>> They can't disagree with the president and still have him be a decent person and a fairly elected president
Whether he was fairly elected or not, he is not a decent person. Give me access to him for 20 seconds, a loaded shotgun and immunity from prosecution and I'll become a worldwide hero before that times is up.
Welfare : I strongly suspect most slashdot readers over the age of 22 are paying rather more in tax than receiving on welfare. I know I certainly am:(
No war : I think there's plenty of support for war. Unfortunately there's also critical thought and a strong desire for logical outcomes. Terrorist attacks WTC does not logically lead to invasion of Iraq. Lack of evidence of WMDs does not logically lead to "lets invade because of the WMDs".
No warrant-less surveillance : Not everyone in my private collection is 18. In fact, all of them are considerably older. You also appear to have disregarded the recent article about UK CCTV gaining loudspeakers, in which several slashdot posters welcomed the imposition of warrantless surveillance.
Anti-trust legislation : As with so many topics on Slashdot, this has many people with strong views both for and against. However, you are correct: Microsoft needs to die.
Abortion : I haven't actually seen any great discussions on Slashdot on this particular topic. My assumption is that the anti-religious bias of the site's contributors will mean that most religious arguments against abortion would be disregarded, and a decision made on ethics, morality and logic. Is that a bad thing?
Gay marriage : See above re: religious arguments.
Yes, do go on. You haven't explained why this site is left-leaning at all, if indeed it is. I perceive it as being more centralist than left-leaning, and there are contributors with views across the spectrum.
School exams (at 16) in the UK have migrated over the past 15 years from almost entirely exam based to heavily coursework based.
One reason for this change was the gender differences in exam scores.
Now of course, girls are outscoring boys quite significantly. And it doesn't matter, because getting an A is now so easy they've had to add A* as a grade, and even those are easy to achieve.
In '92 it was just usenet crossposting that was a problem, and even that wasn't a massive issue until Cantor and Siegel kicked off. Damn I wish we'd kneecapped them back then, set a decent precedent..
Although, Radiohead videos do tend to be compelling viewing. Give me their videos on my portable device and instead of boosting productivity at work it'll probably distract me completely and destroy what tiny chance exists of me getting something useful done.
Tell me please, why should I give a shit about American marines? Far far more people died in the Asian Tsunami a couple of years ago and I didn't grieve about a single one of them. If Prince Harry drops dead tomorrow from a bullet fired by a religious idiot then I personally think that will be beneficial to the country. Evidence is that he's thick as shit, so it wouldn't be a bad thing to get him out of line to the throne, and the death may serve to change British foreign policy.
You did stay out of England in the years leading up to WWII. If you'd joined the war much sooner it would have finished much sooner.
England fought off the threat of Nazi invasion without any help from America at all.
The earliest assistance America gave to England in WWII was the lend-lease. Given we were bankrupting ourselves preventing wide-spread genocide I think it's understandable that we lacked the immediate cash to hand. I'd also like to point out that - we've repaid everything owed under that scheme - one of the payments for lend-lease was the technology and people used on the manhattan project
I'd say America got a pretty fucking good deal out of that one. How about you go and read our history books, and not your own - they clearly only show a very biased perspective and perpetuate the myth that it was the Americans that won the war. (Hint: 20 million dead Russian soldiers would like to disagree)
I've spend significant parts of my life checking for bombs under my car before getting in. Someone in the same town didn't check; a bomb killed them and their partner. That bomb was Irish, the funding for it was American.
I've been using D2 for a few weeks now, and although it's occasionally doing things that surprise me, I've grown to like it a lot.
I used to have to open hidden thread responses in a separate tab; now I can just display them inline. That change alone is worth any pain with the new system.
I noticed inline moderation yesterday too. That surprised me, and I'm not certain I like it - I used to go through an entire discussion and moderate, then check whether I'd tried to moderate more or less posts than I had mod points. If I'd gone over-budget I could then prioritise the use of the mod points. The inline moderation means that once I've selected a moderation, it's used. It's also less forgiving of accidental selection in the drop-down.
The other issue I've noticed is that for very large discussions (700+ posts) Firefox can report that processing the Javascript has taken too long. I get offered the choice of cancelling processing the script, or continuing. Once I'd realised what was causing this and just started hitting 'continue' it hasn't prevented the site working properly, just irritated me. But the performance modifications will probably resolve that.
Inline replies sound good - I'll welcome that.
Overall, given the choice, even with the existing implementation and its occasional flaws, I like it, and I'd prefer to keep it to the old discussion format.
