To give another example, saying "running without backups is like screwing the boss's daughter, you do it at your own risk" also only illustrates the latent risk part. It doesn't actually say you're doing actual sex with the server, nor the possibility of pregnancy, nor get people thinking "mmm, sex is good, so backups are bad," nor anything else.
Well, actually I think you may be missing the point of that one. It's meant to be funny largely in that the two things *are* almost entirely different and the analogy is founded on an extremely tenuous link between the two. Also that one of them involves sex.
The herding cats one is also supposed to be funny, but mostly because the notion of herding cats is itself absurd.
The difference between these and an analogy like yours is that communism is already extremely loaded for purposes of analogies or worse, equivocation. Perhaps you didn't mean to highlight anything other than that feature, but people are going to be rightly suspicious of your motive in bringing it up. I mean, think about it for a moment. Assuming for the moment that they do both share this feature, that they look good on paper but do not work in practice, one still wonders why the comparison should be drawn. Do they have that feature for similar reasons? If so, then presumably there must be other unstated similarities. If not, then what does the analogy contribute? In the case of herding cats or screwing the boss's daughter, the analogy contributes levity and entertainment, but due to the lack of similarity, ultimately makes the point no more convincing than it already was. Was the goal of the communism analogy humor at the dissimilarity? I think a lot of people are going to assume the purpose of the analogy is guilt by association.
I took it more as a sarcastic jab at how overblown and exaggerated the analogy is. I mean, it's approaching argumentum ad Hitlerum. It doesn't actually make the point convincingly that achievements can't be done intelligently. It just says that it's like communism, which we all accept has that trait. Or we'd better. I mean, what are we, communists?!;)
Well, technically, I don't think that's what we're talking about here. We're not talking about whether or not a gaming company makes money, but whether or not a game itself makes money. How much these companies pay their upper management is appalling, but it doesn't have any particular relation to whether a game is considered successful or not. How would you figure it in? If you make 5 games in a year, do you add 20% of the CEO salary as overhead to each game? If you make 100 cheap games, do you add 1% of his salary to each? Doesn't really seem like a useful figure to budget in when considering the economic success of a game. Let's say, for example, that I'm a CEO of a tiny company, we produce one wildly successful game for a mere $100,000 and I decide to pay myself 1 million dollars. Does that boost the cost to create the game up to 1.1 million? Is that a useful way to measure it? I don't think so, but, regardless, that million dollars affects the company's bottom line and overall profits.
That is pretty amusing... but it tries to fit a number of square pegs into round holes. Also, it cherry picks plot/story characteristics to strengthen its point.
The evil organization cliche is stretched a lot. Cerberus hardly has any impact on the first game at all unless you engage heavily in side missions, and then it's *you* trying to stop *them*. They pretty much leave you alone. The darkspawn are hardly an organization, and the fact that you have enemies is hardly surprising for a game... As for KOTOR, the Sith are the primary antagonists. They're an evil empire more than an evil organization, and it's hardly surprising that a Star Wars property will feature the Sith. Jade Empire fits it well enough, though.
The humble origins one is a good point.... but you start at level 1, what should we expect? At least the recent games have been mixing it up. And it's not technically as good a fit for KOTOR as they make it out to be. You have *mysterious* origins.... and as it turns out, decidedly *non*-humble origins.
The magical and martial prowess one is a decent point... on the other hand, I think that's just because they want you to have a balanced party. They do want you to be able to use the mechanics they've set up. Though really.... Dawn Star isn't as good a fit as they make her out to be. She fights with a sword, and never uses magic. Her focus ability restores your chi, but that's as close as it gets. And Bastila is a jedi sentinel, which is a hybrid fighter/force user.... and you don't get her until after you've picked up Mission Vao and Zaalbar, one of whom is a rogue and the other is a heavy fighter.... soooo...... actually, that one's just wrong.
Yeah, so I don't know... lots of spin to make them all seem as similar as that table does.
Well, they are remaking the same exact game since Knight of the Old Republic. Take a look at KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect. Always the same mechanics, always the same basic plot. While they are very good at it, they are not very "creative".
