Hey, you can justify your actions however you want. At the end of the day though, you not only screwed a perfectly capable entry-level person out of a job, but you're screwing a mid-career level guy out of the salary he deserves as well. I can only help that the same happens to you some day. Maybe then you'll realize that Patrick Swayze was on to something when he said those famous words in Road House - "be nice".
Breathing is a necessary and automatic function of life. Suicide is a decision you make and completely under your control. Epic analogy fail on your part.
And having been a "victim" of bullying in school myself many many years ago, I say you're weak and waste years of your life wanting revenge because someone didn't like you. Ignore them and get over it. Hell, what works really well is to play into it - pretend you like it when they call you $insulting_nickname and after awhile, they'll stop because it's not fun anymore. If you can't accept that some people will never like you and will want to make your life hell, then you're going to have a hard time getting through life.
Well since to hug online you type *hug*, I believe it would be *rape*.....or maybe just to be perfectly clear that it was consensual, *statutory rape*.
Except the internet doesn't promote harassment, if anything it makes it easier to avoid. There's this nifty thing called a "block" button. If you decide you don't want someone talking to you, you click that and you're free from hearing from them. If that doesn't work, then change your s/n and only give it to your friends. If you still get people trying to bug you, then you know that one of your friends is telling people your s/n and you start limiting who you put in that trusted inner circle until the mole is flushed out.
The only person who can allow cyberbulling to happen is the person being bullied. They have the ability to stop it at any time (sign off, set their page to private, block lists, etc). However, the teenage girls at least (not sure about the boys) refuse to do this even when directly told to do it in order to stop people. I've had several girls I know (younger siblings, cousins, etc) complain about "people posted something mean in my honesty box" - ok, so get rid of the honesty box and then if they post it with their name, you'll know who it is and you can block them - "No, but they're my friend!" - well then don't complain about them doing it when you refuse to do anything to stop it.
I just had to point out the irony of your sig, "correlation does not imply causation", and the fact that you are automatically assuming that since kids didn't like her, they caused her to kill herself. No one caused her to kill herself but her own decision. But we live in a world where you never blame the person responsible, you always have to have a scapegoat.
I'm aware that I'll get modded down for this, but I'll say it anyways. No one made her do it, she chose to do it on her own accord.
I had plenty of people give me crap when I was young and I was suicidal for awhile, but committing suicide is not caused by anyone else, it's caused by the person deciding that they don't feel life is worth living. If you want to blame people who were mean to her for it, why not blame her favorite team losing a game or her boyfriend breaking up with her - or how about her political party not doing well? Someone who is suicidal will use whatever is there to justify it and trying to blame anyone for it is incredibly stupid unless the person told someone "I'm going to kill myself" and they said / did nothing.
This is just yet another example of the sad state of the world when we rush to blame others for the actions of a depressed girl. We now have a society of "someone else is to blame" for everything instead of acknowledging that people are responsible for their actions.
Actually, if you RTFA, one of the guys being charged with statutory rape is 17 (the girl was 15). The 18 year old I could see being charged depending on local law, but there's no case against the 17 year old since he's still a minor and extremely close in age with the girl.
Ah, I see you ignored where I pointed out that the hiring managers like yourself are demanding 5+ years experience for an entry level position. Then there's the fact that the salary offered is significantly less than it was pre-recession as well. That would be called "taking advantage of the bad economy". Is it illegal? No. Should it be illegal? Again, no. However, it is reprehensible behavior.
I ran the interviews. That is part of what you find out. No, you don't just look at a resume and presume what iy says is accurate. You probe to find out what you need to know.
Really? Did you actually bring in everyone who sent in a resume? Also, interviews don't tell everything either (as shown by the many overqualified people who get turned down for superficial reasons) - I know several people who are hiring managers at their companies and they openly advise people to BS their way through an interview. They even flat out advise people to lie and say they have experience with anything the interviewer asks about. They're well aware that people can easily BS their way through an interview - if you're not aware of that, then you should definitely not be in charge of hiring.
If you have someone with more experience why in the hell WOULDN'T you hire him? If I do, then I would have someone else bitching about me not hiring people because they are overqualified.
Did you pay them more for having way more experience than is necessary? If you did, then there's nothing wrong with that. See, that's the thing about inexperienced workers - you can justify paying them less because they lack experience. Paying someone with 12 years experience what you would normally pay someone with 0 years of experience is not only screwing over the experienced person, but it's screwing over the inexperienced person by taking away their only advantage in the job market (costing companies less money). Also, it's fairly normal to not hire insanely overqualified people because they will leave the second they get a chance at a better job, which means that the company will just have to take time and money to find another employee to fill that spot.
