Right now I can go outside and take a walk. Chances are, no one will see me. Last night I went for a walk, half-drunk, at about 2:30 in the morning. No one saw me. Now sit there with a straight face and tell me you could do that just as comfortably if you knew that some dude with an inflated sense of self-importance chewing down donuts was watching you, possibly while touching himself, AND NOW is suddenly being given a chance to YELL AT YOU.
Seriously. It's weird and not productive. Cameras like this discourage people who wouldn't do anything wrong, and -- I think I'm safe in assuming -- do little to discourage those who actually are up to no good.
Re:Disparaging members of other races? Hardly
on
Hacking the Governator
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
"I mean Cuban, Puerto Rican, they are all very hot," the governor says on the recording. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."
Disparaging or not, and Arnold may or may not be racist, it still attributes personality traits based on racial ethnicity. That's racism by definition. It doesn't matter whether or not said traits are good or bad - its still racism.
I'm sorry, that's asinine.
You're trying to say that saying "Asian chicks are hot" is racist.
Maybe not all asian chicks ARE hot. Maybe you're generalizing. So what.
AMAZINGLY, people of different races have physical differences. Cosmetically different -- not 3 arms or purple noses or anything, just small differences. That's a fact. And some people find some of those differences attractive. OHNOES. What a travesty.
True -- for older titles, you probably will pay less in a store.
But when I got HL2, I got the silver package.. which included DOD:S.. and it was 60 bucks. Less IIRC than it was in a store, and the very day it was released I could play it.. since I had pre-ordered, and pre-downloaded, the program in its entirety.
Really, though, for an extra 5 bucks I'll stick with purchasing via Steam. It saves me about that much gas anyway, but by using Steam you get to indirectly support 3rd-party modders. Some of those folk put in a TON of work, and some are quite impressive with what they're able to do -- in the past it would be just a hobby, with a rare few exceptionals being brought onboard major companies. Steam seems to be taking the angle that, if you develop a mod and want to sell it, and it's good.. just use Steam.
And I just find that neat. And now Steam's delivering games that AREN'T FPS / mods, too? I dunno. I like the potential, and since I can't contribute to what they're selling, I'll support that in another way -- monehz.
Use STEAM. Buy everything via Steam. I've never had any problems with any content purchased and downloaded via Steam -- aside from, yes, the first month or two of Steam in which EVERYTHING was broken.
Seriously, Steam's looking to be one of the greatest innovations in entertainment delivery in the past decade. Or two. Who knows. Bored? Open steam, click on a new game you want, you get charged 5/10/20 bucks, and bam a lil while later there's the whole game. Gotta reformat? Who cares, just download the client, put in your login info, and bam.. there's everything you ever bought, no need to find CDs. On vacation at a friend's computer, bored while they're at work? Getcho that Steam client, you've still got all your games.
(FYI, a few degrees K = a few degrees C. Kevlin is the same scale as Celsius, just with the zero point knocked off by about 273. Dropping a few degrees C between night and day... well, tomorrow's forecast is a daytime high of 24 C and a overnight low of 14 C)
Of course. "I'm not going to pay for this / pay my bill! Ever! Hahaha!"... shouldn't be advised to speak to anyone higher up. They should be, among other (violent) things, told that they're quite wrong.
However, some things are just dumb. Want to return these books without a receipt? Sorry, I can't do it. You're pissed. Awesome, try and find my POS manager, maybe they can do something for you -- check the back room. Knock loud, they're sleeping.
That, I loved to do. Retail sucks, but waking up a POS manager so they can walk out of the back room and say "No, sorry, we can't do that" sort of makes up for you having to run the damned store by yourself every day. Especially when there's 3 customers in line who all are doing the same thing.. and you turn it into 3 seperate trips.
And then during a stint in debt collection there were the individuals who thought they were being racially discriminated against. And some of them claimed, at least, to have lawyers. Well screw that, I'm not dealing with it. The company has a lawyer too -- let them fight it out. Aww you don't want to talk to our company's lawyer, he's mean to you? Deal, Potsie.
