Living in the US, I was curious what freestat was, and looked up the wiki page. Will freestat reach Denmark?
"In May 2003 the BBC moved most of its channels from the Astra 2A satellite to Astra 2D, which has a footprint that focuses more tightly on the UK.[3] This move allowed the BBC to stop encrypting its broadcasts while continuing to meet its rights obligations. It dropped the encryption two months later.[4]"
That wikipedia section seems to indicate that the signal is focused narrowly around the UK. How far does it extend? I'm assuming I wouldn't be able to pick up a signal in the US correct?
LEO: "Have you seen this little girl?" You: "No". LEO: "Where were you around this and that time?" You: "Alone, here in the house." LEO: "Can anybody confirm that?"
Well, and add to that the fact that you might slip up honestly. Say you ran to the store real quick for milk. But were basically home all day long. You just forget to mention that one quick trip. Later the police interview someone in the neighborhood, and that neighbor says "sure I saw him in the store". Congrats, you are now higher up on the suspect list.
Or say you didn't even go to the store. But some neighbor swears to the police that they saw you at the store. Mistakenly. Now, because you have already stated you were home alone, the police suspect you of lying to them. If you say nothing, it would not have contradicted that later interview. You'd still be "neutral" to them.
I'm not seeing the difference here. You basically said, listen, comply, only give out name/address simple facts, and request a lawyer before answering anything beyond simple personal details.
Isn't that the same advice offered in the video for US citizens? Basically, be polite, comply with arrest, and keep your mouth shut until you have a lawyer.
" Millions upon millions of users. Importantly, with our hardware partners we are providing certified, pre-installed, and supported Ubuntu on an ever-widening array of hardware. Dell's XPS 13 is just one awesome example. "
Was curious what the XPS 13 is like. According to Dell's site, it is no longer made. I looked at the i7 XPS 17, it didn't have linux as a choice. I'll be purchasing a new laptop for work soon, does Dell still offer Linux on laptops?
Here in Portland Oregon, our most popular markets sell grass fed/free range meats. It is very pricey, but it sells extremely well. Generally, most of us eat less beef overall, but are more than willing to spend 2-3x as much for quality organic beef.
Even our fast food chain, Burgerville, uses beef from http://www.oregoncountrybeef.com/ and somehow their burger prices aren't too high. I'm just saying, corn fed isn't the only way to sell beef successfully.
I've brought this up a few times on various boards. What happened during the tobacco 'debates' is exactly what is happening in the AGW 'debates' now.
Same funding model. Wealthy individuals/companies fund 'think tanks' for the purpose of spreading misinformation. Those think tank 'experts' get air time on TV and radio because a heated debate is more entertaining than a report about a consensus. And there is also great pressure to be 'fair and balanced' to corporations who are your major source of advertising income.
"Your Insightful mod-up came from the rest of your post."
I take a little bit of issue with the rest of his post.
"Firstly, that if a machine could write a symphony like Mozart, then those symphonies are less special. No, just no. Clearly the summary writer doesn't actually listen to or value this sort of music"
Sure, an art enthusiast might, in a blind test, hear/see equal value in two pieces of art, one created by a human and one created by a computer, but art has layers of value beyond just the piece itself.
The history, struggles, etc.. of the artist are often valued when looking at a piece of art. When you listen to it, you think of that history. When you see a painting, you might reflect on what you feel/see by imaging the life of the artist.
A painfully sad song is much more impacting when it is written about an actual painful or sad event that a listener is aware of.
Except in practice, using FOSS in your business has nothing to do with Linus or Stallman.
"Capitalism is not offering to perform a service that people could do for themselves."
I pay a FOSS provider, like Red Hat, to provide a service that I cannot do myself. I could care less what the dictators of certain FOSS projects do with those projects, as long as my service provider, say Red Hat, continues to provide me for services and solutions that I desire.
