No kidding! I mean come on! I shoot a buffalo thats got 900 pounds of meat but I can only carry 100 pounds? Why the hell could he not just go back to the buffalo and get more meat? Sheesh.
Lemonade stand was my introduction to supply and demand. Number munchers REALLY helped me with my basic math. Oregon Trail helped me learn how to lead a moving target with a gun. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego did actually teach me some facts about other countries.
Now my daughter is 4.5 years old, and she plays on my laptop all the time. Some of her games are pure entertainment (re: Spongebob games) but honestly she much more enjoys the reading/phonics Muppets game, and the Candyland game. In the Candyland game she has to complete a "set" of candy collectables by finishing multiple activities. I wouldn't call this educational in the academic sense, but it HAS taught her to reproduce a color scheme that she can see. They give her a black and white (outlined) picture, with a smaller "photo" of what the picture should look like, a paintbrush, and the required colors. She has to figure out how to make light blue (mixing white and blue, etc), and once she finishes and matches the picture, this little drawer opens up and she can decorate her drawing with stars, butterflies, etc. Now while this may seem useless to some, she is now able to draw a "manual" picture with different colors, stay, for the most part, inside the lines, and make things realistic colors. (Trees and green and brown, sky is blue, etc)
She also has one of those leappad things, where she can read along with the story, touch the word that she doesn't know, and it will either say or spell that word for her. She's quickly getting to the point where she doesn't need that anymore and can just read the story herself. She can also now write her full name, her phone number, and both mine and my wife's name. I think that's pretty decent for someone who's only in preschool.
She also watches about 3-4 movies a week, one or two kids shows a day, and spends a lot of her time just fooling around like most kids would. I refuse to believe that watching TV will give kids ADHD.
I have a relative who lets their little boy watch a movie while he's eating food. Every meal of the day he watches the same movie, and will not eat without it. He eats every meal sitting on his little table, just a few feet from the TV. Breakfast lunch and dinner, every day of the week. Its no surprise that the kid is almost 4 and he barely talks at all.
I think what these "experts" need to consider is the possibility that its not what the kids do, as much as its how MUCH of it, and what ELSE they do. Parents need to get involved with their children's development. Its not just something that will happen on its own, it needs some effort.
Do you think that a child that spends his first 5 years not exposed to any type of speech will learn to talk normally? For the same reason that a child that is born deaf cannot talk, because they learn how to do it by hearing others. The same goes for any other aspect of their education.
So instead of biasing the point with a title like "Interactive Learning Fails Reading Tests", change it to "Kids of Lazy Parents Fail Reading Tests."
(And yes, this has been my.sig for a long time now!)
and to think of they had NOT had the major victory then their future in the industry just might be possibly been compromised! Just think, a world without Rambus.... *shudder* I don't want to think about how it would be without them.
I think I received about 85% of those 280 million spam messages. Where's my money?
They should garnish his wages until the day he dies, then soak up his entire estate, liquidating all his assets. Then once that turnip is dry, cancel the remaining portion of the debt while his estate is still in probate (or before, however that works) so that his executor of his estate becomes responsible for the owed taxes (does it work like that? Not sure how debt is handled when the debtor dies) so that his family has to feel at least a small portion of his pain. It might not be their fault, but that should act as another deterrent for the rest of those a-hole spammers out there.
The funny thing is, even though I don't want anything on my body enlarged, I do actually want more information on a mortgage refinance. However I would never in 280 million years click on one of those email links. How much money could this guy have possibly made from this spamming? That's a number I'd like to see.
That being said, anyone can release games they think should have sequels. Why is that news? Then again I am acknowledging the story by commenting on it... oh well.
So, how's that "2 wrongs" thing working out for ya?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left.
The parent (or grandparent to this comment) isn't even worth dignifying with a response. My 2 year old behaves similarly: she does something she knows she's not supposed to do to get a reaction from me. On the other hand, that's giving grandparent too much credit. At least my 2 year old knows that she shouldn't be doing whatever it is.
