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Yeah...that's good in theory...but not so much in practice when getting along with others is pretty much required for your time to be constructive. Yeah, I'd go one step further and say that it's not even that good in theory, let me explain (pedantic **** mode ON). If you don't give a **** what others say, there is no point in posting or saying anything, ever — just thinking or writing in a journal would accomplish the same result and is more convenient. And if you only care about what others say if they agree with you, that is also pointless, as they already agree with you and reinforcing the same point accomplishes nothing, much like yelling inside an empty cave. It makes no sense to care only about what others say if they agree with you after you convince them, because you can *not* know before listening to their reaction if they agree. So this leaves only two possibilities: either you don't care what people think and only speak because you love the sound of your own voice, or you speak in order to elicit a reaction, whatever that may be, so you do in fact care about what others say. If only because, barring physical demonstrations, you need to listen to their reaction to know that your message has been received at all, and is intelligible. Speaking up and not giving a **** about what other people say is about as sensible as a deaf person that cannot read lips and doesn't know sign language trying to have a conversation. (no, I don't really have anything useful to add to the legal debate)

I'm sorry, you are right. The process is not exactly like that, but I didn't want to go in-depth into this. The way it works is, under the guise of "homogeneization" (the ECTS system and Bologna plan), what used to be a superior degree before (usually 5 years) that endowed a student with both a working understanding of their field of study and an attractive profile for prospective employers, is now a nigh-useless "general" 3-year degree, whereas previous 3-year degrees were specialized career paths that essentially prepared people to work as technicians. Current degrees open the door to a one- or two-year master's that is now the bare minimum for anyone to qualify as skilled labor. Master's credits cost roughly 3x as much as regular degree credits, of course. Funny thing is, the people I've spoken to that hold a master's agree that they are useless and they didn't really learn anything that justified the cost increase, outside of, in some cases, networking contacts. In addition, this has led to rampant abuse of internships, which is where people apparently learn most of their "marketable skills". They call this "better adjusting education to respond to the needs of the market" or some such BS.

I came across this by chance, and never having lived in the US, I don't know what to make of it. While we don't have church or school shootings over here, the mechanism described does apply to the society I know. And with education getting both more expensive and worse (and more oriented toward helping people acquire "marketable skills" rather than... educating them), I'm not sure it's a trend that will soon change.

‘Star Wars’ child star arrested after chase, crash in Colleton County "Now this is pod racing!"

SWTOR Expansion "builds on the Legacy of KotOR" And I think Gorth may be interested to know that character transfers are 90% off (90CC) (why the hell am I posting news here? I haven't played this game since december!)

One of the newsletters I'm subscribed to had this: Is Obesity a Choice? (inb4 fit shaming) Which leads me to another important question: Why Are Words Randomly Capitalised?

That looks great. You've altered the draw distance too, right? What's the performance hit? Almost feel like firing up NV again...

The last link lets you check crime figures for yourself based on FBI data. I didn't look state by state (ain't nobody got time fo' dat), I just glanced at nation-wide aggregate data. While the War on Drugs is federal policy, I'm not sure how state-level legislation affects things, though a majority of the prison population is in state penitentiaries. Anyway, in 1960 you have ~5 murders and non-negligent manslaughters per 100k inhabitants, and in 2012 you have ~47. Aggravated assaults is 86 vs 252, 60 vs 113 robberies, etc. Sure, I'll accept that people report more rapes today, but I doubt many aggravated assaults and murders went unreported in 1960. It's 1960 we're talking about, not 1881 Arizona. Murder rates in 1950 are even lower than in 1960. Remember that the original contention was that your WWII-vet grampa wouldn't agree that things are more ****ed up now that back in the day, so I looked at crime rates for the post-WWII US. You may be surprised, but I take no pleasure in being "that guy" constantly yelling and pointing at the elephant in the room. And I'll gladly admit that I'm greatly ignorant about regional differences in policy, outlook, legislation, demographic makeup and pretty much every other important detail. I'm also aware that the devil is in the detail. Still, there are huge red flags to be worried about, and crime and prison population rates are only some of them. And that's another thread I've derailed, so at this point I'll quietly bow out. edit: I don't always herp, but when I do, derp

Huh. They added Starfleet Command Gold at some point. Not on sale though. This is good news for me because it probably means SFC2/Orion Pirates will be added soon as well.

Funny that you say you can, but you didn't. Because I can point to the absolutely insane rise in prison population (especially after the "War on Drugs" was launched in the 80s), the fact that there are more blacks under correctional control today than there were slaves in 1860, and that crime rates, while currently at a decades-low, are still higher across the board than they were in the 1960s. Lol, "feelz".

(Apologies if it has been posted already. I hadn't seen it before)

It's possible that the manifesto isn't his but WHOIS says the domain was registered back in february. Could certainly be the handiwork of *chan trolls (hosted in Russia and registered under a proxy email). Smells funny, but I suppose that's to be expected. I'm still puzzled they haven't taken it down yet. Maybe being hosted overseas makes it difficult to pull the plug. No, I don't find it ironic, random people posting it on *chan illustrates precisely my point. If the mainstream media do what you suggest, people will go elsewhere for the juicy details. And then you'll get YouTube channels making monetised vids out of this stuff. I'm not against it in principle, I just don't see how it could be done.

