Sorry, it' my own fault for not being clear. I don't feel that "continued use" is a very good definition because the frequency and amount of use that might be enough to cause physical addiction varies wildly from person to person and from substance to substance. I used to smoke pot and cigarettes, and I smoked much more pot than cigarettes, but I was only ever addicted to the latter. When I decided to quit, I quit both at once and even though I both enjoyed and used pot more, quitting the cigarettes was harder.
That's why I said "use" and not "continued use". Of course using any substance a single time isn't enough to get anyone addicted, but it's hard to define when it is enough. Still, I don't think only "everyday usage", as you put it, qualifies - for a heavy addiction, yes, but you can drink every other day and be addicted, enough that if you go two straight days without a drink you get moody etc.
"Hmm, I think I'll set fire to this paper tube full of tar and inhale the smoke, even though countless studies have shown it will give me bad breath, impotence and cancer!" Sounds like a real genius, doesn't it?
You disregard your privacy precisely to the extent of the information you share on Facebook. I also have a minimum-disclosure FB account. Pardon me if I wasn't clear.:)
Still, many people share much more with strangers online than they'd share with strangers offline, and among these, several do so because they don't fully understand/care about the risks of what they're doing. So they obviously won't buy this thing, even if they're told exactly what it does.
Which, obviously, is a great way to judge everything - especially age, since every person in the planet is mandated by the UN to sign up to/. on their twelfth birthday or be forever banned from the Internet.
I'm sorry to have disagreed with you. Now that I understand the methodology you employ in making all your fantastic assumptions, the only rational conclusion I can come to is that you must always be absolutely right about everything.
Judging from the amount of profanity and general tone of your post, might I chance that you are not just a Republican, but also a redneck?
The USA doesn't have a 0% unemployment rate either.
Well, we would if worthless Mexicans hadn't invaded our country and bred us into poverty, destroying our economy.
No, you wouldn't. I can't believe you'd be narrow-minded enough to blame the several poor economic decisions of the American government and corporations on illegal immigration.
Which wouldn't be a problem if (a) the employees and managers understood the legislation better (this is a matter of general education that would fix the interpretation issue but is outside the scope of this article and discussion) or (b) the rating merely indicated content to help the buyer decide what to purchase, instead of an age cap determined subjectively by total strangers - which leads me back to my original point, that it's none of the committee's business how old someone is who plays the game, so long as (in the case of younger audiences) the people responsible for raising them are okay with it.
We had some communication issues (largely my fault) but I daresay we share this opinion?
Well, that's not so much of a problem with the general rule as it is with interpreting it. In the example above, I was of legal age, but was perceived as buying the game for a minor by someone who had no legal authority or obligation to make that sort of judgment even if I were.
If the rating were content to describe what potentially objectionable content each game features (cartoon violence, sexual innuendo, &c) it would be fine. But instead they decide what age that content is suitable for, and discriminate the content seemingly as an afterthought, written in small type beneath the large-type "minimum age".
I have nothing against a purely informative system, like the one Syberz described in his reply to my parent post. But in some places (Australia is among the most radical, but also Brazil, where I live) the rating is used as a base for deciding which games are legal to purchase, even for adults. You're right in your assumption that I am younger, however I feel that you would agree with me if you were banned by a store employee from buying a product that you want and are legally entitled to purchase because you happened to be accompanied by your (legal minor) younger brother and store policy is to not sell that product to anyone accompanied by a minor. And why is that the store policy? Because the people who inspect and enforce these rules are too stupid to understand that yes, I play games in my free time too, and no, that doesn't make me a criminal just because I live in the same house as a minor.
But it's easy to just remove all the commented lines. A properly commented file will cater to both tastes, since it doesn't impede you from looking at a clean version if you want to.
Question: Is there a friendly, readily available GUI application for browsing and reading man pages? Remember, newbies are afraid of the terminal. telling them to type "man packagename" will already scare some of them off.
Perhaps in your case a rolling release like Arch Linux (or -gasp- Gentoo) would be more suitable, then. I've yet to find a package manager that I like more than dpkg/apt, but portage is actually very nice once you get used to it.
This is actually a great idea. A simplified package manager frontend that displays only metapackages for the most commonly used bundles would greatly help new users. Why does gamer Joe need to know the difference between "wesnoth-client" and "wesnoth-data"? If he just wants to play a TBS game, just "wesnoth" should do.
Even before that, there was the newbie-friendly "Add and Remove Applications" option. The Ubuntu Software Center is really just a way to expand that front-end so that it can be as useful as Synaptic without losing the apparent simplicity.
The computer-illiterate masses won't care about, or even know, that distinction. And the iPhone is popular among Windows users too. They'll just associate the idea of a centralised collection of software that they can use, and be more familiar with it.
But still not lenient enough. Just because someone else does it worse it doesn't make you not bad. Picture a rapist and a rapist/baby-killer. The second one is much worse, but the first still fucks people without their consent, which, incidentally, is an appropriate metaphor for any government.
is to be done with this ridiculous system of rating and censoring everything. For fuck's sake, forcing every parent to agree with a committee on what is appropriate for their children is ridiculous.
I'd sooner ban idiots who tell my kids they'll go to an eternal afterlife of torment unless they have the same imaginary friend as the leader Third Twice-Reformed Baptist Church of the Three-Sided Square Circle than a game about a blue hedgehog who likes to jog.
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Sorry, it' my own fault for not being clear. I don't feel that "continued use" is a very good definition because the frequency and amount of use that might be enough to cause physical addiction varies wildly from person to person and from substance to substance. I used to smoke pot and cigarettes, and I smoked much more pot than cigarettes, but I was only ever addicted to the latter. When I decided to quit, I quit both at once and even though I both enjoyed and used pot more, quitting the cigarettes was harder.
