If ever there was a moment for the Blind Association to shine, it's right now. Make an official complaint saying that the Authors Guild is discriminating against blind people with this one! THe authors guild and this copyright bit, it's going to hit a few sites like Slashdot, maybe a few copyright sites, but the "Authors guild discriminating against blind" - that would make the evening news!
I wonder if handing over that information is illegal in Egypt. We jump up and down about that infringement on privacy out here in the western world, but I wonder if over yonder in Egypt, if handing out that information actually breaks local privacy laws.
If it doesn't, I wouldn't like to be the guy explaining to the local police chief why my company doesn't want to give them non classified, non private normal run of the day information helping them solve a case (whatever the case is).
One of my best mates has actually gone one funnier than this. It's not so much where the mouse is, but how. You see, he originally started using a mouse with his Amiga. The Amiga was on a small table to boot. That meant that the already shortish mouse cord was even shorter. Being quite resourceful Scott decided to do the only thing he could to stay comfortable, not have to buy a new desk and still get use of this mouse/Amiga. He started to use it upside down so the lead came out under his arm and then under the table to his Amiga. It worked - sort of. Poor chap cannot use a mouse normally now. It's funny, we both have Logitech Revolutions, but his mouse always has the buttons pretty much pointed at him when he is using it.
One of the lads here uses his mouse on the left hand side (though he is right handed) just to make more use of his brain and to make for a challenge. Each to their own I guess.
The consumers have gotten over the glitz factor being the number one selling point with MMOs and are now showing interest in gameplay aspects that before they didn't even have the vocabulary to discuss.
If you think Wow has made people smarter about MMOs then you are reading the wrong forum threads. I would say that while Wow does well at what it does, it's not an MMO that educates the audience overall.
Now go look at the new Star Wars MMO in development and you have daily questions about will it be released with a native Mac client or how will it handle PvP/RvR or crafting vs looting gear.
Yes, and those same questions were being asked when the "other" Star Wars MMO was coming out. Star Wars Galaxies was one of the most ironic games ever to be released. Ironic why? Because the engine was fantastic (for the time) the graphics were a mile above anything else at that time. Also ironic as the developers spent just simply TOO MUCH time developing the combat mechanics. What might have started off as a good idea to make for innovative gameplay soon turned to a completely imbalanced and un-group rewarding system.
So yes, people are asking about game mechanics. People like myself who looked forward to the "other" Star Wars game for around three years of it's development, who played in the beta, played in the live game - and quit due to a horrendous "reworking" of a bad combat system after the developers had heard enough complaints about it. I am asking now because I am scared to get my hopes up that they won't dick it up again like they did last time.
Lastly, as for examples where graphics do not rule the landscape, you would have gone much closer to making a great point if you had suggested Ultima Online instead of Warcraft. Ultima took off in 1997 and is still being played today. While the subscriptions they got peaked at around 250,000 it was in a time where the market for MMO was around 250,000 - so that's saying a heck of a lot. That game is still around due to the simple yet amazingly playable mechanics in every aspect of the game. Combat, Crafting, Game Achievements and much much more.
I know this post has been a little agro maybe, but just because you strongly feel that Warcraft has taught you a lot about MMOs (which it may well have) it's certainly not a game that I would call educational compared to other MMOs. Has it taught a player who has never played MMO something? Yes. Did it have much to teach people who had played MMOs before Warcraft? Not really.
Warcraft is amazingly successful due to one simple fact. They might not offer the world, but what they do offer is amazingly polished. Eg:
Quests? Quests work. Ones that don't are quickly fixed or lost in the thousands that do work.
Solo play? You can solo play from level 1-80.
Group play? Groups function very well and there is benefit from grouping.
Classes? Sure, they are always rebalancing classes, but that's why there aren't gimp classes.
Content? There is so much to do now that it's just getting silly.
Yes, they have had more time to polish it all up, but that's not a negative thing. It just means that the bar has been raised higher for others following in terms of polish.
