Everything you say is correct. However, when a problem gets so bad that regular people are talking about getting together and doing something about it, because the law obviously isn't working, that's when vigilantism naturally happens.
Right now over half and possibly as much as 90% of all email traffic is unwanted SHIT. Millions of machines are cracked and zombified as a result of the desire of a minority of people who spam. People are going to start breaking the law to stop it. Yeah it's wrong to take the law into your own hands, but it's a forgone conclusion.
It's going to happen because the problem is out of control and people are demanding justice. If they are not given justice, they will TAKE justice.
I guess what I'm getting at is that being right, saying you don't "condone" vigilantism, pointing out the negative effects of vigilantism has absolutely no value in this argument. The only way to keep people from taking the law into their own hands when a problem gets big enough is to solve the problem. If nobody can solve it, get ready for the vigilantes, everybody knows it's wrong, but it's gonna happen.
I worked in a video store through college, and I never once complained about my wages because I was working there because it wasn't hard. We had a constant stream of older, disgruntled employees who would come in, slack off and complain about their shitty hours and wages.
One day, this lady I worked with was bitching about not getting paid enough and I turned to her and asked her "if you want money, why the hell are you working here?"
A friend of mine's mom worked in a factory to support her children after her divorce. It paid decent but was horrible work. She came home every night at midnight or later, and sometimes she'd just sit sit down at the kitchen table and cry. But she did it to support her family. I have no sympathy for people who try to live off minimum wage. If you want money, you have to work for it.
In light of the original quote, do you anticipate Microsoft controlling CSS 2.1/3?
Here's a link at the W3C that details why CSS 2.1 even exists, namely that it's a bugfix on 2. 2.1 isn't adopted yet.
I'm sure if pressed they would claim the fact that 2.1 isn't formally adopted yet is the reason for their hesitation, but that's never stopped them before. I think they are using this as a stalling tactic until they get something that won't look like dog shit next to Firefox.
The author mentions Final Fantasy in a way that implies that Final Fantasy is a role-playing game. I wonder if that's really the case. Personally one of the most important characteristics I would attribute to RPGs is non-linearity (at least to an extent.) Final Fantasy compared to older RPGs, especially if you go way back, is like riding on a rail ride at Disneyland.
I'm not necessarily saying that's bad, but it's qualitatively different from a non-linear system of exploration and leveling, where you can do most things out of order. The Legend of Zelda: A link to the past is more RPG than Final Fantasy, you can do the levels in whatever order you want, get or reject weapons, etc. It may be easiest to do it in a certain order, but the experience is far more personal, and you can tailor the difficulty of the game based on what order you do things, which is more like, um, role playing, where you are in charge.
The article never mentions this explicitly, but based on the MMORPG stuff and moral accountability and repercussions in the games, they seem to be treating it like it's a nice thing to have, but not necessary. Personally I see the lack of it in many games to be a regression, or at least the designers wanted to make a different kind of game that at least traditionally an RPG was like.
Minimum wage isn't SUPPOSED to be a living wage. Unless you are a teenager or mentally retarded, working at Burger King shouldn't look like a sweet employment opportunity. Those jobs pay so cheap because it's not hard work at all.
I think you're on to something. Maybe the reason America is so productive is because by comparison with Europe, people can't slide through life working a low-skill job with padded wages and siphoning services off the welfare state.
If we are only talking about coding to specific features, I agree it's smarter to just detect if the browser has it. On the other hand, sometimes you're coding around bug/s in nearly every version of a particular vendor's browser.
I support an app that securely streams PDFs to users, and we are obligated to support almost everything. Every possible way of doing this runs afoul of either an IE 4/5/6 or Netscape 4.x bug. I got around this by reading the User Agent string and making adjustments for their shitty browser.
Thanks for this, my memory isn't well served over the 10 years or so since this happened. I should have been more clear. If you recall, Chuck Schumer was heading up this government task force, and he publicly declared that he preferred the ESRB over the other one (IIRC), I guess because everyone thought consumers are stupid and need simple-minded age ratings.
I want to research this better and write up a web page on it.
It's only voluntary because if they hadn't done it voluntarily (institute the ESRB rating system,) the government would have instituted one without any input from industry at all. So, I mean what value does pointing out that it's voluntary serve? They were strongarmed by the government.
