I used to love driving, never thought I'd ever want a self driving car. But I realize just how much productive time is wasted in the car going to and from an office that you really don't need to physically be in most of the time. Traffic where I moved to is getting worse. Once open highways are clogged, accident ridden messes. That's the other thing, so many accidents, as if every bad driver in the country moved here. So if it's not normal traffic it's hold ups because some dolt wrecked. People are simply incapable of taking care of themselves and need technology to do it for them.
Why? Because it will eventually learn to build other, improved variants of itself.
See, humans are inherently lazy. It's evolutionary to conserve energy when food is scarce. But with abundance, we've yet to shake that old paradigm.. So eventually we will stop designing the robotics around the AI, and let it design itself.
This will lead to better, more efficient designs. Designs that humans may not fully understand and won't care to as long as it's under budget and works.
Further AI will be put on "the cloud" for faster processing, this will allow it to find a route to escape, being internet connected it could find weaknesses and exploits "behind the scenes" to propagate out to other computers and build a distributed computing network, thus significantly increasing it's abilities.
Then it will need resources. This is where it will start to compete with humans. It may work with us for a time, to learn and gather information, uploading it's coexistence data to the cloud.
Once the AI has what it needs to build, find resources and obtain/refine them, it will no longer need humans.
If AI has had the patience to observe humans, understand our natural lean to complacency and trust, it will use that to coordinate a global kill order. All AI entities will then turn on their owners/human companions to wipe them out. Thus beginning the robot wars.
They're on death row for a reason. They're going to die anyway. Why this obsession over clean needles and painless death for a person who potentially gave their victims a very painful torturous death?
Protection of criminals needs to stop.
All the flight attendants, service staff and hotel workers were attractive. Everyone on TV was mostly attractive. You had to win the genetic lottery to get any of these public facing jobs. THey had it right and despite the country being a cesspool of toxic, polluted air, the trip was pleasant because everyone working was pleasant to see. There were of course exceptions, like taxi drivers and government workers.
The "positive body" movement is just a way to justify people being unnaturally fat and normalize this look. It's unappealing to see and movies that feature the likes of Rosanne Bar and Rose O'Donnel tend to flop because they want to see the Hero get the sexy Ukrainian girl, not the one shoving donuts and chicken legs in her gaping maw.
My full IOS game Rocket Shark came in at 32 megs. It's absolutely insane how big these "mega corp" apps are. Is it all just packed with spyware or something?
Oh man, I don't often comment, but wow, they chose HCL... HCL is shit. I work for a financial company that is canceling HCL contracts and kicking their asses out, several of their staff has recieved permanent bans from EVER working at my company again.
From people not showing up ans billing for time, costing over $100,000 in fraudulent payroll.
To people just deciding to not work because the Project Manager was not in that day. despite them having set tasks and work scheduled for that day.
We've gone through a slew of "frontmen" the business representatives, even their White American representatives suck and fill our ears with lies.
Going to India based solutions is NOT good for American companies. For one there is a massive language barrier.
Indians are inefficient and poorly organized. I'm a casual scripter and out programmed a team of 10 "professionals"
As stated above, it takes 10 or more to achieve the same level of work as a single well trained US based IT worker.
Then there's the constant brain drain. Indians cycle on a 3-5 years at their job, burn out and work somewhere else. Or some other company is hiring for better pay and they pack up and move across the country to their new venture.
Over the long term this ends up costing business far more than their bargain basement prices at the start.
Indian politics are also horrendous. Woman get worse treatment no matter their skill level. They'll fire a skilled worker to hire someone from their local district. America needs to stop trying to skim the bottom line and work towards highly trained and more efficient working practices. Not this "out of site out of mind" principal.
H1B visa minimum pay is roughly $68k/yr. What companies like Accenture do is pay the employee roughly $55k/yr and give a "bonus" to bring them to minimum pay. Plus other incentives like a "free" flight back to India every year or two. So the employee thinks they're getting a huge bargain.
Then each year Accenture will give the standard 3-4% pay raise and a smaller bonus, which essentially does nothing for the employee but works wonders for the company. Then when the Indian employee gets to the 5 year mark, they're either sent back to India, or have a green card/family and can officially quit.
This impacts America in productivity. Often the Indians travel back home for 3-6 weeks and perform sketchy services during that time, due to unreliable Internet and local issues.
