That is most definitely a possibility too... sadly......or people kicking dogs because they find it arousing......or people taking it a step further by mixing bestiality with brutality...
They're doing to humans what farmers do to cows when they brand them. They're feeding them poisonous plants and then branding them to produce a pain response and associating it with the poison. In our case they're associating sex with animal abuse. Sex produces very strong feelings in humans, if you combine that with a extremely opposite feeling (such as sadness and/or disgust) you will be quite a bit more likely to remember it.
They're training humans to have a extreme disgust for animal abuse by conditioning the with the stimulus of sex.
This is remarkably cruel and may result in a lot of people becoming sexually impotent due to the fact that they can't get aroused, because whenever they do, they think about animal brutality... funny how that works.
If a crazy wants to strap a bomb to their chest and explode in your local favorite district, they will, and generally you never know before hand, so there is nothing you can do to stop them... that's what makes it so scary.
Unfortunately the nation doesn't give a shit about the nation, they just care about themselves. And planning for 50 years down the road wont give them a couple extra 100 on their tax break each year.
The American zeitgeist is a terrible creature at this point in time. They only care about changing to look good. Hell the whole Obama campaign preyed on that. When it finally comes down to the nitty gritty they turn their head and move on with their lives.
Games today suck, they're picked apart because they're mostly craptastic games that are highly focused around a very specific target audience. Instead of making a game just to be good, they make them to scoop up a certain type of player. Essentially it's a bloated experience designed to attract players into buying their product rather then actually delivering on it.
Keep in mind this doesn't apply to all games, just most.
If I'm reading the same spot, that's talking about latency between the call when the game wants to draw it and when it's actually rendered, in response to a technique Nvidia is using to smooth out FPS, not variation/jitter in the FPS, which is what a majority of the article is talking about.
I'd like your five minutes and mine for taking the time to read your response too.
I do like the idea of airships, but they have very few uses as far as I can tell, besides recon which is being considered. If you want to go somewhere, they wont take you anywhere fast, which is pretty much what everything else does.
I do think they would have a relatively strong role as a forward military base though. Being able to stay in the air for quite a long time as well as combining it with HTA technology could yield a very formidable forward base of operations. Especially if you consider that there are really no ultra long term aircraft besides UAVs. We have some that stay up in the air quite awhile, but nothing close to days without in air refueling. Maybe I've seen too many sci-fi shows? But honestly it seems like the perfect match.
For every Timmy at a science fair that had his experiment on quantum mechanics ruined, there is 999 douchebags blinding people. Until lasers are seen as weapons, not toys, there should be laws baring people from using them. Lasers are still not considered weapons.
Lasers right now is like what radiation used to be seen as before it put a couple mushroom clouds on a island in the pacific. Go into your shoe store and have a x-ray machine to see how a shoe fits... Have a x-ray machine for parties for fun... Drink water out of a radioactive flask because it's good for your health...
You are in a very small minority, even if you are very intelligent and you benefited greatly from it. You are not the majority. Think what 999 douchebags will do with a 1mW laser. Timmy can build a volcano and if he really is talented enough to use an extremely high powered lasers he should be talking to colleges instead.
Perhaps in the future when Lasers are actually seen as weapons a law like this will seem 'stupid' as everyone knows how dangerous they are, but for now we don't need douchebags blinding Timmys because they like to make fun of him.
I will fully agree that there should be laws baring the use of lasers without an express permit, as someone else mentioned, class 3 or above. Honestly, no one who can't pass the test to get the permit to use one will need one. The only joyful fun that can be had from lasers this powerful is blinding someone and pointing it at cars close to a mile away. THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS. All kids ever need is a tiny one to try and get the cat to chase it around or use it as a 'ooh and aaah'.
This is coming from someone who had a laser shined in his eye TWICE while going through school. First when I was 9 when lasers were first becoming available, one of those small keychain types when I was on the bus, then again when I was in my senior year of highschool when my physics teacher had laser displays setup. Another asshole decided it would be a great idea to do exactly what the teacher said NOT TO DO EVER, disregard the laser warning on the side, and poked me in the eye while giggling like a fucking idiot. To this day I'm quite sad I was an adolescent teenager at the time that didn't know my limits or how I should exactly respond to something like that. I really should have walked up, punched him in the face, and made a huge scene out of it. This is coming from someone who is VERY laid back and will talk most everything out. I believe it would''ve been very well justified. I have partial blindness in my right eye, where that laser hit around my focal point. I am now 26, so this was roughly 9 years ago.
