madbassman39

I've been dying to get into that beta! I lost sleep over it! (Not really) I hope you have fun, and I hope it gets you addicted.... to drugs. (Not really) The only thing worse than not getting in a beta you really want, is not getting into really want and knowing someone who did! Anywho, the only concerning thing about the microtransactions is the ability to buy in game gold. Personally I don't care, but some people see that as buying an advantage.

Well most of my fat is in my face and stomach. My arms and legs seem to have survived pretty well. I am confident I can get close, but I have to work hard at it, and well, I'm not working all that hard at it.

Well my issues all returned and then some this weekend. First everything froze, then my computer shut off, restarted and I got this message "Your computer was unable to start: Startup repair is checking your system for problems..." It performed a system restore after 2 hours, and then it worked fine until today. What the hell? So I ran a virus scan... nothing... then I decided that this was bs, contacted HP and they said it sounds like a hardware issue. That's about all I got from him, but in the live chat it was obvious he was just an outsourced operator following a script. I take no issue with it, but it doesn't really pacify my irritation when the guy I'm talking to probably doesn't really know anything and can only give me generic solutions. I asked to get a new one and he said that they could not do that, so for now that's fine. If the problem returns after it's repaired, I'm going to make sure I get a new computer, even if that means selling this and buying a different brand. @FDS: I was under the impression that HPs were decent laptops, and I chose to buy it based off of the fact that it's a fairly large supplier of laptops, hoping to get as close to the Apple support as I could. I guess I was wrong. Both my sister and mother have HPs and they seem to run OK, but they wouldn't know if it wasn't working right if it would just randomly turn off in the middle of using it, so I think that basing my decision off of their experience may have not been the wisest. All in all, I think I'm going to avoid HP from here on out. Most people I know seem to be happiest with their Toshiba laptops. I personally like a lot of features on this laptop, but seeing as I'm done with school, getting a full time job, I don't need a laptop to do as much as I wanted even 6 months ago. I want a desktop small laptop combo (not really a fan of netbooks). If I wasn't so dead set on saving money and having the windows operating system, I would consider buying a mac, just for their tech support, but I don't really want to do that. For now, I'm sending this into HP asap, hopefully get it back before I possibly move out of my parent's house, and then go from there. Fingers crossed they can actually find my issue.

I personally do like beer. And it is an acquired taste. The reason I got used to it was because it was cheep and its the easiest drink to buy in mass quantities without killing people. I find that I like to try new beers, some are amazingly delicious, others aren't. I don't like to drink it because after about 2 beers (enough to get a buzz for me, because I'm a light weight) I feel bloated and full. Not something I like. Beer is best when eating hot wings though. EDIT: I do feel like I am getting off topic, so to keep myself on topic I will post the following: I met a guy a week ago who said he lost something like 50 pounds in 4 months by jogging, and eating nothing but chicken and rice. I don't think thats quite a healthy diet, but I do think that if I can change my diet to mostly chicken, fish and veggies (with no snacks in between) and exercise regularly (3 to 4 times a week) I could get down to my goal weight in 2 months. I think right now I am 195, I want to get down to 175, so it seems do-able. I just have to stop eating. I love eating, its all about the taste for me. That's a problem.

I like my vodka and cranberry, I dont know if there is a name, but I like it. People say its a girly drink, and I say "So? It tastes good" and that usually shuts them up. They are drinking making faces and I'm drinking with a smile.

This looks awesome. I don't care if steam punk became too cool and is therefore uncool now, I love steam punk. So this has my attention! First time I've heard of it.

I like some of the newer stuff. Not as good as the great Simpsons Episodes of yonder year, but I still watch it weekly and I still laugh at every single episode. I just finished watching the latest release on Hulu, it was a inception episode.

But your not taking all of their extra earnings from them. Lets say you tax an average of 20% (all numbers are made up so I don't have to use a calculator) on someone who makes 200k (person A), then they pay 40k in taxes. You tax someone 10% of 75k (person B), they pay 7.5k in taxes. Those making 200k still have 160k to spend on what every they want, those making 75k still have 67.5k on what ever they want. Who has the opportunity to spend on a wealthier life style? Person A can spend 160k, Person B can spend 67.5K. Person A can chose to live an identical life style as Person B, but Person A will have 92.5k dollars extra a year to spend on what ever they want. I am not saying tax Person A 62.5% and Person B 0% so they both end up with 75k. In my scenario Person A can live a much better life style, even though they pay twice as many taxes (percentage wise) than Person B