Well, the naysayer's arguement is "I can't do quests sometimes because gold farmers are parked there 24/7"
With a mage, its pretty easy to beat this. I don't know of some/most/all of the farmers use some kind of macro to auto-attack then not pay attention to whats going on, but on many many occasions I've found someone farming an area, saying random-word phrases now and then, and who doesn't appear to speak any English.
If its a mob that I need to kill and they're hoarding them, I'll just use my instant fire-blast spell to tap the mob, frost nova to hold it in place, then sit back and watch as the farmer finishes the mob off, then loot away. Rinse and repeat. The fact that this sometimes goes on for 5+ minutes without a word or action from them proves to me that they are not paying attention to whats going on, and are obviously using some kind of bot to farm the area. I've not been wrong yet. (I always observe them first.)
So are YOU the arbiter of what people need and do not need? I'm going to need a phone number where I can reach you at all times, so that I can ask you whether I need the things I think I need.
602-867-5309. My name is Jenny. I'm assuming you got my number off the wall.
Maybe you should read my comment again. "You don't need blogs for this to happen" is not any kind of arbitration. Its just a plain fact. Just like I can say "You don't need to call me to read the article again." or "I don't need for you to post another stupid comment for me to see how you didn't understand mine." See how it works? You don't NEED to eat pizza. You probably do eat pizza, but you don't NEED to.
If 100,000 teens make vidblogs, they'll probably be terrible. Many will publish one, maybe 3 vidcasts and then stop. Yet I still believe that 1 out of 100,000 could make something worth viewing, and once we find it, we'll let others know.
We don't need blogs for this to happen. This already happens. Some cool, funny, or interesting video on the web has its URL emailed around the globe several times before it dies out. Mirrors/copies of the video spring up everywhere.
I'm sure you've probably seen the video of the Christmas lights blinking on and off to music. Well that guy apparently was one of the "1 in 100,000", since I saw that video on a beer commerical on network TV last night. He didn't need a blog. He needed a video that was worth telling your friends and family about. Blogs aren't going to change the world, or the internet. Its just a new word for people posting things on their website, which has been going on for decades now.
Its not the blog that makes something popular, it is its content. If someone produced a really good video and put it on their blog (that I've never heard of before), someone would still have to point me to that blog to see the video, which again is exactly what has been happening for a long time now. You just use the word 'blog' instead of 'site'.
If I remember correctly, wasn't Filter that "show" where there was some sort of storyline that was played by various toons from various games? Who walked around moving with human voiceovers?
If so, I'm SO glad to see it go. That was a such a waste, and was ultimately what made me change the channel. I used to watch G4TV all the time, at least before the merge with TechTV. Filter was by far the worst show on that channel.
Shows that suck should be cancelled, that's how it works. Stop this 'Sign of the Times' crap and just move on. Lots of shows get cancelled. Perhaps they should do a little more rotation of the Neilsen boxes to get a better sense of what people like to watch. I used to watch Battlebots on TV all the time on Comedy Central. I know the competitons are still on, yet the show is no more. Yet I see that Sanford and Son is still on TV. Shows that suck are taken off the listings, thats just how it works.
Flame/mod away, I don't care, the world just got better by a miniscule amount now that Filter is gone!
Less than a year ago, I was looking into purchasing a Panasonic miniDV camera, the GS120 model if I remember correctly. I saw an ad in the back of DV magazine, so I checked them out. I did my research (on the camera, unfortunately not with the company) and finally decided that was a good price, and place an order. Within minutes I got a call back from a salesman telling me that I needed to buy a battery. I replied that I had already purchased a battery, and that I wouldn't be needing one. He insisted that I read him the model # of the battery (I started to see what was happening at this point) so I did, and he said that that battery wouldn't work with that camera. I politely informed him that it was listed on Panasonic's website as being compatible, which he immediately disputed as being incorrect. I said that I was not going to buy a battery.
