Back around '04 I wrote some programming tutorials for a Wiki (gpwiki.org). These included example source files. About once a year I get an email from someone in Iran seeking clarifications or help. Am(Was?) I (or the Wiki) running afoul of US export laws?
improvement over their stupid tirade about Obama swatting a housefly.
Can you provide a link to said tirade? I can only find this reaction:
He isn’t the Buddha, he’s a human being and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act.
This article implies that PETA said very little and the media ran with it. Not that they haven't had more than their share of bat-shit crazy moments but I don't think this was one.
An African-American never chose to have black skin nor can they change that condition.
A subtle point here, as I have made this faux pas as well, the above statement can be read to say that they should want to change their skin pigmentation given the option.
Someone already tried this. The machine took your debit card number, and generated a random number: if (N <= 45) { card->cash *= 2; } else { card->cash *= 0.5; }. The end result was the same, but for some reason it just didn't have the same appeal. My theory is it has something to do with the tangible dice.
Interesting side question: Is his gaming addiction being caused by failing out of school or some other real-life problem (depression?) or is the gaming addiction causing the effects as the story suggests?
Preface: I was once spending more hours per week working on WoW characters than on my concurrent full-time job. I managed to keep said job so I'm not sure I ever got as bad as the person in this story, however, some things worth pointing out:
- This person probably considers those people he knows in the MMO to be greater friends than those he knows in real life. Cooperation from the those in game friends will be the greatest asset to your cause if you can get it, especially if he's a member of a player organization (guild in WoW. Not sure what they're called in Pirates). - I eventually quit because there were things I wanted to do in life. Presumably he has some of these too. Ask him what the end-game is given what he's doing with his time. What does he hope to accomplish in the game that will matter 5 years from now, have him weigh that with what he's potentially giving up in real life that will matter 5 years from now. He has likely considered this and can't quit cold-turkey so this isn't useful until you can get him down to a reasonable amount of play time making this is your long-term weapon. - Point out that he can pick the game up again any time right where he left off. This is your short-term weapon. Remind him real life is rarely so forgiving.
The students will essentially own the computers, are expected to take them home every night
We also have the ability to monitor any machine remotely, lock the machine down at certain hours, prevent the installation of any software by the user, and prevent the use of iChat
These two statements are contradictory. The sooner you accept this the less expensive the lesson will be for all involved.
I'm not sure that's a valid market. Smaller airports frequently have a courtesy car they will lone you for a few hours if you fill up the plane with gas at their FBO, many FBOs even list this fact in their AFD listing. Failing that, the typical cost of renting a car for a day is less than half the typical cost of renting a small plane for an *hour* or if you own the plane, a little over the cost of an hours fuel burn at cruise, and most rental car places will bring the car to you. IAAPP (I Am A Private Pilot)
The advantage I see in this is combating weather. If I want to go on a week long trip, its conceivable that the weather forecast will change enough in that week that I won't be able to get back on time. With this thing, I could prefer flight, but drive to another airport if necessary to escape bad weather. That said, if I'm an aircraft renter, an IFR rating is cheaper and probably enough, and I can't see these things being rental craft (imagine the insurance on a $198,000 rental car).
I assume that the target market for this type of vehicle isn't the lay driver who wants a "flying car" to dodge traffic
Off-topic aside: I've been seriously considering getting powered parachute (which, if flown under certain restrictions requires *zero* training for anyone, even without a pilots license) to make my daily ~7 mile commute to work. Anyone have any experience with those? Could be they be a short range commute craft?
you can either put him into a common, always-loaded area of memory, or you can put an extra copy of him into each loadable chunk
Or you can keep one copy of him around in your "common" area whenever he's in a loaded chunk and get rid of him when he isn't and thereby not waste memory. There is no reason to always load him or keep him with the level data as you're assuming.
Memory isn't really an excuse. You could cut the size of the levels down to a fraction of what they are now (maybe with some overlap necessary for visibility stuff calculations?), and load the chunk the player is heading toward in the background while they are playing through the current chunk, and free the farthest away chunk. And don't give me any crap about slowing down the game waiting on the disk to load stuff, thats what threads are for. For example say you reduce level size to 1/5, you keep the chunk the player is current in, the two adjacent ones, and one other that fluctuates based on what the player is closest to. You have to design your chunks such that the player can't get through the intermediate chunks before the next one can be loaded, but that seems like a practical, solvable problem.
I agree with you but I'll play devil's advocate for a moment. Someone in favor of this type of measure would argue that your freedom to travel is not being violated, you may still travel anywhere you please - just not by air.
Buy a small space in your local newspaper and put your name and the MD5 in it (you might consider doing it without your name, but thats risky - if the paper goes out of business who will be able to testify it was you who placed the ad?). Shouldn't cost more than a couple bucks.