Guess that depends on what you mean by "mechanics". Certainly not gameplay mechanics. KOTOR is a point and click menu based game in semi-real time (turn based underpinnings) based on 3rd edition D&D, Jade Empire is a real time action game, and Mass Effect is a shooter. They do share some similarities in the conversation mechanics, though Mass Effect's is different.
That's an interesting point. Let's see, with a VCR, you're capturing an analog signal to tape, presumably with some degree of degradation, and they (as far as I know) did not take any legal issue with this. Do they take any steps, via DRM perhaps, to prevent you from capturing the signal that streams from Hulu? Even if so, presumably they couldn't stop you from capturing monitor output. I wonder if they would take legal issue with that.
Yes, they're showing ads so they can make more money. Also, they charge a subscription fee so they can make more money. Every dollar they ask of you is so they can make more money. That hardly invalidates my point. They have costs they have to cover, and they have a certain profit margin they'd like to maintain in order to grow their business. They set up a pricing scheme in order to meet those goals in a way that is most palatable to the consumer, which, in turn, benefits them.
If they didn't have ads, they'd charge more. They'd charge as much as they think people would pay. Right now, they are charging as much as they think people would pay for a service that is partially ad-supported, which is less than people would pay for an ad-free service.
It's not like we don't have examples of this. Look at the price of premium channels vs the price of ad supported cable subscription channels. A business believes it can get away with charging you more for ad-free content, so it will. Everybody seems to think this is a dirty thing, that businesses should want to turn a profit and will charge more than we think a service is worth just because they can. But would we do any differently? If you don't think your skills are worth as much money as your employer pays you, do you go and take a voluntary pay cut or do you accept that your skills have a market value that exceeds your estimation?
There's no such thing as "bonus" money, when your goal was to turn a profit. No business sets out to break even. You'll never hear an executive say "All right guys, we made enough money. Let's give some other guys a chance." or maybe "Well, that covered costs, let's just give our product away for free now!"
I mean, are you suggesting that the production companies should give Hulu a special deal rate and voluntarily make less money than they could just because they've already covered costs? Maybe I should tell my employer that I make way more than enough money to pay for my rent, car, food, etc. so they should give me a pay cut. Is there some nuance to this that I'm missing?
They are entitled to do that. They are entitled to offer you a ball of yarn in exchange for all of your worldly possessions. And you do not have to take them up on that offer.
Entitlement is about your rights. Hulu has the right to provide whatever service they want for whatever price they want, and you have the right to say no. Hulu has not claimed any particular right to your money or your business, but people in this thread seem to be saying they have a right to TV without ads. So the entitlement complex absolutely is on the Slashdotters here and not on Hulu.
Convenience: Hulu would win here, but it decides instead to limit its access not only geographically but also by device. I can watch a torrented show on my laptop, desktop, HTPC, cell phone, Wii, Xbox, PS3, etc.
I'd say it still wins on convenience for me, but then again, my laptop has an HDMI out that I can hook up to my receiver.
Price: You can't compete with free unless you give a much better product
Yeah, which brings up an interesting point. Hulu has to play by the rules and obey copyright law. How on earth do you expect them to compete at all?
Quality: Torrents don't have ads. However, you do have to deal with crappy rips and mislabeled media so its a tie.
Where the Hulu ads are a way of trying to keep their price lower. Otherwise, it'd be even worse than it is. Just look at the premium channels, where you pay a substantial sum of money for *one* channel of ad-free programming.
I think torrents still win, which is rather sad because Hulu could easily be better than torrents but instead they have their head in their ass.
Could they be better? Other than your problem with only being able to stream to laptops, I don't think there's much they can do about your complaints. They can't legally conduct their business and stay afloat without charging you, and they show ads so they don't have to charge you more than they already do. If they let you download files for new TV shows, it'd be bypassing the DVD release delay, which production companies would not allow, and, generally, showing new TV shows is a lot more expensive for a streaming video company than Netflix's offerings, which tend to be quite a bit older most of the time.
The reason to use Hulu instead of Bit Torrent isn't that the service is better for you, it's that you think piracy is wrong, except you evidently don't. The fact that you even consider the services worthy of comparison shows that.
