I don't see the point of playing a game in which you're a gangster and trying not to be bad.
I don't imagine that real gangsters, in real life, spend all of their time being bad either. The storyline forces you to be bad, but that doesn't mean you have to spend all your time between missions being bad as well. I prefer not to.
I have played the storyline on just about every GTA. THEN I went off and did other things that looked like fun. However, even though they are just emotionless combinations of pixels, I still tried as much as possible to avoid killing passersby, and even law enforcement. I basically only killed where it was required to complete the storyline.
I feel no need to "be bad" as the author states. I'm sure a certain type of person would. But I am not that type of person.
the parent points out that there are thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians who have been killed or injured by US forces and he's modded "Troll"?!
Well, I would be interested to know where the documentation of these deaths are. I went and looked up deaths in iraq and found this convenient site called "iraqbodycount.org", which from their about page, seems to be pretty anti-US, and yet, all of the incidents that I looked through sounded like Iraqi on Iraqi crime. I didn't find any that said "A US soldier came up and shot somebody." They are all roadside bombs, officials being assassinated by insurgents and whatnot. I'm sure if the U.S. had not toppled Saddam and established democracy there, a lot of these deaths of important officials would not have happened, and of course, they wouldn't be allowed to report about all of the unimportant peasants that he would still be killing.
Car accidents are accidents. And we DO worry about them. Terrorists are people killing other people ON PURPOSE. Each death is an unnecessary and avoidable one. There are only 15,000 murders every year, but we don't just let the murderers go scot free just because other causes of death happen to have more numbers attached.
That's not THE US way to write dates. It is A US way to write dates. People in the US. would also recognize 2001-09-11 (which is much more preferable, especially for programmers), or September 11th, 2001, which is certainly more understandable, but not much fun for programmers.
I beg to differ. I think that throwing money at poverty only INCREASES it. Whenever there is money for poor people, there always seem to be more poor. I find a similar phenomenon on airplanes, where the elderly and people with small children need assistance to be boarded first, but then when the plane lands, they don't seem to need to wait around for someone to help them get OFF the plane.
At least when I was in grade school (late 1970s), American History only covered up to the late 19th/early 20th centuries. They covered the founding of the country up through the end of slavery, and as far as the schools were concerned, once slavery was ended, everything has been peachy.
Without using google, I can get the time of the wars within a decade, I know MOST of the major players, and I wouldn't say that there was necessarily what we would conventionally call a "winner", but there were definitely those who got smacked back into place, and those that did the smacking.
Thinking back, there has never been any point of time in my life, including college, when I have been in a history class that taught any history after about 1910. My (required) American History class in College also taught the exact same timeframe that I learned in elementary and high school, up through about 1900.
This is why we start teaching kids 2+2 even though we have calculators. This is why in college, they teach you how to program at the assembly level first even though we have fourth generation languages. If you don't know the basics, you won't effectively use the tools.
This is why you don't give a kid a laptop.
You see as someone who actually builds and repairs PCs I have found many VERY damned smart people that you might as well be speaking Chinese when it comes to PCs. they simply can not get their head around many of the concepts. if someone would have started them earlier it would probably be a lot easier now, but once they get past mid 20s trying to teach them anything more than how to get to a website is nothing but frustration, for you AND for them.
This just illustrates the point that if they were really INTERESTED in having a computer, than it doesn't help them. If it's true for a genius, then how much more so for a kid?
I have kids in school. I would be dead set against them giving every kid in the school a laptop. This is the lazy way out approach. Like giving a kid a hammer and hoping he will learn to be a carpenter. Well, I guess they are teaching powerpoint, so that is similar to giving a kid a hammer and teaching him how to hit his fingernails with it.
Not every parent needs to come to open house. Typically only the ones who don't come need to come.
In my school district open house is kind of a pain in the butt. It is during school hours and the kids have the whole day off. So of course, most parents are at work. At least when I was a kid, the open house was in the evening, but I think the teacher's union probably managed to figure out that it was more efficient for 4000 parents to take a day off of work than for 200 teachers to work late.
Of course if everyone is given a computer than everyone will have 'grown up' on a computer and you can't tell who to hire. In my generation, if you had a computer it's because you were really interested in having one and were probably actually writing programs on it and learning how it worked, not just playing angry birds and clicking on widgets.
I would like to donate to them, but I don't want the funds to go toward legal expenses. How do I earmark the funds specifically for use to buy bullets?
