I don't think the point is lost, it just isn't relivent to games.slashdot.org. People come here to read about gaming news. There are a lot of other important pieces of news floating about, but they simply don't get press here because there are better places to go for that sort of news. The point is well taken that having a CS department knocked out is small change compared to the damage and the lives lost in the fire. However, the point relivent to gaming is that the fire has had an effect on a game. While in the grand scheme of things this is the smaller point, on a gaming news site it is the larger of the two points.
Why not have redundancy? Simple. It costs money for a service that while important, is not essential. I don't blame them. The number of disasters that could put such a building out of commission for any length of time are very few. I am sure that if they absolutely needed to they could quickly set up a temporary service center at another corporate site, but doing so would be a terrible hassle. Not the least of the hassle would be the fact that they would either need to move the staff to the new location or hire on temp workers. I imagine they would much rather just wait out the couple of days it will take for the fire to pass.
I am not sure what year you played Armageddon, but twinkery is something that very rarely happens these days and generally results in an immortal sized beat down. People die, and people die often. That is the point of the game. It isn't to build mad skills.
As to sitting around and town square all day, I can assure you I have done no such thing. Some people to get their rocks off sitting in taverns all day talking about what noble is doing what. I personally play rough and tough mercenaries. My last mercenary lived for a total of 15 IC years. Over his life time he worked for half of a dozen different organizations, two of which were illegal. He worked as a spy at one point and a bounty hunter at another. He hunted down a magiker and killed a rogue half-giant raider. He survived no less the four assassination attempts. He finished off his life in a seedy merchant house which he turned traitor against the house after they executed two of his close friends for treason. His last days were spent on the run from Allanaki Templars and Merchant house assassins in the 'rinth.
I don't know about you, but I sure as shit have never had a story to tell like that about an MMORPG, and that was just the quick and dirty version. The game enforces strict RP simply because without it you can't have what I just described. I will happily trade my ability to get m4d skillz if it means that there is more to the world then just wandering around killing things. Don't get me wrong. I like to kill stuff, I just like to have it actually have a reason. Killing NPCs or even randomly killing PCs is boring a shit. If I am going to kill someone, I want it to be because they sent an assassin to kill me and I am in a race to kill them first.
Simply put, MMORPGs are years behind MUDs. MMORPGs these days are glorified versions of Diablo. Even the most trade skill savvy MUDs really have just reduced trade skills into a Diablo equivalent... press this button so many times and win a prize. MMORPGs do not have consistent or coherent worlds. They rely purely upon addictive game mechanics and social communities built within the game to thrive. Personally, I went through the stage where I tried out addiction and found it to be less then enjoyable once I stepped back and realized how utterly boring these games were.
These days, I stick to MUDs. MUDs are light years ahead of MMORPGs. For instance, the MUD I normally play, ArmageddonMUD http://www.armageddon.org/ has a coherent world, enforced RP, and permanent death. No MMORPG comes even close to this. The game is NOT built around slaughtering thousands of NPCs. Just like in real life, it will only get you dead.
The day that MMORPGs will become worth while is when they find a formula other then pure addiction to keep people active. I think A Tale in the Desert is a great leap forward. Combining that sort of game play in with traditional action and adventure is where I believe it is at.
Personally, I will go back to MMORPGs the second one manages to pull off true permanent death. MUDs have been able to pull it off and keep the game enjoyable, yet MMORPGs have not even been able to make the effort. Permanent death forces the game world to be coherent and for combat to less then mindless. I think that we have many years to come before MMORPGs can pull off what MUDs have already done.
Personally, I think the biggest issue is that most MMORPGs cater to a certain type of obsessive behavior. For whatever reasons, women seem to be much more immune to this obsession. Guys on the other hand eat it up. Diablo is a perfect example of a game that made itself a hit not off an interesting story, neat quests, or anything of that lack. Diablo was a hit because you spent hours mindlessly killing stuff. It wasn't even that you were killing things. It was that you were just clicking a button for a prize. I don't think it is even the killing that terms women off. I think it is just how tedious these games are and how you need to be obsessive to enjoy it. Throw the average woman in front of GTA3 and she will find it amusing. Throw her in front of Diablo and she will fall asleep after a few minutes. The difference between the two isn't the killing, it is the obsessive and tedious nature of the games.
The thing is, that while women might be more immune to this then men, I think most men are immune to it too. I think that there is a vast audience out there for MMORPGs. The problem is that they all cater to obsession (granted, there are some exceptions these days, but they are woefully under advertised). Once these games evolve beyond needing someone to be addicted to hitting the button for a prize I think the market will start to really expand. If you could enjoy the game for the games sake, I think that things would drastically improve. How to do this? Build worlds. Build worlds where you don't need to kill to be happy. Even if you do kill on occasion, don't make it so that the only way to kill is to be obsessive about it. I think A Tale in the Desert is about as close as one can get to that these days.
Personally, I'll stick to RPI MUDs until MMORPGs are more then multiplayer Diablo. My MUD, http://www.armageddon.org/ provides a cohesive world based around role playing, permanent death, and it doesn't require you to be obsessive about killing in order to play. You can still kill stuff, you just are not going to gain anything by mindlessly killing hordes NPCs. Once a MMORPG can copy what that MUD has, I'll shell out my 15 a week.
This is mindless propaganda. US troops are not "shooting indiscriminately into crowds" to "silence them and have them 'step back into line". They start shooting at protestors when one of the protestors pulls out and AK-47 assault rifle and starts trying to shoot the US soldiers guarding whatever it is the they are guarding. Surprisingly enough, most US soldiers are human, and as humans generally do not enjoy gunning down civilians for shits and giggles unless pushed to the extreme of their limits. Iraq, while a mess, is not such a mess that US soldiers are breaking down into a Vietnam like mentality where they are literally going insane. Further, there is no running order to US units to 'shoot civilians back into line'. Suggesting that there is some evil US plot to shoot people back into line is utterly ludicrous. Protests are allowed in Iraq, unfortunately due to the fact that these protests some times turn violent people die during them. It is not intentionally and I imagine if the military had a special "make the protestors stop shooting at us button without harming them", they would use it liberally.
As to claims that the war in Iraq was a terrorist campaign, I can't help but wonder if you know anything about the history of warfare. The US did an amazing job preserving innocent life during the invasion of Iraq considering the scope of the war. Taking over an entire nation with so few civilian losses was an amazing feat. Compared to wars of the past it was down right mind blowing. People die in wars. Yes, the military bombs targets knowing that there is a possibility civilian will die. We have not learned how to do it any other way yet. Bomb a target with an airplane and you might miss. Send soldiers into the streets to fight house to house and bullets are going to accidentally hit things they shouldn't. People die in wars. That is a fact that can't be helped. The fact that the US was so careful around civilian targets and that civilians didn't even loose power in Baghdad until just days before it was over run shows a very strong effort to minimize the pain inflicted upon civilians.
