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Isohunt is treading the same line, you can go to Isohunt's main page and read up on the legal fights. Much of it has to do with the perception that it is actively aiding users in finding or distributing illegal content. It's the equivalent, here in Chicago, to the old Maxwell Street market. Everybody knew if you lost your hubcaps, you went to Maxwell Street to buy them back. But as long as the street organizers themselves kept up some semblance of actual legit commerce, they city turned a blind eye.

http://home.netcom.com/~cowdery/maxwell/mamoser.html

In this case, Usenet contains what I affectionately call a "Rared Sale" (get it?) - where everything is less than a quarter. In fact, it's free! And as long as we all remember the First Rule of Usenet: Nobody talks about Usenet, then it's all fine. Apparently, these blokes forgot that rule.

In fact, brain size does not matter in humans either. It's just an old wise tale carried over from the 19th century that still haunts us today (as seen here).

For a long time, we were not able to conclusively show that brain size and intelligence were correlated. We now are. The seminal reference is McDaniels, 2005 - a metastudy over MRI research. The fact seems to be considered fairly well established nowadays.

Eivind.

since they had bigger brains. Maybe not the same parts of their brains though.

If having a bigger brain was the ultimate measure of intelligence, then elephants would be geniuses

In fact, brain size does not matter in humans either. It's just an old wise tale carried over from the 19th century that still haunts us today (as seen here).

Check out the study http://hypnosis.home.netcom.com/iq_vs_religiosity.htm about the above claim (it's pretty well-known if you google around to validate the source). You forgot to include boring. Christian mythology is the least original and MOST boring mythology ever created. That means the unintelligent dishonest people are so boring they are not even worth laughing at. Except for Bush, he was endowed with Will Smith ears. I chuckle.

It took 2 minutes with Google to find these:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/religion_vs_iq.html
http://hypnosis.home.netcom.com/iq_vs_religiosity.htm
http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/intelligence.html

I didn't see anything supporting the opposite conclusion.

Well, I suppose you could always email her and let her know.

Ringman, is that you?

( http://pw1.netcom.com/~rogermw/ADnD/IUDC1.html )

Actually there is no light, only absence of dark, making this truly a scam. Not only are you buying something that doesn't exist (light) but you are paying taxes on it, and in fact the actual amoutn of energy that the bits require is far less than the light that is provided.

The Dark Sucker Theory

For years, it has been believed that electric bulbs emit light, but recent information has proved otherwise. Electric bulbs don't emit light; they suck dark. Thus, we call these bulbs Dark Suckers. The Dark Sucker Theory and the existence of dark suckers prove that dark has mass and is heavier than light.

First, the basis of the Dark Sucker Theory is that electric bulbs suck dark. For example, take the Dark Sucker in the room you are in. There is much less dark right next to it than there is elsewhere. The larger the Dark Sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Dark Suckers in the parking lot have a much greater capacity to suck dark than the ones in this room.

So with all things, Dark Suckers don't last forever. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the dark spot on a full Dark Sucker.

A candle is a primitive Dark Sucker. A new candle has a white wick. You can see that after the first use, the wick turns black, representing all the dark that has been sucked into it. If you put a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, it will turn black. This is because it got in the way of the dark flowing into the candle. One of the disadvantages of these primitive Dark Suckers is their limited range.

There are also portable Dark Suckers. In these, the bulbs can't handle all the dark by themselves and must be aided by a Dark Storage Unit. When the Dark Storage Unit is full, it must be either emptied or replaced before the portable Dark Sucker can operate again.

Dark has mass. When dark goes into a Dark Sucker, friction from the mass generates heat. Thus, it is not wise to touch an operating Dark Sucker. Candles present a special problem as the mass must travel into a solid wick instead of through clear glass. This generates a great amount of heat and therefore it's not wise to touch an operating candle.

Also, dark is heavier than light. If you were to swim just below the surface of the lake, you would see a lot of light. If you were to slowly swim deeper and deeper, you would notice it getting darker and darker. When you get really deep, you would be in total darkness. This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats at the top. The is why it is called light.

Finally, we must prove that dark is faster than light. If you were to stand in a lit room in front of a closed, dark closet, and slowly opened the closet door, you would see the light slowly enter the closet. But since dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the dark leave the closet.

