When will gamers start accepting games for works of art?
When I'm not paying $60 a pop and can go to an art gallery instead and play it for a $5 entry fee.
It used to be about difficulty. It used to be about points. It used to be about kill count.
Funny. I thought it used to be about the game being, well, fun to play.
Now I think more developers are moving towards the adventure...immersing yourself in a creative and well thought out storyline...and unfortunately alot of gamers don't appreciate that.
You're gods danm straight I don't appreciate that! If I wanted a compelling storyline I could immerse myself in I'd read a book. Seriously. Even movies are available for those who are literally challenged. Both are a cheaper option that the latest industry bandwagon.
Games are about one thing. One Thing. One. The Gameplay.
Gameplay. The mechanics of the core game. How it plays, how it feels, how you interact with the machine. If you haven't got it, then you've essentially got a very expensive set of polygons moving about on screen, with an occasional soundtrack. Storyline, music, characters, are all filler, not the core. If you haven't got gameplay, you haven't got a game. You've got a plausibly interactive, low quality animated feature. No thanks.
I'll see your facts and figures and raise you an anecdote.
Many moons ago, in an old programming job, I was chatting with the boss. I'd been working there three weeks, and this was the first time I'd ever seen him; the place was a small tech support company. Anyway, he talked for a while and then eventually pointed to a sizable scar just above his right temple and said "You're probably wondering what this is".
Turns out he was six weeks out of a brain surgery operation to remove a tumour the size of a golf ball from his head. This guy was an onsite type of engineer who had been using mobiles since very early days, and in many poor reception areas, so the mobile seemed the most likely suspect in my mind. He was actually fine, still running the company, but had apparently been disbarred from driving for a year because of the operation. Apparently it counted as brain damage. Go figure.
Anyway, around this time I bought my first mobile. I got it with a wired headset.
The second reason they can behave wrongly is simply that the social infrastructure didn't adapt to the popularity yet. What I mean is that administrators are not distinct, named, accountable people.
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad.
A corollary to the theory if I may;
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience + Authority = Complete Dick.
You give people anonymity and power, and they will be guaranteed to abuse it in any way they see fit, secure from repercussions of any kind. Wikipedia needs meatspace administrators, not legions of sockpuppeters.
This rule is completely unnecessary. We don't need the FCC. Everyone knows that the magic of the free market can provide all our telephony needs, just as it provides all our healthcare, education, electricity, roads, water and national defenses.
All this big bad government regulation simply inhibits the market from reaching its optimal state; which is not a monopoly, despite what some pinko econmmunits and their "facts" would have you believe. The true patriot has faith in the Invisible Hand, Profit be Upon It.
No. People are different, but can become as smart as they want if they just try harder.
As far back as I can remember, I was fairly good academically, but I have never, and do not regard myself as somehow being "innately intelligent". That always seemed a crock to me. I have always been of the opinion that most people would be perfectly able to do anything I can and more if they just put their minds to it. Essentially, accordding to this study, I was right all along. People could grok maths if they just worked at it!
However, I do realise that putting your mind to something requires: 1) Being interested enough 2) Having the opportunity to do so 3) Actually putting in effort
The difference between a so called "genius" or "expert" and anyone else is simply a lack of 1) 2) or 3). Despite the modern gene centric neo-eugenics that is so popular now, breeding does not come into the equation, excepting the fact that your sires may be very well able to get you 2).
Violence is necessary and combat is instinctively pleasurable.. why do you think those games are so damn popular? It has strong links with male ego and probably evolved as a motivation to maintain dominance over resources and courtship to females.
($20-$30 for a DVD or BR/HD-DVD feels about right to me for the value I'm getting, so I don't have much problem justifying to myself paying for it).
The current disparity in pricing between movies and albums is the single biggest indicator that something is rotten in the music industry.
Movies cost more to make than albums. It's that simple. Orders of magnitude more in fact. I'd say the average movies costs at least 100 times more to make than the average album.
