There is one obvious solution - the purple state! Then there's no need to cut anyone off from tits - which would presumably be cruel and unusual punishment.
A quick google of "portal escape" show that indeed it would get more fun later on. If the PS3 port of the HL2 engine wasn't so reputedly awful (due to EA London doing the port rather than Valve themself) then I'd definitely get the Orange Box on PS3:/
lol. My interest is slightly more piqued now actually, it would make the whole concept a lot more fun. Since I knew from talking to my friend that I'd done about half the game then I wasn't too fussed about the rest if it just continued along the same lines.
No, the 2D comparison was simply from the game engine point of view and moving a character from one place to another, it wasn't a comment on the gameplay at all. I've done a bit of OpenGL coding and I'm well aware of the differences between 2D and 3D, and I'm not too shabby with my physics and engineering stuff so I know the differences and challenges involved between going from a 2D to a 3D system.
I got through plenty of rooms, never really got stuck (there was one point where I hadn't realised a technique and did one challenge a really awkward way by having myself drop infinitely from ceiling to ground and then fire the exit portal into the vertical platform at just the right time - later I realised that this was totally unecessary, but at least I had fun doing it). I don't know how far I was but probably about halfway considering my friend completed it in a couple of hours (and raved about the game for weeks which kind of just turned me off it, I get like that if something is overhyped), and we are of similar intelligence and FPS experience. That involved teleporting myself and other objects obviously, burning the friend cube etc. Can't remember if I went much beyond that. While it's possible to create interesting puzzles with Portal, I'd find it a lot more fun in a multiplayer environment rather than it just being yet another puzzle game. Once you work out a puzzle, that's it. Multiplayer games are constantly changing and need subtle reworkings of tactics, etc and I just find that more interesting.
I just want to point out that I have completed Half-Life, all the add-ons apart from Blue Shift and Half-Life 2 and the Lost Coast (not to mention the probably thousands of combined hours I spent playing Counter-Strike, which started off with me making my own bots just so that I could play offline back in the 56k days), but ever since then I just have drifted away from PC gaming and not taken the time to play any of the new stuff, even though I think I own Episode 1 and 2. Some games I just play for a day or two and then never touch them again because they didn't have the right hook for me, or I completed them and they weren't worth replaying (about the only game I've ever replayed was Uncharted! on the PS3, I really enjoyed it and it had good rewards for completing challenges on each difficulty mode). Puzzle games generally fall into that category. I loved Lemmings as a kid, but these days I'm more interested in action oriented games. I still enjoy playing more cerebral stuff like Chess too occasionally, but I guess overall I've become a bit of an ADHD addled adrenaline junkie. Anyway, if I was going to go back to PC gaming I'd yet again probably end up addicted to MUDding, though perhaps I'd go and complete Portal first.
Other games which you may be suprised to find I've just left hanging halfway through (even though I enjoy them) are Metal Gear Solid 4 and GTA4. I actually took a couple of days off work to play GTA4 and slept very little during that time, and likewise I played MGS non-stop over a weekend, but since then I just haven't gone back to them because I've been doing other things (anime, cinema, other games.. whatever).
Meh I'd better stop ranting:p In summary, Portal is a great concept, but I think they could have made more of the execution. It quickly started feeling like 'just another puzzle game' to me, because that's what it is. Perhaps the character escapes and the level designs get more interesting and realistic later though, I don't know.
Logically it does imply that he is using BitTorrent as an alternative, but not that he is pirating because of Steam. He is saying that he uses BitTorrent despite Steam, because it is still not good enough. He gave a few reasonable examples of what he thinks are the problems with Steam and other DRMed systems, and how he has gotten around them. It has been shown again and again that DRM just gets in normal users' way, but isn't much of a challenge from the crackers.
I myself much prefer to use NOCD type cracks on my legally bought games - then I can just take my laptop somewhere and play a game without having to actually bring along the CD or pile of CDs. This is especially relevant for laptops because some laptop drives like the one in my MBP can apparently scratch disks if you tilt them while in use. Requiring everyone to use the CD while playing a game is pretty much exactly like saying nobody should be allowed to rip their CDs to MP3 and carry them around in a media player. Why shouldn't they be allowed to do that?
