Sounds like you're equating Hong Kong with China if you're actually defending the statement that they are comparable at all. Hong Kong enjoys relatively high levels of autonomy, and "freedom" comparable to most western nations, as part of the deal in the city changing hands from the British back to China.
China proper however has: -no freedom of speech, along with real censorship (including of the entire internet) and multiple arrests every month of dissenters to prove it. the Dalai Lama himself is a wanted man, advocating anything related to "free tibet" or "free mongolia" is outright illegal, and searching for Tianimin Square on the internet, or even in public libraries, results only in information on the location, not a particular incident involving a protest, nor a certain man and tank and the picture of it. -no freedom of the press, and press articles must first be vetted and agreed to by a representitive of the governemnt before broadcast or publication. -no freedom of movement, until recently, which ties into the next one... -an apartheid like structure between rural workers and urban dwellers -no freedom of association; workers can only belong to one designated union, which is approved by the government. and citizens can only belong to one political party, which is the government. -no freedom of religion, and members of said political party are -required- to be atheists (or at least claim to be). if you wish to be religious, you can't be in the party (and by consequence, cannot hold office), and it must be a state approved religion. any other religion is outlawed. -the One Child Policy. -homosexuality was officially considered a mental illness until 2001. even today the government follows a policy of 3 No's: "No approval; no disapproval; no promotion", and couples do not have the same rights or recognition granted to "normal" couples-the death penalty: China executes more people per year than the rest of the world combined, and the crimes punishable by death is broader than most other nations as well, and includes tradional "white-collar" crimes such as embezzlement and tax fraud/evasion. -abuse the concept of psychiatry for political purposes, namely to disenfranchise, even under their limited form of it, political opponents and their supports. -the use of tortue and mutilation against "lesser" groups (essentially unrecognized/unprotected minorities, because their are others that are), such as Tibetans who have opposed the governemnt over various things, including the diversion of water from people who need it to live, to gold mining operations. -land is regualrly expropriated, in violation of their own limited laws protecting private property, often brutally, in order to profit from it
So ya. There is a big world of difference between the People's Republic of China and the US.
continuing the storyline is all thats needed to stay relevent. the lore is what i like most. i rarely grind content into burnout though simply because it does get boring killing the same guy every week. but that's how ive played even since EQ. but the story continues to evolve and continues to entertain. people place too much importance on the sub numbers.
EQ never topped 1 million players (IIRC), so when WoW shot to new records every month people were in awe. at first. then after a bit it came to be expected to remain insanely high. When numbers started slipping before the first expansion all of a sudden people started this "its cause the game sucks" mantra, and its been repeated every time since. like if it does stay at the size of the population of a medium sized country its somehow a failure.
fact is, no game, no media property period, will ever only go up in popularity. even at 7 milion players you're talking 35 million a month in revenue. they have cash out the ears, enough to finance their own projects, and the rest of activisions if they were to dip into it.
you mean the first tier of Lich King being Naxx? while ignoring the 3 tiers that followed it, 2 of which were vitally important lorewise and very ambitious and unique? or are you disappointed that Dragon Soul used a lot of WotLK locations because it made sense lorewise? you say these things about small portions of the content, myopically ignoring the rest of the expansion, or the reasons for it. all i hear is a rehashed version of "vanilla was the best part of wow, everything after was dumb".
Its because new game in D2 = new maps/monsters. In D3 new game = kill the same monsters after turning the same corners. no thought, no exploration. just beeline to the exit switch.
D2 had replayability because it wasnt the same game every single time. the maps and onsters were randomly generated every single game, which believe it or not does a LOT to the replayability of the game.
the only random thing in D3 is items, and that's irrelevent because most of it stays on the ground anyway.
what is the point in "unidentified" items when there is no identification mechanic, or rather its been so reduced that you just right click to open you useless vendor trash? its like they included it just to have it.
in fact the entire game is extremely dumbed down and streamlined. no skill customizing or choosing. in D2, 1 point per level, spend it how you wish, and oh by the way, different skills interact in different ways. want a melee sorceress? you can do that. want a minion druid? you can do that. want a bow barbarian? you can do that.
in D3, you get predefined spells at certain points. the "customization" from runes is a lie. the spells are all generic clones of each other, and they largely break down into 4 categories: Direct Damage, DOT, AE, and CC. the customization is really just two things: what you want a spell to look like (graphical effect) and what button you want it on (1, 2, 3, or 4).