A country doesn't wage wars to protect it's citizenry. That's done by defending it's borders.
How do you think those borders are defended?
I am still saying that wars are waged outside your own country (short of a coup/civil war). Soldiers protecting a country within it's borders doesn't count as "waging war".
Given the US foreign policy of late, I might be excused for misreading it:)
How do you know the original poster was even an American?
Well, it's mentioned in the grandparent post, he quotes it and makes reference to it, it was during a timezone that is US traffic heavy and a large number of visitors here are American. Given that, I would say the chances are above average. Does it make a difference if he is not? Does it make my point about US foreign policy any less accurate?
Side note: What is this "war on drugs" you referred to before? I am unfamiliar with this term.
The Government outlawing something has never once made it impossible to obtain said item.
Why does something have to be outlawed for no-one to have it? Yes, I am a utopian in that sense, but why does anyone need guns?
I think his point was that the only two jobs for government are protecting the citizenry from outside harm (generally done by waging war) and paving roads.
A country doesn't wage wars to protect it's citizenry. That's done by defending it's borders. Wars are waged against OTHER countries. It might have been context driven, but I read it as (apart from providing infrastructure) the role of the government was to go attack other countries. Given the US foreign policy of late, I might be excused for misreading it:)
Maybe it comes down to society you want to live in. If I had a choice, I'd prefer a society where everyone had guns and the government didn't do anything but pave roads and wage war. Within that context, I am willing to take steps to increase the wealth and safety of myself and others.
Why on earth would you want everyone with a gun? Surely it's much better for no-one to have guns? And seriously, why do you want your government waging wars? The world is in enough strife at the moment without more idiots with guns running into other countries yards.
I'm no biologist, so maybe it's more accurate than it sounds, but it seems there is a pretty significant margin of error at each step, not to mention a lot of assumptions.
Look, stop making so many assumptions about other people's assumptions. It leads to a high margin of error at a possible large number of steps.
Is it that the real-life counterparts to the horrors of scriptwriter imagination are too far beyond human comprehension? Too far beyond budget constraints? Or too big to fit on the cinema screens?
It's more than people today on average just don't get frightened by something simply being big. Also, it's stale. Have a look through the "classics" section of your local dvd store, or troll through imdb.com for a while to and see just how many older movies there are about giant this, and giant that.
Cinema caters to the needs and wants of the moviegoer and currently for the most part, they want the "big bad beastie" to be intelligent (often more intelligent than the initial plot suggests), quite impervious to damage (needs to be shot many times but still be very powerful), needs a trick that no one thought it could do and quite often, it needs to be amazingly fast and agile.
but the proper way to look at it is the earthquake brought the geology back to a neutral point
Why on earth would you say that? Earthquakes don't bring geology to neutral points. They happen when the earth gets past critical point.
I can't think of a totally slashdot car analogy, but here is a good analogy of earthquake causes and how it works geologically that at least includes a car.
Think of a piece of bungee cord 10 meters in length. You tie one part to the tow-ball of a car, and hold the middle of the cord. This means there is five meters of slack cord past the point where you are holding. Now, the car very very slowly starts to drive away from you, and the tension in the cord slowly grows. You holding onto the cord with all your might represents the pressures on the fault line. Sooner or later however, the pull on the cord will be too much, and it will slip in your hand. Now, you don't totally let go however. It might slip an inch or two, just barely enough so that the force of your hand holding it once again overcomes the force of the pull in the cord - but there is still a lot of tension in the cord. When the car moves away far enough again, there will be another slip of a small distance again and again.
This is how fault lines work. When there is a quake, it doesn't go back to a neutral point. It goes back to a point which is lower than the critical point that caused the earthquake.
If you make something material and someone steals it, you no longer have it. If you have information and somebody copies it, you still have your copy. You lose exclusivity as to who know that information, but that exclusivity is not a material thing and cannot be stolen (since the person who makes a copy does not gain that exclusivity.)
