Agreed. It's interesting that most of the people that support the expensive video cards because they like the "quality" also use LCDs. Especially the larger lcds, there's gonna be a lot of ghosting in any FPS and many other games. There goes the quality visuals out the window.
libertarian and "legalise it to stop the criminal elements" arguments considered, it might well be better off legal... but it's hardly the pressing issue of our times. There are many other unfair and unjust laws and relations of power etc. that abound. That someone would care enough about MJ to make it their first political priority is evidence of how far they have fallen. It's lame, it steals a certain edge/quickness from your mind (much more than it's supposed "benefits" - do a philosophy course and tell me which one "expanded your mind" more).
On the whole it's fucking boring and I wish the middle class whingers would stop complaining in the face of the science that ANY type of smoking is bad for your lungs (I pity the fool who tries to dispute that, yes you can eat it), and that MJ is bad for your intelligence (there is evidence of this), bad for some people's mental health (there is evidence of this) and on the whole there are some convincing arguments that it's bad for society.
While I agree with some of the "facts" you state, I think you completely miss the point. From your arguments and the way you perceive the issue, it is apparent to me that you are a very pragmatic person: "it's bad for you, don't do it."
Just think about what you are throwing out when you say, "many stoners will testify that it lessens mental agility" or "On the whole it's fucking boring and I wish the middle class whingers would stop complaining in the face of the science." You relegate the entire realm of art, sprituality and philosophy (yes philosophy) to some substandard realm because it does not produce anything useful.
Have you considered that the lessening of "mental agility" is exactly the state that spiritual beings the world over attempt to capture - it's called a lucid state, and is the goal of many meditations, including yoga. I know for a fact that if you ask a monk in meditation what 485 X 391 is, they aren't going to spit out the answer instantaneously. Does that make them lesser entities? I don't think so, and I'm willing to wager that they far surpass our petty intellects in many profound ways.
What about all manner of art? Do you think that "mental agility" or even straight-up IQ have anything to do with that? I think you'll find that many artists, both contemporary and historical, have not had enormous IQs or were not even "mentally agile." Many artists are documented as having used drugs, especially in modern arts such as music.
Philosophy is a subject that does not require a genius IQ, it requires an expanisiveness of consciousness that can look at things from a very broad perspective. The true concepts of philosophy - realism (materialism) vs idealism vs dualism, teleology, morality - these things require, above all, a willingness to release yourself from the daily understanding of reality and look at human existance in a much more grandiose fashion.
Where you get the notion that wanting legalized weed is libertarian is beyond me. At this point the issue, ironically, transcends any political system. You could have legal weed in any governmental system, the only reason it's illegal in ours (usian) is because of social factors.
As for your own experiences with the drug, let me give you mine. I've smoked for many years, and I did explore other drugs - shrooms, acid, ecstasy, coke, crack, heroin, 2cb, liquid g, meth, K, and others. I've partied in heaven with 5,000 of my closest friends until the next morning, and I've been drunk and stoned for hours experiencing the deepest spiritual experiences listening to music by myself. Bad experiences? I've had one or two. And now, now I work in an office 40 hrs a week, I am responsible and fulfill my role in society while looking to possibilities for the future and reminiscing about the past. For me it's been a spiritual, beautiful experience that transcends mere words.
I'll leave you with the words of the father of pragmatism himself, william james:
The DRM that Apple does use for iTMS purchases is trivial to defeat by design; so trivial that it's really pointless and it's an annoyance as it means I have to burn a CD then rip them back to put them on my file server.
I'm not positive about this, but doesn't that involve an extra conversion from AAC->Wav->AAC, thereby decreasing the quality of your music (extra bits taken out from the lossy compression)? That's always been a concern for me regarding lossy compression (ie never compress music more than once).
How could something so critical be so ignored by the the masses?
Because it is a complicated issue with no clear right or wrong side, unlike the issues people get behind morally - abortion, gun control, terrorism, etc. It's not obvious that abscence of copyright is "good" or that the current situation is "bad".
