The only problem with Asheron's Call was Turbine's credo of "We won't punish the hackers for finding an exploit and using it. We'll fix it." It was a noble but empty promise. There were too many people trying to find exploits relative to the number of people that were maintaining the game.
Once SpeedHack hit after the firt 1.5 years or so the game was over. Either you exploited or you died. It's too bad, really, as the game was generations ahead of the other RPG MMOs of that time (Legends of Kesmai, Meridian 59, Ultima Online, and Everquest).
Which game?
Regardless it still ends up with the problem I mentioned for Freelancer. There's no guarantee that the server with your player stats will be there the next time you want to play.
Private servers have their own issues.
Diablo & NWN let users run the world but character statistics are stored on each players local machines. Giving players access to their own data store leads inevitably to hacking problems. Diablo has had many more issues with that than NWN, but the problem is ever-present.
Freelancer let users run their own servers and tried to solve the hacking problems by keeping player statistics on the server. That was great until you logged on one day to find that your favorite server, the one where your character was uber, you had every ship in the game, and billions of credits, wasn't up. When those server administrators got bored with the game and uninstalled the server all of your hard work went PFFFFT. At least with paid MMOs you're given advance notice.
The best would be a system whereas the players host the servers and each server talks to a company owned authenticated player-stat sever. The developer only has to pay for storage/bandwidth to keep a database running. Nothing more, nothing less. Each player run server, when getting a login request from a player, would pass that information off to the developer's database, retrieve a record, and proceed to let the user play. When the user was done the stats would be copied back up to the developer's database.
Battlefield 2 got very close to that. Unfortunately EA, in their typical fashion, kept the stat-tracking server code to themselves. Either users pay an EA approved hosting facitlity to run the good server software or they run a server on their own that doesn't do stat tracking. Of course the players will always gravitate towards the stat-tracking server, as that gives them a sense of persistance and reword for hard work.
Scott: So we gave our most loyal customers the ability to destroy everyone else in the game.
Before stopping and analyzing how about reading and comprehending? He was making a facitious comment about how the only bug encountered during the launch of the latest expansion pack had to do with veteran titles shown above long-time players causing new players' (e.g. no veteran title) clients to crash. A bug they fixed the first evening the expansion pack was available.
A little unclear on what a "widget" is, are we?
I'm not. You might be. Don't lump me in with you in your plural "we", please. It makes me look bad by association.
Widgets are little browser components that use Web technologies like HTTP for the static stuff and AJAX for the interactive stuff to present the user with information or provide small, single-use applications.
Widgets existed long before AJAX became a buzzword. Widgets aren't browser components, either. There are myriad Konfabulator, DeskTopX, etc... widgets that don't link to any browser whatsoever. You really are confused about what a "widget" is, aren't you?
Google Desktop sidebar plug-ins aren't widgets, which is why they don't call them widgets. They call them sidebar plugins.
Or, it could be that Google uses the term plug-in because more people recognize that than "widget". Lets see, Konfabulator lets people use a simple programming language to build utilities that sit on the desktop. Google Sidebar lets people use a simple programming language to built utilities that sit in a container on the desktop. They seem pretty darned alike to me, regardless of how you try to confuse the situation.
Had it done 3 years ago. It was called Multiplayer BattleTech:3025. It was finished, ready to go, then EA and Microsoft got into a head-butting match over the future of the license. So EA never published the product.
It was, and still is, one of the best products I've worked on.
This is enough reason for me to not buy an XBOX360 EVER. In order to create a frenzy which in turn creates buzz and will most likely help sell even more of their consoles later on, they purposely make sure to not have enough supply for the demand in the beginning. This is just rude and evil.
Or, more likely, it's just business. While the rude and evil theory resonates with a certain age group quite well it just doesn't stand up logically.
