It's easy for you to bitch and moan and fear-monger about the ethics of human DNA in some rice, from your computer chair in your air-conditioned first-world home or office. Meanwhile there are people - real, live people - people with thoughts, and feelings, and whose well-being you'd place at first-priority, whose well-being would be your tantamount concern, whose well-being would trump these silly goddamn over-analytical beardo quack ideas and "what ifs" -- that is, if you weren't such a fucking unthinking monster -- and these people are shitting themselves to death. And even though you and I both laughed as kids when we played Oregon Trail and learned what "dysentary" meant, one of us has managed to grow up, and figures it'd be best if we could put a stop to this horrible pain and suffering in the real world. Meanwhile, the other one is playing Armchair Philosopher, talking about lines being crossed and the ethics of eliminating suffering, without knowing the first thing about what he's talking about. Jesus Christ.
Have you heard about a little invention from the very late 1700s called "vaccinations"? Is this "ethical" in your eyes? Was it "ethical" for Louis Pasteur to inject human beings with (residual amounts of) COW DNA? Or should we have put a stop to this and let smallpox continue to ravage the globe? What about blood transfusions? That's OMG human DNA as well. Or, wait, are you one of those fucking quacker-flappers, like that lady who made an entire campaign out of "HIV does not cause AIDS", then gave AIDS to her daughter (by not taking any preventative measures during pregnancy)?
Look. I'm trying not to be too much of a -1 Flamebait -1 Troll -1 Confrontational Asshole, but what is your deal? If someone you loved (assuming you are actually capable of feeling empathy, or anything beyond Moral Sense [c.f. Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger"]) was locked in a room, in a hotel you did not own, which was currently on fire, would you worry about the ethics of breaking the door down? Would you tap the fireman on the back as he was about to take an axe to the door, and oh-so-wisely, intellectually bleat^H^H^H^H^H state that it was a violation of ethics to be destroying property that wasn't yours? Would you then put on your Humble Pious Face, with your head solemnly cast down, and proclaim your grief for the impending loss of your wife / child / mother / father? Or does this garbage only spew forth from your mouth when it's other people's children whose lives are at risk?
So much idiotic diarrhea dribbling out of your mouth - I'm sure this isn't the only completely moronic thing you've managed to come up with in your blessedly short existance. Maybe you could use a DNA injection. I know I'd gladly sodomize you. I mean "innoculate" you - I get those two words confused =)!
MODS: -1, Whatever me all you want. I prefer not to intellectualize idiocy (such as the Parent post), so if you're going to mod me down for calling bullshit when I see it, mod me down, for calling bullshit, when, I, see... it. </Shatner>
I read that post three times now, and each time it came across as nothing more than a non-sequitur. I'll try one more time:
"If they don't support Windows, that's a 75-85% smackdown in the marketshare. If they don't support Linux, that's somewhere between 5%-15% smackdown. So that means [right about here is where all we ever thought we knew about logic is thrown out the window and violently hate-fucked] Mac will be the only platform to pirate things on [what the fuck? Steve Jobs is in the back pocket of the media companies. Have you never heard of this thing called iTunes? Steve Jobs would do whatever it took to keep the media companies happy], except not on MacOS [exactly], so nobody's going to pirate, so the console isn't going to sell and STARE INTO THE MIDNIGHT OF MY EYES; FOR I AM THE SECRET-KEEPER, THE VERY VASTNESS OF THE INTERNET; I SHALL LET YOU DOWN WITH A FRIENDLY SMILE, AND BEQUEATH ONTO YOU A GOLDEN CHALICE, FOR THE SURVIVAL, ENTRAPMENT, AND GENTLE CONSUMPTION OF YOUR LIQUID HONEY COVERED DREAMS"
It's so cute when linux users think they have buying power
Linux user != not a buyer/renter.
What he means is that there aren't very many Linux users, so even if they all manage to stage the world's first effective, efficient boycott, Blu-Ray's only lost 1% of the entire world market.
Sorta like if your product cannot be used by blind albino dwarves with no arms - sucks, yeah, but unfortunately there aren't enough blind albino dwarves with no arms to keep the masses from being perfectly happy with our UV-blasting monitors, desk chairs, and keyboards. =)
Next wave of MP3 player/recorders may make this redundant, but it was a decent solution at the time and that wasn't that long ago.
As someone active in the live music scene, let me say that absolutely nobody will accept any form of mpeg recording. Even at 320kbps encoding rates, you get occasional sound artifacts in an MP3 that are much more noticible in the context of a live recording (with constant crowd chatter and non-studio sound dynamics) than they are when listening to the latest David Bowie wunderalbum on an iPod. If you ever want to watch a tye-dyed, dope-smoking, certified-peacenik Phish fan shit himself in anger, trade him an uncirculated recording of his for an uncirculated recording of yours in mpeg format (I highly reccomend this for slow news days on/.:-D).
MD is lossy as well, but it typically sounds better than MP3 at equal bitrates, and on the "nearly uncompressed" level, is pretty much indistinguishable from DAT - another supposedly "dead" format that the tapers have kept alive way, way past its sell-by date.
What is really looking to usurp MD is the wave of sub-$2000 laptops with large, large hard drives. Even these have a bulk factor which MD is without, but my guess is that if and when a company offers a $200 unit the size of a PDA that records to FLAC, with a built in 20GB flash drive (good for roughly 40 hours of FLAC-encoded recording, factoring for a need for a buffer for uncompressed audio) and typical expandability (ie, SD cards or whatever's hot at the moment and of course line-in and USB out), MD and DAT alike will both finally bite the dust.
*And by "field recordings", I actually mean "recordings of live concerts" - fellow privacy fanatics, have no fear, I'm not recording your private conversations.
