Color me skeptical, but to get a call or make a call, you have to give them your phone number. If I'm reading the site right, you have to confirm a text message sent to you to be the alarm clock. What I'm a bit concerned about is that they will sell this information to third parties, and I'll start getting texts from advertisers on my phone.
Maybe I'm wrong; I hope I am. Maybe these really are just nice folks who want to create an interesting service. They are in Russia (the "heart of Siberia," according to their web site), though, so although I really want to believe this is completely honest and above-board... Enh. I think I'll pass and let other people be the guinea pigs and see how it works out for them.
That is one of the most awesome ideas I've read about. I especially liked the part where they acknowledged that it probably won't do any good now, but it plants the name in their heads for when they're ready to get out of their extremist organization.
Say, anyone want to chip in for some t-shirts to give away at the next Tea Party convention?
They hate capitalism so much that they... let me get this straight... used it to make money and help fund their government? I don't know, guys, it seems a little disingenuous to me.
This is typical Republican bullshit. I don't have time to pick apart your post, but let's just take this, a particular hot-button topic I've seen:
When people sign for a mortgage they could never afford...
As it turns out, I bought a house right at the start of the housing boom. Living in a family predominantly of homeowners, I had a lot of people offering me good advice. A couple of the best pieces--things I wish that everyone had known--was 1) get a fixed-rate mortgage, not an ARM, and 2) the bank will approve you for a lot more money than you can afford. Figure out how much you can afford before going to the bank, and don't go over that amount. There were a few other things, such as don't use your real estate agent's mortgage broker because they can collude in ways that are not in your best interest, but those were the biggies.
So in my particular case, I decided that I could afford a $200,000 house. I took that information to the bank to get a loan. The first thing that got on my nerves was that he was trying hard to get me into an ARM. In fact, when I mentioned that I wanted a fixed-rate mortgage, he rather treated me like an idiot at my insistence that I wasn't interested. He told me how unlikely it was that interest rates would ever go up, how my payments would be so much cheaper, how I was basically gambling that things would change in ways they couldn't. At one point, he even said, "With real estate values rising like they are, you may even want to consider an interest-only loan, live there for a few years, and move. A lot of people are making a lot of money that way.
The second thing that got on my nerves is that he tried hard to upsell me on a higher loan amount. He told me that really, with my income, I could be looking in the $300,000 range instead. He pointed out that the increase in my mortgage wouldn't really be much of an increase, thanks to the mortgage deduction on my taxes. He pointed out that if home prices go up, they will go up a lot more on a $300,000 house than on a $200,000 house.
Now, keep in mind, this is MY BANK. (A bank, by the way, that I have since fired, and a bank that I ended up not using to finance my mortgage.) Supposedly someone who is an authority on mortgages, someone I'm paying to look out for my best interests. As the housing bubble collapsed and so many people got stuck like they did, I couldn't help but think back on my own experience getting a mortgage. Had I not been lucky enough to have people I trust who were homeowners offering me advice, I might very well have believed that slime. Everything he was telling me seemed to make sense as I was in that office talking to him about home loans. He told me that housing bubbles like the one we're coming out of could never happen, yet here we are.
So yeah, go ahead and pretend like it's all those malicious and stupid people who are responsible for our problems, and they deserve to be thrown out on their asses. I was there, I know the pressure they faced, and I have firsthand experience of what the banks were doing to try to keep their pyramid scheme going. They lied and misused the trust people put in them to cause this mess, and for the most part, got away with it scott free.
Robot cars don't have to be 100% reliable. As long as they're more reliable than the jerks who normally scare the bejesus out of me by cutting across three lanes of traffic, driving 90 MPH, weaving in and out, running red lights, etc., then I'm all for a robot car-driven society. I'm willing to put up with the computer glitches that, on very rare occasions, cause crashes if I don't have to put up with the human glitches that call themselves licensed drivers.
Plenty of White friends of mine stated they wished they could be minorities, especially when applying for college.
Awesome! Make sure that once they get out of school, they face an unemployment rate over 5% higher. And once they do get a job, tell them they need to pay 42% of their income to the "black tax" due to income disparity. Don't forget the other benefits of being black--being harassed by police, being treated like criminals in stores, being accused of dragging down property values by neighbors, having much of your hard-earned success chalked up to being a "token," having your kids mercilessly teased at school, and so on.
Wait, what? They don't want to be black any more? Surely they didn't imagine that they could just turn being black on and off like that, cherry-picking the one or two advantages without having to pay their dues in the immense challenges faced by minorities? And yet you still sit around begrudging this effort to equal the playing field. Unbelievable.
People being treated equally is precisely what the law is about. The law is upholding fundamental human rights. Once we get to the point where people are being treated equally, there will be no more need for the law, and it should go away. Unfortunately, we're not there yet.
Obviously, some minorities fare better than others, duh. And if Asian-Americans were being discriminated against, yes, it would apply to them as well. Fortunately, they are not as systematically affected by bigotry and racism as other minorities are in college admissions, job opportunities, or pay disparity.
The simple fact is that unless there are some teeth to the law--some consequences for not obeying it--people simply won't. Argue as much as you want, but the statistics are quite clear. Without Affirmative Action, everyone uses the exact same arguments that you just did, grasping at whatever straw they can to justify why their individual case is different to propagate racism and bigotry.
And believe it or not, racism is not something that most people these days consciously espouse. I'm not saying that all employers are made up of a bunch of George Wallaces looking to keep society neatly segregated. It's much more subtle than that, and happens due to people's natural tendency to associate with like individuals. That's the beauty of Affirmative Action--it doesn't matter why you're discriminating (except as I recall for some very specific reasons in which discrimination is required, such as actors for a role and such), or even if you know your discriminating. It Just Works.
