Only one thing will fix our broken democracy at this point -- revolution.
The democracy part isn't broken though. Regardless of how horrible you think our officials are, they are our elected officials. When you say "revolution", you are talking about overthrowing the leaders that the people voted for. What kind of government are you planning to replace the current one with? Your revolution will require the governments overthrow by force, so a military dictatorship? Or do you believe you can lead some kind of enlightened aristocracy? There is no need for "revolution" until it the ability (not the willingness) of the people to vote is suppressed. As someone said already, you are just a nutjob.
Why does everyone think as soon as you start to throw up billboards and advertisements that the organization in question has become unethical?... Even this website you're reading this comment on is supported by advertising.
Good point. It's not like slashdot does anything unethical and corporatist like presenting "stories" that are clearly just advertisements. I mean, if they did someone would probably come up with a fancy portmanteau involving "slashdot" and "advertisement", but nothing like that exists.
Like you said, your son laughed at Pac-Man graphics, but Pac-Man is a very good game. Same as the many other "oldies but goodies" that exist out there. I think, as players become bored with their new Wii games, they'll start checking out some of the old titles and will be pleasantly surprised at the quality of those games that captured my generation's attention. And, of course, at $5.00 a pop, it's hard not to do an impulse buy.
I get the nostalgia thing when I see that I can play a game like Pac-Man on the Wii. And maybe I'll spend an hour with it. But that is it. Pac-man is not a great game by today's standards. I guess it is an ok flash\casual game. After an hour I get really bored doing the same thing over and over again. I know there are some people that can spend a lifetime trying to beat Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, but those people are in a very small minority.
Just compare Pac-Man to Team Fortress 2. For $5 I get an hour of entertainment from Pac-Man, unless I'm insane. I've easily had 100 hours of entertainment from TF2 for $20, and the TF2 crazies are probably up in the 1000s of hours. What about Pac-Man is better than TF2? Graphics? Gameplay? Hmm... they are about equal in story.. no, TF2 wins there because the characters are at least funny.
As fun as they may be in short sessions, early video games are just a novelty now. Once storylines start to appear a game might have a little more life to it. A good modern game will easily beat (almost) anything published on the Nintendo and earlier.
I mean, really, do people actually *buy* music videos
iTunes sells music videos. I'm pretty sure they are $.99. I assume that people buy them. Keep in mind that people also buy ringtones for several dollars, and that only includes a short portion of the song. And, yes, some people probably buy the video, the MP3, and the ringtone.
Since people are willing to pay for this, it makes things annoying for the rest of us. Warner now thinks that the videos themselves are not just advertisement, but are worth something.
This is also the reason I don't have text messaging on my phone. People seem to feel that $10 a month or $.10 per message is a reasonable price. I can't see why I would pay so much for such a tiny amount of data, but there are millions of people who think that otherwise. And, therefore, text messaging is expensive and it will stay that way. Yay for capitalism!
The basic concepts of the game are not covered by copyright. You can copyright a particular description of those rules though. Similarly, you cannot copyright a recipe. However, a specific description of the recipe can be. If the rules/recipe are so straightfoward that it is the only way to describe them, they generally wouldn't be covered by copyright.
If a game has a storyline, then that storyline is covered by copyright. The name is usually trademarked. But you cannot control the basic ruleset.
Someone mod this up. There is one more implication of the "Take away the electoral college, and the influence of small states is irrelevant. There is no way they would sign off on that change..." bit. In order to remove the EC, you'd have to pass a constitutional ammendment. To do that you would need to get it to pass by 2/3 in hte House and Senate, and 3/4th of the States' legislatures. Unless the US Senators and State Legistlatures of the 24 smaller states suddenly decide to simply give away power, this will never happen. There is no reason to discuss this, it is simply impossible, unless California creates a mind ray to turn everyone in those states into complete morons.
But... states like Maine have already decided to throw away power by splitting their EC votes, as explained by the parent. So, who knows...
When has it ever worked? When have the people ever used their guns to stop the executive? Answer: Never.
