If we had a magic wand that prevented situations like WeWork, it would seem like a pretty clear improvement since, again, that billion dollars doesn't just disappear - it instead gets put to more productive uses.

Obviously in reality we don't have any such magic wand, but I think that's the general sentiment behind what you're replying to: the hypothetical replacement company could provide far more than 2,000 jobs with that billion dollars, and then (still hypothetically) all the people working there would have more stability.

The research supports the idea that HRT (hormones) and social transition significantly improves quality of life. I certainly hope there's better fixes available, but I figured it might help your peace of mind to know that what we have now does make a significant difference to the happiness of those people.

So what?

We used to install multiple copies of the same game off of one disc. When they added copy protection, we learned how to copy those.

Even ignoring illegal copying, it used to be trivial to swap a game with a friend. You can still loan books and CDs to your friend, for free!

The right to sell the game doesn't oblige Valve to offer a marketplace, so this is probably mostly limited to high-trust situations; selling on the open market risks the other party not actually paying up after you deliver - and they don't want to pay before delivery since there's no guarantee you'll actually provide the game.

Games also make a substantial portion of their revenue in the first week, when people will be less eager to trade away games.

And plenty of people enjoy replaying games occasionally, so they're not going to want to sell.

Unless someone comes up with a high-trust escrow market for used games, this is going to have a negligible effect on sales. And I doubt anyone is making such a market without charging a significant fee, so it's still not "selling for $1"

Interestingly, Endgame is actually 5th if adjusted for inflation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

But of course, that doesn't make sensationalist headlines

It seems like suddenly transitioning to a new, much more difficult environment is exactly when you'd expect people to realize that oh shit, they actually do have a disability - especially the "twice exceptional" crowd that had the smarts to skate through high school on easy mode, and are suddenly being forced to actually study and learn.

How is that a problem? Should we be tracking disabled people for some sort of special discrimination later in life?

> calling a man a woman or vice versa

Plenty of autistic people can handle the existence of trans people. It's like taking a Windows machine, reformatting it, and installing Linux: for all functional purposes, it's now a Linux laptop, and there's not any rational reason to go around ranting that it's "really" a Window's machine.

"However, placebos can also have a surprisingly positive effect on a patient who knows that the given treatment is without any active drug, as compared with a control group who knowingly did not get a placebo."

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo

There's been a lot of research on Placebo effects, and the mind genuinely can do some *fascinating* things. I don't mean this as a disagreement with the rest of your post, just an assertion that the placebo effect has genuine scientific weight behind it.

Dude, PyCon didn't fire them. PyCon didn't even ask them to leave the conference. Adria Richards said PyCon handled the situation fine.

Why in the world would "breaking rules of conduct" be grounds for firing them, given all of that? If we went around firing everyone who broke ANY "rules of conduct", or went 5 MPH over the speed limit, or jaywalked... we wouldn't have an economy anymore.

RELEVANT PORTION OF ARTICLE:

I know it’s important to pick my battles.

I know I don’t have to be a hero in every situation.

Sometimes I just want to go to a conference and be a geek.

But

like Popeye, I couldn’t “stands it no more” because of what happened –

Jesse Noller was up on stage thanking the sponsors. The guys behind me (one off to the right) said, “You can thank me, you can thank me”. That told me they were a sponsoring company of Pycon and from the photos I took, his badge had an add-on that said, “Sponsor”.

My company was a Gold sponsor as well.

They started talking about “big” dongles. I could feel my face getting flustered.

Was this really happening?
How many times do I have to deal with this?
Can they not hear what Jesse is saying?

The stuff about the dongles wasn’t even logical and as a self professed nerd, that bothered me. Dongles are intended to be small and unobtrusive. They’re intended for network connectivity and to service as physical licence keys for software. I’d consulted in the past with an automotive shop that needed data recovery and technical support. I know what PCMCIA dongles look like.

I was telling myself if they made one more sexual joke, I’d say something.

The it happened.The trigger.

Jesse was on the main stage with thousands of people sitting in the audience. He was talking about helping the next generation learn to program and how happy PyCon was with the Young Coders workshop (which I volunteered at). He was mentioning that the PyLadies auction had raised $10,000 in a single night and the funds would be used the funds for their initiatives.

I saw a photo on main stage of a little girl who had been in the Young Coders workshop.

I realized I had to do something or she would never have the chance to learn and love programming because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so.

(I am not a lawyer)

The penalty only applies if you claim to represent someone you don't. So, I can't file a DMCA notice claiming I represent Microsoft, but I can claim pretty much anything else.

It's a sad state of affairs.

You could just make it so that robo-mods don't affect karma...

In case you're not aware: this probably got modded "funny" because when people DO try this, the authorities fight back, dismantle what has been built, and usually have fun doing their best to punish the people involved. WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is a very visible example. You generally don't hear about the smaller ones, but it doesn't end any better.

This was posted on the 13th and still has zero comments... what the heck? ... First Post I guess...

110% agreed. Sadly, it's pretty obvious that the game before patch was basically meant to milk people on the Auction House.

The game-as-shipped had massive "stealth nerfs" to everything that wasn't raw damage/defense at higher difficulties (this was later documented in their online manual, but the in-game tooltips still falsely displayed the same values regardless of difficulty). In other words, the only way to succeed was to have the best gear... which unlike play skill, could be purchased on the Auction House!

Of course, the end-game has always been a grind for better gear, but it feels like they really kicked it up a notch in Diablo III, at the detriment of the "casual" gamers who just wanted to beat the game without spending money.

I love the game ever since Patch 1.0.5 addressed the stealth nerfs, but at this point Guild Wars 2 has stolen me away and I've pretty much forgotten it. It was a good 40 hours of having a blast at lower difficulties, though, so I can't say it wasn't money well spent...

Given that their password system is case insensitive that seems rather unlikely... they also haven't had major issues with their login servers since release.

If you paid any attention, the need for a Battle.Net account and the DRM was pretty obvious - they didn't exactly hide it, and there was a lot of outcry over it.