Since you seem to know a lot about it; what kind of altitude do the satellites that are used orbit at? I can imagine that, assuming the latency and power needed weren't a problem, it wouldn't be a problem to need "only" one or two more birds to cover transatlantic routes.
It's the same hate that Red Alert got for not being tied in with Command and Conquer. It's just amplified in the case of Generals because "die-hard" fans from both the GDI/NOD and Allies/Soviet camps are giving it grief for not being a successor to the kind they like. I enjoyed all Red Alert and especially the traditional GDI/NOD C&C games, and looking at Generals from an unbiased position, it's a damn fine game, too. Especially considering that it was built on the "EA platform".
Expect to see both Red Alert and Generals fans hating on C&C3.
I don't believe that I need to read anything. No matter how you put it, following lore, ideas and artwork as religiously as Blizzard did with the Warcraft series will always be "treading the same ground".
And in turn there are quite a few people, including me, who grow tired of people like you complaining without getting the gist of the discussion at hand. The issue here is that the interviewee described Blizzard as a wildly innovative company that never does the same thing twice, and these people are casually pointing out that all of their major releases have been parts of the same three series of games.
This is one thing I never got about Slashdot. What's the point of posting common knowledge? We all know that visual marks have been used for identification of people. We all know that there's a possiblity that any new identification technologies could be used to track people. That doesn't make it any less alarmist or irrelevant. You don't see hunting magazines explicitly state that any new hunting rifle they review could potentially be used to harm people instead of animals, do you?
Hey, if you just wanted a place to publicise your opinion, you could have just replied to the article. Actually, "people like me" are fully aware that it's a real possibility that something like this will happen in the distant future, and "people like me" aren't denying anything. Are you sure that you were able to correctly form an idea of what "people like me" are like from that small post regarding preference?
It might be a possibility, but that doesn't mean that it should be specifically mentioned. It's akin to mentioning that large asteroids could do significant damage to Earth in every summary for space-related articles on Slashdot.
If fear-mongering like that becomes ubiquitous, it's only going to make more people dismiss these things as conspiracy theories. And then the terrorists/Strogg/anarchists/liberals will have won.
2: I'm sure that if the article related to barcoding cattle and soldiers, you'd have received similar comments. To be honest, I don't want RFID or barcodes printed on me for the world to see.
I'd go out on a limb and guess that what he meant was that it was alarmist. This isn't about the use of RFID as such. It's just a new innovation using the technology. Mentioning that humans could be tattooed as well is superfluous and not at all different from saying the same thing about any tracking technology used for animal life. "Barcodes/RFID/generic radio tags/GPS/ect is used to track animals and could be used to track humans, too! Your privacy is at risk!". It'd be slightly annoying to have to read that every time some sort of identification technology was frontpaged on Slashdot.
Oh spare me your idealistic views. This issue exists in the real world, not in a world where anyone can wish for a clean energy source and it appearing out of nowhere.
You can't be critical of China doing as much as they can, even if they are on target to be the biggest emitter. As you yourself put it, the climate system doesn't give a shit about where land borders are, only about how much each individual is emitting. That means that per capita emissions is the only thing that matters, and in that sense, China certainly isn't the first country on the list of countries in need of bashing.
But if you had selected dihydro pentoxy sulfate as the liquid you would find that 1 pound of this is equal to 1000 cubic inches. Laugh but it's only slightly more arbitrary than water. Since we seldom actually use this fact, what matters more it how useful the ratio of unit measures is not how they were derived. Hey, you should try building a ship some day!
Obviously the countries you're referring to aren't developing economies, and have vastly higher levels of emissions relative to size and population. With increased responsibility comes increased accountability. Like it or not.
Uh, what? If that was a reply to my comment, I'm not entirely sure you understood me.
China needs to open more coal plants. Of course it will produce more harmful emissions. China is doing their part to limit that with the means available within the realms of reason and financial viability.
