How about something's actually done to push more original IPs and game concepts than labor for weeks, months, years over a generic "me-too" shooter or wii minigame compilation?
I'd like to see more original game concepts like braid, p.b. winterbottom and portal, each of which probably took exponentially less time, at least if a team was involved, to create than a generic shooter. Although portal could have had a long development time, I'm unaware about that.
Even if those types of games take just as long as generic shooter #9, it will probably be infinitely more rewarding.
I'm not saying i find android phones complicated, I'm saying the iPhone is prohibitively simple ( no multitasking for ages, limited abilities for 3rd party apps, multitasking is now very limited, every action based around one or two taps on the touchscreen, etc) and the android phones are more complex than that, finding a middle ground between open techie dream and the iPhone.
Yes, but that's exactly what I don't understand. I'm not sure if anyone even has the answer, so it is likely pointless to ask, but why, in a society that punishes child pornographers so severely, do some people still take that risk of possessing pornography (not that that should be right or wrong, legal or illegal) or act on their unaccepted fantasies with such risky possible outcomes?
It just screams a lack of self preservation or understanding the consequences of one's actions, whether or not the act itself is "right" or "wrong".
I may be extremely pissed at something someone did to me, but choosing to try and get away with murder unless I'm saving someone else's life (and possibly trading my own for it) would be idiotic in a normal society.
I think the problem lies in the fact that every person, even pedophiles or murderers etc, understands the need for a society to protect itself. If a person commits a crime, whether willingly or unwillingly (insane, can't control it, etc.), then society at least generally agrees they have to do something to keep this person from harming anyone else.
The problem is that sticking someone in jail where they could get abused "but we didn't cause it" is not a perfectly fitting punishment. Sticking them in jail or a hospital for an arbitrary amount of time decided by an arbitrary judge and jury (in US) is the best we can do.
I don't know the solution to those problems, but at the very least, something needs to be done to those who commit these crimes. It's too bad (and yet arguably good) that a child pornography crime can come down to a possibly innocent act as just having copy-able data on a hard drive (unless it's evidence of a physical crime by the person). It's definitely too bad that apparently the law is such that even obvious reasonable doubt (that some images weren't downloaded willingly) isn't taken as seriously, as it can still go to court, and e.g.: a jury of all moms with young daughters will still convict the guy in spite of the law.
Anyways, regardless of all that, even if we knew the exact reason why someone committed the crime, either consciously, subconsciously or due to a quirk, they are clearly a menace to society if they commit a heinous physical crime. It's just unfortunate that the solution is sometimes too extreme, too tame, or ineffective for many crimes.
I understand your logic, and being what I suppose you could consider a "normal" person, I wish I understood why there are people who, as you say, "could only get a boner from kids".
Completely not understanding why this is natural, assuming it is, I would just as soon believe that this person has such a completely twisted mental state that he/she has caused him/herself over a long time to believe this is the case.
In that case, it would seem to me that it was not a natural, unique thing for this person, but rather a case of mental conditioning over a long period of time. The natural thing would, to me, not be the urge (at least in the case of *only* being able to "get off" on pictures of kids), but rather the ability to, as a human, twist your own thoughts through your own mental conditioning.
I don't have a black and white understanding of it, the situation you described is exactly why I said "more likely than not" in the case of child porn. I suppose the disconnect is I don't see the situation you described as being actual child porn, but I know my view of it is not the legally accepted criteria.
I'd really like to see the android market get overwhelming dev support for both games and useful apps, plus I'd like an android phone to get the insane battery life of the iphone 4. Yeah I know, removable batteries and such but it is hard to ignore the iphone coming with the great battery life right out the gate. Finally, I'm tired of CDMA phones not having interchangeable sim support. If I use the phone enough that it runs out of battery and I'm driving in the dark somewhere, I'd like to be able to stick the SIM in a backup phone in my glovebox in case of emergency.
Screw the UI, as soon as they do all that I would seriously consider jumping ship to an android phone. That EVO screen looks pretty nice, the iphone screen is a little too small IMHO.
