Archive for the ‘define this’ Category
I see 2023 has been another resounding success for this blog. 😂😂😂
PS: Damn, this post would have sufficed to get to 1 post a month. Ah well, now I have a “major” entry about BG3 too. 😛
PPS: Would be kinda funny if I just deleted the BG3 entry now. 😁
If we weren’t supposed to be up at NIGHT, we wouldn’t have evolved to warm-blooded creatures.
Every single time someone has to fill an “open-world” with meaningless “tasks” in order to make it feel less dead and lifeless than it actually is, they already have all the reason anyone will ever have to not shove an open-world into their game and seriously reconsider.
Poor Gamlen! I always thought Hawke and the mother were total douchebags, to stay in his house and whatnot when they needed to, but left him behind once they could move back into this freaking huge mansion. Of course they should have invited him to come along (especially after the event with the mother, he should have been asked) and if the game would have offered this option, I most certainly would have.
Sure, for some reason the game is trying to portray Gamlen as a total dick, but the fact of the matter is, that he made it possible for Hawke (and family) to earn a way into the city, he could have told them to fuck off just as well – he didn’t. Not to mention that he allowed all of them to stay in his house free of charge, although the mom/his sister never did anything to contribute and only constantly complained on top of it all. This always bothered me.
Indeed, if they spent half the time investigating Obama’s Big Brother operations that they spend sneering at Snowden and Greenwald, Americans might demand that the government stop spying on them.
What’s really annoying to me, is how NOW most folks are like “yeah, no surprise, I always TOTALLY knew it ALL!!! I can’t even express anymore how NOT surprised I am!!!”. Right. That’s not how I remember it. After years of calling people lunatics, tin foil hat freaks, paranoiac whatevers and even worse things, it’s disappointing how people can’t even admit their former convictions. It’s strikingly obvious (is this already a pleonasm?) how there are, right now, zero people who didn’t always know. :D This way no one has admit to anything stupid, let alone apologize for anything. Quaint. So funny how everyone is always on the right side. Or was, when you talk about it. Later.
They are still so very easy to spot though. It’s those dickish fools who are saying that it’s not that bad and quite alright with them (because they are too stupid to understand and imagine ANYTHING). AND that no one would be interested in anyones stuff either way. Ouch. Because, you know, that’s always how you demonstrate that you don’t want and need something, by taking it all without exceptions. And since all inner workings are secret and obscure, no one really knows, how long (or short) the path from the inevitably intercepted and analyzed communication really is, until it is suddenly put on a kill list (something apparently lots of folk are allowed to do). :P I also won’t make the case here (anymore), why your freedom is already gone, when you have to be afraid to make a statement that could trigger some filter or algorithm or whatever. Everyone who’s not an idiot is always/automatically aware of that.
It’s (the dudes who now always knew) even worse than this embarrassing disinformation crap, where media outlets only talk about and focus on the leaker, while conveniently overlooking the entire leak. Awesome! Because – we can’t have that. Right? RIGHT?!? But the fools still have no reason to be sad now (sadly they never do), because it’s still the original sin to approach the whole debacle from an angle like “the criminals should be prosecuted, not the people who revealed the crime”. So it’s all good, “fascism” still wins. :P
Also not forgotten, how ugly it really is, that these demagogues use this “we’ve always known” to make it sound normal (and don’t you dare claim this is only coincidental!11!111!!11!!!). And no one complains about things that are normal. So shut the hell up! Why should anyone criticize something that is normal? STOP TALKING ABOUT IT ALREADY! WHY DO YOU THINK WE ARE ASSHOLES FOR DOING THIS?!? Just be honest to yourself, you know why. :P
btw: All of this is also a prime example that movies, games […] have almost no influences on people, like some idiots or other (idiots) often claim. My generation grew up on countless dystopian books, movies and games, where the heroes (yes, the awesome, good protagonists) fight people who pull shit like that (who are the bad guys because they pull shit like that). That doesn’t inspire anyone to have a more enlightened/alternative view on current things. Nothing is gonna happen, except growth – to prism and tempora, because that’s what programs like these always do: GROW. Yay!
