"worked best for me"? I'm sorry, but isn't your job to support the others and make their work easier, not the other way around?
In all likelihood his job is to make sure the company computers work properly.
Making everyone else's work easier is to remove all passwords, anti virus software etc., as that will make it easier for them to do as they want.
His job should be to make sure that what you do doesn't fuck things up for everyone else. And he should do this in the way that causes the least inconvenience to you. That means he shouldn't be taking over your computer in the middle of the day just to perform a scheduled update. It also means that you shouldn't be running the software you're developing on production machines.
It is easy to forget that the rules put in place are there for a reason. They need to be reasonable rules, obviously. No-one in their right mind would shut down production, just because some book says to do it whenever someone wears a blue sweater to work. On the other hand, it's a VERY sane rule that laptops are kept on the other side of firewalls from the rest of the network, that laptops are required to have a lot more security scrutiny than the 50 kg tower computer that is bolted to the floor, and that passwords are treated like keys to the office.
We screw up. Sometimes we screw up big time. Wouldn't you love to know that you missing the '.' in 'rm -rf./*' didn't bring down the production server because you don't have that kind of access on the production server? I know I was glad I only made that mistake on a test machine. But hey - if you feel like fucking up that badly just because it's easier for you, I'm sure there are plenty of companies that will love your answer to "So, why were you fired from your previous job?".
On the other hand, the amount of time I've saved IT support by [...] fixing my own problems
And how much time has causing your own problems cost you?
How many of those problems could have been avoided, if you didn't have carte blanche over your computer?
I suspect my own ratio is on the unfortunate side. Some of the things I've done to fix my own issues (even the ones that aren't caused by me directly) have ended up in causing more problems down the road than the correct solution.
They may not be able to charge him with anything, but considering just how difficult it is to get off the no flight lists, I'm sure the TSA could have some ability to pressure compliance. Not to mention the bad PR KLM would suffer, if it became public knowledge that one of their official bloggers were on that list.
It's a bit like buying fire insurance from mobsters.
First of all, what fraud with the egg? The article nor the summary doesn't talk about crushing an egg, nor is it in the video. The article mentions the word "egg" once:
Its accurate enough to pick up an egg, [...]
That being said, even if they DID have a demo of it crushing an egg, there are several ways to do this: 1) Using an empty egg shell in the gesturing hand. 2) Not having an egg at all in the gesturing hand. 3) Actually breaking the egg by hand
As others have pointed out, the robot doesn't have our physical limitations. You tell it to move its fingers to a certain position, and it could have plenty of power to do it. It doesn't have pain receptors, it doesn't have flesh that spreads the force over a bigger area - it just has metal tips and joints that are much harder than the thin calcium shell of the egg.
Realism would mean you play once for 10 minutes, get shot, possibly through no fault of your own, and are permanently out of the game because in that game you are dead.
This is exactly how Rainbow Six was played.
There wasn't cooperative multi-player, just team vs team and every man for himself. One map played until at most one man/team is left standing. Maps could end a draw if no one survives until the end.
And yes, you could certainly end up in situations where you are killed inside the first 30 seconds and then have to wait tens of minutes for the skirmish to end. Those were the rules of the game.
Did it suck when you had to just lie there? Yes, it did. That was the point. Only way not to lie around dead while waiting for the game to finish was to improve your skills. No respawns available. I am not entirely sure, but I think chat was disabled (possibly a separate channel for the dead) - it's been almost a decade since I played it.
Yes, it had semi-realistic game mechanics. You could move faster than real life when running (though it did make your targeting more or less random in the direction you were pointing). You could survive getting shot, depending on the weapon and where.
Take a 9 or 10 mm shot to the chest and you'd only survive if wearing the medium or heavy armour (armour level affects movement speed). 5.56 mm to the chest and you'd need the heavy armour to survive more than one or two shots. 7.26 mm and the chest wound would either kill or incapacitate you. Arm and legs could be wounded by a single shot, which would affect movement speed and aiming (chest wounds same effect). Heads shots were lethal no matter the weapon.