Lordy, you really believe that don't you?
So, by your reckoning, there is no such thing as copyright? Anyone can download music because "the other person still has their copy"? How about if you write a really good book, but I take a copy and take it to a publisher before you do and sell it? Hey, you still have your copy, you can't be mad right?
Material and information are totally different and it's a real shame that lawmakers aren't clever enough to see something so simple.
Material and information are totally indifferent and it's a real grace that lawmakers are clever enough to see something so simple.
- There. Fixed that for you.
Honest question - who decides what American workers get paid?
Simple. Demand.
Lets say job A has 3 people qualified to do it, but four companies need job A filled, the three qualified people can pick and choose their job. Now, turn to job B, which also has 3 people qualified for it, but only one company needs job B filled. Now, it's the company who can pick and choose who they hire and for how much (or how little).
Yes, this is amazingly simplistic, but it's really quite spot on. When you start looking at this sort of stuff on a global economy scale, yes, it gets a whole lot more complex, but the principle stays the same. Jobs in high demand will earn more. Somewhere above was an example of a qualified Red Hat person leaving college wanting more than an experienced sysadmin with years of experience. Guess why that is? Because right now, lots of companies have decided they need red hat qualified workers. Bingo, sellers market - and the people with red hat who can sell themselves will be making a killing.
In Australia, a funny thing happened about five years ago. We pretty much ran into a shortage of tradies (that's local talk for plumbers, sparkies, brickies etc etc) and the ones who were in that field started to make an utter killing. There were even numerous news stories and articles about the new class of working elite. Yes, the guy hooking up the pipes in your new home was earning $150k a year. The guy fixing the cement slab for your house, he was making much more than the lawyer doing your legal paperwork to buy the house.
Now, companies can of course try to exploit rules in a market. In this case, big banks worked out that they might be able to hire people cheaper by using this sort of working visa. Just means that there is less demand for that sort of worker really. It's a buyers market for this sort of work.
Now, when you start adding more complexity again with "how much does a worker want for a particular type of work" you once again get into yet another kettle of fish. For example, I work in an office doing a business analyst role, but I wouldn't take say a job moving lawns for the same money. I don't like mowing lawns. Sure, I could do it, but for me to do that every day, I would expect to be paid considerably more. I also wouldn't really want to take a job working in a fast food outlet. Now, as it happens to be, those jobs pay less than mine - that's because a lot of people are willing to do them, and can do them for less than me. In global terms, these banks are taking advantage of the fact that they can take workers into a role for less than the average American wants to be paid for doing that job. It's not that there aren't any Americans who don't want to do that job - just not for that amount of money. If the bank can make use of a way to have the job filled for less than an American wants for it - seems to be playing fair. Maybe not patriotic, but fair.
Now, having said all this rather longwinded stuff, I am of the general opinion that you end up getting what you pay for. I advertise roles within this team at above the minimum wages but hire very selectively. This means I get someone who is a better worker for the role - and mostly people who want to do the role well. Paying above the other people advertising the same type of role really lets you pick and choose who you want - it turns any role into a buyer's market.
Could have been a science teacher. Could have been worse though, could have been a grade school science teacher. I think everyone on slashdot has the same opinion about grade school science teachers.
Slashdot Mirror
If ever there was a moment for the Blind Association to shine, it's right now. Make an official complaint saying that the Authors Guild is discriminating against blind people with this one! THe authors guild and this copyright bit, it's going to hit a few sites like Slashdot, maybe a few copyright sites, but the "Authors guild discriminating against blind" - that would make the evening news!
I wonder if handing over that information is illegal in Egypt. We jump up and down about that infringement on privacy out here in the western world, but I wonder if over yonder in Egypt, if handing out that information actually breaks local privacy laws.
If it doesn't, I wouldn't like to be the guy explaining to the local police chief why my company doesn't want to give them non classified, non private normal run of the day information helping them solve a case (whatever the case is).
