Messages

[way]

Let's end this with a picture instead, says more than thousand words or something:



This is the message we send out right now. In EU, it's even worse.

EDIT!
I just realized that there is an institution that will provide way better numbers in rehabilitated vs. not scale, works same way as imprisonment (i.e. uses taxpayer money), but provides results.

It's called military. Why gladiators vs poor lions, when lawbreakers can actually serve the country and pay the dues to society?

We need military all the time, everywhere. It should be separated unit, something like French Foreign Legion, but I think it would work. Far better than hotel "barbed wire" anyway... Plus, teach prisoners alot about taking really care of themselves and provide instant job with honest life once term is served. And get the adrenaline out where needed.

One should define "mainstream game" by number of boring youtube gameplay videos nobody ever watches. That's why CoD series got Theater thing, to increase amount of useless content created.

*Thinks back to days when only game videos in the internet were Counter-Strike ones and usually only really gooooood ones that were really amazing to watch*

Youtube is a wild west of 10-year olds.

Of okay, less bitter definition should be the prevailing game chosen in a game store: Say there's 100 people with 10 similar games to pick but money for only one. This is where CoD's and Halos leave other games behind.

Ok, I've been playing new DeusEx for a day or two now and...well it is really freaking confusing, the game is a cross between Vampire the Masquarde and Mass Effect 2...and while the gameplay is not bad and options to play you want is really good, one thing that bothers me is - graphics and game world.

New Deus Ex is crap. At everything set to highest, graphics and animations still look like something released 6 years ago. Consolish clunky camera and cover system almost elminate way to play it as a smooth stealth game, plus for me, it crashes to desktop in every 30 minutes or so (same with FEAR 3), despite well-maintained high-end system with no driver conflicts or spyware/etc.

One of the worst buys for me over some time, fell totally for hype.

Interesting enough, I've been getting into love with Paradox Interactive games. You know, the ones with gazillion menus and stats on the screen, especially Europa Universalis III and Crusader Kings. Those games feel like a nightmare until you force yourself to play one 3 hours straight. After that time, you actually chew through this hell-on-earth-of-variable-management, need to do superhuman multitasking and furthermore, cannot help about forgetting about food, sleep and peeing. It's that addictive... Civilization doesn't have much to counter those games with, even though I'm a hardcore Civ fan. Only problem is the scope: I spent 7 full days of playing EU3 just to conquer only Scandinavia and after this, instantly dropped my idea of taking over the whole world or even Europe.

I realised that by justifying violence, paradoxally - I might aswell be either Team Calin or Team WHAM and say same stuff about killing being natural and violence as ages-proven way to settle human conflicts so we'd should just accept (and reduce as much as possible) but definitely not deny it.

One side justifies being a dick (from criminals' standpoint - because what else can back-patting for serious crime be?!) and other being a dick... back (on the side of law - vengeance mode).

And yet still, I don't see how promoting being unlawful (by not taking harsh nut-shootin action) would decrease it or decrease better than well, nut shooting.

[you]

But we should also agree that some nuts should be shot.

Say, that someone comes to rape you. Will you perform nut/head shooting combo or preach about society's ills and how you're trying to avoid causing pain/violence while he's tearing you a new one?

If former, then why? Is violent act against you somehow more important than - say, your neighbor? So you're okay if neighbor gets raped and criminal 2 years of soft punishment for this. But not if victim is you?
Would you instantly dump hippie principles for ego and survival instinct? If you answered "yes", team WHAM wins the debate. YAY!

If latter, do you need a doctor?

Darth: It's not the non-innovation that sucks but the fact that generic sure-sellers kill genres, see my post above. Since it so horribly easier to make a first person shooter that sells, nobody wants to make a strategy game anymore. Half-brained* people with their shiny consoles don't help also, since you cannot use mouse on console and you cannot play strategy game with gamepad.

* - If they weren't half-brained, they'd force industry to innovate and find a way to play strategy games on console. But instead they buy & are happy with that 3rd person shooter shit and dump money on business that doesn't justify its profits nor care for consumers.

