Not mentioning a "single" anywhere in my post. Merely pointing out that presence of large amount of small ground-level low pay informants, as referenced in the OP is important, and this is one of the examples.
Not really sure why you grabbed at "single". The little guy, the snitch, alone isn't enough due to reliability concerns in most cases. But when you have a little guy everywhere, or almost everywhere (25% of all hackers pretty much counts for everywhere), you're largely in the know on anything worthwhile that's happening.
Worth noting that "democratic" means that it's lead by leaders supported by majority - the more democratic the country, the larger genuine popular support for its leaders the country has. Russia in several aspects including support for president is more democratic then USA - it has more parties and choices, yet their current president is supported by a significantly larger amount of population then any of the US presidents elected in this millenium.
At the same time however it's far more corrupt, which is the problem you, and several others in the thread are referencing. Stop imagining that democracy is some sort of pure goodness that fixes everything. It's not, it's just a political system in which (often a small) majority tramples minorities. What makes USA even less democratic is two party system (less to choose from).
If you want to see a pure form of representative democracy and what it does, I invite you to look at Nigeria. Christian slight majority, and muslim slight minority, vote is essentially a headcount, and when head count shows that former is bigger then latter, the latter starts to even the score by butchering the former.
This is the old one, I've seen it and it doesn't conflict with my original statement. Let me help you translate intelligence speak into english:
August 2010: American intelligence locates the brothers’ residence.
Translation: Informant sold out the residence's location. Informant not very reliable, but reliable enough to start collecting additional informant statements on site.
September 2010: The Central Intelligence Agency begins to work with President Obama on assessments that lead them to believe that Bin Laden may be located at the compound.
Translation: We assessed that information from the snitch(es) was reliable enough to assume that he may actually be there, and they weren't just taking the money and lying their asses off as they usually do on information about him. There is probably at least two dosen of such sites at any given time or more. President is usually informed as a one-line statement in the large security briefing.
Mid-February 2011: United States government authorities determine that there was a sound intelligence basis to pursue this direction aggressively and develop courses of action.
Translation: After a long round of questioning snitches and flying spy drones and satellites over the site, we have multiple informant statements that match, statistically significant chance of target actually being on site (depending on case and finances, from a few percent to several tens of percent). Deploy our own trustworthy men to check the intel.
March 14: Mr. Obama begins a series of National Security Council meetings to develop options for capturing or killing Bin Laden.
Our men checked out the information, and confirmed snitches' statements. We have a good chance that intel is good and we can work off it.
In the end, it's still the snitch that's the hero. Everyone else is just working off his back.
Oh? I've been following reports pretty closely, and I remember seeing no such information. Early on it was military dick polishing, and later on it was general bullshit about intelligence working. No actual details, other then standard obfuscation to protect sources was ever released as far as I remember seeing.
Do you have a link to a source of any such information? I would be very interested in seeing it.
The thing that makes me actually partially believe them is the remarkable efficiency of department of homeland security's incredible ability to recruit "neighbourhood spies". The numbers may be inflated, but make no mistake - authorities have noted just how efficient it is to essentially make a lot of small people into informants on minimal pay. Stalin would have had a major hard-on if he saw what they did in the States, he tried really hard to make the system in USSR to be similar, but it failed because of lack of ability to process large amounts of data at rapid pace.
We have that thanks to computerization and networking, and USA authorities can proudly state that they already have more spies then USSR spying on their own people. I really don't see why lessons from that can't flow into even more valuable hacker world, where informants are so important. Hell, case Manning makes for a great example - the #1 enemy of intelligence machine wasn't caught because of awesome hardware, awesome software or great investigation work. He was caught because someone Manning viewed as a friend and a "comrade in arms" so to speak was actually a snitch who fingered him.
And it's the importance of having snitches like that anywhere you can have them, and making sure that even if you don't have a snitch in a particular organisation, they THINK you do is the proven, effective control maintenance strategy for authorities. So yes, we can doubt the exact number, but the argument that a very large portion of US hackers are snitches is beyond reasonable doubt.