There's a lot to attract you to an android phone, but I find it's major "flaw" is the middle ground it tries to find between being a simple smartphone and a complicated one. The iphone is and has always been a simple smartphone, and Apple has found success in this previously niche area. For most users, the locked down simplicity has been "enough" and for the more technical users, there's always been a jailbreak either around the corner or immediately available. The boosted user base provided by targeting the average user with the official "simple" phone attracts developers (official and unofficial), and the additional developer support attracts the technical users.
The added general complexity offered by stock android phones does (arguably) nothing to attract the average user away from the iphone's installed base and headstart, which doesn't attract as many developers, which in turn may not attract as many technical folks unless they really dislike Apple and AT&T.
Anyways, it's not a perfect argument on my part, but it seemed to make sense as I thought about it while reading your post.
I wonder if the major reason people say they love AT&T is because they know it's their only option for an iphone, and they are exceedingly happy with their iphone? I know a lot of people who are extremely happy with their iphones but have nothing to say about AT&T service
Could it REALLY just be the vocal minority that has given rise to the familiar "AT&T sucks, verizon is awesome" mentality? I hear this way too often to believe that it's only a small subset. New York for example has long seemed to be a running gag of AT&T's bad coverage from what I've heard over the years.
Well, OK. I can understand the idea that a pedophile's sexual preference could be "underage" as opposed to "male" or "female", but isn't it a more natural human trait to take care of or protect the immature of our species rather than exploit or abuse them?
Or for that matter, self preservation, as being a pedophile must be one of the quickest/easiest ways to be put in jail, and consequently, be tortured in said jail and even after being released.
Anyways, I suppose a lot of the reason why pedophiles might take the risks they do could be their lack of understanding of the consequences and/or technology in general, why else would these government workers have actually surfed child porn at work of all places? (notwithstanding the possibility of being involved with some sort of undercover/sting operation)
Funny. I'm rather sure child pornography/abuse is completely unrelated to the sexual orientation choices of mature adults. I'm also rather sure videos/pictures of two consenting adults having sex is a different product than a videotape of a 10 year old being abused by someone in his thirties.
Can someone explain why child pornographers can't just limit their porn consumption to those that are 18 or older? It seems to just reek of actually having committed an offense in the past and needing the obvious images of someone underage in order to relive that fantasy.
I feel as if I'm asking a stupid question but it's always bothered me, there's so much legal porn out there, why do some people feel the urge to look at shit that was more likely than not the product of abuse? Are there any studies that have unmistakably proven it's a disorder instead of a natural response?
kb/m is undoubtedly the most precise way to control most games. There's a reason why many RTSes don't come out on consoles and why FPSes have auto-aim while you almost NEVER see auto aim on a PC.
I've wondered for a while how exactly people generally measure their "IQ". Whenever I see this statistic pointed out, I do some google searches about the matter but never really get any further than sites that let you take some test then hold the results hostage. I read an article (maybe wikipedia) saying how when Stephen Hawking first noticed his illness, he immediately was worried it would affect his IQ and took a test to confirm if there were any effects. Is anyone aware of a legitimate place for testing your IQ?
Also, is there any real benefit to knowing your IQ besides as a conversational piece or for self satisfaction? Is there anybody out there who actually sees a benefit to putting it on your resume for example?
I still see the openness of android phones as a net plus compared to the general closed, unjailbroken iphone. It's up to the end user to figure out how to get the bloatware off. That said, companies are huge piles of cow crap for loading up phones of all things with this shit.
Could this be used to both eavesdrop on calls as well as snatch arbitrary data transfer as in wi-fi wireless sniffing? I see a lot more dastardly uses of the data than random calls from schmoopy to schmoopy. I always felt like banking on the phone for example was more secure than on an arbitrary computer.
That's one way to look at it, but that's like saying that human interaction has no worth. Slashdot is at a much higher level than click spam games because even though its just text on a screen, someone is behind the keyboard conversing with you. Face to face interaction is at a higher level than that, but that doesn't mean text to text interaction is at the same level of click spam games.
The vast majority of what happens in farmville is interacting with a constructed world with a constructed set of rules meant to keep you addicted and spend money. The proper comparison to something like slashdot would be if everyone who has an account (other than "you" or "me") was a robot programmed to either disagree, agree, flame you/me or ask for money.