I then told him that the ad on their website said that it came with a battery. After about 30 seconds of silence, he said that the battery that came with it was only a 6-minute battery. Now I looked at the website again, and the SKU number of the listed battery was the same as the battery I already had, which was a 2-hour battery. Now I saw full-well what was going on, and decided to cancel my order right there. He warned me of the 15% restocking fee, where I promptly reminded him that the order had been placed literally less than 15 minutes ago. There is no chance that the order had been filled yet, so a restocking fee was out of the question. I also politely informed him that if any charges were made to my credit card, that I would be notifying the police, the better business bureau (which I notified afterwards anyway), and the credit card company.
I was really surprised that he agreed to cancel my order and I never saw any charges on my account (which I watched for months, and still watch.) After reading this account, I'm really shocked to see how easily I seemed to resolve the situation. Perhaps this guy was relatively new to the scam and hadn't built up the nerve yet. I ended up getting my camera for less than he sold it on eBay, brand new.
I never really looked into it, but its rather interesting how the online photo/video stores seem to be a big portion of the sales scams. I guess something with a lot of accessories makes a great medium.
(Note: I can't really remember the name of the store/site, or else I would list it here, but I know that it wasn't PriceRitePhoto.)
Accusing Open Source of being buggy and its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details.
Uhhh, yeah. Microsoft has NEVER done that. If you're going to point the "bug" finger at anyone, point it at everyone who deserves it, which is, well, every company that's ever made software. Bugs are a fact of life in programming. The only difference being the frequency and severity of them, and how quickly they are fixed.
I would think this "Smart Box" would get hacked way too easily, leaving car companies without their money.
You mean it would be just like it is now, where you don't pay and they come and manually reposess your car?
What this would prevent is late payments. Those types of people who "never" pay their payments would get their car reposessed anyway, whether it be via a no-start option like this, or the old manual way. Instead, people who pay their payments late, but still really want to keep their car would be the ones to get dinged by this. They would either learn to pay their payments on time, or get a long that few days/week without a car until their payment is processed.
Just because someone hacks it doesn't mean they'd get a "free" car.
I'm not really concerned about the gaming industry, because all they really do is make and sell products. I have the option of buying them or not.
The part that I am concerned about is when the government gets involved saying what I am or am not allowed to buy. (I know that's not really the focus of the original article, but I still feel its appropriate here) If I feel that my child is mature enough to play a game like GTA:SA, then I should have the right to buy it for them. If I end up being deceived by a game developing company that their 'Rated G' game actually contains pornography (ever see the *original* Little Mermaid VHS cover, with the undeniable phallus as one of the castle towers?) then I can sue them, as it is my right to do so. What I don't want to happen is having the government step in and try to control or limit my ability to parent (yes, using it as a verb here) my children in the way *I* feel they should be parented.
It also will ensure the products will work when the PC is being controlled from a distance via a remote control.'"
So my jerk neighbor can fill my hard drive up with HGTV while I'm away on vacation because he bought one of those programmable universal remotes or something similar? I might lose all my episodes of Golden Girls and Designing Women! Oh the horror!
I'd want the ability to enlist numerous red-shirted, no-named ensigns, who will run up to the action when a fight starts, and gladly sacrifice themselves for the good of the "named" Enterprise crew!
Also just make sure you don't announce a major game overhaul the day after an expansion goes on sale!
If parents would stop leaving it up to the ESRB or the government to decide whats best for their children, these kinds of things wouldn't even be an issue. What the hell is a 13-year-old doing with GTA: San Andreas in the first place? I doubt he has a job, SOMEONE gave him that money, or SOMEONE took him to the store to buy that game. If it wasn't Mom or Dad, consider it a probably-not-illegal version of contributing to the deliquency of a minor. If it was Mom or Dad, shame on you, its YOUR fault.
