If they're computer literate, they'll evaluate their needs and find the best computer to suit those needs. And, all things being equal, they'd probably avoid the platform that is the biggest target for security attacks.
Never understimate the power of the incomptenece of 20% of your userbase.
Ok, so lets assume that 20% of Mac users are incompetent and will run this thing. What negative consequences does that have for the 80% of us who aren't so incompetent? None.
And that's where Apple's security seems to be doing a better job. So sure, maybe my neighbor is stupid and he wrecks his own machine. Let's say this thing was even smart enough to e-mail itself to me. It still won't get my machine without me decompressing and running the file.
Already I'm not scared of this thing.
And I think that's really the point: IBM didn't care much about the success of their desktop/laptop processors. They care about servers. They care about the embedded market. Desktops? That's not a big concern right now.
So it doesn't matter if IBM has some new tech in 2 years. Their tech, if it materializes as promised, will be focussed on server and embedded markets. Intel's chief business, however, is making processors, motherboards, and associated devices for PCs. In two years, they'll also have better chips than those currently available, but for desktops/laptops/portable devices. That's who Apple wanted to cozy up next to.
I respectfully disagree with the author's conclusion, unless by indicating "much more deserving", he is setting the bar incredibly low. Gates' fortune is every bit as obscene as the author claims Jobs' fortune is, and probably much more suspect in how Gates acquired it.
I've heard quite a lot of people claim that we shouldn't care if Microsoft is a big, evil corporation, because Bill Gates is very charitable. One of my friends has even said something to the effect of, "Well, yeah, Microsoft rips me off, but at least I know the money is going someplace good."
I just don't get it. To take it to an extreme, what if someone made billions by being a murderous tyrant and committing genocide, but gave a big chunk of money to TB research. Would that be fine?
Yes, I know, that's an extreme, but when you're establishing moral rules, it's worth asking yourself, what if this is taken to the extreme? Isn't it worth asking where the money came from? Do you think that committing one good act cancels-out or makes up for other ongoing bad acts? If I make money through unethical means, what percentage must I give away for those means to be "alright"?
Personally, I'd rather spend my money on good products and have the producer keep my money than be ripped off and extorted and have some portion of the money scammed from me sent off to charity. To the extent that I'm concerned about charity, I'd rather donate my own money. In no case does someone deserve kudos for donating some small portion of their ill-gotten gains to a good cause while continuing their unethical behavior. Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
It does happen. The media does occasionally doctor photos. I think Newsweek and Time have been caught a couple times in the past few years making photos of events that did happen but that there was no photographer there to cover (or something like that). Usually there's a disclaimer buried somewhere indicating that the photo has been altered.
The Evil Bert incident, however, would have been pretty hard to fake. One of the first editors to notice it had thought the photo was doctored, but had checked other photos of the same poster from different angles, and found they all showed Evil Bert. So he checked the negatives, and there was evil Bert. He then checked with pictures taken by different photographers for different new agencies, and sure enough, photographers that hadn't even noticed Evil Bert in the photos had still captured the same image on the poster.
It was 20 hours split between two different jobs. Neither employer was being unreasonable, but I took on two jobs. Gotta pay the bills somehow.
And it was a couple days a week for a month, not ongoing.
And finally, this is my point. The whole idea of, "You're not getting things done? Suck it up, you pansy! Work harder!" is kind of BS. We have our limits. Now, sometimes when you really want something, it's worth pushing yourself a bit, but this does not negate that we have our limits, and that none of us have endless resources for work.
I only cited my 20 hour work day to illustrate that I'm not saying all this as a "lazy" guy. I work pretty hard. When I was working 20 hour days, I didn't complain, but I sure as hell didn't want to hear anyone tell me to "suck it up" because I didn't feel like job hunting on weekends right then. That'd be a good way to get my thumb stuck in your eye.
But somehow, some people get it stuck in their head the the solution to life's problems is always to work harder. If only things were so simple. Sometimes everyone would be better off, both you and your employer, if you'd just take a nap.
Geeze, why do we always see posts like this? Does it make you feel all good and tough to claim someone is a whiney bitch because they have a limit to the amount of work they want to do? Don't you have some limit after which you'l like to call it quits? How many 20 hour days will you work before you say, "screw this, I'm taking a break!"?* How would you feel if someone called you a whiney bitch for taking that break?