Want to argue that the Iraqi war was bad thing? Sure, I can bite that. In fact, in many ways I agree. Just stick to the reality of it. The war might have been bad, but it wasn't executed the malicious hatred of civilian life you seem to imply. The military planners did their damndest to make the fight as quick and as painless as possible. Suggesting that they had a policy of hunting down civilians is utterly foolish. That last thing anyone wanted was a pile of dead civilians. Dead civilians don't convince a people to accept the invaders and it sure as shit doesn't win any support back home or abroad.
You respond with a lot of sarcasm but no substance. The Sun is going to die one way or another. No, I really have little desire to check which method it is going to end in before posting because it is not relevant to the argument. Only the fact that it will die and the life on this planet will die with it is relevant.
Second, there is no contradiction in calling human kind both a small disaster and the savings grace of nature. We are both. We are certainly destructive to the environment equivalent to a minor disaster. We are pocket change next to a major comet, but one would be fool to think we have had no impact. On the other hand, while we certainly are destructive to life on this planet, we also are the only thing capable of saving all of the life on this planet when the life of the sun comes to an end. Thus, we are both a minor disaster and the planets saving grace. We can be and are both at the same time. Are we acting in our own self interest? Sure. Is that self interest in the end good for life in general? Absolutely.
Finally, you fail to refute my argument and merrily dance around my main point with sarcasm. So, let me spell it out clearly for you, as you seemed to have missed this. Life on this planet will die when the sun dies. There is one creature capable of changing this trend, and that is us. Does that mean we are the end of line when it comes to evolution? Nope. It does mean that we are an important part of it though. Nature evolved a creature that has the potential to survive the lifeless vacuum and spread life throughout the universe. That is a big step.
Being the first intelligent species on this planet and being proud of that fact is not hubris and it isn't arrogant. As chic as it is to hate humankind, I personally am proud of what we have done and what we can do.
Should I be the first to point out that.1 mm is not a lot? Think about it. Stand on a beach, now raise the water.1mm. Are you still ok? If you were to watch the sea lives rise at this rate for a 100 years, you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference.
Global Warming is certainly an issue to worry about, it isn't an issue to freak out about. People seem to forget that no matter what happens, we are still humans, and humans are masters of changing their environment to fit their needs, and this great power only grows stronger as we advance. We certainly should take care, as not all humans are equal when it comes to the ability to change their environment. That said, the human race is never going to be wiped out because of gradual global climate change. Even under the absolutely worst case scenario it just means we have to live in enclosed habitats. So, relax and be proud that you are member of such a remarkable species.
Humans are mother natures dream come true and her ultimate creation. One day the sun is going to go super nova and everything on this planet is going to die. If earth is the only seed of life in the universe, then all the life in the universe will die. Humans, mother natures ultimate creation, is the one species that has the capacity to, if not entirely prevent this, then at the very least to spread the seed of life throughout the galaxy. Even when we are at our most destructive heights, in the end the planet is much better off for having us. We might be a minor global catastrophe as far as the environment is concerned, but we are just one of millions of such catastrophes that the environment has seen, and we are pocket change to much large cataclysms like comet impacts and high volcanic activity. In exchange for being a minor environmental disaster we staunchly defend life in general and hold the promise to spread it across the stars.
The minor catastrophe of human environmental destruction seems like a more then fair trade in exchange for us trying our damndest to spread life throughout the galaxy and protect this planet from real cataclysms that truly threaten life, like comet strikes and the sun going nova. I think if give then the choice of putting up with the minor harm we do in exchange for the protection to life we offer, or being left to the inevitable fate for all life on this planet without or assistance, mother nature personified would gladly embrace human existence and declare it the best thing to happen to this hunk or rock floating in the lifeless void.
China will never nuke the US. Nuke the US and you can be sure that only trade you will be getting is uranium imports compliments of our ICBM fleet. It is US policy to retaliate against any nuclear attack. Nuking the US and having your nation connected to the attack is a VERY BAD thing. China while oppressive is not irrational. Their government might rule with an iron fist, but it is at least a rational iron fist and the power is in many different hands.
While it is nice to know the computing power is out there, people need to realize that the prediction is only as good as the software the scientist. There are a lot of things that go into the weather. I question if we have caputred data on enough of them to really start making such long term predictions. I am curious if they have actually been able to modle past weather based upon the data they would have had avalable. Predicting the weather for what happened a year ago would be a neat trick, but only if you don't cheat and use more data then what would have been avalable if one had done it for real.
I have a zMUD version from 1996. I swear it is still out there somewhere. Search around for it. It is pretty powerful, pretty stable, and free. I do not suggest the newer zMUDs unless you plan on doing some hardcore mudding though.
On the MUD I play we actually recently had a thread on MUD clients. They must have listed off each client out there and why they liked it. You can see the thread here http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=47 33
There are a lot of MUDs out there. I think people miss out on the best ones though. There are a lot of EverQuest style MUDs where you just run around hacking and slashing. There are also a lot of MUDs with strict role playing and no code. That is play acting. The best compromise in my opinion are the RPI (role playing intensive) permanent death MUDs. Permanent death in my mind sets the RPIs out ahead of all the other MUDs out there. Permanent death combined with strict RP and a slick as hell code is just a kill combination that, in my mind, can not be beat. There are two MUDs like this. On is ArmageddonMUD http://www.armageddon.org/ and HarshlandsMUD http://www.harshlands.net/. I have not played on Harshlands MUD, but I highly suggest Armageddon MUD.
Armageddon MUD is roughly based off Dark Sun. The world is brutal, the RP is intense, death is permanent (no resurrections of any kind), and the environment can easily kill you. There are no newbie zones or stock anything. If you like role playing, a brutal desert environment, or Dark Sun, then this is the MUD for you. It has a very active community, high player numbers, and a great message board. If you are looking for a full RP permanent death MUD, nothing beats it.
While the Ion engine is very slow, it actually turns out to be faster then most engines in the long run. For a normal engine they generally burn real quickly then the object just coasts to wherever it is going. With an ion engine they can burn for very long periods of time. Over long distances it is better to burn for a long time with a slow acceleration then it is to burn quickly.
Even better, if you are doing something like flying to Mars, an ion engine combined with a normal engine has a lot of potential. Just strap a big old disposable solid fuel engine onto your spacecraft and let it burn dry. This will get you well on your way to your destination. Dump the solid fuel engine and continue to burn with the ion engine. You will get to where you are going fairly quickly.
How exactly would the oil and gas industry fight this? Oil and gas industries don't make cars. Ford makes cars, not Exxon. If Ford could snap its fingers and make a car that ran off of happy thoughts they wouldn't think twice and the entire world (except for New York City) would have cars where alls you have to do is think a happy thought and it goes from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds. Oil industry be damned, Ford wouldn't think twice.
Ford likes making money. There is a lot of money in making cars that have low gas mileage. They might not give a damn about the environment any more then the government makes them, but they DO give a damn about selling cars. If you can have the same car that pollutes less, eats less gas, and the cost is the same it is going to sell better, pure and simple. They want to sell cars, the gas mileage and safety of the cars helps in selling the cars.