I think it would be more interesting to create a game that was specifically designed to be hackable ten ways from Sunday. The objective of the game would be to develop the best program to play the game.
If you read the EULAs of games like MMOs very closely (second life is the exception rather than the rule) you will find that the company that produces the game "owns" all the items on all the characters on all the servers. This is part of the reason why they ban the selling of virtual goods for real cash. You can't sell something you don't own. So where does that leave the IRS? Sure, money changed hands and they can tax that as income, but can they tax virtual goods that didn't change hands? Sounds like a property tax, so Blizzard for example is suddenly going to find it very expensive to be spawning epic items in every instance because they are high value items. There are two solutions: spawn very few of them to limit the number that are taxed or spawn so many of them as to make them worthless. Where does that leave the game? If they tax virtual goods at all it also raises all sorts of interesting questions about game companies having financial liability if their databases go offline or lose data, and being a GM in such a game is suddenly going to be a government regulated and heavily scrutinized position. Suppose a company running a game files bankruptcy; do their servers, with millions of dollars in virtual items get auctioned off at the value of the virtual items? Not bloody likely. Suppose a dupe hack is found for the game, are we going to have an RIAA-esque gestapo going after people who ended up with dupes in the interest of propping up a doomed business model? Since the company in charge of these games has absolute and irrevocable control over the supply of these goods, can the company be sued as a monopoly if it violates some awkwardly applicable law?
From what I understand, they insert themselves into the P2P network, then gather the IP addresses which connect to them.
They sit on the networks at scan for what are likely copyright violating files (after that they should have to download the files to prove that their copyright has actually been violated, though as far as I know no one has argued this point in court). Seeing what IP addresses connect to them wouldn't get them anywhere for two reasons: 1. Being on a P2P network and connecting to other nodes isn't illegal nor does it constitute a copyright violation in and of itself. 2. Since they are the holder of the copyright, if their P2P client offered it for download (even if it wouldn't actually send that file) that'd be like giving anyone who searched for it a free license to download it since as far as the end user can tell the owner of the copyright is making it available for free download. So if you don't want to be caught, you don't share files.
Their history of false accusations supports this method. Most people here probably remember when they sued a professor named Usher a few years ago for distributing his lectures in mp3 format on P2P.
a few producers have banded together and created a monopoly on item Y
Leveraging the laws of economics adds an interesting level of meta-game strategy to MMOs. Back in my WoW days I formed a cartel with the rest of the mages in my guild to exploit the guild's internal DKP system. It worked spectacularly. Whenever an item came up that could be rolled on by mages and other classes, the mages always had more DKP on hand to burn. We even went so far as to have our own cartel forums, and our own cartel DKP to determine who got the mage-only items. Anyone who crossed the cartel could be forced out of the guild by the rest of the mages refusing to raid with the person, as well as other punishments. (for honor's sake, we decided never to take action against any mage who decided not to join the cartel, but that never happened.)
And work started on it in late 99, early 2000. The whole idea behind it when it was started was pretty much that no one had done a big WW2 multiplayer FPS up to that point.
Has anyone else found themselves not "willing to moderate" one day and miraculously having mod points the next? I know for a fact I have unchecked that box at least once before because I never use the mod points, and somehow it keeps coming back on. Predictably, I end up with mod points that never get used about once a week. (In fact I have 5 right now and had 5 on April fool's day)
Speaking of protected, in college one day a professor wrote some C++ code on the board, and he forgot the 'L' in "public", and so declared a class with a "pubic" area. Somehow I was the only one who noticed this (or the only one with a juvenile sense of humor). The prof must have thought I was crazy by the end of the class with me sitting there trying to contain my laughter to see how long it would take anyone else notice. They never did.
Compressing air probably involves combustion-engine driven air compressors, so I don't see the real benefit here.
"probably"? You're writing off this entire technology because of a "probably"? News flash: energy can be converted from one form into another and stored in innumerable ways (and with only moderate loss according to efficiency physics and such). i.e. You can compress air using whatever the hell you want. The local hardware store has a compressor that runs from a wall outlet. With enough solar cells you could power that outlet. You could do it up to a point by hooking up a damn bicycle to an air pump for christ sake.
This technology takes one problem and converts it into another problem, namely how do we get compressed air without creating emissions. Pretty much everything we learn from science is based on the idea of converting one problem into another one we can solve.
Also, I'd say that since guerrilla marketing by definition is outside of the normal channels for marketing, Cartoon Network should not be surprised when the book of law is tossed at them.
Yes, because in Soviet America, anything outside normal trains of thought is illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
Back around '04 I wrote some programming tutorials for a Wiki (gpwiki.org). These included example source files. About once a year I get an email from someone in Iran seeking clarifications or help. Am(Was?) I (or the Wiki) running afoul of US export laws?
