Microsoft keeps pulling PC devs into the console. And what is the result? You get a dumbed down PC game with crappy controls. Why?
As to lap desks and couches... I'd explore air mice before I used a dpad for a lot of games.
Microsoft experimented with letting PC gamers play against xbox gamers with Halo 1. Guess what the result was?... The Xbox gamers were slaughtered. No contest.
Why? The controls are awkward for FPS games. Useless for strategy. And don't have enough buttons for complex RPGs, MMOs, or even the better simulators which can have upwards of 50 mapped buttons. And yes, you use them all.
In the console you have to suffer through inventory wheels and other annoying gimmicks put into the game to compensate for the fact that you have less then ten buttons total.
Look. For traditional console games the gamepad is fine. But for these hybrid games where they basically release a PC game on the console... they're crap controls.
game pads are crap compared to the keyboard and mouse.
All these new interfaces are just means by which an inferior input system can compete.
Its frustrating for game devs to be limited by the gamepad.
Strategy games are totally impossible. FPS games are awkward. Even RPGs need to be simplified and MMOs which are already pretty dumbed down have to be dumbed down farther.
So here is my suggestion for how to improve the situation.
Allow console users to plug in a keyboard and mouse. By all means, streamline it a bit if you must. But that in and of itself would resolve most of the problems.
Except for this has been a huge PR failure for the NSA. Had they granted amnesty for him early they would have suffered less.
This stiff line is just pissing people off like me that might otherwise defend them.
We need an intelligence agency. I don't have a problem with that.
But they MUST respect my rights. If they don't then I have to destroy them.
End of story.
So if the NSA wants to survive they really should think very carefully about what sort of society they live in and the consequences of pissing off a sizable portion of the voting public. To say nothing of the corporations etc that they rely upon to do their jobs.
Piss us off and you're asking for the consequences.
If the NSA were smart they'd have gone out of their way to placate people that were justifiably infuriated by this situation.
Instead they've doubled down which means they're challenging us to do our worst.
Considering that nearly all of that was bought from US companies with US tax dollars what are you really bragging about here?
The US government didn't design any of these things. They ordered them out of a catalog.
If anything is impressive it is the American people and the American economy. The US government is mostly impressive in the restrictions and checks against its excesses. The very things the NSA is subverting are the most impressive thing about the US government.
The NSA is if anything pissing on what makes this country great.
So if the NSA was conducting a rape program and you told your supervisor about it and he did nothing... you would of course keep your mouth shut?
Or you're wrong?
And no this is not hyperbole. They were flagrantly breaking the law.
That sort of thing is fine when it against an enemy power. But when it is against your own FUCKING PEOPLE it is not okay.
Please try to justify lying to congress. The NSA lied to congress.
Please try to justify spying on americans without warrants. The NSA did that.
Please try to justify compromising US businesses and filling everything with with backdoors? The NSA did that.
Please try to justify compromising encryption standards which put at risk all our banking records, medical records, etc.
Please try to do that and then when you're done humiliating yourself... nail this dunce cap to your head and sit in the back of the class. Because you have to be stupid.
Wow... so you don't think the NSA has to follow constitutional due process or search and seizure rules?
The sort of thing the NSA is doing was one of the things the founders hated about the old british empire. Something known as "General Warrants". Basically the courts would give the British government the right to search any home within a given area.
That's unconstitutional under US law. Search warrants have to be specific and must show cause.
The NSA is doing none of that.
We let them get away with it because we thought it was for foreign targets. The constitution does not apply to them. So we're okay with it for the same reason we're okay with our military killing someone on the battlefield without a trial.
But when you do it in the US against american citizens... Due process is required. They are doing dragnet searches of everyone's communications. its not acceptable.
The executive is given authority to make rules within OUR rules... the rules of the constitution which the NSA has admitted to violating thousands of times a year.
So no.
This is now officially an idiotic conversation... I'm not sure if you're an advocate of a totalitarian state of a fool. But its one of the two.
Snowden betrayed them TO us... he served ME and YOU... so why would I support the NSA screwing ME over and keeping it a secret? how f'ing stupid would either of us have to be to do that?
I agree. That's in large part why we would have the discussion.
Look... you want to beat that document? I love it but you have to admit it is looking pretty god damn weak these days. The courts are betraying it daily.
its dying.
If you want to defend it it needs to be reinked... possibly in blood.
