From a Nuke? From an ICBM? Holy shit, where do you live?
OK, you're an idiot. My bad for not gleaning that earlier and saving myself some time.
The point, of course, is that if Muslim fundamentalists can do so much damage with a plane, why would anyone in their right mind be comfortable with a nation of like ideology having nukes?
Your argument would also keep the Iranians out of commercial aviation.
Yeah, we (in the US) have a big problem defending ourselves. Really big problem.
There's a really big hole in the ground about ten blocks south from where I'm writing this that serves as a warning against your type of over-confidence.
But even if Fortress America was as impregnable as you think, I'd still be concerned for the other smaller, Western, democratic, Christian/Hindu/Jewish/Whatever, free-thinking, modern, nations against whose values the fundamentalist Muslim Sharia-following Iran is pledged.
No, we should undermine their society with the Internet, satellite TV, X-Men comics, other religious beliefs, Victoria's Secret catalogs, and whiskey -- and we are, but it's a slow process. In the meantime, while their mindset is still in the Dark Ages, we need to be able to defend ourselves, and their possession of nukes makes it a more difficult proposition.
That the US and the "west" isn't so special? That smart humans exist in other parts of the world? Yes, let us wake up indeed.
You can forgive us forgetting that nations that subscribe to Sharia law and treat women and opposing points of view the way Iran does might be medieval in other aspects of their "civilization" as well.
I wouldn't have wanted to see Saladin, Richard III, or Oliver Cromwell get nuclear capability. Similarly, I don't want to see Ahmadinejad with it.
At least it wasn't the usual "You'll burn in hell if you have an abortion!"
That may have been "the usual" about 30 years ago, but these days I have noticed the pro-life forces favor using science in their arguments, demonstrating clearly how very early life begins in the womb.
It hasn't seemed to be very effective, but you know how the zealots react when you start arguing with science...
OK, so I'm reporting this: There is not a book or piece of software distributed from a major publishing house that is not being pumped by employee user reviews on major online sites. This behavior is not the exception, it is the standard operating procedure for online retail, prevalent for the last 2-3 years. It is in fact a duty in the job description for just about any entry level marketing position.
I had thought that everybody with a modicum of online retail savvy knew this, but the shock and outrage that I'm reading here today would indicate otherwise.
Who's to say twitter (the obsessive-compulsive (and thereby consistently entertaining-for-all-the-wrong-reasons) Microsoft-hater who contributed this story) isn't a sock-puppet of some Google Marketing Coordinator?
Dude, the Internet is just the wrong medium for this. The Internet excels at "store and forward" content, on-demand content, interactive content. TV is best used for live broadcasts. Period. Full stop. End of conversation. If either your politics or your tin-foil hat prevent you from watching it on MSNBC or Fox, watch the C-SPAN feed.
Forget the With the net, the teacher can have kids look up information quickly crap. The teachers should just let the kids watch the friggin' inauguration and not be distracted. They can ask questions -- and have them answered -- later.
The choice between TV and the Internet is not one of a town crier versus radio, it's one of a helicopter versus an airplane.
You don't grant yourself rights. In the U.S., we have the notion that The Creator grants people "certain inalienable rights," and that's fine (unless you're an atheist, in which case I guess you're out of luck). The practical matter of "rights" is merely governmental quid pro quo. Your nation offers you something -- whether it's healthcare, or a high minimum wage, or paid maternity leave, or whatever, and also makes some demands on you: mandatory military service, restricted Internet access, driving speed limits, a ban on personal assault weaponry, etc. Every nation has a different mix, and you get to choose where you live.
Believe me, there are plenty of people in the US who would happily give up their "right" to an all-access Internet in exchange for their "right" to free healthcare.
I like the notion that pollutants in the air might dampen the effects of the "space storm." Then we could all say that we were doing our part for humanity by generating the largest carbon footprints possible. The general idea of pitting two different camps of Doomsday Cultists against each other in some kind of Texas Cage Match also holds appeal...
...and Robert E. Howard never journeyed more than fifty miles away from his hometown in Texas.
There's a certain school of writer (and reader, too, apparently) that craves that super-deluxe gritty no-don't-make-it-a-blue-beaker-real-chemists-would-never-use-a-blue-beaker work-a-day realism, and then there are those focused on the human condition, complex themes, and imaginative notions no one has ever put to paper before. Not saying the twain can't meet, but life is short...