Companies hire these kinds of people specifically for the purpose of you getting mad at them so that, if they're lucky, you won't do something that might bother the higher-ups. So feel free to cuss and fuss to your heart's content, that's what they're there for. (And yes, I used to be one of them, and until very recently, part of my job involved appeasing angry people.)
And which is why, when I worked retail / CS, I made sure to convey to these people that Policy X that they are upset about is mandated by the office, and that I don't particularly think it's good or fair either.
Because honestly. Those jobs don't pay enough for anybody to give half a fuck.
I always tried to lead them into asking to speak to someone higher up. Make it their idea, so they don't start that conversation off with "Well your rep said I should talk to you..".
That way, after a few minutes me and whoever were on the same side, against my Evil Asshole Bosses. HA! Good CS -AND- creating stupid work for dumb bosses. Loved it.
People might complain about the end game raiding system, but really, there arent any perfect ways to keep hardcore, 30 hour a week gamers interested in a game for years and years. Some people are just going to put forth that much time to be the absolute best, why not give them something to do? If it was just as easy for players to have the same equiptment while playing 5 hours a week, the hardcore people would just stop playing.
You know what?
Fuck the hardcore crowd. Seriously.
There's absolutely no reason to ruin a game for 80% of your playerbase, and make it a headache for 18% of your playerbase, just so you can keep 2% of your playerbase happy.
Seriously.
At E3, some Blizz employee took a guess that maybe up to 25% of the player base has been INSIDE MOLTEN CORE -- after 2 years, a quarter of your player base has stepped foot inside the EASIEST of the end-game content. What percent have killed anything in MC? What percent have moved onto BWL -- 5%? How about Naxx? What minute fraction of a percent of the player base are even going to be within Naxx in the time between now and the release of Burning Crusade (which will just about trivialize Naxx.. though at level 70 it'll be a pretty easy way to go and get some decent gear I guess. Naxx-level epics I believe will be just about on par with level 70 blues.. something along those lines).
THAT is what WoW's problem is -- it listens too much to the tiny, teeny, fraction of players who threaten to quit unless they're given new content. They blow through content so fast.. who cares if they stay or go? If the vast majority of your players (and I do mean VAST) are still MONTHS AND MONTHS -- even YEARS -- behind that small fraction when it comes to progressing through end-game content.. well, too bad.
And I do mean years. If you're a new guild starting out, you can look forward to getting into Naxx, if you get 40 people with a great deal of dedication, in maybe a year or two. You need to race to 60, race to get gear from those instances so you can succeed in MC, need to run MC for a long time until you get more gear so you can run BWL (and keep in mind there's a 1-week lockout on all these raid instances), run BWL until you get MORE gear so you can run Naxx.. oh, and around MC, add ZG and AQ20, and around BWL throw in AQ40.
Totally ridiculous.
Re:Just like there will never be another Doom
on
Can Anyone Beat WoW?
·
· Score: 1
I would suggest that subscription numbers disagree with your conclusion. At, what, 6...6.5 million subscribers currently, it pretty much means EQ is now only a pre-cursor to the true, defining game of this genre: World of Warcraft.
... And roughly 5.5 million of those subscriptions are from Asia.
NA / Europe subscriptions have been FALLING.. why else have they not ever released new numbers on that?
In any case, it saddens me that WoW is most people's experience with an MMO -- the leveling is good in WoW, but the end-game is quite possibly the most horrid implimentation I have ever witnessed. From the raiding situation, to the WORST PvP ranking/rewards system you could make, to the horrible mudflation that's already ruined what used to be decent PvP -- it's now to the point where if you keep losing, all you need to do is PvE, and then your gear will be so much better you literally CAN'T lose.
