1) Flex time, when appropriate. If I am working on some kind of deep core system where I just code and code and code and the only person I'm interacting with is a manager, why should I be on a 9-5 schedule? If it *really* doesn't matter so long as I get my shit done, let me come in at times where I can get my shit done most effectively.
2) Meeting issues. There are 3 kinds of meetings, in my mind: Meetings that are productive and important for me, meetings that are productive and important to other people, and meetings where upper management wants to whack off in public. The first kind of meeting I'll go to gladly. The second kind of meeting I'd like to always be optional. The third kind - you know, where upper management gets up and talks about shit like the direction the company is heading - well, they can email me a ppt presentation... I promise, I'll read it... Yeah... If I want to know about some big initiative the company is having, I'll print out a letter from the CEO and read it while I'm on the crapper, ok? I don't need to have some special ed like encounter group where we all blow smoke up each other's asses.
3) Respect. I don't mean people praising what I do or telling me I'm great. I mean respect like not treating me like some kind of half-functional asocial asshole because I happen to have technology skills. I really hate being treated like some kind of pet nerdling, to be brought out and questioned by the marketing people when they need the opinion of someone who, like, knows how to do math.
4) Respect. Really! Again, this is important. Just because *some* geeks are proud of their Autistic-like behavior doesn't mean we all are. Don't speak to me like I'm a child, and I'll be happy.
5) Privacy. Or, rather, a lack of frequent interruptions. There's a well known study that shows that most people can remember +/- 7 things simultaneously. Programmers frequently come in WAY on the right hand side of that particular bell curve because, one of the things we have to do is keep stuff in ready memory - highly specific, exact stuff. It isn't like we're writing a letter and we just need to remember the gist of something for later - we need to remember every damn bit of the thing we're working on (at least, I do) in order to accomplish stuff.
6) Little things. The best motivator I ever got came at the end of a 3 week crunch. I was taken aside by my manager, given an attagirl, told not to bother coming in on Friday because I would be expected to be enjoying the free spa day the company had signed me up for. Cost to them? 1 day's pay for me + $300 or so, but they had a ferociously motivated person coming back to work on Monday.
7) Managers who can manage. A boss's job is broken into two parts: supervising me and protecting me. Supervising means getting work to me and letting me know what's expected on it. I take a lot of initiative, but when I am handed a task, I would like to know what I'm supposed to do, when I'm supposed to have it done by, and (if applicable) what methods I'm required to use to do it (if I don't have a choice). Protecting me means keeping assholes like Phil in business development from swinging by and talking my ear off for a half hour in the afternoon. It means not scheduling me for meetings that are a complete and absolute waste of my time. Basically, doing all those helpful things that allow me to do what I can do.
8) Be realistic. Let's face it - at *least* 20% of my time is spent on shit like reading/. and other such stuff - let me do it without having to fear that I'm going to lose my job because I need a mental floss break. I'm going to do it anyway, so why not let me do it without stress? Even better - FAR BETTER - let me work on something that is blue-sky stuff for 20% of my time. One place I worked at actually bought me animation/3D design software to use and encouraged me to take up to a day a week to work on it - on their dime. It wound up coming back to them 10-fold: when they were updating their website, and needed a bunc
On the other hand, if you are over 25, just work on your resume. If you've made it this far without the degree, it's not going to help you climb the wage ladder.
I disagree - many companies (larger ones with human resource departments and vetting processes) care about degrees. I routinely deal with firms that require even reception and admin staff to have a bachellors. Why? Because they can.
My partner works for a large company and, recently, a policy was put into place that anyone at the "manager" and higher levels MUST have a degree. Her former boss (now peer) was actually demoted due to not having a degree.
Having a degree is never a bad thing, and almost always to your benefit, even if just as something to get you through another hoop.
Apparently, some people jumped from "Plagueis could create life" to "Plagueis created Anakin". Why would they think that Palpatine did, when he later said that he didn't actually learn those tricks himself, is unclear.
The reason for the leap is because, according to the "extended universe" stuff (which Lucas has said is canon), Palpatine does, in fact, know how to do all that stuff.
Also, Palpatine lies. Constantly and about everything. Anakin is never truly evil - even when he's doing evil shit, he thinks he's doing it for the greater good. Had Palpatine not told him all those lies (and, likely, used the force to cloud his mind) there's no way that Anakin would have turned. Anyway - Palpatine surely lied to Anakin, and the reason for that is pretty easy to figure out: Keep Anakin wanting more. If Anakin knew that Palpatine could do this stuff, he'd expect to learn right away. But if he thinks that Palpatine and he are doing research... well then, that could easily take a lifetime, right? So he has to stick with him.