And if you ever doubt that snitches are the most important part of intelligence, look at case Bin Laden. Hunted with best equipment and millions of men for years, no luck. And in the end, the one who killed him wasn't a bunch of SEALs, or an advanced helicopter. It was some pakistani guy who was a snitch and fingered him. And funnily enough, to show just how well our media is penetrated by intelligence, in between massive dick waving about SEALs, helicopters and other thing that really didn't matter in the end, we didn't hear a word about the one thing that really did matter - THE SNITCH.
The point is that it sells games. ME1 sales had a pretty nice spike right before ME2 was released, probably because of save import feature. There really was very little in term of other reasons for it, and it was very visible (and advertised).
Almost got to learn it with hundreds of megaton class nukes in Cuba. Thank whatever deity there is for Kennedy and Khrushchev for having a shred of common sense.
They will most likely fall apart as other police officers will literally kick such police officers out of the force with a big notice on their personal record. We have a very good example of how NOT to do policing in USA. Most people forget that in many countries police are people who follow a calling to actually police - not bully, and as a result, the small amount of bullies that does get into the force gets ejected out of it very quickly.
Question: if nuke dropping on "military town" (in WW2, essentially every large town was one) was justified, why do we bother with not nuking the shit out of:
1. Afghanistan - essentially 50% military country - male children under age of 10 generally know how to take apart, put together and shoot AK47/74. Only women are not military, and even then to an extent. 2. Iran's military bases and nuclear installations.
Countless other examples.
Perhaps because now we view the (now much smaller but) inevitable civilian casualties in a very different light?
You're presenting my arguments for me: USA specifically signed membership treaty while telling ICC that it will not ratify it until USA citizens get immunity. I wonder why would USA want immunity...
Didn't see folks who ordered nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or carpet bombing Drezden's housing areas on trial either. Winners are exempt from war crime trials.
There is a reason why fuel tank is universally located in a protected area behind and on the side of the car. They're talking about installing capacitors in DOORS.
Gas tanks in doors would likely get your car banned off the road in a very short order.
Problem is far more complex then your gross oversimplification. A good example is that one of the main requirements of getting proper schooling is environment. As public schools lose more and more of good, calm, studious students to private schools, the problem of concentration of lack of talent intensifies. This in turn feeds the "white flight" element even further by pressing more good students out.
End result is bad for both - on one hand poor get worse schooling. On the other hand, rich become so disconnected from reality, you end up with tiered society and all its problems.
If you want to see the most historically infamous case on where tiered society leads, look up French Revolution. That said, historic examples of this stretch from India mentioned here, to more modern examples such as Arab Spring phenomenon. And to get there, you usually have a gross collapse of socioeconomic environment, including but not limited to massively raised crime rates, gradual economic decline, social and political instability, and shrinking middle class, majority of which drop down to the poor tier of society with small minority joining the rich.
Rich win in short term, which is why it appears to be a natural state of human society to slowly edge towards tiered society in known history, which ends reset when it's not longer supportable and social imbalance causes a revolution and re-distribution of wealth.
Technically many people who work in government or organisations performing certain roles are exempt certain parts of the law. This is essentially a requirement for proper functioning.
For example, I used to work as a campus network admin in my local university. Under the privacy legislation, about half of what I had to do for maintenance would have been illegal for an average person to do. However, as an admin, I was exempt from these parts of the law, enabling me to perform necessary maintenance.
Police are allowed similar exemptions, but to a greater degree as they need certain freedoms to enforce the law. I'm not certain how this works in states (judging by comments in this thread, badly), but around here police even have a right to search your house without a warrant on reasonable suspicion of a crime that has a sentence of over 6 months in prison. This is mainly used for drug searches (guy gets caught with drugs, police raid his apartment pretty much immediately).
The reason this is allowed is because in most civilized countries there is an balance between police powers, police ethics, and finally a bond of trust between the police and general population. Around here police officers are generally considered ethical, respected by the general public, and in turn police officers generally respect the public and do not abuse their powers. This is clearly not the case in USA, which is probably the biggest source of the problems.
It's worth noting that if you want to be social, you can. There are many guilds and communities that are aimed toward people who just want someone with similar interests.
