This is an interesting idea, but unfortunately it has a flaw. I haven't looked, but I have a rather strong suspicion that hackers have key generators for Quake III. Hence, someone else could give you a bad name using their pirated copy of the Quake III software and your key. I don't have Quake III, hence I don't know how many bits their key is, but even if it is quite long there is still a chance. And actual valid keyspace will be significantly smaller than the size of the key depending on what sort of algorithm is used.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Actually, fusion does work on earth. I've heard of working experimental fusion reactors as long as 6-7 years ago, though they get very little press. The reason: right now they use more power than they produce. I watched a lecture by one fellow who was working for one of these experimental reactors. He seemed hopeful that they would have the problems sorted out by 2010 - 2015, but I don't know enough about the goings on in fusion to comment on whether that is realistic.
Who owns my Avatar? AvatarMe Ltd owns the copyright to all avatars made in the AvatarBooth. On downloading your Avatar, AvatarMe Ltd gives you permission to use it.
This seems pretty slimey to me. They say they won't sell your avatar without permission, but then, why do they need to claim ownership of it? Highly suspicious.
There were screenshots at the first URL listed, but that server seems to have died. I managed to look at one before it went. I wasn't all that impressed.
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Anonymous said: There is such thing as a natural heirarchy, that would exist even within an anarchist society (although some would argue otherwise), but the difference is that, apart from their charisma, these "leaders" would not have the advantage of violence to back up their decisions the way they do today.
But as far as I can tell, this is not true. Anyone who has ever been bullied knows better. Bullies need no system to legitimize their actions, the fact that their bigger/stronger/are heavily armed/etc is more than enough. Anarchy would not be anarchy for very long - individuals like these would rapidly assert control over domains, form clans/gangs which re-established a power hierarchy, and the average person is back to being yoked by petty tyrants.
What do you think some of the militant militias would do if the US government ceased to exist? Would they say, "Ho, hum, I guess we can all get along now." I rather doubt it. More likely they would dance a little jig, then take over their local town and shoot whoever it was that had opinions they didn't like. And most of said town would probably join them, because that's the power these kinds of groups have. Given a choice of join or die, most people will join, then justify their position by convincing themselves that the group is right.
Isn't it the least bit curious that there doesn't seem to be anywhere on the planet in a state of anarchy for any significant period of time? There is certainly compelling evidence that human group dynamics and social structure are hierarchical. Don't get me wrong, the idea of not having a government, of everyone respecting each other's perspectives and ideas is a nice dream. I just don't see it happening. As the saying goes, lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Western democracies need reforms, of that I have no doubt, but they have a great deal to speak for them, as well. Before toppling a system that works reasonably well (and it does, people cite the brutality in the USA, or the plight of the homeless or the crime rate etc. etc. but these people need to experience what things are like in some non-democratic states...)
In any case... I have read some of the FAQ, but not all of it. So I will read through it at some point, and I'll investigate the CNT as well. Thanks for the info.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
I have a question here. It seems to me that there will -always- be hierarchies in human society. Lets say we get rid of government and form a "collective". There will still remain social leaders, and social followers. These social leaders may simply be charismatic individuals, or they may be religious officials etc. But they will always be there, and their say will always make things difficult (to put it mildly) for individuals they don't like or don't agree with.
It has always seemed to me that anarchy would be self defeating, all that would be accomplished by it would be the breaking up of government into hundreds or thousands of petty tyrant pseudo-states which are run by the 'in posse', in short a return to feudalism. Humans are opportunists - someone will always rise to fill any power vacuum. And there are always those gullible, or greedy enough to follow.
Also, one must reckon with the "tyranny of the majority". Lets say we abolish representational democracy, and let each person participate in government. What body prevents this 'democracy' from enacting laws which abolish the rights of individuals who think/behave differently? It would be completely democratic if 80% of the populous decided to ban bubble gum chewing. But that doesn't make it "right". The existing political system uses the courts to try and help balance this out, and I'll be the last to say it works perfectly. But I can't help but think I would be very afraid in a society which WAS actually ruled by "the people".
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
I wasn't aware of that, thanks for the heads up. (I remember seeing this quote years ago from a fortune. I don't recall there being a Gary Larson attribute in that, either.)
