You are obviously full of shit. Current affairs shows are full of "The Islamic threat" stories and whatnot. You'd have to be on crack if you think the mainstream media is at all pro-Muslim, or "sensitive."
Obviously I'm just going by the information I have. The information indicates that the MSM is mostly sensitive about Islam. Governments are clueless about Islam (that's why terrorist propaganda arms like CAIR can freely operate in America).
There is no evidence of this. So far, it has just resulted in resources being diverted away from real investigations, and the deaths of innocent people. Tell me what terrorist plot has been foiled by racial profiling. It just makes it easier for terrorists - simply field agents who are not of the profiled race, and they get under the radar, while those of a particular race with nothing to do with terrorism are harassed.
It's just common sense, really. If all terrorism is commited by group X (or people who look like they're part of group X), then obviously the authorities should monitor group X. What if the US government had sent everyone to detention camps during World War II, and not just the Japanese, who were perceived to be the enemy? That wouldn't have made a lot of sense.
Utter bullshit. Many terrorists are white Christians. In fact, the majority of terrorist acts in America have been committed by non-Muslims.
I'm not even talking about just terrorism commited in America, because the Jihad is global. It's everywhere. Islamic terrorists have killed or attempted to kill people in America, Canada, Britain, Germany, Spain, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Norway, various part of Africa, Australia, Thailand, the Middle-East... everywhere.
Yeah, some white non-Muslims have also commited terrorism, but that hardly makes any difference. Isolated incidents don't suddenly nullify the Jihad.
A computer doesn't know you are white, and mistakes could be made, your race wrongly represented, etc.
Maybe, maybe not. Either way, authorities must take action againts terrorism, they can't just sit on their asses and hope that nothing bad happens.
What the fuck? The media and mainstream opinion is constantly outraged about the "Muslim threat." Shit, 5 years later they are still showing stupid TV specials about 9/11. Innocent Muslims are constantly targeted by police. Talkback radio runs bigoted anti-Muslim rants constantly. How can you possibly be ignorant of the anti-Muslim outrage that is pumped out 24 hours a day, all over the Western world?
Mainstream media and governments are very politically correct and sensitive when it comes to Islam, especially in Europe where Islamophobia is only slightly less evil than anally raping infants with steel pipes. There really is no "anti-Muslim outrage" going on in the mainstream, unless you're referring to self-inflicted things like news about the latest honor killing or suicide attack.
Then you don't deserve your own civil rights. There is no way to tell a Muslim from a non-Muslim just by looking at them or their country of origin. Law enforcement often makes mistakes.
No, you can't tell with 100% accuracy, but you can make a pretty good guess, and racial profiling is an effective anti-terror measure. There's no pointing in keeping tabs on Joe Average when virtually all terrorism is commited by non-white Muslims (and no, a few white Muslim terrorists here and there don't nullify this principle).
So, you may find yourself dead, or being tortured in a secret prison, because someone made a mistake. And your death would have been fueled by attitudes like your own. Digging your own grave, indeed.
Yes, I'm sure white people get racially profiled as Muslims from the Middle-East all the time. Even you live in 1984 America run by Fuhrer Bush, I find it a little unlikely that you'll be kidnapped to a secret CIA torture facility just because you look like a Muslim. You have to do more than that.
Before you hate muslims, it will be instructive to look at your own history and understand that the muslim world needs more scientific education, rather than counter terrorism.
How are they going to get that education if they don't want it? Are we to just sit back and hope that they cease terrorism and start reading instead? They don't want democracy and they don't want education. They're still mentally stuck in the deserts of the Middle-Ages, and they have no intention of coming out.
If Christians could become moderates, Muslims could become too.
This idea is based on the false notion that Christianity and Islam are similiar, but they are not. They are diametrically opposed and fundamentally different.
Islam is a transnational ideology, which is why Muslims are "outraged" if other Muslims are "oppressed" somewhere in the world (or if someone is drawing pictures in Denmark). They think of themselves as one collective entity, and that means that they are also collectively responsible for what they do. They aren't even trying to clean up their act, they just blame the infidels or simply lie about Islam as much as possible. If some Muslim stands up and says "Jihadism is bullshit, I want nothing to do with it" and they really mean it, then that's cool with me. Unfortunately, it's impossible to tell if they really mean it. Bummer.
Guilt by association is also inevitable when enough people belonging to the same group display consistent negative and violent behavior. This is just natural and sensible.