DN3D had some great multiplayer gameplay elements that IMO have only just come through again in recent years - combining security cameras with pipe bombs, and having laser trip mines were a lot of fun:) I remember me and my bro having a lot of fun playing in a White House map and laying lots of traps for each other. The only online game I've been able to lay traps in since then is Battlefield: Bad Company, but admittedly my online gaming experience over the years tended to focus on Counter-Strike.
I think it just goes to show how game designers tend to get obsessed over shiny graphics and to some extent even 'the story' over gameplay elements. I'm still expecting Duke Nukem Forever to be a pretty original gaming experience (although perhaps I'll be disappointed, who knows?).
IMO the portal 'physics' are pretty easy to understand - it's a very similar idea to sending a 2D character off one side of the screen and making them appear on the Other. The interesting thing to me is that you can see things through the portals - that is a bit more mindbending in programming terms, considering you can see yourself and other parts of the level recursively. I think there is a limit to the amount of graphical recursion it does though, it was maybe even specifiable in the options. I only played Portal once. It was a fun enough concept, and 'original' for me at least, but it's pretty gimmicky and has no long-lasting appeal, in the way that most puzzle games are. Apparently the story is interesting/amusing, but it's never been enough of a draw to make me go back and finish the game.
Actually if you read it properly he was talking about downloading updates, not full games. Sounds like he does pay for it. And he gave plenty of good reasons that he doesn't think Steam is very well implemented wrt LAN games etc. I thought he would just be another pirate until he went off like that:p
The account banning thing did strike me as over the top too, but the rest is sensible enough.
I generally like Steam too now. The only reason I didn't like it a few years ago was that I was on dial-up or just had no connection at all, depending on where I was staying at the time. These days with always on connections it isn't so much of a big deal, but any system that requires online registration to be able to play a single player game is pretty retarded. Consider that situation where Yahoo closed down their online music store recently and people could no longer play their music because there was no server to authenticate with - in that type of situation you have to crack DRM software just to be able to use your legally bought product.
The RROD was extremely common.. perhaps not any more, but you're right, I wouldn't know. I didn't even know if Vista still had the BSOD until I looked it up. I don't use Vista on my own machine though, and hopefully never will have to. Stability doesn't really come into my dislike for Vista. I used to dislike the idea of 'having' to upgrade to XP to use certain apps, but then I tried it and it actually started up just as quick, or quicker, than my 98 machine. With Vista this is definitely not the case. I don't agree with making software inefficient simply because more resources are available, it misses the point entirely. Thankfully the world seems to have agreed, and hopefully Windows 7 will be better, or MS will simply become more and more irrelevant unless they learn how to write efficient software.
It was just a joke, I wasn't even sure if Vista still had blue screens to start with. Even if it was completely stable I wouldn't touch it because of how slow it is. My uncle's laptop has a slightly faster processor than mine, same amount of RAM, but in practice it runs noticeably slower. Especially on basic stuff like startup and shutdown where you'd think MS would have done something smart like have the system startup state actually as a kind of hibernation recovery that loads a fully started up state into the system (this state would have to be updated when you install new startup applications or OS patches of course), that type of thing.
I'd just like to point out that you can probably get an Atari emulator and a Pacman ROM if you think the older versions may have been 'better'. Atari are still around as well, and release 'classics' packs occasionally. I doubt that future video game systems will ever be unable to simulate an Atari experience, unless perhaps they are 'sound only' or something. Any 3D system should be able to simulate a 2D system acceptably. Systems like the Wii come with emulators built in (you can play old NES and even Mega Drive games on them), and that trend will hopefully continue in future.
IMO the main difference between 'classic' paintings, statues, cars etc and computer games is that the computer games can be easily copied so they don't retain value in the same way as real items which tend to become more and more fragile or scarce over time.. the only real way to see if a game is a classic is probably to see if the game keeps getting remade for each console? As long as the gameplay stays the same - the original Mario games bare little resemblance to Mario 64 for example so I'm not sure if that counts.
WTF? Ghost in the Shell presents some much more interesting ideas than some of the simple retelling of well known stories that Shakespeare has done. As well as interesting plots, it also has good graphics and music. Which are both counted as 'art'. I haven't read the mangas yet so I can't comment on if they are as good as the movies and series, but as they are the original inspiration, I don't see why not. Just like you can get trashy romance novels or atrocious paintings, you can get good and bad manga. Being in a certain category does not automatically make something good art or bad art - unless of course the categories are in fact 'good art' and 'bad art'.
