"But overall, I think it kind of detracts from the original point of the game... to just hop in, "run and gun", and have a good time. Now I'm made to feel like I'm supposed to be regularly managing my inventory "backpack" and thinking carefully about what I want to swap and what I'd be better off hanging onto. That's more the arena of an RPG, isn't it?"
"I find Dead Ringer Spys are effective if you're looking to build up a good kill death ratio, but for actually accomplishing objectives and helping your team out the default set is better."
Can you explain that? I'm seriously curious how that works.
I recommend Y tries listening to music, podcasts, or audiobooks instead of MSNBC. No doubt someone would feel better about life and the world if someone wasn't fed a constant stream of stress-inducing, breathless, bad news. Hey, someone can listen to whatever someone wants--it's a free country--but that's my suggestion.
As for sports, well, watching less of it probably wouldn't hurt--could it be considered an addiction to some extent? Doesn't the NHL have games online, though? The NCAA and NFL are just as greedy as the RIAA and MPAA and Comcast, et al, though. Personally, I find their attitudes so distasteful that I don't enjoy them anymore. They want to suck up as much of their fans' money as humanly possible, and they do everything they can to fuel the addictions to their media. Unplugging cold turkey might be the healthiest thing one could do.
If they can't get their fixes from over-the-air broadcasts, then I guess they have two choices: a) wean themselves off the constant news and sports; b) resubscribe to cable.
I'm as bad about this as anyone, but we'd all be better off if we did less vicarious living and more real living.
But an interesting counterpoint is that the cable TV model is fundamentally broken. Subscribers pay far more than the cost to provide the service from the cable office to the wall socket--they pay money that goes to the companies that own the channels--but they are still fed commercials.
The whole point of ad-supported TV is that, as with over-the-air broadcast networks since the beginning, the commercials finance the programming. But cable networks aren't satisfied with that--they want more and more money, so they sell commercials and charge subscribers, too. They want to have their cake, eat it, and have some pie and eat it, too. It's a never-ending, greed-fueled hunger for infinite growth. It's unsustainable; but rather than accept that fact, the megacorps resort to harsher and greedier measures to try to extract more and more money from the public. They're just never satisfied.
Honestly, I'm surprised that they still sell DVDs of movies and TV shows, because that is a one-time sale. I imagine that in 5-10 years, as Internet connections become faster, they will become reluctant to offer one-time sales of anything, instead opting for only rentals with short viewing windows.
So, given the unending greed and corruption of media conglomerates and the government agencies that cater to their every whim, what is John Q. Public to do? He can a) give them what they want: more and more of his hard-earned money, while receiving less and poorer-quality and more expensive services; or b) abstain from their content entirely; or c) use alternative means of acquiring their content. Is option C illegal? Perhaps. Are the relevant laws that protect the greedy corporations at the expense of the citizens of the nation ethical or moral? Perhaps not. Is the government that passes such laws still beholden to its citizens, or to said corporations? Is it still possible for its citizens to effect reform against the wishes of the corporations? If it's not possible, then is civil disobedience immoral? If the corporations are acting unethically and immorally, is it wrong to use technical measures to counter their undermining of the Constitution?
I agree with you that we should all spend less time watching TV and more time doing productive things in our lives--myself included--but these are still valid questions. At what point do we, being powerless to legislatively oppose the greedy, immoral, unethical media corporations, workaround their evil by using the technical measures that are--at the moment--available to us?
I think the basic point is that Microsoft is constantly obsoleting development tools, requiring upgrades to remain relevant, just like they obsolete software like Office and Windows itself, requiring upgrades, all of which forces the purchasing of new licenses for minor upgrades and changes--some of which aren't even improvements.
Compared to FOSS, which, by and large, doesn't force costly upgrades to remain useful and relevant and secure, and is much more self-sustainable, Microsoft software and tools are a treadmill leading to a giant money pit. What's so sad is how many developers and businesses hop on the treadmill and jump in willingly, like mindless Lemmings who can only comprehend the status quo--or are bribed into keeping it.
He was caught using illegal drugs and then lied to the police repeatedly. What do you expect? Why do you have such sympathy for him? If he was truly mentally ill to the point where he "didn't know what he was doing," then it wasn't the police officer's job to diagnose that. I think it's unlikely, though, that he was so schizophrenic that he honestly thought he was a Russian immigrant who couldn't count in English. That sounds like lying to me.
So your argument is that Microsoft intentionally periodically obsoletes languages in order to make money? Am I reading this correctly?
You do understand that:
Pretty much every commercial MS developer already has an MSDN license, which (minimally) gives them access to the latest development languages, SDKs, and tools.
You do understand that:
MSDN licenses cost a lot of money. Were it not for the constant churn, developers wouldn't need MSDN subscriptions, and could save a a lot of money.
