I am a facility production operator on the North Slope of Alaska. To the layfolk, that means I separate oil from water and gas and some suspended solids and then ship it south, where it is turned into everything you see around you (basically).
Anyway, the point is, my job entails a lot of walking. Like, a lot. I routinely walk 12 miles per day during my 12 hour shifts. More than that even. But, sometimes, I sit. And when I sit, I get tired. And time slows down. And it generally gets pretty tough to handle.
So when there's nothing to do, I play janitor. Mopping the floors of a billion dollar facility is actually not too bad, considering the alternative (just sitting there waiting for time to pass).
"Back in the days when consoles were measured in bits, they were also measured by their mascots - interestingly-designed characters that easily encapsulated everything the machine and its parent company stood for in gaming."
What, like Pac Man? How interesting is a circle with a triangular cut-out? It was more the game itself, the challenge of moving through the maze with furious speed while trying to get away from the baddies.
But let's go even further back, if we want to 'measure in bits' we should start with pong. Sure was a great mascot in that game, eh? Sarcasm aside, pong was, again, all about the game play.
Step forward a little to games like Joust on the Atari. A fun game, again, not really depending on a mascot to do well.
I tend to think that often, when a game really had no replay value, the focus was on the mascot to try to make you think there was something special about the game because of the main character, when in fact the gameplay was horrible and not fun to play again and again, I.E. Mario Brothers. These were the days when you 'mastered' a game and then never played it again: you had played it out.
Today games are so complex that a good one has immense replayability. Some games aren't enjoyable at all at first, but after suffering through the first bit you begin to get the controls down and all of the sudden you are addicted. Games like 1080 Snowboarding on the N64, which required precise 360 degree rotations on the thumbstick while also pressing a combination of buttons to pull off the truly awesome jumps.
"Today they are no more than hangers-on, surviving either by cynically marketing to the very young or by remaining vestigial elements in games that would have been great with or without them. The next generation is coming, but mascots are nowhere to be found - so where did they go?"
I think the opposite is true. Yesterday, not today, the mascots were no more than hanger's on. They were the truly vestigial elements in games, and the games really were great with or without them.
As far as the next generation... There are plenty of interesting main characters in today's games. But the truth is that the games of today don't focus on entirely one character. Look at World of Warcraft. There is no mascot, there is rather an entire history of lore so deep you could lose yourself in it for months just reading the entire BOOKS which have been written on it. And then there you are, right in the middle when you play the game.
I think the submitter was perhaps psychologically transferring some other emotion through their memories of playing these earlier games, perhaps life was better for them then, and so because of that, the games seemed better. Or maybe life wasn't as good, so this person was able to lose themselves in the games, simple as they were, and really imprinted a memory of the main characters.
Either way, or however it works, I don't agree with the general sentiment.
What pattern should an investor's thought pattern follow in this gray area of the law? Obviously one can surmise that a company under investigation could quite possibly have serious financial problems which they might be hiding, a la Enron et al.
So does that mean that immediately upon hearing of investigatory action the investor in said company should dump all stock? Say they choose that route. Then the investigation reveals that the company was indeed breaking the law. Then it was a wise choice to dump the stock. But what if the investigation reveals the company wasn't breaking the law? Does the stock then get a noticable, predictable bump? I am seriously asking these questions.
If the norm is that after a positive result, i.e. no law-breaking was found, the stock does not go up, then the only logical answer is to dump the stock no matter what when the investigation is announced. So in this respect whoever hears about the investigation first gets to lose the least amount of money. Which is to say, probably the company owners and employees. Is that insider trading? Again, I am seriously asking these questions.
And what of the possbility of a more secretive investigation? Because in this case it certainly seems like the company in question is essentially guilty until proven innocent, and possibly punished before any proof is found. This certainly seems to breach the idea of constitutional rights.
Is there really any way to make this less damaging to the companies?
The best Eternal Darkness game is/was a MUD. If you don't know what a MUD is, stop reading now.