If your sport requires special on-screen aids to understand what's happening it's probably overdue for a rethink.
That's like saying if your software requires a flashy box and a slick interface, it's probably due for a re-coding.
These TV tricks are pure marketing, designed to extend the appeal of the game to the very casual observer. Football has been extraordinarily successful at every level for decades, and clearly does not need "on screen aids" to be understood.
This is not the first example of such "dumbing down" of pro TV sportscasts. You may remember Fox Sports' "streaking puck" experiment a few seasons back during their NHL broadcasts. That proved a dismal failure (although it was a technical wonder at the time); the first down line-generation has proven a much more successful gimmick.
No, you know your sport is due for a re-think when its fans riot in the streets and generate massive amounts of property damage. Violence and Premature Death are civilization's long-established barometers of failure.
In all fairness though, that tutorial is a good introduction to the game - if you don't get along with it, you won't enjoy EVE.
The problem with the tutorial is that it introduces you superficially (there can be no other way, actually) to all the games that are Eve. You sign up to be a combat pilot and the tutorial still teaches you about manufacturing and mining and trade and legume farming and whatever the hell else you can do in Eve (and there is *a lot* you can do). And because the tutorial touches on everything a little bit, it touches on nothing to any great degree, and when it concludes the only sure knowledge with which you are left is that you are in space, alone, and going to die soon.
Now, in fairness, there are plenty of players who started out thinking they would be combat pilots and ended up as legume farmers -- and vice versa (unlike other MMOs, Eve does not lock you into a class), and maybe some of these actually changed their paths when they saw all Eve had to offer during the tutorial. But I don't think so.
Sit through the tutorial, learn the basics of how to make your ship move so you're not asking the stupid questions, then join a player corporation and ask the legitimate questions.
Here's the Dirty Secret: Around the nation there are profitable companies who have been operating "fat" for years, with bloated rosters of do-nothing personnel. You know this -- We all know this, we've bitched and moaned about it on this board and down at the local pub for years. The trouble was, it was just too difficult to fire anybody. In the litigation-happy workplace that was late 20th century America, a guy had to practically set fire to his cubicle with two secretaries tied to chairs inside it before he could be let go.
No More.
Now, all any large company has to do is mumble something about "recession" or "difficult times" and nobody -- employee, manager, or labor lawyer -- will blink twice.
we're jumping on them for doing standard market research.
Actually, I think we're jumping on them for being a multi-billion dollar company cynically taking miserly advantage of the naive Web 2.0/UGC culture. The next logical step would be for them to reward the really, really clever and marketable ideas with limited edition Google Logo pins and official membership cards in the Google Youth. Or maybe the "Google Yooth." Yeah, I like that...
I'd suggest such a club as a money-making idea to Google directly if I didn't think it would result in them tapping my phone and implanting a microphone in my dog.
I'm always amused how people -- who will defend to the death the word "hacker" 's right to still today mean what it did for three weeks in 1994, despite over a decade of evolutionary use to the contrary -- insist that emoticons retain any value outside of of a fat-fingered person's text messaging.
There is an art and a skill and a subtlety to the written word, something we developed over thousands of years of evolution. When I see our species reverting to pixelated cave pictographs, it makes me wonder whether stone knives and bearskins are next.
Lookit, I'm no expert on the topic, but as I recall the whole thing from when it debuted in '92, the use of the self-scrolling, self-encrypting gimmick was Gibson's toe-dip into a whole new creative medium.
The poem was about his mother, memories for whom were very dim, ephemeral even. Gibson selected this new "self-destructing" medium as a metaphor, to facilitate the poetry: Once you had read the poem, you could not go back and re-visit it, you had to rely upon your memory only -- as did the poem's writer, creating it.
Don't compare it to what Da Vinci did with fine art, compare it to what Ernie Kovaks did with the new medium of television. Now, you watch Kovaks' schtick with switchers today, and it all seems goofy and trite -- but back then it was obviously well though-out, never before seen, and geeky as hell.
Happily for modern civilization, the guys at hackaday.com - whatever the hell that is -- don't get much of a vote regarding what meanings of what words make it into the vernacular. When the guys at nytimes.com and OED.com reverse the meaning of "hacker" back to its hobbyist definition, give me a call...
