No, you're just being foolish and unnecessarily nitpicky. The punishment for stealing $100 dollars could easily be returning the $100 dollars and doing community service for a while, that's less than the crime committed. The crime was depriving another person of $100, the punishment is doing, say, 24 hours community service. The $100 is returned to it's owner as taking it from the thief is not depriving them of it as it was never theirs to begin with.
Well now we've been informed that They aren't worth looking into so that when the dupe, follow-up, it's dupe, and the angry letter are posted on/. we can avoid them. That way you get to see more interesting things, like another article on the iPhone or Vista which are obviously interesting! Isn't it a great plan?
Yes but we're talking about the average person. Do they know the difference? Do they care? Will they listen to him anyways even if he's not an expert just because he's famous? Yes, yes they will, sad though that may be...
Which is why I've stuck with my old Shuffle despite it's new cousin coming out...there is always a sweet spot where a technology works great and is relatively bug free, and the company hasn't started fully taking advantage of it yet, get in to early and deal with bugs, too late and deal with 'protection' from the company...
"The article mentions more detailed research involving rats. I suppose I've one question - does this actually remove memories (as in cause them to no longer be able to be recalled) or does it "smooth the landing", by which I mean disassociate the memories from the intense anguish/pain that they cause. I'd be broadly in favour of option 2, but not too happy about option 1."
I'm not really happy with either one to be honest. Sure, there are some events so traumatic, and people so traumatized, that it can be treated as a disease and healed as such. However the ability to disassociate pain from memories, or even get rid of painful memories, just has way too much potential for abuse. Have a bad memory about ? (Replace with your favorite "seemed like a good idea at the time, I'll never do that again") Disassociate the pain, that way when you look back on it you won't feel bad at all and the next time you feel like doing it it won't seem like such a bad idea.
If, and this is a pretty iffy if if that makes any sense at all, this is only used for the most traumatic of events and people who can't handle the trauma then it may be a good thing. There are cases where this would be beneficial. However this is just far too dangerous in my opinion. Small traumatic memories are the best way to learn from your mistakes, if you do something stupid, and it hurts, you don't do it again. The day you can get rid of that pain is the day you never learn from your mistakes. We're already moving towards as a responsibility-free society, where many mistakes can be recovered from with only a little work, no where near the amount that should be done (debt and bankruptcy being a good example). This is a slippery slope, if these drugs can be kept in the hands of those who absolutely need them to function then fine, but they seem to dangerous to me, what if you could not only remove the problems of extreme debt through bankruptcy, but also the trauma of it. How would you ever learn to not spend to much?
The validity of such an article in the TOS agreements isn't unquestionable and is becoming more unlikely every day. The instant Congress makes virtual items taxable that agreement is meaningless, it's akin to a bank saying "If you want to bank here then you can only use checks, you can't withdraw your money or use credit or debit". Actually it's more akin to a bank saying "If you want to bank here then you can never withdraw your money, you can only trade it to other accounts here without any compensation for the trade outside the bank. If we find out that Bill gave you $2 out of the bank to give his account $2 we will confiscate your money."
So long as virtual items remain virtual the agreement has some legal binding (though that is questionable as well, even a contract can't make you sign away certain rights as I understand it). I'd rank the questionality of these activities somewhere around watching anime only released in Japan online, it's not exactly legal, but the chance of being sued for making it available is low and the chance of losing a lot by doing it even lower. Blizzard (or another company) would have to get evidence that one or more in-game trades were precipitated by this service, which would require a lot more work than it sounds like. Firstly the act of trading a large amount of money in and of itself can't be considered for evidence. Even if it can be shown that both players involved have accounts with these moneysellers, and that one may work for the moneysellers, that doesn't mean the trade was due to real money being exchanged. To go after these guys Blizzard (or another company) would have to show that real money was exchanged, a difficult proposition with detectives and much more difficult for a group who have little real world presence in terms of law enforcement.
He's probably wrong, at the moment. In all likelyhood the count would uphold that, for now, the company has the right to tell gamers they can't do that. But, much as with DRM at the moment, they have little ability to stop gamers. The moment they confiscate too many accounts that weren't involved in questionable activities is the moment the court may start looking at them in a different light, even taking away virtual possessions that have time value to their owner can be considered confiscation of possessions which requires at least some proof. It's a gray area, I doubt the big MMO's will go after them because of the dangers involved but what they are doing is, at least to my understanding at the present time, questionably legal...
