Or you could convince her that videogames are actually therapeutic, a sensible way of releasing tension, frustration and stress...better to take out your Road Rage in Burnout 3 than actually Speed Racering people over cliffs in the real world...
Lovelady: The quality of the drive is something that Microsoft worried about. So they used the best quality drives they could...
Hope this is true. I've heard that the original PS2 was first shipped with a lesser quality drive before they upgraded it in later models. I hope this is not the case with the XBox 360.
Well, for whatever it's worth I ain't no expert on parenting, don't even have kids, but I think you simply have to use your best judgement and learn to live with it. Your best is all you can do.
However, as a child from a dysfunctional household, my best advice is whatever happens, make damn sure that you keep communications open with your kids. In my experience, it's when the trust erodes and talking becomes forced that the real problems start. Talk to your kids as often as they let you, and remember talking means listening too not just laying down edicts.
Boy, you're not kidding. It amazes me how many music Nazis there are on Slashdot who simply cannot or will not grasp the concept of different strokes for different folks.
Kind of like the people out there who claim all modern music is crap based on what they heard on the radio recently or saw on MTC, and failing to take into account that there is a greater variety of music available today than ever before in history. Obviously not all of it can be heard on "KSXX! Where we play all the hits all friggin' day!!!"
I don't want to charge family or friends to clean up their computers, but on the other hand, if too many friends find out you can do it then you'll never get any rest. Solution. Tell them to get Ad-Aware. No guilt and no pain in the ass that way.
The AlAnon folks tried to get me to join them but after a couple of their meetings I began to see they were just as sick if not sicker than the addicts.
Some times, that's why there's a group for them too.
The addicts would use their addiction to get what they wanted, and the AlAnon people would use guilt to get what they wanted..
Sorry you had a bad experience. Some groups are like that. Some people at the meetings are not there for recovery. And your SO shouldn't be using guilt trips on you, but OTOH, it might not have been the most considerate thing to do to have a beer in front of her, especially if she was early in recovey.
But I'm not trying to control anybody. What I'm trying to do is warn people who don't know the danger. Of course if you don't smoke pot, then this topic isn't relevant with you.
What I'm getting from you is you may have been an addict...
May? Oh no, I was the real deal. Jails institutions (and the streets), but thankfully not death. What you're getting from me is an urgent desire to help somebody avoid what some of us have already been through, but didn't need to go through if there had been sufficient help available or maybe if enough people had made the warning more clear. It means nothing when you hear it from a school teacher or a cop. But when you hear it from somebody who's already been through it, it carries more weight. Or at least it should.
You are responible for you, and though the 12th step is to give your recovery away what you are trying to do is preempt recovery. That you simply can not do because it denies others the ability to reach the 1st step.
Oh indeed, if I can stop them from having to find out the hard way, I definitely will as the 1st step is the hardest of all. Most people don't make it past that one. Stopping people before they can get started is an effort that must be undertaken by anybody who understands addiction. When I was in rehab, I had a chance to work with the adolescents, and seeing kids as young as 13 already addicted to the hard stuff should be enough to set off alarms bells in anybody. Of course, the reality is kids younger than that get high. And why not, they see adults doing it. Not good.
Of course I understand these posts will probably make me the least popular reader on Slashdot, but oh well.
I hope you are still involved with the friends of Bill W. because you are still showing the controlling aspects of your addiction by expecting others to be responsible for your behaviour.
On the contrary, I try and protect others before they have to learn the hard way, and to educate those who think it's "no big deal". If you seriously know anything about recovery then you know that we have to give it away in order to keep it. Trying to stop people before they get started is a big part of that.
Strawberries don't consume you from the inside out until you're a shell of a human being like crack or heroin can. Some are just interested in making excuses so you can smoke your weed and not be hassled by the police. You think it's not only not a problem for you, but not a problem for anybody else either. You're very much mistaken, and your careless attitude ensures that drug addiction is alive and well. You should ask yourself what it would take before you consider marijuana a problem, whether it's a problem of yours or something like somebody stealing your car stereo so they can go buy a bag.
