The article summarised the current state fairly well, but overlooked at least one obvious solution. There's no reason that different types of character can't be better "tanks" for different types of enemy. As an example, a mage type enemy might have it's attacks best resisted by a mage (traditional DPS) or priest (traditional Support) character, and be damaged best by warriors (traditional Tank). This would, of course, require each class to have mechanics for the roles, but there's no reason that couldn't be done. This has always seemed like a natural solution to me. It provides the familiarity of a role, with the dynaics of various fights having different roles required of different characters. People would still "know what to do", but also get variety.
Much of the Ares system, that big orage part, isn't a reusable shuttle part. It's recylced tech, but the tanks are one use only, Shuttle or Ares. Eventually, they'll probably want to stop building "spare shuttle parts" for a seperate launch system. Of course, that's assuming that Ares doesn't do what they want reliably and affordably, and that the purpose of these programs is to produce cheap, easy, and reliable access to space.
Are we not liking this because it's optional, free, we don't like the way the optional free thing works, or is it more of a principled blind opposition to anything MS?
There were signs that the mortuary science student was unstable... I'm pretty sure that's the start of a joke, or the end of one.
On a similar note, I have it on good authority that there are only two kinds of people who spend their time thinking about killing people, and only one of them is mystery writers.
Seriously though, it comes down to a judgement call. Facebook or RL, someone was ranting in a public space about killing people. Depending on the rant, it could be funny, or they should be detained and questioned. Kinda like the difference between laughing and cackling.
It seems very reasonable that an officer could look through a person's purse or day-timer if they are arrested. Since phones and digital devices are often similar, it really is just another kind of day-timer. However, computers are often a great deal more. It is reasonable for an officer to secure his safety. It is not reasonable for an officer to search through a suspect's family photos or personal messages. For evidence gathering, I would hope most judges and DA's are sophisticated enough to include digital records with other targetted records searches. However, searching a computer at a tarry is unreasonable.
I find your argument that no one would have wanted to come up with electric products or services to market to farmers both compelling and rational. In other news, even the Mennonites have solar power now days.
When I first started playing WoW there wasn't any of this fancy "meeting stones" or "looking for group". If you wanted to get people together to play you shouted into random channels in Ironforge. No cross realm ques for battlegrounds and there were no PVP rewards, and we liked it! If you wanted a horse, you saved your money from level one and didn't even THINK of buying anything until you had it, and if you wanted something other than a horse TOO BAD. Everything was better then. Loot meant something and everyone in your group looked out for you and made sure the right people got the right gear. Back in my day Paladins were ineffective but unkillable, shamans were GODS and if you wanted to leave Tarren Mill you WALKED because the flightmaster was DEAD. You think it's hard now? Imagine running MC and hoofing it back to your body in Blackrock, uphill both ways!
Currently I have, at minimum, 3 choices (Hughes, Wild Blue, SkyWay) before I even see a telephone line near my house. I most places, I get at least two more options, DSL and Cable. If I'm really looking for variety, I can get Edge network service through a cell provider everywhere I can receieve a cell signal, and faster networks are expanding. Telco domination that prevents variety of service is not a reality at this time, and isn't likely to be so in the future.
As for the threat of companies filtering users based on their use... I'd hope they do just that. High capacity users should pay more. If I pay for a 5meg pipe and 20 gigs of data, I expect to get just that. Curently I pay for a 10 meg pipe with unlimited data. In a not-atypical evening, I spent last night watching Hulu while playing WoW (with Vent), with my wife listening to Pandora in another room. I've not experienced service interuptions or limitations that have affected my enjoyment. In my experience, and the experience of others I know, service is good. The ability to change service is available. Options for service are numerous. Technical advances are making service better, cheaper and providing more options. I see no compelling reason to allow interference in the business at this time.
The idea of network traffic that is not shaped based on content seems to be a good one, in general. Some traffic deserves to be shaped such as spam, DOS attacks and other malicious traffic. I thoroughly encourage the current people in charge of administering such things to keep the system as open as possible. It is my preference to have an option, should I decide the people currently in charge of keeping my access free of interference are doing a bad job. It's worth noting that currently they seem to be doing a fine job and I'm quite happy.
There are a great number of things that "if properly managed" might sound like a good idea. The problem is, the managers are always people. If you think it would be a good idea for Richard Nixon, Barack Obama or George W. Bush to appoint the person in charge of the NN system, and that they, or people like them, would "properly manage" it, then you may well feel it's a good idea.
