Recent posts by NeilSenna on Kongregate

Topic: Serious Discussion / NHS (socialist medicine) and "emotion bonus"

Yes, they should be paid that much. More, if the country could afford it, but sadly it can’t.

They do far more than you think, judging from your comments about their role. If you think that they have such a cushy life, there’s nothing stopping you going to be one yourself. Might open your eyes somewhat.

Topic: Serious Discussion / The high divorce rate

A high divorce rate is a sign of a healthy society.

A lot of humans just won’t work in lifelong (or decade-long, or five-year long) monogamous relationships and it’s only to be expected that something (marriage) which tries to force them into that is going to break down an awful lot.

Lots of divorces also suggest that each gender has sufficient confidence and legal right to go ahead with them.

Topic: Kongregate / New Kongregate Version: Swapping below the game columns on game pages

Just don’t change it back in a few months… takes a while to train the eyes to look in the right place. Unless the intention is to stop us training our eyes.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Global Climate Change - Get off our lazy butts!

Well, OK, what do you want us to do, or is this just a thread of unspecific vague demands to ‘do something’?

Plenty of governments are already investing a reasonable amount in renewable energy, but such things take time and currently aren’t capable of meeting our needs due to being either expensive, inefficient or ‘unsafe’ (hi, nuclear).

Topic: General Gaming / Caribbean Admiral end boss

I beat him the first time using dynamite every time. Then played through again, and for whatever reason the same tactic didn’t work.

Switched to aiming dynamite at (I think) board, which does more damage and worked.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Why doesn't Kongregate have a "Point and Click" games category?

http://www.kongregate.com/point-and-click-games

Click on the ‘point and click’ tag wherever you see it to get that list.

Topic: Kongregate / Good games buried alive: A Kongregate story

I recall there was once a slot on the homepage for the weekly/monthly competition standings, which gave a little bit of extra exposure to new games that weren’t necessarily amazing. Now you have to follow a link to find those lists.

But aside from bringing that back (push the Facebook connect bit down and it should fit in the slot which currently contains a link to it)… they can’t get rid of much else in favour of new games. And there are actually nine games in the ‘hot new’ slot, rather than three… they could perhaps set it to auto-cycle through the three sets, to make that more obvious.

The one slot which could (looking at it as a player, and what I’d want) be replaced with something like ’today’s top games’ is the most-played games. That’s quite prominent and something I never look at.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Should we tolerate the intolerant?

Ideally it’d be nice to say yes, we should tolerate everyone. But things just don’t work that way, because viewpoints and actions can cause harm. There has to be a limit, one of those ever-moving lines in the sand that at some point we as individuals/groups have to decide that some person, group or whatever has crossed.

Side note… ever notice that those who shout the loudest about wanting tolerance and equality and harmony tend to be the first to refuse to tolerate of the opinions of others?

Topic: General Gaming / Favourite KONG Game

Creeper World Evermore (and the others, but this one gets a new level everyday so it gets my #1 spot).

Topic: Kongregate / The Vortex's Lack of Moderation

Originally posted by Jschamber:

SocialSyngery, I am confused about what you wrote, and where it is coming from.

It’s a copy/paste job of an oft-copy/pasted piece of text… doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the thread itself.

Topic: Kongregate / offtopic: seems familiar, right? :D

Pleased this wasn’t in OT, or I’d never have seen it.

100 duck-sized horses for me.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Why are people hating on Koreans

I seem to have missed the part where people hated Koreans.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Age Gap Psychology

I think much of it is what I’ll call ‘stage of life perception’.

Parking myself in my shiny psychology armchair and wearing my broad generalisation hat… as they get older women (men as well to a large degree, but seemingly not as strongly) tend to look more towards stability and sustainability in relationships. They look at the man not simply as an attractive or unattractive object, but at the whole package and under the surface of the package, particularly at the life stage that man is at. Age isn’t really an arbitrary thing here, it’s highly important.

A man who is (let’s say) 35 will be perceived to be at the life stage of more secure employment, financially more solid and more open to longer-term relationships. A younger man like yourself will be perceived to be in the career-starting, financially-shaky and wild-oat-sowing life stage. Less suitable for a proper relationship, more likely to wander off, more likely to be unfaithful, less likely to want kids and build a home.

Whether you are or not doesn’t really matter. Your actual maturity doesn’t really come into it at all, and your physical appearance as a younger man (regarding the fantasy stuff) isn’t as critical as one might think. Perception is what matters, and that’s largely against you.

And in a few cases, social aspects (not wishing to be seen as a ‘cougar’, cradle-snatcher, older woman etc) will play a part too.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Does God exists? and why?

To me ‘God’ does not exist, because the experience and knowledge I’ve acquired during my life point to the whole idea of ‘God’ being a pure invention of humanity, and nothing more.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Real-life Muting and Ignoring through Augmented Reality

I see one problem.

For some people, being ignored is the single most infuriating thing that can happen. Muting someone on the internet is risk-free and a fairly minor thing… muting/blocking someone on a real-life/internet crossover (Facebook maybe) can be dangerous if the person you block is a bit of a nut.

Muting/blocking someone’s entire presence in real life… really, really questionable. It’d trigger a lot of anger and angry people do crazy things. Probably be better off just tolerating them.

But I see a positive, risk-free application in blocking screaming babies on public transport.