ED the MUD was much more engaging than this semi-brainless clicking that these people call a game. Plus it comes with the good things that a MUD will provide, like actually having to learn how to type faster than 20 WPM, and how about using your imagination to picture what is happening in the game rather than someone else's ideas of what something should look like? Graphics aren't everything, at least not for *some* people.
I don't like the word choice "hidden". Hidden is the past participle of hide.
"hide" v. hid, (hd) hidden, (hdn) or hid hiding, hides v. tr. To prevent the disclosure or recognition of; conceal.
This fairly clearly implies intelligent action. I.E. something did the hiding. I.E. the dimensions we can't see (if they exist) are purposefully invisible to us because something chose for them to be, something intelligent. Invisible, as another word choice, would've been better.
Besides, something can't be hidden and yet physically interact with the universe. I believe if a thing interacts with the universe on any degree then we should be able, generally speaking as intelligent beings, to see it. And if we can't see the interaction, despite being able to probe to fundamental scales (planck, anyone?), then, forgive me again but, so fucking what?
So to me the word is not only implying an intelligent purpose, but is furthermore illogical in choice from the very point of view of physics.
Maybe I'm full of shit, I probably am. I guess the real reason I write this is that I'm really starting to get tired of people throwing around buzzword catchphrases like 'hidden dimensions' to get attention. You might as well say the UFO's made them. Anyway, explain to me how something that can be measured via our three standard directional dimensions manages to slip into the realm of 'hidden dimensions'?/endrant
Perhaps it would behoove Seagate to offer a lubricant replenishment program for the drives. I'm not sure it would be that difficult to do, but here is some info about PFPE:
PFPE lubricants aren't all that dangerous. A quick check of the Brayco PFPE lubricant used industrially shows a DOT health hazard risk of 3. Which means the product does pose a moderate health risk but can be handled without problem as long as you use the correct PPE (personal protective equipment) such as goggles and gloves and adequate ventilation.
So the questions I have regarding the these drives are:
- Does ambient pressure affect drive lubrication performance? I.E. if I live in Denver is my drive going to last as long (more DP means more lube lost over time?)
- If I try to refill the lubricant myself, and break the seal so to speak, will I then need to provide a precise operating pressure for the lubricant reservoir?
- Is it really going to be worth my effort to send the drive to Seagate for a refill?
- What am I going to be using ten years from the time I get one of these drives?
Perfluoropolyether is the lubricant. And it's not 'nanotube-based' at all. It's delivered via the tubes.
From the article: "Vapor PFPE also surrounds the platter. As the drive spins, areas of the platter will get hot, which will wear out the lubricant. The vapor PFPE deposits on the platter to replace the worn out lubricant. The "condensing" vapor lowers vapor pressure which then draws out lubricant from the CNTs until the pressure is equalized."
It does say the reservoir will provide ten years of 'practical' use. For someone who uses their hard drives a LOT (maybe someone without enough RAM?:)) I could see this lasting only 7-8 years. Still quite a while IMHO.
.. But, after reading about this days ago, I was under the impression the lubricant itself wasn't 'nanotube based' but rather was distributed across the platters in a controlled fashion via nanotubes. Insofar that the tubes themselves only allow a certain, small, amount of the lubricant to escape and only when the absence of lubricant on the surface produces enough differential pressure to allow it.
And, incidentally, the ten year life of the lubricant reservoir should be sufficient IMHO. I can't imagine in ten years we'll still be using the same hard drives anyway. I think Seagate is banking on it.
Word of advice to anyone who doesn't do hardware themselves:
If your HDD craters and the system doesn't recognize it as a boot disk and you can't reinstall your OS on the drive, take a magnet to it before you EVER hand it over to anyone/throw it away. If it has even a shred of personal information (which today, they all do) you need to give it a ride on the magical magnet train. It takes literally two seconds. There's nothing wrong with a little healthy paranoia.