Next time you see an electric bulb, remember that it is a Dark Sucker.

Also see the following references:

http://home.netcom.com/~rogermw/darksucker.html

Actually, I would give Cold Fusion a far bigger chance of becoming something real than anything which uses magnets.

A nice interview about Cold Fusion with one of its researchers was published in Makezine magazine last year. You can find an interesting interview with Ed Storms about this subject here (sans the images):
http://www.makezine.com/extras/12.html

Also interesting:

Cold Fusion: an objective evaluation: http://home.netcom.com/~storms2/review8.html

After reading some of this material; I'm not saying that it is simply impossible anymore. I also realise that billions have been invested into hot fusion and there is a large group of people who don't want to see their investments going up into smoke.

You're forgetting massive biggie: RFC-1855 (Netiquette guidelines), why your email and news readers put the cursor before quoted text, and why you should think critically before using Earthlink's anti-spam. God knows September needs to end already.

I wouldn't worry about it too much if I were you. I've got a feeling that Creation and Evolution might be two incomplete descriptions of the same process.

They seem different because Abrahmic religions have a personal, conscious God. If you believe in a Spinozan God, then Creation and Evolution aren't that different. Actually, a friend of mine who spoke Hebrew said that the old testament passage on Creation is in really wierd poetic language, and the normal translation of God creating the Earth in 7 days is bogus. Plus of course, the people that wrote it were Taliban types living in the desert.

Actually, you can see that there is an upper limit on what a single conscious entity can achieve, and that it is far short of the omniscient, omnipresent entity that Abrahamic religions believe in because an omniscient entity wouldn't be able to learn anything and omnipresence would require that information be transmitted faster than light.

A non conscious process like evolution can be as omnipresent as it needs to be, and pretty damn close to omniscience in practice though.

This is hardly the first time this has happened. I was to have been moderator of a GNU/Linux v. Microsoft face-off at LWE NYC 2000, when that year's Microsoft rep pulled out. The result was some last-minute scrambling by a lot of folks and a DMCA panel with some really, really impressive panelists, write-up is still on Wired's site, I believe.

I know I've had the opportunity to trot this information out since, so this is at least the third occurance. Y'know, there's scheduling conflicts and there's scheduling conflicts. I can only conclude that MSFT either don't make LWE a priority, or would rather create the disruption of an empty slot than actually put in an appearance.

Karsten M. Self kmself.home.netcom.com
AC for now.

Almost literally true (3000 BC, but who's counting).

Tablets ... Vast quantities of these have been excavated in the Near East, of which about a half million are yet to be read. It is estimated that 99 percent of the Babylonian tablets have yet to be dug. The oldest ones go back to 3000 B.C. They are practically imperishable; fire only hardens them more.

As for 64-bit, can someone give me a good reason to have this on a machine who's primary purpose is to be an over-glorified typewritter? On a developer machine I can see it, but on an office machine, it's overkill.

Until January 19, 2038 that is. If you're still using a 32-bit system then you might run into a little trouble :)

This just about says it all:
http://pw1.netcom.com/~shagbert/humor/meetings.jpg

Of course not! There is the Dark Sucker Theory:
http://pw1.netcom.com/~rogermw/darksucker.html

The trouble isn't making an arbitrary number in the hopes that it's prime, it's in proving that it's prime. There are relatively simple methods to look for Mersenne primes, they just take constant time for crunch. For non-Mersenne primes, you'd have to crunch out every possible factor to prove that it's prime, a tedious process.

This is not even close to correct. Testing primality this way becomes impractical around 30-40 digits or so (depending a bit on how patient you are) and there are methods that are faster even with substantially smaller numbers than that.

First of all, there are probabalistic methods of testing primality that don't involve factoring. While probabalistic, these can be carried to an arbitrary level of accuracy quite quickly and easily. This is a typically done as a preliminary before more difficult methods are attempted at all.