On the up side, WoW DID broaded the market greatly -- personally I'm hoping WAR will be a big hit, right now it definately appears that it's something I'll enjoy.. Mythic's got a lot more experience dealing with end-game content in MMO's. Mistakes and all.
Re:which means you have to build off a franchise
on
Can Anyone Beat WoW?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I GOT IT!
Everyone's familiar with Star Wars, right? It's a sure bet! Brilliant!
There are varieties of force aside from the physical force. In this case, it's the unspoken suspicion that refusing to work overtime would cost you your job -- which isn't that off-base at all.
It's just a debtocracy. Once people owe / spend so much money that they have no choice but to continue working, you can start lowering the conditions and increasing the load on them. It's a lot less obvious now than indentured servitude, or even miners / factory workers living in company towns and being forced to buy company products at exhorborant prices.
I'm sorry; while what you say is in a way true, that's not the whole story.
My company, the location I work specifically, is making a TON of money for the company. A TON. Because they're forcing us to work 20 extra hours a week.
The only ones who see any of that benefit are at the top. The only ones who suffer are at the bottom.
Things would still be very profitable were we to only work 40 hour weeks. They simply may have to hire an extra, say, 4 people. Maybe 6. Oh noes. But, as it's all about min/max, the concept that an employee need ever do anything but work, eat, and sleep is foreign to the pencilpushers who come up with wonderful ideas such as 'mandatory overtime'.
Hell, Western Europe has short work weeks, and many weeks of government-mandated vacation time. Of course, their economies by and by large aren't as robust as ours in the US.. matter of fact, France's is downright going down the drain because of that kind of socialist policies.. but you have to admit that 60 hour weeks are something that really could be done away with and hardly anybody would miss.
Re:I've got the touch
on
Computer Voodoo?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've been on the broken end of that before. Very frustrating when your power supply won't even start running unless one specific person is standing next to it.
Yes, that happened. I also had the strangest, most bizzarre HARDWARE glitch with my MONITOR -- it was almost as if I had an LCD with dead pixels.. but I've a CRT. And they were about 1x1mm blocks all set together in neat tetris-esque patterns. Lasted about a week.
I blamed Mexico -- that's where it was made. The poor spirit of some mexican child who died making it, I think.
heck, the company i work for, right here in the US, considers that 'normal'. Of course, we do get payed 20 hours overtime, and they don't call it normal.. they call it 'mandatory overtime'. Hypothetically I suppose you can refuse, but I bet you'd get real far doing that amiright? The salaried employees get effedinthe-a, but they always do when it comes to overtime. ask some code monkeys who get slaved to desks for 60 hours a week about it, too. I'm sure they'll tell you their normal work week was.. 60 hours.
And yes, it's practically impossible to do anything but work when you're putting in that much time. Once you figure an hour for travel, and an hour / hour and a half for food and hygiene, you're left with scant enough time to even post drivel on slashdot.
"That's why I have to pay my speeding tickets but VP Cheney doesn't get charged with manslaughter when he gets drunk and shoots someone IN THE FACE.".... Or perhaps he didn't get charged with manslaughter because no one wound up dead.
(FYI, hunting accidents like this? not prosecuted. it's up to the person that got shot, and while it's not unreasonable to think they might be pissed off at getting shot, rarely do they want -legal- consequences for a mistake. at most they'd want to beat the piss out of you.. a solution I think all parties would find more fair)
Though I do occasionally get ringing in my ears when I -know- it's 100% silent (so annoying), I've got pretty good hearing anyway. Right now I've got a high-pitched buzz from my monitor, and one from my computer, and one from my TV:( I can't fall asleep with the TV on unless I'm -dead- tired.
Interestingly enough, I downloaded the sound from that NPR story.. it sounded lower-pitched than a TV's whine. More annoying, though.. it sounded sour, whereas a TV's whine is just sharp.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people like not being watched.
