I find the game hard to play with 4 players, especially in public games where everyone does his own things. I can't see the freeze and shocking orbs from Elites because there are too many Meteors and Blizzard and Zombie Bears clustering the screen. Low frame rate during intensive fights is already a problem for many. Having 6 in a game will just be chaos.
I was playing Act IV, not knowing the exact time of RoS launch, and was surprised by the announcement that RoS had launched. I left the game after killing the Key Warden and created a new game for Act V. There was no need to log out. The server was stable. I don't think I ever experienced an expansion launch as smooth as this one.
Based on my personal experience, students in those top ranking Asia Pacific area are taught at a faster pace and exposed to far more challenging questions in school. When I moved to Canada from Hong Kong, I didn't have to study Math for a year and a half because I learned almost everything already. The Asian students have far more homework. The more anxious parents send their kids to tutors, not necessarily because they are falling behind, but also to get ahead of the class. They don't need to "teach to the test" at all to get far better score. They simply know more and face difficult questions on a regular basis.
That's fine for your company's internal meetings. You are only sitting with your co-workers and the setting is likely not very formal. But the article specifically says formal business meetings and that's another story. In these occasions you need to be more serious and show respect to people in the room. Texting or talking on the phone (even walking outside to do so) would be something to frown upon.
This is only partly true. Battleships were rendered irrelevant by carriers. But nothing has replaced carriers in naval battles yet. All advancements since WWII had revolved around carriers by extending their range, improving their protections, and weapons to sink them.
US carriers can easily strike China from beyond the reach of Chinese missiles. Chinese submarines aren't silent as their US counterparts. Chinese fighters will not easily get within range to hit the carrier before getting intercepted.
But for China, even with a carrier battle group, their navy is still no match for the US navy, and they lack the means to protect it as well.
You see. If scientific journals like Nature publishes the map supporting China's claim to that territory, it lends more legitimacy to their rather ridiculous claim of those islands. The Chinese officials can then argue that their claim is supported by these respected journals. It does not really change much, but China is happy to gain any tiny advantage. This is totally in line with their increasingly aggressive stance in the Pacific.
I disagree that a laser that can destroy space debris is "politically not great" for its potential as weapon. Remember that space debris are very small objects, measured in cm or even mm. A laser powerful enough to destroy these small objects is hardly a powerful weapon, and there are plenty of much more powerful alternatives if harm needs be done. As a destructive force laser is horribly ineffective. With decades of research, the best use of laser in military is still intercepting missiles. I cannot see why other countries will have strong opposition to deploying laser for space debris.
Keep your ignorance away from here. Ice hockey is the biggest sport in Canada. In Vancouver, the Stanley Cup final game 7 is THE biggest sports event. The anticipation for Canucks to win their first Stanley Cup title is huge.
However, the hockey game is unlikely the true reason behind the riot. The rioters were prepared to riot. They brought the tools with them to set fire before the game even started. Many of the arrested were known rioters, who caused problems before the Winter Olympics in 2010.
From reading this, I get a feeling that you are just repeating propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party. The stability (or in Chinese term, "harmony") over freedom argument is especially familiar to anyone paying attention to Chinese media. Even in Hong Kong we read that all the time from the left-leaning newspaper.
This problem is that this stability is established on suppression of dissents. It does not actually address the cause of instabilities. The unfairness in the Chinese society is well known. Inflation is high again. Government officials are corrupt. Abuse of power is common, often illegally but usually the officials are able to get away with it. All these contribute to the anger of the less fortunate crowd. To make matters worse, the media, usually controlled by the government, tend to downplay or simply ignore their plight. This effectively removes a vent for them to express themselves in the society. People don't protest because they are stupid (an false assumption you base all your arguments on), but because they are expressing their anger in certain way.
You are assuming that Google is trying to get Android phones to replace light switches. This is, however, only one of many possible applications. With a smart phone you can do much more complicated tasks than flipping a switch.