I did not think there were many Linux hackers, as the opportunity to do widespread damage was so low due to the relative obscurity of the OS.
Oh, wait, you are using the term "hacker" to mean "computer hobbyist"!! I get it now...
umm, 1994 just called. She wants her jargon back...
Seriously, using "hacker" in this context is about six months shy of using "gay" to mean "merry." Like it or not, popular media and language usage has changed the word's meaning, and to insist otherwise is to insist upon being misunderstood.
...is that it is many games for one subscription. Since you can accrue skill points ("level up," such as it is) while logged out, the only real objective yardstick for "success" is how much money you acquire. And there are dozens of different ways to make money.
Arguably the least time-effective way to make money is PvP combat, but PvP is fun -- which is the measure of *subjective* success in Eve (or any game). You can fight, explore, use hacking and archaeology skills to complete specialized missions, manufacture (and/or smuggle) illegal narcotics, haul other people's stuff for profit, hire out as mercenary, put on a white hat and be sheriff in the solar system of your choice, build starships, space stations, or empires. But you can't do it all, or even a good fraction of it. And *That's* what the tutorial does not teach you... it exposes you to a smattering of everything, and more than half of what it throws at you on day one you won't touch again for a year -- maybe NEVER -- if you don't switch careers. Of course, unlike other MMORPGs, your career is switchable, and not defined by an artificial "class," but by the types of skills you learn. Want to play an "Enchanter with a Bazooka who Hides in Shadows"? Play Eve. It will take you a while to learn the mix of skills, but nothing is artificially off-limits.
I know some players who never leave their station. Make a point not to. They make their money buying, selling, manufacturing, and investing. They seem to enjoy themselves, their characters are "rich"... more power to them.
Other players aren't happy unless they are flying the biggest ships. Unfortunately, many of these do not take the time to properly develop the several tiers of support skills necessary to fly a big ship well, and they are routinely massacred by both players and NPCs.
Thousands of Eve players mine in High-Security space, watching their slow-moving mining barges orbit asteroids and extract ore. And although it's undeniably beautiful (my jaw dropped the first time I flew through an ice field and saw the starlight refract through a hundred giant prisms) it's still akin to watching paint dry for many. Different people, different game.
And many more play the game like a live-action wargame, working out logistics for massive fleet actions, managing teams of recon specialists, covert ops people, battleships, fighter carriers, small frigates, massive dreadnoughts, all in near-constant skirmishes to hold parts of the star map they've decided are theirs.
So, clearly, Eve is not WoW. And Monopoly is not Chutes and Ladders, which doesn't make Chutes and Ladders a bad game, just easier to play. But there may be *one* game within Eve that you enjoy, once you realize there is something there for everyone.
You know you will be justified in calling them a fascist
The implication here being that Fascism arises from the Right. Unfortunately, all the real rights-infringing jack-boot legislation in the past 20 years seems to be coming from the Left: Laws dictating where you can smoke, what you can eat, what cars you can drive, which guns you can buy, what media you can record on which devices, etc. all seem to emanate from the Nanny-State Entertainment-Lobby First-Church-Of-Gaia Left Wingnuts. The Right Wing rights infringement has been pretty much beaten down, due in no small part to the derision it has experienced in the media.
I have no problem paying to see performances and sponsoring artists is an old tradition which worked quite well during the renaissance with no copyright around
Will you pay to hear me read my novel? The next show is tomorrow at 4:30am Eastern in my basement. Bring your own coffee.
Well, no, of course you won't. You'll expect me to publish it online and make it available for free. Or you will wait until someone else buys it, rips it, and publishes it online for free.
Message: Artists whose work translates digitally are screwed. Best, really, to become a sculptor. True, few enough people will actually pay to see a gallery showing, but if they want to "own" the art they will have to pay the artist for the privilege.
Slashdot Mirror
They tagged it as "games." That should have been enough to tip off the Linux, BSD, and Mac OS crowd that it was not for them.
From a Nuke? From an ICBM? Holy shit, where do you live?
OK, you're an idiot. My bad for not gleaning that earlier and saving myself some time.
