The meaning of the word has not changed - the use of the word you are describing is rooted in homophobia.
Sure it has. I can say I've used 'gay' == 'stupid' == 'retarded', etc. It's not because of homophobia or hate. It's more sarcastic comedy. Shit, I'm kidding myself if I can explain why I find something funny.
All I know is that I'm not homophobic and I never use it in a deragatory fashion but yes, I still use it.
How does them having a guild where they can play together "harass" you in any way?
Okay, my choice of words was quite poor. I'm not the most elequent of people here on slashdot.
My real problem is when people bring real world issues and activism into these games. Dealing with this in-game makes playing a lot less enjoyable.
I'm not pretending to know what it's like to be gay, apparently it leaves you with the need to publicly separate yourself from the crowd. I just don't understand why it has to be done in a game.
Reminds me of a comment from a few weeks ago (apologies to babydaddy [slashdot.org]):
I get what you're trying to say but saying "My girlfriend..." is not the same as putting it in your faction's name. I wouldn't care if some dude brought up his boyfriend, he's just bullshitting. But when you start bringing activism and the whole real world problems into a game, it really makes playing a lot less fun.
I agree that it would be nice to cut carbon emissions. But the argument remains China/India/etc may be able to spend a minimal amount of money to reduce CO2 emissions, whereas the US may have to spend a substantial amount more to reduce emissions the same amount. But, the US would be required to, and the developing nations would not.
It is assumed that everyone is heterosexual by default. Its what non-gay acting people or straight acting people radiate, which means most of the population. The very reason why you don't notice it is because it is so prevalaent. So yes, every non-explicitly gay guild out there IS proclaiming their heterosexualness and there's nothing wrong with that.
You might assume that. I sure don't. When I'm in the game, I don't care. It's not like I'm hitting on girlies or anything. I'm there to escape the real world bull not jump into some more.
Also this isn't just a game. Its a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
It is a game and if anyone thinks otherwise, I recommend blizzard doing something about that. People pay them for entertainment, not to be harrassed, bombarded, or in any way drug into the sludge of the normal day.
You wat to be gay? Fine. Why do you have to announce that in a game where odds are you'll never even meet any of these people?
I wonder how many people said that same thing when black people or women were fighting for their rights. It doesn't matter what the platform, until those rights are attained, no one should be "safe" from the message of those fighting for equality.
Dude, it's a game. Rights aren't necessary or granted in the virtual world that is owned by these corporations. Either get over the fact that you can't sludge your real world problems into the game or don't play at all.
I'm going to start an Anti-GLBT guild. You think my guild should be allowed?
Well, that and a bunch of fanatical Muslim nutballs who hate Christians, Jews, Westerners, and anyone else who doesn't worship their camel-jockey prophet.
Oh yeah, because people hate for absolutely no reason.
The problem is a little more complex. They are pissed off at us because of our actions, not because of our values or religeon.
I use an older version of this app at my office. What we use it for is single user data storage/backup. We have email boxes backed up using this and any sensitive files that only one user might need.
It's quite handy if you aren't using it for collaboration/file sharing. And quite secure.
I used to believe this was all a misconception probably spurred by the idea of centrifugal force (Which doesnt actually exist.) However a friend tried to make out that it was perfectly sound and I was never able to put across the flaws well enough for us to come to a conclusion.
What? Who told you that? Take the classic example: Put water in a bucket and spin around. Is it gravity that's pulling watter perpendicular to the normal pull of gravity? No.
I understand your problem with the spinning station though. The station 'ring' would have to be spinning pretty fast and be quite large to produce the right effect and you would have to be connected to it somehow(standing might work) while it accellerates. Essentially though, you could still disconnect from it(jump) and float but if you accellerated with the ring, you'll still be traveling with it.
Another example. You're in an airliner that's traveling around 500M/h. You throw a ball straight up into the air. Does it fly to the back of the plane? Nope. Since the ball accellerated with the plane, it's traveling at the same speed. However, if the plane goes into a quick altitude climb, the ball quick drops to the floor(fast).
A basic computer running Firefox with the most limited operating system could likely dominate when AJAX applications start being released. Very scary for those in the IT field if someone finds a way to encapsulate a very solid browser into a very solid mini-OS. Why worry about the end user when everything runs on the server?
Oh yay.. let's all go back to the mainframe days. Those times were great. You know... the single point of failure... the times when someone ran a resource hog and everyone was screwed... the times when annoying UNIX operators were still there in dark rooms hacking away at an ugly console.
Everyone worked hard to get away from those places. Please let's not go back to it. Slim clients suck.
The only benifit this has over mainframe style computing is that this can be highly distributed and accessed from pretty much anywhere. Still not worth it in my opinion.
The problem is that to download at anything like cinema quality for home viewing, you're talking about files of many gigabytes. Even discounting bandwidth limits, that's still a lot of hours worth of downloading to grab all of that.
So what?
Anyone with a decent broadband connection could download a few movies per night when they are asleep. Who's going to watch more then a couple movies per day? And if you really need them quick, you can download TV quality(320x240ish). Poor resolution on my 25" TV at home looks perfectly fine.