Frankly as clueless as you are, I can see why you didn't survive the budget cut.
Just because I call you out for poor business ethics doesn't make me clueless. Also, the VP of the company tried very hard to keep me on because they were so impressed with my work, but since it was a consulting firm and all their clients were cutting their budget, they had no choice but to let a few people go - since I only had 2 years experience they couldn't justify keeping me on full time while they had more experience people who they could only contract out part time, so they split my work up among them - then that same VP makes a point of regularly contacting me to update me on how things are going there because as soon as they get another client, they'll be able to afford to hire me back. I know you don't understand what it's like to really work hard and impress your boss to the point where they really want to keep you working for that company, but some of us actually do have that good of a work ethic.
As someone who has a few years experience after graduating college, getting laid off due to budget cuts, and recently finding a new job, I can say that the hiring managers like you are horribly taking advantage of the bad economy. I can't count how many job postings I saw online where it said "entry level" and then said "requires minimum 5-7 years experience" - that's not fucking entry level then. An entry level job requires no experience and maybe says "some experience preferred". You weren't concerned with finding the "best candidate" for the job, you thought "Oh, here's a mid-career guy who's laid off and desperate so he can feed his wife and kids, so I'll hire him for an entry level job and pay him 1/3 of what his work is actually worth".
But when I have someone with a proven track record who I KNOW will not require only minimal supervision and will bring more to the table
Actually, you DON'T know that. He sent you a resume that said "I had a job for 12 years" - nothing in that proves that he's smarter, more capable, or a harder worker than those college grads with no experience. I personally have met people who have over a decade of experience who've admitted that they don't know shit about how to do their job, they BS their way past hiring managers like you, work for a couple years without really producing anything, then BS a new manager and change jobs after a couple years before the previous company realized they were incompetent - and they keep getting raises when they go from company to company too. I learned very quickly in my job search that actual ability to do the job means pretty much jack shit. It's all about having something flashy to wave in front of the HR persons face and distract them from actually seeing if you're capable or not. It's sort of like this http://www.barneysvideoresume.com/ - a hiring manager would rather see flashy, incoherent, totally irrelevant crap like that "resume" video than someone who's intelligent, hardworking, knows how to do the job, but isn't an arrogant prick.
I'm not against capitalism - I'm all for it. However, nothing about capitalism says that you have to be an asshole and take advantage of people who are down on their luck due to a crappy economy. I'm sure you'd look at it differently if you were the one getting turned down for an entry level job because you didn't have 5+ years experience or if you could only get a job paying 1/3 of what you had been making.
My solution.... if you are still in school... get a fricking internship.
Except even internships are incredibly rare since the economy went down - and when there is one, every single student in that field from every college within 50 miles will apply for it, meaning that you'll be up against hundreds if not thousands of other applicants, and we all know that hiring managers don't want to actually go through that many resumes, so they'll randomly grab a few and pick from that and discard the rest without a glance.
First, I said that you can buy two good gaming systems over the same life span (which one good gaming system should last that just fine), AND have several hundred dollars left over. It costs roughly $2,500 for all three consoles and their controllers - that means on average, it's about $833 per system. For that money you can build a very nice gaming system that will last you several years AND do everything else that a computer can do. Then add in that console games are pretty much stuck at their $60-$70 price, where after a few months PC games are down to around $40 and after a year they're down to about $20, and it's way more expensive to go with a console. Also, you can re-install your old games on a new computer - if you want to play your old consoles, you have to keep a massive stack of consoles surrounding your TV, which is quite a hassle if you actually enjoy games and buy multiple consoles with each generation (I actually have a friend who has an NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii, Atari 2600, Atari Jaguar, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Sega Genesis with all the add-ons, Sega Dreamcast, and Segan Saturn all hooked up to one tv - it's quite a mess, especially with trying to keep track of what A/V switch turns on which consoles).
Secondly, due to game exclusivity, people rarely buy only one console - they buy a 360 for 360 only games like Left 4 Dead or Mass Effect, a PS3 for the PS3 only games, and then a Wii for Mario & Zelda games. If it weren't for the stupid exclusivity agreements, then they could at least buy just a Wii and then a 360 OR PS3 in order to play any game they might want.
I can play with a dozen people or more on my computer - it's this nifty new thing called "the internet".
Finally, old consoles are fun (and cheap); old gaming computers suck at gaming.
