I am outraged by your idea! Do you want my family to die?
EA have threatened to kill everyone I know if I don't buy this DLC- and as I've replied to your post this now includes you and the people reading this post.
DragonAge is a single player game. Complaining about the extra content is like complaining your neighbour's invisible car, that you never see, hear or get into, is faster than yours because they paid for the turbo version.
Paradox had pay-for DLC available for their game East India Company on the day it was released.
And the Steam game 'RailWorks' (or something like that I'm at work so can't check Steam) seems to be nothing but pay-for DLC and most of it costs a significant fraction of the original game's price.
You've fallen for the line that there is some abstract entity called 'country' which can benefit from an influx of these so-called intelligent 'immigrants'.
When it comes to considering whether to allow immigration the question should be: does it benefit citizens IN THE LONG TERM. If the answer is no then they shouldn't be let in.
Let's look at the three main arguments for allow immigrants:
1) highly skilled. Firstly, what's the chance that Bonga-Bonga land is going to produce anyone that's highly skilled? Secondly if they could, why would they come here? And thirdly if we need them INVEST IN OUR PEOPLE!
In fact you could argue that by letting them come here we're depriving their homeland of their expertise.
2) Immigrants will help pay the pensions Immigrants get old as well. So all you do is push the problem back. And that assumes they don't just stick their snouts in the benefits trough.
3) Immigrants will do jobs that we (citizens) don't want to do. Firstly, immigrants don't stick with doing the crappy under-paid jobs. Next generation they too will be declining to do them. So unless you're willing to make them a slave-race that isn't going to work for long. And supply and demand: increase wages to a level that attracts people who want those jobs, don't import foreigners.
There is literally no good reason for a rich country like the UK to allow immigration from the third world.
As someone who has lived in London and now does his best to avoid the place like the plague it's Jamaican drug gangs, Muslim bus-bombers and knife-wielding gangs of black kids who keep me away.
The vast majority of immigrants are *not* highly skilled. Stop all migrants and the UK would nett gain.
They come here, rather than stopping in France, for example, on the way is because we have a stupidly generous benefits systems where not only do we pay legal migrants of no worth we even pay illiegal immigrants and those appealing decisions to extradite them!
The big difference was that the indigenous population at the time of those invasions didn't have the politically correct brigade stopping them from resisting.
We ended up with *winners* immigrating. This is a good thing.
This is in marked contrast to today where we seem set to let all the *losers* into the country which is a bad thing.
So your point must be that we are allowed, indeed required, to take up arms and violently resist these invaders, and only if they win should they be able to stay?
Firstly, nationality is not the same as skin colour. Secondly, it's quite right to discriminate on any basis the country you are seeking to live in decides. Their country, they make the rules.
Of course the resident's nationality is a factor in deciding whether residency is allowed: in fact it should be the major factor.
And the rule should be a simple one: if you are an EU national you are allowed residency in the UK, otherwise not.
We also need to cancel these stupid loopholes that allow nationals of ex-Imperial colonies any preferential right of abode. The British Empire ended over 50 years ago!
Scares me even more that I drive a 2 seater sports car with a 3.2 litre engine and I regularly overtake fast on single carriage ways: 1 car pulling out and I'd go squish.
A recent TopGear did something similar: they crashed an NCAP (European crash standards body) 5 star+ rated (the highest rating) car (Renault Espace) into an earlier model of the same car (a 1998 Espace I think it was) at 35 mph.
The crash investigator they had evaluate the results said the driver of the older car would have had multiple broken bones, including both femurs, and even if he'd survived the crash he would have bled to death by the time they could extract him, which would take 30-40 minutes as the car was so badly deformed.
In contrast, the modern Espace's computers decided the crash wasn't bad enough to deploy the air bags! Only the seat belt pre-tensioners fired. The investigator thought everyone in that car would have walked away from the accident uninjured.
Their conclusion was that modern crumple zones and stiffer chassis work but because they are stiffer older cars suffer much more when colliding with a modern car.
What always surprises me is how much damage is done to any car, old or new, at these low speeds! Really says to me that any speed limit over 40 mph on any single-carriage way road is just insane.
You need to remember two things: the primary purpose of Joel's blog is to build his business and you also have to remember that he was a member of Microsoft's Excel development team, so he's hardly likely to pull a mea culpa on a blog intended to promote his credentials.
He's a Microsoft product: strong on delivery and marketing, not so hot on design and usability.
He also has an exaggerated view of the value of gay ex-Israeli paratroopers. What a shock eh, person with public blog thinks people like him are the best.
Bloated programs take longer to load. Programs with lots of un-needed or badly designed functionality are much harder to use because it's harder to find the function you want amongst all the crap and because the programme likely hasn't been designed with any thought. And if, as Joe claims, the developer hasn't wasted any time worrying about bloat the likeliehood is that he hasn't worried about design and usability either.
Or you do what I've done in the past and write a bunch of unit tests, get them passing. Re-factor all the code you hate making sure they pass your unit tests.
And then you tell people what you've done.
