What kind of fascist are you to tell sports teams which conditions they can put on the tickets they sell?
If you don't want to adhere to the conditions on the ticket, then don't buy it. But don't pretend that this is a liberty issue. It isn't. If you buy sports tickets then you agree to all sorts of things that are usually written on the ticket. Sometimes this includes a prohibition on resale.
Sports teams have their own reasons for pricing their tickets as they do and for wanting to prevent resales. Why should you be able to tell them how much to sell their good for and under what conditions it ought to be sold?
No it isn't. Corporations attach conditions to their sales all the time. If you buy a CD, you aren't allowed to copy it and sell the copies, even though it is your property. All sorts of goods are sold with conditions, and people freely agree to those conditions when they buy them.
Sports teams sell tickets with the condition that they are not to be resold for more than cost. If you don't like that condition, then you are free not to buy the tickets. There's nothing communist about it. Sports teams sell tickets below the market clearing price because it is in their long term interest to do so. Scalpers mess that up and harm the teams. They are nothing more than thieves.
Oh for God's sake. Stop repeating that old tripe and understand what is happening.
This is not an isolated piece of research. Other studies, including meta-studies show the same thing. Similarly, studies into the nature of political authoritarianism tend to show it as a mainly conservative affliction. Just because you don't like the facts doesn't mean they are going to go away, nor does it mean that the studies are biased. In the absence of any evidence that they are, it's reasonable to believe that they are simply true.
In fact if you were centre left or left wing, you would have known this for years. Conservatives are more afflicted with mental rigidity, and are less capable of appreciating subtlety and nuance in politics - you can tell this by talking to them or reading papers they have written. That doesn't mean that every conservative suffers from this affliction, but that as a group conservatives tend to.
There's an assumption in our society that people who adhere to the major political ideologies are on the whole equally intelligent and equally rational, but just disagree. It's politically incorrect to question this belief. However, it would be surprising if it were true, and the research that has been done on it tends to show that it isn't. It turns out that conservatives are less bright on the average than liberals. That's why most college professors are liberals, not because of some political conspiracy, but because you have to be smart to be a college professor. It's also why almost all of the smart conservatives you meet are not really conservatives, they are people who are economically conservative but who are social liberals. Social conservatives are almost to a man extremely thick people.
The truth is that if you are young and conservative, you are an asshole. If you are old and conservative, you're just not that smart.
In my entire life, I have never seen a "perception". I'm aware that scientists tell me that sight is a result of my retina being stimulated by light, etc. etc. But I don't "see" any of those.
The idea that there exist "perceptions" or "sense data" is a hangover from the time when people didn't really understand how the sense organs and the brain worked. Hardly any contemporary philosophers believe it now, as most endorse naturalized epistemology. It's a mistake to think that when I report my seeing something, that "my seeing something" is an object, like "my hand". Wittgenstein wrote a lot about this.
The idea of perceptions or sense data is about as well supported as the idea of a soul. There's just no evidence for it. I guess it lives on as a crutch for the childish relativism that so many people endorse. I guess that many folks just cannot handle the fact that reality isn't necessarily the way we would like it to be.
You have no idea how many philosophers despair at the number of scientists who still believe in sense datum empiricism and/or a Cartesian philosophy of mind. Then again, the number of scientists (and philosophers) who seem to be able to balance evolution and Christianity shames everyone who believes that man is in large part a rational animal.
I own a 360, but if I was buying today I would buy a PS3. The 360 is useless as a media centre since the fans make it sound like someone is revving a jet next door. Having said that, it is a reasonable gaming machine, if that's all you want it for.
The PS2 is still selling more than the 360.
BTW - Gidday Simon... still playing the guitar?
You must be joking.
If one site is shut down, some other method of sharing information will arise. It's already happened numerous times.
Trying to ban file sharing is like trying to ban masturbation. Good luck with that.
That's somewhat true, but I wouldn't change the way iTunes distributes music.
Like you, I prefer albums (and from the look of your post, the same ones you do), but there are a lot of groups that only ever did one or two decent things (like CCS version of "Whole Lotta Love"), and I only want that particular track.
