If we're going to be honest, let's be brutal: the US goes where the Big Oil & Big War big bucks are, whenever there is a 'humanitarian' crisis anywhere in the world, and almost always to protect its own political and resource interests, first and foremost, with real humanitarian aid, or anything altruistic being a distant second. Just look at what they didn't do for Rwanda or Yugoslavia, for example, in recent years, while 100s of thousands were slaughtered in massive ethnic cleansings, not to mention so man other countries where their policies are sucking the marrow & life out of those nations, through various means. Not sure why you think you're actually wanted in most place in the world as the 'world police', or how with your national debt you think you are the world's piggy bank but I guess patriotism, like love, really is blind lol.
To add to this, no, you didn't 'invent' the entire inet, any more than you invented rounded corners and that ball you designed, the archetype/prototype, has now been re-designed & re-produced in a thousand other models, ways & configurations & put to a million other uses worldwide. Hey, Australia invented Wifi - so give it back to us! -p
Which is why we need a decentralised, secure DNS model. 5 years ago.
I would like to see ICANN lose control as they've proven utterly untrustworthy, incompetent & are now just money-grubbing in general. Though I wouldn't want the Urinated Nations from seizing control, at least until that term means something. Far better to deal with poisoned DNS entries & hash tables than continue this way. The Internet may have started with the US military as the 'wild west', but it's now gone backwards to being a politician's bitch, and more gubments having control over it is actually a huge leap backwards for mankind. </soapbox>
They had over 8 years, which is not a bad run for mmos, probably top 10 for A-grade commercial ones, eh.
And you call yourself an OB (Old Bastard) gamer, with that console cretinitis you admit to!? For shame!!!;-p
Getting a game to work on a PC is half the fun man! And seriously, I mean SERIOUSLY, try out Guild Wars 2 - it might just restore your faith in online communities. Just stick to the PvE carebear part of the game, where there is no PvP/ganking or node ninjaing, and co-op is not only encouraged, but rewarded! It has actually, (shock-horror!), made me want to try out WvWvW (massive 3-server realm battles) which is one of the PvP options available.
It's probably the most sensational solo-able mmorpg in, well, forever, as the guys at ArenaNet have re-written some fundamental design idioms/paradigms with mmos, mainly by getting rid of everything WoW-like, or grindy, or too competitive/non-productive from the ground up. Even the fast travel system makes getting around in a flash trivial. Ok, end of shameless plug - I have no affiliation with ANet or any of their wives. Ahem.
Look, for those who just have to have their spandex fix, Champions Online & DCUO are still going strong & are F2P (mostly). I much prefer DCUO over CO, but to each their own. Only thing I dislike about DCUO is the useless pets, as I'm a pet class aficionado, but then again, GW2 necro pets are a PITA as well, but I can't stop playing with them, so go figure.
Though I agree with the sentiment, so long as there is cost & money/profit involved, someone will want to own & control it. The only alternative is an iron-clad contract that the server code & database will be floated to the public domain if & when a mmo goes belly up, which with IP being what it is will ever happen. The only alteranative is playing an open source mmo ala Ryzom & others, but those a slim pickins my fine furry-feathered friend!
Let's not forget hosting costs, ISP inet connection fees, web servers & services, customer service, designers, developers & testers, admin & support staff, corporate/business heads, etc, etc. I wouldn't even think about running a commercial mmo these days without most of those listed - you'd just be a very short-term laughing stock. It's big business. This is not a hobby any more & can't be run as such, except on wanky private UO shards & WoW rip-off servers, which are lucky to get 10 players online simultaneously at any one time.
A mmo has to be MASSIVE, first & foremost, and that's coming from a (mostly) solo carebear:). If I wanted to play a game in a dead, pre-scripted world, there's plenty of SP games out there. Or crappy droid games:-/.
I may have one of 3 people who loved the item AH and the new Rogue Isles alignment system, but oh well, we'll always have the memories.
Being there at launch & through so many amazing events & great gaming moments, weekly team games with peeps from around the world...goodbye Kelvin Ator, goodbye Ruby Rock, Minion Mistress and Aero Man...*sniff*
To be fair, CoX has been F2P for a while now, but I imagine there were still a reasonable number of subs, given it was still profitable at least.
