Hence developers need publishers. Specifically publishers who have blanket deals with retailers to move the merchandise.
The majority of purchases are at retail stores. The online distribution market isn't mature enough as there are few issues that have to be overcome.
1. Not all customers for a game have broadband access.
2. Some games are still too large to download in a timely manner even with broadband.
3. Too many people expect a discount when using a downloaded version while completely ignoring the fact that it does cost the seller money for the bandwidth used.
4. Most people still want something they can touch.
5. Many games would receive no notice if it were not for publishers.
We will get Hitler's little Aryian nations eventually. The difference will be that it will not be a single race.
The issues that arise are detectability of traits not favored by traditional parents. I can see people lining up to stop pregnacies that result in brain damaged or geneticially defective children. What happens if we find out we can determine the likelihood a child will be more inclined to violence or gay (please I am not trying to associate the two). What then? Do we allow for the screening of some traits and not others? Might be interesting to see if designer children lead to people having children whose ethnic traits differ from the parents.
Unless it is under contract to provide an immediate service that is needed. Just putting money out there for funding development would be wrong and we would have nothing more than the waste of taxpayer money that funds "art".
In other words, if there is a purpose/need for the software then by all means fund it under contract for that purpose. This could include changing educational programs to only use OSS for teaching of students on how to program. If however the reason is just to buy votes, keep unemployed "artists" from starving, or there is no need then do not use the taxpayers dollars on it.
I just want to avoid a situation like what we have here in Georgia where one local county spent more on art than their roads. Boy does it show. Want to find a government building - just look for the ugly art or a building that looks more expensive than a bank. I used to think it was just a saying.
They have had nearly 5 months to fix their problems. They are pulling in how much per month? I haven't seen them stop charging people until they get it right. Sure they credit a day or two here but they continue to charge.
That 1.5m looks impressive until you realize its worldwide and the server problems most are concerned with are those in North America. We don't know what their status is in Korea and elsewhere. As for the unexpected NA numbers, well they had enough hardware on hand for 80+ servers which tells me they did anticipate a crush.
There is NO end game for WOW except PvP and Battlegrounds. New game or not they should have had enough in place to satisfy the players. Instead they released before they were done, again a common theme, and have decided to let the players sit and spin until they get the updates out.
So quit apologizing for them. Your only hurting the fans and Blizzard isn't going to reward you for your kissing up. If anything they sit back, chuckle, and think "how nice to have fanbois to eat our shit". This is a big corporation, they are selling a service, they damn well better get it right and quickly if they keep charging for it.
First and foremost was the until Star Wars came out Science Fiction was not considered a viable movie format. Mostly it was ridiculed or left to low budget areas. 2001 should not be counted as its effect was totally different.
Star Wars also opened up the door to expanding the influence that movies can have on popular culture. It also showed that there were many more ways to profit from a movie that by just the film itself (good or bad). They is that it made Science Fiction an acceptable format, Fantasy took a lot longer.
The interview you liked to shows just how immature some of the staff here at/. really is. Worse it reflects upon us a readers of the site as the people being interviewed have to wonder if we are all a bunch of petty/snide damn-the-system type people instead of being professionals that many of us are.
If anything this interview was too lighthearted to get anywhere. The brush off of the harddrive wipes would have have Rob frothing if it were a microsoft person. I really came away from this interview with little real knowledge that wasn't available and certainly little of his personality. I did get to see R act like a groupie so not all is lost:)
My note about the previous interview is here: http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl? sid=139 521&cid=11678534
You jump around on various fan boards for MEO and they are all nearly dead or on life support. There has been very little news of late that means anything.
This announcement isn't what I would label as "good news". Its more like "uh news", as in - whats going on here.
Still any hobbit movie would not be out till 07 or even 08 which would be to late to lift this game. Worse Turbine doesn't have a good track record or reputation with the gamers. Inside the industry they might but gamers shun them in general.
What is even more interesting is that their older titles are being distributed by SOE. I figure this is because turbine doesn't have the name presence at the retail level to get their games carried for a good rate. What are they planning on doing with MEO then?
