Ratings are confusing(why not use the same system as the movie industry?) How are they confusing? E - Everyone, T - Teen, M - Mature, AO - Adults Only. I always thought that was fairly straight foward, apparently the average IQ has dropped enough in this country to make it a confusing rating system though. There's a pretty simple reason why video games don't use the movie rating system, they're not movies. Maybe one day there will be a rating system for all types of media, but parents learned the horribly complicated movie rating system, I'm sure they can learn the ESRB rating system as well.
Stores don't enforce ratings, ever. Really? To date I have been carded at Best Buy, Electronics Boutique, and Media Play. The first time I was carded was about two years ago at Media Play (I was 18 at the time). Perhaps I just live in a really responsible area, that's a possibility. But from my experiences I think this is a very moot point.
Stores don't even advise on ratings hardly ever. Advise on ratings? I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. If you ask a clerk to explain the rating system he will do it, it's not their job to 'advise' people on the rating system all day though. They're there to sell games. As a parent you should be informed, check out the ESRB's website, ask a sales clerk if you're confused, whatever. This is hardly a fault of the store.
There are so many games out there all jumbled together, for older parents who are not gamers themselves, its pretty much impossible to tell one thing from another. Ahh, I see. So it's alright to be a lazy and oblivious parent, ignorance is bliss isn't it? Hey, let's just let the government raise our children. Heaven forbid I have to lift a finger to get involved in my child's life. My father was around 50 when Mortal Kombat 2 came out, he was still intelligent enough to say, "No".
Developers are a problem too. I mean come on, Rockstar was an idiot with this whole sex game thing. They obviously didn't include it in the normal game because they felt it was too much. They should have never left that content in the game. And, if they are bound and determined to make an "adult" game, they need to stop being so half way about it and just make an adult content game. Perhaps they don't want to make an adult game. Maybe that's why they didn't include the sex mini-game. Maybe they realized if they kept that in the game then it might get an AO rating which would make sales plummet. They are a business and they do want money. Don't stifle creativity because you can't parent your child; though as a side note I don't find GTA very creative, but they still have the right to make it however they want.
In the end it's the parents that need to get an f'ing clue.
First off, how many wood iPods do you see laying around? How many are being sold? Is Apple mass producing them? This is a very small bit of wood on a single iPod. Now that it's done other people may very well try this too. But I'd like you to keep in mind that this wouldn't be the main selling point of hardwoods. People use tons and tons of this stuff; a ~6.2 cubic inch piece of hardwood for a few iPods is very insignificant. Even if Apple decided it was a good idea to offer iPods with real, solid hardwood covers, which won't happen simply because it would cost way too much, this still wouldn't be enough to justify such guilt.
Secondly, why are plastics so much better? They produce pollution as byproducts and use fossile fuels as a base, which as we all know is a very big concern right now. If hardwood were to magically be replaced over night by plastics then we would still be in trouble, just in a different form.
I'm not saying deforestation is good, I'm just trying to point out that everything has a down side and you need to take those into consideration.
As far as the mod goes, I think Zap did a very nice job. I would have liked to see some graphics on it however, such as the back, foward, play/pause, and menu buttons. Just to make it look more iPodish while looking refreshingly different at the same time.
I was always under the impression that Anakin/Vader achieved a balance in the force by destroying both the Sith and the Jedi, thereby ending the struggle between the two groups who used the Force to shape the galaxy in their image. When he became a Sith he destroyed the Jedi, but at the end he redeemed himself back to the light side by killing the Sith Lord. I don't recall Luke ever becomming an official Jedi Knight. I know he is force adept, but he never went through the training or educating that 'real' Jedis went through. I could be wrong though, I don't heavily follow the Star Wars plot line.
