Seriously.. what ads? I'm amazed whenever I have to fire up a default browser and i'm like "There are ads on this page?".. not to mention every now and again/. says "Hey you've been nice.. we can turn off ads for you".. "um.. there are ads?"
"To get to your examples: Nations having hierarchies sounds good when you're the first player, but not as the guy who started on a 5 year old game and where every rank above you is fillled with people who seemingly never quit. Some group of fucktards somewhere will make it their goal in life to get those postions just so they can then leave their account running without ever logging in, just so _you_ can't get them."
For a while there I forgot you were talking about a Mmmmogprrrr...
I concur, but I'm gonna put a small spin on it.. when I was in Frankfort DE earlier this year I definitely left the laptop at home, but I did have access to a Nokia N800 'palm top'.. most of the time it sat in a pocket, but when I needed to lookup something like train routes to other towns, or museum hours while eating lunch, it worked great.
yes, I could easily just goto the local bahnhof and get a schedule, but that could be out of the way.
But as for what other people say, if you bring a portable computing device, use it as a substitute for a dead-tree help guide. Honestly I don't think you'd even need something like that in the UK since there is no language barrier (well.. not really;] )
If you're sitting on a plane for as long as you are, go to enjoy yourself.
Watch the video.. honestly, I wonder if a couple layers of Tybek or something would do the same thing on the inside.
The video is very unconvincing as to it's claims.. they just shove a swing-chained cannon ball into a single-layer concrete block and a single-layer brick mini-wall. The strength of block/brick walls lies in it's interlocking members.. something I don't think you can really replicate on a 2'^2 section. Also, especially in the brick case, I don't think I've ever seen just a single-unsupported run of Brick (usually even if it's a skin wall, you'll have some wrap and framing behind it, although older brick construction would be multiple runs of brick).
The purpose of the wrap is to basically prevent a wall from being penetrated.. although per hte video, it'd still be horribly deformed. So worst case, you wouldn't get killed by the flying 2x4, but as the structure of your load-bearing wall fails, you'd instead have your house clapse on you?
It might be great stuff.. but um.. the video doesn't prove it. Perhaps a video with some explosions?
i think it's not so much about the need to heat the whole dome, but rather the fact that the dome would trap all the heat (and pollutants) inside the dome. The lack of air exchange would trap alot of the heat, pretty much exactly how a greenhouse works.
Frankly, I encourage these people to complete their dome. It'll reveal insight into how bad (or maybe good too?) the idea is and what can go wrong with them. Also, it'll be good practice for when/if we decide to colonize extra-terran bodies. I don't think anyone has tried a larger-scale enclose ecosystem like this before (yes I know it won't be entirely enclosed.. but gotta start somewhere).
If you want to make little science, occasionally you have to break some beakers.
I dunno.. I'm sure those skydivers made up their mind how things are will happen.. and even knowing that they stand a very very very very little change of dying, they can still exhibit Fear.
Also, even if the person in question had completely made peace with the fact they are gonna blow themselves up, what about the fear of being caught -before- being able to do the act? If you rot away in prison and get shivved, you're not a martyr, so you 'wouldn't get your heavenly reward'.. assuming you believe such poppycock in the first place.
The points about anti-anxiety drugs and the fact there will be sooo many false-positives for terrorists means that although this is neat stuff,they have a long way before being able to put it in airports for practical use as a security measure.
Because our 'good men' made the mess in the first place. If you make a mess, clean it up. That's good advice for a pre-schooler, and good advice for presidents.
I agree. Tell it to the European nations that fucked up the place in the early 1900s.
Not saying the US is blameless, but the US sure didn't own half the region until the 1940s either.
I dunno... breaking the promise to have 5-days of public exposure/comment on legislation before he signs and other transparency issues are sorta more important then the kept promise to get his kids a puppy.
But that's just me.
Frankly, 99% of the stuff executive branch people promise aren't within the powers of the executive branch.. and it annoys me how people both praise and scorn the execs for things the legistative should be doing.
Unfortunately, Obama did promise many transparency issues that are within the exec's power, many of which are either currently unfilled, or 'broken'. Of course this is a par for most politicians.. i'm not just picking on obama.
