And on top of that not even all games that provide some Pay to Win are bad. The game I play the most currently is Lord of Ultima, which has essentially no real connection to the other Ultima games.
It's a very large and lengthy strategy game. You can play it entirely for free but once you control more than a couple dozen cities it becomes unmanageable without paying for "ministers" which allow for automation of some of the more tedious actions you want done. Ministers are a subscription type thing where you pay for them on a weekly or monthly basis. Other than that items that grant resources and such are all there is to spend money on, and those you can actually gather in game yourself. Use of those items is limited such that you can only use so many in a day. And they are of very limited usefulness. My empire produces around 10m of each resource type in an hour, and the highest level of artifact grants 600k.
Essentially it's a game you can play for free although subscription is the only sane way to go once you progress far enough. And it's not a very high subscription cost either, last I checked it was under $10 a month.
I did a little googling and couldn't find much about accidents involving Sparrows, do you have any useful citations for that assertion?
The main barrier in my eyes to the Sparrow EV line catching on would be the price tag for a single seater. At $30,000 you could just spend twice as much and get a Tesla Model S and still have some spending money left over. Granted I'm comparing an older existing product to a prototype but the Model S even though it's easily twice the value it still appeals to a relatively tiny portion of the population.
I agree that the megaupload case as conspiracy to pushback against the anti-SOPA crowd is insane. Although it is entirely possible that they deliberately adjusted their timetable for making the arrests and such to happen the day afterwards.
The car is purely incidental. What you are gambling is a civil society versus one where a person can threaten physical violence to take anothers property at will. Whether it's my car, watch or wallet, you can bet I'll resist if I think it is reasonably possible I'll succede. I'm a male of larger than average size, I have some wrestling and martial arts experience along with plenty of gun handling. In a fight I'll do what is necessary to survive and I'll be doing it right up front rather than doing it by degrees.
When someone sticks a gun in your face and threatens you they have obviously not decided to kill you yet. So long as you don't mull over the decision too long and telegraph your intent obviously, you can easily deflect their weapon and execute your own attack before they can react. So the real question is whether or not you can attack and follow through well enough to survive. Not everyone can or is willing to and expecting them too would be silly, but those of us that can, should.
Not that I'm a true old timer so far as gaming goes, I didn't have money to spend on them myself until the mid 90's. But what games in a similiar style are you thinking of that have drastically better combat? (not trying to be confrontational here just curious)
The only changes I can see being made to the melee combat that might be worth the effort would be real hit detection for attacks and blocks, being able to control the direction and type of attack, and maybe allowing for damage to specific areas so that wounds matter instead of a big health pool. But adding all of those things would be impractical in terms of how on earth would you manage to control it as a player in real time or anything close to it, let alone whether or not standard consumer hardware could keep up. Maybe a motion capture system like MS's Kinect could do it, but that's not very practical for a game you are marketing so broadly.
Basically how far into a realistic simulation do we want to go before the game ceases to be fun for most people?
I'd agree that going for a gun when someone already has one directed at you is silly. But that doesn't mean you can't fight back very effectively, especially if they are within arms reach.
Somewhere I saw a video of a guy disarming an armed assailant. From the time he decided to disarm the guy it took 12 thousandths of a second for him to do it. I'd like to see what percentage of street thugs have a reaction speed quicker than that. People can move very quickly when motivated, even an overweight person with a knife can close 20 feet of seperation before the person he's charging can draw and fire reliably.
So yes going for your gun is stupid but make no mistake, beating another persons reaction time is not hard.
I wasn't aware of the crappy things done to Skyrim because of the console development being primary, other than the menu/inventory system. So far as the story goes though I've got probably 50 hours in the game and have barely progressed the main story at all. And so far it's been a lot of fun. I just explore and kill stuff. Not that it couldn't be better in some ways but the only console issue that bothers me is the UI stuff.
I do have to say though that my sessions of Terraria have been just as fun recently. I killed the Eye of Cthulu for the first time a few days ago and that was a lot of fun and a challenge.
What I seem to remember was that at some point your prescription can't get any stronger. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me in that I would think that your eyes could go from perfect vision to complete blindness with an infinite number of positions in between.
Although it could be a physical limitation of designing the lens. Where making a stronger magnification affect is not possible within the useable design specifications, focal length, weight and such? Maybe I should just try reading up on all this.
I'm not sure I understand where it was that the corrective lenses were causing her deteriorating vision.