2K is going to release a shitty FPS in Q1 2012, they dare to call 'XCOM'.

There's actually real sequel in works too, promised by the end of the year.
http://www.xenonauts.com/

It looks better, truer to the original and with more potential than previous 101 fan attempts, so I hope it's the one that will really end up released.

As for Jagged Alliance, there will be next one soon (Q1 2012)! Or it seems that even two.
http://www.jaggedalliance.com/en/

But since it's made by Germans, I'm afraid it will have crappy English voiceover and lazy localization.
So suck on this, "mainstream" games.

Mainstream... the problem with mainstream is that it's a shitstream of multiplayer shooters and consolish third person shooters.

1) What happened to real-time strategy?
Only classic-feeling mainstream RTS over last 5 or so years is Starcraft II which is basically not much more than Starcraft with modern looks.
Which is even more tragic because Company of Heroes showed a way to revolutionize genre without losing any fun... I was expecting great things after this... And then... it just halted?

2) What happened to turn-based strategy?
Still waiting for next XCom and Jagged Alliance, but it seems that only ones trying anything at all are small Russian studios, especially 1C, and unfortunately, none of their games feel like AAA title but more like B-movie: the game

Also it's interesting that:

* Free-world-roaming games are losing their touch. At the time, GTA3 felt magically cool, but any latest similar thing becomes dull rather quickly, including GTA IV.
* Capitalistic warfare/quarreling companies is killing good, established game series. Max Payne 3? Where is it? Why did Duke Nukem Forever suck so much? Unreal Tournament? Even Call of Duty is going down quickly, MW2 was just same as first game with additional content and third one - judging by media seen so far - does even less leaps, looking like MW2 with simply different maps. CoD series are too formulaic anyway, you always get that high speed chase, stealth mission and loads of dull shooting to fill the rest of the game time.
* Shooters are getting way too realistic/overbalanced to be enjoyable. That's why Team Fortress 2 is *STILL* hot item.

I'm afraid that game making has turned too much into dry product business and strayed too far from arts & entertainment. "Will it sell?" seems to be loads of more important question than "will it be awesome, unique and fresh?". Just like Hollywood. I'm interested where's the ceiling here and what happens when it's reached. Will the system reboot?

Try also naming it .avi. Who knows?
Also I'd try naming it .3gp and some player/codec for this

And since it isn't homemade porn video, how about posting a file to some specialized forum to see if anyone can crack it?
Such forums are usually accomodated by people who pirate DVDs and such and do some magic stuff so it becomes times smaller so they're quite experienced with encoding and decoding I think.

mp4.... did you try H.264 codec?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC

That literally makes you a psychopath in the medical sense of the word.

In terms of psychiatry, yes,

In every other, normal human being.

Killing (or preparing for it) is what we do best, spend most money on and what is responsible for scientific breakthroughs for millenniums. I would even go as far to say that we need old good war every now and then, to rebuild, improve and invent new stuff. Coming back to space race and nuclear power here is easiest but there's so awfully much more stuff that are more or less war-related.

Also, killing is natural. All lifeforms are in some kind of food chain where's killing involved. Either as eater or the dinner.

Even if we say it's unnatural for humans, it's just hypocrisy, because tonnes of meat were produced as I typed this post and I'm going to eat some of it soon. And at even most holy hippie mode, I don't see any of pacifists doing much to -- say -- help people not get killed in some remote African hellhole.

Or let's try another view: Out of 100 latest video games released until right now, how many of them contains killing someone as an objective? Which types sell best? etc...
There's no point in arguing that "it's just a media conspiracy" because most people really really do enjoy shooting at stuff/people and raining hell from the skies. Games are made exactly like people like them, and how they like them most. I doubt most gamers would ever really kill anyone, but if it's out of question at all, why are we getting more and more realistic kill simulators every day?