I think, however, that the way it was filmed doesn't show any of that. The viewer is left to guess at too many things (and, let's face it, the expectation that we're going to have to actually *think* during these films went out the window the first time we heard "Meesa Jar-Jar Binksa!") and doesn't get to see them.
The conversion scene - "Oh, shit, I just killed Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson! Now I have to be evil!" - as shown is really quite weak. But what of a slight modification to the scene that would show Palpatine playing Anakin like a puppet? "Anakin! You must protect me - the Jedi have gone mad!" and then Anakin saying, in his little wooden-boy voice, "I must protect you - the Jedi have gone mad" and striking down Windu... Well, that would have made a whole bunch of things make sense - we'd have known what Palpatine was doing, would have realized that Anakin wasn't really just flipping his good/evil polarity switch, but was in fact being totally dominated and controlled by this guy. It would also make it make so much more sense when, in Jedi, Anakin turns on Palpatine - the puppet master's control is focused elsewhere, and Anakin is able to break free, etc.
They don't get caught for playing better, just different.
For example, take some repetitive activity that requires frequent clicking of many boxes over and over (crafting). A human will mess up every once in awhile, or will have widely varying click speeds and so on. Most of these scripts don't ever make mistakes, and usually don't vary click speed and timing, etc.
For the most part, bots in combat/grinding situations play REALLY badly. ANYTHING out of the ordinary wrecks them.
Full disclosure: I made scripts in WoW (using python, and not detectable by the Warden methods mentioned) that would have my stealthed rogue run into an instance, head to the spots where chests can spawn, try to open (if anything was there) and wait for a time, then grab all loot, and move to the next. It worked brilliantly. I'd come back every 2-3 hours and empty out my inventory of junk, and mail stuff to an alt to auction at the bank. For me, it was the "challenge" of automating stuff, as opposed to financial gain, but if I can figure it out with no incentive, surely the guys getting paid can come up with better solutions.
I don't mean to be rude, but don't you think the problem might be your attitude? You're referring to people as "the slobbering masses." I think you'd do better if you tried not insulting the people you're reaching out to.
I am very proud of you for not using the "In Soviet Russia..." joke. Because you were a good boy, I shall make your reality Nana in tight leather pants.
It really tickles my funny bone to see big companies make such big mistakes. Like, remember that dumb move by Apple where they started offering a product called the "iPod"? Or when Microsoft was really stupid and decided to offer something called "Windows" despite the fact that DOS was doing just fine? And some stupid company called "AMD" is selling processors even though Intel should be good enough for anyone!
Anyone remember that stupid movie "Star Wars" that came out a few years back? Can you believe that anyone was dumb enough to try putting that thing in theaters? Or that stupid television show "Star Trek"?
Companies make big mistakes because they take big risks. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it takes off like nothing anyone could have possibly expected. Sometimes it smashes into the ground and makes a crater so large it takes the company down with it.
In fact, you seem to be advocating caution. The same kind of caution that had the guy over at HP ask why anyone in the world would want a personal computer. Or that those IBM execs exercised when they made the "safe" bet that the hardware, not the software or operating system, would be the big deal down the line.
Wal-Mart has some of the best tech in retail, actually. Just because they *sell* cheap crap doesn't mean they *use* cheap crap.
If you want to know what other retailers will be doing in 5 years, take a look at Wal-Mart's tech. There's a reason people are willing to work in their tech group for the low wages - it's because they learn a LOT.
All other valid slams on Wal-Mart aside, their tech is most definitely good stuff.
We interfere all the time. Why should this be any different?
Anyone who's ever had a vaccination, taken an anti-biotic, hell, gotten medical attention for anything, has been futzing with natural selection.
The life of a man in nature is nasty, brutish and short. The "natural" state for mankind, from a medical perspective, is to have shockingly high infant mortality rates, being permanently crippled by something as minor as a broken bone, and such poor nutrition, trauma medicine and susceptability to disease that living past 40 makes one a revered elder.
If you want to see what not interfering would look like, spend a couple of years in some of the poorest parts of Africa. And, despite how horrible the conditions are there, even that is better than the purely "natural" state.
Re:Slow games in Civilization
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Sid Meier Responds
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· Score: 3, Informative
How much RAM do you have?
I'm playing on an older P4 (2.something GHz I think) but I've got 1GB of RAM and I don't notice that much of a slow-down in the modern era. I usually play on huge worlds with lots of civs on them, too. I bought this machine about 3-4 years ago.