My eye doctors have explained every time I asked about corrective surgery that my vision will natuarally change from year to year as I age. So far that has meant getting slightly worse for the most part. But it can also go the other way and improve. Some of it is caused by aging its self but some is due to the way you use your eyes on a day to basis, and so a bad prescription can actually damage your eyes.
Anyways I've been advised to wait until my eye's get to umm is it + or -, 5.0 before getting corrective surgery, if I want to avoid needing touchups. Based on your description of your wife's vision it's likely she had hit the point where her prescription had mostly stabilized.
One of my younger brothers for years refused to wear a seatbelt because he thought it'd be safer to be ejected from the vehicle in case of a crash. This despite me trying to tell him about the higher chance of getting crushed if that were to happen. He just wouldn't believe it or whatever.
Then one of our best friends from grade school was partially ejected from a pickup truck during an accident. The truck rolled and he was cut in half just below the rib cage by the roof. I've never seen my brother not put on his seat belt first thing since then.
Not everyone that isn't wearing a seatbelt gets ejected, and not all ejections are full ejections. I've seen lots of pictures during first aid training courses where people got partially ejected and scalped in the process by hitting something on the way out, or when being pulled back in.
And how does a brain teaser have anything to do with finding creative people?
There is still typically only one correct answer. All it would be accomplishing is finding the people clever enough to figure out the answer. Honestly giving someone a few hundred lego's and asking them to build something with a non-specific goal stated, is probably a better test of creativity. Or asking them to write a story from their childhood and embellish it, or make it up entirely.
Is using code snippets from the internet really an issue? Is there a good reason to re-invent the wheel, pulley, block and tackle, lever, wrench, lightbulb and whatnot every time?
Time constraints could certainly be a problem if it takes longer for someone to lookup a solution and implement it than if they just come up with the solution themselves and implement it. And there are legal issues with copying large chunks of code, but I wouldn't think that banning it wholesale is a very productive way to go.
Not to mention that'd just leave all those factories with excess production capacity and parts. They'd probably just keep on making the apple devices anyways and selling them under a slightly different label.
Eyeglasses probably provide more injury risk reduction than increase. Mainly because you are likely to get hit in the eye by objects or particles small enough to be completely and safely deflected than by anything large or fast enough to shatter them. And in the even that something does shatter your glasses, your brain being emulsified is likely a larger concern than lacerations to your eye.
That isn't to say that everyone should wear glasses, or that contacts and corrective surgeries shouldn't be done. But the benefits of wearing eye glasses easily out weigh any risks they may pose.
All of the people I've known that had corrective surgery though have had to go back periodically for touchups, it could just be though that I know more people that haven't had to get it redone and so the original procedure hasn't been brought to my attention, anecdotal evidence being what it is and all.
I wonder if it would be possible to do this with a series of projectors instead of LEDs or TVs. With enough vertical clearance you might need considerably less projectors to cover the same area, you might be able to utilize some kind of special lens to increase the projection area as well.
To solve the controller issue you could just set them all up as displays for a single computer and enable monitor spanning in the graphics settings.
Re:This is where western medicine has failed...
on
How Doctors Die
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· Score: 1
The answer is, at least so long as the patient is unable to make their own decisions, a living will.
I'm glad I have one and so do my parents. This unfortunately requires some forethought and planning. And many people just never get around to it. It really should be part of getting or renwing your drivers license just like opting to be an organ donor.
Actually I would propose that the key to the panda's survival is making them into a popular food source. If we just subsidized the raising and slaughter of Panda and Polar bears companies like Smithfield would rapidly adjust and we'd have millions and millions of them.
I'm curious about how they determined who was cheating for the sampling. I know that some games have tagged people as chearters for modifying things that did not give them an advantage. Such as modifying an ini file to bypass the 5 minutes of video splash screens when starting up a game, tweaking graphics settings not available through the in game interface, and on and on.
It's been a while since I lived out there but if memory serves Palo Alto was certainly close enough to be considered part of SV. SF is definitely stretching it but it wouldn't suprise me if a number of people commuted from there every day.
This is exactly the problem my wife has run in to with checking out ebooks from the local library. I'm frankly amazed they have a system that doesn't allow for returning a book early. They are already expiring the book after a predetermined amount of time why isn't there a way to trigger it early?
"try doubling up a pair of teenagers in the same room without their killing each other, I dare you"
I did it, as did many of my friends growing up, one family had 4 sons all in one room together. It might mean instilling a better sense of discipline and self control in your children but it is not impossible.
It's my understanding that in the US we have a much higher square footage to resident ratio than many other countries. Unless you want to argue that the average US genome has a built in requirement for more space I'm just not seeing this as a valid issue.