Keep in mind that your phone is linked to a network. You can control things at home while you are miles away. You can turn off home heating when you are at work, then turn it on half an hour before going home. You can fill your bathtub up with hot water that you can jump right in after work. I am sure some bright minds out there will think of more interesting ideas.
Essentially this technology allows you to control multiple things with a single remote controller. And with a touch screen, the interface can be much easier than what is available now.
This is not the first time China got caught conducting espionage of this sort. But US has no means to deter China from continuing. At best the States Department will complain about it, and a war of words ensues until the story dies down.
No one outside China takes the Chinese media's views seriously as the media outlets are clearly controlled, or at least tightly watched over, by the government. It does not matter though. Their intended audiences are the Chinese citizens who listen to them daily. Only a very small portion of the citizens actually get news from outside. The Chinese media just have to spin the story around so that US is the true villain in this internet war game, that Google is secretly helping the evil empire of US. As long as the Chinese think their government is in the right, that's mission accomplished.
...actually works out fine for Canada in the last couple years. Conservatives are concerned about losing votes and decide not to bring most controversial issues to the table (e.g. abortion, same-sex marriage), knowing that the oppositions can bring down the government at any time they like. On the other hand, oppositions do not obstruct legislation or stop the government from getting things done because they are also concerned about the votes. With a majority, the Canadian DMCA would have passed with ease.
It does not change the fact that TomTom is secretly submitting data collected from its customers to the police for a profit. I don't want the bottom line of privacy to be "as long as your name does not appear on it, it is fine".
"The United States reports the world's highest incidence of violent crimes"
- More than Mexico where thousands are dying in drug gang violence? Besides, US has a large population, if you use violent crimes per capita as a measure, you should find US quite low in the table, although not as good as most other developed countries.
"The U.S. regards itself as "the beacon of democracy. However, its democracy is largely based on money. "
- Not that I like the big spending on elections, but is fund raising not part of the democracy? I highly doubt if fund raising for a political party is allowed in China.
"While advocating Internet freedom, the U.S. in fact imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace. On June 24, 2010, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which will give the federal government "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency. Handing government the power to control the Internet will only be the first step towards a greatly restricted Internet system, whereby individual IDs and government permission would be required to operate a website."
- Power to shut down the internet is just granting legal power for government to stop a serious cyber war. It's hard to see the US government getting away with shutting down the internet for stopping protests like the dictators do in Middle East. The last sentence is merely China assuming US will follow its footsteps. It has not happened and will not happen in near future.
"Unemployment rate in the United States has been stubbornly high. From December 2007 to October 2010, a total of 7.5 million jobs were lost in the country "...
- What does a severe financial meltdown has to do with human rights? Oh right, in China human rights mean having rice to eat.
a) Afghanistan is not known for oil exports. Oil was not the reason why we invaded the country. We were there because Taliban was providing a safe haven for al-Qaeda. It was not an avoidable war. It could have been handled better, but that's besides the point.
b) One of the motivations of "spending trillion to build robot soldiers" is to avoid "sacrificing thousands of human lives". It is better to have robots defusing bombs.
c) As a global superpower, you need to spend on military. It is unfortunate that a large portion of it is wasted, but developing robots is probably one of the better spent projects, since we are actively putting them to good use.
...and as soon as possible. If force is needed, so be it.
For years the US let North Korea get whatever way they want. NK leaders learned from Mao that military might is what keeps people, both inside and outside the country, fear them. The military power is their only bargaining chips. The more nukes they have, the more likely they can get things their way. This is why talks will never work. The NK leaders know that giving up nukes will seriously undermine their negotiating power. Not even China can possibly convince them.
Right now they threaten to nuke if "provoked". In few years time, they will threaten to nuke if S.Korea refuse to ship them food.
As of now, the government alone defines what is secret and what is not. It rightly keeps the diplomats' reports of foreign leaders away from public eye. More often than not, deals are better made under the table. These are fine, but at the same time, it covers up the illegal actions (things like kidnapping German citizens, killing Iraqi civilians) for its own convenience.