I'm more worried about NCSoft's backslide & what that means for GW2. That's still the best mmo I've played since LOTRO came out & going from strength to strength, now into its 5th month. I'm just praying they don't take ArenaNet with them if they fuck it up royally & that ANet can get off the sinking ship & find another partner in time, or go it themselves (depending on bullshit contracts no doubt).
About time game publishers went the way of the dodo, along with most of Hollywood & all their MAFIAA middlemen cartel leeches & vultures, ahem.
Weeeeeell, if we're gonna compare schwartz sizes by trawling the SW spank-bank universe...I'll take Femi Taylor for 100. >;-)
Actually, it's funny how in the 1st movie (ANH) there are exactly TWO female cast members with roles more than just props, while there are 50+ males who are credited & have lines in the movie. And Empire isn't much better. Hmmm...interesting - maybe Tony Abbott is our #1 SW fan, apparently being our #1 misogynist down under lol!
I find it amusing that we're holding up the ladder with Botswana, of all countries ffs! As much as we may have as many dumb-as-dogshit 'bogans' & 'ockers' & AFL yobos & 'fully sick mate!' petrol heads & Apple users, I just can't accept that we're dumber as a nation than the US, sorry. Plus, all of north AND south America have exactly the same average IQs...? Please.
Last I checked, carbon-based life require amino acids to even get started. But that's only for carbonites like us that we know of. Lots of sci-fi (& some fact) has postulated non-carbon base life, with elements such as silicon, boron & even metal based:
First off, we would have to define & agree on what exactly constitutes 'life', which sounds a lot easier than it actually is. And don't even get me started on 'intelligence' or 'sentience', which complicates the topic no end.
Slashdot Mirror
Bundy is not rum. It is an abomination in the sight and taste of both god & man.
Who said anything about watching child porn FFS!? Oh, yeah, you just did.
If we're going to be honest, let's be brutal: the US goes where the Big Oil & Big War big bucks are, whenever there is a 'humanitarian' crisis anywhere in the world, and almost always to protect its own political and resource interests, first and foremost, with real humanitarian aid, or anything altruistic being a distant second. Just look at what they didn't do for Rwanda or Yugoslavia, for example, in recent years, while 100s of thousands were slaughtered in massive ethnic cleansings, not to mention so man other countries where their policies are sucking the marrow & life out of those nations, through various means.
Not sure why you think you're actually wanted in most place in the world as the 'world police', or how with your national debt you think you are the world's piggy bank but I guess patriotism, like love, really is blind lol.
I think he's saying we should give inet/DNS control over to the Red Cross.
Me, I'd be happy with the RSPCA here down under. <BFG>
Hey, DARPA would never have existed if it wasn't for the Russians and your space race. Just sayin...;)
To add to this, no, you didn't 'invent' the entire inet, any more than you invented rounded corners and that ball you designed, the archetype/prototype, has now been re-designed & re-produced in a thousand other models, ways & configurations & put to a million other uses worldwide. Hey, Australia invented Wifi - so give it back to us! -p
So, you would be happy with, say, Canada, or the UK, or France, having control of DNS...? :)
Which is why we need a decentralised, secure DNS model. 5 years ago.
I would like to see ICANN lose control as they've proven utterly untrustworthy, incompetent & are now just money-grubbing in general.
Though I wouldn't want the Urinated Nations from seizing control, at least until that term means something. Far better to deal with poisoned DNS entries & hash tables than continue this way. The Internet may have started with the US military as the 'wild west', but it's now gone backwards to being a politician's bitch, and more gubments having control over it is actually a huge leap backwards for mankind.
</soapbox>
They had over 8 years, which is not a bad run for mmos, probably top 10 for A-grade commercial ones, eh.
And you call yourself an OB (Old Bastard) gamer, with that console cretinitis you admit to!? For shame!!! ;-p
Getting a game to work on a PC is half the fun man! And seriously, I mean SERIOUSLY, try out Guild Wars 2 - it might just restore your faith in online communities. Just stick to the PvE carebear part of the game, where there is no PvP/ganking or node ninjaing, and co-op is not only encouraged, but rewarded!
It has actually, (shock-horror!), made me want to try out WvWvW (massive 3-server realm battles) which is one of the PvP options available.
