Well, my experience with radeon cards is in windows, for the most part. Really, it doesn't matter because the fglrx drivers for X11 aren't any better. So unless Windows was developed by basement dwellers, your assumption is incorrect.
I based it starting at 10 years ago.. actually it starts with the ATI rage 128 which came out in 98(?), through to the radeon 5000 series. that 128 used to bsod windows on a regular basis with opengl applications (eg quake2). Years later, a litany of broken scenes, kernel panics due to unhandled exceptions (HANDLE YOUR DAMNED EXCEPTIONS!), tearing in video playback, completely broken support in non-game accelerated applications, etc, have kept me far far away. There's a reason adobe, autodesk et al, (and even the demoscene) stick with nvidia even though they want to move to openCL. It's not due to kickbacks, it's because their drivers work (for the most part).
I've had to service a lot of machines over the years (don't do it anymore thankfully), and when the owner complained of video problems, more often than not, there was a radeon in the machine.
I realize this is anecdotal, but my 770 (which is a 680 with higher clocks and faster ram) works fine with the 326.80 and 327.xx drivers. I do know some were having some issues with post 314.x drivers, but I didn't run into any.
that work reliably for more than the current crop of just released games, I don't care how much faster these chips are. I've had too many glitches with radeon drivers over the years to consider them again. Their opengl is horrible, and CCC is a bloated pos.
Uh yes they should worry, if they want autonomy as a business. While the current system sucks, replacing it with some remote company that doesn't give any more fucks than it has to to keep the contract is not the answer either. The 'cloud' is a not a magic fix-all no matter what the idiotic hype says.
Since when does consensus determine the truth of anything? I would side on open discussion because even the pros are human, and can make mistakes, and/or deliberately misstate things for emotional reasons. Open discussion prevents any one party from controlling the dialog for political reasons. Close it down, and one party gets entire control of the floor. The internet was about P2P interaction, and yes that includes dealing with people who don't agree with the stated position.
The term 'troll' has been abused so much now by free speech critics that I'm not sure it has any meaning than as a pejorative for someone who uses whit and sarcasm to score a good point. If science is about extracting truth from the ether, then this person is no different. He's correct, or not. His style is irrelevant. 'trolling' is not an excuse to shut down communication. If that's what popular science wants, maybe they shouldn't publish on the internet and give monologues on public television.. I'm sure all 3 people watching will agree, wringing out their emotional tampons in sympathy.
I'm sure your kid played it anyway. Either he borrowed a friend's copy or played it at his house.. or he downloaded it and played it when you weren't home.
Get some perspective and drop the ad hominem attacks. One can care about his kid and still let him play these games.
Then you don't have to continue playing, do you? Go play Hello Kitty Rainbow Island Adventure then. Why do we still have idiots implicitly calling for government intervention? With people like the author of this article, self policing systems like the ESRB are NEVER enough it seems.
Your prerogative of course. However, if you're too extreme, you'll just end up alienating your kid, socially, which is far worse than him seeing a few boobs, butts, or blood in a dumb game.
..and most European authorities consider many forms of individual expression or assertiveness to be 'anti-social.' So they ban/censor violent media, yet encourage their women to act like prostitutes (for great social justice!) instead of committed mothers, then wonder why their kids continue to grow up delinquent anyway.
Both cultures are loaded with stupid assumptions in this area.
A kid's innocence is a precious thing, and it's a shame to squander it too early. That doesn't mean I want to have my 12-year-old still believing in Santa Claus, but I also don't want him introduced to the ugly world of violent crime, drugs, and prostitution while he's still in kindergarten either.
The problem is that excessive fear mongering by authorities has spread this attitude to parents of 9-16 year olds. 9-16yos are not kindergarteners...and honestly, I never bought into the santa claus thing as a kid so they never had to tell me it was bs.. My sister, however, felt hurt and betrayed by our parents when she was told. I'm not sure feeding kids bullshit like that is a good idea.
There's an oft-quoted thing (which I have no idea is true) that you can't test a teenager to see if they're a sociopath, because most teenagers test as a sociopath anyway.
