Well that looks interesting.

Sounds like a survive the night and loot, build, tech during the day. Could be cool.

>> ^marbles:

Don’t Blame Capitalism for Wall Street’s Corruption and Lawlessness:
When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought about Western civilization, he answered:
I think it would be a good idea.
I feel the same way about free market capitalism.
It would be a good idea, but it is not what we have now. Instead, we have either socialism, fascism or a type of looting.
If people want to criticize capitalism and propose an alternative, that is fine . . . but only if they understand what free market capitalism is and acknowledge that America has not practiced free market capitalism for some time.


think you'll find that it's the move towards a more free market that made things worse, from deregulation in the 70's onwards. governments and presidents Preached about the reduction of big government, and letting the market do what it wants.
Granted, its never strictly speaking been, a free market, because you still had government taxing (though as Wolff has pointed out in the video, shifting the burden completely away from business, and therefore, the market) but what you can say is this:

history now tells us that the more free the market, the worse things become....what makes you think having a 100% free market would make things perfect?
It would be total anarchy. The wealth divide would become incomprehensible.

It's all there, in history. The proof to end all these arguments is there, because it's already happened. Regulation, after the great depression, immediately improved things for America, taxing the wealthy, using that money to put in infrastructure that made america a superpower.
Deregulate everything, and watch the western worlds decline (for the majority).
That is what happened, you cannot argue a situation that actually happened.

All you need is a government that isn't corrupt, that doesn't pander to the free market and peoples desires to win elections, but instead holds certain ideas to be true. The death of idealism was supposed to make individuals free, instead it produced a new kind of control that made things a lot worse for the majority of people.
I believe science will ultimately find out the definition of 'human flourishing' and therefore create a new idea of what is actually best for a society.

Don’t Blame Capitalism for Wall Street’s Corruption and Lawlessness:

When Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought about Western civilization, he answered:

I think it would be a good idea.

I feel the same way about free market capitalism.

It would be a good idea, but it is not what we have now. Instead, we have either socialism, fascism or a type of looting.

If people want to criticize capitalism and propose an alternative, that is fine . . . but only if they understand what free market capitalism is and acknowledge that America has not practiced free market capitalism for some time.

...

People pointing to the Western economies and saying that capitalism doesn’t work is as incorrect as pointing to Stalin’s murder of millions of innocent people and blaming it on socialism. Without the government’s creation of the too big to fail banks, Fed’s intervention in interest rates and the markets, government-created moral hazard emboldening casino-style speculation, corruption of government officials, creation of a system of government-sponsored rating agencies which had at its core a model of bribery, and other government-induced distortions of the free market, things wouldn’t have gotten nearly as bad.

Yeah the game is pretty, but the gameplay is shitty. Go here, explore another rather generic dungeon, retrieve mediocre randomly generated loot, and repeat over and over again. Why should I go trekking half away across Skyrim for you, some random person whom I've just met for 5 seconds?

And playing as a mage, the combat just plain sucks. I just stand there while my follower tanks, and spam firebolt. Its about as interactive as a MMO, and this is on expert difficulty. Got the game against my better judgement, despite hating Oblivion, and now I'm 25 levels in and have no motivation to continue.

*facepalm*

This video is pure fail.

The premise is great, as EQ was definitely harder 'back in the days', but this is NOT EVEN REMOTELY 'back in the days'. The progression servers were an attempt at nostalgia that didn't quite cut it for me and quite a few others.

BTW, it's pronounced "Toonahhrree".