So 17 year olds cant handle it, but 18 year olds can?
All this has proved is how shitty the ESRB rating system is. It's not the system the industry wanted it was forced on it by the government.
The government mandated a ratings system as a result of games like Mortal Kombat, so that parents would have an idea of the content of a game before determining if it was appropriate for their kids. This was a GOOD idea. The government said "create your own rating system, or we will create one for you."
I saw the proposal, and it looked like 4 or 5 thermometers indicating things like how much violence, sexuality, swearing was in the game. There was nothing there that indicated an "age", you just got a clear indicator of the content and then as a parent you could decide if it was appropriate.
The government rejected it! They didn't want a clear rating system, they wanted an easy, one-size-fits-none rating system that looked good on paper. You can rate a game, slap a simple logo in the corner that's easily reduced for ads, and you have something that looks good on a chart that you can show you legislated the problem out of existence. No one has to think, just let the sticker do the parenting and everyone's happy.
So now here we are, arguing over if something is appropriate for an 18 year old but not a 17 year old. I hate how our fucking government works. It's all a big game for them, do the least amount, flashiest work that keeps the constituents happy. I wish there was a rating system for fucking politicians:
C (C Corporations only)
D (Demagogue)
I (Incompetent for any purpose)
Considering that it's accessible now, I'd say for all practical purposes it was released with the game if you can download a cheat to enable it.
Everybody knows the ESRB sucks except the government, but they broke the rules. This would be EXACTLY the same if it was only accessible using a gameshark-type device where it would actually take a runtime memory hack to enable it. If they don't want to declare it, they should have removed it, or at least enough of the content that the game would not have worked if you got into that code.
I guess the question is, following a metaphor used repeatedly in the bible, would you consider a sacrificial lamb to be passive or active?
It's interesting that you've characterized him as a social activist who refused to resort to violence. Ghandi called this "passive resistance", which I think is an apt description of what he generally did. He didn't go bust down the doors of the Pharisees, kick all their asses and tell them to bow down to the new covenant. He just hung around with tax collectors and prostitutes. He didn't tell jews to rebel against the Roman occupation 'cause they were pagan, he said render unto ceasar what is ceasar's. "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ;" or in other words, if you are a slave, be the best slave you can be, your reward is in heaven. Jesus just wasn't an in-your-face type of guy. he went with the flow.
The exception that's always thrown out is the money changers in the temple, but you have to remember that these were people who were directly besmirtching the house of God, the actual heart of the body of God on earth, being twisted and misrepresented. It was too much, and he couldn't take it, because it was the one thing that was incompatible with his goals and couldn't be solved by being a passive example. The actions of the money-changers were simply unacceptable.
And I think that's a valuable lesson! Jesus helped people, he set an example of righteousness, he loved people and he loved God, he let himself be sacrificed. He didn't get down and dirty with all the problems on earth, he was concerned about people's souls. The exception proves the rule, the one time he was truly active was when people were messing with his father's house, the representation of God on earth. Being passive is a virtue and stands as a lesson to others, but sometimes you just plain have to bust some heads.
By the way, Jesus never incited nor rebelled against Roman authority nor jewish authority, That's just something his religious "buddies" accused him of. you'll notice when he came to trial, neither Herod nor Pilate found him guilty of anything.
"So, Pilate called together the chief priests and the elders before all the people, and said to them: You have brought this men before me and accused him of subversion. In your presence I have examined him and found no bases for your charges. And neither Herod, for he sent him back to me. It is quite clear that this man has dome nothing that deserves a death sentence" "
You know who the "activists" are? They are the same people now who they were back then, the money changers, the religious fundamentalists who get into everyone's business, fuck with politics and screw with people's lives, actively collaborate with crooks and who, given the opportunity, would crucify the fucking savior of humanity all over again, because he is nothing like them, and is a great, great threat to their authority. Jesus was nothing like them. If anyone wants to be like Jesus, they should not be like them.
How can ANY Male *EVER* even begin to think for EVEN JUST A SECOND that he has any idea how hard the decision for a woman to have an abortion is?
Does the morality of a decision hinge on how hard it was to make? Is the agonizing even over the morality of it?
