Well, not entirely. They're considered 'scumbags' because they have a habit of buying up small studios and either gutting them for the sole purpose of eliminating a competitor or forcing them to wring out their talents and IP's until nothing is left but a shriveled husk. Maxis, Bioware, Pandemic, Origin Systems; I could keep this list going for awhile yet. EA could make an entire game based around micro-transactions, but it would still be a drop in the bucket next to the greater crime of smashing every talented studio they can hit with their money hammer just to keep the little guy down.
As somebody currently attending a 'large, state-funded, public university', I can safely say that that how high the bar is set depends on the professor that students are assigned. The university I attend tries to mitigate this somewhat by forcing everybody to take a standardized writing test required for graduation, but the test is set somewhere around early to mid High-School level English skills, so there is definitely a low bar there. Whether or not the bar is lower than it was a decade or two ago: I cannot say. What I can say is that all of my peers with university-level writing skills always attribute them to a rigorous high school teacher or university professor who pushed them to get good, myself included. Those who were not lucky enough to have such a presence in their education still amaze me by including 'txt speech' in academic work, even into their Senior year.
I really mean it: I don't want to have to login to the internet. You keep trying to get me to do it with Chrome, so I switched from that, but now you're going to badger me about this for my phone, too? Sometimes I want to surf anonymously. Sometimes I don't want Site X and Site Y knowing that I'm the same person logging into both. And I can say for certain that all the time, I don't want to be tracked by you so you can present me with more "targeted ads" to give me a better user experience. Let's not even get into what happens if my phone gets stolen, and suddenly all my consolidated information is at some stranger's fingertips. There are far, FAR too many problems with centralized authentication, and I'm really getting sick of Google trying to force it down my throat.
Most people who jailbreak don't do it for the value: they do it for the challenge. I doubt the ones who jailbreak iOS are thinking about all the cool new apps they'll get to run once they're finished: that's just a bonus. They're thinking that they want to be the one to break apple's security, to make apple scramble to fix it, and then to do it all over again.
I'm less impressed with the footage of the squid than I am with the Japanese for actually just filming the thing instead of killing it, eating it, than denying any evidence of it ever being there. Did they at least run down one or two environmentalist boats on their way back?
Exactly: after all, what is lobbying? No, the nice gentleman from facebook is not trying to buy my vote on this matter. We are simply good friends who like to take lunch together. Only I have a chronic habit of forgetting my wallet, but he's more than happy to foot the bill. He's also quite fond of my wife, and loves to treat her to the occasional gift of exquisite diamonds and spa trips. But it's okay: he never tries to influence my vote. We're just friends.
An organization with an unlimited power has made a decision to keep that power, rather than parse out and distribute it to others. I've never heard anything so crazy before in my life.
I'd like to know the REAL reason for closing it down.
City of Heroes 2. Same reason Bioware/EA went out of their way to get Galaxies taken down just before the release of The Old Republic: they want to create a demand for a certain type of game, then provide it soon after.
It's been fairly obvious since the initial announcement that a lot of people are interested in seeing City of Heroes continue, and going to extreme lengths to make it so. If NCsoft really does not, for whatever reason, want to continue to host it, than why not just pass it off to somebody else? I'm sure they could have sold off the servers to somebody and at least gotten some salvage value. Hell, they could have brokered a deal were whoever they sell it to still charges a fee to play, which NCsoft gets a percentage of.
It's just boggling to me that there is very obvious money to be made, yet a company seems to have no interest in making it.
I won't lie: any day one of these child porn scumbags is caught is a good day. Even so, the story makes no sense. The FBI doesn't know how to remove Spyware? Any technician worth their salt would run DBAN and that would be the end of it. Yet the FBI went though what sounds like a two step process to wipe this thing, yet failed? I'm not buying it. At the same time though, I have no idea why this guy would have any reason to suspect that the principle would immediately start using his son's laptop upon return, nor any reason to think he was looking at child porn. This story is such a hodgepodge of plausible and impossible... I need a freaking drink.
I agree, it's about fun and not horsepower. The Wii U could have all the horsepower in the world, and I still wouldn't buy it because I don't think Nintendo's stupid new gimmicks are fun.