Once you're convinced that a number is almost certain to be prime, there are quite a few methods of proving it's prime that are faster than brute force -- probably the oldest and best known is based on Fermat's Little Theorem. There's also something known as Wilson't theorem that can prove the same thing, but TTBOMK, this rarely has much practical application. If you're interested in more, you can find a fairly reasonable introduction a number of the better-known factoring methods and such here. You can find more links about factoring here.

The (partisan) Senate vote on Clinton Impeachment:

REPUBLICANS
guilty: 45, not guilty: 10

DEMOCRATS
guilty: 0, not guilty: 45

Refs:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/impeachment/vote/vote_ article1.html
For roll call, see http://pw2.netcom.com/~speaker6/lists/impeach.html

How about sending a few soldiers to get oil and ching ching - profit! I wonder what the pricetag there averages out to, according to the "powers that be." If their assumptions work out right it's surely a "worthwhile" investment as they might see it. "Unfortunately" the assumptions are not always valid, because human spirit is not so easy to subdo. Though not impossible. But at least the effort required is sometimes surprising, enough to throw off your "profit" calculations. Ugh.

On other fronts, human life does carry a pricetag even by your own policies, as long as it's about risk, not definite cases. Examples are mountain climbing for fun, driving your car 60 mph instead of 20. You could argue that sending soldiers into battle falls into this category, where you only have a statistical chance to die, but no certainty.

So, if you must have executions in general, for whatever crime, how about introducing risk instead of certainty? How about execution by russian rulette - you get to spin the barrel yourself if you want? Deterrent enough? It should be at least as scary as a real death penalty, yet it should be "more humane" than this "most humane" way we have now, the absolutely 100% certain lethal injection, and if it doesn't work for whatever reason, we'll just club you to death anyway. If you must have executions, at least give criminals a chance too, like sports-hunters do, and if they don't die, then "God showed his will" and we should be accepting. The downside is that people would be condemned by a jury much more light-heartedly, the jury thinking, well, I didn't sign his death penalty, he can still luck out, and thus not feel fully responsible and agonized as properly in a decision over someone's life, as they should be.

I'm personally opposed to any kind of death penalty though, because ethics is so relative. I don't think there are rotten apples - just think of the Australians, what would be of them if their ancestors were just simply hanged? Wasn't them getting shipped there just an infinitely better choice? Yeah, getting shipped and fed on the boat cost a lot more than a piece of rope and a shovel, but they were human beings. There is always hope when human beings are concerned, they can be changed, or given an opportunity at least - though executing them is the lazy, easy and shameful way out. Maybe when we need to colonize Mars, these supersmart computer criminals will make nice candidates - and they'll love the punishment anyway. Imagine all those cool technologies you have to hack daily, in order to have your urine recycled for fresh water! Everybody wins! The downside is that there are enough good moral citizens who'd love to go and be the pioneers to live on Mars themselves, so taking away their reward and handing it to someone else as punishment, well, that's not fair either.

You're right, and the Jedi religion has already been shown to be a hoax.

Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.

Check out the The Force Skeptics Page:

The Jedi Knights are known for their supposed ability to perform "miracles." They can influence others' thoughts with a wave of their hand, use a slender light saber to deflect blaster bolts with their eyes closed, jump great heights in full gravity, move objects without touching them, see into the future, and do many other things that normal people can't. Or so they claim. They attribute these "powers" to an energy field they call the Force.

Apple used to sell a dos card for macs - it was a 66 MHz 486 that plugged in and used the mac's screen peripherals.

I know that this is going to start a religious flame war. And I apologize in advance. But since I started using challenge/response (specifically TMDA) I just don't care. I give anyone my email whenever they want. I register on websites with an address that expires. So it works for long enough for them to send whatever it is that I need from them and then stops working after that.

Do I still get spam? Yes. The 419 scammers can get through. I see one of them once every 6 months or so. I just blacklist them. 2 spams a year is much easier to deal with than 12000. Do I see automated spam? Nope. Haven't seen one of those in my mailbox since 2001.

IMHO, C/R is the best tool that I've seen to allow me to not worry about giving out my email address to others. I wish there was a way in which we could create a small experiment on the internet in which everyone used C/R, and see what happened to spam. My prediction: it would disappear. And when that happened, no one would be afraid to give out their email address. No one would be worried about companies leaking their email addresses. This story would not be interesting enough to make the front page of /.

