What is the alternative? Not to shock people? Hell, literature would be a rather poor subject if authors had followed that reasoning.
Perhaps you misunderstand what I meant and besides, there are many effective ways of shocking people without resorting to a tiresome marketing technique that ultimately damages the very industry you work in. I personally see characters in games as no more than game pieces, not dissimilar to chess pieces and attach to them roughly the same level of emotion; but to the uninitiated they see games apparently simulating slaughter and torture, turning their children into a murdering wave of emotionless sociopaths.
Activision may claim to be pushing the boundaries and fighting the good fight against censorship but really they are just in it for the immediate dollar signs and perhaps quite rightly so. The problem is that if they push the boundaries too hard and too fast you get a backlash causing things like:-
http://www.gamestooge.com/2009/06/05/germany-bans-violent-games-completely/
Game developers still currently enjoy relative freedom in their creations and I for one would like to see it stay that way. In an ideal world developers would have complete freedom to create whatever content they want and cover it with appropriate warning stickers to compensate, but until that day events like the airport shooting scene ultimately give the morality crusaders ammunition and news headline real estate to put ever increasing pressure on politicians and take away that freedom.
This is a strong contender for "lowest point in the history of journalism about video games". At the very least, it's tied with the whole MS Flight Sim and 9/11 "controversy". It's hard to see it as anything but an insult to those who died or were injured in the incident.
You are right, there is no evidence other than reasonably close timing, but to be honest part of me feels they deserve some of the heat by using such dubious methods purely for hype and marketing purposes. Though I must stress I am completely against censorship, the fact that Activision would add content that is pretty much guaranteed to cause worldwide damage to the gaming industry for free marketing and thus a quick extra few points on the profit margins is frankly far more offensive than the actual content in the game itself.
Just because the adventure games being currently produced are not the focus of the AAA developers does not mean a decline. My partner and her friends sit and play a seemingly endless stream of very creative looking new adventure games produced by indie developers and sold on steam. I'd recommend anyone to check them out and they are usually very cheap to buy.
Also worth noting about the article is that on each of the 6 pages there are up to 4 separate web tracking networks sending my blocking software haywire.
My first though when I heard of the Chinese Stealth Fighter is I wonder where and how they stole the technology. No way China could build one themselves at this point without a little help.
Why not? It should be stressed that the language of the article is purely speculative.
Note the language of the article "experts said China may have gleaned knowledge from a US F-117 Nighthawk..."
"We believe the Chinese used those materials"
"It is likely..."
"it has been claimed..."
I'm not saying it wasn't stolen. I don't know anywhere near enough to have any kind of informed opinion but I feel the need to point out that the article throws out wild speculation and many people here are reading it as hard cold fact. I'm far more worried about the blatant manipulative effect the press has on people than I am by the idea that the Chinese have developed technology the USA has had since the 1970's.
Just like all the herbal medicine that keeps their population down to the billions instead of trillions.
Your right, the people Western world would never be idiotic enough to stock expensive alternative medicines on the high streets that have no beneficial side effects other than that of a similarly administered placebo.
Assuming it exists at all. There is much circumstantial evidence but some argue no direct proof yet (though NASA believe the have proof). Still this excerpt from NASA seems to imply that dark matter does not interact with matter except through gravity.
"The hot gas in this collision was slowed by a drag force, similar to air resistance. In contrast, the dark matter was not slowed by the impact, because it does not interact directly with itself or the gas except through gravity. "
Research and independent learning, not everything is going to be spoon fed to you.
Do you realise your just reinforcing what I just said about linux learning attitude?
To make sure the point I was making is valid, I tried googling one of the issues I had. I googled " 'my sound is not working in Ubuntu' and picked the first two responses. What I get is people talking about running system drivers and typing strange code into a terminal and I understand little to none of it.
I then tried googling 'my sound is not working in windows 7' and the top two hits show me step by step plain English guides on how to solve the problem in numerous different manners and the one even has a link to a program that automatically tries to fix the sound issue for me.
I can understand your point of view, why should I teach you about something you won't bother learning yourself? To which I say, 'why should I bother switching to something that doesn't work right out of the box and to which there is seemingly no basic level user support?'