Certainly though, mileage isn't the only thing be consider, and this is the reason why eco friendly cars are a hard sell, not due to any great evil by baby eating oil companies. Hybrid cars for example have mind blowing gas mileage and the price on them is not too far out of whack. They do not sell not because of an evil oil conspiracy, but because people don't want a tiny car with poor acceleration. Hell, I wouldn't want one of those things. The extra dollars in saved gas is not going to do me any good if a SUV (improved version or otherwise) runs me down in a car accident and my little plastic car is squished flat. I also like to run 70 to 90 miles per hour on the interstate. At high speeds the hybrid cars fall flat on their face.
Don't like corporations? Great. They certainly are not always a basket of roses. However, there is a point where you draw the line. It doesn't rain on your day off because an evil corporation was looking to make your frown. Cars are less then eco friendly not because the oil industries have made a secret pact of pure evil with the auto industry, but because the auto industry just doesn't yet have a technology that is both eco friendly AND something consumers are willing to buy.
All the auto industries are in it against each other. They all want your buck. In a sense, you are right, they fairly amoral about who they screw to get it. In this case though, the auto industry is working for your cause. If they thought they could make more money by completely screwing over the oil industry and making a car that doesn't run on fossil fuels, they would do and not give a thought to what industries they were destroying. If you would buy it, they would make it, oil industry be damned.
I'll play the first game with no leveling tred mill. I have a life, pure and simple. I can't afford to keep up. I might be able to fit a marathon 6 hour run during the weekends, but when it comes to the weekdays 1 hour is being optimistic. Simply put, I can't keep up with a 16 year old kid with no job, no girlfriend, and nothing better to do who can play over 40 hours a week. So I have simply stopped trying. As soon as a MMORPG comes out that appeals to me even though I will never be able to pump 40 hours a week into it, I'll buy it. Until that day, screw MMORPGs. I want a game to play in my spare time, not a game that replaces my social life.
I think that one thing point are clearly missing is that when you break into a store, you can only do so much damage. When you break into a web site, especially a very large corporate web site, they have to assume you did a lot of damage, or that the potential exist for you to do a lot of damage. It is not just a matter of counting how many items were stolen. The seriousness of hacking a large corporate web site is more along the lines of bank robery in terms of damage then it is petty theft from your local super market.
This also is a good time to point out that even in the real world we have degrees of theft. The sentence you get for stealing a bunch of clothes or a watch is MUCH different from what you would get if you robbed a bank.
More Chinese Restaurants Please
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American culture is truly fascinating. It is a very infectious culture that most nations are finding very hard to keep out. The reason why it is so damned hard to keep out is that despite governments best efforts to slow it down or stop it, the people just flat out like American culture. France is a prime example. Here you have a nation whose government is actively fighting tooth and nail against American culture, and despite this, they are loosing. While some French might hate it, it is hard to convince someone that McDonalds, MTV, and Coke are bad things. If the people really wanted McDonalds to go away, they would just have to stop giving them money.
Personally, I think the spread of American culture is a good thing. American culture is the stuff that topples dictators and destroys ultra orthodox laws. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that American is perfect, far from it in fact, but it is better then many places on this planet. I would personally like to see as much American culture boxed up and sent to places like China and the Middle East as possible. These are places that suffer from oppressive regimes. If Coke, McDonalds, and MTV can dent these regimes, then we should be mass producing this stuff.
I think that the entire 'war on terror' is a waste. Go ahead and do what you have to do, but your main weapon should not be stealth bombers. The main weapon should be picking out nations we don't like and dumping our culture on their soil. Dropping TVs and happy meals out of a C-130 would do far more create peaceful democrat nations then dropping bombs. As much as I dislike her music, watching Britney Spears dance around half naked on Islamic television would do far more to convince Islamic woman that they should not be forced by law to be treated so poorly, then dropping bombs on their heads would.
Using culture as an excuse for oppression is never a valid argument. In America an Islamic woman is free to wear full body covering if she pleases. Just the other day I saw a group of woman dressed all in black, covered head to toe so that they could only see through an eye veil. No one gave them anything more then a passing glance, and the police officer they walked by didn't even blink. Now, personally I would never choose to wear that, but I have the option too. A woman in American dress in some Islamic states would have been beaten to death if the police officer and not punished them first.
We are not perfect. We still have a few dumb laws, and we still have dumb people. We have the KKK and other hate organizations. These things can not be helped. Because our culture is open and free means that you have to take the good with the bad. The occasional nut that uses the openness of our culture to inflict hate crimes upon others are a very small minority.
Finally, as to the argument that American culture is intolerant, this foolishness is easily debunked by anyone who has never spent five minutes in an American city. Pick a culture and you fill find it happily accepted in any American city. We like other cultures. We love to scoot over and make room for other cultures to add their two cents. Have you ever heard Americans complain that there is too many Chinese food or Indian restaurants? Hell no! While the French are crying over McDonalds offering good cheap fast food that somehow threatens their culture, we are happily blowing over buildings to let the culture of the month build a restaurant. You have good cheap food in your country too? Great! Send us some.
So sure, go ahead and send us your poor and wretched and all that jazz. However, while you are at it, be sure to bring your restaurants, Nintendos, Mercedes, anime, games, music, movies, technology, and anything else you might have of interest. We won't turn up our noses and bitch about our culture being ruined when another fast food Chinese restaurant opens up, they start playing anime in the theater, they ship us some more Mercedes, and for the love of all that is good, send more Game Cubes and Japanese games.
I am trying to understand the complaint here. We have a business. This businesses job is to report news. The way this business decide what news to report, is the news that receives the highest ratings. Where is the issue? If the people want to watch this mindless drivel, why on earth would they argue differently? If the average American who watches CNN has no care of nanotechnology, or whatever trendy topic you might wish to learn about, why on earth would a business try and shove it down the peoples' throats?
I think the problem you are having is that you think the big evil business are in control. On the contrary, the people are in control. They are voting in a very democratic way. If you like it, you watch. If you don't like it, you don't watch. Instead of using a ballot, they are using their recreation time to vote. The business, which is deciding what to show in the most democratic way possible, can't help it if people are voting dumb. Whatever the people vote using their time is whatever the people want, and what will bring in the most revenue for the company. It seems to me like both parties leave the table happy. The people get what they voted of, and business walks away with the advertising revenue.
As for us in the minority, I don't see it as a huge problem. We live in the internet age. When we don't like what the majority are voting onto the TV, we just go somewhere else to get our news fix. Slashdot is a fine example of this. I want to hear tech news. Most people don't care; much less understand the articles here. If they saw the same stuff we see on Slashdot, on TV, they would just change the channel. So us, in the minority break off from the group, build our own news system, and pick and choose what we want reported.
