People always need a conspiracy, it makes life more interesting. Sadly these people have much more faith in our government (and human nature) than I do.
NIST has changed its story on how WTC 7 fell 3 times now.
Thats how things work. You have a hypothesis, new data comes about, you change your hypothesis. Your on/., you should know this. The collapse of a building is a hugely complicated thing, with massive amounts of force and interactions, expecting any group of investigators to come up with one "story" is absurd.
Actually the process of diagnosing any failure is like this. When you have a cataclysmic software bug do you settle on your first explanation, or do you make a quick hypothesis, check it, reject it, then come up with another as facts dictate?
My problem with the "Truth" movement is I fail to see motive, nor how a government as incompetent as ours could pull of a huge conspiracy, and maintain full secrecy at all levels, with no leaks or whistle blowers. Also with an event so heinous, I really doubt that everyone involved would have absolutely no moral qualms with it, it doesn't gibe with human nature.
I took this to be that you once were a man, btw, and now sit around with boring women, talking about boring things, while lusting (politely) over men named Colonel Rumplebum, and Mr. Asswit and waiting for the carriage.
Which is amusing.
If you are a female, and meant this seriously; please don't do that to yourself, or the rest of us.
Actually Dickens wasn't a bad author, if you can stand the writing of the period. I can't. I don't know what it is about it, it isn't the verbosity since half of my favorite authors are Russian, and most of the other half are German, whom suffer from heightened verbosity.
You have to admit, though, that his pet themes were the nobility of the working class, and the brutality of the industrial revolution. Most of them had some soulless middle-manager type, and orphans dying in the street.
American's love the "little man vs. big man" story, which is about all Dickens coughed up. We like rich people to be big evil robber barons, so we can hate their inhumanity.
While we're poor we read Dickens, when we get rich we read Ayn Rand.
Though creating something and destroying is rather a cliche. How many artists have painted a picture, then dowsed it in gasoline and destroyed it forever immediately after? Or, like Duchamp, made intentionally made installations of materials that decay to add the aspect of time and temporariness to them.
This isn't to rain on anyones parade, or say the idea isn't valid. Being that it is a common theme among modern arts, it surely represents something in society, some important concept.
I was tempted to write this post, then click "cancel" to prove my point.
Dickens maybe, Austen though? Turn on your TV, change channel to Lifetime, watch it for whatever the equivalent of 50000000 pages is, replacing cars with chariots, and everything else with tea, poof instant Jane Austen.
I personally can't stand either of them. Dickens basically wrote the same book 40 times, while Austen is about as readable as Danielle Steele, but gets credit for being a woman writing books when women didn't right books, which is quite an accomplishment even if said books are about banal people being banal (with tea).
I frankly don't see the distinction. If rights were some a priori thing, then why are they limited to so many people throughout time? We couldn't even imagine a free black person 120 years ago, but yet now we view their freedom as a given right, just like the rest of us.
I just don't see the essential innateness of rights when what we consider as such changes dramatically throughout time and geography.
My general definition is "a right is something that you can convince others you have, and then constantly fight to keep".
People are born with all rights; as they grow older they allow them to be taken away.
What rights? People make it sound like rights are some natural phenomena, as real as rocks and oxygen, but they really are a social convention, existing nowhere outside of human culture. Rights are what your society consider rights, and you don't have them until your society becomes convinced you do.
If rights were innate, how do explain the fact that until rather recently (in a historical sense) we had slaves, women couldn't vote, black people needed to use a different water fountain, etc... In much of the world lots of people (mostly women, 51% of the population) don't have these rights still. How can we explain this if rights are natural?
The internet has, for the first time, made anonymous public communication easy and potentially influential. Previously, one would have had to resort to unsigned placards posted in the dark of night (or perhaps the odd shout of "The King is a fink!").