But then I am a coding god, fearless, courageous in the face of danger.... and I know I could walk into a new job yesterday. Oh and back then I didn't have a mortgage.
Linux (and Linus!) seem to have skipped the "lean and mean killing machine" step and the "achieving success" step and skipped straight to the bloated/uninteresting fat bastard step.
Also, and I only have my personal experience to back this up, but writing cursively seems to use a different part of the brain than printing or typing. I say this because I seem to be able to solve problems and come up with solutions much more easily if I write "stuff" down rather than typing it (I don't print, because it's ugly: only infants who haven't learned to write properly yet use printing).
I also find that what I write is much more elegant and coherent than if I type it: so much so that I often write important stuff first and then type it up once it's reached its final form.
It seems to me typing and printing, especially online, engages the "speaking" part of the brain (hence the common mistakes of it's versus its and their, they're and there even when people know the difference: because in speech there isn't one).
Writing, for me at least, seems to engage the same part of my brain that I use when painting: i.e. the creative, artistic part.
Let's hope they poach the staff from the Birmingham Apple Store: the craptard service they provide there is much more in line with Microsoft's standards than Apple's. The service is so awful there I sometimes I wonder if it's actually a fake store set up by Microsoft to discredit Apple.
I can see how it's possible to get a GPA of 4.0 (which means you got 100% in every test, right?) if every evaluation was a simple multiple choice. Impressive in a 'I've learned the skill of passing tests' kind of way.
But how can anyone score 100% on everything if the questions require some analytical thinking and even opinion? Especially if your opinion might differ from the exam markers (not exactly unusual).
You think she is entitled simply because she threw $70K of her parent's money down the drain and expects it to get her a job.
The reason university graduates of my generation had no problem getting a job was because the standards were much higher: typically only 5% of the population got a degree.
University is not and shouldn't be for everybody.
So yes, you're right, the standard of graduates has gone downhill since then: which is why so many of them can't get jobs.
They're the unemployable 'me me me' entitlement generation.
Another way of putting it is evolution in action: at least you failures are less likely to reproduce.
Slashdot Mirror
I am outraged by your idea! Do you want my family to die?
EA have threatened to kill everyone I know if I don't buy this DLC- and as I've replied to your post this now includes you and the people reading this post.
This is complete nonsense.
DragonAge is a single player game. Complaining about the extra content is like complaining your neighbour's invisible car, that you never see, hear or get into, is faster than yours because they paid for the turbo version.
EA weren't the first to do this.
Paradox had pay-for DLC available for their game East India Company on the day it was released.
And the Steam game 'RailWorks' (or something like that I'm at work so can't check Steam) seems to be nothing but pay-for DLC and most of it costs a significant fraction of the original game's price.
That's complete nonesense.
You've fallen for the line that there is some abstract entity called 'country' which can benefit from an influx of these so-called intelligent 'immigrants'.
When it comes to considering whether to allow immigration the question should be: does it benefit citizens IN THE LONG TERM. If the answer is no then they shouldn't be let in.
Let's look at the three main arguments for allow immigrants:
1) highly skilled.
Firstly, what's the chance that Bonga-Bonga land is going to produce anyone that's highly skilled? Secondly if they could, why would they come here? And thirdly if we need them INVEST IN OUR PEOPLE!
In fact you could argue that by letting them come here we're depriving their homeland of their expertise.
2) Immigrants will help pay the pensions
Immigrants get old as well. So all you do is push the problem back. And that assumes they don't just stick their snouts in the benefits trough.
3) Immigrants will do jobs that we (citizens) don't want to do.
Firstly, immigrants don't stick with doing the crappy under-paid jobs. Next generation they too will be declining to do them. So unless you're willing to make them a slave-race that isn't going to work for long. And supply and demand: increase wages to a level that attracts people who want those jobs, don't import foreigners.
There is literally no good reason for a rich country like the UK to allow immigration from the third world.
Hell no.
As someone who has lived in London and now does his best to avoid the place like the plague it's Jamaican drug gangs, Muslim bus-bombers and knife-wielding gangs of black kids who keep me away.
Typical Politically Correct Brigade double-talk: conflating unrelated ideas.
Not wanting them in your home is not the same as hating them.
I don't hate you but I wouldn't invite you into my house.
The vast majority of immigrants are *not* highly skilled. Stop all migrants and the UK would nett gain.
They come here, rather than stopping in France, for example, on the way is because we have a stupidly generous benefits systems where not only do we pay legal migrants of no worth we even pay illiegal immigrants and those appealing decisions to extradite them!
The big difference was that the indigenous population at the time of those invasions didn't have the politically correct brigade stopping them from resisting.
We ended up with *winners* immigrating. This is a good thing.
This is in marked contrast to today where we seem set to let all the *losers* into the country which is a bad thing.
So your point must be that we are allowed, indeed required, to take up arms and violently resist these invaders, and only if they win should they be able to stay?
I could live with that.
Firstly, nationality is not the same as skin colour. Secondly, it's quite right to discriminate on any basis the country you are seeking to live in decides. Their country, they make the rules.