I believe there was a Nintendo-64 Accessory also, but the only link I can find using the "30-second google test" is to a Ebay auction, which I shant repost.
The problem is the number of people who don't go to school for those things, but who go because "everyone needs to go to college" and they choose a major like that because they need to choose something.....
The guy who sits in a cubicle churning out TPS reports a five-year-old could write is automatically elevated over a master CNC machinist and programmer simply because he has a degree and works in an office. There ought to be no shame in taking up a trade like machining or welding; a good machinist, for example, is as valuable to a company as any engineer.
As someone who lives in a Uni town, worked in a machine shop, got some college, and now sits in a cubical (well.. I do not to turn out TPS reports.. thank the FSM); I wholey endorse the parent and agree with what the comment said.
I see tons of people that think college is just a 4-year extension of High School, and the degradation of the K-12 US schooling system (or it seems like it's dumber then when I was in it), means that often HS grads are in fact not qualified for basic jobs.
Correct.. I did not read the (included for historical and anecdotal purposes, but otherwise not relevant to this incident), Therac-25 article.. Instead I read the LATimes article that this story is about, and the FDA recommendation.. neither which had "One example cited that a machine operator who ran through the dosage screen too quickly caused a race and a resultant incorrect dosage."
Good job reading the wrong article:]
The personal jab aside, you're correct in that you cannot test every condition, they will "always build a better idiot"; however in this case it, based on the FDA and LATimes articles, it seems that just measuring the dosages would have been sufficient to reveal this problem. Yes, if it is displayed on the monitoring equipment (I'm not a radiologist, so I don't know), then yes, the operator should know what is a safe dosage.
Maybe next time they will test the damn thing before subjecting patients to it? It's a built in part of my job that I test/confirm a change after I make a change.. because often there's a likely hood of something unexpected or improperly explained that can cause an issue.
How hard would it have been to stick a dosimeter in the machine after the change and run it though a test? (I realize that just a basic dosimeter might not be a sufficient measure.. but it would have been good to get a before/after.. and something like a 8-fold increase would have been easily detectable!)
As for 3/4, yes.. EA already owns UO.. they could just re-purpose the engine, re-art for {XYZ Franchise} and call it done. The -bad- tihng about top-down is generally your view distance is severally limited. Good for your frame-rates, bad for looking at the scenic vistas most 3d MMOs do goto some effort to include.
...but in using it you're also handing control of your software including activation of it to Valve even if you also want to distribute via standard hard copy retail. Should games companies really be stuck with a choice between handing access control to their software to a competitor or losing out on a large amount of sales?
FALSE. When I bought X3:TC on Steam, Steam supplied me with the software key for my purchase, however, I still had to goto X3's site to actually activate my copy of the game. Also the copy of Fallen Earth I bought, same deal.. I still had to go and activate/register on the FE site.
From the customers point of view Steam also takes away the ability to even sell games activated by Steam, but bought on physical media second hand. I agree.. however your option is to not buy Digital-Delivered software in the cases where it's available in a Brick-and-Mortar, or steer clear of 'Steam Required' titles [or the 3rd nefarious option, Pirate it..]. Use your dollah-vote.
As for requiring Steam, how it is worse then requiring 'Games for Windows Activation' ?.. or in the case of DoW2, both!:/
OK, seriously.. how would it be anti-trust?! Maybe is alot of other shops fold up.. but if every other person with my skillset dies suddenly, and I to be held in violation of the trust laws? If Valve was playing dirty, then you have those violations.. but I haven't seen anything (yet) to indicate Valve is playing dirty.
There are many large outlets/retailers for software titles. You have to remember to include brick-and-mortar stores as they are also outlets for software. Total guess here, but I think Best Buy and WalMart are both larger then Steam/Valve.
IMO, what people should be pissed about is the big name publishers like EA using Steam/DirectDrive/whatever to keep a larger piece of the pie (since they no longer have to give WalMart a cut from those sales..).. of course the company has to price the title the same as what they put in Walmart, or else Walmart would refuse to carry the title at all... so on and so on.
As for competition.. there was alot more in the realm of digital-software-delivery once upon a time.. problem is I personally want a strong provider for my digitial delivery, esp since they do have a bit of DRM-like stuff onboard it the titles they supply. Yes, I can run Steam in Offline mode.. but I've had issues trying to patch a few titles that I got on steam and the patch hasn't hit Steam yet.
