The argument against the physical keyboard is a designer's argument. We all know that today's design doesn't create more, it takes away, takes away, takes away. The physical keyboard annoyed these designers so they wanted to get rid of it entirely. This left only HTC as the last company to produce keyboards. Then, there was an internal power struggle in the company and the keyboard faction lost. And that's how we got to where we are today.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/03/16/148761812/this-american-life-retracts-mike-daiseys-apple-factory-story

A highly popular episode of This American Life in which monologuist Mike Daisey tells of the abuses at factories that make Apple products in China contained "significant fabrications," the show said today.

"We're horrified to have let something like this onto public radio," Ira Glass, the show's executive producer and host said in a blog post today. "Our program adheres to the same journalistic standards as the other national shows, and in this case, we did not live up to those standards."

The 39-minute piece aired in January and TAL says after 888,000 downloads, it became its most popular podcast. The story is compelling: It tells of the awful working conditions of Chinese workers making shiny Apple products like iPhones and iPads at factories owned by a company called FoxConn, which also manufactures products for other electronics giants.

The piece essentially made Daisey Apple's chief critic and it also inspired a Change.org petition that collected more than 250,000 signatures demanding that Apple better the working conditions at the factories.

nope. Workers in Shenzhen are highly mobile and if they don't like something, they walk out and get another job across the street. Bosses moan they have to pay more and more to keep workers on the job. It sounds like you were a victim of the NPR fake story that said things were like that. Seriously, it was a total lie, the journalist just went there and told a story about what he wished were true instead of investigating the conditions on the ground. It was widely reported when it came out and we're going to be dealing with the fallout for years to come. Facts != narrative.

Learn Dutch? Why? So I can watch more television? Is that really the argument you just made? WTF?

There are only 17 million Dutch speakers in the world and they all live in one tiny country. The payoff just isn't there. Moreover, having one language for everyone has tons of benefits, chief among them being fewer wars. The story of the Tower of Babel cursing humanity with thousands of mutually incomprehensible languages is a relevant myth.

I used to be impressed by people who spoke lots of languages until I moved overseas and became bilingual myself. Now, who the hell cares? Speaking another language doesn't mean you're super-intelligent or cultured or anything. It just means you can speak another language. If you set things up right, you won't have to. One of the worst pieces of human trash I ever met in my life was a Swiss who could speak seven languages.

It wasn't just Tom Brokaw, it was Walter Cronkite declaring the Tet Offensive in Vietnam a horrible thing. It wasn't until well after I became an adult that I discovered the Tet Offensive was actually a decisive victory for the anti-Communist forces. The Viet Cong were totally destroyed. Yeah, it was a surprise to me as well.

There was an anecdote by a soldier that had helped in the operation. The Viet Cong had committed many atrocities in the areas it had briefly controlled, and the soldier wondered why a wandering TV crew wasn't covering any of it. "We're not here to help Nixon's war," replied one of the journalists.

Let's not even get into the hippy counter-culture scum who really did want to overthrow the US government and institute a communist system. For real. They weren't joking.

See? You just brushed it away. If I made an "argument based on logic" you'd have an answer for that too. Because logic is the white man's way of imperialism. No, seriously, I've actually seen this said. Environmentalism and anti-nuclear beliefs aren't anything that can be swayed by logic or reason. There isn't anything that anyone can say that will make you stop believing that nuclear ANYTHING could possibly be good. You're religious, and I'll bet ten dollars you look down on religious people and call them idiots. I can understand why you are, though, because if you actually looked at yourself with logic your belief system would fall apart and you'd have to rethink everything, and humans HATE doing that.

So, when Americans go to Europe for 2 weeks and draw mistaken conclusions from their experiences it means they're idiots, but you do the reverse and it's valid? WTF? And it IS considered stupid in America, lots of companies don't have these policies. I'm starting to get the idea that Europeans aren't nearly as smart and superior as they are constantly claiming to be.

I disabled the update that nags me to install Windows 10. No way, I have a laptop that is certified to run under 8, and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend even one minute in driver hell. I uninstalled the update, and I think I told Windows Update not to install it again. I hid it, or something...I don't really remember. I applied some kind of solution I found from a message board. But whoops, there it is again after a recent reboot. It also demanded I activate Windows again after boot, which I've already done at least twice. Dicks.

This is why I am a late, late adopter. Hell, I didn't even want Windows 8, I only got it because I couldn't find a decent laptop with 7 when I bought three months ago. Let other people spend hours figuring out how to get their systems to work again. Me, I'm going to be poolside, with my laptop that works, and after 2-3 years when I get another one, the problems will have been fixed by then. Maybe.

