Except when you can't. I've had a handful of times when steam wants to connect even when I tell it to play offline. And it refuses to do anything else. It has pissed me right the hell off each time. That's DRM getting between me and what I paid for.
Steam is a pretty good distribution system. And Valve has a lot of sales which make it enticing. But as far as DRM goes, it's still too much.
I think that people hold fundamentally different values that are valid but that can never be reconciled.
Hmmm. That gave me pause. It's somewhat depressing, but I'd have to agree that's probably true. So a more realistic Federation would have more.... bickering? I dunno though, I kind of have hope that there's a happy middle point where rationality wins and everyone can play nice.
Your view of "totalitarian" is also interesting. There is always dissent. What makes a place totalitarian is if that dissent is allowed to be voiced. Under your definition I think you technically could have a totalitarian democracy, you'd just need everyone to freely choose the same thing. Which is kind of silly, but bear with me a second. A utopia is one where a society/government/economy/whatnot is set up "the right way" so that no-one has any qualm. And while that perfect state is impossible it's certainly possible to get close. The whole whole "fundamentally different values" thing isn't guaranteed to be true. It's just got an overwhelming amount of historical proof behind it.
Did you mean "He could have gotten a degree, but a career would be out of reach"?
How do you figure? I mean, if you're a clinically depressed cutter that can't get their ass out of bed, it doesn't really matter what uber-degree you have. You're probably not going to have much of a career until you get that figured out.
But I don't think one 'D' on one test has the ability to affect the rest of your career. Hell, I failed out of my database class, but still found work as a DBA years later. (Meh, there were circumstances)
So, you're a "long term unemployed loser" because you're a programmer, because you went to a "B" school, because you gave up on science or engineering, because of one "D" grade on one test, because of one question in which you made one trivial mistake...
Uh huh. Yep. Your entire life sucks right now just because of that one unbearable life-shattering mistake. Boo hoo. Sucks to be you.
Sorry, but I don't think you particularly need a pity party. You need to get over it and try again. Or accept that not everyone can be a rock-star MIT valedictorian quant dev or whatever is paying out the nose right now. More than likely, you got "D" grades because you didn't put enough effort, or dedication, or as you say "focus" towards earning your degree and you dropped down to an easier degree in an cheaper school rather than, say, trying harder the next semester. Yeah, I know, shit sucks when you realize you're not the smartest person in the room, maybe not even in the top half. That was an eye-opener when I hit grad classes. But rather than living in the past and sulking that you're not in the top tier, you could be looking towards the future and how to GET INTO that top tier. Or close enough to it to be content.
Dear god, you're a freaking PROGRAMMER. Do you have any idea how far ahead of the pack that puts you?
Like what exactly?
The summary suggests, essentially dumbing down the next question. It's akin to playing on easy mode.
Garth Smith suggests we vaguely "intervene" somehow.
Don't get me wrong, I think this sort of thing would be a fantastic learning aid. While I'm working I could detect just exactly when I go off track, slow down, and work through that portion in more detail. Or it could kick me while I'm down and re-enforce my hatred of math.
I always thought zombies represented man's inhumanity to man. They're all about people becoming a liability rather than a resource. A metaphor for society breaking down usually followed up with a literal breakdown of social circles as the survivors turn on each other.
Cyberpunk, however, is all about the spaces in between in which individuals can make choices and possibly change things.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, on the other hand, strikes me as truly static and dystopian.... Only a totalitarian society could so thoroughly crush dissent and eliminate difference.
The dystopian society that Cyberpunk portrays is not an environment in which individuals can impact the system, despite the protagonists often setting off nukes or digital equivalents. People can make changes to their own lives, but the system as a whole is uncaring, cruel, and expects you to be a terrorist. Sorry, but cyberpunk is not a libertarian utopia in the least. The megaCorps have an entirely one-sided struggle against the masses. They set the laws to protect themselves, and yet can wantonly abuse, arrest, assassinate whoever they wish. They are above the law. It's the epitome of a stacked deck.