Wha? The American War of Independence is an obvious starting place, and similar wars of independence around the globe. The Civil War is sort of an example of a failed attempt. However, the South could have "won" by continuing to fight a "guerilla" war, but luckily Lee helped to stop that from hapenning.
I'm guessing the next paragraph is connected with the argument that small arms are no match for an organized army. Let's see, examples where a relatively small group of people with small arms were able to effectively fight against an organized army. Ya, that's not too common in the modern world. Oh wait, there's Vietnam, Afganistan, Iraq, and pretty much every other place in the world with an "insurgency" of some kind. Just look what a handful of guys just did in Mumbai.
There's never been a need for an armed insurgency in the US (besides the Civil War). We have had corrupt governments, but never so bad as to require people to overthrow the government. If we did drift towards such a thing, the first step is to remove weapons from the masses. You wouldn't want the Black Marias to get shot at when you start removing the dissidents.
Oh, and I don't know anyone who thinks, "Well, if things get bad at least I have a gun, so I guess I'm fine with this terrible government."
It is likewise natural for a player to say, "I punched an enemy soldier," when in reality, she punched no one. All she did was press a button.'"
Last night I tried out the game Rose and Camellia. Google it, it's great! Anyway, after playing I went up to my wife and said, "I slapped her on the cheek!". My wife then explained to me that going around slapping women until they pass it out is a bad thing. Apparently this is true even though I was a woman while I was doing it. Slapping anyone silly is bad, no matter how fun it looked on South Park the other night.
So, as you can imagine, it was quite a relief to find out that I hadn't really slapped anyone at all. On the other hand, it also means that I didn't really run a whole 20 meters (yeah, that's right!) when I played QWOP the other day. I've now learned that I actually have to move my thigh and calf muscles manually to actually claim that I did some exercise. Bummer.
Crap, I just realised that my sig isn't even real. I'm not really "Clovis", that's just a fictitious name I use on the internet. And the letters that make up that name wouldn't be me even if that was my real name. So, no sig, that is not that guy that I am.
your left hand is the one that when you hold it up, the index finger and thumb make an "L"
Stares at palms of hands
"Crap, I've been driving on the wrong side of the street all these years!"
BTW, is something wrong with the blockquote tag? In the preview the little grey bar continues down next to the first line of my response, but only the part that I'm actually quoting is in grey. I bet it shows up correctly when I post and I look like an idiot for writing all this.
I've been closely following coverage of Spore for years now, and I bought the game when it first came out. I've had fun dealing with the DRM, and a few days of fun with the game itself. The handling of the game, the game itself, the terrible patch, the ridiculous "DRM cabal" statement the other day, and now these expansion packs have made this the worst game experience I've ever had. Others, obviously, feel the same way.
However, there is this strange thread; it's all EA's fault. If only Will Wright could escape from EA, everything would be better. These expansions are EA's marketing team's idea. This isn't the developer's fault, it is the publisher's fault. Blah blah blah.
No. There is only one person to blame for every aspect of this debacle. The man who has been a gaming god to me and so many other people, Will Wright. If EA is to blame for anything, it is for corrupting Will, but that doesn't change the fact that he is now corrupt. Unless Mr. Wright comes out with an explanation of why all the original features of the game are going to be nickle and dimed out of his loyal fans, the only explanation is that he is extremely greedy.
Will Wright used to like gamers, I think. I think maybe deep down inside he still does. If gamers start calling him on these transgressions, and not EA, I'm sure it would affect him. Maybe he can be turned from the Dark Side; probably not. But, please, let us start placing the blame where it is obviously due, on the shoulders of Will Wright himself.
What the hell is so fundamentally wrong with gambling?
You should ask the Governor in question, Steve Beshear. Oh wait, he is not against gambling. He actually ran on a platform of expanding gambling in Kentucky. I kid you not, this guy loves gambling, but only the kind that gets taxed by the state... oups... I mean Commonwealth. This is the best news coverage I've ever seen about my state...
It would appear that you believe that all of those who "grew up with computers" know basic computer security and operation. This is just as true as it is that all of those who "grew up with books" are able to read and understand James Joyce.
