Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security are used by elderly and disabled people. So you don't like the programs. I suppose you just want to dispose of all those people costing you money? Do you want your grandparents to move in with you? "Hi kral, the government got rid of social security so we're moving in." Do you want them back in the workforce, pushing wages down again?
I call bull on you, the people I've communicated with are white collar, the kinds of folks who know what Linux is and they like their socialized medicine and the US is crazy for not having it.
You can't treat Europe as a country, because it isn't. And those "individual" European states have far far stronger (and socialist leaning) central governments (even the more conservative ones) than even the most liberal of American states. They've got socialized medicine, paid family leaves for both mother and father with a newborn, remember?
Oh it's worked quite well, compare life expectancy for example or education. As the federal government got stronger, things got better for the majority of people. It was massive govenrment spending that created the middle class as we know it. And crime rates today are actually lower than than they were during the great depression, we just have a more pervasive mass media so what crime that happens crime just gets more press.
Putting it bluntly there's no way you'd truly enjoy living in the economic realities of even a century ago.
Have you ever wondered that perhaps those news stories get so heavily publicized to actually encourage distrust of government by corporate overlords of the media? And if you distrust government then that might encourage you to elect people who pledge to make government smaller and reduce regulation and taxes on said corporate overlords, thus making the corporate overlords even more powerful?
By productive do you mean "sitting on their asses enjoying the proceeds from their robber baron grandfather's greed and evil"? Socialized medicine works and it's cheaper than the system we currently have, all we have to do is ask the people who already benefit from it.
Neither candidate has uttered the words that would probably woo over a good portion of people - "cut the budget."
by good portion you do you mean crazy over privileged adolescent minded Ron Paul fanatic Slashdot libertarians? The guys who, when it gets to the nitty gritty, don't want to pay any taxes, Because they love their wallet and have no empathy for anyone that isn't them at all?
"Fannie Mae Chairman Franklin Raines last week called for continued efforts by Fannie Mae and mortgage lenders to reach out to those 'at the margins' of home ownership. Blacks, Hispanics and immigrants trying to buy homes would be a major focus of outreach, Raines said." Raines made no mention of assistance for the millions of white families who have difficulty purchasing homes.
That was a good thing, do you know why? Because lower middle class minority folks home ownership rates were lower than they ought to be and they were often paying rents higher than house payments to scum who were slightly better than slumlords. And considering how the vast majority of faces I see on those "buy a home" shows are white, I don't think white people have trouble getting loans, when it's established fact that minority folks do. I figure that most of those defaulting on their mortgages are overprivliged upper middle class white people who bought too much home expecting to flip it in a few years and become millionaires.
The value of homes was going up solely because people expected the value of homes to go up (i.e. 'this house is a bit more expensive than we can afford, but in a few years we can sell or refinance and everything will be fine').
If you watch all that "house porn" on HGTV you still see people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars buying houses that they openly say they aren't planning on living in for long, say 7 or 8 years, rather than doing what people used to do, buy ONE house and live in it for the REST OF THEIR LIVES.
Whats the point of searching for a job with a government so bent backward to fun welfare to the lower classes by taxing the middle class?
You're under the mistaken impression that welfare benefits are a lot of money...they aren't. Hell, the home interest deduction, middle class welfare, costs the government more money.
The middle are going to pay for their own low quality care (ever been in a socialist hospital?)
The citizens of the UK/Australia/NZ/Canada/Sweden that I have communicated with seem to really really like their "socialist health care systems"
That's cause he's not sane. Can't run a country of over a quarter billion people like a fucking confederacy, or worse like a 17th century small town. You need a large and strong central government to keep things going because everyone is selfishly working at cross purposes to each other. Besides, some things are good for the whole, but not so good for your wallet. It's your attitude that leads to things like: "I don't have any kids in school so I shouldn't have to pay taxes for them." or "I don't use public libraries so I shouldn't have to pay for them. Everyone should buy their own books."
modern liberals being unashamed socialists and not even pretending to beleive in markets any more.
It's not that we don't believe in markets, it's just that we know that the market isn't "free" enough to trust it to "do the right thing", hasn't been since the late 19th century. When you have a lot of wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few, there is no free market because those in power control it to stifle competition etc.
It was different when you had a billion small to medium sized businesses effectively competiting, once you had robber barons and megacorps the free market was dead. That's when you need a very strong central government to keep the robber barons from running havok over everything.