The only "free choice"/"libertarian utopia" aspect comes from the underworld criminal elements which the protagonists often portray. Yeah, if you think of it that way, criminals are free to do whatever they want.
On the flip side, in Roddenberry's leftist StarTrek utopia, and the more sterile ST:tNG, we have the rule of law. People aren't starving in the street. They have rights. Society works. And people can argue, fight, and rebel. There's still conflict in the Star Trek universe, it just doesn't destroy swaths of humanity in the process. And there's reason for this: By and far, people don't abuse each other because they don't have to. Life is simply better. The massive federation is overall peaceful because times are good and people don't have a reason to stir up shit. They aren't dissenting because their leaders are doing a good job. If you see that as impeding your personally freedom... Dude, you're straying into evil supervillian level ranting.
And there are those SAME criminal elements in Star Trek and Cyberpunk. It's just that in Cyberpunk, they're justified in their actions. It's the best/only way out. Their targets are horrible people. And there's little reason to love an unloving world. In Star Trek, criminals are the bad guys. Their motivators are usually negative aspects like greed and hate.
So, long story short, I disagree. Star Trek's Federation is a utopia and Cyberpunk's vision is a distopia.
He's got a doubly rough road because even if the lawyers can be tamed, you'll still have to get the tech workers on the other side to swallow Sharepoint. Which, from personal experience, is like slowly twisting rusty screws underneath your fingernails. But then again, I was a developer placed in a site administrator's role.
But to get the bean-counters to swallow the GPL while simultaneously getting geeks to swallow MS's monstrosity, in the public sector... That has got to be the hardest sell I've ever heard of. If you can get everyone to sign off on it, to hell with the project, you need to get your ass into congress because you have a magical gift for getting shit approved.
Agreed. Downright hysterical. He's shoving a lot much straw in my mouth.
Foe'd, silenced, done.
Don't pay the nutjobs attention. They really don't deserve it. Generalized fear-mongering against expanding government powers when that's not even on the radar is socially unacceptable. Seriously Dishevel, ask yourself if your argument does anything to validate plantsneedco2.org?
I'm sorry, I just started the game earlier this week, and I'm having trouble wading through the
sheer number of side-quests between me and the big plot quest. I like the compact nature of the
world. There's just enough annoying travel between points of interest. Which is not much.
It makes for some silly bandit camps literally outside the king's window, but it works.
But with this compact nature means that every three steps you get yet another slob with a
problem and they want YOU to fix their shit. And it honestly sounds fun, so I'm up for it. Sure, I'll clean out those zombies, no problem. Happens all the time.
So I'm investigating an interesting hut on the side of the road while on a side-quest I got in the city that I got transported to as part of an ambushed-HAHA-YOU'RE-ON-A-QUEST-NOW
sort of mission while on my way to the big plot. When I apparently hit a stack overflow on the number of tangents I was diverging onto, because that's when the thing bluescreened.
(It was actually when swapping some amulets, but I was certainly feeling the quest stack buildup)
tl;dr I'm feeling there's plenty of quests. At least around lvl 10.
Well, ok. But you're not doing so well on either of those two points. The AC said two lines:
I think you misunderstood. To not believe in evolution does not mean you don't believe in dinosaurs.
I have NEVER heard a Christian claim that dinos never existed. Nice straw man.
Neither of which can be construed to mean that Jehova's Witnesses aren't Christian. You just kinda decided to point that out on your own.
Secondly, take a look at Restorationism. It was a period where Christianity splintered, like many times before, and spawned several denominations that have different views. It's extremely like the protestant thing with those crazy Lutherans that don't want the rich to buy off their sins. If you don't want to think of them as Christians, fine, but many of them consider themselves Christians. As for those "certain characteristic beliefs", yeah, they had this issue before when everyone was jumping on the Christian bandwagon. They came up with the Nicene Creed. The updated version 50 years later clearly cuts out all other denominations other than Catholic.