I personally don't have a problem learning a game. It's a challenge, but it's a fun challenge. I'll use Starsiege: Tribes as an example here. That game was, and still is, very difficult to learn. You don't just have two dimensions anymore, the maps are huge, and the pace is very fast. It took me forever to learn how to conserve jetpack energy while being able to aim and hit someone while we're both flying around like maniacs while we're both trying to dodge bullets, sniper beams, and mortar shells from the opposing team. I'm not goign to say I'm a good player, but I'm decent and it was a very good feeling when I started to climb higher and higher on the scoreboard, even if it was frustrating at first. I appreciate the fact that I'm not just mashing buttons and I have to teach myself how to properly react to different situations.
But I suppose I am a dedicated gamer and I live for challenges such as these.
So tell me, if you were around in 1865 would you not have read From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne? That was science fiction, Jules Verne had a degree in law, and it wasn't even that accurate in terms of science. It still was very popular and roughly 100 years later we went to the moon.
If I want to catch up on present day sciences I'll read books about them. God knows I have stuff ranging from cosmology to mathematics for casual reading on my bookshelf. But when I want to read some fiction I like to leave this world behind and imagine a different place. I suppose you could niavely classify today's science fiction as just plain fiction, but I'd like to point out that just because we don't think something is possible today (FTL travel) doesn't mean it isn't possible; it just means we don't know everything.
I always thought the phrase, "science fiction" was pretty self-explanitory myself. Why in the world would you want to limit authors to only using current science? Let's just assume for a second that we do know everything and our current model of the universe is 100% accurate and complete (which is such a laughable statement in itself), wouldn't it be more fun to escape into a different universe, one where FTL travel is possible, one where anything is possible? That's the point of fiction. Science fiction wasn't meant to be a rehash of your college physics book with a storyline thrown in, it was meant to be fun.
I didn't mean any offense, it's just the way you worded it was a bit wrong. If the only way you can classify your government as tyrannical is to experience a government like that first hand then the same has to be true for the reverse. You can't say your government isn't tyrannical unless you've experienced tyranny first hand. I also don't think reading human rights reports means you know what it's like to live under tyranny. I've read plenty about the Vietnam war, but I don't know what it was really like, though I know my father does since he was in it.
If someone didn't look into that statement then they would get the impression you can call our government good without evidence, but you can't call it bad unless you do have evidence. Hence, blind patriotism.
And by your logic our form of government is the only valid form. Every other type of government is wrong and we should put considerable political pressure on them or just invade them right out and make it all better with 'democracy'. The grandparent isn't a troll, he's stating a fact. If you live in a country you live by the laws of that land. If you don't like the laws then move. I realize that moving isn't always possible for any number of reasons (financial, government, etc...), but that's life. The United States isn't, or shouldn't be, the big brother for every country on Earth.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for free speech, I just don't think we have a right to put our nose in China's internal affairs and tell them that they're wrong.
"America, for all its faults, is nothing at all like a totalitarian country. Those who say it is truly have no clue of what life under tyranny is really like."
Have you lived under tyranny before? If you haven't then I think your statement is a bit of a contradiction, or more bluntly it's blind patriotism.
This is a rather interesting concept. I'm at university now and the professors have a bunch of seperate equipment in the lecture halls. There's usually an overhead (with horrible refresh rates I might add) connected to the projector. You can also connect your laptop to the projector. Of course you need the screen to be down for this, which always covers the black or white boards. Some of the larger lecture halls have side black or white boards which makes it a bit easier to work out problems on the side while having notes and references on the screen. I'm sure these new interactive boards could make the classroom more efficient if it's used properly. Heck, if they start to put these in my university they can just upload the notes scribbled on the board to the class webpage. Even more incentive for me to stay home and drink =P.
It's like R2-D2's younger brother, R2-D3. He wasn't as successful as his older brother. He didn't get to travel the world with Jedi knights, instead he became a trash bin when he fell in love with a bench. He might not have the glamor of galactic battles, but he keeps the streets clean in his town!