Yes. Yes you are.
One of my best mates has actually gone one funnier than this. It's not so much where the mouse is, but how. You see, he originally started using a mouse with his Amiga. The Amiga was on a small table to boot. That meant that the already shortish mouse cord was even shorter. Being quite resourceful Scott decided to do the only thing he could to stay comfortable, not have to buy a new desk and still get use of this mouse/Amiga. He started to use it upside down so the lead came out under his arm and then under the table to his Amiga. It worked - sort of. Poor chap cannot use a mouse normally now. It's funny, we both have Logitech Revolutions, but his mouse always has the buttons pretty much pointed at him when he is using it.
One of the lads here uses his mouse on the left hand side (though he is right handed) just to make more use of his brain and to make for a challenge. Each to their own I guess.
Not a bad idea... Cource, the #1 password would then become 'TINSTAAFL'.
The Instant Noodles Still Taste Awful And Flavour Less?
The Inspector Noticed Shithead Tattooed And Asked For Leads?
Tinkling In Nighttime Surely Takes An Awful Fucking Length?
Wow, mod parent up. That's actually quite an interesting quick read!
Really? What's the atomic number and symbol?
That's funny to me. I could get past the bugs in the game. What I couldn't get past was the total lack of things to do.
The consumers have gotten over the glitz factor being the number one selling point with MMOs and are now showing interest in gameplay aspects that before they didn't even have the vocabulary to discuss.
If you think Wow has made people smarter about MMOs then you are reading the wrong forum threads. I would say that while Wow does well at what it does, it's not an MMO that educates the audience overall.
Now go look at the new Star Wars MMO in development and you have daily questions about will it be released with a native Mac client or how will it handle PvP/RvR or crafting vs looting gear.
Yes, and those same questions were being asked when the "other" Star Wars MMO was coming out. Star Wars Galaxies was one of the most ironic games ever to be released. Ironic why? Because the engine was fantastic (for the time) the graphics were a mile above anything else at that time. Also ironic as the developers spent just simply TOO MUCH time developing the combat mechanics. What might have started off as a good idea to make for innovative gameplay soon turned to a completely imbalanced and un-group rewarding system.
So yes, people are asking about game mechanics. People like myself who looked forward to the "other" Star Wars game for around three years of it's development, who played in the beta, played in the live game - and quit due to a horrendous "reworking" of a bad combat system after the developers had heard enough complaints about it. I am asking now because I am scared to get my hopes up that they won't dick it up again like they did last time.
Lastly, as for examples where graphics do not rule the landscape, you would have gone much closer to making a great point if you had suggested Ultima Online instead of Warcraft. Ultima took off in 1997 and is still being played today. While the subscriptions they got peaked at around 250,000 it was in a time where the market for MMO was around 250,000 - so that's saying a heck of a lot. That game is still around due to the simple yet amazingly playable mechanics in every aspect of the game. Combat, Crafting, Game Achievements and much much more.
I know this post has been a little agro maybe, but just because you strongly feel that Warcraft has taught you a lot about MMOs (which it may well have) it's certainly not a game that I would call educational compared to other MMOs. Has it taught a player who has never played MMO something? Yes. Did it have much to teach people who had played MMOs before Warcraft? Not really.
Warcraft is amazingly successful due to one simple fact. They might not offer the world, but what they do offer is amazingly polished. Eg:
Quests? Quests work. Ones that don't are quickly fixed or lost in the thousands that do work.
Solo play? You can solo play from level 1-80.
Group play? Groups function very well and there is benefit from grouping.
Classes? Sure, they are always rebalancing classes, but that's why there aren't gimp classes.
Content? There is so much to do now that it's just getting silly.
Yes, they have had more time to polish it all up, but that's not a negative thing. It just means that the bar has been raised higher for others following in terms of polish.
So you played counter strike? Seriously, even though your post was lengthy, you didn't actually say what you played.