If I am renting then I do not have a problem with DRM. If I am buying then I do. The only way to protect the consumer who buys in a DRM world is to have a disinterested third party holding the keys should the seller vanish. Even then this is not a great solution as it still means a delay.
The reason DRM exists is because too many people cannot be trusted to not give away COPIES of stuff they do not have the right to distribute copies of. Its the bad apples that make it easy for companies to justify DRM.
I would accept watermarking provided they was an absolute method to track it back to my purchase. A personal watermark that all media I buy online being tagged with would be a better solution. That key would have to be transportable between different types of hardware, have to be unique, and have to have a way I could prove its mine beyond doubt.
I haven't heard too many cases of a publisher ditching a sure thing. So is MEO in trouble? It has been pushed back how many times? Now we have a "2006" release date.
It sounds more and more that MEO has had its premise rewritten more than once. I would guess they could not nail down a time period to play in that doesn't result in players knowing that regardless what you do history is written.
The game is already irrevelvant as the movies are more than a year old. By the time the game comes out we will have had over 2 years since the movies. Do they really think that the name will bring enough people into the genre? Star Wars Online did well but everywhere you turn there is something Star Wars. The movies are current and there are many console and PC games to keep interest up. What does MEO have to gen interest?
I think Vivendi didn't like the progress Turbine is making and didn't want to get into a no win position. I wonder if Vivendi would have forced the game out early if they had kept the publishing rights as Atari did to Artifact Entertainment with Horizons.
and I know of a few friends who lost their jobs contracting. All of it was because of lawsuits like this. We did give most of them the chance to become full time employees but a few decided to strike out on their own.
Now the only contracts we do are short term, IF AT ALL. We now hire consulting companies who bring a solution with them. This can be the same as having 2 or 3 contracters but it avoids the legal issue of whom do these people actually work for.
Too many courts are more than willing to jump on the side of the plantiffs. Combine that with lottery minded juries and the system is ripe for squeezing.
A contract is a contract. I cannot ever recall being forced to actually work for a company I did not choose to. The suits are usually the recourse of people who did nothing to protect their marketability.
While I would like all works performed for the government that are not of National Security importance to be more open I don't think it is necessary.
A lot of work peformed for government agencies is contractual with businesses. These same businesses employ tricks of the trade and such to deliver what is required. To have them detail how the work is just suicidal. The same goes for software they develop for use by the government. Unless specifically addressed in the contract I do not believe there is a right to disclose the code, let alone make it available to the public.
That last part is key. Even if they disclose the source to the government there is no obligation on either party to make it public.
This argument that they have something to hide is childish. It is designed to provide no leeway. Simply put, once labeled as such what other option other than disclosure exist? You might as well say "You have to release it, its for the children" and then proceed to use whole "hates kids, wants kids to die" guilt trip that is far to common in politics today.
Summary. Release it if only its an upfront requirement of the project and agreed upon by both parties. In the future a requirement by law that all government projects must be fully disclosed to include the source of any software may be nice but I bet it would have so many exceptions written into it that it would result only in a "feel-good" law.
but I may buy one as a second computer. I do not think it will be a Mac-Mini as that seems too gimped for anything more than what my grandparents would use a PC for. Too me it appears to be nothing more than an "internet" appliance. I understand it could do more but the PC-build it myself in me screams anything not-expandable it tossable as well.
So here is the question, I figure a G5 of some sort is in my future. I do not need a monitor, my 2001fp from Dell should be compatible, right? I would like to be able to play a good FPS on occasion and maybe a mmorpg or too. What kind of Geforce/Radeon can I get for a Mac. Is there a "Mac" penalty price? What MMORPGs are actually playable native to the Mac? Also, is there a C# compiler on the Mac or does the Mac come with a good compiler and IDE?
You cannot burn those to MP3 CDs. You must first burn them as regular audio cd music, rip those back to MP3 format, then you can burn them to a MP3 CD.
It is a overy convoluted process that should not be required in the first place. Just watermark the damn song when written to a MP3 CD. I just to play the music I am legally entitled to in my car. Jumping through hoops is not a valued expenditure of my time.
If you make something and don't share it your in the wrong? Sorry but that doesn't work.
The whole twisted idea of trying to disassociate ownership from original works is a very selfish position.