Poe's law strikes again. It's an interesting dilemma when you can't tell the trolls trolling trolls from the true believers. Also, Poe is a rather funny guy.
Well yeah. That's crazy as all get out. Crazier than those end-of-the-world nutjobs.
So crazy that NO ONE HAS SUGGESTED THAT. Not in these posts at least. (There are those crazy bastards that think overpopulation is an issue and we should "cull the herd", but they're as crazy as the global warming deniers.)
So... since no one here is claiming that... why would you go out of your way to argue against it?
What you have there is an implicit strawman.
How many bombers have preempted their bombing with 78 false threats?
I think you need to add a few more ".9" to your statistic there. And with enough there, no, it doesn't make it worth it. I'm ok with the risk of meteor impact as I walk outside. I could go live in a bunker and protect myself from that threat, or I could just accept that life isn't safe.
And you don't have to simply ignore the threats. You can, oh I dunno, STOP EVACUATING each and every time. Call in the dogs, sweep the place with the people still there, and if it's a non-issue as usual, it's just the cost of a K9 unit working constantly.
If we the people don't consider our own privacy terribly valuable, we cannot count on government — with its many legitimate worries about law-breaking and security — to guard it for us
Let me explain this for Alex. Some people don't consider privacy terribly valuable. That doesn't mean jack shit to my privacy. And the government and it's laws damn well better protect me. I pay for the damn thing.
We live in a democracy, and there are social norms that do indeed shift with time. If, at some point, a significant percentage somewhere between 50% and 99%, decide that X is a perfectly normal thing to casually share information about, then I can understand his point. There would be a lack of moral outrage against the police collecting such information.
But it's the choice about disclosing that information that makes the difference. If a few outliers choose to broadcast normally embarrassing things, that does not make the case for invading my privacy. It's honestly a little scary that a judge would even consider this argument much less make pose it himself.
During the ice ages, Sweden was fucked because it was too damn cold to raise crops. Egypt is doing just fine.
During warm periods, Canada would be slightly less miserable place to be for all those time-traveling farmers.
Dear god man, climates vary over the surface of the Earth.
And sometimes it really is the rate of change that is the concern. If the poor ranching scrub-land of western Nebraska suddenly turned into a humid tropical wetlands, they wouldn't instantly have rainforests or swamps. They'd have a lot of mudslides, ruined roads, and lost cattle. It would be FANTASTIC farmland in a decade or twenty. But that sort of transformation takes a while. For some though, their climate is changing to better suit their needs. Lucky them. For most of us, we're getting more drought, more floods, and we're going to have to work to come to grips with living in a different climate.
Now, I really don't think that it's as "catastrophic" as a lot of the doomsayers are making out. There's a really big difference between losing a lake in 50 years and losing a lake in 500 years. And I think that's nuance is how they got a lot of these NASA people to sign this thing. But Leighton Steward and Plants Need CO2 is the biggest load of shit I've seen in a long while. A weak shill and nothing more.
Bullshit. He's being asked to POST that he likes the product. Regardless of if he even uses it. Their company is requesting they use their non-work accounts to generate praise. THAT'S ASTROTURF. A cheap version of astroturf where they don't even pay you for shilling for them.
The ONLY way that this action could be considered anything other than astroturf, is if they clearly state "IF you like the product THEN please remember to leave a review. Please do not feel obligated. We will not be checking." Such a request is common to users.
But the moment it comes over as an order, or with the implication that there is either punishment or reward, however minor, then it becomes astroturf.
Slashdot Mirror
They looked like the Palm Pilot you little whippersnapper!
I can play games offline.
Except when you can't. I've had a handful of times when steam wants to connect even when I tell it to play offline. And it refuses to do anything else. It has pissed me right the hell off each time. That's DRM getting between me and what I paid for.