The problem lies in people who want to best of both worlds with cons of none. They want to keep the easygoing "I answer to no one" attitude typical in social gaming, but still get into good groups. And reality is, you can't get both - you have to pick one.
This aspect of the game probably feeds more drama in WoW then anything else, including various loot and balance issues.
And again, I quit WoW around the time the current "slump" hit, mainly because of my guild finally losing too many key people to real life issues. So I count in those 600k lost subs. During my ~4 year play time I knew many people like me, and many people who did what I did - got burned out and stopped playing when content of current patch got stale. It's just the way it is with WoW, and has been for years.
What you dismiss completely in your convoluted attempt to take a piss on WoW is the fact that most people come when you content comes, play through it and leave until next major content update comes. Not to even mention that most people who play WoW are adults rather then kids. Hell, most guilds have a strictly enforced age limit nowadays usually around 16-18 years old at least, often 20+. No one wants a kid who can't control the time he has to stop playing.
And finally, the last two measures taken were from when WoW was at a peak of last content update in 3.3.x and then in a slump when 4.0.x was essentially done to death and everyone was waiting for next one. In this regard, seasonal fluctuation is the perfect descriptor. As with your "new mmo" prediction, you missed completely here as well. The fact that you attribute age and use teenagers as example, as well as claiming that facebook and twitter are challenging blizzard shows your complete and utter lack of even basic familiarity with services that blizzard offers for WoW players, such as facebook integration in free realid service.
And finally, where do you get buffer latency times of tens of milliseconds? Buffers, especially display buffers are designed to be on the low end of latency, so unless you're buying a 10-year old LCD, you're can cut zeros off that number.
This latency remains unchanged, and adds on top of live's latency.
Finally, as mentioned before, human mind compensates for this, because the thing mind is wired to take into account is not only the eye's information, but also the logical construct on how the world changes in relation to your action. That is only limited by latency of keyboard/mouse press in relation to game reacting and is measured in less then a millisecond. The reaction seen on your monitor can be slightly late, but it's not late enough for mind not to be able to compensate as long as the proper reaction is timely.
Not so on onlive, where game is constantly about 50-100ms late which is what gives it the image of "walking while submerged in water".
Even "crappy" panels had a response time within realm of 10ms. Good TN panels are 1-2ms nowadays.
And it's often not so much about image getting there as the game actually reacting to your action. On the screen, you see the result of reaction, not reaction itself.
1. Raid ready guilds are mostly shit. They're the slap-together pugs that don't know each other, and have been up for barely a few weeks/months at best. I could get a spot without trial in really shitty gear (and in fact got invites to several when I was playing on completely shitty geared alts who weren't in main guild - because a person who knows how to play in shitty gear can not only carry his weight almost as well as well geared shitty player, but can also actually help with more advanced things in the game like raid tactics or leading).
If you want to enjoy real WoW, one that draws and keeps people in millions, you're looking for a serious, ESTABLISHED guild that has a functional core. These will present requirements quite different then "just be able to raid and have gear" guilds, including but not limited to your application, your personality and how well you'll mesh with others. Basic gameplay skill is assumed.
2. Skill and activity matters because, once again, it's about RESPECTING OTHER PEOPLE. Something that you clearly, time and time again, show an alarming lack of. When someone puts their time into taking you for a trial, putting you through it, evaluating it, risking a new guy in established community and eventually accept him, that someone has a RIGHT to demand things like activity or playing skill, or certain kind of personality, simply because if the player is not active or can play - what's the point of him being in the guild.
Sure, you can try for a social spot in a guild if you want, there are some very good ones out there that offer new players such a spot, especially after guild perks came out. But chances are, you will want to do some serious stuff with them eventually, generally getting pissed off at "well, I'm in the guild, why won't you take me along for...". And that causes pointless drama not to mention raid/group fails and disbands. Hence, established guilds avoid selfish people like you like plague - you end up not only getting yourself kicked out but hurting the guild in the process.
Essentially your story tells me that you're yet another person who has never been in an established guild, do not have a faintest clue how one works or how you would go about actually being in one, much less getting into one. So you assume that stuff that matters for pugs, pubs and low end "raid ready" guilds is what matters to those who are well established group of friends, who may want to get more people to get raids going, or more backups, or just more people to talk crap with on OG roof.
