Exactly. I get disappointed if I do not get at least one cheating accusation per few hours online play, it means I am having a bad day.

The problem is just the way I play FPS games where I generally charge round the map, taking slightly obscure routes and firing in very short bursts without reloading until I need to (I roughly count the number of shots I fire in my head). This only works because I generally have pretty quick reactions and am good at recognising where enemies are most likely to come from based on sounds, my own team spawn points, and other clues. I generally sidestep around alot too, especially if I hear gunshots close by.

I also take long range pot shots at people where if I see someone on the horizon they get a few rounds fired at them, then I immediately withdraw behind cover and look for a flanking route to that position (usually their team will be close by even if my pot shot killed them). All it takes is a few of those pot shots to actually get a kill halfway across the map and people cry hacker left right and centre.

On top of all this I play as nohax so I get accused a hell of a lot, but I have used this name online for about 10 years now so don't want to change it.

Interesting idea. I used to be in a clan with a player (here's looking at you "reporter") who would literally fire off hundreds of cheat reports (I have submitted 2 or 3 in my life). Every time he lost a match badly he would end up reporting 2 or 3 players on the other team, and since he was a pathetic camper this happened a lot. The things is I reckon Valve must have just added him to some sort of ignore list or at least weighted his accusations to not mean anything based on the number he submitted. I tried talking to him about this but he really did believe that these players were cheating even though I could kill them just as much as they killed me (he probably thought I was a cheat too).

That is the only way this would work though, if you also included the persons rep as a factor in any up and down votes somehow and included some sort of meta system like slashdot use but I have no idea how this would work in terms of games where you have a ton of angst ridden angry teens playing.

What is the purpose of benevolent dictators for life then? (Torvalds/Stallman/ blender/drupal/mullenweg etc.)

To continue to curate the projects and organizations they founded, for as long as the community continues to trust them to do so. Sort of like Shuttleworth directing his distro, if his position were dependent on grassroots support instead of a corporate charter.

'... probably the most important single reason for the reservations about Ubuntu is its frequent attempts to assume the leadership of free software ... [S]ome of those who opposed it, like Aaron Seigo, have re-emerged as critics of Mir â" another indication that personal differences are as important as the issues under discussion.'

Seeing the same critics reappear does not necessarily mean it is a personal difference. It really only indicates that the underlying disagreement remains. Mark Shuttleworth believes in centralization of authority, Open Source is implicitly about decentralization of authority. That is a difference with Mark Shuttleworth's world view; as long as he holds it, and particularly when he tries to be the central authority, he will not fit in the Open Source world. That is not personal in the sense of holding a grudge, but it won't change unless Mark genuinely embraces the decentralized nature of this method of software development.

Some would suggest that their is a very good moral argument to be made by practicing agorism when more than half of federal tax dollars support activities many do not agree with.

I do not disagree with that statement, but I strenuously disagree that more than a very small percentage of people who have studied public finance would say that more than half of an average federal dollar is wasted. If military adventurism(*) is your major objection, then bear in mind that total military spending, budgeted plus war, is about 25% of each federal dollar. Of that money, less than half is war spending. So even if you say every single penny of that war spending is bad, that still leaves about 89% of every federal dollar that has not been determined to be bad. Suppose you cut our budgeted military spending to the smallest %age of GDP of any industrialized nation; that would still leave about 82% of every federal dollar that has not been determined to be bad.

Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act and Social Security combined make up about 60% of the budget. And even an extremely dim view of that spending would put more than 80% of it going right back into the economy. I'm not saying that's good, because it's not. Wasting 20% (if you were such a pessimist as to accept that figure) of every dollar would be horrible. So that scenario cuts that 60% down to 48%, or a loss of 12% from the federal dollar.

Let's re-integrate those figures and see what's left. We lost 11% of every federal dollar because we hypothesized that the Middle East operations were a total loss -- not just wrong on balance, but a total loss. We lost another 12% from inefficiency in Social Security, ACA, and Medi*. We tossed out another 7% assuming that our budgeted military should be cut from the largest in the world to the smallest per GDP of any industrialized nation. That's 30% wasted out of every federal dollar, worst case scenario, so far.

