My experience shows that a lot of the top raiding guilds are full of people who don't care about Lore. Since the lore conclusion comes through the end raids, that means the fraction of players that can witness the end of the lore, is made up largely of those that don't care. When I start talking about the relevance of certain parts of a raid to lore I usually get the following responses on vent. "That's nice Tald, now shut up and tank." "Tald, no one cares about lore, shut the fuck up." "Tald, it's cool that you like the lore and all, but you're never going to get a girlfriend talking like that." That last one usually comes from a female guild member. =(
One of my friends plays FF11. According to him there aren't very many, if any new players coming in, and most low level jobs/players are people raising subjobs. I've wanted to go back and get my AF for Dragoon (Galka Dragoon Represent!), but unless my friend was willing to help me out in leveling, I'd be disinclined to go back.
The truth is that all MMOs are just pieces of money sucking crap, but we still go back to them because as players most of us desire multiplayer content, and a lot of us also desire multiplayer content that requires a number of players to cooperate in order to achieve it. Right now, sans MMOs, my top multiplayer game is current Resistance 2. I've been playing the cooperative mode in it a lot, and that supports up to 8 players. My biggest problem with the cooperative aspect of MMOs is that it can be a crapshoot when dealing with PUGs, or being a PUG. Let's take WoW. I PUG a regular dungeon, there's no penalty to me if I don't complete it, I just reset it and get some new PUGs. A Heroic Dungeon? We get 1 or two bosses down, I'm now locked in when the PUG abandons. If one of the other PUGs gets some other people to finish it, I got screwed until tomorrow on being able to running that heroic. Let's progress to normal raids, Normal Naxxramas. I PUG this, we fail miserable and only clear 2 bosses in the spider wing. I am locked to this. I try looking for more PUGs to finish it, in the meantime one of the PUGs just gets a bunch from his guild goes in and clears it. I just got screwed out of how many boss kills for a week?
That system is just irritating. What I would like to see is for instances that save a player to them, record which bosses the player killed. That way if someone else goes and ninja steals the instance ID and clear it they essentially get a splinter ID. How the hell can they expect players to learn how to perform in raids when after one or two fails their raid disbands and someone else ninja steals the ID?
It seems that a lot of games have humor added as an after the fact rather than integrating it from the start, or they do it via dialogue. What's the funniest part about the Halo games? For me it was watching grunts run around like sissies and listening to the marines. You could remove the marines and grunts and the game would still play out the same, they basically don't contribute much if anything to aiding you. I've recently been playing Army of Two, and the dialogue between Salem and Rios gets to be pretty funny. Salem seems to be a bit more of an apathetic live in the moment kind of guy, while Rios is this hard thinking boy scout, almost. For example, you're riding in an elevator and Salem is talking about the Cowboys football game that night, how he has $10,000 on it, and how that would pay off his credit card debt if he won. Rios chides him about how a year ago he didn't have 2 cents and now he's blowing 10 grand on a football game, and that when the war ends they won't have a stable income. Salem's response... "Relax bro, this war ain't ending any time soon." There's enough shooters out there with dead time where you're riding in elevators, stuff like that just breaks the monotony and is a good source of humor.
Dead Rising is another exceedingly funny game. The game is just ridden with humor, seriously, who kills zombies by throwing lead pipes at them? Frank West does, that's who. Who wear boxing shorts and no shirt while killing zombies? Frank West does. Who wears a fucking dress while killing zombies? Frank West does.
I don't think it's going to be World of Starcraft. Even if it was, you could pick out anywhere from 3 to 7 fractions potentially depending on how it is done. You have Arcturus Mengsk and the Terran Dominion. You have Jimmy Raynor and his bunch of guys. You have the UEF (can't count them out). You have Kerrigan. You have Artanis and the Protoss survivors. You have Zeratul and the Dark Templar. There's also always an opportunity for another Overmind causing a split of the Zerg forces.
No, I think Blizzard isn't doing World of Starcraft, but I can't see them doing another fantasy genre MMO. They're going to do a different genre in order to pull in more subscribers while potentially preventing a mass migration from WoW to this unnamed MMO. So I sit here looking at the various genres that Blizzard could do, and I'm left concluding that this new MMO is going to be a scifi MMO. The genre is underdone at best, and it's ripe for a good developer to come in and make a killing on it.