First of all, stop capitalizing "libertarianism" when speaking of my political philosophy. I am a libertarian, not a member of the Libertarian Party.
Secondly, perhaps you should do a little more reading on "what libertarianism truly means" before you start lecturing me on it, because you clearly only half-understand most of the principles.
Thirdly, I never said anything which advocates your ad absurdum scenarios. Stop knocking down straw men and acting like you've proven anything.
The only reason I'm bothering to reply at this point is because I've been modded a troll for replying to you, and then you're modded +2 insightful for this post. That made me angry, not to mention my original post being modded "overated" before anyone had moderated it! But then, I was fully aware of the romaticization of libertarianism on slashdot when I started posting.
It's become apparent to me that you feel I am somehow personally attacking you by attacking libertarianism.
I was very upset with myself when I read your post and realized that I had been misrepresenting your beliefs by capitalizing libertarianism, which obviously hurt you deeply. Therefore, I went back and counted all the times I've used that word and capitalized it incorrectly; I've said "libertarianism" 9 times, 4 of which were capitalized. However, 2 of those capitalizations were at the beginning of a sentence, and therefore warranted. I apologize profusely for having a higher than 20% rate of misrepresentation of your beliefs. I hope you can forgive me.
Regarding your second and third points, let me interject something: you've said #2 before in this thread , and I merely ask that you point out what I am wrong about; perhaps propose ideas that contradict mine. I've seen some made by other people - monopolies and corporations won't exist in a libertarian world, things like contracts still bind, some legislation may exist (such as pollution regulation), etc - but you make no effort to point out why I'm wrong.
I guess you don't understand the joke about slashdot and "straw men" - that particular logical fallacy has attained the same level as "In soviet russia..." and "in korea only old people..." jokes here. You can't just say something like that and it automagically makes an argument null and void. Any defense of "logical fallacy!" requires an argument in-itself - you have to show (prove) how the argument is logically invalid.
All I'm asking is that anyone think about all of the possible repercussions of a particular political ideal before espousing it as the cure-all of humanity's problems.
Libertarianism isn't about the "non-intervention" of government -- it's about a minimal government that, like any other government, should intervene in any activity that countermands its laws.
Yes, but the reasons why a libertarian government would become involved in the economy are very few: infringment of personal/property rights. That's about it. Many things that are regulated now - pollution, monopolies, rules against price fixing, etc - would not exist. These things in-themselves wouldn't be illegal.
I never said that the companies would have to be corrupt in order to do bad things. Sure, the things you mention about contracts would still be binding. People'd have to be much more careful about reading the fine print though, as there wouldn't be any safety net to fall back on if you signed an unfavorable contract. What you say about contracts being binding works both ways; I thought everyone on Slashdot knew the carelesness of the average person.
Yes, the "free market" created all those things you mention, nevermind that the majority of that wealth is concentrated in a tiny percentge of the people, social programs serve to prevent 1/4 of the population from living in destitute conditions, people buy medicine using government progrmas, many comfort factors are enforced by the government (ex. it's illegal for the gas company to turn the gas off in winter here in chicago, no matter how far behind in payment the tenant is), and a huge number of scientific grants, school grants, and schools themselves are funded by taxes and goverment programs. But then again, you can argue that solely the "free market" supplied all those things, and that they don't exist in other places of the world that don't claim to have a laissez faire economy or they wouldn't exist if we didn't have a "free market".
My bad, what you say is true. However, you're basically talking semantics: whether copyright's for the benefit of "the people" or the artist is essentially the same thing, because under this (copyright) thought process the people would not benefit if the artist didn't and the artist wouldn't benefit if the people didn't. Meaning, there wouldn't be [as much] art/invention without the artist making money (no motivation), and the artist wouldn't make money if the people didn't benefit from the product (who'd buy something useless).
Disclaimer: Yes, I know some people would argue that "the people" don't benefit from Britany Spears.
So you're saying that Libertarianism does not espouse a free market (laissez-faire) system? In which the government does not regulate the economy one iota (unless something is interfering with citizens property rights)?
