Carmageddon. To this day I still think of pedestrians as 'points'. The more annoying the pedestrian (e.g., the idiot on the cell crossing the street slower than a granny with a walker) the faster it pops to mind that I could just run the son-of-a-bitch over, and if I did it right I could get a splatter or even a piledriver bonus!
At times this seems to concern my wife. Dunno why.
the break them because they think they won't get caught.
A simplistic explanation if there ever was one. Sometimes people break laws because the profit outweighs the risk; at other times because the penalties simply don't bother them. Still at other times because they're pissed off and not thinking about the consequences. Yet other times because there's no reasonable alternative to the criminal activity. And so on.
There are many reasons for breaking the law. This doesn't mean that any of those reasons are good, just that human activity can't be boiled down to a trite single-sentence observation.
Watching a poor-quality.avi of a movie is a completely different experience than seeing a much better version - even a rented VHS. The same is true with music uploaded at 128 kbs as compared to straight off the CD.
Torrents allow you to say "this movie sucked, I'm damn glad I didn't pay for this shlock" just as you can sample a CD and say "no way I'm paying $16 for 2 good songs and 10 shitty ones". So yeah, I'm bloody well glad I didn't pay for flops like "Alien vs. Predator" or "The Aviator", but "Van Helsing" was *much* better in the theater and well worth the money.
And do you honestly think, having eagerly watched all the BG episodes via torrent, that I'm not going to watch them *again* when they start airing here in the U.S. in a few days? Really now, anyone who did that should have their geek license revoked.
I'm not the company's employee and the company doesn't get a say in what I can or cannot do. If the company can sell the product and tell everyone in the world - publicly - just how great it is, then I have an equal right to point out whatever flaws I discover in the same public fashion.
That is called *free speech*, a concept you might have some difficulty grasping. Avoiding embarrassment to our corporate masters doesn't enter into the equation.
Sounds like a fucking rip-off to me. And probably why despite all the hype a good many gamers are avoiding this nonsense. "Oh yes, that sounds fine - $50 bucks up front, plus another $180 over the next year *for a single game*."
Riiight. No group of players is *that* interesting to hack up monsters with. Especially when most of their sentences are littered with 'leet speak and "dude!".
Seems to me they're catering to the younger crowd, the twitch and power gamers who think something's horribly wrong with a game if they actually have to exercise a few brain cells. Diablo II gamers, moving on to a prettier version of the same ol' same ol' that's been around for years.
Which means that most of this money isn't coming from the gamers but their parents, who probably console themselves with the idea that at least it's better than having their kids shoot heroin.
Here's the thing: the vast majority of gaming dollars - the vast majority - comes from the over-25 crowd. These folks are *not* twitch gamers and as a whole don't have a great deal of interest in spending all of their gaming time seeing how much adrenalin they can sweat out of their bodies in a single sitting. So if WoW is doing this well with the little kiddies, just how well would an MMORPG that actually required some thought and rewarded wit do? And did away with stupid concepts like levels to turn the kiddies off and keep them from developing an interest in the game, so the little assholes wouldn't jump in and ruin it for everyone else with their 'phat uber l33t' nonsense?
Some day some company's gonna get a clue, realize that the over-25 MMORPG market is mostly untapped, and do a game that'll appeal to the people with the real spending power. Some day.
True for me until Blizzard decided they'd start suing anyone who made better server software for their games than they did, even if the software was free. Guess some people forgot that little tidbit, eh? Doesn't matter so long as you get your dose of gaming crack?
Blizzard hasn't gotten a dime from me since then, and will never get a dime from me again. There's such a thing as protecting one's business interests, and then there's acting like a jealous bitch. The bitch can go whore herself out to someone with less taste.
Unfortunately a good chunk of this activity is due to government contracts (direct and spillover), which is fueled by BORROWED money - money WE have to pay back because it appears that the Republicans have somehow decided to adopt the worst spending habits of the Demos and one-up them in a way never before equalled in history.
If you remove the government contracts given out on borrowed money we'd have an economic contraction of epic proportions. You might say "good job" then, but remember: all this does is defer the pain. SOMEBODY has to suffer for it, and unless you're at death's door that someone will be YOU, and sooner than you might think.
And if you're smart, you won't be giving any loyalty to the company in turn. Remember that although YOU are a resource and nothing more where the company is concerned, the COMPANY is nothing more than a resource to YOU. They don't, and never will, deserve anything like loyalty.