I'll use it right back at you. I'll say "You're a fucking idiot."
I never claimed that you have to be right there after each ATM usage. That would be ludicrous and insane. I was stating that if the hack required physical access, you gain physical access, implement the hack and reap the benefits.
As such, if people who know the hack lives in Salt Lake City, ATMs in Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Seattle, then ATMs in those cities and nearby are only at risk. ATMs in Chicago, New York City, Boston, and many other cities across the US are at SIGNIFICANTLY lower risk of being exploited. Right now, without the exploit published, it's limited to being used by those that know it, or anyone who has the knowledge and expertise to figure it out. It's basic containment strategy limiting the number of individuals capable of causing the problem.
People like you seem to think that releasing an exploit is magically going to make a solution get implemented right then, right now. It isn't, and John Q. Public isn't likely going to care about it anyway. They're too busy stuffing their mouths while watching American Idol.
Not really. Despite the exploit being out there, there is likely only a few malicious people that know about it. If the hack requires physical access to the machine, this means the number of machines that are exploited is less. As other people have mentioned.... once the exploit is significantly more public, that will increase the number of malicious people that know about it and increases the number of exploited machines.
There's a lot of people who can apply exploits. There aren't as many that can discover them.
I'll be perfectly honest. I think the move towards more "realistic" graphics in RPGs is forcing developers to change how the game plays. As you develop a more 3D world which you move your character through it becomes harder and harder to accept the random encounter. Final Fantasy is a perfect example of this progression because they've had games under many platforms. The SNES and early games made it looks like you're moving through a map, rather than an environment. Yes you could interact with objects, but for the most part the largest interaction with your environment took place via random encounters that would go to a battle screen. When you got to FF7-9 you had a 3Dish environment, but you still had a static viewpoint which became more of a 3D map rather than a 3D environment, and the viewpoint moved with you, until you hit the edge of the map. When you got to FF10 you had a 3D environment with a static camera position that would change locations as you moved through the environment. With FF10 the game no longer felt like you were moving through a map, but through an environment. The usage of random encounters ended up feeling more like an interruption. I think FF12 has it right for RPGs where you're in a 3D environment. The enemies need to be on the screen to keep up continuity. I think random encounters is going to become a dead concept.
Agreed, Survival Horror and the horror genre in general don't win on graphics, otherwise you just have a gore slasher.
Dead Space has got to be one of the creepiest games I've played, though I haven't played a lot of the Resident Evil/Silent Hill games either. You compare Dead Space to Resident Evil 4/5, which still try to be horror even if they aren't as good as the old RE games. Dead Space had me on edge way more often that RE4/5 ever did. RE4/5 was semi-predictable on when/where enemies would show up. Dead Space you really couldn't tell. By the end of Chapter 1 I was paranoid about every wall vent, every ceiling vent, every floor vent. The game had my heart racing so much from the adrenaline rush that I had to stop playing it because it was so good to let myself calm down. I never got to that point with any of the Resident Evil games, even the old ones, and certainly not RE4/5.
In Dead Space, the game had me so far on the edge that if I heard any change in sound I'd immediately do a 180 degree turn if I didn't see anything in front of me to make sure nothing was coming up behind me. It was the sound of the game that hooked me, not the graphics, but I think without the graphics it wouldn't have been as top notch as it was.
Now the real problem TM An IP address DOES identify a computer- but not the way the judge thinks. My IP address identifies my router, which in turn owns 5 to 6 computers. With the wireless open, it could refer to the whole neighborhood, for all I know/care. They need to revise, an IP address identifies a NETWORK, but not neccessarily conclusively any particular computer.
So there's another level there. Not only is an IP address not good for identifying a person, but it's rather useless to discover a particular computer either. (Now, there are cookies and other tracking mechanisms, but they're not fool proof..)
This sounds like a good argument for the RIAA to pressure the adoption of IPv6.
