Capitalism is a system where capital is one holding economic power. In historic examples, this most often leads to forming private militias to defend capital's interests efficiently.
It doesn't "mean" but "typically leads to". Kinda like 2+2=x doesn't mean that x is four - it can be 10 in trinary system. But in real world, it's usually not used, so in most cases it's four. Just like unchecked capitalism usually leads to formation/renting of private militias at certain point of development to protect the interest of such capital.
Essentially all countries in Latin America save a couple function in this very matter. Same goes for most African countries struggling through post colonial period. It doesn't require much effort to find this out.
Of course, you just claimed that South America and Africa together hold over hundred countries (they have 66 total as of writing this). With that kind of knowledge of basic geography, I suppose one has to account for extreme cluelessness in other areas as well.
Finally, very rich not only have, but actively excercise power to set weapons on people. Not in US on any meaningful scale (yet?), they have a few assassinations here and there but in general system still works there to prevent the worst abuses of the money. Rest of the world isn't nearly so lucky, in aforementioned Latin America (examples: Brazil, Argentina) rich have their own militas and if they want you dead, you'll be hunted and killed by one of many very well equipped private militias unless you have one of your own to defend you. That's the reality of life there, because in there, capitalism is far more powerful then in US.
And even in US, you can still have a person "vanish" by professionals if you have the money. To believe otherwise shows a significant lack of understanding of reality. This isn't relevant to just US but all Western countries. Recently I remember reading the paper how in Sweden, a young girl committed suicide after being systemically raped by a son of a local "shaker", who came the rich family that owned biggest businesses in town. Local police hush hushed the case until investigative reporter blew a whistle on the case putting it into national spotlight. And that's just one case that only came to light because stars aligned and enough information accidentally landed on reporter's desk and that reported chose to pursue the case instead of going for the low hanging fruit. In the end, what came to light was pretty horrifying for the nation, essentially everyone in their fairly small town knew she was being raped by the guy on daily basis and no one cared because rapist's family was simply too rich and important. Not only that, most people actually put the blame squarely on the girl and treated her like shit which was in part the cause of suicide.
I was actually thinking of current situation in Latin America and Africa, as these have some of the most capitalist countries in the world. The system I was talking about would actually not work with a powerful central government, as in such countries, power is money.
On the other hand in a capitalist system, money is power. These are complete opposites.
Fascism can be considered as the end game of unchecked capitalism, after corporations have gained enough power to buy government level of powers outright due to nature of capitalism focusing resources in the hands of the few.
It's never the fault of the free market. It's the fault of people, and nature of things. Free market works very well if we only had projects that adjusted themselves immediately based on supply and demand, and supply was always there instantly when demand appeared. As reality doesn't quite live up to free market's expectations, it tends to have a whole lot of failure points. So you can either blame free market or you can blame reality.
In hindsight, it's the same argument as one backing communism. Real one mind you, not crappy one tried in USSR. Kinda like real free market, not one we have in reality.
No, you'll just do what people in capitalist countries that already have this problem do. Rich will move to live in walled and guarded enclaves with all those things available, and everyone else kills each other for right to work in those few jobs available to serve the rich. Those who fail either die or learn to live off scraps.
You mean like there was room for "mom and pop's last name" shop a couple of dozens of years ago. Gee, surely the trend will automagically reverse itself in spite of news in the OP talking about the exact opposite continuing to happen?
When your failing economic thesis is your main religion, you won't stop until complete collapse. Partial ones, like the recent banking crisis will just be taken out of the hides of little people and the system will continue to grind on.
USSR is already down. USA seems hell bent to follow.
First of all, he's talking about the trend and direction we're going into, not current scenario which is what you're talking about.
Second, if you claim that retail store clerks are a "high paying job", you're either stupid or ignorant of reality on a scale that would suggest need for psychiatric intervention. These are among the lowest paid jobs with lowest job security of all jobs out there. Grandparent's point is that these jobs are fairly important for local community because they allow for people who can't get other jobs not to start robbing and shooting reasonably well off people like you to earn a living.
Finally, grocery stores are at MASSIVE disadvantage. We already see the situation in electronics, where people go to a local shop, check out what they need and then... order from amazon. This will happen to groceries eventually as well. And that will kill your choice of products, your ability to choose where to spend your money and eventually your ability to actually visit a local store. This is a trend end result of which is very visible in several industries already, such as banking. Almost no way to get a human service, and now that banks got rid of most tellers, they will charge you for actually getting service in the bank.
That is the future of large corporations taking over small ones at retail. It probably won't happen until a generation change, but it's coming. And it's ignorant self-harming cheerleaders like you that will cheer it until the reality is here, at which point you will finally realise that you got a short end of a stick.
