Bah, old hat. I prefer my desktop lap! Quite simple to get really.
1) Eat a bag of cheetos.
2) Repeat step 1 until your lap is large enough to comfortably support something the size of a desktop computer.
No need to worry about the expense or inferior performance of a laptop, with the added bonus that no matter where you go you can set it up without having to carry any extra addons!
No no no, re-read what I wrote. For clarity I will bold for emphasis:
There was NO porn minigame on the DISK
There WAS a minigame featuring a sexual situation on par with an R rated movie
My point was two-fold: (1) The fact that the game was on the disk was irrelevant as it was not accessible without hacking save files and (2) even if the game was accessible through normal gameplay it should not have received an AO rating because there is far worse sexual content in R rated movies.
Right, the minigame was on the disk. I didn't deny that. However the minigame is not available unless you hack a save file to make it available. Under normal playing conditions you can never unlock the mini-game.
I've said it once and I'll say it again: The only thing R*/TT did wrong in the whole Hot Coffee debacle is not calling out the people making a huge fuss over it on their bullshit. Instead they meekly hung their heads in shame and took their punishment, implicitly admitting guilt.
There was NO porn minigame in GTA:SA
There was NO porn minigame on the DISK
There WAS a minigame featuring a sexual situation on par with an R rated movie which was not accessible without hacking save files on a proprietary memory card.
The scary thing about the situation isn't that a game had its rating changed from M to AO and the company suffered. The scary thing is that the entire fiasco, the backlash, the outrage, and the re-rating was predicated on a complete and patent falsehood and people who should know better bought into it.
If good and evil are subjective...then why should be even bother with trying to see both sides? Why bother trying to make peace? If there's no such thing as an objective good to strive for and follow then why the fuck don't we just kill 'em all? As long as we can justify it with our subjective morality, we're not doing anything wrong!
If there is no such thing as objective good and evil then there is no reason to change our viewpoint. There is no reason to make peace. There is no purpose in it because there is no goal to achieve, no standard to follow. You say we shouldn't label people as evil in the name of trying to achieve peace. Is peace objectively good? Or is that your own subjective opinion of the way things should be? By your arguments, it could only be the latter. In that case, your argument is completely pointless. More people in this country clearly have the subjective opinion that the "war" we're in is morally justified. Why should they follow your subjective opinion of what is good over the one they currently have? By your logic, the only thing for our country to do then is to continue the fighting, not make peace.
You do, however, make a good point in pointing out the current subjectivity of morality of many American citizens. Their morality is based on emotions and feelings, not reason and facts. What we need to do is reject the emotional personalizing of what we call good and evil and use our ability to use logic and objective facts of the world around us to figure out what that objective good is. And that's actually what you are claiming we should do even while you claim there is no such thing as objective good and evil. You can't have it both ways. You can either argue that we should strive for peace because peace is a good thing, or you can argue that all morality is subjective and thus provide absolutely no reason for people to follow your subjective claim that we should strive for peace.
"They have tweaked things," said Olson, "but there is blatant pornography on the best-selling game of the year. That says that the ratings system didn't work."
But there's NOT. It is a FLAT OUT LIE That GTA:SA contained pornography. As soon as someone makes that claim everything else they say becomes null and void. They have proven that they are not qualified to speak about the subject. It is absolutely pointless to talk about anything else related to the subject until people actually know what the fuck they're talking about.
Yeah it's really rough to be a straight, white, Christian male in this country. It's too bad that no one who fits that profile could ever gain political power or be appointed to the Supreme Court or be in charge of a Fortune 500 company or anything like that.
Great, so 1% of white christian males have a shot at being wildly successful. What about the remaining 99% of us that have as much chance of getting on the SCOTUS or becoming a majorly successful CEO as every other race or gender? The ones without the political, industrial, or familial connections necessary to move up the socio-economic ladder. Are we to be penalized because the vast minority of people that actually become successful are white christian males?
Yes, there are people with 40 meter advantages in a 100 meter dash. Yes, they are overwhelmingly white males. And they account for a very small percentage of people overall.
Tell me, what advantage inherent in the system gives me an advantage as a white male? Do online job application sites make it easier for whites? Is the coding racist? No. Any problem in the system is with the people in the system. And Im not about to claim that there aren't bad people in the system, because there are. But you can't legislate away discrimination.