I don't know what the wattage was of the one in the classroom, but it definitely wasn't a small one. I will echo the concern that lasers are VERY DANGEROUS. Everyone hops on the OMG band wagon about terrorists, what if someone gets a high powered laser sits atop a very high point in a well occupied city and shines it into some sort of scattering device, such as a brilliant cut diamond or other jewel for instance? That could very easily blind anyone that it happens to hit and there is almost no way of knowing where it comes from if it is only done for a short instance.
Lasers are most definitely not toys when they go above a certain mW and should not be available to people without proper training and/or certification.
"The internet has changed dramatically since I started here, and that's part of my reason for leaving. For me, the Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site."
Sadly this is something a lot of the popular things are encountering online... games like Starcraft, Warcraft, WoW, Counter Strike, and pretty much anything else that can be labeled nostalgia with enough people to get stuck in their ways. It's sad you can't transform this site on your whim into something better without a huge uproar, so you either have to start something new or update it so frequently that no one can tell the difference as it changes over time. That didn't happen on Slashdot and companies like Google knew better before they even started.
I have been reading here since about 2001, so I'm not as old as everyone else, but I have thoroughly enjoyed this site to go with my morning 'coffee' so to speak. Some stories are more nerd related then others, but it's overall still pretty good. I enjoyed it.
Directories are indexed now (except for some) so it takes a lot less time to just search everything. In windows 98 or XP it wasn't indexed, although XP added a search 4.0 addon that added indexing that wasn't till after vista came out.
There are plenty of other e-sports, including the DotA 2 1 milllion dollar competition that just ended sponsored by Valve... That's a LOT of money and a lot of people enjoy watching DotA type events, yet those aren't anywhere in the headlines here. I'd say it's even more competitive then Starcraft and most definitely involves a lot more fast thinking and micro-management.
I don't know who the submitter is, but I would guess he is on Blizzards paycheck. With WoW spiraling downward, ads like this are becoming more and more prevalent to raise sales to make up for losses. You should see all the changes they're adding to the next WoW patch that they should've done four years ago.
I don't really understand this. If you can increase the output simply by angling them differently, you could do that with a traditional design that packs more cells per inch and simply do away with a tree or use something akin to a molten salt reactor in the middle with panels around it in the shape of a circular U on a pivot. Such flower petal design (depending on how wide it is) would take advantage of everything this does except it would have a higher height density. You could even remove the moving part of it and make it a tad wider if you want to avoid moving parts.
While it is cool to design something after nature, you have to think a bit further into why nature made it that way in the first place. Like leaves are redundant as the tree itself cannot move, so some leaves generate more output depending on the time of day and angle. Upon closer look, his flat panel design doesn't pivot at all either, unlike most modern flat panel designs that power companies use (which are usually U shaped as well).
Cool thing to mess around with as a kid, other then that this isn't really ground breaking.
As others mentioned there are multiple reasons why WoW is now going down hill.
