On what do you base that first assertion? Because you wish it were true, because Linux users are somehow better?
I would have said a similar thing about indie games once, particularly those who support their fanbase well and opt for no-DRM releases. Then World of Goo, which calls home for one of the online features in the game, reported a near-90% piracy rate. They even gave out the first world as a free demo, for chrissakes.
The fact is, there's nothing unique about Linux that's going to somehow reduce the piracy rate. I mean, let's face the facts: it's a group of users savvy enough to get their hands on a distributable (possibly via torrent), who have opted for a free OS with tons of free software, and who tend (if this very site is to be believed) statistically towards antiestablishmentarianism. We're hardly ideal customers for anything we can't recommend for purchase at work.
Yes! And on a related note, if a politician or your country does something you don't like, for chrissakes SHUT UP about it. We don't want to hear your whining. Just vote for someone else the next time it comes up! There's no reason to go around discussing it like some animal.
First off, I hate the RIAA as much as the next guy. They've totally obliterated customer good will for themselves and their clients, and in their refusal to adapt to changing technology, the music industry at large has thrown the entire discussion on future distribution methods off the tracks.
BUT, the people in this thread aren't making any sense. They keep going on and on about how excessive the amount rewarded seems, and making silly comparisons like "that song cost $x million dollars, I wouldn't pay y cents, hur hur" like it's going to get funnier the millionth time we read it.
That, however, is how the law works. You can't catch everyone, so you make sure when you DO catch one, you make the punishment appropriately dire as a deterrent.
Imagine if someone broke into your house and stole $100 off the nightstand, then got caught. Would you be appeased if their punishment was $100 and an apology, or would you want some additional fine or jail time attached? Do you think just having to give back what they stole would be any sort of deterrent to future theft?
So go ahead, mod this down, or maybe just make some random response that doesn't really address the issue but will get to +5 because it's how everyone here wishes the system worked, most likely because they've downloaded something themselves and it's human nature to refuse that you've done wrong. Go ahead and quote that bit about excessive bail or fines out of context like it means something. The bottom line is this is the act working exactly as intended, and if you don't like that, work to change the law. Don't give the DoJ shit for upholding the act as it's written.
Dwarf Fortress doesn't use this system at all. He occasionally gets donations, and he sends people who donate a little drawing or piece of a story as a thank-you. AFAIK, there's no intention to ever sell DF, so there's no need for preorders.
Technically, couldn't you shove a corpse in with the fuel of a steam engine and burn it? Does that make old-timey trains monstrous death-machines?
Hell, for that matter, what are "fossil fuels" but the corpses of plants and animals, anyway?
This thing would be scary if it actively hunted corpses not because of its ability to digest them, but rather its intent and design to do so. That you might could shove a body part into a robot out collecting twigs and grass clippings isn't really the designers' fault.
Well, thank you sir. That quite nicely explains why installing Aion brought my brothers' computer to its knees a week ago, forcing a reformat. We'd thought it an unrelated issue, but more research reveals the culprit is that shitty WoW clone, which he'd only installed to placate an online friend.
If you can't handle botting or cheating on the server end - be it via technical or design means - then you fail. Don't shovel a watchdog off on the client because your design team are too lazy to plug holes.
1) The box requires less overall and less constant power. 2) An analog communications channel is much less difficult to implement over possibly unreliable wires. Let the human brain handle the error correction (static). 3) Much cheaper than installing and servicing a computer. 4) Employs local people. 5) Doesn't require the user to be literate. 6) Doesn't require the user to know how to use a computer, what the Internet is, what google is, etc. Just ask your question and get an answer.
The difference is that they could test those other programs for security holes. Of course, there's the possibility they'd miss one, but that would be Apple's failure, and they'd pay for it.
In this case, some obscure ROM could expose a flaw in the emulator well after release, despite the original teams' best efforts at due diligence in testing. What's more, there's the possibility of ROMs released after the emulator being specifically designed to break out. So, as I said before, allowing an emulator is akin to allowing any program to run on the device with no testing, virus checking, or indeed ANY sort of quality assurance. Allowing this program would not merely go against some random, obscure tenet of their EULA; rather, it would invalidate the entire purpose of their app service: that of an experience that trades freedom and quantity for, theoretically at least, control and quality.