If tomorrow Linus altered the course of Linux by doing something drastic to the kernel, on a whim like a Dictator, I wouldn't care, as long as Red Hat continued to provide a type of Linux that met my needs.
"To make an analogy, if a man has two sons, and he gives one son his plow, and the other his sword, he dictates their fate by his choice of gift."
Yet, the son handed the sword, (like all of us handed linux), could choose not to wield the sword himself, and instead pay for mercenaries to do it for him. Or, and more importantly, he could pay for a blacksmith (Red Hat) to melt the sword down into some form that he more desired.
Nobody cares about open solaris. Nobody in their right mind would have chosen it as a platform.
I'm not surprised that IBM is the last company, AIX the last proprietary unix platform. Power the last proprietary hardware platform...
HP & Itanium? Laughable... And Linux on x86 has eaten the rest.
IBM 'get' services in the way the rest never have. They get that it's the bloody hardware which matters. This is why power is hitting 5GHz. The OS is just there to make it work. You want the fastest, lowest latency, highest throughput. You use IBM. You just want it to work and are on a budget? Linux.
The 'executives' of the rest of the companies clearly didn't know or care what their customers want, or what their business really is.
Why is this insightful? And it is especially not insightful after a merger with Oracle, who has declared they will increase support and development for Solaris.
Solaris is currently the most common platform for Oracle installations in higher ed. and many other business types. It runs on both very powerful proprietary cpus (Ultrasparcs) and on commodity x86 hardware. It contains support for multiple variations of virtualization, ZFS (learn a bit more about the power of ZFS if you think it is a minor advantage), and can run practically any software that linux or other unix systems can. See sunfreeware.com
In addition to the added power of Oracle's backing and software lineup, Solaris has a complete stack of solutions for the enterprise. Ldap, email, identity management, etc.. All of which will run on other platforms, but in my experience, run best on Solaris.
Google around: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/11/16/solaris_remains_top_choice_among_fortune_100.html
Solaris is everywhere. Just because you may not be in areas of business that use it, declaring "that nobody in their right mind" would use it is just silly.
In the US the insurance profits aren't actually all that much money. The real issue is that there is overhead EVERYWHERE.
Your doctor probably employs 1-2 people to do billing, because of the complexity of reimbursement. Your doctor nearly employs a lawyer as well with their malpractice premiums.
Your insurance company has 10x more people than it really needs - those don't count as profit, but they certainly bring cost.
Your hospital charges 10x what anything actually costs, because they have all the costs above and also have to provide "free" care to the indigent.
The tort and pay-for-service system guarantees that everybody is getting more treatment and especially more testing than they actually need.
Throw in another dozen issues similar to these and we can see why US health care is so expensive. Everybody likes to point at one thing and call it "the problem" but the whole system is one big mess. Most proposals to "fix" it amount to just shuffling money around so that people don't see the bills.
Good list of some of the top problems. You can more succinctly phrase the above as:
This is what happens when a irreplaceable human service (health care) is regulated as a moral necessity, but driven only by profit.
for example: Most ways that a hospital could save money, are regulated as immoral. Like turning someone away because they can't pay.
If we want to keep the regulations in place that make the system morally good, we need the entire system to be non-profit. There are many ways of doing that, nationalized health care just being one of them.
"I am a big proponent of some form of public healthcare but I dislike the fact that many of the people here in the US that are arguing for it will not acknowledge that it's simply going to [be] expensive."
I'm not sure of your political position, but if you are in favor of reform of some kind, please stop throwing around the cost as a negative, and phrases like "from taxes which you are ultimately going to pay."
There are many ways to pay for it that don't include a single drop of tax increase for the average american. And given that we pay, on average 100% more (twice as much) than any other health care system, we have a tremendous amount of fat to cut before we need to start thinking about funding for the reform.
There may need to be initial investments to get the ball rolling (if they choose single payer, which apparently is completely off the table), but the cost savings long term is undeniable.
