In reply to this comment by Fusionaut:
Thanks! But you are the sift master. Look at all of those crazy votes you get!
In reply to this comment by pumkinandstorm:
In reply to this comment by Fusionaut:
Congratz to you :

Thank you!! By the way, I keep meaning to come by to tell you how much I always love the video titles and descriptions you give your posts. You are so good at that.


Sift master...haha! Imagine how many votes I would get if I had YOUR way with words!

In reply to this comment by UsesProzac:
You're on fire! What a crazy climb you've had, all those top 15s. You're a sifter to contend with! You'll be gold in no time.

Thanks Laura! I want that gold star so badly so I can promote videos!!! I hope my luck continues. Thank for always being so supportive. <3

I get so exhausted sharing and talking and fighting for/against causes that i care about like this. That's why politicians seem to frequently get their way; they have no other job, they mime bullshit for a living.

However, every time I hear someone talk about how they dont give a shit about politics it gets me fired up enough to keep going.
--
--
I attended a funeral this weekend and had a few cousins come up to me "what's up with your facebook page, is that like the government posting that on there or is that you doing it?"

"Oh it's me, I post a lot of things about politics"

"Why do you care so much about that stuff? I just dont even pay attention to any of it."

"Well, take what happened last week in the Supreme Court for example; Do you know what decision was handed down regarding strip searches?"

"No..."

"Well, the supreme court, as you obviously know, renders the final decisions on cases, and those decisions become law of the land. Basically what happened last week involved a man who was arrested for a traffic stop and was strip searched and held in jail for a solid week while the police were trying to figure out what the man had been telling htem all along; there was a computer error that led to a false warrant for his name."

"So?"

"So now, since they ruled against this man who sued the police from his city who arrested/strip searched him and lost, if you or I are taken into custody for ANY reason, we can be subject to a complete strip and body cavity search. Do you care about that?"

"WTF they can't do that!"

"They can and they are because people dont care about politics. Now fuck off!"



("Now fuck off!" added for dramatic emphasis and not actually spoken at the funeral viewing ceremony)

In short, yeah yeah, I'll help you fight your crazy cause you crazy kid.

EDIT: shared on social media and sent letters to my congress peoplez !

Where on Earth did you FIND THIS f'in A++ craziness???


You need a 'terrible' tag on this -- stat!

fucking awesome!! now lets hear crazy on you =)

Ultimately, the service they would provide would be content before any of the knock offs. Plenty of companies have tried to make knockoffs of wow, some even with otherwise very compelling universes in the baggage (lord of the rings online, warhammer online), but no one has come close yet. Star Wars the Old Republic might, but I doubt it. A rose by any other name is still WoW. And right now they have a critical mass of users, which is all they need. They could shit in a shoebox and call it Mist of Pandaria and millions will buy it on the release day.

Sure, there exists private servers of Wow at this point too, and some people like to play on them, but for me? I wouldn't even want to. There's no challenge when everything is possible. I'm certain that even if a joint effort between developers of all sorts banded together to copy and create an MMO like wow, it would likely be crap, because they have no other incentive to make it than "because we can". Design decisions based on that are not good - look at linux. Even Mozilla is a company nowadays. A command structure is essential in creating a massive work of art in a reasonable time.

Making a copy of WoW isn't "just" making a copy of WoW, it's enormous. By the time someone has copied it to the finer details, the game will have moved on to something else; systems change all the time.

A good example of something happening like you say is Vampires: Bloodlines where the community made a huge amount of "community patches" to fix the game, after the developer went bankrupt. I like that, but they could do it because the things they were fixing were straight forward. If they wanted to make entirely new things, who decides which things are good and bad? Like wikipedia, they would need custodians. A private company like Blizzard does not have that problem.

I was certainly a little too broad when I said all intellectual property is bunk. First of all I have a problem with the umbrella term of IP. I don't think it's helpful. Different types of IP have different solutions and problems. Some are more bunk than others. (Wtf is with they way rights to music works? What is it now, 100 years after the artist dies? Crazy.)

Like you I am philosophically on the "you can't own ideas, man"-wagon, but practically I'm more loose with my morals - hell, morals are fluid baby.

I'll say this. I would rather have 50000 people playing my game and 50 people paying for it, than I would have 50 people playing my game and paying for it any day.