My yahoo account gets all kinds of crap from dillards, verizon, and a bunch of home and garden spam because some idiot woman thinks her yahoo address is her first initial and last name, which happens to be the same as mine, and which happens to be my yahoo account address..
Yes. Even on Slashdot, I have seen people claim that email is spam when they *no longer* want it. So they sign up for it, knowing that the list will provide them something that they want, and then when they are done with it, they label it as spam.
Stop spamming me or I will report you. I never signed up for this slashwhatever.
You might be amazed at how many people have intentionally subscribed to a mailing list -- then reported it as spam over the years, much to the dismay of people running legitimate mailing lists.
Been there. Had that happen. Was running a mailing list with a double opt in. Every e-mail ever sent had instructions on how to remove. At least a dozen people after a year or so would come up with questions like 'Why am I getting this?" "Take me off this list!" "I'm reporting you as a spammer" etc. Just about everything except for UNSUBSCRIBE.
Whenever I sign up for something online, I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS click the checkbox that says I don't want them spamming me. In addition, I sign up with a new address at my own domain that I will recognize if I ever get mail on it. For example, for Amazon, I would sign up as amazon@mydomainname.com. If I ever get mail on that address, especially if it is not from amazon, I then know that i need to cancel my account, autotrash that email account and tell everyone I can think of to never do business with them ever.
If the landlords are doing it right, renting is more expensive than owning a home. Otherwise they would go out of business.
Food is not cheap. Have you been to a grocery store lately? Milk is $4 a gallon. Meat is $4 a pound. Yes, we do eat ramen several times a week and that helps keep the costs down some.But our grocery bill is still about $1500 a month.
Clothing is cheap for me. I spend less than $100 a year on myself, but unfortunately clothing is not cheap for kids, because kids grow. We are fortunate to get lots of clothes from grandparents and stuff, but we still have to buy some stuff, mostly shoes, swimwear and the like.
Undoubtedly you can get to where you can support a family on next to nothing. In fact, about 10% of the population has made an art form out of surviving completely on government (excuse me, MY) handouts. Unfortunately, that is a little bit more sacrifice than I am willing to put my kids through. I mean, other than cars and electronics, I generally have nicer things than most people surviving off of the government.
Food is no cheaper and neither are electronics, clothing or other consumer goods. Gas is only a little cheaper. Utilities are a little cheaper. A mortgage on a typical 3 bedroom house is probably $1,000 a month. What kicks your butt is taxes and insurance. My property tax and insurance escrow is 40% of my overall payment.
I'm beginning to resemble the older folks getting in a rut. I'm 41 now, though I can't figure where the time went. But I am trying to learn new stuff as well. I learned Java and have written 211,000 lines of code in it in the last two years.
On the other hand, our company, when it first started, had a 65 year old guy writing VB code and out entire system worked off of it. Then a 60 year old guy came in, declared that the VB was archaic and proceeded to replace it with classic ASP. Now I am fighting to replace this system, which is essentially taxed to the max and being held together by duct tape, baling wire and the grace of God. Unfortunately, the guy who only knows classic ASP (and apparently only knows cut and paste in that) is politically connected and is fighting back every step of the way as we try to modernize the system before it all comes crashing down around us.
I second that vouch. I have four kids, one in college, and live in the midwest, and even in this area, I estimate that it would take $120,000 for me to raise my kids comfortably, and that would be just living, not building retirement. I don't make anything like $120,000, so we live hand to mouth. Also like you, I have no hope of social security, but in my case, I blame the far left and not the far right.
$150k clearly goes a lot farther in your fantasy world than in reality.
Ok. If I ever get there, I will let you know. I USED to make more than that, but now I make about half that. 23 years of professional IT experience, C, C++, java, Sybase and Oracle certified currently working as a Director of Development. Wrote 211,000 lines of code in the last two years.
I also hate to say it, but there is racism, too. I look around and find the indian guys trying to thumbs-down the westerners.
I see this all the time, too. Many of the firms that contact me are Indian run, and the fact that they contact me at all is a shock, since they clearly wouldn't hire me unless I was Indian. In fact, on the application itself, it clearly states "must have H1-b". Unfortunately, I am a citizen,and so i don't have an H1b and therefore not eligible for any of their positions.
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I don't see the point of playing a game in which you're a gangster and trying not to be bad.