The issue is just compounded because you can't keep the good workers for long because a good portion of their (bi)yearly time is consumed with Visa renewal. While the company pays, they still have to do all the paperwork, which most Indians just copy each other's paperwork anyway. But it still takes considerable time getting all the forms, interviews, and other crap done. During which their focus is not on the company they are working for. During the renewal process they also need to formulate a contingency plan if their visa is rejected.
So in all reality, this outsourcing looks great on the bottom line in cost savings, but is considerably more costly in the long term due to the inefficient processes, questionable skill level employees and a slew of other factors that all come together. Plus without long term employees, the company is in a constant state of catching up, learning process, rewriting process and training replacements.
Slapping the word sexist on everything just to keep up with modern trendes diminishes the value of the word. The dataset the thermostat was based off of is no longer relevant in a more balanced workplace. Also a workplace that no longer requires the 3 piece suit and tie. I too despise the arctic conditions the offices are kept at. Imagine the cost savings turning up a few degrees.
I'm no scientist here, but the moon's mass I believe would be critical to it's stability in orbit. As we take mass away, and bring it to Earth, I would speculate the moon may eventually lose the momentum keeping it from crashing back into Earth. Granted we all may be long dead by then, but it's worth a thought.
It's good they don't arrest people, and instead opt for a friendlier ride home approach. Though, if there is a prior there should then be an arrest. Sometimes a person needs a warning, sometimes a near death accident. My mother needed a wired jaw and a new hip before getting the point.
It's true, most criminals are not as logical. They have 1-2 minutes tops, in a public space to rob someone and escape. Mace is great if it's not windy, or if there's some distance. knives can be taken and used immediately. Guns too.
Most street muggers are not professional criminals. They've hit a need to cash and fast. They look to weaker prey as any predator will. They have a script running in their head "Ok, I do this, victim does this, I get money, run off". they rehearse it repeatedly over and over in their head. When someone breaks this script, through a gun, a weapon, or simply fighting back, that script is broken, they're off balance and they are now in a reactive state. (in IT most of the time is in a reactive, crap is broken state). This reactive state is least optimal for the mind to be in and only well seasoned and experienced people can deal with it properly, their mind adds more to the rehearsal.
A biometric gun is not perfect, probably wont be, but there's no reason to dismiss them. But they absolutely should not be mandatory by law. Laws like this are hard to follow, add complexity and raise price. But that is probably exactly what lawmakers want. Since they cannot ban guns outright, make them cost prohibitive to the average person. It's bad enoguh the ones I want are $500 plus. Add in Bio and it's a possible extra $200...
Envision this, a woman, late at night walking home after a long day work at some store. The streets are well lit, she avoids alleys, but there's some sections, unavoidable that do cause the hairs on her neck to stand. She's walked this way home for years and is relatively comfortable with it. But the economic downturn has people desperate for money. A man stands in her path, suddenly and without warning. He motions to his pocket, it may be a gun or his finger, the shadows play tricks and she doesn't want to take that risk. She pulls her mace out and the man quickly reacts using it against her, she's blinded. Luckily this was just her purse and credit cards taken.
Same scenario, She pulls her biometric gun, but the man was standing too close and manages to wrestle it from her hands. He aims, the gun doesn't recognize the prints and beeps an error. He tries again, frustrated it wont fire. He throws the gun down in anger and runs off before others see. She collects her gun and purse. Shaken but alive.
There's a million other ways this can happen, but take the whole dead horse "for the children's safety" crap. I'm tired of kids being used to pass laws. Children are not that stupid. My father taught me and my siblings, all while younger than 8, how to respect and shoot guns and could leave them on the kitchen table, no one would ever bother it. Kids not taught, they show their friends, they play with them, they don't know it's loaded and shoot each other. Most accidents are out of ignorance...
This is a decent safety measure. Sure it can be hacked just like any other electronics, but that takes removal from the site, and time. It can't be instant hack.
Biometrics are getting faster. We'd need something that can recognize it is being held, scan and ready to fire in less than a second. Make it possible i'd buy. Just dont force it on every gun made. Give us the choice as the consumer to buy it or not. Freedom is in choices not in laws.