If you wanted to really challenge yourself, you'd go with level 1 armour and an MP5SD or just pistol only. That way you had to get head shots 50+% of the time to stand a chance. The downside to getting really good at head shots and snap reactions is when you come around a corner, not knowing your team mate is coming the other way and sending a 3 round burst into his skull at point blank rage.
Grenades were another fun thing. They had variable distance for throwing. If you simply used them like in pretty much all other games, you'd drop it by your feet as you just click and release the fire button. A useful tactic if you knew exactly what you were doing, otherwise just a way to get you and your friends killed. But get the distance right, you could bounce them off walls, drop them into corners, down stairs etc. Few things were worse than hearing a grenade landing close to you, as they were pretty much a guaranteed kill within I think 10 yards.
Yes, knowing you can die at any minute and then you'd have to wait for a while to play again can be quite exhilarating. It's not for everyone, obviously, but I quite enjoyed it.
I have a hard time thinking of a movie that isn't preaching a message of sorts.
The Dark Knight? Certainly has a message - heroes aren't always applauded. The Shawshank Redemption? Several, one of which is that sometimes we have to suffer and crawl through a mile of shit to come out squeeky clean on the other side. Toy Story? Friends are important
Just because you happen to like the message being preached to you, doesn't mean it isn't being preached.
Speaking of roids, how many drunks are going to drive home under the influence to maintain the party atmosphere, and quickly jab themselves at the first sign of traffic surveillance or air bag deployment? How is that going to be regulated?
Depending on how quickly it works and a test of syntheol in the blood/breath, it is entirely plausible to have the car automatically dose the drive if needed before it can start.
That's the tricky bit. The French resistance during the 2nd world war weren't representing the sitting government (German or French puppet), nor did they wear any kind uniform to make them distinguishable from the civilian populace.
They were civilians carrying out attacks on military targets. They may have received military training, but that doesn't make them military.
Finding a non-biased distinction between "freedom fighters" and "terrorists" is a VERY difficult task - even when they only target military installations.
Norman Borlaug - "saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived".
I see your Norman Borlaug and raise you Thomas Midgley - "Midgley had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history".
I wonder how quickly Dick Cheney will come forward, lambasting the current administration for their lax attitude against terrorists, foaming at the mouth about how much safer the world was, when waterboarding was a fact of life...
Somewhat arguing semantics, but why is an attack on a military target terrorism? Arguably divebombing a civilian airliner into a military target (Pentagon, 2001/09/11) is, as that involves using a civilian airliner with civilians aboard who didn't work for the Pentagon, but I can't wrap my mind enough to classify the bombing on the USS Cole as a terrorist attack, unless every single attack by the US military that had innocent civilians as collateral damage are also terrorist attacks, and I can't find myself fitting that into the term either.
Well, it DOES have bluetooth and USB, so it's not like you can't hook up a keyboard and/or mouse when you're somewhere suitable for that kind of usage.
But if you're using it in places where you can't put it down to use the keyboard, it's a bit of wasted weight to carry around. The keyboard in my laptop weighs in at around 50 grams. Not much, but every bit counts.
Alright, you don't like Google because of their use of advertising. Fair enough.
So - how much would you be willing to pay to use a search engine that doesn't use advertising to finance their running costs?
Also, would you rather use one that takes money from companies, but doesn't show advertisements and instead bump those companies' websites, or one that tries to return relevant search results and advertisements next to it?
The real question on everyone's mind is when can we start having sex with the exotic natives?
Look around you. Everything non-human on this planet would qualify as 'exotic natives'. I'm fairly certain most would only go for the humanoid species, but what makes you think that any intelligent alien life form would be prettier than an orangutan?
I didn't mean to imply that you thought it should be illegal (euthanasia, not suicide). I apologize if I came across like that.
