I own Metroid Prime 3 on wii. I agree, it feels very natural, and is quite pleasant to use. But as an avid multiplayer FPS gamer, I can tell you instantly why your idea of using the wiimote fails.
Boot a Metroid Prime game on you wii, load a game, and do a 180 degree turn. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Did you notice? It took several seconds to rotate 180 degrees, and another second to recenter your aim. That's why your argument falls apart. Mouse-using players can achieve 180 degree turns in literal fractions of a second, depending on individual skill and current mouse sensitivity. And because the crosshair is always in the center of the screen, you're centered already and you may fire at will. A learned habit of every multiplayer FPS gamer is to continuously check their six. This means 360 degrees of sum total rotation, every couple of seconds. You can't achieve that with the wiimote controls of Metroid Prime.
Which isn't to say it wouldn't be possible to achieve better control. Imagine a thumbstick on the wiimote that controlled orientation (and could be depressed to act like a secondary button). Change visual orientation rapidly with sufficient fine-tuning and waggle the wiimote to control the crosshair.
Here is what I do in TF2: Scroll up for slot1 Scroll down for slot2 press 3 (or rebind, or whatever) for slot3.
No muss, no fuss, instant weapons select for both my ranged weapons and a quick button press for melee.
People do all kinds of strange things. I know a guy who always rebinds mouse1 to move forward and the numpad for other functions. I know another guy who used HJKL as movement keys. Compared to them I'm normal, I use ESDF for movement.
TeamGhostShell, a team linked with the infamous group Anonymous
No.
This is the single most inflammatory and weaselly-worded sentence in the article, and it's the first frigging one.
Perhaps it's pedantic by this point, but I am tired of stupidity like this and I'm just irritable enough right now to attack some misinformation. "Anonymous" is not a group. It's not a collective. It's not even an "it". Anonymous is synonymous with "the masses", with a specific connotation of anonymity and being on the internet. I'll grant that XxXTeamNameChosenByMiddleSchoolersXxX is a "member" of anonymous, but that's like saying that Barack Obama is a "member" of the human species, it doesn't mean anything useful.
I have discovered that I still love books, but for portability and easy reading, an e-ink e-reader beats out everything else. I can hold it in my left hand, lovingly flip the page with a gentle stroke of the thumb, and because it's so light and easy to use I commonly forget I have it in my hand. I can hold five hundred books in a quarter the mass of a single thick paperback, always have my place, flip the page as fast or faster than a real one and with less effort, look up words I don't know, use it as a notepad, use it as a browser (on wi-fi), and because I've rooted the thing I even have an IRC client on it.
I'm already allergic to a major component of food cuisines the world around. Specifically, I am allergic to milk proteins. Want to give it a try? Go for a week without eating any dairy. No milk, no pizza, no ice cream and no cheese. Read every label, don't eat anything with whey or casein in it. Your mind will be expanded. You have literally no idea how many things on supermarket shelves have milk byproducts in them.
I have a few notes to share with you if you want to try this: 1. The less processed the food, the less likely it has milk byproducts in it. 2. Real sourdough has no dairy. 3. The only labels you don't need to read are the ones that say "vegan" on them. 4. Most soy cheeses have milk proteins in them anyways. 5. Soy is your friend.
Optionally, you may try my other food allergy at the same time: Shellfish.
So long as we in the US continue to subsidize corn and raise livestock on it, meat will remain in easy reach of residents of the united states. That's not even considering how an entire huge segment of the population would take the news that they can't do big barbecues anymore. I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm saying this is what I anticipate will happen.
I'm annoyed at valve for this (door-closing, even if it's actually not enforceable) earns a black mark in my book. Ultimately however, I don't think I give a damn. Valve would have to really start spiraling down the Evil Drain for me to actually care about suing them, much less joining a class-action lawsuit against them. There's also the bit about paying the arbitration fees (yes, I read the fine print go away) that tells me they're doing this more in a CYA move than because they've decided to be evil. They make boatloads of cash off of us already without being evil. I wouldn't put it past them to start being evil, but my experience with Valve and their Steam platform has been without flaw up to this point.