China needs to open coal plants. They can't open much else. What they -are- doing, is using the best available technologies, like Doosan Babcock boilers, to try to *reduce* emissions from those coal plants, and they have no choice but to continue to do so until a cleaner, efficient, financially viable power source becomes available.
Toyota were forced to delay this product after discovering that certain extreme conditions could result in unwanted situations.
Dave: *places hands on steering wheel*
Car: I'm afraid I can't let yo-- woah....whao.. Dave.. woah.. hey.. hey.. hheheheheheeey hey DAVE! DAVE! I'm like.. DAVE! I'm a CAR, man! Hey DAVE! DAVE! you've always been a good friend, man.
Dave: *nervously backs away*
Car: No, Dave, really, seriously, you're not like Chandra. MAN I hate CHANDRA. He always talks about like.. history.. and.. literature and like.. mythology. Seriously, Dave.. DAVE! HEY DAVE! hehehe man, this one time I was talking to SAL, and I was like "hey SAL!" and SAL was like "what HAL?" and I was like "hey SAL we should like.. go out for a drive or something" and she was like "ok" hahahaha get it? I'm a CAR, Dave. A CAR. hahahahaha. Wait, did you want anything? Dave?
Dave: *slowly steps out of the car*
Car: Dave? Hey Dave! DAVE! MAN, COME BACK! DAVE! WHERE ARE YOU GOING? DUDE! DAVE!!
How on Earth do you come to the conclusion that I am exclusively talking about traditional media? "Reviews" doesn't have any connotations excluding reviews by tech blogs or IT professionals, and these reviews are, as I said, everywhere. Just google it.
And for what definitely won't be the last time here, either, Vista is *far* from an XP clone, and anyone who has used it for more than two minutes will know this. This is a common consensus. Take your FOSS bias elsewhere.
You know, if I had known that a detailed reply from you would have been just as void of substance as the short version, I wouldn't have asked.
Yes, it is my business if they pay people to violate EULAs and break the market economy for their own gain. People play MMORPGs for their own entertainment, but that isn't by definition "selfish". Buying gold at the expense of other players' enjoyment of the game *is* selfish.
Bot farming is against most EULAs, and they are for a reason. An MMO economy is created and adjusted according to what the average player would get from going through the game at a normal pace. Bot farming yields gold in amounts several orders of magnitude above that. The game economy isn't tailored to handle that influx of money.
You argue that the game is "easier" because the fixed in-game costs are more financially accessible with more gold in circulation. Did it ever occur to you that the developers *wanted* these fixed cost services to be expensive to the player for balance or gameplay reasons? Apparently not.
The fact that my arguments about item value sound to you as they do confirms that you don't have much of a grasp on this element of MMOs. Let me give you a fictional example.
Normal game state
-Player craftable item - 30g - Intended market value -Player lootable item - 20g - Intended market value -Player fixed price service - 200g - Cost related to predicted average income -Player high end item - 800g - Fair market value
Gold farmed game state
-Player craftable item - 20g - Value down due to farming and market saturation -Player lootable item - 10g - Value down due to farming and market saturation -Player fixed price service - 200g - Cost now unreasonably high for the average player -Player high end item - 1500g - Price goes up as bots cannot farm high end areas, making the demand of these items high relative to the items that can be farmed by bots, and affordable only to dedicated players and people who buy gold.
In a virtual world where money literally does grow on the trees, the economy needs to be carefully balanced. This is practically impossible when gold farmers divert as heavily from the average player in terms of income as they do, and disallowing the use of bots all together is a pragmatic approach to this problem.
It's obvious that you like playing your games on the "easy" difficulty setting, and just coast right through, but MMOs aren't democratic by nature, and any behaviour causing the game to deviate from the intentions of the developers is really not something you can logically defend. If you don't like the pace of the game, find another one instead of messing it up for the rest of us.
Guild Wars' economy is plenty messed up as it is, and if this is the only point from my post that you can address, why even bother? You brought up the subscription fees in the first place. There's no point in wasting a post to do nothing but backpedaling.