The first part of the demo was actually the guy having a maaaaassive library of picture data comprising of hundreds of different images, and was able to zoom out and in at will in realtime into any picture he wanted, so I think part off the tech was to do with a very efficient method for handling large amounts of information over a network. Probably slightly analagous to having a massively free roaming game like Grand Theft Auto over a game with small static levels like Quake.
Here is the video:) It really is pretty impressive stuff, though I have no idea how the tech is working or I'd probably be more impressed.
It does make them 3D (I remember seeing the video of the first demo last year I think it was). But it's not quite precise enough to be used for level design, or at least it wasn't back then. Still very cool though:)
So you're saying that 'AC' button in my car doesn't activate an anonymity cloak for when I want to drive quickly through speed check areas or flip off cop cars? Uh oh.
Yep, one of my friends is Australian so I have a small amount of cultural experience (I suppose seeing a few episodes of Round the Twist, Neighbours and Home and Away could count too, eh? heh). He used to work here, and only ever said "Sheila" when having a bit of banter with one of the other guys here and doing exagerrated accents etc. The other guy was a bit of a bigoted bastard sometimes actually, made me cringe on occasion.
"Crafty chick" is just too good a phrase to pass up when reporting on a case like this, especially as it involves home crafting!
I don't know who this Indian guy is:p I agree it's pretty informal, but tabloid or near-tabloid reporting like that of some slashdot editors/submitters isn't usually very formal either!
I do agree with treating people with respect, regardless of age, gender, race, whatever. I just don't agree with morons trying to claim something is offensive when in actual fact it isn't. Several people completely ignored the topic of TFA and jumped on the use of the word "chick", which I didn't even notice. I wouldn't mind being referred to as a "dude", and I doubt this Australian woman would be upset at being referred to as a crafty chick (though of course I don't know her, maybe she's a raging feminist who opposes any perceived subversive attempt to put down the female of the species). Aussies are a pretty laid back bunch. Personally I think that if no offense was meant, then it shouldn't be an issue. Obviously some words have a really bad history behind them, like the "n word", but I expect that one day even that word won't be that offensive any more, since it is becoming quite common in hip hop culture and is actually kinda cool now (leading to white people calling each other nukka or whatever). Some people will then try to tell those that use the word that they have no self respect or whatever, but it's up to them if they want to use it. If I could take any of the words that used to be used on me when I was bullied as a kid, and turn them around I doubt that would be a sign of low self-esteem, that would show that I was secure enough in myself to shrug off the negative intent of others.
Anyway that's just a pet peeve of mine;) I don't like people trying to say what is politically correct and what isn't. A few months ago someone jumped on me for using the word 'oriental' then explained why. I mean how much more pathetic can you get than being upset at someone calling another person someone who "comes from the east"? Should all us people in the UK make our maps center on the pacific just to make sure we aren't causing offense to others by putting ourselves at the center of the map? On our map, they are from the east. I wouldn't mind being called a westerner or northerner or southerner by people from areas to the east, south or north:/ Political correctness does my head in - I had no idea anyone found the word 'oriental' offensive until this year I don't think. I still find it pretty incredulous.
I love asian culture btw, I feel I have to point out that I am not a racist:p Hopefully I'm not bigoted in any other ways either. My brother is gay, and while at first I found it weird, I got used to it. It is pretty natural to be scared of things that are 'different' or unknown, but education cures that.
logically what you said is that the US is either the least or least equal corrupt government:p If you said 'most governments' instead of 'any government' then it would be different.
We are stuck with the same "2 major parties" here in the UK as well. I don't think a "one or the other" party is going to well-represent my views on any spectrum of topics.. as people say, the system kind of sucks but it's the best we can come up with so far!
So what you're saying is that the US government is either the least corrupt or the least-equal corrupt of all governments? I highly doubt it. Just look at that whole Whitehouse email fiasco:/ I'm not claiming that my country is perfect, but it's just sad that Americans tend to bang on about liberty, democracy, the constitution, blah blah blah - meanwhile their government is walking all over them.
I suppose calling males 'guys' or 'dudes' is also sexist, then?
Seriously, some people are way over-fucking-sensitive. Probably not yourself.. but the people that decide on what's "politically correct" should be sent to mental asylums, or perhaps become antagonists in a Jane Austen theatre production.
Slashdot Mirror
There is one obvious solution - the purple state! Then there's no need to cut anyone off from tits - which would presumably be cruel and unusual punishment.