Yet I can buy fairly recent movies on DVD for $20, while 20+ year old music albums will cost me over $30. Recent release may charge me in excess of $30 for only about four tracks.
Perhaps it has to do with the demographics. The biggest buyers of music are, I guess, teenagers and young adults, a group not known for their fiscal prudence. They're also known for considering luxury goods like music albums, absolute essentials, thus elevating their real value. I'm guessing that DVDs, in general, are more in the domain of a slightly older audience, due to their wider appeal. A wider and more fiscally pressured audience that regards DVDs as true luxury goods.
People in the "Cult of Music" also tend to be less... level, as a rule.
Looks interesting, but does it support media streaming so that the Xbox and Playstation 3 systems can use it to run movies remotely? An irritating features of these systems is their refusal to play nicely with regular NAS devices.
I'm sorry, but what did your reply have to do with the grandparent post? Shouldn't you have started a new thread instead of hopping on a +5 funny first post?
Wrong. Using credit gets you into debt, maybe, but not me. Credit does not get you into debt; debt comes from not repaying your creditors.
Wrong.
Credit cards, by their very definition, put the user in debt. You have borrowed money from the lender, albeit in an automated way, in order to purchase something. Admittedly there is an agreement that interest will not be charged on you loan unless you fail to pay it off in time. However, after that point, the interest rates are colossal.
People think that you're only in debt once you've failed to pay off a bill and are no being charged interest. That's not true. You're in debt the moment the card clears the payment. You're in line to receive a bill no matter what, just like an electricity, phone or internet bill. You're in debt, you just haven't accepted it. Most people treat credit cards like debit cards, but the fact is they are not.
This is why I don't like being forced to use a credit card to pay for everything online. Everyone treats a credit card purchase like its just handing over cash when it isn't. The money in my hand is concrete, and I know that as long as I have it there, I'm not in the red. Credit cards do not offer that security. You may think things are fine, but an unexpected bill or expense can and will quickly break that assumption.
I like paying with cash because it means I don't go into debt. I like not having to pay a ~$40 a year credit card tax in order to simple buy things. Nowadays, I'm at more risk of credit card fraud than being mugged, and even if I am mugged, the loss will likely be a lot less than if someone got my credit card number.
Cash is King. It also feels nice having it in your pocket.
This study is quite obviously flawed. Cannabis, otherwise known as marijuana, is bad. It's just bad! Taking it is wrong! People who take marijuana are bad people.
Marijuana cannot be used to stop cancer. Stopping cancer is good, and marijuana is bad; therefore marijuana cannot logically be used to stop cancer. It's a basic fact!
Why are you promoting the use of this evil drug, when you know that it can only be used for bad not for good. Do you want children to smoke marijuana, and destroy their lives? Do you want them to commit murder and rape so they can feed their evil habits? Do you want them to think that bad things are good? That's just wrong!
We need to defend our children and society from the scourge of drugs. Breast cancer is bad, but that does not mean we should use evil to fight it. Instead, I propose setting up a breast cancer awareness group where people can discuss how breast cancer has affected their lives. That's a real solution to this problem.
We can hold meetings at the local bar, so people have a few drinks and a smoke afterwards.
The father is waiting for a call for a job interview. He'd occasionally do this, and nine times out of ten, something would go awry, usually due to my sister and I, who were fairly young at the time, running around at his feet or some such antics. I honestly don't know why he never got a study with a lock on the door for these things.
Anyway, this particular evening, we kept getting these "ghost calls". About half a dozen at least. Everyone of course assumed that it was a prank caller or something like that, as this was back before mobile phones came in and ghost calls, or one way ghost calls, became fairly common. I found it quite amusing, but my sister started getting more and more annoyed. She easily became irate.
Anyway, the phone rings one more time, and the sister, who by now is eager to give the "prank caller" a piece of her mind, picks up the phone and roars "LEAVE US ALONE!!!" into the handset. You guessed it; the guy for the job interview was on the other end of the line. Good times. I believe the ghost calls had been this guy trying to get through all along.