Wrong. Anonyminity is about as old as news, and probably as old as politics. People had to resort to nom de plumes or nom de guerres, or various other flavors of pseudonyms. Look at American revolutionary history, there was a veritable blizzard of pseudonyms and anonymous editorials and pamphlets flying about. Hell even modern (but pre-internet) history is rife with them. Deep Throat comes to mind, as the most famous, and anonymous of them.
The only difference now is that it is the default, and is expected.
So if you want to say some shop is dirty, bad, etc - then you better offer up some proof.
I don't think "dirty" or "bad" fall into the defamation category, since they are subjective, and largely a matter of opinion. If I said "unsanitary", or "the donuts are laced with the HIV", or that the proprietor poisoned them, for the explicit reason to cause harm, then yes, I am defaming.
If people could sue every time someone said something had bad food (or overly high prices, or bad atmosphere, etc...) then the restaurant review business would be dead, and it would be impossible for anyone to ever give advice about food (or any other service). Hummer could sue everyone (for the car analogy) for saying they get "bad" gas mileage.
Hell/. could sue all of us for pointing out the ugly that is new user page, or idle.
But if he attached a qualifier "...that I've ever been too", meaning the claim might be truthful, and not defamation. IANAL but if a statement can be true, it isn't defamation. If I call Ted Bundy a murder it isn't defamation, if I call Ted Smith one (with no evidence) then it is, but if I say "In my opinion Ted Smith is a serial killer", then I'm in the clear.
Also can't dirty be a subjective term? If I say that something is dirty, it doesn't make it defamatory.
You americans is hilarious, stop being so fucking scared.
Eh? I thought the article was about Egypt banning GPS, not the US being frightened of it. The rest of the discussion, as far as I can tell, is about guessing the rational of the Egyptian government for doing so, with an emphasis on national security (Egyptian, obviously), since that theory makes the most sense.
So where do you get the scared American bit from in this discussion? We're scared of a foreign country banning GPS within their own borders, and from their own citizens? Egypt banning GPS doesn't affect the US in the slightest, out side of forcing Apple to turn off a widget (meaning send an email to a plant saying "no, don't do that").
You damn prejudicial !Americans, always trying to stereotype America into some warlike bunch of cowering John Waynes. Yes, it is often true, but not in this case.
I think its the "Promised Land" bit that leads me towards blaming religion, since it begs "promised by whom?". But that is neither here nor there, thanks for the explanation. It doesn't help that being "Jewish" can denote either an ethnicity OR a religious affiliation, and the two are not necessarily connected, one can be a secular Jew, or a non-Jewish Jew (whatever the community calls them). It leads me to some confusion (imagine a secular Catholic!)...so I try to keep this historical lesson firmly in my mind, because I don't want to miss the next time a dictator is plotting to kill me or my family.
A good thing to do. Anytime anyone singles out any religious group, or worse; ethnicity, nothing good can come of it, ever.
Why would you be surprised? You seem to be working on the premise that I have no desire to hear what your saying (or read what your typing, as the case may be), which is odd. Why wouldn't I?
If I got facts wrong, by all means set the record straight. I freely admit a fair share of ignorance when it comes to the roots of Israel.
If your not a member of a modern, liberal, democracy, you don't have the same human value of people who are in one? Every human being, whether we agree with them or not, are human just like us, and have the same rights as us. A dead person is a dead person, be they Arab or Jew, ally or foe.
A few hypothetical: If both the Israelis and the Palestinians stopped the "all or nothing" strategy, and thus the Palestinians could be full members of Israeli society, would they not be members of a liberal democracy?
If this stupid conflict stopped, and everyone finally accepted the inevitable fact that they just have to bloody live together (i.e. not a Jewish state, and not a Muslim state, but a pluralistic one like the rest of us "liberal democracies"), it would take much of the wind of the sails of the various terrorist organizations that use this conflict as a poster child, and point of recruiting propaganda.