Do you honestly believe that corporations would pay any heed to "morality" given this type of situation? A corporation would not face consequences unless what they did directly threatend the property rights of a citizen.
Perhaps you should take a closer look at what libertarianism truly means before you espouse its virtues. Sure, perhaps copyright wouldn't exist (though there is an argument as to whether what is copyrighted could be considered property, in which cases it would exist under libertarianism. Personal property is holy under such a system). But what do you think would replace copyright? Perhaps, as another poster said, a system where you sign a contract (upon each purchase) that states that, under penalty of a $100,000 fine you will not copy, reproduce, play in a public area, or otherwise diseminate the product. Hmm, in order to make this work, a bunch of corporations (say, record labels) could get together and form another big corporation/representative body. Then, they could establish a monopoly over the area they cover (remember-no government intervention in a free market), thereby forcing all new companies to use The Contract. Wow, this is all starting to sound very familiar.
Extend scenarios like this to the extreme, and you see why a "pure" system, such as pure capitalism or pure communism, will never work.
Libertarianism espouses the Free Market! as the solution to the problem of economy! That means that corporations can do whatever the F*ck they want, and the government won't do a single thing to stop them so long as it doesn't affect any citizens property rights. True libertarianism is dead in the water. It is pure capitalism, which is as dead as pure communism.
If you think corporations are bad now, you wouldn't want to see what they look like under a Libertarian system.
Protection of intellectual property is not something that the government created for the benefit of corporations, it was created for the benefit of the artist that created the work. Allowing corporations freedom to do what they want (the "free market" that is so central to libertarianism) is what created a system where corporations can be considered entities in favorable cases, but not living entities in unfavorable cases (how many "corporations" are put in prison?). Thus, these corporations (record labels) can own a copyright on something (that they didn't even create). This leads to the natural occurance of the corporation (a for-profit "entity") trying to prolong its hold on the material (thereby creating more profit).
Free market is what allowed/will allow corporations the power to do what they want, including spewing tons of pollution into the environment (which would only increase with de-regulation), enforcing censorship (walmart), utilizing sweatshops, and abusing a protection put in place for individual people's property rights (copyright).
So, unless everybody wants to agree to my kooky libertarian ideal...
You do know that "libertarian ideals" is what allowed things like the RIAA and MPAA, along with Halliburton and Diebold, to form in the first place, right? Libertarianism is all about the non-intervention of government. That means that the government doesn't interfere with what companies want to do; it espouses the Laissez-faire economic system, which is a total travesty of human thought. The idea that we should be ruled by the dollar is, quite frankly, rather extreme and un-human.
At first I was a little offended by this idea of SOE, but then I decided that I liked it.
I played EQ2 for a while, but suspended my account for a few months (friend left the game for a while). I was planning on renewing my subscription in a couple months.
People afk powerlevelling, purchasing characters/accounts/items through ebay, etc has always irked me. I'm of the MMO school that players should have to "work" for their accomplishments in-game, and that things like levels and items actually mean something (they represent your dedication to the game and serve as a reward to those who put effort into the game, much like the "reward" for putting effort into an fps is fragging all your enemies). This view is often called the "protestant work ethic" view of MMOs, and is offset by the "I'm too busy" view. The I'm Too Busy view is supported by "gamers" who work 60 hrs a week/raise a family/mommy's won't let them play more than 10 hrs a week. These people believe that they cannot have fun unless they have the best/most elite/uber character, and that they should be able to buy those things (or get them for free from guildies) because they "don't have enough time" to earn them. To which I say, "it's a fucking game, and it's fun whether you're lvl 1 or lvl 50". If you don't enjoy playing now, what makes you think you'll enjoy playing when you have a lvl 50(or 60, whatever) with all the best loot and no challenges left, no quests left.
I will not prophecy whether what SOE is doing is a good business venture or not - I don't know (although I'd guess it's not gonna be doom and gloom for SOE) - but hopefully this will help clean up the game. By that I mean, I played on a "RP" server (lucan), which was a farce. People would regularly make fun of RPers and the idea of an RP server in the ooc channel (region). My main problem with MMOs are the "undesirables" playing, and perhaps by creating special servers that cater to these people they will not be on MY server. Perhaps this will lead to age specific or playstyle specific servers (AFK powerlevellers and leet kiddies may go to the "cheat" server, leaving rpers, serious players (including powerlevellers, just not the afk kind), etc to the other servers.