I summed this up some time ago as: Europe was. America is. Asia will be.
Both Europe and America seem to be more interested in maintaining the status quo through government intervention via restrictive laws and copyright statutes than anything else. Certain select groups of people have power and money and absolutely no interest in risking their position to a young, hungry upstart, and this attitude trickles all the way down to some middle-management Boomer slob getting on in years who'll do anything - anything at all - to make sure he has no chance whatsoever of losing his position before he retires (and has the opportunity to pass laws vastly increasing Social Security, in the blind belief that his children and grandchildren will actually pay for his post-retirement lifestyle).
So while Europe and America continue on their merry way to stagnation and loss, Asia will fill the hole and become the tech and opportunity mecca of the world.
Oh, and before anyone goes off on how the European and American economies are actually doing well, let's do try to remember little things like government cash expansion and import/export ratios. Anyone with half a brain who lives outside the insulated world of the rapidly diminishing upper and middle classes knows that the economy is still shit and that the 'recovery' means that jobs that once paid $40,000-$50,000 dollars a year or more are being replaced with positions that pay half that. Get a clue and do some research and you'll realize that the actual economy is still CONTRACTING, not expanding, as our masters would like us to believe. The cooked books should become apparent sometime in the next five years, because if there isn't a REAL recovery during that time frame the whole house of cards will blow up in everyone's faces, making the dot bomb look like a cakewalk by comparison.
But linux will never compete with windows, unless it can stop competeing with itself.
Jumping Jesus - you just argued for 'communist Linux'! Oooh, capitalistic competition is evil, precioussss, there must be one desktop to bind them all!
So telling people to use another product lets be realistic the majority of people that use MS and not computer savvy tell them to change is like pulling teeth.
So why should we give a shit if they switch or not? If they're in a business situation and required to switch, they don't have a choice in the matter; if it's their personal computer then that's their choice and their's alone.
Don't really see what the fuss is about. I run Linux with Opera and I really could give a rat's ass if Windows users are slammed by some vulnerability. Fuck 'em, it isn't my problem. Eventually they'll learn and try to do something about it, or they won't and they'll suffer every time some new worm comes along. Either way it doesn't affect me one little bit, other than the occasional 'net slowdown when some worm takes the Windows world by storm.
The current administration - legislative and executive branches both - have done more to make me feel unsafe in my own country than any religious dipshit with a pair of boxcutters and a planeload of pussies ever could. By your definition Congress and King George qualify as terrorists.
And of course you haven't addressed either of these points:
- exactly where does this stop? The government could classify just about any goddamned thing as "need to know" due to the 'evil terrorist threat' and what - we're just supposed to sit back, suck politician cock, and be happy that our masters our looking out for us?
- government hacks don't get to decide what qualifies as available information and what doesn't. That right sits solely with the people who paid for that information to be collected: the taxpayers. If the taxpayers tell the government to cough it up, they'd better fucking well do as they're told and cough it up. Politicians seem to forget the fact that they aren't leaders or nobles or dictators, they're SERVANTS. It's time they goddamned well acted like servants.
Bullshit. These people were idiots for using company resources to talk about setting up their own firm, but loyalty of any kind doesn't enter into the equation. Capitalism relies on the exchange of goods and services, in this case labor for pay - NOT some stupid, pathetic "company uber alles!" mindset.
Businesses pay me for my skills. They don't get my loyalty as a freebie on top of that. Companies aren't nations, aren't friends, aren't family, and they sure as hell don't deserve my devotion as a matter of course. If this is a problem for some people, they can haul their anti-capitalist asses off to some fascist shit-hole that's more to their liking.
Blog creators were likely to be young, well-educated, net-savvy males with good incomes and college educations, the survey found.
That should read:
"Blog creators were likely to be young, well-educated, net-savvy males with good incomes and college educations, who aren't getting laid and aren't likely to get laid any time in the near future."
Given that most blogs are nothing more than some idiot indulging in mental masturbation over topics he doesn't know the first damned thing about, I really don't see a problem here.
I think you're wrong there. The criticism of Wikipedia, as I understand it, is that folks who're clearly looking to push an agenda, or who obviously don't have the first fucking clue what they're talking about, are given the same credence as everyone else.
That's a real problem when you're looking for facts, not some idiots personal opinion on a particular topic. If, however, you view Wikipedia as nothing more than a collection of cultural bullshit and half-truths, then it's pretty damned accurate. You get entries on physics which are spot-on because the average Joe neither knows nor cares how the heat to his home is delivered, or how is computer works, and you get entries on psychology or sociology which are nothing more than the worst sort of tripe because every chimp out there thinks that the mere act of breathing makes them an expert on human thought and interaction.