Hmm, my city is having problems with pigeons shitting on our public buildings. How are windmills at killing pigeons? Can we install turbines on the roof our of public buildings to deal with the pigeon problem?
Develop a campaign setting for a Pen and Paper RPG. I figure you get what? 7 hours of your 8 hours of work devoted to 4 chan, so by the end of the day you should have a pretty good concept hammered out.
A HMMWV would plow through it, and likely wouldn't just think it was a bit of debris. Those suckers got solid frames and chassis.
A H1 most likely plow through it, but you would feel it. The H1 is basically the HMMWV, just not as solid since it doesn't need to be up to milspec, but it uses the same frame and chassis as the HMMWV.
The H2/H3 would behave like most large sized SUVs hitting it.
Are the laws on the books prohibiting citizens from driving tanks on roads?
If not, I don't think you would get frowns from most people, just puzzled looks. Unless you start to crush other cars on the road and cause rampant damage.
Except for the enviro-fundies, they would frown and scowl at you, and try to be like Tienanmen Square's tank man.
Nothing, to many Americans, being able to drive is one of the biggest expressions of freedom and liberty by being able to drive where you want, when you want, and what you drive.
I was looking at the 2006 statistics for road fatalities by states. With the exception of Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, those that showed large increases (>=5%) in fatality rates were all southern states. Likewise for the most part those states which suffered declines in the number of fatalities tended to be states with far worse weather conditions. Those that suffered small gains in the number of fatalities 5% tended to fall between the northern and southern states, mostly clustered along the same latitude as Maryland. These were statistics from 1994 to 2006.
I would honestly say that the worse weather conditions an area receives, the better the quality of drivers that are churned out.
Well, we played epic, which makes resources significantly easier for players to pull, though I'm a bit of an atypical min/maxer. I tend to focus on defense over attack. I suspect my illusionist would irritate you in your attempts to kill him.
He has a rather potent invisibility... even the typical auto-pierce sight methods against invisibility the creature needs to role a caster level check, but I have the invisibility spell's effective caster level pumped up to the point that the creature trying to see the illusionist needs to be 30 levels higher than him to have a 50% chance, and 40 levels higher to pierce it without a check. Needless to say, something that powerful is likely going to squash the party and they're not likely to run into it unless you intend them to run away or they have some special item/artifact to assist them.
To put more icing on the cake, his hide check without invisibility is on par with a stealthy character that is about 17-20 levels higher than him.
My strategy is that if you're going to kill my character, you're probably going to have to go through the rest of the party first.
It's not semantics, the usage of launch versus delivery vehicle does have real strategic implications. Launch vehicles are the fastest methods for delivering a nuclear warhead, and can carry the most devastating warheads. A launch vehicle is going to be a first strike system/retaliatory delivery vehicle. Aircraft based nuclear weapons are not suitable for first strike, and aren't as effective retaliatory weapons.
Because of that, launch vehicles are the more effective deterrent since they typically are based in hard to strike target, and can get to target faster than other delivery vehicles. You nuke the airbase where some of our B-52s are based and you can take out 12 delivery vehicles. You directly nuke a silo and you will probably prevent that missile from launching, hitting near the silo may not do it. Stopping sub based launch vehicles is also practically impossible.
Essentially, non-launch vehicles are only useful in these days in a protracted nuclear war. Launch vehicles are what indicate the immediate destructive capability. Reduction in the numbers of launch vehicles are far more significant that the reduction of delivery vehicles, since that gets split among launch and non-launch vehicles as well as reduces the numbers of delivery vehicles that are harder to interdict.
Aircraft do not count as launch vehicles. A launch vehicle is a rocket based delivery system. Both missiles and aircraft count as delivery vehicles. The devil is in the details, unless they're using some abnormal definition of launch vehicle. STARTI had separate provisions regarding the number of aircraft each side could deploy.