Microsoft, like most electronic manufacturers, doesn't own the factory that makes their hardware. They sub out the manufacturing to Pacific rim contract manufacturers like Flextronics. Flextronics only has a certain amount of manufacturing capabilities. On average those facilities are running at near full capacity. It's not in Flextronics' best interest to have extra production capacity that is just sitting around unused. Microsoft has to work out a deal with Flextronics to get a finite amount of production capabilities, more than likely givng up their 1st gen XBox manufacturing run in the process, just to get more space. They get X amount of facility and tell Flextronics that they want to launch te console on a certain date. Flextronics says, "Ok, that means you will have # consoles at launch and # consoles each week after that."
At this point Microsoft has a few options:
1) Live with that production capability
2) Sub out to more manufacturers
3) Pay Flextronics to build more space
Option 1 saves the most up front money but means a hard limit on the # of consoles at launch.
Option 2 can increase the # of consoles at launch, but the availability of those consoles is dependent on the # of manufacturers available, the amount of capacity they are offering, and the price point for that capacity.
Option 3 can increase the # of consoles at launch, but is time dependent (can we get the facility going in time?) and will probably end up being a monetary loss for Microsoft. They are essentially building out Flextronics's business for them.
All of these options have to be weighed against the expected necessary weekly production of consoles over the entire lifespan of the console. #3 is a very bad option in this light. While Microsoft could easily make a lot more consoles for launch by paying Flextronics to build more capacity there's no reason to expect that they will need to utilize that amount of capacity over the life of the console. Microsoft would pay for a short term production increase, cut back on production when supply became greater than demand, and leave Flextronics to sell that production capacity out to other companies, like Sony or Nintendo. It's definitely not in Microsoft's best interest to create production capacity for their competitors.
So, Microsoft strikes a balance between cost, # of units available at launch, and required capacity over the life of the console. That will almost always mean demand is higher than supply when there is peak interest in the console, but over the life of the console the supply:demand ratio will be as close to 1:1 as possible.
This whole equation is compounded for Microsoft because of the fact that they are trying to get XBoxes launched in all markets before the demand for them has leveled off in the first market. There just isn't enough manufacturing capacity available to ensure that all of the markets have a glut of product at launch.
Do you really think it's in Microsoft's best interest to annoy potential customers with an artificially introduced shortage? What good does it get them? The lack of available consoles isn't increasing the number of people that want a 360. It's not like Mr. Bob Suburbanite who's never played a game is suddenly saying, "All of the forum trolls are royally pissed that Bill Gates is sitting on a stack of unreleased consoles and laughing maniacally. Well golly, that makes me want one of these things!!!" Quite the opposite, actually. More than likely people who haven't been hanging pictures of 360s in their Jr. High School locker for the past two ye
Only on a Slashdot story would you see Microsoft's work of making a program useful to a larger number of people refered to nefariously as "extending their influence."
How often do you hear about a language pack for (insert OSS program of choice) being created spoken of in such evil terms?
I have no need to look at the source. NoScript informs me that google-analytics.com is currently blocked. NoScript is how I discovered your calendar is using it.
Free AJAX Calendar, and not like a paper calendar moved online either.
You're right! My paper calendar doesn't send my information off to Google Analytics.
That's exactly how the PS2's backward compatibility worked when it was released. Only PS1 games written using the Sony libraries was compatible. Any game that was developed by going directly to the hardware wasn't supported. That meant that most later-cycle PS1 games wouldn't work.
Since when did not having backwards compatability become, "shooting yourself in the foot"? Outside of Nintendo's handheld devices, the extra hardware to let the Sega Genesis play Master System cartridges, and the PS2's ability to play certain PS1 games there really aren't many examples of backward compatibility in consoles.
Would that be "Operate a video camera in the worst possible imaginable way" or "try (badly) to film a self-absorbed glory hunting SOB acting like a total jackass"?
And I've *never* met a sound designer that had any formal computer science or programming background.
The sound designer makes sound effects and music. The programming staff integrates the sound assets, usually using a 3rd party library like Miles. All the sound designer needs to know is how to make music and save it in certain formats. They're never anywhere near the code, and usually that's just fine with them.
If your "friend" is having a hard time getting into the gaming industry he would be better served by polishing up his music and composition skills and learning computer sound development packages, not trying to learn a whole different, unrelated, and unncecssary discipline.
