Okay, I know posting anything that sounds even remotely negative about PC gaming is very taboo here, but I'd rather post and be realistic than watch Slashdot continue it's circle jerk into a pit of self-reassuring ignorance.
I doubt for a second that he meant the 95% figure literally, but simply meant that a high proportion of PC players pirate the game.
It's nothing whatsoever to do with console players putting up with worse games, that's one of the most blatant demonstrations of jealous bitterness I've seen here.
The fact is there's some truth in Ubisoft's stance and whilst I have little sympathy for them as a company because of their misguided DRM attempts that doesn't mean they are wrong.
The fact remains that PC game sales are lower, see here for example with 2 major releases listed for the week ending 12th November:
We have, for MW3: X360: 6.6 million PS3: 4.7 million PC: 0.3 million
Okay, how about something that's always been designed more as a PC game, and IMHO plays better on a PC and reaps the advantages of mods where consoles can't - Skyrim?: X360: 2 million PS3: 0.9 million PC: 0.5 million
These figures are quite depressing for the PC, perhaps the biggest selling PC release in the last few years (decade?) Starcraft 2 shifted 3 million in it's first month. Very respectable for presumably the highest selling one off it still doesn't really come close to say, the Call of Duty series in the 360 which breaks 5 mill in a week (not a month like SC2) each year for the past few years despite the game IMO having gone downhill.
It's pretty well established then that the PC market just doesn't shift as many units as the console market does, it just can't compete in this respect, but there are other factors too - PC gamers are used to paying only £29.99 at most in the UK market for games, versus £39.99 for console games, so not only does the PC face lower sales figures, but lower sales profit also.
The problem is made worse by the fact the PC is simply more expensive to develop for and support, because of the unfortunate situation of having a massive set of hardware and software combinations to deal with many of which can result in sometimes show stopping bugs if not resolved, and, to further maximise sales, where a larger set of configuration settings is needed, and in some cases a large set of content to support these varying configurations giving varying levels of performance each person's system provides.
The net result is that there's really questionable benefit to supporting the PC platform, particularly when the time spent to support the PC would probably better spent making DLC for a console release in terms of profit, and whilst you may well want companies to release for the PC anyway, they're not charities, they're businesses, and they'll do whatever maximises their profits. That often means not supporting the PC.
But it's not all doom and gloom for the PC, I think it's somewhat beneficial, the last few years has seen a massive boom in really really good indie games on the PC because large companies abandoning the platform for higher profit console platforms has left that hole open for indies to compete. There are still areas where PCs are king too - games where decent worthwhile mods can be made, and MMOs - whilst there have been attempts, consoles are next to useless for both of these things.
I know some people will argue with me and say "Well, Steam doesn't release their stats" and that sort of argument, but it doesn't matter- the reality is that these companies have deemed developing for PCs to be not financially worthwhile however you try and spin it, and getting mad at them wont help.
Personally? I just enjoy gaming, so prefer to be pragmatic and have a gaming PC as well as an XBox 360 so that I can enjoy the best of both worlds. I can enjoy console only releases and some pretty fucking great ind
"But seeing people on Slashdot mindlessly say "Apple is teh suxor" is about as intelligent as saying it about Microsoft or Linux without having used them..."
But I do have an iPad 2 and it really is all hype. There's this mythical fantasy built up around them that they're easy to use, that they're flawless, that they're high quality, that they have loads of awesome apps, and it's simply all a load of bollocks.
Starting with build and design quality, the back of it scratches so easily, both mine and everyone's I've seen has numerous scratches on it, it's hardly a tough sturdy material that continues to look nice if you dare ever actually try and use it. The official iPad covers that flip over to protect the screen look fancy but again, after a bit of use, those manky lines that appear on the screen between the grooves resulting in a need for constant cleaning make it look naff, and tacky. There's a long history of poor build quality on Apple products too, from cracking iPhone 3GS', to far too easily scratched iPod nanos, to fire hazard magsafe power adapters, to discolouring MacBook plastics. What about the fundamentally flawed 4G antenna design?
Ease of use is another myth, there's nothing about iOS that's any easier to use than other equally priced devices, I'd argue the fact that it's so utterly app-centric is in fact a downside - Android's gadgets are far more intuitive to end users in letting them access what they want, and far more efficient to boot. The app store app on the iPad is terribly unintuitive, why when I search for something and then click the button to reset search filters does it not actually reset search filters and in fact retains the primary search text? that's not what I want- when I reset search filters it's because I want to search again. Why when I'm scrolling through a massive long list of a few thousand apps split into many pages is it than when I go into one, and go back, it returns me to the first page so I've no idea how far along the list I was and have to scroll through many more apps? What about the extremely unhelpful fact the device tries to tie itself to a person so that if multiple people in a household want to use it they find they have to jump through a massive amount of hoops because switching user accounts for certain things like social media just isn't very easy? That's on the device itself, I wont even get started on how iTunes is probably one of the most awful, buggy, unintuitive mainstream apps around in the world right now. What about the apps that only take up a small portion of the iPad in the middle of the screen "because they were designed for iPhone" - why the fuck do I have this massive tablet if I'm going to have half the apps using only a phone sized section of the screen - great, I can expand it to use the screen and just have an extremely pixelated version instead. We've been building scalable user interfaces on PCs for decades to handle a far wider range of screen resolutions - on a device whose fans espouse how awesome it is in terms of quality and ease of use was it really so hard for Apple to plan for and issue advice for producing scalable, futureproof interfaces to start with? Or we they too busy slagging off Android for fragmentation to do this, because they didn't want to look hypocritical when the same issue - also known as hardware progress - inevitably came to bite them?
The choice of apps isn't as good as often hyped either, there's the obvious - that because of Apple's strict policies you're stuck with a god awful piss poor keyboard that can't even touch the likes of Swype on my phone (my phone is Android), through to the slightly less talked about - that all those great looking apps you see demo'd are pretty fucking hollow when you come to use them. That app on the adverts showing a planet or whatever? no it's not the exciting looking app that looks like it'll let you explore the solar system in great depth using just your fingers, it's a few largely static pages of rather basic factual information. The spr
"Take a look at their ads. They are all about what you can do with the devices."
Yes, I have an iPad2 and you're right.
Unfortunately however being able to randomly slide screens around, and use half-arsed versions of applications that only do 1/100th of what their counterparts on my PC or laptop do is the reason it's just sat uncharged because being arsed to plugged it in to charge it nowadays requires more effort than any resultant benefit the device can provide to my life to be worthwhile. I suppose if I didn't have a PC attached to my TV then it might be useful as a £400 web browser in the living room at least.
"They are renown for focusing on what you can do with the devices."
