The Return of Testing Chat Thread

[RogueIce]

i just played rc pro am civilization 2 4

the computer fucking cheats

my story

[Questor]

I'm still amazed ADR is playing a game on the NES. I thought he was still playing Atari games.

[RogueIce]

Dental Assistant Fired for Being "Irresistable" - Firing Upheld by Iowa State Supreme Court

Words. They fail me.

[Questor]

This is why we don't ever pay any attention to what Iowa thinks on anything important.

Oh, wait...

[Jung]

Dental Assistant Fired for Being "Irresistable" - Firing Upheld by Iowa State Supreme Court

Words. They fail me.

I raged when I heard about this on the news.

Fuck this idea that if a man has bad self-control it's somehow the woman's fault or her responsibility to stop tempting him, instead of his responsibility to find a way to control his impulses.

[Aaron]

Wow. That's pretty greasy.

[adr]

I'm still amazed ADR is playing a game on the NES. I thought he was still playing Atari games.

I think our atari broke some time around '92 and we got the NES to replace it.

I remember playing some of the atari games. My brother actually beat ET, he was fucking obsessed with it. But we didn't play it at all in my prime gaming years, about 95 - 03.


omg my gaming history!!!!!!!!


as I recall, we got the Genesis in thereabouts 1996 - it was after Phantasy Star 4 came out, as that's the game I wanted it for - and the Playstation in 2000, as I played Final Fantasy 8 when it was still relatively new, and we definitely didn't have it when Lunar SSSC came out (May 1999), cuz that's the game I wanted the system for.


Through trading junk, I also got a super nintendo with chrono trigger at some point in the late 90's (98 I think), actually bought myself an N64 for Perfect Dark in the ballpark of 2002. I also got myself Final Fantasy 3 at about that same time - my third (and final) snes game.

I got a computer in 2002 as well, and played some warcraft 2 on it. I got Starcraft in 2003 and Worms 2 in 2004. (Didn't have the internet at home till 2005 tho)

I finally won a free Xbox in either late 2003 or early 2004; last year of high school. I rarely played that though, only did a handful of multiplayer games. My dad also bought a PS2 for him and my brother in this time period but I very rarely played it myself.


However, in 2011, I did buy myself a PS2, so I have one now. Only played it a little bit so far though.

[RogueIce]

Dental Assistant Fired for Being "Irresistable" - Firing Upheld by Iowa State Supreme Court

Words. They fail me.

I raged when I heard about this on the news.

Fuck this idea that if a man has bad self-control it's somehow the woman's fault or her responsibility to stop tempting him, instead of his responsibility to find a way to control his impulses.

Yeah. Like the whole "if you keep working for me one day I will have an affair with you" thing as if his employee (herself married) would have no say in whether she had an affair with a married man when she herself is married.

I mean even the most charitable way you could possibly take that makes him an egotistical douchebag who thinks she'll just melt in his arms. The uncharitable ways to take it, well...

[Instant Sunrise]

Everybody is laughing and bike-riding and cornholeing, except Buster.

[The Spartan]

Unfortunately, Iowa is (I think) an "at-will" employment state. So she has little in the way of legal recourse even if her former employer is being a colossal turd.

[Flagg]

That's actually not true. Federal guidlines supercede those of states and this will get smacked down so fast in Federal court it's not funny.

[adr]

i just played another newer game called call of duty black ops ii

and it was pretty decent. it has real multiplayer, gives the option for good controls (tho i couldn't tell if that applied to both players or only me so i played with bad controls, and i'm starting to gain some competency; i was competitive with the other newbs there and even won a few rounds), and the gameplay was pretty good

so i approve of this game

[Questor]

Christ, how stupid is Terralthra? Did he even READ his quote?

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 7#p3742187

Why on earth would he leave on the last sentence?

Also, he appears to be incapable of simple subtraction if he thinks the Reagan administration was between 40 and 50 years ago.

[Agent Bert Macklin]

Kamikaze Shit is worse. He'd rather imprison killers until they die instead of attempting to rehabilitate them. Too bad he wasn't one of those firefighters.

Editor: I went too far here. I really hate that motherfucker, though. Everyone deserves a chance to right their wrongs, even killers. Its no wonder the prison system in America sucks: there are too many people like Kamikaze.

[Aaron]

Thats a bit harsh.

But...the us prison isn't designed or equipped for rehabilitation, unfortunately. It's just a time out corner.

[The Spartan]

That's actually not true. Federal guidlines supercede those of states and this will get smacked down so fast in Federal court it's not funny.