The morals of the story are: "Never assume that ghost calls are automatically stalkers." and of course "Always confirm the identity of the caller before you hurl abuse at them".
Oh and "Do not have the job interviewer call you at home if you have small children"
Everyone working for Huntingdon Life Sciences does so by choice. They are Legitimate Targets.
Government Officials. Security services. Former security services. Informers.
That was the list of "Legitimate Targets" when last I heard it. If you think for one instant that people working at a private medical research lab qualify, your standards are absurdly lax. Even if the mistreatment of animals qualified as a cause for violent struggle (it doesn't), regular employees of Huntingdon don't qualify for retaliation.
Its funny. Animal right activists always wage their violent protests and hate campaigns against scientists and business people. Where are the hate campaigns against slaughterhouse workers and farmers? Much if not most of the practices of these people are at least on the same level as animal research.
The fact is this. Violent animal rights activists are not committing these actions because they care about animals. They are committing these actions because they enjoy committing these actions. They enjoy harassing and threatening push over scientists and businessmen. They enjoy vandalism, petty crime and shouting people down. They enjoy it, it's that simple.
These people are middle and upper class thugs who have latched onto animal rights as an excuse to engage in violence. They need an excuse because their upbringings will not allow them to simply engage in it randomly.
Activists would never attempt any of their antics outside a slaughterhouse, because they would be quickly intimidated by the altogether more straightforward meat workers. Can you imagine what would happen if a violent animal rights protester spat on a slaughterhouse worker, or shoted abuse to them outside their home? I'd pay to see the results.
Vandalism, threats, pretending to be a terrorist movement, designating "Legitimate Target" (LOL), it's how they get their kicks. It's a giant LARP for these people, except that real people doing real research on real problems are getting seriously hurt by it. They're having their fun, and the animals have nothing to do with it.
Violent animal rights workers are simply bullies who pick soft targets, i.e. scientists, who they proceed to harass and abuse to make themselves feel better. They are not a legitimate movement. They are not a cause. They don't have a point of view. They are a rich kids' street gang, too afraid to actually walk the streets.
I don't approve of animals suffering needlessly. I find experiments like this one, or this contemptible, and if I was a research lab director, I wouldn't have approved them. I would however have approved less severe variations of such experiments. Ones in which while I knew animals might suffer somewhat, that they would not suffer needlessly or excessively. Animal research is necessary, and I defend its use, but only under the condition that the animals are treated with respect, and that their suffering and sacrifice is acknowledged. It's funny how more "primitive" cultures seem to follow such rules as a matter of fact, but our more "modern" scientists have to be reminded of it.
We need science, but we also need our consciences. Animal rights activists have neither.
I am curious "out of the box" how it functions against other nationalities who's facial features are significantly different.
Same way it deals with Japanese facial features. Very poorly.
Seriously, the difference between "races" is hardly so vast that the algorithms will have to be rewritten from scratch. In fact, they probably won't have to be rewritten at all. Are there really any facial feature that are unique to geographic regions?
Exactly such an event happened last year to an Israeli crew, when hackers from Hezbollah eavesdropped on their communications.
In fact, the entire war was characterized by the overall failure of modern military technology, gadgets and intelligence to defeat an enemy essentially using little more than AK-47s, mortars, and sandbags. The entire Israeli army could do little more than advance ~2km into Lebannon. It's clear that military reliance on technological silver bullets is no match for simple numerical superiority and well fortified positions. Hezbollah even eschewed radio communications, using couriers instead, rendering a substantial amount of the high tech based Israeli hardware and personnel useless.
It comes down to something like this I think. Which is better? "Battlewide intelligence acquisition systems", or a 10% increase in manpower?
Exactly what good does all our "modern" military high tech equipment do? Does some bluetooth based worldwide communication equipment actually make a soldier more efficient, or does it just weight him down? Do tanks need the latest Wifi based external cameras streaming megabytes of information back to HQ, or do they need to, say, be less flammable.
