Hot Button Topics (religion, politics, sports)

[Nichi]

At least you aren't like one of my coworkers; who openly said "life isn't fair; we learn this shit in Kindergarten. Nothing will ever change that, so deal with it"
(One of the many people I want to punch in the face, to be honest; mostly because is super anti-welfare and feels that people need to "get off their fat asses and work")

[Chocofreak13]

see, don't kick his ass. punch him in the balls so much they turn to mush. so he can never pass his ignorance on to the future. : D

[Simonorged]

But that would mean that I am a racist incestuous child molester. Not everyone becomes like their parents, and its not a bad thing if they don't. Besides that, attacking his nuts doesn't guarantee he wont have kids, just look at the nut-shot kings healthy little girl.

And life isn't fair, it was never suppose to be. It doesn't mean however that we let the rude, inconsiderate, ingrates of everyday life control how things change. If we did that the world wound be worse off, rather find out whether the guy is breaking any rules and don't do any of his work for him. when nothing he is told to do gets done, all they will be looking at is him.

[Chocofreak13]

after seeing this picture on facebook, i went on a bit of a rant.

me: this is beautiful, but it doesn't make sense if this bike is in Washington. the US didn't enter WWI until 1917...

Colleen: Basic training, and post preparations. They may not know what was to happed, but he was already in when it started

me: exxxcept the US took an extremely neutral stance on the part of Woodrow Wilson until 1917 when they FINALLY decided to enter. they sold arms to both sides, and really only got involved due to 1. political pressure from their allies and 2. some isolated terroristic incidents in the US on the part of Central spies. the US wouldn't have even had reason to start preparing their soldiers for it until late 1916-early 1917, as we didn't enter until April 6th of that year.

perhaps the guy went off for training exercises onto a base beforehand, but that bike looks much too small for a man of a soldier's age.

and upon further review, snopes reveals that the bike, being a 1950's model, was likely just abandoned there.

sorry if i'm bursting a bubble, but when MASSIVE historical inaccuracies get passed around like this to people who don't know any better (or don't bother to check), it only further breeds the ignorance we have come to accept as a society standard.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/bicycle.asp

what are your guys' thoughts on historical inaccuracies being passed around as fact because of social media? is it worth getting uproarious about? or should we just not even bother?

i feel that, as a country, we all get a little bit dumber when one of these makes the rounds.

[Nichi]

Indeed; misrepresenting history is something that really irks me. You have no idea how hard my jimmies were rustled by the History Channel claiming the PlayStation to be the first CD-based video game console...nevermind the TurboGrafx-CD predates it by 5 years, and if we want to focus on mainstream, the Sega CD was the first one from a major company in that era. Granted, History Channel seems more interested in reality shows about lumberjacks and tinfoil hat conspiracy type stuff on how aliens invented pawn shops, than on actually being educational.

I've seen a lot of things like that above pic, where someone takes something and claims it to be something that it isn't. I remember once on Tumblr, seeing someone debunk the "girl in [foreign country] lying inside chalk drawing her mom; who was killed by US soldiers" image and story, as it was actually just a innocent snapshot of a kid at play, that someone got the fucked up idea to twist into a "military is bad and evil" message.

Of course, there's also other bullshit you'll see circulate on the claim of being "fact"; such as the "life-saving info that is totally real, bro" type stuff, like claiming that ATMs have a built in security feature where if you enter your PIN backwards when someone's trying to rob you, it'll lock up and summon police. If you apply any sort of common sense to it, you know it can't work; among many issues one can point out, the glaring one in my eyes is that wouldn't the bank prevent you from having a palindromic PIN, as that would prevent the security function from working?

[Chocofreak13]

not to mention that just being too damn convenient. ATMs have been around long enough for people to know whether or not that's true.

i try not to hesitate to correct people, since, while i might sound like a bitch, i'd rather be the bitch that's going to fucking educate you than the nice guy who'll go on letting you look like a goddamn moron.

[stewartsage]

It was around before social media was invented, such things will outlast Facebook.

Remember, historical fact is my job.  I get to hear that kind of thing every day.

[Simonorged]

Here is a topic for debate, you know how when the PS4 and Xbox One came out, they put a ban on borrowing and trading games. wanting people to buy them new every time.

So here is the question.
Is this a good thing or bad thing and why?