It's probably the most sensational solo-able mmorpg in, well, forever, as the guys at ArenaNet have re-written some fundamental design idioms/paradigms with mmos, mainly by getting rid of everything WoW-like, or grindy, or too competitive/non-productive from the ground up. Even the fast travel system makes getting around in a flash trivial. Ok, end of shameless plug - I have no affiliation with ANet or any of their wives. Ahem.
Vanguard also had some potential that was never fully realised, sadly.
Look, for those who just have to have their spandex fix, Champions Online & DCUO are still going strong & are F2P (mostly). I much prefer DCUO over CO, but to each their own. Only thing I dislike about DCUO is the useless pets, as I'm a pet class aficionado, but then again, GW2 necro pets are a PITA as well, but I can't stop playing with them, so go figure.
That's a MUD. Meridian59 is probably the oldest 'real' mmo still running on free servers out there - going on 17 years on Dec 15 :).
Though I agree with the sentiment, so long as there is cost & money/profit involved, someone will want to own & control it. The only alternative is an iron-clad contract that the server code & database will be floated to the public domain if & when a mmo goes belly up, which with IP being what it is will ever happen. The only alteranative is playing an open source mmo ala Ryzom & others, but those a slim pickins my fine furry-feathered friend!
Let's not forget hosting costs, ISP inet connection fees, web servers & services, customer service, designers, developers & testers, admin & support staff, corporate/business heads, etc, etc. I wouldn't even think about running a commercial mmo these days without most of those listed - you'd just be a very short-term laughing stock. It's big business. This is not a hobby any more & can't be run as such, except on wanky private UO shards & WoW rip-off servers, which are lucky to get 10 players online simultaneously at any one time.
A mmo has to be MASSIVE, first & foremost, and that's coming from a (mostly) solo carebear :). If I wanted to play a game in a dead, pre-scripted world, there's plenty of SP games out there. Or crappy droid games :-/.
I may have one of 3 people who loved the item AH and the new Rogue Isles alignment system, but oh well, we'll always have the memories.
Being there at launch & through so many amazing events & great gaming moments, weekly team games with peeps from around the world...goodbye Kelvin Ator, goodbye Ruby Rock, Minion Mistress and Aero Man...*sniff*
Blew my mods on previous post - +1 Insightful mate ;).
To be fair, CoX has been F2P for a while now, but I imagine there were still a reasonable number of subs, given it was still profitable at least.
I'm more worried about NCSoft's backslide & what that means for GW2. That's still the best mmo I've played since LOTRO came out & going from strength to strength, now into its 5th month. I'm just praying they don't take ArenaNet with them if they fuck it up royally & that ANet can get off the sinking ship & find another partner in time, or go it themselves (depending on bullshit contracts no doubt).
About time game publishers went the way of the dodo, along with most of Hollywood & all their MAFIAA middlemen cartel leeches & vultures, ahem.
You're an NFL fan, errrr, right? ;-p
PM me & we orgynise to meet somewhere ;)
Weeeeeell, if we're gonna compare schwartz sizes by trawling the SW spank-bank universe...I'll take Femi Taylor for 100. >;-)
Actually, it's funny how in the 1st movie (ANH) there are exactly TWO female cast members with roles more than just props, while there are 50+ males who are credited & have lines in the movie. And Empire isn't much better. Hmmm...interesting - maybe Tony Abbott is our #1 SW fan, apparently being our #1 misogynist down under lol!
I find it amusing that we're holding up the ladder with Botswana, of all countries ffs!
As much as we may have as many dumb-as-dogshit 'bogans' & 'ockers' & AFL yobos & 'fully sick mate!' petrol heads & Apple users, I just can't accept that we're dumber as a nation than the US, sorry. Plus, all of north AND south America have exactly the same average IQs...? Please.
I would have thought that the 1-line heading would be the start & end to this article, with anything else being redundant...? :-/
Last I checked, carbon-based life require amino acids to even get started. But that's only for carbonites like us that we know of. Lots of sci-fi (& some fact) has postulated non-carbon base life, with elements such as silicon, boron & even metal based:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry
First off, we would have to define & agree on what exactly constitutes 'life', which sounds a lot easier than it actually is. And don't even get me started on 'intelligence' or 'sentience', which complicates the topic no end.
I think that a full sized, blow-up replica of Leia from start of ROTJ would have attracted far more attention and sales. Just sayin...
I'd forgotten about this SW nerd-o-phile tidbit he he. It's already been solved:
http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=65614