it totally and utterly disgusts me and I think it's really morally reprehensible
I think it's morally reprehensible to not separate an idiot from their money. If you don't get them to give it to you, they're just going to give it to someone else.
Now, I don't support fraudulent credit practices. But it's not like it's a big secret what the interest rates on credit cards are. If you don't want to pay the interest rate on a loan - whether it be mortgage, auto, or credit card, then DON'T TAKE OUT THE LOAN!
The only people to blame for racking up debt are the people who rack up the debt.** It's a free society, you get to make your own choices, and you get to be responsible for the choices you make, good, bad, or ugly.
** Exceptions for the folks who find themselves up to their eyeballs in medical bills due to some uninsured disease/accident. (well, partial exception - no exception if you could have stopped smoking and instead spent the money you WERE spending on smoking on health insurance instead.)
Why do you assume he's a rich asshole? Maybe he's just a nice, average, guy with a JOB.
buy his way into a game he should have worked hard at
Why should he have 'worked hard at it'?
This whole thing seems to assume that somehow grinding out levels is more 'impressive' than working in the real world.
it destroys the concept of a meritocracy, and replaces it with aristocracy.
And what is 'meritorious' about playing a computer game 20 hours a day? I'd say having a real job and then playing a computer game a couple hours a day tops is more meritorious. Just because the most productive thing YOU can do with your life might be working at McDonalds doesn't mean someone who has a job that lets them buy some gold pieces is an aristocrat.
Or maybe that's the real problem here - if you can't win at something by virtue of being the only person willing to play on your computer 20 hours a day, you've lost the only thing you can be good at!
hwever, there is no financial replacement for real skill.
Real skill? Are you kidding me? In an MMORPG? Name me ONE MMORPG where the top players are determined by 'skill' in anywhere close to where they are determined by amount of time the play a day.
But, it's much more effective the lower down the 'ladder of government' you are.
A few thousand emails in a day will definitely grab the attention of a state legislator.
And the nice thing about email is it's instant. If you have a good organization, you can very rapidly send a flood of email, and also very rapidly stop that flood of email.
Email is also better than phone calls because if you have 1,000 people call somebody, then you won't be able to get through yourself.
One of the exercises had us locating a site to build a business and we needed to have access to various utilities while avoiding residential areas and schools.
Well, AFAICS, it's out of respect for the deceased, even though, in practical terms, they're not in a position to care.
You don't not eat dead people because of the wishes of the dead people, you don't eat dead people because people who are alive want to believe they won't be eaten when they die. And if dead people get eaten, then people who are alive can't live life in the comfort of knowing they won't be eaten.
It's not a good analogy - because living people are GOING to die. Nobody who is alive has any risk of being killed for stem cells. We're already past the point where that COULD have happened to us.
So, are all the currently not-dead-yet embryos served by knowing that they won't be killed for stem cell research? Of course not - they're just embryos, and not aware of anything.
The vast majority of eggs fertilized outside of the natural process are fertilized for... surprise... fertilization treatments. Even most of the eggs actually implanted in the uterus die, and there are plenty left over that are not implanted at all.
So if you have a bunch of fertilized eggs that are going to die anyway, why not do something productive with them?
Not everyone's judgement is perfect all of the time.
Morally, I agree, once you have gotten pregnant, EVEN if you were on birth control, you've made your decision and should complete the pregnancy.
But while I find terminating pregnancies that could have been avoided with a little responsibility to be immoral, I also find the idea of the government trying to enforce that morality to be even more disturbing.
And lastly, sometimes, killing children is OK. Granted, I don't think it's ok to kill children in anywhere near the number of circumstances that most republicans seem to think it's OK to kill children (see: Iraq), but as a society we've accepted the validity of actions that will lead to the death of innocent people when there is a 'greater good' to be met. Given that we're willing to accept killing living, breathing children, I also have a tough time worrying about the destruction of embryos for harvesting stem cells, especially when we create and kill embryos all the time for fertility treatments.
Besides, a moderate approach would be to acknowledge that the issue is unclear, or unsolvable
That would be a moderate approach.
an... approach would be to acknowledge that the issue is unclear, or unsolvable, and that it is probably best to error on the side of caution.
