A conservative who shares more in common with libertarians is a libertarian, not a conservative. They should vote like one. If you are libertarian and vote conservative, you are voting for your social rights to be eroded, and you are voting for a theocracy. On the other hand, if you vote liberal then you're voting for your economic rights to be eroded, and the way that soccer moms have taken over the democratic party, you're also voting to erode your social rights, so either way you're screwed.
If you're a libertarian, then stand up for it. Don't call yourself a conservative if you know their policies are just as freedom-bashing as liberalism.
That's a good point. After visiting a doctor, I've often said to my friends that doctors are nothing more than overpaid tech support. They investigate the symptoms, do a cross reference to figure out what it might be, and consult a reference to look up the correct course of action. When they don't know what it is, they tell you to take some painkiller and come back if it hasn't improved in a few days. That's just a little too close to "reboot your computer, and see if that fixes it.":)
As you can tell I'm not overly impressed with doctors. They seem to be obsessed with treating symptoms, and don't care at all about finding the root causes of problems and correcting that.
As an engineer who works on some equipment that could really do bad things if it messed up, I can tell you that pessimistic engineers do better work. That's the defensive pessimist that the article talks about.
However, we're miserable most of the time, and we burn out quick. That's because we blame ourselves for every single little thing that goes wrong, and we feel guilty about every mistake for the rest of our lives. It's a pretty high standard to hold yourself to.
I imagine it's worse for Doctors, but that profession allows you to blame something else for your screw up a lot more, so maybe not.
Yes, I have played with D2A (Emerald) and Forgotten Soldiers. Sturmgrenadier is more hard core than either of those. I recommend FS because it's a little more organized, but they also have some minor cert requirements, so it's up to you. Contact Mayside, CruXX, Greatonz, or other officers listed on this page. (I'm not an officer). Hope to see you on!
Anyone considered making a sex ed game? Tons of sub-games available:
- the whole thing, of course, is an RPG. - singles bar = RTS - you're a sperm travelling up the falopian (sp?) tube = racing game - money shot = FPS
Features: Support for force feedback joysticks. Special item: +5 shield of latex. Alcohols gives charisma bonus of 27% (not to the person drinking it though).
I want to start playing Planetside, as I've tried it at a few friends' places and I enjoyed it. Should I go for it now, or should I wait for this free grunt program thing mid-month to try it out?
The game is so cheap... $19.99... and it comes with one free month which is worth $13 or so, so you're going to pay an extra $7 over one month's subscription to try it out. After that, you can cancel or just play the free account for 12 months.
I say buy it. It's great. You'll want to get in early to get the jump on all the free account guys who are going to join soon. They'll be like free EXP for the first month or so.
I'm a die hard Planetside fan, and I got there after playing SWG and hating it, so I can see where you're coming from. However, SWG had an established base of players that more or less enjoyed the game (everyone who hated it, like me, quit). Once you've got a player base that accepts things the way they are, doing such a drastic change is going to create huge negative publicity. Perhaps the changes were to draw people like me back to SWG, but the fact is that SOE couldn't generate any positive spin out of the changes, so nobody's going to pick it up now, and they lost a good deal of their paying customers.
I definitely feel that Planetside with a star wars skin on it would be absolutely great, but taking an established RPG and morphing it into an FPS is suicide. There are years of customer expectations that can't be undone in a patch.
I still dream of the day when someone crosses Star Wars Battlefront II with Planetside, but I doubt that'll happen.
Huxley sounds like it will be the next big MMOFPS, but they're trying to put a whole bunch of player run economy in there too, along with NPCs, and I bet it'll be a huge flop. Hardcore FPS players just want bigger battles and cooler weapons, not dress up dolls.
Apologies are not in order for Sara. Apologies are in order for Celine. We really appreciate you taking the fall on that one. Las Vegas can keep her.:)
Yeah, that's just a friggin Utopia right there. Look, I'm saying I paid through my taxes for all the sidewalks in the city, not just the ones in front of my house. I agree that if you started back at uninhabited forested land, and had no public services, everything would be quite different, but transitioning to no public services now by privatizing the existing public services is assinine.
What you're preaching is just as idealistic as communism, and just as flawed because neither work in the real world.