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Oh, yeah, attack me because I have a different point of view. Ah, the condescending attitude response...
I'm not being condescending - you're just plain wrong. Sorry. You are the one making arrogant presumptions here. Recall, I -live- in Canada (and have lived in the United States, and 6 other countries as well).
2.7 million individuals with French only backgroundspeaking. This figure is probably low. If you are not aware of the ethnic related problems in Quebec, I don't know where you've been. In any case, that's close to 10% of the population. Sum the 1996 figures for those with Asian origins and we get: 1,968,465. 1996 was prior to Hong Kong's reunification with PRC, this figure may have as much as doubled since that time. But lets say it hasn't. That's still another 7% of the population. Summing some of the other 'single origins' groups together yields another 1,225,630, 4.2%. So without accounting for those with multiple minority origins at all we're looking at over 20% of Canada's population representing ethnic minorities. Even with this very naive figure that's one person in five. Not exactly homogeneous, eh? In major cities such as Toronto, I would say it's more like 1 in 3, and in Vancouver 1 in 2.
Regards, Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
There are slums in Canada, but due to the tiny, largely homogeneous populatoin, they quite naturally are not as dilapidated as some slums in the U.S., although gentrification is remaking many of the U.S. slums into more livable areas.
Homogeneous? You obviously don't have any idea what you are talking about. Canada has it's problems, but so does the US. I won't advance Canada as being a "better" country than the United States, but most of your points here are complete nonsense and reflect the fact that you are basically talking out your ass. (Unfortunately not uncommon for slashdot users...)
Oh, and the country being large makes things MORE difficult, not easier. Trying to maintain infrastructure over the huge distances in Canada is a major strain on government funds. European countries have it easy in this respect.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
This is naive. To begin, income tax is not 60% in Canada.
The provincial tax brackets for BC are: $0 to $30,004 8.4% $30,004.01 to $60,009 12.4% Over $60,009 14.35%
Federal tax is: $0 to $29,590 17% $29,590 to $59,180 26% Over $59,180 29%
Thus the absolute maximum income tax you will pay is 43.35%. And you're only paying this if you are a complete fool. There are a million ways to get tax deductions, most Canadians pay a fraction of this amount. In addition, you can put money into RRSP's thus deferring paying tax on them until, for example, retirement at which point you are earning a reduced income so can probably make a smaller tax bracket.
I've lived in California and Ontario, Canada. The standard of living is higher here, despite constantly hearing from my US friends about how bad our taxes are.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Simple rule of real life that Bill Gates and Microsoft in general found out the hard way during their anti-trust trial.
If you don't want it quoted, don't say it. (Or write it down. Anywhere.)
This holds especially true in a public forum. Anything posted to Slashdot falls under the category of fair use for reprint. They should go ahead and publish.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Also, I've seen these things for sale for $700-800 Canadian in retail stores in Ottawa. So their definitely not only available in Japan. However, the model I saw wasn't capable of recording the entire theoretical limit of a DVD, only 3 or 4 gigs in fact if I remember correctly. (Although admittedly this is an improvement over CD's.) I can't remember if the model I saw was a Panasonic or not but I saw it last Christmas.
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
It's not as simple as you make it sound. Yes, you can probably buy a local band's music for a reasonable price. However, if that local band ever wants to be able to move beyond it's local band status they HAVE to sign a contract with one of the RIAA's member companies. At that point they also sign away any rights they have to distribute their music on their own, regardless of whether they _want_ fans to have access to their music at fair prices.
The libertarian recourse in this sort of situation is typically that they should "start their own distribution company". Small, starving start up bands don't have these kinds of resources, if they did they would have done it all ready. This is one area where Libertarianism is terribly naive.
Because of the monopoly status of the RIAA musicians have only two choices. Either remain insignificant forever, or sell out to the recording industry.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
In the ideal libertarian world, you and I could start a distribution service and enjoy unfettered access to the retail channels.
We could? Not if the major company requires retailers to agree not to deal with other distribution services, using their leverage and power as a monopoly leader to enforce the agreement. Eg. "You either deal only with us, or you don't deal with us at all." If the major company has a large enough place in the marketplace, no retailer will be able to abandon them completely and stay in business.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Do you really want a gig of RDRAM though?:P Especially with DDR PC133 SDRAM close on the horizon. . .
