By my understanding, it isn't the actual selling of goods that is the big problem. The problem is that selling goods starts to tie real-world money gain to the game, and naturally greedy people will then go to any length to maximise their profits: cheating, hacking, griefing.
Aside from that, selling in-game goods kind of defeats the purpose of having an in-game economy. Acquiring items through the game economy is supposed to be part of the game; when you can just buy whatever weapons you want, the MMORPG starts looking like an imbalanced FPS.
Re:Stretching the limits of credulity
on
Bad Science Awards
·
· Score: 1
From aetherius.org:
This is not a new religion... it's a spiritual path to enlightenment and the cosmic evolution of mankind.
I'll try that one on the officer next time I get busted for possession. "This is not marijuana... it's a green leaf that, when smoked, causes the user to get high."
I don't think it had anything to do with games. The games were just a hook to snag a few more viewers with.
That was a show devoted to half-naked women, hip-hop, and corporate sponsors. More than likely, if you weren't already watching Spike TV, there's nothing there to make you change the channel.
Christ, if the Spike TV's and Maxim's of the world would just curl up in to a little ball and die, we could hold American culture up with a little dignity.
Frankly I think Maxim, Playboy, and all the rest of them can go to hell. They are just another example of the bullshit capitalism that infests my country. Capitalism at its core is fine, but what we have here in the States is just obnoxious. Look at Maxim and Playboy - supposedly they're selling sex, but they're doing it in a grotesquely half-assed way. Someday we're going to be seeing Playboy photos in a museum because they're not pornographic enough to actually be porn.
In my opinion, hardcore pornography is one of the purest forms of capitalism. It exists outside of social mores, so everyone cuts the bullshit. You buy a porno DVD, you get porno. Sure, it might be stylized, acted porno, but there's no kidding anyone about it. You buy Maxim, you get women lying around suggestively, in suggestive clothing. It's like sex, only it's not.
American culture needs to cut the bullshit and be honest. Look at Britney Spears. Who the fuck does she think she's kidding? I say she should drop the musician facade and call up Ron Jeremy's agent before she gets old and loses the jailbait appeal.
You haven't met the "God of Death" FPS-geek archetype, have you?
He can't see because he keeps his eyes an inch away from the screen for pixel-perfect aim. He can't hear because he blasted his eardrums to smithereens listening to Slayer at a LAN party. He can't taste because he shoveled one too many piping-hot slices of pizza into his mouth in a hurry to get back to the deathmatch. He can't feel because his Slayer T-shirt is too damn big and covers his entire body. These strange and unholy creatures perceive the outside world only through scent.
It's a damn good thing I'm not the one writing the script. The urge to put in a line for the space marine like "To think I was always the geek in high school" would be just too hard to resist.
IIRC, LEGO has planned to scale back the licensed sets and return to their roots somewhat.
Personally I don't mind the licenses too much (it's nice to have actual Star Wars figures to go with all the Star Wars models I made anyway), as long as they look like Legos. I was very disappointed to find that some of the newer licensed sets have realistic skin-tones - the little yellow minifigures were always one of the most distinctive features of Legos for me.
It would be nice to see them return to their original themes. More pirate Legos, I say! More knights, and I mean old-school Lego knights, not this crazy Knights Kingdom business.
"You damn kids with your nü-Legos! Get off my lawn!"
I swear, if half these idiots had the faintest idea of what it's like to be sexually assaulted then they'd never use the word rape in jest. If they have the slightest idea of what real violence felt like then they wouldn't think of threatening to track someone down, rape their family in front of their eyes, kill them and then start on you
Your assertion is fallacious. By your logic, if they had the slightest idea of what real violence felt like, they wouldn't be playing first person shooters (where most threats of this type are made), which are games in which you pretend to kill people.
The important thing to remember about these slurs is that they're just words. Words mean different things to different people. The intent behind the words is much, much more important than the word itself. "Nigger" can be a terrible racial slur, or part of a friendly greeting. I have heard it used both ways. Personally I do not use the word - it doesn't make sense to me as an insult (seeing as I don't hate people of African descent) , and as a white male, I would probably be putting myself in physical danger if I ever tried to use it the friendly way some African-Americans do.
Maybe I don't know about this kind of thing because I'm a white American middle-class male, and we all know that if you're part of this privileged group, you're virtually untouchable. So I guess you can disregard everything I just wrote. Sorry for wasting your time.