Right now I can go outside and take a walk. Chances are, no one will see me. Last night I went for a walk, half-drunk, at about 2:30 in the morning. No one saw me. Now sit there with a straight face and tell me you could do that just as comfortably if you knew that some dude with an inflated sense of self-importance chewing down donuts was watching you, possibly while touching himself, AND NOW is suddenly being given a chance to YELL AT YOU.
Seriously. It's weird and not productive. Cameras like this discourage people who wouldn't do anything wrong, and -- I think I'm safe in assuming -- do little to discourage those who actually are up to no good.
I'm sorry, that's asinine.
You're trying to say that saying "Asian chicks are hot" is racist.
Maybe not all asian chicks ARE hot. Maybe you're generalizing. So what.
AMAZINGLY, people of different races have physical differences. Cosmetically different -- not 3 arms or purple noses or anything, just small differences. That's a fact. And some people find some of those differences attractive. OHNOES. What a travesty.
Calling that racism is a step too far.
True -- for older titles, you probably will pay less in a store.
But when I got HL2, I got the silver package.. which included DOD:S.. and it was 60 bucks. Less IIRC than it was in a store, and the very day it was released I could play it.. since I had pre-ordered, and pre-downloaded, the program in its entirety.
Really, though, for an extra 5 bucks I'll stick with purchasing via Steam. It saves me about that much gas anyway, but by using Steam you get to indirectly support 3rd-party modders. Some of those folk put in a TON of work, and some are quite impressive with what they're able to do -- in the past it would be just a hobby, with a rare few exceptionals being brought onboard major companies.
Steam seems to be taking the angle that, if you develop a mod and want to sell it, and it's good.. just use Steam.
And I just find that neat. And now Steam's delivering games that AREN'T FPS / mods, too? I dunno. I like the potential, and since I can't contribute to what they're selling, I'll support that in another way -- monehz.
You bought it on a CD?
Ew. Major ick.
Use STEAM. Buy everything via Steam. I've never had any problems with any content purchased and downloaded via Steam -- aside from, yes, the first month or two of Steam in which EVERYTHING was broken.
Seriously, Steam's looking to be one of the greatest innovations in entertainment delivery in the past decade. Or two. Who knows. Bored? Open steam, click on a new game you want, you get charged 5/10/20 bucks, and bam a lil while later there's the whole game. Gotta reformat? Who cares, just download the client, put in your login info, and bam.. there's everything you ever bought, no need to find CDs. On vacation at a friend's computer, bored while they're at work? Getcho that Steam client, you've still got all your games.
Seriously man.
You bought the CD?
Still, that 100% infection rate is nothing to be proud of.. ba-dum ching.
(FYI, a few degrees K = a few degrees C. Kevlin is the same scale as Celsius, just with the zero point knocked off by about 273. Dropping a few degrees C between night and day... well, tomorrow's forecast is a daytime high of 24 C and a overnight low of 14 C)
Um...
Yes?
Where do YOU live?
Of course. "I'm not going to pay for this / pay my bill! Ever! Hahaha!"... shouldn't be advised to speak to anyone higher up. They should be, among other (violent) things, told that they're quite wrong.
However, some things are just dumb. Want to return these books without a receipt? Sorry, I can't do it. You're pissed. Awesome, try and find my POS manager, maybe they can do something for you -- check the back room. Knock loud, they're sleeping.
That, I loved to do. Retail sucks, but waking up a POS manager so they can walk out of the back room and say "No, sorry, we can't do that" sort of makes up for you having to run the damned store by yourself every day. Especially when there's 3 customers in line who all are doing the same thing.. and you turn it into 3 seperate trips.
And then during a stint in debt collection there were the individuals who thought they were being racially discriminated against. And some of them claimed, at least, to have lawyers. Well screw that, I'm not dealing with it. The company has a lawyer too -- let them fight it out. Aww you don't want to talk to our company's lawyer, he's mean to you? Deal, Potsie.
