By you logic, Australia would be part of the 3rd world.
What has the 3rd world ever done to you to deserve that?
The term is indeed pretty flexible and highly political. Animal Planet has all these "animal cop" shows. Sometimes very hard to see the difference between a show in South Africa/England and the US of A.
Why do they not hire a lawyer for the marketing department and funnel every piece of communication through him. Then he gives the standard lawyer advice in any situation: SHUT UP.
Why does Apple even bother with this? Do they really think that nobody is going to complain? And for what? A few extra dollars? Australian dollars at that.
I swear the if Apple and MS were just to shut the fuck up for a month, their reputation would sky-rocket. Someone finds a "misplaced" prototype: SHUT UP. Someone comments that they replaced your software with their own because they don't like yours: SHUT UP.
What did Apple gain with the whole "stolen" iPhone business? What did MS gain by claiming Windows is the most secure OS when Google said they were going to stop using it? Nothing but bad press.
And now this. Is nobody at Apple aware that other countries have got something called consumer protection laws? That not every country in the world bows down (or should that be "bends over") for the almighty companies?
Just because you see your foot in the morning does NOT mean you have to ponder all day on ways to shoot it. Leave it alone, it has done you no harm.
That 0.01 is NOT taken from somewhere else. It is "generated" but generated from nothing. It is the air in the bubble and then it bursts. We had this long before, the great depression was build on it. EVERYONE speculated. And LOTS of money was being generated it seemed, but where did it come from? Nowhere.
You might have heard of the phrase "your ship coming in". Where does it come from?
At least in part from the old dutch practice of funding the sailing of a cargo ship by writing out shares. Anyone could fund some money to build/outfit a ship and would in turn get a share of the profits it would generate on its voyage. This was a long term investment as a voyage to the far east could take 2 or more years. It was a also risky, you could build a bridge to the far east out of all the lost ships (oh okay, you can't but it sounds dramatic).
Now say that I took a share of 100 florins (a shitload of money but a nice round number to work with). I watch the ship sail and hope that it will come back in 2 years time with a fat cargo of spices that will trade for a fortune. My ship will have come in. Or it will sink.
BUT this ship does not exist in a void. It will encounter other vessels. Say that six months out it has crossed the horn of Africa. A seriously risky part of the journey. It comes across another ship making its way back and this ship reports what has happened to Holland. What happens to my share? Well nothing EXCEPT that SOMEONE might be willing to pay me more then 100 florins for it because the risk of it failing has now been reduced. My share has increased in POTENTIAL value. Someone with 200 florins might buy my share. I get a lower but certain profit while that person will gain less of a profit IF the ship comes in but has a higher chance of it then I did.
Other factors can add or substract from this. Say that it has been a calm year at sea and I get news that dozens of ships are making their way back. The price of spices will fall. Less risk of no return but less profit. Or say that nobody has yet reported on my ship at all. Risk has sky rocketed that it has sunk and my share is without value. Might I sell it lower?
THAT is stock market speculation. Betting on the POTENTIAL value of something. The problem is NOT with the speculation itself. The problem is when the speculation starts to be based on nothing. Those ships need to build, to be sailing, to be buying and selling cargo in order for there to be anything to speculate on. And that seems to get forgotten.
The speculation is no longer about the chances of the ship making it with a good cargo but on the speculation itself. Speculators no longer follow the shipping news but share prices themselves.
Take the recent price drop of BP shares. Why? Because of the oil spill? The company makes 60+ million profit PER DAY! The cost of the oil spill are spare change. Yes it will hurt their bottom line a bit but it is really just the cost of doing business. There should be no selling going on because the company is at no risk. Without speculators, there would be no selling going on. No long-term investor would have a reaosn to sell. Not buy perhaps but not sell since selling when a stock is going down means you are loosing money. Only the short term speculators have to sell because they can't afford to simply wait out their investment and need their money now.
We have allowed the stock market and the banks to turn themselves into "THE economy". A bank should be a service provider that real business makes use of. The same a law firm or cleaning company. Instead they have come to think of themselves as the most important part, the very engine of the economy. It is silly.
Imagine this. A justice system is part of civilization right? But when you consider the justice system to BE civilization, I think you would not like the results.