[Nichi]

As far as I can remember, Xbox One was the only one going to do that; in fact, Sony released an ad for the PS4 as a parody of how-to videos, on how to play used games on PS4 (I'll try to find it later).

As for whither it's a good thing or not, that's a definite "no". I honestly don't get the recent fad with game developers making used games out to be a form of piracy; they already got their money from one customer's initial purchase of Battlefield 4, so if that customer decides to sell it to their local game store, they should be free to do so without the developer interfering or demanding a cut of the money. After all, you don't see Toyota or another car manufacturer demanding they get a cut of the profits of someone selling an old Corolla.

[Simonorged]

Yet people sell them back to gamestop and other stores and dont see another cent of profit afterwards. People continue to get the used option verses buying a new one.

[Nichi]

Which is why they should give some incentive to buy new in the first place; something small to make people want to pay the extra $5 and get new over used. For example, rather than "online passes" and other such things to lock out major game content, instead giving you a one-time code to obtain a shiny Charizard when you buy a new copy of the latest Pokémon game or something like that. They can also, as much as I hate to say it, release DLC to get people to buy more stuff.

Besides, not every game is going to be available new in stores forever; some get short print runs, and if there's a "no used games" policy in place, you have to hope you can find a new copy at all, and then you best be ready to pay well above the original tag price (For an example of this, look on Amazon for a new copy of Kirby's Return to Dream Land).

[Chocofreak13]

the way i see it, i'm too poor to afford new things
so it's either buy it used
or pirate it
or ignore it and be sad and out of the loop and resent the company and never buy anything of theirs again.

in terms of books, video games, etc, if i can get it used, i will. that is, if i can't pirate it.

(there ARE one or two books i'd buy new, but that's for different reasons)

[Krizonar]

Xbox was originally going to use a system where you can give games to people on your friendslist, but they presented it in such a stupid way that everyone rioted and a lot did not understand.

You could give Xbox One games you no longer wanted to people that had been on your friendslist for 1 month and they received them permanently. At the time they were also looking at a loaning system where you could give someone a game for a predetermined time, then you get it back.

Considering this was in place for disc AND modern (digital) games, that is really impressive. I could buy Halo 5 on a disc and when I beat it, transfer it to Bella, now she owns Halo 5. I can't give her the physical disc and have it work this way because her Xbox One account doesn't own it, but why would I? She needs an Xbox one to play the game anyway, so I'll just give it to her using it without leaving the room.

I'm not even going go into the fact that 10 'family' members could play all games in your game library.

it is a shame they presented it so stupidly that it got changed due to misinformation and panic, the system wasn't half as bad as people make it out to be and was pretty bold. I don't own an Xbox One, but this looks pretty progressive compared to say, Steam.


wait
I just defended a microsoft device, what am I doing with my life. 

[Bella]

Tbh, the system Kriz outlined seems fairly reasonable. However, I struggle to understand HOW a game disc is inherently different from a music CD, a movie on a DVD, a book, or any other form of media which can be freely resold.

Going back a little earlier, I'm also really annoyed when people repeat historical mistruths as fact. It's annoying if it's done out of ignorance or confusion, but it's downright heinous if it's done to advance an agenda. -___-

Back onto the topic of gaming for a moment
>On tumblr
>Somebody writes a post challenging the idea that all female characters in games are cookie-cutter and hypersexualized
>Posts images of a variety female characters from famous games: Alyx Vance, Lara Croft (post-reboot), Zelda, Chell, Samus Aran in her armor, GLaDOS in potato form, etc. etc.
>Some smartass criticizes the post
>Asks why a robot (Samus) and a potato (GLaDOS) are on the list, because robots and potatoes are sexless and thus can't be female characters
>Samus Aran
>A robot
>PotaDOS
>A potato
>Sexless
>"What does this have to do with females in games?"
>BRO DO U EVEN GAME
>OR USE THE INTERNET

[Krizonar]

Tbh, the system Kriz outlined seems fairly reasonable. However, I struggle to understand HOW a game disc is inherently different from a music CD, a movie on a DVD, a book, or any other form of media which can be freely resold.

I'm pretty sure they did that because you can play the game without its disc now, which means I could pass the disc around to all my friends and they would "own" the game... (since discs are ROM) so now the info is tied to your account on what games you own and don't own.
The disc has moved from containing information as a movie dvd or book does, to being an outdated delivery platform for the game and being easy to abuse due to this feature.