That's one of the issues that I hope will get clarified from discussion here...an international voice on our political system may help some of us see how strange our arguments are.
This political season especially has succombed, basically, to partisanship. Not that it's ever truly different, but from the other elections I've followed, this one seems worse.
Not to mention that outsiders could actually help to settle differences. My democrat friend and I can sit down for hours at a time and agree on nothing because neither of us is willing to budge on basic assumptions (higher taxes=good/bad, bigger government=good/bad, etc). We've started comparing issues like taxes to other countries, and an authoritative voice on those countries would come in handy.
I laughed at first, but you may be onto something. There's a lot of wasted energy coming out of a gym. People are, essentially, expending energy so that their muscles can do work, but that energy is only going to move weights against gravity, so essentially to waste. Huh.
While I fully support editors editorializing in their descriptions of news stories...
is this a step in the right direction for the historically gender-biased institution?...the fact that they didn't have a woman as president before does not a gender biased institution make. I've never seen a female garbageman(person) before either, that doesn't mean the entire field is biased against women, it probably means women don't look for that position or that they weren't qualified (hard to imagine, but I'm sure there are qualifications for being a garbageman).
Beer at tailgates. You inevitably run out of ice, and the beer gets warm sitting 100+ degree temperatures. These could be great for that purpose.
--trb
Re:No, no-one ever thought this
on
Sims 2 Goes Gold
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Aren't "Monster Rancher" or "Animal Crossing" similar games? Having never played either, I'm only going off Gamespot reviews, but they both sound like they share similar, non-violent, build for no apparent reasons qualities.
I never did understand these games. I tried The Sims for about 2 weeks, got bored, moved on. I tried the Sims Online, realized you couldn't get anywhere or really do anything, got bored, moved on. I doubt I'll try Sims 2.
I never once insinuated that liberals use fear to motivate people. Kerry *is* using nothing but promises and lies to motivate people, but not fear. I don't know why so many people think that fear is a major part of this election, I just want a president that has grounded plans, and that's Bush. Kerry hasn't backed up his war plan, his economic plan or his healthcare plan. He said he thought troop redeployment was a good idea, a week before Bush, then condemned Bush for saying it. WTF?
That's because you're hearing what you want to hear and not what I'm trying to say.
People who do bad things on purpose should be stopped. That's what we've set up punishments like the death penalty for. People who accidentally hurt others are punished, but not as severely. If they did something they knew would allow them to hurt someone (driving drunk, for instance) the punishment goes up. Once asbestos was proven to cause cancer, companies stopped installing it or were hit with huge fines.
Terrorists harm intentionally, their punishment should be the move severe. Countries that harbor/aid terrorists should, and will, face the same consequence.
Okay, let me add a 5th step that I thought was self-explanatory
5) once the country has stablized and has a working military/police force, leave
Better? Kerry and the Dems are currently *complaining* about us removing troops from places like Germany where we've left them for 50 years. We've been in Korea for about that long as well. We'll have some troops left in Iraq for the next 2 decades, that doesn't mean we'll be actively fighting that long.
Why aren't we pulling out the stops to make roads and cars safer?
It's a matter of intentions. People intended to kill the kids at Columbine, terrorists intended to kill people on 9/11. Car accidents are just that, accidents.
I don't fear the terrorists, and I don't think most people do; I fear dumb, 16 year old drivers a lot, lot more. However, the 16 year old drivers aren't trying to be bad drivers, they just are and always will be. We won't get rid of them. I feel like we *can* get rid of hostile regimes, men who do bad things to good people (and please, no rhetoric about Bush being a "bad man" doing "bad things" to whomever). You can vote for whom you like on 11/2, but don't think that everyone voting for Bush is terrified...some of us just think he's doing a good job.
I would disagree that both parties are moving in their ideological and opposite directions. They're both making promises that go with their party's supposed ideologies, but we'll see what actually happens. The two parties have, in recent years past, not done anything terribly polarizing because there's such an even split, not only in Congress, but in voters. Nobody is winning landslides anymore, they're splitting the vote and, therefore, not getting anything done. Look at congressional approval of judges and the like. Anyone a Republican nominates gets rejected by Dems unless they're really, really close to the middle. Vice-versa, same thing.
Okay, I disagree with you on everything in your post, so where to start...
Iraq is turning into anther Vietnam
How is that? The numbers of troops lost alone would seem to contradict you. Add to that the violence we're currently facing is nothing compared to the entire VC forces.
we don't have a clear exit strategy or set of goals
Yes we do... 1) Remove Saddam 2) Install temporary Iraqi government 3) Let the Iraqis vote in a free, open election ASAP to choose their new leader 4) while 2 & 3 are happening, leave US forces around because the new government needs time to create a police force that will enforce laws and keep the peace.