There is absolutely nothing in the US Constitution that deals with "non-subsistence property rights".
Yes it does.
"Yes it does." Isn't a valid response, either logically or grammatically to my statement. Beyond that the rest of your post comes across as nothing more than rantings. I see you used the term "subsistence rights". Last time it was "non-subsistence rights". Not only do you make up illogical phrases, you can't even remember which phrases you've used. So is your version of the US Government protecting livelihood rights or non-livelihood rights? Exactly where in the US Constitution does it describe these (livelihood / non-livelihood) rights? Site Article and Clause, please. The Constitution is online in many places, so I'm sure you can do a "find" on it for that phrase. I already have, I got 0 hits.
But, before you answer any of that could you please describe what in the world livelihood rights are? I need to adust my thinking to you slanted orientation before I can even think to understand what in the world it is you are trying to say.
Not as you wrote them, no. But if I saw them in a musical score I would. The graphical notation of the language works within the bounds of the language, which was the point I was trying to make.
Re:Property rights are a social construct.
on
No WINE Before Its Time
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Since the primary function of government is the protection of non-subsistence property rights...
I'm assuming since you have a geocities.com address that you reside in the U.S. As such I'm basing my comments on the purpoes of the US Government. That being said, you're off your rocker with the above quoted statement.
There is absolutely nothing in the US Constitution that deals with "non-subsistence property rights". I'm not even sure what that phrase means, to be honest. What exactly are property rights that don't deal with livelihood?
Section 8 of Article 1 pretty clearly lays down the mega-rules for the Congress. Regulate interstate commerce, coin a national currency, build roads and the Post Office, maintain a Navy, regulate courts below the Supreme, call forth a militia when necessary, declare War, raise armies, punish counerfeiters, trade with other nations, and regulate copyright, etc... Note that copyright is clause #8 in Section 8. Even if that is what you refefing to, it is in no way the primary declared function of the US government.
BTW, clause 1 of Section 8 is, "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States".
Collect taxes, pay debts, defend the counry, and ensure taxes are equal. That's the primary duty. Property rights, of any type, don't factor in to that.
Slashdot Mirror
The only problem with Asheron's Call was Turbine's credo of "We won't punish the hackers for finding an exploit and using it. We'll fix it." It was a noble but empty promise. There were too many people trying to find exploits relative to the number of people that were maintaining the game. Once SpeedHack hit after the firt 1.5 years or so the game was over. Either you exploited or you died. It's too bad, really, as the game was generations ahead of the other RPG MMOs of that time (Legends of Kesmai, Meridian 59, Ultima Online, and Everquest).
Which game? Regardless it still ends up with the problem I mentioned for Freelancer. There's no guarantee that the server with your player stats will be there the next time you want to play.
Private servers have their own issues. Diablo & NWN let users run the world but character statistics are stored on each players local machines. Giving players access to their own data store leads inevitably to hacking problems. Diablo has had many more issues with that than NWN, but the problem is ever-present. Freelancer let users run their own servers and tried to solve the hacking problems by keeping player statistics on the server. That was great until you logged on one day to find that your favorite server, the one where your character was uber, you had every ship in the game, and billions of credits, wasn't up. When those server administrators got bored with the game and uninstalled the server all of your hard work went PFFFFT. At least with paid MMOs you're given advance notice. The best would be a system whereas the players host the servers and each server talks to a company owned authenticated player-stat sever. The developer only has to pay for storage/bandwidth to keep a database running. Nothing more, nothing less. Each player run server, when getting a login request from a player, would pass that information off to the developer's database, retrieve a record, and proceed to let the user play. When the user was done the stats would be copied back up to the developer's database. Battlefield 2 got very close to that. Unfortunately EA, in their typical fashion, kept the stat-tracking server code to themselves. Either users pay an EA approved hosting facitlity to run the good server software or they run a server on their own that doesn't do stat tracking. Of course the players will always gravitate towards the stat-tracking server, as that gives them a sense of persistance and reword for hard work.