No. Maybe replace James Joyce with Dostoyevsky. This is James Joyce:
It sollecited, grobbling hummley, his roundhouse of seven
orofaces, of all, guiltshouters or crimemummers, to be sayd by,
codnops, advices for, free of gracies, scamps encloded, com-
petitioning them, if they had steadied Jura or when they had
raced Messafissi, husband of your wifebetter or bestman botcha-
lover of you yourself, how comes ever a body in our taylorised
world to selve out thishis, whither it gives a primeum nobilees
for our notomise or naught, the farst wriggle from the ubivence,
whereom is man, that old offender, nother man, wheile he is
asame. And fullexampling. The pints in question. With some by-
spills. And sicsecs to provim hurtig. Soup's on!
A random paragraph from Finnegan's Wake via Finnegan's Wiki. Basic computer security and operation is not that complicated. Now I want soup....
"don't object to copyright in principle but copy in the expectation that they will not get caught?"
I guess some 50% to 70%.
"don't understand copyright and copy without knowing they are doing anything wrong?"
There is some other 25% to 45%.
I'd say the latter is the big category. Like 80%+ of people don't fully understand copyright. Most people are under the delusion that everything is ok if you don't make money. The idea that making a mixtape is illegal is shocking to most people. In fact, you can hardly make them believe it if you try.
I was at a get together and someone brought a cornhole set (wiki it yourself, I'm lazy). They had painted pictures of characters from Pixar movies on it. I pointed out to my wife that that was a copyright (and trademark) infringement, and that they could get sued for a hefty amount of money. She didn't believe me. She would only believe that it would be illegal if they sold them.
I hate a system where laws are selectively enforced. You never know when the RIAA/MPAA is going to pick you to get punished. If the laws were strictly enforced people would realize how heinous they are.
So basically every single operator they've ever employed, can find or just remember your username _and_ password if they want to. And who's to stop them from calling after hours and pretending to be you?
I worked for a Staples Call Center for awhile. One night I took an order from some guy. At the end I asked for his credit card number, name on the card, and the billing address. He hesitated on the last question, and stated, "But if I give you all that information, there's nothing to stop you from making an order using my credit card." I had no idea how to respond to this. Yes, you are giving me all the info I need to make a purchase via credit card, because that is what you are doing. So, I really don't see this password thing as a problem. If money disappears from a customer's account, those employees will the the first suspects. They are all probably smart enough to realise this and won't be stealing the information. I, and hundreds of other employees, could have walked out of the Call Center with hundreds of people's credit card info every day.
It's just that most people do not realize that Blockbuster (a Mormon institution)...
Blockbuster is a publicly traded company. It, like Pepsi, is not a "Mormon institution". About the only "Mormon institution", besides the church itself, is Deseret Industries. I guess this rumor was created because it would be hypocritical for the church to own Blockbuster, who rents R and NR DVDs, and rated M games, which Mormons are not supposed to watch. Just like owning Pepsi would be hypocritical because Mormons aren't allowed to drink caffeinated drinks. What's extra funny is that both of those restrictions aren't even true. Try googling before spouting this nonsense.
The rest of your statement is true, except that I don't think Blockbuster does the censoring themselves; the movie studios are glad to do that. Here's a funny story about censoring. For some reason, when John Waters finished A Dirty Shame, he actually got it rated, and it got an NC-17. So, Blockbuster, and every other major store in the US, would not carry it. So, he had to create a rated-R version, which, for a John Waters film, is retarded. At least at the time, Blockbuster would rent NR films. So, if he had released the cut rated-R version, he then could have sold the rated-NR version, which should be NC-17, in Blockbuster. The ban on NC-17 makes no sense. Just put the rated-R version of any film on a shelf next to the NR version and see which sells faster.
Of course, the situation is worse for video games. Nobody will sell an unrated video game, or an AO game. Video games can definitely be art, but due to the cost of making them, and the need to recoup those costs, the ban on AO games is, in essence, censorship.
Isn't that what the auction houses (or other trade systems) are for?? Granted, someone doesn't tell me to go get a stack of 20 linen by killing furlbogs and they'll pay me 30 silver. I just know that people are buying stacks of 20 linen for 30 silver. The player who needs it just goes to the auction and buys it. And now we don't have to manage to find each other either.