Story is just one aspect of the game. Many games you list had severe gameplay and other gaming-related problems which detract from enjoyment quite strongly even if the story was good. If you consider good story to the be the only worthwhile aspect of the game, you should consider shifting medium from games to books. They can do storytelling much better then games ever will.
Deus EX: HR was a massively stripped down version of original DE with a story that you forgot ten minutes after clearing the game. But it had sunglasses implants, so I guess all the cool kids have to rave about that one. Peer pressure and all. Original was awesome, it was a true "in spirit" sequel to system shock with interesting setting and story to boot.
Prototype was a boring on levelling, but had a story you remembered a few weeks after finishing it, and was actually fun to roam around. Not to mention the utterly awesome combat. It's not often that you get to dive off skyscrapers into the ground with such force that asphalt ripples and cars get thrown around.
Original FEAR's setting was so fucking awesome, I still remember actually having problems sleeping after playing it for the first time. It was that fucking scary. The only game to ever get me that shaken was original AvP, and I was a whole lot younger when playing that one.
Just because you're a hater and rage on single player doesn't mean it's actually bad. And I love multiplayer games and play LoL and usually at least one MMO on regular basis, but single player definitely has its place in gaming.
I found "two of the same sized" to be the best setup for LoL so far personally. One open with the game, other shows interfaces for all support software like voice communication for easy access and general accessibility. Game plays in windowed fullscreen allowing for fast switching while still allowing to use mouse to scroll camera.
The specific local mechanisms are likely related to jet stream changes, which introduce dramatic changes to certain areas. This is a known problem. It's just very hard to present concrete proof for reasons because we don't understand the extremely complex mechanisms well enough.
On the other hand your claims that something we are observing now in arctic and other places doesn't in fact exist because it doesn't match your world view stinks of religious fanaticism.
Multi monitor LoL isn't possible because multi-monitor LoL would be cheating. MOBA games must limit the total viewable zone for all players to exactly the same size, and for that reason, they also have a very limited maximum zoom-out.
Because getting a bigger tactical overview would give player an immense advantage in LoL. So if you ever did manage to get LoL to play on multiple monitors with wider view, you'd be banned in a very short order for obvious cheating.
You weirded me out enough to make me dig out my old lyceum (local equivalent of high school) physics textbooks. In text book that was attached to course 1, the only mandatory course of physics for all students, they don't only tell that everything in physics is theoretical, they go into great depths to explain what that means and why. The entire first chapter basically goes through physics being a "empirical science based on observations of surrounding world, that aims to define laws that reflect the world around us as accurately as possible". It goes as far as to mention that "current laws physics are our approximations that are approaching being able to define many parts of surrounding world almost exactly like they probably are".
I also faintly recall our teacher talking about physics being "exact but not absolute, and the main purpose of this course is to teach you how to think critically about everything I will teach" on the first lecture. I strongly suspect that what you're describing is a problem of US school system and its deeply ingrained culture of religion rather then the general teaching and understanding of physics.
Indeed. UN is instead the avenue where people can negotiate treaties under a common framework. When you're negotiating with people from hundreds of different cultures all at once, without an organisation like UN it would be impossible. No one would agree on even how to negotiate, much less be able to produce any results.
This is why UN looks "inefficient" in the eyes of a layman who never really tried negotiating with several parties all from different cultures at once.
Any decent history book. Pick one up. Debts to church were a priority during middle ages due to church's favoured position within all but a few European nations. Slavery was common back then as well, and selling debtor to slavery when he couldn't pay the debt in any other way was common back then, for everything from debts to usurer to debts to a church. You seem to be looking at the things from US point of view with your utterly irrelevant US reference, and you appear utterly clueless of slaving practices in middle ages Europe.
Finally, if you seriously claim that church will not pressure you to pay alms to it now, I urge you to start living in a deeply religious region and systemically refuse to pay donations to the church. You'll find yourself ostracised from the local community at extreme speed. "Oh but it's not the church's doing" is not an excuse here - church controls the mindset and just because it now switched to essentially excluding people from communities through peer pressure and backroom talk rather then direct pressure and charging a tithe doesn't make the actual process or requiring money different. It's just that methods became more humane as we progressed and tithe became unsustainable.
So yes, modern church WILL ask for money and there WILL be pressure and expectation for you to hand over the money. Welcome to the church.
We are talking about the roots of organisation that is extremely conservative and anti-progress to the point of murdering scores of people who were trying to advance humanity and much of which still functions like it exists in the middle ages. If you fail to find relevance, you have a severe logic failure on your part.