I think permadeath would be a good MMO touch, except that you would see a sharp increase in afk-powerleveling, purchasing of loot/gold online, and other metagame "cheating". Any MMO must have some form of advancement, whether it's levels, skills, equipment, social/political status, etc. The level of power will be all the more important because permadeath will limit how many people have the big power.
Weak minded people will begin to think that the world "owes" them something (because they've lost x amount of characters of n power), and rationalize powerleveling, account buying and such.
Of course it's useless. It's a wireless router! What kind of hipster would use a wireless connection to play games? Unless you dropped over 2Gs on your laptop, it's not gonna play games very well. Hooking up your gaming rig to a wireless connection is ridiculous. I'm pretty sure everyone will admit they don't just pick up and move their atx pc 'cause they feel like playing a game in the other room; the internet connection wires would be the least of your worries.
Even if this router gave you pings around 150, that's still horrible. I've been kicked from farcry servers for having a 78 ping (75 was the max limit). Sure, you can play with a 150 ping, but forget sniping or hitting over 100 meters; I guess you could still be a flak monkey or nade/rocket noob though...
You do realize that Mac is a giant in the audio/visual world, and runs a unix kernel which makes it compatable with tons of free open source software right?
Of course Macs are better at audio/visual applications, but I'm not saying I use Avid and make movies from scratch. What I'm saying is that I convert.avi, mpeg, etc into the formats I need. I've found quite a few free tools on the 'net to help facilitate this. While the majority of my Mac experience is with systems before OS X, I don't doubt software is easier to come across now. It's still not as plentiful as windows software though.
The fact of the matter is Windows is really the inferior platform of the three, but being industry standard survives none the less.
Exactly, Windows is the VHS of this debate.
The fact that customers refuse to switch for software purposes just ensures the same lax development practices; you sir, are contributing to the problem.
Personally, I don't know what else goes into the decision of operating system other than software. Perhaps you can enlighten me as to why you use a computer, if it's not for the software (the thrill of compiling a kernal? The joy you get overclocking Ram voltage?). Simple economics dictates that if people will buy something for a certain price that's the price it's gonna be sold at, whether it is poorly written or not. I believe that will be a problem no matter what OS is at the top of the heap. There is no accounting for the decisions that uninformed people make.
The fact that windows isn't secure out of the box doesn't matter one bit to me. I don't care. The notion of running a machine on the 'net straight out of the box just seems foolish to me. I make the machine secure, no matter the OS. At that point, I'm running a secure OS. Furthermore, I haven't had a system crash in many months (other than an annoying UT2004-Kerio bug, which was UT's fault).
As far as Windows being my fault, I say it's also your fault. Why don't you develop a Linux distro that is as easy as windows? One you can just pop the disk in and Linux installs itself and does all the HDD formatting, etc. Once it's installed I don't need to do anything in a console/text prompt, it's all GUI, with minimal configuration necessary. Does something like this already exist? Well, maybe you need some Open Source Marketing then. Games are a large part of why I use Windows, and many people I've talked to say the same thing. Where are the Linux games? Where are the Mac games? It's hardly my--a lowly consumer--fault that these things don't exist. Make Wine and windows emulators work properly, so that I can actually play a demanding windows game on a Linux box. Do these things, and people will start using Linux.
So what you're saying is, "MS sucks! Linux rocks!".
Whatever, that might be true. Quite frankly, my choice of OS is decided by my software needs and not some perceived superiority of one system over another.
The plain, straight up truth is that properly configured (which isn't the nightmare you make it sound like, configuring a machine for security can be fun and enlightening) and with moderately intelligent use a personal windows box is perfectly secure. I have cable internet (and use p2p), and I never once have had a virus on my computer. With a NAT router/firewall, software firewall, and a couple of apps any machine is just fine out on the big, scary 'net.
