Individuals fight for Gay Rights. They fight for equal opportunities. They fight to be recognised as equals. Then they form a guild to spotlight the fact that they are different than the common society.
No. Would some of you dense people read the fucking article? The guild was formed because WoW is rife with homophobic abuse. Yes, Blizzard has a policy against it but it is not enforced. And the guild is "GLBT Friendly" not "GLBT ONLY." What does GLBT Friendly mean? It means guild members can rest assured that they will not receive homophobic harassment from other guild members. It does not mean this is some sort of "gay sex club." Get a fucking grip.
So you don't complain about all the other players who use gay-bashing language, screaming "Faggot!" at anyone who pisses them off, and receive no punishment from Blizzard... But you claim inappropriateness when a GLBT group forms in an effort to counter this abuse?
I guess you think they should sit back down and take the abuse silently like good little homosexuals... I can't believe this received a +4 Insightful on Slashdot.
Can straight people join it? If no, then it's discriminatory. If yes, then there's no point to it.
What do you mean there's no point? The guild in question was advertising itself not as "GLBT Only" but "GLBT Friendly." Try reading the fucking article. Blizzard's stated reason for its policies is to prevent sexual harrassment of players. A guild which is "GLBT Friendly" is an inviting safe haven for players who feel they've been harrasses by other players based on sexual orientation.
why should your orientation be brought into a game that has nothing to do with sex?
Has it occurred to you that perhaps these players do not want to make their orientation an issue, but harrassment from homophobic players has forced them to address it? On top of that Blizzard is insulting them by claiming that their safe haven will lead to more harrassment.
But if they don't come to the party - that's OK: We'll just keep polishing GIMP, Scribus, Inkscape etc until they start seriously eating into Adobe's monopoly (same way M$ lost the server market). Your move, Adobe!
Geez man... Actively challenging a giant is the fastest way to get smashed. By all means continue to improve the software and keep Adobe in the crosshairs but don't turn it into a pissing match. The best way to suddenly outpace a competitor is to trick them into thinking you're not even competing with them.
Shareholder's wealth is more important than human rights? I hope the author feels the same way when China is rounding up "bad thinkers" who search for the wrong things from within China. It's just a matter of time... but at least the shareholders will be happy.
I don't think the author was condoning this, just pointing out that even if Google wanted to do the right thing, they'd be sued into oblivion by their shareholders. The true evil-doers in American business, in my opinion, are the shareholders. Yes, twerps like you and me who've got a few shares here and there. Because if some company misses earnings targets, suddenly those little twerps initiate a lawsuit.
Unfortunately, this has become a vicious cycle. Companies like Enron cook their books in order to keep the shareholders from seeing their failures -- as a result, shareholders don't trust the corporations and start suing on the slightest basis. This in turn makes the boards of directors grow colder and more profit driven. It continues on and on... And it's not just the corporations themselves who are at fault for it. Greedy shareholders are equally to blame.
Owning stock is like playing the slots. You might lose your shirt. Suck it up.
The whole reason Google records search results is to improve the quality of search and provide new features. If you make that database useless in order to confound the government, you also screw up Google.
Wouldn't it be ironic if he had a 'street safety video game'?
I think in both cases it would be ironic. If it had been "Starcraft," it would have not even been noticed or mentioned. At any rate, the officer isn't blaming the crash on the video game, just pointing out a weird coincidence.
Should it really shock anybody that a person who street races might possess a racing game?
I'm not sure where to find this information: Do we have any reason to believe that galaxies aren't flying apart?
When you look at the sky you see mostly intact galaxies and very few ones in the process of disintegrating. Is direct observation not enough evidence for you?
Does this mean that there is an absolute maximum distance that a virtual particle can travel? So if I send out a beam of perfectly coherent light, my friend at the other edge of the universe* would never recieve it?
The photons from your light beam are real, not virtual. There is no limit to how long they can exist.
For the same reason African states don't trade in elephant ivory they seized from poachers, or Western states don't trade in illegal drugs: The trade with it such items is forbidden, and any contract involving a forbidden trade is void.
It's forbidden because it's forbidden? Nice solid argument, there.
I think a joke should have a reasonable premise. The premise that wine isn't interesting for nerds isn't reasonable. I do not begrudge you your +5 Funny, I'm just responding to something you said.
Besides, plenty of posts are made in all seriousness and then end up at +5 Funny, even against the author's intent.
All beers can be aged. Some benefit from it more than others. Some are hurt by aging. You wouldn't want to age a mild, but I'd definitely give a Scotch Ale several months to mellow out before drinking. In general, the higher the specific gravity of the wort (before fermentation) the longer it'll take to age it out. None of this has anything to do with "wine."
Barley wine has other wine-like qualities that don't make it fit neatly into the beer or ale category. For one thing it tends to be much sweeter than ales and thus more wine-like.