There is a slowdown in gameplay, but you don't seem to be discussing that kind of thing since you are mentioning processor and not things like the actual gameplay. I find that by the modern era, in those huge worlds, I have so many things to move and do that each turn can take me 10 minutes or so. I definitely hope that, in Civ4, I'll have even better automating options for city stuff. (Civ 3 really pisses me off that, despite orders to the governors to never build units or to always build any city improvement they can, it still sometimes builds units, or shifts to "wealth" instead of building improvements from the expansion packs. GRR! All the time I save with automation gets spent fighting back against the automation when it misbehaves. Bad expansion!)
Just recently, in honor of City of Villains, Civ4, Quake 4 and FEAR, I have bitten the bullet and upgraded to an AMD 64 system w/SLI and 2GB of RAM. What I spent in hardware costs, I'll save in heating expenses, for sure.
How do they determine what's "more" violent? "More" sexually explicit? What's "better" for kids?
Some examples from other forms of entertainment:
Will the biases of the review board come out? I saw one television show that claimed to have "strong sexual content" and the only sexual content was two men kissing - and yet I've never seen *any* kind of "sexual content" warning, strong or otherwise, on shows where the equivalent (and more, really) heterosexual behavior is taking place.
What about with violence? "The Passion of the Christ" was basically just a snuff film to anyone who isn't Christian, and yet, because it was Jesus in there, it's okay. And then compare that to any run of the mill kill fest flick, and see how people complain about the violence, even though it's so much less than the torture doled out on screen in TPotC.
What about stuff like the South Park movie? Originally it was going to be given some absurd rating because of a few things - like the original title was "South Park: All Hell Breaks Loose" which got changed to the (somehow less "adult") title of Bigger, Longer and Uncut (which is only less adult if you're a fucking moron). In the "making of" extras, the creators were joking about how they took every complaint the ratings people had, made it 10x dirtier but *slightly* more subtle, and put it back in... And eventually got a lower rating because, basically, the board didn't get the jokes. (Not that I mind - I'm glad it had as wide an audience as possible because I do think the message was one worth spreading)
To me, I think it is enough to say "Sex, Violence, Drugs" or whatever and leave it at that. Trying to rank what's "worse" - consensual anal sex onscreen or obscured non consensual sex - eating another human being or hundreds of people being blown up in a battle on a beach - two men kissing, or a straight couple doing everything but fucking on-screen - is best left up to the individual.
This board thing is purely a political move. People are trying to show that they're doing something, even if that something is just a waste of time. The old ratings system was fine - just like any system, it didn't deal with people trying to get around it in unforseen ways.
Actually, he's done more than that. He has contacted a police department claiming that he was the target of an extortion attempt.
That's much more than being an asshole - that's filing a highly specific complaint with the police. He's an attorney, he contacted the police, and he accused the PA guys of being extortionists. Surely there's something wrong when a member of the bar lodges a false complaint with a police department?
If he was just some guy - not an attorney - he might be able to get away with the "I was just upset, I don't know what the legal definition of 'extortion' is - I just wanted them to stop harassing me." But he's an attorney, and he damn well should know better than to shoot off his mouth using terms that have a very specific legal meaning.
If PA were smart, they'd go after him for slander/libel/defamation - IANAL, so I don't know what the hell it is - but I imagine that there's got to be something protecting people from having false complaints made against them by assholes like Jack.
Very true - while it is certainly *possible* for someone to mod The Sims to make it pornographic, the game itself is not. Saying that, because people can mod games to make them hyperviolent or pornographic or both is like saying that we should ban text editors because someone could write "Mein Kampf" in them.
His using The Sims - a game that has had such huge exposure - was a critical mistake: So many of the people he's trying to reach have played it, and probably are wondering how the heck this guy can actually believe it's mind poison.
His positions do have a tiny sliver of a kernel of value to them: Children should not be able to directly purchase hyperviolent/sexually charged video games just as they cannot legally directly purchase pornography. If a parent is willing to let their kid play those kinds of games, then let the parent purchase the game. At least that way they have *some* idea of what their kids are up to.
But any validity gets blown out of the water by such absurdly stupid comments, such as his claiming the Beltway snipers "trained extensively with Halo," rescinding offers to donate to charity, and threatening legal action against people who have done far, far more good (albeit with far, far more profanity and fruit fucking) than he has.
There is a discussion that can be had here, but it's a discussion that should be had between rational people who actually hope to accomplish something positive - not reactionary fuckwits who lash out blindly at things that they clearly don't understand.