A quick google of "portal escape" show that indeed it would get more fun later on. If the PS3 port of the HL2 engine wasn't so reputedly awful (due to EA London doing the port rather than Valve themself) then I'd definitely get the Orange Box on PS3 :/
lol. My interest is slightly more piqued now actually, it would make the whole concept a lot more fun. Since I knew from talking to my friend that I'd done about half the game then I wasn't too fussed about the rest if it just continued along the same lines.
No, the 2D comparison was simply from the game engine point of view and moving a character from one place to another, it wasn't a comment on the gameplay at all. I've done a bit of OpenGL coding and I'm well aware of the differences between 2D and 3D, and I'm not too shabby with my physics and engineering stuff so I know the differences and challenges involved between going from a 2D to a 3D system.
I got through plenty of rooms, never really got stuck (there was one point where I hadn't realised a technique and did one challenge a really awkward way by having myself drop infinitely from ceiling to ground and then fire the exit portal into the vertical platform at just the right time - later I realised that this was totally unecessary, but at least I had fun doing it). I don't know how far I was but probably about halfway considering my friend completed it in a couple of hours (and raved about the game for weeks which kind of just turned me off it, I get like that if something is overhyped), and we are of similar intelligence and FPS experience. That involved teleporting myself and other objects obviously, burning the friend cube etc. Can't remember if I went much beyond that. While it's possible to create interesting puzzles with Portal, I'd find it a lot more fun in a multiplayer environment rather than it just being yet another puzzle game. Once you work out a puzzle, that's it. Multiplayer games are constantly changing and need subtle reworkings of tactics, etc and I just find that more interesting.
I just want to point out that I have completed Half-Life, all the add-ons apart from Blue Shift and Half-Life 2 and the Lost Coast (not to mention the probably thousands of combined hours I spent playing Counter-Strike, which started off with me making my own bots just so that I could play offline back in the 56k days), but ever since then I just have drifted away from PC gaming and not taken the time to play any of the new stuff, even though I think I own Episode 1 and 2. Some games I just play for a day or two and then never touch them again because they didn't have the right hook for me, or I completed them and they weren't worth replaying (about the only game I've ever replayed was Uncharted! on the PS3, I really enjoyed it and it had good rewards for completing challenges on each difficulty mode). Puzzle games generally fall into that category. I loved Lemmings as a kid, but these days I'm more interested in action oriented games. I still enjoy playing more cerebral stuff like Chess too occasionally, but I guess overall I've become a bit of an ADHD addled adrenaline junkie. Anyway, if I was going to go back to PC gaming I'd yet again probably end up addicted to MUDding, though perhaps I'd go and complete Portal first.
Other games which you may be suprised to find I've just left hanging halfway through (even though I enjoy them) are Metal Gear Solid 4 and GTA4. I actually took a couple of days off work to play GTA4 and slept very little during that time, and likewise I played MGS non-stop over a weekend, but since then I just haven't gone back to them because I've been doing other things (anime, cinema, other games.. whatever).
Meh I'd better stop ranting :p In summary, Portal is a great concept, but I think they could have made more of the execution. It quickly started feeling like 'just another puzzle game' to me, because that's what it is. Perhaps the character escapes and the level designs get more interesting and realistic later though, I don't know.
Logically it does imply that he is using BitTorrent as an alternative, but not that he is pirating because of Steam. He is saying that he uses BitTorrent despite Steam, because it is still not good enough. He gave a few reasonable examples of what he thinks are the problems with Steam and other DRMed systems, and how he has gotten around them. It has been shown again and again that DRM just gets in normal users' way, but isn't much of a challenge from the crackers.
I myself much prefer to use NOCD type cracks on my legally bought games - then I can just take my laptop somewhere and play a game without having to actually bring along the CD or pile of CDs. This is especially relevant for laptops because some laptop drives like the one in my MBP can apparently scratch disks if you tilt them while in use. Requiring everyone to use the CD while playing a game is pretty much exactly like saying nobody should be allowed to rip their CDs to MP3 and carry them around in a media player. Why shouldn't they be allowed to do that?
DN3D had some great multiplayer gameplay elements that IMO have only just come through again in recent years - combining security cameras with pipe bombs, and having laser trip mines were a lot of fun :) I remember me and my bro having a lot of fun playing in a White House map and laying lots of traps for each other. The only online game I've been able to lay traps in since then is Battlefield: Bad Company, but admittedly my online gaming experience over the years tended to focus on Counter-Strike.