I use windows because windows has the videogames, which is an important factor for me. Furthermore, I can find a plethora of free tools on the internet to help me do what I want to do. I also do a lot of work with video/audio files, and I'm able to find the tools to, say, convert a divx to dvd, for free on the internet. Granted, I may be able to find these things for OS X or linux, but I guarantee it would be much harder if not impossible.
The fact that I have to use a couple methods to keep my computer safe just seems natural to me. If you wanna plug your "invincible" OS X/Linux box strait into your cable connection, that's up to you. Quite frankly, I'd use security tools on any system I run, not just the ones that I heard on the internet were vulnerable.
And besides, I think the advice you cite is for the stock market not business. More along business lines would be, "corner the market, sell at whatever price you want" or "sell $.01 lower than the competitor."
Still it's what these people did is a kind of bastardly thing; an equivalent would be MS's tight grip on the popular OS market, and selling their product for whatever they want. If these two actively pursue this, they could effectively set the price point for all of this type of merchandise.
Slashbots have such typical responses: "Micro$oft is forcing me to upgrade to SP2". In this situation, MS is not forcing you to do anything. It's your fault for having automatic updates activated. Jeez, when xp asked me if I wanted automatic updates activated I thought, "well, I'm not an utter newb at computing, and I know the difference between a toaster and a computer, so...NO."
I always figured that "feature" was for grandmas/pas that didn't comprehend the most basic elements of computers and didn't care about their computing privacy. Guess I was wrong.
In other news, Halliburton has won a $100 million subcontract to establish Wi-Fi internet service for Colorado cities.
The funds for the project are coming from taxpayers and advertisers.
It does seem counter-intuitive to weld a full tank, and I agree in many cases it is not the best idea (hole on the bottom where fuel would be leaking, etc.). However, welders do it, at least in rural areas where country bumpkins do crazy things. I had difficulty finding some evidence on the net, as it's probably not the "official" method. I did find this however (it's a.pdf, see pg. 4 "Man Injured in Fuel Tank Explosion").
The vapor is the most dangerous thing about working on gas tanks. The stuff I found that said to wash out the tank wanted you to spend hours on it; I can imagine in places where people need to do something fast, and they think their methodology is safe, they won't second guess it.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. It's interesting that most of the people that support the expensive video cards because they like the "quality" also use LCDs. Especially the larger lcds, there's gonna be a lot of ghosting in any FPS and many other games. There goes the quality visuals out the window.
While I agree with some of the "facts" you state, I think you completely miss the point. From your arguments and the way you perceive the issue, it is apparent to me that you are a very pragmatic person: "it's bad for you, don't do it."
Just think about what you are throwing out when you say, "many stoners will testify that it lessens mental agility" or "On the whole it's fucking boring and I wish the middle class whingers would stop complaining in the face of the science." You relegate the entire realm of art, sprituality and philosophy (yes philosophy) to some substandard realm because it does not produce anything useful.
Have you considered that the lessening of "mental agility" is exactly the state that spiritual beings the world over attempt to capture - it's called a lucid state, and is the goal of many meditations, including yoga. I know for a fact that if you ask a monk in meditation what 485 X 391 is, they aren't going to spit out the answer instantaneously. Does that make them lesser entities? I don't think so, and I'm willing to wager that they far surpass our petty intellects in many profound ways.
What about all manner of art? Do you think that "mental agility" or even straight-up IQ have anything to do with that? I think you'll find that many artists, both contemporary and historical, have not had enormous IQs or were not even "mentally agile." Many artists are documented as having used drugs, especially in modern arts such as music.
Philosophy is a subject that does not require a genius IQ, it requires an expanisiveness of consciousness that can look at things from a very broad perspective. The true concepts of philosophy - realism (materialism) vs idealism vs dualism, teleology, morality - these things require, above all, a willingness to release yourself from the daily understanding of reality and look at human existance in a much more grandiose fashion.