Personally, I'd rather have a failover system. When I'm unhappy with one provider, I can go to another. If I'm unhappy with the regulatory environment imposed by the FCC, it take considerably more than a phone call to Time Warner to change that part of my service.
Agreed. Unfortunately, in spite of how it is billed, NN does not address the fundamental problem "human beings take advantage of their power". Until such time as a system is devised that does deal with that issue effectively (difficult giving the system would be designed, implemented and managed by human beings), we're left with the original problem of which group or groups of human beings we feel will do the least harm for the greatest amount of benefit. Personally, I am skeptical of any plan that claims to solve the potential problem of a collection of groups of human beings abusing their power by granting greater authority and power to a single group of human beings. Other people may not be as skeptical. I contend that such is still the choice presented at this time.
I assume that people will abuse power. In fact, that's the only reason there is ANY discussion of NN. If people weren't inclied to abuse their power there'd be no reason to bother with NN. It's just a matter of who you wish to have in the position to abuse power. Either you prefer to have control over networks abused by the people who build and manage them, or you prefer to have control over networks abused by governments.
If you believe that corporate people won't abuse their power, but government people will, then you have either a benighted view of corporate people or a baleful view of government people. If you believe that government people will not abuse their power, but corporate people will, you have the reverse.
I assume that people in government and people in business are equally likely to abuse me. Given that, I am simply left with the choice of which type of abuse I prefer.
It really depends on what you mean when you say "Carbon Offset". Are you talking about a mechanism provided by governments that companies use to min-max their regulatory and tax liabilities? Or do you mean a volountary system for people who wish to purchase a counter to their personal polution? The first option is just a mechanism for trading tax write-offs. The second is very unlikely to be used by high poluting people that don't care. In general, taxing a behavior is a good way to discourage a behavior, providing there's not an easy way to get out of the tax.
Well, you can't really expect the regulatory agencies to regulate unless they can monitor, can you? Then there's the inspection process. Someone has to verify that your network is compliant. So all your new projects, expansions, and services will need a thorough review to verify compliance. Of course, this only scratches the nightmare of what could happen if people start trying to make the internet "equal" and "uniform". Turns out that rural middle of no where has worse service than uptown because of a historical inequity in telecom distribution. Toss in a few racial demographics, because someone will surely do so, and we can see the whole scope of regulation in the name of equality.
Still, it may be that people feel this is preferable. I contend that there's a choice. You can have the sorts of abuses that governments produce, and no other options, or you can have numerous sources of abuse and choose between the variety of individual abuses that companies produce.
Option 1: Allow companies the ability, which they may abuse, to shape and control traffic over networks they own.
Option 2: Allow governments the ability, which they may abuse, to shape and control traffic over all networks within their governance.
Option 1 gives me a number of companies, each abusing their power in their own way. I am allowed to select from a number of choices how I wish to be abused. Some companies may elect to offer "raw internet" as a selling point, others may offer the squashing of bandwidth hogs as a selling point.
Option 2 gives me a number of companies to choose from, but they are prevented from abusing their power for their own purposes. Instead, I have only one abuser, the agency that regulates NN. While I will not be abused by a company directly, I also have no choice in the manner or methods of my abuse.
Many motor dificulties could probably be solved by custom controllers, which I've seen a good bit of already. That's not the domain of developers, and is more like a "video game crutch" than anything.
Most games give feedback through video and audio information.
Subtitles, visual indicators for incoming fire (red screen flash at the edges and such) are included in many games already. I think many game developers use both as a matter of course to make the experience more involving. Most audio effects are acompanied by a visual effect also. Visual is a bit harder due to information density. Color schemes and font sizes are relatively easy, but I don't seen a lot of font sizing options for games (aside from total resolution manipulation). Many games allow the reduction of particle effects and other "business" which could likely help some people. UI scaling might also be useful. There's also the possibility of the industry creating standardized audio cues for commno game events, ie "Red Wizard Needs Food Badly". I've mentioned input already. It's not something I've shopped for, but there might even be a custom controller builder out there somewhere. I know people build custom bicycles for mobility handicapped people. There are also mental difficulties of a variety of sorts. Some could just make coordination difficult, others could effect intelligence. Most games offer some sort of an Easy/Normal/Hard scale that could accomodate many of these issues. Of course, not every problem would be addressed. However, it would be nice if someone could look at a box and have some idea of what features are available to them.