That's nice. So go right ahead and take up that manslaughter hobby you've always dreamed of! After all it was only what, 11 people killed? so $4.5 billion divided by 11: that means you can murder anybody you want for the low low price of only ~$409 million!. What are you waiting for!?...I fucking hate this country.
Such an idiotic move will only serve to drive the enthusiast market towards AMD, which might keep AMD's head above water. Intel wants nothing less, because a world without AMD is a world where Intel gets to face some fun monopoly suits.
If the most recent update is any indication, Microsoft's main trick to getting the gamer population to switch from 7 to 8 is by making newer versions of DirectX Windows 8 exclusive. Yeah yeah, 99.9% of games are console ports still running on DirectX 9, but those few juicy PC exclusive DirectX 11 games look beautiful, and are the whole reason I invested heavily in a gaming PC.
If you'd taken the additional ten seconds required to actually read more than just the headline, you would have stumbled upon the fact that nothing was "required" of anybody. It was strictly on a volunteer basis. In some countries, and I know this is a shock to those living in the USA, governments still consider people innocent until proven guilty. These people were being asked to provide assistance to their police force in order to catch a rapist, and the vast majority chose to do just that. You'll notice that there's nothing stating the 10% who refused are behind bars right now, and that's because deciding NOT to turn in your DNA due to privacy or other such concerns does not instantly make you guilty of suspicion. The anti-government, anti-police stance on this website rivals that of a Ron Paul fanclub forum. Protip: Not all cops are corrupt, and not all governments want to slam a boot down onto your face forever.
Nothing about China is sustainable, and there will be great sorrow and suffering in that country when the bottom drops out of various markets over the next decades.
There will be a great sorrow in every country, especially the US. We are all deeply tied into China's market, and whatever affects them, affects us. The next great depression will not also be a result of domestic economic negligence. It will be the result of China sinking, and dragging the world's economy down with it.
If anybody at PETA had actually bothered to play Pokemon Black and White for more than five minutes, they'd have met a group of villains named Team Plasma. This group was a parody of real world "revolutionary" groups like the Black Panthers or PETA, who attempt to present themselves as fighting for a worthy cause, when in reality they're just after personal gain and a feelings of self-satisfaction. Team Plasma tries to convince you the player that your treatment of pokemon is cruel, and that Pokemon hate people as a result. Yet the real message of the story is learning that catching a pokemon isn't just about stuffing it into a ball and forcing it to fight: It's about building a bond of trust and mutual friendship between the pokemon and trainer, which if properly fostered allows them to accomplish anything together.
If anything, PETA should be commending Pokemon for it's progressive attitude. But I guess that doesn't make for as eye-catching a headline.
I'm surprised they've yet to just attach similar language from PIPA/SOPA to some "Stop Child Pornography Bill". I don't care how invested they are in internet freedom, I very much doubt Google is going to come out against any bill with such a title.
Within a year they've had SOPA and PIPA blown out of the water by that every annoying "democracy" thing, and ACTA got slammed from every angle in the EU before floundering in the parliament. The 'AA's realize this approach is failing, so now they're stepping back to consider their options. If you honestly think they've given up on getting SOPA-like legislation passed, you're dead wrong. They've just realized they have to go about it in a much more clever way, and get the laws passed in small enough pieces to not cause another uproar. Dodd isn't saying "Well that didn't work, we give up!" He's saying: "Plan A failed, so now we're switching gears to Plan B."
Why is this being limited to science?
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Sexism In Science
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· Score: 0
Salary discrimination against Women has been a problem for decades now. It's been tightened up somewhat, but nearly as much as it should be. So why are we limiting ourselves to pointing a finger of blame at the science field? I bet you that no matter where that finger is pointed, you'll find roughly the same data.
That pretty much assured we'll be seeing more batshit insane rioting in the future. From the Muslim World's perspective, the following events occured:
1) Guy releases a movie insulting Islam
2) The Middle East explodes into violent rioting, killing hundreds of people
3) We arrest the guy to quell them.
So in other words, riot more! The more Americans you kill, embassy you torch and flags you rip up, the more the US will bow to your whim! Positive reinforcement for everybody!