>> ^NetRunner:

I think this is the most plausible way I've seen anyone square this circle. I'm just not sure it really holds up to scrutiny.
Philosophically, I'm in the "information isn't property" camp, but I also put food on the table by creating intellectual property.
The confluence of my own philosophical tastes on this topic would be that not only should "making copies" be legalized, it should actually be criminal to withhold any sort of scientific or engineering advance from the broader public, especially for selfish gain.
But, I think that would essentially destroy software companies as we know them. I think Blizzard & WoW would have trouble making the case to people that their service is worth $140/yr. That's especially true in the kind of world in which any content they generate can just be copied by a knockoff service provider just as easily as the original copy of WoW was in the first place.
I have trouble even imagining what sort of service they'd be able to compete on in that world. Uptime? In-game customer service? Best policing of player misbehavior? It can't be bugfixes (copyable), and it can't be content (also copyable).
I think ultimately WoW would have to become something more like an open source project -- the community provides all bugfixes and content gratis. Blizzard ultimately would have to give up any kind of creative or engineering control at that point, and also give up on having a revenue stream of millions of dollars a month, too. They'd just be a glorified hosting company. Companies like Microsoft probably wouldn't even be that.
It'd probably be better for the whole world that way, but not so awesome for incumbents in the industry.
You know, people like you and me.
>> ^gwiz665:
Essentially you couldn't. You would not be able to provide a better service without spending a very very large amount of money and effort into doing it. An MMO is a service, and you have to provide more than just stable servers for it to work, you also have to create new content, bug fixes etc to maintain the integrity of the product.
You can design your way out of it easily. Free to play is one way of doing it, which we have a lot of success with on iOS and the big shots on PC are waking up to as well, finally. Apple in general have their app rejection policy which keeps the most things at bay, but of course there is jailbreaks, which I don't much care for.
I don't have a problem with people copying, although I would of course prefer they give me lots of money. If they corrupt our product however, with map hacks, cheats etc. then it's a much different issue.
I think it's a problem that many different types of media is lumped together under "intellectual property", because I do think things like Art, music etc should be protected from forgeries and that the original artist should be compensated for his time, otherwise we would have no art at all.
The industry is changing to provide a better service still though. Look at music - who buys CDs anymore? We have things like Spotify and Grooveshark who stream just about any music easily supported by commercials.
Any Blizzard game, and all their future games, will need a persistent internet connection, both for piracy issues but also for better service - instant patching, social networking etc. Same with steam.

Oh sorry, I thought you were having a conversation, not masturbating.

Now that we all know how great you are for doing the wrong thing even though you're kind-of-sort-of against it, maybe I could just chime in to clarify:

First of all: I can read as well. I know you see a picture from a bad movie when I post. But that doesn't make your regurgitated diatribe about intellectual property rights that can be found anywhere on the internet where there is a dialog about torrents any more intelligent or original than what anyone else has to say.

Second: In no way am I deluded about the concept of intellectual property. I did not ever imply that Louie C.K.'s work has no value. In fact, I called it "stealing" to download it. I also closed my comment by saying that I probably wouldn't download the show.

And I am not under the impression that just because I can't hold something in my hand, that it has no value. All I said was that it's "silly" to think that experiencing someone's comedy can be a crime. The thing about the T.V. is merely to point out the insubstantial nature of the subject. When I go to buy a T.V., I can negotiate sometimes based on whether or not it's a floor model or still in the box. I can't ask a website for a discount if one of Louie's jokes is bad. And with a T.V., I can keep it for a while and then change my mind. Maybe I decide I don't like it and I want to sell it and use the money to pay for part of the next one. Or maybe I've decided to go to Thailand, and I sell the T.V. to my friend Bob for papaya-salad-money. The point is, the two things are different, not that one is worthless and the other isn't.

And you know what the biggest difference is? Someone should not be punished in anywhere near the same way for stealing five bucks worth of Louis C.K.'s material as they should be for breaking into a person's house and stealing their T.V.

Third: Louis C.K. is probably a multimillionaire. I wasn't trying to justify my behavior as much as correcting Kymbos for saying that he wasn't. But now that you mention it: I see that you steal based on DRM and other issues, but (and call me crazy if you want) when I steal, I take into account the financial status of the person I'm stealing from. It might not justify my behavior but it helps me sleep.