In looking at all the fools who will pay way more for the game than it's worth, pay way more per month to play than is reasonable, and despite all that, sit through in-game ads, I feel like an idiot. I should be trying to sell them some useless garbage, rather than doing what I'm doing for a job now. There seems to be an endless supply of stupid people with too much money.
You seem to be under the impression that the value of a product is an objective fact. You can malign a person's taste, but if they get enough subjective enjoyment out of something to offset the cost and it fits within their entertainment budget, it would be stupid *not* to buy it.
Sure, in many cases, you can wait and get it cheaper, but it's also not unheard of for entertainment value to be linked to timeliness. For example, if all of my friends are playing a game now, I'll get more enjoyment for playing it now too, because we can play together and talk about it. Ultimately, it doesn't even matter why you enjoy something. If you *do* enjoy it and feel that your dollar was well spent, then it was a smart purchase. Judging the value of an entertainment purchase is easy. Were you entertained? Do you feel happy about the purchase? If so, then it was a good purchase.
Hmmm, well, it's not an issue on *my* Xbox360 (or the one before it) or any of the ones ever owned by people I know, and after years of gaming on the 360, this thread is the first I've heard of it. Sure, none of that is statistically significant but it does seriously influence how much I care about this issue.
Oh, and for that matter, I was a gamefly member for over a year and I didn't notice that the Xbox 360 games I rented were any more or less scratched up than the PS3 or PS2 games I rented (though in the case of the PS2 games, you'd expect them to be older)
Other issues I'll grant. Two of my friends have experienced RROD and I've personally experienced a bug with the video out. But this one is news to me
I don't know about the inner workings (and am evidently too lazy to go look), but, externally, the Wii and PS3 drives operate in the same way (think car stereo). And neither operates like the gamecube, where you pop the disc down securely. And the gamecube discs are smaller too, which should further help a bit.
I was more implying (evidently not very well) my dislike for Halo
*shrug* ok. I mean, I like Halo, but everyone is welcome to their opinion.
and, by association the 360.
Wait, what? I don't follow this logic. That makes only slightly more sense than if I said something like "I dislike American Idol and by association, DVD players"
The Xbox is a platform for playing games. No one will make you buy Halo just for owning an Xbox. And it's not exactly as if Halo and Xbox are synonymous. In all the years the 360 has been available, there have been 3 games released with the Halo branding as far as I know: Halo 3, Halo Wars, and Halo 3: ODST. Of those three, the only that could be remotely considered a flagship title is Halo 3 and that was released almost 3 years ago.
It's got to be one of the most overrated games out there.
Another thing I've never understood. Overrated just means that it isn't as good as the common consensus says it is. That doesn't make it bad. I mean there are waaaay worse games than Halo on all three of the consoles (take any movie tie-in for example). Why should Halo be the game that earns your ire? Does it really annoy you so much that other people like it?
Supposedly another advantage is that they don't have to worry about hardware limitations. It looks like a console, but could theoretically have all the power of a continually top of the line gaming PC. In practice, it probably isn't that, but.... it's *supposed* to be one of the draws of the service.
You may think I'm splitting hairs, but such a general statement doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the judgement passed on any individual spammer added to the list.
To continue with my P&T reference, they may call individual people assholes rather than liars or cheats, but they don't characterize themselves as "asshole hunters". Instead, they claim that they search for truth and expose superstition and trickery to reason and clarity.
I'm too lazy to look into this in any great detail, and I concede it's still possible that this is not couched in any kind of evasive language, but your quote alone isn't enough to prove that conclusively
And as for losing business.... I don't know. That sort of cagey rhetoric is extremely common for, probably, exactly this reason, and businesses don't seem all that hurt by it.
Do they say that Party B is a spammer? I honestly don't know. I mean, it seems you could get away with this fairly easily by just saying you provide a list of "suspected" spammers or people you "think" are spammers. If I say "I am convinced you are a cheat" it's subjective. You may not be a cheat, but my statement is not incorrect. Even if other people trust my opinion and it causes measurable harm to your business or reputation, it seems to me that holding that opinion and expressing it is a first amendment right.