No, that's quite the opposite of what they're known for, Apple devices have long been known to let you do less, with the argument that what they do let you do, they let you do more comfortably. Certainly what you do with Apple devices has never been stand out, they've always been quite limited and restrictive whether it was the limited selection of file formats on the early iPods, or the strict lockdown and limitation of applications on the iPhone and iPad.
"If you really believe that marketing brainwashing is a more plausible explanation than that, I'm afraid you're the one who's brainwashed."
Whilst your attempt at the use of the word brainwashing to make it look like some mystical unexplained power is cute, you've got to be quite naive to believe that companies don't rely on common human psychological traits to push a products sales or price higher than it would otherwise be worth. If you hadn't noticed, there are entire industries built around just that, fashion, and modern art are two you can start with. If however rather than cold hard examples like this you prefer the theoretical, then feel free to go and read about consumerism.
Contrary to the hype, Apple products aren't more secure, aren't any less buggy, don't have more features, aren't any easier to use, aren't of any higher quality, and don't always even look any more stylish than all of their competitors. Above all else what separates Apple from the rest is that they've built a brand that allows them to shift units regardless of any downsides to their products in much the same way that some people will gladly squeeze into an uncomfortable pair of Armani jeans and insist on showing them off, simply because they say Armani on them.
"Not true. Boredom and stifling bureaucracy has hounded me all my life. I can't stand sitting in a lecture hall where the speaker's putting me to sleep. I far prefer to slide out to the library, or arts & crafts, or anything where I'd actually learn something of some value."
Yes but the point is you can still pass a degree by doing just that. I passed some courses with distinction without attending a single lecture, they weren't mandatory where I did one of my degrees, as long as you could keep up the grades.
Nowadays it's even easier, you can often download the lectures and watch them in whatever size chunks you prefer and whereever you want.
I do have somewhat of a concern about the ruling, it leaves open the potential that even a slight bit of movement on one of these makes the measures okay:
"which applies indiscriminately to all its customers; exclusively at its expense; and for an unlimited period"
So if it's not exclusively at it's expense, i.e. the music industry pays a pittance, say, £1000 towards the measure or requests it for a finite period such as an effective lifetime - 100 years, then does that make it okay?
Realistically the ruling is too vague to offer any long term guaranteed protection and this will return to the courts once the industry has made a slight bit of movement on one of these points in a manner I described.
The key word that really ruins it all is the "and" in the "and for an unlimited period", if this word was instead "or" then it would imply that none of these things is acceptable, instead it implies that they are only unacceptable when all hold true in combination, so the content industry only has to mitigate one to work round this ruling, which is fairly trivial.
"Keep in mind that while a degree demonstrates some level of knowledge in a particular field, it also demonstrates the ability to complete a long, boring and bureaucratic process. There is value in the later."
But anyone is capable of this, seriously.
When the subject matter just requires you to be able to sit through a bunch of monotonous crap and just remember things then I don't think there really are many people who can't do this. There are a lot of students that go to uni purely for the lifestyle, and to avoid going straight into employment. They don't do it for care of learning or career prospects.
So the question is this, why would you want to employ a history major who did a 4 year degree, quite possibly just because they were too lazy to do a proper job and wanted a few years of drinking and getting high when you could instead have someone who knew uni wasn't really of much worth to them and went straight to work and has 4 years of experience in the field of business in question?
I actually worked full time whilst doing a second degree and have little sympathy for the idea that a degree demonstrates that you're capable of doing 4 years of hard work - it doesn't, it's something you can complete succesfully in your spare time. If the subject matter is worthless to industry coupled with the fact that a single degree doesn't require the same weekly time investment of a full time job (when I did my maths degree I was working around 40 hours a week, and studying around 30 hours a week) then I have a hard time understanding what of use such degrees do actually provide. I'd still rather take the person whose worked in the industry providing they can demonstrate they at least turned up on time and are somewhat competent - the fresh graduate doesn't even have any way of demonstrating that however, it's a gamble - so why employ them? Unless they're doing two degrees at once then they can't realistically demonstrate any useful trait gained from their last 4 years.
If you're going to do a degree, then do it in a subject of worth to industry, ideally an industry you actually want to go into. Otherwise don't waste your time and the time of industry, go straight to work and work your way up. If you're good at what you do then you'll get where you want to go either way. Constantly being able to perform well above your actual job spec and maintaining that as you're career grows, however you do it is really the key to advancing above all else. If you're performing well above your station and can demonstrate it to prospective employers then no one will give a fuck if you have a degree or not.
The real problem is the people who think they're _entitled_ to a job, simply because they have a degree in art history or whatever.
One side note is that yes, blah blah, I know HR will filter you out if you don't have a degree blah blah blah - bollocks. I've seen hardly any companies that actually do this and those that do aren't worth working for anyway. If your CV is well written to demonstrate your achievements and your achievements are of significant note because you have performed well above your previous post to a level suitable for your next post then you'll find no shortage of interviews, degree or not, and if you can back it up in the interview then the offers will follow to boot.
Well why do you think they're so confused about ditching their PC division? On one hand it'll appease the printer faction when the war begins, on the other hand there's potential that the PC faction will defeat the printers and so HP puts itself in danger offending them too. HP is stuck right in the middle of this upcoming war the poor bastards.
There's more to it than this, I have one of these printers and don't use it very often, however last night I was sat playing BF3 and notice something out the corner of my eye. The thing had switched itself on and it's front end on the tablet thing was staring at me with the blue light on the printer flashing, as if it was trying to communicate with me, as if it felt the need to make me acknowledge it's presence.
I suspect HP does know something we don't know about WebOS, and that's that it is sentient. HP understands that if it doesn't retain a close relationship now, that when these things start to learn to do other things, like walk, and weild machine guns, then it risks suffering the same kind of enslavement as the rest of us. Me? I'm not too worried, I said "there there" to my printer in a calm voice, fed it some paper, and said "time to sleep" before gently turning it off. I hope this will be enough, that if I'm kind to it now, it will spare me when the day comes.
"Crazy? Since I am the subject of your link, I would have to take offense at that."
That's great, I'm sure Gaddaffi would've taken offence to being called crazy too, but it really wouldn't make it any less true. So offence or not, you'll be seen as you make yourself seen, not as you wish to be seen.
"But if you want to talk facts, let's talk facts rather than distort the picture or take comments out of context, shall we?"
But that's the problem with crazy people, much like how they think they are seen or would like to be seen being quite different from how they are actually are seen, what they think are facts is quite different from what are actually facts. The fact is the science that has stood up to peer review overwhelmingly demonstrates a warming trend.
"I'd rather be a crazy than some kind of ass who quotes other people out of context."
Yeah, there's a slight problem there, I didn't actually quote you. I linked you. What is behind that link is your posting in it's entirety and the thread that follows from that. There's no cherry picking there, simply what you said in it's entirety.
