But you aren't going to be replacing grassy fields for grazing with fields. Phasing out meat production also means greatly reducing the amount of grains we need in the first place. I have read that the amount of grain that livestock eats in this country is enough to feed 800 million people.
America going vegetarian would also mean we would either have an excess amount of grains, or we would have a bunch of unnecessary farmland. I think it's a sure bet that It won't be used to help feed the poor though...
I know you're joking, but that is exactly how twisted left wing ideology gets when it has festered too long.
I want you to take a moment and honestly consider the following question.
Which of these two do you think is more likely:
1) The left wants to turn everyone into black transgender lesbian atheistic Muslims on welfare having abortions, and the right wing is absolutely right about the liberal agenda... 2) The left believes in respecting the humanity, identity, and choices of people, and the right wing tries to demonize liberal ideology in order to make foolish people (like yourself) believe that protecting a choice or identity is the same as forcing it on people.
Live Sports. The only reason I keep cable is to watch live sports. Until the pirates figure out a way to stream live sports in high quality, I'll be sticking to cable. Beyond that, I don't need it
Live Sports is always the reason that I hear people say that they subscribe to cable. It seems like a lot of people are willing to be abused to get their sports fix.
If you argue that free speech should only be protected against the government and not against employers, then you are in effect saying that a majority of people shouldn't have any free speech protections at all.
Do you want free speech, freedom of association, or a free market? You have the right to say what you want (in theory) without government retribution, but that doesn't mean that the government is going to protect you from the social or business consequences.
You are free to show up for a job interview wearing a "I 3 Hitler" T-shirt, but the company isn't required to give you a job. If it does hire him, customers are free to say they disapprove. The company is free to keep them on (and piss off and lose customers over it), or they can be free to fire them in order to distance themselves from negative customer reactions.
None of those interactions are the government's concern, which is what makes it free.
If you think of pedophilia as a bad thing, are you now a bigot?
Not because you think it's a bad thing, but because you think that it's reasonable to conflate those 2 things...
What about polygamy?
What about it? If all who enter into it are consenting adults who enter into it freely and willingly, then I don't care. I have no moral objection to polygamy itself.
(Which is sort of ironic because bigotry can mean someone who marries multiple people).
... I can't tell if you are joking, trolling, or ignorantly confusing "bigotry" with "bigamy".
What if I think people should not be allowed to marry abstract ideas? Is it hate speech to say I disagree with that practice?
I don't even know what you are talking about, but disagreement (and even bigotry) isn't automatically "hate speech".
Sure, they are all scourge of the earth. However, they are still human, albeit morally reprehensible humans.
They should face the consequences of their crimes, but yet as civilized people we still have the moral duty to allow them with certain human rights.
However, the problem with the analogy (aside from being offensive and inflammatory) is that unlike gays, their rights have nothing to do with the reason we condemn them.
Nazis have the right to hold Nazi beliefs, but they don't have the right to harm the people they hate. Rapists and abusers have the right to think whatever twisted disgusting things they want, but they don't have the right to harm people.
Gays aren't taking anything away from anyone or harming anyone in either their thoughts or their actions.
Romantic, civil, or business partnerships of legally consenting, mentally capable, and non-coerced adults should not be restricted by anything at all.
I'm sorry, but I am intolerant of your intolerance toward intolerance.
Thinking one group of people is subhuman, and not worthy of the same rights isn't "an opposing view", it's bigotry.
According to the Right, liberals are racists, because they are the only ones who talk about race issues. Apparently liberals are also the intolerant ones, because they are concerned about intolerance.
Is that fact based on your political or religious affiliation, or based on actual research?
The reading I've done on the subject seems to either be on the side that it is genetic, or at the very least genetically biased. I'd have let you slide if you said that you doubt is genetic, or it's not clear that it's genetic.
However, just outright saying definitively that it's not genetic seems pretty bold.
In addition to all of those fine points, many of us here are well aware of how loosely defined 'hacker' and 'cyber terrorist' is likely to be (and is already).
I hate it when Jimmy Carter and I agree on anything.
I hate it when Jimmy Carter and I agree with you on anything.
But seriously, the Carter hate is not entirely fair. Some bad things happened while he was in office, but he had some notable accomplishments too.
I think that it's fair to say that he was a much better human being than he was a politician. However, I think we would be better off with a few more Carters around.
The government can petition to be allowed for it to preserve the preserved metadata, in order to use as evidence in civil suits that result from when it's discovered that the preserved metadata wasn't safe from the NSA after all...
It seems like we would need a Miranda equivalent to avoid unintentional self-incrimination.