And while you're right - someone's contemplating suicide, and a lot of people are going to go "meh" and shrug or yell "jump you bastard". That's how we humans are.
Sometimes a plea to their future possibilities (like children) are a good way to sway the argument in favour of living. But if they're involuntarily sterile, want kids but aren't allowed to adopt for whatever reasons (money, sexuality, health issues etc.), talking about kids is likely to be a bad direction to go at it.
Talk about how they'll miss out on the beauty of sunrises and sunsets, and you're going to piss off someone who's blind. Not hearing symphonies and you'll piss off the deaf people.
Without knowing the person, we cannot really counsel them properly. I imagine that the biggest nightmare for someone like the original poster is pain. Pain makes us do all kinds of really irrational things. If not that, then it's probably the nightmare of having to live every single day, not knowing if your next breath will come easily, gasping or at all. Every single breath being quite literally a life or death struggle. It is to all of us - but we don't know what it feels like to face it constantly.
Often when I'm in my dark places (which happens quite often), someone talking to me about how things can be better will push me further down into the depression. Oh, sure, life can be oh so good. Why not just dangle a bottle of 25-year-old scotch in front of a recovering alcoholic? A huge bag of narcotics in front of a recovering addict?
Spoiler Ever seen The Gift? In it, Giovanni Ribisi's says: "If I look into a blue diamond, and I think a negative thought, am I gonna die?" and keeps talking about that blue diamond, and even what appears to be the person closest and most intimate with him thinks that blue diamond is a happy place. Except it's not. That's a tattoo his dad has just below the belly button.
That's just mental stress. That can be worked out in therapy. Lots and lots of therapy. But now imagine him standing on the top of a building, contemplating jumping off, and someone tries to talk him down, talking about all the beautiful things in the world and mentions the beauty of blue diamonds, and him getting all his memories of the abuse back at that particular point in time?
Mental stress is bad enough as it is. But here we're talking about someone who has a disease, whose primary symptoms are pain, and without even looking at the charts, a trained medical professional sends him/her away in tears, because obviously he's a drug addict looking to score.
Not only does he have chronic pain, difficulties breathing to the point of being bedridden for half a year at a time, I'm assuming living in the US so bills are going to be piling up, probably unable to do any kind of regular work (you try working with 20+ bowel movements a day), and now the people who are supposed to help him, supposed to turn his life around from a daily scary as hell nightmare into a manageable bad dream, are calling him a big, fat liar who, I suspect, they could probably have arrested for trying to scam drugs from a doctor.
If I were in the shoes of the original poster, a post talking about how sweet the future could be wouldn't make me go "yes, you're right, I should keep on living and hope for the one in a trillion chance that it'll be alright". If anything it'd push me closer to suicide, because it'd be reminding me of all the things I can't hope to achieve. It'd make me realise that even if I would be able to father children, I wouldn't want to - why would I put any child through the nightmare of watching me going through that kind of nightmare?
Will there be a cure or even something that'll turn if from a daily living nightmare into something that makes it c
But I know there are some people who carry on despite terrible diseases and constant pain, so I know it must be possible somehow.
I can't say I know how he feels. Or you feel. Obviously you feel that taking your own life is a bad idea, but - why make the choice illegal? Or rather, why make aiding it illegal.
My dad watched his dad lie hooked up to machines for about a month before passing away. Then a few years later he watched his mom in the same situation. This October he saw his youngest daughter pass away after having spent almost two weeks in an induced coma, hooked up to an ECMO as doctors worked frantically to try to save her from dying of complications from Sharp's Syndrome, with I think ten IV-tubes running into her, breathing tube in her mouth, two massively thick tubes handling the blood flow in and out of her body as well as dialysis apparatus.
Sadly I wasn't there when she was finally let go. And my mom is pissed that the first thing my dad said after she was declared dead, was that if he ever ended up in a situation like that, he didn't want to be saved. That's where euthanasia comes into play. Even before then.