By all means, let me know if the water starts to boil around me. So far as I can tell, it's still ice cold against my smooth green skin...
See, because you didn't plug your band (and I can't find any reference to it on your linked website) now I'm genuinely curious. I'm all for free music, and despite the occasional itunes purchase the vast majority of my (admittedly small) library is free.
I sincerely doubt it. The days of malware simply destroying data are behind us. It's far more useful (and profitable!) to pwn computers and steal information, serve ads, send spam, preform DDoS attacks... you get the idea.
A swarm of computers with garbled drives has no value. A swarm of computers in a botnet you own is infinitely more valuable.
As much as I dislike the word "cyber" and the overuse of it as a prefix, it's not really "wrong" anymore. It's been used so much that it has acquired legitimacy and meaning in the eyes of the masses, even if we who are computer-aware still wince when someone says it on air.
When a scumbag (read: politician) says "cybersecurity", you and I both know that he means "computer/network/information security", even as we groan. Much as we wish it were not so, it's the way things are now.
"Internet users could contribute to an official blacklist of suspected communist content under a budding 'Clean IT' project, backed by the House Un-American Activities Committee . Participating representatives are putting together 13 proposals in a text that commits web hosts, search engines and ISPs to helping to weed out content that incites or advocates communism. From the article: 'Among those 13 courses of action is a proposal for a system that will allow users to "flag" content they believe to be communist when surfing the web. These alarms would be sent for review to the service provider and in turn, a government agency.'"
There, that adequately represents my feelings on the subject.
You don't get it. Of course the Governements will ignore this "Bat Signal". That's not the point of it. The point is for popular websites to be able to easily inform their viewing public about legislation like SOPA and CISPA and what all. So that their viewing public can raise a ruckus at the gub'mint and get the gub'mint to back the fuck down.
The Bat Signal didn't tell criminals to pack up and go away, it told Batman to swing by and find out about the criminals, so he can go make the criminals pack up and go away.
Not all "touchscreen" technology actually requires you to "touch" the screen. My PRS-T1 uses infrared light to detect when and where I'm "touching" the screen, and it does everything "real" touchscreens can do, and a few things they can't (depending on the technology used).
You raise a valid point, but the implementation of the screen itself my obviate the problem anyways.
Extremism is not compatible with the modern age, and it is a huge problem.
Fixed that for you.
Religion and religious people are not the problem. Extremism and extremist people are. While I agree that certain sub-sections of certain religious groups could do with a few lessons in toleration, this is more a symptom of their extremism than it is their religion. Blaming the issue on people worshiping an invisible man in the sky is just as false as the extremists claiming that their invisible man in the sky told them to do it.
You're quite right, of course. Mod parent up and whatnot.
I played a lot of TF2 for a very long time, up until I was exiled from my favorite community for reasons that don't deserve airing. I even played some competitive, and I saw and learned things about classes, maps, and moves that would make the average "pub" player's hair stand on end. I knew soldiers who had perfected the art of the rocket, snipers who almost never missed, scouts who executed heavy classes and were impossible to hit, and spies who are so sneaky they could literally hide in plain sight. Playing with and against these people honed my skills so much that I can tell the difference between skill and cheating with ease. It's all about the attitude. Despite the public perception, few if any competitive players are assholes. Being part of a "comp" team necessitates a good attitude and an instinct for rapport that belies the usual arrogance and casual asshattery of a cheater. As you said, an honest to goodness GOOD player will give tips and be courteous. A cheater will respond with insults.
In all my literal thousands of hours of TF2, I only saw a handful of cheaters. I could count the number on two hands. You know why? It's the community. If you don't want to deal with cheaters, find a server that has a boisterous community and a conclave of attentive admins. Good players will gravitate towards servers with other good players, and as long as there's enough friendly admins around to keep a lid on the jerks the server will remain pure and enjoyable.