PS: Now that we know they also listened into private EU business (where your friends and allies apparently become downgraded to nothing but targets), the EU should just grant asylum to Snowden or something. But since all of them are nothing but major pussies, absolutely nothing is going to happen – ever. If anyone would have the slightest morals or whatever type of value system left, that would be the least they could do, to show it’s not all over. If they can’t (or won’t) stand up to this, they’ll never again be able to stand up to anything. Because for realZZZ, what would have to happen… Exactly. This is it people.
PPS: I’m also disappointed, that this issue wasn’t even mentioned at any gaming site I saw. I never expected it to be a major headline. I mean, all major games now have (often even) massive online features and too often enforce (permanent) connections. You’d think… It’s not like gamers aren’t automatically affected by this. The only thing that popped up on my radar, was that Steam introduced trading cards (great timing), which puts another layer between things and produces a hell of a lot more data inside the Steam cloud. As if there wasn’t enough already. Ignorance is bliss.
Smooth move, Ferguson: BW once wanted to do DA and ME, so they would have own “IP” to work with, instead of “only” using licensed stuff, that would put them more on rails. Then they sold themselves to EA and now they have to answer to someone else with everything they do.
On the progress of games because of leaps in technology:
When hard drives had 1 GB in size they made cities like Baldur’s Gate and Atkathla. When hard drives had 2000 GB in size, they made Denerim (Dragon Age: Origins). Therefore, Denerim must be roughly 2000 times the size of Baldur’s Gate or Atkathla. Oh wait…
I have this rule, where I publish anything, that’s been a draft for 6 months or delete it, so – there you go:
It’s quite funny that people used almost exclusively pseudonyms, when it was almost guaranteed that nothing (“bad”) could have happened anyway (net was still primarily populated by geeks and the like) and now that privacy is going down the drain, new services start to enforce “real names”, as if they were trying to make this the norm. This world is crazy, right?
– Me
In almost every corner of the Internet, it’s possible to run into people who talk about/refer to anonymity, without (apparently) having the slightest clue what that really is. Weird, right? It’s not like it would be a complex beast. IMHO quite the opposite. I followed discussions in some (“german”) forums (and I believe it’s nowhere as bad as it is “there”), where it’s possible to post as unregistered users or by registering a static nick. Now, everyone writing something as an unregistered user, was considered to be anonymous (it was the unchallenged truth there), while all the people who could call themselves “BatmansGrapplingHook” (if they wanted to) were supposed to be these well-known, trusted community members (naturally the “good”, registered members frequently treated the unregistered members like shit, like second-class posters…). A stance, that repulses me, to say the least. The former basically contains every major misapprehension someone could have, concerning anonymity. This condition is apparently so unknown, that the word is very often used, when people are talking about pseudonymity, at best. It’s really demagogy at this point. Anonymity would mean, to exist in a state, where one is completely untraceable. Pseudonymity only means, to use a nickname, like many people even do with their friends wherever and not just on the net. How the hell is someone supposed to be anonymous, when (yes, in most cases) it takes one fucking phone call to get the real name and address? Yes: THAT MEANS YOU ARE NOT ANONYMOUS AT ALL, DICKWEED! When are people finally getting that? And know what would truly be anonymous, since this is always brought up by people who hate the net (and this is clearly the case, since the same people don’t scream around in public places that they don’t know the names of all these strange people surrounding them, panicking at every step…) and wish it didn’t exist? Go somewhere on foot with sunglasses and buy stuff using cash while leaving the cellphone at home… Unbelievable fact: No IP/email address will ever tie the concrete person to this (and if someone thinks that clothes are recognizable: those aren’t registered to a name either and can be thrown away too, again without a trace…)!