That doesn't sound like government, it sounds like privatization. That could be a dangerous idea. Imagine if you had to subscribe to police services, for example. And it'd be really bad if the local police went bankrupt and left a town without police.
Who would decide which elected officials should have their voters...punished? Besides, we vote for lots of officials who then go against their campaign promises or ignore their electorate's wishes. Then what? People aren't allowed to vote anymore?
And without secret votes, powerful and evil groups could force people to vote a certain way. Haven't we been through that before?
The only options available for AT&T and Comcast (two high-profile examples) were Main Menu and the 800 number itself, and the Comcast ones were disabled, too.
"The problem is, tomorrow we won't be happy with the same old video we used to stream, we are going to want a super high-def version with 8 channel stereo sound and in-line twitter commentary plus it will have to update our facebook status every time we pause it to go to the bathroom... And then we will be back to streaming at 100% capacity again, wondering when the next leap in networking will let us do block downloads again."
Slippery slope fallacy. Probably some hasty generalization too.
It's true that bandwidth will always end up being used eventually, but that doesn't mean that these specific use cases would balloon to use the same fraction they use now, were the Internet as a whole to be upgraded as he says.
I suspect that there are many overpaid fat cat bureaucrats, but that they are vastly outnumbered by the legions you mention. But even though they may be a small minority, there are still plenty of them.
Leaving aside the tone of and extreme, unsupported claims of your post, you qualified the whole thing by saying that your wife works for a large group.
None of that is true for self-employed doctors or smaller groups.
Where would you draw the line? Recording who votes for which candidates who vote for what laws which establish agencies who damage property? Even aside from the secrecy of votes, that's too complex and too prone to mistakes.
As far as I have seen, it already does this. When I upgraded, it told me that SkipScreenAMO and Evernote wouldn't work after the upgrade, and I had the option to cancel.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, because friends don't let friends use AT&T...
I'm glad you're not my "friend".
...Yeah, let's wait until no freedom is left before we demand freedom...
The **AAs sure do have you on a short leash.
Silly AC, karma is for registered users!
"But overall, I think it kind of detracts from the original point of the game ... to just hop in, "run and gun", and have a good time. Now I'm made to feel like I'm supposed to be regularly managing my inventory "backpack" and thinking carefully about what I want to swap and what I'd be better off hanging onto. That's more the arena of an RPG, isn't it?"
I agree completely.
"I find Dead Ringer Spys are effective if you're looking to build up a good kill death ratio, but for actually accomplishing objectives and helping your team out the default set is better."
Can you explain that? I'm seriously curious how that works.
I reject your new punctuation, sir, and your sig which promotes it.
I recommend Y tries listening to music, podcasts, or audiobooks instead of MSNBC. No doubt someone would feel better about life and the world if someone wasn't fed a constant stream of stress-inducing, breathless, bad news. Hey, someone can listen to whatever someone wants--it's a free country--but that's my suggestion.
As for sports, well, watching less of it probably wouldn't hurt--could it be considered an addiction to some extent? Doesn't the NHL have games online, though? The NCAA and NFL are just as greedy as the RIAA and MPAA and Comcast, et al, though. Personally, I find their attitudes so distasteful that I don't enjoy them anymore. They want to suck up as much of their fans' money as humanly possible, and they do everything they can to fuel the addictions to their media. Unplugging cold turkey might be the healthiest thing one could do.
I hate the idea of paying real money for imaginary things. Eventually people figure it out and come to hate it too. Or they run out of money.
It's a shame to see another basically-fun game be turned into a grind-farm with emphasis on acquiring items rather than actually playing the game.
Ugh. It's like everything on the Internet is going down the tubes.
If they can't get their fixes from over-the-air broadcasts, then I guess they have two choices: a) wean themselves off the constant news and sports; b) resubscribe to cable.
I'm as bad about this as anyone, but we'd all be better off if we did less vicarious living and more real living.
You have a point.
But an interesting counterpoint is that the cable TV model is fundamentally broken. Subscribers pay far more than the cost to provide the service from the cable office to the wall socket--they pay money that goes to the companies that own the channels--but they are still fed commercials.
The whole point of ad-supported TV is that, as with over-the-air broadcast networks since the beginning, the commercials finance the programming. But cable networks aren't satisfied with that--they want more and more money, so they sell commercials and charge subscribers, too. They want to have their cake, eat it, and have some pie and eat it, too. It's a never-ending, greed-fueled hunger for infinite growth. It's unsustainable; but rather than accept that fact, the megacorps resort to harsher and greedier measures to try to extract more and more money from the public. They're just never satisfied.