So far as the main topic though I would say that the definition of Middle Class is going to vary by geographic region. Because as you have observed a family in Dayton, OH, can live in a mansion for the cost of a small apartment in LI.
I think the EV1 actually used a plug that was a paddle that slipped into a slot on the hood. But I believe it actually charged via induction, so it wasn't actually a plug in the traditional sense, and I'm not sure how efficient it was.
I really liked this book and have to recommend the author in general. Her Coldfire trilogy was also very good and the world she created for it fascinated me.
My favorite of hers though is probably "The Madness Season" Ancient shape changing vampire/werewolf vs. galactic empire hive mind aliens. Yes it sounds bad but is amazingly good.
I never finished the original GW before the expansions and such came out. But it was a very different game at that time from WoW or most any other MMO.
For starters there was no real difference in characters, other than classes. Everyone of the same class essentially got the same equipment, there were some cosmetic differences and very minor stat differences, but you weren't going to find an upgrade to whatever you had anywhere.
The game was entirely instanced, even the hubs were instanced. This isn't entirely negative as it means that everyone is on the same server. The downside is that if you don't join a group you won't be seeing anyone else in the game world outside of hubs, which kind of ruins the idea of playing in a MMO for me.
I played as a Warrior/Monk or maybe it was Monk/Warrior. That meant that I filled two of the 3 trinity spots for much of the game but it didn't eliminate the efficacy of the trinity effect in the game.
One of the things that I did really like about the game was the companion system that meant you could make your own solo group for when you didn't want to deal with other people to progress. The dual class aspect was interesting and fun. The story telling was interesting and well done, though I would have liked to have seen more than one path to progress along. I liked that the game wold was all one big server, although I would have liked the zones to be less hallway like and allow more groups of players than just one group per instance.
Despite it's shortfalls I'm actually tempted now to go and see if I can play it still, although I wouldn't have any of the expansions.
By dualspec I think he meant being able to have two completely seperate setups for your skill/talent trees. This would be so that your character could switch between rolls, having completely different abilities for each.
The dualspec you are talking about is actually 1 spec that is designed to make your character more versatile all of the time. Instead of being a specialist who can switch between specialties at a moments notice.
Slashdot Mirror
And on top of that not even all games that provide some Pay to Win are bad. The game I play the most currently is Lord of Ultima, which has essentially no real connection to the other Ultima games.
It's a very large and lengthy strategy game. You can play it entirely for free but once you control more than a couple dozen cities it becomes unmanageable without paying for "ministers" which allow for automation of some of the more tedious actions you want done. Ministers are a subscription type thing where you pay for them on a weekly or monthly basis. Other than that items that grant resources and such are all there is to spend money on, and those you can actually gather in game yourself. Use of those items is limited such that you can only use so many in a day. And they are of very limited usefulness. My empire produces around 10m of each resource type in an hour, and the highest level of artifact grants 600k.
Essentially it's a game you can play for free although subscription is the only sane way to go once you progress far enough. And it's not a very high subscription cost either, last I checked it was under $10 a month.
I did a little googling and couldn't find much about accidents involving Sparrows, do you have any useful citations for that assertion? The main barrier in my eyes to the Sparrow EV line catching on would be the price tag for a single seater. At $30,000 you could just spend twice as much and get a Tesla Model S and still have some spending money left over. Granted I'm comparing an older existing product to a prototype but the Model S even though it's easily twice the value it still appeals to a relatively tiny portion of the population.
I agree that the megaupload case as conspiracy to pushback against the anti-SOPA crowd is insane. Although it is entirely possible that they deliberately adjusted their timetable for making the arrests and such to happen the day afterwards.
The car is purely incidental. What you are gambling is a civil society versus one where a person can threaten physical violence to take anothers property at will. Whether it's my car, watch or wallet, you can bet I'll resist if I think it is reasonably possible I'll succede. I'm a male of larger than average size, I have some wrestling and martial arts experience along with plenty of gun handling. In a fight I'll do what is necessary to survive and I'll be doing it right up front rather than doing it by degrees.
When someone sticks a gun in your face and threatens you they have obviously not decided to kill you yet. So long as you don't mull over the decision too long and telegraph your intent obviously, you can easily deflect their weapon and execute your own attack before they can react. So the real question is whether or not you can attack and follow through well enough to survive. Not everyone can or is willing to and expecting them too would be silly, but those of us that can, should.
