Now, go patch something without introducing some hidden bugs, and come back and tell us how easy it is.
It is pretty much impossible to get every bug, look at big developers with hundreds of programmers who can afford large dedicated bug killing programs... Now go look at their running bug lists. Hell, Google sources the community to find bugs in some of their projects, offering money even, and bugs, big and small, manage to sneak through.
Bugs happen. Its a fact of life. Patching should be quick and simple. There is no logical reason to dissuade developers from fixing their products.
Just goes to show that you should test your code, and leave the coding to professionals.
Like who? Bethesda? Obsidian? Ubisoft? Google? Microsoft? Mozilla? None of them have ever released a buggy product, or released a fix that introduced more bugs than they fixed. Nope. Never.
Also, yes please, we should preclude the little guy from making innovative content... We need more EA games.
You have a hard time selling shit to people who expect everything for free.
And who are these people?
I don't think you understand the market demographics. Android isn't for nerds, or geeks, or FOSS people, its for everyone. My father has an android phone, and he wouldn't know a kernel if it bit him in the ass, same for most of my friends (only 2 own iOS devices). My dad has spent far more on Android apps than I ever will, I'm guessing my friends are in the same camp (not being nerds, and not being free-software types). You really can't say, looking at market figures, that the nerds outnumber the "hip, affluent, Apple kids" by such a growing margin. If it was true, this indeed would be the year of the Linux desktop.
No, iOS and Android are just banal market choices, and have nothing to do with deeper underlying philosophies. Its like choosing between a Nissan and a Honda, it means nothing.
I have no clue whether people on iOS spend more than on Android, and doubt very much it is as deeply meaningful as people would like, there are a varieties of factors that would tie into that statistic. It also ignores people who have devices in BOTH ecosystems. My very non-nerdy father has an iPad and an Android phone, both fit different needs, and the iPad had better data plans on Verizon than any Android equivelent, his choice to buy it had nothing to do with Apple or Google, just individual needs.
I got an Android phone (and I AM a nerd), not because it was Google, or based on Linux, or... whatnot... I got it because I could side-load apps onto it, and i actually liked the UI more than Apple's (I'm sick of spit up cough lozenges being considered high design, it is boring). If Apple made a phone, or device, that meet my needs, I would get one. I don't care who makes it, I don't care whose brand it carries, none of that matters. I also don't care if it is FOSS or not, or made by nerdy neckbeards who like cheese puffs (hint, this applies to Apple too) or not. Hell, I'm interested in the x86 MS Surface tablet and if it is affordable or I get enough loose change I will grab one and sell my Transformer, and MS is even less nerdy and open than Apple.
It is about needs, and subjective expectations. Its just a bunch of plastic and chemicals, I don't see any reason to breath deep philosophy into it.
That is a very good point. People generally forget the physics involved. While tablets and phones are generally quite capable (even if they often don't live up to those capabilities), they probably won't replace PCs until someone comes up with a way of allowing them to advance like PCs. PCs have more room for hardware support, and this will probably remain the "cutting edge" market, while advances trickle down to mobile devices as the technology develops to the point where it doesn't need cooling or space.
So someone is going to make voice recognition that doesn't suck soon? That, too, has been coming for decades.
Once, for a lark, I set up various voice options (Dragon, and the one built into Windows, and I think and OS X flavor) and read to them from various texts, from normal (a short story, and a newspaper article), to specialist (a Unix admin guide and a excerpts from Kant), to odd nonsense(Lewis Carroll and Dr. Seuss); the results were uniformly amusing. Obviously the more conventional material was translated okay (about 80% accuracy), but everything else resulted in almost absolute gibberish.
Even when they worked (for boring plain English), it wasn't as convenient or fast as typing, especially when it came to understanding punctuation.
No, this wasn't a scientific study. And I am impressed with Android's speech recognition, it maintains around 70% accuracy even when I talk to it in a Sean Connery voice.
Further, most people get tired of talking long before they get tired of typing. Imagine quietly mumbling to your computer 8 hours a day...
Probably we'll just see something like Chrome OS (or OnLive), backed up by the magical "cloud", with full plug and play support for peripherals. Mobile dumb terminals. This would be nice on one hand (a full computer wherever I go!), and horrible on another (all my data is belong to who?, where is my control?). I'd probably love it, though I'd keep a dedicated computer with real, local, storage sitting around for my work and projects.
But I admit the fact that I'm abnormal, and probably a dinosaur. The "post-PC" world sounds like a utopia for my parents and girlfriend, who didn't grow with computers, and don't have my needs, or conditioned need for 100% control of my information and data. Being that most of my friends don't have desktops even, I'm guessing this is inevitable.
And then there is the cash grabbing series written by his son and Poul Anderson because they needed more money.
Actually it might have started with good intentions, but that didn't last past the first series. Well, maybe not good intentions, since his books always seemed more based on the David Lynch movie than his fathers books...
Sorry for double posting... but... I also don't like ACA. Its better than what we had, but still a pretty crappy solution. I also don't like the idea of being forced to give money to a corporation. Where we're going to disagree is that I don't think it went far enough. We need a single payer system like the rest of the civilized world, universal healthcare for everyone.
Actually, not universal, but you pay by your means. Its free for the poor, cheap for the middle class, and damn expensive for the rich.
...you sound like you are surrounded by people who don't have insurance, so pretty poor I suppose, what no jobs even?
Nope. I didn't have any because I was a full time student and couldn't get a full time job. For a period previous and after college I did independent and freelance work. Wasn't really making enough to handle insurance, and I was young (read that as immortal). Some of the people I know didn't have it because of pre-existing conditions (one of those because of a 30 year old clerical error). My mom is poor, disabled, and unemployed, so that stands. Some of my friends are poor, and some only work part-time. Some are "middle class" , and have issues that make insurance unaffordable. Some just have really crappy insurance from their employers. My dad was a slave to his, since no one else would cover his 10k+ a month healthcare costs, he basically couldn't retire though he had the money saved up, and was sitting on a nice union pension.
Not that it really matters if people are poor or not, I don't see why the rich deserve much better. People are people, and money is fiction. One thing is, and always will be more important than the other.
I'm not sure I buy your history. You're missing a lot of dark and grimy bits of our history. Slavery, for example. Women and the poor being less than human. Indentured servitude. Those are just little bits of the bad bits on the human side, on the business side we had more problems; Horrible and unsafe working conditions. Child labor. Robber barons and monopolies. The Great Depression. Etc... There was never a shining age of capitalism. And we never really ascended (in a global sense) until after the World Wars.
Of-course Constitution wasn't handed down by god, that's the point, it was designed with one goal in mind: preventing corruption in government, and this practice, of preventing massive government corruption, is what prevented the government from stealing from the private sector up until 1913, when both, the Federal reserve and income taxes were introduced.
No, it was to prevent government tyranny, and from the government restricting the rights of the people. Commerce only being a rather small bit of the bigger picture. I care more about the speachy-not-searchy-gun bits than I do about taxes or regulation. And being that we voted to stick it in the constitution, following the rules set in the constitution, can anyone really have a constitutional argument against federal income tax?