-The formula got old. People have finally gotten sick of marginally better upgrades that are just reskinned old items. Over the course of the entire game remarkably little has actually changed in terms of gameplay mechanics and actually adding NEW things (of course the hardcore fans will argue this). Essentially little has really changed even after all this time. -Blizzard seems to have no real direction anymore. With each expansion pack they usually targeted a different game. BC was GW, Wrath was WAR and Aion, Cata on the other hand had nothing like it. They decided to target themselves... well their past selves more precisely. Adding to that that most of the development team moved to Titan didn't help anything. -Blizzard just doesn't seem to care and the players can tell. The half ass slap on of a couple dozen hot fixes. The raids that are shut down for a week after the content comes out to readjust trash drop rates (they didn't think of trash farming?). -Classes are no longer unique. Everything has finally been normalized to the point that every class that can do the samething as another class (tank, dps, heal) is pretty much one in the same -Adding to that classes have been over simplified. They removed tons of abilities, but that's really what made WoW, well WoW. The best I can tell they did this to make it more like other MMOs, such as GW, but in essence removed one of the unique attributes that made WoW unique. -They finally killed off twinking in Cata. This was a huge one for me. You can argue this all you want, but even max level can be considered twinking. Some people simply wanted a level where they didn't need to ride the gear escalator. they could simply log on six months later and still have the best gear. Nothing to do, just play the game. -Rift was released. This ties into the game simply getting old. Rift amounts to WoW 2. If WoW was made six years later. It not only incorporates a completely overhauled system and graphics, it also adds some new play elements... such as Rifts. That isn't suffice to say it's the silver bullet. Rift, too, will also die out as it simply doesn't have anything measurably better then WoW. It's another combination of every other mmo out there, which will abruptly end when the big boys finally hit (Guild Wars 2 and Old Republic)... right now it's simply new. -This is more speculative and may be giving them too much credit, but I honestly believe Blizzard is trying to kill off WoW. Not necessarily actively, but passively. In a efffort to make sure their fan base doesn't turn completely rabid when Titan comes out. When that happens they will need to make a choice and rather then have their fans feel jerked back and forth between two mmos they're laying them out to fallow (so to speak) so they build up enthusiasm for Titan. If they have two top of the line MMOs running it's a overall loss for them, but if they have one mainstream one running and one designed to keep churning out expansion packs so the hardcore players that will never leave will keep playing it's win-win. -Five level expansion pack simply so they could add more expansions later on makes players feel cheated. -Waaaay too much phasing simply removes players from interacting with others. It essentially started turning the game into GW, where you can no longer interact with others because they aren't in your phase (this takes place at 80-85 for the most part). It also removes player freedom from the game). -Recylcing old content continually from the game. They went beyond just reskinning items to redoing dungeons and raids. Which is part of what leads me to believe they're trying to kill off the game. The sharp drop in the quality of their work to save some money. -Adding to all of this is the community that is now going rabid because they have nothing to do so they're bored and troll people 'for fun'. I suppose that's what happens when the main driving factor for people playing your game is not fun, bu
$16 a month = 16 movies from Redbox. $8 a month = 8 movies from Redbox.
I can't speak for the average user, as I am not one, but none of my friends watch more then a movie once a week, sometimes every two weeks. It's simply not worth it unless you don't have a Redbox near you. The selection on Netflix is pretty scant too. Newer releases almost never make it there in any timely manner, some never do.
The rate hike in my opinion is like what ISPs are doing. Since Netflix can't get you on late fees (by underselling their service), they attempt to sell so much of it that people won't use it. Putting it into perspective, at a Redbox price, $16 is roughly 24-30 hours worth of movies.
I think where Netflix really scores is TV series, where multiple volumes are required. That you usually can't get from a Redbox, that usually costs you an arm and a leg at normal Video store, and that's usually why a lot of people pirate. I wonder if they could make a correlation in here.
No, this is just another magical void where they're trying to wring more out of consumers for less money. Even IF you cannot explore all parts of the game or there is more content there then you could possibly take care of, the point is, there are choices and that much content you COULD explore. Not everyone is going to explore every little tiny spot, but some people do. Being able to have the ability to do that makes the world feel much more open and alive, rather then just a typical shooter on rails. I think developers are worrying too much about players seeing very specific content that they put time into, then making a overall engrossing and GOOD game.
Perhaps maybe they just can't think on a scale that makes it seem like an amazing game without focusing exclusively on small and unimportant details?
Taking this from the direction of 'lets make a rational point to reduce content in our games to make them cheaper so we can produce more shitty clones'. See I don't understand this. Somehow people seem to have this notion and developers seem to be spewing this BS that they have a finite amount of resources they magically shift around between different things in the game. Like how they don't want to invest in graphics anymore because thats time and manpower they'll spend on something else......but they DON'T, it just goes into a magical black hole. They never give more content for resources they take away. There is no reallocation, it just doesn't happen. It's like giving someone who is really terrible at managing money more money, it just disappears. Just the same as they somehow rationalized how they don't need better graphics anymore because a majority of players use ancient console level hardware (self-serving in and of itself), players don't use lan support because it only affects a couple players, players don't need certain game types, players don't need modding tools, or want long term support for their games.