Stalin once asked of the Pope: "How many divisions has he got?". It shows the mindset of those whose countries actually fought in a major and prolonged conflict. For them, it was not as much about which tank could turn faster, or whose radios had a better signal. It was about how many men (and for the Soviets, women) they actually had to fight with.
I'd ask of the Western world: "How many divisions have you got?". Note; UAVs, CCTV cameras and satellites do not count towards your tally.
I can tell you're one of those hippy assholes who would protest anything that you dont agree with only to try and save your ass from having to defend the freedom you crave so much.
I hardly see how submitting to slavery would constitute a defense of my freedom. Unless the layers of irony wound themselves up so much they suddenly spring apart revealing some deeper mystery to why governments ostensibly save themselves money by forcing people to work for a fixed wage. Seemingly, when government demand for soldiers goes up, instead of paying a fairer wage, they simply forced people to work under threats.
Just remember, Freedom isn't free.
But apparently, soldiers should be. Let me ask you; Do you believe that conscription, the draft, should be implemented in your society? If so, I think you need to reassess exactly what kind of freedom you signed up to fight for.
I STRONGLY believe in something the Germans currently do, where (and I may be wrong about the specifics) once you're like 18 you must do a couple years in either the military OR the civil service. Manditory. That would definitely build some national pride and respect.
Conscription==Slavery. I cannot see why people have a problem understanding this.
Time and again arguments like "national pride", "respect"(WTF?), "useful skills" and of course "manhood"(LOL), are brought forward to justify forcing people to labor for the state against their will. I mean sure, if you want to serve in the military, then go right ahead. And if you feel it's done you and your country a lot of good, all the better. But your positive experience is not guaranteed to be universal.
Bottom line, you are forcing people, often under pain of death, to do work they will not be fairly paid to do, if they are paid at all. If that is not slavery, I don't know what is.
Even in wartime, it's not excusable. Why can't people accept the fact that if your army is too weak because not enough people joined, then it's basically a sign that not enough people in your country thought it was worth fighting for. I mean, aren't people entitled to say; "I don't consider this country to be worth fighting for". Isn't that a legitimate viewpoint?
Geermany is one of the worst examples of modern conscription. A perennially peacetime nation that nonetheless forces, under duress, millions of people to do its bidding in one way or the other, under the banner defending the nation. What a joke. Maybe they should consider paying their volunteers more, instead of going for the cheaper option.
If my country ever implements conscription, I'll leave it. I'll leave it because I'll know that I'll no longer be free there. I'll just be a feudal vassal or serf, who can be forced into work at any time. When that happens, my country won't be worth fighting for anymore.
You think people remember the oppressed and chain ganged conscripts on veterans day? No. They're something people would like to forget. It's mostly the volunteer corps who are paraded and celebrated. The conscripts who survived were given a pittance and what was left of their stolen lives and were told to be on their way.
Slashdot Mirror
When I'm not paying $60 a pop and can go to an art gallery instead and play it for a $5 entry fee.
Funny. I thought it used to be about the game being, well, fun to play.
You're gods danm straight I don't appreciate that! If I wanted a compelling storyline I could immerse myself in I'd read a book. Seriously. Even movies are available for those who are literally challenged. Both are a cheaper option that the latest industry bandwagon.
Games are about one thing. One Thing. One. The Gameplay .
Gameplay. The mechanics of the core game. How it plays, how it feels, how you interact with the machine. If you haven't got it, then you've essentially got a very expensive set of polygons moving about on screen, with an occasional soundtrack. Storyline, music, characters, are all filler, not the core. If you haven't got gameplay, you haven't got a game. You've got a plausibly interactive, low quality animated feature. No thanks.
Which is exactly where it was found. Consumers==Unpaid Beta Testers
I'll see your facts and figures and raise you an anecdote.
Many moons ago, in an old programming job, I was chatting with the boss. I'd been working there three weeks, and this was the first time I'd ever seen him; the place was a small tech support company. Anyway, he talked for a while and then eventually pointed to a sizable scar just above his right temple and said "You're probably wondering what this is".