These days, just about everyone tests as a sociopath, if they answer the test honestly, as any expression of individualism, selfishness, or aggression is considered mental illness these days, needing, at a minimum, counseling. Testing done by schools and employers (where most of these stats probably come) is a shittest to see how far you're willing to roll over, not to detect truly clinical lacks of conscience. Naturally, being less thoroughly indoctrinated into the passive-aggressive, face-saving politics that pass for 21st century adulthood, they answer more honestly more of the time, giving you your stats.
I think the reason people say they're not fully formed people is because there are still things going on that precludes them from being able to make certain kinds of judgements because they don't yet have the experience and maturity to do it.
I think this is a method for adults to punish youth without rational justification. The neocons like to beat them with punishments. In contrast, leftists label them with a disease, or a passive aggressive ad hominem (he's not 'fully formed'!), that the subject has little control over. It's a way of shifting responsibility elsewhere in perpetual defense of an individual in order to take power away from him. A 16, or even 10 year old, who cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality has a problem much larger than any video game could possibly cause. Of course, try telling that to the doctrinal dragnets in power.
And I'm just not convinced that giving a 10 year old GTA is really a good choice -- and a bunch of years ago when my nephews were around that age and someone bought them a copy of GTA, I wasn't sure it was a good idea then either. Stealing cars and smacking down ho's wasn't something you wanted them growing up emulating.
I'm sure you had your 'outrageous' activities growing up, too, ones your parents thought would ruin you. Every generation goes through this process of rebellion from their parents'. It's normal, natural, and probably critical in the process of growing into adulthood, something today's society seems dead set on retarding. It seems like today's kids aren't allowed to do much of anything individualistic that's deemed 'anti-social' by blue ribbon panels somewhere in the skanky bowels of government (or the squeaky clean whitewashed halls of corporate social overreach).
In the 50s, it was music that had a beat, in the 60s, it was rock'n'roll, in the 70s/80s it was punk, metal, and 'violent' movies, and in the 90s, video games joined the list of scapegoats (Mortal Kombat). If your 10 year old boy can't handle GTA or other 'violent' games and put them in perspective, he was not raised to deal with reality. THAT is bad parenting. At 16, that's severely retarded maturation.
So artificial lockouts are a-ok, and it's the customer's fault for not bowing to the proper altar? Quit apologizing for apple. They don't need your help. Since when do people need 'authorization' to use their products how they see fit? Where is the authorization for apple to modify/reduce functionality post-sale?
Before you scream 'license agreement', the real issue is one of ethics. Well, if it's not ethical for the customer to use 'unauthorized' cables, then it's definitely unethical for apple to modify functionality post sale. This is a big problem that's getting worse as embedded computers spread to more and more devices.
so what? What he did was in reaction to what was done by washington. He did 'wrong' for the right reasons, unlike the fucks in washington who only do right for the wrong reasons. Quit crying about snowden. There are bigger fish to fry. Law itself has no value of those who write and enforce it don't also obey it.
I didn't mention anything about divorce rates by state. I only said that more than 90% of them are filed by women. It's not the men who are unwilling to commit these days. It also wouldn't shock me if your factoid was true. Traditional men have expectations that modern liberal men don't.. like expecting loyalty, respect, and regular sex from their wives in return for a steady, secure lifestyle. Many women, today would find it reprehensible and 'oppressive' if their husband made any demands on them whatsover. If she isn't holding all the trump cards, it's 'patriarchy.'
Fallacy. I never said I have trouble talking to women, nor do I. If the only responses you can muster are ad hominems, perhaps it is you who is deluding himself. Many of the liberal men I've known were pantywaists around women, some to the point where they'd behave like someone else when one entered the immediate area. It was truly a sight to behold; humorous. A few would even get irate at me or some of the other guys who didn't also alter their behavior accordingly. Guess who the women went home with at the end of the night. Hint: it wasn't the pantywaists.
Since you love to speculate about me, I will do some speculation of my own about you. I'll bet you were a guy she 'settled' on in a baby rabies or omg-im-not-married-yet fit after getting thrown off the alpha cock carousel in her late 20s. So the pussy that was pounded by a few dozen guys at parties, is something you have to work your butt off to get access too now. Congratulations sir. What a catch. When she inevitably grows tired of you ("I shouldn't have to settle!"), she will wait until alimony kicks in, and bail, cleaning you out. Woe unto you if children are present, yours or not, the state doesn't care. There will be tears and accusations, and you'll be in a world of hurt, not understanding why this is happening to you. Then you might remember reading this and realize someone tried to warn you....or maybe she's just a red haired (youtube U of toronto feminist) fat ugly duckling feminist troll who loves kicking her men in the balls, and you, being that modern liberal 'progressive' man, happen to like that. Good luck to you. Statistically, it is likely you'll need it.