Beat me to it. Atomic Rockets is an excellent jumping off point for all the things you'll need to consider, complete with references to how real science fiction writers have dealt with these things in the past. Lots of science, math, and more science and math. Did I mention the math? It's pretty much all there. Also, it's darn fun to read. I consider that a bonus. Don't you?
I take issue with that definition. It is misleading and defines the word in terms of its extremes, giving it a negative connotation that is gender-biased.
"Brony" is a gender-neutral term that describes a person above the target age range, most commonly a young adult, who enjoys "My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic". That's it.
Yes, I am a brony. In the fine tradition of slashdot commentators everywhere however, I am a pedant first and everything else second.
A brony can certainly be ashamed of his or her appreciation, flaunt it openly, quietly enjoy it (the most common position), or anything in between. It only carries a negative connotation if you are gender-biased in the fashion common to adult men in western countries. Which is fine, by the way. We don't mind if you don't like it. We'd just prefer the term to be presented in the most neutral light possible to avoid predisposing people unfamiliar with the term.
So how much power do you need to engage or disengage a urinary sphincter? A enough to power a single LED? Less? More? As a comparative unit, I don't think "urinary sphincters" is going to get as much traction as flashlights or New York City for X days.
This is all fine and dandy, but my gut feeling is that some very simple physics and biology related problems are going to limit these things to little more than low output power supplies for simple implants and novelty bodymods.
Although I can think of a few really cool/useful bodymods related to LEDs or other extremely low power devices (e.g. LEDs in your face/hands for simple illumination, light-bright style LED pictures, etc.) These "biofuel" cells are unlikely to be able to recharge your phone or mp3 player. It's far more likely that your phone/mp3 player will simply get more energy efficient and lower power. Maybe in the unknowable future the twain shall meet, but for now it's most likely a pipe dream.
Sometimes, a picture out of one of the various space efforts really gets my attention.
This is one of them.
I'll be the first to admit that the math, the physics, the science, the expansion of the human sphere of knowledge are all extremely important and valid reasons for continuing to fund space missions (of any kind).
But if you don't consider images like this to be a strong reason for continuing our exploits into space, then you aren't someone I want to reason with at all.
Finally, we can actually have the thing that we've been calling those stupid static (or worse, animated) pictures. A picture isn't an avatar. It's just a picture. An avatar is a full representation of the person hiding behind it, and with this software and the kinect (which is commercial, easy to acquire hardware for the geeks interested in this) we can finally have *real* avatars.
I think this is incredibly cool and a substantial step towards fullbody digital interactions over the internet being available to the man on the (first world country) street.
Not sure why I'm responding to your inflammatory post, but sure. Why not.
Thank you for pointing out that I misspelled "miscellaneous". It helps your argument. Did you know I read the Hardy Boy's series when I was ten? Every single one of them? That stuff is high literature when you're only a decade old, and the when rest of your classmates only discuss the shit they saw on TV it's pretty goddamn esoteric. Would you be tearing me a new one if I'd listed Harry Potter too?
Can you recall what's in your library? All of the books? Some of them? Most of them? Maybe you can (and that's great!) but I can't, and I see no value in remembering it all. Of course I've got more books than I've mentioned. No list could be complete without a total catalog, but I have neither the time nor the interest. I just picked a bunch of things off the top of my head. I've read hundreds of books. I continue to read many books each week. I can tear into a four hundred page novel and finish in a day. I don't often do it, but I have.
However, I suppose it's my fault for not being terribly clear: This is my personal collection. I don't buy books I can borrow from others or the library, or that are already part of the family collection. You are free to publicly fault my tastes, but please comprehend my arguments when I make them.
I am an American male, and I turned twenty on the twenty-sixth of May.
