some diverse opinions on here. ZQF your views seem really utopian, I mean you'll discount what Gates does because it's not the best possible thing he could do in your view? Hell he could be corrupting elections, buying politicians and funding Fox News, and it would be in his interest to do so too. stevenaaus, why is it bullshit to recognize that he's doing something less evil than most people in his position do? and maybe this is utopian but I will never stop hating marketing until the day I die. 20861 seems like a good post too. first-world revolutions aren't coming. maybe when the states finally turns into a third world country and probably not even then. it's fix the system or let it get worse, doesn't seem too possible to totally replace it.
(ducks) 

We should probably take this to the politics thread, although this is the general abuse thread. 

Only judge a man when you know them personally, don't judge his media image.

Same, don't hero worship a media image. Hero worship is generally stupid. 

The problem with giving billions to charity is that it is treating symptoms not causes. Lets say that the results of disease in africa are related to the on-going warfare and lack of development in the area. Okay, what (mainly) led to this warfare? Western intervention. Why does the West get involved? Because africa sits on some of the largest reserves of raw materials on earth (see the Congo and Coltan which is pretty much feeding our lovely electronics industry).

Jeez, that is just so much crap. The standard of living for Africans in the aggregate improved immensely during the colonial period. After the West pulled out in the post war era, leftist revolutionaries took control almost everywhere and then everything went to shit.

Ethiopia before its commie revolution was the bread basket of the entire Middle Eastern region in much the same way as the Mid West is to the US. Within a decade of the commies taking over, the people do what people always do when commies take over, they starve and they die en masse.

You can only produce a functional welfare state off of an already existent accumulation of wealth, like Sweden had developed over several centuries before it did so. When you impose upon third world nations your monstrous progressive vision, you wind up with a lot of dead people.

Fortunately for the Africans, they have a large influx of developmental capital coming in from China now that is reversing the downward spiral you leftist caused with decolonization (disinvestment of capital), and that will be what ultimately improves their lives, not your stupid romanticist revolutions nor even philanthropy. 

yer not frum 'round here are ya?
This is a forum devoted to, in large part, designing surreal 3d dungeons for the game Quake. We go off topic all the time but your post makes me suspect you came across this somehow, totally aside from what we normally talk about here (the fact that I've never heard of you on this forum helps that impression along).
Now I regret encouraging this discussion along. I was kind of thinking that at least a bunch of posts means an improvement of some kind to the normal semi-comatose state of GA, but apparently not. 

and if so what's it been like?

From my google research, it seems to be the best free hoto/video sharing web service around. Picasa has a 1GB limit for free users and other sites have ads and/or limits on file upload sizes. 

All your fault! 

yer not frum 'round here are ya?

Probably not, looks like he can string a coherent argument together. We'll beat this sickness out of him given enough time. 

Neorightwing batshit made it to func. Awesome. Just what this forum needed. 

I apologise for bringing it all up at this point...

This kind of thing has been increasingly getting to me what with the current state of politics in the UK (and the US). 

ZealousQuakeFan bring beer and we forgive you :) 

now go map... I want that base map! 

I actually hate politics. To the extent I'm political I'm just a typical Swede and Social Democrat who shows up at the polls and then heads home for a shower. I love Quake and am a long time lurker. What I saw above was a lot of thoughtless, complacent nostrums, and complacency is boring. They needed a kick in the head for bringing up bullshit politics, and I think they know it. 

I'm reposting the quake article ron posted in the rage thread because I've got something to say about it and don't want to hijack that thread for it:
http://www.1up.com/features/why-quake-changed-games-forever

Particularly on page 4 there's this exchange:

Tech changes and trouble plagued Quake's early development. At one point, Carmack set up the engine so that every door in the game was stored in its own level. Romero explains, "Let's say that we build this whole space out and there's supposed to be a door that moves. Anything that's going to move had to have its own level by itself, lit up correctly, and whatever that lighting is getting put on that object has to look exactly the way it would inside of the [stage it's going into]. There's no way to replicate the lighting correctly from inside...there's no way to say, 'I'm a door sitting in a void with some lights hitting it. There's no way to match that so it looks good inside the other level too, that's just not right."