How can ANY MALE, who cannot/will not ever conceive a child and hold it in their womb EVER decide what a WOMAN can and cannot do with HER egg?
Well, if you want to get technical, you're arguing from an a priori assumption that she has the right to control her own body in all cases, which is not a particularly supportable assumption. The government controls what people do with their own bodies all the time, not the least of which means include prison, FDA, national drug policy re illegal narcotics, and these are only the direct ones.
Look, I agree that you have your opinion and everybody else has theirs, but when we are talking about potential killing, how can you even say things like keep your opinion out of politics? I'm not talking about abortion in specific, but killing in general. What kind of a human would stand by while they truly believed millions of people were being killed and just say "well, it's just my opinion..." The ONLY time I hear anyone ever claim that's morally acceptable is in the context of abortion!
I'm speaking strictly to broadcast and cable television. As a matter of fact, I worked in a video store for about 3 years. I like a lot of movies, but they are ruined on me now. It's become difficult to watch a movie and not compare it to some better, older movie that it ripped off.
I don't have a problem strictly with the media, I'm not a bigot who believes that video is inherently evil. I just believe that the content and the advertizing are basically evil.
Re:Why is this even a question anymore?
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RockStar Speaks
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Well, stuff like in this game is all scripted. It would take nothing whatsoever to modify the script at the last minute, with little chance of messing up the game.
Just because of the nature of video game development, I'd have figured that if you had time to whip up a whole fake minigame just for you and your programmer buddies, you'd have missed your release date. To me this means that Rockstar knew about it, and either cut it at the last minute or expected it to be found.
However, there was no reason to make it if you flipped a few bits in the savegame that it would enable it again! The only reason to do this was that someone wanted this content to be accessible, either a programmer covertly slipped that in, or Rockstar let it happen.
Oh yeah, to my recollection, here's what the actual question was:
"what was it like to play Boris Karloff's sidekick in White Zombie?"
So you can see why it pissed him off. I laughed out loud, best moment in the film.
Who keeps modding these comments down? "Gay Niggers From Outer Space is a REAL MOVIE", and asking which one worse is on-topic. To answer your question: It's bad, but not even as bad as Plan 9 From Outer Space.
You heard me right, if forced at gunpoint to choose between watching Plan 9 and Gay Niggers, I'd watch Gay Niggers From Outer Space. God help me if it ever comes to that.
THIS SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN MODDED FLAMEBAIT. This is a quote from Tim Burton's movie "Ed Wood", a dramatic account of the life of the director of Plan 9 From Outer Space.
The joke here is that Bela Lugosi (of Dracula fame, and whose last role was in Plan 9) was constantly being asked questions about Boris Karloff (Frankenstein, and a somewhat rival), and it drove the already irritable old man into a angry frenzy. In the movie, he goes from happy to sign an autograph for a fan to nearly knocking the guy's head off.
Too bad that it's actually not watchable. I mean, there's something cool about something so bad it's good, but this movie is so bad that it went straight through bad, PAST so bad it's good, and back into bad again, so bad it's undescribably unpleasant to watch it. I'm talking kicked in the testicles bad. but worse.
The only movie I have ever seen that I disliked more was a tie between Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. If there was ever a case for copyright extension, keeping those piles of shit out of the public domain IS IT.
Since college about three years ago, I have not watched television. I have a TV, but it is only used for the occasional movie.
I quit watching for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I was just too busy in college. Secondly, there were better things to do, both socially and intellectually. Finally, television at about this time was starting to get to the point where most shows were reality type shows, and there really wasn't that much left that I wanted to watch anymore. There was still some good shows for news, reruns of some good sitcoms, and large chunks of the cartoon network that I could still enjoy.
When I got back home from college, I noticed that I no longer had a desire to watch television. I also noticed that all my friends and family watched television to the extent that it looked like an addiction. Actually sitting down and watching it myself, I was actually disturbed at how manipulative the commercials were, and at how for literally all the rest of my life I hadn't noticed. (I literally was not watching television at all for over a year at this point.) Programs had gotten even worse.
This is not to say that there was never anything interesting on. But even for things I liked like news/politics, or the history or discovery channel, frequently the content was so shallow that I didn't feel like I was learning very much watching them, and consequently was not very entertained.
