Actually, I doubt that copying currency is the major problem with these games. The problem is that the economy is fundamentally broken (one of the few things that Shadowbane apparently got right). Allow me to elaborate...
In online worlds, there are basically two categories of assets; currency and items. On a very broad scale, both currency and items enter the game at a fixed rate. Once an item has entered the economy, it will generally remain in the economy until such a time as its value drops below that of what an in-game NPC merchant will pay for it, at which point in time it is exchanged for currency. Likewise, currency enters the game at a fixed rate (NPC drops, quest rewards, duplication, etc..) and for the most part, it doesn't ever leave the game. Which means, that once everyone who wants a pair of Boots of Butt-kicking has them, prices for the Boots of Butt-kicking are going to fall rapidly with demand. Or, more commonly, the game company releases a new expansion, and a new item in the expansion is Boots of Butt-kicking+5, as people acquire those, the market for the old Boots of Butt Kicking is going to fall through the floor.
The long and short of the deal is, as long as there isn't a "money sink", as there is in the real world (upkeep, upgrades, consumables, rent, taxes, etc...) by which money leaves the economy at the same rate or slightly slower than it's coming in, money is just going to accumulate in bank accounts and/or in capital expenditures, and increase the total money supply, devaluating the currency. It's the exact same thing that happend in post-World War I Germany... the MMOG's keep printing more money, and it's getting worth less every day.
Uhh... word processors store data in flat files, if you need a whole class on flat files, you need help.
Networked Quake doesn't even store data on any scale, other than log files. And I think Google uses an RDBMS at the back end to handle some of the indices. I could be wrong on that one though
What ends up being really important is this: are those jobs being used to produce things that people want? If the money stays in the taxpayers pocket, they are very likely to make their wishes known in the market place and they are very likely to get what they want.
Yes, but what people want isn't always what's best for them. Giving "the people" what they want is very much like giving a 6 year old what he wants all the time... and you end up with a malnourished, spoiled little shit and $10,000 in dental bills.
Look at private business for perfect examples, short-sighted C?O's focusing on nothing more than stock price destroying the long-term viability of a business in order to make a fast buck.
Do we really want to live in a society run by the Darl McBrides of the world?
Ever since then, my prompt has had my current directory in it. That experience certainly made me more careful.
Between this story, and the story about the guy playing the beavis and butthead.au file on his advisor's workstation instead of his own make me very glad that I keep working directory *and* host names in my prompt.:-)
You're wrong. I have the option to not play Grand Theft Auto, and it doesn't cost me a cent. I don't have the option to not recieve spam, AND it costs me
(and/or my employer) my time and money that I could be doing something productive with.
Those stupid SUN optical mice jaded me for a very long time. My ancient ball mouse died a year or so ago, so I decided to pick up a replacement. After a bit of shopping around, I decided on the Logitech mx700 cordless optical. The batteries give it a nice solid feel, it has a very ergonomic shape, and the control is excellent. I've never looked back.
I've heard some complaints from people that installed the logitech drivers, but I've never had an issue with the standard drivers that WinXP automagically installs.
I'm guessing that the microbes follow the standard bacterial exponential growth curve in ideal conditions, so I don't think getting enough microbes is going to be an issue.
Exploding Ford pintos and faulty Firestone tires - those are due to equipment malfunction (or more precisely, failed engineering). But neither of those events had anyone "probably accept that too". Massive lawsuits and large-scale negative press were the result of those.
Actually, massive lawsuits resulted from SUV rollovers as well, to the extent that manufacturers actually budgeted for them. They just weren't very widely publicised.
Perl's taint checking was (at my last check) pretty easy to get around, allowing users to essentially bypass the taint checks quite easily. Also, perl 5.6.0 doesn't do taint checks (even with -T) on lists passed to exec() and system().
It's quite simple. Just take a hole punch, and punch two holes into your root-node bill. Each subsequent bill will take three holes (parent, and leaf nodes) Then, chose your sorting schema (dollar amount, utility name, month name, whatever) and simply tie the bill to the appropriate leaf node with a piece of string. Fast indexing, and fast retrieval. Voila.