I've been a consumer of both systems, and I'm saying that overall, the Canadian system is much better. The reason for lower cost is that in the US, each insurance company has many many many forms and paperwork that needs to be filled out by medical companies and individuals to submit claims. Every single doctor's office needs to be up to date on all the different plans that they want to accept. It's not a small cost, in recent figures, it was over a 3rd of the operating expense of a doctor's office.
In Canada, it's so much simpler - there's just one insurance policy to deal with - the gov't. Nobody worries about what is covered and what isn't. The government doesn't maintain a huge staff that sits there reviewing claims trying to figure out if this particular procedure is covered on this person's insurance plan (which American insurance providers absolutely do). Every service in a hospital with the exception of private rooms and drugs are covered. Same with doctors.
Not only that, but in the US, you are limited to go to a specific "network" of doctors, and you may think you have choice, but not if you want a decent price, so you're a slave to the whims of the executives of the company you work for. In Canada, I can go to see ANY doctor - that's freedom. I agree that in Canada they use the rules of triage to choose who to serve first, and in the US they use the rules of credit cards, so in Canada if you have money, you may be waiting longer than you will in the US. In my experience, the wait times are comparable (political scare tactics aside).
In the US I had what is considered to be a really good health care plan through my employer - blue cross, blue shield. Every time I went to submit a claim, not only is there a deductible (which is fine), but there are tons of these rules about how many procedures of certain categories you can have within a certain time period. They would always send back a letter declining your claim, and you'd have to spend half an hour on the phone with them arguing to get your money. It sucked.
So don't tell me the American medical system is better. I've used it, and it sucks. The Canadian system is better, but it could use some constant feedback to keep it up to date, and some funding wouldn't hurt, but hey... Canada's the only G8 nation not running a deficit, so what do you want? Either irresponsible finances and more money to health care, or we can pay down the debt for our children, and cut back on care a little bit now. Over the past decade Canadians chose with their votes. This is what they want.
I've heard that RIM does have a backup plan in place, with different software that is non-infringing. I'm assuming it will just cost them some fixed amount to switch over, and it will be business as usual.
Interesting to note the Planetside announcements.
on
MMOGs Branch Out
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· Score: 1
Recently, developers of the game Planetside announced you would be able to try it free for 12 months (you will be limited to battle rank 6), and you have to pay for access after that. Most players can make it to BR6 in a month, of course, and they're hoping people will purchase a subscription. The game only costs $20 to buy and that comes with a one month subscription, which is $12 to $15 a month after that, depending on contract length.
I bought in back when you had to buy the box, but even then it was only $20, which is probably enough to cover their expenses in distribution. I think that was quite reasonable.
How does "leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone" eventually mean "privatized sidewalks"? After all, I already paid for the damned things through my taxes... why should I have to pay for them again?
Anything good the government would do will be done more efficiantly when the people involved are not coerced.
This is true of government projects, in general. The Canadian health care system is a counter-example, of course, since it provides more efficient health care (due to substantially lower administrative costs) than the American "system", but of course there are other issues with a centralized mandatory system. I've used both systems, and the Canadian one is more efficient with my money, and I'm even in a high tax bracket.
However, when you think of major economic recessions, such as the depression, the only way to get out of such a situation is for people to spend money, but it's against their nature to do so as free individuals. The way it's regulated now is that governments control the interest rate, so they lower it in a slow economy to get people to take money out of the bank and spend it on things you normally finance, like houses, cars, machinery, etc. Conversely when the economy is going gang-busters, the government raises interest rates which stops inflation from going out of control, which would in turn lead to a deep recession. These controls instituted in the latter half of the 20th century have led to much more stability and prosperity overall. This is something that the government does well. Other ways the government can get an economy moving is by spending money on infrastructure or military, even if you're not taking it in as tax money. WWII ended the depression, first for Germany, then for the rest of the world because governments were forced to spend money they couldn't afford to spend. It was counter-intuitive at the time, but it worked.
Thinking about it some more, the whole concept of currency is something we are better off having, and you can't manage currency efficiently at a local level.
So I find your comments to be overly broad, but your heart is in the right place. Building a bridge in Alaska for 50 people or whatever is complete stupidity, and your best example of government waste.