Disclaimer: I am a developer on a FPS mod (read: free) that is available via Steam.
That's a fundemental difference in who gets the revenue. The Movie Producers get your ticket money. The Theatre gets the money for the Pepsi Ad you watch before the movie.
My understanding is movie theaters pretty much make zip on the ticket sale.. they generate most of their revenue in ads and concessions.
"I can see it now, a WoW loading screen: "This instance brought to you by McDonalds, why not fight Onyxia while chowing down on our new Quadruple Big-Mac? And how about you wash it down with one of our gallon cups of Mountain Dew, Game Fuel?" "
What?! Your game doesn't support the/pizza command?!
In the OPs example of Times Square, in a contempory-themed game title, real ads would work great, and would in fact enhance the experience. However you're correct in that the legal-wrangling involved between the companies might make it hard to do well.
I'd be A-OK with ads in titles like MMOs if: - The revenues went to cost-deferring expenses for the player (either make the game free-to-play, no-up-front cost, or otherwise use a good portion of the moneies to expand/enhance the title) - Ads are in-character for the game title.. this means both placement and appearance. They should blend into the background.. ---- A coke add in Fallen Earth should be gritty and dirty, but still recognizable (because if you can't recognize the product, then why buy the ad?). This would very likely require custom ad campaign generation for each game title. ----- A McDonalds ad in {generic Fantasy RPG} could be a 'scottish-like' building that serves up inexpensive consumables. Since games rarely consider dietary considerations beyond 'food restores hitpoints' that makes it easy to skate around issues like 'eating 10000 orders of fries will kill you' stuff. - And as pointed out above, many companies aren't interested in having their product placed next to a pile of corpses, or otherwise depicted in less then angelic environs and situations. The game company would also have to act responsible to the immersion of the player. Putting Camel ads in a My-Little-Pony MMORPG would be non-immersible.. some products just aren't suitable for all genres.
Don't forget most FPSes, they've been doing it since the Wolf3d editor came out.
Frankly, The main reason companies -want- to offer custom content abilities is to extend the lifespan of their title. Also they often get really great ideas out of it (for example: Epic's Make Something Unreal contest, which had entries that later spawned at least 3 retail titles I know about.. definitely 2 that use the Unreal Engine, which generates additional licensing for Epic...; the other thing about Unreal in particular is lately the game itself blows, I only keep buying them -for- the mods).
As for MMOs, Second Life would probably be king of user-generated content, but in general I think it brings about certain issues having player-generated-content that brings things like new-art into the game. In UO you frequently had player-created story-arcs.
The town I live in has a free municipal provided 802.11b network in the 'downtown' areas; admittedly though ~12 city blocks in size. It sometimes goes wonky and is inaccessible for times, but it's there, and it's free, and works the majority of the time.
As a company, we actually looked at offering Wifi as a for-pay last-mile service, but the reality of our tree coverage and distances (towns in the south US are a bit on the sprawl-side) meant we'd put APs so frequently it couldn't compete on price with already in-ground stuff (cable modems/dsl).
That doesn't even include the horde of open-access points the college students usually put up either.
UrbanDead isn't that far from what you're talking about.. there's actually a serious lack of 'meta-abilities' in the game (like trading), which imo go to help it and keep it from being being noon-stompy.
The issue alot of ppl have with it is it's a real-time turn/based sorta game.. when you're waiting for turns to refresh, your toon is just sitting there (hopefully barricaded up in a building with other survivors for protection...)
I think for CALEA ('lawful intercept', aka warrant-backed-spying of your traffic, at least in the US), calls broadband anything > 128kbps broadband (or there abouts.. it reminded me of something like shotgunned ISDN lines). The difference being anything less then that they can just get a run-of-the-mill telephone wire tap from the local Bell.
I'm sorta wondering how any definition the FCC passes will get abused in the future. This should be fun to watch.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been pretty happy with my Cisco 1800 series at home.
Alternatively, you could do the whole PC-Wirewall/router thing.. if you do, sink time into getting a few real NICs.. not all NICs are equal!