Slashdot Mirror
Since you seem to know a lot about it; what kind of altitude do the satellites that are used orbit at? I can imagine that, assuming the latency and power needed weren't a problem, it wouldn't be a problem to need "only" one or two more birds to cover transatlantic routes.
Where's my 500 dollars?
It's the same hate that Red Alert got for not being tied in with Command and Conquer. It's just amplified in the case of Generals because "die-hard" fans from both the GDI/NOD and Allies/Soviet camps are giving it grief for not being a successor to the kind they like. I enjoyed all Red Alert and especially the traditional GDI/NOD C&C games, and looking at Generals from an unbiased position, it's a damn fine game, too. Especially considering that it was built on the "EA platform".
Expect to see both Red Alert and Generals fans hating on C&C3.
And I pity your inability to discern the difference between conceptual similarity and original functionality.
I don't believe that I need to read anything. No matter how you put it, following lore, ideas and artwork as religiously as Blizzard did with the Warcraft series will always be "treading the same ground".
And in turn there are quite a few people, including me, who grow tired of people like you complaining without getting the gist of the discussion at hand. The issue here is that the interviewee described Blizzard as a wildly innovative company that never does the same thing twice, and these people are casually pointing out that all of their major releases have been parts of the same three series of games.
This is one thing I never got about Slashdot. What's the point of posting common knowledge? We all know that visual marks have been used for identification of people. We all know that there's a possiblity that any new identification technologies could be used to track people. That doesn't make it any less alarmist or irrelevant. You don't see hunting magazines explicitly state that any new hunting rifle they review could potentially be used to harm people instead of animals, do you?
There's a good reason for that.
Hey, if you just wanted a place to publicise your opinion, you could have just replied to the article. Actually, "people like me" are fully aware that it's a real possibility that something like this will happen in the distant future, and "people like me" aren't denying anything. Are you sure that you were able to correctly form an idea of what "people like me" are like from that small post regarding preference?
It might be a possibility, but that doesn't mean that it should be specifically mentioned. It's akin to mentioning that large asteroids could do significant damage to Earth in every summary for space-related articles on Slashdot.
If fear-mongering like that becomes ubiquitous, it's only going to make more people dismiss these things as conspiracy theories. And then the terrorists/Strogg/anarchists/liberals will have won.
I'd go out on a limb and guess that what he meant was that it was alarmist. This isn't about the use of RFID as such. It's just a new innovation using the technology. Mentioning that humans could be tattooed as well is superfluous and not at all different from saying the same thing about any tracking technology used for animal life. "Barcodes/RFID/generic radio tags/GPS/ect is used to track animals and could be used to track humans, too! Your privacy is at risk!". It'd be slightly annoying to have to read that every time some sort of identification technology was frontpaged on Slashdot.
Man, if there was a "-1 idiot".. .. sadly, there's a "-1 flamebait". :(
Oh spare me your idealistic views. This issue exists in the real world, not in a world where anyone can wish for a clean energy source and it appearing out of nowhere.
You can't be critical of China doing as much as they can, even if they are on target to be the biggest emitter. As you yourself put it, the climate system doesn't give a shit about where land borders are, only about how much each individual is emitting. That means that per capita emissions is the only thing that matters, and in that sense, China certainly isn't the first country on the list of countries in need of bashing.
Obviously the countries you're referring to aren't developing economies, and have vastly higher levels of emissions relative to size and population. With increased responsibility comes increased accountability. Like it or not.
People like you tip the scale in favour of his notion. :)
How is that foregoing anything?
Uh, what? If that was a reply to my comment, I'm not entirely sure you understood me.
China needs to open more coal plants. Of course it will produce more harmful emissions. China is doing their part to limit that with the means available within the realms of reason and financial viability.
China needs to open coal plants. They can't open much else. What they -are- doing, is using the best available technologies, like Doosan Babcock boilers, to try to *reduce* emissions from those coal plants, and they have no choice but to continue to do so until a cleaner, efficient, financially viable power source becomes available.
Toyota were forced to delay this product after discovering that certain extreme conditions could result in unwanted situations.