Most game developers are starting to look at option #7, because they ignore the Mod-chips that bypass DRM for game consoles, because most game console owners don't know what a mod-chip is or how to install one and actually buy the retail version of the game instead of pirating it. They are mostly Luddites that can't figure out how to install a program on a PC or Mac, and bought a game console instead because it was easier for them to play games on.
No, they aren't Luddites, they know how to install applications on their PC. They just want to play games without a lot hassle, or play the games that are only available on their console. As for pirating, shouldn't we be discouraging that?
It's extremely easy to be a gamer and a Linux user....as long as you're a console gamer. That could be taken two ways, linux console, or video-game console, or both since you can play Nethack on a PS2 or PS3.
You're forgetting the fact that with analog movement, you don't need keys for "walk slow" or "run". You also have L1, L2, L3 (when you press in the stick) and the d-pad itself (which can be used as buttons since you're not using it for movement). Look, it's hard to explain unless you've played the PS1 port of QuakeII or the PS1 game Alien Resurrection or the PS2 ports of Half Life and Deux Ex. It's a hybrid setup hold the pad just with your left hand, not with your right at all. Your right is on the PS1 mouse (or a USB mouse attached to the PS2/PS3)
Your little finger is the weakest and slowest finger on your hand, you shouldn't want to use them much. Your thumb is your strongest and most dexterous finger, you should want to use it as much as possible.
I'm talking about analog movement on the left stick replacing WASD. God I don't get PC gamers obsession with using the keyboard for action games and how "superior" it is. It sucked in 1983 and it sucks now. As I've said before, I'll grant you the mouse as an excellent aiming device, but never the keyboard.
How to reconcile the two? Dual shock in left hand, mouse in right. Try playing the PS2 ports of Half Life and Deus Ex that way, you'll see.
We're not, in this subthread, you were bragging about your resolution based e-penis. And I was trying to get it through your skull that even if you had 1600x1200 in 1997 that the majority did not, and still don't. And that the most common resolution today is still 1024x768, which consoles can match or beat.
I am comparing apples to apples, because there are games that simply will not run on my old computer from 2003, let alone one from 2000. Computers from 2000, 2003, and 2008 are not a unified platform but many different ones.
You got the folks that got machines that are good enough for flash games
The folks who might be able to a current game if they turn things down
And then you got the folks like the stereotypical PC gamer with two cards that eat up two slots each, and a half a dozen loud fans who spends more time playing benchmarks for bragging points on his e-penis than playing games.
All separate platforms, just like the PS2 and PS3 are.
If the games are the most important thing, then why the big fuss over "in one year my PC will have a better GPU than the PS3"? Because too many PC gamers care more about the hardware behind games than games themselves. Sure you can turn down setting to play new games on your old hardware, but then some forum guy will say, "you're not playing the game it was meant to be played at such low settings, why play it at all. You should buy 4 Freedonia F-force f00thousand cards and put them in a SLI setup."
I don't even have to think about that. I can just pick up the game and know I'll be playing it as it's meant to be played. No muss, no fuss.
I played Diablo and Diablo 2 for a long time. No problems for me. As for analog movement, I have the mouse, which makes movement very smooth and intuitive, so I don't need an analog controller. It would be less precise and therefore a disadvantage. You can't tell me that all the FPS players out there would benefit from an analog controller over the current setup. When it comes to moving and aiming in those games, precision is everything.
Yes, I think FPS players would benefit from analog movement replacing WASD, because analog movement is more precise. I will grant that the mouse might be easier to use for aiming for some people without the learned ability to make fine movements with their right thumbs.
I would, because I checked before making the statement. 1024x768 is at 48% according to the w3. There are a LOT of people out there with older machines.
With that I was referring to the fact that developers tend to cut out anything that they can't make work well with a gamepad. It's why we got things like the unified ammo in DX2, and why the inventory systems tend to suck in comparison with PC games.
Then why not blame the developer and not the console itself. Because there are devs who CAN make it work well. DX1 for the PS2 uses separate ammo so I don't know why the DX2 developers did what they did. They underestimate the console audience, probably like some PC gamers do.
We go from Tomb-raider-esque jumping and climbing to something like Assassin's Creed where all the skill is taken out of it and you just hold down a button and point him in the right direction. If I just wanted to watch something, I'd put in a movie.
I'll tell you why it changed...because jumping in Tomb Raider was not fun. It's difficult to judge a distances on a 2D screen which makes jumping puzzles frustrating.
