so i have been watching this argument over the "ban" all over my facebook.people really like their little "memes" that offer no real criticism,nor any context,they simply display that persons particular bias.the discussion over this "ban" was not my issue.my issue was with the utter lack of depth of understanding.the evident laziness of those who got up on their little soapbox and sanctimoniously,and self-righteously moralized over a situation that they maybe..maaaybe..spent a total of five minutes on.

until finally my head exploded,and i went into hulk-mode.this was my rant,that i now share with you all:

jesus fucking christ...am i reading these comments correctly?

ok,lets put a little clarity into the mix,shall we?

first of all its not actually a "ban" but an extension to vette refugees further.

sounds reasonable right?

but what is NOT mentioned is that the majority of these refugees have already BEEN vetted,and the process has taken up to two years already.

so stop wetting your pants over brown people who happen to be muslim.

secondly,
let us take a look at the countries whose refugees are being "banned".

notice anything?

each and every one of those countries the american military is deployed in.the CIA has been fighting a proxy war in syria for five fucking YEARS.obama expanded operations into:sudan,somolia,yemen,syria and jordan (another proxy war executed by our radical saudi arabia buddies,who just happen to hate america and promote the most radical of muslim interpretations:wahhabism.they spend BILLIONS of their oil money to open madrasas across the region to light the match of radical islam)

so we,along with russia,turkey and other nations,are bombing the SHIT out of these countries,therefore creating the refugee crisis in the first place,and then we turn around an slap a "ban" on them.

oh,i'm sorry,not really a ban,just an extension to vette them further,because god knows we need more than two years to find out if someone is radicalized.

hypocrisy much america?

thirdly,
and this should make us all VERY nervous,but corporate media has YET to address this little turd nugget.a federal court slapped an injunction on this "ban",because it was not done through the proper channels,but rather through executive order.

and DHS ignored the injunction.
IGNORED it,because who needs "checks and balances" right?
who needs an institution,which was put in place to uphold the law and to restrict a sitting president from over-stepping his authority?
right?

and the fact that the DHS,which is under the DoD,outright ignored a direct order from a federal judge to cease and desist,because trump had overstepped his authority by attempting to use executive orders to circumvent the law.,and this was just an injunction,which really just means "stop!until we further review"...the DHS ignored the injunction.

lets ignore the fact that trump gutted the very agency that would have been the first to challenge his executive order "banning" these refugees.trump literally gutted all the high ranking officials at the state dept.

his press secretary said,and this is fucking laughable..they resigned..ALL of them?
all of them just stood up and resigned?

so it came down to a judge to hold trump accountable,which he did by injunction and an entire dept ignored that federal judges ruling.

now let us look at the countries left off that list.

notice anything?

well well well...would you look at that.
not only do they all purchase large amounts of weapons and military apparatus from us.not only do have they have large reserves of oil that our american companies make a shit ton of money from,but lookie here..trump has business in every singly one of those countries.

coincidence?

oh,and lets not overlook the fact that by executive order trump opened the door to have steve bannon on the national security council!
an unqualified,and with zero experience white nationalist is now on the national security council.

this is unprecedented!

but who cares right?
who needs those protocols,or checks and balances right?

trump is slowly creating his own tiny cabal of extreme loyalists and you people are wetting your pants over some brown people who lost everything,and have spent TWO FUCKING YEARS to find refuge?

this isnt the behavior of a president.
this is the behavior of a king.

yes,other presidents have implemented bans.
this is not a new thing.
what IS new,and some of you nimrods are either willingly,or unwittingly ignoring,is that THOSE bans were in direct response to the US being threatened by a particular group,and THOSE bans had the approval of congress..not a fucking piece of paper that king trump signed.

does america need to reform it's immigration policies?
yes,most certainly.

do we need to have an system in place to help assimilate refugees from syria beyond vetting?

of course,all we have to do is look at germany and see what happens when you allow refugees into your country without proper preparation and a system in place to see just how horrible it can get.

does this mean that every muslim refugee is somehow a terrorist?

well,just look at dearborn michigan.the largest muslim community in america and tell me how many terrorist came from that city? how many muslims were radicalized in dearborn?

is radicalized islam a problem?
yes,of course,who would deny this?

but the causes of radicalization are well understood,and have been well documented,and it is NOT only muslims who engage in terrorism.

really folks,before you start making declarations of certitude without having even the most basic knowledge how our government functions,you need to shut the fuck up.

and for FUCK sakes pick up a book once in awhile,and stop being a gaggle of fucking bed wetters.
jesus...you little fags piss yourselves every time a muslim is even mentioned in conversation.

oh,and before one of you tough guys even think about talking shit to me.
1.i am ex military.so go fuck yourself.
2.my JOB is to debunk bullshit stories and research politics and offer analysis.

so you better think twice before you go off half cocked,because my comment hurt your wittle feewings.your comments are ignorant and they are so lacking in the basic understanding of how this government operates that the only feeling you should having right now is:SHAME.