"It's an incredibly unstable situation, because combat in orbit involves almost no defensive options"
I'm sure someone said that about Sea Warfare once, and it was true until Aegis anti-missile and torpedo decoys were developed. Every battlefield has it's differences and there are many for which defending is difficult without technology. The only real area where you can hide behind things is land battles, and I don't think anyone would suggest that Sea and Air warfare 'Involve almost no defensive options' as there are possible options, they're just not natural to the terrain.
Combat in orbit is no more unstable than combat in air, or combat at sea. The only difference is that the wreckage can remain in orbit. That seems at first to be a big deal however there are ways to deal with that, just as there are ways to deal with sat-kill vehicles. Combat in orbit will be no different than any other battlefield once countermeasures are deployed, I seem to recall an attitude of 'We shouldn't try to combatify air because of (list of reasons) which will inevitably make it a more dangerous and horrible place to fight and end humanity' which seems to be how many people treat space right now. As Fallout once said, "War. War never changes."
Odd...I've never heard either of those arguments, and I know a couple who are religious and have an Autistic child. I doubt they'd want to have their kid in the first round of tests, but I highly doubt they'd reject it because 'that's how God made them' (an odd sentiment as Autism, to all intents and purposes and without meaning to be insulting, appears to be a disease or at least genetic problem, something introduced by the Fall, and so fixing it isn't a bad thing, 'least that's my impression of it).
Now that second sentiment sounds a lot more possible, I wouldn't doubt that that would be an issue raised. However the parents who think that will simply not give their kids the drugs, other kids will still benefit from them and someday those kids can decide to try the drugs themselves perhaps.
I'd say this is a good thing for just about everyone, and for the few people who think it isn't it's not a bad thing, just a neutral thing.
Red vs. Blue has been a great show and inspired many to begin doing Machemima (sp?) themselves. I always enjoyed watching their episodes, each one is funny in it's own way. There aren't many things where, after seeing almost 100 of them over the course of a couple years, I can still remember the defining joke of the first few episodes..."Looks more like a Puma.":P. It will be missed, but, at the same time, I'm glad it's over, it's far too easy to fall into a rut with the same characters/background all the time and it's amazing that it hasn't really happened yet. Moving on to a new set of characters should make for better shows (PANICS was fun, this magic one looks okay, and I've never seen Strangerhood).
May I be one of the ones to say Thanks RvB for a lot of entertainment.
Completely from memory and paraphrased Simons-"Looks more like a Puma." Griff-"What, like the shoe company?" Simons-"No a Puma, it's a cat, like a Jaguar" Sarge-"You're making that up" Simons-"I tell you it's a real creature" Sarge-"Griff, I want you to poison Simons' next meal" Griff-"Yes sir!" Sarge-"See these two things, they look like tusks. And what animal has tusks?" Simons-"A walrus" Sarge-"Didn't I just tell you to stop making up animals?"
Sarge-"So if no one else has any ideas, we're gonna call it the warthog. How bout it simons?" Simons-"No sir..." Sarge-"Aww come on, how about Sasquatch" Griff-"A Leprechan" Simons-"He doesn't need any help" Sarge-"Hey Griff, what's the name of that mexican lizard, eat's all the goats?" Griff-"Uhh that would be the Chubacabre sir" Sarge-"What about that Simons, the Chuba-thingy. I like it, got a ring to it"
Exactly, it's really quite amusing to consider that a lightning bolt would happen to strike an AI's core in such a way as to either
A: Copy/Paste code around into a sentient computer, then somehow debug it, something we can't even do right (the debugging that is:P)
or B: Write code from scratch to make the airplane sentient.
The day anything like that happens we'll have flying AI pigs divebombing a frozen Hell while the Spice Girls sing...and people enjoy it. Course that doesn't make it any less of a fun movie, I enjoyed it. It's just amusing to me that some people, probably not the GP but I have seen people, can think that something like that is actually possible and worry about it...