Don't confuse the means with the end. The tool with the goal.
There is nothing wrong with speculation, there is something wrong with
It is funny, the free market caused the worsed financial crisis in decades that now has to be solved with the socialists means of having the taxpayer bailing out the free market and yet you claim it is the best system and needs to fixing.
Rampant stock speculation has NOTHING to do with the idea of investment that stocks were intended for.
License to print money? No, license to create a bubble. Rampant stock speculation does NOT create real value. That is why it always bursts.
Nothing changes. In the west we had exploitative companies as well, still have to some degree read up on EA, and we had the same kind of struggles. In the end it seems to have worked itself out maybe mostly because we didn't have silly people from other cultures giving smart remarks from their comfortable lives won by the hard work of others.
Once a woman choose to be tramped to death for the right to vote. Now many women her age can't even be bothered to vote. On a site were the vast majority is upper white middle class with high paying jobs for a minimum of physical labour you have a discussion about how good/bad foxconn is were people work 14+ hour shifts 6-7 days a week. Last time anyone here did an all nighter was to play WoW. In China you do 30+ hours because the boss says so and when you die, nobody is there to sue the hell out of the employer. Here? If the boss gives you a mean look you sue for trauma.
And of course the fact that 99% here have gadgets made by foxconn doesn't in the least inspire a bit of "justification" spell "B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T-T-I-N-G" alone the lines of 'well, any job is better the no job".
Just go visit the stock markets after the next crash. They are dropping like flies.
Remember, people like the poster you respond to ain't comfortable with the dark void of their soul. So they seek to make excuses. They sound hollow even to them, but not as hollow as the void.
Please tell me what the difference was. At least US allies tried to use all kinds of tech to change the human wave into something a bit more sophisticated. But the US poo-pooed those ideas and went for the human wave. Replace landingcraft with trenches and you had WW1 all over again.
Afterall, why wouldn't you add a rocket launcher to a camera? You know you would if you could.
And the 8 million civilians killed in Vietnam alone were all legitimate targets because you liberate a country by doing a holocaust.
The US does not do introspection. They are right they must be because else they would be wrong and that does not fit with the American way of thinking.
I always just get flashbacks on how BBS'es were going to change the world. There was a dutch innovation program, quite serious, started to have lots of "bbs" parts. X but with a BBS. Seemed very exciting back then, when I was young.
Now I see X but with social media and think "meh".
Will twitter be big? Sure. Same as BBS, the home page and lets not forget RSS. Are we now supposed to blog on our BBS home page and twitter the RSS feed?
As far as I know using Google Analytics is nothing more then including a strong on your html output that instructs the browser to get some javascript from google to record the traffic. The server itself never executes anything from google, it would be the same as if you included the google logo on your pages. Your server ain't involved.
For a 3rd party script to have an effect it somehow needs to be run or the server or have at a minimal its values parsed. Google Analytics (at least for small customers, don't know about big ones) is not installed on the server. I could not call their script on any of my servers despite all my sites use it because it is not there. Not only is there no connection to my database, there is no script. You can't call any URL on my site that even handles "utm_content". Unhandled variables just get ignored. Try it with slashdot. Add "&slashdotters=weenies" to the url and nothing whatsoever will happen.
What is most likely is that this is some ADVERTISING script (GA isn't used for advertising but tracking for the site owner) that is used and that has its own installation including database access for some reason or at least can be made to access the database. Websites ain't magic. I can't just replace "op=reply" in the slashdot url with an SQL command and expect a result. It must be a variable that is used in a query. GRANTED, it could be the case where every query is logged into a database straight without sanitation (did you remember to think of this oh you mighty logger of all data?) but that is silly (and very common).
A bug in Google Analytics would affect Google but not endusers.
A bug in an other script that you have to install COULD affect you. Doubleclick (owned by Google) might work that way.
Remember, javascript rarely runs on the server and therefor can't affect the server.
So when my wife SMS'es me after my monthly duty and I head downstairs for a bear, she is NOT telling me "Dude, Nice Fuck"? Damn, what does she want from me. TWO seconds?!?
Irony is the Americans claiming they won the war of independence yet still speaking the queens English and then raping the hell out of it and telling everyone else their spelling is the correct one.
