Political prisoners are being raped with food intubators to prevent themselves from committing suicide in America's secret torture prison, with the express consent and approval of President Obama, the American Congress, and the numerical majority of the American people.
Clueless middle class Western programmers on Hacker News believed everything some guy in prion said and thought they understood national security realities better than the president of the US.
And they made a bunch of brave comments. Much karma was exchanged.
Nostalgia tells me that your time was a simpler time, when people cared about politics/kids had morals/people were nicer. Also I learned in history class that Barack Obama was a great president who took the first steps toward universal healthcare. They talked about Guantanamo Bay for part of one day. The necessities of war are horrible sometimes; too bad they had to do that."
Seriously though, this is just one of the things that will be glossed over and never really talked about by future generations, similar to former practices such as the US's sterilization of minorities, or engineering bloody coups in Latin America to instill brutal dictators. Or our injustice to Native Americans.
Now you guys invent a time machine and come to tell us which of these two commenter is right.
Although technically they both can be right, what we are interested to know is if you future guys, like us, consider the right to a free trial as a fundamental and unbreachable right in any circumstances.
Sure, we believe you can kill enemy combatants, but if they surrender, we believe they have a right to a free trial within 60 or 90 days of detention.
So come back and tell us how our government is able to flounder the most fundamental rules and principles of law.
'Someone deserves the right to a defend himself in court and face specific charges before being thrown in a dungeon for life, being tortured and denied even the right to die? Ha- what a naive perspective.'
It must make you feel very clever and worldly-wise to dismiss people thus.
This is the most obvious of obvious human rights violations. It’s blatant. How anyone can defend it is beyond me. Holding someone for years without trial is barbaric and disgusting.
Tetris requires a properly sized view and clear, effortlessly distinguishable artwork.
MUDs require a quality typeface, proper layout, and appropriate coloring.
Pacman would be nothing without its remarkable low-fi charm.
Letterpress wouldn't have gathered a moment's attention if the tiles weren't immaculate and well rendered.
Graphical quality matters in everything, everything, everything visual. And it's a reasonably reliable proxy for how much effort has been put into the rest of the game.
>Graphical quality matters in everything, everything, everything visual. And it's a reasonably reliable proxy for how much effort has been put into the rest of the game.
You sidestepped the whole "text only adventure games" thing with the "visual" word. We were talking about computer games in general.
As for all the above examples, I don't think they show at all how graphics matter. They show that great addictive gameplay trumps flashy graphics any day of the week.
I mean "properly sized view and clear, effortlessly distinguishable artwork"?
Those goes without saying. Of course graphics should not obscure the game's goals.
That doesn't mean that the graphics are "60% of Tetris" -- in the same way the fact that Tetris would be totally unplayable if the background was all black and the tiles dark gray --doesn't mean that graphics are "100% of Tetris".
As for "MUDs require a quality typeface, proper layout, and appropriate coloring", yet people have played them in bad typefaces --heck, even not typeface at all, just bitmap graphic card fonts-- and black and white. Matter of fact, in the eighties lots of people on DOS PCs played color games in black and white monitors, and enjoyed them too.
> Of course graphics should not obscure the game's goals.
Indeed, you might say in that case the graphics are of high quality! Low quality graphics can easily detract from gameplay.
I think there are two definitions for "graphics quality" commonly used.
- Realism, as used in this article.
- Aesthetics, an example of which would be Team Fortress 2. By any definition it is not a very realistic game, but it still has very well-made/high quality graphics (before hats, anyway.)
This overseas reblog of a pop science blog which co-blogged a piece from @beckyoskin working for a blogring does not pass the smell test. At the very least, the headline is garbage.
There is no link to the source (here: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/3/1/63/pdf), no supporting material presented, it makes some odd claims starting with "ants prefer to live on active faults" (this paper says nothing about that - it's talking about ants that happen to be found in a geologically interesting faulting area) and ends up with "ants can predict earthquakes". Which then goes up to the headline.
Stop stop stop stop stop.
This paper is a decent exploration of performing day+night video analysis to describe above-ground ant behavior over large periods. The rest of it seems reaching and improbable, but I don't have the background to comment on any of the math or geology presented.
Ok, nevermind on the siting bit, the paper is drafting on her PHD thesis which presumably supports the argument that these ants mounds correlate with faults.
For a tolerant, civil, agreeable collection of intelligent human beings who are interested in perusing anti-global warming literature while taking your throbbing martyr complex into nuanced account at every step of the way, please navigate to about:blank. It loads a hell of a lot faster than HN.
Basically, PCs are dumb, boring work terminals for old people.
Children coming of computing age when the iPhone was released are now 9 years old, perhaps on their second or third portable gaming device, and lobbying their parents for an iPhone.
What on Earth would they possibly want a slow, dirty, heavy keyboard computer for? You can't even take a picture with it unless it's an Apple.