All your points are well taken. I'd like to point out I'm turning 20 in July, I wasn't around in 1982 and I was no where near mature enough to vote or do anything 8 years ago in '97. So while you may be older than me and have around for some of the things you mentioned I am not. It's a tad hard to come into the world and tell them to reverse everything before the Patriot Act when all of their most recent stuff was made on the foundation of its predecessors. I do oppose the war on drugs and many other ridiculous things the government has done to 'protect' John Q Public. Hell, Lincoln absolutely raped the 10th Amendment but I don't hear you bitching about that. Just because I didn't mention every thing that has happened since our country's inception doesn't mean I don't know about it and care about it.
I'm not mad at any one specific party for this crap, I'm mad at the entire government. There's no such thing as voting for the better guy, it's voting for the lesser of the evils; the guy who will do the least damage during his time in office.
We're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic. Somehow we've managed to blur that very distinctive line, or rather the government has and the public has bought it.
Well it is sort of hard to accurately extrapolate all the different nuances and tones a poster put into his/her statement that would be present in their voice, but to me it seemed like he/she was implying I did nothing which several others have stated flat out in this thread. I will apologize if he/she was simply asking, but it did seem like he was implying the aforementioned which ticked me off.
Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. I really don't care which way someone votes, as long as they are informed and care. I love a good political debate usually, but when they don't know what their talking about or are completely disconnected with the politics of their own country my blood pressure tends to rise to dangerous levels;).
I prefer freedom from oppression and persecution. Freedom isn't free and it isn't without it's troubles. Freedom isn't a perfect system, but it beats everything else hands down.
I answered this in a post above. But thanks for assuming I do nothing as well, it's nice to see such arrogance and low expectations from people. Being a full time student at University it's a bit difficult to do everything I'd like to, but I still try. Thanks again for the vote of confidence.
Well gee, let's think about this for a second. Usually when I make a post about something political it's with an intent to persuade people to open their eyes. But of course nobody reads slashdot or any other public forum and certainly nobody reads my comments, right? Apart from openly discussing my concerns about our government on the internet I also talk to people in real life. I inform people who are uninformed and try to tell them what is really going on. You wouldn't believe the number of people who had absolutely no idea what the Real ID Act was, or even the Patriot Act. I also attend and speak at assemblies from time to time in the university square. I vote for who I think will do a better job, though this is sort of a moot point since so many candidates are jokes anyway.
Before you automatically assume I do nothing which was very evidently implied by your post, FUCKING ASK ME. I have no idea how you were rated +5 Insightful when you so arrogantly posted that.
That's the problem, nobody cares that their democracy (or more accurately their constitutional republic) is dead and gone. It simply baffles me that people are so willing to piss away their freedom and it drives me crazy that I'm in the minority of people who see what's going on. The average US citizen will display his faith and patriotism in the US and all that it stands for, especially after 9/11, even though we have become the very thing we used to stand against; it sickens me.
This has nothing to do with being pedantic, it's about accurate reporting. If you're going to give a speed of a celestial object then you should give a frame of reference. Especially in this case, "... faster than the Earth travels through space." You absolutely need a frame of reference with this sentence otherwise I might think you're talking about the velocity at which our planet spins around the sun which spins around the galactic center etc... I'm not just going to assume that it's around the sun or do the math because the reporter was to damn lazy to replace, "through space", with "around the sun".
The second part of your post is informative, the first part is unnecessary.
I agree with most of what you said, but I'd like to point out that sex isn't purely physical. It isn't about the number of positions you are in during a session nor the amount of foreplay you do or how many different places you can stimulate at once. Don't get me wrong they're a part of the equation, but you need a bit more for great sex. You need an emotional and spiritual connection of some sort.
In response to your second to last paragraph, every man and woman is different. Get over being embarrassed in the bedroom and communicate with eachother. Everyone has a fetish or two and you can get pretty turned on fulfilling your partner's desires and I know they will enjoy it.
Slashdot Mirror
Ratings are confusing(why not use the same system as the movie industry?)