And which is why, when I worked retail / CS, I made sure to convey to these people that Policy X that they are upset about is mandated by the office, and that I don't particularly think it's good or fair either.
Because honestly. Those jobs don't pay enough for anybody to give half a fuck.
I always tried to lead them into asking to speak to someone higher up. Make it their idea, so they don't start that conversation off with "Well your rep said I should talk to you..".
That way, after a few minutes me and whoever were on the same side, against my Evil Asshole Bosses. HA! Good CS -AND- creating stupid work for dumb bosses. Loved it.
You know what?
Fuck the hardcore crowd. Seriously.
There's absolutely no reason to ruin a game for 80% of your playerbase, and make it a headache for 18% of your playerbase, just so you can keep 2% of your playerbase happy. Seriously. At E3, some Blizz employee took a guess that maybe up to 25% of the player base has been INSIDE MOLTEN CORE -- after 2 years, a quarter of your player base has stepped foot inside the EASIEST of the end-game content. What percent have killed anything in MC? What percent have moved onto BWL -- 5%? How about Naxx? What minute fraction of a percent of the player base are even going to be within Naxx in the time between now and the release of Burning Crusade (which will just about trivialize Naxx.. though at level 70 it'll be a pretty easy way to go and get some decent gear I guess. Naxx-level epics I believe will be just about on par with level 70 blues.. something along those lines).
THAT is what WoW's problem is -- it listens too much to the tiny, teeny, fraction of players who threaten to quit unless they're given new content. They blow through content so fast.. who cares if they stay or go? If the vast majority of your players (and I do mean VAST) are still MONTHS AND MONTHS -- even YEARS -- behind that small fraction when it comes to progressing through end-game content.. well, too bad.
And I do mean years. If you're a new guild starting out, you can look forward to getting into Naxx, if you get 40 people with a great deal of dedication, in maybe a year or two. You need to race to 60, race to get gear from those instances so you can succeed in MC, need to run MC for a long time until you get more gear so you can run BWL (and keep in mind there's a 1-week lockout on all these raid instances), run BWL until you get MORE gear so you can run Naxx.. oh, and around MC, add ZG and AQ20, and around BWL throw in AQ40.
Totally ridiculous.
NA / Europe subscriptions have been FALLING.. why else have they not ever released new numbers on that?
In any case, it saddens me that WoW is most people's experience with an MMO -- the leveling is good in WoW, but the end-game is quite possibly the most horrid implimentation I have ever witnessed. From the raiding situation, to the WORST PvP ranking/rewards system you could make, to the horrible mudflation that's already ruined what used to be decent PvP -- it's now to the point where if you keep losing, all you need to do is PvE, and then your gear will be so much better you literally CAN'T lose.
On the up side, WoW DID broaded the market greatly -- personally I'm hoping WAR will be a big hit, right now it definately appears that it's something I'll enjoy.. Mythic's got a lot more experience dealing with end-game content in MMO's. Mistakes and all.
I GOT IT!
Everyone's familiar with Star Wars, right? It's a sure bet! Brilliant!
You know, in a world where people understood what words mean you'd be right.
When you find that world, please send for me.
What an idiot.
Riddle me this: If one wanted to get some files of illegal material into a country, would it be easier to:
A- smuggle them in on a laptop's HD
OR
B- PUT THEM ON THE INTERNET
Mr. Customs Offical, Welcome to Two Decades Ago!
There are varieties of force aside from the physical force. In this case, it's the unspoken suspicion that refusing to work overtime would cost you your job -- which isn't that off-base at all.
It's just a debtocracy. Once people owe / spend so much money that they have no choice but to continue working, you can start lowering the conditions and increasing the load on them. It's a lot less obvious now than indentured servitude, or even miners / factory workers living in company towns and being forced to buy company products at exhorborant prices.
I'm sorry; while what you say is in a way true, that's not the whole story.
My company, the location I work specifically, is making a TON of money for the company. A TON. Because they're forcing us to work 20 extra hours a week.
