Re:Fantasy MMORPGs are getting stale
on
The Future of MMOs
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· Score: 2, Interesting
So, then, what I'm getting from this is that your issue is not in fact with the "settings", "Orcs and Elves and all that mess", or "swinging swords and fighting orcs", but rather with the grind-based mechanics of typical MMOs?
I'd have to agree with you, although my bigger complaint with MMOs is the inability of players to affect the world in any meaningful way. If you make 10 characters, you'll end up going through the exact same world 10 times, doing pretty much the same missions/quests 10 times, without any real variation other than the order that you do them and the number of times you run off to help someone else with their "slay the uber-beastie before it destroys the world in 5 minutes" mission even though a) you just got back from killing it and b) they spent more than 5 minutes trying to recruit people to help them with it.
Now, granted, I don't have any practical ideas for ways to have 1,000 people running around all making their own changes to the world without it devolving into a complete mess as soon as you open the doors, but there's got to be something better possible than the current standard of every action being undone as soon as it's completed (perhaps immediately, perhaps after a brief respawn timer).
While that may be suitable for keeping family members at bay, it's a horrible method for securing any account on an internet-connected computer. Simple geometric patterns like that are in plenty of dictionaries used for brute force cracking attempts, as one of my former (now bankrupt) clients discovered rather quickly when they set their web server's root password to qweasdzxc.
What gets me is that a 7-yo actually feels the need to hide things from her parents.
How is making the jump from "she insisted on protection measures being as strong as possible, so that no one else can screw with her computer" to that statement qualitatively different from saying that only criminals would ever use encryption? Seeking privacy does not imply "having something to hide".
Since the courts ruled that making a copy of the software from the install media onto your hard drive and making a copy of the software from your hard drive into memory fall under copyright restrictions, which is how all this software licensing insanity began.
OkCupid, which has been mentioned a few times so far, and all favorably, is completely ad-supported. So it would appear to be an exception to your rule of which to avoid.
Of course. Because the only possibilities are that you know nothing at all (and must, therefore, use Ubuntu) or you know everything there is to know about every distro (and are therefore guaranteed to know exactly which distro would suit you best without having to ask). There are no other possibilities. Right?
I don't get the assertion that one size fits all, or even that one size fits all beginners. Some people are more comfortable with experimenting and won't mind problems when they don't know what's going on. Others may want to use Linux because they agree (knowingly or not) with the FSF and, despite their lack of Linux knowledge, they want a 100% Free distro. Still others may have used a commercial Unix a decade ago in college and want to revisit those days rather than trying to find something Windows-like. You can't make the best possible recommendation unless you know these things and you can't know them without asking.
Easily resolved: "Hold on a sec - I need to merge."
If the driver is unwilling or unable to either verbally provide the person on the other end with a clue that the situation requires their attention or to simply tune out/ignore the phone, then that's the driver's fault, not the phone's.
Just how exactly do you think the police should be "keeping track" of the criminals on probation?
Oh, I don't know... Perhaps the same way they've kept track of criminals on probation that they've used ever since the concept was introduced? (Not that I claim to know what that method is, having never been involved with it myself, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't include stopping random people on the street and demanding to know their personal business.) GPS implants didn't exist 50 years ago, so I'm pretty sure they're not part of the traditional methods. Ditto for ubiquitous surveillance - which I would categorize under "harassing innocent passers-by" anyhow.
Have you ever lived in any high crime neighborhoods?
Why, yes, I have. Or at least in an area that everyone kept telling me was high crime. But maybe it wasn't really that high crime, given that, in the year we lived there, my roommate and I each only saw one dead body lying in the street. (Well, she found a body in the alley, I found one in the street.) For the first month we were there, she said I was obviously in "tactical mode" pretty much constantly, but I relaxed a bit after I got used to it. Obvious police presence had nothing to do with it.
Oh, and there's a difference between "police presence" (i.e., being there, being obvious, and generally keeping an eye out for developing trouble) and "police harassment" (i.e., stopping someone for the "crime" of being on a bicycle and interrogating them).
Part of what the police do is they stop anybody who they see riding around on bikes. They stop the people to figure out who they are and what they are doing in the neighborhood. On one hand, doing so is probably a violation of some "inherent rights." On the other hand, the police are doing what they need to do to reduce the number of convincted criminals running around the neighborhood. That sounds to me like a perfect example of a case in which the police should be doing a better job of keeping track of those convicted criminals rather than taking the opportunity to show off their power by harassing innocent passers-by.
No, this American has been against US entry policies for a number of years as well. It was a bad move by the US and the source of my dismay now is not that such things are starting, but that the rest of the world seems to be following our lead rather than recognizing that paranoia is never a good answer.
Then, with the assistance of psychiatrists, he summoned billions[1] of his citizens together to paralyze them with injections of alcohol and glycol, under the pretense that they were being called for "income tax inspections". The kidnapped populace was loaded into spacecraft for transport to the site of extermination... ...and that is why, to this day, humans hate income taxes and fear the possibility of IRS (or other national tax agency) audits.