From then on the prices for goods and services always went up, they have not gone down as they did for a hundred years preceding that time.
This ignores the fact that we're wealthier now than we were at any modern point (ignoring the very end of the twentieth century), as a whole. Our rich are richer, and our poor are richer. The gap is larger, but we're all better off.
You believe that you would be better served by a system where you are completely taken care of by the government, and the government puts the burden of taking care of you upon those, who still produce something, so you want the production done by others to be taken from them and diverted to your consumption.
Who said I don't produce anything? You think I'm typing this from my cardboard box, with a computer bought with foodstamps? That doesn't make me suddenly a callous bastard. I suppose I am one of the rare people who don't mind paying taxes, as long as those taxes go to something useful. I don't mind the government taking care of people who can't take care of themselves (as long as the goal is elevating them, not just babysitting them). I don't care if someone is going to school on my dime, thats good, they will possibly make America a better place for my children. Government, I realize, isn't about ME, it is about US as a whole.
So... they do things that you disagree with, and are therefore worthless. That doesn't wash.
I disagree with plenty of their decisions, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't make their decisions wrong, or devalue their part in American government. I'm actually, on the whole, GLAD to have them, even if it means accepting strange, or harmful ruling from time to time. There is no golden, 100% real, interpretation of the Constitution, there is only opinion (hopefully) guided by text and some sense of history. This is generally fed through the grist mill of our biases and ideologies. SCOTUS is no different.
Your idea of what the Constitution says, and whatever utopia you would make out of it, would probably be absolute hell for me, and many other people. The same is true in the other direction, I'm sure. The Constitution is like the Bible, a text written by men, and where anyone who knows 100% what it says, and are willing to inflict it on other people, are to be feared and destroyed, not respected and given power.
Our interpretations change with time. Most of SCOTUS' "bad" rulings have gone away over time (Dred Scott) since our country, and culture have changed. This is normal and healthy. What isn't normal and healthy are people holding their own ideology over everyone else, and trying to quash all argument because they are that 100% correct. (I ignore these people, they are morons. Dangerous morons).
I, as an a person who was very recently uninsured (for 10 years) person, can't wait for ACA. Nor can my mom, and my girlfriends parents, and pretty much everyone else I know. I'm still not sure if I agree with how SCOTUS ruled though. It seems a bit odd. But I'm not a lawyer, so what the hell do I know?
Also, while I'm courting with awesomely negative mods, I'm sick to death of people yelling "The Constitution" as if it is some holy writ. If we could acheive a better society but had to violate some principle of the Constitution (or at least by some interpretations), I'd burn the damn thing myself. It isn't holy. It isn't handed to us by God himself. It wasn't created by super humans. It was written a very long time ago, and the world has changed, a lot (so... how about those 3/5ths of a human being...).It was created by men, men who largely disagreed with each other and hashed out some compromise. It isn't terribly special because other countries run as good, or better (*gasp*), than us without it.
Sure, it works somewhat well, and yes it was rather revolutionary... No, I wouldn't throw it out today. But if someone smarter than me thought of something better, I'd jump on it in a second. Government is about the good of the governed, and not about a silly 200 year old bit of paper.
Firefox is merely following Google's example with Chrome. For reference, Chrome is currently version 20 on my machine and still looks remarkably similar to version 1.
One important difference, Google isn't using version numbers for marketing. Without looking, I have no idea what version of Chrome I'm using. It could be 1.0, it could be 90.8.5, it doesn't really matter. With Firefox I'm using Firefox 13, with Chrome I'm using Chrome. They might be competing with Google, but Google isn't competing with them, at least as far as version number inflation goes. I think Google also has a different scheme of version numbers than Firefox had, they generally bumped the principle number for internal things (API changes, etc...), where Firefox used to to do it when their product had a major, outwardly noticeable changes. Sadly they decided that people give a shit about version numbers. Chrome isn't growing because its at version 94.45.2, its growing because Firefox is stagnating and clunky feeling, and because Chrome is new and shiny.
Also, who cares if it looks like 1.0, its a browser, I never really see any of the UI, I only care about the content it displays. The best browser is the most invisible browser. At least as far as user experience goes.
I've been playing the PoE beta for awhile now and it just doesn't grab me. I like what they did, I like the atmosphere, the skill and attribute systems are interesting and fun for the most part. There still is something off about it... I'm not a big fan of the item economy, the classes are rather pointless feeling, and zones are a bit meh. The combat is bog-standard ARPG combat. And the "multiplayer" bit is a bit lame feeling, or at least terribly lonely. And it doesn't rectify the "I can't play on the train" problem at everyone complained about in Diablo 3. I'm not saying its a bad game, it just isn't a great game. But then again it is free, so... Standards be damned, I am getting my moneys worth.
Now, Torchlight 2 is going to be epic, especially if they fixed the skill trees... And Grim Dawn is going to be awesome, I actually liked Titan Quest more than Diablo 2 on pretty much everything but aesthetics and atmosphere (fear Dio, the Dream Warrior!). That said, Diablo 3, for all the flaws and hate, is still a damn good game, and is stiff competition for all of these titles. And you really can't say it isn't hard, when the forums are full of people bitching about it being too hard.
GW2, though, isn't really competition. It competes with WoW and SWoToR more than any of the upcoming ARPGs. I pretty much forgot about PoE the second I got into the Torchlight beta, as well as on every GW2 beta weekend. It really doesn't hold up next to these behomoths. That isn't, again, saying it is bad, just the competition is awesome.
Man, and here I expected to read a nice, distracting, article about a good looking game... Nope, more political bullshit handwavy crap.
I don't care anymore. The government can do whatever it wants to, or doesn't want to... I don't give a shit. My life will go on. What the hell does getting my panties in a bunch (on Slashdot, nonetheless) DO? Nothing. The people who agree with you will feel a nice and justified, the people who disagree with you will ignore you and keep believing in whatever they want. Meanwhile you waste a bunch of other people's time, and work yourself up over pretty much nothing at all.
On one hand, yes, Obamacare is dumb (the manditory part), but now it seems dumb but legal. Tough, now go vote for corrupt bastards who blow smoke up your ass, and hope they actually do something about it. Sadly, the dumb part supports a very nice part (poor people getting health insurance, and stopping insurance companies from fucking everyone for money). Oh well. Accept the good with the dumb, or throw the whole thing out... Who fucking cares? Really? Oh yeah, I know you do. Good. Now shut the fuck up and vote for people, or... if you must open your mouth, say something reasonable, and be respectful. If you can't do that, go die in a fire.
That said. I can't wait for GW2, its going to be awesome. While I don't hate Diablo 3 as much as the internet tells me I should, it really isn't as satisfying over a long period as it could be... Hopefully Guild Wars actually lives up to its reputation. I really enjoyed the two beta events I could participate in, but who knows, I never got high enough level to really see what develops, and didn't really delve into the world versus world versus world stuff (well, I died a few times). I'd like to see where they go with it.