The article blows things way out of proportion. You can have a community with or without a game. Something Awful, for instance, is a big community too. A Counter-Strike clan is a community exactly like a WoW guild. I recently tried out a popular MUD called Achaea (didn't work out, the trial-and-error navigation was too frustrating), and it had a Newbie channel where newbies could ask questions, and there was a guy there specifically to answer questions. It seemed much more involved and player-driven than WoW.
Word of Wacraft is just popular, nothing more. It doesn't elevate community relations and communication to a new plane of existence. In fact, WoW's official forums suck balls and a lot of the players are just grumpy, ninja looting asshats who may or may not understand English.
I see a lot of people complaining about counter-terrorism measures, but nobody is very concerned about Islamic terrorism and supremacism, nor is anyone acknowledging the fact that terrorism causes counter-terrorism, not the other way around. I guess it's just cool to rebel againts authority.
Why should I be outraged? Nobody is outraged when Muslims kill and maim people on a daily basis in every corner of the world while complaining about self-inflicted discrimination. I don't give two shits about the civil rights of Muslims until they get their act together and stop digging their own grave.
But it's id's game and engine. I think Halogen is different because it's such an independent project, and not done with either of the Halo engines (if such a thing was possible). There was a Quake 2/3 mod (I forget which) called Generations which took characters and other elements from Wolf3D, Doom and Quake (and Q2, if it was a Q3 mod). Activision shut it down, but not id. So, I think if you stick to the game you're modding for or make something original, it's all legal. A port of Duke3D to Source was recently axed as well.
Someone once claimed that if copyright holders don't enforce their copyrights, they'll lose them. This would explain why they want to shut down projects like Halogen, but I don't know if it's true. Sounds a little dubious.
I said "may not" which allows for the possibility that deep thoughts are invoked, and I don't think my statement was particularly insulting. Besides, generalization is, contrary to popular Internet belief, very useful and necessary.
I wish someone would clearly establish what art is so that this debate makes some kind of sense. The obvious problem is, of course, that you can't really define art, at least not in a way that everyone can agree on. Is beautiful level design art? If not, why not? Why is it art when you put a Jesus Christ crucifix into a glass of piss?
I think "art" is "a bunch of pretentious asshats being pretentious."
I hate security questions. They're totally insecure and I never use them anyway. I have a small set of different passwords that I use everywhere, randomly. Maybe this isn't the best possible practise, but I'm just some lonely guy on the Internet, and not working for a company or in charge of national security. At least I always remember my passwords or, failing that, try all of them until I find the right one.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it a bit insecure to have questions like "what's your mother's name" and expect people to answer honestly? For a would-be hacker, it wouldn't very challenging to find out the answer, would it (unless you're just some nickname on the Internet)? Therefore, I will just enter some random bullshit answer, which of course I can't remember five minutes later, and thus the security question is useless.
I can just imagine the future: two GPUs, a PPU and an AIPU all running with coolers along with the CPU (quad core, obviously) and a few hard-disks and optical drives. We'll need some sort of alien technoloqy to keep those systems running.
In-game cutscenes are probably more desireable, but if it seems like a pre-rendered cutscene works better, developers should go with that. Intro movies and such can also be pre-rendered (Dawn of War's intro is amazing).
Resident Evil 4 probably has the best in-game cutscenes ever made.
CTF should have definitely been mentioned, and you're right about the fact that Quake modding seems to have been forgotten. The modding culture of Half-Life and other games is nothing but a continuation of what was done with Quake. Even Gamespy and its seemingly infinite network of Planet sites (as well as Fileplanet) are here because of Quake. The whole thing started as a small server browsing tool called QSpy. I guess Quake also pioneered machinima. Quake established so many things that it isn't even funny.
Teamfortress was the same as Counter-Strike, but on a smaller scale. The original mod (which itself was modded into things like MegaTF) for Quake became very popular, and eventually it was purchased by Valve, who turned it into Teamfortress Classic and now Teamfortress 2. I think Robin Walker (one of the masterminds of TF) still works for Valve. TF spawned tons of clones as well, but clearly tactical shooters became more popular. The idea of having character classes in multiplayer FPS was most likely invented by TF, but I don't know for sure.
What is the purpose of ads anyway? I guess companies pay EA to advertise on their behalf, but what do the companies get out of it? Does anyone really pay attention to advertisements on the Internet anymore, let alone in FPS games? I may notice stationary banners (not that I ever click on them), but popup windows get terminated in a few nanoseconds.
I suppose advertising on the Internet must work since it's so popular, but who actually responds to it?