I fucking hate this country.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, not entirely. They're considered 'scumbags' because they have a habit of buying up small studios and either gutting them for the sole purpose of eliminating a competitor or forcing them to wring out their talents and IP's until nothing is left but a shriveled husk. Maxis, Bioware, Pandemic, Origin Systems; I could keep this list going for awhile yet. EA could make an entire game based around micro-transactions, but it would still be a drop in the bucket next to the greater crime of smashing every talented studio they can hit with their money hammer just to keep the little guy down.
As somebody currently attending a 'large, state-funded, public university', I can safely say that that how high the bar is set depends on the professor that students are assigned. The university I attend tries to mitigate this somewhat by forcing everybody to take a standardized writing test required for graduation, but the test is set somewhere around early to mid High-School level English skills, so there is definitely a low bar there. Whether or not the bar is lower than it was a decade or two ago: I cannot say. What I can say is that all of my peers with university-level writing skills always attribute them to a rigorous high school teacher or university professor who pushed them to get good, myself included. Those who were not lucky enough to have such a presence in their education still amaze me by including 'txt speech' in academic work, even into their Senior year.
I really mean it: I don't want to have to login to the internet. You keep trying to get me to do it with Chrome, so I switched from that, but now you're going to badger me about this for my phone, too? Sometimes I want to surf anonymously. Sometimes I don't want Site X and Site Y knowing that I'm the same person logging into both. And I can say for certain that all the time, I don't want to be tracked by you so you can present me with more "targeted ads" to give me a better user experience. Let's not even get into what happens if my phone gets stolen, and suddenly all my consolidated information is at some stranger's fingertips. There are far, FAR too many problems with centralized authentication, and I'm really getting sick of Google trying to force it down my throat.
Skype constantly drops calls. The average Xbox Live voice chat user really needs to shut the fuck up. Win win.
So the more complex the game, the harder it is to find optimal strategies...\ Better break out the Nobel prizes early this year.
Most people who jailbreak don't do it for the value: they do it for the challenge. I doubt the ones who jailbreak iOS are thinking about all the cool new apps they'll get to run once they're finished: that's just a bonus. They're thinking that they want to be the one to break apple's security, to make apple scramble to fix it, and then to do it all over again.
I'm less impressed with the footage of the squid than I am with the Japanese for actually just filming the thing instead of killing it, eating it, than denying any evidence of it ever being there. Did they at least run down one or two environmentalist boats on their way back?
Exactly: after all, what is lobbying? No, the nice gentleman from facebook is not trying to buy my vote on this matter. We are simply good friends who like to take lunch together. Only I have a chronic habit of forgetting my wallet, but he's more than happy to foot the bill. He's also quite fond of my wife, and loves to treat her to the occasional gift of exquisite diamonds and spa trips. But it's okay: he never tries to influence my vote. We're just friends.
An organization with an unlimited power has made a decision to keep that power, rather than parse out and distribute it to others. I've never heard anything so crazy before in my life.
I'd like to know the REAL reason for closing it down.
City of Heroes 2. Same reason Bioware/EA went out of their way to get Galaxies taken down just before the release of The Old Republic: they want to create a demand for a certain type of game, then provide it soon after.
It's been fairly obvious since the initial announcement that a lot of people are interested in seeing City of Heroes continue, and going to extreme lengths to make it so. If NCsoft really does not, for whatever reason, want to continue to host it, than why not just pass it off to somebody else? I'm sure they could have sold off the servers to somebody and at least gotten some salvage value. Hell, they could have brokered a deal were whoever they sell it to still charges a fee to play, which NCsoft gets a percentage of. It's just boggling to me that there is very obvious money to be made, yet a company seems to have no interest in making it.
I won't lie: any day one of these child porn scumbags is caught is a good day. Even so, the story makes no sense. The FBI doesn't know how to remove Spyware? Any technician worth their salt would run DBAN and that would be the end of it. Yet the FBI went though what sounds like a two step process to wipe this thing, yet failed? I'm not buying it. At the same time though, I have no idea why this guy would have any reason to suspect that the principle would immediately start using his son's laptop upon return, nor any reason to think he was looking at child porn. This story is such a hodgepodge of plausible and impossible... I need a freaking drink.
I agree, it's about fun and not horsepower. The Wii U could have all the horsepower in the world, and I still wouldn't buy it because I don't think Nintendo's stupid new gimmicks are fun.