If you want to see a (semi) persistant world with interesting player interaction, try out Tale in the Desert. Oh... that also features grinding though... insanely boring grinding... grinding where instead of killing orcs you pick grass... I'm not kidding...
US District Judge Jeremy Fogel has ruled that an 'allegation that a copyright owner acted in bad faith by issuing a takedown notice without proper consideration of the fair use doctrine...
One can only hope that this ruling will some day be used against those who file misguided copyright complaints against computer printers.
Hmm... I thought that the takedown notices sent to printers was ridiculous because it showed that the method the RIAA used to determine who was pirating music was b0rken.
Apparently, the printers really were downloading music, but they had a fair use! I totally misread that story before. I, for one, will not stand for fair use rights being taken away from our electronic friends!
There have been a few attempts at more conservative humor.
Have there been many attempts at "liberal humor". I don't think the Daily Show counts. Jon seems to make fun of whoever would be...er... funny. It is not surprising that Bush fits the bill most of the time. Any show that plans on being funny in a "conservative" or "liberal" way is probably going to be terrible. Picking a side just reduces the possible objects of ridicule.
How come MMOs get labeled with this "problem" of not having infinite content. I can't remember someone complaining that they got bored with Oblivion after spending 40 hours playing. If you've played an MMO so long that you've maxed out your character (and maybe a 2nd player), and are now bored with the PVP, haven't you got enough out of it? Is that really a problem that needs, or even can, be solved? Try another game...
Boring, repetitive mission structure is definitely a problem though, and the parent's description will probably be spot on.
You know, I really like memes and neologisms, but they do sometimes cause problems. Shouldn't I be able to immediately recognise "trendmilling" as a typo for "treadmilling"? But, I can't. I checked the Wiki for "trendmilling", but there were no results. It sounds like it could mean something. I'm guessing it is a typo. I'm filled with doubt though. I might sound like a complete idiot for not being familiar with "trendmilling". I can't take this pressure...
I might end up in an asylum from this... rocking back and forth, mumbling, "series of tubes, the cake is a lie, hot grits, series of tubes, intertube, interwebs, teh internets, lulz, there fixed that for you, you must be new here, 1. Create Meme 2. ????? 3. PROFIT!!!, in soviet russia tubes trendmill YOU!..."
Don't let anyone mine/pick anything that there skill level makes gray to them
This might be trivial to implement, but I'm guessing the players would be pissed. I've only played for a week, but I'm picking "gray" herbs all the time. What am I supposed to do to get them? Buy them at the auction? Bleh. And who would I buy them from? I'm using up most of my (non-grey) picked herbs to increase my alchemy skill, so I don't think there would be enough to go around. I guess some people could make good money focusing on resource gathering then, but wouldn't that add to the problem?
And this:
limit the price you can sell something for on the AH to 10 times what a vendor would pay
That wouldn't go over to well either. I only auction stuff I can't use, but I've already got well over 10X what the vendor wants. I've never tried, but you can probably be really careful about when to try and trade/auction stuff and make a lot of money. Granted, this might help gold farmers, but it is also a significant part of the game. Legitimate players might really enjoy that aspect. Getting to use play money in a fantasy market can be fun.
Slashdot Mirror
The democracy part isn't broken though. Regardless of how horrible you think our officials are, they are our elected officials. When you say "revolution", you are talking about overthrowing the leaders that the people voted for. What kind of government are you planning to replace the current one with? Your revolution will require the governments overthrow by force, so a military dictatorship? Or do you believe you can lead some kind of enlightened aristocracy? There is no need for "revolution" until it the ability (not the willingness) of the people to vote is suppressed. As someone said already, you are just a nutjob.
Good point. It's not like slashdot does anything unethical and corporatist like presenting "stories" that are clearly just advertisements. I mean, if they did someone would probably come up with a fancy portmanteau involving "slashdot" and "advertisement", but nothing like that exists.
I get the nostalgia thing when I see that I can play a game like Pac-Man on the Wii. And maybe I'll spend an hour with it. But that is it. Pac-man is not a great game by today's standards. I guess it is an ok flash\casual game. After an hour I get really bored doing the same thing over and over again. I know there are some people that can spend a lifetime trying to beat Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, but those people are in a very small minority.