However, I think that iTunes is much more conducive to album sales than people think, especially for new stuff. I've lost count of the number of times I've only wanted 3 or 4 songs off an album and bought them. Then iTunes says that I can complete the album for four or five dollars and get another 7 or 8 tracks. I'm always falling for that. In the old days if I bought the singles, I would have to pay full price for the album and that would discourage me from buying it. With iTunes plus buying an album is even better value, since the single tracks are more expensive and the albums are still the same price.
At least now we have a few months to decide whether we really want the whole thing.
I don't agree about the specialized tastes thing. It seems to me that music is more fragmented than ever. When I was a teenager people either listened to "rock" music, "pop" music, or "punk" music. Now there are all sorts of genres and subgenres and the record charts don't really have the same meaning that they once had. There probably will never be another phenomenon like the Beatles, where virtually every kid bought the record.
The record companies have also been pretty good at putting out a lot of old stuff with added value. I bought the Deluxe edition of "DIsraeli Gears" the other day, and it is superb value (a ton of extra tracks, radio performances, alternate versions, etc.). God knows how many copies that old record will sell. Not many I suspect, but whoever was responsible for putting that package together did an excellent job. Another good example is the box set of Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin. I didn't pay much for that, but you get the whole show, a book and a DVD of the film they made about it.
So, while not wanting to sound like a shill for the record companies, and acknowledging that they do put out quite a lot of crap and that some new stuff is clearly a ripoff, there is a lot of stuff that they take an extreme amount of care over, which probably doesn't make them much cash, and which is a real bargain for anyone who really likes music.
And yet another person who has bought into the countercultural critique of consumerism. I guess it's nice for you think you are so smart and apart from the unwashed sheeple. But the truth is that you are the one with the problem. Every time something popular is released, there will always be people who oppose it simply because they want to be different (just like those daft people who abandon their favourite band when they become popular). So what's happening is that you are subject to the same disease that the people you are criticising are. Being cool is about wanting to stand out and be different. You just want to stand out as an "individual" by resisting the iPhone "groupthink". In essence, you are no different from the people you are criticizing.
The only thing that's funnier and more pathetic than people who buy iPods to be "cool" are people who refuse to buy iPods to be "cool".
The truth is that the whole thing is a fantasy. Of course there are some people who buy iPhones and iPods as a fashion statement, but for iPods, that ship sailed a long time ago, since they are so widespread. Hell, old people have them, and that is usually the killer for the fashion obsessed.
The truth is that the iPhone and iPod are selling well because they are simple, well designed products that have been aimed at the ordinary user. That's the truth of the market. If you make something that is good, people will line up to buy it. The idea that the masses are brainwashed by advertisers and hype is simply a conspiracy theory.
So please stop accusing Apple customers of wanting to be cool, when you are doing the exact same thing.
The problem is that they don't really do anything about it, especially when it's at school. Bullying is an expression of a social hierarchy, and as has been pointed out (in "Why Nerds are Unpopular") social hierarchies in schools, unlike those in the real world, serve no real purpose, yet they still exist.
For teachers to really do something about bullying would mean an all out attack on the students' social hierarchy, and that requires so much effort that they just can't be bothered. I guess they figure that students only have to put up with it for a few years until they join the adult world where people tend to have a much higher standard of behaviour.
The problem is that kids can't appeal to past experience as adults can. Adults know that life won't always be like this, but for children that is harder to understand.
I guess it is a lot harder for kids who are gay or small. I can't say that I was bullied much at school, since I was one of the biggest guys there, but I saw it happen to other people and didn't like it.
The problem is not so much with the kids who are being bullied having to "toughen up", but with the fact that teachers have been stripped of their power to punish students for bullying (mainly by whining parents). People who engage in malicious slander about others know that the worst they might get is a suspension, and that isn't much of a deterrent. The police don't take it seriously, because it is just children. That leaves parents. In some cases parents will be horrified at what their children do to others and will punish them accordingly. But in most cases I can remember the parents are just as much assholes as their kids, and either don't care what their kids do, or approve of it (the sheer number of ignorant sociopaths in our societies always amazes me).