Stop blaming the game companies and start being a parent. If you don't have the time to spend to screen games and movies for your children, and if you're just letting them have whatever they want, then your parenting skills need some work. Obviously Dora the Explorer is probably going to be okay. Any game that has a masked gunman on the front, more than likely will not be okay.
My wife and I recently went to go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Our daughter (4.5 years old) has seen movies 1-3. We thought the dementors in part 3 would be a problem for her, but we told her ahead of time "This movie has some dark ghost-looking things in it, do you think you'll be okay with that." Of course she's going to say yes, (as she did) but it at least gave her a heads up when she did see them. We told her that we were seeing #4 before we did, and we told her why. Even at 4.5 years, she understood (or seemed to) that maybe that movie was too much for a little girl and that if we didn't think it was okay for her to watch it, then she wouldn't get to see it. It wasn't, and she didn't. She (luckily) understood that and didn't even give it a second thought. She just said "Will I get to watch it when I'm older?" and we of course said yes.
Before you ask, was I going to see the movie anyway? Probably. The difference being that we went through the trouble of getting a family member to watch her while we went, instead of just taking her in the first place.
A neighbor's kid watched The Ring because he wasn't being supervised (at all) and he had horrific nightmares for about 3 months because of it. The parents got upset and started blaming the studio. Finally another neighbor (who wasn't afraid to speak her mind) said that it was basically their fault that they weren't involved in what their child was watching. It happened in their own house, on the family TV, while they were home.
Any fool can have a child, but it takes a lot of effort to be able to call yourself a parent. Senator Clinton thinks she knows whats best for your children. While I might not always make the best decision with respect to my kids, I do try to, but the bottom line is that they are MY kids, and its MY decision.
Running into competitors in a D&D game makes for a great potential villain. Or at least a comparable entity that alternates between friend and foe.
Good for gameplay and storyline.
The problem isn't running into a potential "villian", which might make the game fun, exciting, whatever. The problem stems from the immature jerks who love to do nothing except grief other players by tapping quest mobs, training mobs of monsters to you, ganking (which is why I play on a PvE server, but still PvP often) and all the other malicious tactics that those immature players consider fun. Instancing takes out the problem of one jerk causing a 40-man wipe because he decided to run in front of another raid and aggro Lucifron and train him back to the raid. When the 40-man raid is all thats there, that doesn't happen (at least not from outside the raid).
Especially once the whole Leeroy thing came out, how often do you think people would do that if the dungeons weren't instanced? I know of several people offhand who would follow any large raid they see going into Molten Core, BWL, or wherever, just to mess with them.
On the flip side though, the equivalent of probably thousands of square miles exist in the game that are not instanced. Lots of things you can do for fun.... me and 7 other friends (Alliance) "invaded" Undercity one knight. Of course we all died in the end, but we had a hell of a time, and we gathered a HUGE crowd to watch.
Or maybe I missed the point of the parent comment and need more coffee.;-)
I am thankful, in light of this article, for Firefox.
I am thankful that I am smart enough to not have used IE for over a year.
I am thankful that I have convinced my wife and my parents to also use Firefox as well.
I am thankful that things like these keep happening to IE, but only with respect to the fact that it might make those last few businesses that I deal with (re: bank) to modify their pages to support non-IE browsers.
I am thankful for retaining the hope that there are still intelligent people out there.
Too bad they never added Tivo To Go For Macintosh, and I doubt they will ever add this feature to Macs either. Nice to be a second or even 3rd class citizen when it comes to Tivo because i own a mac.
Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Stupid Buffalo.
.sig for a long time now!)
No kidding! I mean come on! I shoot a buffalo thats got 900 pounds of meat but I can only carry 100 pounds? Why the hell could he not just go back to the buffalo and get more meat? Sheesh.
Lemonade stand was my introduction to supply and demand. Number munchers REALLY helped me with my basic math. Oregon Trail helped me learn how to lead a moving target with a gun. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego did actually teach me some facts about other countries.