I've tried it and I can't stand to play them with a gamepad. I spend more time compensating for the crappy controls than I do playing the game.
Could be you and not the controls. Takes time to develop the fine manipulation skills. PC gamers are not used to doing such tiny movements with their thumbs.
You memory must not be good, you don't remember the hordes of hexagon WWII wargames designed by hordes of retired colonels. Or the hordes of D&D inspired RPG's designed by hordes of Gary Gygax wannabe's.
Slashdot Mirror
What solution would you suggest, the Invisible Hand? Doesn't work anymore.
Perhaps you should try communicating in English rather than using symbols that make your response look like a Perl script.
Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security are used by elderly and disabled people. So you don't like the programs. I suppose you just want to dispose of all those people costing you money? Do you want your grandparents to move in with you? "Hi kral, the government got rid of social security so we're moving in." Do you want them back in the workforce, pushing wages down again?
I call bull on you, the people I've communicated with are white collar, the kinds of folks who know what Linux is and they like their socialized medicine and the US is crazy for not having it.
You can't treat Europe as a country, because it isn't. And those "individual" European states have far far stronger (and socialist leaning) central governments (even the more conservative ones) than even the most liberal of American states. They've got socialized medicine, paid family leaves for both mother and father with a newborn, remember?
Oh it's worked quite well, compare life expectancy for example or education. As the federal government got stronger, things got better for the majority of people. It was massive govenrment spending that created the middle class as we know it. And crime rates today are actually lower than than they were during the great depression, we just have a more pervasive mass media so what crime that happens crime just gets more press.
Putting it bluntly there's no way you'd truly enjoy living in the economic realities of even a century ago.
Have you ever wondered that perhaps those news stories get so heavily publicized to actually encourage distrust of government by corporate overlords of the media? And if you distrust government then that might encourage you to elect people who pledge to make government smaller and reduce regulation and taxes on said corporate overlords, thus making the corporate overlords even more powerful?
By productive do you mean "sitting on their asses enjoying the proceeds from their robber baron grandfather's greed and evil"? Socialized medicine works and it's cheaper than the system we currently have, all we have to do is ask the people who already benefit from it.
by good portion you do you mean crazy over privileged adolescent minded Ron Paul fanatic Slashdot libertarians? The guys who, when it gets to the nitty gritty, don't want to pay any taxes, Because they love their wallet and have no empathy for anyone that isn't them at all?
"Fannie Mae Chairman Franklin Raines last week called for continued efforts by Fannie Mae and mortgage lenders to reach out to those 'at the margins' of home ownership. Blacks, Hispanics and immigrants trying to buy homes would be a major focus of outreach, Raines said." Raines made no mention of assistance for the millions of white families who have difficulty purchasing homes.
That was a good thing, do you know why? Because lower middle class minority folks home ownership rates were lower than they ought to be and they were often paying rents higher than house payments to scum who were slightly better than slumlords. And considering how the vast majority of faces I see on those "buy a home" shows are white, I don't think white people have trouble getting loans, when it's established fact that minority folks do. I figure that most of those defaulting on their mortgages are overprivliged upper middle class white people who bought too much home expecting to flip it in a few years and become millionaires.
If you watch all that "house porn" on HGTV you still see people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars buying houses that they openly say they aren't planning on living in for long, say 7 or 8 years, rather than doing what people used to do, buy ONE house and live in it for the REST OF THEIR LIVES.
Flipping bastards.
You're under the mistaken impression that welfare benefits are a lot of money...they aren't. Hell, the home interest deduction, middle class welfare, costs the government more money.
The citizens of the UK/Australia/NZ/Canada/Sweden that I have communicated with seem to really really like their "socialist health care systems"
That's cause he's not sane. Can't run a country of over a quarter billion people like a fucking confederacy, or worse like a 17th century small town. You need a large and strong central government to keep things going because everyone is selfishly working at cross purposes to each other. Besides, some things are good for the whole, but not so good for your wallet. It's your attitude that leads to things like: "I don't have any kids in school so I shouldn't have to pay taxes for them." or "I don't use public libraries so I shouldn't have to pay for them. Everyone should buy their own books."
It's not that we don't believe in markets, it's just that we know that the market isn't "free" enough to trust it to "do the right thing", hasn't been since the late 19th century. When you have a lot of wealth and power concentrated in the hands of a few, there is no free market because those in power control it to stifle competition etc.