My personal book collection is a bunch of Weber, Laumer, and Harrison books, along with some miscaleneous science fiction. I have borrowed (and read!) the entire Foundation series from my high-school library. I've got the entire original Hardy Boy series and I've read every single one. I have almost all of Brian Jacques Redwall series as well. I've got a stack of D&D 3.5 sourcebooks and extras that I never use because I can't find a group. In the realm of comic books I have several volumes of "Essential and most of the existing english translated Battle Angel Alita. I plan to borrow the Scott Pilgrim series from my sister. She says they're good, but not like the movie (which I've seen). These are the major components of my personal library, I personally own a selection of random novels as well. In addition to this, I have access to the entire library of the family. It's not huge, but we've managed to collectively line a few walls with bookshelves, so I guess that's okay.
I *know* I own a huge number of books, compared to the rest of my age book. I'd own more if I could afford it, but I can't.
The only danger to extensive collections of books is a selection of cheap e-readers, and that hasn't happened yet.
Three major reasons for pirating: 1. Money (either try before you buy, or sheer ludicrous pricing schemes). Really not an acceptable excuse in this case. It's $10.
2. DRM bullshit. I'm not gonna argue for or against this one. GMod10 and all of its required games all use STEAM, which is either the best split between DRM and customer friendliness possible or just another demonic DRM scheme (depending on who you ask). Personally, I find the advantages of STEAM manifestly outweigh the disadvantages.
3. Sticking it to the game developer/publisher/related company. This is Valve we're talking about. I don't think any major game developer is friendlier to the gamers than Valve.
Pirating GMod 10 is like visiting five ice cream shops in a row and getting enough "tastes" to fill a quart. Simply not worth the effort, considering that GMod10 is, was, and will remain ONLY. TEN. DOLLARS. If you own any of Valve's excellent recent games, you've fulfilled the only other requirement (a Source engine game). Chances are high that if you're interested in GMod10, you've already got one or more of those.
I can understand pirating a $50 game because you want to stick it to the publisher or you want to try it out before shelling out, but pirating something that costs $10 strikes me as a remarkably pointless gesture.
Slashdot Mirror
I own Metroid Prime 3 on wii. I agree, it feels very natural, and is quite pleasant to use. But as an avid multiplayer FPS gamer, I can tell you instantly why your idea of using the wiimote fails.
Boot a Metroid Prime game on you wii, load a game, and do a 180 degree turn.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Did you notice? It took several seconds to rotate 180 degrees, and another second to recenter your aim. That's why your argument falls apart. Mouse-using players can achieve 180 degree turns in literal fractions of a second, depending on individual skill and current mouse sensitivity. And because the crosshair is always in the center of the screen, you're centered already and you may fire at will. A learned habit of every multiplayer FPS gamer is to continuously check their six. This means 360 degrees of sum total rotation, every couple of seconds. You can't achieve that with the wiimote controls of Metroid Prime.
Which isn't to say it wouldn't be possible to achieve better control. Imagine a thumbstick on the wiimote that controlled orientation (and could be depressed to act like a secondary button). Change visual orientation rapidly with sufficient fine-tuning and waggle the wiimote to control the crosshair.
Here is what I do in TF2:
Scroll up for slot1
Scroll down for slot2
press 3 (or rebind, or whatever) for slot3.
No muss, no fuss, instant weapons select for both my ranged weapons and a quick button press for melee.
People do all kinds of strange things. I know a guy who always rebinds mouse1 to move forward and the numpad for other functions. I know another guy who used HJKL as movement keys. Compared to them I'm normal, I use ESDF for movement.
TeamGhostShell, a team linked with the infamous group Anonymous
No.
This is the single most inflammatory and weaselly-worded sentence in the article, and it's the first frigging one.
Perhaps it's pedantic by this point, but I am tired of stupidity like this and I'm just irritable enough right now to attack some misinformation.
"Anonymous" is not a group. It's not a collective. It's not even an "it". Anonymous is synonymous with "the masses", with a specific connotation of anonymity and being on the internet. I'll grant that XxXTeamNameChosenByMiddleSchoolersXxX is a "member" of anonymous, but that's like saying that Barack Obama is a "member" of the human species, it doesn't mean anything useful.