This is all anecdotal, but I cannot believe that you actually believe that people who promote _no_ television is nearly on the same level as people who burn books. Here is why I think you are wrong, and that television really is very close to raw sewage. At least, I think television is closer to raw sewage than people who don't watch TV are to book burners:
Television is limited quantity. You have a limited number of channels with a fixed amount of time to show programming. This results in decisions having to be made about content. This decision is not made by you, it is made by market forces (or marketers, if you are cynical, aka realistic.) This is the reason that most television is formulaic and pandering. They are taking the shortest path to advertizing revenue. This is the basis of reality programming and the sitcom. I don't have to explain reality programming. Sitcoms are to the point now where I don't think you can make characters any more "extreme", one-dimensional, or street-smart/sassy/witty. The sitcom has degenerated into the "dis"--insult-fests. I'm sure there are original ideas left in the world, but you wouldn't know it from watching sitcoms, pretty much every "situation" is cribbed from I Love Lucy or the Andy Griffith show, with some minor alterations that involve talking about (but not showing!) sex.
I'm getting off my original point however, that books are completely different from television. Let me sum it up:
Distribution: Books: You go and get the books you want. Television: you watch what someone else decides to show.
content: Books: there are more books in any one subject than you could likely read in your life. Television: The limited channels and broadcast time means both that you are limited right now to whatever is on based on market research, and for old content on videotape or whatever, you are limited to what used to be on tv based on some market research.
Finance model: Television: advertizer paid, generally lowest common denominator in order to make the most money in a time slot. Books: If you want to write about something, the market comes to you. There certainly are monetary restrictions in publishing everything, but if you can be assured that enough people are interested, you can find a publisher. Additionally, the "market" that creates demand for books is not solely entertainment (as television almost completely is), books are also published as the result of educational processes, as a side effect of learning via scientific fields and societies. There are even vanity presses that publish anything for a fairly low cost.
Let me put it this way: gamepads SUCK for FPS, so game consoles should have a controller that's good for FPS. It doesn't have to be a keyboard and mouse, but gamepads suck, and a keyboard and mouse are infinitely better than that.
It's not only about the money. Literally for YEARS I went to the Apple web site and tried to make a decision about what kind of Macintosh to buy. You know why I hadn't made a decision in all that time? Because Apple sets up their machines on a scale where if you want particular options, you must upgrade to the next level and spend more money on a bunch of other options you may not even need.
iMac had a good processor and a decent video card, but was not a case with expandable PCI slots. So look at the desktop, if I don't want a shitty video card, I have to upgrade the CPU and hard drive.
Here's the thing. Apple is using all commodity parts in their new systems, apparently, but are going to rig them up somehow so that you can't just run the OS on another machine with essentially the same parts. Their components are going to be the same as any other x86 components. I guarantee you that some motherboard manufacturer will come out with a board that uses the exact same commodity parts as a new Apple, but won't run OS X until someone comes out with the "hack". You get the hack, and suddenly you've got the same hardware, all the drivers work, and you start adding in the components you want.
Regular businesses will not be doing this, but frankly regular businesses tend to run Windows anyway, and if they ARE a mac shop, they are sufficiently zealous that they will continue to buy macintoshes.
Who WILL build their own macintosh computers are people that for years have wanted a Macintosh but APPLE has never offered them the options they wanted.
Incidentally, I finally did buy a Macintosh, a Mac Mini. Even though it wasn't everything I wanted, it came without extra crap I already had, and was cheap enough that I was willing to sacrifice to get on board with OS X. This should be a lesson to Apple, since it does appear that they are getting interested in that market demographic.
Correct, but it would be good to keep in mind that a truly left-leaning news outlet would also be to the left of the average member of congress.
A while back I remember seeing some videotapes of network news shows from the 80's that my grandfather had. The outright blatant left-wing bias was so bad as to be undeniable.
This was before Fox News and talk radio. It is my perception firstly that these right wing networks were formed as a response to a pervasive left-wing media. It is my opinion that in the last few decades that media outlets have become more centrist because of a realization that these right-wing outlets were basically their own fault. Unfortunately, the right wing stations have figured out that being populist gets you more listeners than just news from the perspective of the right.
I am a conservative, and Fox news has degenerated to the disgusting even in my opinion.