Mmm, can you say 2.2GB/s of memory bandwidth? (or something close to that):> Lower latency than Rambus, too. Serial. Ptheh. What's up with the recent obsession of converting things to serial? I see serial IDE cables just over the horizon too.
Still, if a lot of people go for the Rambus upgrade option I wonder if the stock of rambus will hold up. There aren't many manufacturers for it, and I don't get the feeling there is a lot of rambus memory stockpiled.
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
I don't think there are any stability problems with the Athlon itself. The only trouble I've had with mine have been related to 3D games, and I'll get to that in a minute.:) As far as heat and stability of the chip itself, I'd give it 2 thumbs up. My 550 seems to run just fine in 30 degree+ weather. It was a full retail version so came with the AMD heatsink and cooling fan. Nothing special, but not bad either.
Motherboards are an entirely different issue. I have an ASUS K7M. I don't think I'd recommend this, or any other AMD640 based board for a server. VIA and AMD are unfortunately not well known for making high quality chipsets. The issues that plagued Super Socket 7 seem to have carried over to early generation Athlon boards. Most of these problems are AGP related, so not much concern to a server, but one must ask if they screwed up AGP, what else did they screw up? Also, Intel traditionally makes at least one chipset which "optimizes" for server performance and provides better IO performance. For example the 430HX for Pentium class processors. No such "server" chipset exists for the Athlon to my knowledge, although its possible some motherboard companies are looking at building specialty motherboards with higher quality parts (voltage regulators etc.) to suit the server environment. I certainly hope so.
I haven't heard much about the latest generation of KX133 based Athlon boards, but with any luck these have eliminated the bugs of the AMD640 chipset. I would recommend checking out the usual suspects of tomshardware.com, anandtech.com, sharkyextreme.com and dejanews to look for reports of instability with KX133 boards.
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Music artists put a lot of time and effort into producing a work of art which they then allow the general public to enjoy. That is the important point here - they allow the public to listen to. As it is their work, they decide how they want people to obtain and use said work, and anyone that believes otherwise is just condoning theft in one of its many forms.
Bullshit. If I buy a car, I have a right to do whatever I please with it so long as it doesn't harm others. If I want to cut it into pieces and bury it under my lawn thats my right. If I want to listen to Metallica music I've purchased a license for I have a right to do that -HOWEVER- I feel like doing it, backwards, upside down, in space, underwater and in MP3 or ANY other format I feel like. If Metallica doesn't like this they can stop selling their music. As soon as Metallica sells licenses to their music they lose any say over how people use said licenses, just as Toyota can't tell me what I have to do with my truck after I bought it.
The RIAA provides needed services for artists, I agree. They are also a Monopoly worse than Microsoft, there -IS- no competition, and there is no question that they fix prices. That's an anti-trust case I wish would happen. The lack of choice is bad for consumers and bad for artists.
As for Metallica I think they've made a PR mistake. It is not like they are starving artists, and I doubt mp3 racketeering has affected their album sales in the least. I've lost a lot of respect for them getting all hot and bothered over this mp3 issue. Anyone who is a Metallica fan also buys their albums, both to support the band and because CD's sound better. Anyone who is not wouldn't buy their album regardless so there is no lost revenue. Why waste time and alienate fans? I have Metallica mp3's of albums I own, many downloaded from Napster, because its a lot faster than ripping my own on a slow computer.
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
The reason for installing this new 'glass cockpit' is not merely so that shuttles can look all high-tech and cool. There have been constant complaints from shuttle pilots that the old control systems tended towards information overload. There was too much irrelevant data, and readings that were relevant were not prominent enough on the control panel. The new system will presumably have been designed to address this issue: the most relevant data to a given situation should be presented to the pilots on the display panels (presumably 'relevance' of data will be something which is decided by computer after a lot of simulations and consultations with shuttle pilots), while at the same time if they do need other data it should also be relatively quick and easy for them to access from the panels. Remember, by definition when they built the first shuttle nobody had flown it before. Now they have 20 years worth of shuttle pilots to consult in building a system that suits their needs precisely. Control systems can evolve, and should, just like everything else.