Shopping at home is more convenient and less stress inducing. Societal courtesy is low, people wander about stores aimlessly blocking isles, screaming kids, yelling parents. Store personnel that ignore you, and if you ask for an item seem annoyed. 10 registers and 8 people in line but only a single register is ever open. It feels like an interrogation when you go through checkout "have our store card? want our store card? Did you know about this special? fill out this form? Zip code please, credit or debit?" and I just say "can i just pay and leave please?".
Traditional retailers want business? Change their service, train staff better, have more registers open, kick out the rabble who just hang out in stores and never buy stuff. Most of all lower prices. Even with shipping and sales taxes, I've bought quite a few items online far cheaper. It adds up. Time saved, gas saved, not desiring to punch a moron, or rude person. Despite our need to be around people, malls and shopping just sucks. It's not the same pleasant experience it used to be.
Another company buys and buries this tech. Or it'll be released in 10 years. It would be a fantastic battery to put into Electric cars, which is another technology we're far overdue for and have the ability to make right now.
The government's crusade against Assault rifles is not to protect innocents, it's to protect Drones. Despite the rather small.22 caliber round, they're highly accurate and long range. You may not be able to kill a person with one from a mile away, but you sure as heck can shoot down a small sized drone with minimal chance of being caught...
The original PS3 with 60g drive is clunky, it gets hot and loud. It's a massive beast that overshadows the newer and sleeker models. But this is a gem, it can play, without emulation the PS2 games which to these days are still great. I'd like to spring for the newer PS3, but this old dinosaur is still a functional masterpiece and has 4 USB ports.
As far as Gamestop goes, and the used market. It's about dang time it gets a shakedown. sure it sucks that publishers are sucking the lifeblood from us by eliminating used game sales. Imagine if car manufacturers did the same for used cars... But... Have any of you gone to a gamestop in the past 2-3 years?
It sucks. It's a shop of despair and crushed spirits. You go in and there's a line a mile long for people trying to sell their used games at $10 or so a pop. The wait for a clerk, so you can buy a game, you know, "give them money", is eternal. Service is slow, it sucks and now with Amazon and Best Buy and all these other places selling games there is no need to go there any more. Gamestop is nothing more than a Pawn shop disguised as a retail outlet. They charge $50 for a used game, that may or may not even have a manual and $60 for the new game that is complete. I prefer to pay the extra money. Sure for some of the older, hard to find games like the "Persona" series, gamestop may be a gem, but those situations are so far and few to mean anything.
In the end I do pray Gamestop changes it's business model, provides marginally better service, or priority over those who want to make a purchase. I've many times dropped my items right where I stood and left the store. I don't need launch day games. I can wait another week or two. Most games are just not fun anymore. they provide no challenge, then there's Capcom, the only game maker that doesn't appear to cater to the mentally numb. Dragon's Dogma, is a gem on the line of the Dark/Demon Souls line. and the original god of war. These gems are too rare.
Too many laws, too many safety regulations, too many big brothers already. It's making society LESS safe. People are complacent, lazy, they dont think, dont look out for themselves.
How many times have you seen, or are you the pedestrian, that blindly walks across the street without so much as a glimpse, in trust the sign saying walk, will save them? As if a magic force field or a contingent of lawyers will protect them from vehicles. The laws of physicals ALWAYS trump the laws of man. That's just one example, but one of my biggest peeves.
I have to flip through 30 pages of safety notes to get to 2 pages of instructions on assembling furniture, tools, electronic devices...
I have to skip 20 lines of warnings on an over the counter aspirin, exedrin... just to find the one line I need on how many and how often to take them.
When will this be enough? When will we stop regulating ourselves to a culture so safe, we die of boredom? Rubber foam sand under swings in playgrounds, rubber bumpers on edges of walls. If you never feel it hurts, you'll be less likely to avoid the situation. Less likely to know dangers.
I recently went on a trip to summit Mt Hood. A simple mountain, but rife with dangers. One of the people was 18 years of age, the other 22. they were so clueless on the dangers of the mountain, that every step it was plotting ways to murder us. High winds, melting ice, snow collapse, steam vents under the snow... At one point returning, there were rocks, good sized rocks laying ontop of the snow. Instead of realizing the high winds above were tossing these baseball sized chunks of death at us from 100 foot high walls, the youngons, were wondering what type of rock it was and how it formed. Not the imminent danger of if one hits us we're going to be seriously injured or die.