It was different when you had a billion small to medium sized businesses effectively competiting, once you had robber barons and megacorps the free market was dead. That's when you need a very strong central government to keep the robber barons from running havok over everything.
Sure, it's not a full fledged Eclipse style IDE with buttons and menus for "everything", but it comes with Python.
It doesn't work for software because software is licensed on a "as-is" basis. Meaning no warranty for fitness of purpose or usability.
Most game developers are starting to look at option #7, because they ignore the Mod-chips that bypass DRM for game consoles, because most game console owners don't know what a mod-chip is or how to install one and actually buy the retail version of the game instead of pirating it. They are mostly Luddites that can't figure out how to install a program on a PC or Mac, and bought a game console instead because it was easier for them to play games on.
No, they aren't Luddites, they know how to install applications on their PC. They just want to play games without a lot hassle, or play the games that are only available on their console. As for pirating, shouldn't we be discouraging that?
It's extremely easy to be a gamer and a Linux user....as long as you're a console gamer. That could be taken two ways, linux console, or video-game console, or both since you can play Nethack on a PS2 or PS3.
You're forgetting the fact that with analog movement, you don't need keys for "walk slow" or "run". You also have L1, L2, L3 (when you press in the stick) and the d-pad itself (which can be used as buttons since you're not using it for movement). Look, it's hard to explain unless you've played the PS1 port of QuakeII or the PS1 game Alien Resurrection or the PS2 ports of Half Life and Deux Ex. It's a hybrid setup hold the pad just with your left hand, not with your right at all. Your right is on the PS1 mouse (or a USB mouse attached to the PS2/PS3)
Your little finger is the weakest and slowest finger on your hand, you shouldn't want to use them much. Your thumb is your strongest and most dexterous finger, you should want to use it as much as possible.
I'm talking about analog movement on the left stick replacing WASD. God I don't get PC gamers obsession with using the keyboard for action games and how "superior" it is. It sucked in 1983 and it sucks now. As I've said before, I'll grant you the mouse as an excellent aiming device, but never the keyboard.
How to reconcile the two? Dual shock in left hand, mouse in right. Try playing the PS2 ports of Half Life and Deus Ex that way, you'll see.
We're not, in this subthread, you were bragging about your resolution based e-penis. And I was trying to get it through your skull that even if you had 1600x1200 in 1997 that the majority did not, and still don't. And that the most common resolution today is still 1024x768, which consoles can match or beat.
I am comparing apples to apples, because there are games that simply will not run on my old computer from 2003, let alone one from 2000. Computers from 2000, 2003, and 2008 are not a unified platform but many different ones.
You got the folks that got machines that are good enough for flash games
The folks who might be able to a current game if they turn things down
And then you got the folks like the stereotypical PC gamer with two cards that eat up two slots each, and a half a dozen loud fans who spends more time playing benchmarks for bragging points on his e-penis than playing games.
All separate platforms, just like the PS2 and PS3 are.
If the games are the most important thing, then why the big fuss over "in one year my PC will have a better GPU than the PS3"? Because too many PC gamers care more about the hardware behind games than games themselves. Sure you can turn down setting to play new games on your old hardware, but then some forum guy will say, "you're not playing the game it was meant to be played at such low settings, why play it at all. You should buy 4 Freedonia F-force f00thousand cards and put them in a SLI setup."
I don't even have to think about that. I can just pick up the game and know I'll be playing it as it's meant to be played. No muss, no fuss.
Yes, I think FPS players would benefit from analog movement replacing WASD, because analog movement is more precise. I will grant that the mouse might be easier to use for aiming for some people without the learned ability to make fine movements with their right thumbs.
And how much did you pay for those?
I would, because I checked before making the statement. 1024x768 is at 48% according to the w3. There are a LOT of people out there with older machines.
Then why not blame the developer and not the console itself. Because there are devs who CAN make it work well. DX1 for the PS2 uses separate ammo so I don't know why the DX2 developers did what they did. They underestimate the console audience, probably like some PC gamers do.
I'll tell you why it changed...because jumping in Tomb Raider was not fun. It's difficult to judge a distances on a 2D screen which makes jumping puzzles frustrating.
Could be you and not the controls. Takes time to develop the fine manipulation skills. PC gamers are not used to doing such tiny movements with their thumbs.
You memory must not be good, you don't remember the hordes of hexagon WWII wargames designed by hordes of retired colonels. Or the hordes of D&D inspired RPG's designed by hordes of Gary Gygax wannabe's.