Topic: Kongregate / get rid of Our Rating For You:

Had to go looking for it, didn’t even know it existed.

Now I do… indifferent to it. I tried it out on a few games and it managed to work out that I’d generally rate MMOs lower (didn’t go low enough, but I assume the other tags pulled the guess up to between 2 and 3) and certain other types higher. But it’s not the sort of thing I’ll ever deliberately seek out and make use of.

I’m naturally averse to websites/companies trying to suggest things based on data they’ve collected on me, but this doesn’t seem bad. If it was in my face all the time I might care more.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Clean, renewable ENERGY

Most of the political opposition where I live seems to be that the cost exceeds the benefits, with a healthy dose of wind turbine NIMBYism from the public. In a bad economic climate, investment in techology which isn’t really worth it financially isn’t something the government wants to do. Probably a vote-loser because they’d have to take cash from elsewhere, and the anti-wind/whatever MPs/groups/papers would make a big deal of it.

China on the other hand has insane cash reserves, cheap labour, a beaten-down population who can’t vote and daren’t complain and a burning desire to be seen as a world leader.

One supposes a suitable strategy would be to let them spend however many billions and billions trying to make the current, relatively inefficient technology better, then pick up their ball and run with it once it’s financially beneficial to do so.

Topic: Serious Discussion / What do you think about the statements of Sarah Palin?

I’m disappointed and relieved in equal measure that it wasn’t a real quote.

Topic: Kongregate / Dodgy messages...

Only had one in my whole Kong life. She was quite PG for a spambot, didn’t offer me any pictures or videos or anything like that. Just had a funny name.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Boston Marathon Double Explosions

I know nothing beyond news reports, but as everyone else is having a go, I’ll give my theory.

Looks like a one-nutjob effort. No indication of right or left or centre or whatever, but some guy (probably a guy) who decided to draw attention to his cause by making a couple of big bangs.

Topic: General Gaming / what?

A lot of people (children that age up to late teens, normally, but can be anyone) realise that they are not something in the real world, and probably for that reason they try to become it/act it online.

Tough, cool, attractive, whatever it may be.

It seems horribly common so… yes, at some stage your kids will probably do it to some extent.

Topic: Kongregate / the community of this site is terrible

Originally posted by GearsChicken:

Seriously? This is common knowledge… It’s the Internet, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows here (Even if I wish it was…)

^ that says much. Finding a pleasant, accepting and friendly community on the internet is quite difficult.

Kong has a few things leaning towards a crap community… most of the active members fall into the age and gender group most likely to be muppets on the internet, the mod selection process is by necessity near-enough a guessing game for the site admins, and it’s full of bored people. And bored people are (it seems) far more likely to be arseholes.

But really, it’s not terrible. It’s not a community I’d ever become deeply involved in, but given all it has going against it, it manages to be pretty much middle of the road. There are many good bits here and there, despite all of my and others’ negativity.

Topic: Kongregate / why kongregate should have a christian chat room

In the unlikely event this is a serious thread (can’t see it, but hey ho)… no, the site really, really doesn’t need any form of religious chatroom.

There’s a whole internet filled with all manner of more suitable websites for talking about crap like that.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Hang on, I just need one more minute!

Originally posted by Ceasar:

Originally posted by NeilSenna:

Time limits on tests were more of a prison sentence for me. Finish an hour early and sit staring at a wall for what feels like eternity. But maybe it’s difference elsewhere.

Back when I did my exams (a good decade ago, in the UK) I believe the only people to received additional time were those with reading and comprehension difficulties (dyslexia for example), and that’s totally understandable and I support it. I think around 4 or 5 kids in my year group of 300 got it. Universities also give extra time for such students, so it doesn’t really matter whether the higher education institute knows they got it or not.

Of course these days every misbehaved child and his dog has ADHD, and I’m not sure what additional help they get. Rest breaks or something, which I suppose is fair enough.

Is it really fair? The test is used primarily for college admission. Most colleges have a limited number of openings. Not everyone who wants to get in, can get in. What happens when a student who is given extra time gets into a college ahead of someone who didn’t get extra time, and then is unable to sit through their lectures? Do you think THAT is fair?

Not entirely, but (effectively) blocking otherwise very intelligent people from university because they can’t read/concentrate is less fair. On a local note it doesn’t really matter here anyway, as the elite places are filled by people who didn’t even need the standard exam time to get a great score, and there isn’t much competition among competent candidates elsewhere – in the nicest possible way, our system is such that any idiot can and often does get into some university or another.

If anyone gets extra time, everyone should get extra time. That’s the only way to be “fair” about it. Or let anyone take the extra time but make a note of it somewhere on the score, and each college can decide whether they want to accept people who took the extra time or not.

That would probably run into disability discrimination law pretty early in its infancy. It’s not a bad idea and it’s probably the fairest of the lot in my eyes, but (again taking a UK perspective, unsure of what laws the US has) it’d last around 15 minutes between being suggested and having the crap beaten out of it by every disabled rights campaigner and equal-rights lawyer in the country.

Topic: Serious Discussion / HELP!!!

There’s a fairly straightforward set of instructions if you click ‘forgot password’ or whatever it says on the login bit, but contacting the site admins might be a better idea than asking a bunch of random nobodies in a serious discussion forum.

support@kongregate.com