I don't hold it against Slashdot that they post up very little gaming news, in the same way I don't hold it against the media that they offer up little technology news. I just get a gaming news site. If you want to make a complaint about the news the majority watches, don't complain about the company behind it. They are just doing what the people are asking of them. Complain about the people who watch the mindless drivel and vote with their time for more. If they collectively one day decided that DMCA (or whatever Slashdot issue you prefer) was more important then this kidnapping of one little girl, you would be able to hear panel after panel, and news story after news story arguing about the DMCA.
While the news media corporations might be behemoths, they are still in insignificant in the herd of the majority. They will always blindly follow wherever the rest of the herd is going.
I am sorry, but the MMORPGs out there, and the ones being designed are babies compared to some of the MUDs out there. The MUD I currently play has features that an MMORPG will never match until you can hook the damn thing to your head. No MMORPG can offer a true role playing experience. They can offer Quake, only instead of skill or coordination, you just need to throw lots of time at the game.
My test for when MMORPGs will be 'good' is when they can offer true perm death. I don't mean some stupid pretend perm death. If the orc crushes your skull, you die. It doesn't knock you out, no magic saves you. There are no resurrections. You just stay dead. You don't inherit anything (so no, Artiche or however you spell it is out), you don't reclaim some skills, you just flat out die, and have nothing to show for it. When a game can reach a level of sophistication where that is possible, I will be impressed and give up my MUD.
Until then, I will stick with good old Armageddon MUD (http://www.armageddon.com). It is 10 years, strong, has perm death, enforced RP, a dynamic world, and a gritty Dune like feel to it that no MMORPG can even begin to match. The game is set up such that time does NOT equal power. The most powerful people on the game are not the ones that can throw the most time at the game. Throw in the fact that it can hit 100+ players, and nothing beats it. I have been playing this game for over 5 years. How many people can say that they have played a single game for 5 years and still enjoy it? The level of sophistication in the role playing even beats the hell out of a game of D&D. Until they can hook the MMORPG up to my brain, and companies have the guts to enforce role playing rules, I won't touch an MMORPG with a 10 foot pool.
I think that the point that you are missing is that what these 'ad programs' rarely are upfront. If Kazaa or any other free program told me what there ad programs did, AND made it easy to uninstall them, I would seriously consider gritting my teeth and living with them.
Lets say that when installing some free software you go to click the next button a pop-up window appears with big words saying:
ALERT, AD PROGRAM WILL BE INSTALLED. CLICK OK TO CONTINUE, CANCLE TO CANCLE INSTILATTION OF FREE SOFTWARE AND AD PROGRAM, OR CLICK DETAILS FOR MORE INFORMATION.
You then click details and is gives tells you exactly what the ad ware in question is going to do, 'we will have pop up adds display for you offering you services/savings when you search for certain key terms' or whatever it does. Finally, the program would then UNINSTALL ITSELF COMPLETELY when the program it was installed with is uninstalled.
You are full of it if you can claim that your company does the above. This is the basic courtesy. Let me recap. You are deceptive if your program does any of the following.
1) Does not specifically state in clear language (no buried in a EULA) that it is installing ad-ware. If it isn't in a pop up so that there is no question, and makes the important part of the text 'YOU ARE INSTALLING AD-WARE' very visible, it is deceptive. 2) Does not specifically state exactly what the ad-ware in question does AND how it does it for those who care to learn. There is a big difference between a pop up and a program that redirects searches without your knowing it. 3) Does not uninstall itself with the program that it came with. Hell, leave a check box during the uninstallation of the main program that can be unchecked if you want to keep the ad-ware 4) In any way shape or form tries to prevent itself from being uninstalled. If I try and uninstall star craft, it won't dick around with me and try and hide components that came with it. It won't make a couple copies of itself with different names and hide away different components. It will install the whole thing with no questions asked. Your program should do the same. If someone makes it clear they want the program removed, then it should be removed simply and easily with no questions asked.
If your program does any of the above, then I consider your software as honest as a virus, and will happily use software like ad-aware to find this infectious filth on my system and remove it. I just want ad-ware companies to be honest. There are some programs that I would happily take an ad-ware program for if it means I get to use the software for 'free'. However, if these programs try and sneak programs that are not COMPLETELY honest about what they are doing, I will happily let ad-aware give them the boot.
Maybe the proper way to make a virus is just to throw in a EULA? Throw in small text:
"By hitting agree, you agree to let the virus in question destroy your hard drive right after it gets done spaming the network and trying to send itself to everyone in your address book. You also have given us rights to your first born son and any virgin females in your house."
It isn't so much Libertarians flocking to Objectivism, but the other way around.
Objectivism describes how one should live. Without getting into too much detail, the basic jist of objectivism is make yourself happy any way you can, as long as you are not hurting or using force on anyone else. An objectivist would find living in a communal socialist society immoral.
Now, a Libertarian basically believes that you should be able to do whatever you want, as long as you are not harming anyone else. This differs in that a libertarian would not find a socialist out in the hills somewhere objectionable as long as people live there and abided by the communal rules voluntarily.
Basically, libertarianism is the only political belief that allows objectivism to exist. That is not to say that objectivism is the only philosophy that works inside of libertarianism. Libertarians would not care if Stalin himself bought a hunk of land and set up a communist society, as long as people remained there and followed his rules voluntarily.
True libertarians are extremely tolerant people. As long as one person does not infringe on another person, they basically allow you to hold and practice any belief you damn well please.
Here we have a company setting up a fast food restaurant. A man comes in an vandalizes the restaurant. I am having a hard time seeing the French man as the victim. Perhaps I just have the inability to draw the line between outcasts being arrested (which is diffidently bad, but unrelated thing) and McDonalds opening up a new restaurant.
The victim here is McDonalds, the people who were to work at the McDonalds that was being set up, and people who want fast, cheap, and admittedly not gourmet food. McDonalds is not the villain. I like McDonalds. I LIKE the fact that the food is cheap, greasy, and tasteless next to a home cooked meal. I LIKE the ability to choose. I like freely and voluntarily to choose to buy cheap greasy uniform food.
Perhaps I view the world differently from others. I think the thing that makes me an American, is my right to choose. I love how our capitalistic system is based around the idea of voluntary choice. I have NEVER been forced buy McDonalds food, a Ford car, or a Sony Discman. I chosen to buy these things. That is freedom. No one has ever told taken away this freedom to choose. No one ever prevented me from choosing because they thought my choices were wrong.
This man in France is the kind of person who would take away my freedom. He would prevent me from freely choosing to buy McDonalds food. He has decided that my decisions are wrong, and is willing to strip away my freedom to choose with force. That is counter to individualism. The man who will tell you that your choices are wrong, and then proceed to use force and violence to prevent you or anyone else from making those decisions are the kind of people who are willing to throw 'outcasts' in jail. They take the power they have and choose for other people their fate. I find that disgusting. I find the actions of that Frenchman disgusting. He did not convince people of his point of view. He did not attempt to starve the franchise by peacefully changing the opinions of others. He instead attempted to strip the choice away form the people around it, which, is in my opinion, is nothing to celebrate.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think the point is lost, it just isn't relivent to games.slashdot.org. People come here to read about gaming news. There are a lot of other important pieces of news floating about, but they simply don't get press here because there are better places to go for that sort of news. The point is well taken that having a CS department knocked out is small change compared to the damage and the lives lost in the fire. However, the point relivent to gaming is that the fire has had an effect on a game. While in the grand scheme of things this is the smaller point, on a gaming news site it is the larger of the two points.