We're right on track and, frankly, in a much different and better position than we were in Vietnam.
fear is fueled by isolation, compasion is fueled by interaction, which helps with empathy. That's why rural places trend towards conservative and urban areas trend towards liberal.
Um, maybe the first part, but it would be a difficult sell to claim that NYC is a more "compassionate" place than rural Indiana. I've been to both, and I'll tell you that the majority of rural towns are more compassionate. They may "fear" outsiders more, but there's a reason for that...in places like NYC, practically everyone is an "outsider" because there are too many people to know them all personally. Heck, even recognize them all. Rural places will welcome you in once they realize you aren't a threat to their way of life.
Things are slightly skewed towards the conservative right now because our president is a staunch conservative.
I don't know about this...if this were the case, the media would be agreeing with him and biased against John Kerry. That hasn't been the case. Bush has been routed by nearly every media outlet.
Read "Bias" by Bernie Goldberg...while it tends to read like a 150 page rant against Dan "The Dan" Rather, he has a number of people in the news business on record, and through personal testimony, submitting that it's nearly a given that the media is biased towards the left. I'm not talking about ads on Nightline saying "Bush is a Moron", I'm talking about subtle spin being placed on the issue by news reporters...not editorialists (read: Dan Rather, NOT O'Reilly). Some of his citations even wonder why he would bother to make that statement, like it's an unspoken truth about the business. It's a decent read, nothing that's going to lite a fire under you, but interesting.
Okay, forgetting that you sound like you belong to a cult, where have you been? Modern media is slanted left, Hollywood is slanted left, the younger generation tends to have liberal leanings. While I don't feel any political pressure, per se, as a conservative, finding a liberal bastion is as difficult as finding the nearest Starbucks.
As much as you're kidding, I'm sure, this would be akin to women wondering if males had a mental illness because they weren't "in touch with their feelings". Some people just think more with their proverbial head than their proverbial heart.
I'm one of them, I have little to no empathy/compassion for most people and situations. What's right is right, what's wrong is wrong. I vote Republican most of the time. Nothing wrong with that, the party tends to go my way more times than Democrats. I proudly voted for Clinton both times, however.
I absolutely agree with you. Not on your interpretation of Bush's views, but on your belief that you should be informed before voting. One of my pet peeves is best represented by my best friend's wife...her entire reason for voting for Kerry is because he wants to raise teacher's salaries. "He's for education, and as a teacher, I respect that.". Okay, dandy, but a) teacher's salaries are state dependant..federal funding supports education, but does nothing to directly affect their salaries, b) Bush has thrown more into education than any other president *ever*, including accounting for inflation, c) the 'underfunding' that keeps getting reported is a little known difference between 'approved funding' and 'appropriated funding'...every government program gets hit this way.
My point is, the American people are ill-informed and it's going to come back and bite them in the ass. What people should really be looking at is the issues swept under the carpet. I don't care if John Kerry was a war hero or not, but I'll be damned if he's going to spend my tax dollars on a healthcare plan when almost 50% of the national budget is going to be going (within the next decade) to Social Security and Medicare. No candidate can hope to get elected on the "I'm going to raise your taxes because we have to pay for shit" platform, but that's exactly what's going to have to happen in the next few presidential terms. Either that or stop spending so much fucking money. The American public doesn't like hearing that either, unfortunately.
Democrats have been the squelchers this year, not Republicans, just ask any Nader supporter. Check out this article, only one of many that I've read in the past week. Essentially, Democrats don't want Nader anywhere near a ballot. I don't get it...I'm voting Bush either way, but I still think a candidate, whose views don't coincide with Bush's, fyi, with valid points deserves to be on the ballot. He's a good guy.
On a serious note, what makes them think video games are more harmful then say movies or even the public education system?
Frankly, the nightly local news scares the bejeezus out of me, that's why I've stopped watching it and instead hit up CNN or Fox News. I suppose living near Washington, D.C. lends itself to having especially violent, depressing news coverage, but I think it's gotten worse in later times.
What I could never understand about Lieberman, et al, bashing GTA was that, in the game, you were actually *punished* for doing bad things. Kill too many people for no reason, you get a star. Kill a cop, automatic 2 stars (which you can't get rid of by running around). Hold up a store at gunpoint, get up to three stars within 15 seconds. Fire off random rockets in the streets, get stars. Screwing hookers for health never quite registered with me, but most other 'crimes' in the game had the police on your tail. Was it just the fact you were able to do these things? Sounds like a case of free will, to me.