Still I have to wonder why exactly you would quote the Daily Mail - a well known far right site with a distinct anti-global warming bias to it and which has been known to outright lie in it's articles on a regular basis to try and push it's point.
But wait, the other guy responding to you already pointed it out, you said dispute the science, not the source! Well, apart from the fact source credibility is kind of important - I mean, surely you wouldn't blindly believe anything Phil Jones from the CRU says nowadays without proper peer reviewed evidence would you? - doing what you told the other guy to do is pretty simple, in fact, the BBC has done it nicely for you:
You see you could've found this yourself, with a 2 second Google, and could have understood why the Daily Mail article is completely wrong from the outset, but you didn't. Why is that? It's okay, I can answer that for you - it's because you're incapable of objectivity.
You can hide behind your "But I only said in the last 2 - 3 years" all you want, but your agenda is obvious, plenty of your posts betray that falsehood.
You're crazy, you're stupid. It really is that simple. The saddest part is you're too caught up in your own toxic blend of bias and ignorance to even realise it.
The fact is there are still a large number of people out there who haven't even got past the first part of the argument yet, and as this comment was +5 insightful yesterday we're not even talking about some individual kook here, we're talking about a sizeable group of them.
"He released tens (hundreds?) of thousands of documents for basically one or two issues that might have been significant."
Therein lies precisely the problem with people like you who feel the US is a nation who's evidence of wrongdoing should be kept secret, you just fob it off as "one or two issues" when there were, frankly, 100s of important issues all surrounding the same theme - American arrogance as a source of many problems in the world, from diplomatic spying to many many counts of killing of civilians.
If a company suffers from systemic corruption and incompetence then yes, only a complete leak of their data will be enough to allow people to examine the depth of the problem. This is the fundamental issue unveiled by the cables Manning leaked - American corruption and incompetence was a major problem throughout pretty much every level of the military and government, and that needed to be exposed so that America can correct it's path of self-destruction based upon arrogance and the culture of secrecy that allowed such corruption and subversive practices to thrive in the first place.
I don't expect you to understand this though, as first you would have to recognise that America has lost it's way as a force for good in the world, but I'll help you get started on that - extraordinary rendition and detention without trial and Guantanamo are an ideal start. You can follow up with the war in Iraq and exactly what that was meant to achieve and who profited from it (Hint: Bush and Cheney et al.) at the expense of many US service people's lives. When you start to recognise that America has lost it's way, you'll begin to understand why America has seen it's respect in the world plummet, and when you understand all of that you'll begin to recognise that America needs the kind of shake up Manning has provided to wake up from it's mindless sleepwalk towards it's own downfall.
Perhaps you'll also then realise that people like me don't like seeing things like the Wikileaks leak happen because we hate America, but because we would rather see America return to being a force for good in the world - something it inherently can't ever be when the widespread practices exposed by the cables continue to be commonplace. The best defence against such a leak in future is the same solution required for America to return to being an important force for good in the world - stop merely pretending to be a beacon of democracy, liberty, justice, and freedom and actually start once again to act in the interests of those tenets. If America was doing that, there'd be nothing of note worth leaking.
"Reuters had a right to know what happened to their journalists; the fact that they were killed in war is not relevant. They asked politely, and the US army refused to give them the video. This is not a matter of defending the army's actions, or comparing their actions to more barbaric wars, it is a matter of whether or not people have a right to know how two journalists wound up dead."
It's not just the Reuters journalists either, during the Iraq invasion a US A10 pilot strafed British forces killing and wounding some. We recognised that shit happens in war and accepted that yes the US isn't going to prosecute it's pilots over this, however we'd like a copy of the A10's gun camera for our inquest so we could judge what went wrong. America, being America, outright refused even this simple request.
This is precisely the sort of problem at the core of this issue - this attitude in the US military and government of closing ranks when they fuck up rather than learning from their mistakes. It gives US military personnel this idea that they can commit these acts and not worry because their superiors will cover it up and so they have no reason to be careful anymore.
America has created a culture where it's troops aren't accountable, where it doesn't matter who they kill intentionally or not, and this is why the leaks were important - they acted as a balance against this culture of no blame. They brought accountability back to the US military and the US government such that if the US isn't going to force it's soldiers to start acting with some degree of competence in warzones in which both civilians, journalists, and allies are at risk of harm, then they're going to have to face being publicly embarassed on the international stage instead.
"As for right and wrong, for him to take the moral high ground he would have had to exercise a great deal more restraint and specificity on what he leaked than he did."
This is retarded, there's no possible way he could've filtered through the information to separate the countless amounts of abuse documented within, so your argument is effectively that because he couldn't do this he shouldn't have leaked at all to avoid the more menial and irrelevant cables getting leaked.
Your argument amounts to saying that if you can't separate all the evidence of an endemic attitude of turning a blind eye to breaches of various international standards on human rights, diplomatic laws, war crimes and so forth from the mundane then you should just keep it all secret.
The story from the cables wasn't one specific incident or another, it's that the US was ignoring the very standards it preaches to the rest of the world and from the very top to the very bottom illustrated by everything from Hilary Clinton ordering the spying on of UN diplomats in international territory down to grunts on the ground murdering people and shelling civilian populated areas in the hope of randomly hitting militants.
Sure not all of it was relevant to this story, but you just couldn't filter out the irrelevant cruft.
Finally you're missing the GP's point completely, yes we all know that technically it's about breaking some arbitrarily (and often undemocratically) defined legal principle, but the GP's point was that just because something is law, doesn't mean it's just, doesn't mean it's moral, and doesn't mean it's right. Thus far for all the talk of putting lives in danger the leaks have not done so, they have led to a massive positive upheaval in global politics where the entrenched positions of vested interests were the very things that led to the complacency that allowed the abuses highlighted within the cables to be committed in the first place. The net effect of the leaks has been overwhelmingly positive across the globe and in the court of moral judgement Manning has been vindicated, it's just a shame the courts of American justice no longer align with what is right, or what is wrong, only with what the vested interests from large corporates to self interested politicians want to be the case. Really, the only people bitching about what Manning did are wrong are for the most part, the same right wing Republican types who allowed the likes of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to turn into a such a shit storm in the first place, so no, the rest of the world doesn't give a fuck what you think, we just feel sorry for Manning being caught up in your poisonous grasp but thank him for the positive effect his actions have had in the world.
"That is 100% irrelevant to the BBC tax which applies merely to having a TV hooked up - even if you have NO INTENTION of ever watching any BBC channels."
Well that's probably because it doesn't just pay for the BBC but also some goes to the likes of ITV, Channel 4 and so forth, as well as helping fund the UK's TV broadcasting infrastructure.
"Since people have no choice in if they pay the fee, regardless of if they use the service, that makes it a tax."