Euthanasia can be done in really simple ways as well. Doesn't even have to be expensive, messy or painful. You could go out with a huge sense of euphoria on your lips. I present to you: Nitrogen asphyxiation. All you really need is a tight fitting face mask for ventilation and pure nitrogen. Essentially a slightly modified SCUBA kit.
It takes about 15 seconds for someone to lose conciousness and about 7 minutes until brain death sets in. The organs are, I believe, unharmed, which is a good thing if you plan on being a donor. There is a very minute risk (I think I read 1:1,000,000) of painful side effects, but these will only last until the person is unconscious, again no more than 15 to 20 seconds, and then they'll be at peace.
As for the "what ifs", they're just silly.
What if you turn out to have a child that becomes the new Gandhi?
What if you turn out to have a child that becomes the new Hitler? Are those two lives (yours and your child's) really worth the lives and suffering of millions? If we just go by 'what if', we should never have children, as for every Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, we also end up with a Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Papa Doc. For every Norman Borlaug, the agronomist and humanitarian who essentially saved a billion people from starvation, we also end up with a Thomas Midgley, the man behind such wonderful innovations as leaded engines and CFCs. Both were effective at what they were designed for, sure, but the man essentially made a hole in the ozone layer the size of Antarctica and gave every single child in the world lead poisoning - by himself.
Do you really want to be responsible for the next Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Papa Doc or Thomas Midgley? Those are the risk we take when we think we might be the proud parents of the next Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela or Norman Borlaug.
My point still stands. Euthanasia needs to be legal, and it needs to be a cheap and simple one at that. I'd go for nitrogen asphyxiation.
I had a high CHA Char a while ago. It pretty much sucked, as the DM preferred to have persuading, haggling et al. played out instead of rolled out.
Bad DM.
Look at Terry Pratchett's Discworld books involving the Ankh-Morpork city watch Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson. A guy who is insanely charismatic but usually sounds about as intelligent as a bag of hammers and as naïve as anything. Yet pretty much everyone he meets cannot help but want to behave well in his company. Up to the point of him giving murderers a 'motherly talking to' and them being ashamed of their behaviour, because he doesn't approve of it.
THAT is charisma.
I've had the sad experience of playing under DMs who refused to see charisma as anything but a modifier for looks, so I know how you feel.
If the designers are lazy, they can offload the job of finding good stats combination onto the player. To one player thats a huge degree of freedom, to the other it's a chance to mess up and make the game unplayable.
Well, there ARE those of us who consider learning fun. There are several ways to learn things. Being told exactly how to do it (rote memorization). Being shown how to do it and then asked to repeat it. Or learning completely from scratch.
I quite like a mix of number 2 and 3 in those options. Give me two hundred kg of assorted LEGO bricks, and I can have quite a lot of fun. Give me blue prints for some designs, and I'll still have fun. Tell me I am only allowed to make those designs, and I won't want to play.
This is why I like the Fallout series. No classes. You can do anything, just not everything equally well. Meet a lock you can't pick? Try to blow the doors off the hinges. Really really bad with explosives? Steal a key. Really bad at stealing? Tough - you won't get past that door. Practice and come back later if you want to get in there. Or you could try to hire someone who's good at getting past doors.
That way you don't have to fit into a neat little box labelled "Tank", "Healer" or similar. If you wanted to, you could be the "Remover of Obstacles" through picking the locks or the use of rocket launchers and other explosives. Rather handy when you break the last set of lock picks.
Most of these millions of people wouldn't have paid to see in the first place. Lets say a few thousand that would have paid to see your picture don't because they found it for free yes, this costs you real money
Unless you're paying them to watch the movie, it isn't a cost. You might as well argue that Pepsi is costing Coca Cola money, because some people aren't paying Coca Cola for their softdrinks.
