It does seem like AOL is just repeating their past mistake of appealing to the ignorance of first time users. Sure, 10 years ago, people needed an extremely simple way of getting "online," even if it was very restricted and controlled. But eventually people got savvy fewer people needed AOL. Similarly, people are going to start seeing just how restricted they are by using this new AOL service. I mean, it isn't like you can't get unrestricted music from other sources.
If you want it to be a power-level kill everything game, then maybe you should go back to Morrowind and its invincible-destroyer-of-worlds-type equipment.
Actually, I would say that Oblivion encourages power-leveling. And in many ways it makes some form of power-leveling necessary. I'm not normally a power gamer. Oblivion made me a power gamer. I usually just take whatever exprience/skill/eq. the game gives me and stay away from fights I know I can't win until I am ready. The Arena was great for that, but sadly the Arena was a very small part of the game.
The problem with Oblivion is that if you DON'T power level, the game gets incredibly difficult because *all* of your enemies are advancing at a fixed rate per level. If you can't beat or match their progression, you're screwed. It isn't like you can just stay away from the tough fights until you beef up. *All* fights are tough. It gets to the point where you have to move the difficulty slider way down. That shouldn't happen. You end up moderating the game to some constant level of difficulty. And that is boring.
Overall, I thought Oblivion was too homogenous. There was no sense of "Wow, I better stay away from such and such quest until I've reached a suitable level." For the most part, I could do any quest at any time. I didn't like how the world changed as I leveled. IMO, the player should adapt to the world, not the other way around.
I've found that just about every multiplayer online game is like that. The guys who have no job or school or life spend all day practicing/leveling. Playing with them is just no fun. I have never had the kind of fun online as I have had playing on a LAN (remember IPX?) with a few friends/coworkers. It just gets too "serious" online. There's always that faceless character who can snipe you from 10 miles away (or some equivient feat in a given game).
I haven't played the pevious games, but I thought Oblivion's skill/class/leveling system sucked. Yeah, it is more realistic, but there are some skills/spells that don't get used very often. So if you want to advance them, you have to run around using it aimlessly to train it. It makes sense, but what happened to me is that just before every level-up, I would exercise the skills required to boost certain attributes. If I wanted +5 Endurance, my spellcaster had to put on some heavy armor and tank a crab for 10 minutes and/or swing a blunt weapon. Or if I wanted to increase my intelligence, I had to cast some spell that I don't use a lot for 10 minutes. I was unable to concentrate on just playing the game. I was constantly worried about my skill point distribution before each level-up. And level-ups came WAY too quickly. I had to install a mod that slowed it down so I could have some semblence of control. I wouldn't play a game with that system ever again.
That said, a store-bought guide is often laid out better, it's usually prettier to look at and it's usually available either the day the game comes out, or even before. It's also more convenient than using a laptop while playing or printing out page after page (some files on GameFAQs can be hundreds of pages) of a text file. There are also usually nice maps when appropriate that are much better than anything I could print myself (the maps are why I bought the Vice City and San Andreas strategy guides).
Wow, sounds like you are using them much more extensively than I would. For a me a guide is only useful for those spots where i get stuck. And if a game is just so impossible that it can't be completed without frequent references to a guide, well, then the game is crap and I ditch it.
As for maps, the in-game map should be adequate. If it isn't, then I'm probably not going to continue playing the game.
I didn't read the article, but number 3 seems a little off. Who needs to buy a guide with so many spoilers, hints, and even straight walkthus are available on the internet for free for popular games?
I'd put $1 in once in a while, on the theory that it was evening out for the times that I didn't pay anything. And it would probably work out that I would pay too much, to avoid paying too little.
Well I probably wouldn't. I expect to get fresh water on the job... for free. Imagine if they wanted you to pay to use the toilets. Think of something that you take for granted.