This is an epic fail on so many levels. Did you really fail to read my last post and recognise that something is only a tax if it's paid for government purposes and that one of the fundamental principles of the BBC is that it is independent of government? Seriously? You're THAT stupid?
"Why are you incapable of distinguishing between voluntarily paying for a product / service and being forced to pay for a product / service that you don't want?"
Yes, except: a) The license is voluntary b) If you want to use broadcast TV infrastructure you obviously do want it c) If you don't want to use broadcast TV infrastructure you don't need it, see a) d) Paying a license to use TV infrastructure is as optional as buying a Ford car is, hence my analogy
You know, you'd have looked a whole lot less stupid if you'd simply said "Oh, I didn't realise the definition of tax was that it had to be related to government and that the BBC was independent of government, and that the license paid for more than simply just the BBC itself".
Really, no one's going to think you're weak or something if you admit to being wrong on the internet when you are clearly and demonstrably so. You don't have to keep digging you know.
On the flip side, when they've invested $20k in you and have a 6% stake in your business they have some interest in supporting you and seeing you do well.
If you're just interested in producing a cool product based on this tech it still opens the door for you to get a 6 figure salary doing something you enjoy whilst retaining a controlling stake in your company. For many people that's all they could ever want in life. Chances are if you do a good job you can always cash in and sell the rest off to Microsoft for a fair whack anyway.
Most people will put aside paranoia and don't suffer FOSS zealotry if it means they have a chance to do what they love doing, getting to engage with some pretty fucking smart people working on cutting edge tech. But this is why someone with a genuine interest in the field will go ahead with this, probably do something pretty cool and groundbreaking, make decent money and have fun doing so, which is more than can be said for half the Slashdotters crying out paranoid screams about how it's a trap.
This kind of deal is a foot in the door and if your overriding interest is doing what you love then it's the difference between being able to do that and likely make a decent living, and being stuck in some dead end piss boring CRUD app development role.
Any illusion of succeding all by yourself without any outside financial support and without building up any contacts with people in the industry through fear of them stealing your ideas or whatever is precisely the type of attitude you need if you don't want to go anywhere or do anything in life.
I doubt the likes of Zuckerberg fail to sleep at night because Microsoft has a 6% share in his company or whatever. He's still done pretty well out the deal no?
Personally I don't want to migrate to America, if it's even open to foreigners, but for anyone taking this up, good on them, I suspect they'll have a great time and even if it doesn't take off find they've enjoyed an experience that at least looks very good on the CV and gives them a step up in life.
There are plenty more astute, smarter, young people in just about every country than there are stupid older people in that country's government so the idea that young people would make inherently worse politicians is absolute crap.
Worse, it is a lack of age spread in most countries governments that have led to the fact that many nations are enacting laws surrounding the internet that simply make no sense, because the politicians in question have no grasp of it, whilst many younger people would understand and could hence legislate on the issue in a far superior manner.
Sure the young may not have such a grasp of issues like pensions but that's why you need a mix of old and young.
If you genuinely believe the young can never have anything to offer as elected political representatives then I think that's more a sad reflection of your own ignorance and lack of worthfulness to the world of politics than an illustration of the real world.
So in other words your previous pop at the young actually has nothing to do with age and older people can be just as greedy if not more so than younger people?
Really, the world financial state is in such a mess because of the baby boom generation, they wanted everything but didn't think money should ever be an obstacle. I think claiming the young would spend what isn't there is a bit rich in this context, particularly as they're the ones who really will now have to spend the rest of their lives paying for the older baby boomers spending spree.
Yes, well, that's probably one of those unfortunate side effects of reading something that wasn't a troll, as a troll - it wont seem like a very good troll.
Look, you're clearly struggling here, let me help you figure out why it's a license, not a tax.
Step 1: Look up the definition of tax, note the term government.
"And you could fold it into little boats to float all your possessions when the sea level rises to... wait, what? Back to the level it was 3 year ago."
Wait, don't tell me, and you explain this to yourself as being the case because all the excess water just spills over the edge of your flat earth?
Damn those stupid scientists, global warming isn't happening, the earth is flat!
No, honestly though, I have a serious question. How many independent studies showing global warming is happening will it take before you're willing to overturn your viewpoint and accept that as a denialist, you were completely and utterly wrong?
"And it's easy to be "commercially independent" when the public is forced to pay your bills if they have a television, even if they just use their TV to watch DVD's and never watch your network."
This is completely false.
You do not have to pay the license fee if you simply use a DVD/Bluray player/Console or whatever. Only if you are actively picking up broadcast TV do you need to pay for the license. This may mean disabling your antenna socket on your TV in some way but it's certainly the case nonetheless.
You only pay for the TV license if you watch broadcast TV, even if you never watch the BBC this is because some of the license fee does go towards other channels, and the physical TV network itself.
That reason is because tax by definition, is paid to the government to fund the state. The BBC however exists by royal charter and is hence not a government institution. Whilst government has some say in elements of it, such as capping license fee costs and so forth, this is no different than government putting limits on what certain private sector industries can/can't charge and do.
The reason people get annoyed at hearing it called a tax then is because it's not a tax, and most people who call it a tax do so in an attempt to be derogatory about it. The vast majority of people are happy to pay the TV license because they recognise it brings value, and more importantly, an independent news broadcaster that is about as unbiased as the media can be for the most part (as opposed to highly partisan Fox news for example), so they grow rather tired of hearing the petty few of the ultra-paranoid about that sort of thing Americans crying tax every time they hear it. It's no more a tax than having to pay a cable subscription to view cable TV in countries like America is.
Yes, and when I bought a Ford car I had to pay the fucking Ford tax because I wasn't allowed it free, it's disgusting isn't it all this tax. It's worse though, when I went to the supermarket the other night and bought some chocolate I had to pay for that too, fucking chocolate tax, whatever next? It's all definitely tax too because it's just like petrol, I mean people who don't use it don't pay it, but those who do do pay it.
For what it's worth I'm British, but my girlfriend is Canadian and we live in the UK.
Up until Harper got a majority we were seriously considering moving over to Canada. I don't much like our Tory government in the UK but Harper's Tories seem even worse.
I hope it's just temporary, and that Canada isn't going down the same path of right wing rationality that America has gone so far down it can't seem to find it's way back from. Certainly all my friends in Canada from various places and walks of life seem to dislike him so there is hope perhaps that next time he gets a kicking - well, that's if he's still allowing elections by then and hasn't declared himself grand dicator of Canada of course;)
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, I know posting anything that sounds even remotely negative about PC gaming is very taboo here, but I'd rather post and be realistic than watch Slashdot continue it's circle jerk into a pit of self-reassuring ignorance.
I doubt for a second that he meant the 95% figure literally, but simply meant that a high proportion of PC players pirate the game.
It's nothing whatsoever to do with console players putting up with worse games, that's one of the most blatant demonstrations of jealous bitterness I've seen here.
