See, my point of view is only slightly different. I fully agree that gaming is a better use of someone's time than TV. My dispute is the idea that you should primarily be entertaining yourself like that at all.
When I bought Fallout 3, I played the hell out of that game, plus the DLCs. But in between the start and the finish, the weekend came and I went on a journey; a real-life quest to find things I couldn't even imagine yet because I don't even know they exist.
I think I'm changing into something I wouldn't recognise. Possibly a douchebag with a car.:P
I may have been a bit too quick saying any self-identification as a gamer fits my idea, I should have said primary self-identification as gamer. Nearly everyone in this thread admits they wouldn't primarily self-identify as a gamer because they have other things in their life. If you mean "gamer" to simply mean "someone who plays video games in any capacity", then to me that says the average person in the study was 35, fat, and bummed, because pretty much everyone falls under that description.
One thing I will dispute is your idea about money.Money is freedom. My big chunks of free time used to be spent playing video games because the capital per unit time was so low -- you could play a really good game for YEARS based on a 30 dollar investment, but today I'm more likely to travel, or work on different projects, or to do things with friends. With the freedom money affords, life is an adventure. Without money, life is much less fun so you need to be entertained (because even the best friends need new memories to talk about sometimes). Hence the teenager comment.
There are three types of people in the world economy.
1. Resource gatherers. These people farm, cut down trees, mine, and otherwise gather natural resources in such a way that they can be used. They are critical to the world. Without them, the rest of the economy can't do anything because there'd be nothing to work with.
2. Resource processors. These people take wheat and make flour, flour to make bread, trees and make lumber or paper, lumber to make houses, paper to make sacks, metals and make sheets, sheets of metal to make cars. They are critical to the world. Without them, humanity would have no tools, and the natural resources would be much less useful.
3. Consumers. These people take raw resources or processed resources, and consume them. They tend to make their living moving piles of resources from one spot to another, or from the well-timed giving and taking of resources from one spot to another.
People from the first two groups tend not to live in cities. There aren't a lot of mining, manufacturing, forestry, or farming jobs in cities. People in cities tend to move resources from one spot to another. Lots of sales, bankers, day traders, or people whose money comes from supporting those people (doctors, daycare workers, police, government officials).
People from the first two groups can make a difference. They don't need to join greenpeace -- they can petition their bosses to make greener decisions on the spot. People from the last group have no say because they don't do anything, so they tend to form lobbying groups instead.
From a psychological sense, it could actually be that people watching TV consider themselves happier than people playing computer, because they don't have to think about it.
Gamers are more accustomed to thinking while they play, unlike TV watchers who have everything handed to them in an easily digestible package. They think more, and rather than being more depressed because there's something wrong with them, they're more depressed because their brains are turned on and they've come to realise they have good reason to be depressed.
It's rather like the bible. Adam and Eve were thrown from paradise because they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Ignorance is bliss. Does that mean people ought to strive to ignorance?
I've been in the situation where a spurned former lover was sending false statements of fact to people via e-mail.
I wasn't able to pursue any legal action in the matter, despite her actions being clearly unlawful, because there was no way I could show damages, for two reasons:
1. She had such a poor reputation that nobody would believe her, rendering her 'libel-proof'.
2. Even if she wasn't 'libel-proof', at no point was there a negative financial consequence to me as a result of her libel.
This lawsuit will effectively be a SLAPP lawsuit, because it will serve to cost the blogger money in lawyer's fees to dissuade people from saying negative things about the model, but the lawsuit itself is baseless.
The judge can only reveal the identity of the blogger in the case that there's an actionable offence. If you believe in freedom of speech, then there is no actionable offence. Therefore, the judge can only reveal the blogger's identity if there is no freedom of speech.
In order to self-identify as a gamer, you've got to have a certain mindset to begin with. "I play video games, and that's the most important thing in my life". When you're a teenager that's fine, since most teens don't exactly have the resources to go out and have a real life, but when you're 35, you should be at the point where your other dreams are coming true.
I play video games, a lot. I've spent hundreds of dollars on them this year and spent hundreds of hours in them. However, I don't self-identify as a gamer as such, because it's not the central tenet of my lifestyle, nor a major frame of reference for my personality.
The article doesn't tell exactly how they differentiate the two. If it's by self-identification, the problem I've already mentioned crops up. If it's by number of hours spent, it's a poorly designed study to determine the effects of video games, because it's simply axiomatic that if you are more introverted, you'll spend more time doing activities alone.
Speaking to an electrical engineer who is more familiar with the situation, it sounds like an operational/mtce issue.
The turbine was down for repair, operations opened it up, and hit the weak point for massive damage.
Why wasn't there a proper lock-out program in effect? Operations shouldn't have been physically able to destroy the turbine while maintenance was working on it.
Greenpeace members don't live in any of the places they protest. It's not their back yard. Their back yards are thousands of miles away, in cities where such concepts are actually remotely relevant.