But there's a problem. We reached that 30% waste figure by paring down 85% of federal spending. SS is 25%, health care is 35%, budgeted plus war military is 25%. That only leaves 15%. So now let's assume that every highway, the post office, everything the FBI does, the DEA, the CIA, border patrol, air traffic control, NASA, and everything else that the federal government does is a total loss -- nothing redeeming whatsoever. That brings the total waste up to 45%.

And I think you'd be hard pressed to find an economist who would accept *any* of the above figures as being a reasonable estimate of waste. Realistically, it's hard to waste 50% of a dollar without diong something completely irredeemable like building palaces. And even that, the contractors would be rolling a lot of that cash back into the economy. It's easy to waste 5%, or even 10%. 50%, though, is virtually impossible without a concerted effort.

So, if you think things are bad enough that the government should be overthrown, go for it. Begin advocating for the overthrow of the government. Or if you really think the US is irredeemable, leave. There are plenty of places on this planet that are better by many measures. But staying here, and quietly trying to get out of paying your taxes, telling yourself that you are taking a principled stand because 51% of your tax dollar is wasted, is bullshit.

* Side note: Adventurism is a pejorative referring to politics or activism that involves reckless or irresponsible behavior or conduct pursued only in the interest of excitement. Adventurism is often used as a criticism against some government's policies. Countries pursuing foreign wars of dubious merit or which have little chance of success have often been accused of adventurism by opponents.

Are you really insinuating that the wholesale murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians is eclipsed by the benefit of cheap oil?

No, I said the exact opposite. I said that in my opinion the cost is greater than the benefit. Your reading comprehension is terrible.

I'm sure you sleep well at night knowing that you have cheap gasoline for your auto. Who cares what harm this "adventurism" causes to the region or whether it is morally wrong.

Perhaps you missed the part where I said, "I don't like the heavy-handed..." (or perhaps you took my lack of expletives to mean I don't mean "heavy handed" in a strong enough sense, but I can't be responsible for your misinterpretation)

You should be less critical of people who actually want to *do something* about overreaching federal control rather than just being "critical" or "distrustful" and doing nothing.

Perhaps you missed the part where I said, "...and to work for improvement..."

If you find yourself reacting so emotionally that you fail to read the post to which you are responding, it may be time to step back, take a deep breath, and get a grip. Or seek help.

Considering what they blow our tax money on, I can't really see the "common good".

Not sure if you're just being playfully facetious or if you've actually been drinking the silly-juice. Just in case it's the latter, keep in mind that while there is a lot of inefficiency in government, the vast majority of it is still net positive. I don't like the heavy-handed Middle East adventurism, but it does get us cheap oil by keeping OPEC in check. I don't like our unsustainable social security policy, but it gets rolled back into the economy in relatively efficient spending. I don't like the lackadaisical work ethic of some road crew members or crony corporation asphalt price gouging, but our highway system enables trade and labor mobility that makes all our lives better.

It is a good thing to be critical of wastefulness in government, to treat our policies with a certain degree of distrust, and to work for improvement in government accountability. But to conflate that with the notion that tax evasion might be pro-social is sheer lunacy. Failing to pay our bills would be vastly more destructive than paying bills that are somewhat inefficient. People and corporations that shirk their duty to help shoulder the load are despicable.

Such changes could be difficult to implement, given the fact Bitcoin - by design - lacks any central authority." The main problem discovered is that transaction fees do not provide enough incentive to continue operating as "miner" after there are no more bitcoins left to be mined.

I'm not sure that is an accurate reflection of the research, but if it is, it is not very good research. Transaction fees can change, and have changed. The minimum transaction fee changed from 0.0005 BTC to 0.0001 BTC during the runup to $1100, to keep transaction fees low enough for small transactions. There is a central organization, The Bitcoin Foundation, whose authority is explicitly derived from consent of the governed; the miners and users choose to update their software to match recommendations by The Bitcoin Foundation.