And how is first to file any better in the long run? If the PO allowed for cheap and easy filing so that a small research house could file as soon as possible so that another company cannot hijack their patent you've created an entirely new problem. Large corporations will attempt to patent anything and everything because they will be afraid that someone else will come along and see an idea they have that the corporation does not think is patentable or novel. That other person then goes, files a patent, and boom, the corporation now owes liscencing fees on their own idea. In first to invent they could hold up their idea and show that they had it years before someone else tried to come along and patent it. Any attempt to discourage mass filing of junk patents (e.g. penalties for rejected patents) will make the entire process completely arbitrary as any potential filer will have to make the decision between risking rejection and having someone else patent their idea. As a result, the PO would be flooded with even more junk patents while making profiting off of someone else's idea even easier.
Irrelevant. You wouldn't resort to violence because you dislike the words they said, you would resort to violence because of what you think they might do.
Art depecting things that would be considered highly offensive is nothing new. Crosses in jars of urine, collages of the Virgin Mary made up of porno images, etc. But I don't see Christians rioting in the street, setting things on fire, and calling for people to die over these things, do you?
They tried peaceful means first. Violence only came later.
"We tried to do things peacefully, but they FORCED us to set fire to their embassies and attack law enforcement officers! It's not OUR fault! Honest!"
Please.... No matter how offensive something might be, no matter what they may have tried, nothing gives someone the right to resort to violence because they dislike what someone else said.
You could argue that, and technically the behavior might become intuitive, but it's still different. For example, were someone to tell me that, say, a family member of theirs died, I know that the "proper" response is something like "I'm sorry for your loss." Someone else, however, would respond that way not because they've learned the behavior, but because they feel sad and want to express their feelings to the other person.
To use a less morbid example, imagine two players playing Starcraft. The first one is a natural wizard at it. The second one emulates the style of the first and becomes just as good as him. Now ask the first one why he used a particular strategy and he might respond with a tactical explanation. Ask the second why he did the same thing and he might respond "Because that's what works." To the outside world they may look identical, but there are large differences in their fundamental understanding of the game. And if something changes, someone does something unexpected or a change to the game affects strategies, the first player is going to be able to adapt easily. The second player will have to resort to trial and error or mimicry to come up with a new strategy. Now imagine that changes and unexpected events occur on a regular basis. The second player would have no way to keep up.
Some autistics/aspies may be able to analyze a situation enough to make it intuitive, but they probably don't understand the underlying "why" and by and large cannot adapt to new situations.
And this is why I think that ALL machine readable biometric measures will eventually fail. The inherent problem with all biometrics is there is NO method to resecure your authentication method once a compromise has occurred. If someone steals your password you can change it easily. If someone steals a physical key, the lock can be replaced. (A bit costly, but doable). If someone steals your fingerprint, from that point on for the rest of your life you cannot be guaranteed security in a process that uses your fingerprint as authentication. Worse yet, you leave your fingerprints EVERYWHERE. I don't know about you, but I don't leave hundreds of copies of my passwords lying around every day. There's also the argument that it isn't feasable to create fake fingers to pass fingerprint authentication with someone else's prints, but the data has to get digitized somewhere. Once it's all ones and zeros someone doesn't need to create a fake finger. They just need to figure out the right place to put their ones and zeros.
I'm still trying to figure out how that's a benefit:).
It isn't always. Sometimes people say the right thing and sometimes they screw up and say the wrong thing. But they are saying something. They can talk naturally.
There is a marked difference between having nothing to talk about and not being able to talk about something. There is also a large difference between talking 'about something' and talking 'with someone.' What do I mean by that? Well, I can, for example, have a conversation about programming. Or computer hardware. Or a video game. Or football. I can talk about specific subjects that I know about. But sit me down with someone and I have no idea how to act. Nothing comes to mind. If they happen to bring up a subject I can talk about that thing, but once we've talked about whatever subject it is, I'm back to drawing a blank. Even when I have something I want to say or ask it is very hard for me to get it out. Back in high school I would literally have to work up the nerve for 5 or 10 minutes just to ask someone in my class what I missed while I was sick. I'm a little better now, but even something as simple as calling up a friend to see if they want to go do something is a daunting task for me. I generally have to run over several possibile responses in my head before I ask someone a question so that I can respond no matter how they react. If they react in a way that I didn't think about, I blank out. It's not like a bunch of possible responses are running through my head and I reject them. It's not like I have a bunch of unrelated thoughts in my head. It's like someone sucked everything out of my brain and all that's left is a vacuum.
