If she's worried about her grandchildren talking to child molesters on their PlayStation, perhaps she should talk to their parents about keeping an eye on what Junior is doing in his bedroom without supervision - you know, where encryption doesn't matter because they can just read the damn screen - instead of creating a backdoor that the child molesters can use to spy on Little Johnny and plan their kidnapping out of his bedroom because they know that the parents don't pay any attention to him while he's jerking off to porn on his PlayStation.
Or maybe "think of the children" is, as usual, a load of shit excuse to invade people's privacy, and expand the power of government.
Am I the only one flashing back to Pat Pulling and the whole "Dungeons & Dragons is evil and causes suicide" bullshit? When Pat Pulling's claims of D&D suicides was researched it was found that in most of the cases she cited, no death occurred, and in some cases, they were fictional people.
In fact, of the actual suicides that could be identified, there was a far closer correlation between having parents who were religious wingnuts any reasonable person would rather die than live with than with playing D&D.
They're used to being sued, and losing. I guess they're under budget this year, and need to spend a few more million before New Years day on legal fees.
And that you desperately need for him to be right so you can feel superior doesn't make him right, either. NASCAR is far a more accessible user of cutting edge science than NASA will ever be.
They're eating up the author's framing as if it was literally what Nye said. What he actually said was that NASCAR should reward fuel efficiency as well as speed, as it would make a more interesting engineering problem.
If fuel efficiency weren't the most important engineering factor involved, he'd look a lot less like an elitist prick right now.
I grew up in the USian Southeast. I got to meet and spend a lot of time with *many* NASCAR fans. 80% of them both don't give a shit about *any* of the applied science behind somewhat-high-performance racing, *and* are educationally and constitutionally incapable of *understanding* said science.
The same is true of NASA fans, in my experience. They know more buzzwords, sure, but they don't understand them any more than NASCAR rednecks do.
It's aimed at Appleheads, the people who are actually going to buy Apple products. Apples isn't trying to convince any PC user to buy Apple products, they're trying to convince Apple users to my more Apple products. Making them feel smug and superior is a very well proven marketing technique for them.
The only way Amazon could restore the reputation of their reviews would be to change from the bad it's always been to something better (because it couldn't get any worse), then make it bad again.
Based on the trend in recent years of most commercials being ads for other shows, I'm guessing this is just a reflection of the fact that they literally can't sell as many ad slots as they used to. They might as well pretend they're doing this for some reason other than desperation.
Pretty much plan isn't going to work if you allow for blatant rule-breaking. Make it so if you have a "junior apprentice programmer" that has 20 years of experience and is running the project, the company gets fined and the hiring manager risks jail time. Have random audits to confirm people are following the rules. Enforce those rules.
And watch the auditors start buying expensive boats and cars, and taking long vacations in exotic resorts, because then the game is to get your competitor in trouble with accusations of wrongdoing, true or not.
There is no rule that can't be gamed. The only benefit to changing the rules is that it forces the game players to learn the new rules. Sometimes, it might even change the winners. But it'll still be gamed, and still to the advantage of those at the top.
I met a reporter from a local fishwrap once, in the early 80s, doing an article on D&D. We patiently explained what roleplaying games were all about, the social aspects, the requirement for cooperative action, the problem solving challenges, etc. The final article had supposedly first hand accounts about miniatures screaming as they melt when thrown into a fireplace (no, that's the guy who threw it there screaming as the owner of the mini beats him to death with a 50 pound miniatures case) and gamers summoning actual, physically manifesting demons in pentagrams drawn on naked women's stomachs (heh, no gamer I ever knew could concentrate well enough to do the ritual in the presence of a naked woman!).
The reality is that gaming does tend to (somewhat) attract social outcasts, who are generally more accepting of weird than most people (RPGNet excepted, of course), but you just can't play an RPG alone. It's inherently a social activity. In my experience, people who show up at a gaming club that have real emotional issues end up better for being around other people who have been there. And are more likely to get professional help if they continue to deteriorate.
I've been in games where the GM didn't exert authority. Briefly. They always end up a complete clusterfuck of "Did not!" "Did so!" over and over. There has to be a final authority on game mechanics, or it's just improvisational acting. And even that usually has a director.
The only people who think F.A.T.A.L. is anything but a joke are ones that fall under the MRA label. Nobody's head will explode, they'll just shake their heads and sigh at the juvenile level of it. At least Munchkin manages to be funny.
One should note that the author, Byron Hall, clearly did not intend it as a joke, and defending his serious intent vigorously.
But no, I suspect you're misinterpreting the moderator's ban. Most likely it was because that person was TALKING about material in a way that was clearly meant to try to evade an actual legitimate ban. IOW, gaming the system. Too bad for them that the moderator caught onto the line of BS.
The exchange went as follows (I'm paraphrasing, but it was no more subtle):
"I can't say that because I'd be banned."
"And I'm banning you for not saying it."