Old gaming computers play games from the time they were made just perfectly - just like how that old console plays games from when it was made just fine. Your only "argument" for why the old console is better is that for some yet to be defined reason, you dislike PC's.
And you know who buys the top of the line super expensive cards? Pretty much no one. Everyone else either buys a mid-range card or last years top of the line. Both of those will last you a few years and the all around computer cost is less than a console.
Don't believe me that consoles are more expensive? I'm a PC gamer (who occasionally plays console games) and a friend of mine is a console gamer (who occasionally plays PC games). He tries to use your argument about "it's expensive with upgrading your computer", yet he ignores the fact that 1) console games virtually never go down in price, where PC games drop in price very quickly after the first few months and 2) Consoles nickel and dime you to death. We actually sat down and did the math one time and for his Wii, 360, PS3 and enough controllers for 4 players on each, it came out to over $2,500 for just the console hardware. You can easily buy two very good gaming systems for less money over the course of the lifespan of a console generation.
So no, people don't turn to consoles because they're cheaper, people turn to consoles because they can't do basic math.
I understand that, but 70 euros is way overcharging for adding a little polish. That's why I said 10 euros I could understand, but 70 is just way too much.
So essentially it's Open Office, except with only 3 programs (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation) and they want 70 euros for it? I'm sorry, but I fail to see why anyone would pay 70 euros (10 I could possibly see) when you can get Open Office for free.
This guy managed to do that *before* being offered the million bucks, so what would he need it for?
Because the stock market could go to crap (like it did a few years ago) and he could lose most of his money. Or maybe he has a child / grandchild that might have some unexpected expense come up (being falsely sued and having to pay out, car accident that the insurance company won't cover, accidentally burning down the house, who knows) and he'll want money to help them out. Your fallacious "argument" about "you can't predict the future" completely ignored the point I made which is that unforeseen expenses are quite common, and as such there's no such thing as "too much money" set aside for retirement / in case of emergency.
Also, I find it highly amusing that, since I said that it's stupid to turn down free money because you never know when you might have an unexpected expense (they're called unexpected for a reason), you say I'm greedy. However, you think that you taking a million dollars and living work-free off the interest isn't greedy? To use a quote from Buffy - "Your logic does not resemble our Earth logic".
I never once said money was the most important thing in life, if you bothered to read instead of going "capitalist - DIE!! *foam at mouth*", you'd know that. I said that no one knows when you'll have unexpected expenses (you know those "they couldn't help it!" sob stories collectivists like you drag out 1,000 times a day) and as such, it's stupid to turn down free money.
Not wanting FREE MONEY is insane. Everyone has expenses and no one can predict the future, so you never know when you might find yourself in a financial tight-spot. Turning down free money (in a case where it actually IS free because you won a prize) is one of the dumbest things you can do, right up there with cheating on Summer Glau.
now, games from 1995 to about 2000 were all Win9x abominations that won't work
I have to ask, are you using Vista? Vista is the only OS I've had where my older games won't work. I've installed several games from 1995-2000 on my windows 7 machine and they run just fine.
I just looked at the sig and realized that you're the same person who made the incoherent list defending Obamacare on another comment I left, so your mental deficiencies are already noted.
As for your comment of "that's one big [citation needed] right there", it's called watch the goddamn news. There are hundreds of videos of televised interviews where Obama and his pals openly say this. For fucks sake, Al Sharpton even said on tv sunday night that "Americans voted overwhelmingly for socialism" when they voted for Obama. This isn't making things up, this isn't twisting words, this me me simply stating what the people you support have said on national tv. When Obama is appointing multiple people to high government positions who are anti-capitalist and are self proclaimed marxists, that's not "holding what he did in his youth against him", that's looking at his current actions and judging him.
Seriously, watch the news sometime, you'd be amazed at how open Obama and his cohorts are about being socialist / communist / marxist.
As for "Not to be snide, but I've seen how little you need to get a degree in Economics, so forgive me if I ignore your appeal to expertise", since you showed on your other comment that you do not understand economics in the slightest, even if I did "little to get my degree" (hardly true, especially since I went to one of the best Economics programs in the country), it was still way beyond your knowledge or ability.
Wow, after reading that, I know why it was modded offtopic - I don't think I've ever seen someone so clueless before.
1) The fact that the bill makes it so no one can be denied for being too expensive to insure means that the people who were previously denied for being too expensive will not have those insane costs paid for by all of us - that means that insurance rates will increase.
