I won't pretend this is the LP party line, but it's how I feel about the topic:
Firstly, I do not feel it is the governments role to force people to be charitable. Forcibly taking my money away from me to aid, as they see fit, a person or persons I do not know.. I dunno like it... ya ya hold on though.. there's more..
Secondly; I do believe it's an individuals duty as a member of the human race to support your fellow people.. however.. you should do it as you see fit.. I help others by generally being a nice person and helping them with information about various topics. I'm Pro-Education and I have no problems teaching other people trade skills that I already know. I have no problem giving people I feel I can trust temporary shelter or fiscal loans to help them get on their feet.. I've done it many times in the past, and I will likely do it again in the future.
"Would I rather see you dead from disease".. no.. but if you are to unwilling to make an attempt to try and provide for yourself, I have little sympathy for you. If you continue to make the same poor decisions over and over again without learning from them; again.. little sympathy.
(windows systems too.. I mean it is a muni we're talking about..)
But yes.. physical access to a device trumps all. It's probably something like they only have -one- guy that knows what he's doing.. and he just went from being fired to Fed-pound-you-Penn
.. but to the best of my knowledge, EULAs don't exactly have the best track-record when they goto court.
Also, can't most licenses be retracted by either party; an at-will contract? (Isn't that how MMO's can Ban users, essentially at-will?)
The OPs statement of "If you buy a game, you transfer rights to the game developer that they can sue you for." is misleading and false.. you never had rights on the software begin with; beyond the whole 'Run A Copy on your machine'.
I figure most Licensing breaches are handled/settled well before the lawsuit step though (I know that's the case for alot of vendors, M$ included).
---
As for the whole retina thing.. I believe it would fall into a realm of 'un-enforcable'. Gouging out your eyes for looking at a supermodel without a license isn't considered a reasonable activity in most 1st world courts.
.. or if you can't do that, you can find some decent ones on the used market still...
One thing I noticed with my previous WTRG is that if I fired up to many port translations (read: torrenting), it'd just be to much for it (maybe exceeded it's PAT table? i dunno).. now I got me a 'rhymes with Crisco' (and I don't mean one made by Linksys), can't say it's ever needed a reload..
For the amount of money you probably ponied up for all those routers over the years, you're half-way to a real one already.
but if you have a web-presense where you don't want to deal with having another POP/IMAP server to maintain yourself, you can point your MX's to Gmail..
NetFlix offered this feature. Some people bought the service in part because of this feature. Now it's being taken away. No discounts or temporary account upgrades or anything. Not even a way to migrate the old profiles to a new account. That's pretty sleazy. Sleazy would be canceling it 'effective immediately'. They sent out email to me (got it last night) saying 'Hey, in just over 2 months, we're not gonna offer this service anymore'. That's not sleazy. Somewhere a decision was made to discontinue it, and they are giving their customers fair notice.
If people feel that strongly and that feature was a maker and breaker for them, they should cancel their service (aka: stop giving them money). When you do so, be sure to let them know why.. and unlike people that quit MMOs, do so in an intelligent manner.
There are in fact other competing services.. I don't know if they offer the same feature. I guess you have a similar thing at Ye Olde Video Store where the person just sorta picks up what they want... a crazy idea I know.. but it worked pretty well in the past.
And here I thought you were pointing out Modem Wars, which I played on my C=64.. predating the Genesis by a short while.. which.. was.. you know.. at least multiplayer.. and definitely strategy.. First few google hits are good information for those of you that never heard of it.
TBH, I think the RTS market is really divided into 2 groups; 1 is the Research/Harvest style.. Dune, Warcraft, AoE, etcc.. the 2nd (which I perfer) are games like Ground Control, WiC, Blitzkreig and a few others where you don't have any peasants to manage / gold to mine / so on.. elements that seemed to take most of the strategy out of the RTS..
Funny enough, I know people that can't stand turn-based strategy games but love the 'strategy' of RTSes, which usually seem to boil down into either early unit rushes, or end-game-heavy-unit crushes.
now where did I put my copy of WarGame Construction Set...
I concurr. CoV you weren't a Villian.. you were just an anti-hero.. you still wacked the same baddies).. which is sad because there was great potential there.
Furthermore, what I really liked about CoH was the LACK of an economy orignally.. they added one sorta in now, but it doesn't have the feel of a system of a bigger MMO.. and secondaly, was the ability to play with your friends, regardless of level.. (the Sidekick/Exemplar) system, which imo, is the single greatest thing they brought to the MMO genre (since I'm not a big fan of level-based MMOs).... It let the casual player (me) play with some of my more hard-core player friends that were usually 2-3x my level.