Seriously.. what ads? I'm amazed whenever I have to fire up a default browser and i'm like "There are ads on this page?".. not to mention every now and again /. says "Hey you've been nice.. we can turn off ads for you".. "um.. there are ads?"
Adblock.. I love you.
(unfortunately it makes FF start up slower :/ )
"To get to your examples: Nations having hierarchies sounds good when you're the first player, but not as the guy who started on a 5 year old game and where every rank above you is fillled with people who seemingly never quit. Some group of fucktards somewhere will make it their goal in life to get those postions just so they can then leave their account running without ever logging in, just so _you_ can't get them."
For a while there I forgot you were talking about a Mmmmogprrrr...
I concur, but I'm gonna put a small spin on it.. when I was in Frankfort DE earlier this year I definitely left the laptop at home, but I did have access to a Nokia N800 'palm top'.. most of the time it sat in a pocket, but when I needed to lookup something like train routes to other towns, or museum hours while eating lunch, it worked great.
yes, I could easily just goto the local bahnhof and get a schedule, but that could be out of the way.
But as for what other people say, if you bring a portable computing device, use it as a substitute for a dead-tree help guide. Honestly I don't think you'd even need something like that in the UK since there is no language barrier (well.. not really ;] )
If you're sitting on a plane for as long as you are, go to enjoy yourself.
Watch the video.. honestly, I wonder if a couple layers of Tybek or something would do the same thing on the inside.
The video is very unconvincing as to it's claims.. they just shove a swing-chained cannon ball into a single-layer concrete block and a single-layer brick mini-wall. The strength of block/brick walls lies in it's interlocking members.. something I don't think you can really replicate on a 2'^2 section. Also, especially in the brick case, I don't think I've ever seen just a single-unsupported run of Brick (usually even if it's a skin wall, you'll have some wrap and framing behind it, although older brick construction would be multiple runs of brick).
The purpose of the wrap is to basically prevent a wall from being penetrated.. although per hte video, it'd still be horribly deformed. So worst case, you wouldn't get killed by the flying 2x4, but as the structure of your load-bearing wall fails, you'd instead have your house clapse on you?
It might be great stuff.. but um.. the video doesn't prove it. Perhaps a video with some explosions?
.. they should call it "GOTO". :] (Go Two? get it? har har..)
i think it's not so much about the need to heat the whole dome, but rather the fact that the dome would trap all the heat (and pollutants) inside the dome. The lack of air exchange would trap alot of the heat, pretty much exactly how a greenhouse works.
Frankly, I encourage these people to complete their dome. It'll reveal insight into how bad (or maybe good too?) the idea is and what can go wrong with them.
Also, it'll be good practice for when/if we decide to colonize extra-terran bodies. I don't think anyone has tried a larger-scale enclose ecosystem like this before (yes I know it won't be entirely enclosed.. but gotta start somewhere).
If you want to make little science, occasionally you have to break some beakers.
I'll be dead and cold in my grave before I recognize the state of Missouri.
I dunno.. I'm sure those skydivers made up their mind how things are will happen.. and even knowing that they stand a very very very very little change of dying, they can still exhibit Fear.
Also, even if the person in question had completely made peace with the fact they are gonna blow themselves up, what about the fear of being caught -before- being able to do the act? If you rot away in prison and get shivved, you're not a martyr, so you 'wouldn't get your heavenly reward'.. assuming you believe such poppycock in the first place.
The points about anti-anxiety drugs and the fact there will be sooo many false-positives for terrorists means that although this is neat stuff ,they have a long way before being able to put it in airports for practical use as a security measure.
Because our 'good men' made the mess in the first place. If you make a mess, clean it up. That's good advice for a pre-schooler, and good advice for presidents.
I agree.
Tell it to the European nations that fucked up the place in the early 1900s.
Not saying the US is blameless, but the US sure didn't own half the region until the 1940s either.
I dunno... breaking the promise to have 5-days of public exposure/comment on legislation before he signs and other transparency issues are sorta more important then the kept promise to get his kids a puppy.
But that's just me.
Frankly, 99% of the stuff executive branch people promise aren't within the powers of the executive branch.. and it annoys me how people both praise and scorn the execs for things the legistative should be doing.