You're analogy is great...except, you know, smoking actually has been proven to shorten EVERYONE who tries it's lifespan. Last time I checked games don't do that, therefore your analogy kinda falls apart. You act as though these 'weak minded individuals', your word, not mine since I'd prefer to simply say their mentally off-balance, not weak minded, but whatever, are forced to play the games. Guess what, they choose to play it. It is the duty of the strong to protect the weak except when the weak don't want protection, for instance freedom of speech. It's the strong's duty to protect the weak from hearing what they don't want to hear, except when the weak don't want to be protected from it.
By your reasoning anything that may cause someone to 'lose it' should be banned, that's a lot of stuff you want to ban right there, alcohal, drugs (even medical ones and especially psychological), certain foods, books, tv, movies, games, you know what I'm getting at.
No purpose? Well if you believe that there's nothing I can really do, you've obviously decided not to think objectively about the benefits of games of which there are many.
Ha! 1 death should be enough to ban smoking, that's a great attitude. I'd love to see you say that to a smoker with a straight face.
Redundant? Right, because you can obviously have a good time using your imagination to enjoy a game world while playing with people from thousands of other places in any event, I did that last week while having coffee.
Dude, you don't know anything about games if you think they're meaningless, pointless and redundant. Really thought that's beside the point, if I want my meaningless, redundant and pointless game and you say I can't have it because I might be weak then I'm no longer living in a free government. It is the strong's duty to protect the weak unless that protection would rob them of a more important right, such as the right to liberty in how they spend their time (I would say pursuit of happiness but that doesn't mean now what it meant when it was said and really have no bearing on this). The moment you start taking inalienable, or even simply defined rights, away from me "for my protection" you become a dictator, simple as that. Protect me and others to your heart's desire but don't take my rights away to do it.
And that right there, ladies and gentlemen, is the stupidest argument on the anti-game side. There are always a few people who have enough problems to take something way to far. I guess you're in favor of banning the postal service because a few of their workers went nuts, or how 'bout banning school, I hear that has caused a few people to go nuts before.
It doesn't matter at all what a few people do in response to something. If 400 people watch an extremely violent movie, and 1 goes out and commits a murder, are you going to ban the movie? No, because that 1 obviously had some pre-existing problems. If 399 people can see something with no problem, but one goes out and murders after seeing it, then it's problem not the movie's fault now is it?
Look, if little Billy has some mental problems and may go crazy and kill some people after playing Halo, that doesn't mean no one else should be allowed to play Halo Period. The moment you start banning stuff based on an extremely small group's extreme reactions you will ban everything in the world. There are some people for whom peanuts can kill them, should the US (or Britain for that matter) ban peanuts then?
And as for evidence, there's almost equal amounts on both sides. All that proves is that the issue is unresolved. The presence of contradicting evidence doesn't prove the contrary...
Well except for the fact that one is a completely arbitrary judgment which doesn't affect science at all and the other is something that has been proven wrong by evidence numerous times (sorry flat-earthers) you have it right.
I love how I put at the bottom of my post "This method has a lot of problems" and mention that "my math skill aren't that great" and people still criticize me on my math:P
I think you may have hit part of the problem there. It's hard enough to fix someone's computer problem when you have their computer in your hands, fixing it over the phone, especially when dealing with people who are, ahem, less than adept at computer use is exceedingly difficult. Combine that with the fact that many people think errors are simple on/off ordeals, "oh it's broken? hit a. problem solved" type things, and you have a very frustrating experience for both sides.
That would be true, and I did mention it being a silly system, but Mongolia's density is actually 1.7, so it would be only slighly behind the US and Kazakhstan has 7.6 so it would be pretty far behind...
Well lets see, considering that South Korea's density is 41 times the US's I'd say there's likely some correlation
Using (# w/ broadband)/(total population)/density (if you have a better way please go ahead and use it, my math skills aren't the best) we get an "index" of what percent of the population/density has broadband.
US: 53%/31 density = 1.7096 South Korea: 90%/1274 = 0.0706 UK: 55.5%/246 = 0.22560
I wonder what a real mathematical formula would show in terms of the comparison between the US and South Korea. This one has a large number of problems, not the least of which is that it's completely arbitrary. I'd venture a guess that the US is actually one of the best in terms of penetration per area, what percentage of the area can have broadband.