The Japanese have copied the Chinese characters but they are not changing Chinese, just the subset (the characters) they copied. Nobody is suggesting China should adept them, if this would even be possible.
So lets require every piece of software and every gadget to be tested just as electronics have to be tested.
You willing to deal with delay and extra costs? Thought not.
For one thing it would mean we would need REAL software engineers. The kind with real titles and real salaries and real accountability. It would change IT back to the IBM prediction: Nobody wants a computer in their home.
From what I know of Australia your icon should be a passport. Because every single last one of you must be somewhere else by all the aussies I meet around the world. If you sit in the middle seat of an aircraft, one person next to you will be from Australia/New Zealand. Same thing.
Runs for it.
Still I wonder. What makes you such globe trotters. Want to see the world or just want to get the hell out of that place?
All underage people are banned from drinking alcohol because some have problems with it.
All unrated games are banned in Australia because some have problems with it.
All handguns are banned in the UK because someone went on a killing spree with it.
AND the last one has worked because nobody has used a handgun since to go on a killing spree. The next one used a shotgun. The one before the handgun used an automatic rifle which have also been banned and since then nobody has used one either.
But what about porn movies then? Ah, exactly. If you are one of the few slashdotters to have a partner, film yourself. And I mean with the camera just on a tripod filming your regular style. Not exactly movie magic is it? Every single celeb that does a playboy shoot remarks on how much work is involved in setting up a shot. There is a reason for this, reality is not all that attractive.
Playing a game is one thing, watching somebody else play a game is another, trying to turn the tension/emotion from active playing into a passive experience. Impossible.
Take Doom. It seems simple enough, lets forget about the required process of raping the story (and the doom makers must have been pedophiles for raping such an underdeveloped story) but what is Doom? It is running around in a FIRST person view and shooting baddies. You could make a movie out of that. But why? We already seen that, it is the game. So the movie has to add things. Story... but story requires people in movies (well with bad writers anyway) and Doom is about being alone.
In the end the movie had all kinds of stuff added on to it that make it into "Not Doom". The more you make it into a standard movie, the more you get away from the game.
Books have the same problem. How do you do Hobbits? It is very easy for some pratt writer to come up with short people but does he ever think about how hard it is to cast for them? Noooo, not those fancy smancy writers. Story/setting elements that work in one medium can't always be transferred to another. The solo, silent experience of Doom doesn't translate into a "10 little indians movie".
Super Mario is even worse. The entire game is surreal with not a shred of real world realism. How the hell do you translate any of the game elements? Actually the movie made a good attempt but the references ended up closer to in-jokes then part of a coherent world.
Uwe Boll is perhaps the cleanest attempt, he takes the title of the game, some of the most basic elements and then tries to cash in on the connection. And it barely works.
The gamer is always going to be disappointed because it is not the game, the casual fan doesn't see the point and the non-gamer doesn't get the references.
Who is left as your audience? The sucker. Now there is one born every minute but they tend to be short of cash because everyone else is tapping them as well.
But I do pirate and I do buy. So where does that fit? I don't buy from companies that screw me anymore. EA, die already. Bethseda, get stuffed with your horse armor that needs a credit card. Turbine/Code Masters, same thing (latest Lotro expansion).
Sometimes I make an exception, for Bioware but I pirated Mass Effect 2 because the DLC for Dragon Age sucked donkey balls (which I did buy).
Frankly the game industry has managed to make piracy the only way to tell them that you don't like their business practices anymore. Nice game, lousy sales force. So how do you fight back? By hoping that the company goes bankrupt and the creative people start over under smarter management.
Here is a simple hint game makers everywhere: DO NOT SCREW WITH YOUR PAYING CUSTOMER OR HE WILL NOT PAY YOU.
So, people claim that these kids ain't addicted or have a problem. But they assault their supervisor and have one most of the most ill out escape plans in history. Really, what was their destination going to be? Home? Their parents send them there. No money. Well HOW ABOUT WALKING THEN? No, lets hail a cab (more likely a bus service with 14 people but I guess Americans never heard of public transport) with no money in camouflage gear...
The Three Stooges could not have done it better.
