If a guy jumped from the sidewalk to the top of a thirty story building with no explanation for his ability to do so, I'm willing to bet even you would say "that's bullshit. It can't happen".
Actually, I'd probably say "Hey, the Matrix is on. I love that movie!"
If everybody knew that being shot wouldn't knock you through a window, how often do you think we'd see it in movies?
Quite often, because it looks cool. Take the Schwarzenegger movie "Eraser". I've seen people complain about this movie because railguns aren't real (or not that small, at any rate), and you can't see through walls... IT DOESN'T MATTER! In the context of that movie, in the reality that movie creates, that is possible and railguns that small actually exist.
I think the best example for this sort of thing is horror movies. I watched Dawn of the Dead the other day (great movie. Up there with Evil Dead 2), so let's use that. They offer absolutely no explanation why dead people are coming back to life, other than "When there's no room left in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth." (Best. Tagline. EVER.). It is completely implausible, and extremely stupid... yet it works. You have to make the mental leap to get over the fact that the concept of the sudden reanimation of dead dudes is stupid and just GO WITH IT. Also, at least with that movie, it helps if you keep your sense of humor with you.
Every time I switch to a new one, three months later they disappear up their own ass. It happened with IGN (they just sucked), usa.net, and someplace else I can't remember right now. I'm hoping that Google won't go under anytime soon after making Gmail public.
That would be nice, but I'm not a luddite and don't see the point in getting my ass in a sling anytime someone dares use Java or Flash. It's mass amounts of the blinking annoying shit that annoys me, and it's more trouble to turn them on and off than it's worth. I use Mozilla, BTW, so don't give me the 'get a better browser' bullshit.
I doubt it. They still wouldn't give a fuck. I KNOW the REAL physics, and sometimes it just doesn't matter. Reality isn't fun. It isn't interesting. I live here, it's fucking boring. I don't want to watch movies filled with people acting like everyone I know doing the usual things I do. I want to see something INTERESTING.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can complain about physics in a movie, but be able to completely buy into the fact that they're in OUTER FUCKING SPACE surrounded by MIDGET BEARS and massive turd-shaped monsters. It's called "Suspension of Disbelief". At some point you have to give up your pedantic whiny-assing and just say "Fuck it. It's cool."
Fucking hell, that's the dumbest goddamned thing I've read this fucking week.
The fact that a minority of bitchiny whiners have been fucked over in some way by Paypal doesn't make them bad. It makes these people fucking annoying bitchy whiners. Go read some of the stories. Almost all of them involve dodgy sellers or morons trying to use a service they don't understand and didn't read the fucking instruction manual for.
What the FUCK makes you think that Paypal makes a fucking dime 'stealing from a minority of their users'? THEY ARE THE FUCKING MINORITY, DIPSHIT. It's far better to have everyone like you than have everyone hate you. Fucking moron. You don't make money by pissing people off. You make money by providing a good service for a good price. Paypal does that, and they have no reason to intentionally rip anyone off.
This is not sniping. Sniping is bidding on an auction in the last few seconds so you guarantee that whoever else is bidding doesn't get a chance to bid again before the auction ends. What you are talking about is SHILL BIDDING. There is a huge difference, and lumping the two together is just wrong.
You're talking about shill bidding, not sniping. Shill bidding is when a seller bids one of their own items up. Sniping is simply bidding in the last few seconds of an auction to try and catch something at a low price. There's no question that shill bidding is wrong, and the people that do it should be punched in the balls really, really hard. Sniping is only bad for people that want to whine-ass that they couldn't get that TV they wanted because some ass came in on the last 10 seconds of the auction and outbid them. There is a MASSIVE difference, and putting the two in the same category is just plain wrong.
First, you get to hold the item in your hand and see that it exists.
And by reading a users feedback, you can tll if they have a history of screwing people over.
Second, you get to talk immediately to the vendor if you have a question, not having to wait for an email that may never come
Lame point. Auctions last up to nine days. This is why I prefer buying on eBay. I have more time to think things over and ask questions.
Third, don't have to worry about shipping issues (breakage, costs, delay) like you do with Ebay
This is a problem with purchasing ANYTHING that will be shipped to you, not just on eBay. Anything online or in a catalog could have problems.
Fourth, don't have to include iffy escrow services such as PayPal, as you do with Ebay
I haven't dealt with excrow on anything, and I find it quite stupid that anyone would buy something that damn expensive on eBay. I sure as hell wouldn't.