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Everything you say is correct. However, when a problem gets so bad that regular people are talking about getting together and doing something about it, because the law obviously isn't working, that's when vigilantism naturally happens.
Right now over half and possibly as much as 90% of all email traffic is unwanted SHIT. Millions of machines are cracked and zombified as a result of the desire of a minority of people who spam. People are going to start breaking the law to stop it. Yeah it's wrong to take the law into your own hands, but it's a forgone conclusion.
It's going to happen because the problem is out of control and people are demanding justice. If they are not given justice, they will TAKE justice.
I guess what I'm getting at is that being right, saying you don't "condone" vigilantism, pointing out the negative effects of vigilantism has absolutely no value in this argument. The only way to keep people from taking the law into their own hands when a problem gets big enough is to solve the problem. If nobody can solve it, get ready for the vigilantes, everybody knows it's wrong, but it's gonna happen.
I worked in a video store through college, and I never once complained about my wages because I was working there because it wasn't hard. We had a constant stream of older, disgruntled employees who would come in, slack off and complain about their shitty hours and wages.
One day, this lady I worked with was bitching about not getting paid enough and I turned to her and asked her "if you want money, why the hell are you working here?"
A friend of mine's mom worked in a factory to support her children after her divorce. It paid decent but was horrible work. She came home every night at midnight or later, and sometimes she'd just sit sit down at the kitchen table and cry. But she did it to support her family. I have no sympathy for people who try to live off minimum wage. If you want money, you have to work for it.
Here's a link at the W3C that details why CSS 2.1 even exists, namely that it's a bugfix on 2. 2.1 isn't adopted yet.
I'm sure if pressed they would claim the fact that 2.1 isn't formally adopted yet is the reason for their hesitation, but that's never stopped them before. I think they are using this as a stalling tactic until they get something that won't look like dog shit next to Firefox.
The author mentions Final Fantasy in a way that implies that Final Fantasy is a role-playing game. I wonder if that's really the case. Personally one of the most important characteristics I would attribute to RPGs is non-linearity (at least to an extent.) Final Fantasy compared to older RPGs, especially if you go way back, is like riding on a rail ride at Disneyland.
I'm not necessarily saying that's bad, but it's qualitatively different from a non-linear system of exploration and leveling, where you can do most things out of order. The Legend of Zelda: A link to the past is more RPG than Final Fantasy, you can do the levels in whatever order you want, get or reject weapons, etc. It may be easiest to do it in a certain order, but the experience is far more personal, and you can tailor the difficulty of the game based on what order you do things, which is more like, um, role playing, where you are in charge.
The article never mentions this explicitly, but based on the MMORPG stuff and moral accountability and repercussions in the games, they seem to be treating it like it's a nice thing to have, but not necessary. Personally I see the lack of it in many games to be a regression, or at least the designers wanted to make a different kind of game that at least traditionally an RPG was like.
Minimum wage isn't SUPPOSED to be a living wage. Unless you are a teenager or mentally retarded, working at Burger King shouldn't look like a sweet employment opportunity. Those jobs pay so cheap because it's not hard work at all.
I think you're on to something. Maybe the reason America is so productive is because by comparison with Europe, people can't slide through life working a low-skill job with padded wages and siphoning services off the welfare state.
If we are only talking about coding to specific features, I agree it's smarter to just detect if the browser has it. On the other hand, sometimes you're coding around bug/s in nearly every version of a particular vendor's browser.
I support an app that securely streams PDFs to users, and we are obligated to support almost everything. Every possible way of doing this runs afoul of either an IE 4/5/6 or Netscape 4.x bug. I got around this by reading the User Agent string and making adjustments for their shitty browser.
Thanks for this, my memory isn't well served over the 10 years or so since this happened. I should have been more clear. If you recall, Chuck Schumer was heading up this government task force, and he publicly declared that he preferred the ESRB over the other one (IIRC), I guess because everyone thought consumers are stupid and need simple-minded age ratings. I want to research this better and write up a web page on it.
It's only voluntary because if they hadn't done it voluntarily (institute the ESRB rating system,) the government would have instituted one without any input from industry at all. So, I mean what value does pointing out that it's voluntary serve? They were strongarmed by the government.
explanation
I'm not holding my breath or anything.