I think it just goes to show how game designers tend to get obsessed over shiny graphics and to some extent even 'the story' over gameplay elements. I'm still expecting Duke Nukem Forever to be a pretty original gaming experience (although perhaps I'll be disappointed, who knows?).
IMO the portal 'physics' are pretty easy to understand - it's a very similar idea to sending a 2D character off one side of the screen and making them appear on the Other. The interesting thing to me is that you can see things through the portals - that is a bit more mindbending in programming terms, considering you can see yourself and other parts of the level recursively. I think there is a limit to the amount of graphical recursion it does though, it was maybe even specifiable in the options. I only played Portal once. It was a fun enough concept, and 'original' for me at least, but it's pretty gimmicky and has no long-lasting appeal, in the way that most puzzle games are. Apparently the story is interesting/amusing, but it's never been enough of a draw to make me go back and finish the game.
Actually if you read it properly he was talking about downloading updates, not full games. Sounds like he does pay for it. And he gave plenty of good reasons that he doesn't think Steam is very well implemented wrt LAN games etc. I thought he would just be another pirate until he went off like that :p
The account banning thing did strike me as over the top too, but the rest is sensible enough.
I generally like Steam too now. The only reason I didn't like it a few years ago was that I was on dial-up or just had no connection at all, depending on where I was staying at the time. These days with always on connections it isn't so much of a big deal, but any system that requires online registration to be able to play a single player game is pretty retarded. Consider that situation where Yahoo closed down their online music store recently and people could no longer play their music because there was no server to authenticate with - in that type of situation you have to crack DRM software just to be able to use your legally bought product.
The RROD was extremely common.. perhaps not any more, but you're right, I wouldn't know. I didn't even know if Vista still had the BSOD until I looked it up. I don't use Vista on my own machine though, and hopefully never will have to. Stability doesn't really come into my dislike for Vista. I used to dislike the idea of 'having' to upgrade to XP to use certain apps, but then I tried it and it actually started up just as quick, or quicker, than my 98 machine. With Vista this is definitely not the case. I don't agree with making software inefficient simply because more resources are available, it misses the point entirely. Thankfully the world seems to have agreed, and hopefully Windows 7 will be better, or MS will simply become more and more irrelevant unless they learn how to write efficient software.
Besides, it was just a joke.
It was just a joke, I wasn't even sure if Vista still had blue screens to start with. Even if it was completely stable I wouldn't touch it because of how slow it is. My uncle's laptop has a slightly faster processor than mine, same amount of RAM, but in practice it runs noticeably slower. Especially on basic stuff like startup and shutdown where you'd think MS would have done something smart like have the system startup state actually as a kind of hibernation recovery that loads a fully started up state into the system (this state would have to be updated when you install new startup applications or OS patches of course), that type of thing.
Technically doesn't that depend on whether he's happier with a red ring or a blue screen?
I'd just like to point out that you can probably get an Atari emulator and a Pacman ROM if you think the older versions may have been 'better'. Atari are still around as well, and release 'classics' packs occasionally. I doubt that future video game systems will ever be unable to simulate an Atari experience, unless perhaps they are 'sound only' or something. Any 3D system should be able to simulate a 2D system acceptably. Systems like the Wii come with emulators built in (you can play old NES and even Mega Drive games on them), and that trend will hopefully continue in future.
IMO the main difference between 'classic' paintings, statues, cars etc and computer games is that the computer games can be easily copied so they don't retain value in the same way as real items which tend to become more and more fragile or scarce over time.. the only real way to see if a game is a classic is probably to see if the game keeps getting remade for each console? As long as the gameplay stays the same - the original Mario games bare little resemblance to Mario 64 for example so I'm not sure if that counts.
WTF? Ghost in the Shell presents some much more interesting ideas than some of the simple retelling of well known stories that Shakespeare has done. As well as interesting plots, it also has good graphics and music. Which are both counted as 'art'. I haven't read the mangas yet so I can't comment on if they are as good as the movies and series, but as they are the original inspiration, I don't see why not. Just like you can get trashy romance novels or atrocious paintings, you can get good and bad manga. Being in a certain category does not automatically make something good art or bad art - unless of course the categories are in fact 'good art' and 'bad art'.
That's right, Gary.. only this time, it'll be 9.0/11 times one million!