In all seriousness games aren't an addicting substance. I've played games for a long time now, on and off. I've never found it difficult to stop playing, never needed any sort of help. I often find it hard to keep playing a game after playing it for more than a week or so. Maybe some people are getting addicted to game, and those are probably the same people who can get addicted to just about anything thanks to some deeper psychological problems. Last time I checked games don't put chemicals in your system that make you need to play them, they're simply an enjoyable past time that people want to partake in.
Next thing you know someone'll look at a bookworm and claim books are addicting because they were unhappy at being able to read their favorite book, or a moviegoer unhappy at being barred from seeing a movie, or, you get the idea...
Hit the nail on the head there didn't you? Heh, I have a parent who was one of those "bad kids" who listened to rock and watched TV and was having his mind rotted out and HE believes video games are bad for you. You'd think someone, someday would pick up on the progression and realize that you can't judge an entire subculture based on 2 or three people.
I'd argue that anime, while soon to be blamed for some stuff, simply has bad timing to become the next horrible thing, it's around at the same time as video games. Rather I predict that in 10-15 years, when the current generation are adults, holographic videos/tv will be the big thing rotting brains, I'm sure someone will point out how before what you saw was distanced because it was 2D but now that it's 3D is obviously affecting people or some nonsense like that...
"The mere fact that INTEL sells more graphics chips than ATI and nVidia combined should tell you that the vast majority of computers DON'T have the latest greatest chip."
"Most games are written to be at least playable even on Intel integrated graphics."
Actually that tells me that most computers aren't used to play games, Intel cards can't play most games I know of. I'd say it's comparing apples and oranges, Intel graphics are default on more computers I've seen whereas NVidia and ATI are specialty. Actually I've got a great comparison, Intel cards are IE, ATI/Nvidia are FireFox, Opera, Safari, and the others. It's not that IE is such a great program it's that it's default, same with Intel.
On the other hand I have a laptop with an ATI X1400 (I'm pretty sure that's comparable to the X1600 for normal computers, probably even a little worse) and I can play most modern games on it. Macs don't seem to have as many options for gaming, but Macs are also a smaller part of the market so the Mac gaming market is going to be really small due to the simple nature of percentages and so there's less reason to include good gaming stuff when it's such a small group.
Exactly. Why are we so quick to jump to conclusions about plants and animals being the same as humans now a days anyways? So a plant doesn't respond as vigorously when another plant with a similar genome is in the pot with it...how exactly is that altruism? Last I checked altruism was sacrificing something for the benefit of another. These plants aren't giving anything up in this case...it's more like plants are extremely protective/territorial to plants different from themselves and less so with plants like them. The absence of selfishness != altruism...
I mean, first posted comment is a perfectly plausible alternate theory, why isn't that even considered in the article? Could it be, gasp, that saying that plants recognize and display altruism towards siblings gets more reads than that plants have displayed abnormal behavior towards those with similar genomes? This seems an awful lot like hyperbole to get more reads, or, to not attribute to malice what could be simple ignorance, perhaps it's simply that they thought people wouldn't understand it without something in normal life to compare it too...
Uhh, because a bicycle doesn't weigh anywhere near enough to cause damage to a road? Seriously, that's a bit of a duh. That's like asking, well I can't think of a car related metaphor for obvious reasons. But really, the road tax is for repair/upgrade of roads. Repair is needed when cars damage the roads, something bicycles can't do. Upgrades are needed when more cars drive on a road than the road can accommodate, bicycles take up less space so upgrades wouldn't be needed for them.
My Opinion, this guy should still have to pay the road maintenance tax, but he shouldn't be considered a criminal...
"Would you like it if anyone could video tape you doing your job?"
Who cares? Unless I do something really dumb/mean/evil/stupid no one's going to watch it...I don't see why this would be an issue.
Also most jobs that citizens have take place in private property, where videotaping can be banned no matter the state. If I go outside to use my laptop to program I don't see why anyone should be banned from taping me, they can bore themselves if they want.
This happened on public property and involved someone funded by public taxation, why should we treat it the same way we would an event on private property involving someone funded by private funds?