Mea culpa: Should say "counsel".
Don't want to get electrocuted, don't represent a murder.
And how does the one who is falsely accused of murder secure council in your hypothetical reality?
improvement over their stupid tirade about Obama swatting a housefly.
Can you provide a link to said tirade? I can only find this reaction:
He isn’t the Buddha, he’s a human being and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act.
This article implies that PETA said very little and the media ran with it. Not that they haven't had more than their share of bat-shit crazy moments but I don't think this was one.
An African-American never chose to have black skin nor can they change that condition.
A subtle point here, as I have made this faux pas as well, the above statement can be read to say that they should want to change their skin pigmentation given the option.
As much as I would like to believe this, the mantra still applies:
correlation != causation. (and I'm not even sure there's enough data to establish for the former)
fully automize Vegas!
Someone already tried this. The machine took your debit card number, and generated a random number: if (N <= 45) { card->cash *= 2; } else { card->cash *= 0.5; }. The end result was the same, but for some reason it just didn't have the same appeal. My theory is it has something to do with the tangible dice.
Interesting side question: Is his gaming addiction being caused by failing out of school or some other real-life problem (depression?) or is the gaming addiction causing the effects as the story suggests?
Preface: I was once spending more hours per week working on WoW characters than on my concurrent full-time job. I managed to keep said job so I'm not sure I ever got as bad as the person in this story, however, some things worth pointing out:
- This person probably considers those people he knows in the MMO to be greater friends than those he knows in real life. Cooperation from the those in game friends will be the greatest asset to your cause if you can get it, especially if he's a member of a player organization (guild in WoW. Not sure what they're called in Pirates).
- I eventually quit because there were things I wanted to do in life. Presumably he has some of these too. Ask him what the end-game is given what he's doing with his time. What does he hope to accomplish in the game that will matter 5 years from now, have him weigh that with what he's potentially giving up in real life that will matter 5 years from now. He has likely considered this and can't quit cold-turkey so this isn't useful until you can get him down to a reasonable amount of play time making this is your long-term weapon.
- Point out that he can pick the game up again any time right where he left off. This is your short-term weapon. Remind him real life is rarely so forgiving.
The students will essentially own the computers, are expected to take them home every night
We also have the ability to monitor any machine remotely, lock the machine down at certain hours, prevent the installation of any software by the user, and prevent the use of iChat
These two statements are contradictory. The sooner you accept this the less expensive the lesson will be for all involved.
I'm not sure that's a valid market. Smaller airports frequently have a courtesy car they will lone you for a few hours if you fill up the plane with gas at their FBO, many FBOs even list this fact in their AFD listing. Failing that, the typical cost of renting a car for a day is less than half the typical cost of renting a small plane for an *hour* or if you own the plane, a little over the cost of an hours fuel burn at cruise, and most rental car places will bring the car to you. IAAPP (I Am A Private Pilot)
The advantage I see in this is combating weather. If I want to go on a week long trip, its conceivable that the weather forecast will change enough in that week that I won't be able to get back on time. With this thing, I could prefer flight, but drive to another airport if necessary to escape bad weather. That said, if I'm an aircraft renter, an IFR rating is cheaper and probably enough, and I can't see these things being rental craft (imagine the insurance on a $198,000 rental car).
I assume that the target market for this type of vehicle isn't the lay driver who wants a "flying car" to dodge traffic
Off-topic aside: I've been seriously considering getting powered parachute (which, if flown under certain restrictions requires *zero* training for anyone, even without a pilots license) to make my daily ~7 mile commute to work. Anyone have any experience with those? Could be they be a short range commute craft?
... until all the money has been completely milked out of it.
you can either put him into a common, always-loaded area of memory, or you can put an extra copy of him into each loadable chunk
Or you can keep one copy of him around in your "common" area whenever he's in a loaded chunk and get rid of him when he isn't and thereby not waste memory. There is no reason to always load him or keep him with the level data as you're assuming.
Memory isn't really an excuse. You could cut the size of the levels down to a fraction of what they are now (maybe with some overlap necessary for visibility stuff calculations?), and load the chunk the player is heading toward in the background while they are playing through the current chunk, and free the farthest away chunk. And don't give me any crap about slowing down the game waiting on the disk to load stuff, thats what threads are for. For example say you reduce level size to 1/5, you keep the chunk the player is current in, the two adjacent ones, and one other that fluctuates based on what the player is closest to. You have to design your chunks such that the player can't get through the intermediate chunks before the next one can be loaded, but that seems like a practical, solvable problem.
I agree with you but I'll play devil's advocate for a moment. Someone in favor of this type of measure would argue that your freedom to travel is not being violated, you may still travel anywhere you please - just not by air.