Where you get the notion that wanting legalized weed is libertarian is beyond me. At this point the issue, ironically, transcends any political system. You could have legal weed in any governmental system, the only reason it's illegal in ours (usian) is because of social factors.
As for your own experiences with the drug, let me give you mine. I've smoked for many years, and I did explore other drugs - shrooms, acid, ecstasy, coke, crack, heroin, 2cb, liquid g, meth, K, and others. I've partied in heaven with 5,000 of my closest friends until the next morning, and I've been drunk and stoned for hours experiencing the deepest spiritual experiences listening to music by myself. Bad experiences? I've had one or two. And now, now I work in an office 40 hrs a week, I am responsible and fulfill my role in society while looking to possibilities for the future and reminiscing about the past. For me it's been a spiritual, beautiful experience that transcends mere words.
I'll leave you with the words of the father of pragmatism himself, william james:
I'm not positive about this, but doesn't that involve an extra conversion from AAC->Wav->AAC, thereby decreasing the quality of your music (extra bits taken out from the lossy compression)? That's always been a concern for me regarding lossy compression (ie never compress music more than once).
Because it is a complicated issue with no clear right or wrong side, unlike the issues people get behind morally - abortion, gun control, terrorism, etc. It's not obvious that abscence of copyright is "good" or that the current situation is "bad".
It's become apparent to me that you feel I am somehow personally attacking you by attacking libertarianism.
I was very upset with myself when I read your post and realized that I had been misrepresenting your beliefs by capitalizing libertarianism, which obviously hurt you deeply. Therefore, I went back and counted all the times I've used that word and capitalized it incorrectly; I've said "libertarianism" 9 times, 4 of which were capitalized. However, 2 of those capitalizations were at the beginning of a sentence, and therefore warranted. I apologize profusely for having a higher than 20% rate of misrepresentation of your beliefs. I hope you can forgive me.
Regarding your second and third points, let me interject something: you've said #2 before in this thread , and I merely ask that you point out what I am wrong about; perhaps propose ideas that contradict mine. I've seen some made by other people - monopolies and corporations won't exist in a libertarian world, things like contracts still bind, some legislation may exist (such as pollution regulation), etc - but you make no effort to point out why I'm wrong.
I guess you don't understand the joke about slashdot and "straw men" - that particular logical fallacy has attained the same level as "In soviet russia..." and "in korea only old people..." jokes here. You can't just say something like that and it automagically makes an argument null and void. Any defense of "logical fallacy!" requires an argument in-itself - you have to show (prove) how the argument is logically invalid.
All I'm asking is that anyone think about all of the possible repercussions of a particular political ideal before espousing it as the cure-all of humanity's problems.
Yes, but the reasons why a libertarian government would become involved in the economy are very few: infringment of personal/property rights. That's about it. Many things that are regulated now - pollution, monopolies, rules against price fixing, etc - would not exist. These things in-themselves wouldn't be illegal.
I never said that the companies would have to be corrupt in order to do bad things. Sure, the things you mention about contracts would still be binding. People'd have to be much more careful about reading the fine print though, as there wouldn't be any safety net to fall back on if you signed an unfavorable contract. What you say about contracts being binding works both ways; I thought everyone on Slashdot knew the carelesness of the average person.
Yes, the "free market" created all those things you mention, nevermind that the majority of that wealth is concentrated in a tiny percentge of the people, social programs serve to prevent 1/4 of the population from living in destitute conditions, people buy medicine using government progrmas, many comfort factors are enforced by the government (ex. it's illegal for the gas company to turn the gas off in winter here in chicago, no matter how far behind in payment the tenant is), and a huge number of scientific grants, school grants, and schools themselves are funded by taxes and goverment programs. But then again, you can argue that solely the "free market" supplied all those things, and that they don't exist in other places of the world that don't claim to have a laissez faire economy or they wouldn't exist if we didn't have a "free market".
Disclaimer: Yes, I know some people would argue that "the people" don't benefit from Britany Spears.
Do you honestly believe that corporations would pay any heed to "morality" given this type of situation? A corporation would not face consequences unless what they did directly threatend the property rights of a citizen.