Not that I'm a true old timer so far as gaming goes, I didn't have money to spend on them myself until the mid 90's. But what games in a similiar style are you thinking of that have drastically better combat? (not trying to be confrontational here just curious)
The only changes I can see being made to the melee combat that might be worth the effort would be real hit detection for attacks and blocks, being able to control the direction and type of attack, and maybe allowing for damage to specific areas so that wounds matter instead of a big health pool. But adding all of those things would be impractical in terms of how on earth would you manage to control it as a player in real time or anything close to it, let alone whether or not standard consumer hardware could keep up. Maybe a motion capture system like MS's Kinect could do it, but that's not very practical for a game you are marketing so broadly.
Basically how far into a realistic simulation do we want to go before the game ceases to be fun for most people?
I'd agree that going for a gun when someone already has one directed at you is silly. But that doesn't mean you can't fight back very effectively, especially if they are within arms reach.
Somewhere I saw a video of a guy disarming an armed assailant. From the time he decided to disarm the guy it took 12 thousandths of a second for him to do it. I'd like to see what percentage of street thugs have a reaction speed quicker than that. People can move very quickly when motivated, even an overweight person with a knife can close 20 feet of seperation before the person he's charging can draw and fire reliably.
So yes going for your gun is stupid but make no mistake, beating another persons reaction time is not hard.
I wasn't aware of the crappy things done to Skyrim because of the console development being primary, other than the menu/inventory system. So far as the story goes though I've got probably 50 hours in the game and have barely progressed the main story at all. And so far it's been a lot of fun. I just explore and kill stuff. Not that it couldn't be better in some ways but the only console issue that bothers me is the UI stuff.
I do have to say though that my sessions of Terraria have been just as fun recently. I killed the Eye of Cthulu for the first time a few days ago and that was a lot of fun and a challenge.
What I seem to remember was that at some point your prescription can't get any stronger. Which doesn't make a lot of sense to me in that I would think that your eyes could go from perfect vision to complete blindness with an infinite number of positions in between.
Although it could be a physical limitation of designing the lens. Where making a stronger magnification affect is not possible within the useable design specifications, focal length, weight and such? Maybe I should just try reading up on all this.
I'm not sure I understand where it was that the corrective lenses were causing her deteriorating vision.
My eye doctors have explained every time I asked about corrective surgery that my vision will natuarally change from year to year as I age. So far that has meant getting slightly worse for the most part. But it can also go the other way and improve. Some of it is caused by aging its self but some is due to the way you use your eyes on a day to basis, and so a bad prescription can actually damage your eyes.
Anyways I've been advised to wait until my eye's get to umm is it + or -, 5.0 before getting corrective surgery, if I want to avoid needing touchups. Based on your description of your wife's vision it's likely she had hit the point where her prescription had mostly stabilized.
One of my younger brothers for years refused to wear a seatbelt because he thought it'd be safer to be ejected from the vehicle in case of a crash. This despite me trying to tell him about the higher chance of getting crushed if that were to happen. He just wouldn't believe it or whatever.
Then one of our best friends from grade school was partially ejected from a pickup truck during an accident. The truck rolled and he was cut in half just below the rib cage by the roof. I've never seen my brother not put on his seat belt first thing since then.
Not everyone that isn't wearing a seatbelt gets ejected, and not all ejections are full ejections. I've seen lots of pictures during first aid training courses where people got partially ejected and scalped in the process by hitting something on the way out, or when being pulled back in.
And how does a brain teaser have anything to do with finding creative people?
There is still typically only one correct answer. All it would be accomplishing is finding the people clever enough to figure out the answer. Honestly giving someone a few hundred lego's and asking them to build something with a non-specific goal stated, is probably a better test of creativity. Or asking them to write a story from their childhood and embellish it, or make it up entirely.
Is using code snippets from the internet really an issue? Is there a good reason to re-invent the wheel, pulley, block and tackle, lever, wrench, lightbulb and whatnot every time?
Time constraints could certainly be a problem if it takes longer for someone to lookup a solution and implement it than if they just come up with the solution themselves and implement it. And there are legal issues with copying large chunks of code, but I wouldn't think that banning it wholesale is a very productive way to go.
Not to mention that'd just leave all those factories with excess production capacity and parts. They'd probably just keep on making the apple devices anyways and selling them under a slightly different label.
Eyeglasses probably provide more injury risk reduction than increase. Mainly because you are likely to get hit in the eye by objects or particles small enough to be completely and safely deflected than by anything large or fast enough to shatter them. And in the even that something does shatter your glasses, your brain being emulsified is likely a larger concern than lacerations to your eye.