"I was pretty sure that dislike of the US health care system was pretty universal regardless of party affiliation or position on the political spectrum"
That might be true, if misinformation wasn't flying around. But most republicans do not want it touched, and in fact, there is a steady media drum beat coming out of conservative talk radio, fox, etc.. saying how wonderful our health care system is. Google for this article for instance:
"What's Not Wrong with Health Care in the U.S. by Roger Stark, MD Health Care Policy Analyst"
It is complete crap if you have researched the issue yourself, but to the average low information voter, stuff like that is being passed around in emails and convincing many people I know that health care is just fine and dandy.
And without that misinformation machine, I would doubt that it would be such a polarizing issue, given that every single modern western country has single payer. Every...single...one... we have years of undeniable evidence of quality, affordability, and satisfied customers from all over the world...
You can't really use emergency room care as a good indicator of overall health care system effectiveness.
Having worked in a hospital in the US, I can tell you that it is just a fact of life that sometimes a flood of people get hurt at once, and non-critical patients have to wait.
I don't know how your system works in terms of transfers, but (I assume) you should have been able to have the admission receptionist check another nearby clinic or hospital to see what their wait time would be like.
Lastly, I'd be willing to bet that average emergency room wait times are way higher in the USA than Canada. My logic being, all 47 million American's without insurance can only use the emergency room after becoming very ill, whereas all Canadians are insured and can get preventative treatment to hopefully stave off trips the the ER.
Why are you terrified? Medicare and the VA aren't perfect but they aren't, by far, even close to 'terrifying'.
Lobbyists, and now direct corporate involvement (thanks a lot f'ing scotus) certainly influences our government negatively, but think about it this way:
Right now, health care insurance is 100% corporate owned and profit driven, how can it get any worse? Insurance companies are not in the business of caring about you. Their goal is maximum payments from you to them, and minimum payments from them to you.
The health care bill isn't finalized yet, but from what I can tell, it will most likely contain some pretty common sense regulations, some increased competition between insurance providers, no public option (damnit), and that is basically it.
"Wow in particular has ceased to be a world full of adventure and exploration and has rapidly become just a game full of people who complain if there is anything to do that slows down their getting their loot."
Just out of curiosity, was WoW your first mmorpg? The only mmorpg that I felt played like a real world, was my first, EQ. Every single mmorpg since then (and I've played most of them) felt like cheap replicas in comparison.
And in general, every mmorpg population morphs into hardcore reward addicts once content has been fully explored.
Until you become familiar with the Linux file structure, installing a program can appear to hide stuff just like installing a windows program does.
sudo apt-get install mysql
and you might end up with stuff in/etc/mysql.conf/var/opt/mysql/usr/bin/mysqld or maybe/usr/sbin/mysql or or or
And it seems like different packages on different distros stick files in different places.
So if you have someone that does not know Linux or Windows, and have them install something on both platforms, and then ask them to find all the files the program installed, start the program, and configure it, it will most likely be just as difficult.
I'll grant you, after you learn Linux, and especially if you stick with one linux distro for long enough, determining where files end up after an installation can be easier.
I wonder if, like credit cards or other 'real world' items, if players would put up with a system like:
1. buy the game, enter your physically address, phone, name, etc.. 2. game company physically mails you a code to that address 3. You can start playing right away, but the game will quit working if the physically mailed code isn't entered within 2 weeks (or longer/shorter depending on how long it takes for the mail to get to your house). 4. If you are caught cheating, your physical address/name/phone is banned, not the game box identifier.
That way, even if you buy another game, you'd have to register it with a physical address. And sure, you could probably use a friends, but eventually you are going to run out.
I wonder if PC games could overcome this by essentially being a bootdisc+game. Like a linux livecd with only 1 program, the game. Pop in the disc, reboot, and you are now in a locked down OS that boots the game.