Now my daughter is 4.5 years old, and she plays on my laptop all the time. Some of her games are pure entertainment (re: Spongebob games) but honestly she much more enjoys the reading/phonics Muppets game, and the Candyland game. In the Candyland game she has to complete a "set" of candy collectables by finishing multiple activities. I wouldn't call this educational in the academic sense, but it HAS taught her to reproduce a color scheme that she can see. They give her a black and white (outlined) picture, with a smaller "photo" of what the picture should look like, a paintbrush, and the required colors. She has to figure out how to make light blue (mixing white and blue, etc), and once she finishes and matches the picture, this little drawer opens up and she can decorate her drawing with stars, butterflies, etc. Now while this may seem useless to some, she is now able to draw a "manual" picture with different colors, stay, for the most part, inside the lines, and make things realistic colors. (Trees and green and brown, sky is blue, etc)
She also has one of those leappad things, where she can read along with the story, touch the word that she doesn't know, and it will either say or spell that word for her. She's quickly getting to the point where she doesn't need that anymore and can just read the story herself. She can also now write her full name, her phone number, and both mine and my wife's name. I think that's pretty decent for someone who's only in preschool.
She also watches about 3-4 movies a week, one or two kids shows a day, and spends a lot of her time just fooling around like most kids would. I refuse to believe that watching TV will give kids ADHD.
I have a relative who lets their little boy watch a movie while he's eating food. Every meal of the day he watches the same movie, and will not eat without it. He eats every meal sitting on his little table, just a few feet from the TV. Breakfast lunch and dinner, every day of the week. Its no surprise that the kid is almost 4 and he barely talks at all.
I think what these "experts" need to consider is the possibility that its not what the kids do, as much as its how MUCH of it, and what ELSE they do. Parents need to get involved with their children's development. Its not just something that will happen on its own, it needs some effort.
Do you think that a child that spends his first 5 years not exposed to any type of speech will learn to talk normally? For the same reason that a child that is born deaf cannot talk, because they learn how to do it by hearing others. The same goes for any other aspect of their education.
So instead of biasing the point with a title like "Interactive Learning Fails Reading Tests", change it to "Kids of Lazy Parents Fail Reading Tests."
(And yes, this has been my
Microsoft kept asking 'Where do you want to go today?'
Apparently they never bothered listening.
WTF, RTFA ASAP. AFAIK IANAL, but if the COO FUBARs the ODF, OCD VPs and CEOs will drop the GPL and get MCSEs.
if(dead(horse)) { beat(horse); }
fork();
Couldn't help it.
Rambus has just won a major victory
and to think of they had NOT had the major victory then their future in the industry just might be possibly been compromised! Just think, a world without Rambus.... *shudder* I don't want to think about how it would be without them.
I think I received about 85% of those 280 million spam messages. Where's my money?
They should garnish his wages until the day he dies, then soak up his entire estate, liquidating all his assets. Then once that turnip is dry, cancel the remaining portion of the debt while his estate is still in probate (or before, however that works) so that his executor of his estate becomes responsible for the owed taxes (does it work like that? Not sure how debt is handled when the debtor dies) so that his family has to feel at least a small portion of his pain. It might not be their fault, but that should act as another deterrent for the rest of those a-hole spammers out there.
The funny thing is, even though I don't want anything on my body enlarged, I do actually want more information on a mortgage refinance. However I would never in 280 million years click on one of those email links. How much money could this guy have possibly made from this spamming? That's a number I'd like to see.
That being said, anyone can release games they think should have sequels. Why is that news? Then again I am acknowledging the story by commenting on it... oh well.
So, how's that "2 wrongs" thing working out for ya?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but
three rights make a left.
The parent (or grandparent to this comment) isn't even worth
dignifying with a response. My 2 year old behaves similarly: she
does something she knows she's not supposed to do to get a reaction from
me. On the other hand, that's giving grandparent too much credit. At least my 2 year old knows that she shouldn't be doing whatever it is.