See? I can speculate and hurl ad hominems too. It proves jack shit. In contrast, the proof for what I'm talking about is quite easy to find. It just requires a modicum of spine and balls to challenge your politically correct assumptions.
Protip: replying with adhominem attacks doesn't do much for your position. In fact it re-verifies to me that the whole feminist house of cards is driven by instinct driven emotion instead of fact and reason...from both genders.
It takes two to tango. Every step of the way, from first meet to old age... or 10th year anniversary divorce court date. As long as the neocon white knights and liberal manginas are still willing to 'man up' by continuing to shield women from reality, they will never be equal in mens' eyes...yes even guys like you who still think women need special legal protections at mens' expense. Guys like you are a big part of what holds back true equity. You're just too wrapped up in your own pride to see it.
You close with another fallacy. I never said women aren't people or that they don't deserve rights. I made what is called a general statement, which implies exceptions. Your wife may or may not be one, but knowing nothing else, I know which side to bet on as a sane default. It's guys like you that elevate them to deity status and then shun any who dare question it, calling them losers. Questioning feminism is not misogyny, no matter what the European Union says. You're welcome to play the lottery... You might even win, but the jury's still out, and until the laws are changed to something more equitable, will be out until the day you divorce, or one of you drops dead. Good luck.
Really? to the point where the noise floor hits 0db? Oh wait we already hit that point in the lamestream media, and in the law sometime in 199x. Now it's all noise. Enough already. All it's done is drive the remaining men further and further from committed relationships, make women incapable of them (90%+ of divorce is initiated by women), and create a bunch of PC-programmed, crybaby whining apologists like yourself, male and female both.
Try finding a reasonably attractive, fertile western woman with a pleasant disposition and life skillset, who doesn't have a giant feminist chip on her shoulder waiting to lash out post wedding day, and I'll show you a winning $800m jackpot lottery ticket. This is why 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce now (and who knows about the quality of the remaining 50%). Both genders are being encouraged to avoid commitment, for different reasons, the 'progressive' 'no fault' option coupled with oldschool alimony being quite the incentive for her. To today's women, men are appliances that must fit her 'lifestyle.' The moment he doesn't, or balks at enough shittests, he's gone, and divorce is not between him and her, it's between him and his wallet. The proof for this is in the law and its precedent, and the proof of the cultural attitude is in virtually every modern television program, movie, and diva pop tune. Youtube is loaded with it too. Men who ignore this reality when dealing with women are fools. Look up the term 'starter husband.'
I'd say that PC socialist morons like you and the idiot you quoted should be the ones muffled, but then I'd be stooping to your level. I prefer liberty, for everyone, not just specific classes deemed 'oppressed' by some blue ribbon government committee.
Yet, here you are posting, instead of over at wearetheworld.org. Just because people are starving doesn't mean that this isn't a problem worthy of mention for others. This is a tech site. If you want coverage of famine, there's a bevy of leftwing rags out there that talk about it every day. Go read one of those.
This 'first world problem' routine is little more than politically correct shaming language, meant to shame people focused on their own issues into caring only about whatever the speaker wants them to focus on (usually some identity politics 'crisis.').
..or you could simply stop changing the terms used to describe your status whenever you feel like you want to be offended when someone uses the 'outdated' term. If term after term starts to make you feel dirty, then maybe you should look elsewhere for the source of those feelings.
You're welcome to ignore anonymous posters, or ban them from your site, but this topic was about the wane of anonymity in a culture that used to hold it as one of its most important characteristics.
But, what about my right to only interact with people who are willing to put their real life identity behind their words and actions?
Conviction of one's beliefs is not proof of their veracity. So while you can accept/ignore on this basis, it's not a good way to determine truthfulness. My point was that identity is not important unless the goal is to hold the speaker to your personal ideals via implied threats (public shaming, legal action, character assassination etc) should he go where you don't want him to. Why is it so important that you know for sure who it is that you're communicating with? If the argument is sound, accept that you've learned something from someone you'll never know, alter your content to acknowledge it publicly if applicable, and move on. If it's garbage, refute it to strengthen your position in the eyes of your readership who haven't made up their minds yet. Without this discipline, it's too easy to flip the switch at posts you don't agree with for emotional reasons, creating a nice shiny beacon of false consensus for your opinions. Of course, the kind of people who build these beacons usually aren't in it for telling the truth about much of anything. They have political angles or products to sell you for their own emotional or fiscal benefit.