Turns out he was six weeks out of a brain surgery operation to remove a tumour the size of a golf ball from his head. This guy was an onsite type of engineer who had been using mobiles since very early days, and in many poor reception areas, so the mobile seemed the most likely suspect in my mind. He was actually fine, still running the company, but had apparently been disbarred from driving for a year because of the operation. Apparently it counted as brain damage. Go figure.
Anyway, around this time I bought my first mobile. I got it with a wired headset.
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad.
A corollary to the theory if I may;
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience + Authority = Complete Dick.
You give people anonymity and power, and they will be guaranteed to abuse it in any way they see fit, secure from repercussions of any kind. Wikipedia needs meatspace administrators, not legions of sockpuppeters.
This rule is completely unnecessary. We don't need the FCC. Everyone knows that the magic of the free market can provide all our telephony needs, just as it provides all our healthcare, education, electricity, roads, water and national defenses.
All this big bad government regulation simply inhibits the market from reaching its optimal state; which is not a monopoly, despite what some pinko econmmunits and their "facts" would have you believe. The true patriot has faith in the Invisible Hand, Profit be Upon It.
No. People are different, but can become as smart as they want if they just try harder.
As far back as I can remember, I was fairly good academically, but I have never, and do not regard myself as somehow being "innately intelligent". That always seemed a crock to me. I have always been of the opinion that most people would be perfectly able to do anything I can and more if they just put their minds to it. Essentially, accordding to this study, I was right all along. People could grok maths if they just worked at it!
However, I do realise that putting your mind to something requires:
1) Being interested enough
2) Having the opportunity to do so
3) Actually putting in effort
The difference between a so called "genius" or "expert" and anyone else is simply a lack of 1) 2) or 3). Despite the modern gene centric neo-eugenics that is so popular now, breeding does not come into the equation, excepting the fact that your sires may be very well able to get you 2).
The data is making a mockery of your hypothesis.
Best selling video games of all time
And Google Mars is really secret Rothschild initiative to wrest the planet from the control of the Stonemasons!
It all makes sense now!
Movies cost more to make than albums. It's that simple. Orders of magnitude more in fact. I'd say the average movies costs at least 100 times more to make than the average album.
Yet I can buy fairly recent movies on DVD for $20, while 20+ year old music albums will cost me over $30. Recent release may charge me in excess of $30 for only about four tracks.
Perhaps it has to do with the demographics. The biggest buyers of music are, I guess, teenagers and young adults, a group not known for their fiscal prudence. They're also known for considering luxury goods like music albums, absolute essentials, thus elevating their real value. I'm guessing that DVDs, in general, are more in the domain of a slightly older audience, due to their wider appeal. A wider and more fiscally pressured audience that regards DVDs as true luxury goods.
People in the "Cult of Music" also tend to be less... level, as a rule.
Looks interesting, but does it support media streaming so that the Xbox and Playstation 3 systems can use it to run movies remotely? An irritating features of these systems is their refusal to play nicely with regular NAS devices.
I'm sorry, but what did your reply have to do with the grandparent post? Shouldn't you have started a new thread instead of hopping on a +5 funny first post?
Wrong.
Credit cards, by their very definition, put the user in debt. You have borrowed money from the lender, albeit in an automated way, in order to purchase something. Admittedly there is an agreement that interest will not be charged on you loan unless you fail to pay it off in time. However, after that point, the interest rates are colossal.
People think that you're only in debt once you've failed to pay off a bill and are no being charged interest. That's not true. You're in debt the moment the card clears the payment. You're in line to receive a bill no matter what, just like an electricity, phone or internet bill. You're in debt, you just haven't accepted it. Most people treat credit cards like debit cards, but the fact is they are not.
This is why I don't like being forced to use a credit card to pay for everything online. Everyone treats a credit card purchase like its just handing over cash when it isn't. The money in my hand is concrete, and I know that as long as I have it there, I'm not in the red. Credit cards do not offer that security. You may think things are fine, but an unexpected bill or expense can and will quickly break that assumption.