A handful of media pirates get busted, but wouldn't it be great to see: "11 Nation Action Nets Scores of Al Quaida members In Joint Agency Raids" for once? Just for once could the government stay focused on the real threat out there or is just too lucrative to be on the payroll of Hollywood?
Yeah. The backgrounds are good, but I never understand why 90% of the characters look almost exactly alike. They almost all have the same enormous eyes (WTF), and if they're males, what is it with that popular Yu-Gi-Oh starfish shaped hair? Or if they're females as in the Sailor Moon girls, all you do is change hair colors and you have half a dozen characters. American animation is still, in a lot of cases, more realistic than Japanimation. Just look at something like Dragonball Z or Samurai Jack. You call that drawing?
But a lot of the stories are really good. A lot of creativity there.
Perhaps the "others" wouldn't switch to the "hard stuff" if they didn't have to buy their pot from narcotics dealers.
To those not familiar with addiction, I assure you that's not how it works.
Our hospital ER gets filled up nearly every weekend with overdoses both legal (etoh, benzo, opiate, aceteminophen, and ASA), and illegal (cocaine, meth, and opiates), yet I've never seen anyone admitted let alone die from a marijuana overdose
Yep and I guarantee you that all of those people who overdosed on the hard stuff would have started with marijuana and worked their way down to something harder. It's why we call it addiction. One you take that first step, it's a slippery slope. Not everybody slides, but anybody who operates are motor vehicle or works in a potentially hazardous environment while being impaired by THC can easily be just as dangerous as somebody who drives drunk. You might think a little weed is no big deal, but I sure don't want somebody driving stoned behind me at night. I speak as a recovering addict, not somebody who read this out of a book. I not only experienced it firsthand, I saw and heard what it did to others unlike the average Slashdot reader.
The thing about being an addict is that you don't know it until it's too late.
So basically while seeing a lot of "this is bullshit" comments, we're not seeing any comments from anybody who really knows or has worked with either of these two platforms. Instead, we're seeing people more willing to believe MS and Sony who have everything to gain from lying about their products vs. a more realistic view of two over-hyped machines by a website who will attract viewers to their article whether they say good things about these two consoles or not. It really will make no differenc to Anandtech. People will come to read their articles because they've earned a readership so they've no real motivation to make stuff up or distort things.
Admit it people, some of you just don't want to hear what they're saying. Had they said that the PS3 does put out 2 teraflops and the XBox 360 only one, then you could have simply continued on with the normal console flame war which has been going on since E3 ie 3 cores vs 7 SPEs, etc. Then of course, there'd be doubters from the other side accusing Anandtech of being on the payroll of MS and Sony.
Look at the motivation people. Think about who's really got cause to BS the console gamers.
What company is going to want its developers openly saying that MS and Sony are blatant liars? Anonymously will be the only way to get an honest opinion. Otherwise, the developers would simply have to parrot the company line about what geniuses those folks at Sony and MS are or face possible repercussions from management or have their companies ostracized by either of the two.
Yeah, but who's more likely to give you the straight facts, Anandtech who are known for giving detailed analyses of hardware or one of a pair of companies who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by outright lying to consumers?
It's good that somebody finally waded through the BS and sorted things out, letting us know what we can really expect.
Nope, no rumble seat with the XBox, but still you need to try MC3 before you dismiss it. The adrenalin rush alone is worth it moving at intense speeds through the city, down expressways, making some of the craziest jumps ever seen in a game and even taking a leisurely (or not so leisurely) drive across the deck of an aircraft carrier. Some of the races have your nerves stretched taut and when the race is finally over, you almost have to pry your fingers off the controller. San Diego's pretty easy, Atlanta is tougher and Detroit gets positively insane. Best of all, you have such wide variety of cars to pick from...even some real classics like the 1949 Fleetline. Seriously. Try it.
Whatever you think of FPS, nobody can deny that racing games are consistently improving from version to version. Anybody who's tried Burnout 3 or Midnight Club 3 can tell you it's some of the most intense gameplay out there. Especially MC3. The graphics, the music, the customization of the cars, and the action are all impressive. Most importantly of all, it's something you can do safely behind a console rather than doing it for real in the streets and kill somebody as occurred in Sacramento recently. Now compare these games to Pole Position from the old days.
who think it should be legalized, I have two words for you: gateway drug. Yes, maybe not for you, but for a lot of others. And when those others switch to the hard stuff (narcotics, etc.), start shooting up neighborhoods and filling up the emergency rooms and mortuaries faster, you can tell everybody you didn't know it would be such a problem.