Why not have redundancy? Simple. It costs money for a service that while important, is not essential. I don't blame them. The number of disasters that could put such a building out of commission for any length of time are very few. I am sure that if they absolutely needed to they could quickly set up a temporary service center at another corporate site, but doing so would be a terrible hassle. Not the least of the hassle would be the fact that they would either need to move the staff to the new location or hire on temp workers. I imagine they would much rather just wait out the couple of days it will take for the fire to pass.
I am not sure what year you played Armageddon, but twinkery is something that very rarely happens these days and generally results in an immortal sized beat down. People die, and people die often. That is the point of the game. It isn't to build mad skills.
As to sitting around and town square all day, I can assure you I have done no such thing. Some people to get their rocks off sitting in taverns all day talking about what noble is doing what. I personally play rough and tough mercenaries. My last mercenary lived for a total of 15 IC years. Over his life time he worked for half of a dozen different organizations, two of which were illegal. He worked as a spy at one point and a bounty hunter at another. He hunted down a magiker and killed a rogue half-giant raider. He survived no less the four assassination attempts. He finished off his life in a seedy merchant house which he turned traitor against the house after they executed two of his close friends for treason. His last days were spent on the run from Allanaki Templars and Merchant house assassins in the 'rinth.
I don't know about you, but I sure as shit have never had a story to tell like that about an MMORPG, and that was just the quick and dirty version. The game enforces strict RP simply because without it you can't have what I just described. I will happily trade my ability to get m4d skillz if it means that there is more to the world then just wandering around killing things. Don't get me wrong. I like to kill stuff, I just like to have it actually have a reason. Killing NPCs or even randomly killing PCs is boring a shit. If I am going to kill someone, I want it to be because they sent an assassin to kill me and I am in a race to kill them first.
Simply put, MMORPGs are years behind MUDs. MMORPGs these days are glorified versions of Diablo. Even the most trade skill savvy MUDs really have just reduced trade skills into a Diablo equivalent... press this button so many times and win a prize. MMORPGs do not have consistent or coherent worlds. They rely purely upon addictive game mechanics and social communities built within the game to thrive. Personally, I went through the stage where I tried out addiction and found it to be less then enjoyable once I stepped back and realized how utterly boring these games were.
These days, I stick to MUDs. MUDs are light years ahead of MMORPGs. For instance, the MUD I normally play, ArmageddonMUD http://www.armageddon.org/ has a coherent world, enforced RP, and permanent death. No MMORPG comes even close to this. The game is NOT built around slaughtering thousands of NPCs. Just like in real life, it will only get you dead.
The day that MMORPGs will become worth while is when they find a formula other then pure addiction to keep people active. I think A Tale in the Desert is a great leap forward. Combining that sort of game play in with traditional action and adventure is where I believe it is at.
Personally, I will go back to MMORPGs the second one manages to pull off true permanent death. MUDs have been able to pull it off and keep the game enjoyable, yet MMORPGs have not even been able to make the effort. Permanent death forces the game world to be coherent and for combat to less then mindless. I think that we have many years to come before MMORPGs can pull off what MUDs have already done.
Personally, I think the biggest issue is that most MMORPGs cater to a certain type of obsessive behavior. For whatever reasons, women seem to be much more immune to this obsession. Guys on the other hand eat it up. Diablo is a perfect example of a game that made itself a hit not off an interesting story, neat quests, or anything of that lack. Diablo was a hit because you spent hours mindlessly killing stuff. It wasn't even that you were killing things. It was that you were just clicking a button for a prize. I don't think it is even the killing that terms women off. I think it is just how tedious these games are and how you need to be obsessive to enjoy it. Throw the average woman in front of GTA3 and she will find it amusing. Throw her in front of Diablo and she will fall asleep after a few minutes. The difference between the two isn't the killing, it is the obsessive and tedious nature of the games.
The thing is, that while women might be more immune to this then men, I think most men are immune to it too. I think that there is a vast audience out there for MMORPGs. The problem is that they all cater to obsession (granted, there are some exceptions these days, but they are woefully under advertised). Once these games evolve beyond needing someone to be addicted to hitting the button for a prize I think the market will start to really expand. If you could enjoy the game for the games sake, I think that things would drastically improve. How to do this? Build worlds. Build worlds where you don't need to kill to be happy. Even if you do kill on occasion, don't make it so that the only way to kill is to be obsessive about it. I think A Tale in the Desert is about as close as one can get to that these days.
Personally, I'll stick to RPI MUDs until MMORPGs are more then multiplayer Diablo. My MUD, http://www.armageddon.org/ provides a cohesive world based around role playing, permanent death, and it doesn't require you to be obsessive about killing in order to play. You can still kill stuff, you just are not going to gain anything by mindlessly killing hordes NPCs. Once a MMORPG can copy what that MUD has, I'll shell out my 15 a week.
This is mindless propaganda. US troops are not "shooting indiscriminately into crowds" to "silence them and have them 'step back into line". They start shooting at protestors when one of the protestors pulls out and AK-47 assault rifle and starts trying to shoot the US soldiers guarding whatever it is the they are guarding. Surprisingly enough, most US soldiers are human, and as humans generally do not enjoy gunning down civilians for shits and giggles unless pushed to the extreme of their limits. Iraq, while a mess, is not such a mess that US soldiers are breaking down into a Vietnam like mentality where they are literally going insane. Further, there is no running order to US units to 'shoot civilians back into line'. Suggesting that there is some evil US plot to shoot people back into line is utterly ludicrous. Protests are allowed in Iraq, unfortunately due to the fact that these protests some times turn violent people die during them. It is not intentionally and I imagine if the military had a special "make the protestors stop shooting at us button without harming them", they would use it liberally.
As to claims that the war in Iraq was a terrorist campaign, I can't help but wonder if you know anything about the history of warfare. The US did an amazing job preserving innocent life during the invasion of Iraq considering the scope of the war. Taking over an entire nation with so few civilian losses was an amazing feat. Compared to wars of the past it was down right mind blowing. People die in wars. Yes, the military bombs targets knowing that there is a possibility civilian will die. We have not learned how to do it any other way yet. Bomb a target with an airplane and you might miss. Send soldiers into the streets to fight house to house and bullets are going to accidentally hit things they shouldn't. People die in wars. That is a fact that can't be helped. The fact that the US was so careful around civilian targets and that civilians didn't even loose power in Baghdad until just days before it was over run shows a very strong effort to minimize the pain inflicted upon civilians.