I'm also curious where they're going to go with their micro-transactions... So far I'm intrigued, but it could go wrong rather quickly. I just hope they either have more character slots, or sell them very cheaply.
Sorry for ruining your silly off-topic political circle jerk.
(you is rhetorical, and not necessarily aimed at the parent)
That the laws on the books, concerning immigration and anything else, should either be enforced or repealed. Is that biased enough for you?
Or modified, or fixed, or tweaked to meet different needs or times.
It's like you were doing this: "Hmm. Don't like what that guy said - check. Have to portray him as biased, bigoted, or just plain unpleasant because heaven forbid two adults have a conversation about a national issue without making it personal - check. Muddy the water with "human issues" and "both sides of the equation" when concepts like "rule of law" are so damned simple - check."
Er... I don't understand what you said, and generally wholly disagree with anyone who claims that there is one solution to big, convoluted, issues that affect human lives. I don't think I ever implied you were bigoted, or unpleasant, biased; yes (since we all are). If I overstated, I apologize. Part of my point was there was plenty of room for conversation, its is a muddy issue. It also is an issue that can't be discussed without the "human issues", and "both sides" bits. Actually the human issues bit, is the only thing that makes it at all interesting, or controversial
If you support illegal immigration, you wouldn't like that one damned bit. But it would be so unbiased!
I support illegal immigration? That is news to me.
Basically a bit of miscommunication, I misread your comment, and misconstrued your point.
I pretty much read it as another "there are harsher laws in the southern border states because they hate brown people" argument. Sorry. Though there is, sadly, a bit of truth to that statement, as well.
Wait... I think I know the answer! Is it because they don't have thousands of people illegally streaming across the border in those states? It might also be due to the fact that Canada isn't a land known for their violent drug cartels, kidnapping, and murdering thousands of young women.
Now, before you jump down my throat and decide I'm "racist" (grumble, its like saying someone who disagree with Israels foreign policy is an anti-semite, idiotic); I'm not saying that all of our southern neighbors are bad, or that a majority of them are, or that I'm against them being here, or that I want to round them up, or that I want to grant amnesty, or... blah, blah. In short I'm not taking a side in the debate, just pointing out that your statement was rather ignorant.
Basically, different borders, different policies. Race doesn't matter, if Canada had the social problems of Mexico and Central America, the the Border Patrol would be in the states you list, instead of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas (and Florida, obviously).
And what is that "one correct conclusion", oh great enlightened master? Let me guess, it aligns well with you political idealogy, and is generally agreeable to the body of your preexisting views and biases?
Please enlighten me. I am an Arizonan, I have read up extensively on immigration issues, I spend lots of time debating and pondering them. Until, of course, I realized that both sides of the issue are full crackpots and blustering idiot ideologues.
There isn't an easy answer. There never will be. The facts which we can base an answer on are all murky and subjective. The human issues are more so. Immigration is an issue that can only be solved through unhappy compromises, and trying to balance the human elements on both sides of the equation. It is truly a textbook ethical dilemma.
Also, that report is a farce, at least for the purposes of this discussion. It says nothing about the vast majority of immigrants (illegal or non) who aren't incarcerated.
As a starting point, you could read any/all of Locke, Hume, Hobbes, Decartes, Calvin, Rousseau, Kant, or numerous others.
I have. Well, I haven't read Calvin, but I have read the others, many of their books are sitting less than two feet to my left. It still doesn't really answer the question, or at least it still points all at rights being merely a social construct. Them being a social construct isn't terribly useful, since we can then argue back and forth what rights you should have, and not work out from what rights you do have.
People generally use the term like it holds some form of biblical truth, that they are innate and natural. I haven't seen this, nor have a read a compelling case towards it. For example, the person who I was replying to stated that we have these rights "because we are human". This seems to say that they are natural and innate, and inexorably linked to our "humanness". This all leads to the question I asked, "how so?". It seems that this is a question that should be mulled over before we're allowed to run around and bluntly state that something is, indeed, our right.
Now I'm not arguing against rights, or for tyranny. I just find the whole thing an interesting question, and am greatly amused at how many statements are rendered meaningless by the nebulous, hand-wavy-ness, of the term.
. What's more, they have the idea that it's OK not to understand math, and that it's "unfair" to demand that they have any kind of grasp of 7th grade math. I suspect that this latter attitude comes from the fact that there is a non trivial population of college *professors* who can't do 7th grade math.
Please don't treat psych stats this way, and don't cater to the slowest students. Most of the psych departments I've been in use research methods and stats as a sieve, straining out the less serious students from the ones taking the program for easy credit or an easy degree. Stats are pretty much the "trial by fire" of social sciences, or at the least the bits of them that want to be actual social scientists (the "applied" group got there own check, I don't know what since I never cared for the touchy feely bits), and not counselors, or psychiatrists or such (or, heaven forbid, sociologists).
In most universities, the psychology department is the most crowded, and its early classes are ridiculously easy (at least compaired to most things). They need a way to ween out dross. The tiers of classes after stats and methods are actually pretty damn nasty, many of them amounting to undergrad neurology and physiology courses. Hell, when I was in college there actually was a compsci class hiding in the psych department, with various math and CS pre-reqs (Cogsci ###).
Teach it hard, and teach it straight. Teach it just like you would teach it to "hard science" majors of the same level. Perhaps modify some examples to be relevant to the field, but other than that realize that these kids are just as smart (or dumb) as those in your favorite feild, so hold the same standards for both groups.
When I was going to school for psych, we had a split between "research methods", and statistics, the former was all out experimental design, the latter was about... er... statistics. In the methods class were were allowed to use SPSS, and other tools, but in stats we couldn't use anything more than a calculator and a pencil. We managed to get through pretty much the whole book, excepting regression analysis. The professor went a bit beyond the book, since she used numbers cribbed from historical research, then compared our results to those in the papers. It was one of the nastiest classes I've ever taken, and as a result of that I scored the highest in the class.
It also had at least two math prereqs, and 3-4 psych prereqs.
Yes, there were some idiots in the class. But there were also some very smart kids. And the professor was a bit of a bitch, as well. She managed to get in trouble for telling students, on the first day, to drop the class because it will be harder than they can handle, and nicely said they are too stupid for the content.
It might still be among the nastiest classes I've ever taken.
You claim that you want to hold someone responsible for their actions while also claiming we should restrict certain weapons. Why would we restrict the possession of any weapon if we are going to hold them responsible for the misuse of that weapon?
I never said that I, personally, want to restrict anything. Some people in the group of people which I share some attributes with do, there is a difference between groups and individuals. Also, the amendment, as you know, doesn't say "guns", or "firearms" it just says arms. Many things are arms, and only a few of them are unrestricted. For example, neither of use have the right to bear atomic weaponry. I figure, probably, neither of us are going to debate this restriction. Maybe you would, I don't know, but most people wouldn't.
I really don't have a strong opinion on some restrictions on certain classes of firearm. I'm not really in favor of them, or against them.