Another huge _myth_ is, that conversations done face to face, would be almost magically cool, always. I guess some people are to dumb, to notice when there’s often this little thing going on face to face, called “arguing” or “fighting” or yelling at someone until someone’s ears start bleeding… But for some it seems more desirable not to dwell on that any further, because it’s true and derails their point instantly… Before I go into it, I’m just gonna say, that I’m not against offscreen discussions, I’m just arguing against dangerous fools/fascists, who actually want to forbid any other kind. First of, trolling is usually seriously uncool, I’ll give’em that. But facing the facts, it’s no problem. None. Never. Because, other than in “real-life” (another stupid expression really, because the Internet is as real as anything else in our world – DUH!) tabs can simply be closed when something isn’t worth reading, contacts can be deleted, blocked, ignored… Filters automatically sort the spam into an extra folder… Try to do any of that, if you are in a bar with some friends, and some jerk talks crap. Know what’s gonna happen? Social protocol is gonna keep you from just getting up and leaving (your friends behind). No, that would be unfriendly. You’ll gonna stick it out until your friends decide to leave too. Good thing you weren’t in a situation, where closing a browser window would have sufficed, right?!? That doesn’t even take into account, that the Internet is basically about only seeing what its user wants to see anyway. Typical example today would be Twitter, the timeline consists only of people the user himself has selected. If someone is frequently confronted with “offensive” content, chances are he’s using it wrong…
Next up is, obviously, that idiots describe it as the worst thing in the world, when people feel like they can say anything at all, anything they really wanna say. This is always described as the worst thing imaginable to them. No one ever points out, that this can also be a not just good, but really great thing. Isn’t a discussion much more worthwhile, when people are really honest? How rewarding is it, to hear careful statements, that people give because they fear their “social position” might get downgraded. This is boring and makes many dialogs superfluous – a mere waste of time. Further, if someone really hates your guts, don’t you wanna know? What good is it, to have people lie through their teeth all the time? It’s not that bad, not being friends with every living person on this planet. No one ever is! It’s normal!
The next vital aspect is, and this one should never be forgotten, that discussions should always primarily be based on facts. When do discussions usually start to go south? Exactly, when people start to become personal. When suddenly the “bad haircut” of the opponent becomes an issue, which has nothing to to with the topic. So it’s absolutely possible, that people who complain about anonymity, are just *beep*, who miss sabotaging a conversation using such tricks, that can’t be used online… How horrible, right?!? Bad Internet! Also, there is no way to exploit looks/clothing/perceived social status to get ahead in an anonymous online discussion, such things are completely circumvented and “winning” still/only depends on having the better arguments. No wonder some people are furious, every time they are confronted with such a situation! How horrible and strange that must be for them (that’s why Facebook was introduced for those people, to spread old-world posturing to the net :P)!
It’s like those guys who plagiarized their dissertations and justly lost their doctorates. Now some of them try to shift the focus on the founder of the wiki that uncovered their cheating, since this guy lost his pseudonymity. Even if this dude had a motivation of his own, it still wouldn’t change the fact that they were the ones who cheated and deserved to loose their doctorates… It would be the job of the public to not let the cheaters get through with such a technique. Sadly I have no trust in that, but for the sake of this text I will only point out, that with true/intact anonymity it would never have come to this…
And after all that, now it gets really ugly. Because how is stuff like whistleblowing supposed to work, if you can’t share any information in anonymity anymore? Reporters/journalists, their whole craft really, should be up and protesting against any such notions. Sources won’t ever be able to tell a story, if they have to fear to be exposed for it. That’s already “tricky” enough as it is.
But democracy is even more at stake because of this anti-anonymity mentality, than “just” for the “endangering actual journalism” part. In many democratic countries it’s a corner stone, that citizens must be able in elections to cast their vote in secret, in anonymity. Tracing votes back to the concrete person who made them is forbidden, yes, but it’s forbidden because people would no longer be completely free to share their views and that would be a damage to the democratic process itself… Douchebags who agitate against anonymity full-time should try (possibly for the very first time in their lives) to understand this – not just “know” or hear – but understand, actually realize the principle beneath this. Because they either haven’t, or…
A lot of these politicians statements are really about them being afraid, that someone might criticize them and they can’t sue the person, because he/she could be “anonymous”. They appear to see themselves as these warriors on a battlefield and as such they wanna know as much as possible about their perceived enemies. Most of these fears are unfounded (shocker!), because it usually proved to be much more easy to sue someone, than to do “damage” by criticizing. There is an imbalance and it’s not against those in power, is all I’m saying. This imbalance is so obvious, that it appears to be ridiculous to not even want to grant the small feat of some anonymity to others (movements like Anonymous and LulzSec seem to make them shit their pants). The fact that it was the Internet, what helped the people in several Arabic countries to get rid of their “regimes”, makes complaints against all this seem all the more unsympathetic.
