So according to this guy, we should never make laws or decisions that don't have complete bi-partisan support because the other side will try to repeal it. How would anything get done? At that, we wouldn't have any laws at all. Did he even listen to what he said?

I swear, man. Congresscritters sound more like whiny children every day. This is the epitome of politicians' refusal to compromise on anything. The general intelligence of people in politics must steadily be dropping. They better stay where they are because they sure can't do anything else.

Also, for the OCD control freaks like myself, having a more locked down, yet polished, system is a plus. Otherwise, I'd be customizing, tweaking, and optimizing (and breaking, and fixing) all day.

The civil unrest is pretty tangible on the circles I visit on the Internet, and that's spilling over into Real Life (tm). Congress' approval rating is at an all-time low. This country has been around 400 years. It's never been lower. (Okay, it was probably lower back when the Tea Party actually meant something.)

Now, I'm not saying it's going to happen, but sometimes I think this country just needs another civil war against its government. After all, the United States was founded by British colonialists taking up arms against their government. Why couldn't it happen again? I'm sure some parts of the country are closer to doing so than others.

It's hard to fight back within the bounds of the law when the law is so against you.

"Voting is cool but it's not enough to make a democracy." True in so many ways.

You did read the bits about the fact that voting seems to have no effect most of the time? (Or how about this one.)

Anecdotal evidence could work here just as well. Citizens United represents everything you need to know about politics in the United States. If you don't have enough money, you don't have enough "free speech." The polls say more than 90% of the country does not want Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable, and for some good reasons. Do you think that'll sway the regulators, who are being smooched up the ass by Comcast lobbyists?

Or what about what happened to Obama's election promises about getting rid of lobbyists and being transparent? I do believe he was pressured by the incumbents into changing his mind. He might have been honest when he first got elected, but, as they say, the system is too strong. He got borged into it.

I started by working with the Quake 3 engine and seeing what I could do to it. I wound up modifying the guns by adding new firing modes, modifying how the camera a little and learned how to add effects to the game.

Then I messed around with the trigger editor in Starcraft.

Then I messed around with the trigger editor in Warcraft 3 and made a lot more complex things, including implementing the character progression system from a single game from a popular Japanese RPG series -- which shall remain nameless -- in a tower defense map. (It was an awesome-bad project.)

What did I find? This taught me the basics of game programming as well as a lot of about algorithms. It made me a better programmer. Then I made some Starcraft 2 maps, one of which was a port of a Warcraft 3 map. Then I said fuck this, and took the RPG I started in Warcraft 3, moved to Starcraft 2, and I now have a 2D RPG game engine written from scratch for PC that is well beyond the progress of either of the maps it came from. I would argue you don't learn to program games in a language. You just learn the paradigms used to make a game work, and then apply that to a language. You want to learn? Do it. Books may help if you get stuck along the way, but do yourself a favor and stick to libraries if they exist. No one wants to draw their own fonts or write a PNG loader.

Although yes, you may learn some more about the language you're using along the way. I learned a lot about C++. Try to stick with learning to do things The Right Way (tm) and you will surprise yourself with what you learn. For the record, I wrote my own game engine because I wanted to learn how to do that. I sometimes wonder if I should have used a ready-made engine but the learning experience is massive, although I don't recommend it for everyone. I am quite insane.

That's not an argument for personhood. I understand the reason corporations exist.

The idea of corporations as people is a fucking stupid idea. When that dude said, "Corporations are people too!" I wanted to smack his face. He's only saying it because he's been paid by corporations who want to extend their influence by using more money than individual people could ever actually spend. The retarded idea has convinced people of the idea but I wouldn't bet the people involved in it really believe it.

The only reason to give corporations personhood is to allow people to spend more money in politics. If they are people, then they should also go to jail. Want the benefits? Get the disadvantages.

I remember reading something on this a while ago. I submit to you: why are US politics so fucked up? What started the spiral to so much money in politics? Compared to a country like Switzerland? How are the dynamics different? (Or is Switzerland as corrupt and no one told me.)

A fringe group tried creating a third major party: the Tea party. We do have other, small parties, but they never get many votes, and often end up costing one of the major parties.

The two party system has to go. We need more parties, making it harder to buy politicians.

Stay with me here.

1) This super PAC hopes to rid the government of corruption.
2) It plans to do so by attempting to incentivize politicians to ban super PACs and get money out of poliics.
3) To incentivize politicians, it plans to buy them, thereby promoting the very corruption it seeks to abolish.
4) ???
5) Profit!

Is there any guaruntee that the politicians it attracts are actually honest, since they're effectively being bought anyway? What will their policies be once this passes?

For that matter, are there any fucking honest politicians? It seems the only people interested in politics are dishonest, immature, old little bitches. There should be a maximum age for politicians, let alone a minimum.