This has always been my problem with what I've seen of Ultima Online and Everquest. There isn't much in the way of 'role playing' actually involved. It's just develop a character by bashing monsters. Diablo scaled up to thousands or tens of thousands of users. Fun, but not in the way a good role play can be where you actually have to think like your character. Unfortunately not many people understand how to role play properly, let alone desire to do so. Never the less, I wonder if they will release/sell the server so that people could set up their own small scale 'invite only' RPG's using this idea. I suspect not. In any case, none of these types of games can have the flexibility of a text based environment like a MUSH.
Actually, my first thought was 'will it run on the Playstation II'. There is no reason why they couldn't develop clients for this to run on any platform they wanted, and with Sony involved it would give them access to an awful lot of gamers who might not have computer systems capable of meeting the system requirements for the game.
I'm actually inclined to think the opposite. I can understand why they want a monthly charge (although I think it's a little pricey given the service provided). They need to keep the servers alive 'indefinitely'. True, they can assume that interest in the game will decrease as the game gets older, but with no new sales coming in paying for server admins, server room space and bandwidth is going to be a constant drain on their coffers. And if they ever shut down the service you can bet gamers would cry bloody murder.
What I think is that they shouldn't charge for the game CD at all. I was actually shocked when I found out they were charging for the Ultima Online software itself. That doesn't make sense to me. The idea is to hook people into paying a 'low' monthly fee for using the network service. Asking for a full software title's price upfront and then charging a monthly fee seems excessive to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Here is a link to a European fusion project: JET
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Who owns my Avatar? AvatarMe Ltd owns the copyright to all avatars made in the AvatarBooth. On downloading your Avatar, AvatarMe Ltd gives you permission to use it.
This seems pretty slimey to me. They say they won't sell your avatar without permission, but then, why do they need to claim ownership of it? Highly suspicious.
There were screenshots at the first URL listed, but that server seems to have died. I managed to look at one before it went. I wasn't all that impressed.
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
There is such thing as a natural heirarchy, that would exist even within an anarchist society (although some would argue otherwise), but the difference is that, apart from their charisma, these "leaders" would not have the advantage of violence to back up their decisions the way they do today.
But as far as I can tell, this is not true. Anyone who has ever been bullied knows better. Bullies need no system to legitimize their actions, the fact that their bigger/stronger/are heavily armed/etc is more than enough. Anarchy would not be anarchy for very long - individuals like these would rapidly assert control over domains, form clans/gangs which re-established a power hierarchy, and the average person is back to being yoked by petty tyrants.
What do you think some of the militant militias would do if the US government ceased to exist? Would they say, "Ho, hum, I guess we can all get along now." I rather doubt it. More likely they would dance a little jig, then take over their local town and shoot whoever it was that had opinions they didn't like. And most of said town would probably join them, because that's the power these kinds of groups have. Given a choice of join or die, most people will join, then justify their position by convincing themselves that the group is right.
Isn't it the least bit curious that there doesn't seem to be anywhere on the planet in a state of anarchy for any significant period of time? There is certainly compelling evidence that human group dynamics and social structure are hierarchical. Don't get me wrong, the idea of not having a government, of everyone respecting each other's perspectives and ideas is a nice dream. I just don't see it happening. As the saying goes, lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Western democracies need reforms, of that I have no doubt, but they have a great deal to speak for them, as well. Before toppling a system that works reasonably well (and it does, people cite the brutality in the USA, or the plight of the homeless or the crime rate etc. etc. but these people need to experience what things are like in some non-democratic states...)
In any case... I have read some of the FAQ, but not all of it. So I will read through it at some point, and I'll investigate the CNT as well. Thanks for the info.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
It has always seemed to me that anarchy would be self defeating, all that would be accomplished by it would be the breaking up of government into hundreds or thousands of petty tyrant pseudo-states which are run by the 'in posse', in short a return to feudalism. Humans are opportunists - someone will always rise to fill any power vacuum. And there are always those gullible, or greedy enough to follow.