As so many have pointed out before, the PATRIOT Act is written so that it bypasses virtually all the normal safeguards, so that if you violate the Act, chances are good that you won't be able to tell anybody about it.
This is, in my opinion, the real reason why the PATRIOT Act is such an abomination: Federal law enforcement can declare you a terrorist, lock you up, and cite the PATRIOT Act, and nobody can question their evidence because there's no evidence to question. There is no reason why an unscrupulous administration couldn't quickly and easily make some random person disappear under the PATRIOT act. That person could be a rogue senator, a high-profile political dissident, or the staff of a website that offends said administration. Or, it could just be an actor from a movie the Attorney General didn't like. As far as I can tell, it doesn't matter.
That's not to say that the PATRIOT Act was written with such activities in mind, or even that the Bush administration would like to have such a law around. I think it was a well-meaning piece of legislation that was just written too broadly. However, the ability is there and I would rather not risk having a malicious administration abuse it.
Similarly, I would like to see Kerry win the election. Not because I think Bush is a power-hungry tyrant, but because I think his administration is dangerously reckless in its decision-making.
It's the classic socialist conundrum. Under capitalism, some people have nothing while other people are wealthy; while under socialism, everybody has nothing.
For the average user, using Mozilla is like using a 4x4 to go shopping. It is needed one time in a million, and the rest of the time it is woefully underused.
Looking at mall parking lots, I'd have to say your analogy is a little flawed.
The grandparent wasn't referring to their intellectual capabilities, he was pointing out that installing and configuring Linux is hard enough when you can see, and that it would be very difficult for someone who couldn't see. The key here is sight. Command-line installation is all text. Do you realize what the issue is there?
Even if Linux did have a screen reader, the task of installing and configuring it would be such a hassle to a blind individual that it would be better for them to buy a Mac. Many people, handicapped or not, are so intimidated by Linux installation that they stick with Windows. This doesn't reflect on their intellect.
In the future, try to hold back your knee-jerk reactions; it would also probably help to spell "intellectual" and "denigrate" correctly.
Soundwave was the tape player.
Megatron was a Walther PPK. In the cartoon, he could fire the fusion cannon in the gun mode.
Galvatron was, if I recall correctly, a portable gun (kind of like a machine gun, only a fusion cannon instead).
Shockwave was a big, purple, thirty-foot-long alien ray gun.
And in case anybody missed the joke, Unicron was a planet that A) ate other planets and B) could transform into a gargantuan robot.
Slashdot Mirror
By my understanding, it isn't the actual selling of goods that is the big problem. The problem is that selling goods starts to tie real-world money gain to the game, and naturally greedy people will then go to any length to maximise their profits: cheating, hacking, griefing.
Aside from that, selling in-game goods kind of defeats the purpose of having an in-game economy. Acquiring items through the game economy is supposed to be part of the game; when you can just buy whatever weapons you want, the MMORPG starts looking like an imbalanced FPS.
Speak for yourself, it looks fine for me under 1.0.
I think this guy's a troll... but I'm not sure.
Hold on, let me check the temperature in hell.
...
Nope, still not frozen over. Sorry.
I don't think it had anything to do with games. The games were just a hook to snag a few more viewers with.
That was a show devoted to half-naked women, hip-hop, and corporate sponsors. More than likely, if you weren't already watching Spike TV, there's nothing there to make you change the channel.
In my opinion, hardcore pornography is one of the purest forms of capitalism. It exists outside of social mores, so everyone cuts the bullshit. You buy a porno DVD, you get porno. Sure, it might be stylized, acted porno, but there's no kidding anyone about it. You buy Maxim, you get women lying around suggestively, in suggestive clothing. It's like sex, only it's not.
American culture needs to cut the bullshit and be honest. Look at Britney Spears. Who the fuck does she think she's kidding? I say she should drop the musician facade and call up Ron Jeremy's agent before she gets old and loses the jailbait appeal.
You haven't met the "God of Death" FPS-geek archetype, have you?
He can't see because he keeps his eyes an inch away from the screen for pixel-perfect aim. He can't hear because he blasted his eardrums to smithereens listening to Slayer at a LAN party. He can't taste because he shoveled one too many piping-hot slices of pizza into his mouth in a hurry to get back to the deathmatch. He can't feel because his Slayer T-shirt is too damn big and covers his entire body. These strange and unholy creatures perceive the outside world only through scent.