This is not a moderate approach. If caution is 'towards killing babies', this is a pro-life approach. If caution is 'towards government invasion of a woman's control of her own body', then it's a pro-choice approach.
Either way, it's the same as saying "We can't agree, so we should assume I'm right in the meantime."
When you get down to it, aborting pregnancies is in general not desirable behavior. But, the government trying to force women to carry pregnancies to term is not desirable either, with various degrees of not desirable based on circumstance. (Forcing a rape victim to carry a pregnancy to term is probably less desirable than forcing a healthy 30-year old with a healthy pregnancy to carry that pregnancy to term.)
The problem is, while all of that is undesirable, which is MOST undesirable is not a statement of fact. No one has been able to put forth some sort of scientific basis for determining whether the hypothesis 'Government restriction of a woman's ability to have an abortion is preferable to terminating pregnancies' is true or not. So whether a given person believes that to be true or not is based solely on their own personal evaluation of which of their values is more important.
So what's better, letting a group of the population use the government to choose for everyone how their pregnancy should be handled, or letting each woman choose what to do about her own pregnancy?
1. Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment "free music" rhetoric.
Red herring. A particular website making money off of file sharing is not an argument against file sharing and more than one record company screwing over one artist is an argument against record companies.
2. AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.
See #1. Also, has nothing to do with file sharing.
3. Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
Red herring. Again, this has nothing to do with file sharing.
4. Illegal file-sharers don't care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
False on it's face - some certainly do. But even if you accept this as true, again, has nothing to do with whether file sharing is 'good' or not, just that it affects major and independent label works the same.
5. Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
This is a lie. If the average return on investment for bringing 'underground' artists to market is the same or better than the average return on 'bankers', then record companies will make that investment. To argue otherwise is to state that record companies are financially stupid, and would choose to invest their money in areas with a lower return, which clearly they are not.
Also, this argument is based on a misunderstanding of what an 'underground' artist is. An 'underground' artist is just one that hasn't had a record company publicize the crap out of them YET. I remember when Coldplay was an underground artist, for example.
6. ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
Seems like file sharing benefits ISPs.
7. The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth-it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
If #6 is true, then #7 must be false - file sharing creates at least ISP economic growth. It apparently also drives the continued creation of high-bandwidth internet connections. Probably not as much as porn though.
Further, the record companies don't create jobs, exports, tax revenues, or economic growth either. You could wipe them off the face of the planet, make them illegal, and just have artists sell their music online, and let consumers burn CDs for anyone who doesn't have an internet connection, and we'd have just as much music, the artists would have just as much money (maybe not the SAME artists, but artists none-the-less) and consumers would have more money to spend on other things, creating more jobs.
8. Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle- or higher-income earners.
People who can not afford CD players do not buy pirated CDs. Check. People who can get a song on their computer for free do not bother to travel to a record store to pay for it. Check.
9. Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
Sharing copyrighted songs is illegal. People share them anyway. Therefore, we must make sharing songs illegal so that people will stop sharing them?
Huh?
10. P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that
My father is a wise man. One of the things my father taught me at a very young age is that you should always put down the lid on the toilet. This is for two reasons.
Reason 1, having the lid down prevents things that you DON'T want in the toilet from accidentally ending up there - like toothbrushes, pets, etc.
Reason 2, whenever you encounter a woman in your life who insists that the seat be down, you can say ok, but insist that she always put the lid down. Then you've met her needs, while at the same time have successfully bent her to your will, preserving your fragile male ego.
There are a few reasons for this. One, commercials are actually informative. There are really new products and new TV shows and new other things out there that you get informed about watching commercials.
Some commercials are also entertaining.
And, I find that when I need to go to the kitchen or the bathroom or whatever, instead of just getting up and leaving during the commercials like I used to, I just pause the TV, and end up watching the commercials more.
Now, that's not to say I don't fast-forward through commercials - but that's only because you'll see a given commercial more than one time. So I tend to watch each commercial at least once.
AND, I watch a *LOT* more TV than I used to, since I can make the TV I want to watch fit my schedule instead of having to make my schedule fit the TV.
So when you add it all up, watching more TV, still watching commercials, DVRs probably arn't hurting anything, and may even be helping.