(FWIW, I fully understand the argument that says that C/R is bad. I do not agree with it's accuracy nor it's validity. I'm happy to argue about the merits of C/R, but recognize that a lot of these arguments have been addressed by TMDA and other well behaved C/R.)

BUT THE JEDI RELIGION IS A HOAX! Read The Force Skeptics Page!
Man, I love the way that guy writes, so seriously :)

my bible still says the earth is round, Isaiah 40:22.

Well, I missed this point earlier. My goodness, this proves every one of your points. The Bible has at least one verse which does not contradict physical reality, therefore must be 100% true.

Of course, there are people who read the Bible and conclude (admittedly, with a heavy dose of sarcasm), that it proves the earth to be square.

Four corners of the earth, and all that.

Of course, I'm sure I can find some verses in the Koran and Tao Te Ching that are not obviously false; I suppose that makes them equally authoritative?

I hate the argument that Linux isn't ready yet....... or until...... this or that.

Linux is never going to be perfect folks! Stop eluding yourself thinking that it has to be perfect to be accepted. Or that in 2 or 3 years it will be "just right" and Joe Average will slobber all over it.

The more users that get converted now, the more folks will sit up and take notice. The more that take notice, the more that flock to linux. The more that flock to linux, the more the developers take notice and eventually be forced to make software for that market.

But it will never happen with "in two or three year's time" attitude. I heard this attitude 2 or 3 years ago. And also 2 or 3 years before that. Ad infinitum. (Actually only 1998-ish.)

There will always be a learning curve.

With all the spyware/malware problems with Windows - now is the time to strike. Don't think Microsoft is resting on their laurels - maybe (probably) they won't fix the problem - but as the software they bought recently (last year?) and redubbed MS AntiSpyware it shows they will come up with a solution that's good enough for most users as to excuse them not to switch (Let's face it: people are lazy when it comes to change.)

Requiring a Comp.Sci. Degree for Linux just because you couldn't get the printer to run? Save the 200 or so dollar XP installation and buy a compatible computer!

You have to be kidding me with ease of use.

Windows users practically need a degree to get rid of all the spyware/bloat/malware on their computers now, let alone hack the mystical registry when a program doesn't play nice when removed.

Read this:

http://kmself.home.netcom.com/Rants/spyware.html

And then decide if you really want Windows.

What is your true name, or do you hide behind a person

You are one of those cranks who believe in crazy conspiracy theories, huh?

For the not-so-loony.

Adjust your tinfoil hat. It's a bit tight.

'Nuff said...

You are one of those cranks who believe in crazy conspiracy theories, huh?

For the not-so-loony.

Adjust your tinfoil hat. It's a bit tight.

'Nuff said...

Its not an area where laws are consistent except to the extent that they have been consistently manipulated by/for the benefit of large companies. Analogies to railroads are apt but dangerous: a century and a half ago, our government knew it needed rails badly to make commerce efficient and mobility of the population easier. IT GAVE AWAY LAND AND GRANTED OR TOLERATED MONOPOLIES just to meet those objectives and the Goulds, ROCKEFELLERs and a host of other robber barons saw their chance. The debate about whether the public good is better served by public investiment or the enlightened greed of private enterpise is nearly as old as our repbulic. We the wireless public who will be ill served or well served by the decision about how the new infrastructure will be financed ought to be screaming at our congressmen right now. The risk/reward model for investiment in this technology is very different from the infrastructure developments that set the precedents for industrial lobbying in utilities. The cost of WiFi set up is low enough that many municipalities have it on their adgendas. Cities with money to burn are practially nonexistent in this country and still many are trying to be the first or best to enable a wirles citizenry. With costs that low and benefits that manifest, it is obscene that we as tax payers or wireless users would sit by and let corporations meter and profit from a service we could easily afford ourselves.
Where the analogy to older utility development may hold is uniformity of service: is local government, perhaps with guidance from standards bodies, or is private industry, jockying as it must for advantage over its internal competition and alternate services, the better way to provide a seamless or the most uniform WiFi service? Rail commerce did not take off until all the rail barons agreed on a rail guage that allowed cars to move from one carriers territory to another. Similarly, I expect WiFi won't be more than a convenience for pockets business travelers until WiFi is uniformly [and securely] supported in urban areas and the travel corridors between them. I want to be getting and sending my VOIP and email CONTINUOUSLY all the way from Boston to NY to DC and on my train ride to work in the morning...Are Verizon and SBC and their ilk going to cooperate on billing so I can do that?