"They don't count as Weapons of Mass Distraction unless you can fit Cheney's head in there. But then you'd have three boobs..." - Zilch the Torysteller
Just let me write you a prescription for some personality-altering drugs which you are required by law to take. Then maybe you'll see why it's a bad thing. But if you do, we'll just increase the dosage until your mind is sufficiently numbed that you don't notice any more.
Have you ever tried searching for something about, say, Word and turned up millions of documents about words rather than Word? That right there strikes me as a pretty obvious reason to call your program gedit instead of just edit.
You haven't provided enough information to determine whether that's a case of lock-in or not. If the CRM system provides the necessary tools to make it easy for the customer to export all of their data into a format which can then be imported by other CRM systems should the customer choose to change vendors, then there is no lock-in.
Now, granted, that's unlikely to be the case. However, it is the inability to move your data to a competing system which creates the lock-in. The subscription aspect has nothing to do with it one way or the other.
OK, so "If, for example, you're going out clubbing, you can pop it into a fashion sleeve with a fancy design. If you're on a business trip and you need a phone with a Qwerty keypad and large screen, you just have to pop it into a 'jacket' with those features." makes it a "modular, Transformer-style phone".
Does that mean that if I start out in my underwear (the "base unit") and then, if I'm going out clubbing, I put on some fashionable clothes, possibly incorporating fancy designs, then later go on a business trip wearing a suit and tie, plus maybe pop on a wristwatch for some extra functionality, does that make me a "modular, Transformer-style human"?
Heading? Heading?!? It's been there for years, if not decades. How many TV news programs have said things like "Coming up next, Foo - the invisible killer! Find out all about it, including how to protect yourself, after the commercial break." The really bad ones start off the show by announcing they'll talk about it later in the program, then leave it for the absolute last segment so that they can string viewers along to sit through all the commercials, or even pre-announce it during commercials in the preceding program.
So, no, "subscribe to my ad-laden blog to get the whole story" is about as new as a patent for "doing something everyone's done since the beginning of time - on the internet."
I believe the argument in favor of cellphone GPS is that it allows emergency responders to find you when calling 911 from a phone line that isn't tied to a fixed location.
"Draw their own conclusions"? You mean like "He's accused of speeding, but won't share the black box data. Therefore, he's obviously guilty of speeding and is probably trying to hide something much worse, too. So now we just have to decide how many millions to fine him for those other, unknown crimes that he's hiding..."?
Given that transsexuals still have the same chromosomes they were born with, it seems obvious that they would fit into this in accordance with their biological sex at birth.
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So, then, what I'm getting from this is that your issue is not in fact with the "settings", "Orcs and Elves and all that mess", or "swinging swords and fighting orcs", but rather with the grind-based mechanics of typical MMOs?
I'd have to agree with you, although my bigger complaint with MMOs is the inability of players to affect the world in any meaningful way. If you make 10 characters, you'll end up going through the exact same world 10 times, doing pretty much the same missions/quests 10 times, without any real variation other than the order that you do them and the number of times you run off to help someone else with their "slay the uber-beastie before it destroys the world in 5 minutes" mission even though a) you just got back from killing it and b) they spent more than 5 minutes trying to recruit people to help them with it.
Now, granted, I don't have any practical ideas for ways to have 1,000 people running around all making their own changes to the world without it devolving into a complete mess as soon as you open the doors, but there's got to be something better possible than the current standard of every action being undone as soon as it's completed (perhaps immediately, perhaps after a brief respawn timer).
While that may be suitable for keeping family members at bay, it's a horrible method for securing any account on an internet-connected computer. Simple geometric patterns like that are in plenty of dictionaries used for brute force cracking attempts, as one of my former (now bankrupt) clients discovered rather quickly when they set their web server's root password to qweasdzxc.
What gets me is that a 7-yo actually feels the need to hide things from her parents.
How is making the jump from "she insisted on protection measures being as strong as possible, so that no one else can screw with her computer" to that statement qualitatively different from saying that only criminals would ever use encryption? Seeking privacy does not imply "having something to hide".
Since the courts ruled that making a copy of the software from the install media onto your hard drive and making a copy of the software from your hard drive into memory fall under copyright restrictions, which is how all this software licensing insanity began.
OkCupid, which has been mentioned a few times so far, and all favorably, is completely ad-supported. So it would appear to be an exception to your rule of which to avoid.
Of course. Because the only possibilities are that you know nothing at all (and must, therefore, use Ubuntu) or you know everything there is to know about every distro (and are therefore guaranteed to know exactly which distro would suit you best without having to ask). There are no other possibilities. Right?