Any right that assures fetishists, trannys and political radicals a sense of anonymity also assures the rest of society the option to require a lack of anonymity.
That can't be true. The two positions are mutually exclusive. Demanding that others identify themselves so that you can 'feel safe' isn't compatible with respecting those others' rights to anonymity, whatever they may be.
There has never been any society in which an individual got to have full participation while simultaneously defining their own norms. Social norms are defined by the group and if you can't abide by those norms then you will have to pay the price that comes from your choice. And that is not unfair or an injustice.
Yes, and those consensus driven, emotionally justified rationales were the driving forces behind most of the negative events in our history. They are a part of human nature, yes, but they shouldn't be encouraged, or lauded as honorable, because consensus is a poor way of gaining wisdom. Allowing anonymity allows people to stir up the mud, but denying it allows those in control of communications outlets to lie without challenge. That is far worse for a free society.
What are they misrepresenting exactly? Their names? So what? Their arguments stand or fall on their own merit. Someone saying stuff that you or someone else disagrees with strongly, endangers who exactly? You might say legally, but those laws are part of the problem and need changing. The people who drafted and passed them used the same shitty reasoning you have. It's time to remove the power to switch the truth off and on from thin skinned, passive aggressive cultural elements. If you don't want yourself or others to see what others have to say about your site's content, turn them off. Done...and no one said you should be forced to do anything. This subject is about the wane of anonymity in internet culture, something that used to be at the forefront.
Sites who demand real info only want people posting who are politically correct and stay obediently inside the box. The real info requirement forces people into conformance with societal norms under the threat of mass social rejection, which might make it more comfortable for the site admin and/or the kind of user he covets, but it is not necessarily better for open discussion of controversial components of the site's topics (just about everything has its controversy).
The admin can assume "oh well I don't want to hear from those batshit loons anyway", but like I said above, he's not really enabling discussion at that point. He's towing the subject's PC party line, in which case, the honorable thing to do is not allow any 3rd party commentary if he doesn't want his position challenged. A lot of sites allow comments but heavily censor to create a false sense of consensus (see? everyone agrees with me!). Its very misleading for the unsavvy reader. As we know, argument from consensus alone is a fallacy, but peer pressure is quite powerful, falsely projected or not.
How to repair anonymity? Well that's technically easy, but would require politicians and corporate officers to actually work for a living, and have cultures in their organizations that respect personal liberties.
1. Reinstate the US constitution's bill of rights as the preeminent law of the land. Free speech is more important than spurious considerations, like remote threats to 'safety' (terror, pedophiles/rapists, political correctness/identity politics) which are just excuses to force others not to acknowledge the emperor's revealing attire. Retrack the NSA to do its intended job: gather intelligence on the activities of foreign nations who might do us harm. Repeal obviously unconstitutional law, etc. Restrict lobbying to publicly available verbal or written communication. No payoffs, vacations in the tropics, planerides, hookers and blow etc. Violation of this earns the politician a bullet.
2. ISPs cannot be allowed to keep logs. Penalty for doing so is death, or something close to that, for the principals. If the information isn't recorded then it can't be abused. Implement End to end encryption for all networked applications, even mundane ones like games. This crypto standard would have to be open source and easily verifiable. In order to verify security in running code, all source code to routers and operating systems sold to and/or used by the public must be made publicly available and buildable. This wont' make it impossible to snoop, but does make it really hard. Someone will have to be highly motivated to do so. This effectively limits scope of wouldbe government/corporate dragnets due to cost. Obviously, stuff like CALEA ports would have to go.
3. Of course, all of this requires a culture that embraces self reliance, freedom (real freedom, not the current US federal party line), and respect of the individual. What we have now is a soccer mom consensus culture that thinks what the idiot box tells it to think and fears what it is told to fear. Good luck.
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Well, my experience with radeon cards is in windows, for the most part. Really, it doesn't matter because the fglrx drivers for X11 aren't any better. So unless Windows was developed by basement dwellers, your assumption is incorrect.