The following reasons are why EQ was harder back in the days:
1. Lag from the ultra-fast 14.4Kbps modem speeds
2. Holes in the world that have since been patched
3. Ultra-busy GMs and customer service (real fun when you fall through the world and can't get your corpse).
4. Much harsher corpse system, including no ability to drag (only to pull the corpse to you, which everyone macro'd so it was essentially like corpse dragging today), and the almost-guarantee of your own death when trying to recover your own corpse. /consent was a BEEYATCH when you had to trust the corpse dragger not to loot your corpse!
5. NO MONEY! Research the controversy of the plague rat tails that came later in the game. If you weren't a caster-for-money, such as a Shaman, Druid, or Chanter, you had to farm your own cash, which was ULTRA slow. And even for the casters it was often long hours of work, tho with much greater reward.
6. NO GEAR! The gear you could get before the first expansion was minimal at best, often requiring many, many, many hours of crafting or huge wads of plat to get. "Why yes, I would like to pay 100 plat (ie, potentially 30 hours of work) for that +1 to DEX ring!"
7. Camps. Don't even get me started on this. I get so much nerd rage TO THIS DAY about camps.
8. Binding. Nothing like having to pay a caster for where you're going to be resurrected, and then forgetting all about it until you're about to die and you realize you're literally a 30 minute's run away from where you bound.
9. Much harsher death penalties. I remember losing a LOT more XP when I died. I think if you died at 50 you'd lose a whole level, but don't quote me on that.

None of the above would you have experienced much if AT ALL on the progression servers. Gear was better, cash farming easier, corpse retrieval barely needed, never see all camps in a zone taken, etc.

To be honest, the reason it was "more difficult" was that they didn't pander to their players. They made you work for what you got, whether it be your XP, your cash, or your quests. Quest tracker? Yeah, that pen and paper next to your keyboard. Travel? Use autorun and pray you don't get creamed by the level 30 rare monsters in the level 10 zone. Crafting something? Better know your recipes.

Hell yeah, I miss it.

Everquest was pretty hard. Or maybe unforgiving is the better word. It was easy to lose hours of experience.

I started playing on PvP servers. People could loot your equipment. Unless you had it in a container. So if you thought you would die you'd start bagging all of your equipment.

Also, it's hard to believe that this is what EQ looks like after graphical upgrades.

Had something like this happen. I was just wandering the plains of whiterun, and a couple bandits jumped me.

No problem, they're bandits. I destroy the one and whack the other but my enchanted mace sent him fleeing.

I use heavy armour so sprinting is teh suck so he started getting away.

Ran right into two giants.

This exact scenario happened.

...never got to loot the corpse.

>> ^rougy:

@bcglorf,
You're right that it has to be looked at more closely. If you find anything concrete, please feel free to share the link with me if you feel like it.
Regarding the "social spending" angle, I'm curious to know how much of that had to do with investing in some of the more trashy gizmos that Goldman et al had to offer.
We know that here in the states, a number of pension funds took a major hit when Wall Street tanked. They had invested heavily in the CDO scam (AAA rated). Wall Street was bailed out, they weren't.
I'm curious to know how much of Greece's damage was caused by similar investments.
I'm betting it was substantial.

P.S. - G.S. has been behind a lot of really dirty financial shit and they always seem to get away with it. A number of municipalities in the USA have suffered gravely thanks to G.S. They were basically looted. Matt Taibi wrote a great article about it in Rolling Stone, but I can't find the link just now. Worth a read if you feel like Googling for it.
This is worth a read, but I don't think it's the same article I was thinking of.


No love of GS here .

I find the worst part of it though is the bailing out of massive corps like them, while their CEO's and top dogs pocket billions in profits while the companies were taking the massive risks that led to the companies collapse. In my opinion it's criminal to not demand that the ridiculous profits made taking the risks aren't the funds being used to payoff the debts from those very same risks turning out poorly later on.

For the record, in America a very big part of the wealth that was lost wasn't just pocketed by the ultra-wealthy. There were also all the middle class chaps refinancing homes they couldn't afford every two years and pocketing $30k-$60k a year for doing nothing but holding onto a home for two years. Some of those folks put that money away and came out fine. Most however bought RV's, electronics, multiple vehicles to fill their three car garages, and any other toys they wanted. After all, they were earning $30k a year for doing virtually nothing and had the money to burn. Of course after they had burnt that money, their backs were up against the wall when they bought that last fateful home before the market dropped out and found themselves with a $750k mortgage for home now worth $200k and payments they could only make in a world were they sold their home next year for $900k. Again, not everyone was doing this, but the numbers were very high. Over the 15 or so years this madness was going on, the guys really milking it had burnt through almost a half million dollars each buying stuff they really didn't need and with a method that had left them indebted for that same half mill with no way to pay it off. With 10s of thousands of people all having run after this, the value of the bad decisions of even the middle class was utterly massive. It wasn't only Goldman Sachs laughing all the way to the bank with free money, they were just doing it at a bigger scale, taking their 10% cut off the excess of thousands of similarly greedy middle class folk.