And, in the US at least, I've always heard that truth is a surefire defense against libel or slander claims. It's awfully difficult to prove that you didn't hold an opinion at the time you claimed to hold it. I guess this would still be a problem if you had to prove the truth of some implied statement. That is, prove that your opinion is correct even though you didn't state it to be.
Supposedly Penn & Teller call people assholes and whatnot on their show instead of calling them cheats or liars because it's considered to be a matter of personal opinion rather than debatable fact. So if you explicitly establish a claim as your opinion, it seems like it should accomplish the same thing.
Well, I counter that it's funny because it's cleverly framed, and the other joke is unfunny more because it's lame and introduces nothing new, but that extra bit that motivates a moderator to mod it troll rather than, say, redundant, is what I think is interesting.
Something doesn't have to be untrue to be a troll, and something that is untrue is not necessarily a troll. People here just like their linux and you better not talk smack about it:)
I like how you can apply a joke to Windows and it's +5 Funny, but the same joke applied to Linux or OS-X is -1 Troll. I'm not making any particular value judgments about these respective operating systems. Just think it's funny.
When I have the time I talk to the yahoos to tie up their resources and never violate rule number one with phone sales.
Safer phone purchases list.
Post this list by your phone.
#1 Never buy from anyone who called you.
#2 Research any product and vendor before you buy anything.
#3 Comparison shop online.
#3 Place an order only when #1, #2 and #3 is completed.
Both number 3s? You'll never purchase anything! Genius!
Here, I'll put it another way. There's not a person out there who is advocating embryonic stem cell research because they love the idea of irritating religious conservatives. They propose the idea because it has genuine promise. Now I'll be the first to point out that there has been a great deal of promise shown in adult stem cell therapies and that they are absolutely worthy of funding and research. The difference between you and me is your desire to rationalize an ethically founded objection to one avenue of research as though it were actually a scientifically founded objection.
Slashdot Mirror
Janet Jackson's old ass tit.
Couldn't help but think of this
To give another example, saying "running without backups is like screwing the boss's daughter, you do it at your own risk" also only illustrates the latent risk part. It doesn't actually say you're doing actual sex with the server, nor the possibility of pregnancy, nor get people thinking "mmm, sex is good, so backups are bad," nor anything else.
Well, actually I think you may be missing the point of that one. It's meant to be funny largely in that the two things *are* almost entirely different and the analogy is founded on an extremely tenuous link between the two. Also that one of them involves sex.
The herding cats one is also supposed to be funny, but mostly because the notion of herding cats is itself absurd.
The difference between these and an analogy like yours is that communism is already extremely loaded for purposes of analogies or worse, equivocation. Perhaps you didn't mean to highlight anything other than that feature, but people are going to be rightly suspicious of your motive in bringing it up. I mean, think about it for a moment. Assuming for the moment that they do both share this feature, that they look good on paper but do not work in practice, one still wonders why the comparison should be drawn. Do they have that feature for similar reasons? If so, then presumably there must be other unstated similarities. If not, then what does the analogy contribute? In the case of herding cats or screwing the boss's daughter, the analogy contributes levity and entertainment, but due to the lack of similarity, ultimately makes the point no more convincing than it already was. Was the goal of the communism analogy humor at the dissimilarity? I think a lot of people are going to assume the purpose of the analogy is guilt by association.
I took it more as a sarcastic jab at how overblown and exaggerated the analogy is. I mean, it's approaching argumentum ad Hitlerum. It doesn't actually make the point convincingly that achievements can't be done intelligently. It just says that it's like communism, which we all accept has that trait. Or we'd better. I mean, what are we, communists?! ;)
Well, technically, I don't think that's what we're talking about here. We're not talking about whether or not a gaming company makes money, but whether or not a game itself makes money. How much these companies pay their upper management is appalling, but it doesn't have any particular relation to whether a game is considered successful or not. How would you figure it in? If you make 5 games in a year, do you add 20% of the CEO salary as overhead to each game? If you make 100 cheap games, do you add 1% of his salary to each? Doesn't really seem like a useful figure to budget in when considering the economic success of a game. Let's say, for example, that I'm a CEO of a tiny company, we produce one wildly successful game for a mere $100,000 and I decide to pay myself 1 million dollars. Does that boost the cost to create the game up to 1.1 million? Is that a useful way to measure it? I don't think so, but, regardless, that million dollars affects the company's bottom line and overall profits.