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My experience shows that a lot of the top raiding guilds are full of people who don't care about Lore. Since the lore conclusion comes through the end raids, that means the fraction of players that can witness the end of the lore, is made up largely of those that don't care. When I start talking about the relevance of certain parts of a raid to lore I usually get the following responses on vent. "That's nice Tald, now shut up and tank." "Tald, no one cares about lore, shut the fuck up." "Tald, it's cool that you like the lore and all, but you're never going to get a girlfriend talking like that." That last one usually comes from a female guild member. =(
One of my friends plays FF11. According to him there aren't very many, if any new players coming in, and most low level jobs/players are people raising subjobs. I've wanted to go back and get my AF for Dragoon (Galka Dragoon Represent!), but unless my friend was willing to help me out in leveling, I'd be disinclined to go back.
The truth is that all MMOs are just pieces of money sucking crap, but we still go back to them because as players most of us desire multiplayer content, and a lot of us also desire multiplayer content that requires a number of players to cooperate in order to achieve it. Right now, sans MMOs, my top multiplayer game is current Resistance 2. I've been playing the cooperative mode in it a lot, and that supports up to 8 players. My biggest problem with the cooperative aspect of MMOs is that it can be a crapshoot when dealing with PUGs, or being a PUG. Let's take WoW. I PUG a regular dungeon, there's no penalty to me if I don't complete it, I just reset it and get some new PUGs. A Heroic Dungeon? We get 1 or two bosses down, I'm now locked in when the PUG abandons. If one of the other PUGs gets some other people to finish it, I got screwed until tomorrow on being able to running that heroic. Let's progress to normal raids, Normal Naxxramas. I PUG this, we fail miserable and only clear 2 bosses in the spider wing. I am locked to this. I try looking for more PUGs to finish it, in the meantime one of the PUGs just gets a bunch from his guild goes in and clears it. I just got screwed out of how many boss kills for a week?
That system is just irritating. What I would like to see is for instances that save a player to them, record which bosses the player killed. That way if someone else goes and ninja steals the instance ID and clear it they essentially get a splinter ID. How the hell can they expect players to learn how to perform in raids when after one or two fails their raid disbands and someone else ninja steals the ID?
It seems that a lot of games have humor added as an after the fact rather than integrating it from the start, or they do it via dialogue. What's the funniest part about the Halo games? For me it was watching grunts run around like sissies and listening to the marines. You could remove the marines and grunts and the game would still play out the same, they basically don't contribute much if anything to aiding you. I've recently been playing Army of Two, and the dialogue between Salem and Rios gets to be pretty funny. Salem seems to be a bit more of an apathetic live in the moment kind of guy, while Rios is this hard thinking boy scout, almost. For example, you're riding in an elevator and Salem is talking about the Cowboys football game that night, how he has $10,000 on it, and how that would pay off his credit card debt if he won. Rios chides him about how a year ago he didn't have 2 cents and now he's blowing 10 grand on a football game, and that when the war ends they won't have a stable income. Salem's response... "Relax bro, this war ain't ending any time soon." There's enough shooters out there with dead time where you're riding in elevators, stuff like that just breaks the monotony and is a good source of humor.
Dead Rising is another exceedingly funny game. The game is just ridden with humor, seriously, who kills zombies by throwing lead pipes at them? Frank West does, that's who. Who wear boxing shorts and no shirt while killing zombies? Frank West does. Who wears a fucking dress while killing zombies? Frank West does.
I don't think it's going to be World of Starcraft. Even if it was, you could pick out anywhere from 3 to 7 fractions potentially depending on how it is done. You have Arcturus Mengsk and the Terran Dominion. You have Jimmy Raynor and his bunch of guys. You have the UEF (can't count them out). You have Kerrigan. You have Artanis and the Protoss survivors. You have Zeratul and the Dark Templar. There's also always an opportunity for another Overmind causing a split of the Zerg forces.
No, I think Blizzard isn't doing World of Starcraft, but I can't see them doing another fantasy genre MMO. They're going to do a different genre in order to pull in more subscribers while potentially preventing a mass migration from WoW to this unnamed MMO. So I sit here looking at the various genres that Blizzard could do, and I'm left concluding that this new MMO is going to be a scifi MMO. The genre is underdone at best, and it's ripe for a good developer to come in and make a killing on it.
Hacking the machines themselves then selling the private information would likely be the best risk/profit ratio.