Yes, that is the problem. A small portion of society is handicapped in a way that creates a hurdle to playing games. Only so much money will be spent to cater to a small segment of the market. This doesn't seem that remarkable to me. In fact, it seems rather apropriate. I'm not arguing that baseline toolkits for accessability features are a magic wand that will fix everyone's problems without cost. I'm simply saying that if DirectX had tools, or some enterprising colorblind (or whatever) programmer built them, that could be used to more easily implement the desired play modes, it would lower the cost threshold for producing those features. Additionally, accessibility labeling would increase the marketability of those features.
I in no way expect game makers to spend more money than they'll make to producing accessable games. I just think there's money out there for it and the people that include those features will capture a disproportionate amount of that market compared to those who don't.
1. Handicapped people, much like everyone else, want to play games and are willing to pay money to do so.
2. People who make games want to sell games.
3. Handicapped people, much like everyone else, are reluctant to throw away $60 on a game they may not be able to play.
Seems like someone should have the job of creating a set of developer tools along the lines of "Unreal Engine - Color Blind" or "DirectAccessibility". Games with such features could then bear an industry logo, white D-pad on blue field or some such, to signify a certain accessibility standard. Some sort of accessability labeling is an idea worth thinking about anyway, and I'd honestly expect Nintendo, with their "all ages" marketing, to lead the way. Being able to purchase a game with reasonable confidence that you'll be able to play it would make purchasing decisions easier, and sell more games to people for whom that is a concern. On a final note, as a guy who gets around on crutches, I think it's a pretty lame move to sue a consumer goods producer because they don't cater to your own special snowflake problems. For my self, if I don't think a store is easy to get around in and shop at, I go to a different store. Game makers are likely loosing sales to people with various problems because those people have the expectation that they won't have an enjoyable experience for their $60. For such a natural market for their product, it seems like an issue that could be overcome, but suing based on "how dare you not make the game good for me with my individual needs" doesn't strike me as a very adult way of working in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
The article summarised the current state fairly well, but overlooked at least one obvious solution. There's no reason that different types of character can't be better "tanks" for different types of enemy. As an example, a mage type enemy might have it's attacks best resisted by a mage (traditional DPS) or priest (traditional Support) character, and be damaged best by warriors (traditional Tank). This would, of course, require each class to have mechanics for the roles, but there's no reason that couldn't be done.
This has always seemed like a natural solution to me. It provides the familiarity of a role, with the dynaics of various fights having different roles required of different characters. People would still "know what to do", but also get variety.
Much of the Ares system, that big orage part, isn't a reusable shuttle part. It's recylced tech, but the tanks are one use only, Shuttle or Ares. Eventually, they'll probably want to stop building "spare shuttle parts" for a seperate launch system.
Of course, that's assuming that Ares doesn't do what they want reliably and affordably, and that the purpose of these programs is to produce cheap, easy, and reliable access to space.
I'd suspected it was true since highschool, but I guess women really aren't attracted to geeky things.
Are we not liking this because it's optional, free, we don't like the way the optional free thing works, or is it more of a principled blind opposition to anything MS?
There were signs that the mortuary science student was unstable... I'm pretty sure that's the start of a joke, or the end of one.
On a similar note, I have it on good authority that there are only two kinds of people who spend their time thinking about killing people, and only one of them is mystery writers.
Seriously though, it comes down to a judgement call. Facebook or RL, someone was ranting in a public space about killing people. Depending on the rant, it could be funny, or they should be detained and questioned. Kinda like the difference between laughing and cackling.
I'm pretty sure that's what I said. :P
It seems very reasonable that an officer could look through a person's purse or day-timer if they are arrested. Since phones and digital devices are often similar, it really is just another kind of day-timer. However, computers are often a great deal more. It is reasonable for an officer to secure his safety. It is not reasonable for an officer to search through a suspect's family photos or personal messages. For evidence gathering, I would hope most judges and DA's are sophisticated enough to include digital records with other targetted records searches. However, searching a computer at a tarry is unreasonable.
You're not the only one.
I find your argument that no one would have wanted to come up with electric products or services to market to farmers both compelling and rational. In other news, even the Mennonites have solar power now days.
Yeh, I have used sat service. Can't say that it was anywhere near as problematic as you describe.
Who will write the laws that this orginization enforces?
To whom will the law writers and this orginization be acountable?
What processes will exist for removing law writers and enforcers who do bad jobs?
What process will exist to appoint new law writers and enforcers?
These seem like rational questions.
Broadband access, via Hughes as just one of several options, is currently available in the following areas:
Earth
Given that anyone, anywhere in the above location, already has access to an internet connection of 1Mbs+, why is such a law needed?
