Where is the breakdown of actual expenses? I understand the mostly-text-only site has a significant bandwidth demand, but other than that, what could they possibly do with $16mm/yr, other than line the pockets of those on "the board"? (It's amazing how many executives and administrators of charitable organizations make six or even seven figures). It smells an awful lot to me like these startups that get $10mm in VC for a website that clearly was (or should have been) written by one guy over a couple of weekends and could live handily on a couple servers for a few hundred in bandwidth/colo costs per month. But they need the other $9.999mm to cover the expenses of unnecessary office space, aeron chairs, etc.
As for advertising on the site? Isn't there anything on the fucking internet that we can just have without ads? Even every fucking dipshit mother with a blog and one regular reader spams their page with ads and tries to monetize it. Doesn't anyone have some self-respect? Or a sense of doing something because it's enjoyable to do something that contributes to the world?
If there are actual justifiable expenses as astronomical as they're claiming, then do what you have to do to meet the expenses (though, frankly, when you have advertisers, you are now beholden to pleasing THEM and not your visitors, which means it is in your best interest to censor or sponsor things according to the demands of your advertisers above all else).
Mostly, I don't really give a fuck. Wikipedia has largely lost most of its value to a cluster-fuck of navel-gazing.
Sounds perfect, to me. I'm tired of treating driving like some sort of god-given right that we only take away from you in the absolute most dire circumstance. Convicted of driving drunk? Never drive again. Caught driving after a life time ban? Serve time in prison (maybe a year - five if you're doing it drunk). It's pretty easy to avoid losing your right to drive. You know, by just not drinking and driving.
People would be pissed as hell if, say, their doctor was caught performing surgery while drunk. Slap him on the wrist and send him right back into the surgery room. A second time. A third. A fifth. A twelfth.
For that matter, I'd like to see more attention given to proper driving *period*. Your car isn't your living room or your office. People always say things like "well, if I can't use my cell phone in a car, should I just not be allowed to have conversations, either -- since that's proven to be just as distracting?".
YES. Fucking hell YES. You are behind the wheel of a three ton 80mph fucking DEATH MACHINE. You shouldn't be eating, drinking, playing with your radio, reading, disciplining your kids, doing office work, making calls, texting, or any fucking other things. If that's too much to ask of people, they need to hire a fucking driver, walk/bike, take a taxi, or hop on a bus.
It's no different than any other fourth amendment concern. And, in this case, a concern that you can't just subject populations to on-demand searches of their personal property without cause for suspicion.
If you are pulled over and alcohol is suspicion you are under the influence, I have no problem demanding that you be subjected to a breathalizer. I believe it's actually considered an obligation for the "privilege" of having a driver's license. The same way you're not obligated to "present your papers" on the street, Soviet style -- but if you're the driver of a car, you are.
The real problem here is that populations should not be subjected to pointless invasive searches and stops like this. If you suspect an individual -- stop them. But don't set up a fucking road block and treat the entire population with suspicion. It's the same reason searching every single person as they enter a shopping mall or a train station or a bus station or a library or any other place would be such a violation.
If you REALLY want to get serious about dealing with drunk driving, stop treating these fucking bitches with kid gloves. I'm tired of hearing about guys who have countless convictions and the societal perception that driving under the influence is "wrong, but . . . everyone has done it" (they HAVEN'T). How about you lose your license for LIFE after a first conviction and serve five years in prison after your second conviction. Problem fucking solved.
If the law now sees infringement as a crime, I don't understand why plagiarism isn't a crime? And why can't I have someone imprisoned for breaching or breaking a contract, which is essentially what this is.
Wow, that's disgusting. Crime? Really? Crime? A crime is if you steal my car and chop-shop it. Or if you rape someone. Or if you break into my house. Making a copy of a disc and selling it online is shitty and is copyright infringement and you should be held accountable to the copyright holder, financially. But a CRIME? It should go on your criminal record and you should be in prison with violent criminals who have committed actual crimes that actually physically impact people?!
As someone mentioned, Shadowrun attempted this awhile back and it was a miserable failure. There is another developer (I can't recall who) that talks about having researched this possibility, too. In the end, they decided it was probably never *EVER* going to happen, because no matter how much skill you have, a console control simply is not built for the speed and precision that WASD+M is capable of. WASD+M players completely wipe the floor with the console players. There's a reason why most console games have some degree of "auto-aim". For example, it's on in Black Ops. Just aim down your sides as you point your gun at a window and if an enemy walks by that window, your gun will automatically start to move along with them - because of auto-aim.