Your a fucking idiot.
I'll use it right back at you. I'll say "You're a fucking idiot."
I never claimed that you have to be right there after each ATM usage. That would be ludicrous and insane. I was stating that if the hack required physical access, you gain physical access, implement the hack and reap the benefits.
As such, if people who know the hack lives in Salt Lake City, ATMs in Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Seattle, then ATMs in those cities and nearby are only at risk. ATMs in Chicago, New York City, Boston, and many other cities across the US are at SIGNIFICANTLY lower risk of being exploited. Right now, without the exploit published, it's limited to being used by those that know it, or anyone who has the knowledge and expertise to figure it out. It's basic containment strategy limiting the number of individuals capable of causing the problem.
People like you seem to think that releasing an exploit is magically going to make a solution get implemented right then, right now. It isn't, and John Q. Public isn't likely going to care about it anyway. They're too busy stuffing their mouths while watching American Idol.
Not really. Despite the exploit being out there, there is likely only a few malicious people that know about it. If the hack requires physical access to the machine, this means the number of machines that are exploited is less. As other people have mentioned.... once the exploit is significantly more public, that will increase the number of malicious people that know about it and increases the number of exploited machines.
There's a lot of people who can apply exploits. There aren't as many that can discover them.
The army of nerds, otakus, and /b/ wins.
You reached first with your male friend when you went to a cottage because you had a TomTom.
This sounds like the plotline to a really geeky gay porno.
I'll be perfectly honest. I think the move towards more "realistic" graphics in RPGs is forcing developers to change how the game plays. As you develop a more 3D world which you move your character through it becomes harder and harder to accept the random encounter. Final Fantasy is a perfect example of this progression because they've had games under many platforms. The SNES and early games made it looks like you're moving through a map, rather than an environment. Yes you could interact with objects, but for the most part the largest interaction with your environment took place via random encounters that would go to a battle screen. When you got to FF7-9 you had a 3Dish environment, but you still had a static viewpoint which became more of a 3D map rather than a 3D environment, and the viewpoint moved with you, until you hit the edge of the map. When you got to FF10 you had a 3D environment with a static camera position that would change locations as you moved through the environment. With FF10 the game no longer felt like you were moving through a map, but through an environment. The usage of random encounters ended up feeling more like an interruption. I think FF12 has it right for RPGs where you're in a 3D environment. The enemies need to be on the screen to keep up continuity. I think random encounters is going to become a dead concept.
Agreed, Survival Horror and the horror genre in general don't win on graphics, otherwise you just have a gore slasher.
Dead Space has got to be one of the creepiest games I've played, though I haven't played a lot of the Resident Evil/Silent Hill games either. You compare Dead Space to Resident Evil 4/5, which still try to be horror even if they aren't as good as the old RE games. Dead Space had me on edge way more often that RE4/5 ever did. RE4/5 was semi-predictable on when/where enemies would show up. Dead Space you really couldn't tell. By the end of Chapter 1 I was paranoid about every wall vent, every ceiling vent, every floor vent. The game had my heart racing so much from the adrenaline rush that I had to stop playing it because it was so good to let myself calm down. I never got to that point with any of the Resident Evil games, even the old ones, and certainly not RE4/5.
In Dead Space, the game had me so far on the edge that if I heard any change in sound I'd immediately do a 180 degree turn if I didn't see anything in front of me to make sure nothing was coming up behind me. It was the sound of the game that hooked me, not the graphics, but I think without the graphics it wouldn't have been as top notch as it was.
God I'm getting goose bumps remembering the game.
Now the real problem TM
An IP address DOES identify a computer- but not the way the judge thinks. My IP address identifies my router, which in turn owns 5 to 6 computers. With the wireless open, it could refer to the whole neighborhood, for all I know/care. They need to revise, an IP address identifies a NETWORK, but not neccessarily conclusively any particular computer.
So there's another level there. Not only is an IP address not good for identifying a person, but it's rather useless to discover a particular computer either. (Now, there are cookies and other tracking mechanisms, but they're not fool proof..)
This sounds like a good argument for the RIAA to pressure the adoption of IPv6.