2) This has nothing to do with interstate commerce, even in the absolute loosest definition of the term. The federal government has no authority at all to force you to buy anything. I know you don't want to be reminded of it, but that pesky 10th amendment specifically states that all powers not specifically given to the federal government and not specifically forbidden to the states belongs with the states. A STATE could pass such a law, but the federal government cannot.
3) I guess you missed the part where the law says you must buy insurance or be fined - that's forcing you to buy something. Your "examples" were cases where they said they would GIVE you money if you bought one of those and there was nothing in there requiring anyone to buy anything - completely different. The fact that you fail to grasp the difference makes me very worried.
4) No, the taxes are things such as a 10% tax on using a tanning bed (which due to the low profit margins of most tanning beds, it's expected to cause 9,000 people to lose their jobs due to budget cuts / bankruptcy), taxes on insurance companies (part of it will be passed on to consumers - again, higher rates!, and the rest will be covered by cutting employees - yet more jobs lost by Obama's lack of economic knowledge). There are also taxes on people who make more than Obama thinks they should, which since they're not pegged for inflation means that over time, just like the AMT, they'll be forced on more and more citizens. The last thing you do during a recession is increase taxes - of any kind. If Obama had ever taken an economics class, he'd know this.
5) The budget projections show a reduced deficit for two reasons - 1) they ignore that there is a bill to repeal the Medicare cuts, thus jumping the cost several hundred billion and 2) they are planning on collecting taxes for 3-4 years before this goes into effect, thus completely skewing the 10-year budget. If they looked at the budget from 2014 - 2024, it would be a different story because the taxes would be in effect as would the expenditures.
6) Your rambling seems to be that everyone can afford / is already provided health insurance - if that's true, then why the need for this bill at all? Regardless, it's still in the bill that if you can't afford insurance, you will be fined.
Frankly, not only do you not understand the bill, you do not understand economics, or even how to read and respond to a point, since many of your comments were completely irrelevant to the questions I posed - you also had severe logic gaps (such as trying to claim that a law forcing you to buy insurance is similar to giving a tax credit for buying a home).
Then you end with this:
I'm not inclined to be sympathetic to free riders.
The entire point of the Democrats push for government run health care is to increase the number of free riders! Yes, right now we have people who can get free treatment if they are dying from an injury, but the same is not true if they're dying of AIDS / cancer / any long term disease. I really don't think you have a clue what you're talking about.
I forget the list but it involved nationalizing some industries (GM, Chrysler) - check, nationalizing some banks - check, defame anyone who disagreed with him - check, and I forget the rest of the list (there were around 8 things).
Continued the economic policies of his Republican predecessor to try and salvage an economy teetering on the brink.
Nothing Obama has done has helped the economy one bit - in fact, many of his polices have harmed the economy. The fact that Obama constantly talks about raising more and more taxes shows his complete incompetence when it comes to economics (I have a degree in Economics, so I actually do know what I'm talking about).
As for your sarcastic "he must be a commie" comment, Obama has openly stated many times that he believes you should be punished for being successful, that he's against free markets, that he's for government control of all sorts of industries, that he believes industries / companies are the enemy, among other marxist comments. For fucks sake, in one of his books he openly states that he intentionally surrounded himself with as many hard-core marxists as he could! Just look as the people he appoints to offices, many of whom openly promote communism and are quoted as saying things such as "capitalism is dead" or the one Democrat who openly said that Obamacare would "control the people". Just because you bury your head in the sand and pretend that bad things don't exist doesn't make them vanish, it just makes you foolish.
Oh wait, they don't know what they're rejecting, so the poll tells you jack shit.
So it's just like how the politicians who passed this crap didn't have a clue about most of what's in it!
My question for you is, why do you support a bill that:1) will raise insurance costs 2) is unconstitutional 3) sets a precedent where the government can force you to buy a product / service 4) will harm the economy (due to all the taxes being enacted to pay for this) 5) will raise the debt (given that it's already been acknowledged that the Dems. have a bill ready to put up in April that negates the spending cuts to Medicare AND the fact that every government entitlement project has always cost several times more than was initially projected) 6) will fine people if they cannot afford to buy insurance?
That's the thing that never ceases to amaze me about the people on slashdot - they scream bloody murder if you try to tell them they can't change the OS on a device or modify source code, but tell them that they're losing their actual freedoms / rights to an increasingly controlling government and they cheer it on.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, you can justify your actions however you want. At the end of the day though, you not only screwed a perfectly capable entry-level person out of a job, but you're screwing a mid-career level guy out of the salary he deserves as well. I can only help that the same happens to you some day. Maybe then you'll realize that Patrick Swayze was on to something when he said those famous words in Road House - "be nice".
