The difference is that I have accepted my place in life,
and ye shall forever be downtrodden as a result.
While I understand what you're trying to say to the parent and even, to an extent, agree with you the other side of the argument is that if you don't learn to accept where you are in life then you can never be content. I would imagine the parent is probably referring to having found a place in life that they are happy with. That's kind of an important bit of wisdom since for many people being at the "top" doesn't lead to happiness.
For an example I'm at the top of my game, but not at the top of earnings. Still, I make plenty of money, have no problem paying bills, buy anything I want, and do whatever I want (within reason). I don't let people walk over me but I don't need to walk over them, either. I find most people would be a lot happier if they'd take a few moments to realize that they don't actually want to be at "the top," it's just our media machine that blasts you with that.
Of course I could be wrong, I don't know for certain, none of us do. Maybe the parent's just a slacker.
and we won't have to put up with this anymore.
Why? Gamers aren't morons and only morons buy Windows 8 and gaming companies want customers.
Really? Tell me, how many people buy Madden every year again? Oh, or the next Call of Duty: Whatever, it's Another One? Let's not even get into the sheer volume of gamers that claim Linux blows for "real" gaming...while they're on Linux dedicated servers. Gamers indeed can be morons.
No, I certainly did not want KOTOR with co-op. I want to be the protagonist of the story. That can't happen in multiplayer RPGs.
I'm supposing you never played Guild Wars.
and now had enough cash I didn't need to work and could actually enjoy games as a player rather than as a developer.
Personally, as a player-turned-developer, I find it difficult to enjoy games past a certain point without the opportunity to participate in their creation.
Agreed. Only a cynical person would view not working on games as freedom. I absolutely love working on games, playing them, and sharing them.
Yeah I think ms has been making some good products recently, but it can't get over the cloud of its past crap. Win7 is really good. Office 2010 and 2011 are really good. Ie9 is really good. Bing is really good. I'mm a Mac and iPad user at home, but I'm really impresse d by their recent work
O RLY? Windows 7 still has a hard limit on network devices (8 by default, 14 maximum) citation. And Office 2010? Fire up Outlook, make a rule that places a copy of every sent message into an archive located in a network drive. Shut down Outlook. Disconnect the network drive. Fire up Outlook. Watch it shit the bed as it doesn't know how to handle not being able to access an archive, even though it can still chat with Exchange.
And those are just two quite common ones right off the top of my head, not even digging into the slew of other embarassments like how Win7 still doesn't support the very concept of a virtual desktop or window edge resistance for manual placement, mysteriously dropping network connections whenever it feels like it, Excel 2010 not supporting multiple open instances of spreadsheets onscreen concurrently (How DARE you want to look at two spreadsheets side-by-side! Go back to LibreOffice!), and a long host of other bullshit.
Win7's a toy and so's Office. When they move past the 90's I'll be happy for them, but "impressed" is something I reserve for Linux and OS X. If it works for some people I'm happy for them, use the tool that works for you, but don't try to say their work is anything better than mediocre.
"Mom and Pop" military was the Minute Man militia, they'll lose every time against a mechanized military backed by a large corporate industrial structure.
Really? I'm sure all our wonderful folks killed by roadside bombs, improvised explosives, and guerilla tactics will be very happy to hear that'd never happen. Oh, shit, right...
So tell me, if piracy is acceptable if you're poor, why isn't piracy acceptable if you simply don't feel like paying? Why should someone who DOES have money be required to pay for something that people who don't have money get for free? What possible incentive is there to be honest when there is no consequence for dishonesty?
Why should ANYONE have to pay for movies, music, books or software? Corollary: Why should only SOME people have to pay for movies, music, books or software? Corollary^2: Why should anyone get PAID for making movies, music, books or software? Conclusion: Actors, musicians, authors and programmers are worthless, as are their works.
That's not reducto ad absurdum. That's the exact model (and conclusion) that media and software pirates advocate and promote.
I'd say following this line of thought *all* things created are worthless (after all, if it can be created once it should be able to be done so again). If that's the case then it'd be impossible create any wealth. If that was the case, there'd be no need for money since everyone could have everything.
Much as I'd like to argue against this as a Good Thing (tm) I can't really think of any "good" reason why anyone would actually want to encourage a society where the only motivation is to climb tooth and nail on top of everyone you perceive as worth "less" than you. Of course it'd be complete chaos, but if that was such a problem then it's arguing that instead of people being able to rationally work together that they have to put other people down and clamber over their worthless corpses.
But I dunno, I don't think I'm really trained for that sort of debate. Perhaps someone more enlightened could fill me in.
Ah, young idealism, trying to be the Debian. I was there, once. It is true that it's better to have open-source drivers, but you need a stable, open, documented hardware platform. PCs are, Android is neither.
You will spend your entire life rebuilding "plumbing" after which the hardware you've built it for is long dead while its descendents -- you cannot support. A life where you didn't actually build anything useful, the next iPhone nor next game-changing piece of software-engineering, but just ran in a mouse-wheel.
Reality is we just have to bend-over a little and suck up buying new hardware; accept the respective new binary blobs. Just try to stay above it. CyanogenMod is doing a good job there.
You're absolutely right, no good will ever come of trying to replicate and eventually surpass closed-source efforts. I'm definitely glad nobody ever decided to reverse-engineer UNIX or even implement his own version of of it. I mean that'd just be craziness!
"You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape." - Ellyn Mustard