I like paying with cash because it means I don't go into debt. I like not having to pay a ~$40 a year credit card tax in order to simple buy things. Nowadays, I'm at more risk of credit card fraud than being mugged, and even if I am mugged, the loss will likely be a lot less than if someone got my credit card number.
Cash is King. It also feels nice having it in your pocket.
This study is quite obviously flawed. Cannabis, otherwise known as marijuana, is bad. It's just bad! Taking it is wrong! People who take marijuana are bad people.
Marijuana cannot be used to stop cancer. Stopping cancer is good, and marijuana is bad; therefore marijuana cannot logically be used to stop cancer. It's a basic fact!
Why are you promoting the use of this evil drug, when you know that it can only be used for bad not for good. Do you want children to smoke marijuana, and destroy their lives? Do you want them to commit murder and rape so they can feed their evil habits? Do you want them to think that bad things are good? That's just wrong!
We need to defend our children and society from the scourge of drugs. Breast cancer is bad, but that does not mean we should use evil to fight it. Instead, I propose setting up a breast cancer awareness group where people can discuss how breast cancer has affected their lives. That's a real solution to this problem.
We can hold meetings at the local bar, so people have a few drinks and a smoke afterwards.
Every fanboy know this.
Funny story from years back.
The father is waiting for a call for a job interview. He'd occasionally do this, and nine times out of ten, something would go awry, usually due to my sister and I, who were fairly young at the time, running around at his feet or some such antics. I honestly don't know why he never got a study with a lock on the door for these things.
Anyway, this particular evening, we kept getting these "ghost calls". About half a dozen at least. Everyone of course assumed that it was a prank caller or something like that, as this was back before mobile phones came in and ghost calls, or one way ghost calls, became fairly common. I found it quite amusing, but my sister started getting more and more annoyed. She easily became irate.
Anyway, the phone rings one more time, and the sister, who by now is eager to give the "prank caller" a piece of her mind, picks up the phone and roars "LEAVE US ALONE!!!" into the handset. You guessed it; the guy for the job interview was on the other end of the line. Good times. I believe the ghost calls had been this guy trying to get through all along.
The morals of the story are: "Never assume that ghost calls are automatically stalkers." and of course "Always confirm the identity of the caller before you hurl abuse at them".
Oh and " Do not have the job interviewer call you at home if you have small children "
That was the list of "Legitimate Targets" when last I heard it. If you think for one instant that people working at a private medical research lab qualify, your standards are absurdly lax. Even if the mistreatment of animals qualified as a cause for violent struggle (it doesn't), regular employees of Huntingdon don't qualify for retaliation.
Its funny. Animal right activists always wage their violent protests and hate campaigns against scientists and business people. Where are the hate campaigns against slaughterhouse workers and farmers? Much if not most of the practices of these people are at least on the same level as animal research.
The fact is this. Violent animal rights activists are not committing these actions because they care about animals. They are committing these actions because they enjoy committing these actions. They enjoy harassing and threatening push over scientists and businessmen. They enjoy vandalism, petty crime and shouting people down. They enjoy it, it's that simple.
These people are middle and upper class thugs who have latched onto animal rights as an excuse to engage in violence. They need an excuse because their upbringings will not allow them to simply engage in it randomly.
Activists would never attempt any of their antics outside a slaughterhouse, because they would be quickly intimidated by the altogether more straightforward meat workers. Can you imagine what would happen if a violent animal rights protester spat on a slaughterhouse worker, or shoted abuse to them outside their home? I'd pay to see the results.
Vandalism, threats, pretending to be a terrorist movement, designating "Legitimate Target" (LOL), it's how they get their kicks. It's a giant LARP for these people, except that real people doing real research on real problems are getting seriously hurt by it. They're having their fun, and the animals have nothing to do with it.
Violent animal rights workers are simply bullies who pick soft targets, i.e. scientists, who they proceed to harass and abuse to make themselves feel better. They are not a legitimate movement. They are not a cause. They don't have a point of view. They are a rich kids' street gang, too afraid to actually walk the streets.