All this has proved is how shitty the ESRB rating system is. It's not the system the industry wanted it was forced on it by the government.
The government mandated a ratings system as a result of games like Mortal Kombat, so that parents would have an idea of the content of a game before determining if it was appropriate for their kids. This was a GOOD idea. The government said "create your own rating system, or we will create one for you."
I saw the proposal, and it looked like 4 or 5 thermometers indicating things like how much violence, sexuality, swearing was in the game. There was nothing there that indicated an "age", you just got a clear indicator of the content and then as a parent you could decide if it was appropriate.
The government rejected it! They didn't want a clear rating system, they wanted an easy, one-size-fits-none rating system that looked good on paper. You can rate a game, slap a simple logo in the corner that's easily reduced for ads, and you have something that looks good on a chart that you can show you legislated the problem out of existence. No one has to think, just let the sticker do the parenting and everyone's happy.
So now here we are, arguing over if something is appropriate for an 18 year old but not a 17 year old. I hate how our fucking government works. It's all a big game for them, do the least amount, flashiest work that keeps the constituents happy. I wish there was a rating system for fucking politicians:
C (C Corporations only)
D (Demagogue)
I (Incompetent for any purpose)
Everybody knows the ESRB sucks except the government, but they broke the rules. This would be EXACTLY the same if it was only accessible using a gameshark-type device where it would actually take a runtime memory hack to enable it. If they don't want to declare it, they should have removed it, or at least enough of the content that the game would not have worked if you got into that code.
I guess the question is, following a metaphor used repeatedly in the bible, would you consider a sacrificial lamb to be passive or active?
It's interesting that you've characterized him as a social activist who refused to resort to violence. Ghandi called this "passive resistance", which I think is an apt description of what he generally did. He didn't go bust down the doors of the Pharisees, kick all their asses and tell them to bow down to the new covenant. He just hung around with tax collectors and prostitutes. He didn't tell jews to rebel against the Roman occupation 'cause they were pagan, he said render unto ceasar what is ceasar's. "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ;" or in other words, if you are a slave, be the best slave you can be, your reward is in heaven. Jesus just wasn't an in-your-face type of guy. he went with the flow.
The exception that's always thrown out is the money changers in the temple, but you have to remember that these were people who were directly besmirtching the house of God, the actual heart of the body of God on earth, being twisted and misrepresented. It was too much, and he couldn't take it, because it was the one thing that was incompatible with his goals and couldn't be solved by being a passive example. The actions of the money-changers were simply unacceptable.
And I think that's a valuable lesson! Jesus helped people, he set an example of righteousness, he loved people and he loved God, he let himself be sacrificed. He didn't get down and dirty with all the problems on earth, he was concerned about people's souls. The exception proves the rule, the one time he was truly active was when people were messing with his father's house, the representation of God on earth. Being passive is a virtue and stands as a lesson to others, but sometimes you just plain have to bust some heads.
By the way, Jesus never incited nor rebelled against Roman authority nor jewish authority, That's just something his religious "buddies" accused him of. you'll notice when he came to trial, neither Herod nor Pilate found him guilty of anything.
"So, Pilate called together the chief priests and the elders before all the people, and said to them: You have brought this men before me and accused him of subversion. In your presence I have examined him and found no bases for your charges. And neither Herod, for he sent him back to me. It is quite clear that this man has dome nothing that deserves a death sentence" "
You know who the "activists" are? They are the same people now who they were back then, the money changers, the religious fundamentalists who get into everyone's business, fuck with politics and screw with people's lives, actively collaborate with crooks and who, given the opportunity, would crucify the fucking savior of humanity all over again, because he is nothing like them, and is a great, great threat to their authority. Jesus was nothing like them. If anyone wants to be like Jesus, they should not be like them.
I'm sorry, this is a sensitive point for me.
Does the morality of a decision hinge on how hard it was to make? Is the agonizing even over the morality of it?
How can ANY MALE, who cannot/will not ever conceive a child and hold it in their womb EVER decide what a WOMAN can and cannot do with HER egg?