So now that I've answered your questions, how about answering mine? If we do away with Affirmative Action, what is your brilliant idea for upholding the Civil Rights Act and preventing discrimination? When you run across a company that is 98% white, including all of the executives and even mid-level management, and its painfully obvious that there is discrimination going on, what do you do? Nothing?
If the piracy is directly linked to review scores, it means that people just want the games for free and aren't that much interested in trying them out before actually buying them.
How many of us has bought a popularly reviewed game, then found out it sucked? Maybe (as is common today) reviewers are basically being paid to give glowing reviews of crap. Maybe in spite of a game having mass popular appeal, it's just not my type of game?
Maybe you're just making a wild assumption with nothing to back it up, and assuming that everyone will accept it as a valid premise?
Discriminating against someone now doesn't right or balance any past wrongs.
Here's the inconvenient fact that whites like to ignore. From the time they're born, statistically speaking, they have access to better educational resources, better financial resources, more domestic stability, and a ton of other advantages to success in this world than minorities do. It's not about punishing people for the sins of our ancestors. It is trying to make up for present-day inequities caused by the deficiencies of our ancestors.
A real solution to help black people has to get rid of something deeper in the human heart rather than superficial actions......
The actions are hardly superficial. Since the Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1964--Affirmative Action and all--blacks and other minorities have enjoyed a boom in education, employment, and the pay divide has shrunk enormously. There's still a ways to go, but it is getting better.
I do believe that you're right in that the sad truth is that it will probably take a generation or three dying off and taking their ingrained bigotry with them before any semblance of opportunity equality is achieved and race is truly not a consideration when hiring people. But, "you can't make people not bigoted" is a sorry ass excuse for not doing a damn thing about it. Baring legal teeth most certainly does help level the playing field when the human heart is screwed up.
As to your "I don't know a single white person who has ever said, "Wow, I wish that I were African-American!", can I wish to be a black man built like and having the income of Will Smith?
Only if I can be Laurence Fishburne, who I think is quite possibly one of the coolest people on the face of the earth. Hell, I'd settle for just his voice.
I see this whole "preferential treatment" BS a lot. Before you go spouting off again, here are a few things to keep in mind. Let's take African-Americans as an easy example, since that is where Affirmative Action is almost always applied.
For hundreds of years, African-Americans were brutally oppressed. All of a sudden, in 1964, it became illegal to discriminate against them in many places, such as housing, jobs, etc. However, it's not like on midnight July 2, all of a sudden, African-Americans, who had been systematically denied access to things like education, job opportunities, social infrastructure, etc. were equipped with all of the tools, knowledge, and contacts to really be equal. And it's not like all of a sudden, the vast white infrastructure steeped in bigotry and racism suddenly said, "You know, let's give these folks a fair chance."
Unfortunately, what happened is that racism continued in various forms, just as it continues today. You have two candidates, one African-American and one majority white, applying for a job, each with equal qualifications? The theory behind giving the job to the African-American is two-fold. First of all, it is an effort to try to right the wrongs of centuries past. That African-American person who gets the job will now be able to send their kids to college, to integrate themselves in a more equal social structure, to provide much-needed diversity that will make opportunities truly equal, not just equal "on paper." Secondly, as for the white candidate that got turned down? Don't feel too sorry for him or her. Statistically speaking, that person has a much better chance at finding another job, and getting paid more for it, than his African-American counterpart would were the situation reversed.
People kill me, acting like those poor white people are so disadvantaged because of Affirmative Action. The stats just don't bear that out. I don't know a single white person who has ever said, "Wow, I wish that I were African-American!" because their job prospects would be better. They're not. I don't know a single white person who has ever said, "Wow, I wish that I were African-American!" because they wanted better pay. Why do you think that the recent recession has hammered minority communities a lot harder than white communities? Because even today, almost 50 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, there are huge disparities in minority employment and minority pay as compared to their white counterparts. So yeah, poor white people, being all discriminated against with Affirmative Action. What's your idea for providing equal opportunity and upholding the Civil Rights Act?
Also, one thing that I think is lost on a lot of people is that it's not like if you have a large company, you have to have a 50/50 split of minority/majority employees. Affirmative Action only kicks when when there is such a significant statistical deviation from the norm that you are obviously discriminating in your hiring practices. If you have 2,000 employees in an area where minority population is, say, 20%, but only 3% of your employees are minorities, something's wrong, and you're going to get bitten. If 19% or 18% of your employees are minorities, you're not going to have a problem.
So when people gripe about Affirmative Action, I have to ask, okay, so what exactly do you think should be the result of flagrantly disregarding the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Let's say I'm a company with 2000 employees, and I have an implicit hiring policy not to hire any minorities, which is against the law. If there's no Affirmative Action, what's the punishment? I get to just keep right on discriminating and hiring white people exclusively because I hand-wave the law off saying, "they make better candidates"? I'm not asking at what point you draw the line between someone discriminating and someone not, but if you're against Affirmative Action, you're basically saying there should be no line, and without some sort of
Where was I? I was working in the private sector. You know, actually making stuff, contributing to this country's GDP, paying taxes, sounds like writing your paycheck, if you're a government employee. Somehow, though, I still find the time to read and listen to the news, vote, support candidates in line with my views, write letters, and most importantly of all, talk to friends and family about stuff like this so that, unlike you, they're not complicit in flushing it all down the crapper thanks to self-imposed ignorance and apathy.