I have a friend who claims to be an audiophile - and he is - with sound equipment worth well over $40,000.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Assuming you're not......having $40,000 in sound equipment says about as much about your ability to judge sound quality as spending $300 on Celine Dion tickets says about your taste in music.
Although it was before the age of graphical MMORPGs, I used to run a couple moderate-sized MUDs. The problems are the same, the screen just isn't as pretty.
The answer to this is simple, and two-fold:
From a player perspective I can see how damaging it would be to even be seen to show bias one way or the other towards a class, guild, corp. or whatever the game terminology happens to be.
Yes, anytime your devs are involved in the game, the perception that the game is not fair will become widespread. And in fact, the game CAN NOT be fair, as the devs will always have an inherent advantage, even if only due to an intimate knowledge of how the game works. This is why virtually all MMORPG type games do NOT let their devs play.
From a developer perspective it must be quite frustrating not being able to enjoy the game in all its splendor (guild raiding, etc included)
A good developer enjoys developing the game, not playing the game. For the developer, the development IS the game. You are trying to create an environment that other people can play. If this is not the case, and the developer gets more enjoyment from actually playing the game than they do developing it, then they need to quit being a developer (or be fired) and play instead.
whilst simultaneously having to deal with legions of forum whiners moaning about how the Devs "dont know how the game works at the ground level".
A good developer has a thick skin, and realizes that the players as a group are selfish, lazy, uninformed morons. Players just THINK they understand how the game works, but their perspective is really 'What I want is too hard to do.'
That's not to say all player feedback is useless, but any good developer will develop the ability to sift out useful feedback from the piles of whining. The developer's goal is not to give the players everything they want, their goal is to create an enjoyable, fair, experience.
CCP has just plain made the wrong decisions here. Devs need to be prohibited from playing. If Devs would rather play than develop, they can quit. One or the other. Doesn't work when you do both.
Ultimately this huge controversy, whilst ultimately of little interest to me as an outsider, has given me a fresh outlook and sympathy towards MMORPG developers.
The sympathy is undeserved. CCP has caused their own problems. If you still feel bad for them, do you feel bad for the guys who run the NFL/NBA/MLB? Must suck for them that they can't play the league they've developed and have to listen to players whine all the time about how the league just doesn't understand how the game really works....
The problem is (as an Illinois native) elected officials in Illinois have a history of using their current elected position to campaign for the next one. A good example of this is the Secretary of State - the first thing the guy elected Secretary of State does is plaster "John Doe, Secretary of State" on EVERYTHING in the state. Tollway signs. DMV. Courthouses. Whatever. You can't go into a state building in Illinois without knowing who the secretary of state is.
And Blagojevich is a just plain corrupt governor. Sometimes I wonder if there really is a conspiracy between the two parties - the only reason Blagojevich got reelected, even though most people BELIEVE he's corrupt, is that the Republicans somehow managed to field a candidate that was SO BAD that corrupt Blagojevich was actually the better choice! I wish I had been paying more attention, as *I* could have gotten elected governor running against those two.
Anyway, this is just Blagojevich campaigning for Senate or President, using state dollars. You can see the campaign commercial already: 'When Blagojevich was governor of Illinois, he worked to protect vulnerable children from violent video games....'
By the way, watch the SUV that just goes on by through the EZ Pass at regular speed as if nothing happened. Just another day on the turnpike, I guess.
That's really the smartest thing you can do. Unexpectedly stopping is likely to cause a secondary accident when whoever is behind you, distracted by the explosion themselves, runs into you.
Slashdot Mirror
it totally and utterly disgusts me and I think it's really morally reprehensible
I think it's morally reprehensible to not separate an idiot from their money. If you don't get them to give it to you, they're just going to give it to someone else.
Now, I don't support fraudulent credit practices. But it's not like it's a big secret what the interest rates on credit cards are. If you don't want to pay the interest rate on a loan - whether it be mortgage, auto, or credit card, then DON'T TAKE OUT THE LOAN!
The only people to blame for racking up debt are the people who rack up the debt.** It's a free society, you get to make your own choices, and you get to be responsible for the choices you make, good, bad, or ugly.
