I seem to recall that they never get a good rating in any large scale disaster. The key people keep forgetting is that this disaster isn't just New Orleans, we are talking about a Federal Disaster area the size of the United Kingdom.
Now tell me, just what do you expect? The media is going to focus on the worst cases they can find because it sells ads.
The issue about the levees is being disputed by many sources now and more and more will come out. One interesting story http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation \archive\200509\NAT20050907a.html covers the fact that they don't spend most of their levee money on making it work!
Also LA has received more money Corps money than any other state in the last five years. Yes, they got more than even California did! The problem was that the money meant to shore up the levee system went to pork projects instead.
I know its the in thing to bash Bush here but damn it get you facts straight. It seems anything labeled "Insightful" and has Bush's name in it is only so provided it attacks.
FEMA has sucked for ages and it never gets better in what we are shown. Yes they screw up, but damn look at what they have done in such a short time. Biloxi and the rest of Miss. sure in the hell didn't get a pass in this storm but the way everyone is acting you would think only NO was affected.
Well your title hit the nail on the head but your comment seemed to ignore the obvious, there can and usually is a large difference between what constitutes and expansion and what is delivered via patches.
Outside of the Asheron's Call series I do not recall any game which sold monthly content updates as part of the "package".
New dungeons, opening existing areas, and new items are great features for content "patches". Entirely new landmasses, new races, and new "types" of items are valid for expansions.
Which way will Blizzard go? Probably the latter. They have a track record of releasing good quality games for the money paid. I doubt they would let what is now their premier title to do any less. The side effect of being on the top is that when you screw up you have just that many more people screaming about it!
The Federal Disaster Area declaration is nearly as large as the United Kingdom. How would you go about getting everything to everyone in a few days?
Also in the US disaster preparedness and recovery are normally the venue of the States and localities. By tradition they are supposed to ask for aid. Supposedly, I cannot find the story right now, the LA Govenor asked Bush for some time before calling out the Guard. It is the State that "by tradition" orders the Guard, Bush respected that but sometimes I think traditions stink. There are 330,000 Guard members in the US currently. I would think more than a small percent could be moved provided the States will act.
that there are some places people should not live? Instead of throwing billions at a problem that will occur again it might be best to treat the city as we treated people along the Miss.
Move them.
While the mess in New Orleans is bad too many people are ignoring the devastation caused in Miss. and the surrounding areas.
The port area themselves are not affected as the city proper was. We can try to improve the wetlands. We can even hopefully undo the system underwhich the sediment of the Miss is forced into the sea instead of being used to rebuild the area naturally.
The real fact is, New Orleans has always been on borrowed time. I would prefer very much to spend the money to insure that the victims forever are high and dry.
Quote ""Web access could come with a cultural flat fee," he said."
As if we don't have enough horrid artist because of all the government funding of such? Good art does not come because it was funded. Paying for NEW art must remain a voluntary action for the public. Otherwise you end up creating a cottage industry that exists only to suck of wealth.
DRM has many valid uses as do patents. Those ideas should be kept. Toss this mandatory taxation; read: the masses are to ignorant to know what art is; and I can see a lot of people supporting the position.
When they added the politics side of/. it became overly obvious this site was more concerned with page hits and ads than News for Nerds. Incedinary subject areas on discussion sites are very good for generating revenue.
Ever since it was sold the quality of what appears on the main page has dropped as well. The number Slashvertisements that we are subject to makes me wonder if these are not intentional. We can already pay to avoid ads but this sure in the hell looks like an ad to me.
The only question is, who decides which science is wrong? I doubt very seriously any big money areas will have a published high rate of error. After the high money science the next protected type would be whatever is en vogue for the time.
Scientific integrity took a big dive in the late 80s as special interest groups suddenly realized that marketing, confusion, and intimidation were far better at advancing agenda than honest science.
As stated in the linked article a paying customer could have bought the game, a game card, or a subscription. This does not tell us the number of paid accounts on the North American servers. This only tells us how many there could be.
Consider that they have around 100 servers (104 or 105?). Now if only 1000 people are on each server at a time, I think the number can be double that during primetime, this puts them at 100k simulataneous users. That is phenomenal for a US MMORPG. The standard "rule" is that there are 5 times the number of accounts as there are people online at any one time. This would put them over or near 500,000 subscriptions. Impressive by itself. There is always http://www.mmorpgchart.com/ to look at as well. He has a good disclaimer but seems "mostly" accurate in his guesses.