You sound like one of these bullshit Tea Party dimwits, the "Government is evil!" crowd who have amazingly selective memory regarding all the benefits they get from government. "Sure, cut off welfare, do away with food stamps, close the public schools, systematically disband unions--but don't you dare lay a goddamned finger on my Social Security, you corrupt bastards!", right? If you actually get money directly from the government and you have the gall to complain about government spending, wow, that is the height of hypocrisy.
Tell you what, when they start cutting everything, how about they start with whatever pay or benefits you're getting? If you were in the military and still get a salary, of course, that's the first thing that goes. And forget about military heath care at the VA. Even if you're not a government employee, let's go ahead and whack your Social Security benefits, even if you're not drawing them yet. Hope you saved up! Do you have kids? Let's go ahead and kick them out of school. I hope you can foot the bill to send them to private school, especially with all of the other thousands of kids that are going to be crammed in there with them. Of course, they probably won't be able to go to college without student loans or anything. Oh, hey, while we're talking about loans, I really hope your bank doesn't go under, because since we're doing away with the FDIC, you'll just lose your money. And with none of that pesky government oversight that the SEC provides, I guess it will all just work out okay when your 401K is raided because the fund manager wants a new yacht this month. It probably won't matter much, though, when you die because there is no Consumer Product Safety Commission and your coffee pot explodes. (Wow, if only they hadn't have laid off all of your firemen, they would have come in handy now, wouldn't they have?) You might have lived, except that there's no longer anyone requiring your hospital emergency room to treat you, and of course, your insurance company has decided that that little mole you've had since you were a kid is a pre-existing condition for exploding coffee pots and your policy has been rescinded. It's too bad about your wife and kids, too. After you were gone, and with unemployment so high after the economic collapse, they were some of the first tragic victims of crime after all of the police were laid off. Maybe they would have been okay, if only they could have afforded protection thanks to an Insurance Commissioner who had the power to enforce your life insurance policy. Oh well, I guess it's better this way, at least they won't die of cholera when your water supply becomes an open sewer.
Or are you one of these "I don't even vote because they're all so evil!" leeches? Which is all fine and good--until you start bitching out the government you didn't do a damn thing to shape. If you don't bother to participate, then shut the hell up so that those of us who do can figure this shit out instead of just whining about it incessantly.
I normally don't criticize moderators, but this was modded "interesting"? Jesus.
...the US is bringing in enough money to pay for its debt, but the US just wants to SPEND MORE than its bringing in so lets just see how much were willing to slit our own throat...
No, we don't. If we made extremely severe cuts in the budget, we may be able to get by for a little while. However, most of what we're paying right now is interest on what we already owe plus obligations we've already made. It won't take long before we can't pay our debts and our economy is destroyed to the point where we won't ever be able to. Of course, even this rosy scenario is assuming you're willing to endure 40%-60% unemployment, which would quickly lead to a worldwide depression as every economy out there collapses due to global dependency on us. I'd give it two years maximum before we have riots in the streets and martial law. If you're lucky and you're really good at either farming or killing people, you might be able to weather it out.
Funny enough, you know who would benefit the most from such a scenario? Places like western China that are used to subsistence living. Since their government is already well equipped to oppress the masses, it wouldn't take them long to re-crank up their industrial machines and become the new superpower.
I am not going to argue politics with anyone...
Wow, that's really convenient after tossing out a completely asinine, indefensible statement like your first humdinger. So yeah, go ahead, shove those fingers securely in your ears, and shout, "La la la la la!" It doesn't make your idiocy any less idiotic. The reason you're not going to argue politics with anyone is because you don't have a fucking clue what's going on, let alone the capability to actually make a coherent argument.
...and that is because I am disappointed with every single one of the self interest fat ass out of touch snakes in the grass fuckwit children, this administration and last
Did you ever take just a second and stop to think that one of the reasons we're in this mess is because of self-interested fat ass out-of-touch snake-in-the-grass fuckwit children like you? Congressmen are answerable to the public, you dimwit, but when the public collectively says, "Fuck it, I don't care what you do," then what the hell did you expect!!? Are you really too stupid to grasp that if you hadn't have sat on your fat ass and watched while everything went down the tubes, if you had actually gotten out and been active in your community and your country, taken some time to (god forbid) learn something about the politicians who you are--whether by choice or by apathy--giving the power to run your life, they would have had to have been more responsible? You do have the power to change things, but "it's too hard, waaaah!"
People like you make me sick. You like to armchair quarterback your way through life, never actually participating in the process, and your apathy is infectious. Sure is easy to sit on your ivory tower casting stones on things you know nothing about, isn't it? But god forbid you actually do anything productive and contributive, you sucking leech. Is there a day of reckoning coming? Probably so, and you're going to be one of the first ones flushed down the toilet. I can pretty much hear your crying now about how awful it will be that everyone else let it get to that point.
"Interesting," my ass. How about "-1 Clueless Twit" instead?
You are so correct. And make money he did--during the late 70s and 80s, George Lucas and 20th Century Fox made millions off this movie. Apparently, that's not enough though, nosiree. In spite of the piles of cash in both of their respective bank accounts--and the piles of cash that are still flowing into their respective bank accounts because of the franchise--they're going to begrudge this schmo living a very modest life a few thousand dollars for physically making something that he originally designed that helped contribute those millions to their bank accounts.
And then they have the unmitigated gall to accuse the guy of piracy--the guy who designed and built the things to begin with!