The obvious solution would seem to be to have WASD+M for consoles, too. Then you can use whatever platform you want, wherever you want, with whatever input device you want. I don't see them ever doing that, however, because then you have a divide between the console players with WASD+M and those without. They'd rather hobble everyone than allow people a choice. And, to a degree, I guess I can understand it. Part of the reason I've been doing more and more gaming on the console over the years is that as I get older, hunching over a desk with my face plastered against a giant LCD in an office chair (basically, the same environment I spend all day doing actual WORK in) becomes less appealing. I probably wouldn't want to hunch over a coffee table with a mouse and keyboard in front of a giant television, either. So, I have to pick what I want and what I'm willing to give up (which depends on mood, type of game, etc).
You'd think some genius could have figured it out, by now. Instead, they're all busy with 3D (even on the PC) and controller-free motion detection and fucking dancing games. I don't see things changing in the next ten years.
Seriously, your reaction time and eyesight start to go downhill drastically once you hit 25 and in the "professional gaming" circuit, they supposedly consider you over the hill if you're old enough to drink. As an older person with disposable income, I can't even hope to compete against some teenager. Hell, you hear these little fuckers carrying on entire conversations over an open mic (fucking most irritating thing, ever) while stomping your ass in an FPS. I have to do one or the other - playing or conversing.
If you really want to decide who is better skilled, you need to take a WASD+M and a console gamer who have neither ever used the other platform's controls and pit them against each other in a bunch of matches using the input method which is foreign to them.
Sadly, I don't see any time soon that consoles will be getting WASD+M. They're too interested in giving everyone a "fair shake", so rather than giving them more options, they just tie everyone's hand behind their back so *everyone* is crippled. And instead of going the route of more precision, they're busy wasting their time with 3D, motion controls, and dancing "games".
WASD+M is a more accurate method of input, but Input method isn't relevant here, since we're talking about support actions that don't require any type of aiming or precision. Hit a button and you throw a health/ammo pack out.
Can someone explain how the input device is relevant, here?
This objective only counted support actions. There is no input-advantage in pressing one button that throws out a health/ammo pack versus pressing one key that throws out a health/ammo pack.
I'd suggest that one major difference is probably the match-making. I play a lot of BF:BC on console, because I have a giant 8' bean bag to relax on, a 65" TV to play on, and an audio system worth more than my Mustang. I'm willing to give up my WASD+M much of the time, for these accommodations.
However, the thing that sucks the most on the console is that it's hard to get a full 12v12 game. And when you do, it's hard for that lobby to last more than one game. Instead, it is most often 2v2 or 3v3 or (worse) 7v2 or something along those lines. There is no way to leave the game after a game is over. The ONLY way you can exit back to the main menu or quit the game entirely is by leaving IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROUND. So, what happens? You have 12v12 and all the people that wanted to quit playing two minutes ago between games (and then would have been replaced before the game started, by new players) quit as soon as the game starts. Then a couple more quit. Then people get frustrated that people have quit, and they quit, too. So you have to quit as well, then find another game and hope that it's going to be a full game. I'd say about two thirds to three quarters of matches suffer this problem.
It's difficult to perform support actions when there's nobody to support.
Also, I have to wonder if the team sizes are the same on the PC as the console? I couldn't find this with a brief search, but often the PC version of an FPS allows larger team sizes. Bad Company 2 is 12v12 on the console, but perhaps it's 16v16 or even 32v32 on the PC? (I know that Battlefield 2, itself, was something like 32v32 or even bigger about six years ago, on PC). If there are more players on teams, then there's the obvious answer, right there.
Actions rewarded here in this story aren't about "precise aiming and control". It's about hitting a button or a key to throw out a healing pack, ammo pack, or blow torch to point at a tank (about a foot in front of you, so no aiming necessary). Kills and other actions that are non-support are not counted in this statistic, making the input method irrelevant.
It seems obvious to me that there is less fragmentation on the PC right now, so everyone rushes to the new gaming experience that is finally available. On the consoles, people are spread across a number of pretty good recent games. For example, there seem to be an average of 1,000,000 playing the newest COD at any given moment on just the 360, alone.