I love screwing with them by ignoring their 'between the lines' cues and deliberately feeding them 'cues' of my own to make them respond 'wrong'. You would then say I 'lack social skills'
I'm really not sure where you're getting this from. If you have the ability to choose to ignore clues and non-verbal communication then you must have the ability to read it if you wish. What I am describing is not someone who chooses to ignore clues, but someone to whom they literally don't exist. For example:
Other Person: "The movie's at 3, we should probably be leaving pretty soon."
Me: "Yeah, probably." Sits and does nothing
Other Person: "I mean let's leave now."
Me: "Oh, well why didn't you say so?"
Now you may choose to deliberately ignore the implication in the first sentence for the purpose of annoying someone. But some people can't pick up on something that's even that obvious. Looking at the words in print I can pick it up, but if someone said that to me in real life I would have a seriously difficult time trying to determine if they meant "Let's leave now" or "Let's leave in 5 minutes." This is also a pretty simplistic example. In a more complex conversation I probably have no chance.
It is far more than lying and bullshitting. In a social situation, most people can talk naturally. They simply say what comes to mind. For someone with autism, they have little to no intuation. They literally have no concept of what to say or do. If it is severe enough, the only way they can perform in social situations is to observe how others act and react and mimic them when they are in similar situations. This is much more analytical than intuitive to do. If they can't choose a reaction they can't create one on the fly and will just freeze and say very little ("ah, i see") or nothing at all.
They also generally have a difficult time understanding and picking up on more subtle forms of communication. They only hear the words. They don't hear the emotion or inflection or notice the facial expressions, and they have a difficult time reading (or listening as it were) between the lines. Furthermore, they have a difficult time extrapolating the thoughts and feelings of another person. They can't "put themselves in the other person's shoes." Basically, if something isn't said, it doesn't exist to them. That is a crippling disadvantage in social situations.
Generally from what I've read, Asperger's is classified in the same spectrum as Autism. Some say they're the same thing with differing severities, others say they're simply closely related. I would not be surprised at all if the same genetic behaviors found in autism are shared by Asperger's.
No, I don't think anyone says "entrapped" because this case has as much to do with entrapment as it has to do with tea in China. Entrapment requires an agent of the government to coerce someone into comitting a crime they would not otherwise commit. In this case, the guilty party offered the source for sale on his website. This is like someone putting up a sign saying "Crack For Sale" in their yard. He was offering regardless of police interference. That's as far from coercion as you can get.
According to that page, in the US over 50% believe we arrived in the world just as described in the Bible... ugh!
That statistic seems very very shady to me. In 2001 in the US we had 26% Catholic and 54% Other Christian. The official stance of the Catholic Church is against a literal young-earth interpretation. I don't know the specifics for any other Christian denomenations, but I know some support it and some don't. Assuming that the number of Christians has not increased (if it decreased it would only strengthen my point), in order for over 50% of the US population to believe in a literal young-earth interpretation it would require that either less than 7% of all non-Catholic Christians believe in a literal young-earth interpretation or that a significant amount of Catholics believe something more conservative than the official Vatican ruiling. Given the nature of the US Catholic Church to be much more liberal than the Vatican, and the fact that I'm pretty sure more than 7% of non-Catholic Christians do not believe in a literal young-earth interpretation, I have a VERY hard time believing that over 50% of Americans believe in a literal young-earth interpretation of Genesis. I think the much more likely solution is that the cited poll asked a question which induced significant bias or misinterpreted all answers of "Creationism" as being literal young-earth creationism. Unfortunately the article does not link to the details of the cited poll so I can't tell, but I strongly encourage everyone to take any poll about belief in creationism with a grain of salt until they're sure that the poll asks a fair question and correctly distinguishes literal young-earth creationism from old-earth creationism.
Ok, maybe they weren't archetypes in the strict sense, but they were something pretty similar. Heal channies might suck as heavy healers, but they could still get all the healer base buffs and 3 or 4 interleaving prayers of mending into their nuking could add a not insignificant amount of healing to a group. They could also spot heal if need be (more in pve than pvp as it would be more beneficial to nuke in pvp where a channys weaker heals couldnt make as much difference).