Maybe, but I don't see it happening. As it is, the police are allowed a lot of dirty tactics in order to circumvent your rights. Police often see rights as an obstacle for them, rather than something that should be protected.
They already lie and try to intimidate people in order to get them to consent to a search. "If you don't let me in, then I can take you into the station for questioning while we get a warrant... Don't you want to make this easier?" "If you cooperate, then this will go easier on you." "If you didn't do anything wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of."
There are "good" cops and there are bad cops, but even "good" cops protect bad cops, and aren't always looking out for your rights.
At the end of the day you still need to level your character for max level content. Most mentoring systems didn't grant you spells or abilities that the max level character had. Only the stats. So you would be completely broken when it comes to doing true endgame content in a system like this.
Thus the reason for buying a boost.
You are confusing a "Mentor" and "Sidekick" system. A Mentor system will take a higher level player and temporarily reduce their power (level) in order to allow them to play with lower leveled people in lower level content.
A "Sidekick" type system is more like what you are describing, which allows a lower level player to become more powerful in order to play with a higher level character.
Both can be of benefit, but I'd lean towards a Mentor system for WoW.
Also, A "Sidekick" doesn't necessarily have to be viable for high end raid content. In fact, I'd say it shouldn't be! That content is designed to be something that higher level players have to build up to already. But that doesn't negate the value of allowing sidekicks to perform in "Normal" level dungeons with higher level players.
Though a sidekick system probably works best in a game that doesn't require party role optimization to work well, which would not be WoW.
I know you are joking with the dog, but it did make me wonder if a child/teen (who probably wouldn't know their rights) could be tricked into giving consent to a search, against their parents wishes.
That might be the one place where the law decides a minor can give consent...
This seems to lower the bar to whatever member of a household can be bullied or tricked into consenting to a warrant-less search.
One way is to spend some thought and create content that can be played on numerous levels and with group OR solo play.
Absolutely true! Mentoring and Sidekicks aren't the only option. Some games have also created "mercenaries" that allow you to play dungeon content with NPCs that act as your party. Though, the problem with that is that you are still playing a massively multi-player game solo, which kind of seems pointless (given there are better single player games).
I'm still a fan of mentoring though. They could have created a "Legacy Dungeon" mode (with some incentive) for higher level characters that would mix them (artificially de-leveled temporarily) with lower level players (friends or random) that are still leveling up. Give both something to do.
Well there are many possible ways to deal with it, but they seemed to have taken the monetize it solution.
"We have blocked this content because we think that it might contain material that is not licensed by GEMA. We definitely aren't saying that it is being blocked due to GEMA being made up of douchebags. Thank you."
It does devalue the market for max level characters, but that was a black market anyway. In theory, bought characters (if discovered) could get the account banned.
However, I think it's been a long time since you had people power-leveling characters to max to flip them for cash was common. My understanding was that in more recent years, it's been far more common for people to try to steal ("hack") the accounts, and then try to sell those compromised accounts.
When accounts were (or are) not compromised, using cheats and exploits was also common, which again could put you at risk of the "banhammer" if your account comes on the radar of Blizzard.
It was still a short-cut (with risks) for exchanging money for time investment, unofficially.
But again, the lack of a good solution to the original problem that new players are effectively cut off from the content of veteran players is what created an incentive for this type of criminal behavior.
That's one of the big problems with MMRPGs. They eventually become so old that only those heavily invested in it can find it fun and compelling to continue playing. The gap between newbie players and veteran players will continually expand.
However, I still maintain that there are better ways of bridging the gap between old and new players, rather than requiring huge time investments or more money.
Or... maybe MMRPGs are just a flawed idea in general.
"Mentoring" and "sidekicks" have been implemented in many games. It's been requested countless times for WoW. It's a good idea that they seem resistant too.
The nature and design of these games naturally creates limits on who can play with who. Instead of coming up with an interesting and potentially fun solution to the problem (as the other 2 systems create), Blizzard has only implemented the Recruit-A-Friend system that helps reduce the time a little for the new player, but forces one friend to invest a lot of time leveling a new character with that recruited friend. Without that, it's just more grinding through 90 levels, or pay money in the future.
This seems like the greediest way to handle the problem, not the most fun.
Slashdot Mirror
...in order to help crack down on movie piracy ahead of the release of potential box office smashes...
"The bigger the film and the more anticipated it is, the higher-risk it is."
So, the most watched and profitable movies are the ones that need the most protection?
I suppose it's worth pissing off a few consumers to make those massive profits into massiver profits.
But you aren't going to be replacing grassy fields for grazing with fields. Phasing out meat production also means greatly reducing the amount of grains we need in the first place. I have read that the amount of grain that livestock eats in this country is enough to feed 800 million people.