As for the complaints. I find that most people in MMORPGs promise themselves more than the developers do. WOW does have its share of problems but Blizzard has shown they do act. They are very good when dealing with exploiters.
It is worth noting that this news is within 7 days of Turbine announcing they are closing down AC2. The integrity of the companies is very evident in how both fared. Blizzard has done their best to promote their game, police their game, and they did an incredible amount of work so that they released a very stable and nearly complete game. Constrast that to how Turbine handled AC2 both when it was also a MS product and when it was totally a Turbine product. They released a feature incomplete game ridden with bugs and exploits, the did nearly nothing to stop the known exploits early on forever damaging the game, and then there was little promotion of the game except by web banners and a few ads. To add insult to injury one of their lead people blamed the migration from MS's billing system to their own for a major population drop! Completely brushing over the fact that people don't pay for things they do not like.
Even with all the disgruntled people, whom are more evident because of the web, Blizzard and WOW will continue to propser simply because Blizzard is not standing still. The game improves monthly and there is much more to do in this game than can be experienced in just a few months. Battlefields is important, but it is not important to everyone. This is one thing most articles ignore. Battlefields is PvP, a lot of people playing WOW will never PvP so they do not care. These people who don't need PvP or Battlefields will find their own causes to rail about. Still you have to look at it this way, if your users are in such numbers as to get other sites to post about them your game is probably doing just fine.
I remember the videos and previews, hell I still have the preview videos. I suspect that any sequel to UO won't stand a chance until the population numbers of UO drop below 30k or so.
Their comment about UFO:Aftermath was unwarranted. It actually is very much turn based, like the original and TFTD. In fact it is the closest to TFTD of the UFO games proposed or released.
I can tell you one thing though, I lament over the fact of what doesn't get cancelled. Some of the crap that does get released makes you wonder why we even play these games.
and in many cases it is a good indication that the money already being raised is being wasted. Look at some of the costliest per student school systems and you will find some of the worst.
What has been their answer each time they are confronted with low scores and high drop out rates? "we don't have enough money". Give it to them and suddenly every damn relative of the school board, the mayor, and the city board suddenly has nice high paying jobs doing nothing.
My school taxes are nearly $1100 per year based on millage rate on the value of my house. This doesn't even account for the SPLOST of 1% that comes and goes.
What have I seen this spent on? Schools covered in marble that costs more than most high end counter tops. Administration buildings with atriums that take nearly thousands of dollars a year to maintain. Teacher retreats to far off places.
Spare me this crap about raising taxes. Make the teachers and the administrators accountable first. End tenure and remove the damn unions from the school system, a union which only serves to maintain its existance and could not give a damn about a student.
Certainly not government testing. About the only way to cut a teacher loose these days is if they sexually harass their students.
Fail a teaching test. Take it over, and over, and over, and over. What I find hilarious is that some states have the arrogance to hold home schooled children to higher test scores and competence than their peers in public schools.
Also note, that I don't know of any state which will not still tax you for public schools just because you home school. Most home schoolers make significant monetary sacrifices to do so. While not as great as those who send their children to private school the burden can be high.
What I have noticed about home school families is this.
1. The children are very much better behaved. 2. The children are quite capable of holding intelligent conversations with adults. 3. The parents are willing not to keep up with the Jones's and instead focus on family.
Given the choice in neighbors I know which I would choose. The public schools here in my state make me wonder why DFAC doesn't arrest anyone who sends their child to public school.
It should be a crime. We put the interest of teachers before the students. No amount of technology will overcome the NEA. The only way to overcome the NEA is to remove yourself from their scope.
AC2 was not written for the players. It was written by the developers for developers. AC2 had everything their players didn't ask for any nothing they wanted.
There were many hints of discord among the players of the beta. The end of beta event quickly turned into damage control. Turbine introduced items that benefitted PvP players more than regular players. This immediately alarmed many about what the future would hold. They made quite a few changes to the end of beta event to fix that mistake but it was truly a harbringer too come.
Examples of the hubris. Having the audacity, though they might have though themselves humorous, to have a PR person bring "books" down from an ivory tower.
Having a world where the cities were essentially monuments to the developers. None of the buildings were enterable. There were no NPCs. The cities all looked wrecked at the start and only improved if people used the crafting facilities. What was funny was there were ruins of some of the older cities from the previous games and you could enter those buildings; granted they didn't have doors but you could still get in them!