Actually I think it's just the priest that throws everything off. Disregarding the priest, all healer bases were roughly the same healing/damage capabilities. Channies were a bit more damage oriented while the others could generally heal/buff/support a little better. The other base classes are similar. Every mage base was magic damage oriented for example (well, except the bard). They each had their own strengths and weaknesses, or little quirks, but they all served the same purpose in a group. Again, with the fighter or rogue base class, most classes derived from them followed the same principle as the others, big physical damage and tank, or stealthy physical damage dealer respectively. There are exceptions of course, such as nuking fighterlocks, deflars, or sentinel bombs, but for the most part people of a certain base class performed a certain role. Like I said, while you may not be able to consider it strictly as archetyping, it is very similar.
I think it's worth pointing out that Shadowbane did this same thing several years before EQ2.
Ok, ok, yes, I am just saying this because I liked SB (I stand by my belief that it would have been one of the best MMOs ever if it could have gotten past the technical/lag issues). You could start out as one of 4 types (fighter, mage, rogue, or healer...hmm...interesting). At level 10 you chose your class, and at level 20 you could apply "disciplines" (like subclasses). Not only was there a lot of diversity between classes there was a lot of diversity within classes.
Now EQ2 may do it better than SB did (there was not enough diversity in disciplines and some were just plain worthless, some classes were ultra-gimp, there was no reason not to pick certain races for certain classes), but it wasn't the first. That being said, I certainly hope that EQ2 does decently enough that more games come out with this style of class structure. One of my big complaints about WoW is that there are only 8 classes and not a huge deal of diversity within those classes. Talents help some (there's a huge difference between a Soul Link/Afflic lock and a SM/Ruin, for example) but some classes don't have much choice (e.g. Shamans and Mana Tide) if they want to do raids.
Slashdot Mirror
Bah, old hat. I prefer my desktop lap! Quite simple to get really.
1) Eat a bag of cheetos.
2) Repeat step 1 until your lap is large enough to comfortably support something the size of a desktop computer.
No need to worry about the expense or inferior performance of a laptop, with the added bonus that no matter where you go you can set it up without having to carry any extra addons!
No no no, re-read what I wrote. For clarity I will bold for emphasis:
There was NO porn minigame on the DISK
There WAS a minigame featuring a sexual situation on par with an R rated movie
My point was two-fold: (1) The fact that the game was on the disk was irrelevant as it was not accessible without hacking save files and (2) even if the game was accessible through normal gameplay it should not have received an AO rating because there is far worse sexual content in R rated movies.
Right, the minigame was on the disk. I didn't deny that. However the minigame is not available unless you hack a save file to make it available. Under normal playing conditions you can never unlock the mini-game.
I've said it once and I'll say it again: The only thing R*/TT did wrong in the whole Hot Coffee debacle is not calling out the people making a huge fuss over it on their bullshit. Instead they meekly hung their heads in shame and took their punishment, implicitly admitting guilt.
There was NO porn minigame in GTA:SA
There was NO porn minigame on the DISK
There WAS a minigame featuring a sexual situation on par with an R rated movie which was not accessible without hacking save files on a proprietary memory card.
The scary thing about the situation isn't that a game had its rating changed from M to AO and the company suffered. The scary thing is that the entire fiasco, the backlash, the outrage, and the re-rating was predicated on a complete and patent falsehood and people who should know better bought into it.
Vista: the new Daikatana.
Steve Ballmer will make you his bitch!
If good and evil are subjective...then why should be even bother with trying to see both sides? Why bother trying to make peace? If there's no such thing as an objective good to strive for and follow then why the fuck don't we just kill 'em all? As long as we can justify it with our subjective morality, we're not doing anything wrong!
If there is no such thing as objective good and evil then there is no reason to change our viewpoint. There is no reason to make peace. There is no purpose in it because there is no goal to achieve, no standard to follow. You say we shouldn't label people as evil in the name of trying to achieve peace. Is peace objectively good? Or is that your own subjective opinion of the way things should be? By your arguments, it could only be the latter. In that case, your argument is completely pointless. More people in this country clearly have the subjective opinion that the "war" we're in is morally justified. Why should they follow your subjective opinion of what is good over the one they currently have? By your logic, the only thing for our country to do then is to continue the fighting, not make peace.