That's why I said "use" and not "continued use". Of course using any substance a single time isn't enough to get anyone addicted, but it's hard to define when it is enough. Still, I don't think only "everyday usage", as you put it, qualifies - for a heavy addiction, yes, but you can drink every other day and be addicted, enough that if you go two straight days without a drink you get moody etc.
You didn't. The causal relations are between use and addiction and between enjoyment and continued use.
You would think that this particular causal relationship would be common sense... and of course you'd be wrong.
By the way, congratulations on becoming and staying clean.
"Hmm, I think I'll set fire to this paper tube full of tar and inhale the smoke, even though countless studies have shown it will give me bad breath, impotence and cancer!" Sounds like a real genius, doesn't it?
The bartender says "We don't serve superconductors in this bar." The world's smallest superconductor leaves without putting up any resistance.
A tingle? Steve Jobs just had to go get a change of pants.
You disregard your privacy precisely to the extent of the information you share on Facebook. I also have a minimum-disclosure FB account. Pardon me if I wasn't clear. :)
Still, many people share much more with strangers online than they'd share with strangers offline, and among these, several do so because they don't fully understand/care about the risks of what they're doing. So they obviously won't buy this thing, even if they're told exactly what it does.
More than that, they don't care about their online privacy either.
Judging by your uid
Which, obviously, is a great way to judge everything - especially age, since every person in the planet is mandated by the UN to sign up to /. on their twelfth birthday or be forever banned from the Internet.
I'm sorry to have disagreed with you. Now that I understand the methodology you employ in making all your fantastic assumptions, the only rational conclusion I can come to is that you must always be absolutely right about everything.
Judging from the amount of profanity and general tone of your post, might I chance that you are not just a Republican, but also a redneck?
The USA doesn't have a 0% unemployment rate either.
Well, we would if worthless Mexicans hadn't invaded our country and bred us into poverty, destroying our economy.
No, you wouldn't. I can't believe you'd be narrow-minded enough to blame the several poor economic decisions of the American government and corporations on illegal immigration.
Might I chance that you're a Republican?
I would pay to see this.
Which wouldn't be a problem if (a) the employees and managers understood the legislation better (this is a matter of general education that would fix the interpretation issue but is outside the scope of this article and discussion) or (b) the rating merely indicated content to help the buyer decide what to purchase, instead of an age cap determined subjectively by total strangers - which leads me back to my original point, that it's none of the committee's business how old someone is who plays the game, so long as (in the case of younger audiences) the people responsible for raising them are okay with it.
We had some communication issues (largely my fault) but I daresay we share this opinion?
Great. I agree with you. But nowhere is that all made clear when you simply talk about "worthless immigrants".
Well, that's not so much of a problem with the general rule as it is with interpreting it. In the example above, I was of legal age, but was perceived as buying the game for a minor by someone who had no legal authority or obligation to make that sort of judgment even if I were.
I wasn't being serious... but since you replied, do you know if this test also works on skin melanin? Swabbing dead skin should be fairly easy.
If the rating were content to describe what potentially objectionable content each game features (cartoon violence, sexual innuendo, &c) it would be fine. But instead they decide what age that content is suitable for, and discriminate the content seemingly as an afterthought, written in small type beneath the large-type "minimum age".
I have nothing against a purely informative system, like the one Syberz described in his reply to my parent post. But in some places (Australia is among the most radical, but also Brazil, where I live) the rating is used as a base for deciding which games are legal to purchase, even for adults. You're right in your assumption that I am younger, however I feel that you would agree with me if you were banned by a store employee from buying a product that you want and are legally entitled to purchase because you happened to be accompanied by your (legal minor) younger brother and store policy is to not sell that product to anyone accompanied by a minor. And why is that the store policy? Because the people who inspect and enforce these rules are too stupid to understand that yes, I play games in my free time too, and no, that doesn't make me a criminal just because I live in the same house as a minor.
But it's easy to just remove all the commented lines. A properly commented file will cater to both tastes, since it doesn't impede you from looking at a clean version if you want to.
And the FAQ should be in the FM.
Fixed. What is it with *nix geeks and acronyms?
Question: Is there a friendly, readily available GUI application for browsing and reading man pages? Remember, newbies are afraid of the terminal. telling them to type "man packagename" will already scare some of them off.
Perhaps in your case a rolling release like Arch Linux (or -gasp- Gentoo) would be more suitable, then. I've yet to find a package manager that I like more than dpkg/apt, but portage is actually very nice once you get used to it.
This is actually a great idea. A simplified package manager frontend that displays only metapackages for the most commonly used bundles would greatly help new users. Why does gamer Joe need to know the difference between "wesnoth-client" and "wesnoth-data"? If he just wants to play a TBS game, just "wesnoth" should do.
Even before that, there was the newbie-friendly "Add and Remove Applications" option. The Ubuntu Software Center is really just a way to expand that front-end so that it can be as useful as Synaptic without losing the apparent simplicity.
The computer-illiterate masses won't care about, or even know, that distinction. And the iPhone is popular among Windows users too. They'll just associate the idea of a centralised collection of software that they can use, and be more familiar with it.
But still not lenient enough. Just because someone else does it worse it doesn't make you not bad. Picture a rapist and a rapist/baby-killer. The second one is much worse, but the first still fucks people without their consent, which, incidentally, is an appropriate metaphor for any government.
is to be done with this ridiculous system of rating and censoring everything. For fuck's sake, forcing every parent to agree with a committee on what is appropriate for their children is ridiculous.
I'd sooner ban idiots who tell my kids they'll go to an eternal afterlife of torment unless they have the same imaginary friend as the leader Third Twice-Reformed Baptist Church of the Three-Sided Square Circle than a game about a blue hedgehog who likes to jog.