Although the point in the article is that Carmack changed this to be optional, it's worth noting that it's still the best way to make rotating objects because you can place the origin sensibly and give them direction-independent lighting. Cool article all round. 

Abrash now works at Valve according to that article. Doing what? Tired of the API wars, so they are adding software modes to their engine, maybe? 

http://www.vg247.com/2011/10/08/report-s-t-a-l-k-e-r-2-to-have-always-on-drm/

What an asshole slap in the face for the players. I'm curious to see how the scene groups return the favor. 

seems good.

<quote>the most prolific mod scene in history</quote>

Hmmmm... 

If i was feeling optimistic I'd guess NEW ENGINE!

Less optimistic - console optimisations/ports... the dude worked for intel and microsoft, so the 360 is no problem, and from what I understand, the PS3 is a massive whore to work with due to the way the graphics memory is set up, so someone with his low-level programming skillset would be solid gold. 

Worked on portal 2.

Speaking of portal 2, there was new free coop dlc last week, anyone want to play it? 

They needed a kick in the head for bringing up bullshit politics

Sorry that some people dare to speak ill of the church of the free market. Continue to suckle from the teat of Hayek and Rand.

Complacency? It's secure to consider that the entire society you live in is this screwed up? Blimey. I don't want to know how bad things have to get before you lot consider that the invisible hand of the market *might* possibly be complete bullshit.

Your post is so wacky that really to properly reply to it would need several hours and an overhead projector. But I'll sum it up very briefly:

You confuse decolonialisation with disinvestment. What we used to do militarily, we now do economically.

Anyway, this discussion clearly isn't wanted here but I had to reply to a claim I needed a 'kick in the head'. I won't say anymore on the subject here. I will reply to Tronyn though because his question was sincere and not barmy. 

Many a fracas hath there been on this forum about such quandrys of ethics, politics and religion etc. Shockingly, people rarely fully agree on such issues. There are reams and reams of similar posts and arguments in other threads, suich as the politics thread, and, er, the religion thread. There are even threads which were spawned from the afterbirth of other such battles, which are lacking in any decent name, some had other much worse names which were subsequently changed by moderators.

What I'm trying to say is this:

"If you're feeling it, go with it, dont be scared to tell 'em what u think" 

Arguing about politics on the internet is pointless. Also http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymmetric-insight/ is a highly recommended read.

I hear bees are in danger of extinction? 

That's what I'm hoping for as well. I think the work he did on the third Unreal Tournament was fantastic and would love to see that taken up a few notches.

#20888 -- TLDNR 

not quite done yet, but I have to object to this part:

"The researchers explained this is how one eventually arrives at the illusion of naive realism, or believing your thoughts and perceptions are true, accurate and correct, therefore if someone sees things differently than you or disagrees with you in some way it is the result of a bias or an influence or a shortcoming. You feel like the other person must have been tainted in some way, otherwise they would see the world the way you do � the right way."

This is obviously a product of human psychology (what that humans think isn't), but this phrasing makes it seem like we need a psychologist to tell us, which is not true. An ancient logician could easily point out that if I think X is true and you think X is not true true, one of us is wrong. It's also implicit (and obvious) that one thinks that one thinks X because X is correct, ie a literally accurate description of reality. If our psychology was perfectly rational, there would still be disagreements over what was true, at least on the frontiers of science and questions that could actually be debated using evidence (religion on the other hand would probably disappear except as literature and intellectual history).

aka REPTILE-BRAIN ME/MY GROUP IS RIGHT! all others WRONG! (lol) 

levels were often created in weeks or even days

Unbelievable, as I stumble months or years for even one. Cheers to simple floppy level size!