There are MODS (fan made content that was at no cost to developers and those fans never got money for it) that are better then actual games. Mechwarrior Living Legends, Dystopia, Insurgency, and tons of other ones I don't actually remember at this moment.
I didn't even think of this, but I do agree reducing our upkeep on nuclear arms is a very good idea for reducing our budget. However, just like a few people pointed out, if you don't have any nukes you start to look weak. Most of the world still operates on the third world principle, where true strength is derived from might and power. Being able to bulldog anything into the ground. Even if it shows more strength to disarm ourselves when other people are building nukes.
Nukes in themselves are a deterrent, but I think we should start concentrating on something similar to a nuclear shield or some sort of passive method for cleaning up after nuclear fallout. Being on the defensive traditionally requires less resources and it's a completely different game since no one is doing it. Adding to that, more R&D could be spent on better nukes that will get to their target without exploding, rather then the massive hindenburgs of nukes we built in the 60s.
The US is turning into a giant me-too, where we do everything everyone else does that we see as good or makes them look good, but we generally don't plow ahead of anyone anymore. We invented nukes in the first place, you think we'd be the first country that figures out how to deal with them.
The law was supposed to ban inefficient bulbs, but it never took into account mercury content or properly disposing of light bulbs. This is a classic case of tragedy of the commons as no one I know of properly disposes of the light bulbs. Matter of a fact in my area you have to drive about 30 minutes and pay roughly $1.40 to get rid of each CFL that burns out. Who the frick actually does that?
CFLs are sold for prices that underscores their long term effects and disposal to make them seem more plausible. The law which bans inefficient light bulbs to reduce pollution, doesn't take into account long term pollution, just the energy use of the bulbs themselves. I'm not so sure CFLs would either be cheaper or be more 'efficient' when taking into account mercury disposal costs and proper recycling.
The sad thing is, while we may understand that the law bans inefficient bulbs, I don't think that is the general understanding for most people (even on here) and the general consensus is CFLs are better for the environment and last longer. However, buying a good incandescent also has similar effects. It's propaganda based on poison, quite literally because people can't see or rationalize the effects of mercury as it's not included in the price or the label and laws like this as well as marketing has made incandescents seem like terribly ungreen.
If they undo this law they better have another one to take up it's place that includes some sort of rating system for lightbulbs and their effects on the environment (all of them) along with costs that include recycling.
You know, I'm personally more interested to see what Japan will do after this then other countries. While other countries are screaming like ninnies, as are their sheeples, I bet they're going to tear down their old reactors and build new ones in their place... push for newer designs... invest in what caused a massive accident, research it, and make sure it never happens again all the while never forsaking a course of action they thought was prudent in the first place.
The only way they would be faster is if you hit a red light at every single intersection you cross rather then yielding to cars in high flow areas. If you throw in a heavy dose of road rage and a bad day this can lead to quite a few fendor-bendors and people with the inability to get out of the way of traffic due to the way they're shaped.
They're a just cluster fuck and have a 'cool' factor to them because they're largely absent from our culture, appear 'prim' because the English use them, and usually have some sort of fancy artwork in the middle. In no way, shape, or form can I imagine them being faster or safer then a light that automatically tells you if you have right of way or not (baring faults of the light). The only use I can see them having is replacing a four way stop sign in a low-traffic area as a yield, as people usually do rolling stops in these areas anyway.
This is a very bad trend for both those seeking more culture and those seeking a faster way to travel as after all these are installed and we realized how much of a pain in the ass they are as well of how they muck up traffic, they'll have to be exchanged for traffic lights. More so because I've started to see them put into intersections where there wasn't originally a four way stop!
Adding roundabouts wont fix anything, a better traffic light system which takes into account flow and patterns of traffic based on usage statistics that is tied into other traffic lights most definitely can though. I seriously hope they don't become more adopted and remain then the occasional curiosity in a low traffic portion of cities.
Slashdot Mirror
That is most definitely a possibility too... sadly... ...or people kicking dogs because they find it arousing... ...or people taking it a step further by mixing bestiality with brutality...
conditioning humans with the stimulus of sex*
They're doing to humans what farmers do to cows when they brand them. They're feeding them poisonous plants and then branding them to produce a pain response and associating it with the poison. In our case they're associating sex with animal abuse. Sex produces very strong feelings in humans, if you combine that with a extremely opposite feeling (such as sadness and/or disgust) you will be quite a bit more likely to remember it.