Yeah, but does this fall under the Federal anti-discriminatory guidelines? You could argue it's discriminatory on the basis of sex, I suppose, but that might be iffy.

But...the us prison isn't designed or equipped for rehabilitation, unfortunately. It's just a time out corner.

Yeah, it's like we tried to cross a retributive model with a rehabilitation model and failed at both as a result.

[Straha]

Have I ever mentioned here that I hate the gun control debate? Because I do. One side almost only goes for defense as an argument and no one seems to notice or care and it just makes me into an utter and complete psyduck.

[Aaron]

I don’t think you have. Tell us how you really feel, as a pro gun advocate I don't want to fall into the usual errors.

[Zod]

Have I ever mentioned here that I hate the gun control debate? Because I do. One side almost only goes for defense as an argument and no one seems to notice or care and it just makes me into an utter and complete psyduck.

The pro-control side isn't all that much better, honestly. Someone almost always screams that everything would be better if we got rid of all weapons everywhere.

[Straha]

I don’t think you have. Tell us how you really feel, as a pro gun advocate I don't want to fall into the usual errors.

So this needs prefacing. There's a debate concept known as Offense/Defense with regards as to how to weigh arguments. There are a number of ways to understand it, but the simplest way is that Offense is a reason to do something or why doing something might cause something bad to happen (that is to say, offensive arguments have impacts to them), while Defense is a reason why a claim might not be true.

The way that this is traditionally explained is if we were hungry and you said we should go to the ice cream store to satiate our hunger and I made two arguments:
1. "Ice Cream isn't filling and won't be enough to make us not hungry."
and
2. "Ice Cream is filled with fats and sugars, and could lead to us becoming obese diabetics who die by the time we're forty."

The first is a purely defensive claim because it says that it won't work, while the second is offense because it gives a reason why we ought not eat ice cream even if it's kind of a ludicrous one. In formalized debate defense alone is never a reason to make a decision, because the risk of solvency would still justify endorsement, so even if Ice Cream might not satiate our hunger if there's no reason not to eat Ice Cream we should still do it because it might work.


To contextualize this to the gun debate, the most common argument against gun control of any sort is "This doesn't work to stop crimes!" which is a purely defensive argument and doesn't give any reason why guns should be owned. Whatever the lunacy of the pro-gun control side at times, that argument is neither responsive nor effective as an argument.

The proper response to gun control advocates is something like "Hand guns and certain rifles offer definite protective benefits in the hands of properly trained civilians, along with personal utility through pleasure shooting, and are a boost to the economy. Banning them would decrease personal pleasure and employment for negligible gains, or a net decrease, in the realm of public safety."

Except that that would allow for 'assault weapons' bans and a number of protective provisions on guns, and we can't have that sort of moderation in public discourse.

[Aaron]

Interesting, thank you.

[magic princess]

But for conservatives to defend something is to justify it, because the status quo is automatically preferable to change. So from their own point of view it makes perfect sense.

Mind you, I believe that American culture is so wrapped up in armed power that disarmament = dictatorship would become a self-fulfilling prophecy uniquely in the United States even though it wouldn't elsewhere. I.E., the idea that you must have firearms widely available in society for a free and democratic society to exist is such an overwhelmingly strong part of US culture that it has effectively become true in the way we behave, and now we can't disarm because it really would lead to a dictatorship--because the idea it would is so prevalent and so widely accepted.

[Straha]

There's a concept called presumption which has the same effect. Essentially the status quo is presumed to be good, and if there is equivalent offense both for and against change tie goes to the squo.

But you still need offense to justify why the status quo is good against a change that has offense against the squo. Absent that there's no reason to keep the status quo.

[Jung]

To contextualize this to the gun debate, the most common argument against gun control of any sort is "This doesn't work to stop crimes!" which is a purely defensive argument and doesn't give any reason why guns should be owned. Whatever the lunacy of the pro-gun control side at times, that argument is neither responsive nor effective as an argument.

Well I have a rule of thumb in these kinds of issues of erring on the side that allows people to make their own decisions about how they want to run their own lives - there has to be a clear and compelling reason a freedom needs to be curtailed, or I default to the position that people should be allowed to work out what's best for them by themselves. In this case this would mean the defensive argument is all that's necessary to justify permitting gun ownership - if there isn't any clear and compelling reason why people shouldn't be allowed to own them, then default to the position that people should be allowed to decide for themselves whether it's something they want to do. Maybe the argument is usually made with something like that as an implicit assumption.

[Zablorg]

now i am going to download world of tanks