As others have said, it's not that the amount is trivial to the execs - after all, they probably do stop at Starbucks and pick up a bagel and latte, so they understand that bagels cost money. It's that they feel entitled to steal. Some people don't have the same sense of guilt and fair play that other people have.
I don't think it is fair to assume so much about the nature of executives based on such a simple study. Certainly there is vaiability in who is going to steal and who isn't, but I think it is more complicated than simplay saying "executives feel more entitled and are more likely to steal." Like the grandparent suggested, you need to consider relative value. I bet lower level employees would be just as likely to "steal" if the relative value of the items was significantely less than $1.
Ever walk out with a pen from your company? Ever print personal documents on their printers? That is stealing. You know that pens cost money. You should probably know that laser printers cost about $.10 per page (maybe less these days). That is stealing. Maybe nobody cares because the relative value is so small, but it is still stealing.
Thank you for this insightful post. I was all ready to jump on the "anyone who can advance in a corporation must be a crook or dishonest" bandwagon. It would indeed be interesting to compare items of equal realtive value to each person. For example, I bet lower level employees would not be very likely to pay, say, $.10 for a drink of water from the water cooler if they didn't have to. I suggest water as a comparison to bagels because both are food related. Where you might not get valid results if you compared office supplies to bagels. There may be more to value than just relative cost.
No offense, but that is stupid. If you didn't understand why you should have to pay for something as "trivial" as a bagel at work, why would you pay MORE than was asked for?
If your company started asking for $.10 for a drink from the water cooler, would you bother putting in that dime? Would you put in $1? (assuming they had no way of knowing who did and did not pay for water)
Indeed you did! With hyperbole and rhetoric, no less! Congratulations. Mind pointing out which prison have prisoners sipping champaigne for lunch? And if you can show one, can you show that it is the norm?
The value of all the stuff he has purchased from his crimes has since depreciated. There is no way he will be able to make full restitution for the damage he has done. And the six years in prison is nothing...
6 years of his life and little chance of ever being able to enter legitimate society again... even if he wanted to. Seems pretty serious to me.
What is it about Florida and con artists, spammers, religious freaks (i.e. Kent Hovind), and other shady operations anyway? Is it just me or does Florida seems to have more than its fair share of these things?
All medical decisions viewed under judicial purview are considered as state interests vs. private interests. Operative word being private. See the recent case where the state attempted to force a minor to undergo chemotherapy by taking him away from his parents who intended to use a nutritional therapy instead.
The operative word here being "minor" and not "fetus."
Isn't digital cable already using IP for the MPEG2 stream?
Nope, just raw broadcast MPEG2 frames. IP is encapsulated in those frames in the case of cable internet. It is actually reversed. MPEG2 is uses for IP instead of IP being used for MPEG2. If that many any sense.
The Constitution may put it in writing, but the freedom of speech, religion, travel, press, assembly, petition, and, yes, PRIVACY are not given to us by the government.
I said, "guaranteed" by the constitution.. not granted or given. Please read more carefully before you rant. Of course a right cannot be given. Otherwise it is just a privilige.
And ultimately, you either believe that a woman's right to PRIVACY exceeds an unborn child's right to LIFE, or you do not.
Privacy??? You think that forcing a woman to give birth against her will, risking her own life and health, is a matter of PRIVACY? Please.
If medical evidence suggests the child is, in fact, not a human,
Too subjective. There can be no such medical evidence.
then they have no rights. If the evidence suggests it is human, then the original question remains. THAT is where the fight lies; not in whether or not the Constitution allows it. The Constitution allows nothing; it only AFFIRMS the inalienable truth of being a human.
The truth is that it is wrong to force a woman to give birth... even if by some subjective view a fetus is human. That fetus is under the private care of the mother. It is similar to how we treat born children under parental care... but much more extreme. Parents are generally allowed to restrict the rights of children... but children are citizens so we still protect their basic right to life and some other things. Inside a woman's body, however, all bets are off. In the case of pregnancy, all control is given to the mother. A fetus is no citizen or even resident of the US. We make no death certificate if/when it dies (either miscarriage or abortion). We generally don't hold funerals, etc. Think of a person's body as a sort of "international waters" within which US law doesn't really apply.. even if a fetus is human.