They're training humans to have a extreme disgust for animal abuse by conditioning the with the stimulus of sex.
This is remarkably cruel and may result in a lot of people becoming sexually impotent due to the fact that they can't get aroused, because whenever they do, they think about animal brutality... funny how that works.
The Red Scare of 2000... communists caught: 0
If a crazy wants to strap a bomb to their chest and explode in your local favorite district, they will, and generally you never know before hand, so there is nothing you can do to stop them... that's what makes it so scary.
Unfortunately the nation doesn't give a shit about the nation, they just care about themselves. And planning for 50 years down the road wont give them a couple extra 100 on their tax break each year.
The American zeitgeist is a terrible creature at this point in time. They only care about changing to look good. Hell the whole Obama campaign preyed on that. When it finally comes down to the nitty gritty they turn their head and move on with their lives.
If the author has ever heard of consolization?
Games today suck, they're picked apart because they're mostly craptastic games that are highly focused around a very specific target audience. Instead of making a game just to be good, they make them to scoop up a certain type of player. Essentially it's a bloated experience designed to attract players into buying their product rather then actually delivering on it.
Keep in mind this doesn't apply to all games, just most.
If I'm reading the same spot, that's talking about latency between the call when the game wants to draw it and when it's actually rendered, in response to a technique Nvidia is using to smooth out FPS, not variation/jitter in the FPS, which is what a majority of the article is talking about.
I'd like your five minutes and mine for taking the time to read your response too.
I do like the idea of airships, but they have very few uses as far as I can tell, besides recon which is being considered. If you want to go somewhere, they wont take you anywhere fast, which is pretty much what everything else does.
I do think they would have a relatively strong role as a forward military base though. Being able to stay in the air for quite a long time as well as combining it with HTA technology could yield a very formidable forward base of operations. Especially if you consider that there are really no ultra long term aircraft besides UAVs. We have some that stay up in the air quite awhile, but nothing close to days without in air refueling. Maybe I've seen too many sci-fi shows? But honestly it seems like the perfect match.
For every Timmy at a science fair that had his experiment on quantum mechanics ruined, there is 999 douchebags blinding people. Until lasers are seen as weapons, not toys, there should be laws baring people from using them. Lasers are still not considered weapons.
Lasers right now is like what radiation used to be seen as before it put a couple mushroom clouds on a island in the pacific. Go into your shoe store and have a x-ray machine to see how a shoe fits... Have a x-ray machine for parties for fun... Drink water out of a radioactive flask because it's good for your health...
You are in a very small minority, even if you are very intelligent and you benefited greatly from it. You are not the majority. Think what 999 douchebags will do with a 1mW laser. Timmy can build a volcano and if he really is talented enough to use an extremely high powered lasers he should be talking to colleges instead.
Perhaps in the future when Lasers are actually seen as weapons a law like this will seem 'stupid' as everyone knows how dangerous they are, but for now we don't need douchebags blinding Timmys because they like to make fun of him.
I will fully agree that there should be laws baring the use of lasers without an express permit, as someone else mentioned, class 3 or above. Honestly, no one who can't pass the test to get the permit to use one will need one. The only joyful fun that can be had from lasers this powerful is blinding someone and pointing it at cars close to a mile away. THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS. All kids ever need is a tiny one to try and get the cat to chase it around or use it as a 'ooh and aaah'.
This is coming from someone who had a laser shined in his eye TWICE while going through school. First when I was 9 when lasers were first becoming available, one of those small keychain types when I was on the bus, then again when I was in my senior year of highschool when my physics teacher had laser displays setup. Another asshole decided it would be a great idea to do exactly what the teacher said NOT TO DO EVER, disregard the laser warning on the side, and poked me in the eye while giggling like a fucking idiot. To this day I'm quite sad I was an adolescent teenager at the time that didn't know my limits or how I should exactly respond to something like that. I really should have walked up, punched him in the face, and made a huge scene out of it. This is coming from someone who is VERY laid back and will talk most everything out. I believe it would''ve been very well justified. I have partial blindness in my right eye, where that laser hit around my focal point. I am now 26, so this was roughly 9 years ago.