Perhaps you should take a closer look at what libertarianism truly means before you espouse its virtues. Sure, perhaps copyright wouldn't exist (though there is an argument as to whether what is copyrighted could be considered property, in which cases it would exist under libertarianism. Personal property is holy under such a system). But what do you think would replace copyright? Perhaps, as another poster said, a system where you sign a contract (upon each purchase) that states that, under penalty of a $100,000 fine you will not copy, reproduce, play in a public area, or otherwise diseminate the product. Hmm, in order to make this work, a bunch of corporations (say, record labels) could get together and form another big corporation/representative body. Then, they could establish a monopoly over the area they cover (remember-no government intervention in a free market), thereby forcing all new companies to use The Contract. Wow, this is all starting to sound very familiar.
Extend scenarios like this to the extreme, and you see why a "pure" system, such as pure capitalism or pure communism, will never work.
If you think corporations are bad now, you wouldn't want to see what they look like under a Libertarian system.
Free market is what allowed/will allow corporations the power to do what they want, including spewing tons of pollution into the environment (which would only increase with de-regulation), enforcing censorship (walmart), utilizing sweatshops, and abusing a protection put in place for individual people's property rights (copyright).
You do know that "libertarian ideals" is what allowed things like the RIAA and MPAA, along with Halliburton and Diebold, to form in the first place, right? Libertarianism is all about the non-intervention of government. That means that the government doesn't interfere with what companies want to do; it espouses the Laissez-faire economic system, which is a total travesty of human thought. The idea that we should be ruled by the dollar is, quite frankly, rather extreme and un-human.
I played EQ2 for a while, but suspended my account for a few months (friend left the game for a while). I was planning on renewing my subscription in a couple months.
People afk powerlevelling, purchasing characters/accounts/items through ebay, etc has always irked me. I'm of the MMO school that players should have to "work" for their accomplishments in-game, and that things like levels and items actually mean something (they represent your dedication to the game and serve as a reward to those who put effort into the game, much like the "reward" for putting effort into an fps is fragging all your enemies). This view is often called the "protestant work ethic" view of MMOs, and is offset by the "I'm too busy" view. The I'm Too Busy view is supported by "gamers" who work 60 hrs a week/raise a family/mommy's won't let them play more than 10 hrs a week. These people believe that they cannot have fun unless they have the best/most elite/uber character, and that they should be able to buy those things (or get them for free from guildies) because they "don't have enough time" to earn them. To which I say, "it's a fucking game, and it's fun whether you're lvl 1 or lvl 50". If you don't enjoy playing now, what makes you think you'll enjoy playing when you have a lvl 50(or 60, whatever) with all the best loot and no challenges left, no quests left.
I will not prophecy whether what SOE is doing is a good business venture or not - I don't know (although I'd guess it's not gonna be doom and gloom for SOE) - but hopefully this will help clean up the game. By that I mean, I played on a "RP" server (lucan), which was a farce. People would regularly make fun of RPers and the idea of an RP server in the ooc channel (region). My main problem with MMOs are the "undesirables" playing, and perhaps by creating special servers that cater to these people they will not be on MY server. Perhaps this will lead to age specific or playstyle specific servers (AFK powerlevellers and leet kiddies may go to the "cheat" server, leaving rpers, serious players (including powerlevellers, just not the afk kind), etc to the other servers.
Oh, thank God! So you're saying I can still watch DirectTV during this right?
Weak minded people will begin to think that the world "owes" them something (because they've lost x amount of characters of n power), and rationalize powerleveling, account buying and such.
Even if this router gave you pings around 150, that's still horrible. I've been kicked from farcry servers for having a 78 ping (75 was the max limit). Sure, you can play with a 150 ping, but forget sniping or hitting over 100 meters; I guess you could still be a flak monkey or nade/rocket noob though...
Yes, that's true. They had a demo at Gencon '04 that I saw. Definetly NOT turn based.