It may also simply be that Bad Company is bigger on the PC than consoles (I'm not sure if it is or not, though it seems odd if it is, since Bad Company is essentially the round-edged console version of a Battlefield game). If that's the case, then it's an even less meaningful statistic. It's like saying that PC gaming is the biggest thing going, merely because so many people play WoW.
Don't get me wrong. I've been a PC gamer my entire life and I used to talk trash about consoles. I've just come to grips with the fact that we're charity cases, taking what developers pick and choose to actually give us and often as poor ports from games focused on console development and dropped on the PC as an afterthought. Telling myself that "PC gaming is bigger than ever!" isn't going to make it so.
The one benefit I would say PC gaming still has is the community of gamers. I was getting really addicted to Black Ops on the console (I finally got over the "I need WASD+M" hurdle), but I recently woke up one morning and said "I'm done. Not playing another minute of that, ever.". People on PCs are assholes, but I've never experienced anything like Black Ops on the console. Not even Modern Warfare 2 on the console was this bad of an experience. In one evening's gaming session, I would say the average person must hear about 500 racial slurs, just as many homophobic slurs, and a couple hundred death threats. And that doesn't even count the constant five year olds squealing into their microphones, assholes playing their shitty fucking rap music or country music over the mics, randomly screaming into the mics just to disturb people, or carrying on phone conversations or in-person conversations while their fucking mics are hot.
PC gaming seems to still have just enough of a hurdle to get into that it filters out a big chunk of these dipshits.
Gamers clinging to half-dead platform grasp onto any silly statistic to assure themselves that they're still going strong and they're still the primary development platform for game studios.
Look, I'm a life-long PC gamer who hasn't even let consoles into my life until the last few years. However, I've gotten over the "WASD DURPA DURPA DURPA THUMBSTICKS" discussions and I've certainly come to accept that I'm a secondary citizen of the gaming world when it comes to PC games (except for MMOs and some RPGs and RTSes). I understand that the sales numbers for most games on consoles dwarf the same games on PCs.
I'm also not so delusional that I'm going to cling onto this number as proof that PC gaming is thriving, when it's obviously more likely that it's the difference between gamers on the PC having fewer modern choices to focus their attention on, while the console gamers are spreading their attention across many games.
If they think books with any one of these things in them are "bad", just wait until they find out about that "bible" thing that contains pretty much *everything*.
It's difficult for me to fairly comment on this subject, because like a lot of others, I am at least a generation of students behind when laptops in classrooms even became an actual thing. When I was last in school, our computer labs were still nothing more than a few dozen C64s used for nothing more than teaching typing and a handful of Apple IIs for playing Oregon Trail and that one game where a dolphin becomes the president (this was all in the 90s).
However, my concern is that I suspect students don't use these tools for meaningful purposes. It's like how kids use computers today, versus how I used them when I was growing up. I was grateful to get my hands on my own computers through my own means and when I did, I was given to pursue a great deal of self-education. I learned how to setup various BBS systems. How to customize them. How to setup FIDONET and door games and how to deal with phone companies and telecommunication trunks. I learned how to code and how things worked, so that I could wield more power and be capable of *creation* rather than merely *consumption*.
The way I saw people my siblings' age and younger over the past decade approach computers has largely been as a utility for playing flash games and chatting. It never occurs to them to learn about how things work or even care. It never occurs to them to create things (and writing inane blog posts or chatting with people or hooking up is not "creating" anything). They approach computers the way people approached television.
So, that given, I suspect that while a few geeks will make serious use of their laptops in classrooms, the majority will just find it as a facilitator of chatting with their friends and watching youtube clips with the sound off.
Of course, if these are college students, I don't give a fuck. You're an adult and you're the one paying for your education and its your future and career on the table. I couldn't care less how serious you do or don't take things or if you dick around during class.
Yeah, War Games is a movie that actually holds up. And, *shocker*, it's the one film of the bunch that actually focuses on a story rather than "lookie at the pretty things we can do -- ooooh!".
Last Starfighter is another good example. A movie I recall as being amazing, but when watched as an adult all these years later, simply does not hold up (unless you need something to put you to sleep). We need to stop wanking ourselves off to "nostalgia".
Think how many crimes would be solved or prevented if people were never allowed to leave their homes unless they submitted a request for a "public pass" and then had to be escorted by a state official everywhere they went! And had video cameras in their homes!