There are 4 stages of a human in the eyes of the law:
1) Unborn and under the private care of the mother. Fetus lives or dies by the mother. Mother calls all the shots. 2) Born, under parental care, but now a citizen. Parents have a lot of authority over teh child, but the child now has the basic protections of the law. 3) At 18 years old, human is an adult and parents have no real authority. All contitutional rights are protected to their fullest (ideally).... except: 4) At 21, drink!
I was wondering about that the last time I was on YouTube. "How the hell can they get, much less pay for, that much bandwidth?" Music is one thing, but video takes a whole lot of bandwidth. I have to wonder the same thing about anyone who even thinks about doing HDTV over the internet. Only the ISP could realistically provide that... which in many cases means the cable companies... which really doesn't change the service a whole lot.
Anyway, about YouTube... how do they make their money anyway? Do they have ads? (I have adblock, so I wouldn't know). I know they put movie trailers up and now some stupid Paris Hilton thing. Is that enough?
My point was that freedom of speech is as much a freedom guaranteed by the constitution as a woman's right to controll her own body and what grows in it.
Yes, women should have control of their reproduction. That's why they make condoms and birth control pills and depo and morning after pills and blow jobs.
You mean the morning after pill isn't abortion?
Abortion should not be used as a means of birth control.
Fortunately, abortion isn't used as "birth control" for the most part. None of the women who I know who've had abortions took it lightly. It is not an easy decision to make.
But, hey, I could be missing something. What is it?
Extensions.
I'm currently running 6 of them in Firefox. 7 if you count the Filterset.G updater (for Adblock Plus)
1) Adblock Plus. Hardly ever see ads. 2) Tidy HTML validator. Validates and "tidys" up any HTML without having to query an external server. Works on sites that require a session or authentication or just aren't public yet. 3) Remove It Permanently. Just right click and remove any part of a page you don't like. The ad div at the top of Slashdot? Gone. 4) gTranslate. Right click on a foreign word and translate it via Google right in the context menu. 5) Slashdotter. Adds a little functionality to Slashdot such as right click reply to post. Select the text to repond to and it quotes it for you. 6) Web Developer Tools. Indispensible tool for debugging HTML and CSS.
I think I use one or two others at work. I'm considering Greasemonkey.
Someone has to be there ot maintain the equipment and get the robots "unstuck". We have a hard enough keeping a relatively simple rover going with remote control. Look how much R&D went into that. Even if we could do it, I doubt it would be profitable.
No, I think we a long long way away from mining the moon or any other extraterretrial object... especially considering that we are not out of materials here. I mean, it isn't like we NEED to mine the Moon.
You won't need much work - moon's gravity is far less than that of Earth so extracting and packing large boulders of stuff without machinery then becomes possible. Just pick up a boulder, and move.
Are you seriously suggesting that humans *manually* mine the Moon? You've got to be kidding. Yeah, I'm sure astronauts are going to be lining up to train for years just to go to the moon to work as slave labor because hauling machinery up there is too expensive. Even in the worst of times, humans have had beasts of burden to the the heavy lifting.
How, pray-tell, do they dig? How do they get these "light" boulders free? Gravity on the moon might be a lot less than Earth, but it is still there. It is 1/6th Earth's gravity. So a 600 lb. boulder would still weigh 100 lbs on the moon.
Also, note that moon dust is very harmful to the suits that were used on previous missions there. After a couple days of walking around, astronauts could barely move the suits because moon dust is like tiny little shards of glass. If you think getting beach sand in places where the sun don't shine is bad, try moon dust.