The point, of course, is that if Muslim fundamentalists can do so much damage with a plane, why would anyone in their right mind be comfortable with a nation of like ideology having nukes?
Your argument would also keep the Iranians out of commercial aviation.
From your lips to Allah's ears, Bunky.
Yeah, we (in the US) have a big problem defending ourselves. Really big problem.
There's a really big hole in the ground about ten blocks south from where I'm writing this that serves as a warning against your type of over-confidence.
But even if Fortress America was as impregnable as you think, I'd still be concerned for the other smaller, Western, democratic, Christian/Hindu/Jewish/Whatever, free-thinking, modern, nations against whose values the fundamentalist Muslim Sharia-following Iran is pledged.
No, we should undermine their society with the Internet, satellite TV, X-Men comics, other religious beliefs, Victoria's Secret catalogs, and whiskey -- and we are, but it's a slow process. In the meantime, while their mindset is still in the Dark Ages, we need to be able to defend ourselves, and their possession of nukes makes it a more difficult proposition.
That the US and the "west" isn't so special? That smart humans exist in other parts of the world? Yes, let us wake up indeed.
You can forgive us forgetting that nations that subscribe to Sharia law and treat women and opposing points of view the way Iran does might be medieval in other aspects of their "civilization" as well.
I wouldn't have wanted to see Saladin, Richard III, or Oliver Cromwell get nuclear capability. Similarly, I don't want to see Ahmadinejad with it.
At least it wasn't the usual "You'll burn in hell if you have an abortion!"
That may have been "the usual" about 30 years ago, but these days I have noticed the pro-life forces favor using science in their arguments, demonstrating clearly how very early life begins in the womb.
It hasn't seemed to be very effective, but you know how the zealots react when you start arguing with science...
I still want to see it reported and publicized.
OK, so I'm reporting this: There is not a book or piece of software distributed from a major publishing house that is not being pumped by employee user reviews on major online sites. This behavior is not the exception, it is the standard operating procedure for online retail, prevalent for the last 2-3 years. It is in fact a duty in the job description for just about any entry level marketing position.
I had thought that everybody with a modicum of online retail savvy knew this, but the shock and outrage that I'm reading here today would indicate otherwise.
Who's to say twitter (the obsessive-compulsive (and thereby consistently entertaining-for-all-the-wrong-reasons) Microsoft-hater who contributed this story) isn't a sock-puppet of some Google Marketing Coordinator?
Dude, the Internet is just the wrong medium for this. The Internet excels at "store and forward" content, on-demand content, interactive content. TV is best used for live broadcasts. Period. Full stop. End of conversation. If either your politics or your tin-foil hat prevent you from watching it on MSNBC or Fox, watch the C-SPAN feed.
Forget the With the net, the teacher can have kids look up information quickly crap. The teachers should just let the kids watch the friggin' inauguration and not be distracted. They can ask questions -- and have them answered -- later.
The choice between TV and the Internet is not one of a town crier versus radio, it's one of a helicopter versus an airplane.
I never granted them that right.
You don't grant yourself rights. In the U.S., we have the notion that The Creator grants people "certain inalienable rights," and that's fine (unless you're an atheist, in which case I guess you're out of luck). The practical matter of "rights" is merely governmental quid pro quo. Your nation offers you something -- whether it's healthcare, or a high minimum wage, or paid maternity leave, or whatever, and also makes some demands on you: mandatory military service, restricted Internet access, driving speed limits, a ban on personal assault weaponry, etc. Every nation has a different mix, and you get to choose where you live.
Believe me, there are plenty of people in the US who would happily give up their "right" to an all-access Internet in exchange for their "right" to free healthcare.
wouldn't the atmosphere lessen the damage?
I like the notion that pollutants in the air might dampen the effects of the "space storm." Then we could all say that we were doing our part for humanity by generating the largest carbon footprints possible. The general idea of pitting two different camps of Doomsday Cultists against each other in some kind of Texas Cage Match also holds appeal...
...and Robert E. Howard never journeyed more than fifty miles away from his hometown in Texas.
There's a certain school of writer (and reader, too, apparently) that craves that super-deluxe gritty no-don't-make-it-a-blue-beaker-real-chemists-would-never-use-a-blue-beaker work-a-day realism, and then there are those focused on the human condition, complex themes, and imaginative notions no one has ever put to paper before. Not saying the twain can't meet, but life is short...