Quoting is too difficult with a slow internet. @ Yant. I am not at all saying that they have to live proportionately, and nor am I saying that they should or have to live the same life style. I am saying that the wealthier life style is a choice to make, which is completely unrelated to your income. The higher income you earn, the more of a wealthier life style you can afford, but that doesn't mean you have to. If you want a nice car, then by all means go for it. That's whats great about the society in which we live. If I make 50 million a year, but I really just like a Honda Civic, then I can have a Honda Civic. Nobody forces me to buy a Bentley because I can afford it. Just because they are paying less taxes doesn't mean they are living better, if they want to live better they have to work hard at it, just as you say, but that doesn't mean they have to. I am not suggesting the richer shouldn't spend their money, but when they do, I am saying its a choice. Nothing about paying proportionate taxes has anything to do with choice, the wealthy are not making equal money after they pay more taxes, they are still making more money to purchase their luxury items.

That's simply not true, as your standard of living increases your cost of living increases substantially as well. Electricity, property taxes, and just the upkeep of a larger home or a nicer car can be quite a bit more expensive. Cost of living increases proportionally just like everything else but you're proposing increasing taxation exponentially which simply is excessive. Its only proportionately equal if the families live proportionately equal. Not everybody making more money has to own a more expensive car, nor do they have to have a bigger piece of property, nor do they have to use more electricity. They could, if the 200k a year person wanted too, live identical life styles. What you are suggesting is that earning more means that you have to spend more, but I disagree. The cost of living is the same for every single person, the cost of luxury is what increases. Just because you can afford a better lifestyle, doesn't automatically mean you have to. EDIT: I am not saying that they have to live identical lives. If I could afford a better lifestyle I would. What I am saying is that a much nicer lifestyle is a choice and not a necessity.

I wouldn't say jealousy, but more along the lines of thinking economically. With the current standard of living, be it what you may, means that an equal percentage will have a much larger impact on those in lower income brackets than those in higher income brackets. Someone with a family of 4 making $75k a year, having to pay 20% will have a vastly larger impact on their life style than someone making $200k a year in the same situation. I know that the tiered makes it seem unfair to the wealthy, but we are also trying to help those in lower income levels to keep spending. The less money they have tied up in taxes, the more they can spend on luxury and necessity items. The more they spend, the more the money goes back into the system. Thats the idea of the tiered, to create minimal impact on the lower income brackets. I'm not saying it's ideal for those who are in higher tax brackets, but the impact on them is still less than that on the lower income brackets.

I would say someone who makes $200k a year is very well off. If someone paid 50% taxes on his 50 million a year, he would still have 25 million dollars a year. It would take someone 12.5 years, making $200K (without paying taxes) to make what the other person who paid 50% taxes made in one year. It would take someone who makes $100k a year 25 years to catch up to the millionaires one year (this is tax the 50, no tax on the 100k). 25 years! Now lets say that person makes the same amount the next year. I would now have to be 74 (I would have a year under my belt so it would 24+25 years, which is 49 years) to catch up to that someones two years. If I started making 100k a year on my birthday (I'm turning 25 this May) I would be 50 years old to catch up to half of that 50 million. And this is removing all the tax on the 100k, and a huge 50% on the 50 million. If you think about the sheer amount of money that 50 million dollars is, its an incredible amount of money, and when you collect that in one year, and pay a higher tax wage... you are still left with a huge amount of money. I'm not saying tax the rich only, just higher taxes. When you really think about how much money the average person makes, even with higher taxes, the rich are still way way better off. In reality, being my age, I won't be making 100k this year, and I will have to pay taxes on my earnings. Reality is, that 50 million isn't paying 50% of earnings in tax. I will take a lifetime to earn what someone who makes 50 million in a year moving my way up in a company. I'm not all that driven by money, so I probably wont be making 50 mill a year, but even if I did, I don't think I would complain about my living situation after taxes. I'd be better off than most of the planet with just half of what I earned.

I learned this when I just beat AC2, and my brother got me AC Brotherhood right afterwards. I just got burnt out to quickly. I'm going to wait a few months, catch up on some other games to finish.

I just finished Assassins Creed Brotherhood. I really enjoyed it. I felt that the combat, while mostly unchanged, felt a bit more dynamic this time around. I didn't particularly care for Rome as much as I did any of the cities in AC2, but overall I thought it was a good game. I know people say to skip Revelations, but I think I might pick it up after I beat a few other games that I have in my queue of games to finish. I'm not looking for anything groundbreaking and will probably be satisfied with more of the same.