You know, I could understand this if it was some jerk who has no relationship to Lucas or the movies making them and selling them as "Authentic Star Wars Stormtrooper Helmets," but that's clearly not the case. What should have happened is that George Lucas should have said, "You know, even if he's technically breaking copyright law, I'm going to give this guy a pass." Or if he were worried about holding onto his IP rights (even though there's a snowball's chance in hell of him losing them if he chooses not to pursue one single guy because of personal reasons), then he should have called the guy up and said, "Hey, how about giving me a token cut of the profit of each one sold for legal reasons, like say, one penny, and you can even tell people that they're authentic and authorized by George Lucas?" Oh yeah, because that would mean that their piles of millions of dollars would be shorter by a few thousand dollars, which is antithetical to the principle of being so damn greedy that it's not enough that you succeed, but everyone else must fail.
Watching the Star Wars is one of the most cherished memories of my childhood, and I've always wanted to share those movies with kids growing up today. This crap makes me sick, though. It makes me wish that I had never seen the damn movies to begin with and stop sharing them with other people.
Personally, I wish that they would restore the copyright length here in the U.S. back to its original 28 years. 28 years seems like plenty to make money off of your creation, and making it any longer stifles creativity and innovation of others and takes away from the public domain that which belongs in it. I know this case took place in Britain, and I wish that they would enforce a similar copyright period, which would have made this whole case a non-issue. The way I'm reading the article, although the outcome was fair to Mr. Ainsworth, it's still not a best-case scenario. He really only scraped by because the court found that his creation was an "industrial prop," not a work of art. Still, whatever, I'm glad the guy won.
Astronauts literally trusted their lives with this thing - the watch was used to sequence maneuvers, estimate oxygen levels and time spacewalks walks. And all this was done with a spring, some gears and highly-precise engineering.
The Russians just used a pencil.
(Yes, I know it's a non sequitur and that's not how the joke goes, but it still sounded like a funny punchline to me.)
Oh god, no. You wouldn't be able to share the time with anyone else, and you'd have to use Apple's proprietary software to set it. Not to mention that it would be twice as expensive as any other comparable digital watch, and I'm pretty sure that they would pay a license fee to the RIAA for some weird reason for each one sold, which would then mean that the RIAA would now have enough money to start suing other digital watch manufacturers for infringement because apparently the "beep! beep! beep!" of their alarms is copyrighted.
Don't get me started on how you can't replace your iWatch's battery when it runs out...
True. And what frustrates me most is that content owners and distributors sit around scratching their heads wondering why people download infringing content so often. Um... Could it be because they have systematically shut off every reasonable legal way of obtaining it?
I think the studio is doing a good job with this payment model of avoiding that. If you choose to maintain your subscription, you become a VIP and have access to most stuff without buying anything additional. You also get 400 Paragon Points (the currency used to purchase the extra stuff that's not baked in) every month, so if you maintain a subscription, you can just acquire the new stuff without spending anything extra. In my opinion, this is better even than how it is now, with periodic "booster packs" of costume items, emotes, and so on. Right now, you must pay an extra $10 to obtain those things in addition to your subscription fee. When CoH Freedom launches, you can get them a la carte with the Paragon Points you get alotted for being a VIP.
In short, one of the principles behind the "Freedom" branding is that you can choose how you want to pay and play, even if that choice is, "I like how it is now" (but with lots of new shinies you weren't getting before). I will concede that if you're a completionist, you will probably end up spending more to buy literally everything; however, there will be a LOT more to obtain. Although the absolute dollar figure will go up, you'll be getting disproportionately more for what you're spending, which will in theory be a better value. If you're not a completionist, though, you will likely actually end up saving money by being able to pick and choose what you value and acquiring it, instead of being forced to get everything in bundles.
I won't lie, the nickel-and-diming aspect of f2p is what concerns me most about this change, but like I said, I think they realize that and are working hard to think of ways to avoid that, to design a hybrid model that can avoid that if you choose. It really sounds like they are looking to make more money off of the microtransactions of new players who can't or don't want to shell out $15 every month, not trying to milk existing ones.
I deliberately wrote the title of the post to avoid the phrase "free-to-play," and only described it as an option in the body of the submission. I think the studio is taking great pains to avoid some of the pitfalls of the f2p model, and by making it a hybrid payment system with a VIP subscription option, you can avoid a lot of the nickel-and-diming typically associated with a f2p game and play pretty much as you have for the past seven years if you want. That's the purpose behind the new "Freedom" branding of the game--you can choose what you want your experience to be like, including the "I like how it is now" option.
Personally, I'm pretty stoked about it. I'm one of those people who have been playing for seven years, and over that time, I've seen a lot of people who let their subscription lapse because $15 per month is just too much to invest in a diversion in these tough economic times. I imagine that a lot of them would love logging on now to experience how far the game has come, though, even if it's with just two characters. And a lot of them wouldn't mind plunking out a few bucks every month or two to snag some goodies.
As a side note to the poster above, it's true that City of Heroes has the technology baked in to show real-world ads, and they did for a while. I don't know if the contract with their advertising company went south or what, though, because although it's possible, they haven't actually shown any real-world ads in the game for years.
Slashdot Mirror
Color me skeptical, but to get a call or make a call, you have to give them your phone number. If I'm reading the site right, you have to confirm a text message sent to you to be the alarm clock. What I'm a bit concerned about is that they will sell this information to third parties, and I'll start getting texts from advertisers on my phone.