This does for the proof that there is no such thing as game addiction what "I will beat up anyone who says games make me violent" does for the "video games don't cause violence" crowd. Or Jeremy Clarkson does for any issue. He is such a twat that anything he stands for is automatically a lost cause because if he is for it, it has got to be wrong. If you don't know who Jeremy Clarkson is, he is part of a program that tours Vietnam on a motorcycle with american songs blaring in the background. It is a blessing he wasn't born in America, or he would have thought driving through Vietnam on an motor painted in the American flag with Bruce Springsteen blaring from speakers was a good idea.
Anyway, back op topic. Spoiled kids escape from military school. Cry me a river. Beat them harder next time. If you game for 28 hours straight, you have a problem. Constipation for one.
Sorry, China is old news. Vietnam is the new place. Oh wait, that is already old to. Just check were the outsources are moving next. There is always a new poor nation were unions are non-existent. Remember, once Japan was a low-wage nation. So was Korea.
Turkey is an odd nation. It is most free when it is ruled by its military leaders. It depends on military coups for civil rights... something that western nations, especially the EU can't grasp. They insist that the military plays no political role whatsoever (this is the situation in western nations) and that it is instead controlled by politicians. Rather then the army controlling the politicians.
But it is the army that is the guardian of the secular nation of Turkey as created by Ata Turk. He wanted to make Turkey from a has been semi-arabic throwback into a modern nation. The guy was about as enlightened as you can get especially considering the region. Make no mistake this guy was a visionary and among the truly great statesmen.
And Turks loved/love him. To a point. Turkey like so many countries is not all the same. Ankara is not the same as the rural parts of the country just as New York ain't the same as Utah.
And just as enlightened New York has to deal with voters from backwards parts of the nation, Turkey has a strong religious part in the country side. And when things change a lot, and Turkey has been undergoing enormous change, the religious tend to rise up and demand things slow down to stabilize the country (read: they don't want to give up their positions). Turkey the western nation, alley of Israel, secular and separate from the Arabic world. Well that causes a lot of upset. Among Arabic nations, Turkey stands tall, a clear beacon of light. Among western nations, it is nothing. A pathetic bunch of towel heads with a booming economy because going from 0 to 1 is a huge growth.
So what is they Turkish identity? Who are they? What is their culture? Is their culture that of Ata Turk? Or is it that of Islam?
That is what we are seeing right now. The AKP is the religious right wingers mobilizing fueled by the "freedom" emposed by the EU that the military can't slap them down. The military wants to be with the EU. The AKP less so, at least not on the terms that it has to be more western.
And yes, the recent incident has EVERYTHING to do with this. It is very intresting that at the same day, Turkey once again bombed koerdish positions. Very handy to have this incident with Israel to hide their own occupation and suppression and killing of civilians. Planned? Oh surely not. Especially not when all the people killed by Israel were known trouble makers with clear ties to Hamas. And all the ships that were "honest" protestors (bit suspicious to see a moroccan protest the occupation of gaza when no such protest is heard about her own country occupying the Sahara illegaly) there were no incidents. Just the turks.
Turkey is playing a game. Torn between the desire to be part of the EU but unable to qualify yet and wanting to be part of the new nations (Turkey and Brazil are trying to use their recent economic success to become more important on their own terms) and not loosing its own identity, it is making some odd choices.
Turkey also showes clearly why censorship is often not an all or nothing affair. The protection of the image of Ata Turk is part of the protection of the secular nation. So censorship of critism of him is to fight censorship. Because make no mistake, those that attack Ata Turk might right on a banner of free speech, but would tear free speech down first change they got.
It is like neo-nazi's claiming their have the right to freedom, but would deny it to anyone else.
Sometimes when you are against censorship, you got to be on the site of people who censor, because the people they censor are even worse. But that is not a catchy slogan.
Slashdot Mirror
By you logic, Australia would be part of the 3rd world.
What has the 3rd world ever done to you to deserve that?
The term is indeed pretty flexible and highly political. Animal Planet has all these "animal cop" shows. Sometimes very hard to see the difference between a show in South Africa/England and the US of A.
Sorry, the money didn't go to welfare, it went to the banks and car companies.
The can-do attitude was replaced with the "can we make a profit on it by swapping stocks around".
Why do they not hire a lawyer for the marketing department and funnel every piece of communication through him. Then he gives the standard lawyer advice in any situation: SHUT UP.