And here's another piece of advice: Find someone you know who's good with hardware. If you have hardware acting funny or generally dying on you, talk to them FIRST. Tell them you'll owe them a favor, offer to buy them a rack of beers, whatever the hell you have to do to keep it out of some commerical enterprise. This is what friends are for. If you don't have a friend who has this kind of knowledge... You must be Amish. To which I say, wtf are you doing with a computer anyway.
Instead of one examiner, what if you have thousands of applications reading the examiners?
Ok so I anthropomorphized application... But I am just saying, by creating a system more capable of finding the correct examiners for a particular application (perhaps by further defining the details required to submit a patent application) the system would more efficiently utilize the knowledge of each examiner. Then perhaps we wouldn't need to throw "thousands" of examiners at a single application?
NSA: "Stand very still, we're going to beat you with this baseball bat." U.S. Citizen: "Don't I have rights? You can't just beat me with that bat!" NSA: "Don't worry, we've encrypted it."
Well, it's the chicken and the egg. If the guards of the guardians themselves are corrupt, then do we add another layer of guards? When does it stop?
Regarding torture... I agree that it is wrong and shouldn't be used in the pursuit of justice. I was under the impression that torture was only useful in extreme circumstances involving the dissemination of knowledge. I.E. if a terrorist knows specific things, such as locations of their hideouts or details of specific attacks, then torture may be a viable way to gain the knowledge from them.
Obviously there are serious problems with this, i.e. what if the person isn't a terrorist, or if they are, what if they don't really know anything? In the end torture has no real moral high ground.
Offtopic, but somewhat related: Perhaps in the not-so-distant future we'll be having these debates over another technology. One that can effectively read memories from the brain. You wouldn't need to torture someone (assuming it doesn't hurt to perform the reading procedure) to get anything they ever knew from them. It could be a good thing, torture would be seen as a barbaric and inefficient tactic and no longer used. Would that be more humane and moral, to simply read the memories directly from someone's brain, rather than inflict pain and suffering upon them?
The reversal of the Earth's magnetic field is the result of something much more serious. It goes beyond simple geo-magneto-thermal oscillation: In actuality, the entire *universe* began to turn inside-out after hearing......
Invasive how? It doesn't take much to get a DNA sample from someone. And I'm sure that by simply performing a blood test (something everyone who is interested in their health should do) could yield plenty of extra blood to get the DNA sample. So let's say they offer this guy a blood test, just a regular cholesterol/blood sugar test for example, and while they're there would you mind if we take your "DNA fingerprint"? Oh, wait, you're a felon, we don't care if you mind because you have no rights in this matter, since, like we just said, you're a FELON.
This whole debate screams of paranoia and conspiracy theorist rhetoric. The people who protect you, you know, the ones who risk their lives daily to make sure you are safe, they want the DNA for the same reason they want a fingerprint. To identify the bad guy. To know if the bad guy committed a crime by having more indentifiable material to go by.
Why is it wrong to be able to really figure out who broke the law? Felons don't deserve to have the same rights as stand-up citizens. They *should* be tracked and tagged, but at least keep it humane and make the tracking/tagging invisible to the rest of us. Make it so only they know they're being watched.
Should all citizens be reqired to have DNA samples taken? Hell no. We're taking about criminals. They can whine all they want, but maybe they should've thought of the consequences when they broke the law.
Seems to me like this is still a democracy. And if the majority of people *aren't* fighting what you call a 'perfect police state' from being created, then the majority might as well be supporting it.
So are 'they' the majority?
Also, do you really think there's a way to stop ubiquitous surveillance? The way I see it, in the future, with the technologies becoming available, you can either give the 'good guys' the 'right' to watch everything, or just leave that ability for the 'bad guys' who will do with it anything they want.
So, we can shoot ourselves in the right foot with a.22, or we can blow our left foot and most of the leg off with a grenade.. You choose.
When you put a goldfish in a tank, what happens, provided you feed it enough and keep the environment healthy for it?
Well, it grows to the size of its tank.
When you put a few million people in a MMO, feed them with good content and gameplay, what happens?
The MMO goldfish grows to the size of its tank. Or in this case, network.