"Olaf should avoid mines!"
I remember loving that game, I had no idea Blizzard created it, thanks for the info. Hey Blizzard where's our modern sequel to this gem?
Buy a small space in your local newspaper and put your name and the MD5 in it (you might consider doing it without your name, but thats risky - if the paper goes out of business who will be able to testify it was you who placed the ad?). Shouldn't cost more than a couple bucks.
I think it would be more interesting to create a game that was specifically designed to be hackable ten ways from Sunday. The objective of the game would be to develop the best program to play the game.
If you read the EULAs of games like MMOs very closely (second life is the exception rather than the rule) you will find that the company that produces the game "owns" all the items on all the characters on all the servers. This is part of the reason why they ban the selling of virtual goods for real cash. You can't sell something you don't own. So where does that leave the IRS? Sure, money changed hands and they can tax that as income, but can they tax virtual goods that didn't change hands? Sounds like a property tax, so Blizzard for example is suddenly going to find it very expensive to be spawning epic items in every instance because they are high value items. There are two solutions: spawn very few of them to limit the number that are taxed or spawn so many of them as to make them worthless. Where does that leave the game? If they tax virtual goods at all it also raises all sorts of interesting questions about game companies having financial liability if their databases go offline or lose data, and being a GM in such a game is suddenly going to be a government regulated and heavily scrutinized position. Suppose a company running a game files bankruptcy; do their servers, with millions of dollars in virtual items get auctioned off at the value of the virtual items? Not bloody likely. Suppose a dupe hack is found for the game, are we going to have an RIAA-esque gestapo going after people who ended up with dupes in the interest of propping up a doomed business model? Since the company in charge of these games has absolute and irrevocable control over the supply of these goods, can the company be sued as a monopoly if it violates some awkwardly applicable law?
They sit on the networks at scan for what are likely copyright violating files (after that they should have to download the files to prove that their copyright has actually been violated, though as far as I know no one has argued this point in court). Seeing what IP addresses connect to them wouldn't get them anywhere for two reasons: 1. Being on a P2P network and connecting to other nodes isn't illegal nor does it constitute a copyright violation in and of itself. 2. Since they are the holder of the copyright, if their P2P client offered it for download (even if it wouldn't actually send that file) that'd be like giving anyone who searched for it a free license to download it since as far as the end user can tell the owner of the copyright is making it available for free download. So if you don't want to be caught, you don't share files.
Their history of false accusations supports this method. Most people here probably remember when they sued a professor named Usher a few years ago for distributing his lectures in mp3 format on P2P.
IANAL BTW.
Leveraging the laws of economics adds an interesting level of meta-game strategy to MMOs. Back in my WoW days I formed a cartel with the rest of the mages in my guild to exploit the guild's internal DKP system. It worked spectacularly. Whenever an item came up that could be rolled on by mages and other classes, the mages always had more DKP on hand to burn. We even went so far as to have our own cartel forums, and our own cartel DKP to determine who got the mage-only items. Anyone who crossed the cartel could be forced out of the guild by the rest of the mages refusing to raid with the person, as well as other punishments. (for honor's sake, we decided never to take action against any mage who decided not to join the cartel, but that never happened.)
And work started on it in late 99, early 2000. The whole idea behind it when it was started was pretty much that no one had done a big WW2 multiplayer FPS up to that point.
Has anyone else found themselves not "willing to moderate" one day and miraculously having mod points the next? I know for a fact I have unchecked that box at least once before because I never use the mod points, and somehow it keeps coming back on. Predictably, I end up with mod points that never get used about once a week. (In fact I have 5 right now and had 5 on April fool's day)
Speaking of protected, in college one day a professor wrote some C++ code on the board, and he forgot the 'L' in "public", and so declared a class with a "pubic" area. Somehow I was the only one who noticed this (or the only one with a juvenile sense of humor). The prof must have thought I was crazy by the end of the class with me sitting there trying to contain my laughter to see how long it would take anyone else notice. They never did.
Compressing air probably involves combustion-engine driven air compressors, so I don't see the real benefit here.
"probably"? You're writing off this entire technology because of a "probably"? News flash: energy can be converted from one form into another and stored in innumerable ways (and with only moderate loss according to efficiency physics and such). i.e. You can compress air using whatever the hell you want. The local hardware store has a compressor that runs from a wall outlet. With enough solar cells you could power that outlet. You could do it up to a point by hooking up a damn bicycle to an air pump for christ sake.
This technology takes one problem and converts it into another problem, namely how do we get compressed air without creating emissions. Pretty much everything we learn from science is based on the idea of converting one problem into another one we can solve.
Yes, because in Soviet America, anything outside normal trains of thought is illegal.