As to the deterrent... for what? Is this something you want to deter?
To the contrary, I want to encourage this sort of behavior.
Understand, I make a distinction between treason and whistle blowing. This is whistle blowing.
If the police department starts raping women in the jail cells and then covering it up... do you want to deter people that try to inform the public of it?
Yes. The relationship is valid. The NSA has been wantonly breaking the law on a vast scale. And what is more the judicial branch is enabling it. Does the rape become more valid if the judge is okay with it? No. Its actually worse and worthy of increasingly outrage until the issue is resolved.
As to leaks, leaks are almost never punished. The white house, congress, the pentagon, the CIA all leak things all the time that they're not supposed to leak. There was a big flap lately about the CIA leaking things about seal team 6. The leak was ultimately traced to the white house. Anyone go to jail for that? Nope. So what you're doing is not punishing leakers. Leakers don't get punished. What you're doing is punishing a whistle blower. The guy that calls RAPE. You want that silenced.
Sound like a good idea? I don't see how it could be anything but an encouragement for FURTHER corruption.
As to the interest of the NSA versus the people. I think you're confused here... the NSA works for us. Where our interests conflict we take precedence without exception. If the NSA is under any illusions on that issue then why are we paying them with our tax dollars and why are we giving them special extra legal authorities? If they want to go rogue that's fine. They can see how far they get with no money and no extra legal rights. They'd be a non-entity in a week.
So no. They have no conflicting interests that I need to respect. If anything, the public has an interest in treating what interests they have outside of their duty with utter contempt.
They shouldn't have broken the law. Yes the courts have ruled it all legal but everyone knows that to be a farce.
They shouldn't have persecuted Snowden. What has that accomplished?
They shouldn't have doubled down on their right to spy because that has caused an international incident.
And now their corporate partners are all turning on them one by one.
Give up, NSA. Have the national discussion you should have had a generation ago. We'll talk about it.
If we decide as a nation to go down that path... so be it. But we won't. Which means you'll have to operate within more limited rules and capabilities. And as much as that might vex you or put the public at greater risk such is the price of living in a free country.
What you have done is wrong. What snowden did violated the law but served the interests of the American people. We owe it to him to shield him and any like him.
If we don't stand up for men like Snowden then what chance do any of us have when the feds come for YOU.
Perhaps but they lack the force of law under capitalism. They use market forces to maintain power not machine guns.
Furthermore, there isn't one master sociopath to deal with under capitalism but rather a whole class of them which compete against each other. That competition breeds a degree of chaos that an average man can exploit to carve out a bit of freedom. Under a totalitarian state there is no such chaos to exploit. Its at best an oligarchy and more often a dictatorship. Everything concentrating on a single point.
As to Rand... I think its limiting to base your philosophy on any one person or thing. We're all just people making our own little minds up in this game called life.
I would like to keep my right to keep making my mind up for myself. Communism means i lose all my rights. You'll likely say something about what I describe as not being actual communism... to this I respond that you don't know what real communism is in the first place.
The means are the end, dear friend. You become what you do. To enact communism you're going to have to kill a lot of people. You're going to have control everything. You're going to have to monitor and persuade at gun point most of the population. Do you honestly not see how that will change your system from your ideal to your nightmare?
Truly stop and think about it. What you do will be what you create. You intentions will be irrelevant if to get what you want you must do that and you will...
If you value freedom and the individual then you'll start by valuing freedom and the individual enough to leave people alone.
That's all I want from you and all I offer in return. Leave me be.
If you can't do that then we are at war. And at that point the only law between us is the law of tooth and claw.
Does that sound like the generally passive Rand? What is mine is mine. Violate my rights and the social contract is void and there is no law between us.
Honestly?... communism just turns into dictatorship...
So... the future is probably dictatorship. People like you don't respect freedom. You don't respect democracy. You don't respect the individual.
And as a result, when there are enough of you... a dictator will use you to dominate the rest of us. And then we'll live under peonage.
Ideally, the most clever of us will rise in the ranks of the tyranny and carve out reasonable lives for ourselves. But all in all it will be bad for most people.
But on the bright side... you won't get to make choices anymore. Your choices will all be taken away. No one will ask for your opinions. You will be told what to think.
And if you're dumb enough to disagree... at best you'll wind up in a labor camp.
Given that "legitimate" scientists have been caught repeatedly lying about research to get grants or fame... I don't really think the amateurs have that far to go.