In today's world, that would accomplish little. Somebody would dig into court records or something and post the details online regardless. He'd get his minute of glory anyway. Surely you are not suggesting "secret" arrests and trials...? I'm curious: where did you get that link? I doubt the site will be up much longer.

Ah, sorry if I came off as excessively snarky. I wasn't familiar with the idiom "segway" and one definition I found online was "non sequitur". I tend to insert my big bro sales pitch at every possible chance so I'm used to people lashing out with sarcasm. Good catch, I actually missed that. I don't know if it's glitchy or if it's that way by design, but it's definitely not user-friendly. I have to go into BBCode mode to work with quotes 95% of the time. Anyway, I've derailed the thread enough. So... what I did. I "went" (as much as falling off the bed can be considered "going") to work. And will remain here until midnight. I can foresee a posting spree coming.

The Star Wars Franchise was on a big sale a month or two ago. Of course. When they added the JK games, right? I completely forgot about that. Still, kinda iffy that there is absolutely no discount on any SW games (well, except Pinball) on Steam either.

That's a great segway! Nice one! Maybe I should elaborate; I thought it was common knowledge that companies will happily provide any information they have gathered about you to the gov't. You explicitly agree to this by using their devices and services (I can't read Swedish but I figure it's more or less the same): So you pay for an expensive device that records everything you say, and this info is passed along to law enforcement when they require it. Pretty much what you were describing. In addition, those TVs have a "facial recognition" camera, which -unsurprisingly- has been hacked in the past. I'm not making this stuff up, mate.

So it seems the sale is ending in ~40h and they have brought all the deals back. Is his standard practice? Funny thing, no Star Wars games have been on sale either on GOG or Steam. I wonder what's up with that.

Heh. A prominent Spanish 20th century intellectual allegedly said that "fascism is cured by reading, and racism is cured by travelling". Then again, he was executed by a mob of slack-jawed yahoos whose rallying cry was "Long live death!" and "Death to intelligence!", so maybe watch out... Because that would be impossibly expensive, most likely. If, on the other hand, each family were to pay for their own eavesdropping device... For anyone interested in privacy, big bro, data collection and so on, I recommend watching Terms and Conditions May Apply. Oh, and what did I do today? Slept late, skipped today's training session (deload week so no biggie) and got mentally prepared for this weekend's marathon shift. You guys really help me hold on to (what little is left of) my sanity...

Yeah thats pretty much why majority of F1/2 game hate Bethesda I don't know about the "majority", but there are plenty of reasons to hate Bethesda/Zenimax that have nothing to do with their design decisions. It really is a ****ty company, but some people take the aversion to frankly stupid extremes.

I think you have some extra letters there. Well, Alanschu (if you remember him) worked QA for SWTOR and back before the game was released, he said that content-wise the game was effectively KotOR 3, 4, 5 and 6. Having completed all stories, it's hard to disagree with that, it's just that the content was presented in the typical MMO soul-crushing grind format. Now with the (more or less) perpetual 12x XP bonus for subscribers and as the gear kinks have been ironed out, it's possible to play through the story and ignore all multiplayer content, the boring planetary quest lines, and PVP, making it for all intents and purposes a single player experience.

And for the same problems, same "solutions", it seems. They are going to start selling zero-to-hero level boosts. Apparently, for the expansion they are making it a single player-centric MMO-thing of sorts. Not that I'm complaining, mind. I never joined any guilds and pugged group content and PVP all day every day. Still, the lack of cross-faction play is disappointing given the direction they are going in with the story.

So you actually prefer the galactic war. Smaller storylines scattered around the galaxy is how the galactic war is presented from Coruscant/Kaas to Corellia, and you get a general idea of the progress of the war along the way. In fact the Dread Masters and Revan plots are given a much greater sense of importance from a storyline pov than the galactic war, because "OMG impending doom!". The fake sense of urgency gets boring after a while and it's plain it's a way to avoid crafting different stories for each side. In the end, it's less content.

So the Cannibal perk will be in the... Survival tree? And Finesse in... Small Guns? Yeah, if that's the case, as someone else back there said, it doesn't look like they "get" perks at all. Wait and see, I guess.

Trailer's pretty cool, no doubt. But do you think we'll ever get back to the Republic vs Empire war thing that is the WHOLE PREMISE OF THE GAME instead of adding new galactic threats out of nowhere with each patch?

The problem with that dialogue system is minimal compared with the likely quality problem of the writing itself. If the writing is "Have you seen my dad, middle aged guy?" quality again it hardly matters what the dialogue system is, if the writing is good then the system may be a bit limiting, but shouldn't be a major problem. AP used that dialogue system and I liked it well enough, except those times when I chose an answer and Thorton did or say something completely different from what I expected. That was offset by consistently pissing off everyone I came across so in the end it's all good. If I can do the same in FO4 and be chastised for it by the end, I'll be happy. If that's actually the case, it could work better than the previous 1-100 scale. In the old games, there was a die roll that governed skill checks, so a continuous variable made sense. From FO3 on, if, for instance, a lock required [Lockpicking 50] and you had 49, you were SOL. That sucked. However, if perks are now skills... what happens with actual perks now? Do you choose between leveling up a "skill" and picking a perk now? Yeah, I don't think I like that.