Lots of people died on 9/11. That's bad. And I sure as hell don't want any more people to die.
But the reaction has just been silly.
It isn't like we've never had a terrorist attack here in the US before. It isn't like terrorism never existed before. There were several previous attempts to blow up the World Trade Center... And plenty of attacks on British soil over the years... And plenty of home-grown terrorism like the Unabomber and Mr. McVeigh and the anti-abortionists...
So now we're willing to trade prisoners off to different countries so they can be "interrogated" more creatively... Or we'll just torture them here at home instead... And we hold people for years without actually charging them with anything... And we listen in on innocent citizens... And harass people based on nothing more than their ethnicity or religion... And we have no problem trading tons of freedom for very little security...
The point of terrorism is to inspire fear. In that regard they've been amazingly successful.
We were originally told that the terrorists hate our freedom... So is that the plan then? Get rid of all our freedom and the terrorists will have no reason to attack us?
I have personally stopped flying. I'll drive anywhere I have to. Not solely because of the scanners or pat-downs... But because it's become such a tremendous inconvenience.
Used to be you could hop in a plane, snooze for a couple hours, and be at your destination. These days it's hours of lines, invasions of privacy, more waiting, delays, shuffling from one gate to another... It's easier just to drive.
Unfortunately, it is less safe to drive.
These reactions are caused by the irrational fear and exacerbated prudery of the TRAVELERS.
I have absolutely no problems being scanned or getting a deep patdown. One is in the same situation when you get a physical examination from your doctor. We have no problems with that because we don't want to risk our health. Why can't we do the same for our security?
When I choose to go to a doctor and get an exam it is all entirely voluntary. I am not required to go any procedures I don't want. The same is not true when I try to fly home for the holidays... I am required to undergo some kind of invasion of my privacy.
These officers deal with so many people that I would doubt they would find it pleasurable after the 10,000th traveler. And even if they find pleasure off of it, what's the big frickin' deal?
Doctors are expected to be professionals. There are things that are and aren't allowed. And if you cross the line you'll be fired or sued for malpractice. It happens.
If my wife goes to the gynecologist and he's getting off on examining her I'm going to be pretty angry about that. That's not appropriate. And I'm sure as hell not going to tolerate it.
And the standards for hiring these TSA employees are significantly lower.
You may be OK with some random stranger getting his rocks off by fondling your child, but I'm not.
They already said based on the radiation levels and 600 million passengers that about 10 people per year will die from cancer from this screening.
I think the number is lower. Many will die from other causes first.
But say it is 10 and it stops 1 airplane incident per 10 years- it's a wash to a massive savings of life.
Except that the odds of it actually being responsible for stopping any airplane incidents are slim at the very best.
The fact of the matter is that this money could be put to much more effective uses simply by hiring qualified personnel and conducting more effective screening. This whole scanner thing is pure theater. It is just another highly visible annoyance to make people feel safer.
Personally, I can't see why the terrorist don't attack the security checkin next. You are not scanned, there is high density of targets, and it would paralyze travel-- again.
Or the airport itself... Or a bus/train depot... Or any sufficiently crowded and insecure location...
There are plenty of motor car manufacturers, and most people don't just drive a Ford (or whatever). So why is the computing market so different ? I don't believe that it is down to manufacturing capacity, ie s/ware is so much easier to make many of once you have the first copy; if that was so then the many smaller manufacturers, the list is huge.
I think that the key is standards, everyone wants the same - especially file formats. The way that MS got to where it is was by taking everyone else's standards and keeping its own as secret as it could. Whatever reasons: it is something that we should learn from and stop from happening again.
Disclaimer: my desktop has always been Unix based since 1986, Linux for the last 15 years.
The issue certainly is standards.
I can drive whatever car I want on basically any road I want because the interface is standard. You've got some kind of more-or-less flat surface that my tire roll on.
Similarly, I can get behind the wheel of virtually any car and do OK because the interface is pretty standard. Ignition, gas pedal, brake pedal, steering wheel, spedometer, etc.
The problem, when it comes to computers, is that there's precious little standardization.
A specific piece of software will run on one OS, but not another. Or it'll run with a specific service pack installed, but not without.
A specific OS will only run on certain types of hardware.
A specific piece of software will draw its UI one way... Another piece of software will have a completely different UI... Maybe you can hit CTRL+Z in one app, but not in another... Maybe the middle-mouse button works one way here, and another way there...
