I doubt that videogames themselves were even close to the biggest issue, but apparently there is a large segment of the population who play them. I'm a gamer, and I know I certainly care about whether or not a candidate wants to censor the games I play. Of course, this wouldn't be my only reason for supporting one candidate over another, but it is an issue worth considering nonetheless.
I read the article, and while I'm sure that a certain number of dreams could fall under the category of threat rehearsal, there are plenty that don't. I've had my share of fighting/running dreams (I used to kickbox, and once I had a dream that I was fighting with someone. I threw a punch woke and myself up from punching the headboard.), but I've also had plenty of dreams which seem more like my brain is trying to decompress and make sense of daily events. You know the ones, where you see/hear/do things in dreams that don't make any sense at first until you think about them for a while. I don't buy into those dream interpreting books that float around out there, but there definitely seems to be a lot of symbols in dreams, and if you know yourself well enough those symbols start to make sense after a while.
Yeah, well -- there isn't a really polite way to put this -- suck it up.
Really, that's all I can tell you. Nobody keeps paying ME for the creative work I did a month ago in my job. Far as I'm concerned, this notion that I should be prevented from saying words because another person owns them is repugnant on its face -- five years is the compromise position, not the extreme.
If you created it on the job (I'm assuming for someone else) it's called a "work for hire," and you don't own the copyright to get paid for it anyway. I'm sure that if you did own the copyright you'd feel a lot differently on the matter. I agree with you that life + 70 is extreme, but seriously, 5 years is the blink of an eye. Why should an artist not be allowed to reap the benefits of their creation for a longer period of time, such as the original 14 + [14 year extension])? That period of time covers a large portion of the creator's life, and not much beyond that. This (in my mind) is fair the the copyright holder, and still allows the public to benefit from the work without snubbing the creator in the process. Five years essentially says that creative works are near worthless, and leaves creators with very little motivation to create new works if someone else will just snatch them up after that period anyway.
Many of us know plenty of "writer wannabes" of various forms. They all think that "they're
ship is going to come in". So they cheer on the likes of Ellison when he runs amok. They're
like a bunch of business school types subscribing to Forbes thinking that one day they will
be Michael Dell.
And why shouldn't they think that? I mean, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and all that. Who are you to say that there aren't any number of individuals that could come up with the The Next Big Thing(TM), even if it does take more than 5 years to do it? Honestly, take your negative attitude somewhere else and let everyone else have their dreams and aspirations.
The main reason people use Windows is because other operating systems don't meet their needs. It's mainly a software thing, such as is the case for PC gaming (which is still ahead of consoles, but not by as much as in the past).
I have to disagree. I don't think it's so much that the OS doesn't meet their needs, it's more that there are compatibility issues between different applications. There is a FOSS analog for just about every Windows application I can think of (You've already pointed out a couple of them; GIMP, Evolution, etc). Many of these applications have more functionality than their Windows counterparts, and I'm sure there are a lot of folks that would happily convert over to them if it weren't for the fact that the formats aren't fully compatible with the Windows apps. I'm thinking primarily along the lines of Open Office. It's a great productivity suite, but the fact of the matter is that because MS doesn't want to play ball and open up their file formats, or fully support the ODF format, people are simply not able to use whatever suite they want to without problems. This is a major issue if you're talking about the corporate world. Everyone needs to be able to read, edit, and share everyone else's documents without a lot of hassle.
I think the other thing that keeps people from switching away from Windows is the fear of change. Lets face it, most folks are comfortable with their nice, familiar Windows environment. They don't want to take the time to learn another OS, and they don't see a need to.
I agree with you that Google has no need to develop their own OS. It would be entirely counterproductive for them, and it would place them in direct conflict with MS. Their current web-based strategy is working well, and they have no need to enter the OS market.
Google now depends on Microsoft for it's survival as a large majority of their targets are Microsoft users.
Only by default because the majority of PC users in the world run Windows. Most of Google's earning power is web-based, meaning it's not tied down to a particular OS or platform. Google could probably care less if MS disappeared off the face of the earth, their apps would still run just as well on a 'nix-based system as on a Windows-based system.
Do not forget that our civilization depends on cheap energy and energy will be much more expensive in the future.
Says who? Sure, fossil fuels are running out, but there have been great advances in renewable energy. Solar, wind, biofuel, nuclear, hydrogen..... I think we're going to see a huge increase in the use of these sources, and we'll wonder why we didn't do it sooner.