You also want to restrict certain behaviors? What kind of behaviors? Since the topic is about responsible gun ownership I can only assume you mean to restrict behaviors relating to responsible gun ownership
I never said anything about that either. And the topic is about exempting gun owners from a legal responsibility that everyone else has just because they did said behavior with a gun, and not a match or campfire, or anything else. I do find this silly, guns don't bestow extra rights, or exempt you from responsibilities. If you start a fire, and are liable, you should be liable no matter what you used to start the fire. Again, this isn't a second amendment issue, no one wants to restrict guns, just hold people responsible for irresponsible behavior.
You didn't say what behaviors you want to restrict but I have a few guesses. No carry of guns into schools, churches, hospitals, or airports. Did I guess right?
You guessed mostly wrong. If those are public property, then fine. If they are private property, then it is up to the property owner to decide. I can tell you not to bring a firearm into my house without violating your rights, the owner of a business or church should have the same right. If you disagree (I don't want to make you a strawman), then remember that I can kick you out of my house for saying things I don't like, and not violate your rights. The same should be true for arms. As for public property, I don't feel strongly about it. I don't have a problem with most of these, though I think this rests in the hands of voters, and not pro-gun, or anti-whatnot lobbies.
Airplanes are not public property, so it depends on what the owner desires. If America West, for example, decide to allow passengers to carry, then I'm fine with it. If the government forces them to, and violates their property, then I'm against it. Same as I can bar you from having firearms, or using speech I find disagreeable in my house.
Getting a bit more esoteric and hand-wavy here; All rights are conditional on the effects on the rights of others. The basis of all rights is in a social contract, where we give government the power to restrict certain rights, to protect our rights from the actions of others. Your rights to do whatever end when they restrict the rights of another person, or cause direct harm to another person. The degree we apply this shifts back and forth, which is the beautiful thing about our democracy (or republic, or republican democracy, or...), is that it allows US, the people, to determine that balance almost constantly. This also means that some people are going to be unhappy all of the time, since there is no perfect balance, and the collective ideal shifts constantly. But, in the end, it isn't about you, or the NRA, or me, it is about society as a whole. This is why our government exists for the "general welfare", and not any single persons welfare. I didn't make this up, its straight from Locke and Hobbes, two philosophers our founders were well acquai
A republic is a flavor of democracy. It isn't a pure democracy, obviously, but it still is the flavor. Also, that was largely semantics. Let me rephase: "... it equals normal political disagreement. Those are actually healthy and good for any society with democratic roots or leanings, whose governance is based on the wills and desires of diverse groups of people with differing opinions, including Republics." The original way sounded better.
That would be great if we lived in a democracy. We live in a republic, or at least we do in theory. I hate to use the argument of the slippery slope but when it comes to weapons that slippery slope is almost always inevitable. Once a nation has established a restriction on the right to keep and bear arms then it just becomes a matter of degree that the people are willing to put up with.
The debate here on the topic in question has nothing to do with the right to bear arms, actually, but being held responsible for actions committed while exercising said right. Go shoot, but face the consequences if you do so irresponsibly. The fact the gun lobby has decided that people with guns shouldn't be held accountable to the results of their own irresponsibility is a bit silly.
Its like saying that murder committed with a firearm shouldn't be considered murder since it violates the second amendment. No. A gun is a tool, nothing more, nothing less, and a tools users should always be held responsible for its misuse, if said misuse causes harm to others. In this case dropping a match (not intentionally to start a fire) is exactly the same as accidently causing a fire by shooting a rock.
I don't see the slippery slope rearing its ugly head.
Also, the slippery slope is considered an informal fallacy for a reason. Just because you can see one, doesn't mean there is. It really isn't a good basis for argument.
In a republic the people are the government and the people are the militia
No, in a republic chosen representatives are the government. In a democracy the people (demos) are the government (-cracy). Sorry for picking that nit.
he available statistics [xfire.com] suggest that a lot of people bought the game, and then have failed to continue playing it. It sold very quickly at first, but now no one wants it.
You might be right, but I can't tell from that. I don't know how they are measuring this, and I have no clue what Xfire even is. Also, I don't know what to compare that too, how does a game launch of comparable size compare. Again, for all I know, you are 100% correct.
Many of the patch changes nevertheless appear to correspond to the agenda put forth by Activision's new management in the aforementioned conspiracy theory, even if Activision doesn't actually have direct influence in Blizzard's management: continued nerfing despite promises not to do so [battle.net], removing drops from destructible objects, and only slightly modifying the difficulty of Elite monsters all appear to imply that the company wants to force players to participate in the real money auction house in order to finish the game.
I think the community has a lot to do with the nerfs. Inferno was supposed to be impossible, and everyone complained about it NONSTOP, and very loudly. If anything they made the penultimate difficulty LESS difficult, which, one would think, would lessen the need for cash purchases of items. There has been a lot of changes that the community has spun into "Blizzard wants money!!", that can also be seen at face value. Nerfing some builds did open other options, as much of the Demon Hunter nerfs did, they increased the amount of perceived viable builds. I'm okay with this. I wouldn't be okay, though, with them nerfing things to benefit the RMAH (real money auction house). I haven't seen much evidence of this. Companies always patch games, especially Blizzard. They are known for being aggressive patchers, look at the patch notes for Diablo 2 and expansion.
I've heard that Blizzard's testers couldn't actually complete the game on the hardest difficulty, and that they knowingly shipped the game in that state.
When they said that, my mind screamed "hyperbole". But I still, if true, wouldn't take that as a negative. Further, you don't need to really ever use the auction house, the RMAH, or any other social feature of the game to have fun. It might be more work, but it still fun to try. I'm working my way through Act II, and haven't spend a cent of real money, and only a small amount in the in-game money AH. I probably die more than the people who want to spend money, but I'm fine with that.
I probably sound like a "fanboy" or some such here. I do have complaints about the game, but I figure its pointless to voice them since they've been said by others ad nauseum. I also really can't tell how it stacks against Diablo II, since nostalgia rears its ugly undependable head. I'm also much older than I was back then, I have a life now, I have hobbies that don't involve sitting in front of a computer in a dark room, I have experience with more things, and my tastes have changed. I want to say Diablo 2 was better, but I can't really. I was in the Torchlight 2 beta, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I felt I should have, or would have 10 years ago.
At this point, with Microsoft, I really, truly believe that people are so conditioned to hate their products that they can't rightly succeed any more with their current brands. This is the fate of all greedy computer companies, I think.
I don't even know if its hate... On places like Slashdot, sure, but out there in userland... I'm pretty sure it is mostly apathy. When you (Joe Sixpack) think of Microsoft you think of Windows, something that you are forced to use at work, or Office, something that you are forced to use at work. Or you think of that incomprehensible beige box sitting in your home office, that your kid has to fix for you. The problem with Microsoft, for most people, is probably that it leaves no impression on them.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, go patch something without introducing some hidden bugs, and come back and tell us how easy it is.
It is pretty much impossible to get every bug, look at big developers with hundreds of programmers who can afford large dedicated bug killing programs... Now go look at their running bug lists. Hell, Google sources the community to find bugs in some of their projects, offering money even, and bugs, big and small, manage to sneak through.
