset", which also discards all customizations.
Considering that I end up having to do this, on average, every 2-3 weeks, my phone may as well not be very customizable, as I don't have the patience to go through and repeat customizations beyond noise and light settings to turn off some annoying bits that are on by default. (Do NOT beep every time a button is pressed! Do NOT make flashy lights all night that keep me awake to indicate that you're charging!)
1. You don't HAVE to buy a feature-intensive phone.
Actually, yes, I do. AFAICT, they don't make Bluetooth phones that I can use to get my laptop online anywhere there's a cell signal which don't also include cameras, MP3 players, IM clients, Java games, kitchen sinks, etc. (And before you say I don't HAVE to have Bluetooth... it makes my life a hell of a lot easier when a client calls with a problem and I can hop online and fix it from wherever I happen to be without having to run off in search of internet access first.)
Can they anyway? Ringtones are MIDI or MP3/4 files. I can sent them to my 'phone using bluetooth or the (included) cable.
In the US, yes, they can. Or at least they could. When I finally picked up a cellphone (not quite two years ago), I got one from Verizon, specifically chosen for its Bluetooth capabilites. When I got it home and started messing with it, I discovered that Verizon had disabled all Bluetooth functions with exception of connecting to a wireless headset. They claimed it was a security decision to prevent people from shoving things onto your phone as you walk past, but it looked to me like a transparent scheme to force you to pay them $0.25/photo to email yourself any pictures you take instead of just Bluetoothing them off the phone for free.
Since then, the courts have awarded a class-action settlement to Verizon customers with crippled Bluetooth phones, but I didn't pay much attention, as I had returned the phone to Verizon as soon as I discovered the disabled features, which was soon enough that I was able to get a full refund on both phone and service. I wouldn't be surprised if that sort of thing still goes on here, but I expect it's at least become less blatant since the settlement.
I was going to say the exact same thing, but you beat me to it... I think there's a definite market for basic phones with one or two useful features (i.e., Bluetooth and internet connectivity) without having all the crap fluff features (cameras, games, etc.) forced upon you in the process.
Perhaps... aside from the part where he complained about twitch gaming being part of the problem. (And I agree, which is why I lost interest in PlanetSide before my free trial account even had time to expire.)
I slightly disagree... Which is to say, I agree that levels should be deemphasized in PvP, but they should also be deemphasized in PvE. I think this whole notion of PvE and PvP using different rules is absurd. If something has to be toned down because it's too powerful in PvP, then it's probably too powerful in PvE also. Plus, if the two are kept to the same rules, you largely avoid the situation of having PvP builds that are nigh useless in PvE and PvE builds that get ganked in an instant as soon as a hostile PvPer comes into sight. (I don't doubt that there would still be some dichotomy between PvP and PvE builds, as a result of players and mobs tending to use different tactics, but it would be much less extreme than in the typical situation you have now where each type of build is minimaxed for a different set of rules.)
And I have to agree with the earlier poster that Eve does this right - the veterans in their battleships may be a lot more powerful than a raw recruit in his first frigate, but they're not completely untouchable simply because the game says "Level 1 has a 0.001% chance to hit level 60 and only does 1/1000 of normal damage even if he does. Level 60 has 95% chance to hit level 1 and does 100 times normal damage."
But, then, I've been saying that levels should be abolished (in both computer and pen & paper RPGs) ever since I first played a game that wasn't fixated on them.
But, again, your water main bursting and flooding the street is readily obvious to anyone who happens to pass by and there's no way that the homeowner could fail to become aware of it rather quickly as soon as he looks out the window. If your PC is a zombie, the average user has little or no way of knowing that there is a problem (maybe the PC will seem "a little slow", but seeming a little slow is widely considered a normal symptom of running Windows for too long, not an indicator of a real problem) and even an expert needs to use specialized tools (e.g., in some cases, a traffic monitor or packet sniffer running on a separate host) to reliably detect it, so I don't see how they can reasonably be held responsible for "ignoring" it.
Bad analogy. If the water pipe leaks between the street and your premises due to someone else coming along and pounding on it with a hammer, then it's not really your fault, is it? Or would you say that the homeowner was at fault because he didn't erect a fence around the property and post armed guards to keep vandals out?