I didn't get the last pay-raise. That's not costing me money. I'm just not getting as much money as I could have gotten.
Now, if they are downloading it off of my own website (pay what you want), it IS costing me money if they don't pay, but otherwise it is, at most, reduced revenue. That isn't to say it isn't a problem, but it isn't a cost (i.e. expenditure).
Slashdot Mirror
And how many people need to be offended before it counts as public ire?
One? Ten? A hundred?
In all likelihood his job is to make sure the company computers work properly.
Making everyone else's work easier is to remove all passwords, anti virus software etc., as that will make it easier for them to do as they want.
His job should be to make sure that what you do doesn't fuck things up for everyone else. And he should do this in the way that causes the least inconvenience to you. That means he shouldn't be taking over your computer in the middle of the day just to perform a scheduled update. It also means that you shouldn't be running the software you're developing on production machines.
It is easy to forget that the rules put in place are there for a reason. They need to be reasonable rules, obviously. No-one in their right mind would shut down production, just because some book says to do it whenever someone wears a blue sweater to work. On the other hand, it's a VERY sane rule that laptops are kept on the other side of firewalls from the rest of the network, that laptops are required to have a lot more security scrutiny than the 50 kg tower computer that is bolted to the floor, and that passwords are treated like keys to the office.
We screw up. Sometimes we screw up big time. Wouldn't you love to know that you missing the '.' in 'rm -rf ./*' didn't bring down the production server because you don't have that kind of access on the production server? I know I was glad I only made that mistake on a test machine. But hey - if you feel like fucking up that badly just because it's easier for you, I'm sure there are plenty of companies that will love your answer to "So, why were you fired from your previous job?".
And how much time has causing your own problems cost you?
How many of those problems could have been avoided, if you didn't have carte blanche over your computer?
I suspect my own ratio is on the unfortunate side. Some of the things I've done to fix my own issues (even the ones that aren't caused by me directly) have ended up in causing more problems down the road than the correct solution.
I'm reminded of this bit by Frankie Boyle: Look at the shiny shiny
They may not be able to charge him with anything, but considering just how difficult it is to get off the no flight lists, I'm sure the TSA could have some ability to pressure compliance. Not to mention the bad PR KLM would suffer, if it became public knowledge that one of their official bloggers were on that list.
It's a bit like buying fire insurance from mobsters.
First of all, what fraud with the egg? The article nor the summary doesn't talk about crushing an egg, nor is it in the video. The article mentions the word "egg" once:
That being said, even if they DID have a demo of it crushing an egg, there are several ways to do this:
1) Using an empty egg shell in the gesturing hand.
2) Not having an egg at all in the gesturing hand.
3) Actually breaking the egg by hand
As others have pointed out, the robot doesn't have our physical limitations. You tell it to move its fingers to a certain position, and it could have plenty of power to do it. It doesn't have pain receptors, it doesn't have flesh that spreads the force over a bigger area - it just has metal tips and joints that are much harder than the thin calcium shell of the egg.
This is exactly how Rainbow Six was played.
There wasn't cooperative multi-player, just team vs team and every man for himself. One map played until at most one man/team is left standing. Maps could end a draw if no one survives until the end.
And yes, you could certainly end up in situations where you are killed inside the first 30 seconds and then have to wait tens of minutes for the skirmish to end. Those were the rules of the game.
Did it suck when you had to just lie there? Yes, it did. That was the point. Only way not to lie around dead while waiting for the game to finish was to improve your skills. No respawns available. I am not entirely sure, but I think chat was disabled (possibly a separate channel for the dead) - it's been almost a decade since I played it.
Yes, it had semi-realistic game mechanics. You could move faster than real life when running (though it did make your targeting more or less random in the direction you were pointing). You could survive getting shot, depending on the weapon and where.
Take a 9 or 10 mm shot to the chest and you'd only survive if wearing the medium or heavy armour (armour level affects movement speed).