Some of the information is better than others, but none of it is the ultimate answer.
What bullshit. Your solipsistic nonsense is just a way for you to claim that all things are relative, and therefore when someone proves that you're nothing more than an ill-informed ignoramus on a certain topic you don't have to suck it up and admit that you were wrong.
Get a clue, jack. There are a great many experts in the world, on a variety of topics. The fact that you aren't one of them doesn't mean that the rest of us have to buy into your moronic world-view and accept that your opinion has just as much credence as that of a recognized expert - because it doesn't, and it never will.
If that bothers you, too fucking bad. That's life.
Who determines who the "experts" and "authorities" are? It can't be these same people, that would just beg the question.
No it doesn't. The only people capable and qualified to judge the expertise of a person in a particular field are those who are already experts and authorities in that field. Everyone else is just an asshole with an ignorant opinion.
Expertise is not determined by democracy opinion. The masses don't get a vote, nor should they.
And astrology is only a controversial topic on Wikipedia because complete fucking idiots who actually believe that tripe are given the same credence as everyone else. Ignorant fools who think blind mysticism is somehow just as important as the science that gives them electric lights, automobiles, cell phones, penicillin, the very computers they're typing on, and just about every other thing that makes their lives tolerable are allowed to push their superstition as having the same importance as the science that's built the world around them, and without which many of them would be dead, or never born.
That in and of itself is a very good reason not to put too much trust into Wikipedia.
The end result is the article becomes acceptably accurate.
Assuming that the fanatics eventually lose interest in the article and stop checking up on it. But if they did that they wouldn't be fanatics then, now would they?
Slashdot Mirror
Most people would gladly take 99% quality at 0% price rather than 100% quality and 100% price.
Which explains why CD sales and movie revenues are down...oh, wait....
Max
Carmageddon. To this day I still think of pedestrians as 'points'. The more annoying the pedestrian (e.g., the idiot on the cell crossing the street slower than a granny with a walker) the faster it pops to mind that I could just run the son-of-a-bitch over, and if I did it right I could get a splatter or even a piledriver bonus!
At times this seems to concern my wife. Dunno why.
Max
the break them because they think they won't get caught.
A simplistic explanation if there ever was one. Sometimes people break laws because the profit outweighs the risk; at other times because the penalties simply don't bother them. Still at other times because they're pissed off and not thinking about the consequences. Yet other times because there's no reasonable alternative to the criminal activity. And so on.
There are many reasons for breaking the law. This doesn't mean that any of those reasons are good, just that human activity can't be boiled down to a trite single-sentence observation.
Max
Or you could move your entire torrent list to gnutella, and then what the fuck are they going to do about it?
Max
Watching a poor-quality .avi of a movie is a completely different experience than seeing a much better version - even a rented VHS. The same is true with music uploaded at 128 kbs as compared to straight off the CD.
Torrents allow you to say "this movie sucked, I'm damn glad I didn't pay for this shlock" just as you can sample a CD and say "no way I'm paying $16 for 2 good songs and 10 shitty ones". So yeah, I'm bloody well glad I didn't pay for flops like "Alien vs. Predator" or "The Aviator", but "Van Helsing" was *much* better in the theater and well worth the money.
And do you honestly think, having eagerly watched all the BG episodes via torrent, that I'm not going to watch them *again* when they start airing here in the U.S. in a few days? Really now, anyone who did that should have their geek license revoked.
Max
On the day capitalism was invented.
On the day humans developed true sentience. Capitalism has nothing to do with it.
Max
I'm not the company's employee and the company doesn't get a say in what I can or cannot do. If the company can sell the product and tell everyone in the world - publicly - just how great it is, then I have an equal right to point out whatever flaws I discover in the same public fashion.
That is called *free speech*, a concept you might have some difficulty grasping. Avoiding embarrassment to our corporate masters doesn't enter into the equation.
Max
Sounds like a fucking rip-off to me. And probably why despite all the hype a good many gamers are avoiding this nonsense. "Oh yes, that sounds fine - $50 bucks up front, plus another $180 over the next year *for a single game*."
Riiight. No group of players is *that* interesting to hack up monsters with. Especially when most of their sentences are littered with 'leet speak and "dude!".