The first part of the demo was actually the guy having a maaaaassive library of picture data comprising of hundreds of different images, and was able to zoom out and in at will in realtime into any picture he wanted, so I think part off the tech was to do with a very efficient method for handling large amounts of information over a network. Probably slightly analagous to having a massively free roaming game like Grand Theft Auto over a game with small static levels like Quake.
Here is the video :) It really is pretty impressive stuff, though I have no idea how the tech is working or I'd probably be more impressed.
It does make them 3D (I remember seeing the video of the first demo last year I think it was). But it's not quite precise enough to be used for level design, or at least it wasn't back then. Still very cool though :)
So you're saying that 'AC' button in my car doesn't activate an anonymity cloak for when I want to drive quickly through speed check areas or flip off cop cars? Uh oh.
Yep, one of my friends is Australian so I have a small amount of cultural experience (I suppose seeing a few episodes of Round the Twist, Neighbours and Home and Away could count too, eh? heh). He used to work here, and only ever said "Sheila" when having a bit of banter with one of the other guys here and doing exagerrated accents etc. The other guy was a bit of a bigoted bastard sometimes actually, made me cringe on occasion.
"Crafty chick" is just too good a phrase to pass up when reporting on a case like this, especially as it involves home crafting!
I don't know who this Indian guy is :p I agree it's pretty informal, but tabloid or near-tabloid reporting like that of some slashdot editors/submitters isn't usually very formal either!
It's "poofs". And we have plenty here, thanks. The only difference is that everyone in England is a poof ;)
I do agree with treating people with respect, regardless of age, gender, race, whatever. I just don't agree with morons trying to claim something is offensive when in actual fact it isn't. Several people completely ignored the topic of TFA and jumped on the use of the word "chick", which I didn't even notice. I wouldn't mind being referred to as a "dude", and I doubt this Australian woman would be upset at being referred to as a crafty chick (though of course I don't know her, maybe she's a raging feminist who opposes any perceived subversive attempt to put down the female of the species). Aussies are a pretty laid back bunch. Personally I think that if no offense was meant, then it shouldn't be an issue. Obviously some words have a really bad history behind them, like the "n word", but I expect that one day even that word won't be that offensive any more, since it is becoming quite common in hip hop culture and is actually kinda cool now (leading to white people calling each other nukka or whatever). Some people will then try to tell those that use the word that they have no self respect or whatever, but it's up to them if they want to use it. If I could take any of the words that used to be used on me when I was bullied as a kid, and turn them around I doubt that would be a sign of low self-esteem, that would show that I was secure enough in myself to shrug off the negative intent of others.
Anyway that's just a pet peeve of mine ;) I don't like people trying to say what is politically correct and what isn't. A few months ago someone jumped on me for using the word 'oriental' then explained why. I mean how much more pathetic can you get than being upset at someone calling another person someone who "comes from the east"? Should all us people in the UK make our maps center on the pacific just to make sure we aren't causing offense to others by putting ourselves at the center of the map? On our map, they are from the east. I wouldn't mind being called a westerner or northerner or southerner by people from areas to the east, south or north :/ Political correctness does my head in - I had no idea anyone found the word 'oriental' offensive until this year I don't think. I still find it pretty incredulous.
I love asian culture btw, I feel I have to point out that I am not a racist :p Hopefully I'm not bigoted in any other ways either. My brother is gay, and while at first I found it weird, I got used to it. It is pretty natural to be scared of things that are 'different' or unknown, but education cures that.
logically what you said is that the US is either the least or least equal corrupt government :p If you said 'most governments' instead of 'any government' then it would be different.
We are stuck with the same "2 major parties" here in the UK as well. I don't think a "one or the other" party is going to well-represent my views on any spectrum of topics.. as people say, the system kind of sucks but it's the best we can come up with so far!
Wouldn't rockbox be able to do all these things? ;)
So what you're saying is that the US government is either the least corrupt or the least-equal corrupt of all governments? I highly doubt it. Just look at that whole Whitehouse email fiasco :/ I'm not claiming that my country is perfect, but it's just sad that Americans tend to bang on about liberty, democracy, the constitution, blah blah blah - meanwhile their government is walking all over them.
I suppose calling males 'guys' or 'dudes' is also sexist, then?
Seriously, some people are way over-fucking-sensitive. Probably not yourself.. but the people that decide on what's "politically correct" should be sent to mental asylums, or perhaps become antagonists in a Jane Austen theatre production.