I don't get the assertion that one size fits all, or even that one size fits all beginners. Some people are more comfortable with experimenting and won't mind problems when they don't know what's going on. Others may want to use Linux because they agree (knowingly or not) with the FSF and, despite their lack of Linux knowledge, they want a 100% Free distro. Still others may have used a commercial Unix a decade ago in college and want to revisit those days rather than trying to find something Windows-like. You can't make the best possible recommendation unless you know these things and you can't know them without asking.
And your low /. uid suggests you're being wrong deliberately, to mislead, rather than through ignorance.
/. UID mean I'm omniscient, too? Cool... I didn't know that!
So does my even-lower
No, that would be the Mega-Barbura Streisand effect.
Easily resolved: "Hold on a sec - I need to merge."
If the driver is unwilling or unable to either verbally provide the person on the other end with a clue that the situation requires their attention or to simply tune out/ignore the phone, then that's the driver's fault, not the phone's.
Just how exactly do you think the police should be "keeping track" of the criminals on probation?
Oh, I don't know... Perhaps the same way they've kept track of criminals on probation that they've used ever since the concept was introduced? (Not that I claim to know what that method is, having never been involved with it myself, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't include stopping random people on the street and demanding to know their personal business.) GPS implants didn't exist 50 years ago, so I'm pretty sure they're not part of the traditional methods. Ditto for ubiquitous surveillance - which I would categorize under "harassing innocent passers-by" anyhow.
Have you ever lived in any high crime neighborhoods?
Why, yes, I have. Or at least in an area that everyone kept telling me was high crime. But maybe it wasn't really that high crime, given that, in the year we lived there, my roommate and I each only saw one dead body lying in the street. (Well, she found a body in the alley, I found one in the street.) For the first month we were there, she said I was obviously in "tactical mode" pretty much constantly, but I relaxed a bit after I got used to it. Obvious police presence had nothing to do with it.
Oh, and there's a difference between "police presence" (i.e., being there, being obvious, and generally keeping an eye out for developing trouble) and "police harassment" (i.e., stopping someone for the "crime" of being on a bicycle and interrogating them).
No, this American has been against US entry policies for a number of years as well. It was a bad move by the US and the source of my dismay now is not that such things are starting, but that the rest of the world seems to be following our lead rather than recognizing that paranoia is never a good answer.
"They don't count as Weapons of Mass Distraction unless you can fit Cheney's head in there. But then you'd have three boobs..."
- Zilch the Torysteller
Just let me write you a prescription for some personality-altering drugs which you are required by law to take. Then maybe you'll see why it's a bad thing. But if you do, we'll just increase the dosage until your mind is sufficiently numbed that you don't notice any more.
Have you ever tried searching for something about, say, Word and turned up millions of documents about words rather than Word? That right there strikes me as a pretty obvious reason to call your program gedit instead of just edit.
You haven't provided enough information to determine whether that's a case of lock-in or not. If the CRM system provides the necessary tools to make it easy for the customer to export all of their data into a format which can then be imported by other CRM systems should the customer choose to change vendors, then there is no lock-in.
Now, granted, that's unlikely to be the case. However, it is the inability to move your data to a competing system which creates the lock-in. The subscription aspect has nothing to do with it one way or the other.
OK, so "If, for example, you're going out clubbing, you can pop it into a fashion sleeve with a fancy design. If you're on a business trip and you need a phone with a Qwerty keypad and large screen, you just have to pop it into a 'jacket' with those features." makes it a "modular, Transformer-style phone".
Does that mean that if I start out in my underwear (the "base unit") and then, if I'm going out clubbing, I put on some fashionable clothes, possibly incorporating fancy designs, then later go on a business trip wearing a suit and tie, plus maybe pop on a wristwatch for some extra functionality, does that make me a "modular, Transformer-style human"?
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
Heading? Heading?!? It's been there for years, if not decades. How many TV news programs have said things like "Coming up next, Foo - the invisible killer! Find out all about it, including how to protect yourself, after the commercial break." The really bad ones start off the show by announcing they'll talk about it later in the program, then leave it for the absolute last segment so that they can string viewers along to sit through all the commercials, or even pre-announce it during commercials in the preceding program.
So, no, "subscribe to my ad-laden blog to get the whole story" is about as new as a patent for "doing something everyone's done since the beginning of time - on the internet."
I believe the argument in favor of cellphone GPS is that it allows emergency responders to find you when calling 911 from a phone line that isn't tied to a fixed location.
"Draw their own conclusions"? You mean like "He's accused of speeding, but won't share the black box data. Therefore, he's obviously guilty of speeding and is probably trying to hide something much worse, too. So now we just have to decide how many millions to fine him for those other, unknown crimes that he's hiding..."?
Gah! I had successfully forgotten about Cyborg Commando, but then you just had to go and remind me of it...
Given that transsexuals still have the same chromosomes they were born with, it seems obvious that they would fit into this in accordance with their biological sex at birth.
Considering the GP said it "was a domain taster domain registered 3 days prior to yesterday ", I'd say that, yes, he probably did look it up.