That would be what is actually "pointless". Slashdot and anything else that involves human discussion is far from pointless. Many times I'm scanning the discussions for posts from people with a different knowledge set, so I can learn. And I do. Posting something funny or reading funny comments at the same time, while seemingly pointless actually brightens my day, which has value.
I enjoy we rule (for iphone and ipad) somewhat, and decided to see what all the fuss was about with farmville when they came out with the iphone client.
You click once on crops in we rule to plant from a list of crops, the hierarchy of a moderate number of crops, that are always the same, is easily understandable, you can collect more than one crop at a time, and you collect them by just clicking on them once.
Coming from my only exposure to this genre being we rule, I found farmville to be a magnificent exercise in patience and building anger. Not only are there a billion different crops and buildings and plants or whatnot, that all rotate and a whole lot cost the farmville bucks or whatever, but in farmville, you have to click on each crop just to harvest them, and then click a second time to plow the damn field. And, to add even more insult to injury in comparison, you can only do one of these actions at a time.
I realize how much of a colossal waste of time these types of games are, but it's amazing just how ridiculous farmville looks when your exposure started with we rule. I spend maybe 5 minutes of a day harvesting some crops, visiting some towns and buying some stuff from other peoples' shops in we rule. How exactly you could spend as long as some people apparently play farmville every day is mind boggling to me. Is there a way to just play farmville about 5-10 minutes a day to max out your daily allotment like in we rule?
Why associate the creation of ISPs that protect your privacy with piracy?
I'm all for the idea of having certain protections in place at your ISP so you can sleep well at night, maybe even have an unsecured access point knowing that the ISP won't help authorities get you for something your neighbor or a wardriver did.
But what if I don't care for piracy and like to buy the stuff that I enjoy? Why do they want to, in a way, force you to be guilty by association?
Slashdot Mirror
How about something's actually done to push more original IPs and game concepts than labor for weeks, months, years over a generic "me-too" shooter or wii minigame compilation?
I'd like to see more original game concepts like braid, p.b. winterbottom and portal, each of which probably took exponentially less time, at least if a team was involved, to create than a generic shooter. Although portal could have had a long development time, I'm unaware about that.
Even if those types of games take just as long as generic shooter #9, it will probably be infinitely more rewarding.
I wonder if this may ever escalate into being allowed to legally download a torrent of a DVD you own but have broken? Yeah...a guy can dream :(
I'm not saying i find android phones complicated, I'm saying the iPhone is prohibitively simple ( no multitasking for ages, limited abilities for 3rd party apps, multitasking is now very limited, every action based around one or two taps on the touchscreen, etc) and the android phones are more complex than that, finding a middle ground between open techie dream and the iPhone.
Yes, but that's exactly what I don't understand. I'm not sure if anyone even has the answer, so it is likely pointless to ask, but why, in a society that punishes child pornographers so severely, do some people still take that risk of possessing pornography (not that that should be right or wrong, legal or illegal) or act on their unaccepted fantasies with such risky possible outcomes?
It just screams a lack of self preservation or understanding the consequences of one's actions, whether or not the act itself is "right" or "wrong".
I may be extremely pissed at something someone did to me, but choosing to try and get away with murder unless I'm saving someone else's life (and possibly trading my own for it) would be idiotic in a normal society.
I think the problem lies in the fact that every person, even pedophiles or murderers etc, understands the need for a society to protect itself. If a person commits a crime, whether willingly or unwillingly (insane, can't control it, etc.), then society at least generally agrees they have to do something to keep this person from harming anyone else.
The problem is that sticking someone in jail where they could get abused "but we didn't cause it" is not a perfectly fitting punishment. Sticking them in jail or a hospital for an arbitrary amount of time decided by an arbitrary judge and jury (in US) is the best we can do.
I don't know the solution to those problems, but at the very least, something needs to be done to those who commit these crimes. It's too bad (and yet arguably good) that a child pornography crime can come down to a possibly innocent act as just having copy-able data on a hard drive (unless it's evidence of a physical crime by the person). It's definitely too bad that apparently the law is such that even obvious reasonable doubt (that some images weren't downloaded willingly) isn't taken as seriously, as it can still go to court, and e.g.: a jury of all moms with young daughters will still convict the guy in spite of the law.