I made this video few years ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0ygdday4mk

* Lose the pattern texture. There's way too much going on and tiling is very visible and unnatural
* Add more light levels
* Show effort. Light cone looks like you spent 10 seconds maximum on it. Why are edges so straight and clunky? It's lazy and ugly.
* correct perspective. there's gazillion tutorials for this and every third Critics Lounge entry gets a long explanation how to do this.

I do not understand Calin at all.

Look, at some point humans decided to live together. But to make everybody clear how it's going to work, the force/will of majority was established. Laws are just its written form, ethics is the unwritten one.

Say, as a member of this civilization, I want to just walk to this exact spot on the planet. Can I? No damn way. Because between me and the place I want to go is a country border and rest of the civilization pays money for people to guard it. With firearms... I walk, they shoot and nobody cares what I think about this.
The earth is divided by those major groups and they WILL maim and kill if needed, to ensure their laws and right to it. That's called "protecting your country". They are stealing, begging and researching for more and more efficient killing machines every day to be even better at shooting my sorry ass.

Say, I want to walk around naked. What will rest of the humans do? They will send people in blue uniforms who will rob me of my freedom or if I resist, possibly even my life. And I can't do shit about this because majority has agreed that one should not walk around naked. So in fear of imprisonment and death I will definitely not do this. Or stop paying tax. Or anything else.

What I'm saying is that fear is with me all times. Don't howl with the wolves and you're the dinner. By just being born into this or that country, local majority instantly claims me as their own and immediately forces their demands/laws/culture/taxes on me.

Criminals, looters, etc just deny this reality. Say, local crime rate is 7%. That means that concept of fear works for 93% of people. And now let's abandon fear as a psychological tool just because it didn't work for 100%?

Death is the ultimate fear for human being. I seriously, even despite all the statistics in the world cannot see as being less efficient than lifetime imprisonment. As for criminals, I personally know a quite a lot of them and I don't rehabilitation is very likely. Criminal is usually someone who just doesn't give a shit what happens. That's very primary characteristic for anyone turned to serious crime, unless it's a rare case impulsive thing with no preliminary criminal intent.

That said, I'm not saying one should execute anyone for looting London, but if there's no strict and immediate consequences, brits better spend the money they collected for new car or own business in nearest pub, because there could be more of the riots due shitty, eurosoftâ,,¢ justice system. I'm quite sure that heavy immigration plays part in increasing crime rates too, which in the other hand is caused by inequal nature of capitalist countries. If we'd all hunt our food, one forest wouldn't be substantially more desirable than other. And in soviet union, everywhere sucked, so there was no major difference between living in, say - Latvia vs. Ukraine.

Now everyone keeps talking of "deterrence", but what does that really mean? Essentially, deterrence as WHAM and co. define it is fear. Fear of harsh punishment. Fear of death. But what, really, does this fear accomplish? Practically, the fear does not stem from the criminal act itself, but rather of getting caught and facing the consequences, however severe they may be. Let us examine which criminal acts would be eradicated through this fear. For crimes of passion and opportunity, one is aware only of the immediate results of the act (e.g. dead spouse, new TV, adrenaline rush), and is unfocused on or discounting of possible punishment that would await one after capture. For premeditated cases, the perpetration takes the steps necessary to avoid apprehension and intends on escape. Whether they would spend 10, 25, or 50 years in prison of face the death penalty would have negligible effect on someone who intends to get away with it.

Either I don't get it or you don't.

Fear? Fear is very human and basic stuff. How to we raise kids? "You fuck this up, you'll be grounded/dispelled/scolded/whatever". Fear. Fear of unwanted consequences to unruly action.

What is wrong with fear? We get fear injected into us every day. Living in democracy is one endless fear that it might end at some moment. How did brits feel when gangs were on the street? Afraid. How do you counter fear? With hugs? Also, fear is what triggers our survival instincts so we'd be extinct without fear. For example, we got so damn afraid after WWII that we cannot freely talk about it even now, 70 years later. But how much this fear changed world! Space race, anyone?

But yeah, political compass pretty much sums this thread up and shows what a bunch of rebellious hippies we have here. If anybody should govern our newfound state, it's WHAM. Not because he's reborn Stalin, but because a true leader cannot be a undecisive hippie. That's what separates kings and rabble.