Just compare Pac-Man to Team Fortress 2. For $5 I get an hour of entertainment from Pac-Man, unless I'm insane. I've easily had 100 hours of entertainment from TF2 for $20, and the TF2 crazies are probably up in the 1000s of hours. What about Pac-Man is better than TF2? Graphics? Gameplay? Hmm... they are about equal in story.. no, TF2 wins there because the characters are at least funny.
As fun as they may be in short sessions, early video games are just a novelty now. Once storylines start to appear a game might have a little more life to it. A good modern game will easily beat (almost) anything published on the Nintendo and earlier.
iTunes sells music videos. I'm pretty sure they are $.99. I assume that people buy them. Keep in mind that people also buy ringtones for several dollars, and that only includes a short portion of the song. And, yes, some people probably buy the video, the MP3, and the ringtone.
Since people are willing to pay for this, it makes things annoying for the rest of us. Warner now thinks that the videos themselves are not just advertisement, but are worth something.
This is also the reason I don't have text messaging on my phone. People seem to feel that $10 a month or $.10 per message is a reasonable price. I can't see why I would pay so much for such a tiny amount of data, but there are millions of people who think that otherwise. And, therefore, text messaging is expensive and it will stay that way. Yay for capitalism!
The basic concepts of the game are not covered by copyright. You can copyright a particular description of those rules though. Similarly, you cannot copyright a recipe. However, a specific description of the recipe can be. If the rules/recipe are so straightfoward that it is the only way to describe them, they generally wouldn't be covered by copyright.
If a game has a storyline, then that storyline is covered by copyright. The name is usually trademarked. But you cannot control the basic ruleset.
Someone mod this up. There is one more implication of the "Take away the electoral college, and the influence of small states is irrelevant. There is no way they would sign off on that change..." bit. In order to remove the EC, you'd have to pass a constitutional ammendment. To do that you would need to get it to pass by 2/3 in hte House and Senate, and 3/4th of the States' legislatures. Unless the US Senators and State Legistlatures of the 24 smaller states suddenly decide to simply give away power, this will never happen. There is no reason to discuss this, it is simply impossible, unless California creates a mind ray to turn everyone in those states into complete morons.
But... states like Maine have already decided to throw away power by splitting their EC votes, as explained by the parent. So, who knows...
Wha? The American War of Independence is an obvious starting place, and similar wars of independence around the globe. The Civil War is sort of an example of a failed attempt. However, the South could have "won" by continuing to fight a "guerilla" war, but luckily Lee helped to stop that from hapenning.
I'm guessing the next paragraph is connected with the argument that small arms are no match for an organized army. Let's see, examples where a relatively small group of people with small arms were able to effectively fight against an organized army. Ya, that's not too common in the modern world. Oh wait, there's Vietnam, Afganistan, Iraq, and pretty much every other place in the world with an "insurgency" of some kind. Just look what a handful of guys just did in Mumbai.
There's never been a need for an armed insurgency in the US (besides the Civil War). We have had corrupt governments, but never so bad as to require people to overthrow the government. If we did drift towards such a thing, the first step is to remove weapons from the masses. You wouldn't want the Black Marias to get shot at when you start removing the dissidents.
Oh, and I don't know anyone who thinks, "Well, if things get bad at least I have a gun, so I guess I'm fine with this terrible government."
Last night I tried out the game Rose and Camellia. Google it, it's great! Anyway, after playing I went up to my wife and said, "I slapped her on the cheek!". My wife then explained to me that going around slapping women until they pass it out is a bad thing. Apparently this is true even though I was a woman while I was doing it. Slapping anyone silly is bad, no matter how fun it looked on South Park the other night.
So, as you can imagine, it was quite a relief to find out that I hadn't really slapped anyone at all. On the other hand, it also means that I didn't really run a whole 20 meters (yeah, that's right!) when I played QWOP the other day. I've now learned that I actually have to move my thigh and calf muscles manually to actually claim that I did some exercise. Bummer.