Fifth, you can get a sense of the type of dealer by talking to him (emotional reactions, knowledge of subject) face to face vs. having ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA who you're dealing with on Ebay
Again, feedback tells you everything. Someone with 200+ feedback and no negatives isn't going to fuck you over. Period. Someone with 5 feedbacks, 2 of wich are negative, needs to be avoided. After a few months of dealing on eBay you can tell at a glance whether or not someone is likely to fuck you over, just like doing business IRL.
Sixth, you can tell if vendors are legit if they come back to the same place week after week, as opposed to some that show up for one week and then never return.
Feedback, yet again. It takes a long time to rack up significant amounts of feedback and those that do are usually as good as gold.
Ebay being "just like" an open market? Don't think so... I've seen people get ripped off in SO MANY WAYS on Ebay that I'll NEVER buy through them, no matter how good the deal
By 'seen' do you mean "I have real life friends that have been fucked over multiple times" or do you mean "Some guys on this board I go to say eBay sucks"? Yes, eBay is just like an open markt. If you go around believing things that are too good to be true ("Quad Xeon server! Only $149.95!") then you're going to get your ass pounded. If you actually read feedback and are careful about who you deal with, you will have no problems.
Don't ever use money orders. I learned that the same way you did. I bought a guitar effects pedal and sent a $50 money order. A couple of weeks later I get an email from the seller telling me he hasn't received it. I couldn't afford to send another $50, so I got nailed with a negative for non-payment, plus I was out $50. Now I don't buy from anyone that doesn't accept Paypal.
Yes, and it's mind-numbingly obvious when you read their feedback. Often they'll have MANY feedback from the same account in a very short timespan. I've bought items from the same seller several times, but not 8-10 times a day for a week, leaving the same feedback text every time.
I've been using Paypal for about 3 years with absolutely no problems of any kind, and I do a LOT of business with it. People that think it sucks are ones that have invariably been thrown into very strange situations that would fuck up anything.
What pisses me off about everything you mentioned is that all 'real' scientists write off any and all research into those things as 'pseudo-science'. Pseudo-science is taking a biased question ("Aliens exist. How can we prove it?") and trying to find an answer that fits your theory. There are plenty of people that research those topics that ask the RIGHT qustion ("Does this thing exist?"), and their research is just as valid as anything else. The sad thing is that there are far more of the former than the latter.
Because pseudo-intellectual jerkoff hackers need something they can stroke their own wieners over. "I found a problem! It doesn't work like that! *JIZZ*"
Or maybe it's because NORMAL people really don't give a fuck about the correct physics of outer space travel, they just want to watch a movie that doesn't suck.
Hey! A non-moron replied! P2P apps show the hypocritical bullshit that Slashdot is infested with. The EXACT SAME PEOPLE will complain all day and all night about POSSIBLE abuses of RFID tags and how they should be outlawed because MAYBE someone will invade their privacy and do something illegal, then they'll turn around and defend P2P to the death, despite about 95% of all P2P traffic being ILLEGALLY traded items. The bullshit part is that they'll argue how you can't condemn a technology because of possible misuse, then they'll go and do exactly that with RFID.
It's always been accepted that the posession and/or use of items that are used almost entirely for criminal purposes can be restricted. Brass knuckles, lockpicks, radar detectors, and other things have been restricted in some way practically everywhere. If P2P software developers don't get their shit together and come up with ways to get the illegal shit off their networks, the exact same thing will happen to them. The continued facilitation of LARGE-SCALE piracy does absolutely nobody any good.
We might actually have to go back to using Usenet and the streets of New York for our bootleg videos and music! How could we do that?
Of all the good uses that are possible with P2P apps (how often do we see torrents of slashdotted videos?), how many here actually use them for anything BUT pirating movies/games/music/books (bitch about the use of the word pirate and I'll ignore you)? More importantly, since this is the geek-ass bastard capital of the net, how many NORMAL people use it for anything but pirating stuff?
The grandparent's statements are probably only applicable to those of us that only use web-based email and don't care to change to our own servers. The lack of fucking huge Flash and Javascript ads alone are enough to get me switching.
This is the most pedantic bullshit I've ever fucking read.
a) MacOSX, Linux, BeOS, NetBSD, OpenBSD, AmigaOS... exactly how is MS the only company? They're the most popular. Deal with it.
b) But what if I'm a single guy, and I bought a minivan? Should the manufacturer have to remove all but the driver's seat because I'm not going to use them? Why should I pay for them if I'm not going to use them?
c) Bullshit argument that has no bearing ON A FUCKING ANALOGY YOU FUCKING GODDAMN PEDANTIC CUNT. SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Contra: Hard Corps - Genesis
This is where the men and boys separate. It's quite possibly the ultimate test of skill because every time you die, you KNOW that it was YOUR fault and not the game cheating. Contra doesn't play that crap.