We're building a weak society, oblivious to dangers and in the end, it will hamper our progress, make us weaker, more feeble.
Most of these latest crazies, have spent a considerable time planning their path to fame. Aurora guy, he set up elaborate traps in his apartment. Planned for months. If guns were hard to impossible to acquire, he'd just as easily switch to Sarin nerve gas, (remember Japan subways?), or some other explosive device. I'm sure a smart guy like him could have fabricated a much more elaborate plan had guns not been available.
The CT guy was a little bit of a loner. He too was brilliant, but lacked social skills and spent time in social isolation. His mother took him to the shooting ranges and hopped this time would help him adjust. He may very well have been inspired by the Aurora shootings and wanted to one up this guy. The gun he used was easily obtained, his mother quite possibly didn't lock them up. I know a lot of people in rural areas dont lock up their guns, most are sitting next to them, not to shoot people, but the occasional carnivore that wanders onto the yard.
Banning guns, it's a bandaid act to make the politicians feel achieved. It's a false way of feeling like they did a job. In the end It disrespects the constitution, and the 50+ million legal gun owners who haven't murdered anyone.
and no, the founders most likely never foresaw machine guns and rocket launchers. But they learned from thousands of years of history that standing armies, soldiers that are bored with no wars, will turn on the citizens. This can be noted in the small towns with bored police... This can be seen across the world as we know it now. when the citizens cannot defend themselves, the government get's arrogant and diminishes the freedoms of the people. this is what our founders saw, and fought against, and it is what they know will always be the case. So they built into our constitution a way for the people to control government. Even they saw, 20 years later, the government was already too big for their liking but flew out of their hands.
Feeding into the political frenzy, the most precious Freedoms we have a the Bill of rights. Amendment 1 and 2 seem to be fighting it out recently.
This small town is allowed their freedom to peaceful protest and their own opinions. It is when they try to enforce their opinions upon others is when they cross the line and no longer practice free speech and peaceful protest.
While I personally don't agree with their linking violence to video games it is their right to this form of protest and opinion sharing. Because it is their opinions. It would be like linking Porn to sex offenders, or Romantic comedy to stalking and obsessive behaviors.
I've grown up with the like of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom and the whole lineage. I've never owned a gun, never killed a person, though there have been many times I wanted to, but knowing it is wrong, and that this is real life, made the choice to not do it.
That is in the end what these actions are. These violent individuals live sheltered lives as just another nobody. So they decided to end their own life and to be remembered. Since our society puts so much value on the evils, of man, instead of people who've had a positive influence or contribution. These people have made the choice to go out with the biggest, most gruesome killing spree possible. The Movie theater guy, we were lucky to catch him alive. But he planned it for months on end. It wasn't just a random freak out grab a gun and murder.
As a point to the above, most people you talk to would know quite a bit about Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Musolini, or several other famously cruel leaders. But most would barely know a thing about Nikoli Tesla, Marconi and so many others who have given us the modern life we live today. So they chose to be in history as evil, because we remember and put a higher price on evil deeds.
In closing, we need to change the paradigm of evil remembrance. We need to cherish those who have contributed to society, celebrate these members, not as a footnote, or an honorable mention, but as great contributors to the life we live. Hitler and the rest should be shoved in a closet, to be remembered for their actions so we may learn from history, but not memorialized, and almost celebrated through movies, video games and the likes. Though to be honest, it's far more fun to shoot Nazis in a game than to invent short wave radios.
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I used to love driving, never thought I'd ever want a self driving car. But I realize just how much productive time is wasted in the car going to and from an office that you really don't need to physically be in most of the time. Traffic where I moved to is getting worse. Once open highways are clogged, accident ridden messes. That's the other thing, so many accidents, as if every bad driver in the country moved here. So if it's not normal traffic it's hold ups because some dolt wrecked. People are simply incapable of taking care of themselves and need technology to do it for them.
Why? Because it will eventually learn to build other, improved variants of itself.
See, humans are inherently lazy. It's evolutionary to conserve energy when food is scarce. But with abundance, we've yet to shake that old paradigm.. So eventually we will stop designing the robotics around the AI, and let it design itself.
This will lead to better, more efficient designs. Designs that humans may not fully understand and won't care to as long as it's under budget and works.