Breathing is a necessary and automatic function of life. Suicide is a decision you make and completely under your control. Epic analogy fail on your part.
And having been a "victim" of bullying in school myself many many years ago, I say you're weak and waste years of your life wanting revenge because someone didn't like you. Ignore them and get over it. Hell, what works really well is to play into it - pretend you like it when they call you $insulting_nickname and after awhile, they'll stop because it's not fun anymore. If you can't accept that some people will never like you and will want to make your life hell, then you're going to have a hard time getting through life.
Well since to hug online you type *hug*, I believe it would be *rape*.....or maybe just to be perfectly clear that it was consensual, *statutory rape*.
Exactly. If you could go to jail for being mean to someone, then just about everyone on slashdot would be arrested.
Except the internet doesn't promote harassment, if anything it makes it easier to avoid. There's this nifty thing called a "block" button. If you decide you don't want someone talking to you, you click that and you're free from hearing from them. If that doesn't work, then change your s/n and only give it to your friends. If you still get people trying to bug you, then you know that one of your friends is telling people your s/n and you start limiting who you put in that trusted inner circle until the mole is flushed out.
The only person who can allow cyberbulling to happen is the person being bullied. They have the ability to stop it at any time (sign off, set their page to private, block lists, etc). However, the teenage girls at least (not sure about the boys) refuse to do this even when directly told to do it in order to stop people. I've had several girls I know (younger siblings, cousins, etc) complain about "people posted something mean in my honesty box" - ok, so get rid of the honesty box and then if they post it with their name, you'll know who it is and you can block them - "No, but they're my friend!" - well then don't complain about them doing it when you refuse to do anything to stop it.
I just had to point out the irony of your sig, "correlation does not imply causation", and the fact that you are automatically assuming that since kids didn't like her, they caused her to kill herself. No one caused her to kill herself but her own decision. But we live in a world where you never blame the person responsible, you always have to have a scapegoat.
I'm aware that I'll get modded down for this, but I'll say it anyways. No one made her do it, she chose to do it on her own accord.
I had plenty of people give me crap when I was young and I was suicidal for awhile, but committing suicide is not caused by anyone else, it's caused by the person deciding that they don't feel life is worth living. If you want to blame people who were mean to her for it, why not blame her favorite team losing a game or her boyfriend breaking up with her - or how about her political party not doing well? Someone who is suicidal will use whatever is there to justify it and trying to blame anyone for it is incredibly stupid unless the person told someone "I'm going to kill myself" and they said / did nothing.
This is just yet another example of the sad state of the world when we rush to blame others for the actions of a depressed girl. We now have a society of "someone else is to blame" for everything instead of acknowledging that people are responsible for their actions.
Actually, if you RTFA, one of the guys being charged with statutory rape is 17 (the girl was 15). The 18 year old I could see being charged depending on local law, but there's no case against the 17 year old since he's still a minor and extremely close in age with the girl.
I think you forgot to list "excellent oral skills" on there!
Please rent a clue.
Ah, I see you ignored where I pointed out that the hiring managers like yourself are demanding 5+ years experience for an entry level position. Then there's the fact that the salary offered is significantly less than it was pre-recession as well. That would be called "taking advantage of the bad economy". Is it illegal? No. Should it be illegal? Again, no. However, it is reprehensible behavior.
I ran the interviews. That is part of what you find out. No, you don't just look at a resume and presume what iy says is accurate. You probe to find out what you need to know.
Really? Did you actually bring in everyone who sent in a resume? Also, interviews don't tell everything either (as shown by the many overqualified people who get turned down for superficial reasons) - I know several people who are hiring managers at their companies and they openly advise people to BS their way through an interview. They even flat out advise people to lie and say they have experience with anything the interviewer asks about. They're well aware that people can easily BS their way through an interview - if you're not aware of that, then you should definitely not be in charge of hiring.
If you have someone with more experience why in the hell WOULDN'T you hire him? If I do, then I would have someone else bitching about me not hiring people because they are overqualified.
Did you pay them more for having way more experience than is necessary? If you did, then there's nothing wrong with that. See, that's the thing about inexperienced workers - you can justify paying them less because they lack experience. Paying someone with 12 years experience what you would normally pay someone with 0 years of experience is not only screwing over the experienced person, but it's screwing over the inexperienced person by taking away their only advantage in the job market (costing companies less money). Also, it's fairly normal to not hire insanely overqualified people because they will leave the second they get a chance at a better job, which means that the company will just have to take time and money to find another employee to fill that spot.