Batman and Robin - Genesis
The epitome of controller-flinging difficulty. The Mad Hatter boss encounter will send your input device pad screaming towards a was at an appreciable fraction of light speed.
Mickey Mania - Sega CD
What's that? A DISNEY game? You better believe it. Mickey Mania was one of the best Sega CD games, and probably the most underrated platformers of all time. It's also REALLY fucking hard. The early levels start out nice enough, but as you progress they get more difficult at an alarming rate. The bonus levels are nearly impossible!
Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side - Sega CD
Possibly the hardest fighting game ever. Limited special move use, an unconventional fighting system, and a hell of a lot of blood add up to make one of the most frustrating single player experiences ever.
DoDonPachi - Arcade/Saturn/Playstation
Th ultimate twitchfest. Screens literally filled with bullets, most of them your own. Insane weaponry and combo systems. No controller throwing here. You're too busy hitting the start button for another go.
ESPrade - arcade
Also by Cave (makers of DoDonPachi), ESPrade is the heart warming tale of some kids with ESP and... uh.... well, they blow the shit out of stuff. And you play as them. Amazing graphics and brain-numbing difficulty.
Battle Garegga - arcade
Made by Raizing, this may be the most difficult shooter ever. Bullets that are about 5 pixels in size combine with backgrounds of a similar color to make one of the most shrapnel filled games in existence as you repeatedly run headfirst into shit you didn't see.
Honorable mentions:
Chakan: The Forever Man - Genesis
Rally Raid - PC
Axelay - SNES
R-Type Leo - arcade
Armed Police Batrider - arcade
Try out any of these games for a taste of REAL difficulty.
It's a lame reference to most computers being sold with Windows pre-installed. If you're not going to use Windows, it's called the "Microsoft Tax" because you have to pay for Windows anyway. Lame thing to have a phrase for, isn't it? That's like complaining that your car comes with more seats than you use, so you have a "Seatbelt Tax".
Slashdot Mirror
If a guy jumped from the sidewalk to the top of a thirty story building with no explanation for his ability to do so, I'm willing to bet even you would say "that's bullshit. It can't happen".
Actually, I'd probably say "Hey, the Matrix is on. I love that movie!"
If everybody knew that being shot wouldn't knock you through a window, how often do you think we'd see it in movies?
Quite often, because it looks cool. Take the Schwarzenegger movie "Eraser". I've seen people complain about this movie because railguns aren't real (or not that small, at any rate), and you can't see through walls... IT DOESN'T MATTER! In the context of that movie, in the reality that movie creates, that is possible and railguns that small actually exist.
I think the best example for this sort of thing is horror movies. I watched Dawn of the Dead the other day (great movie. Up there with Evil Dead 2), so let's use that. They offer absolutely no explanation why dead people are coming back to life, other than "When there's no room left in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth." (Best. Tagline. EVER.). It is completely implausible, and extremely stupid... yet it works. You have to make the mental leap to get over the fact that the concept of the sudden reanimation of dead dudes is stupid and just GO WITH IT. Also, at least with that movie, it helps if you keep your sense of humor with you.
Every time I switch to a new one, three months later they disappear up their own ass. It happened with IGN (they just sucked), usa.net, and someplace else I can't remember right now. I'm hoping that Google won't go under anytime soon after making Gmail public.
That would be nice, but I'm not a luddite and don't see the point in getting my ass in a sling anytime someone dares use Java or Flash. It's mass amounts of the blinking annoying shit that annoys me, and it's more trouble to turn them on and off than it's worth. I use Mozilla, BTW, so don't give me the 'get a better browser' bullshit.
I doubt it. They still wouldn't give a fuck. I KNOW the REAL physics, and sometimes it just doesn't matter. Reality isn't fun. It isn't interesting. I live here, it's fucking boring. I don't want to watch movies filled with people acting like everyone I know doing the usual things I do. I want to see something INTERESTING.
It never ceases to amaze me how people can complain about physics in a movie, but be able to completely buy into the fact that they're in OUTER FUCKING SPACE surrounded by MIDGET BEARS and massive turd-shaped monsters. It's called "Suspension of Disbelief". At some point you have to give up your pedantic whiny-assing and just say "Fuck it. It's cool."
Fucking hell, that's the dumbest goddamned thing I've read this fucking week.
The fact that a minority of bitchiny whiners have been fucked over in some way by Paypal doesn't make them bad. It makes these people fucking annoying bitchy whiners. Go read some of the stories. Almost all of them involve dodgy sellers or morons trying to use a service they don't understand and didn't read the fucking instruction manual for.