Fourth: I steal download things a lot of the time based on whether I think they are fairly priced. I loved the original Conan the Barbarian, mostly for it's kitsch-factor, but I still own the VHS. When the new one came out, I said to myself "that looks like a giant piece of crap taking a crap." So I downloaded it and you know what? I was right. Fuck them. I'm glad I didn't pay twenty-five dollars for ten-cents-worth of soda, two-cents-worth of popcorn and zero-cents-worth of nap time. And all just to grant some Hollywood producer his million dollar reward to play it safe.

One of my favorite things I've ever gotten for Christmas from my wife was the Criterion Collection edition of "Seven Samurai." I love it. It's got this great cover art that looks almost transparent even though it's printed on cardboard. I think it looks so good because it's taken from the original cellulose of the title screen but I don't know. It's also got a great supplemental book, a great CD of special features and anytime I want, I can sit down to three whole hours of good solid movie. I think it cost around sixty-dollars at the time we bought it and it was totally worth it. Meanwhile, somebody gave me the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" DVD and the ugly yellow text on the menu alone is enough to make me want to burn it for the insult it does to people who paid good money for it.

And you know what else? I doubt that if Louis C.K. were to meet me, that he would hold it against me that I downloaded his show.

I guess I've rambled long enough. I just wanted to make the point that the issues involved with intellectual property are complicated but the concept is something that little children can grasp. So it might not be beneficial to the conversation to write off someone's point that you might disagree with simply because you want to sound righteous. Especially when in the end, you admit that it's all just stealing anyway.

PS: The last book I bought was the hardcover edition of "A Dance With Dragons". I paid the extra money because I find physical copies more satisfying, and I couldn't wait for the paperback.

>> ^jmzero:

scumbag academic: "Best theory that Al Quada did 9/11" (doesn't present a shred of evidence)

Meh - he clearly presented the strongest argument against the "conspiracy theory": that it doesn't make any sense. As he explains, it requires tremendous risk, is far from foolproof, requires magical execution, and there's much, much simpler ways to get to the same place. These are the same simple objections that should come up in anyone's mind when presented with this theory.
Why don't you tell us what you think happened and who did what? Don't be a coward and say "well, I don't know what happened, but I know what didn't because of these X things that I don't accept the explanation of". How about you just tell us what happened and why you think that it makes any sense whatsoever? Or, and this is a much bigger task, provide an explanation that makes more sense and fits better with evidence than the official explanation?
Chomsky would love to be able to get behind this kind of conspiracy (or even leave open the possibility) - heaven knows he loves the underdog, and obviously he had no love for Bush - but he's a rational, smart guy.
Now, if you were calling him a scumbag for defending some dictator in the 70s, then whatever - but calling him a scumbag because even he's not willing to get on this crazy bus? You don't know him, or you're nuts. When Chomsky won't even entertain an idea like this, it says something about the idea, not about Chomsky.


What I liked in particular about his reply was the observation that in many scientific experiments you will observe events that perhaps don't make sense or cannot be easily explained. That perhaps is simply a limitation of our current knowledge and in the real world doesn't necessarily imply a vast, rather complex conspiracy that is far more plausible in a comic book.

Maybe it's more about what was allowed to happen, and less about who did what. Ever think of that?

In reply to this comment by jmzero:
scumbag academic: "Best theory that Al Quada did 9/11" (doesn't present a shred of evidence)


Meh - he clearly presented the strongest argument against the "conspiracy theory": that it doesn't make any sense. As he explains, it requires tremendous risk, is far from foolproof, requires magical execution, and there's much, much simpler ways to get to the same place. These are the same simple objections that should come up in anyone's mind when presented with this theory.

Why don't you tell us what you think happened and who did what? Don't be a coward and say "well, I don't know what happened, but I know what didn't because of these X things that I don't accept the explanation of". How about you just tell us what happened and why you think that it makes any sense whatsoever? Or, and this is a much bigger task, provide an explanation that makes more sense and fits better with evidence than the official explanation?

Chomsky would love to be able to get behind this kind of conspiracy (or even leave open the possibility) - heaven knows he loves the underdog, and obviously he had no love for Bush - but he's a rational, smart guy.