And yes, just like in real life, organised activity requires work on your part. You should try participating in an amateur sports team that plays on a decent level - being in a good WoW guild is VERY similar experience. If you just want fun and games with no obligations, no one will want you. Because WoW is a team game, and no one wants a teammate they know they can't rely on.
The list is quite strange imho. What's wrong with firefox 3.5? I'm on 3.6 myself, and have no intention to upgrade until mozilla gets it's "must remove all comforts of a PC in favor of making browser look like it's on a tablet" crap. Which is probably not coming in a couple of years.
And the level you're talking about, the pub level is indeed horrible. Because everyone is like you, after their own fun, wanting someone else to hold their hand. And not caring about others. And so you get that cesspool.
The reason WoW has a huge following of people that keep their subs up for years is because there's a lot of people who take other people in WoW, and by extension WoW itself much more seriously. And it is that community that thrives, not the pub one.
And like in real life, such communities can only thrive by gating access, and making as sure as possible that people with "well, I don't really care, it's just a..."-attitude don't make it in, and if they do they get kicked out asap and other similar communities informed about that particular person (blacklisted). WoW's social structure is very much like that of real life rather then your average game - and that is what you, and people like you fail to understand.
And so, you're condemned to be stuck in pub level forever, wondering why on earth WoW has over ten million subs when it doesn't seem any different from other MMO's. And until you shape up, spend hours, or even days knocking on doors and asking if you could be let in, make a proper CV of your character, and make a general effort to know people, you will continue failing. In this regard, it's similar to looking for a job in real life, only significantly easier.
The couple of hours to figure out basics and some of the more advanced things behind your class are nothing. The real time investment for a newbie that wants to see the real WoW is the DAYS and WEEKS you'll spend trying to get a trial in a decent guild. And if it works out, you may spend YEARS eating the fruit of your efforts.
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They had a whole lot less total population to work with however. This made managing the entire thing easier.
Not mentioning a "single" anywhere in my post. Merely pointing out that presence of large amount of small ground-level low pay informants, as referenced in the OP is important, and this is one of the examples.
Not really sure why you grabbed at "single". The little guy, the snitch, alone isn't enough due to reliability concerns in most cases. But when you have a little guy everywhere, or almost everywhere (25% of all hackers pretty much counts for everywhere), you're largely in the know on anything worthwhile that's happening.
Worth noting that "democratic" means that it's lead by leaders supported by majority - the more democratic the country, the larger genuine popular support for its leaders the country has. Russia in several aspects including support for president is more democratic then USA - it has more parties and choices, yet their current president is supported by a significantly larger amount of population then any of the US presidents elected in this millenium.
At the same time however it's far more corrupt, which is the problem you, and several others in the thread are referencing. Stop imagining that democracy is some sort of pure goodness that fixes everything. It's not, it's just a political system in which (often a small) majority tramples minorities. What makes USA even less democratic is two party system (less to choose from).
If you want to see a pure form of representative democracy and what it does, I invite you to look at Nigeria. Christian slight majority, and muslim slight minority, vote is essentially a headcount, and when head count shows that former is bigger then latter, the latter starts to even the score by butchering the former.
This is the old one, I've seen it and it doesn't conflict with my original statement. Let me help you translate intelligence speak into english:
August 2010: American intelligence locates the brothers’ residence.
Translation: Informant sold out the residence's location. Informant not very reliable, but reliable enough to start collecting additional informant statements on site.
September 2010: The Central Intelligence Agency begins to work with President Obama on assessments that lead them to believe that Bin Laden may be located at the compound.
Translation: We assessed that information from the snitch(es) was reliable enough to assume that he may actually be there, and they weren't just taking the money and lying their asses off as they usually do on information about him.
There is probably at least two dosen of such sites at any given time or more. President is usually informed as a one-line statement in the large security briefing.
Mid-February 2011: United States government authorities determine that there was a sound intelligence basis to pursue this direction aggressively and develop courses of action.
Translation: After a long round of questioning snitches and flying spy drones and satellites over the site, we have multiple informant statements that match, statistically significant chance of target actually being on site (depending on case and finances, from a few percent to several tens of percent). Deploy our own trustworthy men to check the intel.
