WoW uses the simple ability to move fast as part of its reward system, and to add to time in-game, and to add to the grind for gold.
Who would have thought that a simple increase in movement speed would feel like such an accomplishment! It's obvious there is no technical problem with letting characters move faster - they get to eventually, once you get to the proper level and shell out ever-increasing piles of gold for learning the skill and buying the steed. There's also no technical problem with teleport-on-demand - mages get to do it eventually.
It's like starting out with a 100-lb pack on your back. When you finally get to take it off you feel light as a feather! It's a cheap way to feel like you are being rewarded, when really they are just taking off the burden they started you out with.
A friend of mine runs an email news letter and Bozeman police reports have been a regular feature for years. Here's a sample from today:
* A man was outside a woman's home on Rose Street yelling and screaming around 1 a.m. She said he took off running.
* Police gave an intoxicated man a ride home after he knocked continuously on the door of a residence on West Harrison Street around 3 a.m. He was cold and wanted to come inside. The homeowner did not wish to press charges.
* A yellow lab was "dumpster diving" while tied up on the pool deck at the swim center on Church Avenue.
* An animal, believed to be a fox, was struck by a vehicle and needed to be killed. It turned out to be a skunk and was dead when an officer arrived.
* A man had questions about breaking up with an "abusive, crazy girlfriend."
* A man with a Russian accent called another man and accused him of flirting with his wife.
The Gallatin County Sheriff's Office reports for Wednesday included the following:
* Two 15-year-old males were trying to take beer at a store on Norris Road around 2:30 a.m. One of the boys had come into the store with this shirt over his head and the caller was concerned that they "were up to no good."
* A family was stuck behind a locked gate near a new golf course on Jack Creek Road in Madison County.
These aren't cherry-picked. It's always like that. Who wouldn't want to work there?
I was in a similar situation. I got accepted into a Master's program that offered assistantships. That meant I worked part time for them fixing computers for the college, they paid my tuition and a stipend. I wasn't getting rich but it was enough to scrape by on. You can also get student loans to make up any deficit, the interest rates are not bad right now (3% ish).
I learned a lot in the classes, and working in the assistantship. And I got a much better job when I got out 2 years later.
Go ahead and trash the rulebook - why not come up with more games that are story-driven and collaborative, mix in more puzzle-solving, world-building? I play a lot of WoW but I would love to play something that gave my brain more of a workout and wasn't all about slaughtering whatever creature you're told to kill.
Chimps are also known to be violent, to rape, kill other chimp tribe members and their own infants, and to eat each other. That explains everything about human sexual relationships, right? No? Their conclusions (and many of the comments here) say much more about the evopsych researcher/slashdot commenter than about chimps or humans in general.
How can you get in trouble for linking to a site that is on the "bad" list, if you aren't allowed to know what is actually on the "bad" list? I know I must be missing something. Will they actually fine people for linking to a site that is secretly on the "bad" list? What would stop them from fining anyone they wanted for linking to any random thing if there is no list for the link-er to consult ahead of time? Do they assume that what is on the "bad" list is so obviously illegal that anyone that links to it deserves what they get?
Are they just afraid people will use the "bad" list as a salacious index to the best of the worst of the internet?
I would like to see LOTS of games that aren't based on killing stuff. I've played a lot of WoW but I am tired of all the slaughtering and am concerned about my karma. (Not my/. karma).
telnet://ancient.anguish.org:2222 is a great D&D type MUD and is still very much alive. It has many, many, features that WoW drew from. My favorite part is, when you get a character to a high enough level, you can start down the road as a wizard apprentice and learn to create new content for the MUD. It would be pretty amazing if Warcraft could find a way to emulate that.
The mysterious, post-apocalyptic, "dhalgren" MOO was much fun as well, you could start building right away, with the potential to get your area hooked up to the public world eventually. And you could have your programmer bit turned on just by asking nicely. I can't find this one any more, not sure if it still exists.
I especially miss "moosburg," which was a MOO copy of a small town. We built a lot of stuff there and I watched kids as young as 8 years old learn to program objects and places for it. It's was a student project and is gone now (but not forgotten).
* Rewards for turning in spammers. Spurious spam reports result in your reporting privilege being taken away. Legitimate reports get you special titles or other rewards.
* Spammers 'toons tarred & feathered and hung in the market square. Fun for all, bring the kids and a picnic!
It looks like it will make some money for the companies that are peddling the systems, from cameras and fingerprint readers, to life-history-scrapes that ask you questions, to systems that purport to recognize your typing style.
Enterprising cheaters will find ways around all of that and create an industry unto itself. One person quoted points out, "How do professors know that a student enrolled in a large lecture class is the same one handing in an assignment or test?" The answer is, of course, they don't. I knew a dude years ago that cheated SAT/GRE type tests by physically going in and taking them for someone else.