Why does Apple even bother with this? Do they really think that nobody is going to complain? And for what? A few extra dollars? Australian dollars at that.
I swear the if Apple and MS were just to shut the fuck up for a month, their reputation would sky-rocket. Someone finds a "misplaced" prototype: SHUT UP. Someone comments that they replaced your software with their own because they don't like yours: SHUT UP.
What did Apple gain with the whole "stolen" iPhone business? What did MS gain by claiming Windows is the most secure OS when Google said they were going to stop using it? Nothing but bad press.
And now this. Is nobody at Apple aware that other countries have got something called consumer protection laws? That not every country in the world bows down (or should that be "bends over") for the almighty companies?
Just because you see your foot in the morning does NOT mean you have to ponder all day on ways to shoot it. Leave it alone, it has done you no harm.
Close, but no cigar.
That 0.01 is NOT taken from somewhere else. It is "generated" but generated from nothing. It is the air in the bubble and then it bursts. We had this long before, the great depression was build on it. EVERYONE speculated. And LOTS of money was being generated it seemed, but where did it come from? Nowhere.
You might have heard of the phrase "your ship coming in". Where does it come from?
At least in part from the old dutch practice of funding the sailing of a cargo ship by writing out shares. Anyone could fund some money to build/outfit a ship and would in turn get a share of the profits it would generate on its voyage. This was a long term investment as a voyage to the far east could take 2 or more years. It was a also risky, you could build a bridge to the far east out of all the lost ships (oh okay, you can't but it sounds dramatic).
Now say that I took a share of 100 florins (a shitload of money but a nice round number to work with). I watch the ship sail and hope that it will come back in 2 years time with a fat cargo of spices that will trade for a fortune. My ship will have come in. Or it will sink.
BUT this ship does not exist in a void. It will encounter other vessels. Say that six months out it has crossed the horn of Africa. A seriously risky part of the journey. It comes across another ship making its way back and this ship reports what has happened to Holland. What happens to my share? Well nothing EXCEPT that SOMEONE might be willing to pay me more then 100 florins for it because the risk of it failing has now been reduced. My share has increased in POTENTIAL value. Someone with 200 florins might buy my share. I get a lower but certain profit while that person will gain less of a profit IF the ship comes in but has a higher chance of it then I did.
Other factors can add or substract from this. Say that it has been a calm year at sea and I get news that dozens of ships are making their way back. The price of spices will fall. Less risk of no return but less profit. Or say that nobody has yet reported on my ship at all. Risk has sky rocketed that it has sunk and my share is without value. Might I sell it lower?
THAT is stock market speculation. Betting on the POTENTIAL value of something. The problem is NOT with the speculation itself. The problem is when the speculation starts to be based on nothing. Those ships need to build, to be sailing, to be buying and selling cargo in order for there to be anything to speculate on. And that seems to get forgotten.
The speculation is no longer about the chances of the ship making it with a good cargo but on the speculation itself. Speculators no longer follow the shipping news but share prices themselves.
Take the recent price drop of BP shares. Why? Because of the oil spill? The company makes 60+ million profit PER DAY! The cost of the oil spill are spare change. Yes it will hurt their bottom line a bit but it is really just the cost of doing business. There should be no selling going on because the company is at no risk. Without speculators, there would be no selling going on. No long-term investor would have a reaosn to sell. Not buy perhaps but not sell since selling when a stock is going down means you are loosing money. Only the short term speculators have to sell because they can't afford to simply wait out their investment and need their money now.
We have allowed the stock market and the banks to turn themselves into "THE economy". A bank should be a service provider that real business makes use of. The same a law firm or cleaning company. Instead they have come to think of themselves as the most important part, the very engine of the economy. It is silly.
Imagine this. A justice system is part of civilization right? But when you consider the justice system to BE civilization, I think you would not like the results.
Don't confuse the means with the end. The tool with the goal.
There is nothing wrong with speculation, there is something wrong with
It is funny, the free market caused the worsed financial crisis in decades that now has to be solved with the socialists means of having the taxpayer bailing out the free market and yet you claim it is the best system and needs to fixing.
Rampant stock speculation has NOTHING to do with the idea of investment that stocks were intended for.