So people just pick what's going to behave the way they're used to. They pick the OS and the software that they're familiar with. Which is why everyone yelled and screamed when Microsoft rolled out the whole "ribbon" thing - it was too different.
You could easily borrow a lot from the way LoTR:O. WoW is already broken up into vaguely level-appropriate zones. Sell each zone as a mini-expansion/quest pack.
And they're already selling premium stuff separately - like the cosmetic pets you can buy on the website, or the assorted goodies you can get from the CCG.
Lock a few bag slots until you pay for them... Lock a few character slots until you pay for them... Sell the various zones separately... Throw in some random premium stuff... They'd easily make plenty of money free-to-play.
Requiring wheelchair ramps and website tags will not cause the local muffler shop to move to Bangladesh.
But it could well be the extra regulatory cost that leaves said local muffler shop unable to compete with the national chain shop next door which outsources all non-customer-facing work to Bangladesh, thereby pushing the local shop out of business.
This is why big business _LOVES_ this kind of regulation, they can easily afford to comply where small business can't. The funny part is that the kind of person who has the hots for this kind of regulation is usually also the kind of person who hates big business.
And yet... The folks who always scream about letting the market decide are afraid to actually let the market decide.
If the local muffler shop is doing so poorly that the cost of a wheelchair ramp and some website tags leaves them unable to compete with the national chain, then they should go out of business.
It isn't like wheelchair ramps are forged from unobtainium in the fires of Mount Doom. It isn't like website tags have to be hand-picked from a tree that only grows on the Plateau of Leng.
This stuff is cheap and easy. If you can't handle cheap and easy, you're doing something wrong.
The problem with letting the market decide is that the market does not decide responsibly.
We have an FDA for a reason. Ever read The Jungle? You want to go back to eating floor sweepings in your sausage?
The market is going to decide on what is cheapest and most profitable. If the market can get away with throwing together some tarpaper shack and calling it a storefront, it will. And then that shack falls on top of somebody because there were no building codes or safety regulations. And now somebody is hurt, and somebody else's store is a pile of wreckage, and people are unemployed and everything else. Or you could just avoid all that by implementing some building codes to make sure a structure is safe to use.
Similarly, if there were no regulations at all, very few stores would bother to put in a ramp or anything like that. It's an added expense. A negligible one, but an expense none the less. And you'd soon find a situation where there were basically no stores available for the wheelchair-bound.
In this day and age, if people are THAT upset about it, they can organize boycotts until store X either changes, or goes under.
Are you kidding me? In this day and age nobody is going to actually boycott anything. They'd organize a Facebook group and start up a blog and maybe whine on a talk show or two... But nobody would actually stop buying anything. Certainly not in a volume high enough to be noticed.
here is a perfect example in NY
smoking indoors is banned.... NOW I believe the store should have a right to dictate whether or not they want to allow smoking in their PRIVATELY OWNED establishment
the customer will either complain, and ask that smoking be not allowed and not go back until it is, or if enough people are bothered, he will see it on his balance sheet and ban smoking himself.
The problem, again, is that a store is going to go with whatever is going to make them the most money - with no real concern for customer health or preferences.
You know what? Smoking sections don't work. They might, I suppose, if you installed an airlock or something... But they don't. So you still get smoke even in your non-smoking section. And for my wife, who has a serious problem with cigarette smoke, that meant we could basically not dine out anywhere. And bars? Bars didn't even make an effort at containing smoke. It was flat-out impossible to go out for drinks anywhere. Hell, just walking by a bar was usually enough to give her coughing fits.
Now that indoor smoking is banned in NY we can actually go out to eat. And we can go to bars. It's terrific.
the government getting involved is always the answer to a question NO one asked.
No it isn't. It's the answer to a question someone, somewhere asked. Maybe not a question you were asking... And maybe not the answer you wanted to see...
So you are fine with totally redesigning the net under government edict.
Nobody is going to have to totally redesign anything.
Are you kidding me? This is the net! It's all bits anyway... We've already got various readers and helper applications and plugins to display content in different forms. We're already scraping screens with scripts. We're already manipulating and mangling the content.
Will work need to be done? Sure.
Is it some ginormous, insurmountable mountain of effort? Nope.
This project would surpass NASA's yearly budget by a very very large amount.
It would have to surpass NASA's yearly budget by orders of magnitude before it actually impacted your taxes.
I do not want NASA to pay for this bullshit. I want NASA to fund compelling science, not showmanship.