Those pebbles that came off the mountain only did so because someone put the effort into doing so. If you want their pebbles you can meet their requirements or go get your own. You however do not have a right to take their pebbles just because you might have/could have/would have done it. Anyone who wants to take the effort/work of others without compensation is just a selfish bastard.
Delay could be used for focus but for other task I would suggest an icon similar to a right arrow/chevron/etc that once highlighted executes the task.
In some cases we already see delay based options with the behaviour of the mouse over the corners of windows. (don't know what it does on Mac, I have never used one)
Georgia 400 was built as a toll road. The tolls were only to go to maintaining the road and paying it off. Then came the secret contracts that were leaked where the money was being used for "other" things. Now they just pass laws to circumvent promises made before.
Once a government gets a taxing authority THEY NEVER WILLFULLY give it up. That is one reason SPLOST (special local option sales taxes) fail miserably anymore. No one wants to vote them in as they government still raises taxes even after getting a tax they claim negates the need for further ones.
Governments for the most part no longer serve the people, they serve themselves. They are just the bigger example of what went wrong with our schools.
When the customer is no longer the focus and your existance is then its time to shut it down.
That is probably the biggest reason why I so hate all these municipal "Wi-Fi" ideas. They start out with good intentions but by the end of the day they are glorified job programs rife with nepotism and corruptness.
As for the Big Dig, what pissed me off the most is how many people just shrugged as if waste of this sort was to be expected and therefor "OK". What does that tell you about our society?
Are they counting call centers too?
on
Women Leaving I.T.
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Two different call centers in my area closed down and both of those who lost jobs were women. My understanding was that were more women than men at both. So I am curious what is counted as IT in this report...
As for maternity leave. We have 3 out now and one more going by July here. Two are out on 12 week maternity leaves. This is where I disagree with the article. We, like other companies, simply don't move that fast. Yes a lot can go by in 12 weeks but most of it is meaningless. There might be one major change, maybe two if some managers actually got out of their own way. Two of them have come back once already from an earlier pregnancy and nothing really changed here other than they have a few more missed days throughout the year.
Because the twits that would gank people only half their levels do it to the NPCs that are half their level.
Sorry but the dishonor system needs to have teeth or this continued behaviour is going to ruin the game for many people. On a RP server there are raids by level 50-60s into newbie areas all the time! Ganking the NPCs which prevents players who cannot hope to challenge these losers.
As for the issue about why people complain about ganking people half their level and such. Mainly because for all the claims that people must PvP to find a real challenge in a MMORPG won't pass the laugh test as these same PvP advocates seem to only engange in contests where there is no challenge.
Where is the challenge in ganking people 20+ levels lower than you? Where is the challenge in ganking NPCS 20+ levels lower than you?
Anarchy is no way to run PvP in a MMORPG and that is just what Blizzard is offering. Without systems in place to curtail asshat behaviour what reason is there for players to play right? NONE.
Blizzard is no different than any other company, they have no end game and they plan to cover for it by relying on PvP. Lets look at the logic of that, you want to rely on the one part of the game that generates the most CSR issues as your end game? The one that causes the most worth to thwart exploits?
I wish that Blizzard would confine PvP on PvE/RP servers to Battlegrounds AND duels. (but they need options to let people to decline duels automatically). Allowing people to raid NPCs in starter and middle level areas only fosters grief.
Look, they have panels of experts who rank the continued viability of these spacecraft and Voyagers and Ulysseus rank near the bottom of the pile.
It sounds really easy to say, lets just extend the support because its only a "measely" X million dollars. Then come the insipid comparisons to how much we spend on project Y, program Z, or war #1.
How do you think we end up with super silly budgets? Nothing gets cut. There is always someone who will stand up and cry that it is silly or downright stupid to cut support.
This is what is happening here. We have systems that cannot return data in sufficient detail for what we spend on them. Who knows, maybe some of the peeople who are watching these systems can provide better insight elsewhere, perhaps some are just hanging on because they can't be useful anywhere.
there comes a time when even the sacred cows have to be let go. I am not say that these are sacred cows but let me try one more comparison.