Before stopping and analyzing how about reading and comprehending? He was making a facitious comment about how the only bug encountered during the launch of the latest expansion pack had to do with veteran titles shown above long-time players causing new players' (e.g. no veteran title) clients to crash. A bug they fixed the first evening the expansion pack was available.
Widgets are little browser components that use Web technologies like HTTP for the static stuff and AJAX for the interactive stuff to present the user with information or provide small, single-use applications. Widgets existed long before AJAX became a buzzword. Widgets aren't browser components, either. There are myriad Konfabulator, DeskTopX, etc... widgets that don't link to any browser whatsoever. You really are confused about what a "widget" is, aren't you?
Google Desktop sidebar plug-ins aren't widgets, which is why they don't call them widgets. They call them sidebar plugins.
Or, it could be that Google uses the term plug-in because more people recognize that than "widget". Lets see, Konfabulator lets people use a simple programming language to build utilities that sit on the desktop. Google Sidebar lets people use a simple programming language to built utilities that sit in a container on the desktop. They seem pretty darned alike to me, regardless of how you try to confuse the situation.
Yes. For Google Desktop sidebar. http://desktop.google.com/plugins/.
Had it done 3 years ago. It was called Multiplayer BattleTech:3025. It was finished, ready to go, then EA and Microsoft got into a head-butting match over the future of the license. So EA never published the product. It was, and still is, one of the best products I've worked on.
Or, more likely, it's just business. While the rude and evil theory resonates with a certain age group quite well it just doesn't stand up logically.
Microsoft, like most electronic manufacturers, doesn't own the factory that makes their hardware. They sub out the manufacturing to Pacific rim contract manufacturers like Flextronics. Flextronics only has a certain amount of manufacturing capabilities. On average those facilities are running at near full capacity. It's not in Flextronics' best interest to have extra production capacity that is just sitting around unused. Microsoft has to work out a deal with Flextronics to get a finite amount of production capabilities, more than likely givng up their 1st gen XBox manufacturing run in the process, just to get more space. They get X amount of facility and tell Flextronics that they want to launch te console on a certain date. Flextronics says, "Ok, that means you will have # consoles at launch and # consoles each week after that."
At this point Microsoft has a few options:
1) Live with that production capability 2) Sub out to more manufacturers 3) Pay Flextronics to build more space
Option 1 saves the most up front money but means a hard limit on the # of consoles at launch. Option 2 can increase the # of consoles at launch, but the availability of those consoles is dependent on the # of manufacturers available, the amount of capacity they are offering, and the price point for that capacity. Option 3 can increase the # of consoles at launch, but is time dependent (can we get the facility going in time?) and will probably end up being a monetary loss for Microsoft. They are essentially building out Flextronics's business for them.
All of these options have to be weighed against the expected necessary weekly production of consoles over the entire lifespan of the console. #3 is a very bad option in this light. While Microsoft could easily make a lot more consoles for launch by paying Flextronics to build more capacity there's no reason to expect that they will need to utilize that amount of capacity over the life of the console. Microsoft would pay for a short term production increase, cut back on production when supply became greater than demand, and leave Flextronics to sell that production capacity out to other companies, like Sony or Nintendo. It's definitely not in Microsoft's best interest to create production capacity for their competitors.
So, Microsoft strikes a balance between cost, # of units available at launch, and required capacity over the life of the console. That will almost always mean demand is higher than supply when there is peak interest in the console, but over the life of the console the supply:demand ratio will be as close to 1:1 as possible.
This whole equation is compounded for Microsoft because of the fact that they are trying to get XBoxes launched in all markets before the demand for them has leveled off in the first market. There just isn't enough manufacturing capacity available to ensure that all of the markets have a glut of product at launch.
Do you really think it's in Microsoft's best interest to annoy potential customers with an artificially introduced shortage? What good does it get them? The lack of available consoles isn't increasing the number of people that want a 360. It's not like Mr. Bob Suburbanite who's never played a game is suddenly saying, "All of the forum trolls are royally pissed that Bill Gates is sitting on a stack of unreleased consoles and laughing maniacally. Well golly, that makes me want one of these things!!!" Quite the opposite, actually. More than likely people who haven't been hanging pictures of 360s in their Jr. High School locker for the past two ye
Microsoft wrote the version of SendMail that was vulnerable to the first worm in 1987?
