So, are you against all fraud laws? Is theft ok if someone left their door open?
It's asinine to suggest that anything bad that happens as a result of a bad actor is the victim's fault if it was preventable by them being smarter, stronger, or more powerful. It's really fucked up, it's happens to be the exact opposite of how law works, and it ignores the plain fact that even among smart people, there's differing capacity, and that not all victims of crime are "less smart" across all problem domains. Con men LOVE well educated, hard-working, naive victims with good jobs and lots of money in the bank.
I know you believe you're the GODDAMN BATMAN, but even you might, at some point, get fooled by someone. You've apparently already been fooled by this bullshit libertarianism, so it's just a matter of time. And when that happens - I hope the legal system and social apparatus protect you and prevent you from suffering permanent damage. Because that's what it's there for, and even jackasses deserve protection from honest mistakes and victimization by others.
The problem is that books, which are objects designed over literally centuries to be easily read, are not designed to be read for long periods of time? Or is it that you're weird about it. I don't know if you have some kind of disability, and if you do I'm sorry, but every single problem that you describe as "tough" here is incredibly minor, if it's a problem at all. I mean, "tough to keep open properly?" If an out of shape dude can do it with one hand unconsciously, it's not tough, and I guarantee you, that is a thing I do every single day, for hours at a stretch. "Constant holding?" Well, so does an e-Reader, unless you get a stand (also available for books), or lay it flat (which, in your paragraph about hardbacks, is "as tough on your neck as possible"). So does anything you're going to read that's meant to be hand-portable.
Plus, if you're assuming sedentary reading, these are all extremely solved problems. Reading stands, desks with various accomodations, those little page-holder things.
Note that every single thing in your last paragraph applies equally to e-Readers, computers, paperwork, and building model ships.
There are few things I've done which are as uncomfortable as trying to read a book for a prolonged period of time.
I'm honestly curious - please take this as utterly without any sort of sarcasm/bitchiness of any sort - what are you talking about here? As someone who's pretty much never not been reading a book since the age of five, this seems utterly bizarre to me. I mean, the worst experiences I've had with books have, at absolute worst, been mildly awkward.
I will say that, when eating or in other situations where I only have one hand free, my Kindle is more convenient - but, honestly, not enough to make a reading decision based on it, unless it's a marginal case (i.e. there's two books I want to read about equally, and one is on the Kindle).
I would say that, while there isn't anything necessarily better about books than other forms of entertainment, there is something different. The demands on the attention span and memory from long-form written fiction are very, very different from the demands of movies, television shows, etc. Also, even if the material isn't very complex, just sheer practice means that voracious readers tend to be more fluent readers.
And, from a less aggressively practical perspective, the novel as a medium has different strong and weak points than film or television, which carry over across all levels of quality. Example - romance novels tend to have better characterization than softcore porn directed at women - not due to any difference in quality of writing, but due to the larger space and ability to easily represent internal dialogue.
Yes, and by your logic, we were suffering from a much worse population crisis during the great depression.
You are attached to some reasonable points, but honestly, you're attributing a lot of things to population and resource difficulties that are actually tied to political/social/economic factors.
I could agree with you completely if there was a "near-total socialism" anywhere near being on the table. Frankly, what we have the choice of (in the U.S., at least) is laissez-faire robber baron capitalism from Republicans, and right-of-center corporatist "moderation" from the Democrats.
Except that there's a huge glut of lawyers right now, and law (as a hyper-conservative profession, fiscally) is one of the first to start downsizing, and last to start rehiring? Also, a tiny, tiny amount of lawyers are big firm lawyers like you're talking about - the large bulk are either low-to-moderate paid civil servants, or else low-end private attorneys.
The rest of your post is pretty solid, though.
If they were paying out into charities the amount that they should be paying in tax burden, maybe it would work out. But they're not, as an aggregate, doing so.
Also, charities don't get interstates built, shores defended, or criminals prosecuted, you fscking moron.
Hmmm... Except for geographic search, cookies that show previous searches made (which can be quite extensive, even for single sessions - and for people who don't close their browser often, they can be massive. Also, people often sign into gmail without thinking that it will affect their searches, because that's a non-obvious side effect.
Which is kind of the point - companies have stopped considering employees as anything other than replaceable cogs. It's like they stopped reading the management handbook at "Scientific Management."
Cost-benefit uber alles doesn't actually work very well in any environment that considers other factors besides immediate, short-term profit.