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Yes, but do I, as an adult, still have the right to buy it for myself if stores don't carry it (can't risk being prosecuted if a register jockey decides he doesn't care or a 17-year-old comes in with a fake ID), leading to game publishers deciding that it's not worth the expense of creating games that stores won't carry? Oh, wait - it doesn't matter whether I have the right to buy it or not if it doesn't exist.
When's the last time you saw a sexually-themed game with good production values (no cheesy low-grade graphics or barely-interactive movies that claim to be "games") which doesn't just treat sex as a topic for crude attempts at juvenile humor (sorry, Leisure Suit Larry, you don't count either)? They're generally not made. The sort of bill described in the article, if passed into law and not struck down, would consign graphically violent games to the same obscurity as graphically sexual games.
...but does make it more fun.
*lol* Great point! I'll have to remember that one for future use.
It's not something I've ever looked at, but I kind of doubt that encrypted backups are likely to be popular enough at the "serious backup" level for the simple reason that tape manufacturers advertise the (average) compressed capacity of the tape, with compression being done in hardware by the drive. This has generally been about twice the actual raw, uncompressed capacity of the tape. (It may be higher now; it's been a couple years since I went to virtual tapes.) Well-encrypted data is uncompressible, or very close to it (as in "about as likely to get bigger when compressed as it is to get smaller"). So how long do you think a publisher of encrypted backup software is going to last when corporate execs start to notice that, when they use the encrypted backup software, they can only get 200G onto their 400G tapes?
That all sounds great in theory, but falls flat in practice. Trying to suppress sexuality enhances its appeal and incites sexual thoughts far more than treating it as something normal and natural does.
Just grabbing the first document I could find on google which talks about international rates of teen pregnancy, we find that "Adolescent pregnancy, birth, abortion and sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates are much higher in the United States than in most other developed countries" and that Sweden - a country stereotypically considered to be very open about sex - has a teen pregnancy rate of less than a quarter of that in the US[1], despite having higher levels of sexual activity[2]. The rates of sexually transmitted diseases are also lower in Sweden.[3]
So, no, I can't say that the evidence supports your claim that censoring sexuality does anything to prevent people from "having sex and getting into trouble" when the actual numbers show that more open policies substantially reduce rates of the quantifiable forms of "trouble" which you cited. ("Damaged psyches" isn't really quantifiable, but I submit that, when they result from sex, it is due to either feeling exploited or to societal censure (e.g., being seen as "a slut", whether by yourself or by others) - and both of these would be substantially reduced if sexuality were treated in a more open fashion rather than being suppressed.)
[1] "The proportion of women aged 20-24 who had a child before age 20 is a useful summary indicator that reflects the differences in teenage birthrates by country. This proportion is lowest in Sweden (4%)... and highest in the United States (22%)."
[2] "The proportion of women aged 20-24 who had first intercourse before age 20 varies from 75% in Canada to 86% in Sweden, with the United States (81%), France (83%) and Great Britain (85%) having intermediate levels", "Data on the proportion of all 18-19-year-olds who are currently sexually active (i.e., who had sex in the last three months) are available for four countries. The United States has the lowest proportion (59%), with France and Great Britain (62-64%) having somewhat higher levels, and Sweden (79%) having the highest level"
[3] "The incidence of chlamydia among adolescents in the United States (1,132 cases per 100,000) is nearly twice that in Canada and Sweden", "The annual incidence of gonorrhea among all U.S. adolescents (572 cases per 100,000) is 10 or more times the level in the other four countries."
Your job is to convince your kids that they don't want to play those games. The threat of corporeal punishment is an effective way to do this
Not wanting to do something and being afraid of punishment that will result from doing it are not at all the same thing.
You're assuming the decisions are the developers'.
Back around '98-'99, I worked for a company which assigned me to develop a real-time data collection system based on DCOM for communication between the data collectors and the database server. I did so, it shipped, and the support guys promptly started coming to me with questions about hosts not being able to talk to each other. After much research, we failed to come up with any better solution than "*shrug* Try reinstalling the software and maybe DCOM will work this time."