License to print money? No, license to create a bubble. Rampant stock speculation does NOT create real value. That is why it always bursts.
Capitalists like you are truly the black knight.
Nothing changes. In the west we had exploitative companies as well, still have to some degree read up on EA, and we had the same kind of struggles. In the end it seems to have worked itself out maybe mostly because we didn't have silly people from other cultures giving smart remarks from their comfortable lives won by the hard work of others.
Once a woman choose to be tramped to death for the right to vote. Now many women her age can't even be bothered to vote. On a site were the vast majority is upper white middle class with high paying jobs for a minimum of physical labour you have a discussion about how good/bad foxconn is were people work 14+ hour shifts 6-7 days a week. Last time anyone here did an all nighter was to play WoW. In China you do 30+ hours because the boss says so and when you die, nobody is there to sue the hell out of the employer. Here? If the boss gives you a mean look you sue for trauma.
And of course the fact that 99% here have gadgets made by foxconn doesn't in the least inspire a bit of "justification" spell "B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T-T-I-N-G" alone the lines of 'well, any job is better the no job".
Humanity, not found on slashdot.
Just go visit the stock markets after the next crash. They are dropping like flies.
Remember, people like the poster you respond to ain't comfortable with the dark void of their soul. So they seek to make excuses. They sound hollow even to them, but not as hollow as the void.
Please tell me what the difference was. At least US allies tried to use all kinds of tech to change the human wave into something a bit more sophisticated. But the US poo-pooed those ideas and went for the human wave. Replace landingcraft with trenches and you had WW1 all over again.
That will happen when you vote for it, with your dollars.
MS will get the message when Windows sales drop because nobody buys their bullshit anymore... looks at MS sales figures... not yet it seems.
Customer: I demand you do what I say or else I will continue to buy your products like the sheep I am.
Company: Oh look, a talking sheep. Anyone want shiskebab? Dibs on the eyeballs.
Afterall, why wouldn't you add a rocket launcher to a camera? You know you would if you could.
And the 8 million civilians killed in Vietnam alone were all legitimate targets because you liberate a country by doing a holocaust.
The US does not do introspection. They are right they must be because else they would be wrong and that does not fit with the American way of thinking.
I always just get flashbacks on how BBS'es were going to change the world. There was a dutch innovation program, quite serious, started to have lots of "bbs" parts. X but with a BBS. Seemed very exciting back then, when I was young.
Now I see X but with social media and think "meh".
Will twitter be big? Sure. Same as BBS, the home page and lets not forget RSS. Are we now supposed to blog on our BBS home page and twitter the RSS feed?
As far as I know using Google Analytics is nothing more then including a strong on your html output that instructs the browser to get some javascript from google to record the traffic. The server itself never executes anything from google, it would be the same as if you included the google logo on your pages. Your server ain't involved.
For a 3rd party script to have an effect it somehow needs to be run or the server or have at a minimal its values parsed. Google Analytics (at least for small customers, don't know about big ones) is not installed on the server. I could not call their script on any of my servers despite all my sites use it because it is not there. Not only is there no connection to my database, there is no script. You can't call any URL on my site that even handles "utm_content". Unhandled variables just get ignored. Try it with slashdot. Add "&slashdotters=weenies" to the url and nothing whatsoever will happen.
What is most likely is that this is some ADVERTISING script (GA isn't used for advertising but tracking for the site owner) that is used and that has its own installation including database access for some reason or at least can be made to access the database. Websites ain't magic. I can't just replace "op=reply" in the slashdot url with an SQL command and expect a result. It must be a variable that is used in a query. GRANTED, it could be the case where every query is logged into a database straight without sanitation (did you remember to think of this oh you mighty logger of all data?) but that is silly (and very common).
A bug in Google Analytics would affect Google but not endusers.
A bug in an other script that you have to install COULD affect you. Doubleclick (owned by Google) might work that way.
Remember, javascript rarely runs on the server and therefor can't affect the server.
So when my wife SMS'es me after my monthly duty and I head downstairs for a bear, she is NOT telling me "Dude, Nice Fuck"? Damn, what does she want from me. TWO seconds?!?
Try to install Windows on a powerpc. Thank you, thanks for playing. Retard. Since when is x86 all there is?