You're an anti-nuclear activist, if there is any science explaining why you're factually wrong on any issue, you'll simply rationalize it away as TEH CORPORASHIONS bribing people and keep going with your pre-concieved notions. There's a reason people call environmentalism a religion. Its believers are not easily shaken from truths they know are infallible. Try convincing a Christian "thou shalt not steal" doesn't mean what it means. Same thing.

This is why the Olympics are no fun any more. It's not about who is the fastest or the strongest: it's about whose doctors are the best. If there's a decisive advantage to eating a special kind of cabbage instead of eating the local cabbages, that's just bullshit. There shouldn't be, even though any Olympian would laugh at me and tell me I don't understand how it all works. I do.

There's still a competition going on, but it's not the kind of competition I like to watch.

Wait, I thought dress was a relic from a previous age, one that didn't matter in today's modern world. Now suddenly it has all sorts of important information to convey? Wow, that goes against the entire article.

It's NOT a thing in the US. The only reason it's even in the news is because it's an idiotic decision by a formerly-proud tech company circling the drain. Nice of you to show your prejudices, though. Always educational when Europeans look down on Americans, it's not like it hasn't been happening for over 200 years.

The blog entry is from 2010 and the complaints in the thread linked from there were from 2008. I'm glad it only took seven years to get an obvious bugfix like changing a broken RNG. The random number generator is the very soul of a game that uses chance as a mechanic. And look at the 2008 thread, the developers are being snotty and condescending, telling the users they're making it up (which is sadly entirely within the realm of what I expect). The developers said:

Until the original poster (or someone supporting him) provides his replay, or a mathematical proof of flaws in the code, I don't see any reason to continue this discussion. If on the other hand this is a false bug report filed in the User forum, as it certainly appears to be, then I guess we have a right to be annoyed.

If anyone has evidence of the RNG being broken we will be happy to look at the evidence, but there will be no evidence, because the RNG is not broken.

What a bunch of pricks. If you're on their side against the users, you're a prick too and should probably stop contributing to open source projects. There WAS a broken RNG and they just weren't having any of it because they KNEW they were right.

None of this makes the game any better, nor fixes the broken campaigns. Animation engine? Seriously? For a turn-based strategy game?

But it is what developers like to work on. Who is demanding zoomable magnification? The game uses icons. "Endless incremental improvements are possible." That's the main problem here.

I remember Battle for Wesnoth when it was just beginning. I love fantasy wargames, but most other people don't. Wargamers want hardcore reality, and fantasy fans want roleplaying, so they don't often meet and when they do it usually pisses off one camp or the other. I played it, enjoyed the hell out of it (it's basically Panzer General with some bits rearranged), and was disappointed when the main campaign ended abruptly in an unfinished scenario. Oh well, it was clearly under development, I'll come back later. That's how this kind of thing works.

When I finally saw a link to it a few years later, I remembered it and excitedly tried it again. This time the main campaign worked and there were other campaigns to download. Great! But...the campaign I played was poorly written because it was easy to get into a walking dead situation, where you had no chance to win, none. I complained about it on the official forums and was told I needed to have developed at least 2 third-level healers by the scenario I couldn't finish. Are you kidding? How was I supposed to know that? Isn't this kind of bullshit that killed the adventure game?

Larry had GRASS, but GRASS is also a word for CANNABIS, which in turn is a kind of HEMP from which you can WEAVE a ROPE, so WEAVE GRASS and you have a ROPE.
-- Adventure game logic

I started hanging around the forums since I liked the game so much and was disturbed by what I saw. The game was chosen for a "Google Summer of Code" project and had all sorts of artists and other nongamers hanging around. Super, you think, right? Not really. These people weren't with Wesnoth to make a better game, they were here to as a sort of training session. They didn't give a crap about the game itself, and it showed. They were real keen on doing the 90% of fun work, and leaving the 10% of hard work unfinished. And hell, why not? It's for your class project, after you get your letter grade for class or your SoC participation verified or your bullet point on your resume, leave it for others to finish. It's open source, if you don't like it change it yourself. And IMO this is why Wesnoth is where it is today. It's not a game, it's a continual software development project first and foremost. It can never be finished. If that ever happened, there would be no more resume polishing, and that would be a great tragedy.

I'm probably going to get an angry Wesnoth fan rebutting me with something like, "you're not a member of the community! Your opinion doesn't count because you're not a part of our ecosystem." And you know, you're right. I'm not. I'm just someone who likes fantasy wargames.