Yes, there still would be extremists out there who are sociopathic, or brainwashed, enough to kill people for a mere ideology, but we'd drastically reduce their numbers without bloodshed, or causing further reasons for ideological polarization. We'd also remove the Muslim extremists main propaganda point, exposing them for who they really are.
As a point of clarification, I'm betting a majority of both Palestinians, and Israeli's just want this shit to end, so they can stop worrying about tanks rolling over their house, or suicide bombers on their buses. A majority of both peoples are probably decent normal individuals, but sadly the lunatic fringe is always louder (and more violent), especially when they are allowed political power.
You are correct. I phrased that with a wee bit of hyperbole. What I was going for is that we shouldn't pick sides like we do now. But we should keep a wary eye on things, and avoid the escalation of violence on either side (and by side I include potential hostilities of Israel's neighbors, and Israel's towards them). And by "We" I don't mean the US, I mean everyone.
It was the events of 70 years ago, not the events of 2500 years ago, that led to the creation of the modern state of Israel. And that happened because the US let Europeans fend for themselves from 1938 until the end of 1941.
Yes, but Zionism is based on the idea of Israel being the "Holy Land" promised to them by God, 2500 years ago or so, and it hasn't really been their home since the Diaspora. So while the modern land claims have a more recent origin, the claims themselves have a long historical root. I find the very root to the claims to be rather silly.
As for the UN and British mandates leading to the creation of Israel, I find these rather silly as well.
Most probably the British Mandate of Palestine would become an independent country with multiple religions, like Lebanon is today.
Which would have been wonderful, and is probably how the region will end up (much to the disappointment of extremists on both sides) in the long term, after much bloodshed. But speculating on potential alternative histories is futile. The upshot of a world missing Hitler would potentially be much better than just having a unified and diverse Palestine; the Jewish people could have been able to exist peacefully (with stress on the term "exist") in the countries and neighborhood in which they have lived and flourished for hundreds of years.
My father once said to me that one cannot remain neutral between good and evil. And I believe that every time some group starts hating another to the point of murdering innocent people, that's evil.
Good sentiment, but in the case of Israel ambiguous. Both sides can veer dangerously into Evil, and commonly do. By supporting Israel your fighting against the Palestinians, by supporting them your fighting against Israel. By picking a view ignorant of history, and focusing on the now, that is impossible. Both people's need to coexist, they both now have claim to the land.
If you can find a way to bring forth this solution, your Nobel Prize is waiting for you.
Not for PC games. I recently got a laptop with a dubious graphics card, and wanted to see if I could play a couple games (Spore among them), and found that there is absolutely no way to actually see if I could play them. One of the game sites has a utility that supposedly checks for this, but it returns different hardware values every time I run it.
Basically, the only legal way I can see if a game is playable is to give them $50 and pray.
This excuse doesn't work for movies, since you can just rent them. Sometimes. Can't use Netflix at my apartment (small small mailboxes, and an untrustworthy office where the incoming packages are left in the open), and Blockbuster sucks for the type of movies I enjoy (old, not bestsellers, limited releases, foreign, or possibly not meeting their prude standards). But 90% of them time rental works to see if your buying something worthwhile.
Music is harder to check. Yes, you can hear the radioworthy single (which often sounds nothing like the rest of the album). Yes, iTunes and Amazon, and often Last.fm lets you listen to a random 10 second selection from random songs, of random bands, but it still is rather hard to tell if it is worth money or not.
I give a nice sarcastic "boohoo" to both sides. Both are racist morons blinded by religion and a baseless sense of entitlement. Both like embittered 2 year olds who don't get their way, except armed with tanks, missiles, and suicide bombs.
I haven't found much of a reason to feel much pity for either side. I'm not religious, so I don't buy the "god gave this to us" crap, nor do I think the events of 2500 years ago has much relevance on the land claims of today. So there goes the Jewish side of the argument. I also don't think that killing innocent civilians just because you don't like your neighbors garners much respect (this is true for both sides), especially when you decide to kill your neighbors distant relatives and relations (true mostly for Palestine), or decide to teach your children first how to hate (true for both sides, but more towards the Palestinians), and to commit suicide for no real reason.