Inability to code a decent AI led to giving nearly all MOBs a ranged attack. This happened in beta and stunk to high heaven. What hurt them the most was that most of the mobs were new versions of AC1 mobs - and none of them had ranged attacks so they broke lore because they could not make their new AI work.
Inability to code a decent pathing engine into the new system. This led to the mobs being able to go through many objects AND shoot through them.
Starting the live game with a well known and documented exploit in place. Tyrants were AC2's solution to having Dragons. Unfortunately the model was so large it got stuck on the terrain. People used this throughout beta to powerlevel as even moderately level characters could take down a mob that could not fight back. Turbine was warned over and over about it and how if it went live people would abuse it. It went live and people abused the daylights out of it!
Broken chat at launch. One of the requirements of any MMORPG and it was essentially gone at launch. Half the time you could not even fellowship chat, let alone be heard in a city. If you wanted to chat with people not in your immediate vicinity you used IRC.
Horrible interface. Too many fixed windows and conflicting windows. No real player convienences either. Strange issues with the look of running characters, humans seemed have broken backs on anything but flat surfaces. A combat system that relied on visual cues to tell you when to use your special power yet those cues were lost in the other special effects like frill and fixed objects.
No class balance at launch. It was so bad that it was common knowledge that if you wanted to get ahead you only played a few certain classes. One, the Lugian, had a subclass which could place walls and turrets which allowed the player to literally take a nap and level!
Simple quests. Most were nothing more than finding potions on mobs that made you "horny" to kill other mobs. Really that is how it felt. You drank this potion and suddenly you felt the need to kill 10 of some particular creature. Never mind the fact that half the time that particular mob wasn't anywhere nearby.
Half hearted KvK system. Heavily influenced by DAOC, as in there were even 3 factions, but obviously never thought out. PvP/KvK was a joke from the start. Being heavily level focused PvP was no longer skill oriented when compared to AC1. (in AC1 levels became mostly meaningless after a point, not so in AC2 as there were hidden modifiers based on your level). However the biggest screw up was having non-PvP player forced to go PvP to complete some quests. This led to a lot of grief play as griefers would portal camp.
Vaults. No, these were not player storage, something else that was missing from the game. Vaults were special dungeons that told the story of the game. This was the other major f
We are saddled with just that type of manager. He believes his position grants him not only the authority but the knowledge to make the proper decisions. The analogy we use at work is, "sandbox". Its his sandbox and he makes the rules. You either kiss-up or you don't move up.
It is truly frightening how much damage his type and his sycophants can do. We are 5 years into an 18 month project and still have only managed to install at 8% of our sites!
We now have a multitude of ways to track what we do, from two methods of time tracking, to requirements to submit goals and accomplishments weekly, to maintaining a timeline! Top it off we have a database of projects that are ranked on a priority/importance scale (1-3 importance, 1-10 priority). It is a running joke that anything 2 or below will never ever be worked on. We have so many 1-1s they had to add a button to indicate "really really important" items.
I would take an undereducated but knows it boss anyday over this. We used to have a manager to keep him in check but he has been out for the past 3 months on medical issues. When that manager goes on disability I will be leaving along with a few others.
We have a catch phrase at work borrowed from Aliens "We are on the express elevator to hell! Going down". Sometimes I think the corporate motto is "We make money inspite of ourselves"
Getting the craft back down to earth in one piece is going to be the capability I am most interested in seeing them solve. Will it be ablative or something reusuable like the tile system but more robust? Being Rutan I full expect it to land like a plane on return so that alone will limit some of the choices he can make.
Unless he revolutionizes rocket propulsion I don't see how they are going to get anyone into orbit at reasonable costs, by reasonable I mean in the $1,000,000 range.
If space tourism would generate a good return on investment I am pretty sure the Russians would be all over it. They already have the technology to get there and have proven they would take paying customers. Since they haven't moved more aggressively I have seriously doubts if it is doable on todays technology. Look at the Kliper, the estimated costs are nearly $3 billion just to develop it! It can take 6 people and 750kg of cargo to LEV. The other issue that stands out with Kliper is that the module may only be used 25 times before retirement.
If the Russians are having such issues with LEV on that budget it will take a miracle for anyone else.
They are about individual accomplishment and usually materialistic gain. Even most non-MMORPGs are about individual accomplishment in the way of score.