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No, you're just being foolish and unnecessarily nitpicky. The punishment for stealing $100 dollars could easily be returning the $100 dollars and doing community service for a while, that's less than the crime committed. The crime was depriving another person of $100, the punishment is doing, say, 24 hours community service. The $100 is returned to it's owner as taking it from the thief is not depriving them of it as it was never theirs to begin with.
Well now we've been informed that They aren't worth looking into so that when the dupe, follow-up, it's dupe, and the angry letter are posted on /. we can avoid them. That way you get to see more interesting things, like another article on the iPhone or Vista which are obviously interesting! Isn't it a great plan?
Yes but we're talking about the average person. Do they know the difference? Do they care? Will they listen to him anyways even if he's not an expert just because he's famous? Yes, yes they will, sad though that may be...
Which is why I've stuck with my old Shuffle despite it's new cousin coming out...there is always a sweet spot where a technology works great and is relatively bug free, and the company hasn't started fully taking advantage of it yet, get in to early and deal with bugs, too late and deal with 'protection' from the company...
"The article mentions more detailed research involving rats. I suppose I've one question - does this actually remove memories (as in cause them to no longer be able to be recalled) or does it "smooth the landing", by which I mean disassociate the memories from the intense anguish/pain that they cause. I'd be broadly in favour of option 2, but not too happy about option 1."
I'm not really happy with either one to be honest. Sure, there are some events so traumatic, and people so traumatized, that it can be treated as a disease and healed as such. However the ability to disassociate pain from memories, or even get rid of painful memories, just has way too much potential for abuse. Have a bad memory about ? (Replace with your favorite "seemed like a good idea at the time, I'll never do that again") Disassociate the pain, that way when you look back on it you won't feel bad at all and the next time you feel like doing it it won't seem like such a bad idea.
If, and this is a pretty iffy if if that makes any sense at all, this is only used for the most traumatic of events and people who can't handle the trauma then it may be a good thing. There are cases where this would be beneficial. However this is just far too dangerous in my opinion. Small traumatic memories are the best way to learn from your mistakes, if you do something stupid, and it hurts, you don't do it again. The day you can get rid of that pain is the day you never learn from your mistakes. We're already moving towards as a responsibility-free society, where many mistakes can be recovered from with only a little work, no where near the amount that should be done (debt and bankruptcy being a good example). This is a slippery slope, if these drugs can be kept in the hands of those who absolutely need them to function then fine, but they seem to dangerous to me, what if you could not only remove the problems of extreme debt through bankruptcy, but also the trauma of it. How would you ever learn to not spend to much?
The validity of such an article in the TOS agreements isn't unquestionable and is becoming more unlikely every day. The instant Congress makes virtual items taxable that agreement is meaningless, it's akin to a bank saying "If you want to bank here then you can only use checks, you can't withdraw your money or use credit or debit". Actually it's more akin to a bank saying "If you want to bank here then you can never withdraw your money, you can only trade it to other accounts here without any compensation for the trade outside the bank. If we find out that Bill gave you $2 out of the bank to give his account $2 we will confiscate your money."
So long as virtual items remain virtual the agreement has some legal binding (though that is questionable as well, even a contract can't make you sign away certain rights as I understand it). I'd rank the questionality of these activities somewhere around watching anime only released in Japan online, it's not exactly legal, but the chance of being sued for making it available is low and the chance of losing a lot by doing it even lower. Blizzard (or another company) would have to get evidence that one or more in-game trades were precipitated by this service, which would require a lot more work than it sounds like. Firstly the act of trading a large amount of money in and of itself can't be considered for evidence. Even if it can be shown that both players involved have accounts with these moneysellers, and that one may work for the moneysellers, that doesn't mean the trade was due to real money being exchanged. To go after these guys Blizzard (or another company) would have to show that real money was exchanged, a difficult proposition with detectives and much more difficult for a group who have little real world presence in terms of law enforcement.
He's probably wrong, at the moment. In all likelyhood the count would uphold that, for now, the company has the right to tell gamers they can't do that. But, much as with DRM at the moment, they have little ability to stop gamers. The moment they confiscate too many accounts that weren't involved in questionable activities is the moment the court may start looking at them in a different light, even taking away virtual possessions that have time value to their owner can be considered confiscation of possessions which requires at least some proof. It's a gray area, I doubt the big MMO's will go after them because of the dangers involved but what they are doing is, at least to my understanding at the present time, questionably legal...