And that's jsut the game play side of things. the RMAH i could care less about, it takes far tol long a time investment (grind wise) to get anything remotely decent and worth selling (its a lottery basically), and you have to remember there are others who will spend far more time than you doing it, and, as is always the way with virtual items with no physical value or limt and infinite availibility, more than willing to undercut you however much is needed to make a "sale".
those weapons werent developed by the relatively ignorant and uneducated persons living miles up in the himalayas scraping by on a subsistence existence.
wasnt even officers from what i gather. its a few low ranking sentries that dont have direct oversight (ie, out in teh boonies by themselves) that reported it in.
Only on/. could such an obvious troll post get +5 insightful for making such complete bullsmurf statements simply by bashing the USA, religion, and the citizens in general.
So has 'MERICA. About 77 TIMES those of India. And more active ones than the rest of the world COMBINED.
And yet somehow me manage to not mistake planets for spy drones, and threaten a neighboring country over a the ignorance of a lowly Private on sentry duty in the hinterlands.
Plus is LOADED with crazy religious extremist lunatics. (Basically, a majority of the population is gravely mentally ill with extroverted schizophrenia and other illnesses.).
Officially sanctioned/. hate speech.
PLUS the most heartless dog-eat-dog law-of-the-jungle-glorifying society on the planet..
Several comments: -Funny, I dont recall reading about multiple incidents of woman tourists being gang raped by local men every month. -Nor do I recall us jailing women for reporting rape -for a law of the jungle society, we sure have a lot of laws on human behaviour against things like rape, murder, theft...almost like a nation that believes in the Rule of Law rather than the Law of the Jungle. -for a heartless society we seem to have a rather odd fascination with giving more money to charity than any other nation on Earth (with many of those charities being run by your so called mentally ill relgiuos extremists)
And that has be scientifically shown. It's not just a statement of mine. (My own country was number 3, by the way. But we don't have religion nor nukes.).
And the final peice of bullsmurf the troll states, the alluding to some sort of "scientific fact".
Again: Only on/. could such an obvious troll post get +5 insightful for making such complete bullsmurf statements simply by bashing the USA, religion, and the citizens in general.
they dont ahve to invade. they just ahve to make life miserable in that area, and show the government to be powerless to stop them, while showing themselves capable of maintaining order (under their rules, but if life goes on, most people are satisfied), and they win.
it is not being a prick to point willful ignorance and stupidity that is deliberately insulting and itself condescending. TL;DR is part of the culture of the glorification of stupid, the denigration of intellect. to call it what it is is compeltely justified.
Don't be so sure. KFC sued Col Sanders and got him legally barred from using his own name and his own likeness to open up a new restruant chain after he left the company. The wording was broad enough that he couldnt use them in-any- business, let alone food oriented.
Thou shalt not speak ill of Gunga Din, nor the Thin Man. Gunga Din is a classic tale, and a great movie. You've got Cary Grant, Victor McClaughlin, and Doug Fairbanks Jr. And William Powell's Thin Man was always entertaining.
Also: are you claiming that the classic epic Gone With The Wind, or the ever popular and often imitated Wizard of Oz are not art? Surely you jest.
Why send one fighter when you can send 10 drones that can outmaneuver any manned plane for the less cost and no risk to pilots life.
You are living in a fantasy world. No such combat drone exists. No such situation will ever happen. The pilot in a cockpit will always have better situational awareness than the drone pilot 1000 miles away looking at a monitor. A computer controlled UAV would need an AI that was a better pilot than a pilot, and that doesnt exist either.
classic non-engineer vs engineer perception problems.
non engineer: IT DOESNT WORK AT 100% ALL THE TIME! ITS A WASTE OF MONEY! TRY IT AGAIN! engineer: We achieve 95% of our goals, we're still working on that last 5%. But I have some ideas.
The B52, B1, F15, F16, C130, C17, C5, KC135, E3 and E8 might all have something to say about that. I'd include the Blackbird, but they kinda got retired almost 25 yrs ago, so it'd be a stretch to include them within your given time limit.