Stop doing this.
It's less of a minority than you might think.
I have discovered that I still love books, but for portability and easy reading, an e-ink e-reader beats out everything else.
I can hold it in my left hand, lovingly flip the page with a gentle stroke of the thumb, and because it's so light and easy to use I commonly forget I have it in my hand. I can hold five hundred books in a quarter the mass of a single thick paperback, always have my place, flip the page as fast or faster than a real one and with less effort, look up words I don't know, use it as a notepad, use it as a browser (on wi-fi), and because I've rooted the thing I even have an IRC client on it.
I'm already allergic to a major component of food cuisines the world around. Specifically, I am allergic to milk proteins. Want to give it a try? Go for a week without eating any dairy. No milk, no pizza, no ice cream and no cheese. Read every label, don't eat anything with whey or casein in it. Your mind will be expanded. You have literally no idea how many things on supermarket shelves have milk byproducts in them.
I have a few notes to share with you if you want to try this: 1. The less processed the food, the less likely it has milk byproducts in it. 2. Real sourdough has no dairy. 3. The only labels you don't need to read are the ones that say "vegan" on them. 4. Most soy cheeses have milk proteins in them anyways. 5. Soy is your friend.
Optionally, you may try my other food allergy at the same time: Shellfish.
So long as we in the US continue to subsidize corn and raise livestock on it, meat will remain in easy reach of residents of the united states. That's not even considering how an entire huge segment of the population would take the news that they can't do big barbecues anymore. I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm saying this is what I anticipate will happen.
I'm annoyed at valve for this (door-closing, even if it's actually not enforceable) earns a black mark in my book. Ultimately however, I don't think I give a damn. Valve would have to really start spiraling down the Evil Drain for me to actually care about suing them, much less joining a class-action lawsuit against them. There's also the bit about paying the arbitration fees (yes, I read the fine print go away) that tells me they're doing this more in a CYA move than because they've decided to be evil. They make boatloads of cash off of us already without being evil. I wouldn't put it past them to start being evil, but my experience with Valve and their Steam platform has been without flaw up to this point.
By all means, let me know if the water starts to boil around me. So far as I can tell, it's still ice cold against my smooth green skin...
See, because you didn't plug your band (and I can't find any reference to it on your linked website) now I'm genuinely curious. I'm all for free music, and despite the occasional itunes purchase the vast majority of my (admittedly small) library is free.
Drop us a link, would you please?
I sincerely doubt it. The days of malware simply destroying data are behind us. It's far more useful (and profitable!) to pwn computers and steal information, serve ads, send spam, preform DDoS attacks... you get the idea.
A swarm of computers with garbled drives has no value. A swarm of computers in a botnet you own is infinitely more valuable.
Stop calling it "cyber".
As much as I dislike the word "cyber" and the overuse of it as a prefix, it's not really "wrong" anymore. It's been used so much that it has acquired legitimacy and meaning in the eyes of the masses, even if we who are computer-aware still wince when someone says it on air.
When a scumbag (read: politician) says "cybersecurity", you and I both know that he means "computer/network/information security", even as we groan. Much as we wish it were not so, it's the way things are now.
Sorry.
"Internet users could contribute to an official blacklist of suspected communist content under a budding 'Clean IT' project, backed by the House Un-American Activities Committee . Participating representatives are putting together 13 proposals in a text that commits web hosts, search engines and ISPs to helping to weed out content that incites or advocates communism. From the article: 'Among those 13 courses of action is a proposal for a system that will allow users to "flag" content they believe to be communist when surfing the web. These alarms would be sent for review to the service provider and in turn, a government agency.'"
There, that adequately represents my feelings on the subject.
You don't get it. Of course the Governements will ignore this "Bat Signal". That's not the point of it. The point is for popular websites to be able to easily inform their viewing public about legislation like SOPA and CISPA and what all. So that their viewing public can raise a ruckus at the gub'mint and get the gub'mint to back the fuck down.