I suppose a hacker could copy the cd/dvd to disc, alter it, and then reburn it, and boot from that though... I'm not sure if that could be prevented or not. If would probably require cooperation with hardware makers. Like something in all PC bios that checks whether a bootdisk+game is valid in some way.
And yet, if the server sends packets out that tell your client to form an 'invisible target', surely the hackers can adjust their program to ignore this. The call from the server to the client for invisible targets is different than the call from the server to the client for a real person. And that difference can be found and accounted for.
If I recall correctly, the original showEQ ran on linux only, and would run in front of your windows box running EQ. The incoming server packets were sniffed before they reached your client, and this is what produced the nice map showing everything in the zone.
If CC or any game starts sending invisible targets, I'm pretty sure that the cheaters will just create programs that intercept the packets in front of the game and decide if it is legit or not.
And then the game company and cheaters will go back and forth, each adjusting their programs and the cheats will come back up as fast as they can be knocked down.
What if the stat banning isn't deciding based on your score alone? It might be that if player A goes 20:1 on 3 maps in a row on server A, and another person, player B, goes 20:1 on server B for 3 maps, you are both allowed to keep playing. But if you meet up on server C on opposing sides, and player A is still 20:1 while player B is now 0:20, it decides that player A might be cheating?
If they did use stats, it might be vastly more complex than what I presented. Looking at the historical stats of all the players around you, for each map, and 'estimating' whether you are play vastly better, given your competition, than you have in the past.
I wouldn't doubt that the decline in the quality of education about our civilization's historical roots (Greek, Roman, history of religion, etc..) has played a part in the decline of civic discourse in the country.
However, those previously classically trained leaders have always been a small minority. Manipulation of those leaders, regardless of their integrity or education level, is the easiest means to completely subvert the country as a whole.
If it is impossible to win an election without corporate sponsorship, and corporations are immoral profit machines, you can see the problem.
And even if someone pulls off a grass roots campaign and ignores corporate sponsors (or is independently wealthy), they still have to contend with a media storm driven by corporations. Even if you are the most honest, intelligent, and logical candidate, you can be buried under mounds of misinformation.
I see this in the coverage of science issues all the time. Despite overwhelming proof that 1+1=2, one big push in the right way, with the right money, can make the public think, "well, there might just be something to this guy's message that 1+1=3". It starts with "think tanks" (funded by large corps and the wealthy), fueling blogs and talk radio who then resonate off each other, and mainstream news picking up on it and giving it credibility.
I am pretty sure that most national civic leaders are actually very logical, and very well educated. The problem is that they realize the reality of the political landscape, and realize that the American public, as a whole, is a low information voting block. You either play the game by being sponsored by corporations and trying your best to get a little good done, or play the maverick using personal wealth or grass roots fundraising, and attempt to counter the misinformation mountain with catchy sound bites rather than long logical arguments.
The only way out that I can see is a massive investment in education, and a near revolutionary reform of campaign finance.
Exactly. Insurance companies, or any for-profit company, will charge as much as a person is willing to pay. And in cases of near monopolies, much more than a person would normally be willing to pay.
I see people making the same arguments about taxes on businesses or rich business owners. They seem to think that 10% less taxes for uber billionaire X is going to instantly translate into more money for his workers, cheaper prices on the products, and Reagan-Rainbows sprouting from industrial smokestacks.
"If I could venture my own opinion on this, I think that relativistic values (and I don't mean Einstein) have seeped into much of our educational system, and by extension to society at large. This relativistic world is a place where there is no real truth, where all opinions are relative to the self and are essentially given equal value. In such a world, taken to its extreme, there are no facts, only opinions. Everything is relative."
I would lay the blame for that squarely on the 24 hour media machines, and the news industry in general, as ownership diversity shrinks.
Expect it to worsen significantly with the recent supreme court decision allowing unlimited political spending by corporations. Misinformation is at an all time high.
Slashdot Mirror
Chrome has adblock/flashblock, but lacks noscript right now. That's huge in terms of managing popups/malware imo.