How often do you hear about a language pack for (insert OSS program of choice) being created spoken of in such evil terms?
I have no need to look at the source. NoScript informs me that google-analytics.com is currently blocked. NoScript is how I discovered your calendar is using it.
Free AJAX Calendar, and not like a paper calendar moved online either. You're right! My paper calendar doesn't send my information off to Google Analytics.
Yup, just like cable TV and your TiVo subscriptions are free because of the ads. Don't be naive.
That's exactly how the PS2's backward compatibility worked when it was released. Only PS1 games written using the Sony libraries was compatible. Any game that was developed by going directly to the hardware wasn't supported. That meant that most later-cycle PS1 games wouldn't work.
Since when did not having backwards compatability become, "shooting yourself in the foot"? Outside of Nintendo's handheld devices, the extra hardware to let the Sega Genesis play Master System cartridges, and the PS2's ability to play certain PS1 games there really aren't many examples of backward compatibility in consoles.
Would that be "Operate a video camera in the worst possible imaginable way" or "try (badly) to film a self-absorbed glory hunting SOB acting like a total jackass"?
Regardless of how often it is used, irregardless is not a word.
It was all the rage in the late '80s / early '90s.
The Extreme Gravity series happened the first week in September. Check the date on the byline of the linked article.
The sound designer makes sound effects and music. The programming staff integrates the sound assets, usually using a 3rd party library like Miles. All the sound designer needs to know is how to make music and save it in certain formats. They're never anywhere near the code, and usually that's just fine with them.
If your "friend" is having a hard time getting into the gaming industry he would be better served by polishing up his music and composition skills and learning computer sound development packages, not trying to learn a whole different, unrelated, and unncecssary discipline.
Yes it does.
"Yes it does." Isn't a valid response, either logically or grammatically to my statement. Beyond that the rest of your post comes across as nothing more than rantings. I see you used the term "subsistence rights". Last time it was "non-subsistence rights". Not only do you make up illogical phrases, you can't even remember which phrases you've used. So is your version of the US Government protecting livelihood rights or non-livelihood rights? Exactly where in the US Constitution does it describe these (livelihood / non-livelihood) rights? Site Article and Clause, please. The Constitution is online in many places, so I'm sure you can do a "find" on it for that phrase. I already have, I got 0 hits. But, before you answer any of that could you please describe what in the world livelihood rights are? I need to adust my thinking to you slanted orientation before I can even think to understand what in the world it is you are trying to say.
Your system is among the top 7% of all systems scanned by the Game Advisor. Suck it, biyatch! I p0wn!
Not as you wrote them, no. But if I saw them in a musical score I would. The graphical notation of the language works within the bounds of the language, which was the point I was trying to make.
I'm assuming since you have a geocities.com address that you reside in the U.S. As such I'm basing my comments on the purpoes of the US Government. That being said, you're off your rocker with the above quoted statement.
There is absolutely nothing in the US Constitution that deals with "non-subsistence property rights". I'm not even sure what that phrase means, to be honest. What exactly are property rights that don't deal with livelihood? Section 8 of Article 1 pretty clearly lays down the mega-rules for the Congress. Regulate interstate commerce, coin a national currency, build roads and the Post Office, maintain a Navy, regulate courts below the Supreme, call forth a militia when necessary, declare War, raise armies, punish counerfeiters, trade with other nations, and regulate copyright, etc... Note that copyright is clause #8 in Section 8. Even if that is what you refefing to, it is in no way the primary declared function of the US government. BTW, clause 1 of Section 8 is, "The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States". Collect taxes, pay debts, defend the counry, and ensure taxes are equal. That's the primary duty. Property rights, of any type, don't factor in to that.
long before electronic voting machines do. It's a sad commentary on what American's view as vitally important to their well-being.