That is pretty amusing... but it tries to fit a number of square pegs into round holes. Also, it cherry picks plot/story characteristics to strengthen its point.
The evil organization cliche is stretched a lot. Cerberus hardly has any impact on the first game at all unless you engage heavily in side missions, and then it's *you* trying to stop *them*. They pretty much leave you alone. The darkspawn are hardly an organization, and the fact that you have enemies is hardly surprising for a game... As for KOTOR, the Sith are the primary antagonists. They're an evil empire more than an evil organization, and it's hardly surprising that a Star Wars property will feature the Sith. Jade Empire fits it well enough, though.
The humble origins one is a good point.... but you start at level 1, what should we expect? At least the recent games have been mixing it up. And it's not technically as good a fit for KOTOR as they make it out to be. You have *mysterious* origins.... and as it turns out, decidedly *non*-humble origins.
The magical and martial prowess one is a decent point... on the other hand, I think that's just because they want you to have a balanced party. They do want you to be able to use the mechanics they've set up. Though really.... Dawn Star isn't as good a fit as they make her out to be. She fights with a sword, and never uses magic. Her focus ability restores your chi, but that's as close as it gets. And Bastila is a jedi sentinel, which is a hybrid fighter/force user.... and you don't get her until after you've picked up Mission Vao and Zaalbar, one of whom is a rogue and the other is a heavy fighter.... soooo...... actually, that one's just wrong.
Yeah, so I don't know... lots of spin to make them all seem as similar as that table does.
Well, they are remaking the same exact game since Knight of the Old Republic. Take a look at KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect. Always the same mechanics, always the same basic plot. While they are very good at it, they are not very "creative".
Guess that depends on what you mean by "mechanics". Certainly not gameplay mechanics. KOTOR is a point and click menu based game in semi-real time (turn based underpinnings) based on 3rd edition D&D, Jade Empire is a real time action game, and Mass Effect is a shooter. They do share some similarities in the conversation mechanics, though Mass Effect's is different.
That's an interesting point. Let's see, with a VCR, you're capturing an analog signal to tape, presumably with some degree of degradation, and they (as far as I know) did not take any legal issue with this. Do they take any steps, via DRM perhaps, to prevent you from capturing the signal that streams from Hulu? Even if so, presumably they couldn't stop you from capturing monitor output. I wonder if they would take legal issue with that.
Yes, they're showing ads so they can make more money. Also, they charge a subscription fee so they can make more money. Every dollar they ask of you is so they can make more money. That hardly invalidates my point. They have costs they have to cover, and they have a certain profit margin they'd like to maintain in order to grow their business. They set up a pricing scheme in order to meet those goals in a way that is most palatable to the consumer, which, in turn, benefits them.
If they didn't have ads, they'd charge more. They'd charge as much as they think people would pay. Right now, they are charging as much as they think people would pay for a service that is partially ad-supported, which is less than people would pay for an ad-free service.
It's not like we don't have examples of this. Look at the price of premium channels vs the price of ad supported cable subscription channels. A business believes it can get away with charging you more for ad-free content, so it will. Everybody seems to think this is a dirty thing, that businesses should want to turn a profit and will charge more than we think a service is worth just because they can. But would we do any differently? If you don't think your skills are worth as much money as your employer pays you, do you go and take a voluntary pay cut or do you accept that your skills have a market value that exceeds your estimation?
There's no such thing as "bonus" money, when your goal was to turn a profit. No business sets out to break even. You'll never hear an executive say "All right guys, we made enough money. Let's give some other guys a chance." or maybe "Well, that covered costs, let's just give our product away for free now!"
I mean, are you suggesting that the production companies should give Hulu a special deal rate and voluntarily make less money than they could just because they've already covered costs? Maybe I should tell my employer that I make way more than enough money to pay for my rent, car, food, etc. so they should give me a pay cut. Is there some nuance to this that I'm missing?
They are entitled to do that. They are entitled to offer you a ball of yarn in exchange for all of your worldly possessions. And you do not have to take them up on that offer.