Also, one must reckon with the "tyranny of the majority". Lets say we abolish representational democracy, and let each person participate in government. What body prevents this 'democracy' from enacting laws which abolish the rights of individuals who think/behave differently? It would be completely democratic if 80% of the populous decided to ban bubble gum chewing. But that doesn't make it "right". The existing political system uses the courts to try and help balance this out, and I'll be the last to say it works perfectly. But I can't help but think I would be very afraid in a society which WAS actually ruled by "the people".
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
I'm not being condescending - you're just plain wrong. Sorry. You are the one making arrogant presumptions here. Recall, I -live- in Canada (and have lived in the United States, and 6 other countries as well).
Statistics Canada 1996 minority figures.
2.7 million individuals with French only backgroundspeaking. This figure is probably low. If you are not aware of the ethnic related problems in Quebec, I don't know where you've been. In any case, that's close to 10% of the population. Sum the 1996 figures for those with Asian origins and we get: 1,968,465. 1996 was prior to Hong Kong's reunification with PRC, this figure may have as much as doubled since that time. But lets say it hasn't. That's still another 7% of the population. Summing some of the other 'single origins' groups together yields another 1,225,630, 4.2%. So without accounting for those with multiple minority origins at all we're looking at over 20% of Canada's population representing ethnic minorities. Even with this very naive figure that's one person in five. Not exactly homogeneous, eh? In major cities such as Toronto, I would say it's more like 1 in 3, and in Vancouver 1 in 2.
Regards,
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Homogeneous? You obviously don't have any idea what you are talking about. Canada has it's problems, but so does the US. I won't advance Canada as being a "better" country than the United States, but most of your points here are complete nonsense and reflect the fact that you are basically talking out your ass. (Unfortunately not uncommon for slashdot users...)
Oh, and the country being large makes things MORE difficult, not easier. Trying to maintain infrastructure over the huge distances in Canada is a major strain on government funds. European countries have it easy in this respect.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
The provincial tax brackets for BC are:
$0 to $30,004 8.4%
$30,004.01 to $60,009 12.4%
Over $60,009 14.35%
Federal tax is:
$0 to $29,590 17%
$29,590 to $59,180 26%
Over $59,180 29%
Thus the absolute maximum income tax you will pay is 43.35%. And you're only paying this if you are a complete fool. There are a million ways to get tax deductions, most Canadians pay a fraction of this amount. In addition, you can put money into RRSP's thus deferring paying tax on them until, for example, retirement at which point you are earning a reduced income so can probably make a smaller tax bracket.
I've lived in California and Ontario, Canada. The standard of living is higher here, despite constantly hearing from my US friends about how bad our taxes are.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
If you don't want it quoted, don't say it. (Or write it down. Anywhere.)
This holds especially true in a public forum. Anything posted to Slashdot falls under the category of fair use for reprint. They should go ahead and publish.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
The libertarian recourse in this sort of situation is typically that they should "start their own distribution company". Small, starving start up bands don't have these kinds of resources, if they did they would have done it all ready. This is one area where Libertarianism is terribly naive.
Because of the monopoly status of the RIAA musicians have only two choices. Either remain insignificant forever, or sell out to the recording industry.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
We could? Not if the major company requires retailers to agree not to deal with other distribution services, using their leverage and power as a monopoly leader to enforce the agreement. Eg. "You either deal only with us, or you don't deal with us at all." If the major company has a large enough place in the marketplace, no retailer will be able to abandon them completely and stay in business.
Obasan
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Mmm, can you say 2.2GB/s of memory bandwidth? (or something close to that)
Still, if a lot of people go for the Rambus upgrade option I wonder if the stock of rambus will hold up. There aren't many manufacturers for it, and I don't get the feeling there is a lot of rambus memory stockpiled.
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Motherboards are an entirely different issue. I have an ASUS K7M. I don't think I'd recommend this, or any other AMD640 based board for a server. VIA and AMD are unfortunately not well known for making high quality chipsets. The issues that plagued Super Socket 7 seem to have carried over to early generation Athlon boards. Most of these problems are AGP related, so not much concern to a server, but one must ask if they screwed up AGP, what else did they screw up? Also, Intel traditionally makes at least one chipset which "optimizes" for server performance and provides better IO performance. For example the 430HX for Pentium class processors. No such "server" chipset exists for the Athlon to my knowledge, although its possible some motherboard companies are looking at building specialty motherboards with higher quality parts (voltage regulators etc.) to suit the server environment. I certainly hope so.