I cannot believe that Starcraft didn't make that list.
Well, the naysayer's arguement is "I can't do quests sometimes because gold farmers are parked there 24/7"
With a mage, its pretty easy to beat this. I don't know of some/most/all of the farmers use some kind of macro to auto-attack then not pay attention to whats going on, but on many many occasions I've found someone farming an area, saying random-word phrases now and then, and who doesn't appear to speak any English.
If its a mob that I need to kill and they're hoarding them, I'll just use my instant fire-blast spell to tap the mob, frost nova to hold it in place, then sit back and watch as the farmer finishes the mob off, then loot away. Rinse and repeat. The fact that this sometimes goes on for 5+ minutes without a word or action from them proves to me that they are not paying attention to whats going on, and are obviously using some kind of bot to farm the area. I've not been wrong yet. (I always observe them first.)
So are YOU the arbiter of what people need and do not need? I'm going to need a phone number where I can reach you at all times, so that I can ask you whether I need the things I think I need.
602-867-5309. My name is Jenny. I'm assuming you got my number off the wall.
Maybe you should read my comment again. "You don't need blogs for this to happen" is not any kind of arbitration. Its just a plain fact. Just like I can say "You don't need to call me to read the article again." or "I don't need for you to post another stupid comment for me to see how you didn't understand mine." See how it works? You don't NEED to eat pizza. You probably do eat pizza, but you don't NEED to.
If 100,000 teens make vidblogs, they'll probably be terrible. Many will publish one, maybe 3 vidcasts and then stop. Yet I still believe that 1 out of 100,000 could make something worth viewing, and once we find it, we'll let others know.
We don't need blogs for this to happen. This already happens. Some cool, funny, or interesting video on the web has its URL emailed around the globe several times before it dies out. Mirrors/copies of the video spring up everywhere.
I'm sure you've probably seen the video of the Christmas lights blinking on and off to music. Well that guy apparently was one of the "1 in 100,000", since I saw that video on a beer commerical on network TV last night. He didn't need a blog. He needed a video that was worth telling your friends and family about. Blogs aren't going to change the world, or the internet. Its just a new word for people posting things on their website, which has been going on for decades now.
Its not the blog that makes something popular, it is its content. If someone produced a really good video and put it on their blog (that I've never heard of before), someone would still have to point me to that blog to see the video, which again is exactly what has been happening for a long time now. You just use the word 'blog' instead of 'site'.
How about a dupe-free /.?
Nevermind, I predict flying cars will come first.
Ah yes, PORTAL. That was it. Thanks, got my 6-letter name shows confused. :)
For my original post: s/filter/portal/
If I remember correctly, wasn't Filter that "show" where there was some sort of storyline that was played by various toons from various games? Who walked around moving with human voiceovers?
If so, I'm SO glad to see it go. That was a such a waste, and was ultimately what made me change the channel. I used to watch G4TV all the time, at least before the merge with TechTV. Filter was by far the worst show on that channel.
Shows that suck should be cancelled, that's how it works. Stop this 'Sign of the Times' crap and just move on. Lots of shows get cancelled. Perhaps they should do a little more rotation of the Neilsen boxes to get a better sense of what people like to watch. I used to watch Battlebots on TV all the time on Comedy Central. I know the competitons are still on, yet the show is no more. Yet I see that Sanford and Son is still on TV. Shows that suck are taken off the listings, thats just how it works.
Flame/mod away, I don't care, the world just got better by a miniscule amount now that Filter is gone!