The bad part of CoH is it's totally a grind fest, which is why it didn't have any staying power for alot of people likely.
The cost tie in per use for an ISP is more of a stepping system then a direct correlation, but it is in fact tied to the amount of B/W
If I have 10 customers that want 10mb of service.. and that's all I ever need to do, then all I need is 1x100mb pipe, and probably not much more then a entry-range switching/routing kit
But if I want to be able to transport CustomerA that wants a Gig in the MAN, well.. I better be able to transport 10G all the sudden or at least get multiple 1G links in my MAN.. which means I need to step up to switching/routing/optics that can handle that.
The Road analogy is very relevant.. remember when they used to call the Internet "The Information Superhighway"..
"Building up the infrastructure to fully satisfy the full demand of everyone is a bit ridiculous. The water utilities can't do that, the electric utilities can't do this, the telephone companies could never do this, etc."
And what do the Utilities do to help regulate the usage a customer imposes on the system? They bill per metered unit. Roads aren't as directly tied to it, but there are things like gasoline taxes that help make up for that... one could argue that it's partially 'metered', since there are very people that use a road without paying for gasoline (and most of them don't need something as broad as a road).
If people are going to start treating their Internet as a utility.. which most people do imo, then it wouldn't be unusual to have it billed like one.
We're actually looking at implementing a metered scheme for one of our major co-location customers.. because they asked for it. They are expecting bursty traffic, and don't want to front with a constant 'unlimited' high-speed pipe. So we've started looking into it.
So.. why not a hybrid system.. 2 tiers:
1- Unlimited access.. at 4mb/512k (or whatever). Plenty enough to do pretty much anything.. heck.. put it lower if you want. 2- Metered access.. you get a 10mb (or even 100mb) pipe to your house.. the plan includes Plan1 @ 24x7 worth of transfer already.. but after that, it's $5/GB of transfer. The power users that want -FAST- pipes get it.. and if they really don't just sit around and torrent all day, run an FTP, or whatever, then they are fine.
If I end up doing e-police for the winner, think I can get an appointment as ambassador to a tropical island?
That said.. this article just helps to reflect the fact that major candidates might need to start thinking more on the IT side.. the elections are still held in Meat-Space, but a growing number of people are getting their news solely from Internet Sources, and of course many of the news programs get their sources from the Internet.
So.. do any candidates need a CIO?.. like I said.. i'll do it for a comfy post in the Caribbean:]
Semi-Luddite I know, but we should also invest time/effort/capital into developing more efficient end devices (not end-user devices.. you had better include manufacturing/industrial and commercial in here.. they use -ALOT- of power compared to that rental house with 4 college kids and the monster TV..)
Solar is great.. but I'm still not sold on the overall NET environmental impact once you include the manufacturing process. I'll admit I haven't looked into it in anything remote to detail, but everything these days has a pretty heavy manu impact, and no energy production is really 'clean' when you look at it.. you just have to choose what you're willing to deal with (or go back to a hunter/gatherer society)
(all that said.. I'm pro-Nuke anyhow.. but there ARE in fact other options...)
> 6. With HL2 Engine based games, even play them in Linux with Wine.
Actually don't forget you can do this with the Unreal Based games on Steam as well.
I think I'm with alot of people in that they would like to see a native Steam client for *nix.. I'd have to say that most people that run Nix and would be running steam would have enough brain power to realize not all games will run on *nix, and i'd be ok with having a little reminder or compatibility flag on the game./me is biased.
I concurr... don't you people start liking PACs now they are about something you have moderate interest in.. Frankly I think the game industry was doing fine as is.. sure there's bumps and stuff, but I don't see anything crippling on the horizon for most of the companies I follow.
And to put a damper on the idea.. guess who is going to have more clout in such a PAC?.. hint.. most people don't like them already..
Also, now there's a (better) avenue for the larger companies to try and push in legislation that would harm/cripple the smaller shops. Also maybe there will be stiffer legislation on 'clone' style games?
Just because there is a PAC for your subject matter doesn't mean they are going to enforce =your= views guys.. keep that in mind... unless you are on the list of people contributing big bucks to the PAC.
Agreed.. I'm happy that a non-C-game got a showing:]
I like Fluxx for it's stupid-simple play, zombie fluxx (which I just recently got to play) does make it a bit more complicated, but not enough so that you've gotten bogged down with rules.