Humans are nothing if not resourceful, and I have no doubt that we'll see the end of our dependence on fossil fuels and sigh in relief. The future is bright, don't forget your shades.
You make good points. I guess I reject most advertising on principle, and the idea of an ad-supported torrent app (even if it is used to pay for the proxy service) rubbed me the wrong way. I haven't tried the client myself (I use Azureus myself), but I suppose that if it could be minimized to tray it wouldn't be that bad.
If for example, the deluge creator says on his website "Deluge is great for downloading movies without getting caught!" this would be equivalent to what Kazaa said and would result in him being liable to get screwed over.
I don't know, this sounds pretty close (from the FAQ again):
You're totally anonymous. We keep absolutely no logs...which means that even if we're served with a court order to hand over our records, there are no records to hand over. Simple enough:)
I'm all for privacy and security, but it's statements like these that the AA's love to hear.
It's worth pointing out that the ads aren't showing up in the actual program. If you don't want to see them, don't use the anonymous browsing service.
Well considering that the main point of using his software is to be able to download torrents anonymously, it's rather self-defeating to say if you don't want the ads don't use the anonymizer. I don't begrudge the guy for wanting to make some money back on this, and obviously he's not twisting anyone's arm here, but come on.
Why are there ads? Are you turning evil? This is free software!
This is free software, however, our proxy servers (which anonymizies the browsing) costs us very real dollars. Also, if you don't use our internal browser, you'll never see an ad. In the spirit of freedom, I openly disclose that it costs around US$800 per month (with a two-month contract) for us to cover the hosting expenses, which we need to make up for somehow, or else it comes out of my personal pocket. Deluge does not have any corporate sponsorship, and I've actually put up my own money, without knowing if the ad revenue will make up for it or not. Why did I do this? Because I really believe that users need an anonymous method of getting their torrents...and I'm hoping very much that our users agree with me and that the ads make up the cost. If we don't make enough from ads, we'll begin requesting donations. If we still don't make enough, then we'll take down the proxy servers and remove Deluge's internal browser (not to mention cry for being in the hole $1600). The future of this service is in your hands.
Yeah, sorry, I tend not to tolerate ads in my browsing experience, why should I put up with them for torrent downloads? Also, I thought ad-supported p2p programs went away with KaZaa?
and...
Can we use the internal browser to surf any site?
No. This is a very touchy subject, so I want to be very clear. Our proxy servers have a whitelist of bittorrent-related sites (trackers, index sites, etc), which it allows you to visit. If you try to go to a bittorrent site that's not on our whitelist, please feel free to submit that site to us and we'll add it within 24hrs. We do not discriminate against *any* bittorrent site and will add them on request. However, we want absolutely nothing to do with anonymizing the traffic of pedophiles, sick people who are trying to google on how to get away murder, or whatever else. We want to protect bittorrent and nothing more.
I think this falls under the categories of "Why should we trust your servers?" and "Whitelists suck."
I say this every time the subject of p2p apps comes up: solutions such as these simply add to the arms race between ISP and file-sharers. In the end this will solve nothing. Instead of attempting to out-tech Big Content there should be a focus on improving consumer rights.
Then again this could be an attempt to to show that ads and donations may be a way to support the distribution of content via BT.
I'm sure the article is fine in an Australian context (the site does have a.au domain). How many people outside of the US know what PG13, NC17, etc, are? However, for your curiosity.... I find it highly unlikely that this would cover content outside of Australia, and exactly how would they enforce it even if it did?
I don't think the store manager should be held responsible for the actions of the individual who actually broke the law. Sure the store could be fined, and the employee who actually sold the game should be punished (as should the manager IF they authorized the sale), but why should the store manager take a fall if they were (hypothetically speaking) unaware of the (adult) employee's actions?
I don't buy the whole parents having no idea what their children are doing argument. Given that my folks certainly didn't know what I was 100% of the time, but they were involved enough to know the kind of games I was playing, and what I was doing at my friends' (Calling their parents and talking to them solved that).
By the way and totally unrelated: In Germany (another german example) the law says that parents are responsible for crimes their children commit until they turn seven and after that an expert decides whether they can be held responsible for their actions or not. Noone sues ten-year-olds. In other words, parents are forced to look after their children by law.