I guess the only solution is for the law to recognize that what counts as a crime between adults should also be the case for children. You can't beat up or slander another adult without consequences in most cases. The same should go for children. In fact it should be more strictly policed, since the effects of these things on children is far worse than on adults.
You can solve it by dividing avatar capital into various sorts.
Most games have only one sort of avatar capital, or one sort that is dominant. Usually it is character power. The more of this you have, the easier it is to kill other players. WoW has this in spades, since high level characters can usually kill anyone of low level in one or two shots.
Personally, I hate overpowered characters.
I think it would be much better if the statistical differences between characters weren't overwhelming, and things like faction reputation had more influence. In other words, characters who have been playing for a long time and have achieved a lot have much more freedom in the world than newer characters, even though the more established characters can't completely dominate the new ones. Warhammer may well be like this, which will be interesting.
Gear progression should be somewhat specialized. If you want to complete tiered raids or dungeons, you will need gear from each tier to do so, but that gear will not necessarily translate into a massive advantage over people who don't raid (e.g. you need massive resistance gear and so on).
Because its a game and is supposed to reward skill and effort??
Let's play chess and allow some noob to buy his way to grand master. I'm sure that won't annoy all the other grand masters.
Seriously, you must be some kind of sociopath not to understand how cheating at games is morally wrong. Ask yourself: what if everyone did that? Would there still be a point to the game?
The difference is that World of Warcraft is a game set up for a specific purpose.
It's different from Second Life, and games which are not set up as contests. I think most people would agree that if you make something in Second Life, it's yours and you have the right to sell it for whatever you can get. Some people might be annoyed that you are richer and have nicer looking stuff than them, but it doesn't really interfere with the purpose of the game. People may enage in competitive consumption in Second Life, but it doesn't fundamentally compromise the purpose of the game. In fact RL item trading may make the game better. It's similar to Forza Motorsport 2, where players can sell cars with customized paint jobs. I wouldn't care if people could sell their paint schemes for real money as it wouldn't make their cars go faster or give them an unfair advantage in the game.
WoW has a different purpose. Character advancement is the main aim of the game. You need to do it to stay competitive at PvP and to be able to participate in a lot of the content. People who pay RL money for it claim an unfair advantage and are frustrating the purpose of the game.
This can be proven using Kant's test. What if everyone bought gold and characters from farmers? There would be no point to the game content for anyone except the farmers (similarly, the institution of property would collapse if everyone was permitted to steal). WoW would simply become a PvP game where everyone more or less had the same gear. The vast majority of the game content would become meaningless, and all it would be is a very expensive version of Counterstrike.
Let's play a game. It's called chess. Now, let's change the rules so that either of us can buy back any piece we lose for 20 dollars.
Who would want to play such a game? Almost no-one except rich people.
Gold buyers are cheats. In World of Warcraft, your advancement in the game is supposed to reflect the time and skill (both physical and social) that you put into the game. When you see some character draped in epics go up against you in PvP, you can't complain if that person has simply devoted much more time to the game than you have. Progression is tied to effort and skill, and that is fair. But if people can simply buy characters or equipment, then that moves the competition outside of the game and into the real world. What's the point of having a virtual world if the competition transcends it?
Unfortunately, gold buying is endemic in WoW. It's one of the reasons I cancelled and will probably never play another MMO. I worked a long time on my character, and yet I would often see Night Elf Hunters (why almost always them?) draped in craftable epics and epic drops that cost thousands on the AH and with only a vague idea of how to play the game. My favourite would be people who had raiding gear but were unaware of the existence of the dungeons from which they had acquired such gear.
And there always seem to be a lot of people with inordinate amounts of gold and nonsensical explanations of how they got it.
It may well not be possible to run an MMO without endemic cheating (we can't even run a real world society without it), but that just serves to make MMOs rather unattractive to me.
Because nuclear weapons are inherently dangerous, that's why. They make a country less safe.