When I first started playing WoW there wasn't any of this fancy "meeting stones" or "looking for group". If you wanted to get people together to play you shouted into random channels in Ironforge. No cross realm ques for battlegrounds and there were no PVP rewards, and we liked it! If you wanted a horse, you saved your money from level one and didn't even THINK of buying anything until you had it, and if you wanted something other than a horse TOO BAD. Everything was better then. Loot meant something and everyone in your group looked out for you and made sure the right people got the right gear. Back in my day Paladins were ineffective but unkillable, shamans were GODS and if you wanted to leave Tarren Mill you WALKED because the flightmaster was DEAD. You think it's hard now? Imagine running MC and hoofing it back to your body in Blackrock, uphill both ways!
Currently I have, at minimum, 3 choices (Hughes, Wild Blue, SkyWay) before I even see a telephone line near my house. I most places, I get at least two more options, DSL and Cable. If I'm really looking for variety, I can get Edge network service through a cell provider everywhere I can receieve a cell signal, and faster networks are expanding.
Telco domination that prevents variety of service is not a reality at this time, and isn't likely to be so in the future.
As for the threat of companies filtering users based on their use... I'd hope they do just that. High capacity users should pay more. If I pay for a 5meg pipe and 20 gigs of data, I expect to get just that. Curently I pay for a 10 meg pipe with unlimited data. In a not-atypical evening, I spent last night watching Hulu while playing WoW (with Vent), with my wife listening to Pandora in another room. I've not experienced service interuptions or limitations that have affected my enjoyment.
In my experience, and the experience of others I know, service is good. The ability to change service is available. Options for service are numerous. Technical advances are making service better, cheaper and providing more options. I see no compelling reason to allow interference in the business at this time.
The idea of network traffic that is not shaped based on content seems to be a good one, in general. Some traffic deserves to be shaped such as spam, DOS attacks and other malicious traffic. I thoroughly encourage the current people in charge of administering such things to keep the system as open as possible. It is my preference to have an option, should I decide the people currently in charge of keeping my access free of interference are doing a bad job. It's worth noting that currently they seem to be doing a fine job and I'm quite happy.
There are a great number of things that "if properly managed" might sound like a good idea. The problem is, the managers are always people. If you think it would be a good idea for Richard Nixon, Barack Obama or George W. Bush to appoint the person in charge of the NN system, and that they, or people like them, would "properly manage" it, then you may well feel it's a good idea.
Personally, I'd rather have a failover system. When I'm unhappy with one provider, I can go to another. If I'm unhappy with the regulatory environment imposed by the FCC, it take considerably more than a phone call to Time Warner to change that part of my service.
I should certainly hope so.
Agreed. Unfortunately, in spite of how it is billed, NN does not address the fundamental problem "human beings take advantage of their power". Until such time as a system is devised that does deal with that issue effectively (difficult giving the system would be designed, implemented and managed by human beings), we're left with the original problem of which group or groups of human beings we feel will do the least harm for the greatest amount of benefit. Personally, I am skeptical of any plan that claims to solve the potential problem of a collection of groups of human beings abusing their power by granting greater authority and power to a single group of human beings. Other people may not be as skeptical. I contend that such is still the choice presented at this time.
I assume that people will abuse power. In fact, that's the only reason there is ANY discussion of NN. If people weren't inclied to abuse their power there'd be no reason to bother with NN. It's just a matter of who you wish to have in the position to abuse power. Either you prefer to have control over networks abused by the people who build and manage them, or you prefer to have control over networks abused by governments.
If you believe that corporate people won't abuse their power, but government people will, then you have either a benighted view of corporate people or a baleful view of government people. If you believe that government people will not abuse their power, but corporate people will, you have the reverse.
I assume that people in government and people in business are equally likely to abuse me. Given that, I am simply left with the choice of which type of abuse I prefer.
It really depends on what you mean when you say "Carbon Offset". Are you talking about a mechanism provided by governments that companies use to min-max their regulatory and tax liabilities? Or do you mean a volountary system for people who wish to purchase a counter to their personal polution? The first option is just a mechanism for trading tax write-offs. The second is very unlikely to be used by high poluting people that don't care. In general, taxing a behavior is a good way to discourage a behavior, providing there's not an easy way to get out of the tax.
It's an indulgence for programmers.