What the FUCK makes you think that Paypal makes a fucking dime 'stealing from a minority of their users'? THEY ARE THE FUCKING MINORITY, DIPSHIT. It's far better to have everyone like you than have everyone hate you. Fucking moron. You don't make money by pissing people off. You make money by providing a good service for a good price. Paypal does that, and they have no reason to intentionally rip anyone off.
This is not sniping. Sniping is bidding on an auction in the last few seconds so you guarantee that whoever else is bidding doesn't get a chance to bid again before the auction ends. What you are talking about is SHILL BIDDING. There is a huge difference, and lumping the two together is just wrong.
You're talking about shill bidding, not sniping. Shill bidding is when a seller bids one of their own items up. Sniping is simply bidding in the last few seconds of an auction to try and catch something at a low price. There's no question that shill bidding is wrong, and the people that do it should be punched in the balls really, really hard. Sniping is only bad for people that want to whine-ass that they couldn't get that TV they wanted because some ass came in on the last 10 seconds of the auction and outbid them. There is a MASSIVE difference, and putting the two in the same category is just plain wrong.
One word: FEEDBACK.
First, you get to hold the item in your hand and see that it exists.
And by reading a users feedback, you can tll if they have a history of screwing people over.
Second, you get to talk immediately to the vendor if you have a question, not having to wait for an email that may never come
Lame point. Auctions last up to nine days. This is why I prefer buying on eBay. I have more time to think things over and ask questions.
Third, don't have to worry about shipping issues (breakage, costs, delay) like you do with Ebay
This is a problem with purchasing ANYTHING that will be shipped to you, not just on eBay. Anything online or in a catalog could have problems.
Fourth, don't have to include iffy escrow services such as PayPal, as you do with Ebay
I haven't dealt with excrow on anything, and I find it quite stupid that anyone would buy something that damn expensive on eBay. I sure as hell wouldn't.
Fifth, you can get a sense of the type of dealer by talking to him (emotional reactions, knowledge of subject) face to face vs. having ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA who you're dealing with on Ebay
Again, feedback tells you everything. Someone with 200+ feedback and no negatives isn't going to fuck you over. Period. Someone with 5 feedbacks, 2 of wich are negative, needs to be avoided. After a few months of dealing on eBay you can tell at a glance whether or not someone is likely to fuck you over, just like doing business IRL.
Sixth, you can tell if vendors are legit if they come back to the same place week after week, as opposed to some that show up for one week and then never return.
Feedback, yet again. It takes a long time to rack up significant amounts of feedback and those that do are usually as good as gold.
Ebay being "just like" an open market? Don't think so... I've seen people get ripped off in SO MANY WAYS on Ebay that I'll NEVER buy through them, no matter how good the deal
By 'seen' do you mean "I have real life friends that have been fucked over multiple times" or do you mean "Some guys on this board I go to say eBay sucks"? Yes, eBay is just like an open markt. If you go around believing things that are too good to be true ("Quad Xeon server! Only $149.95!") then you're going to get your ass pounded. If you actually read feedback and are careful about who you deal with, you will have no problems.
Don't ever use money orders. I learned that the same way you did. I bought a guitar effects pedal and sent a $50 money order. A couple of weeks later I get an email from the seller telling me he hasn't received it. I couldn't afford to send another $50, so I got nailed with a negative for non-payment, plus I was out $50. Now I don't buy from anyone that doesn't accept Paypal.
Yes, and it's mind-numbingly obvious when you read their feedback. Often they'll have MANY feedback from the same account in a very short timespan. I've bought items from the same seller several times, but not 8-10 times a day for a week, leaving the same feedback text every time.
I've been using Paypal for about 3 years with absolutely no problems of any kind, and I do a LOT of business with it. People that think it sucks are ones that have invariably been thrown into very strange situations that would fuck up anything.
What pisses me off about everything you mentioned is that all 'real' scientists write off any and all research into those things as 'pseudo-science'. Pseudo-science is taking a biased question ("Aliens exist. How can we prove it?") and trying to find an answer that fits your theory. There are plenty of people that research those topics that ask the RIGHT qustion ("Does this thing exist?"), and their research is just as valid as anything else. The sad thing is that there are far more of the former than the latter.
Because pseudo-intellectual jerkoff hackers need something they can stroke their own wieners over. "I found a problem! It doesn't work like that! *JIZZ*"
Or maybe it's because NORMAL people really don't give a fuck about the correct physics of outer space travel, they just want to watch a movie that doesn't suck.