Because the one thing I demand in a story about people being sucked into a computer where "programs" control each other and fight each other and talk with each other with human avatars is a realistic bash prompt.
My movie is only a failure because you are all too simple minded and stupid to appreciate the true genius of my creation. If the special effects aren't enough for you, then you are a generation of special-effects-spoiled brats with no patience. If the plot isn't good enough for you, it's because you're unimaginative. And you've all clearly grown out of your ability to fantasize and imagine great technological and scientific stories, because you didn't like the absurd plot in my movie that had nearly nothing to do with technology. I mean, nobody watches science fiction movies or shows anymore and there certainly haven't been an abundance of successful movies, shows, and books in the last decade that prove me wrong.
I had understood that the air-puff particle-sniffing machines were actually extremely accurate and were currently in use by the Israelis, who had found that the background scanner screening machines were of no use. Would be interested to know if the "report" on Israeli use of one over the other is all BS or not.
What an amazing turn of words. To say that circumstances around claims and actions by those making the accusations are merely "tactics used to discredit rape victims everyday" is abhorrent. That's a shameless attempt to equate it to saying "she was probably asking for it". The truth is that those "tactics" are used to discredit all sorts of accusations about everything all the time. If you don't take these things into consideration when judging the validity of an accusation, then what the fuck else *is* there?
It's a horrible and sickening crime and that's why the accused should always be given full benefit of doubt and investigation of validity of such weighty claims must be thorough and unquestionable.
Merely googling phrases like "woman admits false rape claim" produce more than enough news articles for me to justify never merely accepting an accusation without intense scrutiny and certainly never believing the accused is guilty until proven well beyond any doubt. Of course, we protect accusers in this country, without affording the same right to the accused -- and their life is ruined forever after merely by the accusation, even if it is found to be false.
Remember the beginning of this year, when two women accused a man of rape . . . because they said the consensual sex wasn't very good?
Slashdot Mirror
Where is the breakdown of actual expenses? I understand the mostly-text-only site has a significant bandwidth demand, but other than that, what could they possibly do with $16mm/yr, other than line the pockets of those on "the board"? (It's amazing how many executives and administrators of charitable organizations make six or even seven figures). It smells an awful lot to me like these startups that get $10mm in VC for a website that clearly was (or should have been) written by one guy over a couple of weekends and could live handily on a couple servers for a few hundred in bandwidth/colo costs per month. But they need the other $9.999mm to cover the expenses of unnecessary office space, aeron chairs, etc.
As for advertising on the site? Isn't there anything on the fucking internet that we can just have without ads? Even every fucking dipshit mother with a blog and one regular reader spams their page with ads and tries to monetize it. Doesn't anyone have some self-respect? Or a sense of doing something because it's enjoyable to do something that contributes to the world?
If there are actual justifiable expenses as astronomical as they're claiming, then do what you have to do to meet the expenses (though, frankly, when you have advertisers, you are now beholden to pleasing THEM and not your visitors, which means it is in your best interest to censor or sponsor things according to the demands of your advertisers above all else).
Mostly, I don't really give a fuck. Wikipedia has largely lost most of its value to a cluster-fuck of navel-gazing.
Of course, there are plenty of cities where the Second Amendment simply does not exist, so . . . : /
Sounds perfect, to me. I'm tired of treating driving like some sort of god-given right that we only take away from you in the absolute most dire circumstance. Convicted of driving drunk? Never drive again. Caught driving after a life time ban? Serve time in prison (maybe a year - five if you're doing it drunk). It's pretty easy to avoid losing your right to drive. You know, by just not drinking and driving.
People would be pissed as hell if, say, their doctor was caught performing surgery while drunk. Slap him on the wrist and send him right back into the surgery room. A second time. A third. A fifth. A twelfth.
For that matter, I'd like to see more attention given to proper driving *period*. Your car isn't your living room or your office. People always say things like "well, if I can't use my cell phone in a car, should I just not be allowed to have conversations, either -- since that's proven to be just as distracting?".
YES. Fucking hell YES. You are behind the wheel of a three ton 80mph fucking DEATH MACHINE. You shouldn't be eating, drinking, playing with your radio, reading, disciplining your kids, doing office work, making calls, texting, or any fucking other things. If that's too much to ask of people, they need to hire a fucking driver, walk/bike, take a taxi, or hop on a bus.