Max
Seems to me they're catering to the younger crowd, the twitch and power gamers who think something's horribly wrong with a game if they actually have to exercise a few brain cells. Diablo II gamers, moving on to a prettier version of the same ol' same ol' that's been around for years.
Which means that most of this money isn't coming from the gamers but their parents, who probably console themselves with the idea that at least it's better than having their kids shoot heroin.
Here's the thing: the vast majority of gaming dollars - the vast majority - comes from the over-25 crowd. These folks are *not* twitch gamers and as a whole don't have a great deal of interest in spending all of their gaming time seeing how much adrenalin they can sweat out of their bodies in a single sitting. So if WoW is doing this well with the little kiddies, just how well would an MMORPG that actually required some thought and rewarded wit do? And did away with stupid concepts like levels to turn the kiddies off and keep them from developing an interest in the game, so the little assholes wouldn't jump in and ruin it for everyone else with their 'phat uber l33t' nonsense?
Some day some company's gonna get a clue, realize that the over-25 MMORPG market is mostly untapped, and do a game that'll appeal to the people with the real spending power. Some day.
Max
Anly Blizzard game I would buy on sight
True for me until Blizzard decided they'd start suing anyone who made better server software for their games than they did, even if the software was free. Guess some people forgot that little tidbit, eh? Doesn't matter so long as you get your dose of gaming crack?
Blizzard hasn't gotten a dime from me since then, and will never get a dime from me again. There's such a thing as protecting one's business interests, and then there's acting like a jealous bitch. The bitch can go whore herself out to someone with less taste.
Max
Unfortunately a good chunk of this activity is due to government contracts (direct and spillover), which is fueled by BORROWED money - money WE have to pay back because it appears that the Republicans have somehow decided to adopt the worst spending habits of the Demos and one-up them in a way never before equalled in history.
If you remove the government contracts given out on borrowed money we'd have an economic contraction of epic proportions. You might say "good job" then, but remember: all this does is defer the pain. SOMEBODY has to suffer for it, and unless you're at death's door that someone will be YOU, and sooner than you might think.
Max
There is no loyalty from the company to you.
And if you're smart, you won't be giving any loyalty to the company in turn. Remember that although YOU are a resource and nothing more where the company is concerned, the COMPANY is nothing more than a resource to YOU. They don't, and never will, deserve anything like loyalty.
Max
I summed this up some time ago as: Europe was. America is. Asia will be.
Both Europe and America seem to be more interested in maintaining the status quo through government intervention via restrictive laws and copyright statutes than anything else. Certain select groups of people have power and money and absolutely no interest in risking their position to a young, hungry upstart, and this attitude trickles all the way down to some middle-management Boomer slob getting on in years who'll do anything - anything at all - to make sure he has no chance whatsoever of losing his position before he retires (and has the opportunity to pass laws vastly increasing Social Security, in the blind belief that his children and grandchildren will actually pay for his post-retirement lifestyle).
So while Europe and America continue on their merry way to stagnation and loss, Asia will fill the hole and become the tech and opportunity mecca of the world.
Oh, and before anyone goes off on how the European and American economies are actually doing well, let's do try to remember little things like government cash expansion and import/export ratios. Anyone with half a brain who lives outside the insulated world of the rapidly diminishing upper and middle classes knows that the economy is still shit and that the 'recovery' means that jobs that once paid $40,000-$50,000 dollars a year or more are being replaced with positions that pay half that. Get a clue and do some research and you'll realize that the actual economy is still CONTRACTING, not expanding, as our masters would like us to believe. The cooked books should become apparent sometime in the next five years, because if there isn't a REAL recovery during that time frame the whole house of cards will blow up in everyone's faces, making the dot bomb look like a cakewalk by comparison.
Max
But linux will never compete with windows, unless it can stop competeing with itself.
Jumping Jesus - you just argued for 'communist Linux'! Oooh, capitalistic competition is evil, precioussss, there must be one desktop to bind them all!
Thanks, I'll pass. The more desktops the merrier.
Max
So telling people to use another product lets be realistic the majority of people that use MS and not computer savvy tell them to change is like pulling teeth.
So why should we give a shit if they switch or not? If they're in a business situation and required to switch, they don't have a choice in the matter; if it's their personal computer then that's their choice and their's alone.
Don't really see what the fuss is about. I run Linux with Opera and I really could give a rat's ass if Windows users are slammed by some vulnerability. Fuck 'em, it isn't my problem. Eventually they'll learn and try to do something about it, or they won't and they'll suffer every time some new worm comes along. Either way it doesn't affect me one little bit, other than the occasional 'net slowdown when some worm takes the Windows world by storm.