The only teaching where there is "no room for question" is religion. In it, you either blindly believe no matter what, or you do not.
In science, there is no room for blind belief. At all. If you were ever "taught" that there is by someone, then your teacher has been utterly terrible. The entire basis of science as a mental construct is that the only absolute in science is that there is absolutely no absolutes. This is the main reason why most religious people who like to pass science as "just another belief" miss the point. They simply cannot fathom that there can be a mental construct that aims to explain the existence that doesn't match their expectations of explaining the uncertainties and insecurities in absolute fashion. To them, such a construct would be dysfunctional and not worth believing in.
I will readily agree that teacher are humans just like the rest of us, and often make mistakes in their teachings. The first thing they told us in the first science class in eighth grade (I live in Finland) was that everything we will be taught should be questioned, and that there are no absolutes. That was the first thing we were taught before any of the actual scientific theories were taught.
And one can make a (false) assumption that science is factual because it's based on facts. Science is fact-BASED, which is different. But laymen rarely understand the difference any more that they understand the difference between theory and hypothesis.
As for "atheist movement", as far as I know, atheism is about arguing that there is no God. As a result, the term itself becomes an anathema of itself, "a-theist" literally "one who believes that there is no religion". As a result, there is no chance of "atheist movement" arguing for anything religious by nature, such as "science is absolute", because in doing so it would in fact become theist, the exact opposite of atheist. Personally I view myself not so much atheist as agnostic, so it's hard for me to make this call, but I certainly sympathize with people who would actively want to convert people away from religion without using theist terms and remain understood. I suspect that your apparent misunderstandings come as a logical result of this paradox.
There is no such thing as an "absolute scientific fact". Using these words together shows massive lack of understanding of how science works. The best science has is a "proven theory backed by observed facts". In science, NOTHING is absolute. This is the biggest difference between science and religion as mental constructs - religion uses definitions which are proven through circular logic and are considered absolute no matter absurd and against observed facts. In science, everything must be proven through linear logic and even then cannot be ever considered absolute as there is always a chance of fault in observations or logic. Best science can ever do is "high degree of certainty".
Slashdot Mirror
Capitalism is a system where capital is one holding economic power. In historic examples, this most often leads to forming private militias to defend capital's interests efficiently.
It doesn't "mean" but "typically leads to". Kinda like 2+2=x doesn't mean that x is four - it can be 10 in trinary system. But in real world, it's usually not used, so in most cases it's four. Just like unchecked capitalism usually leads to formation/renting of private militias at certain point of development to protect the interest of such capital.
Essentially all countries in Latin America save a couple function in this very matter. Same goes for most African countries struggling through post colonial period. It doesn't require much effort to find this out.
Of course, you just claimed that South America and Africa together hold over hundred countries (they have 66 total as of writing this). With that kind of knowledge of basic geography, I suppose one has to account for extreme cluelessness in other areas as well.
Finally, very rich not only have, but actively excercise power to set weapons on people. Not in US on any meaningful scale (yet?), they have a few assassinations here and there but in general system still works there to prevent the worst abuses of the money. Rest of the world isn't nearly so lucky, in aforementioned Latin America (examples: Brazil, Argentina) rich have their own militas and if they want you dead, you'll be hunted and killed by one of many very well equipped private militias unless you have one of your own to defend you. That's the reality of life there, because in there, capitalism is far more powerful then in US.
And even in US, you can still have a person "vanish" by professionals if you have the money. To believe otherwise shows a significant lack of understanding of reality. This isn't relevant to just US but all Western countries. Recently I remember reading the paper how in Sweden, a young girl committed suicide after being systemically raped by a son of a local "shaker", who came the rich family that owned biggest businesses in town. Local police hush hushed the case until investigative reporter blew a whistle on the case putting it into national spotlight. And that's just one case that only came to light because stars aligned and enough information accidentally landed on reporter's desk and that reported chose to pursue the case instead of going for the low hanging fruit. In the end, what came to light was pretty horrifying for the nation, essentially everyone in their fairly small town knew she was being raped by the guy on daily basis and no one cared because rapist's family was simply too rich and important. Not only that, most people actually put the blame squarely on the girl and treated her like shit which was in part the cause of suicide.
I was actually thinking of current situation in Latin America and Africa, as these have some of the most capitalist countries in the world. The system I was talking about would actually not work with a powerful central government, as in such countries, power is money.
On the other hand in a capitalist system, money is power. These are complete opposites.
Fascism can be considered as the end game of unchecked capitalism, after corporations have gained enough power to buy government level of powers outright due to nature of capitalism focusing resources in the hands of the few.