If your sport requires special on-screen aids to understand what's happening it's probably overdue for a rethink.
That's like saying if your software requires a flashy box and a slick interface, it's probably due for a re-coding.
These TV tricks are pure marketing, designed to extend the appeal of the game to the very casual observer. Football has been extraordinarily successful at every level for decades, and clearly does not need "on screen aids" to be understood.
This is not the first example of such "dumbing down" of pro TV sportscasts. You may remember Fox Sports' "streaking puck" experiment a few seasons back during their NHL broadcasts. That proved a dismal failure (although it was a technical wonder at the time); the first down line-generation has proven a much more successful gimmick.
No, you know your sport is due for a re-think when its fans riot in the streets and generate massive amounts of property damage. Violence and Premature Death are civilization's long-established barometers of failure.
In all fairness though, that tutorial is a good introduction to the game - if you don't get along with it, you won't enjoy EVE.
The problem with the tutorial is that it introduces you superficially (there can be no other way, actually) to all the games that are Eve. You sign up to be a combat pilot and the tutorial still teaches you about manufacturing and mining and trade and legume farming and whatever the hell else you can do in Eve (and there is *a lot* you can do). And because the tutorial touches on everything a little bit, it touches on nothing to any great degree, and when it concludes the only sure knowledge with which you are left is that you are in space, alone, and going to die soon.
Now, in fairness, there are plenty of players who started out thinking they would be combat pilots and ended up as legume farmers -- and vice versa (unlike other MMOs, Eve does not lock you into a class), and maybe some of these actually changed their paths when they saw all Eve had to offer during the tutorial. But I don't think so.
Sit through the tutorial, learn the basics of how to make your ship move so you're not asking the stupid questions, then join a player corporation and ask the legitimate questions.
Here's the Dirty Secret: Around the nation there are profitable companies who have been operating "fat" for years, with bloated rosters of do-nothing personnel. You know this -- We all know this, we've bitched and moaned about it on this board and down at the local pub for years. The trouble was, it was just too difficult to fire anybody. In the litigation-happy workplace that was late 20th century America, a guy had to practically set fire to his cubicle with two secretaries tied to chairs inside it before he could be let go.
No More.
Now, all any large company has to do is mumble something about "recession" or "difficult times" and nobody -- employee, manager, or labor lawyer -- will blink twice.
we're jumping on them for doing standard market research.
Actually, I think we're jumping on them for being a multi-billion dollar company cynically taking miserly advantage of the naive Web 2.0/UGC culture. The next logical step would be for them to reward the really, really clever and marketable ideas with limited edition Google Logo pins and official membership cards in the Google Youth. Or maybe the "Google Yooth." Yeah, I like that...
I'd suggest such a club as a money-making idea to Google directly if I didn't think it would result in them tapping my phone and implanting a microphone in my dog.
http://www.wired.com/culture/design/multimedia/2008/12/pl_create
I'm always amused how people -- who will defend to the death the word "hacker" 's right to still today mean what it did for three weeks in 1994, despite over a decade of evolutionary use to the contrary -- insist that emoticons retain any value outside of of a fat-fingered person's text messaging.
There is an art and a skill and a subtlety to the written word, something we developed over thousands of years of evolution. When I see our species reverting to pixelated cave pictographs, it makes me wonder whether stone knives and bearskins are next.
I love art
Thanks for clarifying that.
Lookit, I'm no expert on the topic, but as I recall the whole thing from when it debuted in '92, the use of the self-scrolling, self-encrypting gimmick was Gibson's toe-dip into a whole new creative medium.
The poem was about his mother, memories for whom were very dim, ephemeral even. Gibson selected this new "self-destructing" medium as a metaphor, to facilitate the poetry: Once you had read the poem, you could not go back and re-visit it, you had to rely upon your memory only -- as did the poem's writer, creating it.
Don't compare it to what Da Vinci did with fine art, compare it to what Ernie Kovaks did with the new medium of television. Now, you watch Kovaks' schtick with switchers today, and it all seems goofy and trite -- but back then it was obviously well though-out, never before seen, and geeky as hell.
Kinda like "Agrippa."
It's still good to keep reminding people that there's another recent meaning though.