This is *less* dangerous than if he were talking about Bubonic Plague and released lab mice - the mice would chew on wiring.
Get a grip.
If the mice chewed through the wiring, wouldn't you need a gaffer instead of a grip?
A country doesn't wage wars to protect it's citizenry. That's done by defending it's borders. How do you think those borders are defended?
I am still saying that wars are waged outside your own country (short of a coup/civil war). Soldiers protecting a country within it's borders doesn't count as "waging war".
Given the US foreign policy of late, I might be excused for misreading it :)
How do you know the original poster was even an American?
Well, it's mentioned in the grandparent post, he quotes it and makes reference to it, it was during a timezone that is US traffic heavy and a large number of visitors here are American. Given that, I would say the chances are above average. Does it make a difference if he is not? Does it make my point about US foreign policy any less accurate?
Side note: What is this "war on drugs" you referred to before? I am unfamiliar with this term.
I think my head just exploded. Compound, of one element. What next transparent aluminum?
Geez, get with the program! Next, an element made of two different atomic molecules.
The Government outlawing something has never once made it impossible to obtain said item.
Why does something have to be outlawed for no-one to have it? Yes, I am a utopian in that sense, but why does anyone need guns?
I think his point was that the only two jobs for government are protecting the citizenry from outside harm (generally done by waging war) and paving roads.
A country doesn't wage wars to protect it's citizenry. That's done by defending it's borders. Wars are waged against OTHER countries. It might have been context driven, but I read it as (apart from providing infrastructure) the role of the government was to go attack other countries. Given the US foreign policy of late, I might be excused for misreading it :)
And those paper are shaped like what?
Well, from the movies I have seen, all the paper targets have been pretty much rectangular in shape.
I might be seeing something that isn't there, but there seems to be a pattern with rectangular paper. Seems to be much more common than other shapes.
Maybe it comes down to society you want to live in. If I had a choice, I'd prefer a society where everyone had guns and the government didn't do anything but pave roads and wage war. Within that context, I am willing to take steps to increase the wealth and safety of myself and others.
Why on earth would you want everyone with a gun? Surely it's much better for no-one to have guns? And seriously, why do you want your government waging wars? The world is in enough strife at the moment without more idiots with guns running into other countries yards.
I'm no biologist, so maybe it's more accurate than it sounds, but it seems there is a pretty significant margin of error at each step, not to mention a lot of assumptions.
Look, stop making so many assumptions about other people's assumptions. It leads to a high margin of error at a possible large number of steps.
*cough*
Is it that the real-life counterparts to the horrors of scriptwriter imagination are too far beyond human comprehension? Too far beyond budget constraints? Or too big to fit on the cinema screens?
It's more than people today on average just don't get frightened by something simply being big. Also, it's stale. Have a look through the "classics" section of your local dvd store, or troll through imdb.com for a while to and see just how many older movies there are about giant this, and giant that.
Cinema caters to the needs and wants of the moviegoer and currently for the most part, they want the "big bad beastie" to be intelligent (often more intelligent than the initial plot suggests), quite impervious to damage (needs to be shot many times but still be very powerful), needs a trick that no one thought it could do and quite often, it needs to be amazingly fast and agile.
Whoops, that's me there, hit AC by mistake.
but the proper way to look at it is the earthquake brought the geology back to a neutral point
Why on earth would you say that? Earthquakes don't bring geology to neutral points. They happen when the earth gets past critical point.
I can't think of a totally slashdot car analogy, but here is a good analogy of earthquake causes and how it works geologically that at least includes a car.
Think of a piece of bungee cord 10 meters in length. You tie one part to the tow-ball of a car, and hold the middle of the cord. This means there is five meters of slack cord past the point where you are holding. Now, the car very very slowly starts to drive away from you, and the tension in the cord slowly grows. You holding onto the cord with all your might represents the pressures on the fault line. Sooner or later however, the pull on the cord will be too much, and it will slip in your hand. Now, you don't totally let go however. It might slip an inch or two, just barely enough so that the force of your hand holding it once again overcomes the force of the pull in the cord - but there is still a lot of tension in the cord. When the car moves away far enough again, there will be another slip of a small distance again and again.