Frankly as clueless as you are, I can see why you didn't survive the budget cut.
Just because I call you out for poor business ethics doesn't make me clueless. Also, the VP of the company tried very hard to keep me on because they were so impressed with my work, but since it was a consulting firm and all their clients were cutting their budget, they had no choice but to let a few people go - since I only had 2 years experience they couldn't justify keeping me on full time while they had more experience people who they could only contract out part time, so they split my work up among them - then that same VP makes a point of regularly contacting me to update me on how things are going there because as soon as they get another client, they'll be able to afford to hire me back. I know you don't understand what it's like to really work hard and impress your boss to the point where they really want to keep you working for that company, but some of us actually do have that good of a work ethic.
As someone who has a few years experience after graduating college, getting laid off due to budget cuts, and recently finding a new job, I can say that the hiring managers like you are horribly taking advantage of the bad economy. I can't count how many job postings I saw online where it said "entry level" and then said "requires minimum 5-7 years experience" - that's not fucking entry level then. An entry level job requires no experience and maybe says "some experience preferred". You weren't concerned with finding the "best candidate" for the job, you thought "Oh, here's a mid-career guy who's laid off and desperate so he can feed his wife and kids, so I'll hire him for an entry level job and pay him 1/3 of what his work is actually worth".
But when I have someone with a proven track record who I KNOW will not require only minimal supervision and will bring more to the table
Actually, you DON'T know that. He sent you a resume that said "I had a job for 12 years" - nothing in that proves that he's smarter, more capable, or a harder worker than those college grads with no experience. I personally have met people who have over a decade of experience who've admitted that they don't know shit about how to do their job, they BS their way past hiring managers like you, work for a couple years without really producing anything, then BS a new manager and change jobs after a couple years before the previous company realized they were incompetent - and they keep getting raises when they go from company to company too. I learned very quickly in my job search that actual ability to do the job means pretty much jack shit. It's all about having something flashy to wave in front of the HR persons face and distract them from actually seeing if you're capable or not. It's sort of like this http://www.barneysvideoresume.com/ - a hiring manager would rather see flashy, incoherent, totally irrelevant crap like that "resume" video than someone who's intelligent, hardworking, knows how to do the job, but isn't an arrogant prick.
I'm not against capitalism - I'm all for it. However, nothing about capitalism says that you have to be an asshole and take advantage of people who are down on their luck due to a crappy economy. I'm sure you'd look at it differently if you were the one getting turned down for an entry level job because you didn't have 5+ years experience or if you could only get a job paying 1/3 of what you had been making.
My solution.... if you are still in school... get a fricking internship.
Except even internships are incredibly rare since the economy went down - and when there is one, every single student in that field from every college within 50 miles will apply for it, meaning that you'll be up against hundreds if not thousands of other applicants, and we all know that hiring managers don't want to actually go through that many resumes, so they'll randomly grab a few and pick from that and discard the rest without a glance.
First, I said that you can buy two good gaming systems over the same life span (which one good gaming system should last that just fine), AND have several hundred dollars left over. It costs roughly $2,500 for all three consoles and their controllers - that means on average, it's about $833 per system. For that money you can build a very nice gaming system that will last you several years AND do everything else that a computer can do. Then add in that console games are pretty much stuck at their $60-$70 price, where after a few months PC games are down to around $40 and after a year they're down to about $20, and it's way more expensive to go with a console. Also, you can re-install your old games on a new computer - if you want to play your old consoles, you have to keep a massive stack of consoles surrounding your TV, which is quite a hassle if you actually enjoy games and buy multiple consoles with each generation (I actually have a friend who has an NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii, Atari 2600, Atari Jaguar, Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Sega Genesis with all the add-ons, Sega Dreamcast, and Segan Saturn all hooked up to one tv - it's quite a mess, especially with trying to keep track of what A/V switch turns on which consoles).
Secondly, due to game exclusivity, people rarely buy only one console - they buy a 360 for 360 only games like Left 4 Dead or Mass Effect, a PS3 for the PS3 only games, and then a Wii for Mario & Zelda games. If it weren't for the stupid exclusivity agreements, then they could at least buy just a Wii and then a 360 OR PS3 in order to play any game they might want.
I can play with a dozen people or more on my computer - it's this nifty new thing called "the internet".