I don't imagine that real gangsters, in real life, spend all of their time being bad either. The storyline forces you to be bad, but that doesn't mean you have to spend all your time between missions being bad as well. I prefer not to.
I have played the storyline on just about every GTA. THEN I went off and did other things that looked like fun. However, even though they are just emotionless combinations of pixels, I still tried as much as possible to avoid killing passersby, and even law enforcement. I basically only killed where it was required to complete the storyline.
I feel no need to "be bad" as the author states. I'm sure a certain type of person would. But I am not that type of person.
the parent points out that there are thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians who have been killed or injured by US forces and he's modded "Troll"?!
Well, I would be interested to know where the documentation of these deaths are. I went and looked up deaths in iraq and found this convenient site called "iraqbodycount.org", which from their about page, seems to be pretty anti-US, and yet, all of the incidents that I looked through sounded like Iraqi on Iraqi crime. I didn't find any that said "A US soldier came up and shot somebody." They are all roadside bombs, officials being assassinated by insurgents and whatnot. I'm sure if the U.S. had not toppled Saddam and established democracy there, a lot of these deaths of important officials would not have happened, and of course, they wouldn't be allowed to report about all of the unimportant peasants that he would still be killing.
Car accidents are accidents. And we DO worry about them. Terrorists are people killing other people ON PURPOSE. Each death is an unnecessary and avoidable one. There are only 15,000 murders every year, but we don't just let the murderers go scot free just because other causes of death happen to have more numbers attached.
That's not THE US way to write dates. It is A US way to write dates. People in the US. would also recognize 2001-09-11 (which is much more preferable, especially for programmers), or September 11th, 2001, which is certainly more understandable, but not much fun for programmers.
I beg to differ. I think that throwing money at poverty only INCREASES it. Whenever there is money for poor people, there always seem to be more poor. I find a similar phenomenon on airplanes, where the elderly and people with small children need assistance to be boarded first, but then when the plane lands, they don't seem to need to wait around for someone to help them get OFF the plane.
At least when I was in grade school (late 1970s), American History only covered up to the late 19th/early 20th centuries. They covered the founding of the country up through the end of slavery, and as far as the schools were concerned, once slavery was ended, everything has been peachy.
Without using google, I can get the time of the wars within a decade, I know MOST of the major players, and I wouldn't say that there was necessarily what we would conventionally call a "winner", but there were definitely those who got smacked back into place, and those that did the smacking.
Thinking back, there has never been any point of time in my life, including college, when I have been in a history class that taught any history after about 1910. My (required) American History class in College also taught the exact same timeframe that I learned in elementary and high school, up through about 1900.
This is why we start teaching kids 2+2 even though we have calculators. This is why in college, they teach you how to program at the assembly level first even though we have fourth generation languages. If you don't know the basics, you won't effectively use the tools.
This is why you don't give a kid a laptop.
You see as someone who actually builds and repairs PCs I have found many VERY damned smart people that you might as well be speaking Chinese when it comes to PCs. they simply can not get their head around many of the concepts. if someone would have started them earlier it would probably be a lot easier now, but once they get past mid 20s trying to teach them anything more than how to get to a website is nothing but frustration, for you AND for them.
This just illustrates the point that if they were really INTERESTED in having a computer, than it doesn't help them. If it's true for a genius, then how much more so for a kid?
I have kids in school. I would be dead set against them giving every kid in the school a laptop. This is the lazy way out approach. Like giving a kid a hammer and hoping he will learn to be a carpenter. Well, I guess they are teaching powerpoint, so that is similar to giving a kid a hammer and teaching him how to hit his fingernails with it.
Not every parent needs to come to open house. Typically only the ones who don't come need to come. In my school district open house is kind of a pain in the butt. It is during school hours and the kids have the whole day off. So of course, most parents are at work. At least when I was a kid, the open house was in the evening, but I think the teacher's union probably managed to figure out that it was more efficient for 4000 parents to take a day off of work than for 200 teachers to work late.
Of course if everyone is given a computer than everyone will have 'grown up' on a computer and you can't tell who to hire. In my generation, if you had a computer it's because you were really interested in having one and were probably actually writing programs on it and learning how it worked, not just playing angry birds and clicking on widgets.
Isn't this kind of like the tobacco producers suing thetruth.org? Or no, I guess it is not because at least tobacco is actually legal.
I would like to donate to them, but I don't want the funds to go toward legal expenses. How do I earmark the funds specifically for use to buy bullets?