It's no different than any other fourth amendment concern. And, in this case, a concern that you can't just subject populations to on-demand searches of their personal property without cause for suspicion.
If you are pulled over and alcohol is suspicion you are under the influence, I have no problem demanding that you be subjected to a breathalizer. I believe it's actually considered an obligation for the "privilege" of having a driver's license. The same way you're not obligated to "present your papers" on the street, Soviet style -- but if you're the driver of a car, you are.
The real problem here is that populations should not be subjected to pointless invasive searches and stops like this. If you suspect an individual -- stop them. But don't set up a fucking road block and treat the entire population with suspicion. It's the same reason searching every single person as they enter a shopping mall or a train station or a bus station or a library or any other place would be such a violation.
If you REALLY want to get serious about dealing with drunk driving, stop treating these fucking bitches with kid gloves. I'm tired of hearing about guys who have countless convictions and the societal perception that driving under the influence is "wrong, but . . . everyone has done it" (they HAVEN'T). How about you lose your license for LIFE after a first conviction and serve five years in prison after your second conviction. Problem fucking solved.
If the law now sees infringement as a crime, I don't understand why plagiarism isn't a crime? And why can't I have someone imprisoned for breaching or breaking a contract, which is essentially what this is.
COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT CRIME.
Wow, that's disgusting. Crime? Really? Crime? A crime is if you steal my car and chop-shop it. Or if you rape someone. Or if you break into my house. Making a copy of a disc and selling it online is shitty and is copyright infringement and you should be held accountable to the copyright holder, financially. But a CRIME? It should go on your criminal record and you should be in prison with violent criminals who have committed actual crimes that actually physically impact people?!
As someone mentioned, Shadowrun attempted this awhile back and it was a miserable failure. There is another developer (I can't recall who) that talks about having researched this possibility, too. In the end, they decided it was probably never *EVER* going to happen, because no matter how much skill you have, a console control simply is not built for the speed and precision that WASD+M is capable of. WASD+M players completely wipe the floor with the console players. There's a reason why most console games have some degree of "auto-aim". For example, it's on in Black Ops. Just aim down your sides as you point your gun at a window and if an enemy walks by that window, your gun will automatically start to move along with them - because of auto-aim.
The obvious solution would seem to be to have WASD+M for consoles, too. Then you can use whatever platform you want, wherever you want, with whatever input device you want. I don't see them ever doing that, however, because then you have a divide between the console players with WASD+M and those without. They'd rather hobble everyone than allow people a choice. And, to a degree, I guess I can understand it. Part of the reason I've been doing more and more gaming on the console over the years is that as I get older, hunching over a desk with my face plastered against a giant LCD in an office chair (basically, the same environment I spend all day doing actual WORK in) becomes less appealing. I probably wouldn't want to hunch over a coffee table with a mouse and keyboard in front of a giant television, either. So, I have to pick what I want and what I'm willing to give up (which depends on mood, type of game, etc).
You'd think some genius could have figured it out, by now. Instead, they're all busy with 3D (even on the PC) and controller-free motion detection and fucking dancing games. I don't see things changing in the next ten years.
The fourteen year old.
Seriously, your reaction time and eyesight start to go downhill drastically once you hit 25 and in the "professional gaming" circuit, they supposedly consider you over the hill if you're old enough to drink. As an older person with disposable income, I can't even hope to compete against some teenager. Hell, you hear these little fuckers carrying on entire conversations over an open mic (fucking most irritating thing, ever) while stomping your ass in an FPS. I have to do one or the other - playing or conversing.
If you really want to decide who is better skilled, you need to take a WASD+M and a console gamer who have neither ever used the other platform's controls and pit them against each other in a bunch of matches using the input method which is foreign to them.
Sadly, I don't see any time soon that consoles will be getting WASD+M. They're too interested in giving everyone a "fair shake", so rather than giving them more options, they just tie everyone's hand behind their back so *everyone* is crippled. And instead of going the route of more precision, they're busy wasting their time with 3D, motion controls, and dancing "games".
WASD+M is a more accurate method of input, but Input method isn't relevant here, since we're talking about support actions that don't require any type of aiming or precision. Hit a button and you throw a health/ammo pack out.
Can someone explain how the input device is relevant, here?