Of course Sega is exempt; their programs are a single ROM, run via emulation. You don't buy a Sega hardware emulator and then download ROMs for it, so they can test it fully before allowing it to be released. An open emulator, able to run any ROM you give it, is essentially a way to run un-tested, 3rd party code on the platform. There's no way for Apple to be sure the programs stay within their virtual environment. In essence, it would be a way to circumvent the security and execution protection on the phone entirely; it's a jailbreaker.
I'm about as far from an Apple apologist as you can get, and can't wait for this app store bullshit to quiet down. But let's not start reviling them for merely following their stated policy. If these people want to release their emulator, they'll need to do what their competitors have: bundle it with specific games and sell THOSE instead.
It was an arcade game. Arcades were populated with mostly preteens. Removing something from public places is one thing; removing it from private consumers is another.
Or do you think preventing Chuck-E-Cheese from including animatronic porn in their acts is the same thing as banning the sale of adult DVDs?
So your reasoning for why game makers shouldn't get a cut of used sales is to point out how GE didn't get a cut of used sales? A company you even admit is going belly-up?
While I would say the exact opposite with respect to raids: the reason they're such a chore, and feel like work, is because the drops aren't completely randomized. Each boss has its set number of predetermined items with well-known drop percentages, and the players all need certain sets to be considered ready for higher level content. So you go in, slog your way through boring bosses you don't need, then get your one chance at getting anything out of the evening from your one or two targets. And often, of course, you fail, because to maintain their virtual value, they have to be rare.
See, the definition between "work" and "play" for animals is much simpler than we think: if the rewards are set and universal, it's work, and boring. If the rewards are completely random, it's play, and fun. That's it. That's the fundamental psychological difference between the two, and it's the first thing every game designer needs to understand. It's so basic, it's how we train animals: the first thing you learn is that if you give a treat every single time the trick is completed, the animal grows weary and will stop performing the instant it stops receiving treats. Give the treats on a random basis, and your dog will roll over every single time you ask him to - and seem to enjoy doing it - in perpetuity.
In humans, slot machines are perhaps the most flagrantly obvious real-world example of the principal of random rewards in action. Imagine a job where you pull a lever, some lights flash, and ten seconds later you get a dollar. That's your job, all day, every day. That's going to be a damn good salary; I think many of us would like to be making that much. But can you imagine yourself, day in and day out, enjoying the job itself?
Now replace that lever with a slot machine: a machine you know full well will cheat you over time, as the house always wins. And then go to Vegas and look around: people are sitting in chairs pulling levers and making lights flash and losing money hand over fist. It's a cruelly intelligent gambit, preying on this very facet of the human - nay, animal - brain. A certainty of making a lot of money is far less interesting than a slight chance of making a mediocre amount. Even if we logically force ourselves to take the safe, better bet, it would still fall squarely in the realm of what we call "work."
Blizzard would do well to remove boss-specific drops altogether. Give the entire dungeon a large but universal drop table, with higher level bosses having better chances to drop the better loot (but nothing exclusive, ever, trash pulls included). I know the die-hard player will balk at this, but think about the reasons you're balking: is it because it sounds less fun, or because it sounds like someone else might get something without "working hard enough?" Imagine how much less complaining you'd have about trash if the very first pull of a dungeon had a tiny, tiny chance to drop the best item in the place. Imagine arguments about which boss you'd fight next determined entirely by which one people thought was the most fun!
What's most sad about WoW's failure to accept the fundamental principles of random rewards as it relates to loot is that they themselves are responsible for one of the most successful examples of it done well: Diablo 2. Do you think it's a coincidence that players keep coming back to such a relatively simple (albeit well executed) game? That people will run much simpler boss fights than WoW's over and over and over again, and often enjoy doing it (so long as they're not trying for a specific item)?
Keep in mind: if, as many people in this thread protest, the judge shouldn't be allowed to join special interest groups, how would this case have gone? Would the judge not belonging to this organization change the views that lead him to join said organization? In other words, he'd still be of a significant pro-copyright bias before the case started, it's just now we'd have no indication of it.
What's more, it's not exactly easy to get a judge with zero true bias. I mean, to take that logic to its conclusion, should a murderer get off because the judge was anti-murder? Would we be as angry if the judge in the Pirate Bay case was a member of the EFF? As a human being, the only way for him to be truly bias-free would be to be ignorant of the situation entirely, and while that's OK for juries, trying to find a major judge who has lived in cave for a few decades is going to be rough (and not necessarily desirable, given that he's ruling on a case that requires some technical knowledge).