Someone signed me up for Minnesota Public Radio. I've never even been to Minnesota.
My yahoo account gets all kinds of crap from dillards, verizon, and a bunch of home and garden spam because some idiot woman thinks her yahoo address is her first initial and last name, which happens to be the same as mine, and which happens to be my yahoo account address..
Yes. Even on Slashdot, I have seen people claim that email is spam when they *no longer* want it. So they sign up for it, knowing that the list will provide them something that they want, and then when they are done with it, they label it as spam.
Stop spamming me or I will report you. I never signed up for this slashwhatever.
You might be amazed at how many people have intentionally subscribed to a mailing list -- then reported it as spam over the years, much to the dismay of people running legitimate mailing lists.
Been there. Had that happen. Was running a mailing list with a double opt in. Every e-mail ever sent had instructions on how to remove. At least a dozen people after a year or so would come up with questions like 'Why am I getting this?" "Take me off this list!" "I'm reporting you as a spammer" etc. Just about everything except for UNSUBSCRIBE.
Whenever I sign up for something online, I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS click the checkbox that says I don't want them spamming me. In addition, I sign up with a new address at my own domain that I will recognize if I ever get mail on it. For example, for Amazon, I would sign up as amazon@mydomainname.com. If I ever get mail on that address, especially if it is not from amazon, I then know that i need to cancel my account, autotrash that email account and tell everyone I can think of to never do business with them ever.
If the landlords are doing it right, renting is more expensive than owning a home. Otherwise they would go out of business.
Food is not cheap. Have you been to a grocery store lately? Milk is $4 a gallon. Meat is $4 a pound. Yes, we do eat ramen several times a week and that helps keep the costs down some.But our grocery bill is still about $1500 a month.
Clothing is cheap for me. I spend less than $100 a year on myself, but unfortunately clothing is not cheap for kids, because kids grow. We are fortunate to get lots of clothes from grandparents and stuff, but we still have to buy some stuff, mostly shoes, swimwear and the like.
Undoubtedly you can get to where you can support a family on next to nothing. In fact, about 10% of the population has made an art form out of surviving completely on government (excuse me, MY) handouts. Unfortunately, that is a little bit more sacrifice than I am willing to put my kids through. I mean, other than cars and electronics, I generally have nicer things than most people surviving off of the government.
Food is no cheaper and neither are electronics, clothing or other consumer goods. Gas is only a little cheaper. Utilities are a little cheaper. A mortgage on a typical 3 bedroom house is probably $1,000 a month. What kicks your butt is taxes and insurance. My property tax and insurance escrow is 40% of my overall payment.
I'm beginning to resemble the older folks getting in a rut. I'm 41 now, though I can't figure where the time went. But I am trying to learn new stuff as well. I learned Java and have written 211,000 lines of code in it in the last two years.
On the other hand, our company, when it first started, had a 65 year old guy writing VB code and out entire system worked off of it. Then a 60 year old guy came in, declared that the VB was archaic and proceeded to replace it with classic ASP. Now I am fighting to replace this system, which is essentially taxed to the max and being held together by duct tape, baling wire and the grace of God. Unfortunately, the guy who only knows classic ASP (and apparently only knows cut and paste in that) is politically connected and is fighting back every step of the way as we try to modernize the system before it all comes crashing down around us.
I second that vouch. I have four kids, one in college, and live in the midwest, and even in this area, I estimate that it would take $120,000 for me to raise my kids comfortably, and that would be just living, not building retirement. I don't make anything like $120,000, so we live hand to mouth. Also like you, I have no hope of social security, but in my case, I blame the far left and not the far right.
$150k clearly goes a lot farther in your fantasy world than in reality.
Ok. If I ever get there, I will let you know. I USED to make more than that, but now I make about half that. 23 years of professional IT experience, C, C++, java, Sybase and Oracle certified currently working as a Director of Development. Wrote 211,000 lines of code in the last two years.
I also hate to say it, but there is racism, too. I look around and find the indian guys trying to thumbs-down the westerners.
I see this all the time, too. Many of the firms that contact me are Indian run, and the fact that they contact me at all is a shock, since they clearly wouldn't hire me unless I was Indian. In fact, on the application itself, it clearly states "must have H1-b". Unfortunately, I am a citizen,and so i don't have an H1b and therefore not eligible for any of their positions.
I guess you want to make sure your product works in the field, and that includes making sure it is easy to operate even when you're drunk.