I think the US should just leave both sides to fend for themselves. Helping either side is morally murky, being that both sides cross the boundaries. Picking sides in this conflict has done NOTHING to help the US, and much to hurt us. I don't even get why it is a damn issue.
They will have to learn to live together, and compromise (the mature, rational, and intelligent answer), or annihilate each other (the answer they want).
I have a Wii, its under no dust. Every time my friends come over they want to play it.
I don't have a 9 year old nephew, so this MIGHT be universal, but my 14 year old cousin loves it.
Your evidence has been broken. Do you really care that much? If you don't like it, good, pawn it. If you like the PS3 or 360, or Dreamcast, or Amiga better, then good. Personal taste is personal taste, live with it. If you really care about who is a "real gamer", then you obviously live a good life, since you have nothing actually important to care about.
I have fun with my Wii, if this makes me not a "gamer", who cares? I also enjoy my expensive computer for gaming, does if this makes me not a "gamer", then I still don't care. I find the PS3 and 360 not worth the extra money, if this ruins my "gamer" cred, then fine. If your the opposite me in every way, then also fine. Its a matter of taste. My liking of the Wii hurts you as much as your obviously (irrational) hatred hurts me; not in the slightest.
My question, though is; WHY THE HELL ARE YOU SO WORKED UP ABOUT CONSUMER ELECTRONICS?!
As a gamer in the prime gaming demographic (25-30ish), I own a Wii, and no other console, my only other gaming device is a PC. I play around 90% of my so-called "hardcore" games on the PC, since it still is the best platform for gaming. I'd own a PS3 or a 360 if they had any releases that interested me that were exclusive to them, so far they don't. 90% of console games are stealth shooters, or racing games, which bore me. The only things that consoles have that mildly interest me are JRPGs, but generally they require too much time passively watching cinematics to be able to fit into my life (and are thus boring).
The Wii is good at parties, none of the other consoles really are, outside of the occasional fighting game. None of my friends (in their 30's) are interested in playing Halo, and neither am I. We'd rather get drunk and play Mariokart, or SSBM/B.
So, in your opinion, who the hell is a real gamer? The PC is still the best "hardcore" option, it has the best control scheme for FPSs, more genre's (how many RTSs have you seen on consoles worth playing, or MMOs?), and the most real mutli-player options.
So, excluding quality of game play, and amount sold (the Wii eats it's contenders), then what counts?
Pure graphics? The PC still wins. Story? The PC still wins (excluding games available on both it and other mediums). Controls? It goes to the PC and the Wii. What are you judging by?
Eh, the games are in the Wii. Between virtual arcade, their Xbox Arcade clone, and actual releases, their doing rather well. Granted I am a bit miffed about the lack of 3rd party releases, but still there is plenty to do. The lack of 3rd party released is largely based on the idiocy of developers refusing to offer solid products to the Wii, as much as it is Nintendo's fault for making a system with sub-par graphics (the only thing that matters to young gamers).
I'm not, btw, crying for the lack of stealth shooters based in WWII (or not, to a lesser but still significant degree), which seems to be all that the gaming industry has been able to produce for the last 5 years.
Stop being a fan boy, all the systems have major faults right now, both hardware wise, and in terms of diversity of releases. Out of the 9,000 PS3 games, there might be 5 I'd want to play (of those 4 have PC versions which will be better). The 360 has mortality issues, and has the same game problem as the PS3 (I hate racing and stealth shooters which are the only things out there). The Wii is a graphical weakling, and only has Nintendo releases (though they are largely quality).
Slashdot Mirror
People always need a conspiracy, it makes life more interesting. Sadly these people have much more faith in our government (and human nature) than I do.