... that lesson being "Other people can write letters too, and they vastly outnumber you."
Of course, I imagine that poor, pathetic, insane Jack Thompson probably imagines that he's the noble martyr in some epic battle against the hordes of evildoers who want nothing more than to poison the minds of children, and will not, for a second, ponder the possibility that maybe he's wrong.
Jack, people you thought of as staunch allies have left you, are publically distancing themselves from you. Thousands of people are writing letters demanding that you be investigated while not a single solitary soul is writing the FBA saying you're a good guy. Most people might take that as a hint that their views are not actually meshing well with reality - hopefully you'll take this opportunity to take an assessment, get some help, and most importantly, shut the fuck up already.
Recently she had knee replacement surgery and, while in the recovery room was aparrently spelling out words: "Gear. G. E. A. R. Gear. Don't forget rage - Rage. R. A. G. E. Rage."
I'm trying to imagine her on XBox Live! and it sends me into giggle fits. She used to be a school teacher and was the disciplinarian - she'd whip those l33t k1dd3z into shape!
First, it can be expected to be taken seriously - after all, the guy is a lawyer, and he is filing a complaint with the police. So either he expects that statement to be taken seriously or he's filing a falce claim.
Second, he's an attorney lodging a complaint - extortion has a very specific legal definition and meaning, it isn't a word an attorny lodging a complaint with the police would be throwing around lightly. He either is actually accusing them of extortion or he is incompetent and is using the word incorrectly.
While they probably won't bother doing it, I do think it would be nice if PA did sue this guy. Hell, I'm halfway tempted to goad him into making some stupid ass complaint against me so that I can sue him, too. That should be much more fun than playing violent video games!
Thanks, Jack, for spawning an entirely new gaming genre: Jack Thompson Baiting. Just like Bear Baiting, except it's way funnier to watch you lose your shit.
Why should he hand over his title to some facist punk that will bank on his hard earned work. He's the brilliant guy that came up with this, he should run the company as he sees fits. Sometimes it's not about profit, but about ideals and vision.
Yeah - because when someone has ideals and vision and doesn't care about profits, they DEFINITELY wanna hook up with venture financing people. I hear those big money guys are all about dreams and couldn't give a fuck about profits.
The way to make it work would be to have "iTunes Standard" which just gives consumers 1 choice (because more choices would confuse many people) and then an "iTunes Expert" with extra choices.
The two are entirely different beasts. The price of one has nothing to do with the price of the other.
Realize that a CD of whatever band costs about as much as a DVD of some feature film. The costs of making the content for the CD are *vastly* smaller than the costs of making a feature film, the CD has MUCH less content (and most of it is filler) and there are usually not a lot of extras. Yet it costs... $20. The costs of making a feature film are huge - $100 million isn't uncommon nowadays. Some of them have a huge amount of extra content, and if it's a good movie, it isn't like some scenes are just filler, as on a CD. Yet it costs... $20.
I'm sure Apple did some heavy focus group stuff and found that people would pay more for a tv show, but not that much more. My guess is a lot of it has to do with replayability. I can listen to a song quite a few more times than I will watch a movie. So that's why I would pay almost as much for music as I would for a DVD.
But, my whole point is, other than them both being "entertainment" it isn't like they're actually all that similar from a marketing standpoint.
Let's also not forget that recording requires some level of planning, however small. I don't want to have to remember to record something - I've enough "important" things in my life to worry about without having to remember to set my recorder.
Is it $2 easier for me to download something when I want, to watch when I want, than to remember to set a recorder? For some things, sure - maybe a season premire I want to catch, or maybe for a show that has continuity.
I've bought stuff in MMOs several times, and each time it was worth it:
The first thing I bought was a Jedi account in Star Wars: Galaxies. I paid $100 for it and turned around and sold it for $1,000 on eBay a month later when I got bored with it. $900 profit and getting to play? Definitely worth it.
I've also bought gold in WoW - 2k gold for $75 bucks from some guy who was leaving the game. That amounts to about an hour at my day job and I avoided the endless boring as hell grind to get an epic mount and had plenty of cash left over to buy equipment.
Just like with most people who buy items/gold/etc, I did it to skip over a boring part so that I could enjoy the fun part.
I've noticed that most of the people who have issues with gold buyers would solve their issues if they just quit caring what other people have.
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1) Flex time, when appropriate. If I am working on some kind of deep core system where I just code and code and code and the only person I'm interacting with is a manager, why should I be on a 9-5 schedule? If it *really* doesn't matter so long as I get my shit done, let me come in at times where I can get my shit done most effectively.