That's interesting, but it sounds more than a little arbitrary (not that all laws aren't arbitrary!). I suppose it's similar to American laws regarding children being tried as adults.
I hate to break it to you my friend, but this kind of thing goes on on both sides of the aisle. This really boils down to tugging on the heartstrings of parent voters, and the members of the GOP see the opportunity as clears as the Dems do.
On-site store managers would be subject to a fine of $1,000 or 100 hours of community service for the first offense and $5,000 or 500 hours of community service for each subsequent offense.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. A store selling 18+ games to twelve-year-olds should be punished.
I have a better idea. Instead of punishing the store manager (who probably makes little more than rest of the peons working there), why not punish the f'ing parents for letting their kid buy games unsupervised to begin with? Oh wait, they're not responsible for their own kids, everyone else is right?
The bill would also require an annual, independent analysis of game ratings and require the FTC to conduct an investigation to determine whether hidden sexual content like what was in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a pervasive problem and to take appropriate action
Good idea, honestly. Sorry, but I found Hot Coffee pretty stupid.
Right, a one time occurrence is suddenly a pervasive problem, and never mind the fact that to even get to "Hot Coffee" you had to mod the game (Not that this was especially hard, admittedly, a gameshark and some codes and that was it). I think that appropriate measures have already been taken. The publisher was punished, the mod was disabled, and the game has already been re-rated from MA to AO. Why is it is such a good idea to have the federal government step in to regulate the game industry?
Finally, the bill would authorize the FTC to conduct an annual, random audit of retailers to monitor enforcement and report the findings to Congress.
Again, I approve of that idea, greatly.
After all, this legislation is going to affect underage people, unlike Jack Thompson's ideas of banning such games for everyone.
This is probably the only point I would agree with you on, except for the fact that it implies that the feds would be stepping in again.
The fact of the matter is that there is already a rating system in place, and most retailers follow the rules regarding the sale of MA/AO games to minors. The big issue with GTA: San Andreas was that Hot Coffee was not discovered until after it shipped. It was irresponsible on the part of Rockstar to release the game with that kind of content under an "MA" rating, and they have since been punished for it. We don't need another bill intended to sanitize all content which is produced on the off chance that a minor might get a look at it. Rather than relying on the government to step in the parents should be more involved in their kids lives, and they should know what their kids are playing. There is simply no excuse for irresponsible parenting.
Keep in mind that the article also stated that this is an exercise in considering how we can improve our own observational abilities, and not just "would aliens be able to detect us." I also don't think it's unreasonable to want to search out life that is similar to our own, and which has similar technology. Of course any life would be an astounding discovery, but to find a civilization that is similar to our own, that would be truly amazing. It's a lonely thought to consider that we are alone in the universe (one which I reject, considering the enormity of just the galaxy alone), and I think it is in our nature to want to search out others like us.
I was able to carve the book down by 1/3 by simply ignoring most of the side plots and only reading stuff that concerned Rand,Matt,Perin. If it didn't involve them I didn't care, I moved along.
I think you're missing the point here. RJ wasn't just writing about Rand, Mat and Perrin, he was writing about the entire world. Yes, Rand, Mat, and Perrin are the main protagonists in the series, but you can't expect everything to happen to them all the time. By fleshing out the side characters, the history of world, the various countries, etc, he was able to bring the story alive. There was a lot worth reading that didn't happen to those three.
The way I envisioned it working would be a Syndicate style 3/4 view with the ability to zoom in until you are right above your toon but not necessarily looking through his eyes like you can in WoW. I think that adding an FPS element to it, a la Planetside would make it too complex. I figure you would have to have some sort of system like they use in WoW, probably to hit. It would have to take terrain into account a lot more than the WoW engine does.
That doesn't sound too bad. Like you said the terrain would be a big issue. I always hated it in WoW, City of Heroes, etc that a mob that was locked on to you (or vice versa) could hit you through a corner. Mission specific instances would be great for Shadowrun, especially for BnE runs.
You should give City of Heroes a try sometime, they did a really great job with the whole Super-hero/comic book MMO.
The only thing you're really missing is the Genesis game. I'm trying (extremely hard) to forget that the SNES or 360 versions ever existed. The Genesis game came the closest to capturing the pencil-n-paper feel of the original game, and I'm really hoping that whoever starts developing the MMO (at this point I'm almost positive they will now) does the game justice.