Bugs happen. Its a fact of life. Patching should be quick and simple. There is no logical reason to dissuade developers from fixing their products.
Just goes to show that you should test your code, and leave the coding to professionals.
Like who? Bethesda? Obsidian? Ubisoft? Google? Microsoft? Mozilla? None of them have ever released a buggy product, or released a fix that introduced more bugs than they fixed. Nope. Never.
Also, yes please, we should preclude the little guy from making innovative content... We need more EA games.
" ... And when you gaze long into an Goatse the Goatse also gazes into you." -Nietzsche
You have a hard time selling shit to people who expect everything for free.
And who are these people?
I don't think you understand the market demographics. Android isn't for nerds, or geeks, or FOSS people, its for everyone. My father has an android phone, and he wouldn't know a kernel if it bit him in the ass, same for most of my friends (only 2 own iOS devices). My dad has spent far more on Android apps than I ever will, I'm guessing my friends are in the same camp (not being nerds, and not being free-software types). You really can't say, looking at market figures, that the nerds outnumber the "hip, affluent, Apple kids" by such a growing margin. If it was true, this indeed would be the year of the Linux desktop.
No, iOS and Android are just banal market choices, and have nothing to do with deeper underlying philosophies. Its like choosing between a Nissan and a Honda, it means nothing.
I have no clue whether people on iOS spend more than on Android, and doubt very much it is as deeply meaningful as people would like, there are a varieties of factors that would tie into that statistic. It also ignores people who have devices in BOTH ecosystems. My very non-nerdy father has an iPad and an Android phone, both fit different needs, and the iPad had better data plans on Verizon than any Android equivelent, his choice to buy it had nothing to do with Apple or Google, just individual needs.
I got an Android phone (and I AM a nerd), not because it was Google, or based on Linux, or... whatnot... I got it because I could side-load apps onto it, and i actually liked the UI more than Apple's (I'm sick of spit up cough lozenges being considered high design, it is boring). If Apple made a phone, or device, that meet my needs, I would get one. I don't care who makes it, I don't care whose brand it carries, none of that matters. I also don't care if it is FOSS or not, or made by nerdy neckbeards who like cheese puffs (hint, this applies to Apple too) or not. Hell, I'm interested in the x86 MS Surface tablet and if it is affordable or I get enough loose change I will grab one and sell my Transformer, and MS is even less nerdy and open than Apple.
It is about needs, and subjective expectations. Its just a bunch of plastic and chemicals, I don't see any reason to breath deep philosophy into it.
Pepsi or Coke? Who gives a shit.
That is a very good point. People generally forget the physics involved. While tablets and phones are generally quite capable (even if they often don't live up to those capabilities), they probably won't replace PCs until someone comes up with a way of allowing them to advance like PCs. PCs have more room for hardware support, and this will probably remain the "cutting edge" market, while advances trickle down to mobile devices as the technology develops to the point where it doesn't need cooling or space.
So someone is going to make voice recognition that doesn't suck soon? That, too, has been coming for decades.
Once, for a lark, I set up various voice options (Dragon, and the one built into Windows, and I think and OS X flavor) and read to them from various texts, from normal (a short story, and a newspaper article), to specialist (a Unix admin guide and a excerpts from Kant), to odd nonsense(Lewis Carroll and Dr. Seuss); the results were uniformly amusing. Obviously the more conventional material was translated okay (about 80% accuracy), but everything else resulted in almost absolute gibberish.
Even when they worked (for boring plain English), it wasn't as convenient or fast as typing, especially when it came to understanding punctuation.
No, this wasn't a scientific study. And I am impressed with Android's speech recognition, it maintains around 70% accuracy even when I talk to it in a Sean Connery voice.
Further, most people get tired of talking long before they get tired of typing. Imagine quietly mumbling to your computer 8 hours a day...
Probably we'll just see something like Chrome OS (or OnLive), backed up by the magical "cloud", with full plug and play support for peripherals. Mobile dumb terminals. This would be nice on one hand (a full computer wherever I go!), and horrible on another (all my data is belong to who?, where is my control?). I'd probably love it, though I'd keep a dedicated computer with real, local, storage sitting around for my work and projects.
But I admit the fact that I'm abnormal, and probably a dinosaur. The "post-PC" world sounds like a utopia for my parents and girlfriend, who didn't grow with computers, and don't have my needs, or conditioned need for 100% control of my information and data. Being that most of my friends don't have desktops even, I'm guessing this is inevitable.
No there aren't. There are six Dune novels.
And then there is the cash grabbing series written by his son and Poul Anderson because they needed more money.
Actually it might have started with good intentions, but that didn't last past the first series. Well, maybe not good intentions, since his books always seemed more based on the David Lynch movie than his fathers books...
Sorry for double posting... but... I also don't like ACA. Its better than what we had, but still a pretty crappy solution. I also don't like the idea of being forced to give money to a corporation. Where we're going to disagree is that I don't think it went far enough. We need a single payer system like the rest of the civilized world, universal healthcare for everyone.
Actually, not universal, but you pay by your means. Its free for the poor, cheap for the middle class, and damn expensive for the rich.
...you sound like you are surrounded by people who don't have insurance, so pretty poor I suppose, what no jobs even?
Nope. I didn't have any because I was a full time student and couldn't get a full time job. For a period previous and after college I did independent and freelance work. Wasn't really making enough to handle insurance, and I was young (read that as immortal). Some of the people I know didn't have it because of pre-existing conditions (one of those because of a 30 year old clerical error). My mom is poor, disabled, and unemployed, so that stands. Some of my friends are poor, and some only work part-time. Some are "middle class" , and have issues that make insurance unaffordable. Some just have really crappy insurance from their employers. My dad was a slave to his, since no one else would cover his 10k+ a month healthcare costs, he basically couldn't retire though he had the money saved up, and was sitting on a nice union pension.
Not that it really matters if people are poor or not, I don't see why the rich deserve much better. People are people, and money is fiction. One thing is, and always will be more important than the other.
I'm not sure I buy your history. You're missing a lot of dark and grimy bits of our history. Slavery, for example. Women and the poor being less than human. Indentured servitude. Those are just little bits of the bad bits on the human side, on the business side we had more problems; Horrible and unsafe working conditions. Child labor. Robber barons and monopolies. The Great Depression. Etc... There was never a shining age of capitalism. And we never really ascended (in a global sense) until after the World Wars.
Of-course Constitution wasn't handed down by god, that's the point, it was designed with one goal in mind: preventing corruption in government, and this practice, of preventing massive government corruption, is what prevented the government from stealing from the private sector up until 1913, when both, the Federal reserve and income taxes were introduced.
No, it was to prevent government tyranny, and from the government restricting the rights of the people. Commerce only being a rather small bit of the bigger picture. I care more about the speachy-not-searchy-gun bits than I do about taxes or regulation. And being that we voted to stick it in the constitution, following the rules set in the constitution, can anyone really have a constitutional argument against federal income tax?
From then on the prices for goods and services always went up, they have not gone down as they did for a hundred years preceding that time.