How are they confusing? E - Everyone, T - Teen, M - Mature, AO - Adults Only. I always thought that was fairly straight foward, apparently the average IQ has dropped enough in this country to make it a confusing rating system though. There's a pretty simple reason why video games don't use the movie rating system, they're not movies. Maybe one day there will be a rating system for all types of media, but parents learned the horribly complicated movie rating system, I'm sure they can learn the ESRB rating system as well.
Stores don't enforce ratings, ever.
Really? To date I have been carded at Best Buy, Electronics Boutique, and Media Play. The first time I was carded was about two years ago at Media Play (I was 18 at the time). Perhaps I just live in a really responsible area, that's a possibility. But from my experiences I think this is a very moot point.
Stores don't even advise on ratings hardly ever.
Advise on ratings? I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. If you ask a clerk to explain the rating system he will do it, it's not their job to 'advise' people on the rating system all day though. They're there to sell games. As a parent you should be informed, check out the ESRB's website, ask a sales clerk if you're confused, whatever. This is hardly a fault of the store.
There are so many games out there all jumbled together, for older parents who are not gamers themselves, its pretty much impossible to tell one thing from another.
Ahh, I see. So it's alright to be a lazy and oblivious parent, ignorance is bliss isn't it? Hey, let's just let the government raise our children. Heaven forbid I have to lift a finger to get involved in my child's life. My father was around 50 when Mortal Kombat 2 came out, he was still intelligent enough to say, "No".
Developers are a problem too. I mean come on, Rockstar was an idiot with this whole sex game thing. They obviously didn't include it in the normal game because they felt it was too much. They should have never left that content in the game. And, if they are bound and determined to make an "adult" game, they need to stop being so half way about it and just make an adult content game.
Perhaps they don't want to make an adult game. Maybe that's why they didn't include the sex mini-game. Maybe they realized if they kept that in the game then it might get an AO rating which would make sales plummet. They are a business and they do want money. Don't stifle creativity because you can't parent your child; though as a side note I don't find GTA very creative, but they still have the right to make it however they want.
In the end it's the parents that need to get an f'ing clue.
First off, how many wood iPods do you see laying around? How many are being sold? Is Apple mass producing them? This is a very small bit of wood on a single iPod. Now that it's done other people may very well try this too. But I'd like you to keep in mind that this wouldn't be the main selling point of hardwoods. People use tons and tons of this stuff; a ~6.2 cubic inch piece of hardwood for a few iPods is very insignificant. Even if Apple decided it was a good idea to offer iPods with real, solid hardwood covers, which won't happen simply because it would cost way too much, this still wouldn't be enough to justify such guilt.
Secondly, why are plastics so much better? They produce pollution as byproducts and use fossile fuels as a base, which as we all know is a very big concern right now. If hardwood were to magically be replaced over night by plastics then we would still be in trouble, just in a different form.
I'm not saying deforestation is good, I'm just trying to point out that everything has a down side and you need to take those into consideration.
As far as the mod goes, I think Zap did a very nice job. I would have liked to see some graphics on it however, such as the back, foward, play/pause, and menu buttons. Just to make it look more iPodish while looking refreshingly different at the same time.
I was always under the impression that Anakin/Vader achieved a balance in the force by destroying both the Sith and the Jedi, thereby ending the struggle between the two groups who used the Force to shape the galaxy in their image. When he became a Sith he destroyed the Jedi, but at the end he redeemed himself back to the light side by killing the Sith Lord. I don't recall Luke ever becomming an official Jedi Knight. I know he is force adept, but he never went through the training or educating that 'real' Jedis went through. I could be wrong though, I don't heavily follow the Star Wars plot line.
Why did you rate this guy Offtopic? I mean come on, Bruce Almighty wasn't that bad. =P
Or perhaps they do care but they think their child is mature enough to handle more adult oriented games. Couldn't that also be a possibility?