I don't know what the wattage was of the one in the classroom, but it definitely wasn't a small one. I will echo the concern that lasers are VERY DANGEROUS. Everyone hops on the OMG band wagon about terrorists, what if someone gets a high powered laser sits atop a very high point in a well occupied city and shines it into some sort of scattering device, such as a brilliant cut diamond or other jewel for instance? That could very easily blind anyone that it happens to hit and there is almost no way of knowing where it comes from if it is only done for a short instance.
Lasers are most definitely not toys when they go above a certain mW and should not be available to people without proper training and/or certification.
"The internet has changed dramatically since I started here, and that's part of my reason for leaving. For me, the Slashdot of today is fused to the Slashdot of the past. This makes it really hard to objectively consider the future of the site."
Sadly this is something a lot of the popular things are encountering online... games like Starcraft, Warcraft, WoW, Counter Strike, and pretty much anything else that can be labeled nostalgia with enough people to get stuck in their ways. It's sad you can't transform this site on your whim into something better without a huge uproar, so you either have to start something new or update it so frequently that no one can tell the difference as it changes over time. That didn't happen on Slashdot and companies like Google knew better before they even started.
I have been reading here since about 2001, so I'm not as old as everyone else, but I have thoroughly enjoyed this site to go with my morning 'coffee' so to speak. Some stories are more nerd related then others, but it's overall still pretty good. I enjoyed it.
Directories are indexed now (except for some) so it takes a lot less time to just search everything. In windows 98 or XP it wasn't indexed, although XP added a search 4.0 addon that added indexing that wasn't till after vista came out.
There are plenty of other e-sports, including the DotA 2 1 milllion dollar competition that just ended sponsored by Valve... That's a LOT of money and a lot of people enjoy watching DotA type events, yet those aren't anywhere in the headlines here. I'd say it's even more competitive then Starcraft and most definitely involves a lot more fast thinking and micro-management.
I don't know who the submitter is, but I would guess he is on Blizzards paycheck. With WoW spiraling downward, ads like this are becoming more and more prevalent to raise sales to make up for losses. You should see all the changes they're adding to the next WoW patch that they should've done four years ago.
I don't really understand this. If you can increase the output simply by angling them differently, you could do that with a traditional design that packs more cells per inch and simply do away with a tree or use something akin to a molten salt reactor in the middle with panels around it in the shape of a circular U on a pivot. Such flower petal design (depending on how wide it is) would take advantage of everything this does except it would have a higher height density. You could even remove the moving part of it and make it a tad wider if you want to avoid moving parts.
While it is cool to design something after nature, you have to think a bit further into why nature made it that way in the first place. Like leaves are redundant as the tree itself cannot move, so some leaves generate more output depending on the time of day and angle. Upon closer look, his flat panel design doesn't pivot at all either, unlike most modern flat panel designs that power companies use (which are usually U shaped as well).
Cool thing to mess around with as a kid, other then that this isn't really ground breaking.
As others mentioned there are multiple reasons why WoW is now going down hill.
-The formula got old. People have finally gotten sick of marginally better upgrades that are just reskinned old items. Over the course of the entire game remarkably little has actually changed in terms of gameplay mechanics and actually adding NEW things (of course the hardcore fans will argue this). Essentially little has really changed even after all this time.
-Blizzard seems to have no real direction anymore. With each expansion pack they usually targeted a different game. BC was GW, Wrath was WAR and Aion, Cata on the other hand had nothing like it. They decided to target themselves... well their past selves more precisely. Adding to that that most of the development team moved to Titan didn't help anything.
-Blizzard just doesn't seem to care and the players can tell. The half ass slap on of a couple dozen hot fixes. The raids that are shut down for a week after the content comes out to readjust trash drop rates (they didn't think of trash farming?).
-Classes are no longer unique. Everything has finally been normalized to the point that every class that can do the samething as another class (tank, dps, heal) is pretty much one in the same
-Adding to that classes have been over simplified. They removed tons of abilities, but that's really what made WoW, well WoW. The best I can tell they did this to make it more like other MMOs, such as GW, but in essence removed one of the unique attributes that made WoW unique.