Crap, I just realised that my sig isn't even real. I'm not really "Clovis", that's just a fictitious name I use on the internet. And the letters that make up that name wouldn't be me even if that was my real name. So, no sig, that is not that guy that I am.
Stares at palms of hands
"Crap, I've been driving on the wrong side of the street all these years!"
BTW, is something wrong with the blockquote tag? In the preview the little grey bar continues down next to the first line of my response, but only the part that I'm actually quoting is in grey. I bet it shows up correctly when I post and I look like an idiot for writing all this.
I've been closely following coverage of Spore for years now, and I bought the game when it first came out. I've had fun dealing with the DRM, and a few days of fun with the game itself. The handling of the game, the game itself, the terrible patch, the ridiculous "DRM cabal" statement the other day, and now these expansion packs have made this the worst game experience I've ever had. Others, obviously, feel the same way.
However, there is this strange thread; it's all EA's fault. If only Will Wright could escape from EA, everything would be better. These expansions are EA's marketing team's idea. This isn't the developer's fault, it is the publisher's fault. Blah blah blah.
No. There is only one person to blame for every aspect of this debacle. The man who has been a gaming god to me and so many other people, Will Wright. If EA is to blame for anything, it is for corrupting Will, but that doesn't change the fact that he is now corrupt. Unless Mr. Wright comes out with an explanation of why all the original features of the game are going to be nickle and dimed out of his loyal fans, the only explanation is that he is extremely greedy.
Will Wright used to like gamers, I think. I think maybe deep down inside he still does. If gamers start calling him on these transgressions, and not EA, I'm sure it would affect him. Maybe he can be turned from the Dark Side; probably not. But, please, let us start placing the blame where it is obviously due, on the shoulders of Will Wright himself.
Sorry, I am still offended. We've had computers in Kentucky for almost a decade now...
You should ask the Governor in question, Steve Beshear. Oh wait, he is not against gambling. He actually ran on a platform of expanding gambling in Kentucky. I kid you not, this guy loves gambling, but only the kind that gets taxed by the state... oups... I mean Commonwealth. This is the best news coverage I've ever seen about my state...
No. Maybe replace James Joyce with Dostoyevsky. This is James Joyce:
A random paragraph from Finnegan's Wake via Finnegan's Wiki. Basic computer security and operation is not that complicated. Now I want soup....
Is avoiding "overkill" worth an extra $50? The XBox 360 is now selling for $200.00, while the Wii, if you can find one at retail, is $250.00.
I'd say the latter is the big category. Like 80%+ of people don't fully understand copyright. Most people are under the delusion that everything is ok if you don't make money. The idea that making a mixtape is illegal is shocking to most people. In fact, you can hardly make them believe it if you try.
I was at a get together and someone brought a cornhole set (wiki it yourself, I'm lazy). They had painted pictures of characters from Pixar movies on it. I pointed out to my wife that that was a copyright (and trademark) infringement, and that they could get sued for a hefty amount of money. She didn't believe me. She would only believe that it would be illegal if they sold them.
I hate a system where laws are selectively enforced. You never know when the RIAA/MPAA is going to pick you to get punished. If the laws were strictly enforced people would realize how heinous they are.
How?
I worked for a Staples Call Center for awhile. One night I took an order from some guy. At the end I asked for his credit card number, name on the card, and the billing address. He hesitated on the last question, and stated, "But if I give you all that information, there's nothing to stop you from making an order using my credit card." I had no idea how to respond to this. Yes, you are giving me all the info I need to make a purchase via credit card, because that is what you are doing. So, I really don't see this password thing as a problem. If money disappears from a customer's account, those employees will the the first suspects. They are all probably smart enough to realise this and won't be stealing the information. I, and hundreds of other employees, could have walked out of the Call Center with hundreds of people's credit card info every day.
Blockbuster is a publicly traded company. It, like Pepsi, is not a "Mormon institution". About the only "Mormon institution", besides the church itself, is Deseret Industries. I guess this rumor was created because it would be hypocritical for the church to own Blockbuster, who rents R and NR DVDs, and rated M games, which Mormons are not supposed to watch. Just like owning Pepsi would be hypocritical because Mormons aren't allowed to drink caffeinated drinks. What's extra funny is that both of those restrictions aren't even true. Try googling before spouting this nonsense.