5.56 mm to the chest and you'd need the heavy armour to survive more than one or two shots.
7.26 mm and the chest wound would either kill or incapacitate you.
Arm and legs could be wounded by a single shot, which would affect movement speed and aiming (chest wounds same effect).
Heads shots were lethal no matter the weapon.
If you wanted to really challenge yourself, you'd go with level 1 armour and an MP5SD or just pistol only. That way you had to get head shots 50+% of the time to stand a chance. The downside to getting really good at head shots and snap reactions is when you come around a corner, not knowing your team mate is coming the other way and sending a 3 round burst into his skull at point blank rage.
Grenades were another fun thing. They had variable distance for throwing. If you simply used them like in pretty much all other games, you'd drop it by your feet as you just click and release the fire button. A useful tactic if you knew exactly what you were doing, otherwise just a way to get you and your friends killed. But get the distance right, you could bounce them off walls, drop them into corners, down stairs etc. Few things were worse than hearing a grenade landing close to you, as they were pretty much a guaranteed kill within I think 10 yards.
Yes, knowing you can die at any minute and then you'd have to wait for a while to play again can be quite exhilarating. It's not for everyone, obviously, but I quite enjoyed it.
I have a hard time thinking of a movie that isn't preaching a message of sorts.
The Dark Knight? Certainly has a message - heroes aren't always applauded.
The Shawshank Redemption? Several, one of which is that sometimes we have to suffer and crawl through a mile of shit to come out squeeky clean on the other side.
Toy Story? Friends are important
Just because you happen to like the message being preached to you, doesn't mean it isn't being preached.
Depending on how quickly it works and a test of syntheol in the blood/breath, it is entirely plausible to have the car automatically dose the drive if needed before it can start.
That's the tricky bit. The French resistance during the 2nd world war weren't representing the sitting government (German or French puppet), nor did they wear any kind uniform to make them distinguishable from the civilian populace.
They were civilians carrying out attacks on military targets. They may have received military training, but that doesn't make them military.
Finding a non-biased distinction between "freedom fighters" and "terrorists" is a VERY difficult task - even when they only target military installations.
I see your Norman Borlaug and raise you Thomas Midgley - "Midgley had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history".
I wonder how quickly Dick Cheney will come forward, lambasting the current administration for their lax attitude against terrorists, foaming at the mouth about how much safer the world was, when waterboarding was a fact of life ...
Somewhat arguing semantics, but why is an attack on a military target terrorism? Arguably divebombing a civilian airliner into a military target (Pentagon, 2001/09/11) is, as that involves using a civilian airliner with civilians aboard who didn't work for the Pentagon, but I can't wrap my mind enough to classify the bombing on the USS Cole as a terrorist attack, unless every single attack by the US military that had innocent civilians as collateral damage are also terrorist attacks, and I can't find myself fitting that into the term either.
Because Twitter is designed around the SMS, which puts a natural limit on the number of characters available per message (160)?
The URL to the story is 90 characters by itself, leaving only 70 for the rest of the message. You only need 20 for a typical http://bit.ly/ URL.
Well, it DOES have bluetooth and USB, so it's not like you can't hook up a keyboard and/or mouse when you're somewhere suitable for that kind of usage.
But if you're using it in places where you can't put it down to use the keyboard, it's a bit of wasted weight to carry around. The keyboard in my laptop weighs in at around 50 grams. Not much, but every bit counts.
Alright, you don't like Google because of their use of advertising. Fair enough.
So - how much would you be willing to pay to use a search engine that doesn't use advertising to finance their running costs?
Also, would you rather use one that takes money from companies, but doesn't show advertisements and instead bump those companies' websites, or one that tries to return relevant search results and advertisements next to it?
Look around you. Everything non-human on this planet would qualify as 'exotic natives'. I'm fairly certain most would only go for the humanoid species, but what makes you think that any intelligent alien life form would be prettier than an orangutan?