It's the inability to "start low" that people are complaining about, actually. The position actually being discussed is this: "Software jobs have a higher barrier to entry than is reasonable - even entry-level jobs require multi-year experience, which is unreasonable."
Flock is (was, at this point) built on Firefox, but it's the same principle. And no, no-one needs this crap. Anyone who wants social stuff built into their browser can and will do it with an add-on. Anyone who doesn't will ditch a browser for having it.
Fair enough - I tend to be a little over-cautious with that, and try to heavily separate places where I'm talking about something I don't like that I think has demonstrated appeal/merit, and when I'm talking about something I think is bad or mediocre more or less non-subjectively. As an example, I'd say that Twilight sucks, but I'd say that "The Sun Also Rises" sucks in my opinion. Not that there's any moral imperative to do so, or that you're wrong for not doing so - I'm just explaining where I was coming from.
I'm not a hater on Halo's storyline, actually - I've got some issues with their environment design, and I don't think there's a lot of variation in the gameplay, but it's a compelling story. I also found HL2's story compelling, though - and I thought Alyx was incredibly well characterized, owing to the really amazing work put into her facial expressions, and excellent voice work by Merle Dandridge.
Fair enough - the mechanics-uber-alles thing was misreading on my part.
In response to your actual issues with Valve, I'd like to point out that, when HL2 came out, the Source engine was impressive graphically, particularly in the its character models and their animation, and in how well it handled water. Keep in mind that HL2 came out in 2004 - yes, its competition is Far Cry, Doom3, and UT2004. Of those, only Far Cry can really claim "OMG PRETTIER!", and Far Cry required crazy-ass hardware to run. HL2 ran MUCH better than Doom3 on identical hardware, and it took about a year for the issues with Doom3's rendering engine to get patched, if I recall correctly.
Also, the sound, music, and voice work in Valve's games has been stellar since basically day one; Half-Life was noted for it, even if it has aged badly, and
On the story issue, the majority opinion is diametrically opposed to yours; most people who've played the games come away with the impression that Valve does story extremely well. I think the issue here is one of assuming that your preference is universal - I personally hate Charles Dickens, but I don't assume that it's because he was incompetent, or that there's no reason he's popular.
I'm curious, though - what would your examples of good story in FPS games be? Or good graphics (from the initial release period of HL2)?
So, here it is - you didn't enjoy it, so it's not novel, and doesn't count.
The Gravity Gun was, in fact, novel, and the mechanics around it were exciting to many people. Mechanics aren't everything, also - a lot of what drew people to Half Life 2 was the execution, and the focus on things like facial animation and life-like movement.
I'm also a little confused as to why someone claiming that "only brand new mechanics make a game worthwhile!" is so attached to Stardock. They thrive on presenting evolutionary advances to existing mechanics and play-styles.
This comes down to taste issues, but your criticisms of them aren't the majority opinion, and, frankly, I question your "mechanically not that special." Half-Life was a big deal for a reason, as was Half-Life 2, as was Portal, as was L4D.
Also, scratching an itch can be nice, but it hardly makes a case for genre exceptionalism.
Of course, when you're working with a 7 year old engine, modding it to do radically new things, while still not breaking compatibility with a generic modding API stretching across a whole bunch of still-popular games...
Also, since making the textures for an FPS is much more involved than making them for, say, a turn based strategy... Art, graphical (and audio) content, etc, etc, aren't some magic pixie-dust process you can abstract away. That shit also takes time, can also bog down, and is a huge part of the expense, time, and work of making any type of game. Artists aren't any more deterministic than programmers, particularly if you're holding yourself to high standards.
I mean, cross-genre comparison isn't easy, but I'd say Half-Life 2 and its episode, Left4Dead1/2, and even TF2 (which I don't play myself) are of fairly uniform high quality, and that Stardock's games are, well, nice, but not irreplaceable. This isn't saying that either of those games is bad, just that I'd question whether your statement is an honest quality metric, or whether it's that you like strategy more than shooters.
Frankly, I think you can pick any of Valve's shooters, and it's a better and more important game within the FPS genre than Stardock's are within turn-based strategy. Valve is the best in their field - Stardock is very good, and fills a niche.
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So, are you against all fraud laws? Is theft ok if someone left their door open?