It's never the fault of the free market. It's the fault of people, and nature of things. Free market works very well if we only had projects that adjusted themselves immediately based on supply and demand, and supply was always there instantly when demand appeared. As reality doesn't quite live up to free market's expectations, it tends to have a whole lot of failure points. So you can either blame free market or you can blame reality.
In hindsight, it's the same argument as one backing communism. Real one mind you, not crappy one tried in USSR. Kinda like real free market, not one we have in reality.
One MEGA corporation displaces hundreds medium- and large sized ones.
No, you'll just do what people in capitalist countries that already have this problem do. Rich will move to live in walled and guarded enclaves with all those things available, and everyone else kills each other for right to work in those few jobs available to serve the rich. Those who fail either die or learn to live off scraps.
You mean like there was room for "mom and pop's last name" shop a couple of dozens of years ago. Gee, surely the trend will automagically reverse itself in spite of news in the OP talking about the exact opposite continuing to happen?
When your failing economic thesis is your main religion, you won't stop until complete collapse. Partial ones, like the recent banking crisis will just be taken out of the hides of little people and the system will continue to grind on.
USSR is already down. USA seems hell bent to follow.
First of all, he's talking about the trend and direction we're going into, not current scenario which is what you're talking about.
Second, if you claim that retail store clerks are a "high paying job", you're either stupid or ignorant of reality on a scale that would suggest need for psychiatric intervention. These are among the lowest paid jobs with lowest job security of all jobs out there. Grandparent's point is that these jobs are fairly important for local community because they allow for people who can't get other jobs not to start robbing and shooting reasonably well off people like you to earn a living.
Finally, grocery stores are at MASSIVE disadvantage. We already see the situation in electronics, where people go to a local shop, check out what they need and then... order from amazon. This will happen to groceries eventually as well. And that will kill your choice of products, your ability to choose where to spend your money and eventually your ability to actually visit a local store. This is a trend end result of which is very visible in several industries already, such as banking. Almost no way to get a human service, and now that banks got rid of most tellers, they will charge you for actually getting service in the bank.
That is the future of large corporations taking over small ones at retail. It probably won't happen until a generation change, but it's coming. And it's ignorant self-harming cheerleaders like you that will cheer it until the reality is here, at which point you will finally realise that you got a short end of a stick.
Story is just one aspect of the game. Many games you list had severe gameplay and other gaming-related problems which detract from enjoyment quite strongly even if the story was good. If you consider good story to the be the only worthwhile aspect of the game, you should consider shifting medium from games to books. They can do storytelling much better then games ever will.
LoL had reconnect for ages.
By your measuring stick, all games are failures. ALL of them. Including real life ones.
I present that LoL is fine and your measuring stick is utterly absurd.
Deus EX: HR was a massively stripped down version of original DE with a story that you forgot ten minutes after clearing the game. But it had sunglasses implants, so I guess all the cool kids have to rave about that one. Peer pressure and all. Original was awesome, it was a true "in spirit" sequel to system shock with interesting setting and story to boot.
Prototype was a boring on levelling, but had a story you remembered a few weeks after finishing it, and was actually fun to roam around. Not to mention the utterly awesome combat. It's not often that you get to dive off skyscrapers into the ground with such force that asphalt ripples and cars get thrown around.
Original FEAR's setting was so fucking awesome, I still remember actually having problems sleeping after playing it for the first time. It was that fucking scary. The only game to ever get me that shaken was original AvP, and I was a whole lot younger when playing that one.
Just because you're a hater and rage on single player doesn't mean it's actually bad. And I love multiplayer games and play LoL and usually at least one MMO on regular basis, but single player definitely has its place in gaming.
I see that giving trolls a benefit of a doubt is as pointless on slashdot as it is everywhere else. Oh well.
I found "two of the same sized" to be the best setup for LoL so far personally. One open with the game, other shows interfaces for all support software like voice communication for easy access and general accessibility. Game plays in windowed fullscreen allowing for fast switching while still allowing to use mouse to scroll camera.
The specific local mechanisms are likely related to jet stream changes, which introduce dramatic changes to certain areas. This is a known problem. It's just very hard to present concrete proof for reasons because we don't understand the extremely complex mechanisms well enough.
On the other hand your claims that something we are observing now in arctic and other places doesn't in fact exist because it doesn't match your world view stinks of religious fanaticism.
Multi monitor LoL isn't possible because multi-monitor LoL would be cheating. MOBA games must limit the total viewable zone for all players to exactly the same size, and for that reason, they also have a very limited maximum zoom-out.