I think George Carlin would say something along the lines of "Michael Steel is openly white. He just happens to be black."
I didn't mean to imply that you thought it should be illegal (euthanasia, not suicide). I apologize if I came across like that.
And while you're right - someone's contemplating suicide, and a lot of people are going to go "meh" and shrug or yell "jump you bastard". That's how we humans are.
Sometimes a plea to their future possibilities (like children) are a good way to sway the argument in favour of living. But if they're involuntarily sterile, want kids but aren't allowed to adopt for whatever reasons (money, sexuality, health issues etc.), talking about kids is likely to be a bad direction to go at it.
Talk about how they'll miss out on the beauty of sunrises and sunsets, and you're going to piss off someone who's blind. Not hearing symphonies and you'll piss off the deaf people.
Without knowing the person, we cannot really counsel them properly. I imagine that the biggest nightmare for someone like the original poster is pain. Pain makes us do all kinds of really irrational things. If not that, then it's probably the nightmare of having to live every single day, not knowing if your next breath will come easily, gasping or at all. Every single breath being quite literally a life or death struggle. It is to all of us - but we don't know what it feels like to face it constantly.
Often when I'm in my dark places (which happens quite often), someone talking to me about how things can be better will push me further down into the depression. Oh, sure, life can be oh so good. Why not just dangle a bottle of 25-year-old scotch in front of a recovering alcoholic? A huge bag of narcotics in front of a recovering addict?
Spoiler
Ever seen The Gift? In it, Giovanni Ribisi's says: "If I look into a blue diamond, and I think a negative thought, am I gonna die?" and keeps talking about that blue diamond, and even what appears to be the person closest and most intimate with him thinks that blue diamond is a happy place. Except it's not. That's a tattoo his dad has just below the belly button.
That's just mental stress. That can be worked out in therapy. Lots and lots of therapy. But now imagine him standing on the top of a building, contemplating jumping off, and someone tries to talk him down, talking about all the beautiful things in the world and mentions the beauty of blue diamonds, and him getting all his memories of the abuse back at that particular point in time?
Mental stress is bad enough as it is. But here we're talking about someone who has a disease, whose primary symptoms are pain, and without even looking at the charts, a trained medical professional sends him/her away in tears, because obviously he's a drug addict looking to score.
Not only does he have chronic pain, difficulties breathing to the point of being bedridden for half a year at a time, I'm assuming living in the US so bills are going to be piling up, probably unable to do any kind of regular work (you try working with 20+ bowel movements a day), and now the people who are supposed to help him, supposed to turn his life around from a daily scary as hell nightmare into a manageable bad dream, are calling him a big, fat liar who, I suspect, they could probably have arrested for trying to scam drugs from a doctor.
If I were in the shoes of the original poster, a post talking about how sweet the future could be wouldn't make me go "yes, you're right, I should keep on living and hope for the one in a trillion chance that it'll be alright". If anything it'd push me closer to suicide, because it'd be reminding me of all the things I can't hope to achieve. It'd make me realise that even if I would be able to father children, I wouldn't want to - why would I put any child through the nightmare of watching me going through that kind of nightmare?
Will there be a cure or even something that'll turn if from a daily living nightmare into something that makes it c
I can't say I know how he feels. Or you feel. Obviously you feel that taking your own life is a bad idea, but - why make the choice illegal? Or rather, why make aiding it illegal.
My dad watched his dad lie hooked up to machines for about a month before passing away. Then a few years later he watched his mom in the same situation. This October he saw his youngest daughter pass away after having spent almost two weeks in an induced coma, hooked up to an ECMO as doctors worked frantically to try to save her from dying of complications from Sharp's Syndrome, with I think ten IV-tubes running into her, breathing tube in her mouth, two massively thick tubes handling the blood flow in and out of her body as well as dialysis apparatus.