The fact is there's some truth in Ubisoft's stance and whilst I have little sympathy for them as a company because of their misguided DRM attempts that doesn't mean they are wrong.
The fact remains that PC game sales are lower, see here for example with 2 major releases listed for the week ending 12th November:
http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly.php
We have, for MW3:
X360: 6.6 million
PS3: 4.7 million
PC: 0.3 million
Okay, how about something that's always been designed more as a PC game, and IMHO plays better on a PC and reaps the advantages of mods where consoles can't - Skyrim?:
X360: 2 million
PS3: 0.9 million
PC: 0.5 million
These figures are quite depressing for the PC, perhaps the biggest selling PC release in the last few years (decade?) Starcraft 2 shifted 3 million in it's first month. Very respectable for presumably the highest selling one off it still doesn't really come close to say, the Call of Duty series in the 360 which breaks 5 mill in a week (not a month like SC2) each year for the past few years despite the game IMO having gone downhill.
It's pretty well established then that the PC market just doesn't shift as many units as the console market does, it just can't compete in this respect, but there are other factors too - PC gamers are used to paying only £29.99 at most in the UK market for games, versus £39.99 for console games, so not only does the PC face lower sales figures, but lower sales profit also.
The problem is made worse by the fact the PC is simply more expensive to develop for and support, because of the unfortunate situation of having a massive set of hardware and software combinations to deal with many of which can result in sometimes show stopping bugs if not resolved, and, to further maximise sales, where a larger set of configuration settings is needed, and in some cases a large set of content to support these varying configurations giving varying levels of performance each person's system provides.
The net result is that there's really questionable benefit to supporting the PC platform, particularly when the time spent to support the PC would probably better spent making DLC for a console release in terms of profit, and whilst you may well want companies to release for the PC anyway, they're not charities, they're businesses, and they'll do whatever maximises their profits. That often means not supporting the PC.
But it's not all doom and gloom for the PC, I think it's somewhat beneficial, the last few years has seen a massive boom in really really good indie games on the PC because large companies abandoning the platform for higher profit console platforms has left that hole open for indies to compete. There are still areas where PCs are king too - games where decent worthwhile mods can be made, and MMOs - whilst there have been attempts, consoles are next to useless for both of these things.
I know some people will argue with me and say "Well, Steam doesn't release their stats" and that sort of argument, but it doesn't matter- the reality is that these companies have deemed developing for PCs to be not financially worthwhile however you try and spin it, and getting mad at them wont help.
Personally? I just enjoy gaming, so prefer to be pragmatic and have a gaming PC as well as an XBox 360 so that I can enjoy the best of both worlds. I can enjoy console only releases and some pretty fucking great ind
"But seeing people on Slashdot mindlessly say "Apple is teh suxor" is about as intelligent as saying it about Microsoft or Linux without having used them ..."
But I do have an iPad 2 and it really is all hype. There's this mythical fantasy built up around them that they're easy to use, that they're flawless, that they're high quality, that they have loads of awesome apps, and it's simply all a load of bollocks.
Starting with build and design quality, the back of it scratches so easily, both mine and everyone's I've seen has numerous scratches on it, it's hardly a tough sturdy material that continues to look nice if you dare ever actually try and use it. The official iPad covers that flip over to protect the screen look fancy but again, after a bit of use, those manky lines that appear on the screen between the grooves resulting in a need for constant cleaning make it look naff, and tacky. There's a long history of poor build quality on Apple products too, from cracking iPhone 3GS', to far too easily scratched iPod nanos, to fire hazard magsafe power adapters, to discolouring MacBook plastics. What about the fundamentally flawed 4G antenna design?
Ease of use is another myth, there's nothing about iOS that's any easier to use than other equally priced devices, I'd argue the fact that it's so utterly app-centric is in fact a downside - Android's gadgets are far more intuitive to end users in letting them access what they want, and far more efficient to boot. The app store app on the iPad is terribly unintuitive, why when I search for something and then click the button to reset search filters does it not actually reset search filters and in fact retains the primary search text? that's not what I want- when I reset search filters it's because I want to search again. Why when I'm scrolling through a massive long list of a few thousand apps split into many pages is it than when I go into one, and go back, it returns me to the first page so I've no idea how far along the list I was and have to scroll through many more apps? What about the extremely unhelpful fact the device tries to tie itself to a person so that if multiple people in a household want to use it they find they have to jump through a massive amount of hoops because switching user accounts for certain things like social media just isn't very easy? That's on the device itself, I wont even get started on how iTunes is probably one of the most awful, buggy, unintuitive mainstream apps around in the world right now. What about the apps that only take up a small portion of the iPad in the middle of the screen "because they were designed for iPhone" - why the fuck do I have this massive tablet if I'm going to have half the apps using only a phone sized section of the screen - great, I can expand it to use the screen and just have an extremely pixelated version instead. We've been building scalable user interfaces on PCs for decades to handle a far wider range of screen resolutions - on a device whose fans espouse how awesome it is in terms of quality and ease of use was it really so hard for Apple to plan for and issue advice for producing scalable, futureproof interfaces to start with? Or we they too busy slagging off Android for fragmentation to do this, because they didn't want to look hypocritical when the same issue - also known as hardware progress - inevitably came to bite them?
The choice of apps isn't as good as often hyped either, there's the obvious - that because of Apple's strict policies you're stuck with a god awful piss poor keyboard that can't even touch the likes of Swype on my phone (my phone is Android), through to the slightly less talked about - that all those great looking apps you see demo'd are pretty fucking hollow when you come to use them. That app on the adverts showing a planet or whatever? no it's not the exciting looking app that looks like it'll let you explore the solar system in great depth using just your fingers, it's a few largely static pages of rather basic factual information. The spr
"Take a look at their ads. They are all about what you can do with the devices."
Yes, I have an iPad2 and you're right.
Unfortunately however being able to randomly slide screens around, and use half-arsed versions of applications that only do 1/100th of what their counterparts on my PC or laptop do is the reason it's just sat uncharged because being arsed to plugged it in to charge it nowadays requires more effort than any resultant benefit the device can provide to my life to be worthwhile. I suppose if I didn't have a PC attached to my TV then it might be useful as a £400 web browser in the living room at least.
"They are renown for focusing on what you can do with the devices."
No, that's quite the opposite of what they're known for, Apple devices have long been known to let you do less, with the argument that what they do let you do, they let you do more comfortably. Certainly what you do with Apple devices has never been stand out, they've always been quite limited and restrictive whether it was the limited selection of file formats on the early iPods, or the strict lockdown and limitation of applications on the iPhone and iPad.
"If you really believe that marketing brainwashing is a more plausible explanation than that, I'm afraid you're the one who's brainwashed."