Irony is the Americans claiming they won the war of independence yet still speaking the queens English and then raping the hell out of it and telling everyone else their spelling is the correct one.
The Japanese have copied the Chinese characters but they are not changing Chinese, just the subset (the characters) they copied. Nobody is suggesting China should adept them, if this would even be possible.
A bit of skepticism is warranted when one of the people involved claims to get his data from aliens.
So lets require every piece of software and every gadget to be tested just as electronics have to be tested.
You willing to deal with delay and extra costs? Thought not.
For one thing it would mean we would need REAL software engineers. The kind with real titles and real salaries and real accountability. It would change IT back to the IBM prediction: Nobody wants a computer in their home.
Mostly because they couldn't afford it.
From what I know of Australia your icon should be a passport. Because every single last one of you must be somewhere else by all the aussies I meet around the world. If you sit in the middle seat of an aircraft, one person next to you will be from Australia/New Zealand. Same thing.
Runs for it.
Still I wonder. What makes you such globe trotters. Want to see the world or just want to get the hell out of that place?
All underage people are banned from drinking alcohol because some have problems with it.
All unrated games are banned in Australia because some have problems with it.
All handguns are banned in the UK because someone went on a killing spree with it.
AND the last one has worked because nobody has used a handgun since to go on a killing spree. The next one used a shotgun. The one before the handgun used an automatic rifle which have also been banned and since then nobody has used one either.
Hard to argue that it doesn't work, when it does.
Watching somebody eat cake. Not so much.
But what about porn movies then? Ah, exactly. If you are one of the few slashdotters to have a partner, film yourself. And I mean with the camera just on a tripod filming your regular style. Not exactly movie magic is it? Every single celeb that does a playboy shoot remarks on how much work is involved in setting up a shot. There is a reason for this, reality is not all that attractive.
Playing a game is one thing, watching somebody else play a game is another, trying to turn the tension/emotion from active playing into a passive experience. Impossible.
Take Doom. It seems simple enough, lets forget about the required process of raping the story (and the doom makers must have been pedophiles for raping such an underdeveloped story) but what is Doom? It is running around in a FIRST person view and shooting baddies. You could make a movie out of that. But why? We already seen that, it is the game. So the movie has to add things. Story... but story requires people in movies (well with bad writers anyway) and Doom is about being alone.
In the end the movie had all kinds of stuff added on to it that make it into "Not Doom". The more you make it into a standard movie, the more you get away from the game.
Books have the same problem. How do you do Hobbits? It is very easy for some pratt writer to come up with short people but does he ever think about how hard it is to cast for them? Noooo, not those fancy smancy writers. Story/setting elements that work in one medium can't always be transferred to another. The solo, silent experience of Doom doesn't translate into a "10 little indians movie".
Super Mario is even worse. The entire game is surreal with not a shred of real world realism. How the hell do you translate any of the game elements? Actually the movie made a good attempt but the references ended up closer to in-jokes then part of a coherent world.
Uwe Boll is perhaps the cleanest attempt, he takes the title of the game, some of the most basic elements and then tries to cash in on the connection. And it barely works.
The gamer is always going to be disappointed because it is not the game, the casual fan doesn't see the point and the non-gamer doesn't get the references.
Who is left as your audience? The sucker. Now there is one born every minute but they tend to be short of cash because everyone else is tapping them as well.
There is a reason it is called a LOCAL delicacy. Nobody else is stupid enough to eat it.
Now if you excuse me, my swallow spit soup with bull balls is getting cold.
But I do pirate and I do buy. So where does that fit? I don't buy from companies that screw me anymore. EA, die already. Bethseda, get stuffed with your horse armor that needs a credit card. Turbine/Code Masters, same thing (latest Lotro expansion).
Sometimes I make an exception, for Bioware but I pirated Mass Effect 2 because the DLC for Dragon Age sucked donkey balls (which I did buy).
Frankly the game industry has managed to make piracy the only way to tell them that you don't like their business practices anymore. Nice game, lousy sales force. So how do you fight back? By hoping that the company goes bankrupt and the creative people start over under smarter management.
Here is a simple hint game makers everywhere: DO NOT SCREW WITH YOUR PAYING CUSTOMER OR HE WILL NOT PAY YOU.