Plus, heaven forbid, you might meet someone who doesn't toe the party line.
Addiction my ass. They are protecting their addiction to exploiting their own people under the guise of socialism. Some are more equal than others.
One area is the protectionist movement that is afoot that will doom us. This idea that we can lock down the borders both to immigrants; illegal or not; as well as trade wise. The idea that everything will be A-OK if we just quit importing so much stuff.
Well it doesn't work that way. Isolationism/Protectionism doom economies fast.
It is easy to blame Christians simply because Bush; who is openly Christian; is not in favor on Slashdot. But it is this type of ignorance that belies the real problems. Bush and Christians aren't the reason America is losing its lead in technology. It is the age of selfishness that is. The age of entitlement, the age of me.
The second major area is the schools.
Look at our schools. They are no longer areas of learning, they are bastions of political correctedness. We are no longer looking to educate we are looking to mollify hurt feelings. We have educators who actually support not failing students because it hurts their feelings or because they are part of one ethnic group or another. We no longer reward achievement; in fact we have big disincentives. Class valor dictorian is no longer one person it is many, again because we don't want to hurt the feelings of those who weren't the best. We spend more time worrying about mascots than the students. We spend too much money on administrators and grief counselors rather than improving education. We have more rules to protect bad teachers than to promote good ones!
We cannot be the best if we don't expect of our children. We cannot be first if we tell them its okay to come in second place because we will fix it so second place is the highest you can achieve.
We don't need to get back to winner takes all but we sure in the hell need to get back to at least having winners.
Your post is a catch all of/. appealing buzz-words. No wonder why it got rated insightful, it caters to the horde here.
Using the government to do so isn't and that is a very big distinction that must be understood. Americans as a whole are some of the most generous people on the planet when you look at voluntary donations. Go look up the amount of wealth that flows out of the US. Americans have no qualms about giving money, they just don't want to be forced to do so.
Look at is this way, if your government gives money on your behalf how can you claim to be generous yourself when the decision wasn't your own? You can't. Oh I am sure some can but they could argue the sky isn't blue too.
Your claim that America as a society that holds on to religion yet seems to disagree with it is wrong in. Your applying the argument in a method which makes any dissent indefensible; strawman.
In the trailer there are a lot of seemingly bizarre translations. Twinkler Banks is a great example. Was that a translation made on the word or the meaning of the words? Or was it just wrong altogether? While I understand it is a parody, foreign humor can be difficult to understand at times. Fortunately special effects usually are not confusing.
and why is it in use 20 years beyond its real useful life. Simple, politics. This isn't about aerospace frames being used for long periods, that was just an excuse.
It was politics. Politics inside and outside of NASA. Face it, they went to the moon and promptly got lost in Earth orbit.
When you get first prize your first time out in a major it kinda gets boring to play the regular games. In other words, we made the moon and then went back to playing in orbit.
The Shuttle was a fancy trap. Straight out of science fiction it looked cool and caught the public's imagination. The trouble was that once we caught the golden goose it turned out to be a spruce goose. Pride then got in the way and politics were there to keep it all hidden.
The space station was justification of the shuttle program. It had no other real use. What was the point of spending even more time in Earth orbit. We did it with Skylab and the Russians did it very well with their program. We should have went to the moon and stayed there. Instead we had to justify this spruce goose all because of pride and politics.
At least we know its gone in a few years, perhaps the best thing that could happen to NASA is the kick upside their head.
The easiest way to foist an new entitlement on the taxpayers is to guilt them into accepting it.
Its for the children, you wouldn't hurt/deprive/harm children would you?
Its for the poor, you wouldn't hurt/deprive/harm the poor would you?
Its for minorty-group-of-the-moment, you not a racist are you? (notice you must use the term racist as bigot which is the most appropriate definition doesn't cause enough cowering)
Politics of Guilt is how they hide their re-election programs and get people to pay for it. It used to be libraries, pools, and parks. Now its internet access whether through libraries, wi-fi, or hardline.
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to recall that they never get a good rating in any large scale disaster. The key people keep forgetting is that this disaster isn't just New Orleans, we are talking about a Federal Disaster area the size of the United Kingdom.
n \archive\200509\NAT20050907a.html covers the fact that they don't spend most of their levee money on making it work!
m l
Now tell me, just what do you expect? The media is going to focus on the worst cases they can find because it sells ads.