This is where Wikileaks becomes important. It lets people know what government is doing behind their backs, allowing them to scrutinize it and hold is responsible. And more importantly, it makes government harder to cover up its mess. If there is a bigger chance of being exposed, the government has to think more carefully about the possible consequences.
I am merely pointing out a popular belief in China, and how our perceived failures in politics and economy help to promote such a belief across the Pacific. When US was at its height of global dominance, around time of USSR's downfall, having proven Communism wrong, its capitalist and political system were admired by the developing countries and seen as the undisputed correct way forward. And now with the power balance slowly shifts to the new rising powers, the values held by US, freedom and democracy are no longer seen as the undisputed best way forward.
The idea of stable and harmonious society in China can perhaps be traced back to the June 4 massacre in 1989. In the 80's China opened its market to outside, and like many developing countries, corruption and inflation quickly surfaced. The protests against them quickly gained momentum and ended in the tragedy that is still an unspeakable taboo in China. But the story did not end here. China picked up its economic reforms after Deng XiaoPing's southern tour, and began its miraculous growth.
This gave rise to the impression of causation effect. That is, the suppression of the protest ensured social stability, which was a pre-requisite to economic growth. With this idea the communist party justified its actions in June 4 1989 (but they prefer not to talk about it). As long as economy continues to grow, they can use it to suppress any challenge to their rule. The West demanding more openness? That's a conspiracy to undermine the economy.
Any political and economic system is ultimately judged by end results. China's recent success and rise would give more weight to the system they have. And if US and Europe continue to struggle, it only strengthens China's point of view, and ultimately gives it more justifications to suppress people.
If the government don't lock up disruptive individuals who cause public unrest. The harmony in the country will be gone, and the whole economy will tank. Personal freedom is a small price to pay for a thriving economy. Look at the US and Europe now. Their freedom of expression mires them in endless internal silly arguments while not solving any pressing problem.
This is actually a popular view in China and the party actively promotes it. Our increasingly frustrating politics make it more and more believable.
The hunger strikers are not Google employees. Labor laws would not apply to them. Their companies had contracts with Google. As far as I can tell, Google terminated the contracts lawfully. Google owes them nothing, but they are likely betting on generating some public pressure to force Google to "compensate" their "loss".
The younger, more urban, and less white Americans are a lot less likely to vote. With Republicans riding on the rage and Democrats failing to do anything about it, the outcome is too predictable in this midterm election.
China has always been poor in enforcing some basic safety requirements. Every year thousands of Chinese miners die in all sorts of mine-related accidents. Factories can dump toxic chemicals into rivers and get away with it. Harmful materials are regularly used as cheap substitutes in manufacturing. Better yet, most reports on these horrible practices are quickly suppressed. Welcome to the harmonous and prosperous society of Middle Kingdom.
It seems D3 allows much more customizations of character builds with the new tech tree system and skill runes, but I have my doubts that this will actually work. Gamers typically take very little time to figure out what combination of skills (+runes) work best. Most of the skill rune combos will not be attractive options and we end up with few overpowered builds. In D2 each class had few viable builds that could survive hell difficulty, and had half of their skill tree virtually unused. If the skill balancing and specialization are not well planned out, all the new skill systems will be in vain.
Another problem is the necessity of grinding to get mid-high end items. Most D2 players made a sorc just to run Mephisto over and over, and perhaps other builds to specialize at one single dungeon. There is no mention of how D3 will be different.
My last complain is the new classes look like simple mix of D2 classes. I'm not saying the play style will be similar, but something unique would be very welcomed.
How can this technology replace my mouse, which has 4 buttons and a wheel? My thumb can click the left-most button easily, but tabbing the surface will be harder. And what about the increased friction? I probably won't enjoy rubbing my palm and fingers on the surface all day long.