Slashdot Mirror
It does seem like AOL is just repeating their past mistake of appealing to the ignorance of first time users. Sure, 10 years ago, people needed an extremely simple way of getting "online," even if it was very restricted and controlled. But eventually people got savvy fewer people needed AOL. Similarly, people are going to start seeing just how restricted they are by using this new AOL service. I mean, it isn't like you can't get unrestricted music from other sources.
-matthew
If you want it to be a power-level kill everything game, then maybe you should go back to Morrowind and its invincible-destroyer-of-worlds-type equipment.
Actually, I would say that Oblivion encourages power-leveling. And in many ways it makes some form of power-leveling necessary. I'm not normally a power gamer. Oblivion made me a power gamer. I usually just take whatever exprience/skill/eq. the game gives me and stay away from fights I know I can't win until I am ready. The Arena was great for that, but sadly the Arena was a very small part of the game.
The problem with Oblivion is that if you DON'T power level, the game gets incredibly difficult because *all* of your enemies are advancing at a fixed rate per level. If you can't beat or match their progression, you're screwed. It isn't like you can just stay away from the tough fights until you beef up. *All* fights are tough. It gets to the point where you have to move the difficulty slider way down. That shouldn't happen. You end up moderating the game to some constant level of difficulty. And that is boring.
Overall, I thought Oblivion was too homogenous. There was no sense of "Wow, I better stay away from such and such quest until I've reached a suitable level." For the most part, I could do any quest at any time. I didn't like how the world changed as I leveled. IMO, the player should adapt to the world, not the other way around.
I've found that just about every multiplayer online game is like that. The guys who have no job or school or life spend all day practicing/leveling. Playing with them is just no fun. I have never had the kind of fun online as I have had playing on a LAN (remember IPX?) with a few friends/coworkers. It just gets too "serious" online. There's always that faceless character who can snipe you from 10 miles away (or some equivient feat in a given game).
I haven't played the pevious games, but I thought Oblivion's skill/class/leveling system sucked. Yeah, it is more realistic, but there are some skills/spells that don't get used very often. So if you want to advance them, you have to run around using it aimlessly to train it. It makes sense, but what happened to me is that just before every level-up, I would exercise the skills required to boost certain attributes. If I wanted +5 Endurance, my spellcaster had to put on some heavy armor and tank a crab for 10 minutes and/or swing a blunt weapon. Or if I wanted to increase my intelligence, I had to cast some spell that I don't use a lot for 10 minutes. I was unable to concentrate on just playing the game. I was constantly worried about my skill point distribution before each level-up. And level-ups came WAY too quickly. I had to install a mod that slowed it down so I could have some semblence of control. I wouldn't play a game with that system ever again.
It should have been "Zen and the art of printing".
That said, a store-bought guide is often laid out better, it's usually prettier to look at and it's usually available either the day the game comes out, or even before. It's also more convenient than using a laptop while playing or printing out page after page (some files on GameFAQs can be hundreds of pages) of a text file. There are also usually nice maps when appropriate that are much better than anything I could print myself (the maps are why I bought the Vice City and San Andreas strategy guides).
Wow, sounds like you are using them much more extensively than I would. For a me a guide is only useful for those spots where i get stuck. And if a game is just so impossible that it can't be completed without frequent references to a guide, well, then the game is crap and I ditch it.
As for maps, the in-game map should be adequate. If it isn't, then I'm probably not going to continue playing the game.
-matthew
Does that about cover it?
I didn't read the article, but number 3 seems a little off. Who needs to buy a guide with so many spoilers, hints, and even straight walkthus are available on the internet for free for popular games?
-matthew
I'd put $1 in once in a while, on the theory that it was evening out for the times that I didn't pay anything. And it would probably work out that I would pay too much, to avoid paying too little.
Well I probably wouldn't. I expect to get fresh water on the job... for free. Imagine if they wanted you to pay to use the toilets. Think of something that you take for granted.