I promise you that Blizzard has already looked at the costs of increasing their network capacity versus the amount of estimated benefit (i.e. how many more subscribers they'll get) and found that it is prohibitive. So they are doing what any business would do. Trying to find a balance. They've done some things, like replace servers that aren't performing up to par, but that doesn't affect the network performance as a whole which plagues their entire infrastructure.
Simply put, WoW is gigantic. Too big for itself. Players who can handle it stay. Those who can't, leave. Myself, I have played since the release. I don't consider myself a hardcore player anymore, so it's easier for me to not get all pissed off when I can't login every damn day for hours on end. If it's not happening, I do other things IRL that are just as good, and often more healthy for me than sittin at a computer.
Right now WoW is in equilibrium with the oppositional forces of a over-crowded network and an abundant player base. I imagine this is how it will be for quite a while, and the expansion is only going to make this worse.
It's ok to be contrarian. You have every right to form an opinion. But I can't help but say I detect a degree of hypocrisy when I read this:
"That's your average game-obsessed message board dork in a nutshell: the petty tyrant of a tiny little niche of the Internet but a failure in real life."
I mean, is it just me, or does it seem like this is exactly what this guy represents, within the context of the very article he has written about it?
The rest of it.. I tried hard to find anything meaningful. But every time I just can't help but think the author has personal experience pushing each word into the keyboard.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a facility production operator on the North Slope of Alaska. To the layfolk, that means I separate oil from water and gas and some suspended solids and then ship it south, where it is turned into everything you see around you (basically).
Anyway, the point is, my job entails a lot of walking. Like, a lot. I routinely walk 12 miles per day during my 12 hour shifts. More than that even. But, sometimes, I sit. And when I sit, I get tired. And time slows down. And it generally gets pretty tough to handle.
So when there's nothing to do, I play janitor. Mopping the floors of a billion dollar facility is actually not too bad, considering the alternative (just sitting there waiting for time to pass).
TLF
"I read it as Ethernet Porn Management"
"In which case, I'd use a COMdom"
Feel the karma burn. Ahh but how, -1 Redundant, Offtopic or simply Overrated? Hit me with it.
TLF
What I can't figure out is what parts of the paddle the swimsuit is hiding?
TLF
To each their own.
In your case, less is more.
But I somehow have to think that majority isn't with you on this one.
TLF
"Back in the days when consoles were measured in bits, they were also measured by their mascots - interestingly-designed characters that easily encapsulated everything the machine and its parent company stood for in gaming."
What, like Pac Man? How interesting is a circle with a triangular cut-out? It was more the game itself, the challenge of moving through the maze with furious speed while trying to get away from the baddies.
But let's go even further back, if we want to 'measure in bits' we should start with pong. Sure was a great mascot in that game, eh? Sarcasm aside, pong was, again, all about the game play.
Step forward a little to games like Joust on the Atari. A fun game, again, not really depending on a mascot to do well.
I tend to think that often, when a game really had no replay value, the focus was on the mascot to try to make you think there was something special about the game because of the main character, when in fact the gameplay was horrible and not fun to play again and again, I.E. Mario Brothers. These were the days when you 'mastered' a game and then never played it again: you had played it out.
Today games are so complex that a good one has immense replayability. Some games aren't enjoyable at all at first, but after suffering through the first bit you begin to get the controls down and all of the sudden you are addicted. Games like 1080 Snowboarding on the N64, which required precise 360 degree rotations on the thumbstick while also pressing a combination of buttons to pull off the truly awesome jumps.
"Today they are no more than hangers-on, surviving either by cynically marketing to the very young or by remaining vestigial elements in games that would have been great with or without them. The next generation is coming, but mascots are nowhere to be found - so where did they go?"
I think the opposite is true. Yesterday, not today, the mascots were no more than hanger's on. They were the truly vestigial elements in games, and the games really were great with or without them.