Maybe I'm wrong; I hope I am. Maybe these really are just nice folks who want to create an interesting service. They are in Russia (the "heart of Siberia," according to their web site), though, so although I really want to believe this is completely honest and above-board... Enh. I think I'll pass and let other people be the guinea pigs and see how it works out for them.
That is one of the most awesome ideas I've read about. I especially liked the part where they acknowledged that it probably won't do any good now, but it plants the name in their heads for when they're ready to get out of their extremist organization.
Say, anyone want to chip in for some t-shirts to give away at the next Tea Party convention?
They hate capitalism so much that they... let me get this straight... used it to make money and help fund their government? I don't know, guys, it seems a little disingenuous to me.
This is typical Republican bullshit. I don't have time to pick apart your post, but let's just take this, a particular hot-button topic I've seen:
When people sign for a mortgage they could never afford...
As it turns out, I bought a house right at the start of the housing boom. Living in a family predominantly of homeowners, I had a lot of people offering me good advice. A couple of the best pieces--things I wish that everyone had known--was 1) get a fixed-rate mortgage, not an ARM, and 2) the bank will approve you for a lot more money than you can afford. Figure out how much you can afford before going to the bank, and don't go over that amount. There were a few other things, such as don't use your real estate agent's mortgage broker because they can collude in ways that are not in your best interest, but those were the biggies.
So in my particular case, I decided that I could afford a $200,000 house. I took that information to the bank to get a loan. The first thing that got on my nerves was that he was trying hard to get me into an ARM. In fact, when I mentioned that I wanted a fixed-rate mortgage, he rather treated me like an idiot at my insistence that I wasn't interested. He told me how unlikely it was that interest rates would ever go up, how my payments would be so much cheaper, how I was basically gambling that things would change in ways they couldn't. At one point, he even said, "With real estate values rising like they are, you may even want to consider an interest-only loan, live there for a few years, and move. A lot of people are making a lot of money that way.
The second thing that got on my nerves is that he tried hard to upsell me on a higher loan amount. He told me that really, with my income, I could be looking in the $300,000 range instead. He pointed out that the increase in my mortgage wouldn't really be much of an increase, thanks to the mortgage deduction on my taxes. He pointed out that if home prices go up, they will go up a lot more on a $300,000 house than on a $200,000 house.
Now, keep in mind, this is MY BANK. (A bank, by the way, that I have since fired, and a bank that I ended up not using to finance my mortgage.) Supposedly someone who is an authority on mortgages, someone I'm paying to look out for my best interests. As the housing bubble collapsed and so many people got stuck like they did, I couldn't help but think back on my own experience getting a mortgage. Had I not been lucky enough to have people I trust who were homeowners offering me advice, I might very well have believed that slime. Everything he was telling me seemed to make sense as I was in that office talking to him about home loans. He told me that housing bubbles like the one we're coming out of could never happen, yet here we are.
So yeah, go ahead and pretend like it's all those malicious and stupid people who are responsible for our problems, and they deserve to be thrown out on their asses. I was there, I know the pressure they faced, and I have firsthand experience of what the banks were doing to try to keep their pyramid scheme going. They lied and misused the trust people put in them to cause this mess, and for the most part, got away with it scott free.
I've posted this before and I'll post it again.
Robot cars don't have to be 100% reliable. As long as they're more reliable than the jerks who normally scare the bejesus out of me by cutting across three lanes of traffic, driving 90 MPH, weaving in and out, running red lights, etc., then I'm all for a robot car-driven society. I'm willing to put up with the computer glitches that, on very rare occasions, cause crashes if I don't have to put up with the human glitches that call themselves licensed drivers.
Plenty of White friends of mine stated they wished they could be minorities, especially when applying for college.
Awesome! Make sure that once they get out of school, they face an unemployment rate over 5% higher. And once they do get a job, tell them they need to pay 42% of their income to the "black tax" due to income disparity. Don't forget the other benefits of being black--being harassed by police, being treated like criminals in stores, being accused of dragging down property values by neighbors, having much of your hard-earned success chalked up to being a "token," having your kids mercilessly teased at school, and so on.
Wait, what? They don't want to be black any more? Surely they didn't imagine that they could just turn being black on and off like that, cherry-picking the one or two advantages without having to pay their dues in the immense challenges faced by minorities? And yet you still sit around begrudging this effort to equal the playing field. Unbelievable.
People being treated equally is precisely what the law is about. The law is upholding fundamental human rights. Once we get to the point where people are being treated equally, there will be no more need for the law, and it should go away. Unfortunately, we're not there yet.
Obviously, some minorities fare better than others, duh. And if Asian-Americans were being discriminated against, yes, it would apply to them as well. Fortunately, they are not as systematically affected by bigotry and racism as other minorities are in college admissions, job opportunities, or pay disparity.
The simple fact is that unless there are some teeth to the law--some consequences for not obeying it--people simply won't. Argue as much as you want, but the statistics are quite clear. Without Affirmative Action, everyone uses the exact same arguments that you just did, grasping at whatever straw they can to justify why their individual case is different to propagate racism and bigotry.
And believe it or not, racism is not something that most people these days consciously espouse. I'm not saying that all employers are made up of a bunch of George Wallaces looking to keep society neatly segregated. It's much more subtle than that, and happens due to people's natural tendency to associate with like individuals. That's the beauty of Affirmative Action--it doesn't matter why you're discriminating (except as I recall for some very specific reasons in which discrimination is required, such as actors for a role and such), or even if you know your discriminating. It Just Works.