What I almost like better is the Zelda model. If I hit something with my sword, it gets hurt a predictable amount - the same, every time. If I hit it with a different weapon, it gets hurt a different amount. Different critters respond differently to different weapons... There is no "chance" associated with that - no numbers. The problem is, that devolves to a "twitch" style game - very, very hard to pull off in an MMO. =(
I would like to point out a game called Planetside which effectively does what you describe. It is a twitch style game, it's an MMO, and there is no chance involved at all. The rules are all pre-determined. You aim counts.
If you would like to try it for free for a few days, you can use their 7 day trial, and in February they are going to start a program where you can play for one year for free up to a certain rank. Lower rank doesn't make you less lethal though.
An MMORPG requires servers. Big servers with big pipes. They need to be purchased and maintained. If they were to charge you upfront for that cost, the game would cost $200 or $250 or more. Nobody would buy it.
That's on top of the fact that more content is added every month or so, and content costs money. So do CSRs, etc.
It would be nice if you could buy a lifetime membership along with the game and pay $200, but how often do you buy a game knowing you'll want to play it for (200/15=) 14 months at least to make your money back? Wouldn't you rather pay in installments?
Besides, paying in installments makes sure the developers have to keep fixing bugs and making the game better or people will leave, and their revenue stream dries up.
Does anyone have any stats on maximum connections to PS servers at one time?
Well, each continent on a particular server can have 400 people on it at once (it used to be 500, but that was reduced to get people on multiple continents more often). That 400 is split between the 3 factions, so each faction can have about 133 players on each continent. I imagine each continent could handle far more.
Each server has 10 continents plus 3 sanctuaries, and in theory if each was poplocked at 500, that's 6500 per server, but that'll never happen. Currently there are 3 servers: Markov (US West), Emerald (US East), and Werner (EU).
I remember trying to get back into the game for a while, but even after doubling my RAM (to 512) I still had problems.
That's a good point. The game is playable with 512MB but you should have 1GB if you want a decent framerate. You also need a decent processor and video card.
That said, the designers went to great lengths to create a game where people without great gaming rigs would still have a role to play. You can of course be a medic or engineer (including combat engineer), plus you can be a cloaker which involves a lot of sneaking around very slowly and staying away from enemies trying to sneak into enemy facilities and knife or shoot them in the back, or destroy critical infrastructure. There is also lots of opportunities to be a driver, either for a tank or a galaxy dropship, both of which require less twitch style gameplay.
Are the new players going to be at an inherent disadvantage?
Well, the best thing about Planetside is that it's mostly skill and strategy based. You get quite a large number of "certification points" as soon as you start - 7 I think. That would let you specialize in either infantry, air, armor, or mix it up a little bit if you wanted. Extra cert points let you become well rounded, but as long as you stick to your specialty, you are not at a disadvantage. You can also drop a certification once every 6 hours or something, and get the points back.
I've been playing for over a year, and I think this free year is a great idea. If they would just put a little money into advertising the game too, that would be perfect. It's a shame Sony poured so much money into Star Wars Galaxies advertising when Planetside is so much better of a game fundamentally.
I left it for a month or 2 when work got really hectic, and I tried another game, but I keep going back to Planetside. I'm not saying it's perfect (and they did make mistakes - i.e. BFRs), but it's one of the best game concepts out there.
When the systems die at peak trading, it's 10s of millions in revenue lost. An hour.
While WoW is big, it's nowhere near that big. Blizzard does not make tens of millions an hour in revenue from this game. Half a million subscribers paying $12 per month gives around $8000 or so per hour. Revenue is only lost if people cancel their accounts, not if they don't get to play for a few hours.
I thought that natural diamonds actually have more imperfections and more random imperfections that make them sparkle more than lab diamonds.
I take it your fiance told you that. I also take it she was told that by either her friends or a woman selling diamonds. Eventually, all the misinformation comes from DeBeers.
Slashdot Mirror
A conservative who shares more in common with libertarians is a libertarian, not a conservative. They should vote like one. If you are libertarian and vote conservative, you are voting for your social rights to be eroded, and you are voting for a theocracy. On the other hand, if you vote liberal then you're voting for your economic rights to be eroded, and the way that soccer moms have taken over the democratic party, you're also voting to erode your social rights, so either way you're screwed.