I based it starting at 10 years ago.. actually it starts with the ATI rage 128 which came out in 98(?), through to the radeon 5000 series. that 128 used to bsod windows on a regular basis with opengl applications (eg quake2). Years later, a litany of broken scenes, kernel panics due to unhandled exceptions (HANDLE YOUR DAMNED EXCEPTIONS!), tearing in video playback, completely broken support in non-game accelerated applications, etc, have kept me far far away. There's a reason adobe, autodesk et al, (and even the demoscene) stick with nvidia even though they want to move to openCL. It's not due to kickbacks, it's because their drivers work (for the most part).
I've had to service a lot of machines over the years (don't do it anymore thankfully), and when the owner complained of video problems, more often than not, there was a radeon in the machine.
I realize this is anecdotal, but my 770 (which is a 680 with higher clocks and faster ram) works fine with the 326.80 and 327.xx drivers. I do know some were having some issues with post 314.x drivers, but I didn't run into any.
that work reliably for more than the current crop of just released games, I don't care how much faster these chips are. I've had too many glitches with radeon drivers over the years to consider them again. Their opengl is horrible, and CCC is a bloated pos.
Uh yes they should worry, if they want autonomy as a business. While the current system sucks, replacing it with some remote company that doesn't give any more fucks than it has to to keep the contract is not the answer either. The 'cloud' is a not a magic fix-all no matter what the idiotic hype says.
Depends what you mean by 'code quality.' To me, one of its characteristics is speed.
Since when does consensus determine the truth of anything? I would side on open discussion because even the pros are human, and can make mistakes, and/or deliberately misstate things for emotional reasons. Open discussion prevents any one party from controlling the dialog for political reasons. Close it down, and one party gets entire control of the floor. The internet was about P2P interaction, and yes that includes dealing with people who don't agree with the stated position.
The term 'troll' has been abused so much now by free speech critics that I'm not sure it has any meaning than as a pejorative for someone who uses whit and sarcasm to score a good point. If science is about extracting truth from the ether, then this person is no different. He's correct, or not. His style is irrelevant. 'trolling' is not an excuse to shut down communication. If that's what popular science wants, maybe they shouldn't publish on the internet and give monologues on public television.. I'm sure all 3 people watching will agree, wringing out their emotional tampons in sympathy.
I'm sure your kid played it anyway. Either he borrowed a friend's copy or played it at his house.. or he downloaded it and played it when you weren't home.
Get some perspective and drop the ad hominem attacks. One can care about his kid and still let him play these games.
Commitment to a position is not proof of its veracity.
Then you don't have to continue playing, do you? Go play Hello Kitty Rainbow Island Adventure then. Why do we still have idiots implicitly calling for government intervention? With people like the author of this article, self policing systems like the ESRB are NEVER enough it seems.
Your prerogative of course. However, if you're too extreme, you'll just end up alienating your kid, socially, which is far worse than him seeing a few boobs, butts, or blood in a dumb game.
..and most European authorities consider many forms of individual expression or assertiveness to be 'anti-social.' So they ban/censor violent media, yet encourage their women to act like prostitutes (for great social justice!) instead of committed mothers, then wonder why their kids continue to grow up delinquent anyway.
Both cultures are loaded with stupid assumptions in this area.
A kid's innocence is a precious thing, and it's a shame to squander it too early. That doesn't mean I want to have my 12-year-old still believing in Santa Claus, but I also don't want him introduced to the ugly world of violent crime, drugs, and prostitution while he's still in kindergarten either.
The problem is that excessive fear mongering by authorities has spread this attitude to parents of 9-16 year olds. 9-16yos are not kindergarteners...and honestly, I never bought into the santa claus thing as a kid so they never had to tell me it was bs.. My sister, however, felt hurt and betrayed by our parents when she was told. I'm not sure feeding kids bullshit like that is a good idea.
There's an oft-quoted thing (which I have no idea is true) that you can't test a teenager to see if they're a sociopath, because most teenagers test as a sociopath anyway.