Shadowrun could own WoW if they come up with a decent game engine that can handle ranged combat.
Whatever system they come up with would have to take cover, etc into account. As much as I hate to say it, it would necessarily have to have elements of a FPS.
The big problem that I see is generating a credible world. WoW works because it is a fantasy world and so they can have these huge open spaces and towns that are comprised of a couple of buildings. Shadowrun on the other hand is all about the urban sprawl and dense urban environments. I could be wrong but I don't think that there is game engine out there that can handle all of the NPCs, plus a bunch of players, plus all of the various vehicles operating both on the street and in the air. The WoW model when you are dead and running back to your corpse could be expanded upon to create the seperation between the astral space and the physical world.
I don't really see your point about generating a credible world, what makes WoW any more or less credible than any other fictional setting? City of Heroes is in an urban setting and it seemed to handle numerous NPC, vehicles and all sorts of PCs running around just fine. Zoning makes a lot of that easier, and in that sense Shadowrun would probably operate like 99% of all the other MMOs out there right now. I don't think body runs would necessarily work that well, waking up in a hospital (or DocWagon as the case may be) seems much more likely.
The rules included no personal effects allowed so many of them carried a floppy with pictures of their family that they would load into whatever computer they were assigned and display on the desktop or in a screensaver.
What's a flop-py?
All joking aside though, I know exactly what you mean. I worked in tech support call-center style for while, with the whole no assigned seating in place and I absolutely hated it. I had a friend that I tried to sit next to whenever I could, but it never failed that by the time I got there (around 2pm) all of the surrounding half-cubes were already taken, and I would be forced to sit next to someone who either a.) was a jerk, b.) stank, or c.) thought that screaming into the headset would somehow lead to better troubleshooting. Add to it the fact that we weren't allowed to put anything up on the walls and you had a very demoralizing situation.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt that videogames themselves were even close to the biggest issue, but apparently there is a large segment of the population who play them. I'm a gamer, and I know I certainly care about whether or not a candidate wants to censor the games I play. Of course, this wouldn't be my only reason for supporting one candidate over another, but it is an issue worth considering nonetheless.
I read the article, and while I'm sure that a certain number of dreams could fall under the category of threat rehearsal, there are plenty that don't. I've had my share of fighting/running dreams (I used to kickbox, and once I had a dream that I was fighting with someone. I threw a punch woke and myself up from punching the headboard.), but I've also had plenty of dreams which seem more like my brain is trying to decompress and make sense of daily events. You know the ones, where you see/hear/do things in dreams that don't make any sense at first until you think about them for a while. I don't buy into those dream interpreting books that float around out there, but there definitely seems to be a lot of symbols in dreams, and if you know yourself well enough those symbols start to make sense after a while.
If you created it on the job (I'm assuming for someone else) it's called a "work for hire," and you don't own the copyright to get paid for it anyway. I'm sure that if you did own the copyright you'd feel a lot differently on the matter. I agree with you that life + 70 is extreme, but seriously, 5 years is the blink of an eye. Why should an artist not be allowed to reap the benefits of their creation for a longer period of time, such as the original 14 + [14 year extension])? That period of time covers a large portion of the creator's life, and not much beyond that. This (in my mind) is fair the the copyright holder, and still allows the public to benefit from the work without snubbing the creator in the process. Five years essentially says that creative works are near worthless, and leaves creators with very little motivation to create new works if someone else will just snatch them up after that period anyway.
And why shouldn't they think that? I mean, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and all that. Who are you to say that there aren't any number of individuals that could come up with the The Next Big Thing(TM), even if it does take more than 5 years to do it? Honestly, take your negative attitude somewhere else and let everyone else have their dreams and aspirations.
The main reason people use Windows is because other operating systems don't meet their needs. It's mainly a software thing, such as is the case for PC gaming (which is still ahead of consoles, but not by as much as in the past).
I have to disagree. I don't think it's so much that the OS doesn't meet their needs, it's more that there are compatibility issues between different applications. There is a FOSS analog for just about every Windows application I can think of (You've already pointed out a couple of them; GIMP, Evolution, etc). Many of these applications have more functionality than their Windows counterparts, and I'm sure there are a lot of folks that would happily convert over to them if it weren't for the fact that the formats aren't fully compatible with the Windows apps. I'm thinking primarily along the lines of Open Office. It's a great productivity suite, but the fact of the matter is that because MS doesn't want to play ball and open up their file formats, or fully support the ODF format, people are simply not able to use whatever suite they want to without problems. This is a major issue if you're talking about the corporate world. Everyone needs to be able to read, edit, and share everyone else's documents without a lot of hassle.