You didn't respond to main thrust of my comment. I'll take that to mean you have no coherent response. Instead you've given me a hodgepodge of political slogans.

(I know I shouldn't lavish you with undeserved attention, but I've got a debate jones to satisfy.)

"Tax the rich" All those record profits are doing the economy no good stagnating in corporate coffers. Take that money and pump it into the economy. Use it to create jobs, to repair our crumbling infrastructure, to provide health care. Tax revenue can create jobs when markets fail. It worked in the last great depression. It will work in this depression too.

"Socialism" Nice of you to put words in my mouth. I don't want extreme socialism anymore than I want extreme capitalism. A balanced system that takes advantage of the best of both systems is the wisest.

"Founding fathers" I find it funny that when conservatives come up short in the argument department, that they put words in the mouths of the founding fathers. If your argument cannot stand on it's own then don't make it. Putting words into the mouths of dead people is no more acceptable than putting them into the mouths of the living.

"Tyranny of the majority/Cover for oligarchs" These two stock arguments you've chosen to regurgitate contradict one another. Clearly oligarchs and the people can't both be in charge. You've got to pick one or the other. These types of contradictions reinforce my belief that you are unable to think things through for yourself.

>> ^marbles:

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
I think my comment was pretty clear. I know further clarification is probably a waste of breath, but so be it. The 'job creator-trickle down' spiel goes like this: If you lower taxes for wealthy people, they make lots of money which they then pump back into the economy in the form of jobs (among other benefits to society).
Well, we've now lived under this assumption for 3 decades now, and while it is clear that cutting taxes does give the wealthy more money, it has failed to produce the promised jobs. On the contrary, it seems to actually have the effect of killing good jobs, either by automating them or sending them overseas to third world slaves. This is probably because the extra money is used to lobby the government, rather that create new jobs.
Another big problem with the 'job creator' argument is that from a business standpoint, you generally only hire as many employees as you need to maximize profits, regardless of how much money you have stagnating in their bank accounts. Hiring more or less help than you need makes little sense.
This is how 'we got here'. We've let business take control of our democracy. With this power, big business has taken us to war, filled it's coffers with public money, given itself all manner of no-bid contracts, subsidies, bail outs and trade deals, has eroded our civil rights, corrupted our courts, monopolized our media, among other horrors. They've deregulated and privatized the financial sector as to allow themselves the freedom to pollute, exploit and swindle.
Capiche?

>> ^marbles:
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
The problem with the 'job creators' stratagem is that, with record high wealth/corporate earnings, record low taxes and record high unemployment, it has no obvious basis in reality. It is also delightful to see these protesters dodge his obvious trap, forcing him to awkwardly offer up the payoff without an organic set up. His karma ran over his dogma.

You seem to be oblivious to how we got here. Your argument/position has no obvious basis in reality. Raising taxes doesn't fix anything. It doesn't break up the big banks, stop corporatism, or end the magic money tree called the federal reserve.
It's a delight to frame these serious problems into false partisan arguments?
Nice joke though. But the 90s called and want to know wtf you're talking about.


So let's raise taxes on the rich! That'll teach 'em! And our problems will be fixed.
The most most glaring error in your analysis is that "democracy" got us here.
Socialism is not a remedy. Socialism always has and always will always be a mechanism to consolidate the wealth of the people before looting it.
Our founders didn't set up a "democracy". They recognized the fundamental flaw to "group think". The minority is always at the tyranny of the majority. Protecting the rights of the minority is the only way to preserve the rule of law, and the smallest minority is the individual.
And just like socialism is used to deceive the people, so is democracy. It's political cover for oligarchs. It's not about taking "control of our democracy", for that's the entire point. Democracy is either a false perception or tyranny of the majority. The people lose either way.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