Anyways, regardless of all that, even if we knew the exact reason why someone committed the crime, either consciously, subconsciously or due to a quirk, they are clearly a menace to society if they commit a heinous physical crime. It's just unfortunate that the solution is sometimes too extreme, too tame, or ineffective for many crimes.
I understand your logic, and being what I suppose you could consider a "normal" person, I wish I understood why there are people who, as you say, "could only get a boner from kids".
Completely not understanding why this is natural, assuming it is, I would just as soon believe that this person has such a completely twisted mental state that he/she has caused him/herself over a long time to believe this is the case.
In that case, it would seem to me that it was not a natural, unique thing for this person, but rather a case of mental conditioning over a long period of time. The natural thing would, to me, not be the urge (at least in the case of *only* being able to "get off" on pictures of kids), but rather the ability to, as a human, twist your own thoughts through your own mental conditioning.
I don't have a black and white understanding of it, the situation you described is exactly why I said "more likely than not" in the case of child porn. I suppose the disconnect is I don't see the situation you described as being actual child porn, but I know my view of it is not the legally accepted criteria.
I'd really like to see the android market get overwhelming dev support for both games and useful apps, plus I'd like an android phone to get the insane battery life of the iphone 4. Yeah I know, removable batteries and such but it is hard to ignore the iphone coming with the great battery life right out the gate. Finally, I'm tired of CDMA phones not having interchangeable sim support. If I use the phone enough that it runs out of battery and I'm driving in the dark somewhere, I'd like to be able to stick the SIM in a backup phone in my glovebox in case of emergency.
Screw the UI, as soon as they do all that I would seriously consider jumping ship to an android phone. That EVO screen looks pretty nice, the iphone screen is a little too small IMHO.
There's a lot to attract you to an android phone, but I find it's major "flaw" is the middle ground it tries to find between being a simple smartphone and a complicated one. The iphone is and has always been a simple smartphone, and Apple has found success in this previously niche area. For most users, the locked down simplicity has been "enough" and for the more technical users, there's always been a jailbreak either around the corner or immediately available. The boosted user base provided by targeting the average user with the official "simple" phone attracts developers (official and unofficial), and the additional developer support attracts the technical users.
The added general complexity offered by stock android phones does (arguably) nothing to attract the average user away from the iphone's installed base and headstart, which doesn't attract as many developers, which in turn may not attract as many technical folks unless they really dislike Apple and AT&T.
Anyways, it's not a perfect argument on my part, but it seemed to make sense as I thought about it while reading your post.
..."Get off my lawn!"
I wonder if the major reason people say they love AT&T is because they know it's their only option for an iphone, and they are exceedingly happy with their iphone? I know a lot of people who are extremely happy with their iphones but have nothing to say about AT&T service
Could it REALLY just be the vocal minority that has given rise to the familiar "AT&T sucks, verizon is awesome" mentality? I hear this way too often to believe that it's only a small subset. New York for example has long seemed to be a running gag of AT&T's bad coverage from what I've heard over the years.
Well, OK. I can understand the idea that a pedophile's sexual preference could be "underage" as opposed to "male" or "female", but isn't it a more natural human trait to take care of or protect the immature of our species rather than exploit or abuse them?
Or for that matter, self preservation, as being a pedophile must be one of the quickest/easiest ways to be put in jail, and consequently, be tortured in said jail and even after being released.
Anyways, I suppose a lot of the reason why pedophiles might take the risks they do could be their lack of understanding of the consequences and/or technology in general, why else would these government workers have actually surfed child porn at work of all places? (notwithstanding the possibility of being involved with some sort of undercover/sting operation)
Funny. I'm rather sure child pornography/abuse is completely unrelated to the sexual orientation choices of mature adults. I'm also rather sure videos/pictures of two consenting adults having sex is a different product than a videotape of a 10 year old being abused by someone in his thirties.
Can someone explain why child pornographers can't just limit their porn consumption to those that are 18 or older? It seems to just reek of actually having committed an offense in the past and needing the obvious images of someone underage in order to relive that fantasy.