Living in the US, I was curious what freestat was, and looked up the wiki page. Will freestat reach Denmark?
"In May 2003 the BBC moved most of its channels from the Astra 2A satellite to Astra 2D, which has a footprint that focuses more tightly on the UK.[3] This move allowed the BBC to stop encrypting its broadcasts while continuing to meet its rights obligations. It dropped the encryption two months later.[4]"
That wikipedia section seems to indicate that the signal is focused narrowly around the UK. How far does it extend? I'm assuming I wouldn't be able to pick up a signal in the US correct?
LEO: "Have you seen this little girl?"
You: "No".
LEO: "Where were you around this and that time?"
You: "Alone, here in the house."
LEO: "Can anybody confirm that?"
Well, and add to that the fact that you might slip up honestly. Say you ran to the store real quick for milk. But were basically home all day long. You just forget to mention that one quick trip. Later the police interview someone in the neighborhood, and that neighbor says "sure I saw him in the store". Congrats, you are now higher up on the suspect list.
Or say you didn't even go to the store. But some neighbor swears to the police that they saw you at the store. Mistakenly. Now, because you have already stated you were home alone, the police suspect you of lying to them. If you say nothing, it would not have contradicted that later interview. You'd still be "neutral" to them.
I'm not seeing the difference here. You basically said, listen, comply, only give out name/address simple facts, and request a lawyer before answering anything beyond simple personal details.
Isn't that the same advice offered in the video for US citizens? Basically, be polite, comply with arrest, and keep your mouth shut until you have a lawyer.
" Millions upon millions of users. Importantly, with our hardware partners we are providing certified, pre-installed, and supported Ubuntu on an ever-widening array of hardware. Dell's XPS 13 is just one awesome example. "
Was curious what the XPS 13 is like. According to Dell's site, it is no longer made. I looked at the i7 XPS 17, it didn't have linux as a choice.
I'll be purchasing a new laptop for work soon, does Dell still offer Linux on laptops?
Here in Portland Oregon, our most popular markets sell grass fed/free range meats. It is very pricey, but it sells extremely well. Generally, most of us eat less beef overall, but are more than willing to spend 2-3x as much for quality organic beef.
Even our fast food chain, Burgerville, uses beef from http://www.oregoncountrybeef.com/ and somehow their burger prices aren't too high. I'm just saying, corn fed isn't the only way to sell beef successfully.
Is this wiki article inaccurate?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraquat#.22Paraquat_pot.22
I've brought this up a few times on various boards. What happened during the tobacco 'debates' is exactly what is happening in the AGW 'debates' now.
Same funding model. Wealthy individuals/companies fund 'think tanks' for the purpose of spreading misinformation. Those think tank 'experts' get air time on TV and radio because a heated debate is more entertaining than a report about a consensus. And there is also great pressure to be 'fair and balanced' to corporations who are your major source of advertising income.
"Your Insightful mod-up came from the rest of your post."
I take a little bit of issue with the rest of his post.
"Firstly, that if a machine could write a symphony like Mozart, then those symphonies are less special. No, just no. Clearly the summary writer doesn't actually listen to or value this sort of music"
Sure, an art enthusiast might, in a blind test, hear/see equal value in two pieces of art, one created by a human and one created by a computer, but art has layers of value beyond just the piece itself.
The history, struggles, etc.. of the artist are often valued when looking at a piece of art. When you listen to it, you think of that history. When you see a painting, you might reflect on what you feel/see by imaging the life of the artist.
A painfully sad song is much more impacting when it is written about an actual painful or sad event that a listener is aware of.
Except in practice, using FOSS in your business has nothing to do with Linus or Stallman.
"Capitalism is not offering to perform a service that people could do for themselves."
I pay a FOSS provider, like Red Hat, to provide a service that I cannot do myself. I could care less what the dictators of certain FOSS projects do with those projects, as long as my service provider, say Red Hat, continues to provide me for services and solutions that I desire.