Unfortunately, Obama did promise many transparency issues that are within the exec's power, many of which are either currently unfilled, or 'broken'. Of course this is a par for most politicians.. i'm not just picking on obama.
I believe there was a Nintendo-64 Accessory also, but the only link I can find using the "30-second google test" is to a Ebay auction, which I shant repost.
The problem is the number of people who don't go to school for those things, but who go because "everyone needs to go to college" and they choose a major like that because they need to choose something. ....
The guy who sits in a cubicle churning out TPS reports a five-year-old could write is automatically elevated over a master CNC machinist and programmer simply because he has a degree and works in an office. There ought to be no shame in taking up a trade like machining or welding; a good machinist, for example, is as valuable to a company as any engineer.
As someone who lives in a Uni town, worked in a machine shop, got some college, and now sits in a cubical (well.. I do not to turn out TPS reports.. thank the FSM); I wholey endorse the parent and agree with what the comment said.
I see tons of people that think college is just a 4-year extension of High School, and the degradation of the K-12 US schooling system (or it seems like it's dumber then when I was in it), means that often HS grads are in fact not qualified for basic jobs.
"Good job not reading TFA."
Correct.. I did not read the (included for historical and anecdotal purposes, but otherwise not relevant to this incident), Therac-25 article.. Instead I read the LATimes article that this story is about, and the FDA recommendation.. neither which had "One example cited that a machine operator who ran through the dosage screen too quickly caused a race and a resultant incorrect dosage."
Good job reading the wrong article :]
The personal jab aside, you're correct in that you cannot test every condition, they will "always build a better idiot"; however in this case it, based on the FDA and LATimes articles, it seems that just measuring the dosages would have been sufficient to reveal this problem. Yes, if it is displayed on the monitoring equipment (I'm not a radiologist, so I don't know), then yes, the operator should know what is a safe dosage.
Maybe next time they will test the damn thing before subjecting patients to it? It's a built in part of my job that I test/confirm a change after I make a change.. because often there's a likely hood of something unexpected or improperly explained that can cause an issue.
How hard would it have been to stick a dosimeter in the machine after the change and run it though a test?
(I realize that just a basic dosimeter might not be a sufficient measure.. but it would have been good to get a before/after.. and something like a 8-fold increase would have been easily detectable!)
What's a "Classic MMO" ?
As for 3/4, yes.. EA already owns UO.. they could just re-purpose the engine, re-art for {XYZ Franchise} and call it done.
The -bad- tihng about top-down is generally your view distance is severally limited. Good for your frame-rates, bad for looking at the scenic vistas most 3d MMOs do goto some effort to include.
...but in using it you're also handing control of your software including activation of it to Valve even if you also want to distribute via standard hard copy retail.
Should games companies really be stuck with a choice between handing access control to their software to a competitor or losing out on a large amount of sales?
FALSE.
When I bought X3:TC on Steam, Steam supplied me with the software key for my purchase, however, I still had to goto X3's site to actually activate my copy of the game. Also the copy of Fallen Earth I bought, same deal.. I still had to go and activate/register on the FE site.
From the customers point of view Steam also takes away the ability to even sell games activated by Steam, but bought on physical media second hand.
I agree.. however your option is to not buy Digital-Delivered software in the cases where it's available in a Brick-and-Mortar, or steer clear of 'Steam Required' titles [or the 3rd nefarious option, Pirate it..]. Use your dollah-vote.
As for requiring Steam, how it is worse then requiring 'Games for Windows Activation' ?.. or in the case of DoW2, both! :/
OK, seriously.. how would it be anti-trust?! Maybe is alot of other shops fold up.. but if every other person with my skillset dies suddenly, and I to be held in violation of the trust laws? If Valve was playing dirty, then you have those violations.. but I haven't seen anything (yet) to indicate Valve is playing dirty.
There are many large outlets/retailers for software titles. You have to remember to include brick-and-mortar stores as they are also outlets for software. Total guess here, but I think Best Buy and WalMart are both larger then Steam/Valve.
IMO, what people should be pissed about is the big name publishers like EA using Steam/DirectDrive/whatever to keep a larger piece of the pie (since they no longer have to give WalMart a cut from those sales..).. of course the company has to price the title the same as what they put in Walmart, or else Walmart would refuse to carry the title at all... so on and so on.
