Leasing a base in the Ukraine would have another effect besides tweaking Putin's nose: American servicemen and -women would see a part of the world that few Americans ever see. They would come home with an understanding few armchair theorists could match. It is a fundamental truth: travel damages bigotry and misunderstandings. Maybe one of you would step up...oh wait, this is Slashdot.
Some random thoughts on this:
WoW isn't a problem for the industry: it's a benchmark! World of Warcraft is simply a good standard to go by. It doesn't restrict other good MMOs, but it will snuff out the bad ones.
I will say this: there are small gaming companies doing just fine, like CCP (EVE Online: go ahead, duplicate THAT on the damn consoles) or Introversion (Darwinia: runs on Windows/Mac/Linux - NOT on a console) or Nexon (think Combat Arms, a free online shooter). All these companies do well in PCs, and not one of them designs for consoles. DRM? Not at all. The difference is that these guys found new ways to make their games interesting.
EVE Online is an MMO that attracts both thinking gamers and WoW burnouts. Some people would assume that as an MMO, it wouldn't work on a console because of the typing requirement but that would be incorrect. It wouldn't work on a console because it's not intended for the kids. WoWkids don't survive more than 2 weeks (the free trial period) in EVE because it's too complex and too deep for them. So yes, it's vastly more intellectually stimulating than any console game I've seen yet. CCP is making money with no fear that their userbase will be attracted away to WoW or gravitate to some new console game.
Darwinia is the coolest little (less than 100MB) game made in a decade, and Introversion did it on a shoestring budget and no big publisher. If it's pirated, they don't notice it much, since they've made a huge profit on it already.
Nexon has their free shooter, Combat Arms, and it makes money not from upfront fees or box sales, but from in-game item sales. Want that newer, cooler uniform? Or a SCAR-L in RealTree camo? Break out the credit card!
The point I'm trying to make is that PC game business is healthy, despite the calls for DRM.
EVE ISK 500000M in Storck
$0.02/M in all EVE ISK service , Share the Warefare, 5mins Delivery
www.THSale.com/Fast-EVE-ISK
Slashdot promoting exploiting..
Your link to that gold-seller site is now an error page, thanks to their EVE accounts being banned. I left EVE months ago because I was tired of playing on an uneven field out in nullsec space. Now there's a reason to go back to the game.
Here's the problem....ANYONE who checks this out will get the same results. You see, Google cached the pages, even after O2 cut the server. As a result, I have a series of phone numbers attached to pictures of various kids, one couple who apparently is biking all the way around Great Britain, and some nice lady who sent someone else a picture of herself. I stopped at that point.
Before you call someone a liar, check their evidence.
Ron Paul was left out because he stands an icicle's chance in hell of actually winning, due to his innate crackpottery (and yes, I'm a libertarian-leaning Republican). As such, we can waste yet MORE time discussing him, or we can talk about the Republican candidates who do stand a chance of winning, and who have a message people will actually listen to.
Hacking at Rob won't get you cool points, and it doesn't make your candidate look any better, either.
My taxes are going to pay for an unpopular war, health care for millions of illegal immigrants, and a small number of police in this nation. My taxes are not saving me from the people who break into my house, steal three years of development work on a new Battletech game, and sell those computers for personal gain.
You can moan all you like about how the government takes care of us all, and so we should never stand up for our own rights, because that should make things closer to your personal dream world. I now have new locks, a license to carry concealed, and a Sig Sauer that dares someone to break into my place again.
You see, the government gave me that license, too. The Constitution says I can carry it. One day, weaklings like you may actually thank someone like me, but I really doubt it. Your pastoral dream world died with the Soviet Union, but you failed to see the connection. The government cannot and should not be the only executor of the law. If you allow such a thing to happen, then you too belong on the Nuremberg docket with all the others who let monsters rule. Absolute power corrupts, so a government with absolute powers cannot be anything good.
They're tired. Tired nations with no-growth-to-speak-of economies, huddling together for a while like exhausted boxers in a ring. They're defended by better nations, so their younger idealists have the freedom to talk about Pax Europa and disarmament. The costs of rampant Socialism keep them from developing further, but NATO gives them a temporary umbrella while they catch a breather.