And by the way - Steve B. - the guy who codes for Microsoft, who used to hack into bank accounts on his mom's Commodore C-64, who drives a Segway in his private time? You should change the combination on your safe. The one where you store the alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica.transsexual "backups"? Just reminding you, since it seems that "Edwina", your Personal Assistant (single/white/39yo/TV) failed to do so, even after you reminded hir, not once, but twice, to remind you. I suppose that the AIDS results are still weighing heavily on hir mind.
But seriously... I'll just let the phone companies take care of the monitoring. In the meantime, I've got... "backups"... to be making.:-D
Agreed. The thing with Sony is that when their products aren't built to be absolutely unreliable pieces of shit (PS2), they're built to last. The Trinatron was the TV of choice amongst my friends in the Dreamcast days. And about the MD - while it tanked as a pre-recorded format (as has everything since the CD, for the basic reason that the CD does all that "most people" are looking for), as a way of making field recordings, it is second to none. It's cheaper and more portable than DAT, and the recordings sound better than microcassette (and at maximum compression, offer almost six times the recording capacity as one side of a C-90 microcassette tape - useful when one wishes to conduct a long biographical interview without the need to fiddle around to change tape sides). As someone who makes, ahem, field recordings* on the sly, there's something to be said for a recorder that will fit, unobtrusively, in a breast pocket. MD rocks.
That said (warning, from here on it's probably -1 Redundant), the PS2, while offering a superior library of games and DVD semi-functionality (the slow seek times doom it to a backup unit for me, but there are those who can bear to hold R2 for whole minutes at a time), is probably the most wretchedly fussy console since the good ol' ToasterNES. The DRM fiasco caused my former (tongue in cheek, I assure you) inner Sony fanboy to wither and die, and they really don't seem to have paid much attention to the last ten years of videogame history with the PS3:
Rule #1 - Nobody gives a shit about all-in-ones. c.f. the CDi. If a console happens to have DVD support, that's one thing (and with DVD support it was perfect timing, just as DVDs were beginning to take over the world), but for the most part, people don't care about web-functionality, home theater, or does-your-taxes.
Rule #2 - Nobody mentions Fight-- wait, sorry. Rule #2 - Nobody wants to pay more than $350 for a console. c.f. the Neo-Geo, the Sega Saturn, the aforementioned CDi, and of course, the 3DO. If adding Blu-Ray means your console has to be over the magic $350 line, then maybe you should consider toning it down a notch. Considering we haven't yet seen multiple DVD games (that I'm aware of), it seems to this armchair pundint that a DVD-ROM based console with some glitz (built in hard drive, USB, some fancy controllers, networking out of the box, etc) would be in throbbing demand, and the Blu-Ray console could come out if and when Blu-Ray becomes the Next Big (God forbiDRM) Thing, it could be seen as the budget-oriented gamer's Blu-Ray drive as well. But since budget-oriented folk don't tend to be early adopters, and early adopters would probably feel "safer" with a dedicated player, there really isn't much call for a Blu-Ray / game console.
Rule #3 - Most importantly, the benefits of being second at E3. Remember $299? Yeah. This is anything but.
Anyway. This said, I'm definitely a bit apprehensive about Sony, but given that the 360 is about as popular in Japan as the Manhatten Project, and the Wii is still, despite the bleatings of Nintendo fanboys to the contrary, coming across as more of a casual gamer "gimmick" system (not that that's a bad thing, oh wise and -1 Overrating Nintendo fanboy mods), it seems that Sony isn't totally out of the running. But what was shaping up to be a delightful slaughterfest (as all slaughterfests are - if I sound like a fanboy, it's only because Sony's won the last two rounds. Get me started on the late 80s and I'll sound like a super-gigantic Nintendo fanboy, I assure you) is now in extra-innings. I'd say the E3 showing was the Mookie Wilson groundball through the legs of Bill Buckner (now that we're all up-to-date on our World Series trivia;-)) of this particular World Series.
That's not a bug. Bugs are unintentional, and in the games you mentioned, a throw from home to 2nd would go so slow that the runner on 3rd could score easily.
That said, this is one of those things I love about 8/16bit baseball. I'll admit that I check this on every new game I play. And I've gotten quite good at scoring wtih runners on first and third, just by initiating a double-rundown.
PS - a Google search for "allusion" returns The Gallery of Bush-Hitler Allusions in the #4 spot. I post this not to illustrate a point (though it does tend to support my side of the argument, I'd imagine, maybe not, this sounds disgustingly snide and it's unintentional), but rather for your and the Slashdot Gallery's perusal and bemusual (sic).
Though Hitler and the national socialists can often be used to good effect in a conversation or discussion the fact remains that there have been plenty of bad, fascist, etc people since then(and before. Most people have very little historical knowledge so Hitler is brought up as the prototypical evil guy because he's recognizable. For example if people compared Bush to Tito hardly anyone would know who Tito was. So Hitler is used not because he's the best example but because he's the ONLY example that most people could recognize. Use of the nazi's in an example outside of discussions of early 20th century history is not appropriate--it is only a sign of intellectual laziness or ignorance on the part of the writer and reader.
While we're at it, why should these things be debated in the vernacular? Real intellects use Latin - the tongue of the Gods.
Or maybe not, but do you see my point? (point elaborated below)
Comparing republicans to national socialists is just not a very good comparision and neither is comparing bush to hitler. Adolph Hitler AS A SINGLE MAN had all of state power in his hands. Bush doesn't have nearly that level of TRUE POWER. Bush rules at the whim of the other elites. Bush is a figure head. Hitler was NOT a figure head. Hitler rose to power due to his own cunning. He was a nobody who took the nazi part from just a group that had little get togethers and speeches to forming the third reich. Bush was simply born into his position. To compare Bush to Hitler is to insult Hitler's intelligence and cunning. In addition, the American people are not the German people.