Bertrand Russell once said that you could expect a man to stay on a tightrope for a short time without falling off, but to expect him to stay on for 50 years would be ridiculous. THAT is the problem with nuclear deterrence. The New Zealand government crawled out from under the nuclear umbrella 20 years ago, and has remained out (to the lasting pride of its citizens). Their reasoning was that nuclear weapons, by their very nature, put you at an abominable risk, and that if there is no pressing necessity, you should not want to be defended by them.
I'm not naive, and, given the current situation, the possession of nuclear weapons by certain states is unavoidable and probably necessary. However, this is not the case for Britain, who has no need of them at all (nor do the folks across the ditch). Sure, it might be cheaper to defend yourself with nuclear weapons, but it is vastly less safe. It's like those people who hoard up masses of guns to defend themselves against criminals.
My own view is that it is highly likely that there will be a limited nuclear exchange in the next 20 years. Probably between Israel and one of the Arab states, or (more likely) between India and Pakistan. At that point it will become obvious to everyone (in a way that it is obvious to rational people now and was so back in 1945) that war will have to be abolished forever, irrespective of how much we wish we could use it to solve our problems.
You're attributing posts to me that I did not make.
My claim was that Canada did not need a cold war style military because it had no enemies. It follows that you have no threat of invasion if you have no enemies, but the converse does not necessarily follow.
Someone said that Canada does not need to be under threat of invasion to have enemies. That's true. Nevertheless, Canada has no enemies per se. Name one country that is likely to use conventional military force against specifically Canadian interests that would not merit a UN Security Council authorized response.
That's right. There isn't one. That's why Canada's military needs to be geared towards UN missions (aside from Coast Guard stuff).
Canada is a relatively civilized country that solves its differences with other countries through diplomacy and appeal to international norms. Any other country knows that the Canadian government will be happy to talk over disputes and that Canada is regarded as a good international citizen.
The difference between Canada and the US is that Canada does not have a vast military presence throughout the world, and does not have a record of acting unilaterally. Plenty of other countries might disagree with the Canadians, or dislike their way of life, but pretty much every country respects Canada.
There's a big difference between now and 1933. European states had been intermittently at war with each other ever since they were formed. Plenty of people knew that the Versailles conference hadn't solved anything, and that the same thing was bound to happen again. But war between European states is today unthinkable, and this is one of the major diplomatic achievements in history. War between Britain and Germany is about as likely as war between England and Scotland.
The only countries that could conceivably pose a threat to Britain are Russia and China. No one else can currently threaten Britain, and the idea that mickey mouse states like Iran could ever do so is ridiculous. Russian interests would not be served by war with the EU, and in any case the EU is rich enough and they are poor enough to be bought off with trade agreements and possible membership. The Chinese simply aren't interested in starting a war. They are probably the most restrained country when it comes to nuclear weapons, holding just enough for a deterrent, and they have more than enough problems trying to drag their own country into the modern age to worry about war with Britain, which is far away and cannot threaten China at all. Whatever you think of Israel's nuclear arsenal, at least they have an obvious reason to have one.
As someone else said, threats these days are from non-state actors, who will not be deterred by Trident. Trident is a monument to the British inability to accept that Britain is now a small country with diminishing clout, and one whose citizens are not served by pathetic attempts to maintain "credibility". That money would be better spent on solving British social problems, or by giving it back to the taxpayers.
The problem with the precautionary principle is that it leads to absurd outcomes. There are any number of terrible things that have a minute chance of happening, and which it would be very expensive to protect against. If you take the PP seriously, then you're like that guy who's worried about crime who can only afford Kraft Dinner because his house is surrounded by razor wire, floodlights, attack dogs and a private milita. Everyone can see how ridiculous that is, yet the defence policies of many nations are similarly irrational.
Slashdot Mirror
What kind of fascist are you to tell sports teams which conditions they can put on the tickets they sell?
If you don't want to adhere to the conditions on the ticket, then don't buy it. But don't pretend that this is a liberty issue. It isn't. If you buy sports tickets then you agree to all sorts of things that are usually written on the ticket. Sometimes this includes a prohibition on resale.
Sports teams have their own reasons for pricing their tickets as they do and for wanting to prevent resales. Why should you be able to tell them how much to sell their good for and under what conditions it ought to be sold?