Don't think for a minute that peace is inevitable... There are still European troops acting as peacekeepers in the Balkans, and another poster has mentioned the French immigration problems (which seem to be growing in Germany as well). Europe is not the least militarized zone, not by any margin. It's simply the most hopeful in that respect. The US Army doesn't practice against the Chinese military...it practices against the highly professional German army.
They keep making these "I need attention" posts, full of sentiments like:
1. Fear Us, Dammit! 2. We can't exactly MEASURE our gains against MS/Windows, but WE MUST BE GAINING! 3. see above.
It's always the posts that talk about the immeasurable qualities that make me laugh the most. Yes, OSX is stable. Yes, you don't get viruses. No, you don't have games. No, you're set in your graphics mindset. Hell, if I want a dedicated device that does a few things very well and doesn't crash, I'll buy a graphic calculator. As a Windows user, I want options in software and hardware, not a monolithic platform.
This argument will go on forever, but immeasurable factors like hype tend to burn out after a while. Give me decent numbers if you want to be taken anything like seriously.
I reread that comment a few minutes later, and realized that some fools might not realize it was a joke, and can even take it seriously. I in no way support PETA or the fluff-brained nutjobs who are its most ardent supporters.
The cryptofascist scientific community has gone too far! First it was abuse of multicellular animals, but now they intend to work our unicellular cousins to death! Just what happens to those poor S. marcescens bacteria when they've been forced to push those oh-so-neato drugs on the streetcorners of our fluid systems? They die! They aren't able to stop and grab a break, or a snack, or anything. In fact, why are they even considering putting a helpless little organism into a place its never evolved for? What if the poor creatures feel the need to break their slave chains and revolt? THINK OF WHERE THEY'D HAVE TO CONDUCT THAT REVOLT! No, I say this is doubly dangerous. It sets a precedent for the enslavement of the entire unicellular world! PETA will do something about it, I know it. Maybe they'll throw buckets of S. marcescens workers on the scientists, or simply expose the horrid working conditions another way, but I have faith in PETAs ability to help all the poor animals.
I totally agree. The iPod generation has a tendency to go for instant gratification, and there's none of that in space exploration. It costs money and time, and requires real work. For the current crop of gimme-gimme talking heads that want "social justice now, screw space", remember that most of them (and this is my generation, I'm sorry to say) won't have the stomach to hold down the same job for more than a year, or the attention span to see anything through, besides that next Warcraft expansion.
The shuttles are boring. They go up, work on things, and come down. Where's the excitement in that? A lunar base? Easy enough, but the same talking heads who've forgotten that the annual space budget is less than one ten-thousandth of the military budget still would rather cut its funding, because it's easier to do so. Short-sighted, indeed. But hey, I hear those iPhones are gonna be ub3r!!
I'm ashamed to be counted with these fools.
Your personal definition of communism is beside the point. Those who actually rule China consider themselves Communist, and say so. They ARE evil. Do you really think that true Marxist communism had any real role in the Soviet Union after Stalin took power? Your grasp of history is appalling. If Google has worked with the Chinese to get a foot in the door, then that's just another step towards taking down self-avowed Communists.
Adobe's opinion of Google's product is worthless when their software can run over $600. That means that they do not wish to compete on the same level as others, so Google's free approach is perfectly valid. I notice a lot of people here griping about the capitalist system in use, but as it has been said, Google isn't the only game in town. Adobe picture-management software is in no more danger from Google than they are from GiMP or Paintshop. Besides, Picasa isn't that particularly good.
As for Google raising their prices...they have every right to do so. If they do so egregiously, the free market system will slap them down, since people will bail out wholesale to Yahoo. I see a lot of worry over nothing.
No, I'm saying that a deliberate choice of a partner not of your own race can have rewards besides increasing the immediate pool of genetic diversity. It can even lead to...dare I say it... cultural tolerance!
And of course, there's always the exotic factor. We are attracted to it every time.
Ahhh, where's the boredom in all that interbreeding? My "purely" white (ain't nothin' pure, folks) genes just don't care which way they go, and I don't see how the process could EVER be called boring. Here's to everyone on earth getting a tan the fun way, and rooting out racism while we're at it!...erm, no pun intended.