DCOM wasn't my decision, but I suppose experiencing its effects did have an impact on me... When I quit that job, I knew that I never wanted to work with technology whose source was unavailable to me again. I've been working with (primarily) Linux ever since.
Look at how lazy programmers PERL code looks. It's looks like crap becasue there are so interested in saving time NOW that they don't develop code that saves them time overall.
What you speak of is false laziness. True laziness seeks to minimize work by doing it once, getting it right the first time, and documenting it such that there will never be need to explain it to anyone else. An impossible goal, to be sure, but just as surely a goal which is not served by slapping something unmaintainable together which will cause you much pain and wasted time in the future.
but you clearly got screwed on the holidays. Just about everybody I know gets holidays from day 2 on the job.
That's true of permanent positions, definitely, but the GP was talking about a temp job. In my experience both with temp agencies long ago and consulting agencies more recently[1], they all seem to have policies that you have to work at least X days for them in the immediately preceding 6-12 months to be eligible for holiday pay or vacation time.
[1] I'm subcontracting with one right now to fill time between clients, but they're so used to people being agency employees that they keep giving me fliers about their benefit programs, even though they don't apply to me.
Finding a person that speaks English well enough should not be an issue.
Especially since the local language is Swedish.
Based on my read of TFA, piratpartiet is affiliated with piratbyrån and some of piratbyrån's servers were also seized in the raid, simply because they happened to be nearby. Assuming that's correct, piratpartiet is involved in the event, even if they have no direct ties to TPB itself.
15 minutes on google has failed to find a single page referring to squibs and the WTC collapse which refers to them in any context other than that of a controlled demolition scenario. I have heard many experts cited both for and against the plausibility of controlled demolition vs. plane crashes given the available video records of the event. Their comments can be ultimately synthesized into a single statement: The puffs from the sides of the towers may be consistent with either plane crashes or controlled demolition, depending on what you interpret them to be. There is no consensus of experts one way or the other regarding their significance and I don't have the expertise myself to evaluate the competing claims.
However, one of the experts who I have heard interviewed stated that, for controlled demolition to have been the cause, substantial explosive charges would have had to be placed on exposed structural elements and this would have been readily visible to anyone working on those floors of the building. This statement may be either true or false, but, unlike the puffs of smoke/debris/squibs, it is not subject to personal interpretation. It also makes sense to this layman, and it came from a man with extensive experience in building demolition, therefore I accept it as probably true.
Nobody has said, either before or after the event, that they saw any such charges (or exposed supporting structures, for that matter). Therefore, in the absence of a solid theory to explain how a controlled demolition could have occurred without the use of demolition charges, I believe controlled demolition to be effectively disproven.
Now, if you're advocating a squib-based theory that isn't controlled demolition (or that explains how controlled demolition could be carried out without the use of demolition charges), I'd love to hear it.
Unfortunately, the time for laymen to seek out their own answers (without first becoming experts) appears to be long past, as my attempts to locate sources which clearly and fairly present all viewpoints have proved fruitless. Every single source of information I have found is either presenting a specific alternative theory of how the towers were destroyed or debunking one or more such theories, but none do a good job of even appearing to be objective. They are all clearly aimed at persuading the reader to adopt the author's beliefs rather than presenting the facts in an accessible form such that the reader can form his own opinion.
I'm always tempted to answer that question by calling them simply a way of grabbing near-unlimited power, nothing more, nothing less.
Realistically, though, I think it's much more likely that the folks in government are so worried about not looking "soft" or being seen as not doing anything that they're just rushing out and doing something that looks like it might help without being too concerned about whether it's the right thing to do or even whether it will be truly effective. The sheer number of laws out there that only restrict the law-abiding, have little to no effect on criminals, and thus end up doing nothing about the problems they were claimed to be aimed at solving suggests that this is business as usual for government (at least in the US; I don't know whether other governments behave similarly or not) and the War on Terror only serves to make it play out on a larger scale by increasing the urgency to be seen as doing something about it.