Check out Planetside, it may have just what you're looking for. Character classes, stat advancement, vehicles, and FPS-style combat (including aiming and firing)
Empathy? If you took all your money and flushed it down the toilet, do you deserve empathy? If you decide it'd be a neat idea to deliberately drive a 6" spike through your shin bone, do you think you're going to get a lot of sympathy?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for empathy... if unexpected medical bills had cleaned out his nest egg, or he'd lost it in some Enron-type pension plan raiding, I'd be Mister Empathy himself.
But the long and short of the story is that he got greedy, he didn't listen to advice from good sources. Jesus Christ, he handed over $300,000 to these guys without even doing any due dilligence. And now he's in denial. This guy deserves everything he got, end of story.
I saw a special on Stalker on G4 the other day, and while it was graphically impressive, I can't really say that there was a whole lot driving the story... sorta like a high-dollar version of Serious Sam or something. The big appeal to Half-Life 2 is the excellent ambiance and the story line.
Uhh.. this year and last, 50% of the top-10 highest grossing films weren't repeats. 70% in 2001, although two, Ocean's Eleven and Planet of the Apes, were remakes of old films, bringing us back to 50%. 80% in 1999, which is as far back as IMDB box-office revenue listings go, as far as I can tell. Point being, it's not exactly a recent trend, but has been going on for several years.
Well in the IT Business system Christmas is usually a slow time for business.
What IT business do you work in?:-P Here, Christmas is about the time that everyone starts looking at the year-end project deadlines and realizing that they haven't even sent you the specs yet (unless it's the specs that are due at year-end, in which case you don't have to worry about anything happening until next July or so:-)
in short, nearly everything else grew faster than ag.
Not really. Agriculture benefits from economies of scale, and improvements in technology have made growing, harvesting and distributing more efficient and profitable. Consequently, less people are required to farm the same amount of land, which frees up people to work in other industries.
Was he saying that we should not have been in Vietnam so that all those Natural Born Killers could practice their trade in the good old USA instead of doing it to My Lai?
Uhm no. The main point of NBK was to illustrate the media's fascination with and encouragement of sensationalistic violence.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I doubt that copying currency is the major problem with these games. The problem is that the economy is fundamentally broken (one of the few things that Shadowbane apparently got right). Allow me to elaborate...
In online worlds, there are basically two categories of assets; currency and items. On a very broad scale, both currency and items enter the game at a fixed rate. Once an item has entered the economy, it will generally remain in the economy until such a time as its value drops below that of what an in-game NPC merchant will pay for it, at which point in time it is exchanged for currency. Likewise, currency enters the game at a fixed rate (NPC drops, quest rewards, duplication, etc..) and for the most part, it doesn't ever leave the game. Which means, that once everyone who wants a pair of Boots of Butt-kicking has them, prices for the Boots of Butt-kicking are going to fall rapidly with demand. Or, more commonly, the game company releases a new expansion, and a new item in the expansion is Boots of Butt-kicking+5, as people acquire those, the market for the old Boots of Butt Kicking is going to fall through the floor.
The long and short of the deal is, as long as there isn't a "money sink", as there is in the real world (upkeep, upgrades, consumables, rent, taxes, etc...) by which money leaves the economy at the same rate or slightly slower than it's coming in, money is just going to accumulate in bank accounts and/or in capital expenditures, and increase the total money supply, devaluating the currency. It's the exact same thing that happend in post-World War I Germany... the MMOG's keep printing more money, and it's getting worth less every day.
Uhh... word processors store data in flat files, if you need a whole class on flat files, you need help. Networked Quake doesn't even store data on any scale, other than log files. And I think Google uses an RDBMS at the back end to handle some of the indices. I could be wrong on that one though
Yes, but what people want isn't always what's best for them. Giving "the people" what they want is very much like giving a 6 year old what he wants all the time... and you end up with a malnourished, spoiled little shit and $10,000 in dental bills.
Look at private business for perfect examples, short-sighted C?O's focusing on nothing more than stock price destroying the long-term viability of a business in order to make a fast buck.
Do we really want to live in a society run by the Darl McBrides of the world?
Spam Achieves Spaceflight! Canned ham eats George Bush!
You sir, are a retard.
Ever since then, my prompt has had my current directory in it. That experience certainly made me more careful.
.au file on his advisor's workstation instead of his own make me very glad that I keep working directory *and* host names in my prompt. :-)
Between this story, and the story about the guy playing the beavis and butthead
You're wrong. I have the option to not play Grand Theft Auto, and it doesn't cost me a cent. I don't have the option to not recieve spam, AND it costs me (and/or my employer) my time and money that I could be doing something productive with.