Okay. So the differing names of two political parties completely destroys any comparision one might make? This reminds me of an Orwellian scenario, in a non-specific way.
Does Hitler's intelligence and cunning include the entire St. Petersburg fiasco? I mean, Bush and his administration were cunning and intelligence with the deployal of the PAT-- well, this isn't about Hitler, so I'll clam up (journal entry for those interested in Hitler). (point in next paragraph)
It's not that you shouldn't compare Bush to Hitler because Bush isn't as bad as Hitler. It's that they just aren't that much alike. When you use bad examples like that it leads to bad results. Bush will never pass an "enabling law" like Hitler did so when you compare him to Hitler people are going to be like, "well you're flat out wrong because we just had an election and elected a new guy." You've got to update your examples to more relevant to the post-industrial, nominally democratic 21st century USA.
But if people don't know who Tito (or Baby Doc, or Hussein pre-1991, or even Pol Pot) is, making a comparision isn't as effective. You're a geeky nerd. I'm a geeky nerd. You and I, if confronted with a comparision, one end of which we don't understand, are honor and duty-bound to look it up and immerse ourselves in the fields of knowledge vast and deep. Many people, however, are lazy fucking fucks, and will shrug off your argument as wacko irrelevance. So, allow me to postulate Nugneant's Law - that after Godwin's Law is invoked, the conersation degenerates into bickering over technicalities, or becomes immersed in thick academia.
Though, if the question is as simple as "Is (politician) a good leader", saying he's basically Tito without the Latino Wrestling Star thing is saying more than "HE'S BUSHITLERRRRRR". Hitler comparisions are sometimes bad, true - but "sometimes" does not, in my eyes, necessitate a faceicious "Law".
And when articulating feelings, comparing Bush to Hitler conveys these feelings more accurately than an intellectualization, and this, Godwin's Law fails to account for.
Godwin's Law, whatever it's original intention, is more relevant now than ever as 25 years have passed and thus we have 25 years o
The point with Godwin's Law is that sixteen years ago, some computer dork on USENET thought it was a clever thing to say, and several other computer dorks agreed.
And yes - for certain things, I would agree with those who make snide remarks citing Godwin's Law, perhaps even make them myself. For example, if this was a TV forum, and we were engaged in a debate over whether Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Bender would win in a no-holds-barred fight to the death, I would consider any comparisions to Hitler or the Nazi Party pretty far-fetched (well, unless someone theorizes that Bender would have access to a team of Nazis, and someone else counters with the fact that as a blue-eyed blonde, Buffy would likely easily infiltrate the Nazis - this technically being a comparision to the Nazis)*.
Within a political debate, however, I postulate that Godwin's Law is completely fucking irrelevant, no matter what the situation may be. We can all agree - aside from some truly fucked up, hopeless people - that the Nazi Germany was a very, very bad thing for all involved. We can even agree on what, specifically was bad about Nazi Germany. With such strong baselines in place, it is sometimes more succient to cite the Nazis than use words like "Xenophobia". Nobody wants to be a Nazi. But xenophobia is something we can sympathize with in certain scenarios.
Finally - frankly, curious - what good things would you say Hitler did? Are we talking about general "no-shit" things that pretty much every person has done (said his prayers, was nice to his mother, always flushed [except when Eva Braun was over:-D ])? Or would it be something about the economy? You can reply in my journal if you'd rather not unleash a horde of -1, Troll/Flamebait;-)
* - But even so, the "so you've lost the debate" bullshit only applies if everyone's getting very, very bored and needs a break. By which I mean, Hitler and the Nazis - random, yes, but an rethoric-shattering fallacy (to be compared with a strawman, for instance)? Uhhh.
I'd also like to thank everybody else who replied to this post. Your words of support (cheesy / formulaic as this may sound) mean a lot to me.
I'm not doubting your word - or at least, wouldn't be surprised if their service was shitty.
However, reading Wikipedia (truly the best source for objective information </sarcasm> ), the only thing that sticks out is the "slamming" - ie, moving customers to their long distance without asking them beforehand.
Accounting scandals, though, are preferable to giving up customer data - in my book, at least. Maybe I just associate the term "accounting scandal" with "stealing money from banks", a practice which fails to elicit much empathy from me, one way or the other.
Anyway - for the Coup De Karma: Details / links, if you could be so kind?
--
("MOD PARENT UP" - the slashdot equivilant of "hear, hear!"?)
One common trait I've noted in apparent retard^H^H^H^H^H^Hconservatives (god I hate that word) is this notion that somehow Democrats and Republicans are like Jedis and Imperial Forces.
Who's into the DRM bullshit? Oh, that flakey Demoratic cunt from California.
Who's completely ruining any trust and sympathy for America that other nations felt after 9/11? Oh, mostly Republicans, and the vast majority of Democrats who voted for the PATRIOT act and the war in Iraqistan.
Republicrap, Democrap - they're all the same to me. So all these "well a blurr a hurfdurf a bloobleboo Democrats partisan the enemy farrrrrrrt spibble hahahahaha" statements (such as:
So the fact that both NSA programs were routinely reviewed by both the Senate and House intelligence committees made up of members from both parties doesn't count right?
)
don't mean shit to me or anybody with more than half a brain.
And Carter may have started the Draft up - the dude was hardly the Liberal American Hero that the New York Times et cetera made him out to be - but the Reagan Administration was twice as terrible, with all the Moral Decency idiocy thrown in with the COMMIES R COMIN TO GET U froo-froo. I'm sincerely surprised Reagan wasn't shot at more often. Just goes to show you - people are suckers for a smile.
So the fact that both NSA programs were routinely reviewed by both the Senate and House intelligence committees made up of members from both parties doesn't count right?