You two both have absolutely no concept of what you're talking about. "no form of engagement..." ?? "quaint" ?? the only thing that is new or different is drones, and theres no functional difference between a bomb from a uav or one from and f16.
i cant decide which is more true: that you have absolutely no concept or knowledge of the events of our past wars and conflicts and what occured, or absolutely no concept of today's.
either way, you're both ignorant bags of meat spouting the same retarded pseudo intellectual bullshit, while patting yourselves on the back over how smart and superior you are because you would never deign to lower yourself to serving your nation, not in its military, not in its governance, not even in its soup kitchens. but you'll bitch about your nation constantly, and never once do a thing to help fix it.
to paraphrase: You know nothing Jon Snow, sitting in your ivory tower. Woe to you if you should ever learn the truth the hard way.
(and just to cut you off: I'm neither republican, nor conservative, nor particularly enamored of our government's policies)
$30? Bull honkey. Even in Atlanta the most we ever saw a ticket for was 12$. Now, if you want to include overpriced food at a 1200% markup, that's your fault. Also finding that the typical "AMC in the Mall" just sucks period. Nice thing about out here, the Cinemark theater that's not in a mall, and on the edge of town, nice big seats, big screens, all around goodness....has matinees at $4 still, 7$ for non. Not bad at all. And their food is considerably cheaper too. And it's only a 5 minute drive from my house.
Avatar was the ultimate labor of love for Cameron, and people knew Cameron made good entertaining films. his background as a cinematographer gives him a keen sense of how to compose a shot, and that a huge part of Avatars success, both as a movie, and as a 3D movie. He wanted to tell a fairly simple, yet engrossing story (and the DWW story is a classic trope), and do it with 3D and show that 3D could be done right. A large part of all those years he spent on it was researching exactly how to compose each and every scene in order to exploit the scene in 3D, but not create teh typical "bad, bimmicky 3D". all in all, he succeeded. he blended both the technique and the story quite well, and the box office receipts and rise of "3D" bear that out, though ultimately the suits failed to appreciate the concept of "3D done well", and simply started slapping it on everything, and further eroding the concept.
suckerpunch was insulting to the viewer. the final joke was that the title was what they were doing to the audience. it was compeltely missold, misrepresented in trailers, and when the final product was viewed, it was unsatisfying, boring, and finally, insulting.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like you're equating Hong Kong with China if you're actually defending the statement that they are comparable at all.
Hong Kong enjoys relatively high levels of autonomy, and "freedom" comparable to most western nations, as part of the deal in the city changing hands from the British back to China.
China proper however has:
-no freedom of speech, along with real censorship (including of the entire internet) and multiple arrests every month of dissenters to prove it. the Dalai Lama himself is a wanted man, advocating anything related to "free tibet" or "free mongolia" is outright illegal, and searching for Tianimin Square on the internet, or even in public libraries, results only in information on the location, not a particular incident involving a protest, nor a certain man and tank and the picture of it.
-no freedom of the press, and press articles must first be vetted and agreed to by a representitive of the governemnt before broadcast or publication.
-no freedom of movement, until recently, which ties into the next one...
-an apartheid like structure between rural workers and urban dwellers
-no freedom of association; workers can only belong to one designated union, which is approved by the government. and citizens can only belong to one political party, which is the government.
-no freedom of religion, and members of said political party are -required- to be atheists (or at least claim to be). if you wish to be religious, you can't be in the party (and by consequence, cannot hold office), and it must be a state approved religion. any other religion is outlawed.
-the One Child Policy.
-homosexuality was officially considered a mental illness until 2001. even today the government follows a policy of 3 No's: "No approval; no disapproval; no promotion", and couples do not have the same rights or recognition granted to "normal" couples-the death penalty: China executes more people per year than the rest of the world combined, and the crimes punishable by death is broader than most other nations as well, and includes tradional "white-collar" crimes such as embezzlement and tax fraud/evasion.
-abuse the concept of psychiatry for political purposes, namely to disenfranchise, even under their limited form of it, political opponents and their supports.
-the use of tortue and mutilation against "lesser" groups (essentially unrecognized/unprotected minorities, because their are others that are), such as Tibetans who have opposed the governemnt over various things, including the diversion of water from people who need it to live, to gold mining operations.
-land is regualrly expropriated, in violation of their own limited laws protecting private property, often brutally, in order to profit from it
So ya. There is a big world of difference between the People's Republic of China and the US.
continuing the storyline is all thats needed to stay relevent. the lore is what i like most. i rarely grind content into burnout though simply because it does get boring killing the same guy every week. but that's how ive played even since EQ. but the story continues to evolve and continues to entertain. people place too much importance on the sub numbers.
