At least Half (if not all) of the military's equipment has VERY explicit instructions written on it, to the point that if you had not been trained in its use, you could pick it up on the battlefield and make it work in a few minutes.
So you're saying that the army is not only intelligent but also wise and practical.
In even the darkest clouds, electricity can be conducted through the silver lining. When the charge builds up enough, it strikes the earth, often near large quantities of metal. This is the #1 cause of death for leprechauns. Leprechauns that survive enough of these storms are considered lucky.
On another topic, why won't Wikipedia accept my submissions?
Before we ousted their democratically elected President and installed a puppet of our own choosing, Iran was a SECULAR country in every modern sense of the word (i.e. women went to school, women were doctors, gays didn't get publicly executed, etc.), the only crime they had committed was that they nationalized their own oil fields and kicked out British Petroleum. That's when everything started going to hell. And that's only then that the religious nationalist nut-jobs rose to power.
And how is it useful to bring up 50-year-old talking points like this? It makes the point that "America is bad". Ok, point made. You think America is bad, partly because of stuff that happened 50 years ago.
Do you have anything to say about the future? How is "America is bad" a useful observation on which to build a future? Do you think the solution to the problems in Iran is for all the Persians to pretend it's 1940 again and everything will work out grand?
What you're proposing, or looking forward to, is a world where the news of the day is provided by pundits, camera crews, photographers, rumour mongers and and bloggers of all types
We already have that. This is the standard state of news reporting. This is the NY Times and the Nightly News and CNN and Fox News. They are all cheerleaders for their particular causes.
What I am looking forward to is the end of the pretense of objectivity. The bias will be out in the open instead of hidden and denied. The NY Times and LA Times are as partisan as the Daily Kos, just not as honest about it. And I'm glad they are dying off and leaving us with less deceptive choices.
Some of us out here are done catering to people who decide to take offense at things as a way to exert control over others. (If that's not you, then it's too bad others ruined your opportunity to have your reactions considered genuine.) So your offense is simply... noted.
Good riddance to a slow, biased, anachronistic medium run by unethical America-hating propagandists. We'll find out how America is to blame for everything a lot faster from Slashdot and CNN.com from now on.
Thanks to craigslist, blogs, and YouTube for putting the news back in the hands of ordinary people. It may still be biased, but it's now biased every different way instead of just one.
Security is low on the list of features people notice, so sacrificing anything higher on that list for the sake of security will be perceived as a negative feature.
I don't think anyone actually takes it seriously...
I think they do.
Anyway, you're saying we should all go around talking hate to people and then say:
"What, you thought I was serious? No, this whole thing is just a kind of social role-playing street theatre. No one actually believes anything they say."
You're living in the past. The article was about Apple and Google in the future.
You might not be able to do anything about MS. But the future isn't written yet on Google and Apple. You have the opportunity to make things work out for you. You can avoid getting "life scars" from things in the future. Why not give it a try?
Maybe if you stopped thinking there was a perfect answer to every question? Or if you considered that "dumb" decisions are often just decisions made to solve problems that aren't the same as your problem?
I'm not sure what might do it for you. Maybe if you considered whether you benefit from your attitude toward the hated individuals or organizations? I'm guessing you don't benefit.
There's no need to trust someone or something that has proven unworthy. But "I hate company X" is juvenile and not useful.
How about if you guys just give up on the groupthink instead?
The socially-reinforced need to pick out people or organizations to hate seems like something you might want to grow out of at some point.
If Apple or Google actually send assassins to kill your wife and children, go ahead and hate them. If some opinionated Internet comment-posters and the folks you chit-chat with at the office decide to hate Apple and Google, why not just encourage them to worry about reality, live their own lives, and stop the schoolgirl clique nonsense?
Don't you have anything better to do? Can't you find something before the "hate-Google" and "hate-Apple" memes get started? You have time. Now is your chance.
TSA Agent: "Wow, that guy is going on the plane with the explosives. See the bomb in his vest?"
KillerCow: "It certainly looks like a bomb. But maybe he's a law-abiding citizen -- an actor going to rehearse a play, for example, and the "bomb" is just a stage prop."
As for suicide bombing, it's totally irrelevant. You're talking about a minority of extremists.
When the extremists regularly kill people, they can get what they want. If moderate voices publicly disagree with them and stand up to them, the extremists can just kill the moderates, can't they?
So the extremists get their way until someone stops them -- presumably by killing them. If no one ever stops them, then ultimately, they simply win.
Killers might be a lot of things. One thing killers aren't is irrelevant.
See, I wouldn't have a problem with his 15 minute film if he...
if he said what you wanted to hear instead of what you don't want to hear.