You do, however, make a good point in pointing out the current subjectivity of morality of many American citizens. Their morality is based on emotions and feelings, not reason and facts. What we need to do is reject the emotional personalizing of what we call good and evil and use our ability to use logic and objective facts of the world around us to figure out what that objective good is. And that's actually what you are claiming we should do even while you claim there is no such thing as objective good and evil. You can't have it both ways. You can either argue that we should strive for peace because peace is a good thing, or you can argue that all morality is subjective and thus provide absolutely no reason for people to follow your subjective claim that we should strive for peace.
Can they make the girl look the the same in the morning as she did in the club last night? Please tell me I'm not the only one with that issue...
You must be new here.
"They have tweaked things," said Olson, "but there is blatant pornography on the best-selling game of the year. That says that the ratings system didn't work."
But there's NOT. It is a FLAT OUT LIE That GTA:SA contained pornography. As soon as someone makes that claim everything else they say becomes null and void. They have proven that they are not qualified to speak about the subject. It is absolutely pointless to talk about anything else related to the subject until people actually know what the fuck they're talking about.
Yeah it's really rough to be a straight, white, Christian male in this country. It's too bad that no one who fits that profile could ever gain political power or be appointed to the Supreme Court or be in charge of a Fortune 500 company or anything like that.
Great, so 1% of white christian males have a shot at being wildly successful. What about the remaining 99% of us that have as much chance of getting on the SCOTUS or becoming a majorly successful CEO as every other race or gender? The ones without the political, industrial, or familial connections necessary to move up the socio-economic ladder. Are we to be penalized because the vast minority of people that actually become successful are white christian males?
Yes, there are people with 40 meter advantages in a 100 meter dash. Yes, they are overwhelmingly white males. And they account for a very small percentage of people overall.
Tell me, what advantage inherent in the system gives me an advantage as a white male? Do online job application sites make it easier for whites? Is the coding racist? No. Any problem in the system is with the people in the system. And Im not about to claim that there aren't bad people in the system, because there are. But you can't legislate away discrimination.
In the US, it's amusing that the anti-video-game people are often the same as the pro-gun people.
...wwaaaaiiit a minute....
You mean people like Hillary Clinton and Joeseph Liberman?
And how is first to file any better in the long run? If the PO allowed for cheap and easy filing so that a small research house could file as soon as possible so that another company cannot hijack their patent you've created an entirely new problem. Large corporations will attempt to patent anything and everything because they will be afraid that someone else will come along and see an idea they have that the corporation does not think is patentable or novel. That other person then goes, files a patent, and boom, the corporation now owes liscencing fees on their own idea. In first to invent they could hold up their idea and show that they had it years before someone else tried to come along and patent it. Any attempt to discourage mass filing of junk patents (e.g. penalties for rejected patents) will make the entire process completely arbitrary as any potential filer will have to make the decision between risking rejection and having someone else patent their idea. As a result, the PO would be flooded with even more junk patents while making profiting off of someone else's idea even easier.
What about verbally threatening someone?
Irrelevant. You wouldn't resort to violence because you dislike the words they said, you would resort to violence because of what you think they might do.
Art depecting things that would be considered highly offensive is nothing new. Crosses in jars of urine, collages of the Virgin Mary made up of porno images, etc. But I don't see Christians rioting in the street, setting things on fire, and calling for people to die over these things, do you?
They tried peaceful means first. Violence only came later.
"We tried to do things peacefully, but they FORCED us to set fire to their embassies and attack law enforcement officers! It's not OUR fault! Honest!"
Please.... No matter how offensive something might be, no matter what they may have tried, nothing gives someone the right to resort to violence because they dislike what someone else said.
Resources, herbs, thats great...but what I really want to know is...
Can I zoom in on Darnassus to look down Night Elfs' shirts?
You could argue that, and technically the behavior might become intuitive, but it's still different. For example, were someone to tell me that, say, a family member of theirs died, I know that the "proper" response is something like "I'm sorry for your loss." Someone else, however, would respond that way not because they've learned the behavior, but because they feel sad and want to express their feelings to the other person.
To use a less morbid example, imagine two players playing Starcraft. The first one is a natural wizard at it. The second one emulates the style of the first and becomes just as good as him. Now ask the first one why he used a particular strategy and he might respond with a tactical explanation. Ask the second why he did the same thing and he might respond "Because that's what works." To the outside world they may look identical, but there are large differences in their fundamental understanding of the game. And if something changes, someone does something unexpected or a change to the game affects strategies, the first player is going to be able to adapt easily. The second player will have to resort to trial and error or mimicry to come up with a new strategy. Now imagine that changes and unexpected events occur on a regular basis. The second player would have no way to keep up.