The mill I work at has had several such explosions over the past decade. In our case, it was probably related to the ridiculous amounts of particulate pollution in the open area where our transformers sit causing heat build-up which caused a breakdown of insulation causing an arc flash causing an explosion(Measures have been taken to prevent future failures). Thankfully, the original plant engineers understood that explosions ARE a possible failure mode of transformers, and placed them in areas where it would be unlikely for collateral damage to occur. The Russian dipshit who put the transformer in a place where it could destroy a water bearing wall and kill 12 people is probably feeling pretty bad about himself right now.
Pussy. I paid almost 7 dollars a gallon at a remote northern gas station the last year I owned an F250, and I LIKED it. Gave me something to complain about on forums to make myself look all big.
I was having problems with my F250's clutch, making it difficult to shift. With my big 7.3l turbodiesel motor, I could easily start from third, except for the shame.
It's not the job of judges to determine the value of a law, only to interpret them.
Patent law doesn't say you have to be using the patented device to sue. It never even hints at it. The judge has no authority to make it say that. Microsoft was fined for pretending the law does say or hint at that.
IE4 was a completely different product than Netscape 4.
You'd install IE4 on your Windows 95 box, and it'd rape your system with active desktop. I don't mean a little rape. I'm talking full pyramid head action here. Later on, 98lite would actually make it a paid feature to take the IE4 active desktop out entirely and replace it with the more stable, much faster windows 95 shell, on computers many times faster than the ones IE4 was originally meant for.
Netscape wasn't even the same sort of product. IE4 was a new desktop experience with a web browser attached, Netscape 4 was a web browser.
Slashdot Mirror
See, my point of view is only slightly different. I fully agree that gaming is a better use of someone's time than TV. My dispute is the idea that you should primarily be entertaining yourself like that at all.
When I bought Fallout 3, I played the hell out of that game, plus the DLCs. But in between the start and the finish, the weekend came and I went on a journey; a real-life quest to find things I couldn't even imagine yet because I don't even know they exist.
I think I'm changing into something I wouldn't recognise. Possibly a douchebag with a car. :P
I did always find it odd that people who didn't have sex were judged based on their sexual preference.
I may have been a bit too quick saying any self-identification as a gamer fits my idea, I should have said primary self-identification as gamer. Nearly everyone in this thread admits they wouldn't primarily self-identify as a gamer because they have other things in their life. If you mean "gamer" to simply mean "someone who plays video games in any capacity", then to me that says the average person in the study was 35, fat, and bummed, because pretty much everyone falls under that description.
One thing I will dispute is your idea about money.Money is freedom. My big chunks of free time used to be spent playing video games because the capital per unit time was so low -- you could play a really good game for YEARS based on a 30 dollar investment, but today I'm more likely to travel, or work on different projects, or to do things with friends. With the freedom money affords, life is an adventure. Without money, life is much less fun so you need to be entertained (because even the best friends need new memories to talk about sometimes). Hence the teenager comment.
But if you talk with them, do they primarily identify themselves as "gamers"?
I mean, I'd wager 99% of my generation will play video games at some point this year. Are they all gamers?
Darn.
I was hoping everyone else would catch up with me.
Oh well, life is an adventure, so I'll keep on enjoying it regardless of others inability to let themselves do so.
There are three types of people in the world economy.
1. Resource gatherers.
These people farm, cut down trees, mine, and otherwise gather natural resources in such a way that they can be used. They are critical to the world. Without them, the rest of the economy can't do anything because there'd be nothing to work with.
2. Resource processors.
These people take wheat and make flour, flour to make bread, trees and make lumber or paper, lumber to make houses, paper to make sacks, metals and make sheets, sheets of metal to make cars. They are critical to the world. Without them, humanity would have no tools, and the natural resources would be much less useful.
3. Consumers.
These people take raw resources or processed resources, and consume them. They tend to make their living moving piles of resources from one spot to another, or from the well-timed giving and taking of resources from one spot to another.
People from the first two groups tend not to live in cities. There aren't a lot of mining, manufacturing, forestry, or farming jobs in cities. People in cities tend to move resources from one spot to another. Lots of sales, bankers, day traders, or people whose money comes from supporting those people (doctors, daycare workers, police, government officials).
People from the first two groups can make a difference. They don't need to join greenpeace -- they can petition their bosses to make greener decisions on the spot. People from the last group have no say because they don't do anything, so they tend to form lobbying groups instead.
From a psychological sense, it could actually be that people watching TV consider themselves happier than people playing computer, because they don't have to think about it.
Gamers are more accustomed to thinking while they play, unlike TV watchers who have everything handed to them in an easily digestible package. They think more, and rather than being more depressed because there's something wrong with them, they're more depressed because their brains are turned on and they've come to realise they have good reason to be depressed.