Finally, old consoles are fun (and cheap); old gaming computers suck at gaming.
Old gaming computers play games from the time they were made just perfectly - just like how that old console plays games from when it was made just fine. Your only "argument" for why the old console is better is that for some yet to be defined reason, you dislike PC's.
And you know who buys the top of the line super expensive cards? Pretty much no one. Everyone else either buys a mid-range card or last years top of the line. Both of those will last you a few years and the all around computer cost is less than a console.
Don't believe me that consoles are more expensive? I'm a PC gamer (who occasionally plays console games) and a friend of mine is a console gamer (who occasionally plays PC games). He tries to use your argument about "it's expensive with upgrading your computer", yet he ignores the fact that 1) console games virtually never go down in price, where PC games drop in price very quickly after the first few months and 2) Consoles nickel and dime you to death. We actually sat down and did the math one time and for his Wii, 360, PS3 and enough controllers for 4 players on each, it came out to over $2,500 for just the console hardware. You can easily buy two very good gaming systems for less money over the course of the lifespan of a console generation.
So no, people don't turn to consoles because they're cheaper, people turn to consoles because they can't do basic math.
I understand that, but 70 euros is way overcharging for adding a little polish. That's why I said 10 euros I could understand, but 70 is just way too much.
So essentially it's Open Office, except with only 3 programs (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation) and they want 70 euros for it? I'm sorry, but I fail to see why anyone would pay 70 euros (10 I could possibly see) when you can get Open Office for free.
This guy managed to do that *before* being offered the million bucks, so what would he need it for?
Because the stock market could go to crap (like it did a few years ago) and he could lose most of his money. Or maybe he has a child / grandchild that might have some unexpected expense come up (being falsely sued and having to pay out, car accident that the insurance company won't cover, accidentally burning down the house, who knows) and he'll want money to help them out. Your fallacious "argument" about "you can't predict the future" completely ignored the point I made which is that unforeseen expenses are quite common, and as such there's no such thing as "too much money" set aside for retirement / in case of emergency.
Also, I find it highly amusing that, since I said that it's stupid to turn down free money because you never know when you might have an unexpected expense (they're called unexpected for a reason), you say I'm greedy. However, you think that you taking a million dollars and living work-free off the interest isn't greedy? To use a quote from Buffy - "Your logic does not resemble our Earth logic".
I never once said money was the most important thing in life, if you bothered to read instead of going "capitalist - DIE!! *foam at mouth*", you'd know that. I said that no one knows when you'll have unexpected expenses (you know those "they couldn't help it!" sob stories collectivists like you drag out 1,000 times a day) and as such, it's stupid to turn down free money.
Not wanting FREE MONEY is insane. Everyone has expenses and no one can predict the future, so you never know when you might find yourself in a financial tight-spot. Turning down free money (in a case where it actually IS free because you won a prize) is one of the dumbest things you can do, right up there with cheating on Summer Glau.
now, games from 1995 to about 2000 were all Win9x abominations that won't work
I have to ask, are you using Vista? Vista is the only OS I've had where my older games won't work. I've installed several games from 1995-2000 on my windows 7 machine and they run just fine.
I just looked at the sig and realized that you're the same person who made the incoherent list defending Obamacare on another comment I left, so your mental deficiencies are already noted.
As for your comment of "that's one big [citation needed] right there", it's called watch the goddamn news. There are hundreds of videos of televised interviews where Obama and his pals openly say this. For fucks sake, Al Sharpton even said on tv sunday night that "Americans voted overwhelmingly for socialism" when they voted for Obama. This isn't making things up, this isn't twisting words, this me me simply stating what the people you support have said on national tv. When Obama is appointing multiple people to high government positions who are anti-capitalist and are self proclaimed marxists, that's not "holding what he did in his youth against him", that's looking at his current actions and judging him.
Seriously, watch the news sometime, you'd be amazed at how open Obama and his cohorts are about being socialist / communist / marxist.
As for "Not to be snide, but I've seen how little you need to get a degree in Economics, so forgive me if I ignore your appeal to expertise", since you showed on your other comment that you do not understand economics in the slightest, even if I did "little to get my degree" (hardly true, especially since I went to one of the best Economics programs in the country), it was still way beyond your knowledge or ability.
Actually, I was / am against the Patriot Act too.
Wow, after reading that, I know why it was modded offtopic - I don't think I've ever seen someone so clueless before.