NIST has changed its story on how WTC 7 fell 3 times now.
Thats how things work. You have a hypothesis, new data comes about, you change your hypothesis. Your on /., you should know this. The collapse of a building is a hugely complicated thing, with massive amounts of force and interactions, expecting any group of investigators to come up with one "story" is absurd.
Actually the process of diagnosing any failure is like this. When you have a cataclysmic software bug do you settle on your first explanation, or do you make a quick hypothesis, check it, reject it, then come up with another as facts dictate?
My problem with the "Truth" movement is I fail to see motive, nor how a government as incompetent as ours could pull of a huge conspiracy, and maintain full secrecy at all levels, with no leaks or whistle blowers. Also with an event so heinous, I really doubt that everyone involved would have absolutely no moral qualms with it, it doesn't gibe with human nature.
You missed Jane Austen's BEN HUR?
Please be kidding.
I took this to be that you once were a man, btw, and now sit around with boring women, talking about boring things, while lusting (politely) over men named Colonel Rumplebum, and Mr. Asswit and waiting for the carriage.
Which is amusing.
If you are a female, and meant this seriously; please don't do that to yourself, or the rest of us.
Actually Dickens wasn't a bad author, if you can stand the writing of the period. I can't. I don't know what it is about it, it isn't the verbosity since half of my favorite authors are Russian, and most of the other half are German, whom suffer from heightened verbosity.
You have to admit, though, that his pet themes were the nobility of the working class, and the brutality of the industrial revolution. Most of them had some soulless middle-manager type, and orphans dying in the street.
American's love the "little man vs. big man" story, which is about all Dickens coughed up. We like rich people to be big evil robber barons, so we can hate their inhumanity.
While we're poor we read Dickens, when we get rich we read Ayn Rand.
Though creating something and destroying is rather a cliche. How many artists have painted a picture, then dowsed it in gasoline and destroyed it forever immediately after? Or, like Duchamp, made intentionally made installations of materials that decay to add the aspect of time and temporariness to them.
This isn't to rain on anyones parade, or say the idea isn't valid. Being that it is a common theme among modern arts, it surely represents something in society, some important concept.
I was tempted to write this post, then click "cancel" to prove my point.
Dickens maybe, Austen though? Turn on your TV, change channel to Lifetime, watch it for whatever the equivalent of 50000000 pages is, replacing cars with chariots, and everything else with tea, poof instant Jane Austen.
I personally can't stand either of them. Dickens basically wrote the same book 40 times, while Austen is about as readable as Danielle Steele, but gets credit for being a woman writing books when women didn't right books, which is quite an accomplishment even if said books are about banal people being banal (with tea).
I frankly don't see the distinction. If rights were some a priori thing, then why are they limited to so many people throughout time? We couldn't even imagine a free black person 120 years ago, but yet now we view their freedom as a given right, just like the rest of us.
I just don't see the essential innateness of rights when what we consider as such changes dramatically throughout time and geography.
My general definition is "a right is something that you can convince others you have, and then constantly fight to keep".
People are born with all rights; as they grow older they allow them to be taken away.
What rights? People make it sound like rights are some natural phenomena, as real as rocks and oxygen, but they really are a social convention, existing nowhere outside of human culture. Rights are what your society consider rights, and you don't have them until your society becomes convinced you do.
If rights were innate, how do explain the fact that until rather recently (in a historical sense) we had slaves, women couldn't vote, black people needed to use a different water fountain, etc... In much of the world lots of people (mostly women, 51% of the population) don't have these rights still. How can we explain this if rights are natural?
Where do they come from?
The internet has, for the first time, made anonymous public communication easy and potentially influential. Previously, one would have had to resort to unsigned placards posted in the dark of night (or perhaps the odd shout of "The King is a fink!").