Want to argue that the Iraqi war was bad thing? Sure, I can bite that. In fact, in many ways I agree. Just stick to the reality of it. The war might have been bad, but it wasn't executed the malicious hatred of civilian life you seem to imply. The military planners did their damndest to make the fight as quick and as painless as possible. Suggesting that they had a policy of hunting down civilians is utterly foolish. That last thing anyone wanted was a pile of dead civilians. Dead civilians don't convince a people to accept the invaders and it sure as shit doesn't win any support back home or abroad.
You respond with a lot of sarcasm but no substance. The Sun is going to die one way or another. No, I really have little desire to check which method it is going to end in before posting because it is not relevant to the argument. Only the fact that it will die and the life on this planet will die with it is relevant.
Second, there is no contradiction in calling human kind both a small disaster and the savings grace of nature. We are both. We are certainly destructive to the environment equivalent to a minor disaster. We are pocket change next to a major comet, but one would be fool to think we have had no impact. On the other hand, while we certainly are destructive to life on this planet, we also are the only thing capable of saving all of the life on this planet when the life of the sun comes to an end. Thus, we are both a minor disaster and the planets saving grace. We can be and are both at the same time. Are we acting in our own self interest? Sure. Is that self interest in the end good for life in general? Absolutely.
Finally, you fail to refute my argument and merrily dance around my main point with sarcasm. So, let me spell it out clearly for you, as you seemed to have missed this. Life on this planet will die when the sun dies. There is one creature capable of changing this trend, and that is us. Does that mean we are the end of line when it comes to evolution? Nope. It does mean that we are an important part of it though. Nature evolved a creature that has the potential to survive the lifeless vacuum and spread life throughout the universe. That is a big step.
Being the first intelligent species on this planet and being proud of that fact is not hubris and it isn't arrogant. As chic as it is to hate humankind, I personally am proud of what we have done and what we can do.
Should I be the first to point out that .1 mm is not a lot? Think about it. Stand on a beach, now raise the water .1mm. Are you still ok? If you were to watch the sea lives rise at this rate for a 100 years, you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference.
Global Warming is certainly an issue to worry about, it isn't an issue to freak out about. People seem to forget that no matter what happens, we are still humans, and humans are masters of changing their environment to fit their needs, and this great power only grows stronger as we advance. We certainly should take care, as not all humans are equal when it comes to the ability to change their environment. That said, the human race is never going to be wiped out because of gradual global climate change. Even under the absolutely worst case scenario it just means we have to live in enclosed habitats. So, relax and be proud that you are member of such a remarkable species.
Humans are mother natures dream come true and her ultimate creation. One day the sun is going to go super nova and everything on this planet is going to die. If earth is the only seed of life in the universe, then all the life in the universe will die. Humans, mother natures ultimate creation, is the one species that has the capacity to, if not entirely prevent this, then at the very least to spread the seed of life throughout the galaxy. Even when we are at our most destructive heights, in the end the planet is much better off for having us. We might be a minor global catastrophe as far as the environment is concerned, but we are just one of millions of such catastrophes that the environment has seen, and we are pocket change to much large cataclysms like comet impacts and high volcanic activity. In exchange for being a minor environmental disaster we staunchly defend life in general and hold the promise to spread it across the stars.
The minor catastrophe of human environmental destruction seems like a more then fair trade in exchange for us trying our damndest to spread life throughout the galaxy and protect this planet from real cataclysms that truly threaten life, like comet strikes and the sun going nova. I think if give then the choice of putting up with the minor harm we do in exchange for the protection to life we offer, or being left to the inevitable fate for all life on this planet without or assistance, mother nature personified would gladly embrace human existence and declare it the best thing to happen to this hunk or rock floating in the lifeless void.
China will never nuke the US. Nuke the US and you can be sure that only trade you will be getting is uranium imports compliments of our ICBM fleet. It is US policy to retaliate against any nuclear attack. Nuking the US and having your nation connected to the attack is a VERY BAD thing. China while oppressive is not irrational. Their government might rule with an iron fist, but it is at least a rational iron fist and the power is in many different hands.
While it is nice to know the computing power is out there, people need to realize that the prediction is only as good as the software the scientist. There are a lot of things that go into the weather. I question if we have caputred data on enough of them to really start making such long term predictions. I am curious if they have actually been able to modle past weather based upon the data they would have had avalable. Predicting the weather for what happened a year ago would be a neat trick, but only if you don't cheat and use more data then what would have been avalable if one had done it for real.
I have a zMUD version from 1996. I swear it is still out there somewhere. Search around for it. It is pretty powerful, pretty stable, and free. I do not suggest the newer zMUDs unless you plan on doing some hardcore mudding though.
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On the MUD I play we actually recently had a thread on MUD clients. They must have listed off each client out there and why they liked it. You can see the thread here http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4
There are a lot of MUDs out there. I think people miss out on the best ones though. There are a lot of EverQuest style MUDs where you just run around hacking and slashing. There are also a lot of MUDs with strict role playing and no code. That is play acting. The best compromise in my opinion are the RPI (role playing intensive) permanent death MUDs. Permanent death in my mind sets the RPIs out ahead of all the other MUDs out there. Permanent death combined with strict RP and a slick as hell code is just a kill combination that, in my mind, can not be beat. There are two MUDs like this. On is ArmageddonMUD http://www.armageddon.org/ and HarshlandsMUD http://www.harshlands.net/. I have not played on Harshlands MUD, but I highly suggest Armageddon MUD.
Armageddon MUD is roughly based off Dark Sun. The world is brutal, the RP is intense, death is permanent (no resurrections of any kind), and the environment can easily kill you. There are no newbie zones or stock anything. If you like role playing, a brutal desert environment, or Dark Sun, then this is the MUD for you. It has a very active community, high player numbers, and a great message board. If you are looking for a full RP permanent death MUD, nothing beats it.
http://www.armageddon.org/
While the Ion engine is very slow, it actually turns out to be faster then most engines in the long run. For a normal engine they generally burn real quickly then the object just coasts to wherever it is going. With an ion engine they can burn for very long periods of time. Over long distances it is better to burn for a long time with a slow acceleration then it is to burn quickly.
Even better, if you are doing something like flying to Mars, an ion engine combined with a normal engine has a lot of potential. Just strap a big old disposable solid fuel engine onto your spacecraft and let it burn dry. This will get you well on your way to your destination. Dump the solid fuel engine and continue to burn with the ion engine. You will get to where you are going fairly quickly.
How exactly would the oil and gas industry fight this? Oil and gas industries don't make cars. Ford makes cars, not Exxon. If Ford could snap its fingers and make a car that ran off of happy thoughts they wouldn't think twice and the entire world (except for New York City) would have cars where alls you have to do is think a happy thought and it goes from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds. Oil industry be damned, Ford wouldn't think twice.
Ford likes making money. There is a lot of money in making cars that have low gas mileage. They might not give a damn about the environment any more then the government makes them, but they DO give a damn about selling cars. If you can have the same car that pollutes less, eats less gas, and the cost is the same it is going to sell better, pure and simple. They want to sell cars, the gas mileage and safety of the cars helps in selling the cars.