As for races, it's not the skin color, but culture that makes people act different.
And yes, people with this or that race have separate culture omitted to the race, so unfortunately, everything said can be taken as attack against both of things.
I'd say "people of African culture are this or that" and crappy thing is, saying "black people are this or that" would be almost same, since most black people leave in Africa so hippes start yelling "racist" before I get to end the sentence.
It's also interesting that "not racist"  is more important to be nowadays than "honest". Eh, we'll regret this one day. But then it's too late. But this is totally offtopic here.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/dNuPY_rrCZQ

There should be some islands for sale in the kingdom of Tonga. Let's buy one and declare independence.

I'm pretty sure we'll be infested with classic european immigrants soon. Like the ones who looted UK. After we hanged most of them, there will be another wave of immigrants, orderly people whose stuff was ruined in riots and who actually like our decorations on palm trees.

/evil mode

[encourage]

Also, the death penalty *doesn't work* as a deterrant. The figures show that countries with the death penalty have more violent crime (The USA included) than those that dont.

Exactly why?
* It is non-argumentable fat that dead scum cannot commit crime anymore. Death is final.
* As for lowering number of new major crimes, I don't think death penalty would encourage them any way. So we have no repeating offenders (dead!) and no additional new ones (compared to pre-death penalty).

So, with crime, it surely does sound like reduction via simple logic. But additional benefits are:
1) No  upkeep for those heavy criminals since they're dead
2) Most prisons double as learning centers for lifetime criminals. With "masters" executed, the probability of petty thief turning into hardcore gangster in prison should lower too. Especially since repeated offense it might cost his life

And as for violence, many prisons actually do employ violent despotic regime, where some of elder prisoners are in charge of others and get some benefits from guards for reducing hassle. Since they have no guns or handcuffs, imagine what's the driving power behind other prisoners obeying... And... it works!

Dark Ages, you say it as it was bad somehow. People have used this or another way to police lands for at least 7000 years, and it wasn't endless crime wave at all. Open any history book! Only major difference between then and now is science and technology -- you cannot really rob someone on forest road and escape, because police can use cars or choppers to reach you quickly - and whining hippies who made justicidal system a joke that doesn't deter even 8-year old kids from looting shops. And hell, I can scare 8-year old with pure words. Tells how weak the laws and punishments are!

Disagreed! There'd be a civil war! And if I'd live there I would fight!

So mr. Matti would start a civil war for.... his right to -- loot shops and burn cars. I'd hang you too. Especially if you burned my car and looted my shop because one of your criminal buddies got what he deserved -- or even if not and it was mistake. Gives you still no right to burn the town!

Can be argued, but if we'd have gallows and 20 looters hanging publically in London right now, there wouldn't be even thought of a riot for next 50 years.

[criminal intent]

Damn, I actually agree with WHAM now. I've always thought that law & order is non-negotiable and I'd rather have less civil rights but a strong leader (Absolute monarch or something of the kind) leading the country than bunch of corrupted, backhand-dealing parties. At least if things go wrong, there's clear who to blame and if somebody has to be shot, no fuckin lawyer can obstruct justice if king says otherwise.

Right and wrong isn't as abstract and relative as hippies and pacifists try to make it.
Say, you kill and hack 9-year old kid to pieces, bullet into the head is absolutely what you deserve. WHAT IS SO difficult to understand here?

Also, criminal intent should be the line between harsh and not punishments, instantly tripling the punishment. You steal or loot, murder or beat -- there's no friggin way it can happen by accident.

You can also recheck level using plastic microwave tray filled with water. Use a ruler to measure and make very precise two marks with sharpie (paper knife tip would give even thinner mark) on both sides, then put tray onto level surface and fill with water until it reaches marks precisely. The wider the tray, the better you see difference when something's not level.

And then just use it as a level on your tank. MacGyver version I know, but if water is as tilted as level, it's not level's that's broken.