Now, if you were calling him a scumbag for defending some dictator in the 70s, then whatever - but calling him a scumbag because even he's not willing to get on this crazy bus? You don't know him, or you're nuts. When Chomsky won't even entertain an idea like this, it says something about the idea, not about Chomsky.

scumbag academic: "Best theory that Al Quada did 9/11" (doesn't present a shred of evidence)


Meh - he clearly presented the strongest argument against the "conspiracy theory": that it doesn't make any sense. As he explains, it requires tremendous risk, is far from foolproof, requires magical execution, and there's much, much simpler ways to get to the same place. These are the same simple objections that should come up in anyone's mind when presented with this theory.

Why don't you tell us what you think happened and who did what? Don't be a coward and say "well, I don't know what happened, but I know what didn't because of these X things that I don't accept the explanation of". How about you just tell us what happened and why you think that it makes any sense whatsoever? Or, and this is a much bigger task, provide an explanation that makes more sense and fits better with evidence than the official explanation?

Chomsky would love to be able to get behind this kind of conspiracy (or even leave open the possibility) - heaven knows he loves the underdog, and obviously he had no love for Bush - but he's a rational, smart guy.

Now, if you were calling him a scumbag for defending some dictator in the 70s, then whatever - but calling him a scumbag because even he's not willing to get on this crazy bus? You don't know him, or you're nuts. When Chomsky won't even entertain an idea like this, it says something about the idea, not about Chomsky.

I never was satisfied with the NTSB's report on the super pancaking explanation for the speed of the towers collapse. Perhaps it is emotional, but it is less convincing than many other of their findings from plane crashes and the like. What always puzzled me is why the building was so quick to be disposed of instead of what they do on planes; reconstruct it and examine. Perhaps the scale was to great or the fall and subsequent stack of it made reconstruction impossible, but it always left a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps all the misgivings that I have they share as well, and instead of letting that foster a share of doubt and mystery, they have gone the other direction and made positive assertions of conspiracy. My guess is people don't like doubt, at all. It drives the theist to make claims of a God, it drives some atheists to make the claim of no God. People can't say, "I don't know and I don't know that the truth is ever knowable" doesn't sit well with the bulk of humanity, even those who would consider themselves the elite of intellectuals, perhaps even them the most.

At any rate, I would watch this once. Depending on the tone of the first 20 mins would determine if I watched it the whole way through. I was forced to watch that Ben Stine movie about creationism, and I hated it, but not nearly as much as I hated the show by Bill Maher (see elite of intellectuals above) about how dumb people that don't think like him are.

Will this be our generations Gulf of Tonkin, doubtful. Will it contain some meaningful doubts on a hasty and politically mired investigation, hopefully. Will there be more crazies than you can tolerate in one sitting, time will tell.

At fist I thought this was rather crazy. If you would of asked in the roaring 20's if there come a day when they would be forced to deliver their gold to the government, they would of thought you a mad man. But then, it is 1933 and the depression is in full swing. Executive order 6102 is issued for all to see. Great economic disasters silence critics. Now that the dollar is a "world reserve" currency, the world itself owes to the stability of the dollar, more or less. Times aren't tuff enough for us to be able to politically demand the worlds gold, nor does this president have the "right stuff" to make such demands. And perhaps the US isn't in the right place in peoples minds to make this demand, or get away with it should I say. But tomorrow is not always like today. I can't even make a claim to the unlikeliness of this to occur. For sure, though, I don't Obama could "get away" with it. It would have to be a more populous candidate, and I see Obama more of an elite. I am not for this, mind you, I just like war gaming out possibilities, and this wasn't as crazy as I initially thought.

@shinyblurry

There is no cognitive dissonance in accepting evolution and believing in God. It's not a sin to use our gifts to gain a more accurate understanding of reality. Mistakes will be made along the way, but the more we learn, the more we can appreciate the amazing universe we live in.

My unasked for advice is to stop trying to save people from science, it's really not helping anything. At best it comes off as ignorance and at worst it seems intentionally deceptive and almost cultish. It also makes it harder to have sane dialog between those who do believe and those who don't, because it creates a framework that confirms that people who do believe are in the category of "crazy".