Steam is a pretty good distribution system. And Valve has a lot of sales which make it enticing. But as far as DRM goes, it's still too much.
Uh, yeah, that's known as "Steam".
I think that people hold fundamentally different values that are valid but that can never be reconciled.
Hmmm. That gave me pause. It's somewhat depressing, but I'd have to agree that's probably true. So a more realistic Federation would have more.... bickering? I dunno though, I kind of have hope that there's a happy middle point where rationality wins and everyone can play nice.
Your view of "totalitarian" is also interesting. There is always dissent. What makes a place totalitarian is if that dissent is allowed to be voiced. Under your definition I think you technically could have a totalitarian democracy, you'd just need everyone to freely choose the same thing. Which is kind of silly, but bear with me a second. A utopia is one where a society/government/economy/whatnot is set up "the right way" so that no-one has any qualm. And while that perfect state is impossible it's certainly possible to get close. The whole whole "fundamentally different values" thing isn't guaranteed to be true. It's just got an overwhelming amount of historical proof behind it.
Did you mean "He could have gotten a degree, but a career would be out of reach"?
How do you figure? I mean, if you're a clinically depressed cutter that can't get their ass out of bed, it doesn't really matter what uber-degree you have. You're probably not going to have much of a career until you get that figured out.
But I don't think one 'D' on one test has the ability to affect the rest of your career. Hell, I failed out of my database class, but still found work as a DBA years later. (Meh, there were circumstances)
So, you're a "long term unemployed loser" because you're a programmer, because you went to a "B" school, because you gave up on science or engineering, because of one "D" grade on one test, because of one question in which you made one trivial mistake...
Uh huh. Yep. Your entire life sucks right now just because of that one unbearable life-shattering mistake. Boo hoo. Sucks to be you.
Sorry, but I don't think you particularly need a pity party. You need to get over it and try again. Or accept that not everyone can be a rock-star MIT valedictorian quant dev or whatever is paying out the nose right now. More than likely, you got "D" grades because you didn't put enough effort, or dedication, or as you say "focus" towards earning your degree and you dropped down to an easier degree in an cheaper school rather than, say, trying harder the next semester. Yeah, I know, shit sucks when you realize you're not the smartest person in the room, maybe not even in the top half. That was an eye-opener when I hit grad classes. But rather than living in the past and sulking that you're not in the top tier, you could be looking towards the future and how to GET INTO that top tier. Or close enough to it to be content.
Dear god, you're a freaking PROGRAMMER. Do you have any idea how far ahead of the pack that puts you?
DO SOMETHING about it.
Like what exactly?
The summary suggests, essentially dumbing down the next question. It's akin to playing on easy mode.
Garth Smith suggests we vaguely "intervene" somehow.
Don't get me wrong, I think this sort of thing would be a fantastic learning aid. While I'm working I could detect just exactly when I go off track, slow down, and work through that portion in more detail. Or it could kick me while I'm down and re-enforce my hatred of math.
Well did you compromise at least and go for John Luke FearofCarpet?
I always thought zombies represented man's inhumanity to man. They're all about people becoming a liability rather than a resource. A metaphor for society breaking down usually followed up with a literal breakdown of social circles as the survivors turn on each other.
Cyberpunk, however, is all about the spaces in between in which individuals can make choices and possibly change things.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, on the other hand, strikes me as truly static and dystopian. ... Only a totalitarian society could so thoroughly crush dissent and eliminate difference.
The dystopian society that Cyberpunk portrays is not an environment in which individuals can impact the system, despite the protagonists often setting off nukes or digital equivalents. People can make changes to their own lives, but the system as a whole is uncaring, cruel, and expects you to be a terrorist. Sorry, but cyberpunk is not a libertarian utopia in the least. The megaCorps have an entirely one-sided struggle against the masses. They set the laws to protect themselves, and yet can wantonly abuse, arrest, assassinate whoever they wish. They are above the law. It's the epitome of a stacked deck.