Really, if they are going to be any good, they will most likely ALREADY know what Linux is and how it works.
If they don't, really, don't bother them with it. It'll just confuse them.
Really, if they are going to be any good, they will most likely ALREADY know what Linux is and how it works.
That's exactly the approach that makes most people who try Linux give up after a very short time. I personally tried it twice and found any problems I encountered making things work had no simple step by step instructions on how to fix.
You're right. There is no debate. No legitimate scientist believes in global warming as a condition caused by human activity and there's very little evidence of warming at all (in fact there's a lot of historical evidence that we're entering a cooling period).
Or are you saying you have the first dual core smartphone from 2011?:-)
I'm desperate to know when they will invent a pocket sized smart device capable of impersonating a phone. Oh wait they had that? And they are uninviting them? So they are still replacing phone functionality, signal reception and call reliability with more flashy shit I don't need?
What's that? You can now get a pretty good tricorder app? Damn I genuinely take it all back now.
Checking facebook is neither an unreasonable search nor a seizure. It is publicly available information.
Perhaps the question is not 'are they' but really 'should they'?
I know the article linked below about an FBI tip off via Facebook was likely done by a member of the public and not FBI search spiders. Still if snooping could prevent this sort of thing, should they? I expect any response to this question will be a very resounding 'NO' but I feel its a question that needs asked.
It's also not unconstitutional to stand on the sidewalk in front of my house, watching me with binoculars 24/7. But despite what it thinks, the government has no business doing that and I don't want it to.
If you haven't done anything wrong then you should have nothing to hide! Just like the government.
Arguably sex without a condom is not considered rape in the UK. Also to contradict this, sometimes these rules are bent for political purposes such as the Enron three who were extradited to the USA strangely for defrauding a British bank, were they were charged with wire fraud which is not an offence in the UK.
By hook and by crook the Americans will get hold of Assange. His extradition is only held back by senior US politicians calling out for his death, who are ironically keeping him out of jail.
Anyone notice Obama is acting a lot like Bush lately?
To be honest I hadn't. But only the really extreme stuff reaches us foreigners over the ocean. From a distant standpoint Obama seems to have started a lot less wars and seems less entangled in profiteering from said wars.
It beat Google for the most visited site last year somehow so it seems to be one of the stickier websites around that aren't related to search or email.
Unless I am mistaken it didn't beat Google for hits, only the time spent on facebook was higher than time spent on Google. But if you include googles other sites like Youtube it may tell a different story. Like I said though I could be very mistaken though this site ranks facebook at 5th for 2010. http://hubpages.com/hub/Most-visited-Websites-in-the-World-Most-Popular-Websites-in-the-Internet
What I find strange in the abstract sense is that a website turned over more profit last year than the entire economy Burundi which has a population of 9 million people. Admittedly one of the ten poorest countries in the world, but this puts into perspective in my mind at least just how poor these people really are.
Yeah the Lachesis I have random and frequent locks on x or y axis.. mouse pointer spasms if you click on a non hard mouse mat, tiniest piece of dust makes it go nuts and sometimes it goes all exorcist on me and jumps around the screen. Tried it on my girlfriends computer with the exact same issues, updated firmware, drivers and nothing. Whats the point of a mouse that has all fancy LED's, macro software and an arsenal of buttons if it fails to move your pointer accurately from A to B.
It could be the start of something interesting that brings console users back to PC Games. I would be rather wary of buying one after my own personal experience with the razer lachesis mouse which for a 40 something pound mouse it was unusably glitchy. Took it back and replaced it at the store and the next one was just the same. So yeah once bitten.....
To be fair Casinos are very likely to be rather good at probability and their staff are likely trained at spotting people who are just far too improbable. I don't think its unreasonable that when someone's winnings reaches billion to one odds, that another alternative to luck can be considered. Yes I know I'm taking the naive approach but too many people are jumping on the injustice bandwagon over a sensationalist article that has been misleadingly summed up and sensationalised some more. The top payout on the machine is 251,000 and she won 41,900,000.