It is sweeter because there is more residual sugar left in it. There is more residual sugar because there was more sugar in the first place. Barleywine is simply a very strong ale.
Another thing which clearly distinguishes barleywine from actual wine is that completely different types of yeast are used for the two beverages.
Just because you are stuck with your definitions and terminology does not mean that the rest of us are similarly blinkered.
There is absolutely nothing in the process of making barleywine that is at all different than lighter brews, except of course that the sugar content is higher. Basically, barleywine is either partigyle brewed without sparging (which can be done with any style) or simply boiled down for a longer period of time. This does not magically promote it to "wine."
I don't see in any way how "barley wine" is a misnomer or a euphemism.
Even the people who MAKE the stuff (this includes me) think it is a misnomer. Not a terribly important one, but a misnomer nonetheless. Barleywine is a very strong ale. Period.
Fortunately, our language is not controlled by pedants.
Nobody in the brewing industry agrees with you on this, and certainly not those of us that actually make barleywine. Barleywine is ale, pure and simple.
I can't find the link, but sone researchers did a "pepsi challenge" type of test with a group of experienced wine tasters. The result? No two wine tasters reported the same taste, body, or whatever from the same wines. Their repsonses were, in fact, wildly dissimilar.
Well, that's really not surprising. People have a hard time describing something as subjective as wine in objective terms. However, that doesn't imply there is no difference between the wines. I can't explain to you what the colors red and blue look like, but they're different.
A quality wine is one that you enjoy, that is very true. Price has very little to do with it. But you seem to be implying that anybody who claims to be able to differentiate wine is full of shit. That's clearly not the case.
Bring back the good old days, when wine had the same social status as lager, thats what I say!
The "social status" of wine is in the eye of the beholder. If you think that a glass of fine red wine in your hand somehow promotes you to "hoi polloi" standing, you're deluding yourself.
By the way, are you aware that in Europe, ale is widely viewed as "primitive" in comparison to lager? It's possible to be elitist about just about anything.
Why is this on here? We are nerds, we don't care about wine.
If you think wine ain't for nerds, you haven't read enough about it. Just the first order chemical reactions which occur in wine are complex enough to fill a book. And what sort of geek wouldn't want to read a book chock full of chemical reactions?
If it's just alcohol you seek, I suggest a trip to the liquor store for a bottle of something called Everclear. It's cheaper and purer than you could ever make it yourself.
No, he's not being elitist. Think of it this way. Here on Slashdot we have great flamewars about Linux vs. Apple vs. Microsoft. USB vs. FireWire. Etc. Most of the rest of the world could really care less about this -- they want a computer that works. And yet, there are true differences, advantages and disadvantages between these things.
The fact that we want to discuss these details, details which most "normal" people do not care about, does not make us elitist. It makes us specialists. A wine connoisseur is just the same -- he or she is simply looking at and pondering details which most people would overlook.
Sometimes these people can seem overbearing, talking too much about wine (or computers, as the case may be). Again, this does not make them elitist. They talk about what they love. Surely we've all met the Linux geek who fervently tries to convert every Windows user he encounters, because he honestly thinks it will be better for the user? Maybe it's misguided, but it's rooted in the desire to help other people, not elitism.
Don't confuse the sort of people and behavior you observe at a wine tasting room, with the act of tasting wine. What do those stupid antics have to do with the quality of the wine? Not much...
Personally, I'm a beer "snob" because I brew my own and try to sample everything I can get my hands on. Sometimes I push for a person to try something new because I genuinely believe that they'll like it. I'm trying to spread the wealth, not condescend.
No. Stuff brewed from malted grain is beer. Rice cannot be malted. In fact, it needs to be processed with a special fungus to be rendered fermentable. Laws of the land notwithstanding, sake is not beer or even close to it.
just as there can be wines made from fruits other than wine grapes.
What makes a wine a wine comes from the process. The process of fermenting fruits is similar, no matter which fruit you use. But knowledge of brewing beer will not get you far in brewing sake, and vice versa. They simply aren't in the same category.
It is just very hard to preferentially remove one off-flavour by, say, increasing the storage temperature, adding some funny chemical without affect a whole matrix of other related compounds, even for relative simple product like beer...
What makes you think beer is simple? Winemaking is far simpler: crush grapes, let ferment. Maybe some racking, then bottling. You can even rely on the wild yeasts to do the fermentation for you. With beer, you've got: mill grain, mash grain (you could write a whole book just on this part), sparge the mash, boil wort, add hops, chill quickly, pitch yeast, let ferment. Then racking, maybe dry-hopping, priming and bottling.