This objective only counted support actions. There is no input-advantage in pressing one button that throws out a health/ammo pack versus pressing one key that throws out a health/ammo pack.
I'd suggest that one major difference is probably the match-making. I play a lot of BF:BC on console, because I have a giant 8' bean bag to relax on, a 65" TV to play on, and an audio system worth more than my Mustang. I'm willing to give up my WASD+M much of the time, for these accommodations.
However, the thing that sucks the most on the console is that it's hard to get a full 12v12 game. And when you do, it's hard for that lobby to last more than one game. Instead, it is most often 2v2 or 3v3 or (worse) 7v2 or something along those lines. There is no way to leave the game after a game is over. The ONLY way you can exit back to the main menu or quit the game entirely is by leaving IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROUND. So, what happens? You have 12v12 and all the people that wanted to quit playing two minutes ago between games (and then would have been replaced before the game started, by new players) quit as soon as the game starts. Then a couple more quit. Then people get frustrated that people have quit, and they quit, too. So you have to quit as well, then find another game and hope that it's going to be a full game. I'd say about two thirds to three quarters of matches suffer this problem.
It's difficult to perform support actions when there's nobody to support.
Also, I have to wonder if the team sizes are the same on the PC as the console? I couldn't find this with a brief search, but often the PC version of an FPS allows larger team sizes. Bad Company 2 is 12v12 on the console, but perhaps it's 16v16 or even 32v32 on the PC? (I know that Battlefield 2, itself, was something like 32v32 or even bigger about six years ago, on PC). If there are more players on teams, then there's the obvious answer, right there.
Actions rewarded here in this story aren't about "precise aiming and control". It's about hitting a button or a key to throw out a healing pack, ammo pack, or blow torch to point at a tank (about a foot in front of you, so no aiming necessary). Kills and other actions that are non-support are not counted in this statistic, making the input method irrelevant.
It seems obvious to me that there is less fragmentation on the PC right now, so everyone rushes to the new gaming experience that is finally available. On the consoles, people are spread across a number of pretty good recent games. For example, there seem to be an average of 1,000,000 playing the newest COD at any given moment on just the 360, alone.
It may also simply be that Bad Company is bigger on the PC than consoles (I'm not sure if it is or not, though it seems odd if it is, since Bad Company is essentially the round-edged console version of a Battlefield game). If that's the case, then it's an even less meaningful statistic. It's like saying that PC gaming is the biggest thing going, merely because so many people play WoW.
Don't get me wrong. I've been a PC gamer my entire life and I used to talk trash about consoles. I've just come to grips with the fact that we're charity cases, taking what developers pick and choose to actually give us and often as poor ports from games focused on console development and dropped on the PC as an afterthought. Telling myself that "PC gaming is bigger than ever!" isn't going to make it so.
The one benefit I would say PC gaming still has is the community of gamers. I was getting really addicted to Black Ops on the console (I finally got over the "I need WASD+M" hurdle), but I recently woke up one morning and said "I'm done. Not playing another minute of that, ever.". People on PCs are assholes, but I've never experienced anything like Black Ops on the console. Not even Modern Warfare 2 on the console was this bad of an experience. In one evening's gaming session, I would say the average person must hear about 500 racial slurs, just as many homophobic slurs, and a couple hundred death threats. And that doesn't even count the constant five year olds squealing into their microphones, assholes playing their shitty fucking rap music or country music over the mics, randomly screaming into the mics just to disturb people, or carrying on phone conversations or in-person conversations while their fucking mics are hot.
PC gaming seems to still have just enough of a hurdle to get into that it filters out a big chunk of these dipshits.
Gamers clinging to half-dead platform grasp onto any silly statistic to assure themselves that they're still going strong and they're still the primary development platform for game studios.
Look, I'm a life-long PC gamer who hasn't even let consoles into my life until the last few years. However, I've gotten over the "WASD DURPA DURPA DURPA THUMBSTICKS" discussions and I've certainly come to accept that I'm a secondary citizen of the gaming world when it comes to PC games (except for MMOs and some RPGs and RTSes). I understand that the sales numbers for most games on consoles dwarf the same games on PCs.
I'm also not so delusional that I'm going to cling onto this number as proof that PC gaming is thriving, when it's obviously more likely that it's the difference between gamers on the PC having fewer modern choices to focus their attention on, while the console gamers are spreading their attention across many games.