How many here think we should ditch the shuttle (I raise my own hand). Numerous posters comment how its a just a fraudulent waste of money while a whole 'nother crowd pops up and screams that if we do we might as well shut down NASA --- (strawman arguments usually)
This is a question about the limits of local laws have over content available from sources outside of their domain.
Yes the post maligned this guy. They may have even lied about it. It does look like they reported what they had without researching it completely. This type of stuff happens all the time.
The key issue here is that this guy is sueing in Ontario, where he did not live at the time the article was created. Worse he is sueing because the article is still available through archives.
Bad reporting should be identified but it should never be removed from the public's access. The slippery slope is that if you start to curtail the availability to erroneous documents because they damage someone how long before truthful stuff gets edited or restricted in distribution?
The only way to prevent offense to people in this persons situation would be to expunge the story from all sources accessible from the net. That is not a solution that I even believe is possible.
Say you write some nasty stuff about my company's customer service or product. I then reply on this anti-me site that after carefully researching it I find most if not all your claims are exaggerated or false.
What do you think is going to happen? You feel you have a valid complaint, I cannot find one. Hence I have wasted even more time trying to fix a problem that is past the point of fixing.
One thing I know about customer complaint sites is this, there is little difference between what goes on there and what some fool at a bar claims he is going tell his boss the next time said boss comes up with a boneheaded idea.
I see that someone else already chimed in but seeing your post marked Insightful shows that too many people here have no concept of what a Libertarian is.
The first rule is that Libertarians do not look to the government for a solution that can be provided by the people, which in turn means companies/corporations.
We do not look to take money at gunpoint from another just so we have something without fully paying for it.
No what you are is this offshoot that calls itself Libertarian but is nothing more than a bunch of socialists who are trying to co-op a superior name are yours is tarnished beyond all belief.
Mixed economies do not include governments where the government uses its unfair advantage of monopoloy, emininent domain, and threat of jail to compete.
Slashdot Mirror
Hence developers need publishers. Specifically publishers who have blanket deals with retailers to move the merchandise.
The majority of purchases are at retail stores. The online distribution market isn't mature enough as there are few issues that have to be overcome.
1. Not all customers for a game have broadband access.
2. Some games are still too large to download in a timely manner even with broadband.
3. Too many people expect a discount when using a downloaded version while completely ignoring the fact that it does cost the seller money for the bandwidth used.
4. Most people still want something they can touch.
5. Many games would receive no notice if it were not for publishers.
All those things and more stand in the way.
We will get Hitler's little Aryian nations eventually. The difference will be that it will not be a single race.
The issues that arise are detectability of traits not favored by traditional parents. I can see people lining up to stop pregnacies that result in brain damaged or geneticially defective children. What happens if we find out we can determine the likelihood a child will be more inclined to violence or gay (please I am not trying to associate the two). What then? Do we allow for the screening of some traits and not others? Might be interesting to see if designer children lead to people having children whose ethnic traits differ from the parents.
Unless it is under contract to provide an immediate service that is needed. Just putting money out there for funding development would be wrong and we would have nothing more than the waste of taxpayer money that funds "art".
In other words, if there is a purpose/need for the software then by all means fund it under contract for that purpose. This could include changing educational programs to only use OSS for teaching of students on how to program. If however the reason is just to buy votes, keep unemployed "artists" from starving, or there is no need then do not use the taxpayers dollars on it.
I just want to avoid a situation like what we have here in Georgia where one local county spent more on art than their roads. Boy does it show. Want to find a government building - just look for the ugly art or a building that looks more expensive than a bank. I used to think it was just a saying.
They have had nearly 5 months to fix their problems. They are pulling in how much per month? I haven't seen them stop charging people until they get it right. Sure they credit a day or two here but they continue to charge.
That 1.5m looks impressive until you realize its worldwide and the server problems most are concerned with are those in North America. We don't know what their status is in Korea and elsewhere. As for the unexpected NA numbers, well they had enough hardware on hand for 80+ servers which tells me they did anticipate a crush.
There is NO end game for WOW except PvP and Battlegrounds. New game or not they should have had enough in place to satisfy the players. Instead they released before they were done, again a common theme, and have decided to let the players sit and spin until they get the updates out.