I think my comment was pretty clear. I know further clarification is probably a waste of breath, but so be it. The 'job creator-trickle down' spiel goes like this: If you lower taxes for wealthy people, they make lots of money which they then pump back into the economy in the form of jobs (among other benefits to society).
Well, we've now lived under this assumption for 3 decades now, and while it is clear that cutting taxes does give the wealthy more money, it has failed to produce the promised jobs. On the contrary, it seems to actually have the effect of killing good jobs, either by automating them or sending them overseas to third world slaves. This is probably because the extra money is used to lobby the government, rather that create new jobs.
Another big problem with the 'job creator' argument is that from a business standpoint, you generally only hire as many employees as you need to maximize profits, regardless of how much money you have stagnating in their bank accounts. Hiring more or less help than you need makes little sense.
This is how 'we got here'. We've let business take control of our democracy. With this power, big business has taken us to war, filled it's coffers with public money, given itself all manner of no-bid contracts, subsidies, bail outs and trade deals, has eroded our civil rights, corrupted our courts, monopolized our media, among other horrors. They've deregulated and privatized the financial sector as to allow themselves the freedom to pollute, exploit and swindle.
Capiche?

>> ^marbles:
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
The problem with the 'job creators' stratagem is that, with record high wealth/corporate earnings, record low taxes and record high unemployment, it has no obvious basis in reality. It is also delightful to see these protesters dodge his obvious trap, forcing him to awkwardly offer up the payoff without an organic set up. His karma ran over his dogma.

You seem to be oblivious to how we got here. Your argument/position has no obvious basis in reality. Raising taxes doesn't fix anything. It doesn't break up the big banks, stop corporatism, or end the magic money tree called the federal reserve.
It's a delight to frame these serious problems into false partisan arguments?
Nice joke though. But the 90s called and want to know wtf you're talking about.



So let's raise taxes on the rich! That'll teach 'em! And our problems will be fixed.

The most most glaring error in your analysis is that "democracy" got us here.

Socialism is not a remedy. Socialism always has and always will always be a mechanism to consolidate the wealth of the people before looting it.

Our founders didn't set up a "democracy". They recognized the fundamental flaw to "group think". The minority is always at the tyranny of the majority. Protecting the rights of the minority is the only way to preserve the rule of law, and the smallest minority is the individual.

And just like socialism is used to deceive the people, so is democracy. It's political cover for oligarchs. It's not about taking "control of our democracy", for that's the entire point. Democracy is either a false perception or tyranny of the majority. The people lose either way.

@bcglorf,

You're right that it has to be looked at more closely. If you find anything concrete, please feel free to share the link with me if you feel like it.

Regarding the "social spending" angle, I'm curious to know how much of that had to do with investing in some of the more trashy gizmos that Goldman et al had to offer.

We know that here in the states, a number of pension funds took a major hit when Wall Street tanked. They had invested heavily in the CDO scam (AAA rated). Wall Street was bailed out, they weren't.

I'm curious to know how much of Greece's damage was caused by similar investments.

I'm betting it was substantial.



P.S. - G.S. has been behind a lot of really dirty financial shit and they always seem to get away with it. A number of municipalities in the USA have suffered gravely thanks to G.S. They were basically looted. Matt Taibi wrote a great article about it in Rolling Stone, but I can't find the link just now. Worth a read if you feel like Googling for it.

This is worth a read, but I don't think it's the same article I was thinking of.

I thought it was great... mostly. Amazing graphics, and some of the fighting was awesome. I don't think it was too short, Steam says I played for 17 hours, but like Elron says, it seemed like it was building up to something awesome but then it just sort of ended, which gives the final impression of being short. Some of the earlier levels were pretty epic, and I figured they'd have something pretty cool for the end, but nope, it was probably the most mundane level of all. If they had just added one more hour of epicness in the authority city, it would have made all the difference in the world.

I'd actually say the game could be improved by a fairly simple mod: Remove the vehicles, and make it so you have to fight your way through hordes of mutants in the wasteland on foot to get to mission hubs, making it worthwhile by having them drop interesting loot. The vehicles were well done, but IMO, just unnecessary.