I dunno... You don't think there's any compelling science to be had in something like this?
Maybe not in actually building a ship to travel there... That seems like stuff we've been doing for a while now. Fabricating a vehicle shouldn't be that hard anymore.
But what about the research that goes in to keeping somebody alive for the flight there? And into building a habitat once they're there? What about all the interesting materials and medical stuff?
Seems like there could be some very good science along the way...
This sort of thing needs to be privately funded. I do not want to increase the national debt and therefore my tax burden on moronic bullshit like this.
I love how this comes up every single time we have a discussion about NASA... Do you have any idea how little of your tax money goes to NASA? They could cut out the entire space program and you'd never notice. It isn't even a drop in the bucket.
When I was in college one of my classes required that I download, install, and play around with Linux.
At the time, BT didn't exist so the downloads were primarily FTP. But if a professor were to give a similar assignment today I'd guess that just about any distribution you tried to download would want you to use BT.
So, are we going to see students getting disciplined and handed over to the police for doing their homework? Or are the professors going to have to change the assignments to comply with these new rules?
The only thing that worries me about this whole thing is resale.
I like to buy second hand games, I occasionally like to be able to sell them, or loan them to friends, or whatever. Much like with books. Steam doesn't really do that AFAICT.
Steam is certainly not designed to allow this. Which is good for folks who release their games on Steam, as there's no secondary market of used games. It's bad for retailers, however, since they make so much more money off used games.
You can, however, sell a Steam account just fine. Just like people sell WoW accounts. And it is done.
You could, in theory, have a seperate Steam account for each game. Which would allow you to sell each game individually. But it would certainly be a hassle.
I'm not talking about some rival company starting up a 3D printing business and trying to out-sell LEGO or whoever. I'm talking about printing it yourself, at home.
Copyright law was originally intended to deal with rogue publishers. Somebody getting their own printing press and rolling out thousands of copies of some book. Or pressing thousands of discs for some new bit of software.
But with the advent of ebooks, and desktop publishing, and relatively cheap printers, and photocopiers, and CD burners, and bittorrent and whatever else we're seeing individuals making one or two copies of something that the copyright owners would rather they didn't.
I'm wondering if common 3D printers will do something similar for physical objects.
You won't be printing terribly complex objects... And you won't be turning them out of high-strength materials... At least not right away...
But I'm wondering if the manufacturers of unique/identifiable products will be freaking out when individuals can print out their own cheap knock-offs, instead of buying the real thing.
Most side stories don't gather enough interest to be worth expanding
In which case it isn't the kind of side story that's just begging to be developed, where you play through the whole game just waiting for that story to develop.
or the devs have a plot in mind where a side story may be planned as either an expansion or related game.
In which case it isn't a side story. It is a hook. And it is fully developed into an entirely separate product.
Sorry but a side story does not have to be developed for a game to be complete as a Side-Story is just that. A side story. It is pertinent only as it directly impacts the story arc.
Emphasis added - this is exactly what I'm talking about.
Right, because a lumpy plastic copy of an item is just as good as the real thing....
Nobody is going to printing up an HD TV anytime soon, that's true. But that does not suggest that there is no room for existing 3D printers to step on toes.
You could probably print up something fairly similar to a LEGO brick right now. Or, if not LEGO, then a DUPLO certainly. And there's definitely money to be had there. I don't know that you could really make money printing your own bricks and selling them... But you could probably save some money by printing your own bricks instead of buying them. Especially if you just need a couple more to finish out a project and you don't really want to buy a whole kit or pay for shipping & handling on just a couple pieces.
You could also probably use a 3D printer to generate a mold out of plastic or wax or something, and then cast something inside it. Imagine being able to turn out your own lead/plastic/pewter/whatever miniatures. Games Workshop would pitch a fit.
And then there's all the licensed merchandise... Probably wouldn't be too hard to turn out some cheap beads or pendants or rings with various licensed characters on them, only without actually paying anybody for the likeness.
A complete game is one that contains all the characters, items, quests, missions, levels, or whatever else necessary to provide a solid gaming experience.
Depending on the title, that'll vary. Obviously you don't see a whole ton of different maps in a Madden game, but you'd probably be pretty upset if your new Modern Warfare set every single mission in the same few hundred yards of geography.
Obviously there's always room for expansion and sequels and whatnot... But if some piece of DLC is generally considered essential to the enjoyment of the game, that's a good indication that it should've been included in the retail release.