Unfortunately I haven't ventured out to any of the new/replacement game shops in my area to see what new and interesting board games they have around.. i need to do that..:/
The most recent 2d game that I actually played for a while, that IS a real release and that ISN'T a flash based game would be Introversion's "Defcon".
It's only a year old guys.. surely you haven't forgotten about it!
The entire premise of the game is you looking at 'the big board' and nuking the other guys. It's totally a 2d interface.. they don't even mock 3d with things like 'shadows' on the units or anything.
Yeap.. it's been out for several days now.. it's the hyper-paced action.. but it plays well on my lowly 6600GT.. If you run XP64 or Win2k3 64, there is a 64-bit patch you -might- need. You can find it on Epic's site at http://www.epicgames.com/download/UT3Demo-XP64-2K3.zip
Bards Tale, Wasteland, Ultima 4 and 5 would be cool.
For Wasteland; I disagree.. make a (real) sequel or play the Fallout series.
For Ult5, there was a adaptation of it for Dungeon Siege that looks pretty good (never played it)... and what about Ult3?.. they made a newer versions of Bards Tale in 2004.
-------
These games don't need to be remade. Part of the appeal to them was they didn't have 'awesome graphics'... just like alot of movies.. if you add in more visual elements, I feel you take away the imagination requirement. I feel that it's the imagination element that helps to make you feel immersed.. you make up the details and it makes it more real for you..
What the subject says.. Anyone that read the Black Company series can find the tie ins and some overall plot similarities, but Bungie still filled in alot of their own content and added alot of unique things. It was an 'inspired by' and not a copy. I liked that.. it was good.
Probably the best thing about the Myth series was it was one of the first games I recall that had no mod tools, but was still heavily modded. Unfortunately I couldn't get into Myth 3 nearly as much as I could Myth 1 or 2.
Slashdot Mirror
There's one or two 'high' profile law differences between California and the Fed already.... why couldn't cali do what they want anyhow?
I won't pretend this is the LP party line, but it's how I feel about the topic:
Firstly, I do not feel it is the governments role to force people to be charitable. Forcibly taking my money away from me to aid, as they see fit, a person or persons I do not know.. I dunno like it. .. ya ya hold on though.. there's more..
Secondly; I do believe it's an individuals duty as a member of the human race to support your fellow people.. however.. you should do it as you see fit.. I help others by generally being a nice person and helping them with information about various topics. I'm Pro-Education and I have no problems teaching other people trade skills that I already know. I have no problem giving people I feel I can trust temporary shelter or fiscal loans to help them get on their feet.. I've done it many times in the past, and I will likely do it again in the future.
"Would I rather see you dead from disease".. no.. but if you are to unwilling to make an attempt to try and provide for yourself, I have little sympathy for you. If you continue to make the same poor decisions over and over again without learning from them; again.. little sympathy.
To bad he didn't live in San Fran.. :p .. ftfa; "Terry Childs, a 43-year-old computer network administrator who lives in Pittsburg"
(windows systems too.. I mean it is a muni we're talking about..)
But yes.. physical access to a device trumps all. It's probably something like they only have -one- guy that knows what he's doing.. and he just went from being fired to Fed-pound-you-Penn
.. but to the best of my knowledge, EULAs don't exactly have the best track-record when they goto court.
Also, can't most licenses be retracted by either party; an at-will contract?
(Isn't that how MMO's can Ban users, essentially at-will?)
The OPs statement of "If you buy a game, you transfer rights to the game developer that they can sue you for." is misleading and false.. you never had rights on the software begin with; beyond the whole 'Run A Copy on your machine'.
I figure most Licensing breaches are handled/settled well before the lawsuit step though (I know that's the case for alot of vendors, M$ included).
---
As for the whole retina thing.. I believe it would fall into a realm of 'un-enforcable'. Gouging out your eyes for looking at a supermodel without a license isn't considered a reasonable activity in most 1st world courts.
.. or if you can't do that, you can find some decent ones on the used market still...
One thing I noticed with my previous WTRG is that if I fired up to many port translations (read: torrenting), it'd just be to much for it (maybe exceeded it's PAT table? i dunno).. now I got me a 'rhymes with Crisco' (and I don't mean one made by Linksys), can't say it's ever needed a reload..
For the amount of money you probably ponied up for all those routers over the years, you're half-way to a real one already.