No it isn't. Corporations attach conditions to their sales all the time. If you buy a CD, you aren't allowed to copy it and sell the copies, even though it is your property. All sorts of goods are sold with conditions, and people freely agree to those conditions when they buy them.
Sports teams sell tickets with the condition that they are not to be resold for more than cost. If you don't like that condition, then you are free not to buy the tickets. There's nothing communist about it. Sports teams sell tickets below the market clearing price because it is in their long term interest to do so. Scalpers mess that up and harm the teams. They are nothing more than thieves.
Oh for God's sake. Stop repeating that old tripe and understand what is happening.
This is not an isolated piece of research. Other studies, including meta-studies show the same thing. Similarly, studies into the nature of political authoritarianism tend to show it as a mainly conservative affliction. Just because you don't like the facts doesn't mean they are going to go away, nor does it mean that the studies are biased. In the absence of any evidence that they are, it's reasonable to believe that they are simply true.
In fact if you were centre left or left wing, you would have known this for years. Conservatives are more afflicted with mental rigidity, and are less capable of appreciating subtlety and nuance in politics - you can tell this by talking to them or reading papers they have written. That doesn't mean that every conservative suffers from this affliction, but that as a group conservatives tend to.
There's an assumption in our society that people who adhere to the major political ideologies are on the whole equally intelligent and equally rational, but just disagree. It's politically incorrect to question this belief. However, it would be surprising if it were true, and the research that has been done on it tends to show that it isn't. It turns out that conservatives are less bright on the average than liberals. That's why most college professors are liberals, not because of some political conspiracy, but because you have to be smart to be a college professor. It's also why almost all of the smart conservatives you meet are not really conservatives, they are people who are economically conservative but who are social liberals. Social conservatives are almost to a man extremely thick people.
The truth is that if you are young and conservative, you are an asshole. If you are old and conservative, you're just not that smart.
So you've given up on the chair throwing thing.
;)
We know it's you.
Really?
In my entire life, I have never seen a "perception". I'm aware that scientists tell me that sight is a result of my retina being stimulated by light, etc. etc. But I don't "see" any of those.
The idea that there exist "perceptions" or "sense data" is a hangover from the time when people didn't really understand how the sense organs and the brain worked. Hardly any contemporary philosophers believe it now, as most endorse naturalized epistemology. It's a mistake to think that when I report my seeing something, that "my seeing something" is an object, like "my hand". Wittgenstein wrote a lot about this.
The idea of perceptions or sense data is about as well supported as the idea of a soul. There's just no evidence for it. I guess it lives on as a crutch for the childish relativism that so many people endorse. I guess that many folks just cannot handle the fact that reality isn't necessarily the way we would like it to be.
You have no idea how many philosophers despair at the number of scientists who still believe in sense datum empiricism and/or a Cartesian philosophy of mind. Then again, the number of scientists (and philosophers) who seem to be able to balance evolution and Christianity shames everyone who believes that man is in large part a rational animal.
Not on here. You, Andrew J and I (LC) shared an office and a tutoring job when you were at WU. I remember you practising guitar in the office.
I own a 360, but if I was buying today I would buy a PS3. The 360 is useless as a media centre since the fans make it sound like someone is revving a jet next door. Having said that, it is a reasonable gaming machine, if that's all you want it for. The PS2 is still selling more than the 360. BTW - Gidday Simon... still playing the guitar?
It's a forgiveable mistake.
When they're being gang raped, people often can't keep straight in their heads who was doing what at what time.
You must be joking. If one site is shut down, some other method of sharing information will arise. It's already happened numerous times. Trying to ban file sharing is like trying to ban masturbation. Good luck with that.
Old and busted.
Carlos Mencia already did that.
Not to say that your friend isn't a unique individual, but every Led Zeppelin fan I know, including myself, has everything they ever put out.
And six versions of Communication Breakdown is definitely not enough.
That's somewhat true, but I wouldn't change the way iTunes distributes music.