I don't approve of animals suffering needlessly. I find experiments like this one, or this contemptible, and if I was a research lab director, I wouldn't have approved them. I would however have approved less severe variations of such experiments. Ones in which while I knew animals might suffer somewhat, that they would not suffer needlessly or excessively. Animal research is necessary, and I defend its use, but only under the condition that the animals are treated with respect, and that their suffering and sacrifice is acknowledged. It's funny how more "primitive" cultures seem to follow such rules as a matter of fact, but our more "modern" scientists have to be reminded of it.
We need science, but we also need our consciences. Animal rights activists have neither.
I guess the truth is finally up for sale.
Seriously, the difference between "races" is hardly so vast that the algorithms will have to be rewritten from scratch. In fact, they probably won't have to be rewritten at all. Are there really any facial feature that are unique to geographic regions?
Either that or they haven't been very Intelligently Designed.
It comes down to something like this I think. Which is better? "Battlewide intelligence acquisition systems", or a 10% increase in manpower?
Exactly what good does all our "modern" military high tech equipment do? Does some bluetooth based worldwide communication equipment actually make a soldier more efficient, or does it just weight him down? Do tanks need the latest Wifi based external cameras streaming megabytes of information back to HQ, or do they need to, say, be less flammable.
Stalin once asked of the Pope: "How many divisions has he got?". It shows the mindset of those whose countries actually fought in a major and prolonged conflict. For them, it was not as much about which tank could turn faster, or whose radios had a better signal. It was about how many men (and for the Soviets, women) they actually had to fight with.
I'd ask of the Western world: "How many divisions have you got?". Note; UAVs, CCTV cameras and satellites do not count towards your tally.
Associations with prostitution aside, massage seems an altogether too intimate procedure for a company to host on campus. I mean... there's touching!
I hardly see how submitting to slavery would constitute a defense of my freedom. Unless the layers of irony wound themselves up so much they suddenly spring apart revealing some deeper mystery to why governments ostensibly save themselves money by forcing people to work for a fixed wage. Seemingly, when government demand for soldiers goes up, instead of paying a fairer wage, they simply forced people to work under threats.But apparently, soldiers should be. Let me ask you; Do you believe that conscription, the draft, should be implemented in your society? If so, I think you need to reassess exactly what kind of freedom you signed up to fight for.
Conscription==Slavery. I cannot see why people have a problem understanding this.
Time and again arguments like "national pride", "respect"(WTF?), "useful skills" and of course "manhood"(LOL), are brought forward to justify forcing people to labor for the state against their will. I mean sure, if you want to serve in the military, then go right ahead. And if you feel it's done you and your country a lot of good, all the better. But your positive experience is not guaranteed to be universal.
Bottom line, you are forcing people, often under pain of death, to do work they will not be fairly paid to do, if they are paid at all. If that is not slavery, I don't know what is.
Even in wartime, it's not excusable. Why can't people accept the fact that if your army is too weak because not enough people joined, then it's basically a sign that not enough people in your country thought it was worth fighting for. I mean, aren't people entitled to say; "I don't consider this country to be worth fighting for". Isn't that a legitimate viewpoint?
Geermany is one of the worst examples of modern conscription. A perennially peacetime nation that nonetheless forces, under duress, millions of people to do its bidding in one way or the other, under the banner defending the nation. What a joke. Maybe they should consider paying their volunteers more, instead of going for the cheaper option.
If my country ever implements conscription, I'll leave it. I'll leave it because I'll know that I'll no longer be free there. I'll just be a feudal vassal or serf, who can be forced into work at any time. When that happens, my country won't be worth fighting for anymore.
You think people remember the oppressed and chain ganged conscripts on veterans day? No. They're something people would like to forget. It's mostly the volunteer corps who are paraded and celebrated. The conscripts who survived were given a pittance and what was left of their stolen lives and were told to be on their way.