True..
but if you have a web-presense where you don't want to deal with having another POP/IMAP server to maintain yourself, you can point your MX's to Gmail..
Frankly.. I use google web app tools and love em.
What? comment your code?
Ludicrous!!
And I don't mean the guy that dances and wears diamonds.
I imagine the open-source 'vendors' have discussion about the topic somewhere.. right?
If people feel that strongly and that feature was a maker and breaker for them, they should cancel their service (aka: stop giving them money). When you do so, be sure to let them know why.. and unlike people that quit MMOs, do so in an intelligent manner.
There are in fact other competing services.. I don't know if they offer the same feature. I guess you have a similar thing at Ye Olde Video Store where the person just sorta picks up what they want... a crazy idea I know.. but it worked pretty well in the past.
And here I thought you were pointing out Modem Wars, which I played on my C=64.. predating the Genesis by a short while.. which.. was.. you know.. at least multiplayer.. and definitely strategy..
First few google hits are good information for those of you that never heard of it.
TBH, I think the RTS market is really divided into 2 groups; 1 is the Research/Harvest style.. Dune, Warcraft, AoE, etcc.. the 2nd (which I perfer) are games like Ground Control, WiC, Blitzkreig and a few others where you don't have any peasants to manage / gold to mine / so on.. elements that seemed to take most of the strategy out of the RTS..
Funny enough, I know people that can't stand turn-based strategy games but love the 'strategy' of RTSes, which usually seem to boil down into either early unit rushes, or end-game-heavy-unit crushes.
now where did I put my copy of WarGame Construction Set...
I concurr. CoV you weren't a Villian.. you were just an anti-hero.. you still wacked the same baddies).. which is sad because there was great potential there.
.. It let the casual player (me) play with some of my more hard-core player friends that were usually 2-3x my level.
Furthermore, what I really liked about CoH was the LACK of an economy orignally.. they added one sorta in now, but it doesn't have the feel of a system of a bigger MMO..
and secondaly, was the ability to play with your friends, regardless of level.. (the Sidekick/Exemplar) system, which imo, is the single greatest thing they brought to the MMO genre (since I'm not a big fan of level-based MMOs)..
The bad part of CoH is it's totally a grind fest, which is why it didn't have any staying power for alot of people likely.
The cost tie in per use for an ISP is more of a stepping system then a direct correlation, but it is in fact tied to the amount of B/W
If I have 10 customers that want 10mb of service.. and that's all I ever need to do, then all I need is 1x100mb pipe, and probably not much more then a entry-range switching/routing kit
But if I want to be able to transport CustomerA that wants a Gig in the MAN, well.. I better be able to transport 10G all the sudden or at least get multiple 1G links in my MAN.. which means I need to step up to switching/routing/optics that can handle that.
True.
The Road analogy is very relevant.. remember when they used to call the Internet "The Information Superhighway"..
"Building up the infrastructure to fully satisfy the full demand of everyone is a bit ridiculous. The water utilities can't do that, the electric utilities can't do this, the telephone companies could never do this, etc."
And what do the Utilities do to help regulate the usage a customer imposes on the system? They bill per metered unit.
Roads aren't as directly tied to it, but there are things like gasoline taxes that help make up for that... one could argue that it's partially 'metered', since there are very people that use a road without paying for gasoline (and most of them don't need something as broad as a road).
If people are going to start treating their Internet as a utility.. which most people do imo, then it wouldn't be unusual to have it billed like one.
We're actually looking at implementing a metered scheme for one of our major co-location customers.. because they asked for it. They are expecting bursty traffic, and don't want to front with a constant 'unlimited' high-speed pipe. So we've started looking into it.
So.. why not a hybrid system.. 2 tiers:
1- Unlimited access.. at 4mb/512k (or whatever). Plenty enough to do pretty much anything.. heck.. put it lower if you want.
2- Metered access.. you get a 10mb (or even 100mb) pipe to your house.. the plan includes Plan1 @ 24x7 worth of transfer already.. but after that, it's $5/GB of transfer. The power users that want -FAST- pipes get it.. and if they really don't just sit around and torrent all day, run an FTP, or whatever, then they are fine.
Eh.. some ramblings.. it's what I do best.
If I end up doing e-police for the winner, think I can get an appointment as ambassador to a tropical island?
:]
That said.. this article just helps to reflect the fact that major candidates might need to start thinking more on the IT side.. the elections are still held in Meat-Space, but a growing number of people are getting their news solely from Internet Sources, and of course many of the news programs get their sources from the Internet.