The only ones who see any of that benefit are at the top. The only ones who suffer are at the bottom.
Things would still be very profitable were we to only work 40 hour weeks. They simply may have to hire an extra, say, 4 people. Maybe 6. Oh noes.
But, as it's all about min/max, the concept that an employee need ever do anything but work, eat, and sleep is foreign to the pencilpushers who come up with wonderful ideas such as 'mandatory overtime'.
Hell, Western Europe has short work weeks, and many weeks of government-mandated vacation time. Of course, their economies by and by large aren't as robust as ours in the US.. matter of fact, France's is downright going down the drain because of that kind of socialist policies.. but you have to admit that 60 hour weeks are something that really could be done away with and hardly anybody would miss.
I've been on the broken end of that before. Very frustrating when your power supply won't even start running unless one specific person is standing next to it.
Yes, that happened. I also had the strangest, most bizzarre HARDWARE glitch with my MONITOR -- it was almost as if I had an LCD with dead pixels.. but I've a CRT. And they were about 1x1mm blocks all set together in neat tetris-esque patterns. Lasted about a week.
I blamed Mexico -- that's where it was made. The poor spirit of some mexican child who died making it, I think.
heck, the company i work for, right here in the US, considers that 'normal'. Of course, we do get payed 20 hours overtime, and they don't call it normal.. they call it 'mandatory overtime'. Hypothetically I suppose you can refuse, but I bet you'd get real far doing that amiright? The salaried employees get effedinthe-a, but they always do when it comes to overtime.
ask some code monkeys who get slaved to desks for 60 hours a week about it, too. I'm sure they'll tell you their normal work week was.. 60 hours.
And yes, it's practically impossible to do anything but work when you're putting in that much time. Once you figure an hour for travel, and an hour / hour and a half for food and hygiene, you're left with scant enough time to even post drivel on slashdot.
For some reason I really got a good hard chuckle out of "MOD PARENT AS NAZI!"
That's Grade-A sig material.
Don't trust a map; trust your gut. My gut tells me that sometimes east = west.
(stfu D:)
"That's why I have to pay my speeding tickets but VP Cheney doesn't get charged with manslaughter when he gets drunk and shoots someone IN THE FACE." .... Or perhaps he didn't get charged with manslaughter because no one wound up dead.
(FYI, hunting accidents like this? not prosecuted. it's up to the person that got shot, and while it's not unreasonable to think they might be pissed off at getting shot, rarely do they want -legal- consequences for a mistake. at most they'd want to beat the piss out of you.. a solution I think all parties would find more fair)
Actually, just go check out a map.
It's not as clear as you may think.
Hey, how about Iraq? Israel? Turkey? What continents are those countries in? Europe? Asia? Africa?
Now, Hungary's European.. it's east of the Ukraine.. but there is a question as to where, exactly, Asia stops and Europe begins.
Which is why I like to refer to it as the supercontinent of Eurasia.
Ahem..
There's fear out there, and somebody has to monger it.
How's that for a recent quote?
A wise friend in college once told me the secret to getting unwelcome guests to leave.. I imagine it would also work on the elderly.
.. tell your neighbors to do the same.
cradle of filth.
"THIS BAND IS GREAT," as you turn the volume to 11.
Actually, I've found something more.. bad.. recently. Wolf Eyes - Stabbed in the Face.
TERRIBLE SONG.
PLAY IT AT 7PM WHEN HE'S GOING TO SLEEP
Though I do occasionally get ringing in my ears when I -know- it's 100% silent (so annoying), I've got pretty good hearing anyway. Right now I've got a high-pitched buzz from my monitor, and one from my computer, and one from my TV :( I can't fall asleep with the TV on unless I'm -dead- tired.
Interestingly enough, I downloaded the sound from that NPR story.. it sounded lower-pitched than a TV's whine. More annoying, though.. it sounded sour, whereas a TV's whine is just sharp.