A PC is a "Personal Computer," though traditionally it only refers to IBM-compatible computers (or "a Windows machine" if in the context of Mac vs PC).
This "moving to mobile devices" debate seems to put "PC" in the context of "desktop and laptop computers" vs "tablets and smart phones" with ChromeBooks in a kind of middle-ground.
It's rather frustrating when the core functionality for a quarter billion phones stops working on a monthly basis. But at least I can now understand the hot tears generated when BBM would go down; over-the-top messaging with delivery/read/syndication truly is superior to SMS.
I pretty much need to "try again" when sending any message, sometimes it sends without any issues, but most of the times just shows me the exclamation red icon, and I need to try again.. And then sometimes it goes, others it fails again.. And this can go on for 2 or 3 more tries. It actually worked better when it was launched than now.
Just to put a needle fine point on it: Wal-Mart has "always low prices"... for your area.
Their data mining lets them know exactly what to price Household Paper Products in your zip code so that they're always lower than the surrounding competition while not leaving money on the table. They're not targeting the lowest possible price system-wide.
"An annual web poll shows that once again, Electronic Arts will be named the "Worst Company in America".
We at EA understand that we provide a lightning rod for many in an industry that has undergone massive change and experienced a great deal of consolidation. We've acquired beloved game developers, we've put storied franchises to rest, and we've sheparded evolutions in gameplay and game design that have been met with skepticism and rejection.
But please believe, we're on the player's side.
Tens of thousands of EA employees show up to work every day to create incredible new experiences and polish fantastic new things that the world has never seen.
You, your family, and your friends entrust us with time, attention, and money in return for fantastic experiences with characters you love and places that are realer than real. It's an honor to work in this industry.
We love these shared stories and adventures, and truly understand what makes videogaming special to hundreds of millions of people every day.
That said, we are a business, and all businessess will make mistakes, fail to meet expectations, and poorly communicate. We're no different.
XXX EXAMPLES XXX
Videogames are unique in that the business environment changes more in six months than most other industries change in decades, and we've struggled to adapt to the new realities just like hundreds of other videogame developers.
We feel it's essential that we have an online content distribution system of our own, called Origin. It's clear that we've fallen painfully short of industry standards in terms of technical execution and customer service, and we most certainly are not meeting our own expectations.
XXX INSERT HONEST FIXES HERE XXX
We also feel that we're failing to incorporate our customer's frustrations, concerns, and desires into the development of our franchises. When some player were disappointed with Mass Effect 3, they had nowhere to voice their opinions where they felt they would be heard.
Thus, as of this week we will be employing ombudsmen for each of our major franchises. They'll be superfans who know the games inside and out, and their sole responsibility will be to communicate with you about what's happening with the development and care of your favorite series and franchises.
FIFA - @Matthiew
Mass Effect - @Jennifer
SIMCITY - @Alyssa
XXX ETCETERA XXX
Feel free to vent, praise, be angry, you name it. They'll be listening. But always be respectful. We're here to have a good time together.
Finally, we understand that server shutdowns are a necessary part of the life of any game. No party goes on forever. But we don't want to shut off the lights too early, and we don't want customers to wonder how long the game they've just purchased will be fully functional and connected.
So today we're instituting a 3 year server guarantee on every network-aware and network-based videogame we sell. You can purchase an EA game and rest assured that you'll have friends to go on adventures with for a long long time.
For what we've failed in, we are truly sorry. We strive to delight one and all, but we can never be perfect. For those who feel we can never do right, you'll find dozens of other talented studios who you can have a more fruitful relationship with.
We don't feel there's any shame in being #1, but we do feel there's a great responsibility in it.
Let us bring you the best games on Earth, tell us plainly and clearly when we're not meeting that expectation, and let's all have fun together.
- EA CEO WHATEVER"
I wrote this in literally twelve fucking minutes. What a prick.
Seriously, good job. Why is it so hard to be honest with customers once a company grows past a certain point? Does the money corrupt, or am I naive, or both?
I dunno. Maybe ten years around Steve Ballmer terminally fucked him up.
The fundamental problem is that his post was targeted at the 10,000 industry and customer elite, none of whom feel like giving the Titan much respect because nobody fundamentally likes the #1 guy.
Who he should have been writing to were the 350M people he claims to support. When you're selling sweet-smelling electronic vapor, you use sweet-smelling words to gently remind people that comparing a videogame developer to ACTUAL HITLER is insane and insulting. That a substantial portion of the market is composed of profound assholes is beyond the point.
You don't play at their level, you don't speak at their level, and you don't engage in CEO Ego-battle 3000X. It's just fucking videogames.
Their true customer is a 15 year old girl playing Simpsons on her Samsung. He should be writing to her.
Political prisoners are being raped with food intubators to prevent themselves from committing suicide in America's secret torture prison, with the express consent and approval of President Obama, the American Congress, and the numerical majority of the American people.
Love, 2013