These days, just about everyone tests as a sociopath, if they answer the test honestly, as any expression of individualism, selfishness, or aggression is considered mental illness these days, needing, at a minimum, counseling. Testing done by schools and employers (where most of these stats probably come) is a shittest to see how far you're willing to roll over, not to detect truly clinical lacks of conscience. Naturally, being less thoroughly indoctrinated into the passive-aggressive, face-saving politics that pass for 21st century adulthood, they answer more honestly more of the time, giving you your stats.
I think the reason people say they're not fully formed people is because there are still things going on that precludes them from being able to make certain kinds of judgements because they don't yet have the experience and maturity to do it.
I think this is a method for adults to punish youth without rational justification. The neocons like to beat them with punishments. In contrast, leftists label them with a disease, or a passive aggressive ad hominem (he's not 'fully formed'!), that the subject has little control over. It's a way of shifting responsibility elsewhere in perpetual defense of an individual in order to take power away from him. A 16, or even 10 year old, who cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality has a problem much larger than any video game could possibly cause. Of course, try telling that to the doctrinal dragnets in power.
And I'm just not convinced that giving a 10 year old GTA is really a good choice -- and a bunch of years ago when my nephews were around that age and someone bought them a copy of GTA, I wasn't sure it was a good idea then either. Stealing cars and smacking down ho's wasn't something you wanted them growing up emulating.
I'm sure you had your 'outrageous' activities growing up, too, ones your parents thought would ruin you. Every generation goes through this process of rebellion from their parents'. It's normal, natural, and probably critical in the process of growing into adulthood, something today's society seems dead set on retarding. It seems like today's kids aren't allowed to do much of anything individualistic that's deemed 'anti-social' by blue ribbon panels somewhere in the skanky bowels of government (or the squeaky clean whitewashed halls of corporate social overreach).
In the 50s, it was music that had a beat, in the 60s, it was rock'n'roll, in the 70s/80s it was punk, metal, and 'violent' movies, and in the 90s, video games joined the list of scapegoats (Mortal Kombat). If your 10 year old boy can't handle GTA or other 'violent' games and put them in perspective, he was not raised to deal with reality. THAT is bad parenting. At 16, that's severely retarded maturation.
So artificial lockouts are a-ok, and it's the customer's fault for not bowing to the proper altar? Quit apologizing for apple. They don't need your help. Since when do people need 'authorization' to use their products how they see fit? Where is the authorization for apple to modify/reduce functionality post-sale?
Before you scream 'license agreement', the real issue is one of ethics. Well, if it's not ethical for the customer to use 'unauthorized' cables, then it's definitely unethical for apple to modify functionality post sale. This is a big problem that's getting worse as embedded computers spread to more and more devices.
so what? What he did was in reaction to what was done by washington. He did 'wrong' for the right reasons, unlike the fucks in washington who only do right for the wrong reasons. Quit crying about snowden. There are bigger fish to fry. Law itself has no value of those who write and enforce it don't also obey it.
I didn't mention anything about divorce rates by state. I only said that more than 90% of them are filed by women. It's not the men who are unwilling to commit these days. It also wouldn't shock me if your factoid was true. Traditional men have expectations that modern liberal men don't.. like expecting loyalty, respect, and regular sex from their wives in return for a steady, secure lifestyle. Many women, today would find it reprehensible and 'oppressive' if their husband made any demands on them whatsover. If she isn't holding all the trump cards, it's 'patriarchy.'
Fallacy. I never said I have trouble talking to women, nor do I. If the only responses you can muster are ad hominems, perhaps it is you who is deluding himself. Many of the liberal men I've known were pantywaists around women, some to the point where they'd behave like someone else when one entered the immediate area. It was truly a sight to behold; humorous. A few would even get irate at me or some of the other guys who didn't also alter their behavior accordingly. Guess who the women went home with at the end of the night. Hint: it wasn't the pantywaists.
Since you love to speculate about me, I will do some speculation of my own about you. I'll bet you were a guy she 'settled' on in a baby rabies or omg-im-not-married-yet fit after getting thrown off the alpha cock carousel in her late 20s. So the pussy that was pounded by a few dozen guys at parties, is something you have to work your butt off to get access too now. Congratulations sir. What a catch. When she inevitably grows tired of you ("I shouldn't have to settle!"), she will wait until alimony kicks in, and bail, cleaning you out. Woe unto you if children are present, yours or not, the state doesn't care. There will be tears and accusations, and you'll be in a world of hurt, not understanding why this is happening to you. Then you might remember reading this and realize someone tried to warn you. ...or maybe she's just a red haired (youtube U of toronto feminist) fat ugly duckling feminist troll who loves kicking her men in the balls, and you, being that modern liberal 'progressive' man, happen to like that. Good luck to you. Statistically, it is likely you'll need it.