Unfortunately the next Battlefield incarnation (2042?) is going the other way.
The career mode will be tightly linked to in-game upgrades and capabilities.
This means that the non-casual players, who play longer and get better at the game, get access to better equipment. This means they have the advantage of superior equipment AND the advantage of greater experience.
I see this widening the gulf between hard-core and casual players, and as someone that doesn't want to spend 20 hours a week on any given game this disappoints me. If the game goes live with that system in place I just wont buy it - why spend money for an online experience where I'm pretty much guaranteed to be at a disadvantage.
For multi-player gaming, especially PvP (player versus player), base the game on player skill, not on cash/time spent. If someone beats me because they're a better player than I have the incentive to get better. If they beat me because they have better equipment, then I have no incentive, as I'll never have a level playing field. (Especially when getting that equipment involves hundreds of hours of gameplay against people that already have it).
World of Warcraft PvP suffers an identical problem. Unless I abandon all my friends, weasel my way into a top-end guild, play for 3-4 hours every night for 8 months and get lucky on certain drops, I can never have a fair 1v1 fight with certain other players. Forgive me for not finding that fun.
F1GP was a masterpiece. Accessible to absolute beginners, graphics you couldn't believe, a physics model you could believe in, high speed crashes to die for (or in) and tweakable to the extreme. Oh, and damn good fun to play. And multiplayer. And way way ahead of anything else out at the time.
>> Unreal Tournament instead of Quake?
Definitely. Every serious online gamer I know preferred UT to Quake, and every beginner got into it more easily too.
UT2003 I'll concede did suck.
>> No Starcraft?
No Warcraft 2, Total Annihilation or xx:Total War either, all of which are superior to Starcraft.
Quake was neither the first, the most ground-breaking, or the best. It is perhaps the most overrated.
>> Best Western RPG: Oblivion
I'm confused. Oblivion does have an amazing game world, immense diversity of activities, total freedom of character advancement, beautiful graphics and intersting storyline. It also has an immensely flawed levelling system that frankly breaks the game.
Fix the levelling system and it's definitely a contender. As released, sorry, no.
>> Best Sports: NBA Jam (Second place goes to the NFL2K series)
The review site is a UK one. Too many football (erm, soccer) games (a couple of which featured) that are far more appealing than any minority sport like basketball.
Throw in driving games (PGR is probably my favourite, although F1GP was truly a classic) and golf games (I still seek a golf game even remotely close to being as much raw fun as Microprose Golf) and I must disagree with you very strongly.
>> Best Strategy: Advance Wars: Dual Strike
How on earth can such a limited game possibly be the best strategy game? Even disregarding the pantheon of 8-bit strategy games, you've put it ahead of all the RTS games (many would say Starcraft, I preferred Warcraft but consider Total Annihilation the best RTS of all time) and ahead of far better turn-based games (Battle Isle, HOMM, Civ). Throw in the Total War series and it seems you've had very little exposure to this genre.
Best Overall: GTA: San Andreas
A great game, but strangely one I find repetitive. Ultimately it boils down to "drive fast, shoot accurately" and there are better driving games out there and better shooting games.
The control systems of the Battlefield series (BF1942, BF:V and BF2) would be interesting in the GTA universe - proper shooting from vehicles, better camera work, etc.
Still, everyone's different. Always fun to compare lists, thank you for sharing yours.
I'd also say that the civilians should either take up arms or get the fuck out of the way. There are no innocent bystanders in war.
Are these tactics nice? Hell no. Do I like them? No. Do I expect them? Definitely. Asymmetric warfare requires exploitation of weaknesses, and the US unwillingness to be seen to be shooting civilians is a very definite and very exploitable weakness.
>> War is an extension of politics. War is what you do when your other methods of persuasion have failed.
>> The point of war is not to destroy the enemy
Carl von Clausewitz is the origin of the statement that war is the continuation of policy by other means. He's also the chap that explicitly stated that the desired outcome from war is to impose your will on the enemy, and that destruction of the enemy is a means to that end.
The point of war is to destroy the enemy. To remove their ability to prevent you imposing your will upon them.
Ironically the use of extreme force by the US (and recently by Israel in Lebanon) may achieve tactical victories but strategically it is failing to achieve destruction of the enemy - instead more people are becoming enraged with the tactics used and taking up political and military action against the US.
Thus the enemy is reinforced and not destroyed, the war is not won, the will of the US is not imposed and policy is not continued.
>> These people are animals, barbarians, sub-human scum, but don't get me started.