This is how fault lines work. When there is a quake, it doesn't go back to a neutral point. It goes back to a point which is lower than the critical point that caused the earthquake.
If you make something material and someone steals it, you no longer have it. If you have information and somebody copies it, you still have your copy. You lose exclusivity as to who know that information, but that exclusivity is not a material thing and cannot be stolen (since the person who makes a copy does not gain that exclusivity.)
Lordy, you really believe that don't you?
So, by your reckoning, there is no such thing as copyright? Anyone can download music because "the other person still has their copy"? How about if you write a really good book, but I take a copy and take it to a publisher before you do and sell it? Hey, you still have your copy, you can't be mad right?
Material and information are totally different and it's a real shame that lawmakers aren't clever enough to see something so simple.
Material and information are totally indifferent and it's a real grace that lawmakers are clever enough to see something so simple.
- There. Fixed that for you.
We don't do military conquest anymore, only economic ones.
How is that working out for you?
Honest question - who decides what American workers get paid?
Simple. Demand.
Lets say job A has 3 people qualified to do it, but four companies need job A filled, the three qualified people can pick and choose their job. Now, turn to job B, which also has 3 people qualified for it, but only one company needs job B filled. Now, it's the company who can pick and choose who they hire and for how much (or how little).
Yes, this is amazingly simplistic, but it's really quite spot on. When you start looking at this sort of stuff on a global economy scale, yes, it gets a whole lot more complex, but the principle stays the same. Jobs in high demand will earn more. Somewhere above was an example of a qualified Red Hat person leaving college wanting more than an experienced sysadmin with years of experience. Guess why that is? Because right now, lots of companies have decided they need red hat qualified workers. Bingo, sellers market - and the people with red hat who can sell themselves will be making a killing.
In Australia, a funny thing happened about five years ago. We pretty much ran into a shortage of tradies (that's local talk for plumbers, sparkies, brickies etc etc) and the ones who were in that field started to make an utter killing. There were even numerous news stories and articles about the new class of working elite. Yes, the guy hooking up the pipes in your new home was earning $150k a year. The guy fixing the cement slab for your house, he was making much more than the lawyer doing your legal paperwork to buy the house.
Now, companies can of course try to exploit rules in a market. In this case, big banks worked out that they might be able to hire people cheaper by using this sort of working visa. Just means that there is less demand for that sort of worker really. It's a buyers market for this sort of work.
Now, when you start adding more complexity again with "how much does a worker want for a particular type of work" you once again get into yet another kettle of fish. For example, I work in an office doing a business analyst role, but I wouldn't take say a job moving lawns for the same money. I don't like mowing lawns. Sure, I could do it, but for me to do that every day, I would expect to be paid considerably more. I also wouldn't really want to take a job working in a fast food outlet. Now, as it happens to be, those jobs pay less than mine - that's because a lot of people are willing to do them, and can do them for less than me. In global terms, these banks are taking advantage of the fact that they can take workers into a role for less than the average American wants to be paid for doing that job. It's not that there aren't any Americans who don't want to do that job - just not for that amount of money. If the bank can make use of a way to have the job filled for less than an American wants for it - seems to be playing fair. Maybe not patriotic, but fair.
Now, having said all this rather longwinded stuff, I am of the general opinion that you end up getting what you pay for. I advertise roles within this team at above the minimum wages but hire very selectively. This means I get someone who is a better worker for the role - and mostly people who want to do the role well. Paying above the other people advertising the same type of role really lets you pick and choose who you want - it turns any role into a buyer's market.
Could have been a science teacher. Could have been worse though, could have been a grade school science teacher. I think everyone on slashdot has the same opinion about grade school science teachers.