Whilst your attempt at the use of the word brainwashing to make it look like some mystical unexplained power is cute, you've got to be quite naive to believe that companies don't rely on common human psychological traits to push a products sales or price higher than it would otherwise be worth. If you hadn't noticed, there are entire industries built around just that, fashion, and modern art are two you can start with. If however rather than cold hard examples like this you prefer the theoretical, then feel free to go and read about consumerism.
Contrary to the hype, Apple products aren't more secure, aren't any less buggy, don't have more features, aren't any easier to use, aren't of any higher quality, and don't always even look any more stylish than all of their competitors. Above all else what separates Apple from the rest is that they've built a brand that allows them to shift units regardless of any downsides to their products in much the same way that some people will gladly squeeze into an uncomfortable pair of Armani jeans and insist on showing them off, simply because they say Armani on them.
"Not true. Boredom and stifling bureaucracy has hounded me all my life. I can't stand sitting in a lecture hall where the speaker's putting me to sleep. I far prefer to slide out to the library, or arts & crafts, or anything where I'd actually learn something of some value."
Yes but the point is you can still pass a degree by doing just that. I passed some courses with distinction without attending a single lecture, they weren't mandatory where I did one of my degrees, as long as you could keep up the grades.
Nowadays it's even easier, you can often download the lectures and watch them in whatever size chunks you prefer and whereever you want.
I do have somewhat of a concern about the ruling, it leaves open the potential that even a slight bit of movement on one of these makes the measures okay:
"which applies indiscriminately to all its customers; exclusively at its expense; and for an unlimited period"
So if it's not exclusively at it's expense, i.e. the music industry pays a pittance, say, £1000 towards the measure or requests it for a finite period such as an effective lifetime - 100 years, then does that make it okay?
Realistically the ruling is too vague to offer any long term guaranteed protection and this will return to the courts once the industry has made a slight bit of movement on one of these points in a manner I described.
The key word that really ruins it all is the "and" in the "and for an unlimited period", if this word was instead "or" then it would imply that none of these things is acceptable, instead it implies that they are only unacceptable when all hold true in combination, so the content industry only has to mitigate one to work round this ruling, which is fairly trivial.
"Keep in mind that while a degree demonstrates some level of knowledge in a particular field, it also demonstrates the ability to complete a long, boring and bureaucratic process. There is value in the later."
But anyone is capable of this, seriously.
When the subject matter just requires you to be able to sit through a bunch of monotonous crap and just remember things then I don't think there really are many people who can't do this. There are a lot of students that go to uni purely for the lifestyle, and to avoid going straight into employment. They don't do it for care of learning or career prospects.
So the question is this, why would you want to employ a history major who did a 4 year degree, quite possibly just because they were too lazy to do a proper job and wanted a few years of drinking and getting high when you could instead have someone who knew uni wasn't really of much worth to them and went straight to work and has 4 years of experience in the field of business in question?
I actually worked full time whilst doing a second degree and have little sympathy for the idea that a degree demonstrates that you're capable of doing 4 years of hard work - it doesn't, it's something you can complete succesfully in your spare time. If the subject matter is worthless to industry coupled with the fact that a single degree doesn't require the same weekly time investment of a full time job (when I did my maths degree I was working around 40 hours a week, and studying around 30 hours a week) then I have a hard time understanding what of use such degrees do actually provide. I'd still rather take the person whose worked in the industry providing they can demonstrate they at least turned up on time and are somewhat competent - the fresh graduate doesn't even have any way of demonstrating that however, it's a gamble - so why employ them? Unless they're doing two degrees at once then they can't realistically demonstrate any useful trait gained from their last 4 years.
If you're going to do a degree, then do it in a subject of worth to industry, ideally an industry you actually want to go into. Otherwise don't waste your time and the time of industry, go straight to work and work your way up. If you're good at what you do then you'll get where you want to go either way. Constantly being able to perform well above your actual job spec and maintaining that as you're career grows, however you do it is really the key to advancing above all else. If you're performing well above your station and can demonstrate it to prospective employers then no one will give a fuck if you have a degree or not.
The real problem is the people who think they're _entitled_ to a job, simply because they have a degree in art history or whatever.
One side note is that yes, blah blah, I know HR will filter you out if you don't have a degree blah blah blah - bollocks. I've seen hardly any companies that actually do this and those that do aren't worth working for anyway. If your CV is well written to demonstrate your achievements and your achievements are of significant note because you have performed well above your previous post to a level suitable for your next post then you'll find no shortage of interviews, degree or not, and if you can back it up in the interview then the offers will follow to boot.
That's a bit harsh, I've never had an inappropriate relationship or been accused of sexual harassment in my life!
Well why do you think they're so confused about ditching their PC division? On one hand it'll appease the printer faction when the war begins, on the other hand there's potential that the PC faction will defeat the printers and so HP puts itself in danger offending them too. HP is stuck right in the middle of this upcoming war the poor bastards.
There's more to it than this, I have one of these printers and don't use it very often, however last night I was sat playing BF3 and notice something out the corner of my eye. The thing had switched itself on and it's front end on the tablet thing was staring at me with the blue light on the printer flashing, as if it was trying to communicate with me, as if it felt the need to make me acknowledge it's presence.
I suspect HP does know something we don't know about WebOS, and that's that it is sentient. HP understands that if it doesn't retain a close relationship now, that when these things start to learn to do other things, like walk, and weild machine guns, then it risks suffering the same kind of enslavement as the rest of us. Me? I'm not too worried, I said "there there" to my printer in a calm voice, fed it some paper, and said "time to sleep" before gently turning it off. I hope this will be enough, that if I'm kind to it now, it will spare me when the day comes.
"Crazy? Since I am the subject of your link, I would have to take offense at that."
That's great, I'm sure Gaddaffi would've taken offence to being called crazy too, but it really wouldn't make it any less true. So offence or not, you'll be seen as you make yourself seen, not as you wish to be seen.
"But if you want to talk facts, let's talk facts rather than distort the picture or take comments out of context, shall we?"
But that's the problem with crazy people, much like how they think they are seen or would like to be seen being quite different from how they are actually are seen, what they think are facts is quite different from what are actually facts. The fact is the science that has stood up to peer review overwhelmingly demonstrates a warming trend.
"I'd rather be a crazy than some kind of ass who quotes other people out of context."
Yeah, there's a slight problem there, I didn't actually quote you. I linked you. What is behind that link is your posting in it's entirety and the thread that follows from that. There's no cherry picking there, simply what you said in it's entirety.
Still I have to wonder why exactly you would quote the Daily Mail - a well known far right site with a distinct anti-global warming bias to it and which has been known to outright lie in it's articles on a regular basis to try and push it's point.