And I can understand being in a situation like "We have this interesting side story to develop, but that would push back the release date a few months." I'd rather have that option to extend the game if I'm enjoying it.
Again, it'll depend on the game and execution and whatnot... If you've got some kind of sandbox-style freeplay after the game is finished, and you add on some more quests to do with DLC, that's fine.
If the game is basically done when you finish it, and you have to start over from scratch, and then you release some more quests that could only be completed during a new run through the game, that's not so fine. That means those quests should have been completed during the original story arc, and I missed out on them because I didn't have the DLC when I completed that arc.
Worse is if there's some fairly obvious room to expand on something. Like a character just begging for a side story to develop. And you play through the whole game just waiting for that story to develop. And then you have to buy some DLC to explore that very obvious side story.
And what I really, really hate is when they've got DLC right there on the disc. Some NPC with a quest icon that sends you to a DLC store on launch day. Or actual content there on the disc that can only be unlocked by spending more money. That's bullshit.
Since I am from Europe that whole netflix and hulu-thing is beyond me. Why do you guys want to pay for this? You have torrents, youtube etc. What's on netflix or hulu that you just have to see? This is just a question from someone not familiar with these products and not intended as a troll or whatever. Just want to make that clear;)
I've got a Netflix subscription. I generally use it for movies that I can't find elsewhere.
If I just want to see whatever big budget Hollywood thing is out on video I can pick it up pretty much anywhere. We've got a locally-owned rental store... We've got a Blockbuster... We've got a few of those Redbox kiosks... I can get the big budget stuff pretty much anywhere.
But if I want to watch something older or less mainstream, I've got a serious problem getting my hands on it. None of my local options carry much besides the big Hollywood stuff.
I might be able to find a torrent of it... Maybe. Or I might be able to find a DVD for sale somewhere... Possibly.
Or I can throw it in my Netflix queue. They've got a huge selection of movies and television. They've got an awful lot of it available for streaming. I can watch it on my computer or on my TV, since my bluray player does Netflix too. Or, worst-case, I just wait for it to show up in the mail.
I hope that they referenced utilitarianism in the article and I hope that they recognize utilitarianism can be used to justify evil things including letting a few starve so everyone else can live.
How is that evil?
If some have to starve, so that others can live, what's the alternative? Everybody dies? And that's better somehow?
I don't care how you pick, or who gets picked, somebody is going to die.
Does the logic flow of the code need to be the same as well? This goes beyond interface interaction.
It's been ages since I wrote any real code... And I haven't looked at any of the code involved here...
But, depending on what you're trying to accomplish, there's really only one or two obvious/sensible ways to do it. Sure, I guess if you were really worried about copyright and/or lawsuits you could go out of your way to write your code in such a bizarre manner that nobody else would do it your way...
I've never been a big fan of voice chat. It seems to make being an asshat just a little too easy.
Unfortunately, it seems to be fairly essential to gameplay these days.
Used to be that you'd have an assortment of hotkeys for commands like "I need help" or "cover me" or whatever... Since it was difficult to type these out quickly. Voice comms make it very easy to simply yell out commands, so those hotkeys are fading out. I've seen some games that still have them... But a lot of games don't anymore. And even if they do, nobody seems to use them.
So, if I need help... Or want somebody to cover me... Or if somebody out there is requesting cover from me... Then I kind of need to use voice comms, whether I like it or not.
But that's really almost irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that I have fairly limited playtime these days, and I'm just not going to play enough to get genuinely good. And I'm OK with that. I don't need to get the #1 slot on some server to feel good about myself. And the derision of pre-pubescent asshats, while annoying, isn't a serious blow to my ego.
The problem, ultimately, is that games these days seem to focus very heavily on multi-player. To the exclusion of single-player.
If I go out and buy some random shooter I can almost guarantee it'll have, at most, 10 hours of single-player. The assumption is that you'll get your money's worth by playing multi-player. And if I'm not not playing multi-player, then I just shelled out $60 for 10 hours of gameplay.
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Lots of people died on 9/11. That's bad. And I sure as hell don't want any more people to die.
But the reaction has just been silly.
It isn't like we've never had a terrorist attack here in the US before. It isn't like terrorism never existed before. There were several previous attempts to blow up the World Trade Center... And plenty of attacks on British soil over the years... And plenty of home-grown terrorism like the Unabomber and Mr. McVeigh and the anti-abortionists...