It’s all really just an extension of my earlier 11 part series “why they hate it”. If they can’t come up with new/fresh arguments against the net, they try it this way, in the hopes of getting some more support, by people who don’t recognize this method. It’s sad, that those dudes don’t want to understand, that there is not always a difference between opinions that are now visible for everyone because of the net and opinions that always existed (=even before), but remained unknown.
tl;dr: So, anonymity is being actually untraceable, hasn’t necessarily to do with using a nickname… and is more often than not really GOOD.
PS: Oh, and if you thought this/the above is about (or has anything to do with) no accountability, be ashamed of yourself because you belong to them. :P Because it isn’t. Quite the contrary. Some of the stuff is even what creates accountability. Think about it, but hopefully you won’t have to.
How come this comment gets automatically/immediately moved to the spam folder, but this one has to be moderated first and stays online until user interaction occurs?!? While I don’t even know how Akismet recognizes the first one, since it sounds like something an actual person could say, you’d think the XXX links to porn sites might be a slight hint…
Smartphones, tablet “pcs”, various handhelds/mobile devices (and so on) appear more and more to be the introduction of some smarter/subtler form of DRM. Because of their smaller storage spaces, users are much more likely tempted to purchase all kinds of contents, than just access it from a small/non-existent disk for free. How convenient, that such devices usually come bundled with some form of shop, run by the platform vendor. People who have access to vast amounts of local data and can simply reuse files from an archive, can operate more independent. Yay cloud-computing!
PS: Has someone already calculated, how much cheaper it is, to buy hard disks, than to continually pay various subscription fees?
It’s so abysmal to me, that the Witcher 2 is gonna get some negative form of “criticism” for a level of “nudity”, that is an accepted standard in movies since the eighties (think Mel Gibson pretending to have intercourse with Patsy Kensit in Lethal Weapon). THE EIGHTIES. It’s really a major example for my theory, that computer games are at least 20 years behind movies in being granted the same rights/acceptance (with the age of the medium being the sole reason). So a heart-felt hell yeah to everything that fights this ridiculous stupidity. If I wouldn’t buy this game already for other reasons, that one would win me over immediately.
According to my blog, it’s the third time I thought of it. Today!
There is no way to make a text short enough. For some. Because it’ll still be a text.
Hating “anonymity” on the net is hating free speech is hating freedom is hating… democracy.
Wie Mainstream das Internet inzwischen (endlich?) geworden ist, merkt man bestens daran, dass es nun (das sagen andere zwar schon seit Jahren, aber mir drängt es sich im Augenblick geradezu unübersehbar auf) kein reines Rückzugsgebiet für Geeks oder Andersdenkende/Freigeister mehr darstellt. Früher™ konnte man noch bei störenden, (aber trotzdem) dominierenden Ereignissen (“Promi”-Hochzeiten, Karneval, Fußball-Whatevers, “Musik”-Irgendwas…) in allen anderen Medien auf das Internet ausweichen, um davon verschont zu bleiben (das war auch einer der Faktoren der bei mir endgültig das Ende des TV-Zeitalters eingeläutet hatte). Davon kann inzwischen jedoch keine Rede mehr sein. Auch wenn Twitter vielleicht sogar schon systembedingt nicht das beste Beispiel dafür ist, so reicht es dort längst nicht mehr, sich nur seine eigene Bohème-Timeline zu bauen, sondern das Ausblenden der TT wird zur Pflicht. Vielleicht zeigt sich dadurch aber auch nur die Konsequenz der Einbindung von “Social”-Elementen in immer höherem Ausmaß in immer mehr Diensten, was dann selbstverständlich darin resultieren muss, dass dort der gleiche Bullshit angeschwemmt wird, wie er auch sonst für die meisten Gesellschaften definierend ist.
FileHippo.com- VSDC Free Video Editor 6.3.5.7 for PC Windows
- FileZilla 3.43.0 64-bit FTP Client for PC Windows
- FileZilla 3.43.0 for PC Windows
- Iperius Backup 6.2.2 Complete Backup Utility for PC Windows
- Ashampoo WinOptimizer 17.00.23 for PC Windows
- Kodi Media Streaming 18.3 for PC Windows
- Potplayer 32-bit 1.7.19315.0 Beta for PC Windows
- Avast Secure Browser 75.0.1447.81 Privacy and Security Tool for PC Windows
- McAfee Labs Stinger 12.1.0.3218 Antivirus for PC Windows
- Maxthon Cloud Browser 5.2.7.5000 for PC Windows
adrift 