Part of the dilemna is that most rules of real life contradict the first rule of video game design: If a feature detracts from the 'fun' aspect of a game, it's not a good feature.
Exceptions are made for this rule...I think that WoW's resting is going to be a good thing, it will prohibit people from power leveling. You make some good points about weapon proficiency, things that I've often considered were bad as well...why can't prowess in long swords be applied to short shords, if not in full then partially? I don't know why games haven't done it yet, but shouldn't a class/subclass system of proficiency be used? i.e., you have a weapon proficiency, sword is a subclass of that, longsword is a subclass of that. Using a long sword gains you X proficiency points in longsword, X/2 in swords and X/4 in weapons.
Anyways, a lot of simplification is done in games because the developers want the average Joe Sixpack to be able to play it. Anyone remember Ultima? Anyone remember having to remember or read from the manual the rune words for spells? In order to cast a spell, you had to mix specific ingredients for that spell ahead of time, then say the right words to cast it (In Flam was fireball, I think...Mas Flam was fire wind, or something along those lines).
It certainly added a more complicated aspect to the game, but would a game embodying those aspects be popular now? Hell, games have all but done away with making the user map areas...I must have had 2 tablets of Bards Tale maps sitting around my house at one time.
There's another way, you know. How many of us owned these 'classic' games when they were released for the NES? I still have the carts sitting in my basement, so I feel absolutely no remorse about downloading the ROMs, and either playing them through an emulator or burning them to a flash cartridge. You can fit around 100 or more classic games on the GBA carts and use PocketNES to run them.
Speaking of Al Franken, my buddy and I have gotten into heated "discussions" recently regarding Franken's chapter on O'Reilly in his book. Check out http://www.lyingliar.com, it was eye opening for me...I never liked Franken, I like him less now.
I remember life and death...never could get past the apendectomy, not sure what came next. Either the suturing didn't go well, the patient bled to death or he died of heart arythmia...this is assuming I remembered to turn the gas on first (those screams were GREAT!).
I think the game was rigged, personally. We tried countless times and could never get a single surgery down.
Slashdot Mirror
That's one of the issues that I hope will get clarified from discussion here...an international voice on our political system may help some of us see how strange our arguments are.
This political season especially has succombed, basically, to partisanship. Not that it's ever truly different, but from the other elections I've followed, this one seems worse.
Not to mention that outsiders could actually help to settle differences. My democrat friend and I can sit down for hours at a time and agree on nothing because neither of us is willing to budge on basic assumptions (higher taxes=good/bad, bigger government=good/bad, etc). We've started comparing issues like taxes to other countries, and an authoritative voice on those countries would come in handy.
--trb
I laughed at first, but you may be onto something. There's a lot of wasted energy coming out of a gym. People are, essentially, expending energy so that their muscles can do work, but that energy is only going to move weights against gravity, so essentially to waste. Huh.
--trb
While I fully support editors editorializing in their descriptions of news stories...
...the fact that they didn't have a woman as president before does not a gender biased institution make. I've never seen a female garbageman(person) before either, that doesn't mean the entire field is biased against women, it probably means women don't look for that position or that they weren't qualified (hard to imagine, but I'm sure there are qualifications for being a garbageman).
is this a step in the right direction for the historically gender-biased institution?
--trb
Beer at tailgates. You inevitably run out of ice, and the beer gets warm sitting 100+ degree temperatures. These could be great for that purpose.
--trb
Aren't "Monster Rancher" or "Animal Crossing" similar games? Having never played either, I'm only going off Gamespot reviews, but they both sound like they share similar, non-violent, build for no apparent reasons qualities.
I never did understand these games. I tried The Sims for about 2 weeks, got bored, moved on. I tried the Sims Online, realized you couldn't get anywhere or really do anything, got bored, moved on. I doubt I'll try Sims 2.
--trb
I never once insinuated that liberals use fear to motivate people. Kerry *is* using nothing but promises and lies to motivate people, but not fear. I don't know why so many people think that fear is a major part of this election, I just want a president that has grounded plans, and that's Bush. Kerry hasn't backed up his war plan, his economic plan or his healthcare plan. He said he thought troop redeployment was a good idea, a week before Bush, then condemned Bush for saying it. WTF?
--trb
Your logic makes no sense.
That's because you're hearing what you want to hear and not what I'm trying to say.
People who do bad things on purpose should be stopped. That's what we've set up punishments like the death penalty for. People who accidentally hurt others are punished, but not as severely. If they did something they knew would allow them to hurt someone (driving drunk, for instance) the punishment goes up. Once asbestos was proven to cause cancer, companies stopped installing it or were hit with huge fines.