Put another way: judges are meant to judge without bias. They're not meant to exist without forming opinions.
(All that said, he still should have revealed his affiliations beforehand, so that the proper authorities could review it. Its relevance wasn't his decision to make.)
A more appropriate metaphor is parking it in your driveway, gassed up, without keys. Yes, you can pretty much assume you'll be able to remove the security systems and hotwire the thing eventually, but that's different from knowing someone could do it quickly, easily, and with an already available skeleton key.
Try to train yourself to blink when your character turns, like you'd do when physically turning your head in real life. People prone to motion sickness in games often don't "put themselves in the game" enough to activate that reflex. I'm not positive if it's something you can train yourself to do, but it's worth a shot.
I used to do this, too, but it won't last. Eventually, a spam site will get one of your domain names, and they will begin guessing people/positions/etc. at your "company." Once the tide of spam has struck an account that maps all mail aliases to a single box, the entire domain will become worthless within a week.
Now that they've found it, I'd like to see if they could - though I understand such specific manipulation is no doubt a long way off - work on a way to stimulate the area artificially. The ability to build controllable phantom limbs could be of great use for interacting with virtual realities. Imagine, while still having full control of your senses and limbs, being able to walk around a second entirely separate world with an entirely separate body; a lucid, computer-assisted daydream, essentially.
Such is the way of all intelligent life, though. If you build a maze for a mouse, the rodent may run its course a thousand times to reach the end and its reward. But never be fooled for a second: the mouse likes the cheese, not the maze. If he finds a way to climb over the walls and skip the test entirely, you should be neither surprised nor angry, as the failure is yours.
Slashdot Mirror
If you mean the longest word thing, it's actually "Antidisestablishmentarianism". I was just building a word that matched what I was trying to say.
On what do you base that first assertion? Because you wish it were true, because Linux users are somehow better?
I would have said a similar thing about indie games once, particularly those who support their fanbase well and opt for no-DRM releases. Then World of Goo, which calls home for one of the online features in the game, reported a near-90% piracy rate. They even gave out the first world as a free demo, for chrissakes.
The fact is, there's nothing unique about Linux that's going to somehow reduce the piracy rate. I mean, let's face the facts: it's a group of users savvy enough to get their hands on a distributable (possibly via torrent), who have opted for a free OS with tons of free software, and who tend (if this very site is to be believed) statistically towards antiestablishmentarianism. We're hardly ideal customers for anything we can't recommend for purchase at work.
Yes! And on a related note, if a politician or your country does something you don't like, for chrissakes SHUT UP about it. We don't want to hear your whining. Just vote for someone else the next time it comes up! There's no reason to go around discussing it like some animal.
First off, I hate the RIAA as much as the next guy. They've totally obliterated customer good will for themselves and their clients, and in their refusal to adapt to changing technology, the music industry at large has thrown the entire discussion on future distribution methods off the tracks.
BUT, the people in this thread aren't making any sense. They keep going on and on about how excessive the amount rewarded seems, and making silly comparisons like "that song cost $x million dollars, I wouldn't pay y cents, hur hur" like it's going to get funnier the millionth time we read it.
That, however, is how the law works. You can't catch everyone, so you make sure when you DO catch one, you make the punishment appropriately dire as a deterrent.
Imagine if someone broke into your house and stole $100 off the nightstand, then got caught. Would you be appeased if their punishment was $100 and an apology, or would you want some additional fine or jail time attached? Do you think just having to give back what they stole would be any sort of deterrent to future theft?
So go ahead, mod this down, or maybe just make some random response that doesn't really address the issue but will get to +5 because it's how everyone here wishes the system worked, most likely because they've downloaded something themselves and it's human nature to refuse that you've done wrong. Go ahead and quote that bit about excessive bail or fines out of context like it means something. The bottom line is this is the act working exactly as intended, and if you don't like that, work to change the law. Don't give the DoJ shit for upholding the act as it's written.
Dwarf Fortress doesn't use this system at all. He occasionally gets donations, and he sends people who donate a little drawing or piece of a story as a thank-you. AFAIK, there's no intention to ever sell DF, so there's no need for preorders.