Like you, I prefer albums (and from the look of your post, the same ones you do), but there are a lot of groups that only ever did one or two decent things (like CCS version of "Whole Lotta Love"), and I only want that particular track.
However, I think that iTunes is much more conducive to album sales than people think, especially for new stuff. I've lost count of the number of times I've only wanted 3 or 4 songs off an album and bought them. Then iTunes says that I can complete the album for four or five dollars and get another 7 or 8 tracks. I'm always falling for that. In the old days if I bought the singles, I would have to pay full price for the album and that would discourage me from buying it. With iTunes plus buying an album is even better value, since the single tracks are more expensive and the albums are still the same price.
At least now we have a few months to decide whether we really want the whole thing.
I don't agree about the specialized tastes thing. It seems to me that music is more fragmented than ever. When I was a teenager people either listened to "rock" music, "pop" music, or "punk" music. Now there are all sorts of genres and subgenres and the record charts don't really have the same meaning that they once had. There probably will never be another phenomenon like the Beatles, where virtually every kid bought the record.
The record companies have also been pretty good at putting out a lot of old stuff with added value. I bought the Deluxe edition of "DIsraeli Gears" the other day, and it is superb value (a ton of extra tracks, radio performances, alternate versions, etc.). God knows how many copies that old record will sell. Not many I suspect, but whoever was responsible for putting that package together did an excellent job. Another good example is the box set of Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin. I didn't pay much for that, but you get the whole show, a book and a DVD of the film they made about it.
So, while not wanting to sound like a shill for the record companies, and acknowledging that they do put out quite a lot of crap and that some new stuff is clearly a ripoff, there is a lot of stuff that they take an extreme amount of care over, which probably doesn't make them much cash, and which is a real bargain for anyone who really likes music.
Slashdotters should have sympathy with Clinton, since they lie about having had sex all the time.
And yet another person who has bought into the countercultural critique of consumerism. I guess it's nice for you think you are so smart and apart from the unwashed sheeple. But the truth is that you are the one with the problem. Every time something popular is released, there will always be people who oppose it simply because they want to be different (just like those daft people who abandon their favourite band when they become popular). So what's happening is that you are subject to the same disease that the people you are criticising are. Being cool is about wanting to stand out and be different. You just want to stand out as an "individual" by resisting the iPhone "groupthink". In essence, you are no different from the people you are criticizing.
The only thing that's funnier and more pathetic than people who buy iPods to be "cool" are people who refuse to buy iPods to be "cool".
The truth is that the whole thing is a fantasy. Of course there are some people who buy iPhones and iPods as a fashion statement, but for iPods, that ship sailed a long time ago, since they are so widespread. Hell, old people have them, and that is usually the killer for the fashion obsessed.
The truth is that the iPhone and iPod are selling well because they are simple, well designed products that have been aimed at the ordinary user. That's the truth of the market. If you make something that is good, people will line up to buy it. The idea that the masses are brainwashed by advertisers and hype is simply a conspiracy theory.
So please stop accusing Apple customers of wanting to be cool, when you are doing the exact same thing.
No. In ancient Hebrew he would have written "YH DD T" or more likely "YHWH WS HR LLZ!"
The problem is that they don't really do anything about it, especially when it's at school. Bullying is an expression of a social hierarchy, and as has been pointed out (in "Why Nerds are Unpopular") social hierarchies in schools, unlike those in the real world, serve no real purpose, yet they still exist.
For teachers to really do something about bullying would mean an all out attack on the students' social hierarchy, and that requires so much effort that they just can't be bothered. I guess they figure that students only have to put up with it for a few years until they join the adult world where people tend to have a much higher standard of behaviour.
The problem is that kids can't appeal to past experience as adults can. Adults know that life won't always be like this, but for children that is harder to understand.
I guess it is a lot harder for kids who are gay or small. I can't say that I was bullied much at school, since I was one of the biggest guys there, but I saw it happen to other people and didn't like it.