Some autistics/aspies may be able to analyze a situation enough to make it intuitive, but they probably don't understand the underlying "why" and by and large cannot adapt to new situations.
And this is why I think that ALL machine readable biometric measures will eventually fail. The inherent problem with all biometrics is there is NO method to resecure your authentication method once a compromise has occurred. If someone steals your password you can change it easily. If someone steals a physical key, the lock can be replaced. (A bit costly, but doable). If someone steals your fingerprint, from that point on for the rest of your life you cannot be guaranteed security in a process that uses your fingerprint as authentication. Worse yet, you leave your fingerprints EVERYWHERE. I don't know about you, but I don't leave hundreds of copies of my passwords lying around every day. There's also the argument that it isn't feasable to create fake fingers to pass fingerprint authentication with someone else's prints, but the data has to get digitized somewhere. Once it's all ones and zeros someone doesn't need to create a fake finger. They just need to figure out the right place to put their ones and zeros.
I'm still trying to figure out how that's a benefit :).
It isn't always. Sometimes people say the right thing and sometimes they screw up and say the wrong thing. But they are saying something. They can talk naturally.
There is a marked difference between having nothing to talk about and not being able to talk about something. There is also a large difference between talking 'about something' and talking 'with someone.' What do I mean by that? Well, I can, for example, have a conversation about programming. Or computer hardware. Or a video game. Or football. I can talk about specific subjects that I know about. But sit me down with someone and I have no idea how to act. Nothing comes to mind. If they happen to bring up a subject I can talk about that thing, but once we've talked about whatever subject it is, I'm back to drawing a blank. Even when I have something I want to say or ask it is very hard for me to get it out. Back in high school I would literally have to work up the nerve for 5 or 10 minutes just to ask someone in my class what I missed while I was sick. I'm a little better now, but even something as simple as calling up a friend to see if they want to go do something is a daunting task for me. I generally have to run over several possibile responses in my head before I ask someone a question so that I can respond no matter how they react. If they react in a way that I didn't think about, I blank out. It's not like a bunch of possible responses are running through my head and I reject them. It's not like I have a bunch of unrelated thoughts in my head. It's like someone sucked everything out of my brain and all that's left is a vacuum.
I love screwing with them by ignoring their 'between the lines' cues and deliberately feeding them 'cues' of my own to make them respond 'wrong'. You would then say I 'lack social skills'
I'm really not sure where you're getting this from. If you have the ability to choose to ignore clues and non-verbal communication then you must have the ability to read it if you wish. What I am describing is not someone who chooses to ignore clues, but someone to whom they literally don't exist. For example:
Other Person: "The movie's at 3, we should probably be leaving pretty soon."
Me: "Yeah, probably." Sits and does nothing
Other Person: "I mean let's leave now."
Me: "Oh, well why didn't you say so?"
Now you may choose to deliberately ignore the implication in the first sentence for the purpose of annoying someone. But some people can't pick up on something that's even that obvious. Looking at the words in print I can pick it up, but if someone said that to me in real life I would have a seriously difficult time trying to determine if they meant "Let's leave now" or "Let's leave in 5 minutes." This is also a pretty simplistic example. In a more complex conversation I probably have no chance.
It is far more than lying and bullshitting. In a social situation, most people can talk naturally. They simply say what comes to mind. For someone with autism, they have little to no intuation. They literally have no concept of what to say or do. If it is severe enough, the only way they can perform in social situations is to observe how others act and react and mimic them when they are in similar situations. This is much more analytical than intuitive to do. If they can't choose a reaction they can't create one on the fly and will just freeze and say very little ("ah, i see") or nothing at all.
They also generally have a difficult time understanding and picking up on more subtle forms of communication. They only hear the words. They don't hear the emotion or inflection or notice the facial expressions, and they have a difficult time reading (or listening as it were) between the lines. Furthermore, they have a difficult time extrapolating the thoughts and feelings of another person. They can't "put themselves in the other person's shoes." Basically, if something isn't said, it doesn't exist to them. That is a crippling disadvantage in social situations.