Make sure you know the knife laws for your locality. You might not think of a Leatherman as a weapon, but the local police may disagree--especially around schools and colleges. Here are some useful links:
http://www.thehighroad.org/library/blades/knifelaw s.html
http://pweb.netcom.com/~brlevine/sta-law.htm

California-specific laws:
http://www.equalccw.com/knifelaw.html

Always keep in mind that info on the Internet may be wrong or out of date, so take with appropriate seasonings.

Eric

I'd just submitted the same item, but with some additional background...

Moreford isn't the only person noting crap quality of Microsoft. The New York Times saw fit to run 2300 words on erasing a hard drive and reinstalling the OS, to terminate spyware with extreme prejudice. I mean, when was nuking your C:\ drive national news? A few months earlier, I was interviewed for an expose of the adware/spyware industry in Barbiarians at the Digital Gates. My own technical followup, Spyware, Adware, Windows, GNU/Linux, and Software Culture has garnered a number of responses, most variations of "why do people put up with this cr*p?!"

Even the local small-town paper's usually Microsoft partisan columnist is suggesting it's time for the Microsoft Empire to begin to crumble. And he's not the only one.

The point is that these aren't geeks and gearheads talking out, it's the current in the popular press. Ordinary people. Which wouldn't be so significant if there weren't clearly identifiable, far better alternatives. Linux. Mac OS X. ABMS - Anything but Microsoft.

I think we're finally seeing the ediface crumble.

Other crusades have been

The prohibition of Alchohol during 20's. Alcohol was the the leading factor in bad health, missed work, crime, violence, etc. ie, it was the root of all evil, so banning it ofcourse would fix all these social ills.

Communism during early fifties. For its strange ability to make people homosexual. Which of course makes it the root of all evil.

The evil "switch blade" which suddenly in the late 50's became the root of all evil and in the midst of much hysteria in congress, had to be banned for our own good.

Child Porn during the late 70's. mentioned above.

Public key encryption during the early 90's, Logic dictates that Citizens with unbreakable encyption are probably criminals.

Mean looking guns, which have supplanted switch blades as the source of all crime during the 90's.

copywrite infringers in the late 90's.

Terrorists which somehow only live in oil rich nations for the 2000's.

and now video copywrite infingers.

I think his point is that its just another crusade. Something blown out of proportion to what it really should be. Check the stats:

In 2002, there was an estimated 896,000 cases of abused children. More than 60 percent of child victims experienced neglect. Almost 20 percent were physically abused; 10 percent were sexually abused; and 7 percent were emotionally maltreated. In addition, almost 20 percent were associated with "other" types of maltreatment based on specific State laws and policies.

Of those 10% that were sexually abused, how many were abused just so that they could be photographed? Does Child Porn really get the attention it deserves or is it getting a lion share because it is somehow more dirty and news worthy than a kid getting beaten to death by his drunk step dad.

It's not a laser, it's a Dark Sucker, although a very well collimated and controlled one.

Mal-2

Ah, the days when the DM concentrated on storylines, all the while trying to avoid the IUDC syndrome.

Actually, according to a recent analysis of MMORPG subscription growth, Lineage II seems to have taken a decent chunk of the EQ junkies.

Being an account holder of Lineage 2 I will say that I do enjoy playing it, however it has turned into a huge chore of consistenly leveling a character. The environment is very immersive with great detail put into the scenary and is a good hook for the new player.

What made me start losing interset in Lineage II? Well, the pseudo-economy has basicly become run by chinese "businesses" as they have the equivalent of sweatshops but with chinese players "farming" items and Adena(money) all day. This has raised the prices of all weapons/goods because of the inflated prices and because people are stupid enough to actually buy the shit off ebay.
Read: either buy Adena off ebay or you play * 2 as much for the equivalent items.