The issue about the levees is being disputed by many sources now and more and more will come out. One interesting story http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Natio
Also LA has received more money Corps money than any other state in the last five years. Yes, they got more than even California did! The problem was that the money meant to shore up the levee system went to pork projects instead.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/125/5602732.ht
I know its the in thing to bash Bush here but damn it get you facts straight. It seems anything labeled "Insightful" and has Bush's name in it is only so provided it attacks.
FEMA has sucked for ages and it never gets better in what we are shown. Yes they screw up, but damn look at what they have done in such a short time. Biloxi and the rest of Miss. sure in the hell didn't get a pass in this storm but the way everyone is acting you would think only NO was affected.
http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/specs.html
The Nano most likely is using the same chipset as the HDD version. If you look at the feature set the Shuffle is just a little different.
Now I have seen reviews which claim the shuffle sounds better than the regular iPod. So I am curious, does the Nano sound as good as the shuffle?
Well your title hit the nail on the head but your comment seemed to ignore the obvious, there can and usually is a large difference between what constitutes and expansion and what is delivered via patches.
Outside of the Asheron's Call series I do not recall any game which sold monthly content updates as part of the "package".
New dungeons, opening existing areas, and new items are great features for content "patches". Entirely new landmasses, new races, and new "types" of items are valid for expansions.
Which way will Blizzard go? Probably the latter. They have a track record of releasing good quality games for the money paid. I doubt they would let what is now their premier title to do any less. The side effect of being on the top is that when you screw up you have just that many more people screaming about it!
The Federal Disaster Area declaration is nearly as large as the United Kingdom. How would you go about getting everything to everyone in a few days?
Also in the US disaster preparedness and recovery are normally the venue of the States and localities. By tradition they are supposed to ask for aid. Supposedly, I cannot find the story right now, the LA Govenor asked Bush for some time before calling out the Guard. It is the State that "by tradition" orders the Guard, Bush respected that but sometimes I think traditions stink. There are 330,000 Guard members in the US currently. I would think more than a small percent could be moved provided the States will act.
that there are some places people should not live? Instead of throwing billions at a problem that will occur again it might be best to treat the city as we treated people along the Miss.
Move them.
While the mess in New Orleans is bad too many people are ignoring the devastation caused in Miss. and the surrounding areas.
The port area themselves are not affected as the city proper was. We can try to improve the wetlands. We can even hopefully undo the system underwhich the sediment of the Miss is forced into the sea instead of being used to rebuild the area naturally.
The real fact is, New Orleans has always been on borrowed time. I would prefer very much to spend the money to insure that the victims forever are high and dry.
Quote ""Web access could come with a cultural flat fee," he said."
As if we don't have enough horrid artist because of all the government funding of such? Good art does not come because it was funded. Paying for NEW art must remain a voluntary action for the public. Otherwise you end up creating a cottage industry that exists only to suck of wealth.
DRM has many valid uses as do patents. Those ideas should be kept. Toss this mandatory taxation; read: the masses are to ignorant to know what art is; and I can see a lot of people supporting the position.
When they added the politics side of /. it became overly obvious this site was more concerned with page hits and ads than News for Nerds. Incedinary subject areas on discussion sites are very good for generating revenue.
Ever since it was sold the quality of what appears on the main page has dropped as well. The number Slashvertisements that we are subject to makes me wonder if these are not intentional. We can already pay to avoid ads but this sure in the hell looks like an ad to me.
the level of religous dogma in some camps.
The only question is, who decides which science is wrong? I doubt very seriously any big money areas will have a published high rate of error. After the high money science the next protected type would be whatever is en vogue for the time.
Scientific integrity took a big dive in the late 80s as special interest groups suddenly realized that marketing, confusion, and intimidation were far better at advancing agenda than honest science.
As stated in the linked article a paying customer could have bought the game, a game card, or a subscription. This does not tell us the number of paid accounts on the North American servers. This only tells us how many there could be.
Consider that they have around 100 servers (104 or 105?). Now if only 1000 people are on each server at a time, I think the number can be double that during primetime, this puts them at 100k simulataneous users. That is phenomenal for a US MMORPG. The standard "rule" is that there are 5 times the number of accounts as there are people online at any one time. This would put them over or near 500,000 subscriptions. Impressive by itself. There is always http://www.mmorpgchart.com/ to look at as well. He has a good disclaimer but seems "mostly" accurate in his guesses.