So now we're willing to trade prisoners off to different countries so they can be "interrogated" more creatively... Or we'll just torture them here at home instead... And we hold people for years without actually charging them with anything... And we listen in on innocent citizens... And harass people based on nothing more than their ethnicity or religion... And we have no problem trading tons of freedom for very little security...
The point of terrorism is to inspire fear. In that regard they've been amazingly successful.
We were originally told that the terrorists hate our freedom... So is that the plan then? Get rid of all our freedom and the terrorists will have no reason to attack us?
Forget that. Wonder about the odds of dying from a car crash, since you and millions of Americans decided to avoid flying this year because of the patdowns and since driving is much, much more dangerous than flying. The TSA kills Americans.
The patdowns are not responsible for any deaths.
I have personally stopped flying. I'll drive anywhere I have to. Not solely because of the scanners or pat-downs... But because it's become such a tremendous inconvenience.
Used to be you could hop in a plane, snooze for a couple hours, and be at your destination. These days it's hours of lines, invasions of privacy, more waiting, delays, shuffling from one gate to another... It's easier just to drive.
Unfortunately, it is less safe to drive.
These reactions are caused by the irrational fear and exacerbated prudery of the TRAVELERS.
I have absolutely no problems being scanned or getting a deep patdown. One is in the same situation when you get a physical examination from your doctor. We have no problems with that because we don't want to risk our health. Why can't we do the same for our security?
When I choose to go to a doctor and get an exam it is all entirely voluntary. I am not required to go any procedures I don't want. The same is not true when I try to fly home for the holidays... I am required to undergo some kind of invasion of my privacy.
These officers deal with so many people that I would doubt they would find it pleasurable after the 10,000th traveler. And even if they find pleasure off of it, what's the big frickin' deal?
Doctors are expected to be professionals. There are things that are and aren't allowed. And if you cross the line you'll be fired or sued for malpractice. It happens.
If my wife goes to the gynecologist and he's getting off on examining her I'm going to be pretty angry about that. That's not appropriate. And I'm sure as hell not going to tolerate it.
And the standards for hiring these TSA employees are significantly lower.
You may be OK with some random stranger getting his rocks off by fondling your child, but I'm not.
They already said based on the radiation levels and 600 million passengers that about 10 people per year will die from cancer from this screening.
I think the number is lower. Many will die from other causes first.
But say it is 10 and it stops 1 airplane incident per 10 years- it's a wash to a massive savings of life.
Except that the odds of it actually being responsible for stopping any airplane incidents are slim at the very best.
The fact of the matter is that this money could be put to much more effective uses simply by hiring qualified personnel and conducting more effective screening. This whole scanner thing is pure theater. It is just another highly visible annoyance to make people feel safer.
Personally, I can't see why the terrorist don't attack the security checkin next. You are not scanned, there is high density of targets, and it would paralyze travel-- again.
Or the airport itself... Or a bus/train depot... Or any sufficiently crowded and insecure location...
There are plenty of motor car manufacturers, and most people don't just drive a Ford (or whatever). So why is the computing market so different ?
I don't believe that it is down to manufacturing capacity, ie s/ware is so much easier to make many of once you have the first copy; if that was so then the
many smaller manufacturers, the list is huge.
I think that the key is standards, everyone wants the same - especially file formats. The way that MS got to where it is was by taking everyone else's standards and keeping its own as secret as it could.
Whatever reasons: it is something that we should learn from and stop from happening again.
Disclaimer: my desktop has always been Unix based since 1986, Linux for the last 15 years.
The issue certainly is standards.
I can drive whatever car I want on basically any road I want because the interface is standard. You've got some kind of more-or-less flat surface that my tire roll on.
Similarly, I can get behind the wheel of virtually any car and do OK because the interface is pretty standard. Ignition, gas pedal, brake pedal, steering wheel, spedometer, etc.
The problem, when it comes to computers, is that there's precious little standardization.
A specific piece of software will run on one OS, but not another. Or it'll run with a specific service pack installed, but not without.
A specific OS will only run on certain types of hardware.
A specific piece of software will draw its UI one way... Another piece of software will have a completely different UI... Maybe you can hit CTRL+Z in one app, but not in another... Maybe the middle-mouse button works one way here, and another way there...
So people just pick what's going to behave the way they're used to. They pick the OS and the software that they're familiar with. Which is why everyone yelled and screamed when Microsoft rolled out the whole "ribbon" thing - it was too different.