The only "free choice"/"libertarian utopia" aspect comes from the underworld criminal elements which the protagonists often portray. Yeah, if you think of it that way, criminals are free to do whatever they want.
On the flip side, in Roddenberry's leftist StarTrek utopia, and the more sterile ST:tNG, we have the rule of law. People aren't starving in the street. They have rights. Society works. And people can argue, fight, and rebel. There's still conflict in the Star Trek universe, it just doesn't destroy swaths of humanity in the process. And there's reason for this: By and far, people don't abuse each other because they don't have to. Life is simply better. The massive federation is overall peaceful because times are good and people don't have a reason to stir up shit. They aren't dissenting because their leaders are doing a good job. If you see that as impeding your personally freedom... Dude, you're straying into evil supervillian level ranting.
And there are those SAME criminal elements in Star Trek and Cyberpunk. It's just that in Cyberpunk, they're justified in their actions. It's the best/only way out. Their targets are horrible people. And there's little reason to love an unloving world. In Star Trek, criminals are the bad guys. Their motivators are usually negative aspects like greed and hate.
So, long story short, I disagree. Star Trek's Federation is a utopia and Cyberpunk's vision is a distopia.
He's got a doubly rough road because even if the lawyers can be tamed, you'll still have to get the tech workers on the other side to swallow Sharepoint. Which, from personal experience, is like slowly twisting rusty screws underneath your fingernails. But then again, I was a developer placed in a site administrator's role.
But to get the bean-counters to swallow the GPL while simultaneously getting geeks to swallow MS's monstrosity, in the public sector... That has got to be the hardest sell I've ever heard of. If you can get everyone to sign off on it, to hell with the project, you need to get your ass into congress because you have a magical gift for getting shit approved.
Next up, sandtrout and lasguns!
. . . I'm not usually one for feeding the trolls, but that sir, was magnificent.
we forget about the importance of self control
You forget the importance of the word "SELF". Who are you arguing should control who?
Agreed. Downright hysterical. He's shoving a lot much straw in my mouth.
Foe'd, silenced, done.
Don't pay the nutjobs attention. They really don't deserve it. Generalized fear-mongering against expanding government powers when that's not even on the radar is socially unacceptable. Seriously Dishevel, ask yourself if your argument does anything to validate plantsneedco2.org?
This additional content will add new quest
I'm sorry, I just started the game earlier this week, and I'm having trouble wading through the sheer number of side-quests between me and the big plot quest. I like the compact nature of the world. There's just enough annoying travel between points of interest. Which is not much. It makes for some silly bandit camps literally outside the king's window, but it works. But with this compact nature means that every three steps you get yet another slob with a problem and they want YOU to fix their shit. And it honestly sounds fun, so I'm up for it. Sure, I'll clean out those zombies, no problem. Happens all the time.
So I'm investigating an interesting hut on the side of the road while on a side-quest I got in the city that I got transported to as part of an ambushed-HAHA-YOU'RE-ON-A-QUEST-NOW sort of mission while on my way to the big plot. When I apparently hit a stack overflow on the number of tangents I was diverging onto, because that's when the thing bluescreened.
(It was actually when swapping some amulets, but I was certainly feeling the quest stack buildup)
tl;dr I'm feeling there's plenty of quests. At least around lvl 10.
I think you misunderstood. To not believe in evolution does not mean you don't believe in dinosaurs.
I have NEVER heard a Christian claim that dinos never existed. Nice straw man.
Neither of which can be construed to mean that Jehova's Witnesses aren't Christian. You just kinda decided to point that out on your own.
Secondly, take a look at Restorationism. It was a period where Christianity splintered, like many times before, and spawned several denominations that have different views. It's extremely like the protestant thing with those crazy Lutherans that don't want the rich to buy off their sins. If you don't want to think of them as Christians, fine, but many of them consider themselves Christians. As for those "certain characteristic beliefs", yeah, they had this issue before when everyone was jumping on the Christian bandwagon. They came up with the Nicene Creed. The updated version 50 years later clearly cuts out all other denominations other than Catholic.