Terrorists harm intentionally, their punishment should be the move severe. Countries that harbor/aid terrorists should, and will, face the same consequence.
--trb
sigh.
Okay, let me add a 5th step that I thought was self-explanatory
5) once the country has stablized and has a working military/police force, leave
Better? Kerry and the Dems are currently *complaining* about us removing troops from places like Germany where we've left them for 50 years. We've been in Korea for about that long as well. We'll have some troops left in Iraq for the next 2 decades, that doesn't mean we'll be actively fighting that long.
--trb
Why aren't we pulling out the stops to make roads and cars safer?
It's a matter of intentions. People intended to kill the kids at Columbine, terrorists intended to kill people on 9/11. Car accidents are just that, accidents.
I don't fear the terrorists, and I don't think most people do; I fear dumb, 16 year old drivers a lot, lot more. However, the 16 year old drivers aren't trying to be bad drivers, they just are and always will be. We won't get rid of them. I feel like we *can* get rid of hostile regimes, men who do bad things to good people (and please, no rhetoric about Bush being a "bad man" doing "bad things" to whomever). You can vote for whom you like on 11/2, but don't think that everyone voting for Bush is terrified...some of us just think he's doing a good job.
--trb
I would disagree that both parties are moving in their ideological and opposite directions. They're both making promises that go with their party's supposed ideologies, but we'll see what actually happens. The two parties have, in recent years past, not done anything terribly polarizing because there's such an even split, not only in Congress, but in voters. Nobody is winning landslides anymore, they're splitting the vote and, therefore, not getting anything done. Look at congressional approval of judges and the like. Anyone a Republican nominates gets rejected by Dems unless they're really, really close to the middle. Vice-versa, same thing.
--trb
Okay, I disagree with you on everything in your post, so where to start...
Iraq is turning into anther Vietnam
How is that? The numbers of troops lost alone would seem to contradict you. Add to that the violence we're currently facing is nothing compared to the entire VC forces.
we don't have a clear exit strategy or set of goals
Yes we do...
1) Remove Saddam
2) Install temporary Iraqi government
3) Let the Iraqis vote in a free, open election ASAP to choose their new leader
4) while 2 & 3 are happening, leave US forces around because the new government needs time to create a police force that will enforce laws and keep the peace.
We're right on track and, frankly, in a much different and better position than we were in Vietnam.
fear is fueled by isolation, compasion is fueled by interaction, which helps with empathy. That's why rural places trend towards conservative and urban areas trend towards liberal.
Um, maybe the first part, but it would be a difficult sell to claim that NYC is a more "compassionate" place than rural Indiana. I've been to both, and I'll tell you that the majority of rural towns are more compassionate. They may "fear" outsiders more, but there's a reason for that...in places like NYC, practically everyone is an "outsider" because there are too many people to know them all personally. Heck, even recognize them all. Rural places will welcome you in once they realize you aren't a threat to their way of life.
--trb
Things are slightly skewed towards the conservative right now because our president is a staunch conservative.
I don't know about this...if this were the case, the media would be agreeing with him and biased against John Kerry. That hasn't been the case. Bush has been routed by nearly every media outlet.
Read "Bias" by Bernie Goldberg...while it tends to read like a 150 page rant against Dan "The Dan" Rather, he has a number of people in the news business on record, and through personal testimony, submitting that it's nearly a given that the media is biased towards the left. I'm not talking about ads on Nightline saying "Bush is a Moron", I'm talking about subtle spin being placed on the issue by news reporters...not editorialists (read: Dan Rather, NOT O'Reilly). Some of his citations even wonder why he would bother to make that statement, like it's an unspoken truth about the business. It's a decent read, nothing that's going to lite a fire under you, but interesting.
--trb
Okay, forgetting that you sound like you belong to a cult, where have you been? Modern media is slanted left, Hollywood is slanted left, the younger generation tends to have liberal leanings. While I don't feel any political pressure, per se, as a conservative, finding a liberal bastion is as difficult as finding the nearest Starbucks.
--trb
must...ignore...troll..doh!
As much as you're kidding, I'm sure, this would be akin to women wondering if males had a mental illness because they weren't "in touch with their feelings". Some people just think more with their proverbial head than their proverbial heart.
I'm one of them, I have little to no empathy/compassion for most people and situations. What's right is right, what's wrong is wrong. I vote Republican most of the time. Nothing wrong with that, the party tends to go my way more times than Democrats. I proudly voted for Clinton both times, however.
--trb
"Ted Kennedy. Great senator, but a bad date."
Go on eBay, I got the Laserdisc rips on DVD for around $35. Pretty damn good quality.