If you check out the study that FAIR did a while ago(www.fair.org), you'd see that in fact, there were more Republicans on NPR's shows then there were any other political party. Not quite as many republicans as say Fox News but still slanted towards the right.
...perhaps someone could call the local police department or FBI and say "Excuse me, but I'd like to report a computer crime; someone cracked my system with a rootkit. I think I know who it was, and I have a copy of the rootkit on CD."
What kind of slashdotter would really invite the FBI to their place?
Regardless of whether or not intelligence agencies are tapping universally or not, everyone here has the power to stop them using simple privacy measures such as encrypting email...
Don't you think there's a reason that we can only use up to a certain amount of encryption legally? The government allready has the means to decrypt all 'legal' communication within a reasonable amount of time.
And let's not even mention the NSA and their encryption scandals...
Isn't the IPTV which they're offering meant to be largely handled by their FIOS service?
Sort of. Their Fiber Optic Service consists of Internet access, phone service, and soon to be, TV service. Where I live, they run 100Mbps lines to each house. So they section off a portion for internet service, 15Mbps let's say. Now they have 85Mbps to use for the other services
So yes, it's handled by the same network but it's exactly the same as a cable company's setup.
I agree with you, but that's not what they are doing. They already sectioned off the bandwidth for their TV service. This in no way affects their customers and their 'guaranteed' bandwidth. They customers still get what they pay for.
For instance, I pay for 15Mbps FiOS(FTTP). They have a 100Mbps fiber line to my house. So they have 85Mbps to play with for their TV service, phone service, or better internet access plans. I am not affected as I am paying for exactly what they are giving me.
Bacteria does not have a nervous system, but its self aware.
Bacteria is NOT self aware. It does not know what it is doing or how it affects it's environment. It is an automoton wiggling around sucking things up excreting things. There is no awareness there.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, my boss doens't recognize this law.
The meaning of the word has not changed - the use of the word you are describing is rooted in homophobia.
Sure it has. I can say I've used 'gay' == 'stupid' == 'retarded', etc. It's not because of homophobia or hate. It's more sarcastic comedy. Shit, I'm kidding myself if I can explain why I find something funny.
All I know is that I'm not homophobic and I never use it in a deragatory fashion but yes, I still use it.
How does them having a guild where they can play together "harass" you in any way?
Okay, my choice of words was quite poor. I'm not the most elequent of people here on slashdot.
My real problem is when people bring real world issues and activism into these games. Dealing with this in-game makes playing a lot less enjoyable.
I'm not pretending to know what it's like to be gay, apparently it leaves you with the need to publicly separate yourself from the crowd. I just don't understand why it has to be done in a game.
Reminds me of a comment from a few weeks ago (apologies to babydaddy [slashdot.org]):
I get what you're trying to say but saying "My girlfriend..." is not the same as putting it in your faction's name. I wouldn't care if some dude brought up his boyfriend, he's just bullshitting. But when you start bringing activism and the whole real world problems into a game, it really makes playing a lot less fun.
I agree that it would be nice to cut carbon emissions. But the argument remains China/India/etc may be able to spend a minimal amount of money to reduce CO2 emissions, whereas the US may have to spend a substantial amount more to reduce emissions the same amount. But, the US would be required to, and the developing nations would not.
Mom: You can't pollute the earth.
Kid: But Billy's mom let's him pollute the earth!
It is assumed that everyone is heterosexual by default. Its what non-gay acting people or straight acting people radiate, which means most of the population. The very reason why you don't notice it is because it is so prevalaent. So yes, every non-explicitly gay guild out there IS proclaiming their heterosexualness and there's nothing wrong with that.
You might assume that. I sure don't. When I'm in the game, I don't care. It's not like I'm hitting on girlies or anything. I'm there to escape the real world bull not jump into some more.
Also this isn't just a game. Its a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
It is a game and if anyone thinks otherwise, I recommend blizzard doing something about that. People pay them for entertainment, not to be harrassed, bombarded, or in any way drug into the sludge of the normal day.
You wat to be gay? Fine. Why do you have to announce that in a game where odds are you'll never even meet any of these people?
120MB and it doesn't have ping? And people are confused when we Linux geeks say it's a bloated OS.
In it's defense, it comes with a ton of programs like OpenOffice, firefox, etc..
And as a result one should ban all hetrosexual guilds as well since they are based on sexual activity...
Ok, now name a heterosexual guild.
...that's what I thought.
I wonder how many people said that same thing when black people or women were fighting for their rights. It doesn't matter what the platform, until those rights are attained, no one should be "safe" from the message of those fighting for equality.
Dude, it's a game. Rights aren't necessary or granted in the virtual world that is owned by these corporations. Either get over the fact that you can't sludge your real world problems into the game or don't play at all.
I'm going to start an Anti-GLBT guild. You think my guild should be allowed?
You brought your personal politics of avoiding supporting equal rights because you just wanna play a game.
Equal rights? Come on now. Do you see guilds/factions outright proclaming their heterosexualness out there?