Wrong. Anonyminity is about as old as news, and probably as old as politics. People had to resort to nom de plumes or nom de guerres, or various other flavors of pseudonyms. Look at American revolutionary history, there was a veritable blizzard of pseudonyms and anonymous editorials and pamphlets flying about. Hell even modern (but pre-internet) history is rife with them. Deep Throat comes to mind, as the most famous, and anonymous of them.
The only difference now is that it is the default, and is expected.
So if you want to say some shop is dirty, bad, etc - then you better offer up some proof.
I don't think "dirty" or "bad" fall into the defamation category, since they are subjective, and largely a matter of opinion. If I said "unsanitary", or "the donuts are laced with the HIV", or that the proprietor poisoned them, for the explicit reason to cause harm, then yes, I am defaming.
If people could sue every time someone said something had bad food (or overly high prices, or bad atmosphere, etc...) then the restaurant review business would be dead, and it would be impossible for anyone to ever give advice about food (or any other service). Hummer could sue everyone (for the car analogy) for saying they get "bad" gas mileage.
Hell /. could sue all of us for pointing out the ugly that is new user page, or idle.
But if he attached a qualifier "...that I've ever been too", meaning the claim might be truthful, and not defamation. IANAL but if a statement can be true, it isn't defamation. If I call Ted Bundy a murder it isn't defamation, if I call Ted Smith one (with no evidence) then it is, but if I say "In my opinion Ted Smith is a serial killer", then I'm in the clear.
Also can't dirty be a subjective term? If I say that something is dirty, it doesn't make it defamatory.
I wasn't aware that Canadians were now a racial group. I congratulate you on this development though!
You americans is hilarious, stop being so fucking scared.
Eh? I thought the article was about Egypt banning GPS, not the US being frightened of it. The rest of the discussion, as far as I can tell, is about guessing the rational of the Egyptian government for doing so, with an emphasis on national security (Egyptian, obviously), since that theory makes the most sense.
So where do you get the scared American bit from in this discussion? We're scared of a foreign country banning GPS within their own borders, and from their own citizens? Egypt banning GPS doesn't affect the US in the slightest, out side of forcing Apple to turn off a widget (meaning send an email to a plant saying "no, don't do that").
You damn prejudicial !Americans, always trying to stereotype America into some warlike bunch of cowering John Waynes. Yes, it is often true, but not in this case.
I think its the "Promised Land" bit that leads me towards blaming religion, since it begs "promised by whom?". But that is neither here nor there, thanks for the explanation. It doesn't help that being "Jewish" can denote either an ethnicity OR a religious affiliation, and the two are not necessarily connected, one can be a secular Jew, or a non-Jewish Jew (whatever the community calls them). It leads me to some confusion (imagine a secular Catholic!) ...so I try to keep this historical lesson firmly in my mind, because I don't want to miss the next time a dictator is plotting to kill me or my family.
A good thing to do. Anytime anyone singles out any religious group, or worse; ethnicity, nothing good can come of it, ever.
Why would you be surprised? You seem to be working on the premise that I have no desire to hear what your saying (or read what your typing, as the case may be), which is odd. Why wouldn't I?
If I got facts wrong, by all means set the record straight. I freely admit a fair share of ignorance when it comes to the roots of Israel.
If your not a member of a modern, liberal, democracy, you don't have the same human value of people who are in one? Every human being, whether we agree with them or not, are human just like us, and have the same rights as us. A dead person is a dead person, be they Arab or Jew, ally or foe.
A few hypothetical: If both the Israelis and the Palestinians stopped the "all or nothing" strategy, and thus the Palestinians could be full members of Israeli society, would they not be members of a liberal democracy?
If this stupid conflict stopped, and everyone finally accepted the inevitable fact that they just have to bloody live together (i.e. not a Jewish state, and not a Muslim state, but a pluralistic one like the rest of us "liberal democracies"), it would take much of the wind of the sails of the various terrorist organizations that use this conflict as a poster child, and point of recruiting propaganda.