As others have said, it's not that the amount is trivial to the execs - after all, they probably do stop at Starbucks and pick up a bagel and latte, so they understand that bagels cost money. It's that they feel entitled to steal. Some people don't have the same sense of guilt and fair play that other people have.
I don't think it is fair to assume so much about the nature of executives based on such a simple study. Certainly there is vaiability in who is going to steal and who isn't, but I think it is more complicated than simplay saying "executives feel more entitled and are more likely to steal." Like the grandparent suggested, you need to consider relative value. I bet lower level employees would be just as likely to "steal" if the relative value of the items was significantely less than $1.
Ever walk out with a pen from your company? Ever print personal documents on their printers? That is stealing. You know that pens cost money. You should probably know that laser printers cost about $.10 per page (maybe less these days). That is stealing. Maybe nobody cares because the relative value is so small, but it is still stealing.
Thank you for this insightful post. I was all ready to jump on the "anyone who can advance in a corporation must be a crook or dishonest" bandwagon. It would indeed be interesting to compare items of equal realtive value to each person. For example, I bet lower level employees would not be very likely to pay, say, $.10 for a drink of water from the water cooler if they didn't have to. I suggest water as a comparison to bagels because both are food related. Where you might not get valid results if you compared office supplies to bagels. There may be more to value than just relative cost.
-matthew
No offense, but that is stupid. If you didn't understand why you should have to pay for something as "trivial" as a bagel at work, why would you pay MORE than was asked for?
If your company started asking for $.10 for a drink from the water cooler, would you bother putting in that dime? Would you put in $1? (assuming they had no way of knowing who did and did not pay for water)
-matthew
Or better yet, sell it to get seed money for the next Big Con.
Indeed you did! With hyperbole and rhetoric, no less! Congratulations. Mind pointing out which prison have prisoners sipping champaigne for lunch? And if you can show one, can you show that it is the norm?
Where did I say that we shouldn't send people to jail?
The value of all the stuff he has purchased from his crimes has since depreciated. There is no way he will be able to make full restitution for the damage he has done. And the six years in prison is nothing...
6 years of his life and little chance of ever being able to enter legitimate society again... even if he wanted to. Seems pretty serious to me.
How about we take the cost of imprisoning all these people for such unreasonably long times out of YOUR paycheck? Maybe then you might grow a heart.
What is it about Florida and con artists, spammers, religious freaks (i.e. Kent Hovind), and other shady operations anyway? Is it just me or does Florida seems to have more than its fair share of these things?
All medical decisions viewed under judicial purview are considered as state interests vs. private interests. Operative word being private. See the recent case where the state attempted to force a minor to undergo chemotherapy by taking him away from his parents who intended to use a nutritional therapy instead.
The operative word here being "minor" and not "fetus."
Nope, just raw broadcast MPEG2 frames. IP is encapsulated in those frames in the case of cable internet. It is actually reversed. MPEG2 is uses for IP instead of IP being used for MPEG2. If that many any sense.
-matthew
The Constitution may put it in writing, but the freedom of speech, religion, travel, press, assembly, petition, and, yes, PRIVACY are not given to us by the government.
I said, "guaranteed" by the constitution.. not granted or given. Please read more carefully before you rant. Of course a right cannot be given. Otherwise it is just a privilige.
And ultimately, you either believe that a woman's right to PRIVACY exceeds an unborn child's right to LIFE, or you do not.
Privacy??? You think that forcing a woman to give birth against her will, risking her own life and health, is a matter of PRIVACY? Please.
If medical evidence suggests the child is, in fact, not a human,
Too subjective. There can be no such medical evidence.
then they have no rights. If the evidence suggests it is human, then the original question remains. THAT is where the fight lies; not in whether or not the Constitution allows it. The Constitution allows nothing; it only AFFIRMS the inalienable truth of being a human.