Of course Macs are better at audio/visual applications, but I'm not saying I use Avid and make movies from scratch. What I'm saying is that I convert .avi, mpeg, etc into the formats I need. I've found quite a few free tools on the 'net to help facilitate this. While the majority of my Mac experience is with systems before OS X, I don't doubt software is easier to come across now. It's still not as plentiful as windows software though.
The fact of the matter is Windows is really the inferior platform of the three, but being industry standard survives none the less.
Exactly, Windows is the VHS of this debate.
The fact that customers refuse to switch for software purposes just ensures the same lax development practices; you sir, are contributing to the problem.
Personally, I don't know what else goes into the decision of operating system other than software. Perhaps you can enlighten me as to why you use a computer, if it's not for the software (the thrill of compiling a kernal? The joy you get overclocking Ram voltage?). Simple economics dictates that if people will buy something for a certain price that's the price it's gonna be sold at, whether it is poorly written or not. I believe that will be a problem no matter what OS is at the top of the heap. There is no accounting for the decisions that uninformed people make.
The fact that windows isn't secure out of the box doesn't matter one bit to me. I don't care. The notion of running a machine on the 'net straight out of the box just seems foolish to me. I make the machine secure, no matter the OS. At that point, I'm running a secure OS. Furthermore, I haven't had a system crash in many months (other than an annoying UT2004-Kerio bug, which was UT's fault).
As far as Windows being my fault, I say it's also your fault. Why don't you develop a Linux distro that is as easy as windows? One you can just pop the disk in and Linux installs itself and does all the HDD formatting, etc. Once it's installed I don't need to do anything in a console/text prompt, it's all GUI, with minimal configuration necessary. Does something like this already exist? Well, maybe you need some Open Source Marketing then. Games are a large part of why I use Windows, and many people I've talked to say the same thing. Where are the Linux games? Where are the Mac games? It's hardly my--a lowly consumer--fault that these things don't exist. Make Wine and windows emulators work properly, so that I can actually play a demanding windows game on a Linux box. Do these things, and people will start using Linux.
I'm sorry, in my haste to get Frist Psot I misspelled "Queue".
Whatever, that might be true. Quite frankly, my choice of OS is decided by my software needs and not some perceived superiority of one system over another.
The plain, straight up truth is that properly configured (which isn't the nightmare you make it sound like, configuring a machine for security can be fun and enlightening) and with moderately intelligent use a personal windows box is perfectly secure. I have cable internet (and use p2p), and I never once have had a virus on my computer. With a NAT router/firewall, software firewall, and a couple of apps any machine is just fine out on the big, scary 'net.
I use windows because windows has the videogames, which is an important factor for me. Furthermore, I can find a plethora of free tools on the internet to help me do what I want to do. I also do a lot of work with video/audio files, and I'm able to find the tools to, say, convert a divx to dvd, for free on the internet. Granted, I may be able to find these things for OS X or linux, but I guarantee it would be much harder if not impossible.
The fact that I have to use a couple methods to keep my computer safe just seems natural to me. If you wanna plug your "invincible" OS X/Linux box strait into your cable connection, that's up to you. Quite frankly, I'd use security tools on any system I run, not just the ones that I heard on the internet were vulnerable.
And besides, I think the advice you cite is for the stock market not business. More along business lines would be, "corner the market, sell at whatever price you want" or "sell $.01 lower than the competitor."
Still it's what these people did is a kind of bastardly thing; an equivalent would be MS's tight grip on the popular OS market, and selling their product for whatever they want. If these two actively pursue this, they could effectively set the price point for all of this type of merchandise.
and put them in a que!
I always figured that "feature" was for grandmas/pas that didn't comprehend the most basic elements of computers and didn't care about their computing privacy. Guess I was wrong.
In other news, Halliburton has won a $100 million subcontract to establish Wi-Fi internet service for Colorado cities.
The funds for the project are coming from taxpayers and advertisers.
That belief is not based on logic, reasoning or evidence.
The vapor is the most dangerous thing about working on gas tanks. The stuff I found that said to wash out the tank wanted you to spend hours on it; I can imagine in places where people need to do something fast, and they think their methodology is safe, they won't second guess it.