All you have to do is make a discovery, document it well enough that someone else will attempt to replicate it, and then have that replication verified.
That's about it.
If I discover something but document it terribly... and someone else uses what little I provided to show I was right... then I discovered it.
I've gotten a lot of sites that don't let you delete accounts to delete the account by simply calling them. Their numbers are often hard to find but get them on the phone and ask nicely.
as to your tax comment... well by that argument what portion of the world population even has a computer?
get real...
As to US taxes... they're incredibly complicated and the IRS can get very scary if you so much as make an error on the very complicated forms.
US tax code at this point is over 10,000 pages. A fraction of that is relevant to any given person but its impossible to know what is relevant unless you know it all... so people guess. And that means that most of the time people in the US tend to pay more taxes then they're supposed to pay because they don't know about all the deductions etc they could use.
If you're an adult that uses their computer for adult stuff then you do stuff on it like manage spreadsheets, modify PDF files, and do your taxes.
I'm just talking about personal finance here.
Excel files or similar spread sheet programs give you access to simple data management. PDF files are the defacto standard for contracts. I've had to virtually sign these on many occasions and you can't do that on a smart phone. And then when tax season comes around... well... you need something like quicken or turbo tax.
This is basic stuff. Computers from the dawn of the personal computer could do this and you want to use a machine that can't?
Silly.
Further, forgive me if I'm wrong... but can android's even read flash? Don't get me wrong... flash is stupid... but its common and required on many sites.
Will it open excel spread sheets, allow me to modify PDF files for a contract, is it compatible with printer drivers, will it run quicken during tax season?
See my point? A giant smart phone is not sufficient.
Slashdot Mirror
It isn't a singularity at all.
Microsoft keeps pulling PC devs into the console. And what is the result? You get a dumbed down PC game with crappy controls. Why?
As to lap desks and couches... I'd explore air mice before I used a dpad for a lot of games.
Microsoft experimented with letting PC gamers play against xbox gamers with Halo 1. Guess what the result was?... The Xbox gamers were slaughtered. No contest.
Why? The controls are awkward for FPS games. Useless for strategy. And don't have enough buttons for complex RPGs, MMOs, or even the better simulators which can have upwards of 50 mapped buttons. And yes, you use them all.
In the console you have to suffer through inventory wheels and other annoying gimmicks put into the game to compensate for the fact that you have less then ten buttons total.
Look. For traditional console games the gamepad is fine. But for these hybrid games where they basically release a PC game on the console... they're crap controls.
game pads are crap compared to the keyboard and mouse.
All these new interfaces are just means by which an inferior input system can compete.
Its frustrating for game devs to be limited by the gamepad.
Strategy games are totally impossible. FPS games are awkward. Even RPGs need to be simplified and MMOs which are already pretty dumbed down have to be dumbed down farther.
So here is my suggestion for how to improve the situation.
Allow console users to plug in a keyboard and mouse. By all means, streamline it a bit if you must. But that in and of itself would resolve most of the problems.
Except for this has been a huge PR failure for the NSA. Had they granted amnesty for him early they would have suffered less.
This stiff line is just pissing people off like me that might otherwise defend them.
We need an intelligence agency. I don't have a problem with that.
But they MUST respect my rights. If they don't then I have to destroy them.
End of story.
So if the NSA wants to survive they really should think very carefully about what sort of society they live in and the consequences of pissing off a sizable portion of the voting public. To say nothing of the corporations etc that they rely upon to do their jobs.
Piss us off and you're asking for the consequences.
If the NSA were smart they'd have gone out of their way to placate people that were justifiably infuriated by this situation.
Instead they've doubled down which means they're challenging us to do our worst.
So fine. Scorched earth on the NSA.
Considering that nearly all of that was bought from US companies with US tax dollars what are you really bragging about here?
The US government didn't design any of these things. They ordered them out of a catalog.
If anything is impressive it is the American people and the American economy. The US government is mostly impressive in the restrictions and checks against its excesses. The very things the NSA is subverting are the most impressive thing about the US government.
The NSA is if anything pissing on what makes this country great.
I wish Bill Nye would do something actually useful.
So if the NSA was conducting a rape program and you told your supervisor about it and he did nothing... you would of course keep your mouth shut?
Or you're wrong?
And no this is not hyperbole. They were flagrantly breaking the law.