I've been in this sort of situation before. Frankly, I find that it's hard to go through a good job search if you have a full-time job at all. I find job searches to be worse than any full-time job I've ever had, and having to do it after a long day's work isn't fun. Doing it after working 18 hours straight is pretty demoralizing.
And on top of all the rest, potential employers want everyone to be so goddamn chipper. That's what gets me, is even if your working hard and still looking for a job, you're tired and a bit depressed, which is exactly the wrong state to be in if you want to get hired. They want you to have the most beautiful resume ever, a personally-crafted cover letter, and a big smile on your face when you show up for an interview. Lots of them want you to tell them how they have the best company ever and the job you're interviewing for is your dream job. All this after they went through all the trouble of writing a 2 sentence job post for Monster.com.
Honestly, my theory is that there's a serious problem with the way we find work, in that the skills to find the job, the skills to get the job, and the skills to do the job are often not the same. Sometimes, they're contradictory. And we don't have help, and we treat people like their lazy idiots if they have any trouble with the process.
I mean, yeah, you have to suck it up. If you want a job, you have to do it. But can't we have a little sympathy for someone who works long days, has other things going on in his life (don't we all?), and is frustrated by the job-search process? When he asks for help, can't we offer something more productive than name-calling?
My advice (and others have said similar things) is to put limits on the hours for the current job. When they dump more hours and responsibilities on you, say no. Leave on time. Take vacation/sick/personal time for interviews. Do what you need to do. It won't make your boss happy, but you don't need him to be super-impressed if you're not trying to move up in that company anyway. Wait until you get your new job, then work your ass off to impress the boss. Work your ass off when you work for a good company where hard work will pay off.
*yes, before I got my current job, I interrupted my job search for about a month because I was working 20 hour days sometimes and I didn't have the energy to look.
The last sentence seems to conflict with the first:
I don't think much of the success of Pixar is due to Steve Jobs.... Jobs is just this one guy who sees ahead better than most and invest in people who can make it happen, like Lasseter or Wozniak...
Generally, one would think that a CEO with great foresight and who recognizes brilliance/talent/greatness in others and knows how to invest in it, push it, and cultivate it would be credited greatly with the success of the company. Otherwise, what's the argument? That CEOs have nothing to do with the success of a company? Or that CEOs are supposed to do all the work themselves?
No, having a vision, being able to find good people, keep good people, and push your people to do the best work they can-- that's what a good CEO does, and the success of a company, sooner or later, will hinge on the ability of the CEO to accomplish these.
The issue, in my eyes, is not whether MacOS users are going to be immediately vulnerable to any virus outbreaks because they're not securing their computers properly - it's whether this whole "I use Macs, therefore, I am impervious" is fostering a culture of bad security practices in the Mac community. A good OS is only half the battle - you need to make sure you have good security practices, too, if you don't want to get owned.
Yes, but if anyone is smug about Macintoshes being 'impervious', they are that way because they don't understand security. These people who don't understand security, they'll have bad security practices anyway. The belief that their machine is impervious is just a symptom of ignorance. It can happen also when people think, "Well, I have some Norton thingy installed, so my machine is impervious!"
However, if some people are over-confident because they have an anti-virus program installed, that doesn't make it any less true that they should install an antivirus on their Windows machine. Likewise, even if some Mac users are smug, that doesn't mean that they aren't safer on a Mac.
Second, just browse around and look at what's out there for you to use as anti-virus and virus blocking tools.
Yes, look around at the anti-virus market for Macintosh and evaluate which product is best at protecting your Mac from all those viruses and worms that don't exist yet. And then pay $50 in order to protect yourself from those non-existant viruses.
I'm not saying there will never be viruses for the Mac, but I wouldn't advise the average user to start freaking out until there are some real threats. There won't even be worthwhile antivirus products until there are real threats to protect against.
I'm interested in someone taking advantage of the hardware virtualization in the Core Duos and letting me run Windows in a window on an OS X desktop with no performance hit. Screw dual-booting.
How about some Windows/Apple cooperation towards making cross-platform development trivial? All this effort towards making Windows able to run in the other core, and I just don't want Windows running on my system at all. I'd like the ability to run Windows applications similar to how you can run Linux apps in X in OSX. However, in both cases, I'd be far, far more interested in a native application that integrates properly with the OS and is non-ugly.