So quit apologizing for them. Your only hurting the fans and Blizzard isn't going to reward you for your kissing up. If anything they sit back, chuckle, and think "how nice to have fanbois to eat our shit". This is a big corporation, they are selling a service, they damn well better get it right and quickly if they keep charging for it.
First and foremost was the until Star Wars came out Science Fiction was not considered a viable movie format. Mostly it was ridiculed or left to low budget areas. 2001 should not be counted as its effect was totally different.
Star Wars also opened up the door to expanding the influence that movies can have on popular culture. It also showed that there were many more ways to profit from a movie that by just the film itself (good or bad). They is that it made Science Fiction an acceptable format, Fantasy took a lot longer.
While the movies were amazing they did not have the effect on culture that Star Wars did when it came out.
As for MEO, I was under the impression there wasn't any PvP. Has this changed?
The interview you liked to shows just how immature some of the staff here at /. really is. Worse it reflects upon us a readers of the site as the people being interviewed have to wonder if we are all a bunch of petty/snide damn-the-system type people instead of being professionals that many of us are.
:)
? sid=139 521&cid=11678534
If anything this interview was too lighthearted to get anywhere. The brush off of the harddrive wipes would have have Rob frothing if it were a microsoft person. I really came away from this interview with little real knowledge that wasn't available and certainly little of his personality. I did get to see R act like a groupie so not all is lost
My note about the previous interview is here:
http://interviews.slashdot.org/comments.pl
Your threshold settings by chance?
You jump around on various fan boards for MEO and they are all nearly dead or on life support. There has been very little news of late that means anything.
This announcement isn't what I would label as "good news". Its more like "uh news", as in - whats going on here.
Still any hobbit movie would not be out till 07 or even 08 which would be to late to lift this game. Worse Turbine doesn't have a good track record or reputation with the gamers. Inside the industry they might but gamers shun them in general.
What is even more interesting is that their older titles are being distributed by SOE. I figure this is because turbine doesn't have the name presence at the retail level to get their games carried for a good rate. What are they planning on doing with MEO then?
That is the key to the DRM argument.
If I am renting then I do not have a problem with DRM. If I am buying then I do. The only way to protect the consumer who buys in a DRM world is to have a disinterested third party holding the keys should the seller vanish. Even then this is not a great solution as it still means a delay.
The reason DRM exists is because too many people cannot be trusted to not give away COPIES of stuff they do not have the right to distribute copies of. Its the bad apples that make it easy for companies to justify DRM.
I would accept watermarking provided they was an absolute method to track it back to my purchase. A personal watermark that all media I buy online being tagged with would be a better solution. That key would have to be transportable between different types of hardware, have to be unique, and have to have a way I could prove its mine beyond doubt.
I haven't heard too many cases of a publisher ditching a sure thing. So is MEO in trouble? It has been pushed back how many times? Now we have a "2006" release date.
It sounds more and more that MEO has had its premise rewritten more than once. I would guess they could not nail down a time period to play in that doesn't result in players knowing that regardless what you do history is written.
The game is already irrevelvant as the movies are more than a year old. By the time the game comes out we will have had over 2 years since the movies. Do they really think that the name will bring enough people into the genre? Star Wars Online did well but everywhere you turn there is something Star Wars. The movies are current and there are many console and PC games to keep interest up. What does MEO have to gen interest?
I think Vivendi didn't like the progress Turbine is making and didn't want to get into a no win position. I wonder if Vivendi would have forced the game out early if they had kept the publishing rights as Atari did to Artifact Entertainment with Horizons.
and I know of a few friends who lost their jobs contracting. All of it was because of lawsuits like this. We did give most of them the chance to become full time employees but a few decided to strike out on their own.
Now the only contracts we do are short term, IF AT ALL. We now hire consulting companies who bring a solution with them. This can be the same as having 2 or 3 contracters but it avoids the legal issue of whom do these people actually work for.
Too many courts are more than willing to jump on the side of the plantiffs. Combine that with lottery minded juries and the system is ripe for squeezing.
A contract is a contract. I cannot ever recall being forced to actually work for a company I did not choose to. The suits are usually the recourse of people who did nothing to protect their marketability.