Slashdot Mirror
Leasing a base in the Ukraine would have another effect besides tweaking Putin's nose: American servicemen and -women would see a part of the world that few Americans ever see. They would come home with an understanding few armchair theorists could match. It is a fundamental truth: travel damages bigotry and misunderstandings. Maybe one of you would step up...oh wait, this is Slashdot.
Some random thoughts on this: WoW isn't a problem for the industry: it's a benchmark! World of Warcraft is simply a good standard to go by. It doesn't restrict other good MMOs, but it will snuff out the bad ones. I will say this: there are small gaming companies doing just fine, like CCP (EVE Online: go ahead, duplicate THAT on the damn consoles) or Introversion (Darwinia: runs on Windows/Mac/Linux - NOT on a console) or Nexon (think Combat Arms, a free online shooter). All these companies do well in PCs, and not one of them designs for consoles. DRM? Not at all. The difference is that these guys found new ways to make their games interesting. EVE Online is an MMO that attracts both thinking gamers and WoW burnouts. Some people would assume that as an MMO, it wouldn't work on a console because of the typing requirement but that would be incorrect. It wouldn't work on a console because it's not intended for the kids. WoWkids don't survive more than 2 weeks (the free trial period) in EVE because it's too complex and too deep for them. So yes, it's vastly more intellectually stimulating than any console game I've seen yet. CCP is making money with no fear that their userbase will be attracted away to WoW or gravitate to some new console game. Darwinia is the coolest little (less than 100MB) game made in a decade, and Introversion did it on a shoestring budget and no big publisher. If it's pirated, they don't notice it much, since they've made a huge profit on it already. Nexon has their free shooter, Combat Arms, and it makes money not from upfront fees or box sales, but from in-game item sales. Want that newer, cooler uniform? Or a SCAR-L in RealTree camo? Break out the credit card! The point I'm trying to make is that PC game business is healthy, despite the calls for DRM.
Ads by Google:
EVE ISK 500000M in Storck $0.02/M in all EVE ISK service , Share the Warefare, 5mins Delivery www.THSale.com/Fast-EVE-ISK
Slashdot promoting exploiting..
Your link to that gold-seller site is now an error page, thanks to their EVE accounts being banned. I left EVE months ago because I was tired of playing on an uneven field out in nullsec space. Now there's a reason to go back to the game.
Here's the problem....ANYONE who checks this out will get the same results. You see, Google cached the pages, even after O2 cut the server. As a result, I have a series of phone numbers attached to pictures of various kids, one couple who apparently is biking all the way around Great Britain, and some nice lady who sent someone else a picture of herself. I stopped at that point. Before you call someone a liar, check their evidence.
Ron Paul was left out because he stands an icicle's chance in hell of actually winning, due to his innate crackpottery (and yes, I'm a libertarian-leaning Republican). As such, we can waste yet MORE time discussing him, or we can talk about the Republican candidates who do stand a chance of winning, and who have a message people will actually listen to. Hacking at Rob won't get you cool points, and it doesn't make your candidate look any better, either.
Besides, while he's running away, I'll yell "HEY, you left your wallet!" When he turns around.... then I'll shoot him.
My taxes are going to pay for an unpopular war, health care for millions of illegal immigrants, and a small number of police in this nation. My taxes are not saving me from the people who break into my house, steal three years of development work on a new Battletech game, and sell those computers for personal gain.
You can moan all you like about how the government takes care of us all, and so we should never stand up for our own rights, because that should make things closer to your personal dream world. I now have new locks, a license to carry concealed, and a Sig Sauer that dares someone to break into my place again.
You see, the government gave me that license, too. The Constitution says I can carry it. One day, weaklings like you may actually thank someone like me, but I really doubt it. Your pastoral dream world died with the Soviet Union, but you failed to see the connection. The government cannot and should not be the only executor of the law. If you allow such a thing to happen, then you too belong on the Nuremberg docket with all the others who let monsters rule. Absolute power corrupts, so a government with absolute powers cannot be anything good.
They're tired. Tired nations with no-growth-to-speak-of economies, huddling together for a while like exhausted boxers in a ring. They're defended by better nations, so their younger idealists have the freedom to talk about Pax Europa and disarmament. The costs of rampant Socialism keep them from developing further, but NATO gives them a temporary umbrella while they catch a breather.