If someone is really concerned though, I am sure you can unplug the camera set-up while you aren't taking a test.
Thank you for that post. Rape jokes are heartless, whether directed at men or women. People don't care about rape of men (or women) in prison, and they don't care about rape of women (or men) on the street. The common gamer use of "raped" for trivial incidents is a bleak indicator of the pervasive lack of empathy for all victims of sexual assault.
TFA explains that Tor itself doesn't do encryption. If you are using protocols that send name/pwd in clear text (like, FTP, POP, etc.), then Tor cheerfully passes those along. The most interesting thing they did IMO is seed the Tor traffic with honeypot clear text username/pwd combos and then watch for attempts to log in using those credentials, which happened almost immediately. There are hackers out there that are scooping up logins, taking advantage of the fact that people don't know (or don't care) how Tor works.
"One image shows a smiling Lipton at the Halloween party, clutching cans of the energy drink Red Bull with his arm draped around a young woman in a sorority T-shirt. Above it, Sullivan rhetorically wrote, "Remorseful?" "
Sullivan, the prosecutor, was the one that captioned the image "Remorseful?" not Lipton, the dude shown in the picture. Lipton looks like a dumbass but I don't think he was purposefully trying to sabotage his own case.
"Junk science, the lot of it; sole purpose is to perpetuate a stereotype."
I agree. Any time I see an article titled "X's brains wired for Y" I figure it's junk. Brains aren't computers. People aren't "wired." Perhaps "male brains" are more socialized to be territorial. I think making any generalization from a sample size of 22 is a bad idea, as well. I would be interested in a similar study that tried to control for socialization.
Nader wasn't a spoiler. If Gore had been a better candidate, Nader wouldn't have attracted the votes he did. And if Gore had insisted on recounts and not conceded when he did, we might not have had to suffer through all these years of GW.
I can see a phisher buying a kit that looks like an ebay or paypal or bank site login page. I can see them buying access to some elementary school's compromised web server and copying their stuff into a directory on it. But how do they make//compromisedneighborhoodschoolserver.org/somefolder/someother/myebaykit/ look like a plausible URL? Don't they have to register something somewhere, leaving a trail behind that could be used to find them? Or do they not bother and assume the victims won't look at the URL?
My workplace has a site license for Windows, which has been upgraded to Vista. If I want to install XP, I pay for a Vista license and then install XP from my own media. It's a legal copy, everyone is happy and Bill gets to chalk up another Vista sale.
I had a friend who got her son an HP Vista laptop for Xmas. I 'downgraded' it to XP for her. HP's site said not to do it, that it wouldn't work, that there weren't drivers for XP, etc., even though they sold the identical model running XP earlier in the year. I got everything going - I did boot it in Vista and saved screen shots of all the device manager pages showing what was installed and what drivers were being used. It took a couple days of looking but I did get drivers for everything and it's running happily under XP. Chalk up another Vista sale!
That's why I stopped reading them, too. All the lead female characters were in love with the main dude. And there was supposed to be all this tension over them not scratching each other to pieces like they were dying to do (because he was sooooo important they were all willing to struggle to overcome their "natural" female tendencies). It did seem like he knew no women at all (but had some fantasies about how he'd like them to act if he was the hero of a novel!).
Slashdot Mirror
Who would have thought that a simple increase in movement speed would feel like such an accomplishment! It's obvious there is no technical problem with letting characters move faster - they get to eventually, once you get to the proper level and shell out ever-increasing piles of gold for learning the skill and buying the steed. There's also no technical problem with teleport-on-demand - mages get to do it eventually.
It's like starting out with a 100-lb pack on your back. When you finally get to take it off you feel light as a feather! It's a cheap way to feel like you are being rewarded, when really they are just taking off the burden they started you out with.
At 97, you may qualify for a prize for oldest Slashdotter!
These aren't cherry-picked. It's always like that. Who wouldn't want to work there?
http://bozemandailychronicle.com/police_reports/
I was in a similar situation. I got accepted into a Master's program that offered assistantships. That meant I worked part time for them fixing computers for the college, they paid my tuition and a stipend. I wasn't getting rich but it was enough to scrape by on. You can also get student loans to make up any deficit, the interest rates are not bad right now (3% ish).
I learned a lot in the classes, and working in the assistantship. And I got a much better job when I got out 2 years later.
Sounds interesting, thanks - I will check it out
Go ahead and trash the rulebook - why not come up with more games that are story-driven and collaborative, mix in more puzzle-solving, world-building? I play a lot of WoW but I would love to play something that gave my brain more of a workout and wasn't all about slaughtering whatever creature you're told to kill.