EQ never topped 1 million players (IIRC), so when WoW shot to new records every month people were in awe. at first. then after a bit it came to be expected to remain insanely high. When numbers started slipping before the first expansion all of a sudden people started this "its cause the game sucks" mantra, and its been repeated every time since. like if it does stay at the size of the population of a medium sized country its somehow a failure.
fact is, no game, no media property period, will ever only go up in popularity. even at 7 milion players you're talking 35 million a month in revenue. they have cash out the ears, enough to finance their own projects, and the rest of activisions if they were to dip into it.
you mean the first tier of Lich King being Naxx? while ignoring the 3 tiers that followed it, 2 of which were vitally important lorewise and very ambitious and unique?
or are you disappointed that Dragon Soul used a lot of WotLK locations because it made sense lorewise? you say these things about small portions of the content, myopically ignoring the rest of the expansion, or the reasons for it. all i hear is a rehashed version of "vanilla was the best part of wow, everything after was dumb".
next content patch (5.4) provides another desired emotional salve: finally getting to smack Garrosh upside the head.
Its because new game in D2 = new maps/monsters.
In D3 new game = kill the same monsters after turning the same corners. no thought, no exploration. just beeline to the exit switch.
D2 had replayability because it wasnt the same game every single time. the maps and onsters were randomly generated every single game, which believe it or not does a LOT to the replayability of the game.
the only random thing in D3 is items, and that's irrelevent because most of it stays on the ground anyway.
what is the point in "unidentified" items when there is no identification mechanic, or rather its been so reduced that you just right click to open you useless vendor trash? its like they included it just to have it.
in fact the entire game is extremely dumbed down and streamlined. no skill customizing or choosing. in D2, 1 point per level, spend it how you wish, and oh by the way, different skills interact in different ways. want a melee sorceress? you can do that. want a minion druid? you can do that. want a bow barbarian? you can do that.
in D3, you get predefined spells at certain points. the "customization" from runes is a lie. the spells are all generic clones of each other, and they largely break down into 4 categories: Direct Damage, DOT, AE, and CC. the customization is really just two things: what you want a spell to look like (graphical effect) and what button you want it on (1, 2, 3, or 4).
And that's jsut the game play side of things. the RMAH i could care less about, it takes far tol long a time investment (grind wise) to get anything remotely decent and worth selling (its a lottery basically), and you have to remember there are others who will spend far more time than you doing it, and, as is always the way with virtual items with no physical value or limt and infinite availibility, more than willing to undercut you however much is needed to make a "sale".
those weapons werent developed by the relatively ignorant and uneducated persons living miles up in the himalayas scraping by on a subsistence existence.
wasnt even officers from what i gather. its a few low ranking sentries that dont have direct oversight (ie, out in teh boonies by themselves) that reported it in.
Only on /. could such an obvious troll post get +5 insightful for making such complete bullsmurf statements simply by bashing the USA, religion, and the citizens in general.
So has 'MERICA. About 77 TIMES those of India. And more active ones than the rest of the world COMBINED.
And yet somehow me manage to not mistake planets for spy drones, and threaten a neighboring country over a the ignorance of a lowly Private on sentry duty in the hinterlands.
Plus is LOADED with crazy religious extremist lunatics. (Basically, a majority of the population is gravely mentally ill with extroverted schizophrenia and other illnesses.).
Officially sanctioned /. hate speech.
PLUS the most heartless dog-eat-dog law-of-the-jungle-glorifying society on the planet. .
Several comments:
-Funny, I dont recall reading about multiple incidents of woman tourists being gang raped by local men every month.
-Nor do I recall us jailing women for reporting rape
-for a law of the jungle society, we sure have a lot of laws on human behaviour against things like rape, murder, theft...almost like a nation that believes in the Rule of Law rather than the Law of the Jungle.
-for a heartless society we seem to have a rather odd fascination with giving more money to charity than any other nation on Earth (with many of those charities being run by your so called mentally ill relgiuos extremists)
And that has be scientifically shown. It's not just a statement of mine. (My own country was number 3, by the way. But we don't have religion nor nukes.).
And the final peice of bullsmurf the troll states, the alluding to some sort of "scientific fact".