If tomorrow Linus altered the course of Linux by doing something drastic to the kernel, on a whim like a Dictator, I wouldn't care, as long as Red Hat continued to provide a type of Linux that met my needs.
"To make an analogy, if a man has two sons, and he gives one son his plow, and the other his sword, he dictates their fate by his choice of gift."
Yet, the son handed the sword, (like all of us handed linux), could choose not to wield the sword himself, and instead pay for mercenaries to do it for him. Or, and more importantly, he could pay for a blacksmith (Red Hat) to melt the sword down into some form that he more desired.
Nobody cares about open solaris. Nobody in their right mind would have chosen it as a platform.
I'm not surprised that IBM is the last company, AIX the last proprietary unix platform. Power the last proprietary hardware platform...
HP & Itanium? Laughable... And Linux on x86 has eaten the rest.
IBM 'get' services in the way the rest never have. They get that it's the bloody hardware which matters. This is why power is hitting 5GHz. The OS is just there to make it work. You want the fastest, lowest latency, highest throughput. You use IBM. You just want it to work and are on a budget? Linux.
The 'executives' of the rest of the companies clearly didn't know or care what their customers want, or what their business really is.
Why is this insightful? And it is especially not insightful after a merger with Oracle, who has declared they will increase support and development for Solaris.
Solaris is currently the most common platform for Oracle installations in higher ed. and many other business types. It runs on both very powerful proprietary cpus (Ultrasparcs) and on commodity x86 hardware. It contains support for multiple variations of virtualization, ZFS (learn a bit more about the power of ZFS if you think it is a minor advantage), and can run practically any software that linux or other unix systems can. See sunfreeware.com
In addition to the added power of Oracle's backing and software lineup, Solaris has a complete stack of solutions for the enterprise. Ldap, email, identity management, etc.. All of which will run on other platforms, but in my experience, run best on Solaris.
Google around: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/11/16/solaris_remains_top_choice_among_fortune_100.html
Solaris is everywhere. Just because you may not be in areas of business that use it, declaring "that nobody in their right mind" would use it is just silly.
In the US the insurance profits aren't actually all that much money. The real issue is that there is overhead EVERYWHERE.
Your doctor probably employs 1-2 people to do billing, because of the complexity of reimbursement. Your doctor nearly employs a lawyer as well with their malpractice premiums.
Your insurance company has 10x more people than it really needs - those don't count as profit, but they certainly bring cost.
Your hospital charges 10x what anything actually costs, because they have all the costs above and also have to provide "free" care to the indigent.
The tort and pay-for-service system guarantees that everybody is getting more treatment and especially more testing than they actually need.
Throw in another dozen issues similar to these and we can see why US health care is so expensive. Everybody likes to point at one thing and call it "the problem" but the whole system is one big mess. Most proposals to "fix" it amount to just shuffling money around so that people don't see the bills.
Good list of some of the top problems. You can more succinctly phrase the above as:
This is what happens when a irreplaceable human service (health care) is regulated as a moral necessity, but driven only by profit.
for example: Most ways that a hospital could save money, are regulated as immoral. Like turning someone away because they can't pay.
If we want to keep the regulations in place that make the system morally good, we need the entire system to be non-profit. There are many ways of doing that, nationalized health care just being one of them.
"I am a big proponent of some form of public healthcare but I dislike the fact that many of the people here in the US that are arguing for it will not acknowledge that it's simply going to [be] expensive."
I'm not sure of your political position, but if you are in favor of reform of some kind, please stop throwing around the cost as a negative, and phrases like "from taxes which you are ultimately going to pay."
There are many ways to pay for it that don't include a single drop of tax increase for the average american. And given that we pay, on average 100% more (twice as much) than any other health care system, we have a tremendous amount of fat to cut before we need to start thinking about funding for the reform.