I personally don't have a problem learning a game. It's a challenge, but it's a fun challenge. I'll use Starsiege: Tribes as an example here. That game was, and still is, very difficult to learn. You don't just have two dimensions anymore, the maps are huge, and the pace is very fast. It took me forever to learn how to conserve jetpack energy while being able to aim and hit someone while we're both flying around like maniacs while we're both trying to dodge bullets, sniper beams, and mortar shells from the opposing team. I'm not goign to say I'm a good player, but I'm decent and it was a very good feeling when I started to climb higher and higher on the scoreboard, even if it was frustrating at first. I appreciate the fact that I'm not just mashing buttons and I have to teach myself how to properly react to different situations.
But I suppose I am a dedicated gamer and I live for challenges such as these.
So tell me, if you were around in 1865 would you not have read From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne? That was science fiction, Jules Verne had a degree in law, and it wasn't even that accurate in terms of science. It still was very popular and roughly 100 years later we went to the moon.
If I want to catch up on present day sciences I'll read books about them. God knows I have stuff ranging from cosmology to mathematics for casual reading on my bookshelf. But when I want to read some fiction I like to leave this world behind and imagine a different place. I suppose you could niavely classify today's science fiction as just plain fiction, but I'd like to point out that just because we don't think something is possible today (FTL travel) doesn't mean it isn't possible; it just means we don't know everything.
I always thought the phrase, "science fiction" was pretty self-explanitory myself. Why in the world would you want to limit authors to only using current science? Let's just assume for a second that we do know everything and our current model of the universe is 100% accurate and complete (which is such a laughable statement in itself), wouldn't it be more fun to escape into a different universe, one where FTL travel is possible, one where anything is possible? That's the point of fiction. Science fiction wasn't meant to be a rehash of your college physics book with a storyline thrown in, it was meant to be fun.
I didn't mean any offense, it's just the way you worded it was a bit wrong. If the only way you can classify your government as tyrannical is to experience a government like that first hand then the same has to be true for the reverse. You can't say your government isn't tyrannical unless you've experienced tyranny first hand. I also don't think reading human rights reports means you know what it's like to live under tyranny. I've read plenty about the Vietnam war, but I don't know what it was really like, though I know my father does since he was in it.
If someone didn't look into that statement then they would get the impression you can call our government good without evidence, but you can't call it bad unless you do have evidence. Hence, blind patriotism.
And by your logic our form of government is the only valid form. Every other type of government is wrong and we should put considerable political pressure on them or just invade them right out and make it all better with 'democracy'. The grandparent isn't a troll, he's stating a fact. If you live in a country you live by the laws of that land. If you don't like the laws then move. I realize that moving isn't always possible for any number of reasons (financial, government, etc...), but that's life. The United States isn't, or shouldn't be, the big brother for every country on Earth.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for free speech, I just don't think we have a right to put our nose in China's internal affairs and tell them that they're wrong.
"America, for all its faults, is nothing at all like a totalitarian country. Those who say it is truly have no clue of what life under tyranny is really like."
Have you lived under tyranny before? If you haven't then I think your statement is a bit of a contradiction, or more bluntly it's blind patriotism.
This is a rather interesting concept. I'm at university now and the professors have a bunch of seperate equipment in the lecture halls. There's usually an overhead (with horrible refresh rates I might add) connected to the projector. You can also connect your laptop to the projector. Of course you need the screen to be down for this, which always covers the black or white boards. Some of the larger lecture halls have side black or white boards which makes it a bit easier to work out problems on the side while having notes and references on the screen. I'm sure these new interactive boards could make the classroom more efficient if it's used properly. Heck, if they start to put these in my university they can just upload the notes scribbled on the board to the class webpage. Even more incentive for me to stay home and drink =P.
It's like R2-D2's younger brother, R2-D3. He wasn't as successful as his older brother. He didn't get to travel the world with Jedi knights, instead he became a trash bin when he fell in love with a bench. He might not have the glamor of galactic battles, but he keeps the streets clean in his town!