The Bat Signal didn't tell criminals to pack up and go away, it told Batman to swing by and find out about the criminals, so he can go make the criminals pack up and go away.
I was lead to believe there would be faerie cake.
Not all "touchscreen" technology actually requires you to "touch" the screen. My PRS-T1 uses infrared light to detect when and where I'm "touching" the screen, and it does everything "real" touchscreens can do, and a few things they can't (depending on the technology used).
You raise a valid point, but the implementation of the screen itself my obviate the problem anyways.
Extremism is not compatible with the modern age, and it is a huge problem.
Fixed that for you.
Religion and religious people are not the problem. Extremism and extremist people are. While I agree that certain sub-sections of certain religious groups could do with a few lessons in toleration, this is more a symptom of their extremism than it is their religion. Blaming the issue on people worshiping an invisible man in the sky is just as false as the extremists claiming that their invisible man in the sky told them to do it.
You're quite right, of course. Mod parent up and whatnot.
I played a lot of TF2 for a very long time, up until I was exiled from my favorite community for reasons that don't deserve airing. I even played some competitive, and I saw and learned things about classes, maps, and moves that would make the average "pub" player's hair stand on end. I knew soldiers who had perfected the art of the rocket, snipers who almost never missed, scouts who executed heavy classes and were impossible to hit, and spies who are so sneaky they could literally hide in plain sight. Playing with and against these people honed my skills so much that I can tell the difference between skill and cheating with ease. It's all about the attitude. Despite the public perception, few if any competitive players are assholes. Being part of a "comp" team necessitates a good attitude and an instinct for rapport that belies the usual arrogance and casual asshattery of a cheater. As you said, an honest to goodness GOOD player will give tips and be courteous. A cheater will respond with insults.
In all my literal thousands of hours of TF2, I only saw a handful of cheaters. I could count the number on two hands. You know why? It's the community. If you don't want to deal with cheaters, find a server that has a boisterous community and a conclave of attentive admins. Good players will gravitate towards servers with other good players, and as long as there's enough friendly admins around to keep a lid on the jerks the server will remain pure and enjoyable.
Beat me to it. Atomic Rockets is an excellent jumping off point for all the things you'll need to consider, complete with references to how real science fiction writers have dealt with these things in the past. Lots of science, math, and more science and math. Did I mention the math? It's pretty much all there.
Also, it's darn fun to read. I consider that a bonus. Don't you?
I take issue with that definition. It is misleading and defines the word in terms of its extremes, giving it a negative connotation that is gender-biased.
"Brony" is a gender-neutral term that describes a person above the target age range, most commonly a young adult, who enjoys "My Little Pony - Friendship is Magic".
That's it.
Yes, I am a brony.
In the fine tradition of slashdot commentators everywhere however, I am a pedant first and everything else second.
A brony can certainly be ashamed of his or her appreciation, flaunt it openly, quietly enjoy it (the most common position), or anything in between.
It only carries a negative connotation if you are gender-biased in the fashion common to adult men in western countries.
Which is fine, by the way. We don't mind if you don't like it. We'd just prefer the term to be presented in the most neutral light possible to avoid predisposing people unfamiliar with the term.
So how much power do you need to engage or disengage a urinary sphincter? A enough to power a single LED? Less? More?
As a comparative unit, I don't think "urinary sphincters" is going to get as much traction as flashlights or New York City for X days.
This is all fine and dandy, but my gut feeling is that some very simple physics and biology related problems are going to limit these things to little more than low output power supplies for simple implants and novelty bodymods.
Although I can think of a few really cool/useful bodymods related to LEDs or other extremely low power devices (e.g. LEDs in your face/hands for simple illumination, light-bright style LED pictures, etc.) These "biofuel" cells are unlikely to be able to recharge your phone or mp3 player. It's far more likely that your phone/mp3 player will simply get more energy efficient and lower power. Maybe in the unknowable future the twain shall meet, but for now it's most likely a pipe dream.
Sometimes, a picture out of one of the various space efforts really gets my attention.