But there's room for improvement too. My earlier comment basicaly was to indicate that/. got scooped on this story.
You can only get 'scooped' on a story if you're a reporter, i.e. you're writing your own stories. Otherwise, you see, we'd have to say that the Guardian scooped everyone. They had the story first. But that's because they actually had a writer write the thing, and Slashdot/Fark/Digg/whoever are just news aggregators (and discussion groups) that provide links to the story.
News aggregators, however, can only be accused of being "too slow". Is Slashdot "too slow"? Well, the story is dates yesterday, and the story isn't so old as to be irrelevant or out-of-date, so I'd say no. Insofar as it's a news aggregator, since I got the story in a timely fashion, I don't see room for complaints. That someone else got to the story slightly faster is far less important to me than a) whether I got the story, and b) quality of the user-experience of the news aggregator.
How about seizing all the assets and making him perform a few years community service in a relevant field , perhaps even a stay in a minimum security prison or a term of parole.
How about 1 second of community service for each illegal e-mail, based on the amount of time he's wasted of someone else's life. Something like 15 years of picking up trash would seem fitting.
1) Some originality would be nice. ...
4) Some originality would be nice. Every time there's a French story, its like reading fark. ...
5) Please see points 1 and 5.
Meant to be ironic?
But anyway, yes, people have hated the French for quite a long time. I'm guessing that it started when people hated the French for many of the same reasons people hate Americans now.
Well you're right about "agnosticism" being about knowledge, and less about belief. "Gnosis" is a sort of knowledge, similar to intuition. It's a sort of knowledge that when someone asks, "How do you know?" you might answer, "I just know."
Therefore, when someone claims to be "agnostic" in some matter, religious or not, he is saying, in essence, that he doesn't find that sort of knowledge within themselves. "Agnosticism" with a capital "A" might be taken to indicate a belief system which claims that there is no such knowledge available to people (regarding God). Since gnostic knowledge is the sort of knowledge by which people would generally know God, dismissing gnostic knowledge might also be taken as a claim that no knowledge is possible.
That would be one linguistic attack on the problem. I, however, tend to think of "atheists" as people who find faith in the non-existence of god, and "agnostics" as those who find faith in their lack of faith.
Well, I think most of us here are a couple of steps above the ant on the evolutionary scale. I'm not entirely sure why ants are here...
And yet they are here. They do live. They go around, doing things that ants do. And you go around doing things that people do. You too, once, a long time ago, lived a life where you were less able to experience joy than an ant, and you continued living. What are all those life forms doing? How can the purpose of life be "joy" unless all living things are capable of feeling joy, and choose joy at every turn?
Are you claiming that you've never made a choice that wasn't joyful? What of the circumstances when no choice brings joy, or all choices bring joy-- are there no other considerations? If there are no other considerations, then how do you make joy-neutral decisions? If there are other considerations, couldn't those considerations, at some point, conspire to outweigh joy?
If you didn't have to work, it's possible you might be more joyful, true enough. However, how does money invalidate your responsibilities to your fellow man?
Are you doing to have family? Friends? Are you going to interact with strangers? Are you going to live in a society? Be part of the human race? Even besides your responsibilities to all sorts of people, you have responsibilities to yourself. A more religious man than I might say you have responsibilities to God, too.
Sure, winning the lottery will ease your financial responsibilities, and enough money even diminishes what the law will hold you responsibile for. However, you'll still have to make choices, and even if you're a miserly hermit, you'll be responsible for being a miserly hermit, and you'll suffer whatever consequences come along with those choices.
Sheesh, everyones replies are so strange today. Is it because the kids are home from school?
hmmm... maybe you want to try Usenet groups? I keep posting in the Brittany Spears group, and even though she hasn't responded yet, she can't ignore me forever!
Tell me this first: does an ant live for the sake of joy? Does a fern? An amoeba? My life may be different now, but there was a time when I was barely more complex than an amoeba, and I lived then. I suspect that the reason I live now is not so different than why I lived then, which might be no more than because "a living thing" is what I am and "living" is what living things do.
You say "joy"? I say "rationalization". Why do you need that one-word answer to "why do you live?" You say that my life is sad? I say you think life, itself, is sad, and that's why you need that rationalization. I'm not in any terrific need of rationalization, so what do you think that says about the quality of my life?