March 14: Mr. Obama begins a series of National Security Council meetings to develop options for capturing or killing Bin Laden.
Our men checked out the information, and confirmed snitches' statements. We have a good chance that intel is good and we can work off it.
In the end, it's still the snitch that's the hero. Everyone else is just working off his back.
Oh? I've been following reports pretty closely, and I remember seeing no such information. Early on it was military dick polishing, and later on it was general bullshit about intelligence working. No actual details, other then standard obfuscation to protect sources was ever released as far as I remember seeing.
Do you have a link to a source of any such information? I would be very interested in seeing it.
The thing that makes me actually partially believe them is the remarkable efficiency of department of homeland security's incredible ability to recruit "neighbourhood spies".
The numbers may be inflated, but make no mistake - authorities have noted just how efficient it is to essentially make a lot of small people into informants on minimal pay. Stalin would have had a major hard-on if he saw what they did in the States, he tried really hard to make the system in USSR to be similar, but it failed because of lack of ability to process large amounts of data at rapid pace.
We have that thanks to computerization and networking, and USA authorities can proudly state that they already have more spies then USSR spying on their own people. I really don't see why lessons from that can't flow into even more valuable hacker world, where informants are so important. Hell, case Manning makes for a great example - the #1 enemy of intelligence machine wasn't caught because of awesome hardware, awesome software or great investigation work. He was caught because someone Manning viewed as a friend and a "comrade in arms" so to speak was actually a snitch who fingered him.
And it's the importance of having snitches like that anywhere you can have them, and making sure that even if you don't have a snitch in a particular organisation, they THINK you do is the proven, effective control maintenance strategy for authorities. So yes, we can doubt the exact number, but the argument that a very large portion of US hackers are snitches is beyond reasonable doubt.
And if you ever doubt that snitches are the most important part of intelligence, look at case Bin Laden. Hunted with best equipment and millions of men for years, no luck. And in the end, the one who killed him wasn't a bunch of SEALs, or an advanced helicopter. It was some pakistani guy who was a snitch and fingered him. And funnily enough, to show just how well our media is penetrated by intelligence, in between massive dick waving about SEALs, helicopters and other thing that really didn't matter in the end, we didn't hear a word about the one thing that really did matter - THE SNITCH.
The point is that it sells games. ME1 sales had a pretty nice spike right before ME2 was released, probably because of save import feature. There really was very little in term of other reasons for it, and it was very visible (and advertised).
Almost got to learn it with hundreds of megaton class nukes in Cuba. Thank whatever deity there is for Kennedy and Khrushchev for having a shred of common sense.
They will most likely fall apart as other police officers will literally kick such police officers out of the force with a big notice on their personal record. We have a very good example of how NOT to do policing in USA. Most people forget that in many countries police are people who follow a calling to actually police - not bully, and as a result, the small amount of bullies that does get into the force gets ejected out of it very quickly.
Question: if nuke dropping on "military town" (in WW2, essentially every large town was one) was justified, why do we bother with not nuking the shit out of:
1. Afghanistan - essentially 50% military country - male children under age of 10 generally know how to take apart, put together and shoot AK47/74. Only women are not military, and even then to an extent.
2. Iran's military bases and nuclear installations.
Countless other examples.
Perhaps because now we view the (now much smaller but) inevitable civilian casualties in a very different light?
You're presenting my arguments for me: USA specifically signed membership treaty while telling ICC that it will not ratify it until USA citizens get immunity. I wonder why would USA want immunity...
Yeah.
This is probably the first time ever on slashdot that simple "DIAF" is an appropriate response and not trolling.
Didn't see folks who ordered nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or carpet bombing Drezden's housing areas on trial either. Winners are exempt from war crime trials.
There is a reason why fuel tank is universally located in a protected area behind and on the side of the car. They're talking about installing capacitors in DOORS.
Gas tanks in doors would likely get your car banned off the road in a very short order.