As far as the next generation... There are plenty of interesting main characters in today's games. But the truth is that the games of today don't focus on entirely one character. Look at World of Warcraft. There is no mascot, there is rather an entire history of lore so deep you could lose yourself in it for months just reading the entire BOOKS which have been written on it. And then there you are, right in the middle when you play the game.
I think the submitter was perhaps psychologically transferring some other emotion through their memories of playing these earlier games, perhaps life was better for them then, and so because of that, the games seemed better. Or maybe life wasn't as good, so this person was able to lose themselves in the games, simple as they were, and really imprinted a memory of the main characters.
Either way, or however it works, I don't agree with the general sentiment.
TLF
Excellent response. I am glad you took the time to write it.
TLF
What pattern should an investor's thought pattern follow in this gray area of the law? Obviously one can surmise that a company under investigation could quite possibly have serious financial problems which they might be hiding, a la Enron et al.
So does that mean that immediately upon hearing of investigatory action the investor in said company should dump all stock? Say they choose that route. Then the investigation reveals that the company was indeed breaking the law. Then it was a wise choice to dump the stock. But what if the investigation reveals the company wasn't breaking the law? Does the stock then get a noticable, predictable bump? I am seriously asking these questions.
If the norm is that after a positive result, i.e. no law-breaking was found, the stock does not go up, then the only logical answer is to dump the stock no matter what when the investigation is announced. So in this respect whoever hears about the investigation first gets to lose the least amount of money. Which is to say, probably the company owners and employees. Is that insider trading? Again, I am seriously asking these questions.
And what of the possbility of a more secretive investigation? Because in this case it certainly seems like the company in question is essentially guilty until proven innocent, and possibly punished before any proof is found. This certainly seems to breach the idea of constitutional rights.
Is there really any way to make this less damaging to the companies?
TLF
The best Eternal Darkness game is/was a MUD. If you don't know what a MUD is, stop reading now.
ED the MUD was much more engaging than this semi-brainless clicking that these people call a game. Plus it comes with the good things that a MUD will provide, like actually having to learn how to type faster than 20 WPM, and how about using your imagination to picture what is happening in the game rather than someone else's ideas of what something should look like? Graphics aren't everything, at least not for *some* people.
TLF
"If we are just gonna make up dimensions to make the math work isn't that just as bad as making up Thor to explain the thunder and lightning?"
Yes.
I don't like the word choice "hidden". Hidden is the past participle of hide.
/endrant
"hide"
v. hid, (hd) hidden, (hdn) or hid hiding, hides
v. tr.
To prevent the disclosure or recognition of; conceal.
This fairly clearly implies intelligent action. I.E. something did the hiding. I.E. the dimensions we can't see (if they exist) are purposefully invisible to us because something chose for them to be, something intelligent. Invisible, as another word choice, would've been better.
Besides, something can't be hidden and yet physically interact with the universe. I believe if a thing interacts with the universe on any degree then we should be able, generally speaking as intelligent beings, to see it. And if we can't see the interaction, despite being able to probe to fundamental scales (planck, anyone?), then, forgive me again but, so fucking what?
So to me the word is not only implying an intelligent purpose, but is furthermore illogical in choice from the very point of view of physics.
Maybe I'm full of shit, I probably am. I guess the real reason I write this is that I'm really starting to get tired of people throwing around buzzword catchphrases like 'hidden dimensions' to get attention. You might as well say the UFO's made them. Anyway, explain to me how something that can be measured via our three standard directional dimensions manages to slip into the realm of 'hidden dimensions'?
TLF
Perhaps it would behoove Seagate to offer a lubricant replenishment program for the drives. I'm not sure it would be that difficult to do, but here is some info about PFPE:
PFPE lubricants aren't all that dangerous. A quick check of the Brayco PFPE lubricant used industrially shows a DOT health hazard risk of 3. Which means the product does pose a moderate health risk but can be handled without problem as long as you use the correct PPE (personal protective equipment) such as goggles and gloves and adequate ventilation.