Hmmm... This sounds familiar...
I can't see WoW working well as free to play.
I can.
You could easily borrow a lot from the way LoTR:O. WoW is already broken up into vaguely level-appropriate zones. Sell each zone as a mini-expansion/quest pack.
And they're already selling premium stuff separately - like the cosmetic pets you can buy on the website, or the assorted goodies you can get from the CCG.
Lock a few bag slots until you pay for them... Lock a few character slots until you pay for them... Sell the various zones separately... Throw in some random premium stuff... They'd easily make plenty of money free-to-play.
Requiring wheelchair ramps and website tags will not cause the local muffler shop to move to Bangladesh.
But it could well be the extra regulatory cost that leaves said local muffler shop unable to compete with the national chain shop next door which outsources all non-customer-facing work to Bangladesh, thereby pushing the local shop out of business.
This is why big business _LOVES_ this kind of regulation, they can easily afford to comply where small business can't. The funny part is that the kind of person who has the hots for this kind of regulation is usually also the kind of person who hates big business.
And yet... The folks who always scream about letting the market decide are afraid to actually let the market decide.
If the local muffler shop is doing so poorly that the cost of a wheelchair ramp and some website tags leaves them unable to compete with the national chain, then they should go out of business.
It isn't like wheelchair ramps are forged from unobtainium in the fires of Mount Doom. It isn't like website tags have to be hand-picked from a tree that only grows on the Plateau of Leng.
This stuff is cheap and easy. If you can't handle cheap and easy, you're doing something wrong.
Let the market decide
The problem with letting the market decide is that the market does not decide responsibly.
We have an FDA for a reason. Ever read The Jungle? You want to go back to eating floor sweepings in your sausage?
The market is going to decide on what is cheapest and most profitable. If the market can get away with throwing together some tarpaper shack and calling it a storefront, it will. And then that shack falls on top of somebody because there were no building codes or safety regulations. And now somebody is hurt, and somebody else's store is a pile of wreckage, and people are unemployed and everything else. Or you could just avoid all that by implementing some building codes to make sure a structure is safe to use.
Similarly, if there were no regulations at all, very few stores would bother to put in a ramp or anything like that. It's an added expense. A negligible one, but an expense none the less. And you'd soon find a situation where there were basically no stores available for the wheelchair-bound.
In this day and age, if people are THAT upset about it, they can organize boycotts until store X either changes, or goes under.
Are you kidding me? In this day and age nobody is going to actually boycott anything. They'd organize a Facebook group and start up a blog and maybe whine on a talk show or two... But nobody would actually stop buying anything. Certainly not in a volume high enough to be noticed.
here is a perfect example in NY
smoking indoors is banned.... NOW I believe the store should have a right to dictate whether or not they want to allow smoking in their PRIVATELY OWNED establishment
the customer will either complain, and ask that smoking be not allowed and not go back until it is, or if enough people are bothered, he will see it on his balance sheet and ban smoking himself.
The problem, again, is that a store is going to go with whatever is going to make them the most money - with no real concern for customer health or preferences.
You know what? Smoking sections don't work. They might, I suppose, if you installed an airlock or something... But they don't. So you still get smoke even in your non-smoking section. And for my wife, who has a serious problem with cigarette smoke, that meant we could basically not dine out anywhere. And bars? Bars didn't even make an effort at containing smoke. It was flat-out impossible to go out for drinks anywhere. Hell, just walking by a bar was usually enough to give her coughing fits.
Now that indoor smoking is banned in NY we can actually go out to eat. And we can go to bars. It's terrific.
the government getting involved is always the answer to a question NO one asked.
No it isn't. It's the answer to a question someone, somewhere asked. Maybe not a question you were asking... And maybe not the answer you wanted to see...
So you are fine with totally redesigning the net under government edict.
Nobody is going to have to totally redesign anything.
Are you kidding me? This is the net! It's all bits anyway... We've already got various readers and helper applications and plugins to display content in different forms. We're already scraping screens with scripts. We're already manipulating and mangling the content.
Will work need to be done? Sure.
Is it some ginormous, insurmountable mountain of effort? Nope.
This project would surpass NASA's yearly budget by a very very large amount.
It would have to surpass NASA's yearly budget by orders of magnitude before it actually impacted your taxes.
I do not want NASA to pay for this bullshit. I want NASA to fund compelling science, not showmanship.
I dunno... You don't think there's any compelling science to be had in something like this?