Don't think for a minute that peace is inevitable... There are still European troops acting as peacekeepers in the Balkans, and another poster has mentioned the French immigration problems (which seem to be growing in Germany as well). Europe is not the least militarized zone, not by any margin. It's simply the most hopeful in that respect. The US Army doesn't practice against the Chinese military...it practices against the highly professional German army.
They keep making these "I need attention" posts, full of sentiments like:
1. Fear Us, Dammit!
2. We can't exactly MEASURE our gains against MS/Windows, but WE MUST BE GAINING!
3. see above.
It's always the posts that talk about the immeasurable qualities that make me laugh the most. Yes, OSX is stable. Yes, you don't get viruses. No, you don't have games. No, you're set in your graphics mindset. Hell, if I want a dedicated device that does a few things very well and doesn't crash, I'll buy a graphic calculator. As a Windows user, I want options in software and hardware, not a monolithic platform.
This argument will go on forever, but immeasurable factors like hype tend to burn out after a while. Give me decent numbers if you want to be taken anything like seriously.
I reread that comment a few minutes later, and realized that some fools might not realize it was a joke, and can even take it seriously. I in no way support PETA or the fluff-brained nutjobs who are its most ardent supporters.
The cryptofascist scientific community has gone too far! First it was abuse of multicellular animals, but now they intend to work our unicellular cousins to death! Just what happens to those poor S. marcescens bacteria when they've been forced to push those oh-so-neato drugs on the streetcorners of our fluid systems? They die! They aren't able to stop and grab a break, or a snack, or anything. In fact, why are they even considering putting a helpless little organism into a place its never evolved for? What if the poor creatures feel the need to break their slave chains and revolt? THINK OF WHERE THEY'D HAVE TO CONDUCT THAT REVOLT! No, I say this is doubly dangerous. It sets a precedent for the enslavement of the entire unicellular world! PETA will do something about it, I know it. Maybe they'll throw buckets of S. marcescens workers on the scientists, or simply expose the horrid working conditions another way, but I have faith in PETAs ability to help all the poor animals.
I totally agree. The iPod generation has a tendency to go for instant gratification, and there's none of that in space exploration. It costs money and time, and requires real work. For the current crop of gimme-gimme talking heads that want "social justice now, screw space", remember that most of them (and this is my generation, I'm sorry to say) won't have the stomach to hold down the same job for more than a year, or the attention span to see anything through, besides that next Warcraft expansion. The shuttles are boring. They go up, work on things, and come down. Where's the excitement in that? A lunar base? Easy enough, but the same talking heads who've forgotten that the annual space budget is less than one ten-thousandth of the military budget still would rather cut its funding, because it's easier to do so. Short-sighted, indeed. But hey, I hear those iPhones are gonna be ub3r!! I'm ashamed to be counted with these fools.
Your personal definition of communism is beside the point. Those who actually rule China consider themselves Communist, and say so. They ARE evil. Do you really think that true Marxist communism had any real role in the Soviet Union after Stalin took power? Your grasp of history is appalling. If Google has worked with the Chinese to get a foot in the door, then that's just another step towards taking down self-avowed Communists.
Adobe's opinion of Google's product is worthless when their software can run over $600. That means that they do not wish to compete on the same level as others, so Google's free approach is perfectly valid. I notice a lot of people here griping about the capitalist system in use, but as it has been said, Google isn't the only game in town. Adobe picture-management software is in no more danger from Google than they are from GiMP or Paintshop. Besides, Picasa isn't that particularly good. As for Google raising their prices...they have every right to do so. If they do so egregiously, the free market system will slap them down, since people will bail out wholesale to Yahoo. I see a lot of worry over nothing.
No, I'm saying that a deliberate choice of a partner not of your own race can have rewards besides increasing the immediate pool of genetic diversity. It can even lead to ...dare I say it... cultural tolerance!
And of course, there's always the exotic factor. We are attracted to it every time.
Ahhh, where's the boredom in all that interbreeding? My "purely" white (ain't nothin' pure, folks) genes just don't care which way they go, and I don't see how the process could EVER be called boring. Here's to everyone on earth getting a tan the fun way, and rooting out racism while we're at it! ...erm, no pun intended.