There may need to be initial investments to get the ball rolling (if they choose single payer, which apparently is completely off the table), but the cost savings long term is undeniable.
"I was pretty sure that dislike of the US health care system was pretty universal regardless of party affiliation or position on the political spectrum"
That might be true, if misinformation wasn't flying around. But most republicans do not want it touched, and in fact, there is a steady media drum beat coming out of conservative talk radio, fox, etc.. saying how wonderful our health care system is. Google for this article for instance:
"What's Not Wrong with Health Care in the U.S.
by Roger Stark, MD
Health Care Policy Analyst"
It is complete crap if you have researched the issue yourself, but to the average low information voter, stuff like that is being passed around in emails and convincing many people I know that health care is just fine and dandy.
And without that misinformation machine, I would doubt that it would be such a polarizing issue, given that every single modern western country has single payer. Every...single...one... we have years of undeniable evidence of quality, affordability, and satisfied customers from all over the world...
You can't really use emergency room care as a good indicator of overall health care system effectiveness.
Having worked in a hospital in the US, I can tell you that it is just a fact of life that sometimes a flood of people get hurt at once, and non-critical patients have to wait.
I don't know how your system works in terms of transfers, but (I assume) you should have been able to have the admission receptionist check another nearby clinic or hospital to see what their wait time would be like.
Lastly, I'd be willing to bet that average emergency room wait times are way higher in the USA than Canada. My logic being, all 47 million American's without insurance can only use the emergency room after becoming very ill, whereas all Canadians are insured and can get preventative treatment to hopefully stave off trips the the ER.
Why are you terrified? Medicare and the VA aren't perfect but they aren't, by far, even close to 'terrifying'.
Lobbyists, and now direct corporate involvement (thanks a lot f'ing scotus) certainly influences our government negatively, but think about it this way:
Right now, health care insurance is 100% corporate owned and profit driven, how can it get any worse? Insurance companies are not in the business of caring about you. Their goal is maximum payments from you to them, and minimum payments from them to you.
The health care bill isn't finalized yet, but from what I can tell, it will most likely contain some pretty common sense regulations, some increased competition between insurance providers, no public option (damnit), and that is basically it.
"Wow in particular has ceased to be a world full of adventure and exploration and has rapidly become just a game full of people who complain if there is anything to do that slows down their getting their loot."
Just out of curiosity, was WoW your first mmorpg? The only mmorpg that I felt played like a real world, was my first, EQ. Every single mmorpg since then (and I've played most of them) felt like cheap replicas in comparison.
And in general, every mmorpg population morphs into hardcore reward addicts once content has been fully explored.
Until you become familiar with the Linux file structure, installing a program can appear to hide stuff just like installing a windows program does.
sudo apt-get install mysql
and you might end up with stuff in /etc/mysql.conf /var/opt/mysql /usr/bin/mysqld or maybe /usr/sbin/mysql or or or
And it seems like different packages on different distros stick files in different places.
So if you have someone that does not know Linux or Windows, and have them install something on both platforms, and then ask them to find all the files the program installed, start the program, and configure it, it will most likely be just as difficult.
I'll grant you, after you learn Linux, and especially if you stick with one linux distro for long enough, determining where files end up after an installation can be easier.
I wonder if, like credit cards or other 'real world' items, if players would put up with a system like:
1. buy the game, enter your physically address, phone, name, etc..
2. game company physically mails you a code to that address
3. You can start playing right away, but the game will quit working if the physically mailed code isn't entered within 2 weeks (or longer/shorter depending on how long it takes for the mail to get to your house).
4. If you are caught cheating, your physical address/name/phone is banned, not the game box identifier.
That way, even if you buy another game, you'd have to register it with a physical address. And sure, you could probably use a friends, but eventually you are going to run out.
I wonder if PC games could overcome this by essentially being a bootdisc+game. Like a linux livecd with only 1 program, the game. Pop in the disc, reboot, and you are now in a locked down OS that boots the game.