That sort of thing is fine when it against an enemy power. But when it is against your own FUCKING PEOPLE it is not okay.
Please try to justify lying to congress. The NSA lied to congress.
Please try to justify spying on americans without warrants. The NSA did that.
Please try to justify compromising US businesses and filling everything with with backdoors? The NSA did that.
Please try to justify compromising encryption standards which put at risk all our banking records, medical records, etc.
Please try to do that and then when you're done humiliating yourself... nail this dunce cap to your head and sit in the back of the class. Because you have to be stupid.
Wow... so you don't think the NSA has to follow constitutional due process or search and seizure rules?
The sort of thing the NSA is doing was one of the things the founders hated about the old british empire. Something known as "General Warrants". Basically the courts would give the British government the right to search any home within a given area.
That's unconstitutional under US law. Search warrants have to be specific and must show cause.
The NSA is doing none of that.
We let them get away with it because we thought it was for foreign targets. The constitution does not apply to them. So we're okay with it for the same reason we're okay with our military killing someone on the battlefield without a trial.
But when you do it in the US against american citizens... Due process is required. They are doing dragnet searches of everyone's communications. its not acceptable.
The executive is given authority to make rules within OUR rules... the rules of the constitution which the NSA has admitted to violating thousands of times a year.
So no.
This is now officially an idiotic conversation... I'm not sure if you're an advocate of a totalitarian state of a fool. But its one of the two.
They don't get to make rules.
We make rules. The NSA serves us.
Snowden betrayed them TO us... he served ME and YOU... so why would I support the NSA screwing ME over and keeping it a secret? how f'ing stupid would either of us have to be to do that?
I agree. That's in large part why we would have the discussion.
Look... you want to beat that document? I love it but you have to admit it is looking pretty god damn weak these days. The courts are betraying it daily.
its dying.
If you want to defend it it needs to be reinked... possibly in blood.
As to the deterrent... for what? Is this something you want to deter?
To the contrary, I want to encourage this sort of behavior.
Understand, I make a distinction between treason and whistle blowing. This is whistle blowing.
If the police department starts raping women in the jail cells and then covering it up... do you want to deter people that try to inform the public of it?
Yes. The relationship is valid. The NSA has been wantonly breaking the law on a vast scale. And what is more the judicial branch is enabling it. Does the rape become more valid if the judge is okay with it? No. Its actually worse and worthy of increasingly outrage until the issue is resolved.
As to leaks, leaks are almost never punished. The white house, congress, the pentagon, the CIA all leak things all the time that they're not supposed to leak. There was a big flap lately about the CIA leaking things about seal team 6. The leak was ultimately traced to the white house. Anyone go to jail for that? Nope. So what you're doing is not punishing leakers. Leakers don't get punished. What you're doing is punishing a whistle blower. The guy that calls RAPE. You want that silenced.
Sound like a good idea? I don't see how it could be anything but an encouragement for FURTHER corruption.
As to the interest of the NSA versus the people. I think you're confused here... the NSA works for us. Where our interests conflict we take precedence without exception. If the NSA is under any illusions on that issue then why are we paying them with our tax dollars and why are we giving them special extra legal authorities? If they want to go rogue that's fine. They can see how far they get with no money and no extra legal rights. They'd be a non-entity in a week.
So no. They have no conflicting interests that I need to respect. If anything, the public has an interest in treating what interests they have outside of their duty with utter contempt.
They shouldn't have broken the law. Yes the courts have ruled it all legal but everyone knows that to be a farce.
They shouldn't have persecuted Snowden. What has that accomplished?
They shouldn't have doubled down on their right to spy because that has caused an international incident.
And now their corporate partners are all turning on them one by one.
Give up, NSA. Have the national discussion you should have had a generation ago. We'll talk about it.
If we decide as a nation to go down that path... so be it. But we won't. Which means you'll have to operate within more limited rules and capabilities. And as much as that might vex you or put the public at greater risk such is the price of living in a free country.
What you have done is wrong. What snowden did violated the law but served the interests of the American people. We owe it to him to shield him and any like him.
If we don't stand up for men like Snowden then what chance do any of us have when the feds come for YOU.
Perhaps but they lack the force of law under capitalism. They use market forces to maintain power not machine guns.
Furthermore, there isn't one master sociopath to deal with under capitalism but rather a whole class of them which compete against each other. That competition breeds a degree of chaos that an average man can exploit to carve out a bit of freedom. Under a totalitarian state there is no such chaos to exploit. Its at best an oligarchy and more often a dictatorship. Everything concentrating on a single point.