Well, you can't really expect the regulatory agencies to regulate unless they can monitor, can you? Then there's the inspection process. Someone has to verify that your network is compliant. So all your new projects, expansions, and services will need a thorough review to verify compliance.
Of course, this only scratches the nightmare of what could happen if people start trying to make the internet "equal" and "uniform". Turns out that rural middle of no where has worse service than uptown because of a historical inequity in telecom distribution. Toss in a few racial demographics, because someone will surely do so, and we can see the whole scope of regulation in the name of equality.
Still, it may be that people feel this is preferable. I contend that there's a choice. You can have the sorts of abuses that governments produce, and no other options, or you can have numerous sources of abuse and choose between the variety of individual abuses that companies produce.
Concerning NN, there's a choice before people.
Option 1: Allow companies the ability, which they may abuse, to shape and control traffic over networks they own.
Option 2: Allow governments the ability, which they may abuse, to shape and control traffic over all networks within their governance.
Option 1 gives me a number of companies, each abusing their power in their own way. I am allowed to select from a number of choices how I wish to be abused. Some companies may elect to offer "raw internet" as a selling point, others may offer the squashing of bandwidth hogs as a selling point.
Option 2 gives me a number of companies to choose from, but they are prevented from abusing their power for their own purposes. Instead, I have only one abuser, the agency that regulates NN. While I will not be abused by a company directly, I also have no choice in the manner or methods of my abuse.
Many motor dificulties could probably be solved by custom controllers, which I've seen a good bit of already. That's not the domain of developers, and is more like a "video game crutch" than anything.
Most games give feedback through video and audio information.
Subtitles, visual indicators for incoming fire (red screen flash at the edges and such) are included in many games already. I think many game developers use both as a matter of course to make the experience more involving. Most audio effects are acompanied by a visual effect also.
Visual is a bit harder due to information density. Color schemes and font sizes are relatively easy, but I don't seen a lot of font sizing options for games (aside from total resolution manipulation). Many games allow the reduction of particle effects and other "business" which could likely help some people. UI scaling might also be useful. There's also the possibility of the industry creating standardized audio cues for commno game events, ie "Red Wizard Needs Food Badly".
I've mentioned input already. It's not something I've shopped for, but there might even be a custom controller builder out there somewhere. I know people build custom bicycles for mobility handicapped people.
There are also mental difficulties of a variety of sorts. Some could just make coordination difficult, others could effect intelligence. Most games offer some sort of an Easy/Normal/Hard scale that could accomodate many of these issues.
Of course, not every problem would be addressed. However, it would be nice if someone could look at a box and have some idea of what features are available to them.
Yes, that is the problem.
A small portion of society is handicapped in a way that creates a hurdle to playing games. Only so much money will be spent to cater to a small segment of the market.
This doesn't seem that remarkable to me. In fact, it seems rather apropriate. I'm not arguing that baseline toolkits for accessability features are a magic wand that will fix everyone's problems without cost. I'm simply saying that if DirectX had tools, or some enterprising colorblind (or whatever) programmer built them, that could be used to more easily implement the desired play modes, it would lower the cost threshold for producing those features. Additionally, accessibility labeling would increase the marketability of those features.
I in no way expect game makers to spend more money than they'll make to producing accessable games. I just think there's money out there for it and the people that include those features will capture a disproportionate amount of that market compared to those who don't.
1. Handicapped people, much like everyone else, want to play games and are willing to pay money to do so.
2. People who make games want to sell games.
3. Handicapped people, much like everyone else, are reluctant to throw away $60 on a game they may not be able to play.
Seems like someone should have the job of creating a set of developer tools along the lines of "Unreal Engine - Color Blind" or "DirectAccessibility". Games with such features could then bear an industry logo, white D-pad on blue field or some such, to signify a certain accessibility standard.
Some sort of accessability labeling is an idea worth thinking about anyway, and I'd honestly expect Nintendo, with their "all ages" marketing, to lead the way. Being able to purchase a game with reasonable confidence that you'll be able to play it would make purchasing decisions easier, and sell more games to people for whom that is a concern.
On a final note, as a guy who gets around on crutches, I think it's a pretty lame move to sue a consumer goods producer because they don't cater to your own special snowflake problems. For my self, if I don't think a store is easy to get around in and shop at, I go to a different store. Game makers are likely loosing sales to people with various problems because those people have the expectation that they won't have an enjoyable experience for their $60. For such a natural market for their product, it seems like an issue that could be overcome, but suing based on "how dare you not make the game good for me with my individual needs" doesn't strike me as a very adult way of working in the world.