I haven't heard much about the latest generation of KX133 based Athlon boards, but with any luck these have eliminated the bugs of the AMD640 chipset. I would recommend checking out the usual suspects of tomshardware.com, anandtech.com, sharkyextreme.com and dejanews to look for reports of instability with KX133 boards.
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
Bullshit. If I buy a car, I have a right to do whatever I please with it so long as it doesn't harm others. If I want to cut it into pieces and bury it under my lawn thats my right. If I want to listen to Metallica music I've purchased a license for I have a right to do that -HOWEVER- I feel like doing it, backwards, upside down, in space, underwater and in MP3 or ANY other format I feel like. If Metallica doesn't like this they can stop selling their music. As soon as Metallica sells licenses to their music they lose any say over how people use said licenses, just as Toyota can't tell me what I have to do with my truck after I bought it.
The RIAA provides needed services for artists, I agree. They are also a Monopoly worse than Microsoft, there -IS- no competition, and there is no question that they fix prices. That's an anti-trust case I wish would happen. The lack of choice is bad for consumers and bad for artists.
As for Metallica I think they've made a PR mistake. It is not like they are starving artists, and I doubt mp3 racketeering has affected their album sales in the least. I've lost a lot of respect for them getting all hot and bothered over this mp3 issue. Anyone who is a Metallica fan also buys their albums, both to support the band and because CD's sound better. Anyone who is not wouldn't buy their album regardless so there is no lost revenue. Why waste time and alienate fans? I have Metallica mp3's of albums I own, many downloaded from Napster, because its a lot faster than ripping my own on a slow computer.
If a tree falls in the forest, and kills a mime, does anyone care?
The reason for installing this new 'glass cockpit' is not merely so that shuttles can look all high-tech and cool. There have been constant complaints from shuttle pilots that the old control systems tended towards information overload. There was too much irrelevant data, and readings that were relevant were not prominent enough on the control panel. The new system will presumably have been designed to address this issue: the most relevant data to a given situation should be presented to the pilots on the display panels (presumably 'relevance' of data will be something which is decided by computer after a lot of simulations and consultations with shuttle pilots), while at the same time if they do need other data it should also be relatively quick and easy for them to access from the panels. Remember, by definition when they built the first shuttle nobody had flown it before. Now they have 20 years worth of shuttle pilots to consult in building a system that suits their needs precisely. Control systems can evolve, and should, just like everything else.
This has always been my problem with what I've seen of Ultima Online and Everquest. There isn't much in the way of 'role playing' actually involved. It's just develop a character by bashing monsters. Diablo scaled up to thousands or tens of thousands of users. Fun, but not in the way a good role play can be where you actually have to think like your character. Unfortunately not many people understand how to role play properly, let alone desire to do so. Never the less, I wonder if they will release/sell the server so that people could set up their own small scale 'invite only' RPG's using this idea. I suspect not. In any case, none of these types of games can have the flexibility of a text based environment like a MUSH.
Actually, my first thought was 'will it run on the Playstation II'. There is no reason why they couldn't develop clients for this to run on any platform they wanted, and with Sony involved it would give them access to an awful lot of gamers who might not have computer systems capable of meeting the system requirements for the game.
I'm actually inclined to think the opposite. I can understand why they want a monthly charge (although I think it's a little pricey given the service provided). They need to keep the servers alive 'indefinitely'. True, they can assume that interest in the game will decrease as the game gets older, but with no new sales coming in paying for server admins, server room space and bandwidth is going to be a constant drain on their coffers. And if they ever shut down the service you can bet gamers would cry bloody murder.
What I think is that they shouldn't charge for the game CD at all. I was actually shocked when I found out they were charging for the Ultima Online software itself. That doesn't make sense to me. The idea is to hook people into paying a 'low' monthly fee for using the network service. Asking for a full software title's price upfront and then charging a monthly fee seems excessive to me.