The rest of your statement is true, except that I don't think Blockbuster does the censoring themselves; the movie studios are glad to do that. Here's a funny story about censoring. For some reason, when John Waters finished A Dirty Shame, he actually got it rated, and it got an NC-17. So, Blockbuster, and every other major store in the US, would not carry it. So, he had to create a rated-R version, which, for a John Waters film, is retarded. At least at the time, Blockbuster would rent NR films. So, if he had released the cut rated-R version, he then could have sold the rated-NR version, which should be NC-17, in Blockbuster. The ban on NC-17 makes no sense. Just put the rated-R version of any film on a shelf next to the NR version and see which sells faster.
Of course, the situation is worse for video games. Nobody will sell an unrated video game, or an AO game. Video games can definitely be art, but due to the cost of making them, and the need to recoup those costs, the ban on AO games is, in essence, censorship.
A-ha! Once again the sandwich-heavy portfolio pays off for the hungry investor!
Isn't that what the auction houses (or other trade systems) are for?? Granted, someone doesn't tell me to go get a stack of 20 linen by killing furlbogs and they'll pay me 30 silver. I just know that people are buying stacks of 20 linen for 30 silver. The player who needs it just goes to the auction and buys it. And now we don't have to manage to find each other either.
If you want to see a (semi) persistant world with interesting player interaction, try out Tale in the Desert. Oh... that also features grinding though... insanely boring grinding... grinding where instead of killing orcs you pick grass... I'm not kidding...
Hmm... I thought that the takedown notices sent to printers was ridiculous because it showed that the method the RIAA used to determine who was pirating music was b0rken.
Apparently, the printers really were downloading music, but they had a fair use! I totally misread that story before. I, for one, will not stand for fair use rights being taken away from our electronic friends!
Have there been many attempts at "liberal humor". I don't think the Daily Show counts. Jon seems to make fun of whoever would be...er... funny. It is not surprising that Bush fits the bill most of the time. Any show that plans on being funny in a "conservative" or "liberal" way is probably going to be terrible. Picking a side just reduces the possible objects of ridicule.
How come MMOs get labeled with this "problem" of not having infinite content. I can't remember someone complaining that they got bored with Oblivion after spending 40 hours playing. If you've played an MMO so long that you've maxed out your character (and maybe a 2nd player), and are now bored with the PVP, haven't you got enough out of it? Is that really a problem that needs, or even can, be solved? Try another game...
Boring, repetitive mission structure is definitely a problem though, and the parent's description will probably be spot on.
You know, I really like memes and neologisms, but they do sometimes cause problems. Shouldn't I be able to immediately recognise "trendmilling" as a typo for "treadmilling"? But, I can't. I checked the Wiki for "trendmilling", but there were no results. It sounds like it could mean something. I'm guessing it is a typo. I'm filled with doubt though. I might sound like a complete idiot for not being familiar with "trendmilling". I can't take this pressure...
I might end up in an asylum from this... rocking back and forth, mumbling, "series of tubes, the cake is a lie, hot grits, series of tubes, intertube, interwebs, teh internets, lulz, there fixed that for you, you must be new here, 1. Create Meme 2. ????? 3. PROFIT!!!, in soviet russia tubes trendmill YOU!..."
This might be trivial to implement, but I'm guessing the players would be pissed. I've only played for a week, but I'm picking "gray" herbs all the time. What am I supposed to do to get them? Buy them at the auction? Bleh. And who would I buy them from? I'm using up most of my (non-grey) picked herbs to increase my alchemy skill, so I don't think there would be enough to go around. I guess some people could make good money focusing on resource gathering then, but wouldn't that add to the problem?
And this:
That wouldn't go over to well either. I only auction stuff I can't use, but I've already got well over 10X what the vendor wants. I've never tried, but you can probably be really careful about when to try and trade/auction stuff and make a lot of money. Granted, this might help gold farmers, but it is also a significant part of the game. Legitimate players might really enjoy that aspect. Getting to use play money in a fantasy market can be fun.