Slashdot Mirror
I find the game hard to play with 4 players, especially in public games where everyone does his own things. I can't see the freeze and shocking orbs from Elites because there are too many Meteors and Blizzard and Zombie Bears clustering the screen. Low frame rate during intensive fights is already a problem for many. Having 6 in a game will just be chaos.
I was playing Act IV, not knowing the exact time of RoS launch, and was surprised by the announcement that RoS had launched. I left the game after killing the Key Warden and created a new game for Act V. There was no need to log out. The server was stable. I don't think I ever experienced an expansion launch as smooth as this one.
Based on my personal experience, students in those top ranking Asia Pacific area are taught at a faster pace and exposed to far more challenging questions in school. When I moved to Canada from Hong Kong, I didn't have to study Math for a year and a half because I learned almost everything already. The Asian students have far more homework. The more anxious parents send their kids to tutors, not necessarily because they are falling behind, but also to get ahead of the class. They don't need to "teach to the test" at all to get far better score. They simply know more and face difficult questions on a regular basis.
That's fine for your company's internal meetings. You are only sitting with your co-workers and the setting is likely not very formal. But the article specifically says formal business meetings and that's another story. In these occasions you need to be more serious and show respect to people in the room. Texting or talking on the phone (even walking outside to do so) would be something to frown upon.
This is only partly true. Battleships were rendered irrelevant by carriers. But nothing has replaced carriers in naval battles yet. All advancements since WWII had revolved around carriers by extending their range, improving their protections, and weapons to sink them.
US carriers can easily strike China from beyond the reach of Chinese missiles. Chinese submarines aren't silent as their US counterparts. Chinese fighters will not easily get within range to hit the carrier before getting intercepted.
But for China, even with a carrier battle group, their navy is still no match for the US navy, and they lack the means to protect it as well.
You see. If scientific journals like Nature publishes the map supporting China's claim to that territory, it lends more legitimacy to their rather ridiculous claim of those islands. The Chinese officials can then argue that their claim is supported by these respected journals. It does not really change much, but China is happy to gain any tiny advantage. This is totally in line with their increasingly aggressive stance in the Pacific.
I disagree that a laser that can destroy space debris is "politically not great" for its potential as weapon. Remember that space debris are very small objects, measured in cm or even mm. A laser powerful enough to destroy these small objects is hardly a powerful weapon, and there are plenty of much more powerful alternatives if harm needs be done. As a destructive force laser is horribly ineffective. With decades of research, the best use of laser in military is still intercepting missiles. I cannot see why other countries will have strong opposition to deploying laser for space debris.
Keep your ignorance away from here. Ice hockey is the biggest sport in Canada. In Vancouver, the Stanley Cup final game 7 is THE biggest sports event. The anticipation for Canucks to win their first Stanley Cup title is huge.
However, the hockey game is unlikely the true reason behind the riot. The rioters were prepared to riot. They brought the tools with them to set fire before the game even started. Many of the arrested were known rioters, who caused problems before the Winter Olympics in 2010.
From reading this, I get a feeling that you are just repeating propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party. The stability (or in Chinese term, "harmony") over freedom argument is especially familiar to anyone paying attention to Chinese media. Even in Hong Kong we read that all the time from the left-leaning newspaper.
This problem is that this stability is established on suppression of dissents. It does not actually address the cause of instabilities. The unfairness in the Chinese society is well known. Inflation is high again. Government officials are corrupt. Abuse of power is common, often illegally but usually the officials are able to get away with it. All these contribute to the anger of the less fortunate crowd. To make matters worse, the media, usually controlled by the government, tend to downplay or simply ignore their plight. This effectively removes a vent for them to express themselves in the society. People don't protest because they are stupid (an false assumption you base all your arguments on), but because they are expressing their anger in certain way.
You are assuming that Google is trying to get Android phones to replace light switches. This is, however, only one of many possible applications. With a smart phone you can do much more complicated tasks than flipping a switch.