Demo-corrupt, Republi-corrupt - both sides can be corrupt. This is the stupidest argument you've made yet. ALL PEOPLE ARE EITHER BLACK OR WHITE, DEMOCRATICS ARE BLACK, REPUBLICANS WHITE, HOORAY DUALISM VALIDATES MY EVERY ARGUMENT!!
It's more like if Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy BOTH had representatives to a bi-partisian (meaning, as best I can figure, "two-party") review of the human rights policies of Stalin. Would you be posting to slashdot saying "well a hurf a boodle boo, it was bi-partisian so it was fair and unbiased"?
Nevermind, you wouldn't if the buzzwords were "Nazi Germany" and "Fascist Italy" (which is why your sort always make anyone who mentions these words out to be a paranoid schizophrenic, because they always point out how very wrong you are), but if the buzzwords were changed to "Nationally Socialist-Democratic Luxemborg" and, uh, "People's Party of Independant Nigeria" (or the "Tigers" and the "Bears"), well surrree you would! Contemptible fuckwit.
All these months of emotional repression are leaking out, and I for one don't care to constrain myself. This Godwin's Law horseshit is straight out of Orwell - and please let's start trying to smear me as a paranoid hippie of some sort, because after all, who the fuck uses cautionary novels for support? (well, besides the Bible Thumpers, but I'd say Orwell remains relevant to our times)
Laughing at people who compare things to Hitler is ignoring a very large question that you (and in this case I am referring to the Grandparent and those of his mindset) should (if you weren't so educated fucking stupid) be asking yourself/yourselves: Why is this person so upset?
If we can't cite Hitler, we can't learn from our mistakes. If we can't learn from our mistakes, there's no point in making mistakes. If there's no point in making mistakes, then we should live in constant fear of making a mistake. If we should live in constant fear of making a mistake, we should all wipe ourselves out, because mistakes are inevitable, whether they be supporting facists or making a spelling error on Slashdot.
I am sick and tired. I can TASTE the contempt I have for people like you in my TEETH. "I'm content to be stupid, I enjoy being a parrot, and I can be happy with making little sacrifices - I'm not a bad person. Why can't everyone else be just like me?"
I... there's just so much contempt within me that I find it almost impossible to coherantly express how I feel. It's thanks to moron idiots like you that Stalin was able to remain in power. It's thanks to moron idiots like you that Hitler was able to commit crimes against humanity. It's thanks to moron idiots like you that Bush and the fascists in office can feel free to trample all over every basic human dignity and liberty alike, because you will accept, and even defend, this practice. Not because you actually relate to it - though it gives you a goofy rise, much like how civilized people get a goofy rise out of watching Sonny Chiba movies - but because you are a crippled creature, willing to surpress your basic, ingrained notion of Right, and Wrong, and Fair. Whether through phony intellectualization or simple contempt for whoever's hurt your feelings (which you allow to spread over to the rest of humanity because epic destruction is so awesome), you become a creature of contempt. And even if you were touched by these idiotic policies which your contemptable straw man voodoo rhetoric supports - you know, say your brother got shot to death in Iraq, your father was imprisoned for talking with an old college bud of his and joking about killing the President, and your mother was stalked and raped after trying to rally people in support of your father - you would still sooner claim it the fault of liberalism, misunderstanding, dirty Islamic towelheads who have no right to anything, violent videogames, or God's Will - rather than simply admit that you are wrong, that you have been wrong, that your desire for a cheap rise, a moment of feeling Intellectually Gifted, and/or your simple crass thoughtlessness - whatever it is - is to blame.
The problem isn't that people feel, or think, that Bush is like an American Hitler. The problem is inside you, and inside anybody who would laugh off a comparision without actually giving it some thought, just because they read on Somethingawful/Fark/The "New" MAD Magazine/your satire source of choice that it's apparently "ridiculous" to say such things. Because "OOOOH HITLER, LOL! OMG, WTF, BBQ??? get it??? (insert heavy handed dose of "we're saying this is funny, in an unfunny way, because we think we actually ARE funny in some way, and therefore right - irony" here)", or something.
I have yet to actually read anywhere a coherant and sober reason for why it's a fallacy to compare things to Hitler or the Nazis. Maybe it's because Moderate folk (who can be just as emotionally overwraught as diehard Liberal or Conservative - leaning folk) can't stand t
Unfortunately, Qwest doesn't offer much beyond calling cards in my area.
It's a shame, if they had branched out to the east coast by now, they'd have at least three new accounts from my conversations of the last 24 hours alone.:-\
...tell me A) where and how to sign up, and B) honestly, and not as a partisan / America suxxx troll, what the chances are of the judge and juries voting with their inner moralities, and not being blinded by political "moralities" along the way?
IANAnAlcoholic... but from my limited experience, it has to do with a fear people have of saying or doing things that don't make any sense. Basically "knowledge is power" and all that - ie "if I were to suddenly stand up and scream 'RAUNCHY COWBOYSH GO AMERICAN ELEPHANTSHHHHohgodiatehamagain', then vomit all over myself normally, people might call the cops and get me put under 72 hour observation. If I tell them I'm drunk/stoned/tripping balls/whatever beforehand, tho, then they'll at least understand it's just the whiskey/marijuana/acid/week-old-foot-fungus causing a chemical reaction in my brain".
FWIW, I used to feel the same way as you - but now (uh, thanks to a friend's word-of-mouth (cough)) I see from both sides of the fence.
I'd say this is more a choice between paying $49.95 for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, paying $19.95 for some wild strawberries and contaminated groundwater, or starving.
I was amazed to see how low the sales numbers were for the GTA games on xbox.
Apples and oranges, I'd say. Have you ever seen the numbers for PS2 vs. X-Box? I'm not about to go wiki it up, but let's just postulate that it's something like 30 billion million PS2s for every X-Box (note: slight exaggeration).
Now, for every 30 billion million PS2s, at least five of them still work. So that's 5 working PS2s for every 1 working X-Box (note: source for final PS2 vs X-Box numbers: this thread).