Leveling isn't a real problem since you max out so early, but I guess questing can be difficult. I kind of stopped playing Factions before I got to any difficult parts, but Prophecies starts getting tough when you start approaching the Northen Shiverpeaks, and questing with NPCs becomes increasingly difficult. Eventually it started to seem impossible. GW isn't much of a solo act.
If by "getting things done" you mean leveling up, it's blazing fast in Factions. I think there are 12 missions, and I was level 17 by the time I finished mission 2. The island you start on is also much more friendlier than Ascalon, there aren't as many enemies and it's not so depressing all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously I'm just going by the information I have. The information indicates that the MSM is mostly sensitive about Islam. Governments are clueless about Islam (that's why terrorist propaganda arms like CAIR can freely operate in America).
It's just common sense, really. If all terrorism is commited by group X (or people who look like they're part of group X), then obviously the authorities should monitor group X. What if the US government had sent everyone to detention camps during World War II, and not just the Japanese, who were perceived to be the enemy? That wouldn't have made a lot of sense.
I'm not even talking about just terrorism commited in America, because the Jihad is global. It's everywhere. Islamic terrorists have killed or attempted to kill people in America, Canada, Britain, Germany, Spain, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Norway, various part of Africa, Australia, Thailand, the Middle-East... everywhere.
Yeah, some white non-Muslims have also commited terrorism, but that hardly makes any difference. Isolated incidents don't suddenly nullify the Jihad.
Maybe, maybe not. Either way, authorities must take action againts terrorism, they can't just sit on their asses and hope that nothing bad happens.
I'm certain that I've seen this study pop up before, perhaps even at Slashdot.
I think the study reeks of bullshit anyway. There isn't even any eye contact in games.
Mainstream media and governments are very politically correct and sensitive when it comes to Islam, especially in Europe where Islamophobia is only slightly less evil than anally raping infants with steel pipes. There really is no "anti-Muslim outrage" going on in the mainstream, unless you're referring to self-inflicted things like news about the latest honor killing or suicide attack.
No, you can't tell with 100% accuracy, but you can make a pretty good guess, and racial profiling is an effective anti-terror measure. There's no pointing in keeping tabs on Joe Average when virtually all terrorism is commited by non-white Muslims (and no, a few white Muslim terrorists here and there don't nullify this principle).
Yes, I'm sure white people get racially profiled as Muslims from the Middle-East all the time. Even you live in 1984 America run by Fuhrer Bush, I find it a little unlikely that you'll be kidnapped to a secret CIA torture facility just because you look like a Muslim. You have to do more than that.
So... Muslims are not responsible for their own behavior because they're not white Christians?
How are they going to get that education if they don't want it? Are we to just sit back and hope that they cease terrorism and start reading instead? They don't want democracy and they don't want education. They're still mentally stuck in the deserts of the Middle-Ages, and they have no intention of coming out.
This idea is based on the false notion that Christianity and Islam are similiar, but they are not. They are diametrically opposed and fundamentally different.
Islam is a transnational ideology, which is why Muslims are "outraged" if other Muslims are "oppressed" somewhere in the world (or if someone is drawing pictures in Denmark). They think of themselves as one collective entity, and that means that they are also collectively responsible for what they do. They aren't even trying to clean up their act, they just blame the infidels or simply lie about Islam as much as possible. If some Muslim stands up and says "Jihadism is bullshit, I want nothing to do with it" and they really mean it, then that's cool with me. Unfortunately, it's impossible to tell if they really mean it. Bummer.
Guilt by association is also inevitable when enough people belonging to the same group display consistent negative and violent behavior. This is just natural and sensible.
The article blows things way out of proportion. You can have a community with or without a game. Something Awful, for instance, is a big community too. A Counter-Strike clan is a community exactly like a WoW guild. I recently tried out a popular MUD called Achaea (didn't work out, the trial-and-error navigation was too frustrating), and it had a Newbie channel where newbies could ask questions, and there was a guy there specifically to answer questions. It seemed much more involved and player-driven than WoW.
Word of Wacraft is just popular, nothing more. It doesn't elevate community relations and communication to a new plane of existence. In fact, WoW's official forums suck balls and a lot of the players are just grumpy, ninja looting asshats who may or may not understand English.
Exactly.
I see a lot of people complaining about counter-terrorism measures, but nobody is very concerned about Islamic terrorism and supremacism, nor is anyone acknowledging the fact that terrorism causes counter-terrorism, not the other way around. I guess it's just cool to rebel againts authority.
Why should I be outraged? Nobody is outraged when Muslims kill and maim people on a daily basis in every corner of the world while complaining about self-inflicted discrimination. I don't give two shits about the civil rights of Muslims until they get their act together and stop digging their own grave.