Too fucking late, you've got me started.
These people are just people. No better, no worse, no different to anybody else.
Maybe you don't understand their viewpoint. Maybe they don't understand yours. Maybe they are trying to kill you.
That doesn't make them sub-human, or animals, or scum. It doesn't make them barbarians.
If I were going to take on US Marines then I'm going to do one of two things 1 : Bring the British Army with me. Hell, I pay for them, the least they can do is help out 2 : Fight a non-conventional war. I can't match the equipment or force of US forces, and it would be stupid to try.
If I stand amongst civilians then you probably wont shoot me. If I don't, you will. It's not barbarism or animalistic behaviour for these people to force you into that decision, it's raw common sense.
Your attitude towards these people is itself one of the very reasons they hate you.
You want option three, a non-lethal response? I offer you option 4 : Stay the fuck out in the first place.
I think you'll find that a large number of people are outraged. It's just not easy to do anything constructive and legal about it.
In reality me writing to my MP will achieve nothing - shit, he supports ID cards for entirely spurious reasons - but the threat of greater Islamic dissonance will actually cause change to occur.
I did write and complain about ID cards, about the incitement to religious hatred bill, about half a dozen other things. Only one letter has had any effect at all (and even there I suspect the FFII did the real work, rather than my missive).
One day all this will end. How, and when.. that'll be interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
>> They can't disagree with the president and still have him be a decent person and a fairly elected president
Whether he was fairly elected or not, he is not a decent person. Give me access to him for 20 seconds, a loaded shotgun and immunity from prosecution and I'll become a worldwide hero before that times is up.
Welfare : I strongly suspect most slashdot readers over the age of 22 are paying rather more in tax than receiving on welfare. I know I certainly am
No war : I think there's plenty of support for war. Unfortunately there's also critical thought and a strong desire for logical outcomes. Terrorist attacks WTC does not logically lead to invasion of Iraq. Lack of evidence of WMDs does not logically lead to "lets invade because of the WMDs".
No warrant-less surveillance : Not everyone in my private collection is 18. In fact, all of them are considerably older. You also appear to have disregarded the recent article about UK CCTV gaining loudspeakers, in which several slashdot posters welcomed the imposition of warrantless surveillance.
Anti-trust legislation : As with so many topics on Slashdot, this has many people with strong views both for and against. However, you are correct: Microsoft needs to die.
Abortion : I haven't actually seen any great discussions on Slashdot on this particular topic. My assumption is that the anti-religious bias of the site's contributors will mean that most religious arguments against abortion would be disregarded, and a decision made on ethics, morality and logic. Is that a bad thing?
Gay marriage : See above re: religious arguments.
Yes, do go on. You haven't explained why this site is left-leaning at all, if indeed it is. I perceive it as being more centralist than left-leaning, and there are contributors with views across the spectrum.
Move.
Indeed. I personally believe I have more chance of getting shot by the police than a criminal.
(such that the two are distinct)
I did, and I'm confused.
1 = index finger only
2 = middle finger only
3 = both
4 = ring finger
Where I come from holding out your ring finger has little relevance.
>> (yeah, yeah, I know, I must be new here
No, you spell like a true veteran.
School exams (at 16) in the UK have migrated over the past 15 years from almost entirely exam based to heavily coursework based.
One reason for this change was the gender differences in exam scores.
Now of course, girls are outscoring boys quite significantly. And it doesn't matter, because getting an A is now so easy they've had to add A* as a grade, and even those are easy to achieve.
You got spam in '92? Shit, took me until '95-96.
In '92 it was just usenet crossposting that was a problem, and even that wasn't a massive issue until Cantor and Siegel kicked off. Damn I wish we'd kneecapped them back then, set a decent precedent..
Only if I have permission to use them for target practice when your bad parenting results in your kids becoming a nuisance to society.
Or use you for target practice. Or get you to stand behind your kids so I can save on arrows..
Although, Radiohead videos do tend to be compelling viewing. Give me their videos on my portable device and instead of boosting productivity at work it'll probably distract me completely and destroy what tiny chance exists of me getting something useful done.
>> you're a dumbass if you think that Americans funded the IRA
Me and most of the UK and America, it would seem: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1563119
Maybe the American Government didn't fund the IRA. They certainly didn't stop American citizens from doing so.
>> we did, in the Pacific. No one helped us fight the Japanese!
So the 17 aircraft carriers, 4 battleships and 10 cruisers of the British Pacific Fleet didn't exist?