/. and other such stuff - let me do it without having to fear that I'm going to lose my job because I need a mental floss break. I'm going to do it anyway, so why not let me do it without stress? Even better - FAR BETTER - let me work on something that is blue-sky stuff for 20% of my time. One place I worked at actually bought me animation/3D design software to use and encouraged me to take up to a day a week to work on it - on their dime. It wound up coming back to them 10-fold: when they were updating their website, and needed a bunc
2) Meeting issues. There are 3 kinds of meetings, in my mind: Meetings that are productive and important for me, meetings that are productive and important to other people, and meetings where upper management wants to whack off in public. The first kind of meeting I'll go to gladly. The second kind of meeting I'd like to always be optional. The third kind - you know, where upper management gets up and talks about shit like the direction the company is heading - well, they can email me a ppt presentation... I promise, I'll read it... Yeah... If I want to know about some big initiative the company is having, I'll print out a letter from the CEO and read it while I'm on the crapper, ok? I don't need to have some special ed like encounter group where we all blow smoke up each other's asses.
3) Respect. I don't mean people praising what I do or telling me I'm great. I mean respect like not treating me like some kind of half-functional asocial asshole because I happen to have technology skills. I really hate being treated like some kind of pet nerdling, to be brought out and questioned by the marketing people when they need the opinion of someone who, like, knows how to do math.
4) Respect. Really! Again, this is important. Just because *some* geeks are proud of their Autistic-like behavior doesn't mean we all are. Don't speak to me like I'm a child, and I'll be happy.
5) Privacy. Or, rather, a lack of frequent interruptions. There's a well known study that shows that most people can remember +/- 7 things simultaneously. Programmers frequently come in WAY on the right hand side of that particular bell curve because, one of the things we have to do is keep stuff in ready memory - highly specific, exact stuff. It isn't like we're writing a letter and we just need to remember the gist of something for later - we need to remember every damn bit of the thing we're working on (at least, I do) in order to accomplish stuff.
6) Little things. The best motivator I ever got came at the end of a 3 week crunch. I was taken aside by my manager, given an attagirl, told not to bother coming in on Friday because I would be expected to be enjoying the free spa day the company had signed me up for. Cost to them? 1 day's pay for me + $300 or so, but they had a ferociously motivated person coming back to work on Monday.
7) Managers who can manage. A boss's job is broken into two parts: supervising me and protecting me. Supervising means getting work to me and letting me know what's expected on it. I take a lot of initiative, but when I am handed a task, I would like to know what I'm supposed to do, when I'm supposed to have it done by, and (if applicable) what methods I'm required to use to do it (if I don't have a choice). Protecting me means keeping assholes like Phil in business development from swinging by and talking my ear off for a half hour in the afternoon. It means not scheduling me for meetings that are a complete and absolute waste of my time. Basically, doing all those helpful things that allow me to do what I can do.
8) Be realistic. Let's face it - at *least* 20% of my time is spent on shit like reading
On the other hand, if you are over 25, just work on your resume. If you've made it this far without the degree, it's not going to help you climb the wage ladder.
I disagree - many companies (larger ones with human resource departments and vetting processes) care about degrees. I routinely deal with firms that require even reception and admin staff to have a bachellors. Why? Because they can.
My partner works for a large company and, recently, a policy was put into place that anyone at the "manager" and higher levels MUST have a degree. Her former boss (now peer) was actually demoted due to not having a degree.
Having a degree is never a bad thing, and almost always to your benefit, even if just as something to get you through another hoop.
Apparently, some people jumped from "Plagueis could create life" to "Plagueis created Anakin". Why would they think that Palpatine did, when he later said that he didn't actually learn those tricks himself, is unclear.
The reason for the leap is because, according to the "extended universe" stuff (which Lucas has said is canon), Palpatine does, in fact, know how to do all that stuff.
Also, Palpatine lies. Constantly and about everything. Anakin is never truly evil - even when he's doing evil shit, he thinks he's doing it for the greater good. Had Palpatine not told him all those lies (and, likely, used the force to cloud his mind) there's no way that Anakin would have turned. Anyway - Palpatine surely lied to Anakin, and the reason for that is pretty easy to figure out: Keep Anakin wanting more. If Anakin knew that Palpatine could do this stuff, he'd expect to learn right away. But if he thinks that Palpatine and he are doing research... well then, that could easily take a lifetime, right? So he has to stick with him.
I think, however, that the way it was filmed doesn't show any of that. The viewer is left to guess at too many things (and, let's face it, the expectation that we're going to have to actually *think* during these films went out the window the first time we heard "Meesa Jar-Jar Binksa!") and doesn't get to see them.