There's no misinterpreting of anything. The moderators have a notice in their.sigs that they are moderators. But if you mention they are moderators, they will ban you. Yes. Really. You can get a warning (or, I assume, ban) for following a moderator's instructions on how to raise issues with policies - and by "follow instructions," I mean a moderator telling you "If you want to discuss this, go to Trouble Tickets," and when you bring it up in Trouble Tickets, you get a warning (first hand account, BTW).
And, of course, there's the famous "I keep going to gaming cons even though I always get raped every time" thread, started, apparently, by some Something Awful or 4chan troll, in which it turned out, after a lot of back and forth, that the poster's definition of "rape" was that some guy she didn't like looked at her ass in the elevator. People were banned for pointing that (politely) that is not, perhaps, the most common definition of the word. Apparently, they have a formal policy that one is never, ever, under any circumstances allowed to question in any way anything posted by anyone claiming to be female. Perhaps I exaggerate a bit on that, but only a bit.
RPGNet is legendary for their habit of taking the most offensive trolls and making them moderators.
I met a (Catholic) priest once who used D&D (specifically) as part of his bible study classes. He felt it was a wonderful tool to teach certain moral lessons, and the students loved it (and paid at lost closer attention.)
SJWs love roleplaying games, because they allow them to pretend they (the SJWs) matter. RPGNet is their private little sandbox, no adults allowed (I've seen someone be banned for refusing to post something that would get them banned. I do not exaggerate. The moderator said to in those very words in the post announcing the ban.) And they get to spew outrage at non-PC games, which is the real point for most of them - to be outraged, and frankly they don't care about what, read Eric Hoffer's The True Believer for a detailed explanation.
Not that they don't occasionally have a point. You can fairly well make a SJW's head explode with a copy of F.A.T.A.L., with a magic materials list that includes the phrase "cunt pipe," a list of professions that includes not a single one available for females that does not end with "will also engage in prostitution," and its (series of) table(s) for (I swear to God) how many finger you can stick in to a newborn baby's ass (by species) before you have to roll for damage,
Rule 0: The gamemaster is always right. Rule 1: The only way to do it wrong is to not have fun.
But I would reverse those, because the silent and invisible part of Rule 0 is "even if the gamemaster is the only one left in the game because he's a dick."
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If she's worried about her grandchildren talking to child molesters on their PlayStation, perhaps she should talk to their parents about keeping an eye on what Junior is doing in his bedroom without supervision - you know, where encryption doesn't matter because they can just read the damn screen - instead of creating a backdoor that the child molesters can use to spy on Little Johnny and plan their kidnapping out of his bedroom because they know that the parents don't pay any attention to him while he's jerking off to porn on his PlayStation.
Or maybe "think of the children" is, as usual, a load of shit excuse to invade people's privacy, and expand the power of government.
Projects without funds are dead projects.
Sometimes, it's a mercy killing.
Mindless idiots will love Google anyway.
Or hate them anyway, even if they cure cancer and end world hunger.
My ISP hasn't built their entire business on collecting as much information as possible and selling it to advertisers.
Am I the only one flashing back to Pat Pulling and the whole "Dungeons & Dragons is evil and causes suicide" bullshit? When Pat Pulling's claims of D&D suicides was researched it was found that in most of the cases she cited, no death occurred, and in some cases, they were fictional people.
In fact, of the actual suicides that could be identified, there was a far closer correlation between having parents who were religious wingnuts any reasonable person would rather die than live with than with playing D&D.
They're used to being sued, and losing. I guess they're under budget this year, and need to spend a few more million before New Years day on legal fees.
And that you desperately need for him to be right so you can feel superior doesn't make him right, either. NASCAR is far a more accessible user of cutting edge science than NASA will ever be.
They're eating up the author's framing as if it was literally what Nye said. What he actually said was that NASCAR should reward fuel efficiency as well as speed, as it would make a more interesting engineering problem.
If fuel efficiency weren't the most important engineering factor involved, he'd look a lot less like an elitist prick right now.
I grew up in the USian Southeast. I got to meet and spend a lot of time with *many* NASCAR fans. 80% of them both don't give a shit about *any* of the applied science behind somewhat-high-performance racing, *and* are educationally and constitutionally incapable of *understanding* said science.
The same is true of NASA fans, in my experience. They know more buzzwords, sure, but they don't understand them any more than NASCAR rednecks do.
Er, no, that's not true of NASCAR. There are racing circuits where it is, but NASCAR's not one of them.
he was equating people who pay more attention to NASCAR than NASA to a lower intelligence.
So he's a different flavor of elitist asshole. He's still an elitist asshole.
Perhaps it's a sport in the sense that mutations are sometimes called sports.
So is Steve Job's ass if you apply some furniture polish.
It's aimed at Appleheads, the people who are actually going to buy Apple products. Apples isn't trying to convince any PC user to buy Apple products, they're trying to convince Apple users to my more Apple products. Making them feel smug and superior is a very well proven marketing technique for them.
The only way Amazon could restore the reputation of their reviews would be to change from the bad it's always been to something better (because it couldn't get any worse), then make it bad again.
Based on the trend in recent years of most commercials being ads for other shows, I'm guessing this is just a reflection of the fact that they literally can't sell as many ad slots as they used to. They might as well pretend they're doing this for some reason other than desperation.