I think the other thing that keeps people from switching away from Windows is the fear of change. Lets face it, most folks are comfortable with their nice, familiar Windows environment. They don't want to take the time to learn another OS, and they don't see a need to.
I agree with you that Google has no need to develop their own OS. It would be entirely counterproductive for them, and it would place them in direct conflict with MS. Their current web-based strategy is working well, and they have no need to enter the OS market.
Google now depends on Microsoft for it's survival as a large majority of their targets are Microsoft users.
Only by default because the majority of PC users in the world run Windows. Most of Google's earning power is web-based, meaning it's not tied down to a particular OS or platform. Google could probably care less if MS disappeared off the face of the earth, their apps would still run just as well on a 'nix-based system as on a Windows-based system.
Says who? Sure, fossil fuels are running out, but there have been great advances in renewable energy. Solar, wind, biofuel, nuclear, hydrogen..... I think we're going to see a huge increase in the use of these sources, and we'll wonder why we didn't do it sooner.
Humans are nothing if not resourceful, and I have no doubt that we'll see the end of our dependence on fossil fuels and sigh in relief. The future is bright, don't forget your shades.
Your point would be more valid if you bothered to cite a more recent article, seeing as how this one was published "Thursday 18th November 2004."
Haha!
You make good points. I guess I reject most advertising on principle, and the idea of an ad-supported torrent app (even if it is used to pay for the proxy service) rubbed me the wrong way. I haven't tried the client myself (I use Azureus myself), but I suppose that if it could be minimized to tray it wouldn't be that bad.
If for example, the deluge creator says on his website "Deluge is great for downloading movies without getting caught!" this would be equivalent to what Kazaa said and would result in him being liable to get screwed over.
I don't know, this sounds pretty close (from the FAQ again):
I'm all for privacy and security, but it's statements like these that the AA's love to hear.
It's worth pointing out that the ads aren't showing up in the actual program. If you don't want to see them, don't use the anonymous browsing service.
Well considering that the main point of using his software is to be able to download torrents anonymously, it's rather self-defeating to say if you don't want the ads don't use the anonymizer. I don't begrudge the guy for wanting to make some money back on this, and obviously he's not twisting anyone's arm here, but come on.
Yeah, sorry, I tend not to tolerate ads in my browsing experience, why should I put up with them for torrent downloads? Also, I thought ad-supported p2p programs went away with KaZaa?
and...
I think this falls under the categories of "Why should we trust your servers?" and "Whitelists suck."
I say this every time the subject of p2p apps comes up: solutions such as these simply add to the arms race between ISP and file-sharers. In the end this will solve nothing. Instead of attempting to out-tech Big Content there should be a focus on improving consumer rights.
Then again this could be an attempt to to show that ads and donations may be a way to support the distribution of content via BT.
TFA is terrible. What is X18+ and RC+ content?
I'm sure the article is fine in an Australian context (the site does have a .au domain). How many people outside of the US know what PG13, NC17, etc, are? However, for your curiosity.... I find it highly unlikely that this would cover content outside of Australia, and exactly how would they enforce it even if it did?
Why not punish both?
I don't think the store manager should be held responsible for the actions of the individual who actually broke the law. Sure the store could be fined, and the employee who actually sold the game should be punished (as should the manager IF they authorized the sale), but why should the store manager take a fall if they were (hypothetically speaking) unaware of the (adult) employee's actions?
I don't buy the whole parents having no idea what their children are doing argument. Given that my folks certainly didn't know what I was 100% of the time, but they were involved enough to know the kind of games I was playing, and what I was doing at my friends' (Calling their parents and talking to them solved that).
By the way and totally unrelated: In Germany (another german example) the law says that parents are responsible for crimes their children commit until they turn seven and after that an expert decides whether they can be held responsible for their actions or not. Noone sues ten-year-olds. In other words, parents are forced to look after their children by law.
That's interesting, but it sounds more than a little arbitrary (not that all laws aren't arbitrary!). I suppose it's similar to American laws regarding children being tried as adults.
And it's always the Dems doing it.