Now, what percentage of X-Box users also own a PS2? Again, too lazy to Wiki it, but it's soemthing like 75%, if my memory serves me correctly.
So basically, the largest installed base gets an exclusive... and so then even when it does come out for both platforms, most of Platform B's users already have it on their Platform A. Gee, I wonder which platform will sell more copies?
Now, compare that to this generation, where, even if the X-Box (Circle) drops in price, only your Neo-Geo kiddies will have the monies for both consoles - and a lot of people have saved for an X-Box (Circle) without being able to purchase one, so they're prime Sony-bait - and I think you'll find that the split will be closer to 60-40 or thereabouts.
In conclusion, it's not the exclusivity period itself that determines final results. Rather, the install-base, and the "whatever-the-fancy-word-is-for people-who-own-both-consoles", play the biggest role in determining which console's version ends up selling more. Any doubts? Look at one of the GameCube "exclusives" that later came to the PS2.
Given the way the market seems to be shaping up, I'm betting sales figures will be roughly the same - assuming a relatively uneventful launch (neither good nor a disaster) for Sony.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously.
Shut. The. Fuck. Up.
It's easy for you to bitch and moan and fear-monger about the ethics of human DNA in some rice, from your computer chair in your air-conditioned first-world home or office. Meanwhile there are people - real, live people - people with thoughts, and feelings, and whose well-being you'd place at first-priority, whose well-being would be your tantamount concern, whose well-being would trump these silly goddamn over-analytical beardo quack ideas and "what ifs" -- that is, if you weren't such a fucking unthinking monster -- and these people are shitting themselves to death. And even though you and I both laughed as kids when we played Oregon Trail and learned what "dysentary" meant, one of us has managed to grow up, and figures it'd be best if we could put a stop to this horrible pain and suffering in the real world. Meanwhile, the other one is playing Armchair Philosopher, talking about lines being crossed and the ethics of eliminating suffering , without knowing the first thing about what he's talking about. Jesus Christ.
Have you heard about a little invention from the very late 1700s called "vaccinations"? Is this "ethical" in your eyes? Was it "ethical" for Louis Pasteur to inject human beings with (residual amounts of) COW DNA? Or should we have put a stop to this and let smallpox continue to ravage the globe? What about blood transfusions? That's OMG human DNA as well. Or, wait, are you one of those fucking quacker-flappers, like that lady who made an entire campaign out of "HIV does not cause AIDS", then gave AIDS to her daughter (by not taking any preventative measures during pregnancy)?
Look. I'm trying not to be too much of a -1 Flamebait -1 Troll -1 Confrontational Asshole, but what is your deal? If someone you loved (assuming you are actually capable of feeling empathy, or anything beyond Moral Sense [c.f. Twain, "The Mysterious Stranger"]) was locked in a room, in a hotel you did not own, which was currently on fire, would you worry about the ethics of breaking the door down? Would you tap the fireman on the back as he was about to take an axe to the door, and oh-so-wisely, intellectually bleat^H^H^H^H^H state that it was a violation of ethics to be destroying property that wasn't yours? Would you then put on your Humble Pious Face, with your head solemnly cast down, and proclaim your grief for the impending loss of your wife / child / mother / father? Or does this garbage only spew forth from your mouth when it's other people's children whose lives are at risk?
So much idiotic diarrhea dribbling out of your mouth - I'm sure this isn't the only completely moronic thing you've managed to come up with in your blessedly short existance. Maybe you could use a DNA injection. I know I'd gladly sodomize you. I mean "innoculate" you - I get those two words confused =)!
MODS: -1, Whatever me all you want. I prefer not to intellectualize idiocy (such as the Parent post), so if you're going to mod me down for calling bullshit when I see it, mod me down, for calling bullshit, when, I, see... it. </Shatner>
I read that post three times now, and each time it came across as nothing more than a non-sequitur. I'll try one more time:
Yep. Still sounds, at best, -1, Troll to me.
...And fanboys like this are exactly why large numbers of us are staying far, far, far away from X-Box Live.
He's talking about online gaming.
(duh)
Linux user != not a buyer/renter.
What he means is that there aren't very many Linux users, so even if they all manage to stage the world's first effective, efficient boycott, Blu-Ray's only lost 1% of the entire world market.
Sorta like if your product cannot be used by blind albino dwarves with no arms - sucks, yeah, but unfortunately there aren't enough blind albino dwarves with no arms to keep the masses from being perfectly happy with our UV-blasting monitors, desk chairs, and keyboards. =)
But why would they bother playing games at all when they have such cheery, personable, loving parents to spend time with?
I think Sharp sells MD recorders here in the States. Or used to, at the very least.
As someone active in the live music scene, let me say that absolutely nobody will accept any form of mpeg recording. Even at 320kbps encoding rates, you get occasional sound artifacts in an MP3 that are much more noticible in the context of a live recording (with constant crowd chatter and non-studio sound dynamics) than they are when listening to the latest David Bowie wunderalbum on an iPod. If you ever want to watch a tye-dyed, dope-smoking, certified-peacenik Phish fan shit himself in anger, trade him an uncirculated recording of his for an uncirculated recording of yours in mpeg format (I highly reccomend this for slow news days on
MD is lossy as well, but it typically sounds better than MP3 at equal bitrates, and on the "nearly uncompressed" level, is pretty much indistinguishable from DAT - another supposedly "dead" format that the tapers have kept alive way, way past its sell-by date.
What is really looking to usurp MD is the wave of sub-$2000 laptops with large, large hard drives. Even these have a bulk factor which MD is without, but my guess is that if and when a company offers a $200 unit the size of a PDA that records to FLAC, with a built in 20GB flash drive (good for roughly 40 hours of FLAC-encoded recording, factoring for a need for a buffer for uncompressed audio) and typical expandability (ie, SD cards or whatever's hot at the moment and of course line-in and USB out), MD and DAT alike will both finally bite the dust.