So now that I've answered your questions, how about answering mine? If we do away with Affirmative Action, what is your brilliant idea for upholding the Civil Rights Act and preventing discrimination? When you run across a company that is 98% white, including all of the executives and even mid-level management, and its painfully obvious that there is discrimination going on, what do you do? Nothing?
How the hell did you make this leap?
If the piracy is directly linked to review scores, it means that people just want the games for free and aren't that much interested in trying them out before actually buying them.
How many of us has bought a popularly reviewed game, then found out it sucked? Maybe (as is common today) reviewers are basically being paid to give glowing reviews of crap. Maybe in spite of a game having mass popular appeal, it's just not my type of game?
Maybe you're just making a wild assumption with nothing to back it up, and assuming that everyone will accept it as a valid premise?
Discriminating against someone now doesn't right or balance any past wrongs.
Here's the inconvenient fact that whites like to ignore. From the time they're born, statistically speaking, they have access to better educational resources, better financial resources, more domestic stability, and a ton of other advantages to success in this world than minorities do. It's not about punishing people for the sins of our ancestors. It is trying to make up for present-day inequities caused by the deficiencies of our ancestors.
A real solution to help black people has to get rid of something deeper in the human heart rather than superficial actions......
The actions are hardly superficial. Since the Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1964--Affirmative Action and all--blacks and other minorities have enjoyed a boom in education, employment, and the pay divide has shrunk enormously. There's still a ways to go, but it is getting better.
I do believe that you're right in that the sad truth is that it will probably take a generation or three dying off and taking their ingrained bigotry with them before any semblance of opportunity equality is achieved and race is truly not a consideration when hiring people. But, "you can't make people not bigoted" is a sorry ass excuse for not doing a damn thing about it. Baring legal teeth most certainly does help level the playing field when the human heart is screwed up.
As to your "I don't know a single white person who has ever said, "Wow, I wish that I were African-American!", can I wish to be a black man built like and having the income of Will Smith?
Only if I can be Laurence Fishburne, who I think is quite possibly one of the coolest people on the face of the earth. Hell, I'd settle for just his voice.
Unfortunately, no. It's not the simple sound-bite issue that a lot of people make it out to be.
I see this whole "preferential treatment" BS a lot. Before you go spouting off again, here are a few things to keep in mind. Let's take African-Americans as an easy example, since that is where Affirmative Action is almost always applied.
For hundreds of years, African-Americans were brutally oppressed. All of a sudden, in 1964, it became illegal to discriminate against them in many places, such as housing, jobs, etc. However, it's not like on midnight July 2, all of a sudden, African-Americans, who had been systematically denied access to things like education, job opportunities, social infrastructure, etc. were equipped with all of the tools, knowledge, and contacts to really be equal. And it's not like all of a sudden, the vast white infrastructure steeped in bigotry and racism suddenly said, "You know, let's give these folks a fair chance."
Unfortunately, what happened is that racism continued in various forms, just as it continues today. You have two candidates, one African-American and one majority white, applying for a job, each with equal qualifications? The theory behind giving the job to the African-American is two-fold. First of all, it is an effort to try to right the wrongs of centuries past. That African-American person who gets the job will now be able to send their kids to college, to integrate themselves in a more equal social structure, to provide much-needed diversity that will make opportunities truly equal, not just equal "on paper." Secondly, as for the white candidate that got turned down? Don't feel too sorry for him or her. Statistically speaking, that person has a much better chance at finding another job, and getting paid more for it, than his African-American counterpart would were the situation reversed.
People kill me, acting like those poor white people are so disadvantaged because of Affirmative Action. The stats just don't bear that out. I don't know a single white person who has ever said, "Wow, I wish that I were African-American!" because their job prospects would be better. They're not. I don't know a single white person who has ever said, "Wow, I wish that I were African-American!" because they wanted better pay. Why do you think that the recent recession has hammered minority communities a lot harder than white communities? Because even today, almost 50 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, there are huge disparities in minority employment and minority pay as compared to their white counterparts. So yeah, poor white people, being all discriminated against with Affirmative Action. What's your idea for providing equal opportunity and upholding the Civil Rights Act?
Also, one thing that I think is lost on a lot of people is that it's not like if you have a large company, you have to have a 50/50 split of minority/majority employees. Affirmative Action only kicks when when there is such a significant statistical deviation from the norm that you are obviously discriminating in your hiring practices. If you have 2,000 employees in an area where minority population is, say, 20%, but only 3% of your employees are minorities, something's wrong, and you're going to get bitten. If 19% or 18% of your employees are minorities, you're not going to have a problem.
So when people gripe about Affirmative Action, I have to ask, okay, so what exactly do you think should be the result of flagrantly disregarding the 1964 Civil Rights Act? Let's say I'm a company with 2000 employees, and I have an implicit hiring policy not to hire any minorities, which is against the law. If there's no Affirmative Action, what's the punishment? I get to just keep right on discriminating and hiring white people exclusively because I hand-wave the law off saying, "they make better candidates"? I'm not asking at what point you draw the line between someone discriminating and someone not, but if you're against Affirmative Action, you're basically saying there should be no line, and without some sort of
Where was I? I was working in the private sector. You know, actually making stuff, contributing to this country's GDP, paying taxes, sounds like writing your paycheck, if you're a government employee. Somehow, though, I still find the time to read and listen to the news, vote, support candidates in line with my views, write letters, and most importantly of all, talk to friends and family about stuff like this so that, unlike you, they're not complicit in flushing it all down the crapper thanks to self-imposed ignorance and apathy.