-They finally killed off twinking in Cata. This was a huge one for me. You can argue this all you want, but even max level can be considered twinking. Some people simply wanted a level where they didn't need to ride the gear escalator. they could simply log on six months later and still have the best gear. Nothing to do, just play the game.
-Rift was released. This ties into the game simply getting old. Rift amounts to WoW 2. If WoW was made six years later. It not only incorporates a completely overhauled system and graphics, it also adds some new play elements... such as Rifts. That isn't suffice to say it's the silver bullet. Rift, too, will also die out as it simply doesn't have anything measurably better then WoW. It's another combination of every other mmo out there, which will abruptly end when the big boys finally hit (Guild Wars 2 and Old Republic)... right now it's simply new.
-This is more speculative and may be giving them too much credit, but I honestly believe Blizzard is trying to kill off WoW. Not necessarily actively, but passively. In a efffort to make sure their fan base doesn't turn completely rabid when Titan comes out. When that happens they will need to make a choice and rather then have their fans feel jerked back and forth between two mmos they're laying them out to fallow (so to speak) so they build up enthusiasm for Titan. If they have two top of the line MMOs running it's a overall loss for them, but if they have one mainstream one running and one designed to keep churning out expansion packs so the hardcore players that will never leave will keep playing it's win-win.
-Five level expansion pack simply so they could add more expansions later on makes players feel cheated.
-Waaaay too much phasing simply removes players from interacting with others. It essentially started turning the game into GW, where you can no longer interact with others because they aren't in your phase (this takes place at 80-85 for the most part). It also removes player freedom from the game).
-Recylcing old content continually from the game. They went beyond just reskinning items to redoing dungeons and raids. Which is part of what leads me to believe they're trying to kill off the game. The sharp drop in the quality of their work to save some money.
-Adding to all of this is the community that is now going rabid because they have nothing to do so they're bored and troll people 'for fun'. I suppose that's what happens when the main driving factor for people playing your game is not fun, bu
Interesting, I wrote the same exact comment 5 minutes earlier and I was modded 1, redundant.
Make the game for the console then port it to PC.
$16 a month = 16 movies from Redbox. $8 a month = 8 movies from Redbox.
I can't speak for the average user, as I am not one, but none of my friends watch more then a movie once a week, sometimes every two weeks. It's simply not worth it unless you don't have a Redbox near you. The selection on Netflix is pretty scant too. Newer releases almost never make it there in any timely manner, some never do.
The rate hike in my opinion is like what ISPs are doing. Since Netflix can't get you on late fees (by underselling their service), they attempt to sell so much of it that people won't use it. Putting it into perspective, at a Redbox price, $16 is roughly 24-30 hours worth of movies.
I think where Netflix really scores is TV series, where multiple volumes are required. That you usually can't get from a Redbox, that usually costs you an arm and a leg at normal Video store, and that's usually why a lot of people pirate. I wonder if they could make a correlation in here.
No, this is just another magical void where they're trying to wring more out of consumers for less money. Even IF you cannot explore all parts of the game or there is more content there then you could possibly take care of, the point is, there are choices and that much content you COULD explore. Not everyone is going to explore every little tiny spot, but some people do. Being able to have the ability to do that makes the world feel much more open and alive, rather then just a typical shooter on rails. I think developers are worrying too much about players seeing very specific content that they put time into, then making a overall engrossing and GOOD game.
...but they DON'T, it just goes into a magical black hole. They never give more content for resources they take away. There is no reallocation, it just doesn't happen. It's like giving someone who is really terrible at managing money more money, it just disappears. Just the same as they somehow rationalized how they don't need better graphics anymore because a majority of players use ancient console level hardware (self-serving in and of itself), players don't use lan support because it only affects a couple players, players don't need certain game types, players don't need modding tools, or want long term support for their games.
Perhaps maybe they just can't think on a scale that makes it seem like an amazing game without focusing exclusively on small and unimportant details?
Taking this from the direction of 'lets make a rational point to reduce content in our games to make them cheaper so we can produce more shitty clones'. See I don't understand this. Somehow people seem to have this notion and developers seem to be spewing this BS that they have a finite amount of resources they magically shift around between different things in the game. Like how they don't want to invest in graphics anymore because thats time and manpower they'll spend on something else...