But wait, the other guy responding to you already pointed it out, you said dispute the science, not the source! Well, apart from the fact source credibility is kind of important - I mean, surely you wouldn't blindly believe anything Phil Jones from the CRU says nowadays without proper peer reviewed evidence would you? - doing what you told the other guy to do is pretty simple, in fact, the BBC has done it nicely for you:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15538845
You see you could've found this yourself, with a 2 second Google, and could have understood why the Daily Mail article is completely wrong from the outset, but you didn't. Why is that? It's okay, I can answer that for you - it's because you're incapable of objectivity.
You can hide behind your "But I only said in the last 2 - 3 years" all you want, but your agenda is obvious, plenty of your posts betray that falsehood.
You're crazy, you're stupid. It really is that simple. The saddest part is you're too caught up in your own toxic blend of bias and ignorance to even realise it.
No, they really are, that's the problem.
Despite such independent studies there are still a lot of crazies out there who genuinely still believe global warming isn't happening.
See this post from just yesterday for one example:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2534148&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=38107720
The fact is there are still a large number of people out there who haven't even got past the first part of the argument yet, and as this comment was +5 insightful yesterday we're not even talking about some individual kook here, we're talking about a sizeable group of them.
"He released tens (hundreds?) of thousands of documents for basically one or two issues that might have been significant."
Therein lies precisely the problem with people like you who feel the US is a nation who's evidence of wrongdoing should be kept secret, you just fob it off as "one or two issues" when there were, frankly, 100s of important issues all surrounding the same theme - American arrogance as a source of many problems in the world, from diplomatic spying to many many counts of killing of civilians.
If a company suffers from systemic corruption and incompetence then yes, only a complete leak of their data will be enough to allow people to examine the depth of the problem. This is the fundamental issue unveiled by the cables Manning leaked - American corruption and incompetence was a major problem throughout pretty much every level of the military and government, and that needed to be exposed so that America can correct it's path of self-destruction based upon arrogance and the culture of secrecy that allowed such corruption and subversive practices to thrive in the first place.
I don't expect you to understand this though, as first you would have to recognise that America has lost it's way as a force for good in the world, but I'll help you get started on that - extraordinary rendition and detention without trial and Guantanamo are an ideal start. You can follow up with the war in Iraq and exactly what that was meant to achieve and who profited from it (Hint: Bush and Cheney et al.) at the expense of many US service people's lives. When you start to recognise that America has lost it's way, you'll begin to understand why America has seen it's respect in the world plummet, and when you understand all of that you'll begin to recognise that America needs the kind of shake up Manning has provided to wake up from it's mindless sleepwalk towards it's own downfall.
Perhaps you'll also then realise that people like me don't like seeing things like the Wikileaks leak happen because we hate America, but because we would rather see America return to being a force for good in the world - something it inherently can't ever be when the widespread practices exposed by the cables continue to be commonplace. The best defence against such a leak in future is the same solution required for America to return to being an important force for good in the world - stop merely pretending to be a beacon of democracy, liberty, justice, and freedom and actually start once again to act in the interests of those tenets. If America was doing that, there'd be nothing of note worth leaking.
"Reuters had a right to know what happened to their journalists; the fact that they were killed in war is not relevant. They asked politely, and the US army refused to give them the video. This is not a matter of defending the army's actions, or comparing their actions to more barbaric wars, it is a matter of whether or not people have a right to know how two journalists wound up dead."
It's not just the Reuters journalists either, during the Iraq invasion a US A10 pilot strafed British forces killing and wounding some. We recognised that shit happens in war and accepted that yes the US isn't going to prosecute it's pilots over this, however we'd like a copy of the A10's gun camera for our inquest so we could judge what went wrong. America, being America, outright refused even this simple request.
This is precisely the sort of problem at the core of this issue - this attitude in the US military and government of closing ranks when they fuck up rather than learning from their mistakes. It gives US military personnel this idea that they can commit these acts and not worry because their superiors will cover it up and so they have no reason to be careful anymore.
America has created a culture where it's troops aren't accountable, where it doesn't matter who they kill intentionally or not, and this is why the leaks were important - they acted as a balance against this culture of no blame. They brought accountability back to the US military and the US government such that if the US isn't going to force it's soldiers to start acting with some degree of competence in warzones in which both civilians, journalists, and allies are at risk of harm, then they're going to have to face being publicly embarassed on the international stage instead.
"As for right and wrong, for him to take the moral high ground he would have had to exercise a great deal more restraint and specificity on what he leaked than he did."
This is retarded, there's no possible way he could've filtered through the information to separate the countless amounts of abuse documented within, so your argument is effectively that because he couldn't do this he shouldn't have leaked at all to avoid the more menial and irrelevant cables getting leaked.
Your argument amounts to saying that if you can't separate all the evidence of an endemic attitude of turning a blind eye to breaches of various international standards on human rights, diplomatic laws, war crimes and so forth from the mundane then you should just keep it all secret.
The story from the cables wasn't one specific incident or another, it's that the US was ignoring the very standards it preaches to the rest of the world and from the very top to the very bottom illustrated by everything from Hilary Clinton ordering the spying on of UN diplomats in international territory down to grunts on the ground murdering people and shelling civilian populated areas in the hope of randomly hitting militants.
Sure not all of it was relevant to this story, but you just couldn't filter out the irrelevant cruft.
Finally you're missing the GP's point completely, yes we all know that technically it's about breaking some arbitrarily (and often undemocratically) defined legal principle, but the GP's point was that just because something is law, doesn't mean it's just, doesn't mean it's moral, and doesn't mean it's right. Thus far for all the talk of putting lives in danger the leaks have not done so, they have led to a massive positive upheaval in global politics where the entrenched positions of vested interests were the very things that led to the complacency that allowed the abuses highlighted within the cables to be committed in the first place. The net effect of the leaks has been overwhelmingly positive across the globe and in the court of moral judgement Manning has been vindicated, it's just a shame the courts of American justice no longer align with what is right, or what is wrong, only with what the vested interests from large corporates to self interested politicians want to be the case. Really, the only people bitching about what Manning did are wrong are for the most part, the same right wing Republican types who allowed the likes of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to turn into a such a shit storm in the first place, so no, the rest of the world doesn't give a fuck what you think, we just feel sorry for Manning being caught up in your poisonous grasp but thank him for the positive effect his actions have had in the world.
"That is 100% irrelevant to the BBC tax which applies merely to having a TV hooked up - even if you have NO INTENTION of ever watching any BBC channels."
Well that's probably because it doesn't just pay for the BBC but also some goes to the likes of ITV, Channel 4 and so forth, as well as helping fund the UK's TV broadcasting infrastructure.
"Since people have no choice in if they pay the fee, regardless of if they use the service, that makes it a tax."
This is an epic fail on so many levels. Did you really fail to read my last post and recognise that something is only a tax if it's paid for government purposes and that one of the fundamental principles of the BBC is that it is independent of government? Seriously? You're THAT stupid?