Maybe not in actually building a ship to travel there... That seems like stuff we've been doing for a while now. Fabricating a vehicle shouldn't be that hard anymore.
But what about the research that goes in to keeping somebody alive for the flight there? And into building a habitat once they're there? What about all the interesting materials and medical stuff?
Seems like there could be some very good science along the way...
This sort of thing needs to be privately funded. I do not want to increase the national debt and therefore my tax burden on moronic bullshit like this.
I love how this comes up every single time we have a discussion about NASA... Do you have any idea how little of your tax money goes to NASA? They could cut out the entire space program and you'd never notice. It isn't even a drop in the bucket.
When I was in college one of my classes required that I download, install, and play around with Linux.
At the time, BT didn't exist so the downloads were primarily FTP. But if a professor were to give a similar assignment today I'd guess that just about any distribution you tried to download would want you to use BT.
So, are we going to see students getting disciplined and handed over to the police for doing their homework? Or are the professors going to have to change the assignments to comply with these new rules?
Doesn't seem like a good solution either way...
Not just WoW. The new StarCraft game uses BitTorrent for updates as well.
The only thing that worries me about this whole thing is resale.
I like to buy second hand games, I occasionally like to be able to sell them, or loan them to friends, or whatever. Much like with books. Steam doesn't really do that AFAICT.
Steam is certainly not designed to allow this. Which is good for folks who release their games on Steam, as there's no secondary market of used games. It's bad for retailers, however, since they make so much more money off used games.
You can, however, sell a Steam account just fine. Just like people sell WoW accounts. And it is done.
You could, in theory, have a seperate Steam account for each game. Which would allow you to sell each game individually. But it would certainly be a hassle.
I'm not talking about some rival company starting up a 3D printing business and trying to out-sell LEGO or whoever. I'm talking about printing it yourself, at home.
Copyright law was originally intended to deal with rogue publishers. Somebody getting their own printing press and rolling out thousands of copies of some book. Or pressing thousands of discs for some new bit of software.
But with the advent of ebooks, and desktop publishing, and relatively cheap printers, and photocopiers, and CD burners, and bittorrent and whatever else we're seeing individuals making one or two copies of something that the copyright owners would rather they didn't.
I'm wondering if common 3D printers will do something similar for physical objects.
You won't be printing terribly complex objects... And you won't be turning them out of high-strength materials... At least not right away...
But I'm wondering if the manufacturers of unique/identifiable products will be freaking out when individuals can print out their own cheap knock-offs, instead of buying the real thing.
Most side stories don't gather enough interest to be worth expanding
In which case it isn't the kind of side story that's just begging to be developed, where you play through the whole game just waiting for that story to develop.
or the devs have a plot in mind where a side story may be planned as either an expansion or related game.
In which case it isn't a side story. It is a hook. And it is fully developed into an entirely separate product.
Sorry but a side story does not have to be developed for a game to be complete as a Side-Story is just that. A side story. It is pertinent only as it directly impacts the story arc.
Emphasis added - this is exactly what I'm talking about.
Right, because a lumpy plastic copy of an item is just as good as the real thing....
Nobody is going to printing up an HD TV anytime soon, that's true. But that does not suggest that there is no room for existing 3D printers to step on toes.
You could probably print up something fairly similar to a LEGO brick right now. Or, if not LEGO, then a DUPLO certainly. And there's definitely money to be had there. I don't know that you could really make money printing your own bricks and selling them... But you could probably save some money by printing your own bricks instead of buying them. Especially if you just need a couple more to finish out a project and you don't really want to buy a whole kit or pay for shipping & handling on just a couple pieces.
You could also probably use a 3D printer to generate a mold out of plastic or wax or something, and then cast something inside it. Imagine being able to turn out your own lead/plastic/pewter/whatever miniatures. Games Workshop would pitch a fit.
And then there's all the licensed merchandise... Probably wouldn't be too hard to turn out some cheap beads or pendants or rings with various licensed characters on them, only without actually paying anybody for the likeness.
What's a "complete" game anyway?
A complete game is one that contains all the characters, items, quests, missions, levels, or whatever else necessary to provide a solid gaming experience.
Depending on the title, that'll vary. Obviously you don't see a whole ton of different maps in a Madden game, but you'd probably be pretty upset if your new Modern Warfare set every single mission in the same few hundred yards of geography.