Problem is far more complex then your gross oversimplification. A good example is that one of the main requirements of getting proper schooling is environment. As public schools lose more and more of good, calm, studious students to private schools, the problem of concentration of lack of talent intensifies. This in turn feeds the "white flight" element even further by pressing more good students out.
End result is bad for both - on one hand poor get worse schooling. On the other hand, rich become so disconnected from reality, you end up with tiered society and all its problems.
If you want to see the most historically infamous case on where tiered society leads, look up French Revolution. That said, historic examples of this stretch from India mentioned here, to more modern examples such as Arab Spring phenomenon. And to get there, you usually have a gross collapse of socioeconomic environment, including but not limited to massively raised crime rates, gradual economic decline, social and political instability, and shrinking middle class, majority of which drop down to the poor tier of society with small minority joining the rich.
Rich win in short term, which is why it appears to be a natural state of human society to slowly edge towards tiered society in known history, which ends reset when it's not longer supportable and social imbalance causes a revolution and re-distribution of wealth.
Technically many people who work in government or organisations performing certain roles are exempt certain parts of the law. This is essentially a requirement for proper functioning.
For example, I used to work as a campus network admin in my local university. Under the privacy legislation, about half of what I had to do for maintenance would have been illegal for an average person to do. However, as an admin, I was exempt from these parts of the law, enabling me to perform necessary maintenance.
Police are allowed similar exemptions, but to a greater degree as they need certain freedoms to enforce the law. I'm not certain how this works in states (judging by comments in this thread, badly), but around here police even have a right to search your house without a warrant on reasonable suspicion of a crime that has a sentence of over 6 months in prison. This is mainly used for drug searches (guy gets caught with drugs, police raid his apartment pretty much immediately).
The reason this is allowed is because in most civilized countries there is an balance between police powers, police ethics, and finally a bond of trust between the police and general population. Around here police officers are generally considered ethical, respected by the general public, and in turn police officers generally respect the public and do not abuse their powers. This is clearly not the case in USA, which is probably the biggest source of the problems.
It's worth noting that if you want to be social, you can. There are many guilds and communities that are aimed toward people who just want someone with similar interests.
The problem lies in people who want to best of both worlds with cons of none. They want to keep the easygoing "I answer to no one" attitude typical in social gaming, but still get into good groups. And reality is, you can't get both - you have to pick one.
This aspect of the game probably feeds more drama in WoW then anything else, including various loot and balance issues.
And again, I quit WoW around the time the current "slump" hit, mainly because of my guild finally losing too many key people to real life issues. So I count in those 600k lost subs. During my ~4 year play time I knew many people like me, and many people who did what I did - got burned out and stopped playing when content of current patch got stale. It's just the way it is with WoW, and has been for years.
What you dismiss completely in your convoluted attempt to take a piss on WoW is the fact that most people come when you content comes, play through it and leave until next major content update comes.
Not to even mention that most people who play WoW are adults rather then kids. Hell, most guilds have a strictly enforced age limit nowadays usually around 16-18 years old at least, often 20+. No one wants a kid who can't control the time he has to stop playing.
And finally, the last two measures taken were from when WoW was at a peak of last content update in 3.3.x and then in a slump when 4.0.x was essentially done to death and everyone was waiting for next one. In this regard, seasonal fluctuation is the perfect descriptor. As with your "new mmo" prediction, you missed completely here as well. The fact that you attribute age and use teenagers as example, as well as claiming that facebook and twitter are challenging blizzard shows your complete and utter lack of even basic familiarity with services that blizzard offers for WoW players, such as facebook integration in free realid service.
And finally, where do you get buffer latency times of tens of milliseconds? Buffers, especially display buffers are designed to be on the low end of latency, so unless you're buying a 10-year old LCD, you're can cut zeros off that number.
This latency remains unchanged, and adds on top of live's latency.
Finally, as mentioned before, human mind compensates for this, because the thing mind is wired to take into account is not only the eye's information, but also the logical construct on how the world changes in relation to your action. That is only limited by latency of keyboard/mouse press in relation to game reacting and is measured in less then a millisecond. The reaction seen on your monitor can be slightly late, but it's not late enough for mind not to be able to compensate as long as the proper reaction is timely.
Not so on onlive, where game is constantly about 50-100ms late which is what gives it the image of "walking while submerged in water".