Technically, couldn't you shove a corpse in with the fuel of a steam engine and burn it? Does that make old-timey trains monstrous death-machines?
Hell, for that matter, what are "fossil fuels" but the corpses of plants and animals, anyway?
This thing would be scary if it actively hunted corpses not because of its ability to digest them, but rather its intent and design to do so. That you might could shove a body part into a robot out collecting twigs and grass clippings isn't really the designers' fault.
I suspect they'd be roughly as effective in that role as Palin keepin' an eye on Russia for us.
Well, thank you sir. That quite nicely explains why installing Aion brought my brothers' computer to its knees a week ago, forcing a reformat. We'd thought it an unrelated issue, but more research reveals the culprit is that shitty WoW clone, which he'd only installed to placate an online friend.
If you can't handle botting or cheating on the server end - be it via technical or design means - then you fail. Don't shovel a watchdog off on the client because your design team are too lazy to plug holes.
1) The box requires less overall and less constant power.
2) An analog communications channel is much less difficult to implement over possibly unreliable wires. Let the human brain handle the error correction (static).
3) Much cheaper than installing and servicing a computer.
4) Employs local people.
5) Doesn't require the user to be literate.
6) Doesn't require the user to know how to use a computer, what the Internet is, what google is, etc. Just ask your question and get an answer.
etc etc etc
As far as I know, nothing in Daggerfall was randomly generated at runtime. It's as static as Morrowind or Oblivion, just less varied.
Let's fill the world with gigantic metal spinning blades suspended hundreds of feet in the air. What could possibly go wrong?
The difference is that they could test those other programs for security holes. Of course, there's the possibility they'd miss one, but that would be Apple's failure, and they'd pay for it.
In this case, some obscure ROM could expose a flaw in the emulator well after release, despite the original teams' best efforts at due diligence in testing. What's more, there's the possibility of ROMs released after the emulator being specifically designed to break out. So, as I said before, allowing an emulator is akin to allowing any program to run on the device with no testing, virus checking, or indeed ANY sort of quality assurance. Allowing this program would not merely go against some random, obscure tenet of their EULA; rather, it would invalidate the entire purpose of their app service: that of an experience that trades freedom and quantity for, theoretically at least, control and quality.
Of course Sega is exempt; their programs are a single ROM, run via emulation. You don't buy a Sega hardware emulator and then download ROMs for it, so they can test it fully before allowing it to be released. An open emulator, able to run any ROM you give it, is essentially a way to run un-tested, 3rd party code on the platform. There's no way for Apple to be sure the programs stay within their virtual environment. In essence, it would be a way to circumvent the security and execution protection on the phone entirely; it's a jailbreaker.
I'm about as far from an Apple apologist as you can get, and can't wait for this app store bullshit to quiet down. But let's not start reviling them for merely following their stated policy. If these people want to release their emulator, they'll need to do what their competitors have: bundle it with specific games and sell THOSE instead.
It was an arcade game. Arcades were populated with mostly preteens. Removing something from public places is one thing; removing it from private consumers is another.
Or do you think preventing Chuck-E-Cheese from including animatronic porn in their acts is the same thing as banning the sale of adult DVDs?
So your reasoning for why game makers shouldn't get a cut of used sales is to point out how GE didn't get a cut of used sales? A company you even admit is going belly-up?
Edgar?
While I would say the exact opposite with respect to raids: the reason they're such a chore, and feel like work, is because the drops aren't completely randomized. Each boss has its set number of predetermined items with well-known drop percentages, and the players all need certain sets to be considered ready for higher level content. So you go in, slog your way through boring bosses you don't need, then get your one chance at getting anything out of the evening from your one or two targets. And often, of course, you fail, because to maintain their virtual value, they have to be rare.
See, the definition between "work" and "play" for animals is much simpler than we think: if the rewards are set and universal, it's work, and boring. If the rewards are completely random, it's play, and fun. That's it. That's the fundamental psychological difference between the two, and it's the first thing every game designer needs to understand. It's so basic, it's how we train animals: the first thing you learn is that if you give a treat every single time the trick is completed, the animal grows weary and will stop performing the instant it stops receiving treats. Give the treats on a random basis, and your dog will roll over every single time you ask him to - and seem to enjoy doing it - in perpetuity.