Bloody HELL why do I know all this?
Ah, the no-true-scotman argument comes out again. Go get some learnings, you.
Poe's law strikes again. It's an interesting dilemma when you can't tell the trolls trolling trolls from the true believers. Also, Poe is a rather funny guy.
Well yeah. That's crazy as all get out. Crazier than those end-of-the-world nutjobs.
So crazy that NO ONE HAS SUGGESTED THAT. Not in these posts at least. (There are those crazy bastards that think overpopulation is an issue and we should "cull the herd", but they're as crazy as the global warming deniers.)
So... since no one here is claiming that... why would you go out of your way to argue against it?
What you have there is an implicit strawman.
My money is either on a disgruntled ex-groundskeeper, or a computer security/polySci professor trying to make a point.
How many bombers have preempted their bombing with 78 false threats?
I think you need to add a few more ".9" to your statistic there. And with enough there, no, it doesn't make it worth it. I'm ok with the risk of meteor impact as I walk outside. I could go live in a bunker and protect myself from that threat, or I could just accept that life isn't safe.
And you don't have to simply ignore the threats. You can, oh I dunno, STOP EVACUATING each and every time. Call in the dogs, sweep the place with the people still there, and if it's a non-issue as usual, it's just the cost of a K9 unit working constantly.
If we the people don't consider our own privacy terribly valuable, we cannot count on government — with its many legitimate worries about law-breaking and security — to guard it for us
Let me explain this for Alex. Some people don't consider privacy terribly valuable. That doesn't mean jack shit to my privacy. And the government and it's laws damn well better protect me. I pay for the damn thing.
We live in a democracy, and there are social norms that do indeed shift with time. If, at some point, a significant percentage somewhere between 50% and 99%, decide that X is a perfectly normal thing to casually share information about, then I can understand his point. There would be a lack of moral outrage against the police collecting such information.
But it's the choice about disclosing that information that makes the difference. If a few outliers choose to broadcast normally embarrassing things, that does not make the case for invading my privacy. It's honestly a little scary that a judge would even consider this argument much less make pose it himself.
During the ice ages, Sweden was fucked because it was too damn cold to raise crops. Egypt is doing just fine.
During warm periods, Canada would be slightly less miserable place to be for all those time-traveling farmers.
Dear god man, climates vary over the surface of the Earth.
And sometimes it really is the rate of change that is the concern. If the poor ranching scrub-land of western Nebraska suddenly turned into a humid tropical wetlands, they wouldn't instantly have rainforests or swamps. They'd have a lot of mudslides, ruined roads, and lost cattle. It would be FANTASTIC farmland in a decade or twenty. But that sort of transformation takes a while. For some though, their climate is changing to better suit their needs. Lucky them. For most of us, we're getting more drought, more floods, and we're going to have to work to come to grips with living in a different climate.
Now, I really don't think that it's as "catastrophic" as a lot of the doomsayers are making out. There's a really big difference between losing a lake in 50 years and losing a lake in 500 years. And I think that's nuance is how they got a lot of these NASA people to sign this thing. But Leighton Steward and Plants Need CO2 is the biggest load of shit I've seen in a long while. A weak shill and nothing more.
Bullshit. He's being asked to POST that he likes the product. Regardless of if he even uses it. Their company is requesting they use their non-work accounts to generate praise. THAT'S ASTROTURF. A cheap version of astroturf where they don't even pay you for shilling for them.
The ONLY way that this action could be considered anything other than astroturf, is if they clearly state "IF you like the product THEN please remember to leave a review. Please do not feel obligated. We will not be checking." Such a request is common to users.
But the moment it comes over as an order, or with the implication that there is either punishment or reward, however minor, then it becomes astroturf.