I suppose a hacker could copy the cd/dvd to disc, alter it, and then reburn it, and boot from that though... I'm not sure if that could be prevented or not. If would probably require cooperation with hardware makers. Like something in all PC bios that checks whether a bootdisk+game is valid in some way.
And yet, if the server sends packets out that tell your client to form an 'invisible target', surely the hackers can adjust their program to ignore this. The call from the server to the client for invisible targets is different than the call from the server to the client for a real person. And that difference can be found and accounted for.
If I recall correctly, the original showEQ ran on linux only, and would run in front of your windows box running EQ. The incoming server packets were sniffed before they reached your client, and this is what produced the nice map showing everything in the zone.
If CC or any game starts sending invisible targets, I'm pretty sure that the cheaters will just create programs that intercept the packets in front of the game and decide if it is legit or not.
And then the game company and cheaters will go back and forth, each adjusting their programs and the cheats will come back up as fast as they can be knocked down.
Just speculating here...
What if the stat banning isn't deciding based on your score alone? It might be that if player A goes 20:1 on 3 maps in a row on server A, and another person, player B, goes 20:1 on server B for 3 maps, you are both allowed to keep playing. But if you meet up on server C on opposing sides, and player A is still 20:1 while player B is now 0:20, it decides that player A might be cheating?
If they did use stats, it might be vastly more complex than what I presented. Looking at the historical stats of all the players around you, for each map, and 'estimating' whether you are play vastly better, given your competition, than you have in the past.
I wouldn't doubt that the decline in the quality of education about our civilization's historical roots (Greek, Roman, history of religion, etc..) has played a part in the decline of civic discourse in the country.
However, those previously classically trained leaders have always been a small minority. Manipulation of those leaders, regardless of their integrity or education level, is the easiest means to completely subvert the country as a whole.
If it is impossible to win an election without corporate sponsorship, and corporations are immoral profit machines, you can see the problem.
And even if someone pulls off a grass roots campaign and ignores corporate sponsors (or is independently wealthy), they still have to contend with a media storm driven by corporations. Even if you are the most honest, intelligent, and logical candidate, you can be buried under mounds of misinformation.
I see this in the coverage of science issues all the time. Despite overwhelming proof that 1+1=2, one big push in the right way, with the right money, can make the public think, "well, there might just be something to this guy's message that 1+1=3". It starts with "think tanks" (funded by large corps and the wealthy), fueling blogs and talk radio who then resonate off each other, and mainstream news picking up on it and giving it credibility.
I am pretty sure that most national civic leaders are actually very logical, and very well educated. The problem is that they realize the reality of the political landscape, and realize that the American public, as a whole, is a low information voting block. You either play the game by being sponsored by corporations and trying your best to get a little good done, or play the maverick using personal wealth or grass roots fundraising, and attempt to counter the misinformation mountain with catchy sound bites rather than long logical arguments.
The only way out that I can see is a massive investment in education, and a near revolutionary reform of campaign finance.
Exactly. Insurance companies, or any for-profit company, will charge as much as a person is willing to pay. And in cases of near monopolies, much more than a person would normally be willing to pay.
I see people making the same arguments about taxes on businesses or rich business owners. They seem to think that 10% less taxes for uber billionaire X is going to instantly translate into more money for his workers, cheaper prices on the products, and Reagan-Rainbows sprouting from industrial smokestacks.
"If I could venture my own opinion on this, I think that relativistic values (and I don't mean Einstein) have seeped into much of our educational system, and by extension to society at large. This relativistic world is a place where there is no real truth, where all opinions are relative to the self and are essentially given equal value. In such a world, taken to its extreme, there are no facts, only opinions. Everything is relative."
I would lay the blame for that squarely on the 24 hour media machines, and the news industry in general, as ownership diversity shrinks.
Expect it to worsen significantly with the recent supreme court decision allowing unlimited political spending by corporations. Misinformation is at an all time high.