If they think books with any one of these things in them are "bad", just wait until they find out about that "bible" thing that contains pretty much *everything*.
It's difficult for me to fairly comment on this subject, because like a lot of others, I am at least a generation of students behind when laptops in classrooms even became an actual thing. When I was last in school, our computer labs were still nothing more than a few dozen C64s used for nothing more than teaching typing and a handful of Apple IIs for playing Oregon Trail and that one game where a dolphin becomes the president (this was all in the 90s).
However, my concern is that I suspect students don't use these tools for meaningful purposes. It's like how kids use computers today, versus how I used them when I was growing up. I was grateful to get my hands on my own computers through my own means and when I did, I was given to pursue a great deal of self-education. I learned how to setup various BBS systems. How to customize them. How to setup FIDONET and door games and how to deal with phone companies and telecommunication trunks. I learned how to code and how things worked, so that I could wield more power and be capable of *creation* rather than merely *consumption*.
The way I saw people my siblings' age and younger over the past decade approach computers has largely been as a utility for playing flash games and chatting. It never occurs to them to learn about how things work or even care. It never occurs to them to create things (and writing inane blog posts or chatting with people or hooking up is not "creating" anything). They approach computers the way people approached television.
So, that given, I suspect that while a few geeks will make serious use of their laptops in classrooms, the majority will just find it as a facilitator of chatting with their friends and watching youtube clips with the sound off.
Of course, if these are college students, I don't give a fuck. You're an adult and you're the one paying for your education and its your future and career on the table. I couldn't care less how serious you do or don't take things or if you dick around during class.
I don't see where the mystery is, here. If you like *this* stupid shit, you're probably dumb enough to like this *other* stupid shit.
Yeah, War Games is a movie that actually holds up. And, *shocker*, it's the one film of the bunch that actually focuses on a story rather than "lookie at the pretty things we can do -- ooooh!".
Last Starfighter is another good example. A movie I recall as being amazing, but when watched as an adult all these years later, simply does not hold up (unless you need something to put you to sleep). We need to stop wanking ourselves off to "nostalgia".
Think how many crimes would be solved or prevented if people were never allowed to leave their homes unless they submitted a request for a "public pass" and then had to be escorted by a state official everywhere they went! And had video cameras in their homes!
To compare, Transformers brought in more than $200,000,000 in the opening weekend, alone. What was Tron? About $44,000,000?
Because the one thing I demand in a story about people being sucked into a computer where "programs" control each other and fight each other and talk with each other with human avatars is a realistic bash prompt.
My movie is only a failure because you are all too simple minded and stupid to appreciate the true genius of my creation. If the special effects aren't enough for you, then you are a generation of special-effects-spoiled brats with no patience. If the plot isn't good enough for you, it's because you're unimaginative. And you've all clearly grown out of your ability to fantasize and imagine great technological and scientific stories, because you didn't like the absurd plot in my movie that had nearly nothing to do with technology. I mean, nobody watches science fiction movies or shows anymore and there certainly haven't been an abundance of successful movies, shows, and books in the last decade that prove me wrong.
I can't wait until Big Brother flags people as possible terrorists for merely developing FOSS.
I had understood that the air-puff particle-sniffing machines were actually extremely accurate and were currently in use by the Israelis, who had found that the background scanner screening machines were of no use. Would be interested to know if the "report" on Israeli use of one over the other is all BS or not.
What an amazing turn of words. To say that circumstances around claims and actions by those making the accusations are merely "tactics used to discredit rape victims everyday" is abhorrent. That's a shameless attempt to equate it to saying "she was probably asking for it". The truth is that those "tactics" are used to discredit all sorts of accusations about everything all the time. If you don't take these things into consideration when judging the validity of an accusation, then what the fuck else *is* there?
It's a horrible and sickening crime and that's why the accused should always be given full benefit of doubt and investigation of validity of such weighty claims must be thorough and unquestionable.
Merely googling phrases like "woman admits false rape claim" produce more than enough news articles for me to justify never merely accepting an accusation without intense scrutiny and certainly never believing the accused is guilty until proven well beyond any doubt. Of course, we protect accusers in this country, without affording the same right to the accused -- and their life is ruined forever after merely by the accusation, even if it is found to be false.
Remember the beginning of this year, when two women accused a man of rape . . . because they said the consensual sex wasn't very good?