--trb
I absolutely agree with you. Not on your interpretation of Bush's views, but on your belief that you should be informed before voting. One of my pet peeves is best represented by my best friend's wife...her entire reason for voting for Kerry is because he wants to raise teacher's salaries. "He's for education, and as a teacher, I respect that.". Okay, dandy, but a) teacher's salaries are state dependant..federal funding supports education, but does nothing to directly affect their salaries, b) Bush has thrown more into education than any other president *ever*, including accounting for inflation, c) the 'underfunding' that keeps getting reported is a little known difference between 'approved funding' and 'appropriated funding'...every government program gets hit this way.
My point is, the American people are ill-informed and it's going to come back and bite them in the ass. What people should really be looking at is the issues swept under the carpet. I don't care if John Kerry was a war hero or not, but I'll be damned if he's going to spend my tax dollars on a healthcare plan when almost 50% of the national budget is going to be going (within the next decade) to Social Security and Medicare. No candidate can hope to get elected on the "I'm going to raise your taxes because we have to pay for shit" platform, but that's exactly what's going to have to happen in the next few presidential terms. Either that or stop spending so much fucking money. The American public doesn't like hearing that either, unfortunately.
--trb
Democrats have been the squelchers this year, not Republicans, just ask any Nader supporter. Check out this article, only one of many that I've read in the past week. Essentially, Democrats don't want Nader anywhere near a ballot. I don't get it...I'm voting Bush either way, but I still think a candidate, whose views don't coincide with Bush's, fyi, with valid points deserves to be on the ballot. He's a good guy.
On a serious note, what makes them think video games are more harmful then say movies or even the public education system?
Frankly, the nightly local news scares the bejeezus out of me, that's why I've stopped watching it and instead hit up CNN or Fox News. I suppose living near Washington, D.C. lends itself to having especially violent, depressing news coverage, but I think it's gotten worse in later times.
What I could never understand about Lieberman, et al, bashing GTA was that, in the game, you were actually *punished* for doing bad things. Kill too many people for no reason, you get a star. Kill a cop, automatic 2 stars (which you can't get rid of by running around). Hold up a store at gunpoint, get up to three stars within 15 seconds. Fire off random rockets in the streets, get stars. Screwing hookers for health never quite registered with me, but most other 'crimes' in the game had the police on your tail. Was it just the fact you were able to do these things? Sounds like a case of free will, to me.
--trb
Part of the dilemna is that most rules of real life contradict the first rule of video game design: If a feature detracts from the 'fun' aspect of a game, it's not a good feature.
Exceptions are made for this rule...I think that WoW's resting is going to be a good thing, it will prohibit people from power leveling. You make some good points about weapon proficiency, things that I've often considered were bad as well...why can't prowess in long swords be applied to short shords, if not in full then partially? I don't know why games haven't done it yet, but shouldn't a class/subclass system of proficiency be used? i.e., you have a weapon proficiency, sword is a subclass of that, longsword is a subclass of that. Using a long sword gains you X proficiency points in longsword, X/2 in swords and X/4 in weapons.
Anyways, a lot of simplification is done in games because the developers want the average Joe Sixpack to be able to play it. Anyone remember Ultima? Anyone remember having to remember or read from the manual the rune words for spells? In order to cast a spell, you had to mix specific ingredients for that spell ahead of time, then say the right words to cast it (In Flam was fireball, I think...Mas Flam was fire wind, or something along those lines).
It certainly added a more complicated aspect to the game, but would a game embodying those aspects be popular now? Hell, games have all but done away with making the user map areas...I must have had 2 tablets of Bards Tale maps sitting around my house at one time.
--trb
There's another way, you know. How many of us owned these 'classic' games when they were released for the NES? I still have the carts sitting in my basement, so I feel absolutely no remorse about downloading the ROMs, and either playing them through an emulator or burning them to a flash cartridge. You can fit around 100 or more classic games on the GBA carts and use PocketNES to run them.
--trb
Speaking of Al Franken, my buddy and I have gotten into heated "discussions" recently regarding Franken's chapter on O'Reilly in his book. Check out http://www.lyingliar.com, it was eye opening for me...I never liked Franken, I like him less now.
--trb
fyi, obligatory Home of the Underdogs link
--trb
I remember life and death...never could get past the apendectomy, not sure what came next. Either the suturing didn't go well, the patient bled to death or he died of heart arythmia...this is assuming I remembered to turn the gas on first (those screams were GREAT!).
I think the game was rigged, personally. We tried countless times and could never get a single surgery down.
--trb
This may be offtopic, by why is this in the YRO category? I don't see how this has to do with digital, or analog, personal rights.
--trb