Ah, good point. Then you could play at invading various species around the galaxy, rather than just humans. But an alien drone's life is probably even less interesting than a typical MMORPG player.
so much content to choose from?
on
Aliens RPG Cancelled
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I just don't understand what an Aliens MMO would have looked like, if it was centered around the actual Alien aliens. How many different monsters does this really lend itself to? Sure, when aliens pop out of various creatures, they tend to resemble that creature more. But how many black dog-ish alien, black horse-ish alien, black tiger-ish alien, etc. can you really deal with before it just become monotonous?
And then there's the whole question of the deadliness of the aliens. The major aspect of the movies is how these are near unstoppable killing machines. How exactly does that square with "Bring me back 20 dog-ish alien hides" quests? When one player could play a character that slaughters thousands of aliens in their lifetime without (mostly) dieing, then the players have become the unstoppable killing machines and the aliens are relegated to target dummies.
You die mainly because of cell damage accumulation
I'd like to see a bit of a citation. As far as I've seen, it's still a bit up in the air as to what exactly causes aging and why our bodies can't have a mechanism to counter it. We have immortal cancer cells that do not shorten their telomeres each time they divide. They just keep making new healthy cells to replace the ones that have died from cell damage. So part of why we die is because of this built-in time bomb in our cells. Another part may have to do with inflammation, where a process that is good for our body in general eventually brings it down in the long run.
If you look through the animal kingdom, you'll see quite a few examples of animals that have a much different system of aging. It seems possible that mutations could greatly lengthen the lifespan of a human.
In a very real sense, every one of our ancestors from the first bacterial life to the first proto-fish to crawl out of the sea to our tree-swinging simian forebears has struggled and fought and killed so that they and their species will survive.
Because it's a biologically programmed urge. That doesn't make it noble. If bacteria can be noble, it ruins the entire concept.
I'm not even sure if you're joking, either. Glad I'm in good company.
I have no idea. I am not a lawyer and without a great deal of study, I have no way to evaluate your brief. I'm not going to pretend I do understand it like I think a lot of people who post on these threads do.
As such, I just have to trust what people who are qualified say. And I'm afraid I'm beginning to lose a bit of my trust in your opinion, Ray. You say things will go way with such ironclad certitude and never explore the pragmatic reality that judges may disagree with you. I know this is a plus in your profession, but it makes it pretty hard to actually tell if you're right.
I just hope that if you turn out to be wrong (i.e. the judges don't decide the way you're sure they will), you'll maybe start giving us a little more objective commentary here on slashdot. You are obviously intelligent, so it'd be great to have some objective legal commentary that doesn't have to be prefaced by "IANAL," on both this subject and others you are interested in.
The Supreme Court's jurisprudence in the area of knocking down excessive "punitive awards" is well established, and would most assuredly lead to the RIAA's statutory damages theory being crushed.
Here we go again. Look, Ray, you seem to be a nice and intelligent guy. But if you're wrong on this one, too, (and I don't mean wrong on how it should be decided but wrong on how it is decided) will you please drop the whole 100% "I'm certain the RIAA is on the ropes" routine you've had at just about every stage of the Thomas trial?
If I were one of these mysterious people you claim are secretly reading this, one of the first things I'd do to a post asking for a citation would be to post and say that I quit or am about to quit contributing to project X because of the theft. Yet not a single person has posted this as far as I can tell.
I'm not going to flame you, but I do disagree. I've read many very enjoyable scifi books where the characters play second fiddle to a vision of a future society, a technology, a philosophy, or a phenomenon.
Dear lord. I was waiting for the story to post (seeing the un-commentable preview subscribers get) so I could quote that block and reply with the exact same "citation needed" cliche.
It's an opinion, but it's one that's hard to justify. My own opinion is that open source programmers contribute to a project because they want a program that does a thing they need done, and because they want it done "just so." Witness the history of forking on certain projects.
I'm sad to see this judgment turn out the way it did. But I can't help but wish Ray had reported with a little bit less spin. Every time he had a story submission, it was like it was a guaranteed fact that the RIAA was on the ropes and there was no way Thomas would lose. I understand the PR world and how you want to leave the overwhelming impression that there's no way you can lose because sometimes that actually helps you win. But I don't think the slashdot crowd was very well served. I would have liked a more neutral point of view where from time to time they said things like, "yes, this bit DOES suck but it's likely it will apply based on other court judgments."
I know Ray pointed out several things that he thought were just plain wrong, but I start feeling like I'm not sure if I'm reading the neutral factual opinion or the press release version. As it stands, the laws are pretty stacked against the way most of on slashdot wish it was. Until we get those changed, I see little hope for courtroom victories.