If you want to understand the nature of creation then look around you. The whole universe is evolving. Everything is destined and seemingly driven to transform into something else. It's a beautiful and awe inspiring thing and I do believe there is a creator for it all.

Faith in God is not dependent upon disproving evolution.

I limit my religious related posts to about one per year .. so think about it.

>> ^jmzero:

>> ^westy:
Gr8 job there ignoring a comment and spending all your time telling sumone how to spell depsite the fact that what they write is enterly legible.

Gr8 job there ignoring a comment and spending all your time telling sumone how to spell depsite the fact that what they write is enterly legible.

So, from this post, clearly you're spelling poorly on purpose - it's just your fantastically lame gimmick. Sad and stupid, but I guess I won't bother commenting on it further.
However, since you seem to want me to comment on the content of your post, I will.

aside from this if there was a legitimate reason to fight a war and I was in it I would not feel that I need anyone to recognize my efforts, the reward would be the outcome of peace that was achieved the best payback would be for people to live as free and normal life as possible.

Fair enough, you wouldn't want recognition. But that doesn't make it wrong (or not commendable even) for someone to give some recognition to people that really, really got screwed over. But I guess you didn't know that because...

I didn't know people were spiting on them and what have you...

...you've paid zero attention to history. The treatment of Vietnam war vets is not a well guarded secret. Even without any exposure to history, I'm surprised you haven't bumped into this in pop culture. I mean, didn't you watch, like "Forrest Gump"? Or was that movie just really, really confusing for you? Barring that particular movie, it just seems like this is the kind of fact you'd have to be actively avoiding. And if you're actively avoiding talk about history, world events, and politics, why do you comment on them so much?
I guess it's no wonder your opinions on all sorts of current events are a crazy mishmash, you're evaluating them without any context.


"So, from this post, clearly you're spelling poorly on purpose - it's just your fantastically lame gimmick. Sad and stupid, but I guess I won't bother commenting on it further."

Wrong.

"Fair enough, you wouldn't want recognition. But that doesn't make it wrong (or not commendable even) for someone to give some recognition to people that really, really got screwed over. But I guess you didn't know that because..."

Did you read my comment I dont think you understood it , I was primerly saying people should give recognisoin through pragmatic and proactive efforts ( funding vetern suport , helping with PTSD and respecting people as you would respect annyone else) Not simple and mostly symbolic gestures such as what this guy is doing.

How would sumone not living in US know specifcaly about this parade other than what was presented in the video ? How in Anny way did my comment say that i sided with morons that are harassing and generally being negative to them ? You are making allot of assumptions in order to then be angry and attack my comment.

" didn't you watch, like "Forrest Gump"? Or was that movie just really, really confusing for you? "


Whats that about ? you do realize if you insult people they are less likely to bother to pay attention to you let alone listen to a point you might lagitimetly be making ?

>> ^westy:

Gr8 job there ignoring a comment and spending all your time telling sumone how to spell depsite the fact that what they write is enterly legible.

Gr8 job there ignoring a comment and spending all your time telling sumone how to spell depsite the fact that what they write is enterly legible.

So, from this post, clearly you're spelling poorly on purpose - it's just your fantastically lame gimmick. Sad and stupid, but I guess I won't bother commenting on it further.

However, since you seem to want me to comment on the content of your post, I will.

aside from this if there was a legitimate reason to fight a war and I was in it I would not feel that I need anyone to recognize my efforts, the reward would be the outcome of peace that was achieved the best payback would be for people to live as free and normal life as possible.

Fair enough, you wouldn't want recognition. But that doesn't make it wrong (or not commendable even) for someone to give some recognition to people that really, really got screwed over. But I guess you didn't know that because...

I didn't know people were spiting on them and what have you...

...you've paid zero attention to history. The treatment of Vietnam war vets is not a well guarded secret. Even without any exposure to history, I'm surprised you haven't bumped into this in pop culture. I mean, didn't you watch, like "Forrest Gump"? Or was that movie just really, really confusing for you? Barring that particular movie, it just seems like this is the kind of fact you'd have to be actively avoiding. And if you're actively avoiding talk about history, world events, and politics, why do you comment on them so much?

I guess it's no wonder your opinions on all sorts of current events are a crazy mishmash, you're evaluating them without any context.