Imagine you bid $20 on a pair of jeans on some auction site but a cat on keyboard malfunction caused you to bid 20 million instead. Now the seller is suing you for the 20 million you promised. Hardly seems fair to be able to force you to somehow try and pay this off over the rest of your life now does it?
Well done, you have bought into a PETA scare tactic. no logic, no science, but man, it sure helps you feel righteous, doesn't it?
At which point did I mention Peta or cite them as a source?
You do know that American beef has been banned by the European Economic Community since 1998. A ban that was contested by the USA but it was upheld after the ban was analysed and then supported by the World Trade Organisation.
Perhaps if you could provide some sources to back up the alleged saftey of the unregulated use of growth hormones in beef and dairy products?
Then there is the issues with milk from cows given bovine somatotropin, something which is banned in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all European Union countries (currently numbering 27). You can eat and drink that shit all you want, but I'll happily have nothing to do with it.
Parents who's children catch and spread diseases that vaccinations would otherwise have caught should sue the newspapers for spreading false information. The are all bad for it, generally preferring to consult a celebrity instead of an actually qualified expert. The BBC's endless use of nutritionists like Gillian Mackeith instead of consulting dietitians who's job title is medically protected by a requirement of relevant qualifications is just an example of why these quack ideas take hold.
These quacks are generally just trolls and the media love feeding them to say crazy things so they can sell it as science and make $$$'s.
TR suffered from a number of problems. Actually, it should go into textbooks as an example what you can possibly do WRONG in an MMO.
Yes the list can go on about the things wrong with this game. My partner played an all female guild and they wanted to migrate to a new game. They all got TR in first few days of release and after a few hours they were all bored. Basically their main complaint was its a 'boy game' full or army stuff and soldiers and held nothing of interest to girls. Given that wow had (at oct 2010) 12 million players with a recent census claiming 16% female population, TR has cut off almost 2 million potential players by seemingly exclusively targeting males players with their product at launch, not counting how many horny nerd players went else where when they realised the only female characters were guys in e-drag.
on a side note regarding point 3. I'm not sure there have been many, if any MMORPG's that were actually released without thousands of bugs and issues. WOW for one was shocking bug riddled in the first week of release.
Don't take it so personally - particularly since you didn't evangelize. I was just responding to the query that seemed to form the core of your post, in general form.
Tone is very hard to read with pure text and I'm sorry if you felt genuinely insulted by what I said; However its easy to read a comment as directed personally when its an immediate reply to my post and using the words 'you' and 'your' 7 times in two lines.
Good for you and how you choose to live. Leave me out of it.
That also goes for your gods, your software licenses, your sexual proclivities, and everything else you really think I need to do because you like it so much.
Is it really evangelising when your replying to an over-rated and factually incorrect rant? Or did you just glance at it without reading, take what I said out of context and slap on a ready baked crowd pleaser quote that could have been straight from any random day time talk show.
... in which case rather than saving these animals, you may just drive them extinct. These animals are domesticated, it's not going to be like a Disney movie where they are all freed into the wild to survive happy and free on their own, they don't have survival skills - we keep them alive. The trade is really that they get to exist at all, and we get to eat them.
I cannot believe this nonsense gets voted up to 5. Cows and chickens extinct because we stop eating them? Have you never heard of eggs and milk? Why does some peoples personal choice not to eat meat get you so angry? As for exacerbating the market by eating less meat forcing farmers to cut corners? Actually the stress put on farmers currently which forces them already to cut so many corners is supermarket domination forcing them to sell their product for the barest survivable profit. The centre of your argument is that if we eat less meat, less of them would be reared for the slaughter and you somehow manage to imply this would be a bad thing? You seem to imply that a short cramped life waist deep in your own excrement while fed on growth hormones (that cause all kinds of terrible issues) then butchered as early as possible is something they should be thankful for? I am no vegetarian but I can see why some people choose to be, especially considering the long term effects of growth hormone and antibiotic raised meat is largely unknown on humans at this time.
Slashdot Mirror
What is the alternative? Not to shock people? Hell, literature would be a rather poor subject if authors had followed that reasoning.