This ignores the fact that we're wealthier now than we were at any modern point (ignoring the very end of the twentieth century), as a whole. Our rich are richer, and our poor are richer. The gap is larger, but we're all better off.
You believe that you would be better served by a system where you are completely taken care of by the government, and the government puts the burden of taking care of you upon those, who still produce something, so you want the production done by others to be taken from them and diverted to your consumption.
Who said I don't produce anything? You think I'm typing this from my cardboard box, with a computer bought with foodstamps? That doesn't make me suddenly a callous bastard. I suppose I am one of the rare people who don't mind paying taxes, as long as those taxes go to something useful. I don't mind the government taking care of people who can't take care of themselves (as long as the goal is elevating them, not just babysitting them). I don't care if someone is going to school on my dime, thats good, they will possibly make America a better place for my children. Government, I realize, isn't about ME, it is about US as a whole.
That is exactly the type of corruption that des
So... they do things that you disagree with, and are therefore worthless. That doesn't wash.
I disagree with plenty of their decisions, but that doesn't matter. It doesn't make their decisions wrong, or devalue their part in American government. I'm actually, on the whole, GLAD to have them, even if it means accepting strange, or harmful ruling from time to time. There is no golden, 100% real, interpretation of the Constitution, there is only opinion (hopefully) guided by text and some sense of history. This is generally fed through the grist mill of our biases and ideologies. SCOTUS is no different.
Your idea of what the Constitution says, and whatever utopia you would make out of it, would probably be absolute hell for me, and many other people. The same is true in the other direction, I'm sure. The Constitution is like the Bible, a text written by men, and where anyone who knows 100% what it says, and are willing to inflict it on other people, are to be feared and destroyed, not respected and given power.
Our interpretations change with time. Most of SCOTUS' "bad" rulings have gone away over time (Dred Scott) since our country, and culture have changed. This is normal and healthy. What isn't normal and healthy are people holding their own ideology over everyone else, and trying to quash all argument because they are that 100% correct. (I ignore these people, they are morons. Dangerous morons).
I, as an a person who was very recently uninsured (for 10 years) person, can't wait for ACA. Nor can my mom, and my girlfriends parents, and pretty much everyone else I know. I'm still not sure if I agree with how SCOTUS ruled though. It seems a bit odd. But I'm not a lawyer, so what the hell do I know?
Also, while I'm courting with awesomely negative mods, I'm sick to death of people yelling "The Constitution" as if it is some holy writ. If we could acheive a better society but had to violate some principle of the Constitution (or at least by some interpretations), I'd burn the damn thing myself. It isn't holy. It isn't handed to us by God himself. It wasn't created by super humans. It was written a very long time ago, and the world has changed, a lot (so... how about those 3/5ths of a human being...) .It was created by men, men who largely disagreed with each other and hashed out some compromise. It isn't terribly special because other countries run as good, or better (*gasp*), than us without it.
Sure, it works somewhat well, and yes it was rather revolutionary... No, I wouldn't throw it out today. But if someone smarter than me thought of something better, I'd jump on it in a second. Government is about the good of the governed, and not about a silly 200 year old bit of paper.
Mod me to hell.
Firefox is merely following Google's example with Chrome. For reference, Chrome is currently version 20 on my machine and still looks remarkably similar to version 1.
One important difference, Google isn't using version numbers for marketing. Without looking, I have no idea what version of Chrome I'm using. It could be 1.0, it could be 90.8.5, it doesn't really matter. With Firefox I'm using Firefox 13, with Chrome I'm using Chrome. They might be competing with Google, but Google isn't competing with them, at least as far as version number inflation goes. I think Google also has a different scheme of version numbers than Firefox had, they generally bumped the principle number for internal things (API changes, etc...), where Firefox used to to do it when their product had a major, outwardly noticeable changes. Sadly they decided that people give a shit about version numbers. Chrome isn't growing because its at version 94.45.2, its growing because Firefox is stagnating and clunky feeling, and because Chrome is new and shiny.
Also, who cares if it looks like 1.0, its a browser, I never really see any of the UI, I only care about the content it displays. The best browser is the most invisible browser. At least as far as user experience goes.
So I go and check my "About Phone" and I see... 2.3.4! What blather are you spouting?
I've been playing the PoE beta for awhile now and it just doesn't grab me. I like what they did, I like the atmosphere, the skill and attribute systems are interesting and fun for the most part. There still is something off about it... I'm not a big fan of the item economy, the classes are rather pointless feeling, and zones are a bit meh. The combat is bog-standard ARPG combat. And the "multiplayer" bit is a bit lame feeling, or at least terribly lonely. And it doesn't rectify the "I can't play on the train" problem at everyone complained about in Diablo 3. I'm not saying its a bad game, it just isn't a great game. But then again it is free, so... Standards be damned, I am getting my moneys worth.
Now, Torchlight 2 is going to be epic, especially if they fixed the skill trees... And Grim Dawn is going to be awesome, I actually liked Titan Quest more than Diablo 2 on pretty much everything but aesthetics and atmosphere (fear Dio, the Dream Warrior!). That said, Diablo 3, for all the flaws and hate, is still a damn good game, and is stiff competition for all of these titles. And you really can't say it isn't hard, when the forums are full of people bitching about it being too hard.
GW2, though, isn't really competition. It competes with WoW and SWoToR more than any of the upcoming ARPGs. I pretty much forgot about PoE the second I got into the Torchlight beta, as well as on every GW2 beta weekend. It really doesn't hold up next to these behomoths. That isn't, again, saying it is bad, just the competition is awesome.
Man, and here I expected to read a nice, distracting, article about a good looking game... Nope, more political bullshit handwavy crap.
I don't care anymore. The government can do whatever it wants to, or doesn't want to... I don't give a shit. My life will go on. What the hell does getting my panties in a bunch (on Slashdot, nonetheless) DO? Nothing. The people who agree with you will feel a nice and justified, the people who disagree with you will ignore you and keep believing in whatever they want. Meanwhile you waste a bunch of other people's time, and work yourself up over pretty much nothing at all.
On one hand, yes, Obamacare is dumb (the manditory part), but now it seems dumb but legal. Tough, now go vote for corrupt bastards who blow smoke up your ass, and hope they actually do something about it. Sadly, the dumb part supports a very nice part (poor people getting health insurance, and stopping insurance companies from fucking everyone for money). Oh well. Accept the good with the dumb, or throw the whole thing out... Who fucking cares? Really? Oh yeah, I know you do. Good. Now shut the fuck up and vote for people, or... if you must open your mouth, say something reasonable, and be respectful. If you can't do that, go die in a fire.
That said. I can't wait for GW2, its going to be awesome. While I don't hate Diablo 3 as much as the internet tells me I should, it really isn't as satisfying over a long period as it could be... Hopefully Guild Wars actually lives up to its reputation. I really enjoyed the two beta events I could participate in, but who knows, I never got high enough level to really see what develops, and didn't really delve into the world versus world versus world stuff (well, I died a few times). I'd like to see where they go with it.