Hey! A non-moron replied! P2P apps show the hypocritical bullshit that Slashdot is infested with. The EXACT SAME PEOPLE will complain all day and all night about POSSIBLE abuses of RFID tags and how they should be outlawed because MAYBE someone will invade their privacy and do something illegal, then they'll turn around and defend P2P to the death, despite about 95% of all P2P traffic being ILLEGALLY traded items. The bullshit part is that they'll argue how you can't condemn a technology because of possible misuse, then they'll go and do exactly that with RFID.
It's always been accepted that the posession and/or use of items that are used almost entirely for criminal purposes can be restricted. Brass knuckles, lockpicks, radar detectors, and other things have been restricted in some way practically everywhere. If P2P software developers don't get their shit together and come up with ways to get the illegal shit off their networks, the exact same thing will happen to them. The continued facilitation of LARGE-SCALE piracy does absolutely nobody any good.
I never SAID anything, I asked a question. A few lessons in basic English comprehension might help that stupidity problem of yours.
We might actually have to go back to using Usenet and the streets of New York for our bootleg videos and music! How could we do that?
Of all the good uses that are possible with P2P apps (how often do we see torrents of slashdotted videos?), how many here actually use them for anything BUT pirating movies/games/music/books (bitch about the use of the word pirate and I'll ignore you)? More importantly, since this is the geek-ass bastard capital of the net, how many NORMAL people use it for anything but pirating stuff?
The grandparent's statements are probably only applicable to those of us that only use web-based email and don't care to change to our own servers. The lack of fucking huge Flash and Javascript ads alone are enough to get me switching.
Give me some REALISTIC possible privacy concerns, and I might give a shit. Can you come up with any?
What privacy concerns? Give me something that doesn't sound like a retarded tinfoil hat wearing moronic theory and I MIGHT be inclined to give a shit.
This is the most pedantic bullshit I've ever fucking read.
a) MacOSX, Linux, BeOS, NetBSD, OpenBSD, AmigaOS... exactly how is MS the only company? They're the most popular. Deal with it.
b) But what if I'm a single guy, and I bought a minivan? Should the manufacturer have to remove all but the driver's seat because I'm not going to use them? Why should I pay for them if I'm not going to use them?
c) Bullshit argument that has no bearing ON A FUCKING ANALOGY YOU FUCKING GODDAMN PEDANTIC CUNT. SHUT THE FUCK UP.
Alright. Here's some REAL hard games.
Contra: Hard Corps - Genesis
This is where the men and boys separate. It's quite possibly the ultimate test of skill because every time you die, you KNOW that it was YOUR fault and not the game cheating. Contra doesn't play that crap.
Batman and Robin - Genesis
The epitome of controller-flinging difficulty. The Mad Hatter boss encounter will send your input device pad screaming towards a was at an appreciable fraction of light speed.
Mickey Mania - Sega CD
What's that? A DISNEY game? You better believe it. Mickey Mania was one of the best Sega CD games, and probably the most underrated platformers of all time. It's also REALLY fucking hard. The early levels start out nice enough, but as you progress they get more difficult at an alarming rate. The bonus levels are nearly impossible!
Eternal Champions: Challenge from the Dark Side - Sega CD
Possibly the hardest fighting game ever. Limited special move use, an unconventional fighting system, and a hell of a lot of blood add up to make one of the most frustrating single player experiences ever.
DoDonPachi - Arcade/Saturn/Playstation
Th ultimate twitchfest. Screens literally filled with bullets, most of them your own. Insane weaponry and combo systems. No controller throwing here. You're too busy hitting the start button for another go.
ESPrade - arcade
Also by Cave (makers of DoDonPachi), ESPrade is the heart warming tale of some kids with ESP and... uh.... well, they blow the shit out of stuff. And you play as them. Amazing graphics and brain-numbing difficulty.
Battle Garegga - arcade
Made by Raizing, this may be the most difficult shooter ever. Bullets that are about 5 pixels in size combine with backgrounds of a similar color to make one of the most shrapnel filled games in existence as you repeatedly run headfirst into shit you didn't see.
Honorable mentions:
Chakan: The Forever Man - Genesis
Rally Raid - PC
Axelay - SNES
R-Type Leo - arcade
Armed Police Batrider - arcade
Try out any of these games for a taste of REAL difficulty.
It's a lame reference to most computers being sold with Windows pre-installed. If you're not going to use Windows, it's called the "Microsoft Tax" because you have to pay for Windows anyway. Lame thing to have a phrase for, isn't it? That's like complaining that your car comes with more seats than you use, so you have a "Seatbelt Tax".
Yeah, only on IP. Except for all that memory they sold (or didn't sell, as the case may be).