Those stupid SUN optical mice jaded me for a very long time. My ancient ball mouse died a year or so ago, so I decided to pick up a replacement. After a bit of shopping around, I decided on the Logitech mx700 cordless optical. The batteries give it a nice solid feel, it has a very ergonomic shape, and the control is excellent. I've never looked back. I've heard some complaints from people that installed the logitech drivers, but I've never had an issue with the standard drivers that WinXP automagically installs.
I'm guessing that the microbes follow the standard bacterial exponential growth curve in ideal conditions, so I don't think getting enough microbes is going to be an issue.
Or save yourself the hassle and toss the volunteers in with the birds. Green soylent green, tartare!
Exploding Ford pintos and faulty Firestone tires - those are due to equipment malfunction (or more precisely, failed engineering). But neither of those events had anyone "probably accept that too". Massive lawsuits and large-scale negative press were the result of those.
Actually, massive lawsuits resulted from SUV rollovers as well, to the extent that manufacturers actually budgeted for them. They just weren't very widely publicised.
Perl's taint checking was (at my last check) pretty easy to get around, allowing users to essentially bypass the taint checks quite easily. Also, perl 5.6.0 doesn't do taint checks (even with -T) on lists passed to exec() and system().
Don't feed the trolls.
It's quite simple. Just take a hole punch, and punch two holes into your root-node bill. Each subsequent bill will take three holes (parent, and leaf nodes) Then, chose your sorting schema (dollar amount, utility name, month name, whatever) and simply tie the bill to the appropriate leaf node with a piece of string. Fast indexing, and fast retrieval. Voila.
Check out Planetside, it may have just what you're looking for. Character classes, stat advancement, vehicles, and FPS-style combat (including aiming and firing)
the most unbelievable thing is that he somehow managed not to get the word that this is a fraud
He was told by the police that the deal was a fraud. He ignored the warning. It's in the article.
I doubt it, I thought that one of the criteria to be considered for the award was that you had to die first.
:-P
Actually, you only have to remove your ability to reproduce, so through death or... umm... dismemberment
Empathy? If you took all your money and flushed it down the toilet, do you deserve empathy? If you decide it'd be a neat idea to deliberately drive a 6" spike through your shin bone, do you think you're going to get a lot of sympathy?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for empathy... if unexpected medical bills had cleaned out his nest egg, or he'd lost it in some Enron-type pension plan raiding, I'd be Mister Empathy himself.
But the long and short of the story is that he got greedy, he didn't listen to advice from good sources. Jesus Christ, he handed over $300,000 to these guys without even doing any due dilligence. And now he's in denial. This guy deserves everything he got, end of story.
D'oh, ignore that post, I got Stalker confused with a different game.
I saw a special on Stalker on G4 the other day, and while it was graphically impressive, I can't really say that there was a whole lot driving the story... sorta like a high-dollar version of Serious Sam or something. The big appeal to Half-Life 2 is the excellent ambiance and the story line.
Uhh.. this year and last, 50% of the top-10 highest grossing films weren't repeats. 70% in 2001, although two, Ocean's Eleven and Planet of the Apes, were remakes of old films, bringing us back to 50%. 80% in 1999, which is as far back as IMDB box-office revenue listings go, as far as I can tell. Point being, it's not exactly a recent trend, but has been going on for several years.
Well in the IT Business system Christmas is usually a slow time for business.
:-P Here, Christmas is about the time that everyone starts looking at the year-end project deadlines and realizing that they haven't even sent you the specs yet (unless it's the specs that are due at year-end, in which case you don't have to worry about anything happening until next July or so :-)
What IT business do you work in?
in short, nearly everything else grew faster than ag.
Not really. Agriculture benefits from economies of scale, and improvements in technology have made growing, harvesting and distributing more efficient and profitable. Consequently, less people are required to farm the same amount of land, which frees up people to work in other industries.
That's all from MI3, which was actually pretty decent. MI4 was pretty bad, though.
Was he saying that we should not have been in Vietnam so that all those Natural Born Killers could practice their trade in the good old USA instead of doing it to My Lai?
Uhm no. The main point of NBK was to illustrate the media's fascination with and encouragement of sensationalistic violence.