Obviously there's always room for expansion and sequels and whatnot... But if some piece of DLC is generally considered essential to the enjoyment of the game, that's a good indication that it should've been included in the retail release.
And I can understand being in a situation like "We have this interesting side story to develop, but that would push back the release date a few months." I'd rather have that option to extend the game if I'm enjoying it.
Again, it'll depend on the game and execution and whatnot... If you've got some kind of sandbox-style freeplay after the game is finished, and you add on some more quests to do with DLC, that's fine.
If the game is basically done when you finish it, and you have to start over from scratch, and then you release some more quests that could only be completed during a new run through the game, that's not so fine. That means those quests should have been completed during the original story arc, and I missed out on them because I didn't have the DLC when I completed that arc.
Worse is if there's some fairly obvious room to expand on something. Like a character just begging for a side story to develop. And you play through the whole game just waiting for that story to develop. And then you have to buy some DLC to explore that very obvious side story.
And what I really, really hate is when they've got DLC right there on the disc. Some NPC with a quest icon that sends you to a DLC store on launch day. Or actual content there on the disc that can only be unlocked by spending more money. That's bullshit.
Since I am from Europe that whole netflix and hulu-thing is beyond me. Why do you guys want to pay for this? You have torrents, youtube etc. What's on netflix or hulu that you just have to see? This is just a question from someone not familiar with these products and not intended as a troll or whatever. Just want to make that clear ;)
I've got a Netflix subscription. I generally use it for movies that I can't find elsewhere.
If I just want to see whatever big budget Hollywood thing is out on video I can pick it up pretty much anywhere. We've got a locally-owned rental store... We've got a Blockbuster... We've got a few of those Redbox kiosks... I can get the big budget stuff pretty much anywhere.
But if I want to watch something older or less mainstream, I've got a serious problem getting my hands on it. None of my local options carry much besides the big Hollywood stuff.
I might be able to find a torrent of it... Maybe. Or I might be able to find a DVD for sale somewhere... Possibly.
Or I can throw it in my Netflix queue. They've got a huge selection of movies and television. They've got an awful lot of it available for streaming. I can watch it on my computer or on my TV, since my bluray player does Netflix too. Or, worst-case, I just wait for it to show up in the mail.
You don't have to vote for one of the big two. Vote for some independent candidate. Or write someone in. But go vote.
I hope that they referenced utilitarianism in the article and I hope that they recognize utilitarianism can be used to justify evil things including letting a few starve so everyone else can live.
How is that evil?
If some have to starve, so that others can live, what's the alternative? Everybody dies? And that's better somehow?
I don't care how you pick, or who gets picked, somebody is going to die.
Does the logic flow of the code need to be the same as well? This goes beyond interface interaction.
It's been ages since I wrote any real code... And I haven't looked at any of the code involved here...
But, depending on what you're trying to accomplish, there's really only one or two obvious/sensible ways to do it. Sure, I guess if you were really worried about copyright and/or lawsuits you could go out of your way to write your code in such a bizarre manner that nobody else would do it your way...
I've played WoW. It was fun for a while. It got old.
I want to relax and enjoy myself.
In any competitive multiplayer game, someone is going to be on the losing side. So what do you propose?
I don't have a problem losing.
I have a problem with people yelling obscenities at me as I lose.
I've never been a big fan of voice chat. It seems to make being an asshat just a little too easy.
Unfortunately, it seems to be fairly essential to gameplay these days.
Used to be that you'd have an assortment of hotkeys for commands like "I need help" or "cover me" or whatever... Since it was difficult to type these out quickly. Voice comms make it very easy to simply yell out commands, so those hotkeys are fading out. I've seen some games that still have them... But a lot of games don't anymore. And even if they do, nobody seems to use them.
So, if I need help... Or want somebody to cover me... Or if somebody out there is requesting cover from me... Then I kind of need to use voice comms, whether I like it or not.
But that's really almost irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that I have fairly limited playtime these days, and I'm just not going to play enough to get genuinely good. And I'm OK with that. I don't need to get the #1 slot on some server to feel good about myself. And the derision of pre-pubescent asshats, while annoying, isn't a serious blow to my ego.
The problem, ultimately, is that games these days seem to focus very heavily on multi-player. To the exclusion of single-player.
If I go out and buy some random shooter I can almost guarantee it'll have, at most, 10 hours of single-player. The assumption is that you'll get your money's worth by playing multi-player. And if I'm not not playing multi-player, then I just shelled out $60 for 10 hours of gameplay.