We need to stop pretending that Gigs/month were a good way to meter this, like it were water.
It's not. It's almost exactly the same as phone traffic. And it has the same rough costs.
Nah, that's not a good idea. Having more complicated plans that charge peak rates versus off-peak rates, etc. would just discourage use because it will be unpredictable how much your monthly bill will be. Much like most phone service these days, they found you get more overall business by having a simple plan. No per minute charges, no peak charges.
Well, I was addressing the problem with how they currently use the "unlimited" term. Right now, they don't advertise unlimited line speed. They advertise very specific speeds. They just say you have unlimited (or they just fail to specify the limit, which has about the same implication) amounts of upload/download at that speed.
But any reasonable person knows that the limit is governed by the speed. That's why it's not deceptive for a car rental place to say you can have unlimited miles even though your miles are limited by the cars top speed.
You dont pay your water bill by your pipe-diameter, or your electricity bill by your wire-gauge. So why should you pay your internet becaue of the maximum throughput possible?
Only going to say one thing here - remember that trying to analogize the internet to make it the same as things that are not-the-internet has led us to some rather unfortunate conclusions.
With that said, what I'd prefer is simply regulation that you can't call a service "unlimited" if it's not unlimited. That's my biggest beef. They should have to clearly advertise it as X gigs/month. "Unlimited" should mean "unlimited."
Aside from target shooting and hunting, firearms are an insurance policy against the unthinkable. Do you have fire and flood insurance? Same thing. I bet you don't spend every day in fear of fire or flood, but you have insurance just in case.
Fires and floods many times every year. How often do world superpowers fall into anarchy? Also, I don't have flood insurance for my house, and I live two streets away from the Mississippi River. I don't have it because the estimated chances of my location flooding are <0.2% annually. What do you think the chances are that you'll need to fight an armed rebellion against the U.S. government?
The gift cards meet a legitimate need. As such, they're not going to go away. Sometimes people overestimate the amount our government control us versus how much we control our government.
It doesn't matter if the bank can track the transactions, as long as it can't tie them to you. As I explained in another thread, I already have a cash card that's not tied to my name. It's made by American Express and has $300 on it.
I'm not necessarily saying I think there will be cards that actually have the cash "in the card" (in that the value is tracked by the card alone and not by a bank). I think that's a possibility, for low value denominations like $10 or $20. But the debate over whether anonymous cash cards will ever happen is rather silly since I've got one in my wallet.
I disagree. I already have an anonymous cash card with $300 on it. It's an American Express gift card that was given to me. They have the name of the purchaser on it, but not my name. It is traceable in that AMEX knows when it is used and where, but they do not know by whom (sign with an X). They're not the only one who sells cards like this. Rather than actually pay with them, I could pass the actual card off to someone else as payment. Yes, there are some practical issues such as some of these cards having features like being able to call in and report it stolen (if you actually registered it in your name), but not all cards have this feature. And it would be difficult to check a balance, true. But all these are pretty small points, and I think it's far enough along to say we DO have anonymous cash cards.
Yes, it would be hard to get a $50,000 gift card without being traced, but do you think you can actually get that much cash without being traced? And really, when you say $50,000 cash, you mean something along the lines of 500 $100 bills. Not so much different to have 500 $100 gift cards.
So maybe if you're thinking I meant we'll have a cash card that can hold hundreds of thousands of dollars and you can seamlessly transfer it back and forth and use it everywhere you'd use a credit card or check, no. But you already can't do that with cash today (at least non anonymously). So basically, I see cash cards replacing cash in the $1000 per card amounts which you can then refill later. Their use would be anonymous and you'd be boned if you lost the card (just like cash).
Then I'd say David Chaum's "digital cash" is not what will wind up being used.
If cash goes away, there will be easy ways to get cash cards anonymously. And no, the tokens won't be useless unless payed into a bank. You take the cash card, go to the store and buy something with it. Or, if you're accepting them like you would cash, you simply stockpile them just like you would cash.
And yes, it'd be hard to get a $50,000 cash card while remaining anonymous. But do you think you can somehow easily get $50,000 cash anonymously today?
Slashdot Mirror
That's how I feel sometimes, too. Only replace the words "homeland security guards" with the word "humans".
Ah, good point. Then you could play at invading various species around the galaxy, rather than just humans. But an alien drone's life is probably even less interesting than a typical MMORPG player.