So.. do any candidates need a CIO?.. like I said.. i'll do it for a comfy post in the Caribbean
3 sir.. we could start using less power.. :]
Semi-Luddite I know, but we should also invest time/effort/capital into developing more efficient end devices (not end-user devices.. you had better include manufacturing/industrial and commercial in here.. they use -ALOT- of power compared to that rental house with 4 college kids and the monster TV..)
Solar is great.. but I'm still not sold on the overall NET environmental impact once you include the manufacturing process. I'll admit I haven't looked into it in anything remote to detail, but everything these days has a pretty heavy manu impact, and no energy production is really 'clean' when you look at it.. you just have to choose what you're willing to deal with (or go back to a hunter/gatherer society)
(all that said.. I'm pro-Nuke anyhow.. but there ARE in fact other options...)
> 6. With HL2 Engine based games, even play them in Linux with Wine.
/me is biased.
Actually don't forget you can do this with the Unreal Based games on Steam as well.
I think I'm with alot of people in that they would like to see a native Steam client for *nix.. I'd have to say that most people that run Nix and would be running steam would have enough brain power to realize not all games will run on *nix, and i'd be ok with having a little reminder or compatibility flag on the game.
Pip Pip!
.. hint.. most people don't like them already..
I concurr... don't you people start liking PACs now they are about something you have moderate interest in.. Frankly I think the game industry was doing fine as is.. sure there's bumps and stuff, but I don't see anything crippling on the horizon for most of the companies I follow.
And to put a damper on the idea.. guess who is going to have more clout in such a PAC?
Also, now there's a (better) avenue for the larger companies to try and push in legislation that would harm/cripple the smaller shops. Also maybe there will be stiffer legislation on 'clone' style games?
Just because there is a PAC for your subject matter doesn't mean they are going to enforce =your= views guys.. keep that in mind... unless you are on the list of people contributing big bucks to the PAC.
Agreed.. I'm happy that a non-C-game got a showing :]
:/
I like Fluxx for it's stupid-simple play, zombie fluxx (which I just recently got to play) does make it a bit more complicated, but not enough so that you've gotten bogged down with rules.
Unfortunately I haven't ventured out to any of the new/replacement game shops in my area to see what new and interesting board games they have around.. i need to do that..
What? You don't want the "Everyone Loves Raymond" MMORPG?
What's WRONG WITH YOU!?
The most recent 2d game that I actually played for a while, that IS a real release and that ISN'T a flash based game would be Introversion's "Defcon".
It's only a year old guys.. surely you haven't forgotten about it!
The entire premise of the game is you looking at 'the big board' and nuking the other guys. It's totally a 2d interface.. they don't even mock 3d with things like 'shadows' on the units or anything.
Yeap.. it's been out for several days now.. it's the hyper-paced action.. but it plays well on my lowly 6600GT..
If you run XP64 or Win2k3 64, there is a 64-bit patch you -might- need. You can find it on Epic's site at http://www.epicgames.com/download/UT3Demo-XP64-2K3.zip
That said..
Can I haz SDK now? kthx!
Bards Tale, Wasteland, Ultima 4 and 5 would be cool.
.. and what about Ult3? .. they made a newer versions of Bards Tale in 2004.
For Wasteland; I disagree.. make a (real) sequel or play the Fallout series.
For Ult5, there was a adaptation of it for Dungeon Siege that looks pretty good (never played it).
-------
These games don't need to be remade. Part of the appeal to them was they didn't have 'awesome graphics'... just like alot of movies.. if you add in more visual elements, I feel you take away the imagination requirement. I feel that it's the imagination element that helps to make you feel immersed.. you make up the details and it makes it more real for you..
Yeah.. sorry.. i mispoke.. Myth 2 did have them, Myth 1 didn't. But the other posters pointed that out already.
Memory lane for sure.. Good times :]
I played alot of SlugFest too back then.... unlike alot of people though, I didn't mind that much getting the middle and first punt.
What the subject says..
Anyone that read the Black Company series can find the tie ins and some overall plot similarities, but Bungie still filled in alot of their own content and added alot of unique things. It was an 'inspired by' and not a copy. I liked that.. it was good.
Probably the best thing about the Myth series was it was one of the first games I recall that had no mod tools, but was still heavily modded. Unfortunately I couldn't get into Myth 3 nearly as much as I could Myth 1 or 2.
VR Pool Party 4 lyfe!