The 9/11 hijackers had perfectly valid travel papers and would have been most likely granted entry even had these rules been in place.
Some of them entered the US with perfectly valid travel papers. As I recall, the 9/11 Commission Report mentioned that two of them entered with obviously-forged passports, but, for some reason, the customs guys at the border decided to let it slide. Others were already known terrorists and should not have been issued visas in the first place.
You're absolutely right that all the new laws since then probably wouldn't have kept these guys out, but everyone seems to overlook the reverse of that argument: The laws already in place on Sept. 10, 2001 would have been sufficient to catch at least half of these guys - and, more likely than not, to prevent the attack entirely - if only they had been properly enforced.
I also agree that US involvement in the mideast (and, specifically, our dogmatic insistence on supporting Israel, no matter what) is the root issue and needs to be addressed if we're ever to get a true resolution to our terrorist problems.
It's a nice theory but, if the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition as I assume you're suggesting, then that raises other hard questions such as "Where were the explosive charges which should have been attached to exposed structural elements that are normally covered?" and "How were the charges triggered, given that there have been no reports of unusual cables running through the building, nor of any likely radio-controlled detonation signal?"
There are lots of experts supporting each side of the question of what the destruction was or was not consistent with, but, to me, the kicker is the lack of anyone having seen anything to indicate that demolition charges or the means of detonating them were in place prior to the event.
Definite agreement on our own government being a bigger threat than any terrorist, though.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for mentioning that... It's one of my pet peeves as well.
"Sex" is a biological attribute. "Gender" is a grammatical or social construct; it has also recently come to be widely used to refer to sexual identity. Nonetheless, unless you somehow know whether an unborn baby is heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, etc., you have no idea what its sexual identity (i.e., gender) is. (Even if you could see into the future to determine what its ultimate sexuality would be, I would still question the term on the basis that it really doesn't have any identity yet, sexual or otherwise.) You only know its sex.
Even after owning it for a year, I couldn't skip songs or navigate the content without grabbing it and looking at it.
Granted, I can skip songs on my iPod without looking, but, even after owning it for a year, I can't navigate the content without looking at it, thanks to their godawful "it looks just like a 4-way directional pad, but it functions absolutely nothing like one" control scheme.
Listening to music in the car and want to switch to a different playlist? Good luck watching the road while you do it - dragging your thumb an eigth of the way around the pad will sometimes move you down one spot, sometimes three. There's no way to know unless you're either looking at it or have it set to make obnoxious "beep - beep - beep"s every time it moves by an item. Even when I am looking at it, I overshoot more often than not and then have to sit there playing hopscotch with it as the cursor jumps back and forth over the option I want, without ever actually stopping on it.
But, hey, that's the perfect interface, because just pressing once on the bottom of the pad to move down one item is too complicated or something, I guess. It's much more intuitive for "down" to mean "toggle between play and pause". Just like, when they show a little arrow pointing right to indicate there's a submenu, it's more intuitive to press the button in the center than to press the right edge of the pad (you know, in the direction the arrow is pointing).
Sorry, everyone, but I really don't see what's supposed to be so wonderful about the iPod interface.
(Nothing actually specific to your post, anagama, yours was just the first one I saw referencing specific defects in other mp3 players' interfaces, so it seemed the most natural place to put my rant about the iPod interface in an attempt to offset all the posts raving about how absolutely wonderful it is.)
Is your phone not customizable?
You forgot the related question: How persistent is the customization?
My phone is a Motorola V600 and the one non-basic feature I use on it is Bluetooth. Unfortunately, it has a habit of occasionally deciding that the reason it can no longer see a Bluetooth device is not because the device has been turned off or gone out of range, but rather that the phone's own Bluetooth hardware has failed, so it shuts that part of itself off and any attempt to turn it back on is met with the error "BLUETOOTH MODULE NOT ATTACHED". The only way to get it working again is to do a "Master Reset", which also discards all customizations.
Considering that I end up having to do this, on average, every 2-3 weeks, my phone may as well not be very customizable, as I don't have the patience to go through and repeat customizations beyond noise and light settings to turn off some annoying bits that are on by default. (Do NOT beep every time a button is pressed! Do NOT make flashy lights all night that keep me awake to indicate that you're charging!)