As for competition.. there was alot more in the realm of digital-software-delivery once upon a time.. problem is I personally want a strong provider for my digitial delivery, esp since they do have a bit of DRM-like stuff onboard it the titles they supply. Yes, I can run Steam in Offline mode.. but I've had issues trying to patch a few titles that I got on steam and the patch hasn't hit Steam yet.
Disclaimer: I am a developer on a FPS mod (read: free) that is available via Steam.
That's a fundemental difference in who gets the revenue.
The Movie Producers get your ticket money.
The Theatre gets the money for the Pepsi Ad you watch before the movie.
My understanding is movie theaters pretty much make zip on the ticket sale.. they generate most of their revenue in ads and concessions.
"I can see it now, a WoW loading screen: "This instance brought to you by McDonalds, why not fight Onyxia while chowing down on our new Quadruple Big-Mac? And how about you wash it down with one of our gallon cups of Mountain Dew, Game Fuel?" "
What?! Your game doesn't support the /pizza command?!
I concurr.
In the OPs example of Times Square, in a contempory-themed game title, real ads would work great, and would in fact enhance the experience. However you're correct in that the legal-wrangling involved between the companies might make it hard to do well.
I'd be A-OK with ads in titles like MMOs if:
- The revenues went to cost-deferring expenses for the player (either make the game free-to-play, no-up-front cost, or otherwise use a good portion of the moneies to expand/enhance the title)
- Ads are in-character for the game title.. this means both placement and appearance. They should blend into the background..
---- A coke add in Fallen Earth should be gritty and dirty, but still recognizable (because if you can't recognize the product, then why buy the ad?). This would very likely require custom ad campaign generation for each game title.
----- A McDonalds ad in {generic Fantasy RPG} could be a 'scottish-like' building that serves up inexpensive consumables. Since games rarely consider dietary considerations beyond 'food restores hitpoints' that makes it easy to skate around issues like 'eating 10000 orders of fries will kill you' stuff.
- And as pointed out above, many companies aren't interested in having their product placed next to a pile of corpses, or otherwise depicted in less then angelic environs and situations. The game company would also have to act responsible to the immersion of the player. Putting Camel ads in a My-Little-Pony MMORPG would be non-immersible.. some products just aren't suitable for all genres.
Don't forget most FPSes, they've been doing it since the Wolf3d editor came out.
Frankly, The main reason companies -want- to offer custom content abilities is to extend the lifespan of their title. Also they often get really great ideas out of it (for example: Epic's Make Something Unreal contest, which had entries that later spawned at least 3 retail titles I know about.. definitely 2 that use the Unreal Engine, which generates additional licensing for Epic...; the other thing about Unreal in particular is lately the game itself blows, I only keep buying them -for- the mods).
As for MMOs, Second Life would probably be king of user-generated content, but in general I think it brings about certain issues having player-generated-content that brings things like new-art into the game. In UO you frequently had player-created story-arcs.
The town I live in has a free municipal provided 802.11b network in the 'downtown' areas; admittedly though ~12 city blocks in size. It sometimes goes wonky and is inaccessible for times, but it's there, and it's free, and works the majority of the time.
As a company, we actually looked at offering Wifi as a for-pay last-mile service, but the reality of our tree coverage and distances (towns in the south US are a bit on the sprawl-side) meant we'd put APs so frequently it couldn't compete on price with already in-ground stuff (cable modems/dsl).
That doesn't even include the horde of open-access points the college students usually put up either.
UrbanDead isn't that far from what you're talking about.. there's actually a serious lack of 'meta-abilities' in the game (like trading), which imo go to help it and keep it from being being noon-stompy.
The issue alot of ppl have with it is it's a real-time turn/based sorta game.. when you're waiting for turns to refresh, your toon is just sitting there (hopefully barricaded up in a building with other survivors for protection...)
I think for CALEA ('lawful intercept', aka warrant-backed-spying of your traffic, at least in the US), calls broadband anything > 128kbps broadband (or there abouts.. it reminded me of something like shotgunned ISDN lines). The difference being anything less then that they can just get a run-of-the-mill telephone wire tap from the local Bell.
I'm sorta wondering how any definition the FCC passes will get abused in the future. This should be fun to watch.