The conversion scene - "Oh, shit, I just killed Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson! Now I have to be evil!" - as shown is really quite weak. But what of a slight modification to the scene that would show Palpatine playing Anakin like a puppet? "Anakin! You must protect me - the Jedi have gone mad!" and then Anakin saying, in his little wooden-boy voice, "I must protect you - the Jedi have gone mad" and striking down Windu... Well, that would have made a whole bunch of things make sense - we'd have known what Palpatine was doing, would have realized that Anakin wasn't really just flipping his good/evil polarity switch, but was in fact being totally dominated and controlled by this guy. It would also make it make so much more sense when, in Jedi, Anakin turns on Palpatine - the puppet master's control is focused elsewhere, and Anakin is able to break free, etc.
They don't get caught for playing better, just different.
For example, take some repetitive activity that requires frequent clicking of many boxes over and over (crafting). A human will mess up every once in awhile, or will have widely varying click speeds and so on. Most of these scripts don't ever make mistakes, and usually don't vary click speed and timing, etc.
For the most part, bots in combat/grinding situations play REALLY badly. ANYTHING out of the ordinary wrecks them.
Full disclosure: I made scripts in WoW (using python, and not detectable by the Warden methods mentioned) that would have my stealthed rogue run into an instance, head to the spots where chests can spawn, try to open (if anything was there) and wait for a time, then grab all loot, and move to the next. It worked brilliantly. I'd come back every 2-3 hours and empty out my inventory of junk, and mail stuff to an alt to auction at the bank. For me, it was the "challenge" of automating stuff, as opposed to financial gain, but if I can figure it out with no incentive, surely the guys getting paid can come up with better solutions.
I don't mean to be rude, but don't you think the problem might be your attitude? You're referring to people as "the slobbering masses." I think you'd do better if you tried not insulting the people you're reaching out to.
Here, please allow me to explain The Matrix films:
1) Ooooh, look, a goose that lays golden eggs!
2) Let's strangle it.
3) Now let's fuck the corpse!
That's all you need to know about The Matrix.
I am very proud of you for not using the "In Soviet Russia..." joke. Because you were a good boy, I shall make your reality Nana in tight leather pants.
It really tickles my funny bone to see big companies make such big mistakes. Like, remember that dumb move by Apple where they started offering a product called the "iPod"? Or when Microsoft was really stupid and decided to offer something called "Windows" despite the fact that DOS was doing just fine? And some stupid company called "AMD" is selling processors even though Intel should be good enough for anyone!
Anyone remember that stupid movie "Star Wars" that came out a few years back? Can you believe that anyone was dumb enough to try putting that thing in theaters? Or that stupid television show "Star Trek"?
Companies make big mistakes because they take big risks. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it takes off like nothing anyone could have possibly expected. Sometimes it smashes into the ground and makes a crater so large it takes the company down with it.
In fact, you seem to be advocating caution. The same kind of caution that had the guy over at HP ask why anyone in the world would want a personal computer. Or that those IBM execs exercised when they made the "safe" bet that the hardware, not the software or operating system, would be the big deal down the line.
Wal-Mart has some of the best tech in retail, actually. Just because they *sell* cheap crap doesn't mean they *use* cheap crap.
If you want to know what other retailers will be doing in 5 years, take a look at Wal-Mart's tech. There's a reason people are willing to work in their tech group for the low wages - it's because they learn a LOT.
All other valid slams on Wal-Mart aside, their tech is most definitely good stuff.
I hear in Bizarro World you do things to SOVIET RUSSIA!
Goodbye, Karma.
We interfere all the time. Why should this be any different?
Anyone who's ever had a vaccination, taken an anti-biotic, hell, gotten medical attention for anything, has been futzing with natural selection.
The life of a man in nature is nasty, brutish and short. The "natural" state for mankind, from a medical perspective, is to have shockingly high infant mortality rates, being permanently crippled by something as minor as a broken bone, and such poor nutrition, trauma medicine and susceptability to disease that living past 40 makes one a revered elder.
If you want to see what not interfering would look like, spend a couple of years in some of the poorest parts of Africa. And, despite how horrible the conditions are there, even that is better than the purely "natural" state.
How much RAM do you have?
I'm playing on an older P4 (2.something GHz I think) but I've got 1GB of RAM and I don't notice that much of a slow-down in the modern era. I usually play on huge worlds with lots of civs on them, too. I bought this machine about 3-4 years ago.