Less than a year ago, I was looking into purchasing a Panasonic miniDV camera, the GS120 model if I remember correctly. I saw an ad in the back of DV magazine, so I checked them out. I did my research (on the camera, unfortunately not with the company) and finally decided that was a good price, and place an order. Within minutes I got a call back from a salesman telling me that I needed to buy a battery. I replied that I had already purchased a battery, and that I wouldn't be needing one. He insisted that I read him the model # of the battery (I started to see what was happening at this point) so I did, and he said that that battery wouldn't work with that camera. I politely informed him that it was listed on Panasonic's website as being compatible, which he immediately disputed as being incorrect. I said that I was not going to buy a battery.
I then told him that the ad on their website said that it came with a battery. After about 30 seconds of silence, he said that the battery that came with it was only a 6-minute battery. Now I looked at the website again, and the SKU number of the listed battery was the same as the battery I already had, which was a 2-hour battery. Now I saw full-well what was going on, and decided to cancel my order right there. He warned me of the 15% restocking fee, where I promptly reminded him that the order had been placed literally less than 15 minutes ago. There is no chance that the order had been filled yet, so a restocking fee was out of the question. I also politely informed him that if any charges were made to my credit card, that I would be notifying the police, the better business bureau (which I notified afterwards anyway), and the credit card company.
I was really surprised that he agreed to cancel my order and I never saw any charges on my account (which I watched for months, and still watch.) After reading this account, I'm really shocked to see how easily I seemed to resolve the situation. Perhaps this guy was relatively new to the scam and hadn't built up the nerve yet. I ended up getting my camera for less than he sold it on eBay, brand new.
I never really looked into it, but its rather interesting how the online photo/video stores seem to be a big portion of the sales scams. I guess something with a lot of accessories makes a great medium.
(Note: I can't really remember the name of the store/site, or else I would list it here, but I know that it wasn't PriceRitePhoto.)
Accusing Open Source of being buggy and its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details.
Uhhh, yeah. Microsoft has NEVER done that. If you're going to point the "bug" finger at anyone, point it at everyone who deserves it, which is, well, every company that's ever made software. Bugs are a fact of life in programming. The only difference being the frequency and severity of them, and how quickly they are fixed.
I would think this "Smart Box" would get hacked way too easily, leaving car companies without their money.
You mean it would be just like it is now, where you don't pay and they come and manually reposess your car?
What this would prevent is late payments. Those types of people who "never" pay their payments would get their car reposessed anyway, whether it be via a no-start option like this, or the old manual way.
Instead, people who pay their payments late, but still really want to keep their car would be the ones to get dinged by this. They would either learn to pay their payments on time, or get a long that few days/week without a car until their payment is processed.
Just because someone hacks it doesn't mean they'd get a "free" car.
I'm not really concerned about the gaming industry, because all they really do is make and sell products. I have the option of buying them or not.
The part that I am concerned about is when the government gets involved saying what I am or am not allowed to buy. (I know that's not really the focus of the original article, but I still feel its appropriate here) If I feel that my child is mature enough to play a game like GTA:SA, then I should have the right to buy it for them. If I end up being deceived by a game developing company that their 'Rated G' game actually contains pornography (ever see the *original* Little Mermaid VHS cover, with the undeniable phallus as one of the castle towers?) then I can sue them, as it is my right to do so. What I don't want to happen is having the government step in and try to control or limit my ability to parent (yes, using it as a verb here) my children in the way *I* feel they should be parented.
It also will ensure the products will work when the PC is being controlled from a distance via a remote control.'"
So my jerk neighbor can fill my hard drive up with HGTV while I'm away on vacation because he bought one of those programmable universal remotes or something similar? I might lose all my episodes of Golden Girls and Designing Women! Oh the horror!
I want a Hot-Coffee like scene with Whoopi behind the bar.
I'd want the ability to enlist numerous red-shirted, no-named ensigns, who will run up to the action when a fight starts, and gladly sacrifice themselves for the good of the "named" Enterprise crew!
Also just make sure you don't announce a major game overhaul the day after an expansion goes on sale!