Certainly though, mileage isn't the only thing be consider, and this is the reason why eco friendly cars are a hard sell, not due to any great evil by baby eating oil companies. Hybrid cars for example have mind blowing gas mileage and the price on them is not too far out of whack. They do not sell not because of an evil oil conspiracy, but because people don't want a tiny car with poor acceleration. Hell, I wouldn't want one of those things. The extra dollars in saved gas is not going to do me any good if a SUV (improved version or otherwise) runs me down in a car accident and my little plastic car is squished flat. I also like to run 70 to 90 miles per hour on the interstate. At high speeds the hybrid cars fall flat on their face.
Don't like corporations? Great. They certainly are not always a basket of roses. However, there is a point where you draw the line. It doesn't rain on your day off because an evil corporation was looking to make your frown. Cars are less then eco friendly not because the oil industries have made a secret pact of pure evil with the auto industry, but because the auto industry just doesn't yet have a technology that is both eco friendly AND something consumers are willing to buy.
All the auto industries are in it against each other. They all want your buck. In a sense, you are right, they fairly amoral about who they screw to get it. In this case though, the auto industry is working for your cause. If they thought they could make more money by completely screwing over the oil industry and making a car that doesn't run on fossil fuels, they would do and not give a thought to what industries they were destroying. If you would buy it, they would make it, oil industry be damned.
I'll play the first game with no leveling tred mill. I have a life, pure and simple. I can't afford to keep up. I might be able to fit a marathon 6 hour run during the weekends, but when it comes to the weekdays 1 hour is being optimistic. Simply put, I can't keep up with a 16 year old kid with no job, no girlfriend, and nothing better to do who can play over 40 hours a week. So I have simply stopped trying. As soon as a MMORPG comes out that appeals to me even though I will never be able to pump 40 hours a week into it, I'll buy it. Until that day, screw MMORPGs. I want a game to play in my spare time, not a game that replaces my social life.
I think that one thing point are clearly missing is that when you break into a store, you can only do so much damage. When you break into a web site, especially a very large corporate web site, they have to assume you did a lot of damage, or that the potential exist for you to do a lot of damage. It is not just a matter of counting how many items were stolen. The seriousness of hacking a large corporate web site is more along the lines of bank robery in terms of damage then it is petty theft from your local super market.
This also is a good time to point out that even in the real world we have degrees of theft. The sentence you get for stealing a bunch of clothes or a watch is MUCH different from what you would get if you robbed a bank.
American culture is truly fascinating. It is a very infectious culture that most nations are finding very hard to keep out. The reason why it is so damned hard to keep out is that despite governments best efforts to slow it down or stop it, the people just flat out like American culture. France is a prime example. Here you have a nation whose government is actively fighting tooth and nail against American culture, and despite this, they are loosing. While some French might hate it, it is hard to convince someone that McDonalds, MTV, and Coke are bad things. If the people really wanted McDonalds to go away, they would just have to stop giving them money.
Personally, I think the spread of American culture is a good thing. American culture is the stuff that topples dictators and destroys ultra orthodox laws. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that American is perfect, far from it in fact, but it is better then many places on this planet. I would personally like to see as much American culture boxed up and sent to places like China and the Middle East as possible. These are places that suffer from oppressive regimes. If Coke, McDonalds, and MTV can dent these regimes, then we should be mass producing this stuff.
I think that the entire 'war on terror' is a waste. Go ahead and do what you have to do, but your main weapon should not be stealth bombers. The main weapon should be picking out nations we don't like and dumping our culture on their soil. Dropping TVs and happy meals out of a C-130 would do far more create peaceful democrat nations then dropping bombs. As much as I dislike her music, watching Britney Spears dance around half naked on Islamic television would do far more to convince Islamic woman that they should not be forced by law to be treated so poorly, then dropping bombs on their heads would.
Using culture as an excuse for oppression is never a valid argument. In America an Islamic woman is free to wear full body covering if she pleases. Just the other day I saw a group of woman dressed all in black, covered head to toe so that they could only see through an eye veil. No one gave them anything more then a passing glance, and the police officer they walked by didn't even blink. Now, personally I would never choose to wear that, but I have the option too. A woman in American dress in some Islamic states would have been beaten to death if the police officer and not punished them first.
We are not perfect. We still have a few dumb laws, and we still have dumb people. We have the KKK and other hate organizations. These things can not be helped. Because our culture is open and free means that you have to take the good with the bad. The occasional nut that uses the openness of our culture to inflict hate crimes upon others are a very small minority.
Finally, as to the argument that American culture is intolerant, this foolishness is easily debunked by anyone who has never spent five minutes in an American city. Pick a culture and you fill find it happily accepted in any American city. We like other cultures. We love to scoot over and make room for other cultures to add their two cents. Have you ever heard Americans complain that there is too many Chinese food or Indian restaurants? Hell no! While the French are crying over McDonalds offering good cheap fast food that somehow threatens their culture, we are happily blowing over buildings to let the culture of the month build a restaurant. You have good cheap food in your country too? Great! Send us some.
So sure, go ahead and send us your poor and wretched and all that jazz. However, while you are at it, be sure to bring your restaurants, Nintendos, Mercedes, anime, games, music, movies, technology, and anything else you might have of interest. We won't turn up our noses and bitch about our culture being ruined when another fast food Chinese restaurant opens up, they start playing anime in the theater, they ship us some more Mercedes, and for the love of all that is good, send more Game Cubes and Japanese games.
I am trying to understand the complaint here. We have a business. This businesses job is to report news. The way this business decide what news to report, is the news that receives the highest ratings. Where is the issue? If the people want to watch this mindless drivel, why on earth would they argue differently? If the average American who watches CNN has no care of nanotechnology, or whatever trendy topic you might wish to learn about, why on earth would a business try and shove it down the peoples' throats?
I think the problem you are having is that you think the big evil business are in control. On the contrary, the people are in control. They are voting in a very democratic way. If you like it, you watch. If you don't like it, you don't watch. Instead of using a ballot, they are using their recreation time to vote. The business, which is deciding what to show in the most democratic way possible, can't help it if people are voting dumb. Whatever the people vote using their time is whatever the people want, and what will bring in the most revenue for the company. It seems to me like both parties leave the table happy. The people get what they voted of, and business walks away with the advertising revenue.
As for us in the minority, I don't see it as a huge problem. We live in the internet age. When we don't like what the majority are voting onto the TV, we just go somewhere else to get our news fix. Slashdot is a fine example of this. I want to hear tech news. Most people don't care; much less understand the articles here. If they saw the same stuff we see on Slashdot, on TV, they would just change the channel. So us, in the minority break off from the group, build our own news system, and pick and choose what we want reported.