If you're a libertarian, then stand up for it. Don't call yourself a conservative if you know their policies are just as freedom-bashing as liberalism.
That's a good point. After visiting a doctor, I've often said to my friends that doctors are nothing more than overpaid tech support. They investigate the symptoms, do a cross reference to figure out what it might be, and consult a reference to look up the correct course of action. When they don't know what it is, they tell you to take some painkiller and come back if it hasn't improved in a few days. That's just a little too close to "reboot your computer, and see if that fixes it." :)
As you can tell I'm not overly impressed with doctors. They seem to be obsessed with treating symptoms, and don't care at all about finding the root causes of problems and correcting that.
As an engineer who works on some equipment that could really do bad things if it messed up, I can tell you that pessimistic engineers do better work. That's the defensive pessimist that the article talks about.
However, we're miserable most of the time, and we burn out quick. That's because we blame ourselves for every single little thing that goes wrong, and we feel guilty about every mistake for the rest of our lives. It's a pretty high standard to hold yourself to.
I imagine it's worse for Doctors, but that profession allows you to blame something else for your screw up a lot more, so maybe not.
I interpret the italics to mean it's the words of the submitter. Within the italics, quoted sections are from the article.
Hey Bishouen,
:)
No, not Radant. I'm an ex-D2A'er actually, but I'm not going to go any further than that.
Yes, I have played with D2A (Emerald) and Forgotten Soldiers. Sturmgrenadier is more hard core than either of those. I recommend FS because it's a little more organized, but they also have some minor cert requirements, so it's up to you. Contact Mayside, CruXX, Greatonz, or other officers listed on this page. (I'm not an officer). Hope to see you on!
Anyone considered making a sex ed game? Tons of sub-games available:
- the whole thing, of course, is an RPG.
- singles bar = RTS
- you're a sperm travelling up the falopian (sp?) tube = racing game
- money shot = FPS
Features:
Support for force feedback joysticks.
Special item: +5 shield of latex.
Alcohols gives charisma bonus of 27% (not to the person drinking it though).
I want to start playing Planetside, as I've tried it at a few friends' places and I enjoyed it. Should I go for it now, or should I wait for this free grunt program thing mid-month to try it out?
The game is so cheap... $19.99... and it comes with one free month which is worth $13 or so, so you're going to pay an extra $7 over one month's subscription to try it out. After that, you can cancel or just play the free account for 12 months.
I say buy it. It's great. You'll want to get in early to get the jump on all the free account guys who are going to join soon. They'll be like free EXP for the first month or so.
Here's a fan made trailer.
I'm a die hard Planetside fan, and I got there after playing SWG and hating it, so I can see where you're coming from. However, SWG had an established base of players that more or less enjoyed the game (everyone who hated it, like me, quit). Once you've got a player base that accepts things the way they are, doing such a drastic change is going to create huge negative publicity. Perhaps the changes were to draw people like me back to SWG, but the fact is that SOE couldn't generate any positive spin out of the changes, so nobody's going to pick it up now, and they lost a good deal of their paying customers.
I definitely feel that Planetside with a star wars skin on it would be absolutely great, but taking an established RPG and morphing it into an FPS is suicide. There are years of customer expectations that can't be undone in a patch.
I still dream of the day when someone crosses Star Wars Battlefront II with Planetside, but I doubt that'll happen.
Huxley sounds like it will be the next big MMOFPS, but they're trying to put a whole bunch of player run economy in there too, along with NPCs, and I bet it'll be a huge flop. Hardcore FPS players just want bigger battles and cooler weapons, not dress up dolls.
You've just described Planetside.
I would have thought a more devistating weapon would be announcing a North American Celine Dion tour?
Latest memo from CSIS to the Prime Minister's office: Agent 536CD is progressing well at her assignment in Las Vegas.
Apologies are not in order for Sara. Apologies are in order for Celine. We really appreciate you taking the fall on that one. Las Vegas can keep her. :)
Yeah, that's just a friggin Utopia right there. Look, I'm saying I paid through my taxes for all the sidewalks in the city, not just the ones in front of my house. I agree that if you started back at uninhabited forested land, and had no public services, everything would be quite different, but transitioning to no public services now by privatizing the existing public services is assinine.