If that summary is an accurate reflection of the research, it sounds like they don't really know much about how Bitcoin works. I mean, I know that much, and I've only spent a few hours reading about it.

In my experience having a can-do attitude and a willingness to learn can set you apart in IT. I recently got a job where I think the best thing I did was openly ask the technical lead to mentor me and do my best to convince them that although I may not know much, I am very capable of learning quickly.

There are too many people in our field who are possessed with an obscene level of arrogance and complete lack of social skills. Unlearning those habits is far harder than teaching someone who is bright and passionate how to program, especially if they already have some basic development experience in a language such as Java (btw, I hate Java so I am not a fan but still see lots of value in learning it)

Then you have people who seem to have an in built hatred of change, see the AC post below where some carps on about how awful Agile-Scrum is. This smarts of someone who can't function unless they are given a spec to work from that dictates everything or fellow technical type to explain the problem rather than being able to figure out the business need by actually talking to the non-technical people who will have to use the system. Coming from a support background can be a big advantage as it means you should be used to dealing with non-techies.

Often the people I see who left university with CS degrees and want to be developers have grown so used to being ahead of the curve as the rest of class were way behind them in terms of technical ability. Then they join the wonderful world of work and suddenly find that the people around them are serious professionals who have often spent years honing their craft. They may well also find that at least some of the people on their team expected to mentor them have not academic background in CS and instead chose to study subjects like pure maths that are actually a ton harder than CS.

Nope, in my book being able and willing to learn, adapt and and improve yourself often is the things that sets you apart if you really do examine your own actions from that perspective constantly and also learn to love constructive criticism from anyone and everyone as well.

Nah, the staff are just being redeployed as moving targets :)

Vicurex is tiny. They only did US$30,822 of business in the past 30 days. The corner pawnbroker is probably a bigger business. The corner gas station definitely is.

Bitcoin may be a future currency (though I doubt it is The Future of Currency). It may be a very bad high risk investment (though calling it a Ponzi scheme would be giving the players far too much credit). Whichever it is, or wherever in between, it is no more or less what it was in the (nearly imperceptible) wake of Vicurex's failure.

Society just hasn't adjusted to the total absence of privacy yet. They will - there is little choice in the matter.

Of course we have a choice in the matter. Long ago we decided that the Post Office could not look in your mail, and we have held them to that for over a century. We extended similar prohibitions to UPS, FedEx, and the voice carriers, and we have held them to it for decades.

It is neither reasonable nor inevitable for us to give up our privacy just because they are infringing it in a new way. Your meek acceptance of their imposition is the only thing allowing them to move forward.

Is it illegal to make these "agreements"?

Yes, which is why the DoJ is already well on the track to sentencing, and the companies are begging to broker a deal. And what's more, they've got the dirt on one of the originators of the scheme admitting he knew it was probably illegal and trying to cover his tracks (mens rea).

âoeI would prefer that Omid do it verbally since I donâ(TM)t want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later? Not sure about this.. thanks Eric [Schmidt]â

Remember that whenever you hear "Do No Evil" -- that was mostly Sergey, and a little bit Larry. Eric Schmidt hates you and masturbates while thinking of doing evil.

Dicks getting punched for being dicks is nothing new. If you had walked through a college party ten years ago, taking pictures of people without getting their attention first, it wouldn't take more than ten photos before your camera met an untimely demise. The new thing here is the device making it impossible to tell when you are being a dick, not the reaction to such dickish behavior.

To those who claim that glassholes are doing nothing wrong, try this little experiment: Go to your local Wal-Mart, when the parking lot is busy with people walking in and out, take out your digital camera, and walk through a busy part of the parking lot. Squat down behind each car, and take a close-up photo of the license plate. Make sure it is very clear what you are doing.

Frankly, I don't think you've got the balls to do it, because you know it is wrong. And if you do, whether because you are a big enough dick not to care or because you genuinely don't understand that it is wrong, I give it less than ten minutes before someone fervently explains to you that your behavior is uncivil.

Resume's tell you nothing about fit. They tell you about experience, and give you a starting point but many people confound expectations when it comes to how they work as part of a team.