*edit:this is not directed towards anyone in particular here,but this single focus on trumps ill-thought "ban",and how he did so in such a broad,and general wave of a pen stroke that affected even those HAD gone through the process to get their green cards,visas etc etc is simply buying into the corporate narrative.

and then NOT consider the implications of a gutted state department,the loss of the attorney general and the defiant,disobedience of the DHS in regards to a federal judges injunction.

is unforgivable in it's ignorance.

the implications ALONE should make us all worried.
very very worried.
because it appears trump is reshaping our government into his own little fiefdom of loyalists,willing to defy the everyday governmental operations of checks and balances.

trump is consolidating and concentrating his power by creating his own little cabal of loyalists.that motherfucker has ALREADY put his candidacy on the ballot for 2020.now accepting donations to the highest bidder! feel free to purchase your own piece of the american presidency!

on sale NOW! so act fast! positions are limited!
*prices may vary according to your status and where you reside on the class scale.poor people can simply fuck off.

i realize this speculation on my part,
and i could be wrong.
god..please let me be wrong.

Why would you assume this is a fashion statement? I didn't even consider something that crazy. Of course i always assume people LOVE their pets. Seems like a cat carrier to me. Much better than the cat carrier i use to use. Especially if your mode of transport is on foot. Do you always assume the worst in all situations where animals are involved?

I guess its possible you are somewhat joking but from your past comments i assume you are serious.

Oh Snap! Now that is Man Mode! Wow... respect!

The improvements overall in 2.6 is pretty good (much better frame rate among them), and Star Marine is fun enough. It actually is playable, though until 3.0, there isn't much to do in the Persistent Universe.

People give Star Citizen lots of flack for long development time and the like, but most developers/publishers wouldn't even announce they were working on the game until it was where Star Citizen is now. Most games are in development for a few years before they start showing off stuff, then give a year or two more on a game of this scope. The only other thing I can think of is CD Project Red's Cyberpunk 2077, which was announced before development really started in earnest (though they had a good team working on it when it was announced in 2013)... and that title won't be out until late 2017 or more likely 2018 (I'm not expecting more than a release window announcement in 2017 saying some quarter in 2018). Now to be fair, people aren't spending thousands on Cyberpunk ahead of release as they are with Star Citizen, though I think most people stopped at $60 tops, and there are valid issues/concerns with funding the way Star Citizen is funded, but I'll give it a chance. I'll dip back in after each major update... 3.0 or so is where it starts getting interesting, and it's nice seeing a developer be more open about what's going on while it's being worked on.

Come the end of 2017 or mid 2018, if we don't have Squadron 42 and most of the Protestant Universe, then I'll start having doubts. I'd expect it to be wrapped up and in maintenance mode with adding things like Elite Dangerous does by that point... and walking around in ED will likely take another expensive DLC.

I tried some of these once a few years back. I'm competent if far from talented at riding a skateboard, I'm pretty good at inline skating, but these things I decided after about ten minutes were too dangerous for an 'old' guy like me. There's no way to learn to ride them well without falling down a lot in the process. Not a problem when I was a kid, now: not so much.

In the end, I didn't know what to make of them. They offer no advantage over skateboards or skates and have quite a lot of disadvantages. I guess they're a challenge for its own sake, which is fine since ultimately that's the point since they're not a mode of transportation as skateboards or skates arguably can be.

America is hardcore mode but with first world conditions. I'm sorry, but we just accept that when you get run the fuck over, you're run the fuck over for life. I mean.. death.

(I half imagined after the cop chased down the pedestrian, that the grappler bumper had turned into a pair of giant scissors ready to cut off that guy's legs.)

Could be interesting.

I would normally say for something like this, it comes down to the graphical power of portable vs. console mode (and the footage in the video makes it seem like performance slowed to a crawl), but Nintendo have generally cranked out good first party games even on low spec hardware. 3rd party support might be a different question.

Also, the two controllers tabs separately split from the screen looks awkward as hell. Like seriously, the part where the guy was using it on the plane looked super awkward, almost like a parody video.