Sadly I wasn't there when she was finally let go. And my mom is pissed that the first thing my dad said after she was declared dead, was that if he ever ended up in a situation like that, he didn't want to be saved. That's where euthanasia comes into play. Even before then.
Euthanasia can be done in really simple ways as well. Doesn't even have to be expensive, messy or painful. You could go out with a huge sense of euphoria on your lips. I present to you: Nitrogen asphyxiation. All you really need is a tight fitting face mask for ventilation and pure nitrogen. Essentially a slightly modified SCUBA kit.
It takes about 15 seconds for someone to lose conciousness and about 7 minutes until brain death sets in. The organs are, I believe, unharmed, which is a good thing if you plan on being a donor. There is a very minute risk (I think I read 1:1,000,000) of painful side effects, but these will only last until the person is unconscious, again no more than 15 to 20 seconds, and then they'll be at peace.
As for the "what ifs", they're just silly.
What if you turn out to have a child that becomes the new Hitler? Are those two lives (yours and your child's) really worth the lives and suffering of millions? If we just go by 'what if', we should never have children, as for every Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, we also end up with a Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Papa Doc. For every Norman Borlaug, the agronomist and humanitarian who essentially saved a billion people from starvation, we also end up with a Thomas Midgley, the man behind such wonderful innovations as leaded engines and CFCs. Both were effective at what they were designed for, sure, but the man essentially made a hole in the ozone layer the size of Antarctica and gave every single child in the world lead poisoning - by himself.
Do you really want to be responsible for the next Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Papa Doc or Thomas Midgley? Those are the risk we take when we think we might be the proud parents of the next Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela or Norman Borlaug.
My point still stands. Euthanasia needs to be legal, and it needs to be a cheap and simple one at that. I'd go for nitrogen asphyxiation.
Bad DM.
Look at Terry Pratchett's Discworld books involving the Ankh-Morpork city watch Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson. A guy who is insanely charismatic but usually sounds about as intelligent as a bag of hammers and as naïve as anything. Yet pretty much everyone he meets cannot help but want to behave well in his company. Up to the point of him giving murderers a 'motherly talking to' and them being ashamed of their behaviour, because he doesn't approve of it.
THAT is charisma.
I've had the sad experience of playing under DMs who refused to see charisma as anything but a modifier for looks, so I know how you feel.
Well, there ARE those of us who consider learning fun. There are several ways to learn things. Being told exactly how to do it (rote memorization). Being shown how to do it and then asked to repeat it. Or learning completely from scratch.
I quite like a mix of number 2 and 3 in those options. Give me two hundred kg of assorted LEGO bricks, and I can have quite a lot of fun. Give me blue prints for some designs, and I'll still have fun. Tell me I am only allowed to make those designs, and I won't want to play.
This is why I like the Fallout series. No classes. You can do anything, just not everything equally well. Meet a lock you can't pick? Try to blow the doors off the hinges. Really really bad with explosives? Steal a key. Really bad at stealing? Tough - you won't get past that door. Practice and come back later if you want to get in there. Or you could try to hire someone who's good at getting past doors.
That way you don't have to fit into a neat little box labelled "Tank", "Healer" or similar. If you wanted to, you could be the "Remover of Obstacles" through picking the locks or the use of rocket launchers and other explosives. Rather handy when you break the last set of lock picks.
Why? If you think you're hung about average for someone who's average height (about 6 foot), how will you compare to their usual blue-headed monsters?
Unless you're paying them to watch the movie, it isn't a cost. You might as well argue that Pepsi is costing Coca Cola money, because some people aren't paying Coca Cola for their softdrinks.
I didn't get the last pay-raise. That's not costing me money. I'm just not getting as much money as I could have gotten.
Now, if they are downloading it off of my own website (pay what you want), it IS costing me money if they don't pay, but otherwise it is, at most, reduced revenue. That isn't to say it isn't a problem, but it isn't a cost (i.e. expenditure).
Don't get pissed - get even. Cut the cord for his controller and ... that special cord of his.