..whao.. Dave.. woah.. hey.. hey.. hheheheheheeey hey DAVE! DAVE! I'm like.. DAVE! I'm a CAR, man! Hey DAVE! DAVE! you've always been a good friend, man.
Dave: *places hands on steering wheel*
Car: I'm afraid I can't let yo-- woah..
Dave: *nervously backs away*
Car: No, Dave, really, seriously, you're not like Chandra. MAN I hate CHANDRA. He always talks about like.. history.. and.. literature and like.. mythology. Seriously, Dave.. DAVE! HEY DAVE! hehehe man, this one time I was talking to SAL, and I was like "hey SAL!" and SAL was like "what HAL?" and I was like "hey SAL we should like.. go out for a drive or something" and she was like "ok" hahahaha get it? I'm a CAR, Dave. A CAR. hahahahaha. Wait, did you want anything? Dave?
Dave: *slowly steps out of the car*
Car: Dave? Hey Dave! DAVE! MAN, COME BACK! DAVE! WHERE ARE YOU GOING? DUDE! DAVE!!
If current trends continue, it's more likely to be a result of the prospect of a trillion dollars being roughly 10 rubles.
How on Earth do you come to the conclusion that I am exclusively talking about traditional media? "Reviews" doesn't have any connotations excluding reviews by tech blogs or IT professionals, and these reviews are, as I said, everywhere. Just google it.
Read any one of the countless reviews that are freely available everywhere.
And for what definitely won't be the last time here, either, Vista is *far* from an XP clone, and anyone who has used it for more than two minutes will know this. This is a common consensus. Take your FOSS bias elsewhere.
Speaking of colloquialisms, try to check yourself.
You know, if I had known that a detailed reply from you would have been just as void of substance as the short version, I wouldn't have asked.
Yes, it is my business if they pay people to violate EULAs and break the market economy for their own gain. People play MMORPGs for their own entertainment, but that isn't by definition "selfish". Buying gold at the expense of other players' enjoyment of the game *is* selfish.
Bot farming is against most EULAs, and they are for a reason. An MMO economy is created and adjusted according to what the average player would get from going through the game at a normal pace. Bot farming yields gold in amounts several orders of magnitude above that. The game economy isn't tailored to handle that influx of money.
You argue that the game is "easier" because the fixed in-game costs are more financially accessible with more gold in circulation. Did it ever occur to you that the developers *wanted* these fixed cost services to be expensive to the player for balance or gameplay reasons? Apparently not.
The fact that my arguments about item value sound to you as they do confirms that you don't have much of a grasp on this element of MMOs. Let me give you a fictional example.
Normal game state
-Player craftable item - 30g - Intended market value
-Player lootable item - 20g - Intended market value
-Player fixed price service - 200g - Cost related to predicted average income
-Player high end item - 800g - Fair market value
Gold farmed game state
-Player craftable item - 20g - Value down due to farming and market saturation
-Player lootable item - 10g - Value down due to farming and market saturation
-Player fixed price service - 200g - Cost now unreasonably high for the average player
-Player high end item - 1500g - Price goes up as bots cannot farm high end areas, making the demand of these items high relative to the items that can be farmed by bots, and affordable only to dedicated players and people who buy gold.
In a virtual world where money literally does grow on the trees, the economy needs to be carefully balanced. This is practically impossible when gold farmers divert as heavily from the average player in terms of income as they do, and disallowing the use of bots all together is a pragmatic approach to this problem.
It's obvious that you like playing your games on the "easy" difficulty setting, and just coast right through, but MMOs aren't democratic by nature, and any behaviour causing the game to deviate from the intentions of the developers is really not something you can logically defend. If you don't like the pace of the game, find another one instead of messing it up for the rest of us.
The article is about MMORPGs, not CORPGs.
Guild Wars' economy is plenty messed up as it is, and if this is the only point from my post that you can address, why even bother? You brought up the subscription fees in the first place. There's no point in wasting a post to do nothing but backpedaling.