Just because alcohol and tobacco are already legal doesn't mean all drugs should be. As for the pain-killing aspects, you seriously think there's no alternative medications for that?
My HP came with Quicktime, iTunes, Real Player and WMP. Can I do without WMP? Sure, the only problem is the codecs. The real question is why don't we have open formats for media files so that you really can use any media player and not have to worry whether it's a.wmp,.mov, ogg or whatever? Qt doesn't play.wmv and Windows Media Player doesn't play.mov. What the hell sense does that make? VLC plays them all, but the OEMS will be damned if they bundle in an open source app.
I'll second that. For a minute there I thought I missed something. WTF does spamming have to do with cracking? He/she thins that spamming is impressive?
Windows users/fanatics (including MS employees) who come to Slashdot and scratch their heads at the anti-Microsoft sentiment here...but they still come back again and again. The Shi'ites do it for religious purposes. Why do MS users do it?
We've already talked about moviegoers being essentially spoiled which is why 47% think the at movies are getting worse when they're clearly getting better.
So it is with videogames too. When Pac Man came out, people were just happy that they weren't stuck with pong anymore. But now, no matter how realistic, how impressive the graphics or gameplay is, none of them are good enough, and lately we've been subjected to an endless stream of "Why Videogames Today Suck" articles.
Honestly people, doesn't anybody think before they go into a rant? Test out a game like Midnight Club 3 or Burnout 3, and try and tell me that Pole Position was better.
the Jedi are fallible as all living creatures are, despite their code. Especially in a time of war. The fact is the Jedi didn't kill anybody who weren't already attacking them.
"Had the truth been as Obi-wan had orginally told Luke, it would have made a better prequal in my opinion. I would much rather have watched a movie about Darth's betryal of Luke's father."
I'd agree with you there. The whole "I am your father thing" was rather soap operatish.
"I mostly disagree with what you say, but one thing that has changed a lot are the fans who saw the orginal trilogy when they were children."
This is probably true, but while the critics then harshly criticized Mark Hamill for his performance, the fans didn't. I wouldn't. I thought he was a great Luke Skywalker. But that's what separates the fans from the critics. Being able to simply appreciate rather than purposely going out and punching holes.
Slashdot Mirror
Or you could convince her that videogames are actually therapeutic, a sensible way of releasing tension, frustration and stress...better to take out your Road Rage in Burnout 3 than actually Speed Racering people over cliffs in the real world...
So it is more advisable to wait until the second run of these things come out or will MS get it right on the first try this time?
Hope this is true. I've heard that the original PS2 was first shipped with a lesser quality drive before they upgraded it in later models. I hope this is not the case with the XBox 360.
Well, for whatever it's worth I ain't no expert on parenting, don't even have kids, but I think you simply have to use your best judgement and learn to live with it. Your best is all you can do.
However, as a child from a dysfunctional household, my best advice is whatever happens, make damn sure that you keep communications open with your kids. In my experience, it's when the trust erodes and talking becomes forced that the real problems start. Talk to your kids as often as they let you, and remember talking means listening too not just laying down edicts.
Kind of like the people out there who claim all modern music is crap based on what they heard on the radio recently or saw on MTC, and failing to take into account that there is a greater variety of music available today than ever before in history. Obviously not all of it can be heard on "KSXX! Where we play all the hits all friggin' day!!!"
I don't want to charge family or friends to clean up their computers, but on the other hand, if too many friends find out you can do it then you'll never get any rest. Solution. Tell them to get Ad-Aware. No guilt and no pain in the ass that way.
Cool. The sister I never had. God, how I wish they'd come up with a version of Twisted Metal for the X-Box.
Some times, that's why there's a group for them too.
The addicts would use their addiction to get what they wanted, and the AlAnon people would use guilt to get what they wanted. .