Perhaps you misunderstand what I meant and besides, there are many effective ways of shocking people without resorting to a tiresome marketing technique that ultimately damages the very industry you work in. I personally see characters in games as no more than game pieces, not dissimilar to chess pieces and attach to them roughly the same level of emotion; but to the uninitiated they see games apparently simulating slaughter and torture, turning their children into a murdering wave of emotionless sociopaths.
Activision may claim to be pushing the boundaries and fighting the good fight against censorship but really they are just in it for the immediate dollar signs and perhaps quite rightly so. The problem is that if they push the boundaries too hard and too fast you get a backlash causing things like:- http://www.gamestooge.com/2009/06/05/germany-bans-violent-games-completely/
Game developers still currently enjoy relative freedom in their creations and I for one would like to see it stay that way. In an ideal world developers would have complete freedom to create whatever content they want and cover it with appropriate warning stickers to compensate, but until that day events like the airport shooting scene ultimately give the morality crusaders ammunition and news headline real estate to put ever increasing pressure on politicians and take away that freedom.
This is a strong contender for "lowest point in the history of journalism about video games". At the very least, it's tied with the whole MS Flight Sim and 9/11 "controversy". It's hard to see it as anything but an insult to those who died or were injured in the incident.
You are right, there is no evidence other than reasonably close timing, but to be honest part of me feels they deserve some of the heat by using such dubious methods purely for hype and marketing purposes. Though I must stress I am completely against censorship, the fact that Activision would add content that is pretty much guaranteed to cause worldwide damage to the gaming industry for free marketing and thus a quick extra few points on the profit margins is frankly far more offensive than the actual content in the game itself.
Just because the adventure games being currently produced are not the focus of the AAA developers does not mean a decline. My partner and her friends sit and play a seemingly endless stream of very creative looking new adventure games produced by indie developers and sold on steam. I'd recommend anyone to check them out and they are usually very cheap to buy.
Also worth noting about the article is that on each of the 6 pages there are up to 4 separate web tracking networks sending my blocking software haywire.
My first though when I heard of the Chinese Stealth Fighter is I wonder where and how they stole the technology. No way China could build one themselves at this point without a little help.
Why not? It should be stressed that the language of the article is purely speculative.
Note the language of the article
"experts said China may have gleaned knowledge from a US F-117 Nighthawk..."
"We believe the Chinese used those materials"
"It is likely..."
"it has been claimed..."
I'm not saying it wasn't stolen. I don't know anywhere near enough to have any kind of informed opinion but I feel the need to point out that the article throws out wild speculation and many people here are reading it as hard cold fact. I'm far more worried about the blatant manipulative effect the press has on people than I am by the idea that the Chinese have developed technology the USA has had since the 1970's.
Just like all the herbal medicine that keeps their population down to the billions instead of trillions.
Your right, the people Western world would never be idiotic enough to stock expensive alternative medicines on the high streets that have no beneficial side effects other than that of a similarly administered placebo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
What is the form of the dark matter?
Assuming it exists at all. There is much circumstantial evidence but some argue no direct proof yet (though NASA believe the have proof). Still this excerpt from NASA seems to imply that dark matter does not interact with matter except through gravity.
"The hot gas in this collision was slowed by a drag force, similar to air resistance. In contrast, the dark matter was not slowed by the impact, because it does not interact directly with itself or the gas except through gravity. "
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/aug/HQ_06297_CHANDRA_Dark_Matter.html
Research and independent learning, not everything is going to be spoon fed to you.
Do you realise your just reinforcing what I just said about linux learning attitude?
To make sure the point I was making is valid, I tried googling one of the issues I had. I googled " 'my sound is not working in Ubuntu' and picked the first two responses. What I get is people talking about running system drivers and typing strange code into a terminal and I understand little to none of it.
I then tried googling 'my sound is not working in windows 7' and the top two hits show me step by step plain English guides on how to solve the problem in numerous different manners and the one even has a link to a program that automatically tries to fix the sound issue for me.
I can understand your point of view, why should I teach you about something you won't bother learning yourself? To which I say, 'why should I bother switching to something that doesn't work right out of the box and to which there is seemingly no basic level user support?'