Again: Only on /. could such an obvious troll post get +5 insightful for making such complete bullsmurf statements simply by bashing the USA, religion, and the citizens in general.
they dont ahve to invade. they just ahve to make life miserable in that area, and show the government to be powerless to stop them, while showing themselves capable of maintaining order (under their rules, but if life goes on, most people are satisfied), and they win.
it is not being a prick to point willful ignorance and stupidity that is deliberately insulting and itself condescending. TL;DR is part of the culture of the glorification of stupid, the denigration of intellect. to call it what it is is compeltely justified.
translation: I hate this and you should too because I have passed judgement on it
Don't be so sure. KFC sued Col Sanders and got him legally barred from using his own name and his own likeness to open up a new restruant chain after he left the company. The wording was broad enough that he couldnt use them in-any- business, let alone food oriented.
so much for "neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, ..."
Now you're talking my old neck of the woods. Used to go about 90+ miles into the valleys around Reno. Lovely area. Can't wait to get back to it.
what bloody sleeper cells? this is still more hollywood fantasy than any sort of concept based in reality.
Thou shalt not speak ill of Gunga Din, nor the Thin Man. Gunga Din is a classic tale, and a great movie. You've got Cary Grant, Victor McClaughlin, and Doug Fairbanks Jr. And William Powell's Thin Man was always entertaining.
Also: are you claiming that the classic epic Gone With The Wind, or the ever popular and often imitated Wizard of Oz are not art? Surely you jest.
mod up for getting the reference.
classic book.
classic and all time favorite movie.
Why send one fighter when you can send 10 drones that can outmaneuver any manned plane for the less cost and no risk to pilots life.
You are living in a fantasy world.
No such combat drone exists.
No such situation will ever happen.
The pilot in a cockpit will always have better situational awareness than the drone pilot 1000 miles away looking at a monitor.
A computer controlled UAV would need an AI that was a better pilot than a pilot, and that doesnt exist either.
classic non-engineer vs engineer perception problems.
non engineer: IT DOESNT WORK AT 100% ALL THE TIME! ITS A WASTE OF MONEY! TRY IT AGAIN!
engineer: We achieve 95% of our goals, we're still working on that last 5%. But I have some ideas.
The B52, B1, F15, F16, C130, C17, C5, KC135, E3 and E8 might all have something to say about that. I'd include the Blackbird, but they kinda got retired almost 25 yrs ago, so it'd be a stretch to include them within your given time limit.
You two both have absolutely no concept of what you're talking about. "no form of engagement..." ?? "quaint" ?? the only thing that is new or different is drones, and theres no functional difference between a bomb from a uav or one from and f16.
i cant decide which is more true: that you have absolutely no concept or knowledge of the events of our past wars and conflicts and what occured, or absolutely no concept of today's.
either way, you're both ignorant bags of meat spouting the same retarded pseudo intellectual bullshit, while patting yourselves on the back over how smart and superior you are because you would never deign to lower yourself to serving your nation, not in its military, not in its governance, not even in its soup kitchens. but you'll bitch about your nation constantly, and never once do a thing to help fix it.
to paraphrase: You know nothing Jon Snow, sitting in your ivory tower. Woe to you if you should ever learn the truth the hard way.
(and just to cut you off: I'm neither republican, nor conservative, nor particularly enamored of our government's policies)
$30? Bull honkey. Even in Atlanta the most we ever saw a ticket for was 12$. Now, if you want to include overpriced food at a 1200% markup, that's your fault. Also finding that the typical "AMC in the Mall" just sucks period. Nice thing about out here, the Cinemark theater that's not in a mall, and on the edge of town, nice big seats, big screens, all around goodness....has matinees at $4 still, 7$ for non. Not bad at all. And their food is considerably cheaper too. And it's only a 5 minute drive from my house.
Avatar was the ultimate labor of love for Cameron, and people knew Cameron made good entertaining films. his background as a cinematographer gives him a keen sense of how to compose a shot, and that a huge part of Avatars success, both as a movie, and as a 3D movie. He wanted to tell a fairly simple, yet engrossing story (and the DWW story is a classic trope), and do it with 3D and show that 3D could be done right. A large part of all those years he spent on it was researching exactly how to compose each and every scene in order to exploit the scene in 3D, but not create teh typical "bad, bimmicky 3D". all in all, he succeeded. he blended both the technique and the story quite well, and the box office receipts and rise of "3D" bear that out, though ultimately the suits failed to appreciate the concept of "3D done well", and simply started slapping it on everything, and further eroding the concept.
suckerpunch was insulting to the viewer. the final joke was that the title was what they were doing to the audience. it was compeltely missold, misrepresented in trailers, and when the final product was viewed, it was unsatisfying, boring, and finally, insulting.