That's what censorship is. That's also why we have free speech protections in the USA -- because speech that everyone wants to hear doesn't need protection. It's only the "flamebait" and other stuff that someone might disagree with that needs protection.
A lot of microstudios develop for PC because they are too small to qualify for console development licenses. What do you suggest for them?
Merge together to form a bigger organization. Or ask nicely. Or show a good game prototype to the right people at a conference. It's easy to come up with suggestions.
Arguing exceptions like MMOs, Linux machines and Macs doesn't really advance things.
The point is that consoles are going to take more and more of the game market share away from PCs. The point was NOT that PCs would eventually stop being used for games.
Consoles have the upper hand now. That will continue for at least 2 more years. PCs won't catch up and take over like the Wild Tangent guy says. He's wrong -- for the foreseeable future.
But the game developers don't see it that way. They are making games that perform about the same across 2-3 platforms, including consoles and medium-end PCs. They don't make bleeding-edge games because the bulk of the game-buying public won't afford the computer needed to play a bleeding-edge game.
Try listing the bleeding-edge games. I'll start: Crysis. Are there any more?
High production-values games need to sell a LOT of copies to make money. And you just can't sell that many to guys who have $400 graphics cards. The money and the games are on consoles and low to medium end PCs, including laptops.
It's not a performance race any more. Gaming is a mass market now.
Games take 2-3 years to develop. And there'll be another new generation of consoles in a few years.
Also, there's a price consideration. It doesn't matter, on average, what the new graphics cards can do. It matters what the $70 graphics card can do. It matters what the reasonably-priced laptop graphics systems can do.
You post underscores another big problem with PC gaming -- the compulsion to upgrade your system every six months or every year. I paid a lot for my console, but it'll save me 5 times over in frustrating PC upgrades.
PC gaming won't be going away, but it will shrink until it occupies a mostly-MMO niche. It's already well on the way there.
Slashdot Mirror
At least Half (if not all) of the military's equipment has VERY explicit instructions written on it, to the point that if you had not been trained in its use, you could pick it up on the battlefield and make it work in a few minutes.
So you're saying that the army is not only intelligent but also wise and practical.
I'm saying we should stop attacking foreign countries to install puppet governments...
And do what instead? America's critics are quick to blame us, slow to credit us, and they never, ever have any solutions to any problems.
In even the darkest clouds, electricity can be conducted through the silver lining. When the charge builds up enough, it strikes the earth, often near large quantities of metal. This is the #1 cause of death for leprechauns. Leprechauns that survive enough of these storms are considered lucky.
On another topic, why won't Wikipedia accept my submissions?
Ball Lightning is the most painful kind of lightning.
On the other hand, "ball lightening" is yet another failed spin-off product of the tooth-whitening industry.
Before we ousted their democratically elected President and installed a puppet of our own choosing, Iran was a SECULAR country in every modern sense of the word (i.e. women went to school, women were doctors, gays didn't get publicly executed, etc.), the only crime they had committed was that they nationalized their own oil fields and kicked out British Petroleum. That's when everything started going to hell. And that's only then that the religious nationalist nut-jobs rose to power.
And how is it useful to bring up 50-year-old talking points like this? It makes the point that "America is bad". Ok, point made. You think America is bad, partly because of stuff that happened 50 years ago.
Do you have anything to say about the future? How is "America is bad" a useful observation on which to build a future? Do you think the solution to the problems in Iran is for all the Persians to pretend it's 1940 again and everything will work out grand?
What you're proposing, or looking forward to, is a world where the news of the day is provided by pundits, camera crews, photographers, rumour mongers and and bloggers of all types
We already have that. This is the standard state of news reporting. This is the NY Times and the Nightly News and CNN and Fox News. They are all cheerleaders for their particular causes.
What I am looking forward to is the end of the pretense of objectivity. The bias will be out in the open instead of hidden and denied. The NY Times and LA Times are as partisan as the Daily Kos, just not as honest about it. And I'm glad they are dying off and leaving us with less deceptive choices.
Consider your offense noted.
... noted.
Some of us out here are done catering to people who decide to take offense at things as a way to exert control over others. (If that's not you, then it's too bad others ruined your opportunity to have your reactions considered genuine.) So your offense is simply
Good riddance to a slow, biased, anachronistic medium run by unethical America-hating propagandists. We'll find out how America is to blame for everything a lot faster from Slashdot and CNN.com from now on.
Thanks to craigslist, blogs, and YouTube for putting the news back in the hands of ordinary people. It may still be biased, but it's now biased every different way instead of just one.
Too heavy.
Security is low on the list of features people notice, so sacrificing anything higher on that list for the sake of security will be perceived as a negative feature.
So no.
I don't think anyone actually takes it seriously...
I think they do.