What you're preaching is just as idealistic as communism, and just as flawed because neither work in the real world.
I've been a consumer of both systems, and I'm saying that overall, the Canadian system is much better. The reason for lower cost is that in the US, each insurance company has many many many forms and paperwork that needs to be filled out by medical companies and individuals to submit claims. Every single doctor's office needs to be up to date on all the different plans that they want to accept. It's not a small cost, in recent figures, it was over a 3rd of the operating expense of a doctor's office.
In Canada, it's so much simpler - there's just one insurance policy to deal with - the gov't. Nobody worries about what is covered and what isn't. The government doesn't maintain a huge staff that sits there reviewing claims trying to figure out if this particular procedure is covered on this person's insurance plan (which American insurance providers absolutely do). Every service in a hospital with the exception of private rooms and drugs are covered. Same with doctors.
Not only that, but in the US, you are limited to go to a specific "network" of doctors, and you may think you have choice, but not if you want a decent price, so you're a slave to the whims of the executives of the company you work for. In Canada, I can go to see ANY doctor - that's freedom. I agree that in Canada they use the rules of triage to choose who to serve first, and in the US they use the rules of credit cards, so in Canada if you have money, you may be waiting longer than you will in the US. In my experience, the wait times are comparable (political scare tactics aside).
In the US I had what is considered to be a really good health care plan through my employer - blue cross, blue shield. Every time I went to submit a claim, not only is there a deductible (which is fine), but there are tons of these rules about how many procedures of certain categories you can have within a certain time period. They would always send back a letter declining your claim, and you'd have to spend half an hour on the phone with them arguing to get your money. It sucked.
So don't tell me the American medical system is better. I've used it, and it sucks. The Canadian system is better, but it could use some constant feedback to keep it up to date, and some funding wouldn't hurt, but hey... Canada's the only G8 nation not running a deficit, so what do you want? Either irresponsible finances and more money to health care, or we can pay down the debt for our children, and cut back on care a little bit now. Over the past decade Canadians chose with their votes. This is what they want.
I've heard that RIM does have a backup plan in place, with different software that is non-infringing. I'm assuming it will just cost them some fixed amount to switch over, and it will be business as usual.
Recently, developers of the game Planetside announced you would be able to try it free for 12 months (you will be limited to battle rank 6), and you have to pay for access after that. Most players can make it to BR6 in a month, of course, and they're hoping people will purchase a subscription. The game only costs $20 to buy and that comes with a one month subscription, which is $12 to $15 a month after that, depending on contract length.
I bought in back when you had to buy the box, but even then it was only $20, which is probably enough to cover their expenses in distribution. I think that was quite reasonable.
How does "leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone" eventually mean "privatized sidewalks"? After all, I already paid for the damned things through my taxes... why should I have to pay for them again?
Ok, so the revenue is $80,000 per hour. That's still not 10's of millions.
Anything good the government would do will be done more efficiantly when the people involved are not coerced.
This is true of government projects, in general. The Canadian health care system is a counter-example, of course, since it provides more efficient health care (due to substantially lower administrative costs) than the American "system", but of course there are other issues with a centralized mandatory system. I've used both systems, and the Canadian one is more efficient with my money, and I'm even in a high tax bracket.
However, when you think of major economic recessions, such as the depression, the only way to get out of such a situation is for people to spend money, but it's against their nature to do so as free individuals. The way it's regulated now is that governments control the interest rate, so they lower it in a slow economy to get people to take money out of the bank and spend it on things you normally finance, like houses, cars, machinery, etc. Conversely when the economy is going gang-busters, the government raises interest rates which stops inflation from going out of control, which would in turn lead to a deep recession. These controls instituted in the latter half of the 20th century have led to much more stability and prosperity overall. This is something that the government does well. Other ways the government can get an economy moving is by spending money on infrastructure or military, even if you're not taking it in as tax money. WWII ended the depression, first for Germany, then for the rest of the world because governments were forced to spend money they couldn't afford to spend. It was counter-intuitive at the time, but it worked.