"It's an incredibly unstable situation, because combat in orbit involves almost no defensive options"
I'm sure someone said that about Sea Warfare once, and it was true until Aegis anti-missile and torpedo decoys were developed. Every battlefield has it's differences and there are many for which defending is difficult without technology. The only real area where you can hide behind things is land battles, and I don't think anyone would suggest that Sea and Air warfare 'Involve almost no defensive options' as there are possible options, they're just not natural to the terrain.
Combat in orbit is no more unstable than combat in air, or combat at sea. The only difference is that the wreckage can remain in orbit. That seems at first to be a big deal however there are ways to deal with that, just as there are ways to deal with sat-kill vehicles. Combat in orbit will be no different than any other battlefield once countermeasures are deployed, I seem to recall an attitude of 'We shouldn't try to combatify air because of (list of reasons) which will inevitably make it a more dangerous and horrible place to fight and end humanity' which seems to be how many people treat space right now. As Fallout once said, "War. War never changes."
Odd...I've never heard either of those arguments, and I know a couple who are religious and have an Autistic child. I doubt they'd want to have their kid in the first round of tests, but I highly doubt they'd reject it because 'that's how God made them' (an odd sentiment as Autism, to all intents and purposes and without meaning to be insulting, appears to be a disease or at least genetic problem, something introduced by the Fall, and so fixing it isn't a bad thing, 'least that's my impression of it).
Now that second sentiment sounds a lot more possible, I wouldn't doubt that that would be an issue raised. However the parents who think that will simply not give their kids the drugs, other kids will still benefit from them and someday those kids can decide to try the drugs themselves perhaps.
I'd say this is a good thing for just about everyone, and for the few people who think it isn't it's not a bad thing, just a neutral thing.
Red vs. Blue has been a great show and inspired many to begin doing Machemima (sp?) themselves. I always enjoyed watching their episodes, each one is funny in it's own way. There aren't many things where, after seeing almost 100 of them over the course of a couple years, I can still remember the defining joke of the first few episodes..."Looks more like a Puma." :P. It will be missed, but, at the same time, I'm glad it's over, it's far too easy to fall into a rut with the same characters/background all the time and it's amazing that it hasn't really happened yet. Moving on to a new set of characters should make for better shows (PANICS was fun, this magic one looks okay, and I've never seen Strangerhood).
May I be one of the ones to say Thanks RvB for a lot of entertainment.
Completely from memory and paraphrased
Simons-"Looks more like a Puma."
Griff-"What, like the shoe company?"
Simons-"No a Puma, it's a cat, like a Jaguar"
Sarge-"You're making that up"
Simons-"I tell you it's a real creature"
Sarge-"Griff, I want you to poison Simons' next meal"
Griff-"Yes sir!"
Sarge-"See these two things, they look like tusks. And what animal has tusks?"
Simons-"A walrus"
Sarge-"Didn't I just tell you to stop making up animals?"
Sarge-"So if no one else has any ideas, we're gonna call it the warthog. How bout it simons?"
Simons-"No sir..."
Sarge-"Aww come on, how about Sasquatch"
Griff-"A Leprechan"
Simons-"He doesn't need any help"
Sarge-"Hey Griff, what's the name of that mexican lizard, eat's all the goats?"
Griff-"Uhh that would be the Chubacabre sir"
Sarge-"What about that Simons, the Chuba-thingy. I like it, got a ring to it"
Only on /. is a post joking about killing your older brother to become more intelligent modded informative...
Exactly, it's really quite amusing to consider that a lightning bolt would happen to strike an AI's core in such a way as to either
:P)
A: Copy/Paste code around into a sentient computer, then somehow debug it, something we can't even do right (the debugging that is
or B: Write code from scratch to make the airplane sentient.
The day anything like that happens we'll have flying AI pigs divebombing a frozen Hell while the Spice Girls sing...and people enjoy it. Course that doesn't make it any less of a fun movie, I enjoyed it. It's just amusing to me that some people, probably not the GP but I have seen people, can think that something like that is actually possible and worry about it...