I understand there is a Doom remake in the works that uses this engine. That could be awesome. Screw story, characters, whatever, just give me some ridiculous weapons and set me loose on martian research facility overrun by zombies and demons, with just enough plot to keep it moving forward.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^ghark:
Besides, by saying the GOP made nice comments about Arab Spring then bad comments about these protests, aren't you highlighting their hypocrisy? So what's the big deal about highlighting hypocrisy when it comes from the other side?
Yes, I'm highlighting their hypocrisy, because they are actually being hypocritical.
Democrats are not. They are sympathetic to OWS. They are saying good things about OWS. They are not capable of issuing orders to the police protesters are clashing with, and they definitely are not ordering a violent crackdown on demonstrators who are largely arguing for Democratic proposals.
>> ^ghark:
I agree that Republican obstructionism is not good, but if Dem's had the significant majority in both the house and senate would it make a big difference? I think in the past it might have, when the corporate influence in politics wasn't so great, these days... I think it's a very hard argument to make, especially considering the fact they didn't do anything significant when they did have the numbers after the last election.
Let's do some quick math. Suppose the Democratic Party consisted only of clones of Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin. Further, let's suppose that in any given election, the Democratic party sends 80% Bernies, and 20% Joes to Congress. For simplicity, let's assume all the Joes always vote with Republicans, and that 100% of the Republicans vote against anything OWS wants.
You need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. How big does the Democratic Party's margin of victory need to be for there to be 60 clones of Bernie Sanders in the Senate? Answer: 75. You need Democrats to carry 75% of the Senate. That means a minimum of 25 of 50 states need to have both their Senators be Democrats. Are there 25 blue states? And that scenario also requires ALL the remaining states be purple, with no pure red states at all.
Now, if Republicans weren't filibustering everything and anything, then the math changes only slightly. Democrats could pass legislation with just 50 votes (plus Biden), but as long as the Republican party stays 100% unified against anything even remotely like what OWS wants, you need 63 Democrats in order to wind up with 50 Bernies.
This is my way of saying "Democratic purity isn't the problem" -- 80% Bernies would be a massive, massive leap forward in Democratic ideological purity, and it still wouldn't do jack shit for us, because the deck is stacked against us by a) the rules of the Senate, and b) lockstep Republican opposition to sane policy.
So, are you out there working to help give Democrats that kind of majority, or improve their purity, or at least doing something about Republicans? Fuck no, you're out there taking potshots at Democrats because you didn't get a pony from Obama.
It ticks me off, because it's part of what's killing this country. To quote Yeats, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."


I think the argument has to go a little deeper than that - you are talking about improving the number of 'rational-acting' Democrats which is a noble idea, and one which I of course support. However, at some point (if things stay the way they are) people are going to be unhappy with the system so you're going to get swing voters voting Republican. So unless both parties are brought into line we'll just persist with the current system where, no matter what anyone votes, there will never be enough Bernie Sanders' to make a difference.

The answer to both your Democratic problem, and the Republican problem can be mostly solved by just one change, removing the money in politics.

I don't think it should ever be about which side is better, it should be about 'how do we get the results we want' - talk is cheap after all.

The reason I don't think you can just hope for more people to vote Democrat and expect change that way is Obama had a huge wave of support in the last election; you'd just had years of Iraq war, Afghan occupation, colonialism just about anywhere there was oil, corporate looting, disastrous economic decisions etc by Bush, 2008 was the moment where the Democrats could have made a difference. But what have they done? I mean seriously, while we debate this nonsense people are getting slaughtered all over the world in the name of oil, by your troops, by your private armies, by your weapons and often with other countries support (including mine). There is a time for debate, but we must also realize that we are destroying our own livelihoods and the livelihoods of our children, we need to fix the path we're on sooner rather than later.

Upvote, but Ehhhh. I won't say it looks bad - but it looks like Deus Ex meets the idioticness of Call of Duty. Way to fail a perfect franchise opportunity. The original could be remade with the isometric view & all. Funny how everyone wants to make FPS type of games because they think they will sell or that that is what people want... when Blizzard is the company that makes the loot. And Blizzard still basically takes old school games and polishes the shit out of them. The only way Syndicate should be made is with a Bullfrog type of touch.

>> ^marinara:

upvote for crazy. Obama should fire the banksters in his cabinet that are loading America up with debt and looting the remains of jobs.


But he likes those banksters...they support him and he will continue to serve the corporations. He didn't wake up one day and decide "Yes democracy!"