You sound like one of these bullshit Tea Party dimwits, the "Government is evil!" crowd who have amazingly selective memory regarding all the benefits they get from government. "Sure, cut off welfare, do away with food stamps, close the public schools, systematically disband unions--but don't you dare lay a goddamned finger on my Social Security, you corrupt bastards!", right? If you actually get money directly from the government and you have the gall to complain about government spending, wow, that is the height of hypocrisy.
Tell you what, when they start cutting everything, how about they start with whatever pay or benefits you're getting? If you were in the military and still get a salary, of course, that's the first thing that goes. And forget about military heath care at the VA. Even if you're not a government employee, let's go ahead and whack your Social Security benefits, even if you're not drawing them yet. Hope you saved up! Do you have kids? Let's go ahead and kick them out of school. I hope you can foot the bill to send them to private school, especially with all of the other thousands of kids that are going to be crammed in there with them. Of course, they probably won't be able to go to college without student loans or anything. Oh, hey, while we're talking about loans, I really hope your bank doesn't go under, because since we're doing away with the FDIC, you'll just lose your money. And with none of that pesky government oversight that the SEC provides, I guess it will all just work out okay when your 401K is raided because the fund manager wants a new yacht this month. It probably won't matter much, though, when you die because there is no Consumer Product Safety Commission and your coffee pot explodes. (Wow, if only they hadn't have laid off all of your firemen, they would have come in handy now, wouldn't they have?) You might have lived, except that there's no longer anyone requiring your hospital emergency room to treat you, and of course, your insurance company has decided that that little mole you've had since you were a kid is a pre-existing condition for exploding coffee pots and your policy has been rescinded. It's too bad about your wife and kids, too. After you were gone, and with unemployment so high after the economic collapse, they were some of the first tragic victims of crime after all of the police were laid off. Maybe they would have been okay, if only they could have afforded protection thanks to an Insurance Commissioner who had the power to enforce your life insurance policy. Oh well, I guess it's better this way, at least they won't die of cholera when your water supply becomes an open sewer.
Or are you one of these "I don't even vote because they're all so evil!" leeches? Which is all fine and good--until you start bitching out the government you didn't do a damn thing to shape. If you don't bother to participate, then shut the hell up so that those of us who do can figure this shit out instead of just whining about it incessantly.
I normally don't criticize moderators, but this was modded "interesting"? Jesus.
...the US is bringing in enough money to pay for its debt, but the US just wants to SPEND MORE than its bringing in so lets just see how much were willing to slit our own throat...
No, we don't. If we made extremely severe cuts in the budget, we may be able to get by for a little while. However, most of what we're paying right now is interest on what we already owe plus obligations we've already made. It won't take long before we can't pay our debts and our economy is destroyed to the point where we won't ever be able to. Of course, even this rosy scenario is assuming you're willing to endure 40%-60% unemployment, which would quickly lead to a worldwide depression as every economy out there collapses due to global dependency on us. I'd give it two years maximum before we have riots in the streets and martial law. If you're lucky and you're really good at either farming or killing people, you might be able to weather it out.
Funny enough, you know who would benefit the most from such a scenario? Places like western China that are used to subsistence living. Since their government is already well equipped to oppress the masses, it wouldn't take them long to re-crank up their industrial machines and become the new superpower.
I am not going to argue politics with anyone...
Wow, that's really convenient after tossing out a completely asinine, indefensible statement like your first humdinger. So yeah, go ahead, shove those fingers securely in your ears, and shout, "La la la la la!" It doesn't make your idiocy any less idiotic. The reason you're not going to argue politics with anyone is because you don't have a fucking clue what's going on, let alone the capability to actually make a coherent argument.
...and that is because I am disappointed with every single one of the self interest fat ass out of touch snakes in the grass fuckwit children, this administration and last
Did you ever take just a second and stop to think that one of the reasons we're in this mess is because of self-interested fat ass out-of-touch snake-in-the-grass fuckwit children like you? Congressmen are answerable to the public, you dimwit, but when the public collectively says, "Fuck it, I don't care what you do," then what the hell did you expect!!? Are you really too stupid to grasp that if you hadn't have sat on your fat ass and watched while everything went down the tubes, if you had actually gotten out and been active in your community and your country, taken some time to (god forbid) learn something about the politicians who you are--whether by choice or by apathy--giving the power to run your life, they would have had to have been more responsible? You do have the power to change things, but "it's too hard, waaaah!"
People like you make me sick. You like to armchair quarterback your way through life, never actually participating in the process, and your apathy is infectious. Sure is easy to sit on your ivory tower casting stones on things you know nothing about, isn't it? But god forbid you actually do anything productive and contributive, you sucking leech. Is there a day of reckoning coming? Probably so, and you're going to be one of the first ones flushed down the toilet. I can pretty much hear your crying now about how awful it will be that everyone else let it get to that point.
"Interesting," my ass. How about "-1 Clueless Twit" instead?
14 to start with, but another 14 could be tagged on if the creator was still alive.
You are so correct. And make money he did--during the late 70s and 80s, George Lucas and 20th Century Fox made millions off this movie. Apparently, that's not enough though, nosiree. In spite of the piles of cash in both of their respective bank accounts--and the piles of cash that are still flowing into their respective bank accounts because of the franchise--they're going to begrudge this schmo living a very modest life a few thousand dollars for physically making something that he originally designed that helped contribute those millions to their bank accounts.
And then they have the unmitigated gall to accuse the guy of piracy--the guy who designed and built the things to begin with!