The focus on flowerpots, while a little misguided, is still correct. Yoshida explained (or rather, a translator in my ear explained because he was speaking in Japanese) that, because they had such great success with FFXI, they failed to look at where the MMO genre had gone and stuck conservatively to their (cartoonishly large) guns. Undeniably, Square-Enix is a graphics powerhouse. Their games look gorgeous. Correct me if I'm wrong but style is just part of Japanese culture. The systemic problem was that the focus was not where it should have been: player experience. This is a game, after all. He emphasized that the success of FFXI blinded them in the creation of FFXIV and development time was spent in all the wrong places because they believed they were doing a good job without realizing what was going on right under their noses.

There's also the part that the game suffered upwards of 400 crashes per day (I'm assuming across the various servers worldwide), which was just a symptom of the larger problem.

Can we all agree on this one at least? You don't have to socialize something if there's enough healthy competition. In fact, I would recommend against it because the social agency is under no pressure to provide anything better than basic service based on its funding. I wouldn't call the state of internet service in the US "under healthy competition." My particular area is out of the ordinary because we have Verizon, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable. Of course, let's not forget that the apartment complex I live in has a deal with Cablevision so they're the only choice I really have.

There's little competition with cell phone service. Why? The upstart cost is ridiculous because you have to put wires and towers all over the place and all the big companies bought up the little ones to have more coverage.

There's little competition with internet providers. Why? See above. Add on the fact that content delivery companies are merging with internet providers and now you have to compete with a company that has more money, more lawyers and more weight.

There's little competition with content delivery companies. Actually that's a lie but as ISPs merge with content companies and become bigger, they'll have more weight to push out content delivery startups. I can see Netflix being forced to buy up an ISP like Time Warner if the Comcast deal fails. TimeFlix Warner? (Comflixcast?)

In both the cell service and ISP cases, the trouble I see is lack of regulation and conflict of interest with the companies involved. One company should be the one to lay lines down and build towers for cell companies. AT&T should not be responsible for laying its lines down. Or else, Google could come to areas with Verizon and lease their fiber lines. Line-laying companies would be in competition with one another and want the business of the ISPs and cell companies. Also, I agree that content companies should not be able to merge with internet providers.

Split up line companies from delivery companies and you'll see costs go down because you only have to lease from a company that will have others leasing as well. Split up content companies from ISPs and you'll see Comcast playing nice with Netflix because it'll be one of many content companies its customers will demand access to -- or switch ISPs because they'll have a choice. You take out choice and you take out the only card customers have in determining what fails and what succeeds. If the company holds the cards, they only get bigger, which, as we can see, ultimately leads to regulatory capture. People are greedy and want money. I'm not against the fact that companies exist to make money but when they stop serving the public interests and only their stockholders' because they can then something has to change. If a company doesn't have to compete with anyone else for customers, then they're going to do all they can to raise prices and lower costs without losing too many customers to their non-existent competition.

Case in point: T-Mobile disrupting the cell industry, Apple disrupting the tablet industry and then Microsoft, and Google Fiber disrupting ISPs. (Time Warner increasing speeds to 300 Mbps near Google Fiber not because of Google but because customers [i]there[/i] are demanding higher speeds? Bullshit. I was talking to my ISP once for service and somehow Google Fiber came up. told the tech if they came here I would drop them so fast. He laughed.)

I would argue that the first troll in the world didn't know what they were doing. The behavior probably evolved as a form of blowing off steam, people who can't keep tangents to themselves or someone who is just stupid and doesn't know how to argue a point and just spouts nonsense in return. Ever since it was given a name and definition, it's certainly become a lot more deliberate.

You're id is lower than mine, Teun. Get teh fuck off my lawn. This is my house.

Truth be told I remember hearing on the radio that the qualities we admire in leaders are the same exact qualities that make someone one step closer to being what we might normally call a horrible human begin. As such: quick thinkers (rash decisions?); can make emotionless decisions or separate the people from the process (lack of empathy: "people are just resources" and "I can lay them off because they are just employees"); and self-confident (egotistical).

Think of someone you know at work or elsewhere who you would consider a great leader. Now, realize that they very likely have the above qualities. Think of the kind of people who are made to helm company mergers, the people who have to decide who stays and who goes. Now, remember that those kinds of psychotic, unhealthy people are running major corporations as well as countries.

Is that guy apathetic towards you; can he make quick decisions, no matter how horrible; and is he very confident in what he says? Sure! Hire that fucker or vote him in as president! The most dangerous has to be self-confidence. Trolls sure as hell aren't humble, but a humble person isn't getting into a leadership position any time soon because empathy, humbleness and indecisiveness is considered weak.

A few weeks ago, the corporate division I work in decided it wanted the employees to feel more empathy towards our end-customers (I work in a medicinal-label pressing company). It's sort of a sick game of marketing: by increasing our empathy towards the patients whose medicine will be bearing our labels, they believe we will work harder. The plan? Take down the abstract art pictures in the building and put up pictures of patients. I honestly see it as a sort of disgusting: in an effort to get the employees to be more productive, they want us to have more empathy towards our end-customers. To make us feel more empathy, they play with our emotions by putting up pictures of people. The division has been around for 15+ years and they're just thinking of this now?

Business people, especially those who make company decisions based on money, are some of the scummiest people I can think of. It's no wonder society sucks. It's run by a bunch of trolls.