While I would like all works performed for the government that are not of National Security importance to be more open I don't think it is necessary.
A lot of work peformed for government agencies is contractual with businesses. These same businesses employ tricks of the trade and such to deliver what is required. To have them detail how the work is just suicidal. The same goes for software they develop for use by the government. Unless specifically addressed in the contract I do not believe there is a right to disclose the code, let alone make it available to the public.
That last part is key. Even if they disclose the source to the government there is no obligation on either party to make it public.
This argument that they have something to hide is childish. It is designed to provide no leeway. Simply put, once labeled as such what other option other than disclosure exist? You might as well say "You have to release it, its for the children" and then proceed to use whole "hates kids, wants kids to die" guilt trip that is far to common in politics today.
Summary. Release it if only its an upfront requirement of the project and agreed upon by both parties. In the future a requirement by law that all government projects must be fully disclosed to include the source of any software may be nice but I bet it would have so many exceptions written into it that it would result only in a "feel-good" law.
but I may buy one as a second computer. I do not think it will be a Mac-Mini as that seems too gimped for anything more than what my grandparents would use a PC for. Too me it appears to be nothing more than an "internet" appliance. I understand it could do more but the PC-build it myself in me screams anything not-expandable it tossable as well.
So here is the question, I figure a G5 of some sort is in my future. I do not need a monitor, my 2001fp from Dell should be compatible, right? I would like to be able to play a good FPS on occasion and maybe a mmorpg or too. What kind of Geforce/Radeon can I get for a Mac. Is there a "Mac" penalty price? What MMORPGs are actually playable native to the Mac? Also, is there a C# compiler on the Mac or does the Mac come with a good compiler and IDE?
is that most geeks would then have equal size arms.
You cannot burn those to MP3 CDs. You must first burn them as regular audio cd music, rip those back to MP3 format, then you can burn them to a MP3 CD.
It is a overy convoluted process that should not be required in the first place. Just watermark the damn song when written to a MP3 CD. I just to play the music I am legally entitled to in my car. Jumping through hoops is not a valued expenditure of my time.
If you make something and don't share it your in the wrong? Sorry but that doesn't work.
The whole twisted idea of trying to disassociate ownership from original works is a very selfish position.
Those pebbles that came off the mountain only did so because someone put the effort into doing so. If you want their pebbles you can meet their requirements or go get your own. You however do not have a right to take their pebbles just because you might have/could have/would have done it. Anyone who wants to take the effort/work of others without compensation is just a selfish bastard.
Delay could be used for focus but for other task I would suggest an icon similar to a right arrow/chevron/etc that once highlighted executes the task.
In some cases we already see delay based options with the behaviour of the mouse over the corners of windows. (don't know what it does on Mac, I have never used one)
Georgia 400 was built as a toll road. The tolls were only to go to maintaining the road and paying it off. Then came the secret contracts that were leaked where the money was being used for "other" things. Now they just pass laws to circumvent promises made before.
Once a government gets a taxing authority THEY NEVER WILLFULLY give it up. That is one reason SPLOST (special local option sales taxes) fail miserably anymore. No one wants to vote them in as they government still raises taxes even after getting a tax they claim negates the need for further ones.
Governments for the most part no longer serve the people, they serve themselves. They are just the bigger example of what went wrong with our schools.
When the customer is no longer the focus and your existance is then its time to shut it down.
That is probably the biggest reason why I so hate all these municipal "Wi-Fi" ideas. They start out with good intentions but by the end of the day they are glorified job programs rife with nepotism and corruptness.
As for the Big Dig, what pissed me off the most is how many people just shrugged as if waste of this sort was to be expected and therefor "OK". What does that tell you about our society?
Two different call centers in my area closed down and both of those who lost jobs were women. My understanding was that were more women than men at both. So I am curious what is counted as IT in this report...
:)
As for maternity leave. We have 3 out now and one more going by July here. Two are out on 12 week maternity leaves. This is where I disagree with the article. We, like other companies, simply don't move that fast. Yes a lot can go by in 12 weeks but most of it is meaningless. There might be one major change, maybe two if some managers actually got out of their own way. Two of them have come back once already from an earlier pregnancy and nothing really changed here other than they have a few more missed days throughout the year.