Responsibilities are not tools, and therefore need no human purpose. And yet they are. You have responsibilities. In your life, you must carry out your resposibilities as they're thrust upon you, or you must live with the consequences of shirking those responsibilities. Luckily, there will be both joy and sadness along the way, but none of these things are the answer to "why do you live?"
If your problem is with line 3, then I mean to tell you: You live a very sad life.
If you really think things are so simple, then I feel compelled to respond in kind: you live, at best, a very vapid life.
Does this help things? Why must we insult strangers on the internet by criticizing aspects of their lives which we can't possibly know anything about? I'd prefer to believe that you aren't vapid at all, but that you merely overestimate your rhetorical abilities.
Everyone is assuming that I meant to say that gaming was bad because I used the word "procrastination". Procrastination can be bad, but it need not be. Anything can be bad if you over-do it.
In fact, it would be extremely harmful to be consumed with worries and responsibilities all day long. One must, at times, put-off and ignore responsibilities and worries. Some level of procrastination is necessary in order to be functional and healthy.
I would say talking on the phone is a minor form of social interaction, and is no substitute for being in-person in the same room. However, at least then the activity takes the specific form of direct interaction with another person (as in, there is no purpose other than to converse). However, online game-playing has neither the virtue of real interaction (in person) nor direct interaction (where there is no interveining purpose). The only social need it fulfills is game-playing (in the broad sense, that even in conversations, people play games), and in most games, even this is only fulfilled in a superficial way.
Slashdot Mirror
How about just "sudo bash"? Same result, IFAIK, but simpler.
If they're computer literate, they'll evaluate their needs and find the best computer to suit those needs. And, all things being equal, they'd probably avoid the platform that is the biggest target for security attacks.
Never understimate the power of the incomptenece of 20% of your userbase. Ok, so lets assume that 20% of Mac users are incompetent and will run this thing. What negative consequences does that have for the 80% of us who aren't so incompetent? None. And that's where Apple's security seems to be doing a better job. So sure, maybe my neighbor is stupid and he wrecks his own machine. Let's say this thing was even smart enough to e-mail itself to me. It still won't get my machine without me decompressing and running the file. Already I'm not scared of this thing.
So it doesn't matter if IBM has some new tech in 2 years. Their tech, if it materializes as promised, will be focussed on server and embedded markets. Intel's chief business, however, is making processors, motherboards, and associated devices for PCs. In two years, they'll also have better chips than those currently available, but for desktops/laptops/portable devices. That's who Apple wanted to cozy up next to.
I've heard quite a lot of people claim that we shouldn't care if Microsoft is a big, evil corporation, because Bill Gates is very charitable. One of my friends has even said something to the effect of, "Well, yeah, Microsoft rips me off, but at least I know the money is going someplace good."
I just don't get it. To take it to an extreme, what if someone made billions by being a murderous tyrant and committing genocide, but gave a big chunk of money to TB research. Would that be fine?
Yes, I know, that's an extreme, but when you're establishing moral rules, it's worth asking yourself, what if this is taken to the extreme? Isn't it worth asking where the money came from? Do you think that committing one good act cancels-out or makes up for other ongoing bad acts? If I make money through unethical means, what percentage must I give away for those means to be "alright"?
Personally, I'd rather spend my money on good products and have the producer keep my money than be ripped off and extorted and have some portion of the money scammed from me sent off to charity. To the extent that I'm concerned about charity, I'd rather donate my own money. In no case does someone deserve kudos for donating some small portion of their ill-gotten gains to a good cause while continuing their unethical behavior. Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
The Evil Bert incident, however, would have been pretty hard to fake. One of the first editors to notice it had thought the photo was doctored, but had checked other photos of the same poster from different angles, and found they all showed Evil Bert. So he checked the negatives, and there was evil Bert. He then checked with pictures taken by different photographers for different new agencies, and sure enough, photographers that hadn't even noticed Evil Bert in the photos had still captured the same image on the poster.
And it was a couple days a week for a month, not ongoing.
And finally, this is my point. The whole idea of, "You're not getting things done? Suck it up, you pansy! Work harder!" is kind of BS. We have our limits. Now, sometimes when you really want something, it's worth pushing yourself a bit, but this does not negate that we have our limits, and that none of us have endless resources for work.