Well, if you want to get technical, you're arguing from an a priori assumption that she has the right to control her own body in all cases, which is not a particularly supportable assumption. The government controls what people do with their own bodies all the time, not the least of which means include prison, FDA, national drug policy re illegal narcotics, and these are only the direct ones.
Look, I agree that you have your opinion and everybody else has theirs, but when we are talking about potential killing, how can you even say things like keep your opinion out of politics? I'm not talking about abortion in specific, but killing in general. What kind of a human would stand by while they truly believed millions of people were being killed and just say "well, it's just my opinion..." The ONLY time I hear anyone ever claim that's morally acceptable is in the context of abortion!
I'm speaking strictly to broadcast and cable television. As a matter of fact, I worked in a video store for about 3 years. I like a lot of movies, but they are ruined on me now. It's become difficult to watch a movie and not compare it to some better, older movie that it ripped off.
I don't have a problem strictly with the media, I'm not a bigot who believes that video is inherently evil. I just believe that the content and the advertizing are basically evil.
Well, stuff like in this game is all scripted. It would take nothing whatsoever to modify the script at the last minute, with little chance of messing up the game.
Just because of the nature of video game development, I'd have figured that if you had time to whip up a whole fake minigame just for you and your programmer buddies, you'd have missed your release date. To me this means that Rockstar knew about it, and either cut it at the last minute or expected it to be found.
However, there was no reason to make it if you flipped a few bits in the savegame that it would enable it again! The only reason to do this was that someone wanted this content to be accessible, either a programmer covertly slipped that in, or Rockstar let it happen.
Oh my God, thank you for that. I was going to post it then I saw yours. George Costanza...loving it. If I had mod points they would be yours.
Oh yeah, to my recollection, here's what the actual question was: "what was it like to play Boris Karloff's sidekick in White Zombie?" So you can see why it pissed him off. I laughed out loud, best moment in the film.
Who keeps modding these comments down? "Gay Niggers From Outer Space is a REAL MOVIE", and asking which one worse is on-topic. To answer your question: It's bad, but not even as bad as Plan 9 From Outer Space.
You heard me right, if forced at gunpoint to choose between watching Plan 9 and Gay Niggers, I'd watch Gay Niggers From Outer Space. God help me if it ever comes to that.
THIS SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN MODDED FLAMEBAIT. This is a quote from Tim Burton's movie "Ed Wood", a dramatic account of the life of the director of Plan 9 From Outer Space.
The joke here is that Bela Lugosi (of Dracula fame, and whose last role was in Plan 9) was constantly being asked questions about Boris Karloff (Frankenstein, and a somewhat rival), and it drove the already irritable old man into a angry frenzy. In the movie, he goes from happy to sign an autograph for a fan to nearly knocking the guy's head off.
It was hilarious.
Too bad that it's actually not watchable. I mean, there's something cool about something so bad it's good, but this movie is so bad that it went straight through bad, PAST so bad it's good, and back into bad again, so bad it's undescribably unpleasant to watch it. I'm talking kicked in the testicles bad. but worse.
The only movie I have ever seen that I disliked more was a tie between Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. If there was ever a case for copyright extension, keeping those piles of shit out of the public domain IS IT.
I am NOT kidding. This movie is BAD.
Since college about three years ago, I have not watched television. I have a TV, but it is only used for the occasional movie.
I quit watching for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I was just too busy in college. Secondly, there were better things to do, both socially and intellectually. Finally, television at about this time was starting to get to the point where most shows were reality type shows, and there really wasn't that much left that I wanted to watch anymore. There was still some good shows for news, reruns of some good sitcoms, and large chunks of the cartoon network that I could still enjoy.
When I got back home from college, I noticed that I no longer had a desire to watch television. I also noticed that all my friends and family watched television to the extent that it looked like an addiction. Actually sitting down and watching it myself, I was actually disturbed at how manipulative the commercials were, and at how for literally all the rest of my life I hadn't noticed. (I literally was not watching television at all for over a year at this point.) Programs had gotten even worse.
This is not to say that there was never anything interesting on. But even for things I liked like news/politics, or the history or discovery channel, frequently the content was so shallow that I didn't feel like I was learning very much watching them, and consequently was not very entertained.