All your points are well taken. I'd like to point out I'm turning 20 in July, I wasn't around in 1982 and I was no where near mature enough to vote or do anything 8 years ago in '97. So while you may be older than me and have around for some of the things you mentioned I am not. It's a tad hard to come into the world and tell them to reverse everything before the Patriot Act when all of their most recent stuff was made on the foundation of its predecessors. I do oppose the war on drugs and many other ridiculous things the government has done to 'protect' John Q Public. Hell, Lincoln absolutely raped the 10th Amendment but I don't hear you bitching about that. Just because I didn't mention every thing that has happened since our country's inception doesn't mean I don't know about it and care about it.
I'm not mad at any one specific party for this crap, I'm mad at the entire government. There's no such thing as voting for the better guy, it's voting for the lesser of the evils; the guy who will do the least damage during his time in office.
We're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic. Somehow we've managed to blur that very distinctive line, or rather the government has and the public has bought it.
Well it is sort of hard to accurately extrapolate all the different nuances and tones a poster put into his/her statement that would be present in their voice, but to me it seemed like he/she was implying I did nothing which several others have stated flat out in this thread. I will apologize if he/she was simply asking, but it did seem like he was implying the aforementioned which ticked me off.
Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. I really don't care which way someone votes, as long as they are informed and care. I love a good political debate usually, but when they don't know what their talking about or are completely disconnected with the politics of their own country my blood pressure tends to rise to dangerous levels ;).
I prefer freedom from oppression and persecution. Freedom isn't free and it isn't without it's troubles. Freedom isn't a perfect system, but it beats everything else hands down.
I answered this in a post above. But thanks for assuming I do nothing as well, it's nice to see such arrogance and low expectations from people. Being a full time student at University it's a bit difficult to do everything I'd like to, but I still try. Thanks again for the vote of confidence.
Well gee, let's think about this for a second. Usually when I make a post about something political it's with an intent to persuade people to open their eyes. But of course nobody reads slashdot or any other public forum and certainly nobody reads my comments, right? Apart from openly discussing my concerns about our government on the internet I also talk to people in real life. I inform people who are uninformed and try to tell them what is really going on. You wouldn't believe the number of people who had absolutely no idea what the Real ID Act was, or even the Patriot Act. I also attend and speak at assemblies from time to time in the university square. I vote for who I think will do a better job, though this is sort of a moot point since so many candidates are jokes anyway.
Before you automatically assume I do nothing which was very evidently implied by your post, FUCKING ASK ME. I have no idea how you were rated +5 Insightful when you so arrogantly posted that.
That's the problem, nobody cares that their democracy (or more accurately their constitutional republic) is dead and gone. It simply baffles me that people are so willing to piss away their freedom and it drives me crazy that I'm in the minority of people who see what's going on. The average US citizen will display his faith and patriotism in the US and all that it stands for, especially after 9/11, even though we have become the very thing we used to stand against; it sickens me.
This has nothing to do with being pedantic, it's about accurate reporting. If you're going to give a speed of a celestial object then you should give a frame of reference. Especially in this case, "... faster than the Earth travels through space." You absolutely need a frame of reference with this sentence otherwise I might think you're talking about the velocity at which our planet spins around the sun which spins around the galactic center etc... I'm not just going to assume that it's around the sun or do the math because the reporter was to damn lazy to replace, "through space", with "around the sun".
The second part of your post is informative, the first part is unnecessary.
I looked at the archives for that page and found this link:
/ /www.bungie.net/perlbin/blam.pl?file=/site/0/news/ stories/the_marathon_connection.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20040206174724/http:
I disagree. If you and your partner agree to a polygamous relationship and you lay out some sturdy ground rules then you should be fine.
I agree with most of what you said, but I'd like to point out that sex isn't purely physical. It isn't about the number of positions you are in during a session nor the amount of foreplay you do or how many different places you can stimulate at once. Don't get me wrong they're a part of the equation, but you need a bit more for great sex. You need an emotional and spiritual connection of some sort.
In response to your second to last paragraph, every man and woman is different. Get over being embarrassed in the bedroom and communicate with eachother. Everyone has a fetish or two and you can get pretty turned on fulfilling your partner's desires and I know they will enjoy it.
Besides, porn is just visual stimuli.