** Exceptions for the folks who find themselves up to their eyeballs in medical bills due to some uninsured disease/accident. (well, partial exception - no exception if you could have stopped smoking and instead spent the money you WERE spending on smoking on health insurance instead.)
it allows some rich asshole
Why do you assume he's a rich asshole? Maybe he's just a nice, average, guy with a JOB.
buy his way into a game he should have worked hard at
Why should he have 'worked hard at it'?
This whole thing seems to assume that somehow grinding out levels is more 'impressive' than working in the real world.
it destroys the concept of a meritocracy, and replaces it with aristocracy.
And what is 'meritorious' about playing a computer game 20 hours a day? I'd say having a real job and then playing a computer game a couple hours a day tops is more meritorious. Just because the most productive thing YOU can do with your life might be working at McDonalds doesn't mean someone who has a job that lets them buy some gold pieces is an aristocrat.
Or maybe that's the real problem here - if you can't win at something by virtue of being the only person willing to play on your computer 20 hours a day, you've lost the only thing you can be good at!
hwever, there is no financial replacement for real skill.
Real skill? Are you kidding me? In an MMORPG? Name me ONE MMORPG where the top players are determined by 'skill' in anywhere close to where they are determined by amount of time the play a day.
But, it's much more effective the lower down the 'ladder of government' you are.
A few thousand emails in a day will definitely grab the attention of a state legislator.
And the nice thing about email is it's instant. If you have a good organization, you can very rapidly send a flood of email, and also very rapidly stop that flood of email.
Email is also better than phone calls because if you have 1,000 people call somebody, then you won't be able to get through yourself.
One of the exercises had us locating a site to build a business and we needed to have access to various utilities while avoiding residential areas and schools.
Building a strip club?
Well, AFAICS, it's out of respect for the deceased, even though, in practical terms, they're not in a position to care.
You don't not eat dead people because of the wishes of the dead people, you don't eat dead people because people who are alive want to believe they won't be eaten when they die. And if dead people get eaten, then people who are alive can't live life in the comfort of knowing they won't be eaten.
It's not a good analogy - because living people are GOING to die. Nobody who is alive has any risk of being killed for stem cells. We're already past the point where that COULD have happened to us.
So, are all the currently not-dead-yet embryos served by knowing that they won't be killed for stem cell research? Of course not - they're just embryos, and not aware of anything.
The vast majority of eggs fertilized outside of the natural process are fertilized for ... surprise ... fertilization treatments. Even most of the eggs actually implanted in the uterus die, and there are plenty left over that are not implanted at all.
So if you have a bunch of fertilized eggs that are going to die anyway, why not do something productive with them?
Birth control is not 100% effective.
Not all sex is consensual.
Not everyone's judgement is perfect all of the time.
Morally, I agree, once you have gotten pregnant, EVEN if you were on birth control, you've made your decision and should complete the pregnancy.
But while I find terminating pregnancies that could have been avoided with a little responsibility to be immoral, I also find the idea of the government trying to enforce that morality to be even more disturbing.
And lastly, sometimes, killing children is OK. Granted, I don't think it's ok to kill children in anywhere near the number of circumstances that most republicans seem to think it's OK to kill children (see: Iraq), but as a society we've accepted the validity of actions that will lead to the death of innocent people when there is a 'greater good' to be met. Given that we're willing to accept killing living, breathing children, I also have a tough time worrying about the destruction of embryos for harvesting stem cells, especially when we create and kill embryos all the time for fertility treatments.
In almost all cases, if no one does anything to a pregnant woman, a child will be born.
In almost all cases, an egg will die before becoming fertilized.
In almost all cases, sperm will die before fertilizing an egg.
In almost all cases, if no one does anything to an egg that has been fertilized outside of a woman, that egg will die.
Therefore, killing an embryo is OK, as if you left it sitting there it was going to die anyway, right?
Besides, a moderate approach would be to acknowledge that the issue is unclear, or unsolvable
... approach would be to acknowledge that the issue is unclear, or unsolvable, and that it is probably best to error on the side of caution.
That would be a moderate approach.
an
This is not a moderate approach. If caution is 'towards killing babies', this is a pro-life approach. If caution is 'towards government invasion of a woman's control of her own body', then it's a pro-choice approach.
Either way, it's the same as saying "We can't agree, so we should assume I'm right in the meantime."