Sorry you had a bad experience. Some groups are like that. Some people at the meetings are not there for recovery. And your SO shouldn't be using guilt trips on you, but OTOH, it might not have been the most considerate thing to do to have a beer in front of her, especially if she was early in recovey.
But I'm not trying to control anybody. What I'm trying to do is warn people who don't know the danger. Of course if you don't smoke pot, then this topic isn't relevant with you.
What I'm getting from you is you may have been an addict...
May? Oh no, I was the real deal. Jails institutions (and the streets), but thankfully not death. What you're getting from me is an urgent desire to help somebody avoid what some of us have already been through, but didn't need to go through if there had been sufficient help available or maybe if enough people had made the warning more clear. It means nothing when you hear it from a school teacher or a cop. But when you hear it from somebody who's already been through it, it carries more weight. Or at least it should.
You are responible for you, and though the 12th step is to give your recovery away what you are trying to do is preempt recovery. That you simply can not do because it denies others the ability to reach the 1st step.
Oh indeed, if I can stop them from having to find out the hard way, I definitely will as the 1st step is the hardest of all. Most people don't make it past that one. Stopping people before they can get started is an effort that must be undertaken by anybody who understands addiction. When I was in rehab, I had a chance to work with the adolescents, and seeing kids as young as 13 already addicted to the hard stuff should be enough to set off alarms bells in anybody. Of course, the reality is kids younger than that get high. And why not, they see adults doing it. Not good.
Of course I understand these posts will probably make me the least popular reader on Slashdot, but oh well.
On the contrary, I try and protect others before they have to learn the hard way, and to educate those who think it's "no big deal". If you seriously know anything about recovery then you know that we have to give it away in order to keep it. Trying to stop people before they get started is a big part of that.
Strawberries don't consume you from the inside out until you're a shell of a human being like crack or heroin can. Some are just interested in making excuses so you can smoke your weed and not be hassled by the police. You think it's not only not a problem for you, but not a problem for anybody else either. You're very much mistaken, and your careless attitude ensures that drug addiction is alive and well. You should ask yourself what it would take before you consider marijuana a problem, whether it's a problem of yours or something like somebody stealing your car stereo so they can go buy a bag.
A handful of media pirates get busted, but wouldn't it be great to see: "11 Nation Action Nets Scores of Al Quaida members In Joint Agency Raids" for once? Just for once could the government stay focused on the real threat out there or is just too lucrative to be on the payroll of Hollywood?
But a lot of the stories are really good. A lot of creativity there.
Perhaps the "others" wouldn't switch to the "hard stuff" if they didn't have to buy their pot from narcotics dealers. To those not familiar with addiction, I assure you that's not how it works. Our hospital ER gets filled up nearly every weekend with overdoses both legal (etoh, benzo, opiate, aceteminophen, and ASA), and illegal (cocaine, meth, and opiates), yet I've never seen anyone admitted let alone die from a marijuana overdose Yep and I guarantee you that all of those people who overdosed on the hard stuff would have started with marijuana and worked their way down to something harder. It's why we call it addiction. One you take that first step, it's a slippery slope. Not everybody slides, but anybody who operates are motor vehicle or works in a potentially hazardous environment while being impaired by THC can easily be just as dangerous as somebody who drives drunk. You might think a little weed is no big deal, but I sure don't want somebody driving stoned behind me at night. I speak as a recovering addict, not somebody who read this out of a book. I not only experienced it firsthand, I saw and heard what it did to others unlike the average Slashdot reader. The thing about being an addict is that you don't know it until it's too late.
So basically while seeing a lot of "this is bullshit" comments, we're not seeing any comments from anybody who really knows or has worked with either of these two platforms. Instead, we're seeing people more willing to believe MS and Sony who have everything to gain from lying about their products vs. a more realistic view of two over-hyped machines by a website who will attract viewers to their article whether they say good things about these two consoles or not. It really will make no differenc to Anandtech. People will come to read their articles because they've earned a readership so they've no real motivation to make stuff up or distort things.
Admit it people, some of you just don't want to hear what they're saying. Had they said that the PS3 does put out 2 teraflops and the XBox 360 only one, then you could have simply continued on with the normal console flame war which has been going on since E3 ie 3 cores vs 7 SPEs, etc. Then of course, there'd be doubters from the other side accusing Anandtech of being on the payroll of MS and Sony.