You're analogy is great...except, you know, smoking actually has been proven to shorten EVERYONE who tries it's lifespan. Last time I checked games don't do that, therefore your analogy kinda falls apart. You act as though these 'weak minded individuals', your word, not mine since I'd prefer to simply say their mentally off-balance, not weak minded, but whatever, are forced to play the games. Guess what, they choose to play it. It is the duty of the strong to protect the weak except when the weak don't want protection, for instance freedom of speech. It's the strong's duty to protect the weak from hearing what they don't want to hear, except when the weak don't want to be protected from it.
By your reasoning anything that may cause someone to 'lose it' should be banned, that's a lot of stuff you want to ban right there, alcohal, drugs (even medical ones and especially psychological), certain foods, books, tv, movies, games, you know what I'm getting at.
No purpose? Well if you believe that there's nothing I can really do, you've obviously decided not to think objectively about the benefits of games of which there are many.
Ha! 1 death should be enough to ban smoking, that's a great attitude. I'd love to see you say that to a smoker with a straight face.
Redundant? Right, because you can obviously have a good time using your imagination to enjoy a game world while playing with people from thousands of other places in any event, I did that last week while having coffee.
Dude, you don't know anything about games if you think they're meaningless, pointless and redundant. Really thought that's beside the point, if I want my meaningless, redundant and pointless game and you say I can't have it because I might be weak then I'm no longer living in a free government. It is the strong's duty to protect the weak unless that protection would rob them of a more important right, such as the right to liberty in how they spend their time (I would say pursuit of happiness but that doesn't mean now what it meant when it was said and really have no bearing on this). The moment you start taking inalienable, or even simply defined rights, away from me "for my protection" you become a dictator, simple as that. Protect me and others to your heart's desire but don't take my rights away to do it.
"Furthermore, there are bound to be a few..."
And that right there, ladies and gentlemen, is the stupidest argument on the anti-game side. There are always a few people who have enough problems to take something way to far. I guess you're in favor of banning the postal service because a few of their workers went nuts, or how 'bout banning school, I hear that has caused a few people to go nuts before.
It doesn't matter at all what a few people do in response to something. If 400 people watch an extremely violent movie, and 1 goes out and commits a murder, are you going to ban the movie? No, because that 1 obviously had some pre-existing problems. If 399 people can see something with no problem, but one goes out and murders after seeing it, then it's problem not the movie's fault now is it?
Look, if little Billy has some mental problems and may go crazy and kill some people after playing Halo, that doesn't mean no one else should be allowed to play Halo Period. The moment you start banning stuff based on an extremely small group's extreme reactions you will ban everything in the world. There are some people for whom peanuts can kill them, should the US (or Britain for that matter) ban peanuts then?
And as for evidence, there's almost equal amounts on both sides. All that proves is that the issue is unresolved. The presence of contradicting evidence doesn't prove the contrary...
Hehe, he said heavenly body and Xena...hehe
Well except for the fact that one is a completely arbitrary judgment which doesn't affect science at all and the other is something that has been proven wrong by evidence numerous times (sorry flat-earthers) you have it right.
I love how I put at the bottom of my post "This method has a lot of problems" and mention that "my math skill aren't that great" and people still criticize me on my math :P
I think you may have hit part of the problem there. It's hard enough to fix someone's computer problem when you have their computer in your hands, fixing it over the phone, especially when dealing with people who are, ahem, less than adept at computer use is exceedingly difficult. Combine that with the fact that many people think errors are simple on/off ordeals, "oh it's broken? hit a. problem solved" type things, and you have a very frustrating experience for both sides.
That would be true, and I did mention it being a silly system, but Mongolia's density is actually 1.7, so it would be only slighly behind the US and Kazakhstan has 7.6 so it would be pretty far behind...
Well lets see, considering that South Korea's density is 41 times the US's I'd say there's likely some correlation
Using (# w/ broadband)/(total population)/density (if you have a better way please go ahead and use it, my math skills aren't the best) we get an "index" of what percent of the population/density has broadband.