America going vegetarian would also mean we would either have an excess amount of grains, or we would have a bunch of unnecessary farmland. I think it's a sure bet that It won't be used to help feed the poor though...
Are you implying that being gay is a choice? You then have no idea what you are talking about.
Why don't you go back and ready my post. If you look real hard you might see the words, "choice or identity". What do you think I'm implying now?
Don't they stop employees from taking any kind of IP and running away with it, which would basically kill the industry?
More than that, they also help suppress wages.
Yeah, I'm sure Comcast's management and investors totally feel bad about that whole public opinion thing.
Public opinion doesn't matter much when you engineer local monopolies.
I know you're joking, but that is exactly how twisted left wing ideology gets when it has festered too long.
I want you to take a moment and honestly consider the following question.
Which of these two do you think is more likely:
1) The left wants to turn everyone into black transgender lesbian atheistic Muslims on welfare having abortions, and the right wing is absolutely right about the liberal agenda...
2) The left believes in respecting the humanity, identity, and choices of people, and the right wing tries to demonize liberal ideology in order to make foolish people (like yourself) believe that protecting a choice or identity is the same as forcing it on people.
Live Sports. The only reason I keep cable is to watch live sports. Until the pirates figure out a way to stream live sports in high quality, I'll be sticking to cable. Beyond that, I don't need it
Live Sports is always the reason that I hear people say that they subscribe to cable. It seems like a lot of people are willing to be abused to get their sports fix.
Clearly you don't understand the difference between abusive relationships and consenting relationships..
If you argue that free speech should only be protected against the government and not against employers, then you are in effect saying that a majority of people shouldn't have any free speech protections at all.
Do you want free speech, freedom of association, or a free market? You have the right to say what you want (in theory) without government retribution, but that doesn't mean that the government is going to protect you from the social or business consequences.
You are free to show up for a job interview wearing a "I 3 Hitler" T-shirt, but the company isn't required to give you a job. If it does hire him, customers are free to say they disapprove. The company is free to keep them on (and piss off and lose customers over it), or they can be free to fire them in order to distance themselves from negative customer reactions.
None of those interactions are the government's concern, which is what makes it free.
If you think of pedophilia as a bad thing, are you now a bigot?
Not because you think it's a bad thing, but because you think that it's reasonable to conflate those 2 things...
What about polygamy?
What about it? If all who enter into it are consenting adults who enter into it freely and willingly, then I don't care. I have no moral objection to polygamy itself.
(Which is sort of ironic because bigotry can mean someone who marries multiple people).
... I can't tell if you are joking, trolling, or ignorantly confusing "bigotry" with "bigamy".
What if I think people should not be allowed to marry abstract ideas? Is it hate speech to say I disagree with that practice?
I don't even know what you are talking about, but disagreement (and even bigotry) isn't automatically "hate speech".
Sure, they are all scourge of the earth. However, they are still human, albeit morally reprehensible humans.
They should face the consequences of their crimes, but yet as civilized people we still have the moral duty to allow them with certain human rights.
However, the problem with the analogy (aside from being offensive and inflammatory) is that unlike gays, their rights have nothing to do with the reason we condemn them.
Nazis have the right to hold Nazi beliefs, but they don't have the right to harm the people they hate. Rapists and abusers have the right to think whatever twisted disgusting things they want, but they don't have the right to harm people.
Gays aren't taking anything away from anyone or harming anyone in either their thoughts or their actions.
Romantic, civil, or business partnerships of legally consenting, mentally capable, and non-coerced adults should not be restricted by anything at all.
I'm sorry, but I am intolerant of your intolerance toward intolerance.
Thinking one group of people is subhuman, and not worthy of the same rights isn't "an opposing view", it's bigotry.
According to the Right, liberals are racists, because they are the only ones who talk about race issues. Apparently liberals are also the intolerant ones, because they are concerned about intolerance.
COULD move from price and quality to 'who has the best patent lawyer'?
Has someone patented that process yet?
Homosexuality is not genetic.
Is that fact based on your political or religious affiliation, or based on actual research?
The reading I've done on the subject seems to either be on the side that it is genetic, or at the very least genetically biased. I'd have let you slide if you said that you doubt is genetic, or it's not clear that it's genetic.
However, just outright saying definitively that it's not genetic seems pretty bold.
In addition to all of those fine points, many of us here are well aware of how loosely defined 'hacker' and 'cyber terrorist' is likely to be (and is already).
I hate it when Jimmy Carter and I agree on anything.
I hate it when Jimmy Carter and I agree with you on anything.
But seriously, the Carter hate is not entirely fair. Some bad things happened while he was in office, but he had some notable accomplishments too.