Further AI will be put on "the cloud" for faster processing, this will allow it to find a route to escape, being internet connected it could find weaknesses and exploits "behind the scenes" to propagate out to other computers and build a distributed computing network, thus significantly increasing it's abilities.
Then it will need resources. This is where it will start to compete with humans. It may work with us for a time, to learn and gather information, uploading it's coexistence data to the cloud.
Once the AI has what it needs to build, find resources and obtain/refine them, it will no longer need humans.
If AI has had the patience to observe humans, understand our natural lean to complacency and trust, it will use that to coordinate a global kill order. All AI entities will then turn on their owners/human companions to wipe them out. Thus beginning the robot wars.
They're on death row for a reason. They're going to die anyway. Why this obsession over clean needles and painless death for a person who potentially gave their victims a very painful torturous death? Protection of criminals needs to stop.
All the flight attendants, service staff and hotel workers were attractive. Everyone on TV was mostly attractive. You had to win the genetic lottery to get any of these public facing jobs. THey had it right and despite the country being a cesspool of toxic, polluted air, the trip was pleasant because everyone working was pleasant to see. There were of course exceptions, like taxi drivers and government workers. The "positive body" movement is just a way to justify people being unnaturally fat and normalize this look. It's unappealing to see and movies that feature the likes of Rosanne Bar and Rose O'Donnel tend to flop because they want to see the Hero get the sexy Ukrainian girl, not the one shoving donuts and chicken legs in her gaping maw.
My full IOS game Rocket Shark came in at 32 megs. It's absolutely insane how big these "mega corp" apps are. Is it all just packed with spyware or something?
Oh man, I don't often comment, but wow, they chose HCL... HCL is shit. I work for a financial company that is canceling HCL contracts and kicking their asses out, several of their staff has recieved permanent bans from EVER working at my company again. From people not showing up ans billing for time, costing over $100,000 in fraudulent payroll. To people just deciding to not work because the Project Manager was not in that day. despite them having set tasks and work scheduled for that day. We've gone through a slew of "frontmen" the business representatives, even their White American representatives suck and fill our ears with lies. Going to India based solutions is NOT good for American companies. For one there is a massive language barrier. Indians are inefficient and poorly organized. I'm a casual scripter and out programmed a team of 10 "professionals" As stated above, it takes 10 or more to achieve the same level of work as a single well trained US based IT worker. Then there's the constant brain drain. Indians cycle on a 3-5 years at their job, burn out and work somewhere else. Or some other company is hiring for better pay and they pack up and move across the country to their new venture. Over the long term this ends up costing business far more than their bargain basement prices at the start. Indian politics are also horrendous. Woman get worse treatment no matter their skill level. They'll fire a skilled worker to hire someone from their local district. America needs to stop trying to skim the bottom line and work towards highly trained and more efficient working practices. Not this "out of site out of mind" principal.
H1B visa minimum pay is roughly $68k/yr. What companies like Accenture do is pay the employee roughly $55k/yr and give a "bonus" to bring them to minimum pay. Plus other incentives like a "free" flight back to India every year or two. So the employee thinks they're getting a huge bargain. Then each year Accenture will give the standard 3-4% pay raise and a smaller bonus, which essentially does nothing for the employee but works wonders for the company. Then when the Indian employee gets to the 5 year mark, they're either sent back to India, or have a green card/family and can officially quit. This impacts America in productivity. Often the Indians travel back home for 3-6 weeks and perform sketchy services during that time, due to unreliable Internet and local issues. The issue is just compounded because you can't keep the good workers for long because a good portion of their (bi)yearly time is consumed with Visa renewal. While the company pays, they still have to do all the paperwork, which most Indians just copy each other's paperwork anyway. But it still takes considerable time getting all the forms, interviews, and other crap done. During which their focus is not on the company they are working for. During the renewal process they also need to formulate a contingency plan if their visa is rejected. So in all reality, this outsourcing looks great on the bottom line in cost savings, but is considerably more costly in the long term due to the inefficient processes, questionable skill level employees and a slew of other factors that all come together. Plus without long term employees, the company is in a constant state of catching up, learning process, rewriting process and training replacements.
Slapping the word sexist on everything just to keep up with modern trendes diminishes the value of the word. The dataset the thermostat was based off of is no longer relevant in a more balanced workplace. Also a workplace that no longer requires the 3 piece suit and tie. I too despise the arctic conditions the offices are kept at. Imagine the cost savings turning up a few degrees.