You know, I could understand this if it was some jerk who has no relationship to Lucas or the movies making them and selling them as "Authentic Star Wars Stormtrooper Helmets," but that's clearly not the case. What should have happened is that George Lucas should have said, "You know, even if he's technically breaking copyright law, I'm going to give this guy a pass." Or if he were worried about holding onto his IP rights (even though there's a snowball's chance in hell of him losing them if he chooses not to pursue one single guy because of personal reasons), then he should have called the guy up and said, "Hey, how about giving me a token cut of the profit of each one sold for legal reasons, like say, one penny, and you can even tell people that they're authentic and authorized by George Lucas?" Oh yeah, because that would mean that their piles of millions of dollars would be shorter by a few thousand dollars, which is antithetical to the principle of being so damn greedy that it's not enough that you succeed, but everyone else must fail.
Watching the Star Wars is one of the most cherished memories of my childhood, and I've always wanted to share those movies with kids growing up today. This crap makes me sick, though. It makes me wish that I had never seen the damn movies to begin with and stop sharing them with other people.
Personally, I wish that they would restore the copyright length here in the U.S. back to its original 28 years. 28 years seems like plenty to make money off of your creation, and making it any longer stifles creativity and innovation of others and takes away from the public domain that which belongs in it. I know this case took place in Britain, and I wish that they would enforce a similar copyright period, which would have made this whole case a non-issue. The way I'm reading the article, although the outcome was fair to Mr. Ainsworth, it's still not a best-case scenario. He really only scraped by because the court found that his creation was an "industrial prop," not a work of art. Still, whatever, I'm glad the guy won.
They very well may; Oracle acquired hell about a year and a half ago.
Oh, that's good! :) (Probably also true.)
Probably the same way we explain how phones "ring." :P
Astronauts literally trusted their lives with this thing - the watch was used to sequence maneuvers, estimate oxygen levels and time spacewalks walks. And all this was done with a spring, some gears and highly-precise engineering.
The Russians just used a pencil.
(Yes, I know it's a non sequitur and that's not how the joke goes, but it still sounded like a funny punchline to me.)
In fact, maybe an iWatch wouldn't be a bad idea.
Oh god, no. You wouldn't be able to share the time with anyone else, and you'd have to use Apple's proprietary software to set it. Not to mention that it would be twice as expensive as any other comparable digital watch, and I'm pretty sure that they would pay a license fee to the RIAA for some weird reason for each one sold, which would then mean that the RIAA would now have enough money to start suing other digital watch manufacturers for infringement because apparently the "beep! beep! beep!" of their alarms is copyrighted.
Don't get me started on how you can't replace your iWatch's battery when it runs out...
True. And what frustrates me most is that content owners and distributors sit around scratching their heads wondering why people download infringing content so often. Um... Could it be because they have systematically shut off every reasonable legal way of obtaining it?
Well, it was nice while it lasted.
Broad sword and Katana powersets, or if hacking is more your style over slashing, Battle Axe or War Mace. Wait, what's that? You want a longsword? A scimitar? Or one of the 31 other types of swords? Or could we even interest you in two swords?
Don't forget your shield.
I think the studio is doing a good job with this payment model of avoiding that. If you choose to maintain your subscription, you become a VIP and have access to most stuff without buying anything additional. You also get 400 Paragon Points (the currency used to purchase the extra stuff that's not baked in) every month, so if you maintain a subscription, you can just acquire the new stuff without spending anything extra. In my opinion, this is better even than how it is now, with periodic "booster packs" of costume items, emotes, and so on. Right now, you must pay an extra $10 to obtain those things in addition to your subscription fee. When CoH Freedom launches, you can get them a la carte with the Paragon Points you get alotted for being a VIP.
In short, one of the principles behind the "Freedom" branding is that you can choose how you want to pay and play, even if that choice is, "I like how it is now" (but with lots of new shinies you weren't getting before). I will concede that if you're a completionist, you will probably end up spending more to buy literally everything; however, there will be a LOT more to obtain. Although the absolute dollar figure will go up, you'll be getting disproportionately more for what you're spending, which will in theory be a better value. If you're not a completionist, though, you will likely actually end up saving money by being able to pick and choose what you value and acquiring it, instead of being forced to get everything in bundles.
I won't lie, the nickel-and-diming aspect of f2p is what concerns me most about this change, but like I said, I think they realize that and are working hard to think of ways to avoid that, to design a hybrid model that can avoid that if you choose. It really sounds like they are looking to make more money off of the microtransactions of new players who can't or don't want to shell out $15 every month, not trying to milk existing ones.
I deliberately wrote the title of the post to avoid the phrase "free-to-play," and only described it as an option in the body of the submission. I think the studio is taking great pains to avoid some of the pitfalls of the f2p model, and by making it a hybrid payment system with a VIP subscription option, you can avoid a lot of the nickel-and-diming typically associated with a f2p game and play pretty much as you have for the past seven years if you want. That's the purpose behind the new "Freedom" branding of the game--you can choose what you want your experience to be like, including the "I like how it is now" option.
Personally, I'm pretty stoked about it. I'm one of those people who have been playing for seven years, and over that time, I've seen a lot of people who let their subscription lapse because $15 per month is just too much to invest in a diversion in these tough economic times. I imagine that a lot of them would love logging on now to experience how far the game has come, though, even if it's with just two characters. And a lot of them wouldn't mind plunking out a few bucks every month or two to snag some goodies.
As a side note to the poster above, it's true that City of Heroes has the technology baked in to show real-world ads, and they did for a while. I don't know if the contract with their advertising company went south or what, though, because although it's possible, they haven't actually shown any real-world ads in the game for years.