I just don't understand what an Aliens MMO would have looked like, if it was centered around the actual Alien aliens. How many different monsters does this really lend itself to? Sure, when aliens pop out of various creatures, they tend to resemble that creature more. But how many black dog-ish alien, black horse-ish alien, black tiger-ish alien, etc. can you really deal with before it just become monotonous?
And then there's the whole question of the deadliness of the aliens. The major aspect of the movies is how these are near unstoppable killing machines. How exactly does that square with "Bring me back 20 dog-ish alien hides" quests? When one player could play a character that slaughters thousands of aliens in their lifetime without (mostly) dieing, then the players have become the unstoppable killing machines and the aliens are relegated to target dummies.
You die mainly because of cell damage accumulation
I'd like to see a bit of a citation. As far as I've seen, it's still a bit up in the air as to what exactly causes aging and why our bodies can't have a mechanism to counter it. We have immortal cancer cells that do not shorten their telomeres each time they divide. They just keep making new healthy cells to replace the ones that have died from cell damage. So part of why we die is because of this built-in time bomb in our cells. Another part may have to do with inflammation, where a process that is good for our body in general eventually brings it down in the long run.
If you look through the animal kingdom, you'll see quite a few examples of animals that have a much different system of aging. It seems possible that mutations could greatly lengthen the lifespan of a human.
Wait, what? How the fuck did it make sense to you to turn this into a copyright rant?
In a very real sense, every one of our ancestors from the first bacterial life to the first proto-fish to crawl out of the sea to our tree-swinging simian forebears has struggled and fought and killed so that they and their species will survive.
Because it's a biologically programmed urge. That doesn't make it noble. If bacteria can be noble, it ruins the entire concept.
I'm not even sure if you're joking, either. Glad I'm in good company.
With which part of my brief do you disagree?
I have no idea. I am not a lawyer and without a great deal of study, I have no way to evaluate your brief. I'm not going to pretend I do understand it like I think a lot of people who post on these threads do.
As such, I just have to trust what people who are qualified say. And I'm afraid I'm beginning to lose a bit of my trust in your opinion, Ray. You say things will go way with such ironclad certitude and never explore the pragmatic reality that judges may disagree with you. I know this is a plus in your profession, but it makes it pretty hard to actually tell if you're right.
I just hope that if you turn out to be wrong (i.e. the judges don't decide the way you're sure they will), you'll maybe start giving us a little more objective commentary here on slashdot. You are obviously intelligent, so it'd be great to have some objective legal commentary that doesn't have to be prefaced by "IANAL," on both this subject and others you are interested in.
The Supreme Court's jurisprudence in the area of knocking down excessive "punitive awards" is well established, and would most assuredly lead to the RIAA's statutory damages theory being crushed.
Here we go again. Look, Ray, you seem to be a nice and intelligent guy. But if you're wrong on this one, too, (and I don't mean wrong on how it should be decided but wrong on how it is decided) will you please drop the whole 100% "I'm certain the RIAA is on the ropes" routine you've had at just about every stage of the Thomas trial?
If I were one of these mysterious people you claim are secretly reading this, one of the first things I'd do to a post asking for a citation would be to post and say that I quit or am about to quit contributing to project X because of the theft. Yet not a single person has posted this as far as I can tell.
So, again, [citation needed]
I am very sorry you are unhappy with what you have gotten for free.
Actually, I'm a subscriber. Thanks for the free attitude, though.
I'm not going to flame you, but I do disagree. I've read many very enjoyable scifi books where the characters play second fiddle to a vision of a future society, a technology, a philosophy, or a phenomenon.
Dear lord. I was waiting for the story to post (seeing the un-commentable preview subscribers get) so I could quote that block and reply with the exact same "citation needed" cliche.
It's an opinion, but it's one that's hard to justify. My own opinion is that open source programmers contribute to a project because they want a program that does a thing they need done, and because they want it done "just so." Witness the history of forking on certain projects.
I take it you've never read many comments with score < 0.
I'm sad to see this judgment turn out the way it did. But I can't help but wish Ray had reported with a little bit less spin. Every time he had a story submission, it was like it was a guaranteed fact that the RIAA was on the ropes and there was no way Thomas would lose. I understand the PR world and how you want to leave the overwhelming impression that there's no way you can lose because sometimes that actually helps you win. But I don't think the slashdot crowd was very well served. I would have liked a more neutral point of view where from time to time they said things like, "yes, this bit DOES suck but it's likely it will apply based on other court judgments."
I know Ray pointed out several things that he thought were just plain wrong, but I start feeling like I'm not sure if I'm reading the neutral factual opinion or the press release version. As it stands, the laws are pretty stacked against the way most of on slashdot wish it was. Until we get those changed, I see little hope for courtroom victories.