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/LondonGazet
Tell me please, why should I give a shit about American marines? Far far more people died in the Asian Tsunami a couple of years ago and I didn't grieve about a single one of them. If Prince Harry drops dead tomorrow from a bullet fired by a religious idiot then I personally think that will be beneficial to the country. Evidence is that he's thick as shit, so it wouldn't be a bad thing to get him out of line to the throne, and the death may serve to change British foreign policy.
You did stay out of England in the years leading up to WWII. If you'd joined the war much sooner it would have finished much sooner.
England fought off the threat of Nazi invasion without any help from America at all.
The earliest assistance America gave to England in WWII was the lend-lease. Given we were bankrupting ourselves preventing wide-spread genocide I think it's understandable that we lacked the immediate cash to hand. I'd also like to point out that
- we've repaid everything owed under that scheme
- one of the payments for lend-lease was the technology and people used on the manhattan project
I'd say America got a pretty fucking good deal out of that one. How about you go and read our history books, and not your own - they clearly only show a very biased perspective and perpetuate the myth that it was the Americans that won the war. (Hint: 20 million dead Russian soldiers would like to disagree)
I've spend significant parts of my life checking for bombs under my car before getting in. Someone in the same town didn't check; a bomb killed them and their partner. That bomb was Irish, the funding for it was American.
Or isn't it terrorism when American's want it?
Say hi to your husband from me.
I've been using D2 for a few weeks now, and although it's occasionally doing things that surprise me, I've grown to like it a lot.
I used to have to open hidden thread responses in a separate tab; now I can just display them inline. That change alone is worth any pain with the new system.
I noticed inline moderation yesterday too. That surprised me, and I'm not certain I like it - I used to go through an entire discussion and moderate, then check whether I'd tried to moderate more or less posts than I had mod points. If I'd gone over-budget I could then prioritise the use of the mod points. The inline moderation means that once I've selected a moderation, it's used. It's also less forgiving of accidental selection in the drop-down.
The other issue I've noticed is that for very large discussions (700+ posts) Firefox can report that processing the Javascript has taken too long. I get offered the choice of cancelling processing the script, or continuing. Once I'd realised what was causing this and just started hitting 'continue' it hasn't prevented the site working properly, just irritated me. But the performance modifications will probably resolve that.
Inline replies sound good - I'll welcome that.
Overall, given the choice, even with the existing implementation and its occasional flaws, I like it, and I'd prefer to keep it to the old discussion format.
I've said before, and let me restate it: American marines do not defend my freedom. If they all die tomorrow, I personally will celebrate.
If you, the Americans, stay the fuck out of the rest of the world, it will be a better place.
Unfortunately the next Battlefield incarnation (2042?) is going the other way.
The career mode will be tightly linked to in-game upgrades and capabilities.
This means that the non-casual players, who play longer and get better at the game, get access to better equipment. This means they have the advantage of superior equipment AND the advantage of greater experience.
I see this widening the gulf between hard-core and casual players, and as someone that doesn't want to spend 20 hours a week on any given game this disappoints me. If the game goes live with that system in place I just wont buy it - why spend money for an online experience where I'm pretty much guaranteed to be at a disadvantage.
For multi-player gaming, especially PvP (player versus player), base the game on player skill, not on cash/time spent. If someone beats me because they're a better player than I have the incentive to get better. If they beat me because they have better equipment, then I have no incentive, as I'll never have a level playing field. (Especially when getting that equipment involves hundreds of hours of gameplay against people that already have it).
World of Warcraft PvP suffers an identical problem. Unless I abandon all my friends, weasel my way into a top-end guild, play for 3-4 hours every night for 8 months and get lucky on certain drops, I can never have a fair 1v1 fight with certain other players. Forgive me for not finding that fun.
>> Formula 1 GP instead of Gran Turismo?
F1GP was a masterpiece. Accessible to absolute beginners, graphics you couldn't believe, a physics model you could believe in, high speed crashes to die for (or in) and tweakable to the extreme. Oh, and damn good fun to play. And multiplayer. And way way ahead of anything else out at the time.
>> Unreal Tournament instead of Quake?
Definitely. Every serious online gamer I know preferred UT to Quake, and every beginner got into it more easily too.
UT2003 I'll concede did suck.
>> No Starcraft?
No Warcraft 2, Total Annihilation or xx:Total War either, all of which are superior to Starcraft.
>> Best Online FPS: Quake
Quake was neither the first, the most ground-breaking, or the best. It is perhaps the most overrated.