Entitlement is about your rights. Hulu has the right to provide whatever service they want for whatever price they want, and you have the right to say no. Hulu has not claimed any particular right to your money or your business, but people in this thread seem to be saying they have a right to TV without ads. So the entitlement complex absolutely is on the Slashdotters here and not on Hulu.
Convenience: Hulu would win here, but it decides instead to limit its access not only geographically but also by device. I can watch a torrented show on my laptop, desktop, HTPC, cell phone, Wii, Xbox, PS3, etc.
I'd say it still wins on convenience for me, but then again, my laptop has an HDMI out that I can hook up to my receiver.
Price: You can't compete with free unless you give a much better product
Yeah, which brings up an interesting point. Hulu has to play by the rules and obey copyright law. How on earth do you expect them to compete at all?
Quality: Torrents don't have ads. However, you do have to deal with crappy rips and mislabeled media so its a tie.
Where the Hulu ads are a way of trying to keep their price lower. Otherwise, it'd be even worse than it is. Just look at the premium channels, where you pay a substantial sum of money for *one* channel of ad-free programming.
I think torrents still win, which is rather sad because Hulu could easily be better than torrents but instead they have their head in their ass.
Could they be better? Other than your problem with only being able to stream to laptops, I don't think there's much they can do about your complaints. They can't legally conduct their business and stay afloat without charging you, and they show ads so they don't have to charge you more than they already do. If they let you download files for new TV shows, it'd be bypassing the DVD release delay, which production companies would not allow, and, generally, showing new TV shows is a lot more expensive for a streaming video company than Netflix's offerings, which tend to be quite a bit older most of the time.
The reason to use Hulu instead of Bit Torrent isn't that the service is better for you, it's that you think piracy is wrong, except you evidently don't. The fact that you even consider the services worthy of comparison shows that.
In looking at all the fools who will pay way more for the game than it's worth, pay way more per month to play than is reasonable, and despite all that, sit through in-game ads, I feel like an idiot. I should be trying to sell them some useless garbage, rather than doing what I'm doing for a job now. There seems to be an endless supply of stupid people with too much money.
You seem to be under the impression that the value of a product is an objective fact. You can malign a person's taste, but if they get enough subjective enjoyment out of something to offset the cost and it fits within their entertainment budget, it would be stupid *not* to buy it.
Sure, in many cases, you can wait and get it cheaper, but it's also not unheard of for entertainment value to be linked to timeliness. For example, if all of my friends are playing a game now, I'll get more enjoyment for playing it now too, because we can play together and talk about it. Ultimately, it doesn't even matter why you enjoy something. If you *do* enjoy it and feel that your dollar was well spent, then it was a smart purchase. Judging the value of an entertainment purchase is easy. Were you entertained? Do you feel happy about the purchase? If so, then it was a good purchase.
Hmmm, well, it's not an issue on *my* Xbox360 (or the one before it) or any of the ones ever owned by people I know, and after years of gaming on the 360, this thread is the first I've heard of it. Sure, none of that is statistically significant but it does seriously influence how much I care about this issue.
Oh, and for that matter, I was a gamefly member for over a year and I didn't notice that the Xbox 360 games I rented were any more or less scratched up than the PS3 or PS2 games I rented (though in the case of the PS2 games, you'd expect them to be older)
Other issues I'll grant. Two of my friends have experienced RROD and I've personally experienced a bug with the video out. But this one is news to me
I don't know about the inner workings (and am evidently too lazy to go look), but, externally, the Wii and PS3 drives operate in the same way (think car stereo). And neither operates like the gamecube, where you pop the disc down securely. And the gamecube discs are smaller too, which should further help a bit.
I was more implying (evidently not very well) my dislike for Halo
*shrug* ok. I mean, I like Halo, but everyone is welcome to their opinion.
and, by association the 360.
Wait, what? I don't follow this logic. That makes only slightly more sense than if I said something like "I dislike American Idol and by association, DVD players" The Xbox is a platform for playing games. No one will make you buy Halo just for owning an Xbox. And it's not exactly as if Halo and Xbox are synonymous. In all the years the 360 has been available, there have been 3 games released with the Halo branding as far as I know: Halo 3, Halo Wars, and Halo 3: ODST. Of those three, the only that could be remotely considered a flagship title is Halo 3 and that was released almost 3 years ago.