As for the complaints. I find that most people in MMORPGs promise themselves more than the developers do. WOW does have its share of problems but Blizzard has shown they do act. They are very good when dealing with exploiters.
It is worth noting that this news is within 7 days of Turbine announcing they are closing down AC2. The integrity of the companies is very evident in how both fared. Blizzard has done their best to promote their game, police their game, and they did an incredible amount of work so that they released a very stable and nearly complete game. Constrast that to how Turbine handled AC2 both when it was also a MS product and when it was totally a Turbine product. They released a feature incomplete game ridden with bugs and exploits, the did nearly nothing to stop the known exploits early on forever damaging the game, and then there was little promotion of the game except by web banners and a few ads. To add insult to injury one of their lead people blamed the migration from MS's billing system to their own for a major population drop! Completely brushing over the fact that people don't pay for things they do not like.
Even with all the disgruntled people, whom are more evident because of the web, Blizzard and WOW will continue to propser simply because Blizzard is not standing still. The game improves monthly and there is much more to do in this game than can be experienced in just a few months. Battlefields is important, but it is not important to everyone. This is one thing most articles ignore. Battlefields is PvP, a lot of people playing WOW will never PvP so they do not care. These people who don't need PvP or Battlefields will find their own causes to rail about. Still you have to look at it this way, if your users are in such numbers as to get other sites to post about them your game is probably doing just fine.
I remember the videos and previews, hell I still have the preview videos. I suspect that any sequel to UO won't stand a chance until the population numbers of UO drop below 30k or so.
Their comment about UFO:Aftermath was unwarranted. It actually is very much turn based, like the original and TFTD. In fact it is the closest to TFTD of the UFO games proposed or released.
I can tell you one thing though, I lament over the fact of what doesn't get cancelled. Some of the crap that does get released makes you wonder why we even play these games.
and in many cases it is a good indication that the money already being raised is being wasted. Look at some of the costliest per student school systems and you will find some of the worst.
What has been their answer each time they are confronted with low scores and high drop out rates? "we don't have enough money". Give it to them and suddenly every damn relative of the school board, the mayor, and the city board suddenly has nice high paying jobs doing nothing.
My school taxes are nearly $1100 per year based on millage rate on the value of my house. This doesn't even account for the SPLOST of 1% that comes and goes.
What have I seen this spent on? Schools covered in marble that costs more than most high end counter tops. Administration buildings with atriums that take nearly thousands of dollars a year to maintain. Teacher retreats to far off places.
Spare me this crap about raising taxes. Make the teachers and the administrators accountable first. End tenure and remove the damn unions from the school system, a union which only serves to maintain its existance and could not give a damn about a student.
Certainly not government testing. About the only way to cut a teacher loose these days is if they sexually harass their students.
Fail a teaching test. Take it over, and over, and over, and over. What I find hilarious is that some states have the arrogance to hold home schooled children to higher test scores and competence than their peers in public schools.
Also note, that I don't know of any state which will not still tax you for public schools just because you home school. Most home schoolers make significant monetary sacrifices to do so. While not as great as those who send their children to private school the burden can be high.
What I have noticed about home school families is this.
1. The children are very much better behaved.
2. The children are quite capable of holding intelligent conversations with adults.
3. The parents are willing not to keep up with the Jones's and instead focus on family.
Given the choice in neighbors I know which I would choose. The public schools here in my state make me wonder why DFAC doesn't arrest anyone who sends their child to public school.
It should be a crime. We put the interest of teachers before the students. No amount of technology will overcome the NEA. The only way to overcome the NEA is to remove yourself from their scope.
I received a letter which I assume is because I did something to register my iPod. At least this is my assumption.
Oh course I no longer have that iPod, it died, so I cannot act on it.
AC2 was not written for the players. It was written by the developers for developers. AC2 had everything their players didn't ask for any nothing they wanted.
There were many hints of discord among the players of the beta. The end of beta event quickly turned into damage control. Turbine introduced items that benefitted PvP players more than regular players. This immediately alarmed many about what the future would hold. They made quite a few changes to the end of beta event to fix that mistake but it was truly a harbringer too come.
Examples of the hubris.
Having the audacity, though they might have though themselves humorous, to have a PR person bring "books" down from an ivory tower.
Having a world where the cities were essentially monuments to the developers. None of the buildings were enterable. There were no NPCs. The cities all looked wrecked at the start and only improved if people used the crafting facilities. What was funny was there were ruins of some of the older cities from the previous games and you could enter those buildings; granted they didn't have doors but you could still get in them!