See? I can speculate and hurl ad hominems too. It proves jack shit. In contrast, the proof for what I'm talking about is quite easy to find. It just requires a modicum of spine and balls to challenge your politically correct assumptions.
Not that statements being 'talking points' is relevant. Whether they are true or not is relevant.
Protip: replying with adhominem attacks doesn't do much for your position. In fact it re-verifies to me that the whole feminist house of cards is driven by instinct driven emotion instead of fact and reason...from both genders.
It takes two to tango. Every step of the way, from first meet to old age... or 10th year anniversary divorce court date. As long as the neocon white knights and liberal manginas are still willing to 'man up' by continuing to shield women from reality, they will never be equal in mens' eyes...yes even guys like you who still think women need special legal protections at mens' expense. Guys like you are a big part of what holds back true equity. You're just too wrapped up in your own pride to see it.
You close with another fallacy. I never said women aren't people or that they don't deserve rights. I made what is called a general statement, which implies exceptions. Your wife may or may not be one, but knowing nothing else, I know which side to bet on as a sane default. It's guys like you that elevate them to deity status and then shun any who dare question it, calling them losers. Questioning feminism is not misogyny, no matter what the European Union says. You're welcome to play the lottery... You might even win, but the jury's still out, and until the laws are changed to something more equitable, will be out until the day you divorce, or one of you drops dead. Good luck.
Really? to the point where the noise floor hits 0db? Oh wait we already hit that point in the lamestream media, and in the law sometime in 199x. Now it's all noise. Enough already. All it's done is drive the remaining men further and further from committed relationships, make women incapable of them (90%+ of divorce is initiated by women), and create a bunch of PC-programmed, crybaby whining apologists like yourself, male and female both.
Try finding a reasonably attractive, fertile western woman with a pleasant disposition and life skillset, who doesn't have a giant feminist chip on her shoulder waiting to lash out post wedding day, and I'll show you a winning $800m jackpot lottery ticket. This is why 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce now (and who knows about the quality of the remaining 50%). Both genders are being encouraged to avoid commitment, for different reasons, the 'progressive' 'no fault' option coupled with oldschool alimony being quite the incentive for her. To today's women, men are appliances that must fit her 'lifestyle.' The moment he doesn't, or balks at enough shittests, he's gone, and divorce is not between him and her, it's between him and his wallet. The proof for this is in the law and its precedent, and the proof of the cultural attitude is in virtually every modern television program, movie, and diva pop tune. Youtube is loaded with it too. Men who ignore this reality when dealing with women are fools. Look up the term 'starter husband.'
I'd say that PC socialist morons like you and the idiot you quoted should be the ones muffled, but then I'd be stooping to your level. I prefer liberty, for everyone, not just specific classes deemed 'oppressed' by some blue ribbon government committee.
Yet, here you are posting, instead of over at wearetheworld.org. Just because people are starving doesn't mean that this isn't a problem worthy of mention for others. This is a tech site. If you want coverage of famine, there's a bevy of leftwing rags out there that talk about it every day. Go read one of those.
This 'first world problem' routine is little more than politically correct shaming language, meant to shame people focused on their own issues into caring only about whatever the speaker wants them to focus on (usually some identity politics 'crisis.').
..or you could simply stop changing the terms used to describe your status whenever you feel like you want to be offended when someone uses the 'outdated' term. If term after term starts to make you feel dirty, then maybe you should look elsewhere for the source of those feelings.
You're welcome to ignore anonymous posters, or ban them from your site, but this topic was about the wane of anonymity in a culture that used to hold it as one of its most important characteristics.
But, what about my right to only interact with people who are willing to put their real life identity behind their words and actions?