Keep in mind that your phone is linked to a network. You can control things at home while you are miles away. You can turn off home heating when you are at work, then turn it on half an hour before going home. You can fill your bathtub up with hot water that you can jump right in after work. I am sure some bright minds out there will think of more interesting ideas.
Essentially this technology allows you to control multiple things with a single remote controller. And with a touch screen, the interface can be much easier than what is available now.
This is not the first time China got caught conducting espionage of this sort. But US has no means to deter China from continuing. At best the States Department will complain about it, and a war of words ensues until the story dies down.
No one outside China takes the Chinese media's views seriously as the media outlets are clearly controlled, or at least tightly watched over, by the government. It does not matter though. Their intended audiences are the Chinese citizens who listen to them daily. Only a very small portion of the citizens actually get news from outside. The Chinese media just have to spin the story around so that US is the true villain in this internet war game, that Google is secretly helping the evil empire of US. As long as the Chinese think their government is in the right, that's mission accomplished.
...actually works out fine for Canada in the last couple years. Conservatives are concerned about losing votes and decide not to bring most controversial issues to the table (e.g. abortion, same-sex marriage), knowing that the oppositions can bring down the government at any time they like. On the other hand, oppositions do not obstruct legislation or stop the government from getting things done because they are also concerned about the votes. With a majority, the Canadian DMCA would have passed with ease.
It does not change the fact that TomTom is secretly submitting data collected from its customers to the police for a profit. I don't want the bottom line of privacy to be "as long as your name does not appear on it, it is fine".
Some of them have a point, others not so much.
...
"The United States reports the world's highest incidence of violent crimes"
- More than Mexico where thousands are dying in drug gang violence? Besides, US has a large population, if you use violent crimes per capita as a measure, you should find US quite low in the table, although not as good as most other developed countries.
"The U.S. regards itself as "the beacon of democracy. However, its democracy is largely based on money. "
- Not that I like the big spending on elections, but is fund raising not part of the democracy? I highly doubt if fund raising for a political party is allowed in China.
"While advocating Internet freedom, the U.S. in fact imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace. On June 24, 2010, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which will give the federal government "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency. Handing government the power to control the Internet will only be the first step towards a greatly restricted Internet system, whereby individual IDs and government permission would be required to operate a website."
- Power to shut down the internet is just granting legal power for government to stop a serious cyber war. It's hard to see the US government getting away with shutting down the internet for stopping protests like the dictators do in Middle East. The last sentence is merely China assuming US will follow its footsteps. It has not happened and will not happen in near future.
"Unemployment rate in the United States has been stubbornly high. From December 2007 to October 2010, a total of 7.5 million jobs were lost in the country "
- What does a severe financial meltdown has to do with human rights? Oh right, in China human rights mean having rice to eat.
No, you are not making much sense at all.
a) Afghanistan is not known for oil exports. Oil was not the reason why we invaded the country. We were there because Taliban was providing a safe haven for al-Qaeda. It was not an avoidable war. It could have been handled better, but that's besides the point.
b) One of the motivations of "spending trillion to build robot soldiers" is to avoid "sacrificing thousands of human lives". It is better to have robots defusing bombs.
c) As a global superpower, you need to spend on military. It is unfortunate that a large portion of it is wasted, but developing robots is probably one of the better spent projects, since we are actively putting them to good use.
...and as soon as possible. If force is needed, so be it.
For years the US let North Korea get whatever way they want. NK leaders learned from Mao that military might is what keeps people, both inside and outside the country, fear them. The military power is their only bargaining chips. The more nukes they have, the more likely they can get things their way. This is why talks will never work. The NK leaders know that giving up nukes will seriously undermine their negotiating power. Not even China can possibly convince them.
Right now they threaten to nuke if "provoked". In few years time, they will threaten to nuke if S.Korea refuse to ship them food.