It's got to be one of the most overrated games out there.
Another thing I've never understood. Overrated just means that it isn't as good as the common consensus says it is. That doesn't make it bad. I mean there are waaaay worse games than Halo on all three of the consoles (take any movie tie-in for example). Why should Halo be the game that earns your ire? Does it really annoy you so much that other people like it?
Yeah, but no real scotsma--errr gamer would find that acceptable ;)
Supposedly another advantage is that they don't have to worry about hardware limitations. It looks like a console, but could theoretically have all the power of a continually top of the line gaming PC. In practice, it probably isn't that, but.... it's *supposed* to be one of the draws of the service.
You may think I'm splitting hairs, but such a general statement doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the judgement passed on any individual spammer added to the list.
To continue with my P&T reference, they may call individual people assholes rather than liars or cheats, but they don't characterize themselves as "asshole hunters". Instead, they claim that they search for truth and expose superstition and trickery to reason and clarity.
I'm too lazy to look into this in any great detail, and I concede it's still possible that this is not couched in any kind of evasive language, but your quote alone isn't enough to prove that conclusively
And as for losing business.... I don't know. That sort of cagey rhetoric is extremely common for, probably, exactly this reason, and businesses don't seem all that hurt by it.
Do they say that Party B is a spammer? I honestly don't know. I mean, it seems you could get away with this fairly easily by just saying you provide a list of "suspected" spammers or people you "think" are spammers. If I say "I am convinced you are a cheat" it's subjective. You may not be a cheat, but my statement is not incorrect. Even if other people trust my opinion and it causes measurable harm to your business or reputation, it seems to me that holding that opinion and expressing it is a first amendment right.
And, in the US at least, I've always heard that truth is a surefire defense against libel or slander claims. It's awfully difficult to prove that you didn't hold an opinion at the time you claimed to hold it. I guess this would still be a problem if you had to prove the truth of some implied statement. That is, prove that your opinion is correct even though you didn't state it to be.
Supposedly Penn & Teller call people assholes and whatnot on their show instead of calling them cheats or liars because it's considered to be a matter of personal opinion rather than debatable fact. So if you explicitly establish a claim as your opinion, it seems like it should accomplish the same thing.
Well, I counter that it's funny because it's cleverly framed, and the other joke is unfunny more because it's lame and introduces nothing new, but that extra bit that motivates a moderator to mod it troll rather than, say, redundant, is what I think is interesting.
Something doesn't have to be untrue to be a troll, and something that is untrue is not necessarily a troll. People here just like their linux and you better not talk smack about it :)
I like how you can apply a joke to Windows and it's +5 Funny, but the same joke applied to Linux or OS-X is -1 Troll. I'm not making any particular value judgments about these respective operating systems. Just think it's funny.
Indeed. Particularly since the eyesight variation is in focus, not resolution.
When I have the time I talk to the yahoos to tie up their resources and never violate rule number one with phone sales.
Safer phone purchases list. Post this list by your phone.
#1 Never buy from anyone who called you. #2 Research any product and vendor before you buy anything. #3 Comparison shop online. #3 Place an order only when #1, #2 and #3 is completed.
Both number 3s? You'll never purchase anything! Genius!
I think anyone who spends a lot of time on games past about 16 years needs some help growing up.
Which, presumably, would not be true of people who spend their time reading books, watching films, playing golf, etc..
The old "my leisure activity is superior to your leisure activity" nonsense, eh?
The need to play so much indicates (to me) that they don't have enough interesting, more important things to think about.
Oh. So is this more the "leisure activities are a complete waste of time" variety of nonsense?
Here, I'll put it another way. There's not a person out there who is advocating embryonic stem cell research because they love the idea of irritating religious conservatives. They propose the idea because it has genuine promise. Now I'll be the first to point out that there has been a great deal of promise shown in adult stem cell therapies and that they are absolutely worthy of funding and research. The difference between you and me is your desire to rationalize an ethically founded objection to one avenue of research as though it were actually a scientifically founded objection.