If you meant that beer is aesthetically simpler than wine, maybe you're just lacking the tasting experience. Even if you want to reduce everything down to the spectrum of fermentation byproducts, beer is chemically just as complex as wine, in that it contains hundreds of different esters, diketones, and alcohols. Many of the same compounds show up in both beverages.
Um, it isn't a grammatical error. The submitter simply has no idea what the term "market share" actually means and seems to believe that it refers to real "shares" like corporate shares.
As if some kind of "shares" trade hands whenever AMD starts eating into Intel's customer base or vice versa...
This reads like an article from the 90's. This being 2006 and all, I would hope that programmers know how to make effective use of TCP/IP sockets.
Actually, given that it's 2006, I would have thought that the socket layer would be smart enough to perform these sorts of "optimizations" for you automatically, by analyzing your usage patterns. There's no reason the programmer should have to deal with any of this crap, except maybe by providing a broad hint such as "Maximize throughput" or "Minimize latency."
Netcat might be what you want. It has two modes, a "client" and "server" mode. In client mode, it connects to an IP/port that you specify, then reads data from stdin and sends it through that socket. In server mode, it listens on a port you specify, and prints any data it received to stdout.
You make good points, but actually, my goal with this idea wasn't to stop gold farming, but rather to combat the inflation that goes along with it. Gold farming would obviously still occur, as you say.
Slashdot Mirror
No. Would some of you dense people read the fucking article? The guild was formed because WoW is rife with homophobic abuse. Yes, Blizzard has a policy against it but it is not enforced. And the guild is "GLBT Friendly" not "GLBT ONLY." What does GLBT Friendly mean? It means guild members can rest assured that they will not receive homophobic harassment from other guild members. It does not mean this is some sort of "gay sex club." Get a fucking grip.
I guess you think they should sit back down and take the abuse silently like good little homosexuals... I can't believe this received a +4 Insightful on Slashdot.
What do you mean there's no point? The guild in question was advertising itself not as "GLBT Only" but "GLBT Friendly." Try reading the fucking article. Blizzard's stated reason for its policies is to prevent sexual harrassment of players. A guild which is "GLBT Friendly" is an inviting safe haven for players who feel they've been harrasses by other players based on sexual orientation.
why should your orientation be brought into a game that has nothing to do with sex?
Has it occurred to you that perhaps these players do not want to make their orientation an issue, but harrassment from homophobic players has forced them to address it? On top of that Blizzard is insulting them by claiming that their safe haven will lead to more harrassment.
Holy crap don't spread that disease around. At my workplace, being caught using Outlook is grounds for termination (not kidding).
Geez man... Actively challenging a giant is the fastest way to get smashed. By all means continue to improve the software and keep Adobe in the crosshairs but don't turn it into a pissing match. The best way to suddenly outpace a competitor is to trick them into thinking you're not even competing with them.
I don't think the author was condoning this, just pointing out that even if Google wanted to do the right thing, they'd be sued into oblivion by their shareholders. The true evil-doers in American business, in my opinion, are the shareholders. Yes, twerps like you and me who've got a few shares here and there. Because if some company misses earnings targets, suddenly those little twerps initiate a lawsuit.
Unfortunately, this has become a vicious cycle. Companies like Enron cook their books in order to keep the shareholders from seeing their failures -- as a result, shareholders don't trust the corporations and start suing on the slightest basis. This in turn makes the boards of directors grow colder and more profit driven. It continues on and on... And it's not just the corporations themselves who are at fault for it. Greedy shareholders are equally to blame.
Owning stock is like playing the slots. You might lose your shirt. Suck it up.
The whole reason Google records search results is to improve the quality of search and provide new features. If you make that database useless in order to confound the government, you also screw up Google.
I think in both cases it would be ironic. If it had been "Starcraft," it would have not even been noticed or mentioned. At any rate, the officer isn't blaming the crash on the video game, just pointing out a weird coincidence.
Should it really shock anybody that a person who street races might possess a racing game?
Could it be that this moron possesses a copy of Need for Speed because... He's a crazy street racer and likes that kind of shit?
When you look at the sky you see mostly intact galaxies and very few ones in the process of disintegrating. Is direct observation not enough evidence for you?
The photons from your light beam are real, not virtual. There is no limit to how long they can exist.
It's forbidden because it's forbidden? Nice solid argument, there.
Disagree with me about what?
Besides, plenty of posts are made in all seriousness and then end up at +5 Funny, even against the author's intent.
All beers can be aged. Some benefit from it more than others. Some are hurt by aging. You wouldn't want to age a mild, but I'd definitely give a Scotch Ale several months to mellow out before drinking. In general, the higher the specific gravity of the wort (before fermentation) the longer it'll take to age it out. None of this has anything to do with "wine."
Barley wine has other wine-like qualities that don't make it fit neatly into the beer or ale category. For one thing it tends to be much sweeter than ales and thus more wine-like.