*And by "field recordings", I actually mean "recordings of live concerts" - fellow privacy fanatics, have no fear, I'm not recording your private conversations.
:-D
And by the way - Steve B. - the guy who codes for Microsoft, who used to hack into bank accounts on his mom's Commodore C-64, who drives a Segway in his private time? You should change the combination on your safe. The one where you store the alt.binaries.multimedia.erotica.transsexual "backups"? Just reminding you, since it seems that "Edwina", your Personal Assistant (single/white/39yo/TV) failed to do so, even after you reminded hir, not once, but twice, to remind you. I suppose that the AIDS results are still weighing heavily on hir mind.
But seriously... I'll just let the phone companies take care of the monitoring. In the meantime, I've got... "backups"... to be making.
Agreed. The thing with Sony is that when their products aren't built to be absolutely unreliable pieces of shit (PS2), they're built to last. The Trinatron was the TV of choice amongst my friends in the Dreamcast days. And about the MD - while it tanked as a pre-recorded format (as has everything since the CD, for the basic reason that the CD does all that "most people" are looking for), as a way of making field recordings, it is second to none. It's cheaper and more portable than DAT, and the recordings sound better than microcassette (and at maximum compression, offer almost six times the recording capacity as one side of a C-90 microcassette tape - useful when one wishes to conduct a long biographical interview without the need to fiddle around to change tape sides). As someone who makes, ahem, field recordings* on the sly, there's something to be said for a recorder that will fit, unobtrusively, in a breast pocket. MD rocks.
That said (warning, from here on it's probably -1 Redundant), the PS2, while offering a superior library of games and DVD semi-functionality (the slow seek times doom it to a backup unit for me, but there are those who can bear to hold R2 for whole minutes at a time), is probably the most wretchedly fussy console since the good ol' ToasterNES. The DRM fiasco caused my former (tongue in cheek, I assure you) inner Sony fanboy to wither and die, and they really don't seem to have paid much attention to the last ten years of videogame history with the PS3:
Rule #1 - Nobody gives a shit about all-in-ones. c.f. the CDi. If a console happens to have DVD support, that's one thing (and with DVD support it was perfect timing, just as DVDs were beginning to take over the world), but for the most part, people don't care about web-functionality, home theater, or does-your-taxes.
Rule #2 - Nobody mentions Fight-- wait, sorry. Rule #2 - Nobody wants to pay more than $350 for a console. c.f. the Neo-Geo, the Sega Saturn, the aforementioned CDi, and of course, the 3DO. If adding Blu-Ray means your console has to be over the magic $350 line, then maybe you should consider toning it down a notch. Considering we haven't yet seen multiple DVD games (that I'm aware of), it seems to this armchair pundint that a DVD-ROM based console with some glitz (built in hard drive, USB, some fancy controllers, networking out of the box, etc) would be in throbbing demand, and the Blu-Ray console could come out if and when Blu-Ray becomes the Next Big (God forbiDRM) Thing, it could be seen as the budget-oriented gamer's Blu-Ray drive as well. But since budget-oriented folk don't tend to be early adopters, and early adopters would probably feel "safer" with a dedicated player, there really isn't much call for a Blu-Ray / game console.
Rule #3 - Most importantly, the benefits of being second at E3. Remember $299? Yeah. This is anything but.
Anyway. This said, I'm definitely a bit apprehensive about Sony, but given that the 360 is about as popular in Japan as the Manhatten Project, and the Wii is still, despite the bleatings of Nintendo fanboys to the contrary, coming across as more of a casual gamer "gimmick" system (not that that's a bad thing, oh wise and -1 Overrating Nintendo fanboy mods), it seems that Sony isn't totally out of the running. But what was shaping up to be a delightful slaughterfest (as all slaughterfests are - if I sound like a fanboy, it's only because Sony's won the last two rounds. Get me started on the late 80s and I'll sound like a super-gigantic Nintendo fanboy, I assure you) is now in extra-innings. I'd say the E3 showing was the Mookie Wilson groundball through the legs of Bill Buckner (now that we're all up-to-date on our World Series trivia
That's not a bug. Bugs are unintentional, and in the games you mentioned, a throw from home to 2nd would go so slow that the runner on 3rd could score easily.
That said, this is one of those things I love about 8/16bit baseball. I'll admit that I check this on every new game I play. And I've gotten quite good at scoring wtih runners on first and third, just by initiating a double-rundown.
PS - a Google search for "allusion" returns The Gallery of Bush-Hitler Allusions in the #4 spot. I post this not to illustrate a point (though it does tend to support my side of the argument, I'd imagine, maybe not, this sounds disgustingly snide and it's unintentional), but rather for your and the Slashdot Gallery's perusal and bemusual (sic).
While we're at it, why should these things be debated in the vernacular? Real intellects use Latin - the tongue of the Gods.
Or maybe not, but do you see my point? (point elaborated below)
Okay. So the differing names of two political parties completely destroys any comparision one might make? This reminds me of an Orwellian scenario, in a non-specific way.
Does Hitler's intelligence and cunning include the entire St. Petersburg fiasco? I mean, Bush and his administration were cunning and intelligence with the deployal of the PAT-- well, this isn't about Hitler, so I'll clam up (journal entry for those interested in Hitler). (point in next paragraph)
But if people don't know who Tito (or Baby Doc, or Hussein pre-1991, or even Pol Pot) is, making a comparision isn't as effective. You're a geeky nerd. I'm a geeky nerd. You and I, if confronted with a comparision, one end of which we don't understand, are honor and duty-bound to look it up and immerse ourselves in the fields of knowledge vast and deep. Many people, however, are lazy fucking fucks, and will shrug off your argument as wacko irrelevance. So, allow me to postulate Nugneant's Law - that after Godwin's Law is invoked, the conersation degenerates into bickering over technicalities, or becomes immersed in thick academia.