Yes, there still would be extremists out there who are sociopathic, or brainwashed, enough to kill people for a mere ideology, but we'd drastically reduce their numbers without bloodshed, or causing further reasons for ideological polarization. We'd also remove the Muslim extremists main propaganda point, exposing them for who they really are.
As a point of clarification, I'm betting a majority of both Palestinians, and Israeli's just want this shit to end, so they can stop worrying about tanks rolling over their house, or suicide bombers on their buses. A majority of both peoples are probably decent normal individuals, but sadly the lunatic fringe is always louder (and more violent), especially when they are allowed political power.
You are correct. I phrased that with a wee bit of hyperbole. What I was going for is that we shouldn't pick sides like we do now. But we should keep a wary eye on things, and avoid the escalation of violence on either side (and by side I include potential hostilities of Israel's neighbors, and Israel's towards them). And by "We" I don't mean the US, I mean everyone.
It was the events of 70 years ago, not the events of 2500 years ago, that led to the creation of the modern state of Israel. And that happened because the US let Europeans fend for themselves from 1938 until the end of 1941.
Yes, but Zionism is based on the idea of Israel being the "Holy Land" promised to them by God, 2500 years ago or so, and it hasn't really been their home since the Diaspora. So while the modern land claims have a more recent origin, the claims themselves have a long historical root. I find the very root to the claims to be rather silly.
As for the UN and British mandates leading to the creation of Israel, I find these rather silly as well.
Most probably the British Mandate of Palestine would become an independent country with multiple religions, like Lebanon is today.
Which would have been wonderful, and is probably how the region will end up (much to the disappointment of extremists on both sides) in the long term, after much bloodshed. But speculating on potential alternative histories is futile. The upshot of a world missing Hitler would potentially be much better than just having a unified and diverse Palestine; the Jewish people could have been able to exist peacefully (with stress on the term "exist") in the countries and neighborhood in which they have lived and flourished for hundreds of years.
My father once said to me that one cannot remain neutral between good and evil. And I believe that every time some group starts hating another to the point of murdering innocent people, that's evil.
Good sentiment, but in the case of Israel ambiguous. Both sides can veer dangerously into Evil, and commonly do. By supporting Israel your fighting against the Palestinians, by supporting them your fighting against Israel. By picking a view ignorant of history, and focusing on the now, that is impossible. Both people's need to coexist, they both now have claim to the land.
If you can find a way to bring forth this solution, your Nobel Prize is waiting for you.
Not for PC games. I recently got a laptop with a dubious graphics card, and wanted to see if I could play a couple games (Spore among them), and found that there is absolutely no way to actually see if I could play them. One of the game sites has a utility that supposedly checks for this, but it returns different hardware values every time I run it.
Basically, the only legal way I can see if a game is playable is to give them $50 and pray.
This excuse doesn't work for movies, since you can just rent them. Sometimes. Can't use Netflix at my apartment (small small mailboxes, and an untrustworthy office where the incoming packages are left in the open), and Blockbuster sucks for the type of movies I enjoy (old, not bestsellers, limited releases, foreign, or possibly not meeting their prude standards). But 90% of them time rental works to see if your buying something worthwhile.
Music is harder to check. Yes, you can hear the radioworthy single (which often sounds nothing like the rest of the album). Yes, iTunes and Amazon, and often Last.fm lets you listen to a random 10 second selection from random songs, of random bands, but it still is rather hard to tell if it is worth money or not.
I give a nice sarcastic "boohoo" to both sides. Both are racist morons blinded by religion and a baseless sense of entitlement. Both like embittered 2 year olds who don't get their way, except armed with tanks, missiles, and suicide bombs.