There is a slowdown in gameplay, but you don't seem to be discussing that kind of thing since you are mentioning processor and not things like the actual gameplay. I find that by the modern era, in those huge worlds, I have so many things to move and do that each turn can take me 10 minutes or so. I definitely hope that, in Civ4, I'll have even better automating options for city stuff. (Civ 3 really pisses me off that, despite orders to the governors to never build units or to always build any city improvement they can, it still sometimes builds units, or shifts to "wealth" instead of building improvements from the expansion packs. GRR! All the time I save with automation gets spent fighting back against the automation when it misbehaves. Bad expansion!)
Just recently, in honor of City of Villains, Civ4, Quake 4 and FEAR, I have bitten the bullet and upgraded to an AMD 64 system w/SLI and 2GB of RAM. What I spent in hardware costs, I'll save in heating expenses, for sure.
How do they determine what's "more" violent? "More" sexually explicit? What's "better" for kids?
Some examples from other forms of entertainment:
Will the biases of the review board come out? I saw one television show that claimed to have "strong sexual content" and the only sexual content was two men kissing - and yet I've never seen *any* kind of "sexual content" warning, strong or otherwise, on shows where the equivalent (and more, really) heterosexual behavior is taking place.
What about with violence? "The Passion of the Christ" was basically just a snuff film to anyone who isn't Christian, and yet, because it was Jesus in there, it's okay. And then compare that to any run of the mill kill fest flick, and see how people complain about the violence, even though it's so much less than the torture doled out on screen in TPotC.
What about stuff like the South Park movie? Originally it was going to be given some absurd rating because of a few things - like the original title was "South Park: All Hell Breaks Loose" which got changed to the (somehow less "adult") title of Bigger, Longer and Uncut (which is only less adult if you're a fucking moron). In the "making of" extras, the creators were joking about how they took every complaint the ratings people had, made it 10x dirtier but *slightly* more subtle, and put it back in... And eventually got a lower rating because, basically, the board didn't get the jokes. (Not that I mind - I'm glad it had as wide an audience as possible because I do think the message was one worth spreading)
To me, I think it is enough to say "Sex, Violence, Drugs" or whatever and leave it at that. Trying to rank what's "worse" - consensual anal sex onscreen or obscured non consensual sex - eating another human being or hundreds of people being blown up in a battle on a beach - two men kissing, or a straight couple doing everything but fucking on-screen - is best left up to the individual.
This board thing is purely a political move. People are trying to show that they're doing something, even if that something is just a waste of time. The old ratings system was fine - just like any system, it didn't deal with people trying to get around it in unforseen ways.
Actually, he's done more than that. He has contacted a police department claiming that he was the target of an extortion attempt.
That's much more than being an asshole - that's filing a highly specific complaint with the police. He's an attorney, he contacted the police, and he accused the PA guys of being extortionists. Surely there's something wrong when a member of the bar lodges a false complaint with a police department?
If he was just some guy - not an attorney - he might be able to get away with the "I was just upset, I don't know what the legal definition of 'extortion' is - I just wanted them to stop harassing me." But he's an attorney, and he damn well should know better than to shoot off his mouth using terms that have a very specific legal meaning.
If PA were smart, they'd go after him for slander/libel/defamation - IANAL, so I don't know what the hell it is - but I imagine that there's got to be something protecting people from having false complaints made against them by assholes like Jack.
Very true - while it is certainly *possible* for someone to mod The Sims to make it pornographic, the game itself is not. Saying that, because people can mod games to make them hyperviolent or pornographic or both is like saying that we should ban text editors because someone could write "Mein Kampf" in them.
His using The Sims - a game that has had such huge exposure - was a critical mistake: So many of the people he's trying to reach have played it, and probably are wondering how the heck this guy can actually believe it's mind poison.
His positions do have a tiny sliver of a kernel of value to them: Children should not be able to directly purchase hyperviolent/sexually charged video games just as they cannot legally directly purchase pornography. If a parent is willing to let their kid play those kinds of games, then let the parent purchase the game. At least that way they have *some* idea of what their kids are up to.
But any validity gets blown out of the water by such absurdly stupid comments, such as his claiming the Beltway snipers "trained extensively with Halo," rescinding offers to donate to charity, and threatening legal action against people who have done far, far more good (albeit with far, far more profanity and fruit fucking) than he has.
There is a discussion that can be had here, but it's a discussion that should be had between rational people who actually hope to accomplish something positive - not reactionary fuckwits who lash out blindly at things that they clearly don't understand.
... that lesson being "Other people can write letters too, and they vastly outnumber you."