It's rather like the bible. Adam and Eve were thrown from paradise because they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Ignorance is bliss. Does that mean people ought to strive to ignorance?
I've been in the situation where a spurned former lover was sending false statements of fact to people via e-mail.
I wasn't able to pursue any legal action in the matter, despite her actions being clearly unlawful, because there was no way I could show damages, for two reasons:
1. She had such a poor reputation that nobody would believe her, rendering her 'libel-proof'.
2. Even if she wasn't 'libel-proof', at no point was there a negative financial consequence to me as a result of her libel.
This lawsuit will effectively be a SLAPP lawsuit, because it will serve to cost the blogger money in lawyer's fees to dissuade people from saying negative things about the model, but the lawsuit itself is baseless.
The judge can only reveal the identity of the blogger in the case that there's an actionable offence. If you believe in freedom of speech, then there is no actionable offence. Therefore, the judge can only reveal the blogger's identity if there is no freedom of speech.
At least, in my opinion.
It's interesting, by using the legal system to try to destroy this blogger for juvenile insults, the model actually proved she's a psychotic skank ho.
Isn't that funny? The psychotic skank ho only had grounds to sue until she actually sued.
Poor psychotic skank ho. I feel sorry for her psychotic skank ho ass.
That's a pretty weak argument. "Oh, becoming the second source for the most popular personal computer on the planet isn't an effort"
In order to self-identify as a gamer, you've got to have a certain mindset to begin with. "I play video games, and that's the most important thing in my life". When you're a teenager that's fine, since most teens don't exactly have the resources to go out and have a real life, but when you're 35, you should be at the point where your other dreams are coming true.
I play video games, a lot. I've spent hundreds of dollars on them this year and spent hundreds of hours in them. However, I don't self-identify as a gamer as such, because it's not the central tenet of my lifestyle, nor a major frame of reference for my personality.
The article doesn't tell exactly how they differentiate the two. If it's by self-identification, the problem I've already mentioned crops up. If it's by number of hours spent, it's a poorly designed study to determine the effects of video games, because it's simply axiomatic that if you are more introverted, you'll spend more time doing activities alone.
Speaking to an electrical engineer who is more familiar with the situation, it sounds like an operational/mtce issue.
The turbine was down for repair, operations opened it up, and hit the weak point for massive damage.
Why wasn't there a proper lock-out program in effect? Operations shouldn't have been physically able to destroy the turbine while maintenance was working on it.
The transformer should've been protected from overload in a few different ways. It shouldn't have exploded if it wasn't an electrical fault.
Further, the transformer still should have been placed in a spot where it wouldn't kill 12 people and cause millions of dollars in damage.
Dearest dblll,
Greenpeace members don't live in any of the places they protest. It's not their back yard. Their back yards are thousands of miles away, in cities where such concepts are actually remotely relevant.
With Love,
Northern Manitoba
They already do.
You need to understand, electricity is heavy shit. If you're talking about a large transformer at high voltage, it can explode catastrophically.
Arc blast at low voltage
The mill I work at has had several such explosions over the past decade. In our case, it was probably related to the ridiculous amounts of particulate pollution in the open area where our transformers sit causing heat build-up which caused a breakdown of insulation causing an arc flash causing an explosion(Measures have been taken to prevent future failures). Thankfully, the original plant engineers understood that explosions ARE a possible failure mode of transformers, and placed them in areas where it would be unlikely for collateral damage to occur. The Russian dipshit who put the transformer in a place where it could destroy a water bearing wall and kill 12 people is probably feeling pretty bad about himself right now.
Bitches don't know about my water table
Pussy. I paid almost 7 dollars a gallon at a remote northern gas station the last year I owned an F250, and I LIKED it. Gave me something to complain about on forums to make myself look all big.
I was having problems with my F250's clutch, making it difficult to shift. With my big 7.3l turbodiesel motor, I could easily start from third, except for the shame.
AMDs early efforts were identical to Intel parts, because IBM contracted AMD as a second source for 8088s.
Why should I trust you? You're not even buffer safe.
It's not the job of judges to determine the value of a law, only to interpret them.
Patent law doesn't say you have to be using the patented device to sue. It never even hints at it. The judge has no authority to make it say that. Microsoft was fined for pretending the law does say or hint at that.
IE4 was a completely different product than Netscape 4.
You'd install IE4 on your Windows 95 box, and it'd rape your system with active desktop. I don't mean a little rape. I'm talking full pyramid head action here. Later on, 98lite would actually make it a paid feature to take the IE4 active desktop out entirely and replace it with the more stable, much faster windows 95 shell, on computers many times faster than the ones IE4 was originally meant for.
Netscape wasn't even the same sort of product. IE4 was a new desktop experience with a web browser attached, Netscape 4 was a web browser.
To be frank, anyone who would've used netscape 6 would probably have used mozilla 0.9.4.1 instead.
Netscape created too perfect competition in an open source likeness of itself.