Even "crappy" panels had a response time within realm of 10ms. Good TN panels are 1-2ms nowadays.
And it's often not so much about image getting there as the game actually reacting to your action. On the screen, you see the result of reaction, not reaction itself.
Small lag, yes. HUGE lag that this causes - no.
Have you ever tried walking when submerged in the water up to the knees? Remote playing is a somewhat similar experience.
1. Raid ready guilds are mostly shit. They're the slap-together pugs that don't know each other, and have been up for barely a few weeks/months at best. I could get a spot without trial in really shitty gear (and in fact got invites to several when I was playing on completely shitty geared alts who weren't in main guild - because a person who knows how to play in shitty gear can not only carry his weight almost as well as well geared shitty player, but can also actually help with more advanced things in the game like raid tactics or leading).
If you want to enjoy real WoW, one that draws and keeps people in millions, you're looking for a serious, ESTABLISHED guild that has a functional core. These will present requirements quite different then "just be able to raid and have gear" guilds, including but not limited to your application, your personality and how well you'll mesh with others. Basic gameplay skill is assumed.
2. Skill and activity matters because, once again, it's about RESPECTING OTHER PEOPLE. Something that you clearly, time and time again, show an alarming lack of. When someone puts their time into taking you for a trial, putting you through it, evaluating it, risking a new guy in established community and eventually accept him, that someone has a RIGHT to demand things like activity or playing skill, or certain kind of personality, simply because if the player is not active or can play - what's the point of him being in the guild.
Sure, you can try for a social spot in a guild if you want, there are some very good ones out there that offer new players such a spot, especially after guild perks came out. But chances are, you will want to do some serious stuff with them eventually, generally getting pissed off at "well, I'm in the guild, why won't you take me along for...". And that causes pointless drama not to mention raid/group fails and disbands. Hence, established guilds avoid selfish people like you like plague - you end up not only getting yourself kicked out but hurting the guild in the process.
Essentially your story tells me that you're yet another person who has never been in an established guild, do not have a faintest clue how one works or how you would go about actually being in one, much less getting into one. So you assume that stuff that matters for pugs, pubs and low end "raid ready" guilds is what matters to those who are well established group of friends, who may want to get more people to get raids going, or more backups, or just more people to talk crap with on OG roof.
And yes, just like in real life, organised activity requires work on your part. You should try participating in an amateur sports team that plays on a decent level - being in a good WoW guild is VERY similar experience. If you just want fun and games with no obligations, no one will want you. Because WoW is a team game, and no one wants a teammate they know they can't rely on.
The list is quite strange imho. What's wrong with firefox 3.5? I'm on 3.6 myself, and have no intention to upgrade until mozilla gets it's "must remove all comforts of a PC in favor of making browser look like it's on a tablet" crap. Which is probably not coming in a couple of years.
And the level you're talking about, the pub level is indeed horrible. Because everyone is like you, after their own fun, wanting someone else to hold their hand. And not caring about others. And so you get that cesspool.
The reason WoW has a huge following of people that keep their subs up for years is because there's a lot of people who take other people in WoW, and by extension WoW itself much more seriously. And it is that community that thrives, not the pub one.
And like in real life, such communities can only thrive by gating access, and making as sure as possible that people with "well, I don't really care, it's just a ..."-attitude don't make it in, and if they do they get kicked out asap and other similar communities informed about that particular person (blacklisted). WoW's social structure is very much like that of real life rather then your average game - and that is what you, and people like you fail to understand.
And so, you're condemned to be stuck in pub level forever, wondering why on earth WoW has over ten million subs when it doesn't seem any different from other MMO's. And until you shape up, spend hours, or even days knocking on doors and asking if you could be let in, make a proper CV of your character, and make a general effort to know people, you will continue failing. In this regard, it's similar to looking for a job in real life, only significantly easier.
The couple of hours to figure out basics and some of the more advanced things behind your class are nothing. The real time investment for a newbie that wants to see the real WoW is the DAYS and WEEKS you'll spend trying to get a trial in a decent guild. And if it works out, you may spend YEARS eating the fruit of your efforts.