It's more natural to hold a phone in portrait (vertical) than in landscape (horizontal). Typically landscape requires 2 hands -- and if filming landscape with one hand, it becomes easy to lose grip.

I know it ruins the cinematic quality, but he didn't film the dude for our entertainment, he filmed it as proof.

It's also a logistical issue, as it is easier to grip a phone vertically than horizontally. This is the reason why there are so many videos filmed in this mode. Especially in situations where people are unable to use both of their hands to stabilize the video, such as running, when in danger, or at the top of a bridge...

Also, his subject is a human which stands upright, so filming vertical allows him to distribute his subject matter across the entire canvas; whereas landscape would cut off the primary focus and distribute the background on either side of the subject, which is unimportant to the situation, in place of filming the man from head to toe in a single frame.

Obviously you haven't played with Space Engine. It's not much of a game, but I find myself lost in it for hours just exploring. The shots you see are made in-game, traveling at many thousand times the speed of light. Every star you see, you can literally travel to. It might have planets and moons in orbit which you can visit, or that "star" might even be an entirely new galaxy with billions more stars.

It does have a game mode with space ships, but I have never tried it. I just load it up from time to time, click a random star and go to it.

Yeah, exactly. There were tons of streams on Twitch of NMS before release. I should have said this in my statement, but before I thought it was just going to be an indie space exploration survival game - but it became clear from the streams - that this game consisted of a lot of grinding and was pretty repetitive. I wasn't sure if I would actually enjoy that, which is why I didn't pay for it First thing I noticed was the nerfed surface travel, you can't even crash and second thing I noticed was the retarded inventory system, third - mine, mine, mine, grind and not much variation. It WREAKS of consolitis (framerate at 30, on PC, attention to detail Sean, come on?!), but to their credit, playing the game with a controller is quite nice, so much better than the shitty PC controls they implemented. I still like it and am enjoying the surprising relaxation of the grind/exploration, so I will pay for it when it's $30 and is heavily patched & modded. $60.00 is absolutely ridiculous for this game, but hopefully they take that extra $30 they ripped off from people and put in some major work.

Overwatch is another game that I was pissed at having paid $60.00 for. But, since it's a Blizzard game I always know they will make it worth my while in the long-run and it's steadily been true of Overwatch. Blizzard really know how to support their games unlike any other developer. I enjoy OW much more now that the competitive mode came out, a new hero (a little underwhelming but still cool) added and pretty soon an awesome looking new map. The lucio-ball thing is cool that they added in, but don't care much for it. Still hate the loot, though....

http://techdrake.com/2016/06/overwatchs-anti-cheat-proves-too-much-for-cheaters/

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20744844365

https://scrap.tf/raffles/N4F7RG

Overwatch does monitor for cheating. Blizzard also issues permanent bans. Battle.net in and of itself is fairly resistant, read the last link on how much harder it was to even create an aimbot hack for Overwatch than for any game using VAC.

Bethesda and Id, on the other hand, don't seem nearly as concerned or proactive. Which is bad, because you can have the most fun game in the universe and lose playerbase because of the cheating. They could take steps, very simple ones, such as enabling a spectator mode so that you could take video from the view of the cheating player. They could enable dedicated servers so that there could be admins in place to ban cheaters from those servers. They could even act on the multiple reports sent to them of obvious cheaters and ban them.

They chose to do none of that. Instead they chose to release a 15 dollar DLC that many say (including me) is hardly worth that amount. You get 3 new maps that you have to play in rotation mode, one new armor skin, some goofy rainbow spectrum colors, a few new post match taunts, and an extremely underwhelming new weapon/demon.

So, tldr mode, Blizzard does bust their ass to prevent hacking via software and bans, while Bethesda/Id does neither and releases new cash grab DLC. One of those methods is successful with an estimated 15m players and one has about 2k players on average. I'll let you figure out which is which and which will still be around in a month or two.

Not a monkey joke, that wouldn't get a laugh from anyone. there is a racial stereotype that black people don't swim. Perpetuated even by black comedians. It's not considered the most offensive stereotype. More playful than serious, like, "white people put mayonnaise on everything."

And if you watched the old black and white Tarzan films, he had only two modes of locomotion, 'swing on vine' and 'swim'.

@Engels You COULD NOT be more wrong about me. However, I so deeply love that image, I'm going to stick with it.

(I was fairly sure your comment wasn't directed at me, however it did LAND on me, because my monocle slipped there. Codswallop. Lovely lovely monocle-ish word that is still denigrating instead of descriptive. I prefer description when in monocle mode.)

And yeah. Internet arguments. I'm severely allergic to them now.