That isn't to say that everyone should wear glasses, or that contacts and corrective surgeries shouldn't be done. But the benefits of wearing eye glasses easily out weigh any risks they may pose.
All of the people I've known that had corrective surgery though have had to go back periodically for touchups, it could just be though that I know more people that haven't had to get it redone and so the original procedure hasn't been brought to my attention, anecdotal evidence being what it is and all.
I wonder if it would be possible to do this with a series of projectors instead of LEDs or TVs. With enough vertical clearance you might need considerably less projectors to cover the same area, you might be able to utilize some kind of special lens to increase the projection area as well.
To solve the controller issue you could just set them all up as displays for a single computer and enable monitor spanning in the graphics settings.
The answer is, at least so long as the patient is unable to make their own decisions, a living will.
I'm glad I have one and so do my parents. This unfortunately requires some forethought and planning. And many people just never get around to it. It really should be part of getting or renwing your drivers license just like opting to be an organ donor.
Actually I would propose that the key to the panda's survival is making them into a popular food source. If we just subsidized the raising and slaughter of Panda and Polar bears companies like Smithfield would rapidly adjust and we'd have millions and millions of them.
Pandas, the newest white meat!
I'm curious about how they determined who was cheating for the sampling. I know that some games have tagged people as chearters for modifying things that did not give them an advantage. Such as modifying an ini file to bypass the 5 minutes of video splash screens when starting up a game, tweaking graphics settings not available through the in game interface, and on and on.
It's been a while since I lived out there but if memory serves Palo Alto was certainly close enough to be considered part of SV. SF is definitely stretching it but it wouldn't suprise me if a number of people commuted from there every day.
This is exactly the problem my wife has run in to with checking out ebooks from the local library. I'm frankly amazed they have a system that doesn't allow for returning a book early. They are already expiring the book after a predetermined amount of time why isn't there a way to trigger it early?
"try doubling up a pair of teenagers in the same room without their killing each other, I dare you"
I did it, as did many of my friends growing up, one family had 4 sons all in one room together. It might mean instilling a better sense of discipline and self control in your children but it is not impossible.
It's my understanding that in the US we have a much higher square footage to resident ratio than many other countries. Unless you want to argue that the average US genome has a built in requirement for more space I'm just not seeing this as a valid issue.
So far as the main topic though I would say that the definition of Middle Class is going to vary by geographic region. Because as you have observed a family in Dayton, OH, can live in a mansion for the cost of a small apartment in LI.
I think the EV1 actually used a plug that was a paddle that slipped into a slot on the hood. But I believe it actually charged via induction, so it wasn't actually a plug in the traditional sense, and I'm not sure how efficient it was.
"C.S. Friedman - This Alien Shore"
I really liked this book and have to recommend the author in general. Her Coldfire trilogy was also very good and the world she created for it fascinated me.
My favorite of hers though is probably "The Madness Season" Ancient shape changing vampire/werewolf vs. galactic empire hive mind aliens. Yes it sounds bad but is amazingly good.
I never finished the original GW before the expansions and such came out. But it was a very different game at that time from WoW or most any other MMO.
For starters there was no real difference in characters, other than classes. Everyone of the same class essentially got the same equipment, there were some cosmetic differences and very minor stat differences, but you weren't going to find an upgrade to whatever you had anywhere.
The game was entirely instanced, even the hubs were instanced. This isn't entirely negative as it means that everyone is on the same server. The downside is that if you don't join a group you won't be seeing anyone else in the game world outside of hubs, which kind of ruins the idea of playing in a MMO for me.
I played as a Warrior/Monk or maybe it was Monk/Warrior. That meant that I filled two of the 3 trinity spots for much of the game but it didn't eliminate the efficacy of the trinity effect in the game.
One of the things that I did really like about the game was the companion system that meant you could make your own solo group for when you didn't want to deal with other people to progress. The dual class aspect was interesting and fun. The story telling was interesting and well done, though I would have liked to have seen more than one path to progress along. I liked that the game wold was all one big server, although I would have liked the zones to be less hallway like and allow more groups of players than just one group per instance.
Despite it's shortfalls I'm actually tempted now to go and see if I can play it still, although I wouldn't have any of the expansions.
By dualspec I think he meant being able to have two completely seperate setups for your skill/talent trees. This would be so that your character could switch between rolls, having completely different abilities for each.
The dualspec you are talking about is actually 1 spec that is designed to make your character more versatile all of the time. Instead of being a specialist who can switch between specialties at a moments notice.