Inability to code a decent AI led to giving nearly all MOBs a ranged attack. This happened in beta and stunk to high heaven. What hurt them the most was that most of the mobs were new versions of AC1 mobs - and none of them had ranged attacks so they broke lore because they could not make their new AI work.
Inability to code a decent pathing engine into the new system. This led to the mobs being able to go through many objects AND shoot through them.
Starting the live game with a well known and documented exploit in place. Tyrants were AC2's solution to having Dragons. Unfortunately the model was so large it got stuck on the terrain. People used this throughout beta to powerlevel as even moderately level characters could take down a mob that could not fight back. Turbine was warned over and over about it and how if it went live people would abuse it. It went live and people abused the daylights out of it!
Broken chat at launch. One of the requirements of any MMORPG and it was essentially gone at launch. Half the time you could not even fellowship chat, let alone be heard in a city. If you wanted to chat with people not in your immediate vicinity you used IRC.
Horrible interface. Too many fixed windows and conflicting windows. No real player convienences either. Strange issues with the look of running characters, humans seemed have broken backs on anything but flat surfaces. A combat system that relied on visual cues to tell you when to use your special power yet those cues were lost in the other special effects like frill and fixed objects.
No class balance at launch. It was so bad that it was common knowledge that if you wanted to get ahead you only played a few certain classes. One, the Lugian, had a subclass which could place walls and turrets which allowed the player to literally take a nap and level!
Simple quests. Most were nothing more than finding potions on mobs that made you "horny" to kill other mobs. Really that is how it felt. You drank this potion and suddenly you felt the need to kill 10 of some particular creature. Never mind the fact that half the time that particular mob wasn't anywhere nearby.
Half hearted KvK system. Heavily influenced by DAOC, as in there were even 3 factions, but obviously never thought out. PvP/KvK was a joke from the start. Being heavily level focused PvP was no longer skill oriented when compared to AC1. (in AC1 levels became mostly meaningless after a point, not so in AC2 as there were hidden modifiers based on your level). However the biggest screw up was having non-PvP player forced to go PvP to complete some quests. This led to a lot of grief play as griefers would portal camp.
Vaults. No, these were not player storage, something else that was missing from the game. Vaults were special dungeons that told the story of the game. This was the other major f
The state benefit is best described by my closing line in the original post, some are more equal than others.
The state being defined as those who are in power.
Amen.
We are saddled with just that type of manager. He believes his position grants him not only the authority but the knowledge to make the proper decisions. The analogy we use at work is, "sandbox". Its his sandbox and he makes the rules. You either kiss-up or you don't move up.
It is truly frightening how much damage his type and his sycophants can do. We are 5 years into an 18 month project and still have only managed to install at 8% of our sites!
We now have a multitude of ways to track what we do, from two methods of time tracking, to requirements to submit goals and accomplishments weekly, to maintaining a timeline! Top it off we have a database of projects that are ranked on a priority/importance scale (1-3 importance, 1-10 priority). It is a running joke that anything 2 or below will never ever be worked on. We have so many 1-1s they had to add a button to indicate "really really important" items.
I would take an undereducated but knows it boss anyday over this. We used to have a manager to keep him in check but he has been out for the past 3 months on medical issues. When that manager goes on disability I will be leaving along with a few others.
We have a catch phrase at work borrowed from Aliens "We are on the express elevator to hell! Going down". Sometimes I think the corporate motto is "We make money inspite of ourselves"
I haven't seen its equal since the day it came out.
Three others that I remember fondly..
Wing Commander
Privateer (subsequent versions weren't)
XCOM : TFTD
Getting the craft back down to earth in one piece is going to be the capability I am most interested in seeing them solve. Will it be ablative or something reusuable like the tile system but more robust? Being Rutan I full expect it to land like a plane on return so that alone will limit some of the choices he can make.
Unless he revolutionizes rocket propulsion I don't see how they are going to get anyone into orbit at reasonable costs, by reasonable I mean in the $1,000,000 range.
If space tourism would generate a good return on investment I am pretty sure the Russians would be all over it. They already have the technology to get there and have proven they would take paying customers. Since they haven't moved more aggressively I have seriously doubts if it is doable on todays technology. Look at the Kliper, the estimated costs are nearly $3 billion just to develop it! It can take 6 people and 750kg of cargo to LEV. The other issue that stands out with Kliper is that the module may only be used 25 times before retirement.