The truth is that it is wrong to force a woman to give birth... even if by some subjective view a fetus is human. That fetus is under the private care of the mother. It is similar to how we treat born children under parental care... but much more extreme. Parents are generally allowed to restrict the rights of children... but children are citizens so we still protect their basic right to life and some other things. Inside a woman's body, however, all bets are off. In the case of pregnancy, all control is given to the mother. A fetus is no citizen or even resident of the US. We make no death certificate if/when it dies (either miscarriage or abortion). We generally don't hold funerals, etc. Think of a person's body as a sort of "international waters" within which US law doesn't really apply.. even if a fetus is human.
There are 4 stages of a human in the eyes of the law:
1) Unborn and under the private care of the mother. Fetus lives or dies by the mother. Mother calls all the shots.
2) Born, under parental care, but now a citizen. Parents have a lot of authority over teh child, but the child now has the basic protections of the law.
3) At 18 years old, human is an adult and parents have no real authority. All contitutional rights are protected to their fullest (ideally).... except:
4) At 21, drink!
-matthew
I was wondering about that the last time I was on YouTube. "How the hell can they get, much less pay for, that much bandwidth?" Music is one thing, but video takes a whole lot of bandwidth. I have to wonder the same thing about anyone who even thinks about doing HDTV over the internet. Only the ISP could realistically provide that... which in many cases means the cable companies... which really doesn't change the service a whole lot.
Anyway, about YouTube... how do they make their money anyway? Do they have ads? (I have adblock, so I wouldn't know). I know they put movie trailers up and now some stupid Paris Hilton thing. Is that enough?
-matthew
My point was that freedom of speech is as much a freedom guaranteed by the constitution as a woman's right to controll her own body and what grows in it.
Yes, women should have control of their reproduction. That's why they make condoms and birth control pills and depo and morning after pills and blow jobs.
You mean the morning after pill isn't abortion?
Abortion should not be used as a means of birth control.
Fortunately, abortion isn't used as "birth control" for the most part. None of the women who I know who've had abortions took it lightly. It is not an easy decision to make.
-matthew
Extensions.
I'm currently running 6 of them in Firefox. 7 if you count the Filterset.G updater (for Adblock Plus)
1) Adblock Plus. Hardly ever see ads.
2) Tidy HTML validator. Validates and "tidys" up any HTML without having to query an external server. Works on sites that require a session or authentication or just aren't public yet.
3) Remove It Permanently. Just right click and remove any part of a page you don't like. The ad div at the top of Slashdot? Gone.
4) gTranslate. Right click on a foreign word and translate it via Google right in the context menu.
5) Slashdotter. Adds a little functionality to Slashdot such as right click reply to post. Select the text to repond to and it quotes it for you.
6) Web Developer Tools. Indispensible tool for debugging HTML and CSS.
I think I use one or two others at work. I'm considering Greasemonkey.
-matthew
Someone has to be there ot maintain the equipment and get the robots "unstuck". We have a hard enough keeping a relatively simple rover going with remote control. Look how much R&D went into that. Even if we could do it, I doubt it would be profitable.
No, I think we a long long way away from mining the moon or any other extraterretrial object... especially considering that we are not out of materials here. I mean, it isn't like we NEED to mine the Moon.
-matthew
Are you seriously suggesting that humans *manually* mine the Moon? You've got to be kidding. Yeah, I'm sure astronauts are going to be lining up to train for years just to go to the moon to work as slave labor because hauling machinery up there is too expensive. Even in the worst of times, humans have had beasts of burden to the the heavy lifting.
How, pray-tell, do they dig? How do they get these "light" boulders free? Gravity on the moon might be a lot less than Earth, but it is still there. It is 1/6th Earth's gravity. So a 600 lb. boulder would still weigh 100 lbs on the moon.
Also, note that moon dust is very harmful to the suits that were used on previous missions there. After a couple days of walking around, astronauts could barely move the suits because moon dust is like tiny little shards of glass. If you think getting beach sand in places where the sun don't shine is bad, try moon dust.
-matthew