Honestly, I'm surprised that they still sell DVDs of movies and TV shows, because that is a one-time sale. I imagine that in 5-10 years, as Internet connections become faster, they will become reluctant to offer one-time sales of anything, instead opting for only rentals with short viewing windows.
So, given the unending greed and corruption of media conglomerates and the government agencies that cater to their every whim, what is John Q. Public to do? He can a) give them what they want: more and more of his hard-earned money, while receiving less and poorer-quality and more expensive services; or b) abstain from their content entirely; or c) use alternative means of acquiring their content. Is option C illegal? Perhaps. Are the relevant laws that protect the greedy corporations at the expense of the citizens of the nation ethical or moral? Perhaps not. Is the government that passes such laws still beholden to its citizens, or to said corporations? Is it still possible for its citizens to effect reform against the wishes of the corporations? If it's not possible, then is civil disobedience immoral? If the corporations are acting unethically and immorally, is it wrong to use technical measures to counter their undermining of the Constitution?
I agree with you that we should all spend less time watching TV and more time doing productive things in our lives--myself included--but these are still valid questions. At what point do we, being powerless to legislatively oppose the greedy, immoral, unethical media corporations, workaround their evil by using the technical measures that are--at the moment--available to us?
Hm. Well, .NET isn't a language, of course.
I think the basic point is that Microsoft is constantly obsoleting development tools, requiring upgrades to remain relevant, just like they obsolete software like Office and Windows itself, requiring upgrades, all of which forces the purchasing of new licenses for minor upgrades and changes--some of which aren't even improvements.
Compared to FOSS, which, by and large, doesn't force costly upgrades to remain useful and relevant and secure, and is much more self-sustainable, Microsoft software and tools are a treadmill leading to a giant money pit. What's so sad is how many developers and businesses hop on the treadmill and jump in willingly, like mindless Lemmings who can only comprehend the status quo--or are bribed into keeping it.
He was caught using illegal drugs and then lied to the police repeatedly. What do you expect? Why do you have such sympathy for him? If he was truly mentally ill to the point where he "didn't know what he was doing," then it wasn't the police officer's job to diagnose that. I think it's unlikely, though, that he was so schizophrenic that he honestly thought he was a Russian immigrant who couldn't count in English. That sounds like lying to me.
So your argument is that Microsoft intentionally periodically obsoletes languages in order to make money? Am I reading this correctly?
You do understand that:
Pretty much every commercial MS developer already has an MSDN license, which (minimally) gives them access to the latest development languages, SDKs, and tools.
You do understand that:
MSDN licenses cost a lot of money. Were it not for the constant churn, developers wouldn't need MSDN subscriptions, and could save a a lot of money.
That doesn't sound like government, it sounds like privatization. That could be a dangerous idea. Imagine if you had to subscribe to police services, for example. And it'd be really bad if the local police went bankrupt and left a town without police.
Who would decide which elected officials should have their voters...punished? Besides, we vote for lots of officials who then go against their campaign promises or ignore their electorate's wishes. Then what? People aren't allowed to vote anymore?
And without secret votes, powerful and evil groups could force people to vote a certain way. Haven't we been through that before?
Someone, please.
That's interesting. I wonder if that testing is automated or if people have to do it.
The only options available for AT&T and Comcast (two high-profile examples) were Main Menu and the 800 number itself, and the Comcast ones were disabled, too.
"The problem is, tomorrow we won't be happy with the same old video we used to stream, we are going to want a super high-def version with 8 channel stereo sound and in-line twitter commentary plus it will have to update our facebook status every time we pause it to go to the bathroom... And then we will be back to streaming at 100% capacity again, wondering when the next leap in networking will let us do block downloads again."
Slippery slope fallacy. Probably some hasty generalization too.
It's true that bandwidth will always end up being used eventually, but that doesn't mean that these specific use cases would balloon to use the same fraction they use now, were the Internet as a whole to be upgraded as he says.
I suspect that there are many overpaid fat cat bureaucrats, but that they are vastly outnumbered by the legions you mention. But even though they may be a small minority, there are still plenty of them.
Leaving aside the tone of and extreme, unsupported claims of your post, you qualified the whole thing by saying that your wife works for a large group.
None of that is true for self-employed doctors or smaller groups.
The system is fundamentally broken.
Where would you draw the line? Recording who votes for which candidates who vote for what laws which establish agencies who damage property? Even aside from the secrecy of votes, that's too complex and too prone to mistakes.
Let us know if you find out. Sounds interesting.
As far as I have seen, it already does this. When I upgraded, it told me that SkipScreenAMO and Evernote wouldn't work after the upgrade, and I had the option to cancel.
Does that actually happen most of the time, or is it just an option?
Noteworthy fallacies:
Strawman argument
False dilemma