Of course the resident's nationality is a factor in deciding whether residency is allowed: in fact it should be the major factor.
And the rule should be a simple one: if you are an EU national you are allowed residency in the UK, otherwise not.
We also need to cancel these stupid loopholes that allow nationals of ex-Imperial colonies any preferential right of abode. The British Empire ended over 50 years ago!
PS
Scares me even more that I drive a 2 seater sports car with a 3.2 litre engine and I regularly overtake fast on single carriage ways: 1 car pulling out and I'd go squish.
A recent TopGear did something similar: they crashed an NCAP (European crash standards body) 5 star+ rated (the highest rating) car (Renault Espace) into an earlier model of the same car (a 1998 Espace I think it was) at 35 mph.
The crash investigator they had evaluate the results said the driver of the older car would have had multiple broken bones, including both femurs, and even if he'd survived the crash he would have bled to death by the time they could extract him, which would take 30-40 minutes as the car was so badly deformed.
In contrast, the modern Espace's computers decided the crash wasn't bad enough to deploy the air bags! Only the seat belt pre-tensioners fired. The investigator thought everyone in that car would have walked away from the accident uninjured.
Their conclusion was that modern crumple zones and stiffer chassis work but because they are stiffer older cars suffer much more when colliding with a modern car.
What always surprises me is how much damage is done to any car, old or new, at these low speeds! Really says to me that any speed limit over 40 mph on any single-carriage way road is just insane.
You need to remember two things: the primary purpose of Joel's blog is to build his business and you also have to remember that he was a member of Microsoft's Excel development team, so he's hardly likely to pull a mea culpa on a blog intended to promote his credentials.
He's a Microsoft product: strong on delivery and marketing, not so hot on design and usability.
He also has an exaggerated view of the value of gay ex-Israeli paratroopers. What a shock eh, person with public blog thinks people like him are the best.
Bloated programs take longer to load. Programs with lots of un-needed or badly designed functionality are much harder to use because it's harder to find the function you want amongst all the crap and because the programme likely hasn't been designed with any thought. And if, as Joe claims, the developer hasn't wasted any time worrying about bloat the likeliehood is that he hasn't worried about design and usability either.
Or you do what I've done in the past and write a bunch of unit tests, get them passing. Re-factor all the code you hate making sure they pass your unit tests.
;)
And then you tell people what you've done.
But then I am a coding god, fearless, courageous in the face of danger.... and I know I could walk into a new job yesterday. Oh and back then I didn't have a mortgage.
Not sure I could do it today
Linux (and Linus!) seem to have skipped the "lean and mean killing machine" step and the "achieving success" step and skipped straight to the bloated/uninteresting fat bastard step.
Someone wake me when Torvalds says something interesting. Oh wait, I won't live that long.
Printing is ugly.
Also, and I only have my personal experience to back this up, but writing cursively seems to use a different part of the brain than printing or typing. I say this because I seem to be able to solve problems and come up with solutions much more easily if I write "stuff" down rather than typing it (I don't print, because it's ugly: only infants who haven't learned to write properly yet use printing).
I also find that what I write is much more elegant and coherent than if I type it: so much so that I often write important stuff first and then type it up once it's reached its final form.
It seems to me typing and printing, especially online, engages the "speaking" part of the brain (hence the common mistakes of it's versus its and their, they're and there even when people know the difference: because in speech there isn't one).
Writing, for me at least, seems to engage the same part of my brain that I use when painting: i.e. the creative, artistic part.
Let's hope they poach the staff from the Birmingham Apple Store: the craptard service they provide there is much more in line with Microsoft's standards than Apple's. The service is so awful there I sometimes I wonder if it's actually a fake store set up by Microsoft to discredit Apple.
How does Slashdot formatting turn "100 MB" into "1GB"? Sounds to me like you were trying to distance yourself from an embarassing, ill-informed, rant.
I don't blame you.
So... when does this new president of yours take office, because I can't see that anything has changed since January?
"What this student has done is an simply an act of employment suicide."
There, fixed that for you.
I'm curious.
I can see how it's possible to get a GPA of 4.0 (which means you got 100% in every test, right?) if every evaluation was a simple multiple choice. Impressive in a 'I've learned the skill of passing tests' kind of way.
But how can anyone score 100% on everything if the questions require some analytical thinking and even opinion? Especially if your opinion might differ from the exam markers (not exactly unusual).
Just curious.
I see no distinction between her un-earned sense of entitlement and her lack of moral character.
Your post proves my point.
You think she is entitled simply because she threw $70K of her parent's money down the drain and expects it to get her a job.
The reason university graduates of my generation had no problem getting a job was because the standards were much higher: typically only 5% of the population got a degree.
University is not and shouldn't be for everybody.
So yes, you're right, the standard of graduates has gone downhill since then: which is why so many of them can't get jobs.
They're the unemployable 'me me me' entitlement generation.
Another way of putting it is evolution in action: at least you failures are less likely to reproduce.
And obviously nobody TAUGHT you English.