Thinking about it some more, the whole concept of currency is something we are better off having, and you can't manage currency efficiently at a local level.
So I find your comments to be overly broad, but your heart is in the right place. Building a bridge in Alaska for 50 people or whatever is complete stupidity, and your best example of government waste.
What I almost like better is the Zelda model. If I hit something with my sword, it gets hurt a predictable amount - the same, every time. If I hit it with a different weapon, it gets hurt a different amount. Different critters respond differently to different weapons... There is no "chance" associated with that - no numbers. The problem is, that devolves to a "twitch" style game - very, very hard to pull off in an MMO. =(
I would like to point out a game called Planetside which effectively does what you describe. It is a twitch style game, it's an MMO, and there is no chance involved at all. The rules are all pre-determined. You aim counts.
If you would like to try it for free for a few days, you can use their 7 day trial, and in February they are going to start a program where you can play for one year for free up to a certain rank. Lower rank doesn't make you less lethal though.
An MMORPG requires servers. Big servers with big pipes. They need to be purchased and maintained. If they were to charge you upfront for that cost, the game would cost $200 or $250 or more. Nobody would buy it.
That's on top of the fact that more content is added every month or so, and content costs money. So do CSRs, etc.
It would be nice if you could buy a lifetime membership along with the game and pay $200, but how often do you buy a game knowing you'll want to play it for (200/15=) 14 months at least to make your money back? Wouldn't you rather pay in installments?
Besides, paying in installments makes sure the developers have to keep fixing bugs and making the game better or people will leave, and their revenue stream dries up.
Does anyone have any stats on maximum connections to PS servers at one time?
Well, each continent on a particular server can have 400 people on it at once (it used to be 500, but that was reduced to get people on multiple continents more often). That 400 is split between the 3 factions, so each faction can have about 133 players on each continent. I imagine each continent could handle far more.
Each server has 10 continents plus 3 sanctuaries, and in theory if each was poplocked at 500, that's 6500 per server, but that'll never happen. Currently there are 3 servers: Markov (US West), Emerald (US East), and Werner (EU).
I remember trying to get back into the game for a while, but even after doubling my RAM (to 512) I still had problems.
That's a good point. The game is playable with 512MB but you should have 1GB if you want a decent framerate. You also need a decent processor and video card.
That said, the designers went to great lengths to create a game where people without great gaming rigs would still have a role to play. You can of course be a medic or engineer (including combat engineer), plus you can be a cloaker which involves a lot of sneaking around very slowly and staying away from enemies trying to sneak into enemy facilities and knife or shoot them in the back, or destroy critical infrastructure. There is also lots of opportunities to be a driver, either for a tank or a galaxy dropship, both of which require less twitch style gameplay.
Are the new players going to be at an inherent disadvantage?
Well, the best thing about Planetside is that it's mostly skill and strategy based. You get quite a large number of "certification points" as soon as you start - 7 I think. That would let you specialize in either infantry, air, armor, or mix it up a little bit if you wanted. Extra cert points let you become well rounded, but as long as you stick to your specialty, you are not at a disadvantage. You can also drop a certification once every 6 hours or something, and get the points back.
I've been playing for over a year, and I think this free year is a great idea. If they would just put a little money into advertising the game too, that would be perfect. It's a shame Sony poured so much money into Star Wars Galaxies advertising when Planetside is so much better of a game fundamentally.
I left it for a month or 2 when work got really hectic, and I tried another game, but I keep going back to Planetside. I'm not saying it's perfect (and they did make mistakes - i.e. BFRs), but it's one of the best game concepts out there.
When the systems die at peak trading, it's 10s of millions in revenue lost. An hour.
While WoW is big, it's nowhere near that big. Blizzard does not make tens of millions an hour in revenue from this game. Half a million subscribers paying $12 per month gives around $8000 or so per hour. Revenue is only lost if people cancel their accounts, not if they don't get to play for a few hours.
I thought that natural diamonds actually have more imperfections and more random imperfections that make them sparkle more than lab diamonds.
I take it your fiance told you that. I also take it she was told that by either her friends or a woman selling diamonds. Eventually, all the misinformation comes from DeBeers.