Because getting a bigger tactical overview would give player an immense advantage in LoL. So if you ever did manage to get LoL to play on multiple monitors with wider view, you'd be banned in a very short order for obvious cheating.
You weirded me out enough to make me dig out my old lyceum (local equivalent of high school) physics textbooks. In text book that was attached to course 1, the only mandatory course of physics for all students, they don't only tell that everything in physics is theoretical, they go into great depths to explain what that means and why. The entire first chapter basically goes through physics being a "empirical science based on observations of surrounding world, that aims to define laws that reflect the world around us as accurately as possible". It goes as far as to mention that "current laws physics are our approximations that are approaching being able to define many parts of surrounding world almost exactly like they probably are".
I also faintly recall our teacher talking about physics being "exact but not absolute, and the main purpose of this course is to teach you how to think critically about everything I will teach" on the first lecture. I strongly suspect that what you're describing is a problem of US school system and its deeply ingrained culture of religion rather then the general teaching and understanding of physics.
Indeed. UN is instead the avenue where people can negotiate treaties under a common framework. When you're negotiating with people from hundreds of different cultures all at once, without an organisation like UN it would be impossible. No one would agree on even how to negotiate, much less be able to produce any results.
This is why UN looks "inefficient" in the eyes of a layman who never really tried negotiating with several parties all from different cultures at once.
Any decent history book. Pick one up. Debts to church were a priority during middle ages due to church's favoured position within all but a few European nations. Slavery was common back then as well, and selling debtor to slavery when he couldn't pay the debt in any other way was common back then, for everything from debts to usurer to debts to a church. You seem to be looking at the things from US point of view with your utterly irrelevant US reference, and you appear utterly clueless of slaving practices in middle ages Europe.
Finally, if you seriously claim that church will not pressure you to pay alms to it now, I urge you to start living in a deeply religious region and systemically refuse to pay donations to the church. You'll find yourself ostracised from the local community at extreme speed. "Oh but it's not the church's doing" is not an excuse here - church controls the mindset and just because it now switched to essentially excluding people from communities through peer pressure and backroom talk rather then direct pressure and charging a tithe doesn't make the actual process or requiring money different. It's just that methods became more humane as we progressed and tithe became unsustainable.
So yes, modern church WILL ask for money and there WILL be pressure and expectation for you to hand over the money. Welcome to the church.
We are talking about the roots of organisation that is extremely conservative and anti-progress to the point of murdering scores of people who were trying to advance humanity and much of which still functions like it exists in the middle ages. If you fail to find relevance, you have a severe logic failure on your part.
The only teaching where there is "no room for question" is religion. In it, you either blindly believe no matter what, or you do not.
In science, there is no room for blind belief. At all. If you were ever "taught" that there is by someone, then your teacher has been utterly terrible. The entire basis of science as a mental construct is that the only absolute in science is that there is absolutely no absolutes. This is the main reason why most religious people who like to pass science as "just another belief" miss the point. They simply cannot fathom that there can be a mental construct that aims to explain the existence that doesn't match their expectations of explaining the uncertainties and insecurities in absolute fashion. To them, such a construct would be dysfunctional and not worth believing in.
I will readily agree that teacher are humans just like the rest of us, and often make mistakes in their teachings. The first thing they told us in the first science class in eighth grade (I live in Finland) was that everything we will be taught should be questioned, and that there are no absolutes. That was the first thing we were taught before any of the actual scientific theories were taught.
And one can make a (false) assumption that science is factual because it's based on facts. Science is fact-BASED, which is different. But laymen rarely understand the difference any more that they understand the difference between theory and hypothesis.
As for "atheist movement", as far as I know, atheism is about arguing that there is no God. As a result, the term itself becomes an anathema of itself, "a-theist" literally "one who believes that there is no religion". As a result, there is no chance of "atheist movement" arguing for anything religious by nature, such as "science is absolute", because in doing so it would in fact become theist, the exact opposite of atheist. Personally I view myself not so much atheist as agnostic, so it's hard for me to make this call, but I certainly sympathize with people who would actively want to convert people away from religion without using theist terms and remain understood. I suspect that your apparent misunderstandings come as a logical result of this paradox.
What was the main avenue of talks between these two nations during this stalemate?
There is no such thing as an "absolute scientific fact". Using these words together shows massive lack of understanding of how science works. The best science has is a "proven theory backed by observed facts". In science, NOTHING is absolute. This is the biggest difference between science and religion as mental constructs - religion uses definitions which are proven through circular logic and are considered absolute no matter absurd and against observed facts. In science, everything must be proven through linear logic and even then cannot be ever considered absolute as there is always a chance of fault in observations or logic. Best science can ever do is "high degree of certainty".