It's asinine to suggest that anything bad that happens as a result of a bad actor is the victim's fault if it was preventable by them being smarter, stronger, or more powerful. It's really fucked up, it's happens to be the exact opposite of how law works, and it ignores the plain fact that even among smart people, there's differing capacity, and that not all victims of crime are "less smart" across all problem domains. Con men LOVE well educated, hard-working, naive victims with good jobs and lots of money in the bank.
I know you believe you're the GODDAMN BATMAN, but even you might, at some point, get fooled by someone. You've apparently already been fooled by this bullshit libertarianism, so it's just a matter of time. And when that happens - I hope the legal system and social apparatus protect you and prevent you from suffering permanent damage. Because that's what it's there for, and even jackasses deserve protection from honest mistakes and victimization by others.
Doesn't that sort of miss the point of "The assignment is to use an OS different from what you normally use?"
Ah, Loki Software. You are missed. I still have that Linux copy of Alpha Centauri, somewhere.
The problem is that books, which are objects designed over literally centuries to be easily read, are not designed to be read for long periods of time? Or is it that you're weird about it. I don't know if you have some kind of disability, and if you do I'm sorry, but every single problem that you describe as "tough" here is incredibly minor, if it's a problem at all. I mean, "tough to keep open properly?" If an out of shape dude can do it with one hand unconsciously, it's not tough, and I guarantee you, that is a thing I do every single day, for hours at a stretch. "Constant holding?" Well, so does an e-Reader, unless you get a stand (also available for books), or lay it flat (which, in your paragraph about hardbacks, is "as tough on your neck as possible"). So does anything you're going to read that's meant to be hand-portable.
Plus, if you're assuming sedentary reading, these are all extremely solved problems. Reading stands, desks with various accomodations, those little page-holder things.
Note that every single thing in your last paragraph applies equally to e-Readers, computers, paperwork, and building model ships.
I'm honestly curious - please take this as utterly without any sort of sarcasm/bitchiness of any sort - what are you talking about here? As someone who's pretty much never not been reading a book since the age of five, this seems utterly bizarre to me. I mean, the worst experiences I've had with books have, at absolute worst, been mildly awkward.
I will say that, when eating or in other situations where I only have one hand free, my Kindle is more convenient - but, honestly, not enough to make a reading decision based on it, unless it's a marginal case (i.e. there's two books I want to read about equally, and one is on the Kindle).
This.
I would say that, while there isn't anything necessarily better about books than other forms of entertainment, there is something different. The demands on the attention span and memory from long-form written fiction are very, very different from the demands of movies, television shows, etc. Also, even if the material isn't very complex, just sheer practice means that voracious readers tend to be more fluent readers.
And, from a less aggressively practical perspective, the novel as a medium has different strong and weak points than film or television, which carry over across all levels of quality. Example - romance novels tend to have better characterization than softcore porn directed at women - not due to any difference in quality of writing, but due to the larger space and ability to easily represent internal dialogue.
If you want to go with something WYSIWYG with some chance of being around in five/ten years, I think Dreamweaver is probably your best bet.
Yes, and by your logic, we were suffering from a much worse population crisis during the great depression.
You are attached to some reasonable points, but honestly, you're attributing a lot of things to population and resource difficulties that are actually tied to political/social/economic factors.
I could agree with you completely if there was a "near-total socialism" anywhere near being on the table. Frankly, what we have the choice of (in the U.S., at least) is laissez-faire robber baron capitalism from Republicans, and right-of-center corporatist "moderation" from the Democrats.
Except that there's a huge glut of lawyers right now, and law (as a hyper-conservative profession, fiscally) is one of the first to start downsizing, and last to start rehiring? Also, a tiny, tiny amount of lawyers are big firm lawyers like you're talking about - the large bulk are either low-to-moderate paid civil servants, or else low-end private attorneys. The rest of your post is pretty solid, though.
If they were paying out into charities the amount that they should be paying in tax burden, maybe it would work out. But they're not, as an aggregate, doing so. Also, charities don't get interstates built, shores defended, or criminals prosecuted, you fscking moron.
Mod this the hell up.
Hmmm... Except for geographic search, cookies that show previous searches made (which can be quite extensive, even for single sessions - and for people who don't close their browser often, they can be massive. Also, people often sign into gmail without thinking that it will affect their searches, because that's a non-obvious side effect.
Which is kind of the point - companies have stopped considering employees as anything other than replaceable cogs. It's like they stopped reading the management handbook at "Scientific Management."