So the questions I have regarding the these drives are:
- Does ambient pressure affect drive lubrication performance? I.E. if I live in Denver is my drive going to last as long (more DP means more lube lost over time?)
- If I try to refill the lubricant myself, and break the seal so to speak, will I then need to provide a precise operating pressure for the lubricant reservoir?
- Is it really going to be worth my effort to send the drive to Seagate for a refill?
- What am I going to be using ten years from the time I get one of these drives?
TLF
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/07/04/seagate_leaky_dr ives/
:)) I could see this lasting only 7-8 years. Still quite a while IMHO.
TG Daily a few days ago.
Perfluoropolyether is the lubricant. And it's not 'nanotube-based' at all. It's delivered via the tubes.
From the article: "Vapor PFPE also surrounds the platter. As the drive spins, areas of the platter will get hot, which will wear out the lubricant. The vapor PFPE deposits on the platter to replace the worn out lubricant. The "condensing" vapor lowers vapor pressure which then draws out lubricant from the CNTs until the pressure is equalized."
It does say the reservoir will provide ten years of 'practical' use. For someone who uses their hard drives a LOT (maybe someone without enough RAM?
TLF
.. But, after reading about this days ago, I was under the impression the lubricant itself wasn't 'nanotube based' but rather was distributed across the platters in a controlled fashion via nanotubes. Insofar that the tubes themselves only allow a certain, small, amount of the lubricant to escape and only when the absence of lubricant on the surface produces enough differential pressure to allow it.
And, incidentally, the ten year life of the lubricant reservoir should be sufficient IMHO. I can't imagine in ten years we'll still be using the same hard drives anyway. I think Seagate is banking on it.
TLF
Interesting. HDD's must have gotten more resilient than in the past. I've corrupted some older ones by accident with a 45lb capacity magnet.
:)
I guess it would just be easier to use the sledgehammer approach afterall
TLF
Word of advice to anyone who doesn't do hardware themselves:
If your HDD craters and the system doesn't recognize it as a boot disk and you can't reinstall your OS on the drive, take a magnet to it before you EVER hand it over to anyone/throw it away. If it has even a shred of personal information (which today, they all do) you need to give it a ride on the magical magnet train. It takes literally two seconds. There's nothing wrong with a little healthy paranoia.
And here's another piece of advice: Find someone you know who's good with hardware. If you have hardware acting funny or generally dying on you, talk to them FIRST. Tell them you'll owe them a favor, offer to buy them a rack of beers, whatever the hell you have to do to keep it out of some commerical enterprise. This is what friends are for. If you don't have a friend who has this kind of knowledge... You must be Amish. To which I say, wtf are you doing with a computer anyway.
TLF
Ok so I anthropomorphized application... But I am just saying, by creating a system more capable of finding the correct examiners for a particular application (perhaps by further defining the details required to submit a patent application) the system would more efficiently utilize the knowledge of each examiner. Then perhaps we wouldn't need to throw "thousands" of examiners at a single application?
TLF
NSA: "Stand very still, we're going to beat you with this baseball bat."
U.S. Citizen: "Don't I have rights? You can't just beat me with that bat!"
NSA: "Don't worry, we've encrypted it."
Well, it's the chicken and the egg. If the guards of the guardians themselves are corrupt, then do we add another layer of guards? When does it stop?
Regarding torture... I agree that it is wrong and shouldn't be used in the pursuit of justice. I was under the impression that torture was only useful in extreme circumstances involving the dissemination of knowledge. I.E. if a terrorist knows specific things, such as locations of their hideouts or details of specific attacks, then torture may be a viable way to gain the knowledge from them.
Obviously there are serious problems with this, i.e. what if the person isn't a terrorist, or if they are, what if they don't really know anything? In the end torture has no real moral high ground.
Offtopic, but somewhat related: Perhaps in the not-so-distant future we'll be having these debates over another technology. One that can effectively read memories from the brain. You wouldn't need to torture someone (assuming it doesn't hurt to perform the reading procedure) to get anything they ever knew from them. It could be a good thing, torture would be seen as a barbaric and inefficient tactic and no longer used. Would that be more humane and moral, to simply read the memories directly from someone's brain, rather than inflict pain and suffering upon them?