I only cited my 20 hour work day to illustrate that I'm not saying all this as a "lazy" guy. I work pretty hard. When I was working 20 hour days, I didn't complain, but I sure as hell didn't want to hear anyone tell me to "suck it up" because I didn't feel like job hunting on weekends right then. That'd be a good way to get my thumb stuck in your eye.
But somehow, some people get it stuck in their head the the solution to life's problems is always to work harder. If only things were so simple. Sometimes everyone would be better off, both you and your employer, if you'd just take a nap.
I've been in this sort of situation before. Frankly, I find that it's hard to go through a good job search if you have a full-time job at all. I find job searches to be worse than any full-time job I've ever had, and having to do it after a long day's work isn't fun. Doing it after working 18 hours straight is pretty demoralizing.
And on top of all the rest, potential employers want everyone to be so goddamn chipper. That's what gets me, is even if your working hard and still looking for a job, you're tired and a bit depressed, which is exactly the wrong state to be in if you want to get hired. They want you to have the most beautiful resume ever, a personally-crafted cover letter, and a big smile on your face when you show up for an interview. Lots of them want you to tell them how they have the best company ever and the job you're interviewing for is your dream job. All this after they went through all the trouble of writing a 2 sentence job post for Monster.com.
Honestly, my theory is that there's a serious problem with the way we find work, in that the skills to find the job, the skills to get the job, and the skills to do the job are often not the same. Sometimes, they're contradictory. And we don't have help, and we treat people like their lazy idiots if they have any trouble with the process.
I mean, yeah, you have to suck it up. If you want a job, you have to do it. But can't we have a little sympathy for someone who works long days, has other things going on in his life (don't we all?), and is frustrated by the job-search process? When he asks for help, can't we offer something more productive than name-calling?
My advice (and others have said similar things) is to put limits on the hours for the current job. When they dump more hours and responsibilities on you, say no. Leave on time. Take vacation/sick/personal time for interviews. Do what you need to do. It won't make your boss happy, but you don't need him to be super-impressed if you're not trying to move up in that company anyway. Wait until you get your new job, then work your ass off to impress the boss. Work your ass off when you work for a good company where hard work will pay off.
*yes, before I got my current job, I interrupted my job search for about a month because I was working 20 hour days sometimes and I didn't have the energy to look.
The last sentence seems to conflict with the first:
I don't think much of the success of Pixar is due to Steve Jobs....
Jobs is just this one guy who sees ahead better than most and invest in people who can make it happen, like Lasseter or Wozniak...
Generally, one would think that a CEO with great foresight and who recognizes brilliance/talent/greatness in others and knows how to invest in it, push it, and cultivate it would be credited greatly with the success of the company. Otherwise, what's the argument? That CEOs have nothing to do with the success of a company? Or that CEOs are supposed to do all the work themselves?
No, having a vision, being able to find good people, keep good people, and push your people to do the best work they can-- that's what a good CEO does, and the success of a company, sooner or later, will hinge on the ability of the CEO to accomplish these.
Yes, but if anyone is smug about Macintoshes being 'impervious', they are that way because they don't understand security. These people who don't understand security, they'll have bad security practices anyway. The belief that their machine is impervious is just a symptom of ignorance. It can happen also when people think, "Well, I have some Norton thingy installed, so my machine is impervious!"
However, if some people are over-confident because they have an anti-virus program installed, that doesn't make it any less true that they should install an antivirus on their Windows machine. Likewise, even if some Mac users are smug, that doesn't mean that they aren't safer on a Mac.
Yes, look around at the anti-virus market for Macintosh and evaluate which product is best at protecting your Mac from all those viruses and worms that don't exist yet. And then pay $50 in order to protect yourself from those non-existant viruses.
I'm not saying there will never be viruses for the Mac, but I wouldn't advise the average user to start freaking out until there are some real threats. There won't even be worthwhile antivirus products until there are real threats to protect against.
How about some Windows/Apple cooperation towards making cross-platform development trivial? All this effort towards making Windows able to run in the other core, and I just don't want Windows running on my system at all. I'd like the ability to run Windows applications similar to how you can run Linux apps in X in OSX. However, in both cases, I'd be far, far more interested in a native application that integrates properly with the OS and is non-ugly.
I'm also disappointed with xbox360's launch titles being mostly FPS, sports, and racing.
You can only get 'scooped' on a story if you're a reporter, i.e. you're writing your own stories. Otherwise, you see, we'd have to say that the Guardian scooped everyone. They had the story first. But that's because they actually had a writer write the thing, and Slashdot/Fark/Digg/whoever are just news aggregators (and discussion groups) that provide links to the story.