I'm also curious where they're going to go with their micro-transactions... So far I'm intrigued, but it could go wrong rather quickly. I just hope they either have more character slots, or sell them very cheaply.
Sorry for ruining your silly off-topic political circle jerk.
(you is rhetorical, and not necessarily aimed at the parent)
That the laws on the books, concerning immigration and anything else, should either be enforced or repealed. Is that biased enough for you?
Or modified, or fixed, or tweaked to meet different needs or times.
It's like you were doing this: "Hmm. Don't like what that guy said - check. Have to portray him as biased, bigoted, or just plain unpleasant because heaven forbid two adults have a conversation about a national issue without making it personal - check. Muddy the water with "human issues" and "both sides of the equation" when concepts like "rule of law" are so damned simple - check."
Er... I don't understand what you said, and generally wholly disagree with anyone who claims that there is one solution to big, convoluted, issues that affect human lives. I don't think I ever implied you were bigoted, or unpleasant, biased; yes (since we all are). If I overstated, I apologize. Part of my point was there was plenty of room for conversation, its is a muddy issue. It also is an issue that can't be discussed without the "human issues", and "both sides" bits. Actually the human issues bit, is the only thing that makes it at all interesting, or controversial
If you support illegal immigration, you wouldn't like that one damned bit. But it would be so unbiased!
I support illegal immigration? That is news to me.
Basically a bit of miscommunication, I misread your comment, and misconstrued your point.
I pretty much read it as another "there are harsher laws in the southern border states because they hate brown people" argument. Sorry. Though there is, sadly, a bit of truth to that statement, as well.
But they already were required to carry documentation before this law, and are required to carry it in all of the other 49 states as well...
So, whatever state you live in is also as bad as South Africa around 1912, Nazi Germany, and Iran.
Wait... I think I know the answer! Is it because they don't have thousands of people illegally streaming across the border in those states? It might also be due to the fact that Canada isn't a land known for their violent drug cartels, kidnapping, and murdering thousands of young women.
Now, before you jump down my throat and decide I'm "racist" (grumble, its like saying someone who disagree with Israels foreign policy is an anti-semite, idiotic); I'm not saying that all of our southern neighbors are bad, or that a majority of them are, or that I'm against them being here, or that I want to round them up, or that I want to grant amnesty, or... blah, blah. In short I'm not taking a side in the debate, just pointing out that your statement was rather ignorant.
Basically, different borders, different policies. Race doesn't matter, if Canada had the social problems of Mexico and Central America, the the Border Patrol would be in the states you list, instead of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas (and Florida, obviously).
already come to the one correct conclusion,
And what is that "one correct conclusion", oh great enlightened master? Let me guess, it aligns well with you political idealogy, and is generally agreeable to the body of your preexisting views and biases?
Please enlighten me. I am an Arizonan, I have read up extensively on immigration issues, I spend lots of time debating and pondering them. Until, of course, I realized that both sides of the issue are full crackpots and blustering idiot ideologues.
There isn't an easy answer. There never will be. The facts which we can base an answer on are all murky and subjective. The human issues are more so. Immigration is an issue that can only be solved through unhappy compromises, and trying to balance the human elements on both sides of the equation. It is truly a textbook ethical dilemma.
Also, that report is a farce, at least for the purposes of this discussion. It says nothing about the vast majority of immigrants (illegal or non) who aren't incarcerated.
As a starting point, you could read any/all of Locke, Hume, Hobbes, Decartes, Calvin, Rousseau, Kant, or numerous others.
I have. Well, I haven't read Calvin, but I have read the others, many of their books are sitting less than two feet to my left. It still doesn't really answer the question, or at least it still points all at rights being merely a social construct. Them being a social construct isn't terribly useful, since we can then argue back and forth what rights you should have, and not work out from what rights you do have.
People generally use the term like it holds some form of biblical truth, that they are innate and natural. I haven't seen this, nor have a read a compelling case towards it. For example, the person who I was replying to stated that we have these rights "because we are human". This seems to say that they are natural and innate, and inexorably linked to our "humanness". This all leads to the question I asked, "how so?". It seems that this is a question that should be mulled over before we're allowed to run around and bluntly state that something is, indeed, our right.
Now I'm not arguing against rights, or for tyranny. I just find the whole thing an interesting question, and am greatly amused at how many statements are rendered meaningless by the nebulous, hand-wavy-ness, of the term.
. What's more, they have the idea that it's OK not to understand math, and that it's "unfair" to demand that they have any kind of grasp of 7th grade math. I suspect that this latter attitude comes from the fact that there is a non trivial population of college *professors* who can't do 7th grade math.
Please don't treat psych stats this way, and don't cater to the slowest students. Most of the psych departments I've been in use research methods and stats as a sieve, straining out the less serious students from the ones taking the program for easy credit or an easy degree. Stats are pretty much the "trial by fire" of social sciences, or at the least the bits of them that want to be actual social scientists (the "applied" group got there own check, I don't know what since I never cared for the touchy feely bits), and not counselors, or psychiatrists or such (or, heaven forbid, sociologists).
In most universities, the psychology department is the most crowded, and its early classes are ridiculously easy (at least compaired to most things). They need a way to ween out dross. The tiers of classes after stats and methods are actually pretty damn nasty, many of them amounting to undergrad neurology and physiology courses. Hell, when I was in college there actually was a compsci class hiding in the psych department, with various math and CS pre-reqs (Cogsci ###).
Teach it hard, and teach it straight. Teach it just like you would teach it to "hard science" majors of the same level. Perhaps modify some examples to be relevant to the field, but other than that realize that these kids are just as smart (or dumb) as those in your favorite feild, so hold the same standards for both groups.
When I was going to school for psych, we had a split between "research methods", and statistics, the former was all out experimental design, the latter was about... er... statistics. In the methods class were were allowed to use SPSS, and other tools, but in stats we couldn't use anything more than a calculator and a pencil. We managed to get through pretty much the whole book, excepting regression analysis. The professor went a bit beyond the book, since she used numbers cribbed from historical research, then compared our results to those in the papers. It was one of the nastiest classes I've ever taken, and as a result of that I scored the highest in the class.
It also had at least two math prereqs, and 3-4 psych prereqs.
Yes, there were some idiots in the class. But there were also some very smart kids. And the professor was a bit of a bitch, as well. She managed to get in trouble for telling students, on the first day, to drop the class because it will be harder than they can handle, and nicely said they are too stupid for the content.
It might still be among the nastiest classes I've ever taken.
You claim that you want to hold someone responsible for their actions while also claiming we should restrict certain weapons. Why would we restrict the possession of any weapon if we are going to hold them responsible for the misuse of that weapon?
I never said that I, personally, want to restrict anything. Some people in the group of people which I share some attributes with do, there is a difference between groups and individuals. Also, the amendment, as you know, doesn't say "guns", or "firearms" it just says arms. Many things are arms, and only a few of them are unrestricted. For example, neither of use have the right to bear atomic weaponry. I figure, probably, neither of us are going to debate this restriction. Maybe you would, I don't know, but most people wouldn't.