I haven't found much of a reason to feel much pity for either side. I'm not religious, so I don't buy the "god gave this to us" crap, nor do I think the events of 2500 years ago has much relevance on the land claims of today. So there goes the Jewish side of the argument. I also don't think that killing innocent civilians just because you don't like your neighbors garners much respect (this is true for both sides), especially when you decide to kill your neighbors distant relatives and relations (true mostly for Palestine), or decide to teach your children first how to hate (true for both sides, but more towards the Palestinians), and to commit suicide for no real reason.
I think the US should just leave both sides to fend for themselves. Helping either side is morally murky, being that both sides cross the boundaries. Picking sides in this conflict has done NOTHING to help the US, and much to hurt us. I don't even get why it is a damn issue.
They will have to learn to live together, and compromise (the mature, rational, and intelligent answer), or annihilate each other (the answer they want).
Freddy Mercury?
Anecdotal evidence = anecdotal evidence.
I have a Wii, its under no dust. Every time my friends come over they want to play it.
I don't have a 9 year old nephew, so this MIGHT be universal, but my 14 year old cousin loves it.
Your evidence has been broken. Do you really care that much? If you don't like it, good, pawn it. If you like the PS3 or 360, or Dreamcast, or Amiga better, then good. Personal taste is personal taste, live with it. If you really care about who is a "real gamer", then you obviously live a good life, since you have nothing actually important to care about.
I have fun with my Wii, if this makes me not a "gamer", who cares? I also enjoy my expensive computer for gaming, does if this makes me not a "gamer", then I still don't care. I find the PS3 and 360 not worth the extra money, if this ruins my "gamer" cred, then fine. If your the opposite me in every way, then also fine. Its a matter of taste. My liking of the Wii hurts you as much as your obviously (irrational) hatred hurts me; not in the slightest.
My question, though is; WHY THE HELL ARE YOU SO WORKED UP ABOUT CONSUMER ELECTRONICS?!
As a gamer in the prime gaming demographic (25-30ish), I own a Wii, and no other console, my only other gaming device is a PC. I play around 90% of my so-called "hardcore" games on the PC, since it still is the best platform for gaming. I'd own a PS3 or a 360 if they had any releases that interested me that were exclusive to them, so far they don't. 90% of console games are stealth shooters, or racing games, which bore me. The only things that consoles have that mildly interest me are JRPGs, but generally they require too much time passively watching cinematics to be able to fit into my life (and are thus boring).
The Wii is good at parties, none of the other consoles really are, outside of the occasional fighting game. None of my friends (in their 30's) are interested in playing Halo, and neither am I. We'd rather get drunk and play Mariokart, or SSBM/B.
So, in your opinion, who the hell is a real gamer? The PC is still the best "hardcore" option, it has the best control scheme for FPSs, more genre's (how many RTSs have you seen on consoles worth playing, or MMOs?), and the most real mutli-player options.
So, excluding quality of game play, and amount sold (the Wii eats it's contenders), then what counts?
Pure graphics? The PC still wins. Story? The PC still wins (excluding games available on both it and other mediums). Controls? It goes to the PC and the Wii. What are you judging by?
Eh, the games are in the Wii. Between virtual arcade, their Xbox Arcade clone, and actual releases, their doing rather well. Granted I am a bit miffed about the lack of 3rd party releases, but still there is plenty to do. The lack of 3rd party released is largely based on the idiocy of developers refusing to offer solid products to the Wii, as much as it is Nintendo's fault for making a system with sub-par graphics (the only thing that matters to young gamers).
I'm not, btw, crying for the lack of stealth shooters based in WWII (or not, to a lesser but still significant degree), which seems to be all that the gaming industry has been able to produce for the last 5 years.
Stop being a fan boy, all the systems have major faults right now, both hardware wise, and in terms of diversity of releases. Out of the 9,000 PS3 games, there might be 5 I'd want to play (of those 4 have PC versions which will be better). The 360 has mortality issues, and has the same game problem as the PS3 (I hate racing and stealth shooters which are the only things out there). The Wii is a graphical weakling, and only has Nintendo releases (though they are largely quality).