"Why are you incapable of distinguishing between voluntarily paying for a product / service and being forced to pay for a product / service that you don't want?"
Yes, except:
a) The license is voluntary
b) If you want to use broadcast TV infrastructure you obviously do want it
c) If you don't want to use broadcast TV infrastructure you don't need it, see a)
d) Paying a license to use TV infrastructure is as optional as buying a Ford car is, hence my analogy
You know, you'd have looked a whole lot less stupid if you'd simply said "Oh, I didn't realise the definition of tax was that it had to be related to government and that the BBC was independent of government, and that the license paid for more than simply just the BBC itself".
Really, no one's going to think you're weak or something if you admit to being wrong on the internet when you are clearly and demonstrably so. You don't have to keep digging you know.
On the flip side, when they've invested $20k in you and have a 6% stake in your business they have some interest in supporting you and seeing you do well.
If you're just interested in producing a cool product based on this tech it still opens the door for you to get a 6 figure salary doing something you enjoy whilst retaining a controlling stake in your company. For many people that's all they could ever want in life. Chances are if you do a good job you can always cash in and sell the rest off to Microsoft for a fair whack anyway.
Most people will put aside paranoia and don't suffer FOSS zealotry if it means they have a chance to do what they love doing, getting to engage with some pretty fucking smart people working on cutting edge tech. But this is why someone with a genuine interest in the field will go ahead with this, probably do something pretty cool and groundbreaking, make decent money and have fun doing so, which is more than can be said for half the Slashdotters crying out paranoid screams about how it's a trap.
This kind of deal is a foot in the door and if your overriding interest is doing what you love then it's the difference between being able to do that and likely make a decent living, and being stuck in some dead end piss boring CRUD app development role.
Any illusion of succeding all by yourself without any outside financial support and without building up any contacts with people in the industry through fear of them stealing your ideas or whatever is precisely the type of attitude you need if you don't want to go anywhere or do anything in life.
I doubt the likes of Zuckerberg fail to sleep at night because Microsoft has a 6% share in his company or whatever. He's still done pretty well out the deal no?
Personally I don't want to migrate to America, if it's even open to foreigners, but for anyone taking this up, good on them, I suspect they'll have a great time and even if it doesn't take off find they've enjoyed an experience that at least looks very good on the CV and gives them a step up in life.
No because the US isn't a signatory to the ICC precisely so it can get away with breaching human rights without having to answer to anyone.
That's just complete tosh.
There are plenty more astute, smarter, young people in just about every country than there are stupid older people in that country's government so the idea that young people would make inherently worse politicians is absolute crap.
Worse, it is a lack of age spread in most countries governments that have led to the fact that many nations are enacting laws surrounding the internet that simply make no sense, because the politicians in question have no grasp of it, whilst many younger people would understand and could hence legislate on the issue in a far superior manner.
Sure the young may not have such a grasp of issues like pensions but that's why you need a mix of old and young.
If you genuinely believe the young can never have anything to offer as elected political representatives then I think that's more a sad reflection of your own ignorance and lack of worthfulness to the world of politics than an illustration of the real world.
So in other words your previous pop at the young actually has nothing to do with age and older people can be just as greedy if not more so than younger people?
Really, the world financial state is in such a mess because of the baby boom generation, they wanted everything but didn't think money should ever be an obstacle. I think claiming the young would spend what isn't there is a bit rich in this context, particularly as they're the ones who really will now have to spend the rest of their lives paying for the older baby boomers spending spree.
Yes, well, that's probably one of those unfortunate side effects of reading something that wasn't a troll, as a troll - it wont seem like a very good troll.
Look, you're clearly struggling here, let me help you figure out why it's a license, not a tax.
Step 1: Look up the definition of tax, note the term government.
Step 2: Go here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/about/how_we_govern/charter_and_agreement/ and specifically note the last sentence of the first paragraph in the section labelled "The Agreement"
Let me know how it goes for you, if you're still struggling I'll spell it out for you.
"And you could fold it into little boats to float all your possessions when the sea level rises to... wait, what? Back to the level it was 3 year ago."
Wait, don't tell me, and you explain this to yourself as being the case because all the excess water just spills over the edge of your flat earth?
Damn those stupid scientists, global warming isn't happening, the earth is flat!
No, honestly though, I have a serious question. How many independent studies showing global warming is happening will it take before you're willing to overturn your viewpoint and accept that as a denialist, you were completely and utterly wrong?
"And it's easy to be "commercially independent" when the public is forced to pay your bills if they have a television, even if they just use their TV to watch DVD's and never watch your network."
This is completely false.
You do not have to pay the license fee if you simply use a DVD/Bluray player/Console or whatever. Only if you are actively picking up broadcast TV do you need to pay for the license. This may mean disabling your antenna socket on your TV in some way but it's certainly the case nonetheless.
You only pay for the TV license if you watch broadcast TV, even if you never watch the BBC this is because some of the license fee does go towards other channels, and the physical TV network itself.
There's a simple reason as to why it's not a tax.
That reason is because tax by definition, is paid to the government to fund the state. The BBC however exists by royal charter and is hence not a government institution. Whilst government has some say in elements of it, such as capping license fee costs and so forth, this is no different than government putting limits on what certain private sector industries can/can't charge and do.
The reason people get annoyed at hearing it called a tax then is because it's not a tax, and most people who call it a tax do so in an attempt to be derogatory about it. The vast majority of people are happy to pay the TV license because they recognise it brings value, and more importantly, an independent news broadcaster that is about as unbiased as the media can be for the most part (as opposed to highly partisan Fox news for example), so they grow rather tired of hearing the petty few of the ultra-paranoid about that sort of thing Americans crying tax every time they hear it. It's no more a tax than having to pay a cable subscription to view cable TV in countries like America is.
Yes, and when I bought a Ford car I had to pay the fucking Ford tax because I wasn't allowed it free, it's disgusting isn't it all this tax. It's worse though, when I went to the supermarket the other night and bought some chocolate I had to pay for that too, fucking chocolate tax, whatever next? It's all definitely tax too because it's just like petrol, I mean people who don't use it don't pay it, but those who do do pay it.
For what it's worth I'm British, but my girlfriend is Canadian and we live in the UK.
Up until Harper got a majority we were seriously considering moving over to Canada. I don't much like our Tory government in the UK but Harper's Tories seem even worse.
I hope it's just temporary, and that Canada isn't going down the same path of right wing rationality that America has gone so far down it can't seem to find it's way back from. Certainly all my friends in Canada from various places and walks of life seem to dislike him so there is hope perhaps that next time he gets a kicking - well, that's if he's still allowing elections by then and hasn't declared himself grand dicator of Canada of course ;)