The problem is not so much with the kids who are being bullied having to "toughen up", but with the fact that teachers have been stripped of their power to punish students for bullying (mainly by whining parents). People who engage in malicious slander about others know that the worst they might get is a suspension, and that isn't much of a deterrent. The police don't take it seriously, because it is just children. That leaves parents. In some cases parents will be horrified at what their children do to others and will punish them accordingly. But in most cases I can remember the parents are just as much assholes as their kids, and either don't care what their kids do, or approve of it (the sheer number of ignorant sociopaths in our societies always amazes me).
I guess the only solution is for the law to recognize that what counts as a crime between adults should also be the case for children. You can't beat up or slander another adult without consequences in most cases. The same should go for children. In fact it should be more strictly policed, since the effects of these things on children is far worse than on adults.
I was hoping for one in whom the force was strong.
Props to you sir
You can solve it by dividing avatar capital into various sorts.
Most games have only one sort of avatar capital, or one sort that is dominant. Usually it is character power. The more of this you have, the easier it is to kill other players. WoW has this in spades, since high level characters can usually kill anyone of low level in one or two shots.
Personally, I hate overpowered characters.
I think it would be much better if the statistical differences between characters weren't overwhelming, and things like faction reputation had more influence. In other words, characters who have been playing for a long time and have achieved a lot have much more freedom in the world than newer characters, even though the more established characters can't completely dominate the new ones. Warhammer may well be like this, which will be interesting.
Gear progression should be somewhat specialized. If you want to complete tiered raids or dungeons, you will need gear from each tier to do so, but that gear will not necessarily translate into a massive advantage over people who don't raid (e.g. you need massive resistance gear and so on).
Yes, because someone whose username includes the Islamic name for Satan is likely to be a paragon of moral probity.
Because its a game and is supposed to reward skill and effort??
Let's play chess and allow some noob to buy his way to grand master. I'm sure that won't annoy all the other grand masters.
Seriously, you must be some kind of sociopath not to understand how cheating at games is morally wrong. Ask yourself: what if everyone did that? Would there still be a point to the game?
The difference is that World of Warcraft is a game set up for a specific purpose.
It's different from Second Life, and games which are not set up as contests. I think most people would agree that if you make something in Second Life, it's yours and you have the right to sell it for whatever you can get. Some people might be annoyed that you are richer and have nicer looking stuff than them, but it doesn't really interfere with the purpose of the game. People may enage in competitive consumption in Second Life, but it doesn't fundamentally compromise the purpose of the game. In fact RL item trading may make the game better. It's similar to Forza Motorsport 2, where players can sell cars with customized paint jobs. I wouldn't care if people could sell their paint schemes for real money as it wouldn't make their cars go faster or give them an unfair advantage in the game.
WoW has a different purpose. Character advancement is the main aim of the game. You need to do it to stay competitive at PvP and to be able to participate in a lot of the content. People who pay RL money for it claim an unfair advantage and are frustrating the purpose of the game.
This can be proven using Kant's test. What if everyone bought gold and characters from farmers? There would be no point to the game content for anyone except the farmers (similarly, the institution of property would collapse if everyone was permitted to steal). WoW would simply become a PvP game where everyone more or less had the same gear. The vast majority of the game content would become meaningless, and all it would be is a very expensive version of Counterstrike.
Let's play a game. It's called chess. Now, let's change the rules so that either of us can buy back any piece we lose for 20 dollars.
Who would want to play such a game? Almost no-one except rich people.
Gold buyers are cheats. In World of Warcraft, your advancement in the game is supposed to reflect the time and skill (both physical and social) that you put into the game. When you see some character draped in epics go up against you in PvP, you can't complain if that person has simply devoted much more time to the game than you have. Progression is tied to effort and skill, and that is fair. But if people can simply buy characters or equipment, then that moves the competition outside of the game and into the real world. What's the point of having a virtual world if the competition transcends it?
Unfortunately, gold buying is endemic in WoW. It's one of the reasons I cancelled and will probably never play another MMO. I worked a long time on my character, and yet I would often see Night Elf Hunters (why almost always them?) draped in craftable epics and epic drops that cost thousands on the AH and with only a vague idea of how to play the game. My favourite would be people who had raiding gear but were unaware of the existence of the dungeons from which they had acquired such gear.