Hmm, my city is having problems with pigeons shitting on our public buildings. How are windmills at killing pigeons? Can we install turbines on the roof our of public buildings to deal with the pigeon problem?
Develop a campaign setting for a Pen and Paper RPG. I figure you get what? 7 hours of your 8 hours of work devoted to 4 chan, so by the end of the day you should have a pretty good concept hammered out.
Your idea intrigues me. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to make sure.
A HMMWV would plow through it, and likely wouldn't just think it was a bit of debris. Those suckers got solid frames and chassis.
A H1 most likely plow through it, but you would feel it. The H1 is basically the HMMWV, just not as solid since it doesn't need to be up to milspec, but it uses the same frame and chassis as the HMMWV.
The H2/H3 would behave like most large sized SUVs hitting it.
Are the laws on the books prohibiting citizens from driving tanks on roads?
If not, I don't think you would get frowns from most people, just puzzled looks. Unless you start to crush other cars on the road and cause rampant damage.
Except for the enviro-fundies, they would frown and scowl at you, and try to be like Tienanmen Square's tank man.
The Hummerity?
Nothing, to many Americans, being able to drive is one of the biggest expressions of freedom and liberty by being able to drive where you want, when you want, and what you drive.
I was looking at the 2006 statistics for road fatalities by states. With the exception of Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, those that showed large increases (>=5%) in fatality rates were all southern states. Likewise for the most part those states which suffered declines in the number of fatalities tended to be states with far worse weather conditions. Those that suffered small gains in the number of fatalities 5% tended to fall between the northern and southern states, mostly clustered along the same latitude as Maryland. These were statistics from 1994 to 2006.
I would honestly say that the worse weather conditions an area receives, the better the quality of drivers that are churned out.
Well, we played epic, which makes resources significantly easier for players to pull, though I'm a bit of an atypical min/maxer. I tend to focus on defense over attack. I suspect my illusionist would irritate you in your attempts to kill him.
He has a rather potent invisibility... even the typical auto-pierce sight methods against invisibility the creature needs to role a caster level check, but I have the invisibility spell's effective caster level pumped up to the point that the creature trying to see the illusionist needs to be 30 levels higher than him to have a 50% chance, and 40 levels higher to pierce it without a check. Needless to say, something that powerful is likely going to squash the party and they're not likely to run into it unless you intend them to run away or they have some special item/artifact to assist them.
To put more icing on the cake, his hide check without invisibility is on par with a stealthy character that is about 17-20 levels higher than him.
My strategy is that if you're going to kill my character, you're probably going to have to go through the rest of the party first.
It's not semantics, the usage of launch versus delivery vehicle does have real strategic implications. Launch vehicles are the fastest methods for delivering a nuclear warhead, and can carry the most devastating warheads. A launch vehicle is going to be a first strike system/retaliatory delivery vehicle. Aircraft based nuclear weapons are not suitable for first strike, and aren't as effective retaliatory weapons.
Because of that, launch vehicles are the more effective deterrent since they typically are based in hard to strike target, and can get to target faster than other delivery vehicles. You nuke the airbase where some of our B-52s are based and you can take out 12 delivery vehicles. You directly nuke a silo and you will probably prevent that missile from launching, hitting near the silo may not do it. Stopping sub based launch vehicles is also practically impossible.
Essentially, non-launch vehicles are only useful in these days in a protracted nuclear war. Launch vehicles are what indicate the immediate destructive capability. Reduction in the numbers of launch vehicles are far more significant that the reduction of delivery vehicles, since that gets split among launch and non-launch vehicles as well as reduces the numbers of delivery vehicles that are harder to interdict.
Right, so thanks for iterating my point.
DELIVERY VEHICLES LAUNCH VEHICLES
The poster I was replying to stated LAUNCH VEHICLES. Before you snap replies, maybe you should read the friggin thread.
Aircraft do not count as launch vehicles. A launch vehicle is a rocket based delivery system. Both missiles and aircraft count as delivery vehicles. The devil is in the details, unless they're using some abnormal definition of launch vehicle. STARTI had separate provisions regarding the number of aircraft each side could deploy.