News aggregators, however, can only be accused of being "too slow". Is Slashdot "too slow"? Well, the story is dates yesterday, and the story isn't so old as to be irrelevant or out-of-date, so I'd say no. Insofar as it's a news aggregator, since I got the story in a timely fashion, I don't see room for complaints. That someone else got to the story slightly faster is far less important to me than a) whether I got the story, and b) quality of the user-experience of the news aggregator.
Well, strictly speaking, "Centrino" isn't the processor.
How about 1 second of community service for each illegal e-mail, based on the amount of time he's wasted of someone else's life. Something like 15 years of picking up trash would seem fitting.
...
4) Some originality would be nice. Every time there's a French story, its like reading fark.
...
5) Please see points 1 and 5.
Meant to be ironic?
But anyway, yes, people have hated the French for quite a long time. I'm guessing that it started when people hated the French for many of the same reasons people hate Americans now.
Therefore, when someone claims to be "agnostic" in some matter, religious or not, he is saying, in essence, that he doesn't find that sort of knowledge within themselves. "Agnosticism" with a capital "A" might be taken to indicate a belief system which claims that there is no such knowledge available to people (regarding God). Since gnostic knowledge is the sort of knowledge by which people would generally know God, dismissing gnostic knowledge might also be taken as a claim that no knowledge is possible.
That would be one linguistic attack on the problem. I, however, tend to think of "atheists" as people who find faith in the non-existence of god, and "agnostics" as those who find faith in their lack of faith.
And yet they are here. They do live. They go around, doing things that ants do. And you go around doing things that people do. You too, once, a long time ago, lived a life where you were less able to experience joy than an ant, and you continued living. What are all those life forms doing? How can the purpose of life be "joy" unless all living things are capable of feeling joy, and choose joy at every turn?
Are you claiming that you've never made a choice that wasn't joyful? What of the circumstances when no choice brings joy, or all choices bring joy-- are there no other considerations? If there are no other considerations, then how do you make joy-neutral decisions? If there are other considerations, couldn't those considerations, at some point, conspire to outweigh joy?
If you didn't have to work, it's possible you might be more joyful, true enough. However, how does money invalidate your responsibilities to your fellow man?
Sure, winning the lottery will ease your financial responsibilities, and enough money even diminishes what the law will hold you responsibile for. However, you'll still have to make choices, and even if you're a miserly hermit, you'll be responsible for being a miserly hermit, and you'll suffer whatever consequences come along with those choices.
Sheesh, everyones replies are so strange today. Is it because the kids are home from school?
hmmm... maybe you want to try Usenet groups? I keep posting in the Brittany Spears group, and even though she hasn't responded yet, she can't ignore me forever!
You say "joy"? I say "rationalization". Why do you need that one-word answer to "why do you live?" You say that my life is sad? I say you think life, itself, is sad, and that's why you need that rationalization. I'm not in any terrific need of rationalization, so what do you think that says about the quality of my life?
Responsibilities are not tools, and therefore need no human purpose. And yet they are. You have responsibilities. In your life, you must carry out your resposibilities as they're thrust upon you, or you must live with the consequences of shirking those responsibilities. Luckily, there will be both joy and sadness along the way, but none of these things are the answer to "why do you live?"
Is this the conversation you want to be having?
If you really think things are so simple, then I feel compelled to respond in kind: you live, at best, a very vapid life.
Does this help things? Why must we insult strangers on the internet by criticizing aspects of their lives which we can't possibly know anything about? I'd prefer to believe that you aren't vapid at all, but that you merely overestimate your rhetorical abilities.
In fact, it would be extremely harmful to be consumed with worries and responsibilities all day long. One must, at times, put-off and ignore responsibilities and worries. Some level of procrastination is necessary in order to be functional and healthy.
I would say talking on the phone is a minor form of social interaction, and is no substitute for being in-person in the same room. However, at least then the activity takes the specific form of direct interaction with another person (as in, there is no purpose other than to converse). However, online game-playing has neither the virtue of real interaction (in person) nor direct interaction (where there is no interveining purpose). The only social need it fulfills is game-playing (in the broad sense, that even in conversations, people play games), and in most games, even this is only fulfilled in a superficial way.