This is all anecdotal, but I cannot believe that you actually believe that people who promote _no_ television is nearly on the same level as people who burn books. Here is why I think you are wrong, and that television really is very close to raw sewage. At least, I think television is closer to raw sewage than people who don't watch TV are to book burners:
Television is limited quantity. You have a limited number of channels with a fixed amount of time to show programming. This results in decisions having to be made about content. This decision is not made by you, it is made by market forces (or marketers, if you are cynical, aka realistic.) This is the reason that most television is formulaic and pandering. They are taking the shortest path to advertizing revenue. This is the basis of reality programming and the sitcom. I don't have to explain reality programming. Sitcoms are to the point now where I don't think you can make characters any more "extreme", one-dimensional, or street-smart/sassy/witty. The sitcom has degenerated into the "dis"--insult-fests. I'm sure there are original ideas left in the world, but you wouldn't know it from watching sitcoms, pretty much every "situation" is cribbed from I Love Lucy or the Andy Griffith show, with some minor alterations that involve talking about (but not showing!) sex.
I'm getting off my original point however, that books are completely different from television. Let me sum it up:
Distribution:
Books: You go and get the books you want.
Television: you watch what someone else decides to show.
content:
Books: there are more books in any one subject than you could likely read in your life.
Television: The limited channels and broadcast time means both that you are limited right now to whatever is on based on market research, and for old content on videotape or whatever, you are limited to what used to be on tv based on some market research.
Finance model:
Television: advertizer paid, generally lowest common denominator in order to make the most money in a time slot.
Books: If you want to write about something, the market comes to you. There certainly are monetary restrictions in publishing everything, but if you can be assured that enough people are interested, you can find a publisher. Additionally, the "market" that creates demand for books is not solely entertainment (as television almost completely is), books are also published as the result of educational processes, as a side effect of learning via scientific fields and societies. There are even vanity presses that publish anything for a fairly low cost.
Link
So anyway, a worker with all those medical records contacts the hospital and ransoms their records. Great fun.
Let me put it this way: gamepads SUCK for FPS, so game consoles should have a controller that's good for FPS. It doesn't have to be a keyboard and mouse, but gamepads suck, and a keyboard and mouse are infinitely better than that.
It's not only about the money. Literally for YEARS I went to the Apple web site and tried to make a decision about what kind of Macintosh to buy. You know why I hadn't made a decision in all that time? Because Apple sets up their machines on a scale where if you want particular options, you must upgrade to the next level and spend more money on a bunch of other options you may not even need.
iMac had a good processor and a decent video card, but was not a case with expandable PCI slots. So look at the desktop, if I don't want a shitty video card, I have to upgrade the CPU and hard drive.
Here's the thing. Apple is using all commodity parts in their new systems, apparently, but are going to rig them up somehow so that you can't just run the OS on another machine with essentially the same parts. Their components are going to be the same as any other x86 components. I guarantee you that some motherboard manufacturer will come out with a board that uses the exact same commodity parts as a new Apple, but won't run OS X until someone comes out with the "hack". You get the hack, and suddenly you've got the same hardware, all the drivers work, and you start adding in the components you want.
Regular businesses will not be doing this, but frankly regular businesses tend to run Windows anyway, and if they ARE a mac shop, they are sufficiently zealous that they will continue to buy macintoshes.
Who WILL build their own macintosh computers are people that for years have wanted a Macintosh but APPLE has never offered them the options they wanted.
Incidentally, I finally did buy a Macintosh, a Mac Mini. Even though it wasn't everything I wanted, it came without extra crap I already had, and was cheap enough that I was willing to sacrifice to get on board with OS X. This should be a lesson to Apple, since it does appear that they are getting interested in that market demographic.
Correct, but it would be good to keep in mind that a truly left-leaning news outlet would also be to the left of the average member of congress.
A while back I remember seeing some videotapes of network news shows from the 80's that my grandfather had. The outright blatant left-wing bias was so bad as to be undeniable.
This was before Fox News and talk radio. It is my perception firstly that these right wing networks were formed as a response to a pervasive left-wing media. It is my opinion that in the last few decades that media outlets have become more centrist because of a realization that these right-wing outlets were basically their own fault. Unfortunately, the right wing stations have figured out that being populist gets you more listeners than just news from the perspective of the right.
I am a conservative, and Fox news has degenerated to the disgusting even in my opinion.