I think that it's fair to say that he was a much better human being than he was a politician. However, I think we would be better off with a few more Carters around.
Or kids using their parents credit cards...
There are many stories of kids racking up thousands of dollars on in-game purchases in games that seem to specifically be targeting kids.
The government can petition to be allowed for it to preserve the preserved metadata, in order to use as evidence in civil suits that result from when it's discovered that the preserved metadata wasn't safe from the NSA after all...
It seems like we would need a Miranda equivalent to avoid unintentional self-incrimination.
Maybe, but I don't see it happening. As it is, the police are allowed a lot of dirty tactics in order to circumvent your rights. Police often see rights as an obstacle for them, rather than something that should be protected.
They already lie and try to intimidate people in order to get them to consent to a search. "If you don't let me in, then I can take you into the station for questioning while we get a warrant... Don't you want to make this easier?" "If you cooperate, then this will go easier on you." "If you didn't do anything wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of."
There are "good" cops and there are bad cops, but even "good" cops protect bad cops, and aren't always looking out for your rights.
At the end of the day you still need to level your character for max level content. Most mentoring systems didn't grant you spells or abilities that the max level character had. Only the stats. So you would be completely broken when it comes to doing true endgame content in a system like this.
Thus the reason for buying a boost.
You are confusing a "Mentor" and "Sidekick" system. A Mentor system will take a higher level player and temporarily reduce their power (level) in order to allow them to play with lower leveled people in lower level content.
A "Sidekick" type system is more like what you are describing, which allows a lower level player to become more powerful in order to play with a higher level character.
Both can be of benefit, but I'd lean towards a Mentor system for WoW.
Also, A "Sidekick" doesn't necessarily have to be viable for high end raid content. In fact, I'd say it shouldn't be! That content is designed to be something that higher level players have to build up to already. But that doesn't negate the value of allowing sidekicks to perform in "Normal" level dungeons with higher level players.
Though a sidekick system probably works best in a game that doesn't require party role optimization to work well, which would not be WoW.
I know you are joking with the dog, but it did make me wonder if a child/teen (who probably wouldn't know their rights) could be tricked into giving consent to a search, against their parents wishes.
That might be the one place where the law decides a minor can give consent...
This seems to lower the bar to whatever member of a household can be bullied or tricked into consenting to a warrant-less search.
One way is to spend some thought and create content that can be played on numerous levels and with group OR solo play.
Absolutely true! Mentoring and Sidekicks aren't the only option. Some games have also created "mercenaries" that allow you to play dungeon content with NPCs that act as your party. Though, the problem with that is that you are still playing a massively multi-player game solo, which kind of seems pointless (given there are better single player games).
I'm still a fan of mentoring though. They could have created a "Legacy Dungeon" mode (with some incentive) for higher level characters that would mix them (artificially de-leveled temporarily) with lower level players (friends or random) that are still leveling up. Give both something to do.
Well there are many possible ways to deal with it, but they seemed to have taken the monetize it solution.
"We have blocked this content because we think that it might contain material that is not licensed by GEMA. We definitely aren't saying that it is being blocked due to GEMA being made up of douchebags. Thank you."
It does devalue the market for max level characters, but that was a black market anyway. In theory, bought characters (if discovered) could get the account banned.
However, I think it's been a long time since you had people power-leveling characters to max to flip them for cash was common. My understanding was that in more recent years, it's been far more common for people to try to steal ("hack") the accounts, and then try to sell those compromised accounts.
When accounts were (or are) not compromised, using cheats and exploits was also common, which again could put you at risk of the "banhammer" if your account comes on the radar of Blizzard.
It was still a short-cut (with risks) for exchanging money for time investment, unofficially.
But again, the lack of a good solution to the original problem that new players are effectively cut off from the content of veteran players is what created an incentive for this type of criminal behavior.
That's one of the big problems with MMRPGs. They eventually become so old that only those heavily invested in it can find it fun and compelling to continue playing. The gap between newbie players and veteran players will continually expand.
However, I still maintain that there are better ways of bridging the gap between old and new players, rather than requiring huge time investments or more money.
Or... maybe MMRPGs are just a flawed idea in general.
"Mentoring" and "sidekicks" have been implemented in many games. It's been requested countless times for WoW. It's a good idea that they seem resistant too.
The nature and design of these games naturally creates limits on who can play with who. Instead of coming up with an interesting and potentially fun solution to the problem (as the other 2 systems create), Blizzard has only implemented the Recruit-A-Friend system that helps reduce the time a little for the new player, but forces one friend to invest a lot of time leveling a new character with that recruited friend. Without that, it's just more grinding through 90 levels, or pay money in the future.
This seems like the greediest way to handle the problem, not the most fun.