I feel as if I'm asking a stupid question but it's always bothered me, there's so much legal porn out there, why do some people feel the urge to look at shit that was more likely than not the product of abuse? Are there any studies that have unmistakably proven it's a disorder instead of a natural response?
kb/m is undoubtedly the most precise way to control most games. There's a reason why many RTSes don't come out on consoles and why FPSes have auto-aim while you almost NEVER see auto aim on a PC.
anyone who brings up their IQ in conversation or on a resume is a pretentious twit.
Oh believe me, I feel the same way.
I've wondered for a while how exactly people generally measure their "IQ". Whenever I see this statistic pointed out, I do some google searches about the matter but never really get any further than sites that let you take some test then hold the results hostage. I read an article (maybe wikipedia) saying how when Stephen Hawking first noticed his illness, he immediately was worried it would affect his IQ and took a test to confirm if there were any effects. Is anyone aware of a legitimate place for testing your IQ?
Also, is there any real benefit to knowing your IQ besides as a conversational piece or for self satisfaction? Is there anybody out there who actually sees a benefit to putting it on your resume for example?
I still see the openness of android phones as a net plus compared to the general closed, unjailbroken iphone. It's up to the end user to figure out how to get the bloatware off. That said, companies are huge piles of cow crap for loading up phones of all things with this shit.
Could this be used to both eavesdrop on calls as well as snatch arbitrary data transfer as in wi-fi wireless sniffing? I see a lot more dastardly uses of the data than random calls from schmoopy to schmoopy. I always felt like banking on the phone for example was more secure than on an arbitrary computer.
I just have to say, my vote for best article title ever. Felt like I was in some sort of slashdot dream seeing that pop up on the ol' RSS.
...to justify playing an MMO as a leadership opportunity. I wonder if he's getting paid those 6-7 hours as on the job training?
That's one way to look at it, but that's like saying that human interaction has no worth. Slashdot is at a much higher level than click spam games because even though its just text on a screen, someone is behind the keyboard conversing with you. Face to face interaction is at a higher level than that, but that doesn't mean text to text interaction is at the same level of click spam games.
The vast majority of what happens in farmville is interacting with a constructed world with a constructed set of rules meant to keep you addicted and spend money. The proper comparison to something like slashdot would be if everyone who has an account (other than "you" or "me") was a robot programmed to either disagree, agree, flame you/me or ask for money.
That would be what is actually "pointless". Slashdot and anything else that involves human discussion is far from pointless. Many times I'm scanning the discussions for posts from people with a different knowledge set, so I can learn. And I do. Posting something funny or reading funny comments at the same time, while seemingly pointless actually brightens my day, which has value.
I enjoy we rule (for iphone and ipad) somewhat, and decided to see what all the fuss was about with farmville when they came out with the iphone client.
You click once on crops in we rule to plant from a list of crops, the hierarchy of a moderate number of crops, that are always the same, is easily understandable, you can collect more than one crop at a time, and you collect them by just clicking on them once.
Coming from my only exposure to this genre being we rule, I found farmville to be a magnificent exercise in patience and building anger. Not only are there a billion different crops and buildings and plants or whatnot, that all rotate and a whole lot cost the farmville bucks or whatever, but in farmville, you have to click on each crop just to harvest them, and then click a second time to plow the damn field. And, to add even more insult to injury in comparison, you can only do one of these actions at a time.
I realize how much of a colossal waste of time these types of games are, but it's amazing just how ridiculous farmville looks when your exposure started with we rule. I spend maybe 5 minutes of a day harvesting some crops, visiting some towns and buying some stuff from other peoples' shops in we rule. How exactly you could spend as long as some people apparently play farmville every day is mind boggling to me. Is there a way to just play farmville about 5-10 minutes a day to max out your daily allotment like in we rule?
Why associate the creation of ISPs that protect your privacy with piracy?
I'm all for the idea of having certain protections in place at your ISP so you can sleep well at night, maybe even have an unsecured access point knowing that the ISP won't help authorities get you for something your neighbor or a wardriver did.
But what if I don't care for piracy and like to buy the stuff that I enjoy? Why do they want to, in a way, force you to be guilty by association?
They were advised by Blizzard Valve and 3Drealms. It'll be done when it's done.