Look at the motivation people. Think about who's really got cause to BS the console gamers.
What company is going to want its developers openly saying that MS and Sony are blatant liars? Anonymously will be the only way to get an honest opinion. Otherwise, the developers would simply have to parrot the company line about what geniuses those folks at Sony and MS are or face possible repercussions from management or have their companies ostracized by either of the two.
Yeah, but who's more likely to give you the straight facts, Anandtech who are known for giving detailed analyses of hardware or one of a pair of companies who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by outright lying to consumers?
It's good that somebody finally waded through the BS and sorted things out, letting us know what we can really expect.
Nope, no rumble seat with the XBox, but still you need to try MC3 before you dismiss it. The adrenalin rush alone is worth it moving at intense speeds through the city, down expressways, making some of the craziest jumps ever seen in a game and even taking a leisurely (or not so leisurely) drive across the deck of an aircraft carrier. Some of the races have your nerves stretched taut and when the race is finally over, you almost have to pry your fingers off the controller. San Diego's pretty easy, Atlanta is tougher and Detroit gets positively insane. Best of all, you have such wide variety of cars to pick from...even some real classics like the 1949 Fleetline. Seriously. Try it.
Whatever you think of FPS, nobody can deny that racing games are consistently improving from version to version. Anybody who's tried Burnout 3 or Midnight Club 3 can tell you it's some of the most intense gameplay out there. Especially MC3. The graphics, the music, the customization of the cars, and the action are all impressive. Most importantly of all, it's something you can do safely behind a console rather than doing it for real in the streets and kill somebody as occurred in Sacramento recently. Now compare these games to Pole Position from the old days.
who think it should be legalized, I have two words for you: gateway drug. Yes, maybe not for you, but for a lot of others. And when those others switch to the hard stuff (narcotics, etc.), start shooting up neighborhoods and filling up the emergency rooms and mortuaries faster, you can tell everybody you didn't know it would be such a problem.
Just because alcohol and tobacco are already legal doesn't mean all drugs should be. As for the pain-killing aspects, you seriously think there's no alternative medications for that?
My HP came with Quicktime, iTunes, Real Player and WMP. Can I do without WMP? Sure, the only problem is the codecs. The real question is why don't we have open formats for media files so that you really can use any media player and not have to worry whether it's a .wmp, .mov, ogg or whatever? Qt doesn't play .wmv and Windows Media Player doesn't play .mov. What the hell sense does that make? VLC plays them all, but the OEMS will be damned if they bundle in an open source app.
I'll second that. For a minute there I thought I missed something. WTF does spamming have to do with cracking? He/she thins that spamming is impressive?
Windows users/fanatics (including MS employees) who come to Slashdot and scratch their heads at the anti-Microsoft sentiment here...but they still come back again and again. The Shi'ites do it for religious purposes. Why do MS users do it?
There is, and it's right here:
http://forums.microsoft.com/
So it is with videogames too. When Pac Man came out, people were just happy that they weren't stuck with pong anymore. But now, no matter how realistic, how impressive the graphics or gameplay is, none of them are good enough, and lately we've been subjected to an endless stream of "Why Videogames Today Suck" articles.
Honestly people, doesn't anybody think before they go into a rant? Test out a game like Midnight Club 3 or Burnout 3, and try and tell me that Pole Position was better.
the Jedi are fallible as all living creatures are, despite their code. Especially in a time of war. The fact is the Jedi didn't kill anybody who weren't already attacking them.
"Had the truth been as Obi-wan had orginally told Luke, it would have made a better prequal in my opinion. I would much rather have watched a movie about Darth's betryal of Luke's father." I'd agree with you there. The whole "I am your father thing" was rather soap operatish. "I mostly disagree with what you say, but one thing that has changed a lot are the fans who saw the orginal trilogy when they were children." This is probably true, but while the critics then harshly criticized Mark Hamill for his performance, the fans didn't. I wouldn't. I thought he was a great Luke Skywalker. But that's what separates the fans from the critics. Being able to simply appreciate rather than purposely going out and punching holes.