I don't hold it against Slashdot that they post up very little gaming news, in the same way I don't hold it against the media that they offer up little technology news. I just get a gaming news site. If you want to make a complaint about the news the majority watches, don't complain about the company behind it. They are just doing what the people are asking of them. Complain about the people who watch the mindless drivel and vote with their time for more. If they collectively one day decided that DMCA (or whatever Slashdot issue you prefer) was more important then this kidnapping of one little girl, you would be able to hear panel after panel, and news story after news story arguing about the DMCA.
While the news media corporations might be behemoths, they are still in insignificant in the herd of the majority. They will always blindly follow wherever the rest of the herd is going.
I am sorry, but the MMORPGs out there, and the ones being designed are babies compared to some of the MUDs out there. The MUD I currently play has features that an MMORPG will never match until you can hook the damn thing to your head. No MMORPG can offer a true role playing experience. They can offer Quake, only instead of skill or coordination, you just need to throw lots of time at the game.
My test for when MMORPGs will be 'good' is when they can offer true perm death. I don't mean some stupid pretend perm death. If the orc crushes your skull, you die. It doesn't knock you out, no magic saves you. There are no resurrections. You just stay dead. You don't inherit anything (so no, Artiche or however you spell it is out), you don't reclaim some skills, you just flat out die, and have nothing to show for it. When a game can reach a level of sophistication where that is possible, I will be impressed and give up my MUD.
Until then, I will stick with good old Armageddon MUD (http://www.armageddon.com). It is 10 years, strong, has perm death, enforced RP, a dynamic world, and a gritty Dune like feel to it that no MMORPG can even begin to match. The game is set up such that time does NOT equal power. The most powerful people on the game are not the ones that can throw the most time at the game. Throw in the fact that it can hit 100+ players, and nothing beats it. I have been playing this game for over 5 years. How many people can say that they have played a single game for 5 years and still enjoy it? The level of sophistication in the role playing even beats the hell out of a game of D&D. Until they can hook the MMORPG up to my brain, and companies have the guts to enforce role playing rules, I won't touch an MMORPG with a 10 foot pool.
I think that the point that you are missing is that what these 'ad programs' rarely are upfront. If Kazaa or any other free program told me what there ad programs did, AND made it easy to uninstall them, I would seriously consider gritting my teeth and living with them.
Lets say that when installing some free software you go to click the next button a pop-up window appears with big words saying:
ALERT, AD PROGRAM WILL BE INSTALLED. CLICK OK TO CONTINUE, CANCLE TO CANCLE INSTILATTION OF FREE SOFTWARE AND AD PROGRAM, OR CLICK DETAILS FOR MORE INFORMATION.
You then click details and is gives tells you exactly what the ad ware in question is going to do, 'we will have pop up adds display for you offering you services/savings when you search for certain key terms' or whatever it does. Finally, the program would then UNINSTALL ITSELF COMPLETELY when the program it was installed with is uninstalled.
You are full of it if you can claim that your company does the above. This is the basic courtesy. Let me recap. You are deceptive if your program does any of the following.
1) Does not specifically state in clear language (no buried in a EULA) that it is installing ad-ware. If it isn't in a pop up so that there is no question, and makes the important part of the text 'YOU ARE INSTALLING AD-WARE' very visible, it is deceptive.
2) Does not specifically state exactly what the ad-ware in question does AND how it does it for those who care to learn. There is a big difference between a pop up and a program that redirects searches without your knowing it.
3) Does not uninstall itself with the program that it came with. Hell, leave a check box during the uninstallation of the main program that can be unchecked if you want to keep the ad-ware
4) In any way shape or form tries to prevent itself from being uninstalled. If I try and uninstall star craft, it won't dick around with me and try and hide components that came with it. It won't make a couple copies of itself with different names and hide away different components. It will install the whole thing with no questions asked. Your program should do the same. If someone makes it clear they want the program removed, then it should be removed simply and easily with no questions asked.
If your program does any of the above, then I consider your software as honest as a virus, and will happily use software like ad-aware to find this infectious filth on my system and remove it. I just want ad-ware companies to be honest. There are some programs that I would happily take an ad-ware program for if it means I get to use the software for 'free'. However, if these programs try and sneak programs that are not COMPLETELY honest about what they are doing, I will happily let ad-aware give them the boot.
Maybe the proper way to make a virus is just to throw in a EULA? Throw in small text:
"By hitting agree, you agree to let the virus in question destroy your hard drive right after it gets done spaming the network and trying to send itself to everyone in your address book. You also have given us rights to your first born son and any virgin females in your house."
It isn't so much Libertarians flocking to Objectivism, but the other way around.
Objectivism describes how one should live. Without getting into too much detail, the basic jist of objectivism is make yourself happy any way you can, as long as you are not hurting or using force on anyone else. An objectivist would find living in a communal socialist society immoral.
Now, a Libertarian basically believes that you should be able to do whatever you want, as long as you are not harming anyone else. This differs in that a libertarian would not find a socialist out in the hills somewhere objectionable as long as people live there and abided by the communal rules voluntarily.
Basically, libertarianism is the only political belief that allows objectivism to exist. That is not to say that objectivism is the only philosophy that works inside of libertarianism. Libertarians would not care if Stalin himself bought a hunk of land and set up a communist society, as long as people remained there and followed his rules voluntarily.
True libertarians are extremely tolerant people. As long as one person does not infringe on another person, they basically allow you to hold and practice any belief you damn well please.
Who is the victim?
Here we have a company setting up a fast food restaurant. A man comes in an vandalizes the restaurant. I am having a hard time seeing the French man as the victim. Perhaps I just have the inability to draw the line between outcasts being arrested (which is diffidently bad, but unrelated thing) and McDonalds opening up a new restaurant.
The victim here is McDonalds, the people who were to work at the McDonalds that was being set up, and people who want fast, cheap, and admittedly not gourmet food. McDonalds is not the villain. I like McDonalds. I LIKE the fact that the food is cheap, greasy, and tasteless next to a home cooked meal. I LIKE the ability to choose. I like freely and voluntarily to choose to buy cheap greasy uniform food.
Perhaps I view the world differently from others. I think the thing that makes me an American, is my right to choose. I love how our capitalistic system is based around the idea of voluntary choice. I have NEVER been forced buy McDonalds food, a Ford car, or a Sony Discman. I chosen to buy these things. That is freedom. No one has ever told taken away this freedom to choose. No one ever prevented me from choosing because they thought my choices were wrong.
This man in France is the kind of person who would take away my freedom. He would prevent me from freely choosing to buy McDonalds food. He has decided that my decisions are wrong, and is willing to strip away my freedom to choose with force. That is counter to individualism. The man who will tell you that your choices are wrong, and then proceed to use force and violence to prevent you or anyone else from making those decisions are the kind of people who are willing to throw 'outcasts' in jail. They take the power they have and choose for other people their fate. I find that disgusting. I find the actions of that Frenchman disgusting. He did not convince people of his point of view. He did not attempt to starve the franchise by peacefully changing the opinions of others. He instead attempted to strip the choice away form the people around it, which, is in my opinion, is nothing to celebrate.