When you get down to it, aborting pregnancies is in general not desirable behavior. But, the government trying to force women to carry pregnancies to term is not desirable either, with various degrees of not desirable based on circumstance. (Forcing a rape victim to carry a pregnancy to term is probably less desirable than forcing a healthy 30-year old with a healthy pregnancy to carry that pregnancy to term.)
The problem is, while all of that is undesirable, which is MOST undesirable is not a statement of fact. No one has been able to put forth some sort of scientific basis for determining whether the hypothesis 'Government restriction of a woman's ability to have an abortion is preferable to terminating pregnancies' is true or not. So whether a given person believes that to be true or not is based solely on their own personal evaluation of which of their values is more important.
So what's better, letting a group of the population use the government to choose for everyone how their pregnancy should be handled, or letting each woman choose what to do about her own pregnancy?
How do you verify that someone has been taking their birth control?
How do you prevent people who are not eligible to have abortions because they wern't 'responsible' from having abortions anyway?
Four years ago, I was trying to download "Shaolin Soccer" and all I got was 1.5 hours of drunken frat boys playing soccer.
1. Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment "free music" rhetoric.
Red herring. A particular website making money off of file sharing is not an argument against file sharing and more than one record company screwing over one artist is an argument against record companies.
2. AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.
See #1. Also, has nothing to do with file sharing.
3. Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.
Red herring. Again, this has nothing to do with file sharing.
4. Illegal file-sharers don't care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.
False on it's face - some certainly do. But even if you accept this as true, again, has nothing to do with whether file sharing is 'good' or not, just that it affects major and independent label works the same.
5. Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on "underground" artists and more inclination to invest in "bankers" like American Idol stars.
This is a lie. If the average return on investment for bringing 'underground' artists to market is the same or better than the average return on 'bankers', then record companies will make that investment. To argue otherwise is to state that record companies are financially stupid, and would choose to invest their money in areas with a lower return, which clearly they are not.
Also, this argument is based on a misunderstanding of what an 'underground' artist is. An 'underground' artist is just one that hasn't had a record company publicize the crap out of them YET. I remember when Coldplay was an underground artist, for example.
6. ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.
Seems like file sharing benefits ISPs.
7. The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth-it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.
If #6 is true, then #7 must be false - file sharing creates at least ISP economic growth. It apparently also drives the continued creation of high-bandwidth internet connections. Probably not as much as porn though.
Further, the record companies don't create jobs, exports, tax revenues, or economic growth either. You could wipe them off the face of the planet, make them illegal, and just have artists sell their music online, and let consumers burn CDs for anyone who doesn't have an internet connection, and we'd have just as much music, the artists would have just as much money (maybe not the SAME artists, but artists none-the-less) and consumers would have more money to spend on other things, creating more jobs.
8. Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle- or higher-income earners.
People who can not afford CD players do not buy pirated CDs. Check. People who can get a song on their computer for free do not bother to travel to a record store to pay for it. Check.
9. Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won't stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.
Sharing copyrighted songs is illegal. People share them anyway. Therefore, we must make sharing songs illegal so that people will stop sharing them?
Huh?
10. P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that
How are you going to take anyone to court after you agreed to an EULA that absolves them of responsibility?
I just have my two-year-old accept all the EULA's.
My father is a wise man. One of the things my father taught me at a very young age is that you should always put down the lid on the toilet. This is for two reasons.
Reason 1, having the lid down prevents things that you DON'T want in the toilet from accidentally ending up there - like toothbrushes, pets, etc.
Reason 2, whenever you encounter a woman in your life who insists that the seat be down, you can say ok, but insist that she always put the lid down. Then you've met her needs, while at the same time have successfully bent her to your will, preserving your fragile male ego.
Clearly publishing the entire work and publishing an excerpt are not the same. You fail.
I've had my DVR for over 2 years now.
And I still watch commercials.
There are a few reasons for this. One, commercials are actually informative. There are really new products and new TV shows and new other things out there that you get informed about watching commercials.
Some commercials are also entertaining.
And, I find that when I need to go to the kitchen or the bathroom or whatever, instead of just getting up and leaving during the commercials like I used to, I just pause the TV, and end up watching the commercials more.
Now, that's not to say I don't fast-forward through commercials - but that's only because you'll see a given commercial more than one time. So I tend to watch each commercial at least once.