Of course, I imagine that poor, pathetic, insane Jack Thompson probably imagines that he's the noble martyr in some epic battle against the hordes of evildoers who want nothing more than to poison the minds of children, and will not, for a second, ponder the possibility that maybe he's wrong.
Jack, people you thought of as staunch allies have left you, are publically distancing themselves from you. Thousands of people are writing letters demanding that you be investigated while not a single solitary soul is writing the FBA saying you're a good guy. Most people might take that as a hint that their views are not actually meshing well with reality - hopefully you'll take this opportunity to take an assessment, get some help, and most importantly, shut the fuck up already.
She is addicted to Pogo - Word Whomp! especially.
Recently she had knee replacement surgery and, while in the recovery room was aparrently spelling out words: "Gear. G. E. A. R. Gear. Don't forget rage - Rage. R. A. G. E. Rage."
I'm trying to imagine her on XBox Live! and it sends me into giggle fits. She used to be a school teacher and was the disciplinarian - she'd whip those l33t k1dd3z into shape!
This should say: It is the nature of white humans to explore, conquer, and colonize.
Correction, you should have said: "I am completely fucking ignorant of history, and have no idea what I'm talking about."
Actually, yeah -
First, it can be expected to be taken seriously - after all, the guy is a lawyer, and he is filing a complaint with the police. So either he expects that statement to be taken seriously or he's filing a falce claim.
Second, he's an attorney lodging a complaint - extortion has a very specific legal definition and meaning, it isn't a word an attorny lodging a complaint with the police would be throwing around lightly. He either is actually accusing them of extortion or he is incompetent and is using the word incorrectly.
While they probably won't bother doing it, I do think it would be nice if PA did sue this guy. Hell, I'm halfway tempted to goad him into making some stupid ass complaint against me so that I can sue him, too. That should be much more fun than playing violent video games!
Thanks, Jack, for spawning an entirely new gaming genre: Jack Thompson Baiting. Just like Bear Baiting, except it's way funnier to watch you lose your shit.
Why should he hand over his title to some facist punk that will bank on his hard earned work. He's the brilliant guy that came up with this, he should run the company as he sees fits. Sometimes it's not about profit, but about ideals and vision.
Yeah - because when someone has ideals and vision and doesn't care about profits, they DEFINITELY wanna hook up with venture financing people. I hear those big money guys are all about dreams and couldn't give a fuck about profits.
The way to make it work would be to have "iTunes Standard" which just gives consumers 1 choice (because more choices would confuse many people) and then an "iTunes Expert" with extra choices.
The two are entirely different beasts. The price of one has nothing to do with the price of the other.
Realize that a CD of whatever band costs about as much as a DVD of some feature film. The costs of making the content for the CD are *vastly* smaller than the costs of making a feature film, the CD has MUCH less content (and most of it is filler) and there are usually not a lot of extras. Yet it costs... $20. The costs of making a feature film are huge - $100 million isn't uncommon nowadays. Some of them have a huge amount of extra content, and if it's a good movie, it isn't like some scenes are just filler, as on a CD. Yet it costs... $20.
I'm sure Apple did some heavy focus group stuff and found that people would pay more for a tv show, but not that much more. My guess is a lot of it has to do with replayability. I can listen to a song quite a few more times than I will watch a movie. So that's why I would pay almost as much for music as I would for a DVD.
But, my whole point is, other than them both being "entertainment" it isn't like they're actually all that similar from a marketing standpoint.
Let's also not forget that recording requires some level of planning, however small. I don't want to have to remember to record something - I've enough "important" things in my life to worry about without having to remember to set my recorder.
Is it $2 easier for me to download something when I want, to watch when I want, than to remember to set a recorder? For some things, sure - maybe a season premire I want to catch, or maybe for a show that has continuity.
I've bought stuff in MMOs several times, and each time it was worth it:
The first thing I bought was a Jedi account in Star Wars: Galaxies. I paid $100 for it and turned around and sold it for $1,000 on eBay a month later when I got bored with it. $900 profit and getting to play? Definitely worth it.
I've also bought gold in WoW - 2k gold for $75 bucks from some guy who was leaving the game. That amounts to about an hour at my day job and I avoided the endless boring as hell grind to get an epic mount and had plenty of cash left over to buy equipment.
Just like with most people who buy items/gold/etc, I did it to skip over a boring part so that I could enjoy the fun part.
I've noticed that most of the people who have issues with gold buyers would solve their issues if they just quit caring what other people have.
They'd have to be bonded - that's the protection.