As of now, the government alone defines what is secret and what is not. It rightly keeps the diplomats' reports of foreign leaders away from public eye. More often than not, deals are better made under the table. These are fine, but at the same time, it covers up the illegal actions (things like kidnapping German citizens, killing Iraqi civilians) for its own convenience.
This is where Wikileaks becomes important. It lets people know what government is doing behind their backs, allowing them to scrutinize it and hold is responsible. And more importantly, it makes government harder to cover up its mess. If there is a bigger chance of being exposed, the government has to think more carefully about the possible consequences.
I am merely pointing out a popular belief in China, and how our perceived failures in politics and economy help to promote such a belief across the Pacific. When US was at its height of global dominance, around time of USSR's downfall, having proven Communism wrong, its capitalist and political system were admired by the developing countries and seen as the undisputed correct way forward. And now with the power balance slowly shifts to the new rising powers, the values held by US, freedom and democracy are no longer seen as the undisputed best way forward.
The idea of stable and harmonious society in China can perhaps be traced back to the June 4 massacre in 1989. In the 80's China opened its market to outside, and like many developing countries, corruption and inflation quickly surfaced. The protests against them quickly gained momentum and ended in the tragedy that is still an unspeakable taboo in China. But the story did not end here. China picked up its economic reforms after Deng XiaoPing's southern tour, and began its miraculous growth.
This gave rise to the impression of causation effect. That is, the suppression of the protest ensured social stability, which was a pre-requisite to economic growth. With this idea the communist party justified its actions in June 4 1989 (but they prefer not to talk about it). As long as economy continues to grow, they can use it to suppress any challenge to their rule. The West demanding more openness? That's a conspiracy to undermine the economy.
Any political and economic system is ultimately judged by end results. China's recent success and rise would give more weight to the system they have. And if US and Europe continue to struggle, it only strengthens China's point of view, and ultimately gives it more justifications to suppress people.
If the government don't lock up disruptive individuals who cause public unrest. The harmony in the country will be gone, and the whole economy will tank. Personal freedom is a small price to pay for a thriving economy. Look at the US and Europe now. Their freedom of expression mires them in endless internal silly arguments while not solving any pressing problem.
This is actually a popular view in China and the party actively promotes it. Our increasingly frustrating politics make it more and more believable.
The hunger strikers are not Google employees. Labor laws would not apply to them. Their companies had contracts with Google. As far as I can tell, Google terminated the contracts lawfully. Google owes them nothing, but they are likely betting on generating some public pressure to force Google to "compensate" their "loss".
The younger, more urban, and less white Americans are a lot less likely to vote. With Republicans riding on the rage and Democrats failing to do anything about it, the outcome is too predictable in this midterm election.
China has always been poor in enforcing some basic safety requirements. Every year thousands of Chinese miners die in all sorts of mine-related accidents. Factories can dump toxic chemicals into rivers and get away with it. Harmful materials are regularly used as cheap substitutes in manufacturing. Better yet, most reports on these horrible practices are quickly suppressed. Welcome to the harmonous and prosperous society of Middle Kingdom.
It seems D3 allows much more customizations of character builds with the new tech tree system and skill runes, but I have my doubts that this will actually work. Gamers typically take very little time to figure out what combination of skills (+runes) work best. Most of the skill rune combos will not be attractive options and we end up with few overpowered builds. In D2 each class had few viable builds that could survive hell difficulty, and had half of their skill tree virtually unused. If the skill balancing and specialization are not well planned out, all the new skill systems will be in vain.
Another problem is the necessity of grinding to get mid-high end items. Most D2 players made a sorc just to run Mephisto over and over, and perhaps other builds to specialize at one single dungeon. There is no mention of how D3 will be different.
My last complain is the new classes look like simple mix of D2 classes. I'm not saying the play style will be similar, but something unique would be very welcomed.
Of cour
How can this technology replace my mouse, which has 4 buttons and a wheel? My thumb can click the left-most button easily, but tabbing the surface will be harder. And what about the increased friction? I probably won't enjoy rubbing my palm and fingers on the surface all day long.