>> Best Western RPG: Oblivion
I'm confused. Oblivion does have an amazing game world, immense diversity of activities, total freedom of character advancement, beautiful graphics and intersting storyline. It also has an immensely flawed levelling system that frankly breaks the game.
Fix the levelling system and it's definitely a contender. As released, sorry, no.
>> Best Sports: NBA Jam (Second place goes to the NFL2K series)
The review site is a UK one. Too many football (erm, soccer) games (a couple of which featured) that are far more appealing than any minority sport like basketball.
Throw in driving games (PGR is probably my favourite, although F1GP was truly a classic) and golf games (I still seek a golf game even remotely close to being as much raw fun as Microprose Golf) and I must disagree with you very strongly.
>> Best Strategy: Advance Wars: Dual Strike
How on earth can such a limited game possibly be the best strategy game? Even disregarding the pantheon of 8-bit strategy games, you've put it ahead of all the RTS games (many would say Starcraft, I preferred Warcraft but consider Total Annihilation the best RTS of all time) and ahead of far better turn-based games (Battle Isle, HOMM, Civ). Throw in the Total War series and it seems you've had very little exposure to this genre.
Best Overall: GTA: San Andreas
A great game, but strangely one I find repetitive. Ultimately it boils down to "drive fast, shoot accurately" and there are better driving games out there and better shooting games.
The control systems of the Battlefield series (BF1942, BF:V and BF2) would be interesting in the GTA universe - proper shooting from vehicles, better camera work, etc.
Still, everyone's different. Always fun to compare lists, thank you for sharing yours.
I'd say they're pretty damn sensible.
I'd also say that the civilians should either take up arms or get the fuck out of the way. There are no innocent bystanders in war.
Are these tactics nice? Hell no. Do I like them? No. Do I expect them? Definitely. Asymmetric warfare requires exploitation of weaknesses, and the US unwillingness to be seen to be shooting civilians is a very definite and very exploitable weakness.
If I ever get prosecuted under that law I'll be taking my longbow to York and shooting anybody Scottish I see after it gets dark.
That's still legal, y'see..
>> War is an extension of politics. War is what you do when your other methods of persuasion have failed.
>> The point of war is not to destroy the enemy
Carl von Clausewitz is the origin of the statement that war is the continuation of policy by other means. He's also the chap that explicitly stated that the desired outcome from war is to impose your will on the enemy, and that destruction of the enemy is a means to that end.
The point of war is to destroy the enemy. To remove their ability to prevent you imposing your will upon them.
Ironically the use of extreme force by the US (and recently by Israel in Lebanon) may achieve tactical victories but strategically it is failing to achieve destruction of the enemy - instead more people are becoming enraged with the tactics used and taking up political and military action against the US.
Thus the enemy is reinforced and not destroyed, the war is not won, the will of the US is not imposed and policy is not continued.
>> These people are animals, barbarians, sub-human scum, but don't get me started.
Too fucking late, you've got me started.
These people are just people. No better, no worse, no different to anybody else.
Maybe you don't understand their viewpoint. Maybe they don't understand yours. Maybe they are trying to kill you.
That doesn't make them sub-human, or animals, or scum. It doesn't make them barbarians.
If I were going to take on US Marines then I'm going to do one of two things
1 : Bring the British Army with me. Hell, I pay for them, the least they can do is help out
2 : Fight a non-conventional war. I can't match the equipment or force of US forces, and it would be stupid to try.
If I stand amongst civilians then you probably wont shoot me. If I don't, you will. It's not barbarism or animalistic behaviour for these people to force you into that decision, it's raw common sense.
Your attitude towards these people is itself one of the very reasons they hate you.
You want option three, a non-lethal response? I offer you option 4 : Stay the fuck out in the first place.
It's unlikely to destroy the earth, but even if there's a good chance it will: Do it anyway.
Live a little..
I think you'll find that a large number of people are outraged. It's just not easy to do anything constructive and legal about it.
In reality me writing to my MP will achieve nothing - shit, he supports ID cards for entirely spurious reasons - but the threat of greater Islamic dissonance will actually cause change to occur.
I did write and complain about ID cards, about the incitement to religious hatred bill, about half a dozen other things. Only one letter has had any effect at all (and even there I suspect the FFII did the real work, rather than my missive).
One day all this will end. How, and when.. that'll be interesting.
There was an equivalent story 12 years ago in one of the UK broadsheets. I got cash for it..
Are you sure? Seems to be the only reasonable explanation for the vastly differing conviction rates when compared by race.