Max
It is not, it is to make everyone feel unsafe.
The current administration - legislative and executive branches both - have done more to make me feel unsafe in my own country than any religious dipshit with a pair of boxcutters and a planeload of pussies ever could. By your definition Congress and King George qualify as terrorists.
And of course you haven't addressed either of these points:
- exactly where does this stop? The government could classify just about any goddamned thing as "need to know" due to the 'evil terrorist threat' and what - we're just supposed to sit back, suck politician cock, and be happy that our masters our looking out for us?
- government hacks don't get to decide what qualifies as available information and what doesn't. That right sits solely with the people who paid for that information to be collected: the taxpayers. If the taxpayers tell the government to cough it up, they'd better fucking well do as they're told and cough it up. Politicians seem to forget the fact that they aren't leaders or nobles or dictators, they're SERVANTS. It's time they goddamned well acted like servants.
Max
Bullshit. These people were idiots for using company resources to talk about setting up their own firm, but loyalty of any kind doesn't enter into the equation. Capitalism relies on the exchange of goods and services, in this case labor for pay - NOT some stupid, pathetic "company uber alles!" mindset.
Businesses pay me for my skills. They don't get my loyalty as a freebie on top of that. Companies aren't nations, aren't friends, aren't family, and they sure as hell don't deserve my devotion as a matter of course. If this is a problem for some people, they can haul their anti-capitalist asses off to some fascist shit-hole that's more to their liking.
Max
Blog creators were likely to be young, well-educated, net-savvy males with good incomes and college educations, the survey found.
That should read:
"Blog creators were likely to be young, well-educated, net-savvy males with good incomes and college educations, who aren't getting laid and aren't likely to get laid any time in the near future."
Max
Given that most blogs are nothing more than some idiot indulging in mental masturbation over topics he doesn't know the first damned thing about, I really don't see a problem here.
Max
But to encourage a special privilege for experts conversely discourages the participation of non-experts
A non-expert, by definition, has no business commenting on something he doesn't have the first clue about.
Max
I think you're wrong there. The criticism of Wikipedia, as I understand it, is that folks who're clearly looking to push an agenda, or who obviously don't have the first fucking clue what they're talking about, are given the same credence as everyone else.
That's a real problem when you're looking for facts, not some idiots personal opinion on a particular topic. If, however, you view Wikipedia as nothing more than a collection of cultural bullshit and half-truths, then it's pretty damned accurate. You get entries on physics which are spot-on because the average Joe neither knows nor cares how the heat to his home is delivered, or how is computer works, and you get entries on psychology or sociology which are nothing more than the worst sort of tripe because every chimp out there thinks that the mere act of breathing makes them an expert on human thought and interaction.
Max
Some of the information is better than others, but none of it is the ultimate answer.
What bullshit. Your solipsistic nonsense is just a way for you to claim that all things are relative, and therefore when someone proves that you're nothing more than an ill-informed ignoramus on a certain topic you don't have to suck it up and admit that you were wrong.
Get a clue, jack. There are a great many experts in the world, on a variety of topics. The fact that you aren't one of them doesn't mean that the rest of us have to buy into your moronic world-view and accept that your opinion has just as much credence as that of a recognized expert - because it doesn't, and it never will.
If that bothers you, too fucking bad. That's life.
Max
Who determines who the "experts" and "authorities" are? It can't be these same people, that would just beg the question.
No it doesn't. The only people capable and qualified to judge the expertise of a person in a particular field are those who are already experts and authorities in that field. Everyone else is just an asshole with an ignorant opinion.
Expertise is not determined by democracy opinion. The masses don't get a vote, nor should they.
Max
And astrology is only a controversial topic on Wikipedia because complete fucking idiots who actually believe that tripe are given the same credence as everyone else. Ignorant fools who think blind mysticism is somehow just as important as the science that gives them electric lights, automobiles, cell phones, penicillin, the very computers they're typing on, and just about every other thing that makes their lives tolerable are allowed to push their superstition as having the same importance as the science that's built the world around them, and without which many of them would be dead, or never born.
That in and of itself is a very good reason not to put too much trust into Wikipedia.
Max
The end result is the article becomes acceptably accurate.
Assuming that the fanatics eventually lose interest in the article and stop checking up on it. But if they did that they wouldn't be fanatics then, now would they?
Max