It's a damn good thing I'm not the one writing the script. The urge to put in a line for the space marine like "To think I was always the geek in high school" would be just too hard to resist.
IIRC, LEGO has planned to scale back the licensed sets and return to their roots somewhat.
Personally I don't mind the licenses too much (it's nice to have actual Star Wars figures to go with all the Star Wars models I made anyway), as long as they look like Legos. I was very disappointed to find that some of the newer licensed sets have realistic skin-tones - the little yellow minifigures were always one of the most distinctive features of Legos for me.
It would be nice to see them return to their original themes. More pirate Legos, I say! More knights, and I mean old-school Lego knights, not this crazy Knights Kingdom business.
"You damn kids with your nü-Legos! Get off my lawn!"
The important thing to remember about these slurs is that they're just words. Words mean different things to different people. The intent behind the words is much, much more important than the word itself. "Nigger" can be a terrible racial slur, or part of a friendly greeting. I have heard it used both ways. Personally I do not use the word - it doesn't make sense to me as an insult (seeing as I don't hate people of African descent) , and as a white male, I would probably be putting myself in physical danger if I ever tried to use it the friendly way some African-Americans do.
Maybe I don't know about this kind of thing because I'm a white American middle-class male, and we all know that if you're part of this privileged group, you're virtually untouchable. So I guess you can disregard everything I just wrote. Sorry for wasting your time.
We could capture a whole shitload of flags.
Clearly this poster is trying to karma whore, by impressing moderators with the fact that he has a wife.
Remember, when moderating, it is the content of the post that matters, not the mythical nature of the poster.
Forget video games *and* the military.
People cause violence. Ban people instead.
Stupid people, always screwing everything up.
As so many have pointed out before, the PATRIOT Act is written so that it bypasses virtually all the normal safeguards, so that if you violate the Act, chances are good that you won't be able to tell anybody about it.
This is, in my opinion, the real reason why the PATRIOT Act is such an abomination: Federal law enforcement can declare you a terrorist, lock you up, and cite the PATRIOT Act, and nobody can question their evidence because there's no evidence to question. There is no reason why an unscrupulous administration couldn't quickly and easily make some random person disappear under the PATRIOT act. That person could be a rogue senator, a high-profile political dissident, or the staff of a website that offends said administration. Or, it could just be an actor from a movie the Attorney General didn't like. As far as I can tell, it doesn't matter.
That's not to say that the PATRIOT Act was written with such activities in mind, or even that the Bush administration would like to have such a law around. I think it was a well-meaning piece of legislation that was just written too broadly. However, the ability is there and I would rather not risk having a malicious administration abuse it.
Similarly, I would like to see Kerry win the election. Not because I think Bush is a power-hungry tyrant, but because I think his administration is dangerously reckless in its decision-making.
For one thing, I wasn't talking about pride. I was talking about medical service.
For another, would you prefer a sense of pride or a sense of, say, having a properly working heart?
Which one of you needs to get a clue again?
It's the classic socialist conundrum. Under capitalism, some people have nothing while other people are wealthy; while under socialism, everybody has nothing.
A loaded .45 always works on my kids.
Looking at mall parking lots, I'd have to say your analogy is a little flawed.
The grandparent wasn't referring to their intellectual capabilities, he was pointing out that installing and configuring Linux is hard enough when you can see, and that it would be very difficult for someone who couldn't see. The key here is sight. Command-line installation is all text. Do you realize what the issue is there?
Even if Linux did have a screen reader, the task of installing and configuring it would be such a hassle to a blind individual that it would be better for them to buy a Mac. Many people, handicapped or not, are so intimidated by Linux installation that they stick with Windows. This doesn't reflect on their intellect.
In the future, try to hold back your knee-jerk reactions; it would also probably help to spell "intellectual" and "denigrate" correctly.
Soundwave was the tape player.
Megatron was a Walther PPK. In the cartoon, he could fire the fusion cannon in the gun mode.
Galvatron was, if I recall correctly, a portable gun (kind of like a machine gun, only a fusion cannon instead).
Shockwave was a big, purple, thirty-foot-long alien ray gun.
And in case anybody missed the joke, Unicron was a planet that A) ate other planets and B) could transform into a gargantuan robot.