1) The fact that the bill makes it so no one can be denied for being too expensive to insure means that the people who were previously denied for being too expensive will not have those insane costs paid for by all of us - that means that insurance rates will increase.
2) This has nothing to do with interstate commerce, even in the absolute loosest definition of the term. The federal government has no authority at all to force you to buy anything. I know you don't want to be reminded of it, but that pesky 10th amendment specifically states that all powers not specifically given to the federal government and not specifically forbidden to the states belongs with the states. A STATE could pass such a law, but the federal government cannot.
3) I guess you missed the part where the law says you must buy insurance or be fined - that's forcing you to buy something. Your "examples" were cases where they said they would GIVE you money if you bought one of those and there was nothing in there requiring anyone to buy anything - completely different. The fact that you fail to grasp the difference makes me very worried.
4) No, the taxes are things such as a 10% tax on using a tanning bed (which due to the low profit margins of most tanning beds, it's expected to cause 9,000 people to lose their jobs due to budget cuts / bankruptcy), taxes on insurance companies (part of it will be passed on to consumers - again, higher rates!, and the rest will be covered by cutting employees - yet more jobs lost by Obama's lack of economic knowledge). There are also taxes on people who make more than Obama thinks they should, which since they're not pegged for inflation means that over time, just like the AMT, they'll be forced on more and more citizens. The last thing you do during a recession is increase taxes - of any kind. If Obama had ever taken an economics class, he'd know this.
5) The budget projections show a reduced deficit for two reasons - 1) they ignore that there is a bill to repeal the Medicare cuts, thus jumping the cost several hundred billion and 2) they are planning on collecting taxes for 3-4 years before this goes into effect, thus completely skewing the 10-year budget. If they looked at the budget from 2014 - 2024, it would be a different story because the taxes would be in effect as would the expenditures.
6) Your rambling seems to be that everyone can afford / is already provided health insurance - if that's true, then why the need for this bill at all? Regardless, it's still in the bill that if you can't afford insurance, you will be fined.
Frankly, not only do you not understand the bill, you do not understand economics, or even how to read and respond to a point, since many of your comments were completely irrelevant to the questions I posed - you also had severe logic gaps (such as trying to claim that a law forcing you to buy insurance is similar to giving a tax credit for buying a home).
Then you end with this:
I'm not inclined to be sympathetic to free riders.
The entire point of the Democrats push for government run health care is to increase the number of free riders! Yes, right now we have people who can get free treatment if they are dying from an injury, but the same is not true if they're dying of AIDS / cancer / any long term disease. I really don't think you have a clue what you're talking about.
I forget the list but it involved nationalizing some industries (GM, Chrysler) - check, nationalizing some banks - check, defame anyone who disagreed with him - check, and I forget the rest of the list (there were around 8 things).
Continued the economic policies of his Republican predecessor to try and salvage an economy teetering on the brink.
Nothing Obama has done has helped the economy one bit - in fact, many of his polices have harmed the economy. The fact that Obama constantly talks about raising more and more taxes shows his complete incompetence when it comes to economics (I have a degree in Economics, so I actually do know what I'm talking about).
As for your sarcastic "he must be a commie" comment, Obama has openly stated many times that he believes you should be punished for being successful, that he's against free markets, that he's for government control of all sorts of industries, that he believes industries / companies are the enemy, among other marxist comments. For fucks sake, in one of his books he openly states that he intentionally surrounded himself with as many hard-core marxists as he could! Just look as the people he appoints to offices, many of whom openly promote communism and are quoted as saying things such as "capitalism is dead" or the one Democrat who openly said that Obamacare would "control the people". Just because you bury your head in the sand and pretend that bad things don't exist doesn't make them vanish, it just makes you foolish.
Oh wait, they don't know what they're rejecting, so the poll tells you jack shit.
So it's just like how the politicians who passed this crap didn't have a clue about most of what's in it!
My question for you is, why do you support a bill that:1) will raise insurance costs 2) is unconstitutional 3) sets a precedent where the government can force you to buy a product / service 4) will harm the economy (due to all the taxes being enacted to pay for this) 5) will raise the debt (given that it's already been acknowledged that the Dems. have a bill ready to put up in April that negates the spending cuts to Medicare AND the fact that every government entitlement project has always cost several times more than was initially projected) 6) will fine people if they cannot afford to buy insurance?
That's the thing that never ceases to amaze me about the people on slashdot - they scream bloody murder if you try to tell them they can't change the OS on a device or modify source code, but tell them that they're losing their actual freedoms / rights to an increasingly controlling government and they cheer it on.