As to Rand... I think its limiting to base your philosophy on any one person or thing. We're all just people making our own little minds up in this game called life.
I would like to keep my right to keep making my mind up for myself. Communism means i lose all my rights. You'll likely say something about what I describe as not being actual communism... to this I respond that you don't know what real communism is in the first place.
The means are the end, dear friend. You become what you do. To enact communism you're going to have to kill a lot of people. You're going to have control everything. You're going to have to monitor and persuade at gun point most of the population. Do you honestly not see how that will change your system from your ideal to your nightmare?
Truly stop and think about it. What you do will be what you create. You intentions will be irrelevant if to get what you want you must do that and you will...
If you value freedom and the individual then you'll start by valuing freedom and the individual enough to leave people alone.
That's all I want from you and all I offer in return. Leave me be.
If you can't do that then we are at war. And at that point the only law between us is the law of tooth and claw.
Does that sound like the generally passive Rand? What is mine is mine. Violate my rights and the social contract is void and there is no law between us.
I'm not defending capitalism. I'm defending my rights and my individuality.
Just because you're determined to be a slave doesn't mean you have to drag everyone else down with you.
Just grease yourself up for a gimp suit, put on your leash, and enjoy a life on your knees.
Some of us want to live on our feet.
Honestly?... communism just turns into dictatorship...
So... the future is probably dictatorship. People like you don't respect freedom. You don't respect democracy. You don't respect the individual.
And as a result, when there are enough of you... a dictator will use you to dominate the rest of us. And then we'll live under peonage.
Ideally, the most clever of us will rise in the ranks of the tyranny and carve out reasonable lives for ourselves. But all in all it will be bad for most people.
But on the bright side... you won't get to make choices anymore. Your choices will all be taken away. No one will ask for your opinions. You will be told what to think.
And if you're dumb enough to disagree... at best you'll wind up in a labor camp.
Communism.
Smell the despair.
He's so far down the rabbit hole he doesn't see the sun anymore.
Its too bad. He's so compromised all the oaths he swore to uphold that its frankly irredeemable.
We need to reevaluate everything.
Given that "legitimate" scientists have been caught repeatedly lying about research to get grants or fame... I don't really think the amateurs have that far to go.
All you have to do is make a discovery, document it well enough that someone else will attempt to replicate it, and then have that replication verified.
That's about it.
If I discover something but document it terribly... and someone else uses what little I provided to show I was right... then I discovered it.
Boom and done.
You argued with me... not the other way around, sport.
*clicks tongue*... do you have more... because this now become boring.
Facebook is creepy.
I would argue that people that don't need to do modern adult things don't really need a computer at all.
I've gotten a lot of sites that don't let you delete accounts to delete the account by simply calling them. Their numbers are often hard to find but get them on the phone and ask nicely.
as to your tax comment... well by that argument what portion of the world population even has a computer?
get real...
As to US taxes... they're incredibly complicated and the IRS can get very scary if you so much as make an error on the very complicated forms.
US tax code at this point is over 10,000 pages. A fraction of that is relevant to any given person but its impossible to know what is relevant unless you know it all... so people guess. And that means that most of the time people in the US tend to pay more taxes then they're supposed to pay because they don't know about all the deductions etc they could use.
Its a pain.
Only if 75 percent are not adults.
If you're an adult that uses their computer for adult stuff then you do stuff on it like manage spreadsheets, modify PDF files, and do your taxes.
I'm just talking about personal finance here.
Excel files or similar spread sheet programs give you access to simple data management. PDF files are the defacto standard for contracts. I've had to virtually sign these on many occasions and you can't do that on a smart phone. And then when tax season comes around... well... you need something like quicken or turbo tax.
This is basic stuff. Computers from the dawn of the personal computer could do this and you want to use a machine that can't?
Silly.
Further, forgive me if I'm wrong... but can android's even read flash? Don't get me wrong... flash is stupid... but its common and required on many sites.
This isn't new. People have always been pretty clueless.
Android is not capable of competing head to head with windows. It wasn't designed to do it. The whole idea is a non-starter.
Will it open excel spread sheets, allow me to modify PDF files for a contract, is it compatible with printer drivers, will it run quicken during tax season?
See my point? A giant smart phone is not sufficient.