I guess. I still don't think it would be sensible to title an article about, say, a jovial developers' seminar as "Gay Time Had at Linux Confab."
There comes a time when you just have to let a word go...
Happily for modern civilization, the guys at hackaday.com - whatever the hell that is -- don't get much of a vote regarding what meanings of what words make it into the vernacular. When the guys at nytimes.com and OED.com reverse the meaning of "hacker" back to its hobbyist definition, give me a call...
I did not think there were many Linux hackers, as the opportunity to do widespread damage was so low due to the relative obscurity of the OS.
Oh, wait, you are using the term "hacker" to mean "computer hobbyist"!! I get it now...
umm, 1994 just called. She wants her jargon back...
Seriously, using "hacker" in this context is about six months shy of using "gay" to mean "merry." Like it or not, popular media and language usage has changed the word's meaning, and to insist otherwise is to insist upon being misunderstood.
...is that it is many games for one subscription. Since you can accrue skill points ("level up," such as it is) while logged out, the only real objective yardstick for "success" is how much money you acquire. And there are dozens of different ways to make money.
Arguably the least time-effective way to make money is PvP combat, but PvP is fun -- which is the measure of *subjective* success in Eve (or any game). You can fight, explore, use hacking and archaeology skills to complete specialized missions, manufacture (and/or smuggle) illegal narcotics, haul other people's stuff for profit, hire out as mercenary, put on a white hat and be sheriff in the solar system of your choice, build starships, space stations, or empires. But you can't do it all, or even a good fraction of it. And *That's* what the tutorial does not teach you... it exposes you to a smattering of everything, and more than half of what it throws at you on day one you won't touch again for a year -- maybe NEVER -- if you don't switch careers. Of course, unlike other MMORPGs, your career is switchable, and not defined by an artificial "class," but by the types of skills you learn. Want to play an "Enchanter with a Bazooka who Hides in Shadows"? Play Eve. It will take you a while to learn the mix of skills, but nothing is artificially off-limits.
I know some players who never leave their station. Make a point not to. They make their money buying, selling, manufacturing, and investing. They seem to enjoy themselves, their characters are "rich"... more power to them.
Other players aren't happy unless they are flying the biggest ships. Unfortunately, many of these do not take the time to properly develop the several tiers of support skills necessary to fly a big ship well, and they are routinely massacred by both players and NPCs.
Thousands of Eve players mine in High-Security space, watching their slow-moving mining barges orbit asteroids and extract ore. And although it's undeniably beautiful (my jaw dropped the first time I flew through an ice field and saw the starlight refract through a hundred giant prisms) it's still akin to watching paint dry for many. Different people, different game.
And many more play the game like a live-action wargame, working out logistics for massive fleet actions, managing teams of recon specialists, covert ops people, battleships, fighter carriers, small frigates, massive dreadnoughts, all in near-constant skirmishes to hold parts of the star map they've decided are theirs.
So, clearly, Eve is not WoW. And Monopoly is not Chutes and Ladders, which doesn't make Chutes and Ladders a bad game, just easier to play. But there may be *one* game within Eve that you enjoy, once you realize there is something there for everyone.
You know you will be justified in calling them a fascist
The implication here being that Fascism arises from the Right. Unfortunately, all the real rights-infringing jack-boot legislation in the past 20 years seems to be coming from the Left: Laws dictating where you can smoke, what you can eat, what cars you can drive, which guns you can buy, what media you can record on which devices, etc. all seem to emanate from the Nanny-State Entertainment-Lobby First-Church-Of-Gaia Left Wingnuts. The Right Wing rights infringement has been pretty much beaten down, due in no small part to the derision it has experienced in the media.
I have no problem paying to see performances and sponsoring artists is an old tradition which worked quite well during the renaissance with no copyright around
Will you pay to hear me read my novel? The next show is tomorrow at 4:30am Eastern in my basement. Bring your own coffee.
Well, no, of course you won't. You'll expect me to publish it online and make it available for free. Or you will wait until someone else buys it, rips it, and publishes it online for free.
Message: Artists whose work translates digitally are screwed. Best, really, to become a sculptor. True, few enough people will actually pay to see a gallery showing, but if they want to "own" the art they will have to pay the artist for the privilege.