The biggest problem with MMORPGs is they change from being entertainment into the hideous beast of another job. The person who "fixes" that in the next MMORPG will be rich.

Maybe the reason is that these types of "tiresome" games are not showing any sign of maturation and there really is no reason to try something that may or may not work. If the same formula keeps working and growing the consumer base, there isn't a reason to innovate yet.

Called Motor City Online.

You would race for pink slips (that's Yank for certificate of ownership of a car), build up money to mod your car, and so forth.

Here is a Gamespot review. Little point in buying it now, though.

I never played it, but at its peak it in Summer of '02 it had around 36,000 subscribers according to this study of MMORPG subscriber trends.

It fell sharply from its peak and Electronic Arts shut it down a year later.

The MMORPG market reached saturation point a long LONG time ago, yet the market is still being flooded by those companies who haven't heard the penny drop.

Parent is a troll (check out the url) but I've seen the same thing repeated by others on Slashdot. I don't see the numbers to back up this claim.

FFXI was released in 2002 with a North American release in 2003. It has around 500,000 subscribers now. Star Wars Galaxies was released in 2003 and has 300,000 subscribers. (Lower than they were expecting, I think, but hardly a failure.) City of Heroes, which was released this year now has about 200,000 subscribers.

Numbers here: http://pw1.netcom.com/~sirbruce/Subscriptions.html

Everquest II and Worlds of Warcraft are due out in two months and there's a lot of advance excitement around them.

A few failures doesn't indicate saturation. Look at non-MMORPG videogames. What percentage of them do you suppose are successful?

Hmmm, my previous comment was deleted?

Again, the web page is currently up at an alternate URL:
http://pw1.netcom.com/~sirbruce3/Subscriptions.htm l

Bruce

I know about the technical issues I play Quake and you learn all you need to know about ping and latencny playing first person shooters.
[...]
This isn't a shot at you FYI. So maybe you're not skilled enough or have enough schooling to design game mechanics/network engine around the 'challenge' of latency but other games have done just that.

I'll pretend for a moment that you're not a troll, even though you've tried very hard to not insult me by insulting me.

For what it's worth, I've been working on online games since 1992, staring with text MUDs. I've been doing this professionally since 1998 with the game Meridian 59, which was originally launched in 1996 (prior to UO). I've done quite a bit more than just "play Quake", so I know what I'm talking about. I am recognized by my peers as someone quite informed about online game development, and I'm even on a panel at the Austin Game Conference talking about "Building Massively Multiplayer Games on a Budget".

At the core, it's a design issue and not a technical issue. The root issue is that the primary feature of online games is persistence. That's the reason why you have to pay the monthly subscription fee, because the server stores everything that happens. Everything that happens in the game permanently affects your character.

Consider what happens if you're playing Quake and suddenly you hit a lag spike. Someone nails you without you being able to react. Now what? Well, you respawn, grab some weapons, and go back into the firefight. Your Quake character is a throwaway shell that you don't really care about in most cases. But, now consider what happens in an online game. If that same thing happened, that death would permanently affect your character. You might lose some of your accumulated experience or skill points, perhaps some of the equipment it took you some time to collect. A lag spike leading to death isn't an "Oh, well, try again." moment. Trust me, I deal with this on a regular basis. Therefore, most games are designed to be a lot more latency-tolerant, so that lag doesn't disrupt the game, leading to permanent results.

You specifically mentioned PlanetSide a few times in your post. They've used latency reducing measures in their game, but you'll notice that PlanetSide is more like an FPS than a traditional online game. There is much less focus on persistence in PlanetSide, so they can focus more on twitch gameplay. Notably, a death on PlanetSide has very little impact overall.

It's also interesting to note the popularity of each type of game. According to the currently available version of a chart tracking online RPG subscriptions, you can see how some of these games stack up. Sony Online Entertainments two flagship products, EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies are pretty easy to see; EverQuest is the big yellow line that dominates most of the chart. You might have to look hard to find PlanetSide, which is a the small black line down in the lower right-hand corner struggling to get over 50,000 subscribers. Oh, and FFIX, the game you think is dreadfully boring? That's the red line shooting up the right-hand side of the chart, reaching a fairly hefty half a million subscribers. (Caveat: it's widely accepted that some of the numbers on that chart aren't 100% accurate, but they're not too far off the mark.)