Anyway, you're saying we should all go around talking hate to people and then say:
"What, you thought I was serious? No, this whole thing is just a kind of social role-playing street theatre. No one actually believes anything they say."
It seems unwise.
You're living in the past. The article was about Apple and Google in the future.
You might not be able to do anything about MS. But the future isn't written yet on Google and Apple. You have the opportunity to make things work out for you. You can avoid getting "life scars" from things in the future. Why not give it a try?
Maybe if you stopped thinking there was a perfect answer to every question? Or if you considered that "dumb" decisions are often just decisions made to solve problems that aren't the same as your problem?
I'm not sure what might do it for you. Maybe if you considered whether you benefit from your attitude toward the hated individuals or organizations? I'm guessing you don't benefit.
There's no need to trust someone or something that has proven unworthy. But "I hate company X" is juvenile and not useful.
How about if you guys just give up on the groupthink instead?
The socially-reinforced need to pick out people or organizations to hate seems like something you might want to grow out of at some point.
If Apple or Google actually send assassins to kill your wife and children, go ahead and hate them. If some opinionated Internet comment-posters and the folks you chit-chat with at the office decide to hate Apple and Google, why not just encourage them to worry about reality, live their own lives, and stop the schoolgirl clique nonsense?
Don't you have anything better to do? Can't you find something before the "hate-Google" and "hate-Apple" memes get started? You have time. Now is your chance.
TSA Agent: "Wow, that guy is going on the plane with the explosives. See the bomb in his vest?"
KillerCow: "It certainly looks like a bomb. But maybe he's a law-abiding citizen -- an actor going to rehearse a play, for example, and the "bomb" is just a stage prop."
TSA Agent: "I think we should ask him."
KillerCow: "Enjoy the slide into a police state."
As for suicide bombing, it's totally irrelevant. You're talking about a minority of extremists.
When the extremists regularly kill people, they can get what they want. If moderate voices publicly disagree with them and stand up to them, the extremists can just kill the moderates, can't they?
So the extremists get their way until someone stops them -- presumably by killing them. If no one ever stops them, then ultimately, they simply win.
Killers might be a lot of things. One thing killers aren't is irrelevant.
See, I wouldn't have a problem with his 15 minute film if he...
if he said what you wanted to hear instead of what you don't want to hear.
That's what censorship is. That's also why we have free speech protections in the USA -- because speech that everyone wants to hear doesn't need protection. It's only the "flamebait" and other stuff that someone might disagree with that needs protection.
Don't know about USA...
I can help with this. In the USA, this did not happen.
Now you know.
How well would Half-Life have sold without TFC and Counter-Strike backing it up?
How well would Halo 3 have sold without those things?
A lot of microstudios develop for PC because they are too small to qualify for console development licenses. What do you suggest for them?
Merge together to form a bigger organization. Or ask nicely. Or show a good game prototype to the right people at a conference. It's easy to come up with suggestions.
When are simulated game realities going to become interesting enough that interacting with virtual elements is as interesting as shooting them?
Never.
Or when the "virtual elements" are sufficiently pornographic.
Sex and violence are the keys to story-telling. They are the most universally understandable, easy-to-portray character motivations.
And this is a big selling point to a very tiny fraction of the public with an even tinier fraction of game-buying dollars.
Consoles won't be your choice if you want your games to be "free". They are a good option for folks who prioritize fun in their gaming though.
Arguing exceptions like MMOs, Linux machines and Macs doesn't really advance things.
The point is that consoles are going to take more and more of the game market share away from PCs. The point was NOT that PCs would eventually stop being used for games.
Consoles have the upper hand now. That will continue for at least 2 more years. PCs won't catch up and take over like the Wild Tangent guy says. He's wrong -- for the foreseeable future.
But the game developers don't see it that way. They are making games that perform about the same across 2-3 platforms, including consoles and medium-end PCs. They don't make bleeding-edge games because the bulk of the game-buying public won't afford the computer needed to play a bleeding-edge game.
Try listing the bleeding-edge games. I'll start: Crysis. Are there any more?
High production-values games need to sell a LOT of copies to make money. And you just can't sell that many to guys who have $400 graphics cards. The money and the games are on consoles and low to medium end PCs, including laptops.
It's not a performance race any more. Gaming is a mass market now.
Games take 2-3 years to develop. And there'll be another new generation of consoles in a few years.
Also, there's a price consideration. It doesn't matter, on average, what the new graphics cards can do. It matters what the $70 graphics card can do. It matters what the reasonably-priced laptop graphics systems can do.
You post underscores another big problem with PC gaming -- the compulsion to upgrade your system every six months or every year. I paid a lot for my console, but it'll save me 5 times over in frustrating PC upgrades.
PC gaming won't be going away, but it will shrink until it occupies a mostly-MMO niche. It's already well on the way there.