This is one of them.
I'll be the first to admit that the math, the physics, the science, the expansion of the human sphere of knowledge are all extremely important and valid reasons for continuing to fund space missions (of any kind).
But if you don't consider images like this to be a strong reason for continuing our exploits into space, then you aren't someone I want to reason with at all.
Finally, we can actually have the thing that we've been calling those stupid static (or worse, animated) pictures. A picture isn't an avatar. It's just a picture. An avatar is a full representation of the person hiding behind it, and with this software and the kinect (which is commercial, easy to acquire hardware for the geeks interested in this) we can finally have *real* avatars.
I think this is incredibly cool and a substantial step towards fullbody digital interactions over the internet being available to the man on the (first world country) street.
Not sure why I'm responding to your inflammatory post, but sure. Why not.
Thank you for pointing out that I misspelled "miscellaneous". It helps your argument.
Did you know I read the Hardy Boy's series when I was ten? Every single one of them? That stuff is high literature when you're only a decade old, and the when rest of your classmates only discuss the shit they saw on TV it's pretty goddamn esoteric. Would you be tearing me a new one if I'd listed Harry Potter too?
Can you recall what's in your library? All of the books? Some of them? Most of them? Maybe you can (and that's great!) but I can't, and I see no value in remembering it all. Of course I've got more books than I've mentioned. No list could be complete without a total catalog, but I have neither the time nor the interest. I just picked a bunch of things off the top of my head. I've read hundreds of books. I continue to read many books each week. I can tear into a four hundred page novel and finish in a day. I don't often do it, but I have.
However, I suppose it's my fault for not being terribly clear: This is my personal collection. I don't buy books I can borrow from others or the library, or that are already part of the family collection. You are free to publicly fault my tastes, but please comprehend my arguments when I make them.
HI.
I am an American male, and I turned twenty on the twenty-sixth of May.
My personal book collection is a bunch of Weber, Laumer, and Harrison books, along with some miscaleneous science fiction. I have borrowed (and read!) the entire Foundation series from my high-school library. I've got the entire original Hardy Boy series and I've read every single one. I have almost all of Brian Jacques Redwall series as well. I've got a stack of D&D 3.5 sourcebooks and extras that I never use because I can't find a group. In the realm of comic books I have several volumes of "Essential and most of the existing english translated Battle Angel Alita. I plan to borrow the Scott Pilgrim series from my sister. She says they're good, but not like the movie (which I've seen). These are the major components of my personal library, I personally own a selection of random novels as well. In addition to this, I have access to the entire library of the family. It's not huge, but we've managed to collectively line a few walls with bookshelves, so I guess that's okay.
I *know* I own a huge number of books, compared to the rest of my age book. I'd own more if I could afford it, but I can't.
The only danger to extensive collections of books is a selection of cheap e-readers, and that hasn't happened yet.
They certainly do.
Three major reasons for pirating:
1. Money (either try before you buy, or sheer ludicrous pricing schemes).
Really not an acceptable excuse in this case. It's $10.
2. DRM bullshit.
I'm not gonna argue for or against this one. GMod10 and all of its required games all use STEAM, which is either the best split between DRM and customer friendliness possible or just another demonic DRM scheme (depending on who you ask). Personally, I find the advantages of STEAM manifestly outweigh the disadvantages.
3. Sticking it to the game developer/publisher/related company.
This is Valve we're talking about. I don't think any major game developer is friendlier to the gamers than Valve.
Pirating GMod 10 is like visiting five ice cream shops in a row and getting enough "tastes" to fill a quart. Simply not worth the effort, considering that GMod10 is, was, and will remain ONLY. TEN. DOLLARS. If you own any of Valve's excellent recent games, you've fulfilled the only other requirement (a Source engine game). Chances are high that if you're interested in GMod10, you've already got one or more of those.
I can understand pirating a $50 game because you want to stick it to the publisher or you want to try it out before shelling out, but pirating something that costs $10 strikes me as a remarkably pointless gesture.