We need to stop pretending that Gigs/month were a good way to meter this, like it were water.
It's not. It's almost exactly the same as phone traffic. And it has the same rough costs.
Nah, that's not a good idea. Having more complicated plans that charge peak rates versus off-peak rates, etc. would just discourage use because it will be unpredictable how much your monthly bill will be. Much like most phone service these days, they found you get more overall business by having a simple plan. No per minute charges, no peak charges.
Well, I was addressing the problem with how they currently use the "unlimited" term. Right now, they don't advertise unlimited line speed. They advertise very specific speeds. They just say you have unlimited (or they just fail to specify the limit, which has about the same implication) amounts of upload/download at that speed.
But any reasonable person knows that the limit is governed by the speed. That's why it's not deceptive for a car rental place to say you can have unlimited miles even though your miles are limited by the cars top speed.
You dont pay your water bill by your pipe-diameter, or your electricity bill by your wire-gauge.
So why should you pay your internet becaue of the maximum throughput possible?
Only going to say one thing here - remember that trying to analogize the internet to make it the same as things that are not-the-internet has led us to some rather unfortunate conclusions.
With that said, what I'd prefer is simply regulation that you can't call a service "unlimited" if it's not unlimited. That's my biggest beef. They should have to clearly advertise it as X gigs/month. "Unlimited" should mean "unlimited."
Aside from target shooting and hunting, firearms are an insurance policy against the unthinkable. Do you have fire and flood insurance? Same thing. I bet you don't spend every day in fear of fire or flood, but you have insurance just in case.
Fires and floods many times every year. How often do world superpowers fall into anarchy? Also, I don't have flood insurance for my house, and I live two streets away from the Mississippi River. I don't have it because the estimated chances of my location flooding are <0.2% annually. What do you think the chances are that you'll need to fight an armed rebellion against the U.S. government?
I get your point, but it's apples and oranges.
Stereotyping a whole country based on one guy? Stay classy, Lord Kano.
Also, to avoid shattering your cozy world view, please never look up either Benedict Arnold or Vikings.
The gift cards meet a legitimate need. As such, they're not going to go away. Sometimes people overestimate the amount our government control us versus how much we control our government.
It doesn't matter if the bank can track the transactions, as long as it can't tie them to you. As I explained in another thread, I already have a cash card that's not tied to my name. It's made by American Express and has $300 on it.
I'm not necessarily saying I think there will be cards that actually have the cash "in the card" (in that the value is tracked by the card alone and not by a bank). I think that's a possibility, for low value denominations like $10 or $20. But the debate over whether anonymous cash cards will ever happen is rather silly since I've got one in my wallet.
Unfortunately, slashdot is a big proponent of moderation deficit spending:
Concentrate more on promoting than on demoting.
We need a balanced moderation amendment. No comment shall be moderated up without another comment being moderated down!
I disagree. I already have an anonymous cash card with $300 on it. It's an American Express gift card that was given to me. They have the name of the purchaser on it, but not my name. It is traceable in that AMEX knows when it is used and where, but they do not know by whom (sign with an X). They're not the only one who sells cards like this. Rather than actually pay with them, I could pass the actual card off to someone else as payment. Yes, there are some practical issues such as some of these cards having features like being able to call in and report it stolen (if you actually registered it in your name), but not all cards have this feature. And it would be difficult to check a balance, true. But all these are pretty small points, and I think it's far enough along to say we DO have anonymous cash cards.
Yes, it would be hard to get a $50,000 gift card without being traced, but do you think you can actually get that much cash without being traced? And really, when you say $50,000 cash, you mean something along the lines of 500 $100 bills. Not so much different to have 500 $100 gift cards.
So maybe if you're thinking I meant we'll have a cash card that can hold hundreds of thousands of dollars and you can seamlessly transfer it back and forth and use it everywhere you'd use a credit card or check, no. But you already can't do that with cash today (at least non anonymously). So basically, I see cash cards replacing cash in the $1000 per card amounts which you can then refill later. Their use would be anonymous and you'd be boned if you lost the card (just like cash).
Then I'd say David Chaum's "digital cash" is not what will wind up being used.
If cash goes away, there will be easy ways to get cash cards anonymously. And no, the tokens won't be useless unless payed into a bank. You take the cash card, go to the store and buy something with it. Or, if you're accepting them like you would cash, you simply stockpile them just like you would cash.
And yes, it'd be hard to get a $50,000 cash card while remaining anonymous. But do you think you can somehow easily get $50,000 cash anonymously today?
No, really honey, I was just buying some pens and fishing tackle!