And there always seem to be a lot of people with inordinate amounts of gold and nonsensical explanations of how they got it.
It may well not be possible to run an MMO without endemic cheating (we can't even run a real world society without it), but that just serves to make MMOs rather unattractive to me.
Because nuclear weapons are inherently dangerous, that's why. They make a country less safe.
Bertrand Russell once said that you could expect a man to stay on a tightrope for a short time without falling off, but to expect him to stay on for 50 years would be ridiculous. THAT is the problem with nuclear deterrence. The New Zealand government crawled out from under the nuclear umbrella 20 years ago, and has remained out (to the lasting pride of its citizens). Their reasoning was that nuclear weapons, by their very nature, put you at an abominable risk, and that if there is no pressing necessity, you should not want to be defended by them.
I'm not naive, and, given the current situation, the possession of nuclear weapons by certain states is unavoidable and probably necessary. However, this is not the case for Britain, who has no need of them at all (nor do the folks across the ditch). Sure, it might be cheaper to defend yourself with nuclear weapons, but it is vastly less safe. It's like those people who hoard up masses of guns to defend themselves against criminals.
My own view is that it is highly likely that there will be a limited nuclear exchange in the next 20 years. Probably between Israel and one of the Arab states, or (more likely) between India and Pakistan. At that point it will become obvious to everyone (in a way that it is obvious to rational people now and was so back in 1945) that war will have to be abolished forever, irrespective of how much we wish we could use it to solve our problems.
You're attributing posts to me that I did not make.
My claim was that Canada did not need a cold war style military because it had no enemies. It follows that you have no threat of invasion if you have no enemies, but the converse does not necessarily follow.
Someone said that Canada does not need to be under threat of invasion to have enemies. That's true. Nevertheless, Canada has no enemies per se. Name one country that is likely to use conventional military force against specifically Canadian interests that would not merit a UN Security Council authorized response.
That's right. There isn't one. That's why Canada's military needs to be geared towards UN missions (aside from Coast Guard stuff).
Canada is a relatively civilized country that solves its differences with other countries through diplomacy and appeal to international norms. Any other country knows that the Canadian government will be happy to talk over disputes and that Canada is regarded as a good international citizen.
The difference between Canada and the US is that Canada does not have a vast military presence throughout the world, and does not have a record of acting unilaterally. Plenty of other countries might disagree with the Canadians, or dislike their way of life, but pretty much every country respects Canada.
FTR I am not a Canadian.
There's a big difference between now and 1933. European states had been intermittently at war with each other ever since they were formed. Plenty of people knew that the Versailles conference hadn't solved anything, and that the same thing was bound to happen again. But war between European states is today unthinkable, and this is one of the major diplomatic achievements in history. War between Britain and Germany is about as likely as war between England and Scotland.
The only countries that could conceivably pose a threat to Britain are Russia and China. No one else can currently threaten Britain, and the idea that mickey mouse states like Iran could ever do so is ridiculous. Russian interests would not be served by war with the EU, and in any case the EU is rich enough and they are poor enough to be bought off with trade agreements and possible membership. The Chinese simply aren't interested in starting a war. They are probably the most restrained country when it comes to nuclear weapons, holding just enough for a deterrent, and they have more than enough problems trying to drag their own country into the modern age to worry about war with Britain, which is far away and cannot threaten China at all. Whatever you think of Israel's nuclear arsenal, at least they have an obvious reason to have one.
As someone else said, threats these days are from non-state actors, who will not be deterred by Trident. Trident is a monument to the British inability to accept that Britain is now a small country with diminishing clout, and one whose citizens are not served by pathetic attempts to maintain "credibility". That money would be better spent on solving British social problems, or by giving it back to the taxpayers.
The problem with the precautionary principle is that it leads to absurd outcomes. There are any number of terrible things that have a minute chance of happening, and which it would be very expensive to protect against. If you take the PP seriously, then you're like that guy who's worried about crime who can only afford Kraft Dinner because his house is surrounded by razor wire, floodlights, attack dogs and a private milita. Everyone can see how ridiculous that is, yet the defence policies of many nations are similarly irrational.