There are no interesting game mechanics in MMO's that haven't been done MUCH better in single player games.

Except for the whole being able to play directly with a hundred, a thousand, or even more other people.

Okay, perhaps that's a bit too general. How about a real mechanic, then: political intrigue. There's plenty of that even in Meridian 59. When is the last time your game of Quake had players electing other player(s) to positions that directly affected gameplay? People

I thought the idea was great, if they could work a large wooden beaver into the design.

No really, if they could build some mouse-jigs they could use the modified Electr-O-Sketch to design loom components. Soon they'd innovate Punchcards, then the Difference Engine - and finally the mouse.

With recent advances in transistors and microprocessors they'd soon be able to design childrens toys without the need of the highly inefficient clay tablet

I predict a bright future for this group of stalwart free thinkers!

Ok here are some numbers i had pulled up a week or so ago. But are semi-relevant here. Numbers are comparisons of PC MMPORG numbers and PS2 online subscribers. as well as the actual amount of hardware for online use they have sold. Sony online registered member numbers, check bottom paragraph gives you Everquest PC numbers PLUS the numbers for Everquest Online adventures (the PS2 game) A chart shoing subscriber numbers of several MMORPG's Everquest Online Adventures being the PS2 one at the bottom Chart And here is another SOE press release staing only 500k hardware adapters were sold in the US, and im pretty sure all of themaint gettin used. SOE press release either way this supports the fact that there isnt a cash cow in console online games. MMORPGS would generally have a higher active subscriber base then other online games due to their nature. PS2 is the highest proliferated console system in the US atm. And just using SOE's numbers (which might even be inflated) doesnt really give a rosy picture. granted FFXI for PS2 skews the numbers a good buit, but i think thats due to the different approach they have taken towards subscription and how they implemented the game.

Challenge/Response is fundamentally broken. For more information, take a look at some discussions on the topic from debian-user: here's one. There's a few google-harvested discussions on the topic too.

Third step: If the score is less than 20, and the person wasn't whitelisted, run the message through TMDA and politely tell the sender I'm not sure who they are, and I get a lot of spam, and could you please click this link to prove that you're a real person. ...

So based on those numbers I'd estimate a success rate of 99.9997% for eliminating spam (which is, admittedly, COMPLETELY INSANE), and a false-positive (or at least "lost message") rate of 0% so far (fingers crossed).

hm. you should check this out

MMOG Analysis

I don't think that the numbers are statistically insignificant. And I do not think that it is the rare exception you consider it to be.

Here is the link to Sir Bruce's latest chart that I could find:

As you can see, there are some interesting details when one starts to look at the peaks and turning points and the coincidental timing/launch of new games/expansions.

The problem here is that the numbers are guesswork and the level of detail is confounding. The method of comparison is also not incredibly standardized. (i.e. global market vs. North American market, etc.).

What we really need is an in depth analysis on a monthly basis of the subscription levels. Or even better, how popuated various game worlds are by real players. Only the business element cares about subscriptions. (SWG seems to have north of 250k subscriptions. But they have recently gone to a 14-day free trial. Usually a sign of needing an infusion of new revenue in the way of short-term subscriptions...)

Of course we could not rely upon companies giving us real legitimate numbers. I would not believe any statistic provided by Funcom, nor many of the other game companies.

As far as audience cap. I think that that will be a soft number until the basis for analysis is agreed upon. What about console accounts? (FFXI for PS2, etc.). What about the silly subscription levels in South Korea for that one game that boasts the largest audience online for ANY game. Largely because of funky math having to do with multiple accounts based at an internet cafe or something like that... What about the kids growing older and wanting to get into a new game type. Or those in rural areas getting access to broadband connectivity...

There is money to be made, and there are games to be played. Everyone is waiting for the next big thing. I agree that a game cannot have a financial model based upon taking accounts from other games. But I would argue that a significant amount of this type of activity does in fact go on, and absolutely impacts the bottom line of a game.

- Zhirem

Maybe he meant a Google Image Search? No wonder he's confused; what's up with the llama?