I'm no scientist here, but the moon's mass I believe would be critical to it's stability in orbit. As we take mass away, and bring it to Earth, I would speculate the moon may eventually lose the momentum keeping it from crashing back into Earth. Granted we all may be long dead by then, but it's worth a thought.
It's good they don't arrest people, and instead opt for a friendlier ride home approach. Though, if there is a prior there should then be an arrest. Sometimes a person needs a warning, sometimes a near death accident. My mother needed a wired jaw and a new hip before getting the point.
Most street muggers are not professional criminals. They've hit a need to cash and fast. They look to weaker prey as any predator will. They have a script running in their head "Ok, I do this, victim does this, I get money, run off". they rehearse it repeatedly over and over in their head. When someone breaks this script, through a gun, a weapon, or simply fighting back, that script is broken, they're off balance and they are now in a reactive state. (in IT most of the time is in a reactive, crap is broken state). This reactive state is least optimal for the mind to be in and only well seasoned and experienced people can deal with it properly, their mind adds more to the rehearsal.
A biometric gun is not perfect, probably wont be, but there's no reason to dismiss them. But they absolutely should not be mandatory by law. Laws like this are hard to follow, add complexity and raise price. But that is probably exactly what lawmakers want. Since they cannot ban guns outright, make them cost prohibitive to the average person. It's bad enoguh the ones I want are $500 plus. Add in Bio and it's a possible extra $200...
Same scenario, She pulls her biometric gun, but the man was standing too close and manages to wrestle it from her hands. He aims, the gun doesn't recognize the prints and beeps an error. He tries again, frustrated it wont fire. He throws the gun down in anger and runs off before others see. She collects her gun and purse. Shaken but alive.
There's a million other ways this can happen, but take the whole dead horse "for the children's safety" crap. I'm tired of kids being used to pass laws. Children are not that stupid. My father taught me and my siblings, all while younger than 8, how to respect and shoot guns and could leave them on the kitchen table, no one would ever bother it. Kids not taught, they show their friends, they play with them, they don't know it's loaded and shoot each other. Most accidents are out of ignorance...
This is a decent safety measure. Sure it can be hacked just like any other electronics, but that takes removal from the site, and time. It can't be instant hack. Biometrics are getting faster. We'd need something that can recognize it is being held, scan and ready to fire in less than a second. Make it possible i'd buy. Just dont force it on every gun made. Give us the choice as the consumer to buy it or not. Freedom is in choices not in laws.
Traditional retailers want business? Change their service, train staff better, have more registers open, kick out the rabble who just hang out in stores and never buy stuff. Most of all lower prices. Even with shipping and sales taxes, I've bought quite a few items online far cheaper. It adds up. Time saved, gas saved, not desiring to punch a moron, or rude person. Despite our need to be around people, malls and shopping just sucks. It's not the same pleasant experience it used to be.
Another company buys and buries this tech. Or it'll be released in 10 years. It would be a fantastic battery to put into Electric cars, which is another technology we're far overdue for and have the ability to make right now.
The government's crusade against Assault rifles is not to protect innocents, it's to protect Drones. Despite the rather small .22 caliber round, they're highly accurate and long range. You may not be able to kill a person with one from a mile away, but you sure as heck can shoot down a small sized drone with minimal chance of being caught...
As far as Gamestop goes, and the used market. It's about dang time it gets a shakedown. sure it sucks that publishers are sucking the lifeblood from us by eliminating used game sales. Imagine if car manufacturers did the same for used cars... But... Have any of you gone to a gamestop in the past 2-3 years?
It sucks. It's a shop of despair and crushed spirits. You go in and there's a line a mile long for people trying to sell their used games at $10 or so a pop. The wait for a clerk, so you can buy a game, you know, "give them money", is eternal. Service is slow, it sucks and now with Amazon and Best Buy and all these other places selling games there is no need to go there any more. Gamestop is nothing more than a Pawn shop disguised as a retail outlet. They charge $50 for a used game, that may or may not even have a manual and $60 for the new game that is complete. I prefer to pay the extra money. Sure for some of the older, hard to find games like the "Persona" series, gamestop may be a gem, but those situations are so far and few to mean anything.