So, people claim that these kids ain't addicted or have a problem. But they assault their supervisor and have one most of the most ill out escape plans in history. Really, what was their destination going to be? Home? Their parents send them there. No money. Well HOW ABOUT WALKING THEN? No, lets hail a cab (more likely a bus service with 14 people but I guess Americans never heard of public transport) with no money in camouflage gear...
The Three Stooges could not have done it better.
This does for the proof that there is no such thing as game addiction what "I will beat up anyone who says games make me violent" does for the "video games don't cause violence" crowd. Or Jeremy Clarkson does for any issue. He is such a twat that anything he stands for is automatically a lost cause because if he is for it, it has got to be wrong. If you don't know who Jeremy Clarkson is, he is part of a program that tours Vietnam on a motorcycle with american songs blaring in the background. It is a blessing he wasn't born in America, or he would have thought driving through Vietnam on an motor painted in the American flag with Bruce Springsteen blaring from speakers was a good idea.
Anyway, back op topic. Spoiled kids escape from military school. Cry me a river. Beat them harder next time. If you game for 28 hours straight, you have a problem. Constipation for one.
Sorry, China is old news. Vietnam is the new place. Oh wait, that is already old to. Just check were the outsources are moving next. There is always a new poor nation were unions are non-existent. Remember, once Japan was a low-wage nation. So was Korea.
Turkey is an odd nation. It is most free when it is ruled by its military leaders. It depends on military coups for civil rights... something that western nations, especially the EU can't grasp. They insist that the military plays no political role whatsoever (this is the situation in western nations) and that it is instead controlled by politicians. Rather then the army controlling the politicians.
But it is the army that is the guardian of the secular nation of Turkey as created by Ata Turk. He wanted to make Turkey from a has been semi-arabic throwback into a modern nation. The guy was about as enlightened as you can get especially considering the region. Make no mistake this guy was a visionary and among the truly great statesmen.
And Turks loved/love him. To a point. Turkey like so many countries is not all the same. Ankara is not the same as the rural parts of the country just as New York ain't the same as Utah.
And just as enlightened New York has to deal with voters from backwards parts of the nation, Turkey has a strong religious part in the country side. And when things change a lot, and Turkey has been undergoing enormous change, the religious tend to rise up and demand things slow down to stabilize the country (read: they don't want to give up their positions). Turkey the western nation, alley of Israel, secular and separate from the Arabic world. Well that causes a lot of upset. Among Arabic nations, Turkey stands tall, a clear beacon of light. Among western nations, it is nothing. A pathetic bunch of towel heads with a booming economy because going from 0 to 1 is a huge growth.
So what is they Turkish identity? Who are they? What is their culture? Is their culture that of Ata Turk? Or is it that of Islam?
That is what we are seeing right now. The AKP is the religious right wingers mobilizing fueled by the "freedom" emposed by the EU that the military can't slap them down. The military wants to be with the EU. The AKP less so, at least not on the terms that it has to be more western.
And yes, the recent incident has EVERYTHING to do with this. It is very intresting that at the same day, Turkey once again bombed koerdish positions. Very handy to have this incident with Israel to hide their own occupation and suppression and killing of civilians. Planned? Oh surely not. Especially not when all the people killed by Israel were known trouble makers with clear ties to Hamas. And all the ships that were "honest" protestors (bit suspicious to see a moroccan protest the occupation of gaza when no such protest is heard about her own country occupying the Sahara illegaly) there were no incidents. Just the turks.
Turkey is playing a game. Torn between the desire to be part of the EU but unable to qualify yet and wanting to be part of the new nations (Turkey and Brazil are trying to use their recent economic success to become more important on their own terms) and not loosing its own identity, it is making some odd choices.
Turkey also showes clearly why censorship is often not an all or nothing affair. The protection of the image of Ata Turk is part of the protection of the secular nation. So censorship of critism of him is to fight censorship. Because make no mistake, those that attack Ata Turk might right on a banner of free speech, but would tear free speech down first change they got.
It is like neo-nazi's claiming their have the right to freedom, but would deny it to anyone else.
Sometimes when you are against censorship, you got to be on the site of people who censor, because the people they censor are even worse. But that is not a catchy slogan.