It is sweeter because there is more residual sugar left in it. There is more residual sugar because there was more sugar in the first place. Barleywine is simply a very strong ale.
Another thing which clearly distinguishes barleywine from actual wine is that completely different types of yeast are used for the two beverages.
Just because you are stuck with your definitions and terminology does not mean that the rest of us are similarly blinkered.
There is absolutely nothing in the process of making barleywine that is at all different than lighter brews, except of course that the sugar content is higher. Basically, barleywine is either partigyle brewed without sparging (which can be done with any style) or simply boiled down for a longer period of time. This does not magically promote it to "wine."
I don't see in any way how "barley wine" is a misnomer or a euphemism.
Even the people who MAKE the stuff (this includes me) think it is a misnomer. Not a terribly important one, but a misnomer nonetheless. Barleywine is a very strong ale. Period.
Fortunately, our language is not controlled by pedants.
Nobody in the brewing industry agrees with you on this, and certainly not those of us that actually make barleywine. Barleywine is ale, pure and simple.
There are wines with an insect content of 100%.
Well, that's really not surprising. People have a hard time describing something as subjective as wine in objective terms. However, that doesn't imply there is no difference between the wines. I can't explain to you what the colors red and blue look like, but they're different.
A quality wine is one that you enjoy, that is very true. Price has very little to do with it. But you seem to be implying that anybody who claims to be able to differentiate wine is full of shit. That's clearly not the case.
Bring back the good old days, when wine had the same social status as lager, thats what I say!
The "social status" of wine is in the eye of the beholder. If you think that a glass of fine red wine in your hand somehow promotes you to "hoi polloi" standing, you're deluding yourself.
By the way, are you aware that in Europe, ale is widely viewed as "primitive" in comparison to lager? It's possible to be elitist about just about anything.
If you think wine ain't for nerds, you haven't read enough about it. Just the first order chemical reactions which occur in wine are complex enough to fill a book. And what sort of geek wouldn't want to read a book chock full of chemical reactions?
If it's just alcohol you seek, I suggest a trip to the liquor store for a bottle of something called Everclear. It's cheaper and purer than you could ever make it yourself.
The fact that we want to discuss these details, details which most "normal" people do not care about, does not make us elitist. It makes us specialists. A wine connoisseur is just the same -- he or she is simply looking at and pondering details which most people would overlook.
Sometimes these people can seem overbearing, talking too much about wine (or computers, as the case may be). Again, this does not make them elitist. They talk about what they love. Surely we've all met the Linux geek who fervently tries to convert every Windows user he encounters, because he honestly thinks it will be better for the user? Maybe it's misguided, but it's rooted in the desire to help other people, not elitism.
Don't confuse the sort of people and behavior you observe at a wine tasting room, with the act of tasting wine. What do those stupid antics have to do with the quality of the wine? Not much...
Personally, I'm a beer "snob" because I brew my own and try to sample everything I can get my hands on. Sometimes I push for a person to try something new because I genuinely believe that they'll like it. I'm trying to spread the wealth, not condescend.
Sorry for the meandering post.
No. Stuff brewed from malted grain is beer. Rice cannot be malted. In fact, it needs to be processed with a special fungus to be rendered fermentable. Laws of the land notwithstanding, sake is not beer or even close to it.
just as there can be wines made from fruits other than wine grapes.
What makes a wine a wine comes from the process. The process of fermenting fruits is similar, no matter which fruit you use. But knowledge of brewing beer will not get you far in brewing sake, and vice versa. They simply aren't in the same category.
What makes you think beer is simple? Winemaking is far simpler: crush grapes, let ferment. Maybe some racking, then bottling. You can even rely on the wild yeasts to do the fermentation for you. With beer, you've got: mill grain, mash grain (you could write a whole book just on this part), sparge the mash, boil wort, add hops, chill quickly, pitch yeast, let ferment. Then racking, maybe dry-hopping, priming and bottling.
If you meant that beer is aesthetically simpler than wine, maybe you're just lacking the tasting experience. Even if you want to reduce everything down to the spectrum of fermentation byproducts, beer is chemically just as complex as wine, in that it contains hundreds of different esters, diketones, and alcohols. Many of the same compounds show up in both beverages.
As if some kind of "shares" trade hands whenever AMD starts eating into Intel's customer base or vice versa...
Actually, given that it's 2006, I would have thought that the socket layer would be smart enough to perform these sorts of "optimizations" for you automatically, by analyzing your usage patterns. There's no reason the programmer should have to deal with any of this crap, except maybe by providing a broad hint such as "Maximize throughput" or "Minimize latency."
Is that what you're looking for?
You make good points, but actually, my goal with this idea wasn't to stop gold farming, but rather to combat the inflation that goes along with it. Gold farming would obviously still occur, as you say.