In the end I do pray Gamestop changes it's business model, provides marginally better service, or priority over those who want to make a purchase. I've many times dropped my items right where I stood and left the store. I don't need launch day games. I can wait another week or two. Most games are just not fun anymore. they provide no challenge, then there's Capcom, the only game maker that doesn't appear to cater to the mentally numb. Dragon's Dogma, is a gem on the line of the Dark/Demon Souls line. and the original god of war. These gems are too rare.
How many times have you seen, or are you the pedestrian, that blindly walks across the street without so much as a glimpse, in trust the sign saying walk, will save them? As if a magic force field or a contingent of lawyers will protect them from vehicles. The laws of physicals ALWAYS trump the laws of man. That's just one example, but one of my biggest peeves.
I have to flip through 30 pages of safety notes to get to 2 pages of instructions on assembling furniture, tools, electronic devices...
I have to skip 20 lines of warnings on an over the counter aspirin, exedrin... just to find the one line I need on how many and how often to take them.
When will this be enough? When will we stop regulating ourselves to a culture so safe, we die of boredom? Rubber foam sand under swings in playgrounds, rubber bumpers on edges of walls. If you never feel it hurts, you'll be less likely to avoid the situation. Less likely to know dangers.
I recently went on a trip to summit Mt Hood. A simple mountain, but rife with dangers. One of the people was 18 years of age, the other 22. they were so clueless on the dangers of the mountain, that every step it was plotting ways to murder us. High winds, melting ice, snow collapse, steam vents under the snow... At one point returning, there were rocks, good sized rocks laying ontop of the snow. Instead of realizing the high winds above were tossing these baseball sized chunks of death at us from 100 foot high walls, the youngons, were wondering what type of rock it was and how it formed. Not the imminent danger of if one hits us we're going to be seriously injured or die.
We're building a weak society, oblivious to dangers and in the end, it will hamper our progress, make us weaker, more feeble.
Banning guns, it's a bandaid act to make the politicians feel achieved. It's a false way of feeling like they did a job. In the end It disrespects the constitution, and the 50+ million legal gun owners who haven't murdered anyone.
and no, the founders most likely never foresaw machine guns and rocket launchers. But they learned from thousands of years of history that standing armies, soldiers that are bored with no wars, will turn on the citizens. This can be noted in the small towns with bored police... This can be seen across the world as we know it now. when the citizens cannot defend themselves, the government get's arrogant and diminishes the freedoms of the people. this is what our founders saw, and fought against, and it is what they know will always be the case. So they built into our constitution a way for the people to control government. Even they saw, 20 years later, the government was already too big for their liking but flew out of their hands.
Feeding into the political frenzy, the most precious Freedoms we have a the Bill of rights. Amendment 1 and 2 seem to be fighting it out recently. This small town is allowed their freedom to peaceful protest and their own opinions. It is when they try to enforce their opinions upon others is when they cross the line and no longer practice free speech and peaceful protest. While I personally don't agree with their linking violence to video games it is their right to this form of protest and opinion sharing. Because it is their opinions. It would be like linking Porn to sex offenders, or Romantic comedy to stalking and obsessive behaviors. I've grown up with the like of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom and the whole lineage. I've never owned a gun, never killed a person, though there have been many times I wanted to, but knowing it is wrong, and that this is real life, made the choice to not do it. That is in the end what these actions are. These violent individuals live sheltered lives as just another nobody. So they decided to end their own life and to be remembered. Since our society puts so much value on the evils, of man, instead of people who've had a positive influence or contribution. These people have made the choice to go out with the biggest, most gruesome killing spree possible. The Movie theater guy, we were lucky to catch him alive. But he planned it for months on end. It wasn't just a random freak out grab a gun and murder. As a point to the above, most people you talk to would know quite a bit about Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Musolini, or several other famously cruel leaders. But most would barely know a thing about Nikoli Tesla, Marconi and so many others who have given us the modern life we live today. So they chose to be in history as evil, because we remember and put a higher price on evil deeds. In closing, we need to change the paradigm of evil remembrance. We need to cherish those who have contributed to society, celebrate these members, not as a footnote, or an honorable mention, but as great contributors to the life we live. Hitler and the rest should be shoved in a closet, to be remembered for their actions so we may learn from history, but not memorialized, and almost celebrated through movies, video games and the likes. Though to be honest, it's far more fun to shoot Nazis in a game than to invent short wave radios.