Honestly I like the UK way better as well. It takes some time to get used to, but once you do its very nice. I find it to be a rather funny cultural difference though, because its such a small difference that has a major effect on people visiting foreign countries. @HH, we too had to approach the customers, and I don't think customers want it as much as the companies think they do.

As an employee, we hated the way the grocery store moved around, but most employees just hated the company we worked for. We were unionized, but a few years before I started working all the Southern California supermarket employees went on strike because the big chains wanted to cut benefits. The result was keep benefits for existing employees, and take everything from the new employees. My opinion of unions changed when I joined one. Because I wasn't someone they fought to protect back then, so they didn't care about me. The only thing the union I worked in cared about was sticking it to the man, and I wasn't a person to protect, but a tool of leverage against the company. The union representative never showed up to work on time, bitched about the job constantly, and threatened to go to the union when the store manager looked at him wrong. The union that was supposed to be protecting us was corrupt, so I saw unions in a negative light there after. I know that's not the case with most unions, as the whole point is to make sure you have benefits, you cannot be fired without a proper cause, and to overall protect the small guy from the big company. The interests are different on both ends, the employee wants to be properly compensated for his/her work with job security, and the company is trying to maximize profits and minimize costs. The real kicker is stores like Trader Joes, where they have higher quality food, better prices, they give better benefits to the employees, and higher wages. This of course is just in the grocery industry and not always the case, but like I said, unions were painted in a negative light, I'm not against unions, I just don't like them from my experiences. I think the Union discussion is for another thread, I just got carried away. I have family in the UK, so I have been there, I also lived in London for a while (study abroad) so I feel like I have enough experience to say that the US stores are more geared to make the customer feel like each customer is important (one person really isn't but its nice to feel that way) where as in the UK they are more geared to efficiency, get someone in and out.

Jalopnik is the only gawker site I still visit regularly, but its becoming less so now that Autoblog has stepped up their game.

When I was at the supermarket (I'm almost 25 now, I was 17 when I started.... so math tells me that was 8 years ago) We would take groceries to the customers cars, but only if they asked. Usually I would offer, and the elderly would be the only ones who would want it.

I worked in a supermarket when I was younger, and there is so much logic to how everything is laid out in a store its insane. Hell, I didn't have any official numbers, but from working for over a year there, I knew when we needed to have more registers open, when we needed to refill the milk, when we needed almost everything. There is so much involved in a supermarket, and in the US employees bag your groceries for you, unlike most markets I've visited in the UK. (Although in parts of California, they no longer have plastic bags, and you pay 10 cents for a paper bag. This is a law, to help clean up the environment). When it comes to bagging there are rules, that most employees don't really care to follow. Most are common sense, don't put fragile foods in with heavy foods, and don't put cleaning supplies in with food, but some are not as common such as keeping dairy products separate from everything non dairy, because dairy absorbs the smell as flavor.

Its being talked about because of the previous conversation having to do with thumbstick position. The many reports on that controller have mentioned why the thumbsticks and buttons are positioned there, and therefore its relevant to the conversation.

I would agree that functionality wouldn't be ideal, but the theory is that your hands never really leave the resting position. Frankly I'd prefer all buttons on one side as well, and both the DS3 and 360 controllers aren't so uncomfortable that I wouldn't sacrifice functionality over ergonomics.

Wonderful! Doesn't really change anything though. Prototype or not, it has been considered to be the most ergonomic controller to date, and it does look ugly as it is.

Also, to help Ethan's argument, this controller has been called the most ergonomically created controller because of the stick/button positions and because of its symmetry. Everything is in the resting position of the hand Damn is it ugly though

If I am understanding Ethan correctly, its the position of neutral hand. If you rest your hand neutrally on any controller, it will be closer to the edges and not the center. So if you are working for a dual stick perspective, the symmetry would be optimal if both thumb sticks were where in their respective position such as the left stick on the 360 pad. If you need buttons there, then the buttons are better there. The 360 chose to put one stick up and buttons up on the right, because most games (left handed or not) only use the left stick to move the character and the right buttons to do actions. If you can arrange the controls to be suited for left handed gamers then you are at a disadvantage, because the main controls are not at the neutral position anymore.

I think that exactly it, to quote the article posted: It's not really that the fighting game community is exclusive to this, its that the representatives of the community are saying "this is what the fighting game community is" and that makes everything all better. No matter what community you are in, its not ok to sexually harass someone, and to justify it because its "what the community does" only makes it worse. I just remember an old saying my mother taught me, and I'm sure you all heard it in one form or another: "Just because everybody else is doing it, doesn't mean its okay. If everybody jumped off of a bridge, would you do it too?"