AND, I watch a *LOT* more TV than I used to, since I can make the TV I want to watch fit my schedule instead of having to make my schedule fit the TV.
So when you add it all up, watching more TV, still watching commercials, DVRs probably arn't hurting anything, and may even be helping.
On Earth, Humans and Cylons still live side-by-side and are happy about it.
I have a friend who claims to be an audiophile - and he is - with sound equipment worth well over $40,000.
...having $40,000 in sound equipment says about as much about your ability to judge sound quality as spending $300 on Celine Dion tickets says about your taste in music.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Assuming you're not...
And since it's not plugged into an electrical outlet, it doesn't draw any power either!
Although it was before the age of graphical MMORPGs, I used to run a couple moderate-sized MUDs. The problems are the same, the screen just isn't as pretty.
The answer to this is simple, and two-fold:
From a player perspective I can see how damaging it would be to even be seen to show bias one way or the other towards a class, guild, corp. or whatever the game terminology happens to be.
Yes, anytime your devs are involved in the game, the perception that the game is not fair will become widespread. And in fact, the game CAN NOT be fair, as the devs will always have an inherent advantage, even if only due to an intimate knowledge of how the game works. This is why virtually all MMORPG type games do NOT let their devs play.
From a developer perspective it must be quite frustrating not being able to enjoy the game in all its splendor (guild raiding, etc included)
A good developer enjoys developing the game, not playing the game. For the developer, the development IS the game. You are trying to create an environment that other people can play. If this is not the case, and the developer gets more enjoyment from actually playing the game than they do developing it, then they need to quit being a developer (or be fired) and play instead.
whilst simultaneously having to deal with legions of forum whiners moaning about how the Devs "dont know how the game works at the ground level".
A good developer has a thick skin, and realizes that the players as a group are selfish, lazy, uninformed morons. Players just THINK they understand how the game works, but their perspective is really 'What I want is too hard to do.'
That's not to say all player feedback is useless, but any good developer will develop the ability to sift out useful feedback from the piles of whining. The developer's goal is not to give the players everything they want, their goal is to create an enjoyable, fair, experience.
CCP has just plain made the wrong decisions here. Devs need to be prohibited from playing. If Devs would rather play than develop, they can quit. One or the other. Doesn't work when you do both.
Ultimately this huge controversy, whilst ultimately of little interest to me as an outsider, has given me a fresh outlook and sympathy towards MMORPG developers.
The sympathy is undeserved. CCP has caused their own problems. If you still feel bad for them, do you feel bad for the guys who run the NFL/NBA/MLB? Must suck for them that they can't play the league they've developed and have to listen to players whine all the time about how the league just doesn't understand how the game really works....
They have made the decision to allow their devs to play the game.
*ALL* of the negative publicity is a DIRECT result of this decision. CCP has no one to blame for this but themselves.
This attribute is probably not found in sharks.
In sharks, the part of the brain that responds to altruism is replaced with a part that responds to well-aimed laser beams.
How did you find out the combination to my luggage?
The problem is (as an Illinois native) elected officials in Illinois have a history of using their current elected position to campaign for the next one. A good example of this is the Secretary of State - the first thing the guy elected Secretary of State does is plaster "John Doe, Secretary of State" on EVERYTHING in the state. Tollway signs. DMV. Courthouses. Whatever. You can't go into a state building in Illinois without knowing who the secretary of state is.
And Blagojevich is a just plain corrupt governor. Sometimes I wonder if there really is a conspiracy between the two parties - the only reason Blagojevich got reelected, even though most people BELIEVE he's corrupt, is that the Republicans somehow managed to field a candidate that was SO BAD that corrupt Blagojevich was actually the better choice! I wish I had been paying more attention, as *I* could have gotten elected governor running against those two.
Anyway, this is just Blagojevich campaigning for Senate or President, using state dollars. You can see the campaign commercial already: 'When Blagojevich was governor of Illinois, he worked to protect vulnerable children from violent video games....'
By the way, watch the SUV that just goes on by through the EZ Pass at regular speed as if nothing happened. Just another day on the turnpike, I guess.
That's really the smartest thing you can do. Unexpectedly stopping is likely to cause a secondary accident when whoever is behind you, distracted by the explosion themselves, runs into you.