Leaving in droves? Maybe they got smart
Because the twits that would gank people only half their levels do it to the NPCs that are half their level.
Sorry but the dishonor system needs to have teeth or this continued behaviour is going to ruin the game for many people. On a RP server there are raids by level 50-60s into newbie areas all the time! Ganking the NPCs which prevents players who cannot hope to challenge these losers.
As for the issue about why people complain about ganking people half their level and such. Mainly because for all the claims that people must PvP to find a real challenge in a MMORPG won't pass the laugh test as these same PvP advocates seem to only engange in contests where there is no challenge.
Where is the challenge in ganking people 20+ levels lower than you?
Where is the challenge in ganking NPCS 20+ levels lower than you?
Anarchy is no way to run PvP in a MMORPG and that is just what Blizzard is offering. Without systems in place to curtail asshat behaviour what reason is there for players to play right? NONE.
Blizzard is no different than any other company, they have no end game and they plan to cover for it by relying on PvP. Lets look at the logic of that, you want to rely on the one part of the game that generates the most CSR issues as your end game? The one that causes the most worth to thwart exploits?
I wish that Blizzard would confine PvP on PvE/RP servers to Battlegrounds AND duels. (but they need options to let people to decline duels automatically). Allowing people to raid NPCs in starter and middle level areas only fosters grief.
Look, they have panels of experts who rank the continued viability of these spacecraft and Voyagers and Ulysseus rank near the bottom of the pile.
It sounds really easy to say, lets just extend the support because its only a "measely" X million dollars. Then come the insipid comparisons to how much we spend on project Y, program Z, or war #1.
How do you think we end up with super silly budgets? Nothing gets cut. There is always someone who will stand up and cry that it is silly or downright stupid to cut support.
This is what is happening here. We have systems that cannot return data in sufficient detail for what we spend on them. Who knows, maybe some of the peeople who are watching these systems can provide better insight elsewhere, perhaps some are just hanging on because they can't be useful anywhere.
there comes a time when even the sacred cows have to be let go. I am not say that these are sacred cows but let me try one more comparison.
How many here think we should ditch the shuttle (I raise my own hand). Numerous posters comment how its a just a fraudulent waste of money while a whole 'nother crowd pops up and screams that if we do we might as well shut down NASA --- (strawman arguments usually)
So, let them go.
This is a question about the limits of local laws have over content available from sources outside of their domain.
Yes the post maligned this guy. They may have even lied about it. It does look like they reported what they had without researching it completely. This type of stuff happens all the time.
The key issue here is that this guy is sueing in Ontario, where he did not live at the time the article was created. Worse he is sueing because the article is still available through archives.
Bad reporting should be identified but it should never be removed from the public's access. The slippery slope is that if you start to curtail the availability to erroneous documents because they damage someone how long before truthful stuff gets edited or restricted in distribution?
The only way to prevent offense to people in this persons situation would be to expunge the story from all sources accessible from the net. That is not a solution that I even believe is possible.
Think about it.
Say you write some nasty stuff about my company's customer service or product. I then reply on this anti-me site that after carefully researching it I find most if not all your claims are exaggerated or false.
What do you think is going to happen? You feel you have a valid complaint, I cannot find one. Hence I have wasted even more time trying to fix a problem that is past the point of fixing.
One thing I know about customer complaint sites is this, there is little difference between what goes on there and what some fool at a bar claims he is going tell his boss the next time said boss comes up with a boneheaded idea.
I see that someone else already chimed in but seeing your post marked Insightful shows that too many people here have no concept of what a Libertarian is.
The first rule is that Libertarians do not look to the government for a solution that can be provided by the people, which in turn means companies/corporations.
We do not look to take money at gunpoint from another just so we have something without fully paying for it.
No what you are is this offshoot that calls itself Libertarian but is nothing more than a bunch of socialists who are trying to co-op a superior name are yours is tarnished beyond all belief.
Mixed economies do not include governments where the government uses its unfair advantage of monopoloy, emininent domain, and threat of jail to compete.