If the Russians are having such issues with LEV on that budget it will take a miracle for anyone else.
Wiki link to Kliper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kliper
They are about individual accomplishment and usually materialistic gain. Even most non-MMORPGs are about individual accomplishment in the way of score.
Plus, heaven forbid, you might meet someone who doesn't toe the party line.
Addiction my ass. They are protecting their addiction to exploiting their own people under the guise of socialism. Some are more equal than others.
One area is the protectionist movement that is afoot that will doom us. This idea that we can lock down the borders both to immigrants; illegal or not; as well as trade wise. The idea that everything will be A-OK if we just quit importing so much stuff.
/. appealing buzz-words. No wonder why it got rated insightful, it caters to the horde here.
Well it doesn't work that way. Isolationism/Protectionism doom economies fast.
It is easy to blame Christians simply because Bush; who is openly Christian; is not in favor on Slashdot. But it is this type of ignorance that belies the real problems. Bush and Christians aren't the reason America is losing its lead in technology. It is the age of selfishness that is. The age of entitlement, the age of me.
The second major area is the schools.
Look at our schools. They are no longer areas of learning, they are bastions of political correctedness. We are no longer looking to educate we are looking to mollify hurt feelings. We have educators who actually support not failing students because it hurts their feelings or because they are part of one ethnic group or another. We no longer reward achievement; in fact we have big disincentives. Class valor dictorian is no longer one person it is many, again because we don't want to hurt the feelings of those who weren't the best. We spend more time worrying about mascots than the students. We spend too much money on administrators and grief counselors rather than improving education. We have more rules to protect bad teachers than to promote good ones!
We cannot be the best if we don't expect of our children. We cannot be first if we tell them its okay to come in second place because we will fix it so second place is the highest you can achieve.
We don't need to get back to winner takes all but we sure in the hell need to get back to at least having winners.
Your post is a catch all of
Using the government to do so isn't and that is a very big distinction that must be understood. Americans as a whole are some of the most generous people on the planet when you look at voluntary donations. Go look up the amount of wealth that flows out of the US. Americans have no qualms about giving money, they just don't want to be forced to do so.
Look at is this way, if your government gives money on your behalf how can you claim to be generous yourself when the decision wasn't your own? You can't. Oh I am sure some can but they could argue the sky isn't blue too.
Your claim that America as a society that holds on to religion yet seems to disagree with it is wrong in. Your applying the argument in a method which makes any dissent indefensible; strawman.
A question for someone who speaks both languages.
In the trailer there are a lot of seemingly bizarre translations. Twinkler Banks is a great example. Was that a translation made on the word or the meaning of the words? Or was it just wrong altogether? While I understand it is a parody, foreign humor can be difficult to understand at times. Fortunately special effects usually are not confusing.
Tetris.
and why is it in use 20 years beyond its real useful life. Simple, politics. This isn't about aerospace frames being used for long periods, that was just an excuse.
It was politics. Politics inside and outside of NASA. Face it, they went to the moon and promptly got lost in Earth orbit.
When you get first prize your first time out in a major it kinda gets boring to play the regular games. In other words, we made the moon and then went back to playing in orbit.
The Shuttle was a fancy trap. Straight out of science fiction it looked cool and caught the public's imagination. The trouble was that once we caught the golden goose it turned out to be a spruce goose. Pride then got in the way and politics were there to keep it all hidden.
The space station was justification of the shuttle program. It had no other real use. What was the point of spending even more time in Earth orbit. We did it with Skylab and the Russians did it very well with their program. We should have went to the moon and stayed there. Instead we had to justify this spruce goose all because of pride and politics.
At least we know its gone in a few years, perhaps the best thing that could happen to NASA is the kick upside their head.
The easiest way to foist an new entitlement on the taxpayers is to guilt them into accepting it.
Its for the children, you wouldn't hurt/deprive/harm children would you?
Its for the poor, you wouldn't hurt/deprive/harm the poor would you?
Its for minorty-group-of-the-moment, you not a racist are you? (notice you must use the term racist as bigot which is the most appropriate definition doesn't cause enough cowering)
Politics of Guilt is how they hide their re-election programs and get people to pay for it. It used to be libraries, pools, and parks. Now its internet access whether through libraries, wi-fi, or hardline.