Generally from what I've read, Asperger's is classified in the same spectrum as Autism. Some say they're the same thing with differing severities, others say they're simply closely related. I would not be surprised at all if the same genetic behaviors found in autism are shared by Asperger's.
No, I don't think anyone says "entrapped" because this case has as much to do with entrapment as it has to do with tea in China. Entrapment requires an agent of the government to coerce someone into comitting a crime they would not otherwise commit. In this case, the guilty party offered the source for sale on his website. This is like someone putting up a sign saying "Crack For Sale" in their yard. He was offering regardless of police interference. That's as far from coercion as you can get.
Am I the only person here who's never used a Blackberry and never known anyone who's used one?
Yes.
Yes, I know some genius is going to reply "Yes." and probably get modded +5, Funny for it.
I hope so.
According to that page, in the US over 50% believe we arrived in the world just as described in the Bible... ugh!
That statistic seems very very shady to me. In 2001 in the US we had 26% Catholic and 54% Other Christian. The official stance of the Catholic Church is against a literal young-earth interpretation. I don't know the specifics for any other Christian denomenations, but I know some support it and some don't. Assuming that the number of Christians has not increased (if it decreased it would only strengthen my point), in order for over 50% of the US population to believe in a literal young-earth interpretation it would require that either less than 7% of all non-Catholic Christians believe in a literal young-earth interpretation or that a significant amount of Catholics believe something more conservative than the official Vatican ruiling. Given the nature of the US Catholic Church to be much more liberal than the Vatican, and the fact that I'm pretty sure more than 7% of non-Catholic Christians do not believe in a literal young-earth interpretation, I have a VERY hard time believing that over 50% of Americans believe in a literal young-earth interpretation of Genesis. I think the much more likely solution is that the cited poll asked a question which induced significant bias or misinterpreted all answers of "Creationism" as being literal young-earth creationism. Unfortunately the article does not link to the details of the cited poll so I can't tell, but I strongly encourage everyone to take any poll about belief in creationism with a grain of salt until they're sure that the poll asks a fair question and correctly distinguishes literal young-earth creationism from old-earth creationism.
Karaoke fucking Revolution
:D
Hmm...I think I really must look into that particular game a little further...
Ok, maybe they weren't archetypes in the strict sense, but they were something pretty similar. Heal channies might suck as heavy healers, but they could still get all the healer base buffs and 3 or 4 interleaving prayers of mending into their nuking could add a not insignificant amount of healing to a group. They could also spot heal if need be (more in pve than pvp as it would be more beneficial to nuke in pvp where a channys weaker heals couldnt make as much difference).
Actually I think it's just the priest that throws everything off. Disregarding the priest, all healer bases were roughly the same healing/damage capabilities. Channies were a bit more damage oriented while the others could generally heal/buff/support a little better. The other base classes are similar. Every mage base was magic damage oriented for example (well, except the bard). They each had their own strengths and weaknesses, or little quirks, but they all served the same purpose in a group. Again, with the fighter or rogue base class, most classes derived from them followed the same principle as the others, big physical damage and tank, or stealthy physical damage dealer respectively. There are exceptions of course, such as nuking fighterlocks, deflars, or sentinel bombs, but for the most part people of a certain base class performed a certain role. Like I said, while you may not be able to consider it strictly as archetyping, it is very similar.
I think it's worth pointing out that Shadowbane did this same thing several years before EQ2.
...hmm...interesting). At level 10 you chose your class, and at level 20 you could apply "disciplines" (like subclasses). Not only was there a lot of diversity between classes there was a lot of diversity within classes.
Ok, ok, yes, I am just saying this because I liked SB (I stand by my belief that it would have been one of the best MMOs ever if it could have gotten past the technical/lag issues). You could start out as one of 4 types (fighter, mage, rogue, or healer
Now EQ2 may do it better than SB did (there was not enough diversity in disciplines and some were just plain worthless, some classes were ultra-gimp, there was no reason not to pick certain races for certain classes), but it wasn't the first. That being said, I certainly hope that EQ2 does decently enough that more games come out with this style of class structure. One of my big complaints about WoW is that there are only 8 classes and not a huge deal of diversity within those classes. Talents help some (there's a huge difference between a Soul Link/Afflic lock and a SM/Ruin, for example) but some classes don't have much choice (e.g. Shamans and Mana Tide) if they want to do raids.