1. You don't HAVE to buy a feature-intensive phone.
Actually, yes, I do. AFAICT, they don't make Bluetooth phones that I can use to get my laptop online anywhere there's a cell signal which don't also include cameras, MP3 players, IM clients, Java games, kitchen sinks, etc. (And before you say I don't HAVE to have Bluetooth... it makes my life a hell of a lot easier when a client calls with a problem and I can hop online and fix it from wherever I happen to be without having to run off in search of internet access first.)
Can they anyway? Ringtones are MIDI or MP3/4 files. I can sent them to my 'phone using bluetooth or the (included) cable.
In the US, yes, they can. Or at least they could. When I finally picked up a cellphone (not quite two years ago), I got one from Verizon, specifically chosen for its Bluetooth capabilites. When I got it home and started messing with it, I discovered that Verizon had disabled all Bluetooth functions with exception of connecting to a wireless headset. They claimed it was a security decision to prevent people from shoving things onto your phone as you walk past, but it looked to me like a transparent scheme to force you to pay them $0.25/photo to email yourself any pictures you take instead of just Bluetoothing them off the phone for free.
Since then, the courts have awarded a class-action settlement to Verizon customers with crippled Bluetooth phones, but I didn't pay much attention, as I had returned the phone to Verizon as soon as I discovered the disabled features, which was soon enough that I was able to get a full refund on both phone and service. I wouldn't be surprised if that sort of thing still goes on here, but I expect it's at least become less blatant since the settlement.
I was going to say the exact same thing, but you beat me to it... I think there's a definite market for basic phones with one or two useful features (i.e., Bluetooth and internet connectivity) without having all the crap fluff features (cameras, games, etc.) forced upon you in the process.
Maybe you should ask why paper coupons exist (the anonymous type) exist in the first place. That's a little less obvious. I can tell you if you care.
By all means... Do tell.
Perhaps... aside from the part where he complained about twitch gaming being part of the problem. (And I agree, which is why I lost interest in PlanetSide before my free trial account even had time to expire.)
I slightly disagree... Which is to say, I agree that levels should be deemphasized in PvP, but they should also be deemphasized in PvE. I think this whole notion of PvE and PvP using different rules is absurd. If something has to be toned down because it's too powerful in PvP, then it's probably too powerful in PvE also. Plus, if the two are kept to the same rules, you largely avoid the situation of having PvP builds that are nigh useless in PvE and PvE builds that get ganked in an instant as soon as a hostile PvPer comes into sight. (I don't doubt that there would still be some dichotomy between PvP and PvE builds, as a result of players and mobs tending to use different tactics, but it would be much less extreme than in the typical situation you have now where each type of build is minimaxed for a different set of rules.)
And I have to agree with the earlier poster that Eve does this right - the veterans in their battleships may be a lot more powerful than a raw recruit in his first frigate, but they're not completely untouchable simply because the game says "Level 1 has a 0.001% chance to hit level 60 and only does 1/1000 of normal damage even if he does. Level 60 has 95% chance to hit level 1 and does 100 times normal damage."
But, then, I've been saying that levels should be abolished (in both computer and pen & paper RPGs) ever since I first played a game that wasn't fixated on them.
But, again, your water main bursting and flooding the street is readily obvious to anyone who happens to pass by and there's no way that the homeowner could fail to become aware of it rather quickly as soon as he looks out the window. If your PC is a zombie, the average user has little or no way of knowing that there is a problem (maybe the PC will seem "a little slow", but seeming a little slow is widely considered a normal symptom of running Windows for too long, not an indicator of a real problem) and even an expert needs to use specialized tools (e.g., in some cases, a traffic monitor or packet sniffer running on a separate host) to reliably detect it, so I don't see how they can reasonably be held responsible for "ignoring" it.
Bad analogy. If the water pipe leaks between the street and your premises due to someone else coming along and pounding on it with a hammer, then it's not really your fault, is it? Or would you say that the homeowner was at fault because he didn't erect a fence around the property and post armed guards to keep vandals out?