That's nice. So go right ahead and take up that manslaughter hobby you've always dreamed of! After all it was only what, 11 people killed? so $4.5 billion divided by 11: that means you can murder anybody you want for the low low price of only ~$409 million!. What are you waiting for!? ...I fucking hate this country.
Such an idiotic move will only serve to drive the enthusiast market towards AMD, which might keep AMD's head above water. Intel wants nothing less, because a world without AMD is a world where Intel gets to face some fun monopoly suits.
If the most recent update is any indication, Microsoft's main trick to getting the gamer population to switch from 7 to 8 is by making newer versions of DirectX Windows 8 exclusive. Yeah yeah, 99.9% of games are console ports still running on DirectX 9, but those few juicy PC exclusive DirectX 11 games look beautiful, and are the whole reason I invested heavily in a gaming PC.
If you'd taken the additional ten seconds required to actually read more than just the headline, you would have stumbled upon the fact that nothing was "required" of anybody. It was strictly on a volunteer basis. In some countries, and I know this is a shock to those living in the USA, governments still consider people innocent until proven guilty. These people were being asked to provide assistance to their police force in order to catch a rapist, and the vast majority chose to do just that. You'll notice that there's nothing stating the 10% who refused are behind bars right now, and that's because deciding NOT to turn in your DNA due to privacy or other such concerns does not instantly make you guilty of suspicion. The anti-government, anti-police stance on this website rivals that of a Ron Paul fanclub forum. Protip: Not all cops are corrupt, and not all governments want to slam a boot down onto your face forever.
Nothing about China is sustainable, and there will be great sorrow and suffering in that country when the bottom drops out of various markets over the next decades.
There will be a great sorrow in every country, especially the US. We are all deeply tied into China's market, and whatever affects them, affects us. The next great depression will not also be a result of domestic economic negligence. It will be the result of China sinking, and dragging the world's economy down with it.
I'd love to have a smartphone, but on the other hand, I value not being sold to advertisers like a slab of meat even more.
If anybody at PETA had actually bothered to play Pokemon Black and White for more than five minutes, they'd have met a group of villains named Team Plasma. This group was a parody of real world "revolutionary" groups like the Black Panthers or PETA, who attempt to present themselves as fighting for a worthy cause, when in reality they're just after personal gain and a feelings of self-satisfaction. Team Plasma tries to convince you the player that your treatment of pokemon is cruel, and that Pokemon hate people as a result. Yet the real message of the story is learning that catching a pokemon isn't just about stuffing it into a ball and forcing it to fight: It's about building a bond of trust and mutual friendship between the pokemon and trainer, which if properly fostered allows them to accomplish anything together. If anything, PETA should be commending Pokemon for it's progressive attitude. But I guess that doesn't make for as eye-catching a headline.
I'm surprised they've yet to just attach similar language from PIPA/SOPA to some "Stop Child Pornography Bill". I don't care how invested they are in internet freedom, I very much doubt Google is going to come out against any bill with such a title.
Within a year they've had SOPA and PIPA blown out of the water by that every annoying "democracy" thing, and ACTA got slammed from every angle in the EU before floundering in the parliament. The 'AA's realize this approach is failing, so now they're stepping back to consider their options. If you honestly think they've given up on getting SOPA-like legislation passed, you're dead wrong. They've just realized they have to go about it in a much more clever way, and get the laws passed in small enough pieces to not cause another uproar. Dodd isn't saying "Well that didn't work, we give up!" He's saying: "Plan A failed, so now we're switching gears to Plan B."
Salary discrimination against Women has been a problem for decades now. It's been tightened up somewhat, but nearly as much as it should be. So why are we limiting ourselves to pointing a finger of blame at the science field? I bet you that no matter where that finger is pointed, you'll find roughly the same data.
That pretty much assured we'll be seeing more batshit insane rioting in the future. From the Muslim World's perspective, the following events occured: 1) Guy releases a movie insulting Islam 2) The Middle East explodes into violent rioting, killing hundreds of people 3) We arrest the guy to quell them. So in other words, riot more! The more Americans you kill, embassy you torch and flags you rip up, the more the US will bow to your whim! Positive reinforcement for everybody! I fucking hate this country.
The best protection policy on the market.