I hate to break it to you my friend, but this kind of thing goes on on both sides of the aisle. This really boils down to tugging on the heartstrings of parent voters, and the members of the GOP see the opportunity as clears as the Dems do.
I have a better idea. Instead of punishing the store manager (who probably makes little more than rest of the peons working there), why not punish the f'ing parents for letting their kid buy games unsupervised to begin with? Oh wait, they're not responsible for their own kids, everyone else is right?
Right, a one time occurrence is suddenly a pervasive problem, and never mind the fact that to even get to "Hot Coffee" you had to mod the game (Not that this was especially hard, admittedly, a gameshark and some codes and that was it). I think that appropriate measures have already been taken. The publisher was punished, the mod was disabled, and the game has already been re-rated from MA to AO. Why is it is such a good idea to have the federal government step in to regulate the game industry?
This is probably the only point I would agree with you on, except for the fact that it implies that the feds would be stepping in again.
The fact of the matter is that there is already a rating system in place, and most retailers follow the rules regarding the sale of MA/AO games to minors. The big issue with GTA: San Andreas was that Hot Coffee was not discovered until after it shipped. It was irresponsible on the part of Rockstar to release the game with that kind of content under an "MA" rating, and they have since been punished for it. We don't need another bill intended to sanitize all content which is produced on the off chance that a minor might get a look at it. Rather than relying on the government to step in the parents should be more involved in their kids lives, and they should know what their kids are playing. There is simply no excuse for irresponsible parenting.
Keep in mind that the article also stated that this is an exercise in considering how we can improve our own observational abilities, and not just "would aliens be able to detect us." I also don't think it's unreasonable to want to search out life that is similar to our own, and which has similar technology. Of course any life would be an astounding discovery, but to find a civilization that is similar to our own, that would be truly amazing. It's a lonely thought to consider that we are alone in the universe (one which I reject, considering the enormity of just the galaxy alone), and I think it is in our nature to want to search out others like us.
Electric Gonorrhea, the noisy killer!
I was able to carve the book down by 1/3 by simply ignoring most of the side plots and only reading stuff that concerned Rand,Matt,Perin. If it didn't involve them I didn't care, I moved along.
I think you're missing the point here. RJ wasn't just writing about Rand, Mat and Perrin, he was writing about the entire world. Yes, Rand, Mat, and Perrin are the main protagonists in the series, but you can't expect everything to happen to them all the time. By fleshing out the side characters, the history of world, the various countries, etc, he was able to bring the story alive. There was a lot worth reading that didn't happen to those three.
That doesn't sound too bad. Like you said the terrain would be a big issue. I always hated it in WoW, City of Heroes, etc that a mob that was locked on to you (or vice versa) could hit you through a corner. Mission specific instances would be great for Shadowrun, especially for BnE runs.
You should give City of Heroes a try sometime, they did a really great job with the whole Super-hero/comic book MMO.
The only thing you're really missing is the Genesis game. I'm trying (extremely hard) to forget that the SNES or 360 versions ever existed. The Genesis game came the closest to capturing the pencil-n-paper feel of the original game, and I'm really hoping that whoever starts developing the MMO (at this point I'm almost positive they will now) does the game justice.
Whatever system they come up with would have to take cover, etc into account. As much as I hate to say it, it would necessarily have to have elements of a FPS.
I don't really see your point about generating a credible world, what makes WoW any more or less credible than any other fictional setting? City of Heroes is in an urban setting and it seemed to handle numerous NPC, vehicles and all sorts of PCs running around just fine. Zoning makes a lot of that easier, and in that sense Shadowrun would probably operate like 99% of all the other MMOs out there right now. I don't think body runs would necessarily work that well, waking up in a hospital (or DocWagon as the case may be) seems much more likely.
What's a flop-py?
All joking aside though, I know exactly what you mean. I worked in tech support call-center style for while, with the whole no assigned seating in place and I absolutely hated it. I had a friend that I tried to sit next to whenever I could, but it never failed that by the time I got there (around 2pm) all of the surrounding half-cubes were already taken, and I would be forced to sit next to someone who either a.) was a jerk, b.) stank, or c.) thought that screaming into the headset would somehow lead to better troubleshooting. Add to it the fact that we weren't allowed to put anything up on the walls and you had a very demoralizing situation.
Why not simply charge people for disagreeing with you?
That will be $1/response (unless you plan to agree with me) by the way!