Really, if they are going to be any good, they will most likely ALREADY know what Linux is and how it works.
If they don't, really, don't bother them with it. It'll just confuse them.
Really, if they are going to be any good, they will most likely ALREADY know what Linux is and how it works.
That's exactly the approach that makes most people who try Linux give up after a very short time. I personally tried it twice and found any problems I encountered making things work had no simple step by step instructions on how to fix.
You're right. There is no debate. No legitimate scientist believes in global warming as a condition caused by human activity and there's very little evidence of warming at all (in fact there's a lot of historical evidence that we're entering a cooling period).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2u4zNGtnY8&feature=related
Or are you saying you have the first dual core smartphone from 2011? :-)
I'm desperate to know when they will invent a pocket sized smart device capable of impersonating a phone. Oh wait they had that? And they are uninviting them? So they are still replacing phone functionality, signal reception and call reliability with more flashy shit I don't need?
What's that? You can now get a pretty good tricorder app? Damn I genuinely take it all back now.
Checking facebook is neither an unreasonable search nor a seizure. It is publicly available information.
Perhaps the question is not 'are they' but really 'should they'?
I know the article linked below about an FBI tip off via Facebook was likely done by a member of the public and not FBI search spiders. Still if snooping could prevent this sort of thing, should they?
I expect any response to this question will be a very resounding 'NO' but I feel its a question that needs asked.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/16/fbi-gun-scare-merseyside-school
It's also not unconstitutional to stand on the sidewalk in front of my house, watching me with binoculars 24/7. But despite what it thinks, the government has no business doing that and I don't want it to.
If you haven't done anything wrong then you should have nothing to hide! Just like the government.
Arguably sex without a condom is not considered rape in the UK. Also to contradict this, sometimes these rules are bent for political purposes such as the Enron three who were extradited to the USA strangely for defrauding a British bank, were they were charged with wire fraud which is not an offence in the UK.
By hook and by crook the Americans will get hold of Assange. His extradition is only held back by senior US politicians calling out for his death, who are ironically keeping him out of jail.
It's not really a Navy unless it's got guns, or a least archers or spear-throwers or something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Navy
Anyone notice Obama is acting a lot like Bush lately?
To be honest I hadn't. But only the really extreme stuff reaches us foreigners over the ocean. From a distant standpoint Obama seems to have started a lot less wars and seems less entangled in profiteering from said wars.
It beat Google for the most visited site last year somehow so it seems to be one of the stickier websites around that aren't related to search or email.
Unless I am mistaken it didn't beat Google for hits, only the time spent on facebook was higher than time spent on Google. But if you include googles other sites like Youtube it may tell a different story. Like I said though I could be very mistaken though this site ranks facebook at 5th for 2010.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Most-visited-Websites-in-the-World-Most-Popular-Websites-in-the-Internet
What I find strange in the abstract sense is that a website turned over more profit last year than the entire economy Burundi which has a population of 9 million people. Admittedly one of the ten poorest countries in the world, but this puts into perspective in my mind at least just how poor these people really are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
Yeah the Lachesis I have random and frequent locks on x or y axis.. mouse pointer spasms if you click on a non hard mouse mat, tiniest piece of dust makes it go nuts and sometimes it goes all exorcist on me and jumps around the screen. Tried it on my girlfriends computer with the exact same issues, updated firmware, drivers and nothing. Whats the point of a mouse that has all fancy LED's, macro software and an arsenal of buttons if it fails to move your pointer accurately from A to B.
It could be the start of something interesting that brings console users back to PC Games. I would be rather wary of buying one after my own personal experience with the razer lachesis mouse which for a 40 something pound mouse it was unusably glitchy. Took it back and replaced it at the store and the next one was just the same. So yeah once bitten.....
To be fair Casinos are very likely to be rather good at probability and their staff are likely trained at spotting people who are just far too improbable. I don't think its unreasonable that when someone's winnings reaches billion to one odds, that another alternative to luck can be considered. Yes I know I'm taking the naive approach but too many people are jumping on the injustice bandwagon over a sensationalist article that has been misleadingly summed up and sensationalised some more. The top payout on the machine is 251,000 and she won 41,900,000.