In humans, slot machines are perhaps the most flagrantly obvious real-world example of the principal of random rewards in action. Imagine a job where you pull a lever, some lights flash, and ten seconds later you get a dollar. That's your job, all day, every day. That's going to be a damn good salary; I think many of us would like to be making that much. But can you imagine yourself, day in and day out, enjoying the job itself?
Now replace that lever with a slot machine: a machine you know full well will cheat you over time, as the house always wins. And then go to Vegas and look around: people are sitting in chairs pulling levers and making lights flash and losing money hand over fist. It's a cruelly intelligent gambit, preying on this very facet of the human - nay, animal - brain. A certainty of making a lot of money is far less interesting than a slight chance of making a mediocre amount. Even if we logically force ourselves to take the safe, better bet, it would still fall squarely in the realm of what we call "work."
Blizzard would do well to remove boss-specific drops altogether. Give the entire dungeon a large but universal drop table, with higher level bosses having better chances to drop the better loot (but nothing exclusive, ever, trash pulls included). I know the die-hard player will balk at this, but think about the reasons you're balking: is it because it sounds less fun, or because it sounds like someone else might get something without "working hard enough?" Imagine how much less complaining you'd have about trash if the very first pull of a dungeon had a tiny, tiny chance to drop the best item in the place. Imagine arguments about which boss you'd fight next determined entirely by which one people thought was the most fun!
What's most sad about WoW's failure to accept the fundamental principles of random rewards as it relates to loot is that they themselves are responsible for one of the most successful examples of it done well: Diablo 2. Do you think it's a coincidence that players keep coming back to such a relatively simple (albeit well executed) game? That people will run much simpler boss fights than WoW's over and over and over again, and often enjoy doing it (so long as they're not trying for a specific item)?
Keep in mind: if, as many people in this thread protest, the judge shouldn't be allowed to join special interest groups, how would this case have gone? Would the judge not belonging to this organization change the views that lead him to join said organization? In other words, he'd still be of a significant pro-copyright bias before the case started, it's just now we'd have no indication of it.
What's more, it's not exactly easy to get a judge with zero true bias. I mean, to take that logic to its conclusion, should a murderer get off because the judge was anti-murder? Would we be as angry if the judge in the Pirate Bay case was a member of the EFF? As a human being, the only way for him to be truly bias-free would be to be ignorant of the situation entirely, and while that's OK for juries, trying to find a major judge who has lived in cave for a few decades is going to be rough (and not necessarily desirable, given that he's ruling on a case that requires some technical knowledge).
Put another way: judges are meant to judge without bias. They're not meant to exist without forming opinions.
(All that said, he still should have revealed his affiliations beforehand, so that the proper authorities could review it. Its relevance wasn't his decision to make.)
A more appropriate metaphor is parking it in your driveway, gassed up, without keys. Yes, you can pretty much assume you'll be able to remove the security systems and hotwire the thing eventually, but that's different from knowing someone could do it quickly, easily, and with an already available skeleton key.
And on a related note, this is why I always insert multiple </b>'s into my text.
Hee hee balls is another word for testicles!
Try to train yourself to blink when your character turns, like you'd do when physically turning your head in real life. People prone to motion sickness in games often don't "put themselves in the game" enough to activate that reflex. I'm not positive if it's something you can train yourself to do, but it's worth a shot.
I used to do this, too, but it won't last. Eventually, a spam site will get one of your domain names, and they will begin guessing people/positions/etc. at your "company." Once the tide of spam has struck an account that maps all mail aliases to a single box, the entire domain will become worthless within a week.
Now that they've found it, I'd like to see if they could - though I understand such specific manipulation is no doubt a long way off - work on a way to stimulate the area artificially. The ability to build controllable phantom limbs could be of great use for interacting with virtual realities. Imagine, while still having full control of your senses and limbs, being able to walk around a second entirely separate world with an entirely separate body; a lucid, computer-assisted daydream, essentially.
Such is the way of all intelligent life, though. If you build a maze for a mouse, the rodent may run its course a thousand times to reach the end and its reward. But never be fooled for a second: the mouse likes the cheese, not the maze. If he finds a way to climb over the walls and skip the test entirely, you should be neither surprised nor angry, as the failure is yours.