There are MODS (fan made content that was at no cost to developers and those fans never got money for it) that are better then actual games. Mechwarrior Living Legends, Dystopia, Insurgency, and tons of other ones I don't actually remember at this moment.
I didn't even think of this, but I do agree reducing our upkeep on nuclear arms is a very good idea for reducing our budget. However, just like a few people pointed out, if you don't have any nukes you start to look weak. Most of the world still operates on the third world principle, where true strength is derived from might and power. Being able to bulldog anything into the ground. Even if it shows more strength to disarm ourselves when other people are building nukes.
Nukes in themselves are a deterrent, but I think we should start concentrating on something similar to a nuclear shield or some sort of passive method for cleaning up after nuclear fallout. Being on the defensive traditionally requires less resources and it's a completely different game since no one is doing it. Adding to that, more R&D could be spent on better nukes that will get to their target without exploding, rather then the massive hindenburgs of nukes we built in the 60s.
The US is turning into a giant me-too, where we do everything everyone else does that we see as good or makes them look good, but we generally don't plow ahead of anyone anymore. We invented nukes in the first place, you think we'd be the first country that figures out how to deal with them.
Putting aside ethics... it's not about production, it's about the mercury in the bulbs after they go to landfills. That stays here.
The law was supposed to ban inefficient bulbs, but it never took into account mercury content or properly disposing of light bulbs. This is a classic case of tragedy of the commons as no one I know of properly disposes of the light bulbs. Matter of a fact in my area you have to drive about 30 minutes and pay roughly $1.40 to get rid of each CFL that burns out. Who the frick actually does that?
CFLs are sold for prices that underscores their long term effects and disposal to make them seem more plausible. The law which bans inefficient light bulbs to reduce pollution, doesn't take into account long term pollution, just the energy use of the bulbs themselves. I'm not so sure CFLs would either be cheaper or be more 'efficient' when taking into account mercury disposal costs and proper recycling.
The sad thing is, while we may understand that the law bans inefficient bulbs, I don't think that is the general understanding for most people (even on here) and the general consensus is CFLs are better for the environment and last longer. However, buying a good incandescent also has similar effects. It's propaganda based on poison, quite literally because people can't see or rationalize the effects of mercury as it's not included in the price or the label and laws like this as well as marketing has made incandescents seem like terribly ungreen.
If they undo this law they better have another one to take up it's place that includes some sort of rating system for lightbulbs and their effects on the environment (all of them) along with costs that include recycling.
You know, I'm personally more interested to see what Japan will do after this then other countries. While other countries are screaming like ninnies, as are their sheeples, I bet they're going to tear down their old reactors and build new ones in their place... push for newer designs... invest in what caused a massive accident, research it, and make sure it never happens again all the while never forsaking a course of action they thought was prudent in the first place.
...you make it sound like the same person who would go through a red light would be more likely to yield to a yield sign on a roundabout.
The only way they would be faster is if you hit a red light at every single intersection you cross rather then yielding to cars in high flow areas. If you throw in a heavy dose of road rage and a bad day this can lead to quite a few fendor-bendors and people with the inability to get out of the way of traffic due to the way they're shaped.
They're a just cluster fuck and have a 'cool' factor to them because they're largely absent from our culture, appear 'prim' because the English use them, and usually have some sort of fancy artwork in the middle. In no way, shape, or form can I imagine them being faster or safer then a light that automatically tells you if you have right of way or not (baring faults of the light). The only use I can see them having is replacing a four way stop sign in a low-traffic area as a yield, as people usually do rolling stops in these areas anyway.
This is a very bad trend for both those seeking more culture and those seeking a faster way to travel as after all these are installed and we realized how much of a pain in the ass they are as well of how they muck up traffic, they'll have to be exchanged for traffic lights. More so because I've started to see them put into intersections where there wasn't originally a four way stop!
Adding roundabouts wont fix anything, a better traffic light system which takes into account flow and patterns of traffic based on usage statistics that is tied into other traffic lights most definitely can though. I seriously hope they don't become more adopted and remain then the occasional curiosity in a low traffic portion of cities.