US: 53%/31 density = 1.7096
South Korea: 90%/1274 = 0.0706
UK: 55.5%/246 = 0.22560
I wonder what a real mathematical formula would show in terms of the comparison between the US and South Korea. This one has a large number of problems, not the least of which is that it's completely arbitrary. I'd venture a guess that the US is actually one of the best in terms of penetration per area, what percentage of the area can have broadband.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/05/08
I'm not playing right now
In all seriousness games aren't an addicting substance. I've played games for a long time now, on and off. I've never found it difficult to stop playing, never needed any sort of help. I often find it hard to keep playing a game after playing it for more than a week or so. Maybe some people are getting addicted to game, and those are probably the same people who can get addicted to just about anything thanks to some deeper psychological problems. Last time I checked games don't put chemicals in your system that make you need to play them, they're simply an enjoyable past time that people want to partake in.
Next thing you know someone'll look at a bookworm and claim books are addicting because they were unhappy at being able to read their favorite book, or a moviegoer unhappy at being barred from seeing a movie, or, you get the idea...
Hit the nail on the head there didn't you? Heh, I have a parent who was one of those "bad kids" who listened to rock and watched TV and was having his mind rotted out and HE believes video games are bad for you. You'd think someone, someday would pick up on the progression and realize that you can't judge an entire subculture based on 2 or three people.
I'd argue that anime, while soon to be blamed for some stuff, simply has bad timing to become the next horrible thing, it's around at the same time as video games. Rather I predict that in 10-15 years, when the current generation are adults, holographic videos/tv will be the big thing rotting brains, I'm sure someone will point out how before what you saw was distanced because it was 2D but now that it's 3D is obviously affecting people or some nonsense like that...
"The mere fact that INTEL sells more graphics chips than ATI and nVidia combined should tell you that the vast majority of computers DON'T have the latest greatest chip."
"Most games are written to be at least playable even on Intel integrated graphics."
Actually that tells me that most computers aren't used to play games, Intel cards can't play most games I know of. I'd say it's comparing apples and oranges, Intel graphics are default on more computers I've seen whereas NVidia and ATI are specialty. Actually I've got a great comparison, Intel cards are IE, ATI/Nvidia are FireFox, Opera, Safari, and the others. It's not that IE is such a great program it's that it's default, same with Intel.
On the other hand I have a laptop with an ATI X1400 (I'm pretty sure that's comparable to the X1600 for normal computers, probably even a little worse) and I can play most modern games on it. Macs don't seem to have as many options for gaming, but Macs are also a smaller part of the market so the Mac gaming market is going to be really small due to the simple nature of percentages and so there's less reason to include good gaming stuff when it's such a small group.
Exactly. Why are we so quick to jump to conclusions about plants and animals being the same as humans now a days anyways? So a plant doesn't respond as vigorously when another plant with a similar genome is in the pot with it...how exactly is that altruism? Last I checked altruism was sacrificing something for the benefit of another. These plants aren't giving anything up in this case...it's more like plants are extremely protective/territorial to plants different from themselves and less so with plants like them. The absence of selfishness != altruism...
I mean, first posted comment is a perfectly plausible alternate theory, why isn't that even considered in the article? Could it be, gasp, that saying that plants recognize and display altruism towards siblings gets more reads than that plants have displayed abnormal behavior towards those with similar genomes? This seems an awful lot like hyperbole to get more reads, or, to not attribute to malice what could be simple ignorance, perhaps it's simply that they thought people wouldn't understand it without something in normal life to compare it too...
Uhh, because a bicycle doesn't weigh anywhere near enough to cause damage to a road? Seriously, that's a bit of a duh. That's like asking, well I can't think of a car related metaphor for obvious reasons. But really, the road tax is for repair/upgrade of roads. Repair is needed when cars damage the roads, something bicycles can't do. Upgrades are needed when more cars drive on a road than the road can accommodate, bicycles take up less space so upgrades wouldn't be needed for them.
My Opinion, this guy should still have to pay the road maintenance tax, but he shouldn't be considered a criminal...
"Would you like it if anyone could video tape you doing your job?"
Who cares? Unless I do something really dumb/mean/evil/stupid no one's going to watch it...I don't see why this would be an issue.
Also most jobs that citizens have take place in private property, where videotaping can be banned no matter the state. If I go outside to use my laptop to program I don't see why anyone should be banned from taping me, they can bore themselves if they want.
This happened on public property and involved someone funded by public taxation, why should we treat it the same way we would an event on private property involving someone funded by private funds?