Chimps are also known to be violent, to rape, kill other chimp tribe members and their own infants, and to eat each other. That explains everything about human sexual relationships, right? No? Their conclusions (and many of the comments here) say much more about the evopsych researcher/slashdot commenter than about chimps or humans in general.
You need guns to protect yourself from Google?
yay slashdot, where suggesting that porn might not be good for 11 year olds is modded down
How can you get in trouble for linking to a site that is on the "bad" list, if you aren't allowed to know what is actually on the "bad" list? I know I must be missing something. Will they actually fine people for linking to a site that is secretly on the "bad" list? What would stop them from fining anyone they wanted for linking to any random thing if there is no list for the link-er to consult ahead of time? Do they assume that what is on the "bad" list is so obviously illegal that anyone that links to it deserves what they get? Are they just afraid people will use the "bad" list as a salacious index to the best of the worst of the internet?
Apparently the shooter's computer was also full of violent porn. I'm looking forward to Germany banning that, as well!
I would like to see LOTS of games that aren't based on killing stuff. I've played a lot of WoW but I am tired of all the slaughtering and am concerned about my karma. (Not my /. karma).
The mysterious, post-apocalyptic, "dhalgren" MOO was much fun as well, you could start building right away, with the potential to get your area hooked up to the public world eventually. And you could have your programmer bit turned on just by asking nicely. I can't find this one any more, not sure if it still exists.
I especially miss "moosburg," which was a MOO copy of a small town. We built a lot of stuff there and I watched kids as young as 8 years old learn to program objects and places for it. It's was a student project and is gone now (but not forgotten).
* Spammers 'toons tarred & feathered and hung in the market square. Fun for all, bring the kids and a picnic!
Enterprising cheaters will find ways around all of that and create an industry unto itself. One person quoted points out, "How do professors know that a student enrolled in a large lecture class is the same one handing in an assignment or test?" The answer is, of course, they don't. I knew a dude years ago that cheated SAT/GRE type tests by physically going in and taking them for someone else.
If someone is really concerned though, I am sure you can unplug the camera set-up while you aren't taking a test.
Thank you for that post. Rape jokes are heartless, whether directed at men or women. People don't care about rape of men (or women) in prison, and they don't care about rape of women (or men) on the street. The common gamer use of "raped" for trivial incidents is a bleak indicator of the pervasive lack of empathy for all victims of sexual assault.
TFA explains that Tor itself doesn't do encryption. If you are using protocols that send name/pwd in clear text (like, FTP, POP, etc.), then Tor cheerfully passes those along. The most interesting thing they did IMO is seed the Tor traffic with honeypot clear text username/pwd combos and then watch for attempts to log in using those credentials, which happened almost immediately. There are hackers out there that are scooping up logins, taking advantage of the fact that people don't know (or don't care) how Tor works.
Sullivan, the prosecutor, was the one that captioned the image "Remorseful?" not Lipton, the dude shown in the picture. Lipton looks like a dumbass but I don't think he was purposefully trying to sabotage his own case.
I concur. If people want this kind of lame crap there are plenty of other sources.
From the WoTC responses to the questions, you'd think that females just didn't exist. All players and DMs are male. Feh.
I agree. Any time I see an article titled "X's brains wired for Y" I figure it's junk. Brains aren't computers. People aren't "wired." Perhaps "male brains" are more socialized to be territorial. I think making any generalization from a sample size of 22 is a bad idea, as well. I would be interested in a similar study that tried to control for socialization.
Nader wasn't a spoiler. If Gore had been a better candidate, Nader wouldn't have attracted the votes he did. And if Gore had insisted on recounts and not conceded when he did, we might not have had to suffer through all these years of GW.
I can see a phisher buying a kit that looks like an ebay or paypal or bank site login page. I can see them buying access to some elementary school's compromised web server and copying their stuff into a directory on it. But how do they make //compromisedneighborhoodschoolserver.org/somefolder/someother/myebaykit/ look like a plausible URL? Don't they have to register something somewhere, leaving a trail behind that could be used to find them? Or do they not bother and assume the victims won't look at the URL?
I had a friend who got her son an HP Vista laptop for Xmas. I 'downgraded' it to XP for her. HP's site said not to do it, that it wouldn't work, that there weren't drivers for XP, etc., even though they sold the identical model running XP earlier in the year. I got everything going - I did boot it in Vista and saved screen shots of all the device manager pages showing what was installed and what drivers were being used. It took a couple days of looking but I did get drivers for everything and it's running happily under XP. Chalk up another Vista sale!
That's why I stopped reading them, too. All the lead female characters were in love with the main dude. And there was supposed to be all this tension over them not scratching each other to pieces like they were dying to do (because he was sooooo important they were all willing to struggle to overcome their "natural" female tendencies). It did seem like he knew no women at all (but had some fantasies about how he'd like them to act if he was the hero of a novel!).