Conviction of one's beliefs is not proof of their veracity. So while you can accept/ignore on this basis, it's not a good way to determine truthfulness. My point was that identity is not important unless the goal is to hold the speaker to your personal ideals via implied threats (public shaming, legal action, character assassination etc) should he go where you don't want him to. Why is it so important that you know for sure who it is that you're communicating with? If the argument is sound, accept that you've learned something from someone you'll never know, alter your content to acknowledge it publicly if applicable, and move on. If it's garbage, refute it to strengthen your position in the eyes of your readership who haven't made up their minds yet. Without this discipline, it's too easy to flip the switch at posts you don't agree with for emotional reasons, creating a nice shiny beacon of false consensus for your opinions. Of course, the kind of people who build these beacons usually aren't in it for telling the truth about much of anything. They have political angles or products to sell you for their own emotional or fiscal benefit.
Any right that assures fetishists, trannys and political radicals a sense of anonymity also assures the rest of society the option to require a lack of anonymity.
That can't be true. The two positions are mutually exclusive. Demanding that others identify themselves so that you can 'feel safe' isn't compatible with respecting those others' rights to anonymity, whatever they may be.
There has never been any society in which an individual got to have full participation while simultaneously defining their own norms. Social norms are defined by the group and if you can't abide by those norms then you will have to pay the price that comes from your choice. And that is not unfair or an injustice.
Yes, and those consensus driven, emotionally justified rationales were the driving forces behind most of the negative events in our history. They are a part of human nature, yes, but they shouldn't be encouraged, or lauded as honorable, because consensus is a poor way of gaining wisdom. Allowing anonymity allows people to stir up the mud, but denying it allows those in control of communications outlets to lie without challenge. That is far worse for a free society.
What are they misrepresenting exactly? Their names? So what? Their arguments stand or fall on their own merit. Someone saying stuff that you or someone else disagrees with strongly, endangers who exactly? You might say legally, but those laws are part of the problem and need changing. The people who drafted and passed them used the same shitty reasoning you have. It's time to remove the power to switch the truth off and on from thin skinned, passive aggressive cultural elements. If you don't want yourself or others to see what others have to say about your site's content, turn them off. Done. ..and no one said you should be forced to do anything. This subject is about the wane of anonymity in internet culture, something that used to be at the forefront.
Sites who demand real info only want people posting who are politically correct and stay obediently inside the box. The real info requirement forces people into conformance with societal norms under the threat of mass social rejection, which might make it more comfortable for the site admin and/or the kind of user he covets, but it is not necessarily better for open discussion of controversial components of the site's topics (just about everything has its controversy).
The admin can assume "oh well I don't want to hear from those batshit loons anyway", but like I said above, he's not really enabling discussion at that point. He's towing the subject's PC party line, in which case, the honorable thing to do is not allow any 3rd party commentary if he doesn't want his position challenged. A lot of sites allow comments but heavily censor to create a false sense of consensus (see? everyone agrees with me!). Its very misleading for the unsavvy reader. As we know, argument from consensus alone is a fallacy, but peer pressure is quite powerful, falsely projected or not.
How to repair anonymity? Well that's technically easy, but would require politicians and corporate officers to actually work for a living, and have cultures in their organizations that respect personal liberties.
1. Reinstate the US constitution's bill of rights as the preeminent law of the land. Free speech is more important than spurious considerations, like remote threats to 'safety' (terror, pedophiles/rapists, political correctness/identity politics) which are just excuses to force others not to acknowledge the emperor's revealing attire. Retrack the NSA to do its intended job: gather intelligence on the activities of foreign nations who might do us harm. Repeal obviously unconstitutional law, etc. Restrict lobbying to publicly available verbal or written communication. No payoffs, vacations in the tropics, planerides, hookers and blow etc. Violation of this earns the politician a bullet.
2. ISPs cannot be allowed to keep logs. Penalty for doing so is death, or something close to that, for the principals. If the information isn't recorded then it can't be abused. Implement End to end encryption for all networked applications, even mundane ones like games. This crypto standard would have to be open source and easily verifiable. In order to verify security in running code, all source code to routers and operating systems sold to and/or used by the public must be made publicly available and buildable. This wont' make it impossible to snoop, but does make it really hard. Someone will have to be highly motivated to do so. This effectively limits scope of wouldbe government/corporate dragnets due to cost. Obviously, stuff like CALEA ports would have to go.
3. Of course, all of this requires a culture that embraces self reliance, freedom (real freedom, not the current US federal party line), and respect of the individual. What we have now is a soccer mom consensus culture that thinks what the idiot box tells it to think and fears what it is told to fear. Good luck.
Who are you to say what those reasons should be?