Cost-benefit uber alles doesn't actually work very well in any environment that considers other factors besides immediate, short-term profit.
It's the inability to "start low" that people are complaining about, actually. The position actually being discussed is this: "Software jobs have a higher barrier to entry than is reasonable - even entry-level jobs require multi-year experience, which is unreasonable."
Flock is (was, at this point) built on Firefox, but it's the same principle. And no, no-one needs this crap. Anyone who wants social stuff built into their browser can and will do it with an add-on. Anyone who doesn't will ditch a browser for having it.
Flock is dead.... short live the Rockmelt!
Fair enough - I tend to be a little over-cautious with that, and try to heavily separate places where I'm talking about something I don't like that I think has demonstrated appeal/merit, and when I'm talking about something I think is bad or mediocre more or less non-subjectively. As an example, I'd say that Twilight sucks, but I'd say that "The Sun Also Rises" sucks in my opinion. Not that there's any moral imperative to do so, or that you're wrong for not doing so - I'm just explaining where I was coming from.
I'm not a hater on Halo's storyline, actually - I've got some issues with their environment design, and I don't think there's a lot of variation in the gameplay, but it's a compelling story. I also found HL2's story compelling, though - and I thought Alyx was incredibly well characterized, owing to the really amazing work put into her facial expressions, and excellent voice work by Merle Dandridge.
Fair enough - the mechanics-uber-alles thing was misreading on my part.
In response to your actual issues with Valve, I'd like to point out that, when HL2 came out, the Source engine was impressive graphically, particularly in the its character models and their animation, and in how well it handled water. Keep in mind that HL2 came out in 2004 - yes, its competition is Far Cry, Doom3, and UT2004. Of those, only Far Cry can really claim "OMG PRETTIER!", and Far Cry required crazy-ass hardware to run. HL2 ran MUCH better than Doom3 on identical hardware, and it took about a year for the issues with Doom3's rendering engine to get patched, if I recall correctly.
Also, the sound, music, and voice work in Valve's games has been stellar since basically day one; Half-Life was noted for it, even if it has aged badly, and
On the story issue, the majority opinion is diametrically opposed to yours; most people who've played the games come away with the impression that Valve does story extremely well. I think the issue here is one of assuming that your preference is universal - I personally hate Charles Dickens, but I don't assume that it's because he was incompetent, or that there's no reason he's popular.
I'm curious, though - what would your examples of good story in FPS games be? Or good graphics (from the initial release period of HL2)?
So, here it is - you didn't enjoy it, so it's not novel, and doesn't count.
The Gravity Gun was, in fact, novel, and the mechanics around it were exciting to many people. Mechanics aren't everything, also - a lot of what drew people to Half Life 2 was the execution, and the focus on things like facial animation and life-like movement.
I'm also a little confused as to why someone claiming that "only brand new mechanics make a game worthwhile!" is so attached to Stardock. They thrive on presenting evolutionary advances to existing mechanics and play-styles.
This comes down to taste issues, but your criticisms of them aren't the majority opinion, and, frankly, I question your "mechanically not that special." Half-Life was a big deal for a reason, as was Half-Life 2, as was Portal, as was L4D.
Also, scratching an itch can be nice, but it hardly makes a case for genre exceptionalism.
That's fair. I was actually kind of thinking of them as a unit, which isn't clear at all in my original post.
Of course, when you're working with a 7 year old engine, modding it to do radically new things, while still not breaking compatibility with a generic modding API stretching across a whole bunch of still-popular games...
Also, since making the textures for an FPS is much more involved than making them for, say, a turn based strategy... Art, graphical (and audio) content, etc, etc, aren't some magic pixie-dust process you can abstract away. That shit also takes time, can also bog down, and is a huge part of the expense, time, and work of making any type of game. Artists aren't any more deterministic than programmers, particularly if you're holding yourself to high standards.
Really?
I mean, cross-genre comparison isn't easy, but I'd say Half-Life 2 and its episode, Left4Dead1/2, and even TF2 (which I don't play myself) are of fairly uniform high quality, and that Stardock's games are, well, nice, but not irreplaceable. This isn't saying that either of those games is bad, just that I'd question whether your statement is an honest quality metric, or whether it's that you like strategy more than shooters.
Frankly, I think you can pick any of Valve's shooters, and it's a better and more important game within the FPS genre than Stardock's are within turn-based strategy. Valve is the best in their field - Stardock is very good, and fills a niche.