"I meant to do that. Yeah, that's the ticket."
Pretty much plan isn't going to work if you allow for blatant rule-breaking. Make it so if you have a "junior apprentice programmer" that has 20 years of experience and is running the project, the company gets fined and the hiring manager risks jail time. Have random audits to confirm people are following the rules. Enforce those rules.
And watch the auditors start buying expensive boats and cars, and taking long vacations in exotic resorts, because then the game is to get your competitor in trouble with accusations of wrongdoing, true or not.
There is no rule that can't be gamed. The only benefit to changing the rules is that it forces the game players to learn the new rules. Sometimes, it might even change the winners. But it'll still be gamed, and still to the advantage of those at the top.
I met a reporter from a local fishwrap once, in the early 80s, doing an article on D&D. We patiently explained what roleplaying games were all about, the social aspects, the requirement for cooperative action, the problem solving challenges, etc. The final article had supposedly first hand accounts about miniatures screaming as they melt when thrown into a fireplace (no, that's the guy who threw it there screaming as the owner of the mini beats him to death with a 50 pound miniatures case) and gamers summoning actual, physically manifesting demons in pentagrams drawn on naked women's stomachs (heh, no gamer I ever knew could concentrate well enough to do the ritual in the presence of a naked woman!).
The reality is that gaming does tend to (somewhat) attract social outcasts, who are generally more accepting of weird than most people (RPGNet excepted, of course), but you just can't play an RPG alone. It's inherently a social activity. In my experience, people who show up at a gaming club that have real emotional issues end up better for being around other people who have been there. And are more likely to get professional help if they continue to deteriorate.
I've been in games where the GM didn't exert authority. Briefly. They always end up a complete clusterfuck of "Did not!" "Did so!" over and over. There has to be a final authority on game mechanics, or it's just improvisational acting. And even that usually has a director.
Sounds like he actually belonged in a mental hospital, but didn't get forced in to one before that ship sailed.
Again, he problem wasn't gaming, it was mental illness.
The only people who think F.A.T.A.L. is anything but a joke are ones that fall under the MRA label. Nobody's head will explode, they'll just shake their heads and sigh at the juvenile level of it. At least Munchkin manages to be funny.
One should note that the author, Byron Hall, clearly did not intend it as a joke, and defending his serious intent vigorously.
But no, I suspect you're misinterpreting the moderator's ban. Most likely it was because that person was TALKING about material in a way that was clearly meant to try to evade an actual legitimate ban. IOW, gaming the system. Too bad for them that the moderator caught onto the line of BS.
The exchange went as follows (I'm paraphrasing, but it was no more subtle):
"I can't say that because I'd be banned."
"And I'm banning you for not saying it."
There's no misinterpreting of anything. The moderators have a notice in their .sigs that they are moderators. But if you mention they are moderators, they will ban you. Yes. Really. You can get a warning (or, I assume, ban) for following a moderator's instructions on how to raise issues with policies - and by "follow instructions," I mean a moderator telling you "If you want to discuss this, go to Trouble Tickets," and when you bring it up in Trouble Tickets, you get a warning (first hand account, BTW).
And, of course, there's the famous "I keep going to gaming cons even though I always get raped every time" thread, started, apparently, by some Something Awful or 4chan troll, in which it turned out, after a lot of back and forth, that the poster's definition of "rape" was that some guy she didn't like looked at her ass in the elevator. People were banned for pointing that (politely) that is not, perhaps, the most common definition of the word. Apparently, they have a formal policy that one is never, ever, under any circumstances allowed to question in any way anything posted by anyone claiming to be female. Perhaps I exaggerate a bit on that, but only a bit.
RPGNet is legendary for their habit of taking the most offensive trolls and making them moderators.
I met a (Catholic) priest once who used D&D (specifically) as part of his bible study classes. He felt it was a wonderful tool to teach certain moral lessons, and the students loved it (and paid at lost closer attention.)
SJWs love roleplaying games, because they allow them to pretend they (the SJWs) matter. RPGNet is their private little sandbox, no adults allowed (I've seen someone be banned for refusing to post something that would get them banned. I do not exaggerate. The moderator said to in those very words in the post announcing the ban.) And they get to spew outrage at non-PC games, which is the real point for most of them - to be outraged, and frankly they don't care about what, read Eric Hoffer's The True Believer for a detailed explanation.
Not that they don't occasionally have a point. You can fairly well make a SJW's head explode with a copy of F.A.T.A.L., with a magic materials list that includes the phrase "cunt pipe," a list of professions that includes not a single one available for females that does not end with "will also engage in prostitution," and its (series of) table(s) for (I swear to God) how many finger you can stick in to a newborn baby's ass (by species) before you have to roll for damage,
His problem wasn't gaming. His problem was that he was a psychopath.
The old adage is:
Rule 0: The gamemaster is always right.
Rule 1: The only way to do it wrong is to not have fun.
But I would reverse those, because the silent and invisible part of Rule 0 is "even if the gamemaster is the only one left in the game because he's a dick."