The good guys are the ones risking their own asses to protect you/their country.
You could be one of them.. I don't know. And this is not to say they're the only good guys. They're just.. some of them.
The reversal of the Earth's magnetic field is the result of something much more serious. It goes beyond simple geo-magneto-thermal oscillation: In actuality, the entire *universe* began to turn inside-out after hearing......
;D
Britney Spears is pregnant again.
Invasive how? It doesn't take much to get a DNA sample from someone. And I'm sure that by simply performing a blood test (something everyone who is interested in their health should do) could yield plenty of extra blood to get the DNA sample. So let's say they offer this guy a blood test, just a regular cholesterol/blood sugar test for example, and while they're there would you mind if we take your "DNA fingerprint"? Oh, wait, you're a felon, we don't care if you mind because you have no rights in this matter, since, like we just said, you're a FELON.
This whole debate screams of paranoia and conspiracy theorist rhetoric. The people who protect you, you know, the ones who risk their lives daily to make sure you are safe, they want the DNA for the same reason they want a fingerprint. To identify the bad guy. To know if the bad guy committed a crime by having more indentifiable material to go by.
Why is it wrong to be able to really figure out who broke the law? Felons don't deserve to have the same rights as stand-up citizens. They *should* be tracked and tagged, but at least keep it humane and make the tracking/tagging invisible to the rest of us. Make it so only they know they're being watched.
Should all citizens be reqired to have DNA samples taken? Hell no. We're taking about criminals. They can whine all they want, but maybe they should've thought of the consequences when they broke the law.
I can't help but wonder..
.22, or we can blow our left foot and most of the leg off with a grenade.. You choose.
But who the hell are 'they'?
Seems to me like this is still a democracy. And if the majority of people *aren't* fighting what you call a 'perfect police state' from being created, then the majority might as well be supporting it.
So are 'they' the majority?
Also, do you really think there's a way to stop ubiquitous surveillance? The way I see it, in the future, with the technologies becoming available, you can either give the 'good guys' the 'right' to watch everything, or just leave that ability for the 'bad guys' who will do with it anything they want.
So, we can shoot ourselves in the right foot with a
When you put a goldfish in a tank, what happens, provided you feed it enough and keep the environment healthy for it?
Well, it grows to the size of its tank.
When you put a few million people in a MMO, feed them with good content and gameplay, what happens?
The MMO goldfish grows to the size of its tank. Or in this case, network.
I promise you that Blizzard has already looked at the costs of increasing their network capacity versus the amount of estimated benefit (i.e. how many more subscribers they'll get) and found that it is prohibitive. So they are doing what any business would do. Trying to find a balance. They've done some things, like replace servers that aren't performing up to par, but that doesn't affect the network performance as a whole which plagues their entire infrastructure.
Simply put, WoW is gigantic. Too big for itself. Players who can handle it stay. Those who can't, leave. Myself, I have played since the release. I don't consider myself a hardcore player anymore, so it's easier for me to not get all pissed off when I can't login every damn day for hours on end. If it's not happening, I do other things IRL that are just as good, and often more healthy for me than sittin at a computer.
Right now WoW is in equilibrium with the oppositional forces of a over-crowded network and an abundant player base. I imagine this is how it will be for quite a while, and the expansion is only going to make this worse.
It's ok to be contrarian. You have every right to form an opinion. But I can't help but say I detect a degree of hypocrisy when I read this:
"That's your average game-obsessed message board dork in a nutshell: the petty tyrant of a tiny little niche of the Internet but a failure in real life."
I mean, is it just me, or does it seem like this is exactly what this guy represents, within the context of the very article he has written about it?
The rest of it.. I tried hard to find anything meaningful. But every time I just can't help but think the author has personal experience pushing each word into the keyboard.
TLF
Yes, it's a paradox, which is why it hasn't, and won't, happen ;p