I'm not against the GLBT but the GP has a point. When you go into these games, you want them to be just that, GAMES.
Or TinyXP. It's a stripped down version of windows that's like 120MB or so. I'm sure you can google for a torrent.
Once I found out it didn't come with PING, I knew it wasn't for me.
Well, that and a bunch of fanatical Muslim nutballs who hate Christians, Jews, Westerners, and anyone else who doesn't worship their camel-jockey prophet.
Oh yeah, because people hate for absolutely no reason.
The problem is a little more complex. They are pissed off at us because of our actions, not because of our values or religeon.
I use an older version of this app at my office. What we use it for is single user data storage/backup. We have email boxes backed up using this and any sensitive files that only one user might need.
It's quite handy if you aren't using it for collaboration/file sharing. And quite secure.
I used to believe this was all a misconception probably spurred by the idea of centrifugal force (Which doesnt actually exist.) However a friend tried to make out that it was perfectly sound and I was never able to put across the flaws well enough for us to come to a conclusion.
What? Who told you that? Take the classic example: Put water in a bucket and spin around. Is it gravity that's pulling watter perpendicular to the normal pull of gravity? No.
I understand your problem with the spinning station though. The station 'ring' would have to be spinning pretty fast and be quite large to produce the right effect and you would have to be connected to it somehow(standing might work) while it accellerates. Essentially though, you could still disconnect from it(jump) and float but if you accellerated with the ring, you'll still be traveling with it.
Another example. You're in an airliner that's traveling around 500M/h. You throw a ball straight up into the air. Does it fly to the back of the plane? Nope. Since the ball accellerated with the plane, it's traveling at the same speed. However, if the plane goes into a quick altitude climb, the ball quick drops to the floor(fast).
Unless they turn it upside down...
Gravity is not the same as magnets. If you travel to the southern hemisphere of earth do you get repelled?
A basic computer running Firefox with the most limited operating system could likely dominate when AJAX applications start being released. Very scary for those in the IT field if someone finds a way to encapsulate a very solid browser into a very solid mini-OS. Why worry about the end user when everything runs on the server?
Oh yay.. let's all go back to the mainframe days. Those times were great. You know... the single point of failure... the times when someone ran a resource hog and everyone was screwed... the times when annoying UNIX operators were still there in dark rooms hacking away at an ugly console.
Everyone worked hard to get away from those places. Please let's not go back to it. Slim clients suck.
The only benifit this has over mainframe style computing is that this can be highly distributed and accessed from pretty much anywhere. Still not worth it in my opinion.
To be fair, the guy does appear to have been doing illegal actions and they have been subpoenaed in open court.
For me, it's the secret courts that don't use subpoenaes that creep me out.
The problem is that to download at anything like cinema quality for home viewing, you're talking about files of many gigabytes. Even discounting bandwidth limits, that's still a lot of hours worth of downloading to grab all of that.
So what?
Anyone with a decent broadband connection could download a few movies per night when they are asleep. Who's going to watch more then a couple movies per day? And if you really need them quick, you can download TV quality(320x240ish). Poor resolution on my 25" TV at home looks perfectly fine.
If you check out the study that FAIR did a while ago(www.fair.org), you'd see that in fact, there were more Republicans on NPR's shows then there were any other political party. Not quite as many republicans as say Fox News but still slanted towards the right.
And you call this leftist? ugh...
...perhaps someone could call the local police department or FBI and say "Excuse me, but I'd like to report a computer crime; someone cracked my system with a rootkit. I think I know who it was, and I have a copy of the rootkit on CD."
What kind of slashdotter would really invite the FBI to their place?
What would be really nice is a button (in the window status bar maybe) that lets one enable/disable the Flash plugin at will.
Of course, there is a Firefox extension exactly for this purpose.
Regardless of whether or not intelligence agencies are tapping universally or not, everyone here has the power to stop them using simple privacy measures such as encrypting email...
Don't you think there's a reason that we can only use up to a certain amount of encryption legally? The government allready has the means to decrypt all 'legal' communication within a reasonable amount of time.
And let's not even mention the NSA and their encryption scandals...
Isn't the IPTV which they're offering meant to be largely handled by their FIOS service?
Sort of. Their Fiber Optic Service consists of Internet access, phone service, and soon to be, TV service. Where I live, they run 100Mbps lines to each house. So they section off a portion for internet service, 15Mbps let's say. Now they have 85Mbps to use for the other services
So yes, it's handled by the same network but it's exactly the same as a cable company's setup.
I agree with you, but that's not what they are doing. They already sectioned off the bandwidth for their TV service. This in no way affects their customers and their 'guaranteed' bandwidth. They customers still get what they pay for.
For instance, I pay for 15Mbps FiOS(FTTP). They have a 100Mbps fiber line to my house. So they have 85Mbps to play with for their TV service, phone service, or better internet access plans. I am not affected as I am paying for exactly what they are giving me.
Bacteria does not have a nervous system, but its self aware.
Bacteria is NOT self aware. It does not know what it is doing or how it affects it's environment. It is an automoton wiggling around sucking things up excreting things. There is no awareness there.