I really don't have a strong opinion on some restrictions on certain classes of firearm. I'm not really in favor of them, or against them.
You also want to restrict certain behaviors? What kind of behaviors? Since the topic is about responsible gun ownership I can only assume you mean to restrict behaviors relating to responsible gun ownership
I never said anything about that either. And the topic is about exempting gun owners from a legal responsibility that everyone else has just because they did said behavior with a gun, and not a match or campfire, or anything else. I do find this silly, guns don't bestow extra rights, or exempt you from responsibilities. If you start a fire, and are liable, you should be liable no matter what you used to start the fire. Again, this isn't a second amendment issue, no one wants to restrict guns, just hold people responsible for irresponsible behavior.
You didn't say what behaviors you want to restrict but I have a few guesses. No carry of guns into schools, churches, hospitals, or airports. Did I guess right?
You guessed mostly wrong. If those are public property, then fine. If they are private property, then it is up to the property owner to decide. I can tell you not to bring a firearm into my house without violating your rights, the owner of a business or church should have the same right. If you disagree (I don't want to make you a strawman), then remember that I can kick you out of my house for saying things I don't like, and not violate your rights. The same should be true for arms. As for public property, I don't feel strongly about it. I don't have a problem with most of these, though I think this rests in the hands of voters, and not pro-gun, or anti-whatnot lobbies.
Airplanes are not public property, so it depends on what the owner desires. If America West, for example, decide to allow passengers to carry, then I'm fine with it. If the government forces them to, and violates their property, then I'm against it. Same as I can bar you from having firearms, or using speech I find disagreeable in my house.
Getting a bit more esoteric and hand-wavy here; All rights are conditional on the effects on the rights of others. The basis of all rights is in a social contract, where we give government the power to restrict certain rights, to protect our rights from the actions of others. Your rights to do whatever end when they restrict the rights of another person, or cause direct harm to another person. The degree we apply this shifts back and forth, which is the beautiful thing about our democracy (or republic, or republican democracy, or...), is that it allows US, the people, to determine that balance almost constantly. This also means that some people are going to be unhappy all of the time, since there is no perfect balance, and the collective ideal shifts constantly. But, in the end, it isn't about you, or the NRA, or me, it is about society as a whole. This is why our government exists for the "general welfare", and not any single persons welfare. I didn't make this up, its straight from Locke and Hobbes, two philosophers our founders were well acquai
A republic is a flavor of democracy. It isn't a pure democracy, obviously, but it still is the flavor. Also, that was largely semantics. Let me rephase: "... it equals normal political disagreement. Those are actually healthy and good for any society with democratic roots or leanings, whose governance is based on the wills and desires of diverse groups of people with differing opinions, including Republics." The original way sounded better.
That would be great if we lived in a democracy. We live in a republic, or at least we do in theory. I hate to use the argument of the slippery slope but when it comes to weapons that slippery slope is almost always inevitable. Once a nation has established a restriction on the right to keep and bear arms then it just becomes a matter of degree that the people are willing to put up with.
The debate here on the topic in question has nothing to do with the right to bear arms, actually, but being held responsible for actions committed while exercising said right. Go shoot, but face the consequences if you do so irresponsibly. The fact the gun lobby has decided that people with guns shouldn't be held accountable to the results of their own irresponsibility is a bit silly.
Its like saying that murder committed with a firearm shouldn't be considered murder since it violates the second amendment. No. A gun is a tool, nothing more, nothing less, and a tools users should always be held responsible for its misuse, if said misuse causes harm to others. In this case dropping a match (not intentionally to start a fire) is exactly the same as accidently causing a fire by shooting a rock.
I don't see the slippery slope rearing its ugly head.
Also, the slippery slope is considered an informal fallacy for a reason. Just because you can see one, doesn't mean there is. It really isn't a good basis for argument.
In a republic the people are the government and the people are the militia
No, in a republic chosen representatives are the government. In a democracy the people (demos) are the government (-cracy). Sorry for picking that nit.
he available statistics [xfire.com] suggest that a lot of people bought the game, and then have failed to continue playing it. It sold very quickly at first, but now no one wants it.
You might be right, but I can't tell from that. I don't know how they are measuring this, and I have no clue what Xfire even is. Also, I don't know what to compare that too, how does a game launch of comparable size compare. Again, for all I know, you are 100% correct.
Many of the patch changes nevertheless appear to correspond to the agenda put forth by Activision's new management in the aforementioned conspiracy theory, even if Activision doesn't actually have direct influence in Blizzard's management: continued nerfing despite promises not to do so [battle.net], removing drops from destructible objects, and only slightly modifying the difficulty of Elite monsters all appear to imply that the company wants to force players to participate in the real money auction house in order to finish the game.
I think the community has a lot to do with the nerfs. Inferno was supposed to be impossible, and everyone complained about it NONSTOP, and very loudly. If anything they made the penultimate difficulty LESS difficult, which, one would think, would lessen the need for cash purchases of items. There has been a lot of changes that the community has spun into "Blizzard wants money!!", that can also be seen at face value. Nerfing some builds did open other options, as much of the Demon Hunter nerfs did, they increased the amount of perceived viable builds. I'm okay with this. I wouldn't be okay, though, with them nerfing things to benefit the RMAH (real money auction house). I haven't seen much evidence of this. Companies always patch games, especially Blizzard. They are known for being aggressive patchers, look at the patch notes for Diablo 2 and expansion.
I've heard that Blizzard's testers couldn't actually complete the game on the hardest difficulty, and that they knowingly shipped the game in that state.
When they said that, my mind screamed "hyperbole". But I still, if true, wouldn't take that as a negative. Further, you don't need to really ever use the auction house, the RMAH, or any other social feature of the game to have fun. It might be more work, but it still fun to try. I'm working my way through Act II, and haven't spend a cent of real money, and only a small amount in the in-game money AH. I probably die more than the people who want to spend money, but I'm fine with that.
I probably sound like a "fanboy" or some such here. I do have complaints about the game, but I figure its pointless to voice them since they've been said by others ad nauseum. I also really can't tell how it stacks against Diablo II, since nostalgia rears its ugly undependable head. I'm also much older than I was back then, I have a life now, I have hobbies that don't involve sitting in front of a computer in a dark room, I have experience with more things, and my tastes have changed. I want to say Diablo 2 was better, but I can't really. I was in the Torchlight 2 beta, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I felt I should have, or would have 10 years ago.
At this point, with Microsoft, I really, truly believe that people are so conditioned to hate their products that they can't rightly succeed any more with their current brands. This is the fate of all greedy computer companies, I think.
I don't even know if its hate... On places like Slashdot, sure, but out there in userland... I'm pretty sure it is mostly apathy. When you (Joe Sixpack) think of Microsoft you think of Windows, something that you are forced to use at work, or Office, something that you are forced to use at work. Or you think of that incomprehensible beige box sitting in your home office, that your kid has to fix for you. The problem with Microsoft, for most people, is probably that it leaves no impression on them.
What is happening to Blizzard is comparable. They're being sold out.
By whom, to whom?