Though, if the question is as simple as "Is (politician) a good leader", saying he's basically Tito without the Latino Wrestling Star thing is saying more than "HE'S BUSHITLERRRRRR". Hitler comparisions are sometimes bad, true - but "sometimes" does not, in my eyes, necessitate a faceicious "Law".
And when articulating feelings, comparing Bush to Hitler conveys these feelings more accurately than an intellectualization, and this, Godwin's Law fails to account for.
The point with Godwin's Law is that sixteen years ago, some computer dork on USENET thought it was a clever thing to say, and several other computer dorks agreed.
:-D ])? Or would it be something about the economy? You can reply in my journal if you'd rather not unleash a horde of -1, Troll/Flamebait ;-)
And yes - for certain things, I would agree with those who make snide remarks citing Godwin's Law, perhaps even make them myself. For example, if this was a TV forum, and we were engaged in a debate over whether Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Bender would win in a no-holds-barred fight to the death, I would consider any comparisions to Hitler or the Nazi Party pretty far-fetched (well, unless someone theorizes that Bender would have access to a team of Nazis, and someone else counters with the fact that as a blue-eyed blonde, Buffy would likely easily infiltrate the Nazis - this technically being a comparision to the Nazis)*.
Within a political debate, however, I postulate that Godwin's Law is completely fucking irrelevant, no matter what the situation may be. We can all agree - aside from some truly fucked up, hopeless people - that the Nazi Germany was a very, very bad thing for all involved. We can even agree on what, specifically was bad about Nazi Germany. With such strong baselines in place, it is sometimes more succient to cite the Nazis than use words like "Xenophobia". Nobody wants to be a Nazi. But xenophobia is something we can sympathize with in certain scenarios.
Finally - frankly, curious - what good things would you say Hitler did? Are we talking about general "no-shit" things that pretty much every person has done (said his prayers, was nice to his mother, always flushed [except when Eva Braun was over
* - But even so, the "so you've lost the debate" bullshit only applies if everyone's getting very, very bored and needs a break. By which I mean, Hitler and the Nazis - random, yes, but an rethoric-shattering fallacy (to be compared with a strawman, for instance)? Uhhh.
I'd also like to thank everybody else who replied to this post. Your words of support (cheesy / formulaic as this may sound) mean a lot to me.
I'm not doubting your word - or at least, wouldn't be surprised if their service was shitty.
However, reading Wikipedia (truly the best source for objective information </sarcasm> ), the only thing that sticks out is the "slamming" - ie, moving customers to their long distance without asking them beforehand.
Accounting scandals, though, are preferable to giving up customer data - in my book, at least. Maybe I just associate the term "accounting scandal" with "stealing money from banks", a practice which fails to elicit much empathy from me, one way or the other.
Anyway - for the Coup De Karma: Details / links, if you could be so kind?
--
("MOD PARENT UP" - the slashdot equivilant of "hear, hear!"?)
Who's into the DRM bullshit? Oh, that flakey Demoratic cunt from California.
Who's completely ruining any trust and sympathy for America that other nations felt after 9/11? Oh, mostly Republicans, and the vast majority of Democrats who voted for the PATRIOT act and the war in Iraqistan.
Republicrap, Democrap - they're all the same to me. So all these "well a blurr a hurfdurf a bloobleboo Democrats partisan the enemy farrrrrrrt spibble hahahahaha" statements (such as:
)
don't mean shit to me or anybody with more than half a brain.
And Carter may have started the Draft up - the dude was hardly the Liberal American Hero that the New York Times et cetera made him out to be - but the Reagan Administration was twice as terrible, with all the Moral Decency idiocy thrown in with the COMMIES R COMIN TO GET U froo-froo. I'm sincerely surprised Reagan wasn't shot at more often. Just goes to show you - people are suckers for a smile.
Demo-corrupt, Republi-corrupt - both sides can be corrupt. This is the stupidest argument you've made yet. ALL PEOPLE ARE EITHER BLACK OR WHITE, DEMOCRATICS ARE BLACK, REPUBLICANS WHITE, HOORAY DUALISM VALIDATES MY EVERY ARGUMENT!!
It's more like if Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy BOTH had representatives to a bi-partisian (meaning, as best I can figure, "two-party") review of the human rights policies of Stalin. Would you be posting to slashdot saying "well a hurf a boodle boo, it was bi-partisian so it was fair and unbiased"?
Nevermind, you wouldn't if the buzzwords were "Nazi Germany" and "Fascist Italy" (which is why your sort always make anyone who mentions these words out to be a paranoid schizophrenic, because they always point out how very wrong you are), but if the buzzwords were changed to "Nationally Socialist-Democratic Luxemborg" and, uh, "People's Party of Independant Nigeria" (or the "Tigers" and the "Bears"), well surrree you would! Contemptible fuckwit.
All these months of emotional repression are leaking out, and I for one don't care to constrain myself. This Godwin's Law horseshit is straight out of Orwell - and please let's start trying to smear me as a paranoid hippie of some sort, because after all, who the fuck uses cautionary novels for support? (well, besides the Bible Thumpers, but I'd say Orwell remains relevant to our times)
Laughing at people who compare things to Hitler is ignoring a very large question that you (and in this case I am referring to the Grandparent and those of his mindset) should (if you weren't so educated fucking stupid) be asking yourself/yourselves: Why is this person so upset?
If we can't cite Hitler, we can't learn from our mistakes. If we can't learn from our mistakes, there's no point in making mistakes. If there's no point in making mistakes, then we should live in constant fear of making a mistake. If we should live in constant fear of making a mistake, we should all wipe ourselves out, because mistakes are inevitable, whether they be supporting facists or making a spelling error on Slashdot.