But it's id's game and engine. I think Halogen is different because it's such an independent project, and not done with either of the Halo engines (if such a thing was possible). There was a Quake 2/3 mod (I forget which) called Generations which took characters and other elements from Wolf3D, Doom and Quake (and Q2, if it was a Q3 mod). Activision shut it down, but not id. So, I think if you stick to the game you're modding for or make something original, it's all legal. A port of Duke3D to Source was recently axed as well.
Someone once claimed that if copyright holders don't enforce their copyrights, they'll lose them. This would explain why they want to shut down projects like Halogen, but I don't know if it's true. Sounds a little dubious.
I said "may not" which allows for the possibility that deep thoughts are invoked, and I don't think my statement was particularly insulting. Besides, generalization is, contrary to popular Internet belief, very useful and necessary.
Not necessarily. Music or a painting of a landscape may not inspire any deep thoughts.
I wish someone would clearly establish what art is so that this debate makes some kind of sense. The obvious problem is, of course, that you can't really define art, at least not in a way that everyone can agree on. Is beautiful level design art? If not, why not? Why is it art when you put a Jesus Christ crucifix into a glass of piss?
I think "art" is "a bunch of pretentious asshats being pretentious."
Space has a terrible power.
I hate security questions. They're totally insecure and I never use them anyway. I have a small set of different passwords that I use everywhere, randomly. Maybe this isn't the best possible practise, but I'm just some lonely guy on the Internet, and not working for a company or in charge of national security. At least I always remember my passwords or, failing that, try all of them until I find the right one.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it a bit insecure to have questions like "what's your mother's name" and expect people to answer honestly? For a would-be hacker, it wouldn't very challenging to find out the answer, would it (unless you're just some nickname on the Internet)? Therefore, I will just enter some random bullshit answer, which of course I can't remember five minutes later, and thus the security question is useless.
I can just imagine the future: two GPUs, a PPU and an AIPU all running with coolers along with the CPU (quad core, obviously) and a few hard-disks and optical drives. We'll need some sort of alien technoloqy to keep those systems running.
Hopefully it won't come to that.
In-game cutscenes are probably more desireable, but if it seems like a pre-rendered cutscene works better, developers should go with that. Intro movies and such can also be pre-rendered (Dawn of War's intro is amazing).
Resident Evil 4 probably has the best in-game cutscenes ever made.
We are here to protect you from the terrible secret of space.
Do you have an elevator in your house?
CTF should have definitely been mentioned, and you're right about the fact that Quake modding seems to have been forgotten. The modding culture of Half-Life and other games is nothing but a continuation of what was done with Quake. Even Gamespy and its seemingly infinite network of Planet sites (as well as Fileplanet) are here because of Quake. The whole thing started as a small server browsing tool called QSpy. I guess Quake also pioneered machinima. Quake established so many things that it isn't even funny.
Teamfortress was the same as Counter-Strike, but on a smaller scale. The original mod (which itself was modded into things like MegaTF) for Quake became very popular, and eventually it was purchased by Valve, who turned it into Teamfortress Classic and now Teamfortress 2. I think Robin Walker (one of the masterminds of TF) still works for Valve. TF spawned tons of clones as well, but clearly tactical shooters became more popular. The idea of having character classes in multiplayer FPS was most likely invented by TF, but I don't know for sure.
You must mean Worldcraft, which was purchased by Valve for use with Half-Life. It's now known as Valve Hammer Editor.
What is the purpose of ads anyway? I guess companies pay EA to advertise on their behalf, but what do the companies get out of it? Does anyone really pay attention to advertisements on the Internet anymore, let alone in FPS games? I may notice stationary banners (not that I ever click on them), but popup windows get terminated in a few nanoseconds.
I suppose advertising on the Internet must work since it's so popular, but who actually responds to it?
You are not your keyboard. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
Stop trying to control everything and just let go! Let go! -- Tyler Durden, Fight Club
Leveling isn't a real problem since you max out so early, but I guess questing can be difficult. I kind of stopped playing Factions before I got to any difficult parts, but Prophecies starts getting tough when you start approaching the Northen Shiverpeaks, and questing with NPCs becomes increasingly difficult. Eventually it started to seem impossible. GW isn't much of a solo act.
If by "getting things done" you mean leveling up, it's blazing fast in Factions. I think there are 12 missions, and I was level 17 by the time I finished mission 2. The island you start on is also much more friendlier than Ascalon, there aren't as many enemies and it's not so depressing all the time.