If parents would stop leaving it up to the ESRB or the government to decide whats best for their children, these kinds of things wouldn't even be an issue. What the hell is a 13-year-old doing with GTA: San Andreas in the first place? I doubt he has a job, SOMEONE gave him that money, or SOMEONE took him to the store to buy that game. If it wasn't Mom or Dad, consider it a probably-not-illegal version of contributing to the deliquency of a minor. If it was Mom or Dad, shame on you, its YOUR fault.
Stop blaming the game companies and start being a parent. If you don't have the time to spend to screen games and movies for your children, and if you're just letting them have whatever they want, then your parenting skills need some work. Obviously Dora the Explorer is probably going to be okay. Any game that has a masked gunman on the front, more than likely will not be okay.
My wife and I recently went to go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Our daughter (4.5 years old) has seen movies 1-3. We thought the dementors in part 3 would be a problem for her, but we told her ahead of time "This movie has some dark ghost-looking things in it, do you think you'll be okay with that." Of course she's going to say yes, (as she did) but it at least gave her a heads up when she did see them. We told her that we were seeing #4 before we did, and we told her why. Even at 4.5 years, she understood (or seemed to) that maybe that movie was too much for a little girl and that if we didn't think it was okay for her to watch it, then she wouldn't get to see it. It wasn't, and she didn't. She (luckily) understood that and didn't even give it a second thought. She just said "Will I get to watch it when I'm older?" and we of course said yes.
Before you ask, was I going to see the movie anyway? Probably. The difference being that we went through the trouble of getting a family member to watch her while we went, instead of just taking her in the first place.
A neighbor's kid watched The Ring because he wasn't being supervised (at all) and he had horrific nightmares for about 3 months because of it. The parents got upset and started blaming the studio. Finally another neighbor (who wasn't afraid to speak her mind) said that it was basically their fault that they weren't involved in what their child was watching. It happened in their own house, on the family TV, while they were home.
Any fool can have a child, but it takes a lot of effort to be able to call yourself a parent. Senator Clinton thinks she knows whats best for your children. While I might not always make the best decision with respect to my kids, I do try to, but the bottom line is that they are MY kids, and its MY decision.
Running into competitors in a D&D game makes for a great potential villain. Or at least a comparable entity that alternates between friend and foe.
;-)
Good for gameplay and storyline.
The problem isn't running into a potential "villian", which might make the game fun, exciting, whatever. The problem stems from the immature jerks who love to do nothing except grief other players by tapping quest mobs, training mobs of monsters to you, ganking (which is why I play on a PvE server, but still PvP often) and all the other malicious tactics that those immature players consider fun. Instancing takes out the problem of one jerk causing a 40-man wipe because he decided to run in front of another raid and aggro Lucifron and train him back to the raid. When the 40-man raid is all thats there, that doesn't happen (at least not from outside the raid).
Especially once the whole Leeroy thing came out, how often do you think people would do that if the dungeons weren't instanced? I know of several people offhand who would follow any large raid they see going into Molten Core, BWL, or wherever, just to mess with them.
On the flip side though, the equivalent of probably thousands of square miles exist in the game that are not instanced. Lots of things you can do for fun.... me and 7 other friends (Alliance) "invaded" Undercity one knight. Of course we all died in the end, but we had a hell of a time, and we gathered a HUGE crowd to watch.
Or maybe I missed the point of the parent comment and need more coffee.
I am thankful, in light of this article, for Firefox.
I am thankful that I am smart enough to not have used IE for over a year.
I am thankful that I have convinced my wife and my parents to also use Firefox as well.
I am thankful that things like these keep happening to IE, but only with respect to the fact that it might make those last few businesses that I deal with (re: bank) to modify their pages to support non-IE browsers.
I am thankful for retaining the hope that there are still intelligent people out there.
Too bad they never added Tivo To Go For Macintosh, and I doubt they will ever add this feature to Macs either. Nice to be a second or even 3rd class citizen when it comes to Tivo because i own a mac.
:)
Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.