I am sick and tired. I can TASTE the contempt I have for people like you in my TEETH. "I'm content to be stupid, I enjoy being a parrot, and I can be happy with making little sacrifices - I'm not a bad person. Why can't everyone else be just like me?"
I... there's just so much contempt within me that I find it almost impossible to coherantly express how I feel. It's thanks to moron idiots like you that Stalin was able to remain in power. It's thanks to moron idiots like you that Hitler was able to commit crimes against humanity. It's thanks to moron idiots like you that Bush and the fascists in office can feel free to trample all over every basic human dignity and liberty alike, because you will accept, and even defend, this practice. Not because you actually relate to it - though it gives you a goofy rise, much like how civilized people get a goofy rise out of watching Sonny Chiba movies - but because you are a crippled creature, willing to surpress your basic, ingrained notion of Right, and Wrong, and Fair. Whether through phony intellectualization or simple contempt for whoever's hurt your feelings (which you allow to spread over to the rest of humanity because epic destruction is so awesome), you become a creature of contempt. And even if you were touched by these idiotic policies which your contemptable straw man voodoo rhetoric supports - you know, say your brother got shot to death in Iraq, your father was imprisoned for talking with an old college bud of his and joking about killing the President, and your mother was stalked and raped after trying to rally people in support of your father - you would still sooner claim it the fault of liberalism, misunderstanding, dirty Islamic towelheads who have no right to anything, violent videogames, or God's Will - rather than simply admit that you are wrong, that you have been wrong, that your desire for a cheap rise, a moment of feeling Intellectually Gifted, and/or your simple crass thoughtlessness - whatever it is - is to blame.
The problem isn't that people feel, or think, that Bush is like an American Hitler. The problem is inside you, and inside anybody who would laugh off a comparision without actually giving it some thought, just because they read on Somethingawful/Fark/The "New" MAD Magazine/your satire source of choice that it's apparently "ridiculous" to say such things. Because "OOOOH HITLER, LOL! OMG, WTF, BBQ??? get it??? (insert heavy handed dose of "we're saying this is funny, in an unfunny way, because we think we actually ARE funny in some way, and therefore right - irony" here)", or something.
I have yet to actually read anywhere a coherant and sober reason for why it's a fallacy to compare things to Hitler or the Nazis. Maybe it's because Moderate folk (who can be just as emotionally overwraught as diehard Liberal or Conservative - leaning folk) can't stand t
Right, because that's been known to happen all the time.
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And in other news: (font color red, size=+2, bgcolor grey, center, embedded midi) CONTRAILS!!!!!111! (animated
Unfortunately, Qwest doesn't offer much beyond calling cards in my area.
:-\
It's a shame, if they had branched out to the east coast by now, they'd have at least three new accounts from my conversations of the last 24 hours alone.
...tell me A) where and how to sign up, and B) honestly, and not as a partisan / America suxxx troll, what the chances are of the judge and juries voting with their inner moralities, and not being blinded by political "moralities" along the way?
Thanks in advance -
~Nugneant
IANAnAlcoholic... but from my limited experience, it has to do with a fear people have of saying or doing things that don't make any sense. Basically "knowledge is power" and all that - ie "if I were to suddenly stand up and scream 'RAUNCHY COWBOYSH GO AMERICAN ELEPHANTSHHHHohgodiatehamagain', then vomit all over myself normally, people might call the cops and get me put under 72 hour observation. If I tell them I'm drunk/stoned/tripping balls/whatever beforehand, tho, then they'll at least understand it's just the whiskey/marijuana/acid/week-old-foot-fungus causing a chemical reaction in my brain".
FWIW, I used to feel the same way as you - but now (uh, thanks to a friend's word-of-mouth (cough)) I see from both sides of the fence.
It's like a choice between eating or starving.
Nah. Those are bi-polar opposites.
I'd say this is more a choice between paying $49.95 for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, paying $19.95 for some wild strawberries and contaminated groundwater, or starving.
We can't really do the same thing to humans, a minor issue of ethics stopping us.
Don't worry, within a couple years or so Our Boys in Iraq will be working on it.
*ducks*
I was amazed to see how low the sales numbers were for the GTA games on xbox.
Apples and oranges, I'd say. Have you ever seen the numbers for PS2 vs. X-Box? I'm not about to go wiki it up, but let's just postulate that it's something like 30 billion million PS2s for every X-Box (note: slight exaggeration).
Now, for every 30 billion million PS2s, at least five of them still work. So that's 5 working PS2s for every 1 working X-Box (note: source for final PS2 vs X-Box numbers: this thread).
Now, what percentage of X-Box users also own a PS2? Again, too lazy to Wiki it, but it's soemthing like 75%, if my memory serves me correctly.
So basically, the largest installed base gets an exclusive... and so then even when it does come out for both platforms, most of Platform B's users already have it on their Platform A. Gee, I wonder which platform will sell more copies?
Now, compare that to this generation, where, even if the X-Box (Circle) drops in price, only your Neo-Geo kiddies will have the monies for both consoles - and a lot of people have saved for an X-Box (Circle) without being able to purchase one, so they're prime Sony-bait - and I think you'll find that the split will be closer to 60-40 or thereabouts.
In conclusion, it's not the exclusivity period itself that determines final results. Rather, the install-base, and the "whatever-the-fancy-word-is-for people-who-own-both-consoles", play the biggest role in determining which console's version ends up selling more. Any doubts? Look at one of the GameCube "exclusives" that later came to the PS2.
Given the way the market seems to be shaping up, I'm betting sales figures will be roughly the same - assuming a relatively uneventful launch (neither good nor a disaster) for Sony.
--
My MOMMY knows I'm not a fanboy!