Imagine you bid $20 on a pair of jeans on some auction site but a cat on keyboard malfunction caused you to bid 20 million instead. Now the seller is suing you for the 20 million you promised.
Hardly seems fair to be able to force you to somehow try and pay this off over the rest of your life now does it?
Well done, you have bought into a PETA scare tactic. no logic, no science, but man, it sure helps you feel righteous, doesn't it?
At which point did I mention Peta or cite them as a source?
You do know that American beef has been banned by the European Economic Community since 1998. A ban that was contested by the USA but it was upheld after the ban was analysed and then supported by the World Trade Organisation.
Perhaps if you could provide some sources to back up the alleged saftey of the unregulated use of growth hormones in beef and dairy products?
Then there is the issues with milk from cows given bovine somatotropin, something which is banned in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all European Union countries (currently numbering 27). You can eat and drink that shit all you want, but I'll happily have nothing to do with it.
http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/general/hormones_meat.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_somatotropin
Parents who's children catch and spread diseases that vaccinations would otherwise have caught should sue the newspapers for spreading false information. The are all bad for it, generally preferring to consult a celebrity instead of an actually qualified expert. The BBC's endless use of nutritionists like Gillian Mackeith instead of consulting dietitians who's job title is medically protected by a requirement of relevant qualifications is just an example of why these quack ideas take hold.
These quacks are generally just trolls and the media love feeding them to say crazy things so they can sell it as science and make $$$'s.
TR suffered from a number of problems. Actually, it should go into textbooks as an example what you can possibly do WRONG in an MMO.
Yes the list can go on about the things wrong with this game. My partner played an all female guild and they wanted to migrate to a new game. They all got TR in first few days of release and after a few hours they were all bored. Basically their main complaint was its a 'boy game' full or army stuff and soldiers and held nothing of interest to girls. Given that wow had (at oct 2010) 12 million players with a recent census claiming 16% female population, TR has cut off almost 2 million potential players by seemingly exclusively targeting males players with their product at launch, not counting how many horny nerd players went else where when they realised the only female characters were guys in e-drag.
on a side note regarding point 3. I'm not sure there have been many, if any MMORPG's that were actually released without thousands of bugs and issues. WOW for one was shocking bug riddled in the first week of release.
Don't take it so personally - particularly since you didn't evangelize. I was just responding to the query that seemed to form the core of your post, in general form.
Tone is very hard to read with pure text and I'm sorry if you felt genuinely insulted by what I said; However its easy to read a comment as directed personally when its an immediate reply to my post and using the words 'you' and 'your' 7 times in two lines.
Good for you and how you choose to live. Leave me out of it.
That also goes for your gods, your software licenses, your sexual proclivities, and everything else you really think I need to do because you like it so much.
Is it really evangelising when your replying to an over-rated and factually incorrect rant? Or did you just glance at it without reading, take what I said out of context and slap on a ready baked crowd pleaser quote that could have been straight from any random day time talk show.
... in which case rather than saving these animals, you may just drive them extinct. These animals are domesticated, it's not going to be like a Disney movie where they are all freed into the wild to survive happy and free on their own, they don't have survival skills - we keep them alive. The trade is really that they get to exist at all, and we get to eat them.
I cannot believe this nonsense gets voted up to 5. Cows and chickens extinct because we stop eating them? Have you never heard of eggs and milk? Why does some peoples personal choice not to eat meat get you so angry? As for exacerbating the market by eating less meat forcing farmers to cut corners? Actually the stress put on farmers currently which forces them already to cut so many corners is supermarket domination forcing them to sell their product for the barest survivable profit. The centre of your argument is that if we eat less meat, less of them would be reared for the slaughter and you somehow manage to imply this would be a bad thing? You seem to imply that a short cramped life waist deep in your own excrement while fed on growth hormones (that cause all kinds of terrible issues) then butchered as early as possible is something they should be thankful for? I am no vegetarian but I can see why some people choose to be, especially considering the long term effects of growth hormone and antibiotic raised meat is largely unknown on humans at this time.