Irrelevant argument. We are talking about language here, not politics and the majority trumps the snobbish majority. Language evolution is always bottom up and driven by people who simply can't be bothered to speak "properly". A good thing too, or we would still be stuck with the Thee/Thou silliness and the social awkardness that goes with it.
Oh pardon me. I guess the Quebecois should also start speaking Parisian French as well. The interesting thing is that the southern dialect (not the 'standard' American English however) of American English is closer to Elizabethan than what is currently spoken in Britain, much like what is spoken in Quebec city is closed to 18th century French than modern French. Think of it as a code fork. American and British English forked in the 17th century. Claiming that one fork is "proper" is the same kind of nonsense as saying that a particular fork of Linux is pure, especially when that fork has a minority of users (60 native speakers as opposed to 300 million).
But it is always great fun provoking a Brit into a tirade about language superiority.
For a variety of not very good reasons we haven't purchased an unlimited films for twelve quid a month pass, we don't have Orange phones and we don't go on Wednesdays: we we're paying rack rate.
Would you mind rephrasing that in English? Something about 12 (I presume) GB pounds per month for unlimited trips to the cinema, something else about phones being orange having something to do with going on Wednesdays and something else...
/. is a specific case as it has the filter settings. Now consider the specis of blog as a whole and the specis of forum as a whole and I think the point holds.
Is there really all that big a difference between a dicussion forum and a blog? Sure the discussion forum might be moderated (as we do collectively here) and sure the blog might have a single "thread starter", but the end effect is not so different. It is opinions and opinions about opinions.
The thing with E3 was that gamers drooled over it and dreamed of going. How many webcomics have sported subplots about sneaking into E3? The new format seems about making journalists happy and giving a press conference venue. So it is strictly a PR venue. If you want to read the heartbeat of the gaming industry, the GDC is the place to be. That's where devs talk to each other.
I'll reckon that buried in the EULA somewhere is a "we get to scan your hard drive" clause. Using the software is aggrememt to being scanned. Kind of hard to sue when you "agreed" to it.
As an amateur virtual world designer (http://rpg-gamerz.com/smf/index.php), this is something I've pondered a lot and don't really have an answer, but I can say a couple of things. 1- you don't see RMT in smaller, closed knit communities such as with NWN. Everyone knows everyone, so it is almost like a guild in itself. This helps, but people tend to like the eye candy of the big commercial worlds. 2- and on the RP servers, part of the advancement (titles, housing, etc) is GM granted based on the players roleplay history with that character. Only a very small percentage of MMO players are roleplayers, so this is not an answer. 3-Have you ever plyed a FPS online? I have and I get massacred every time. Everyone's toon is the same and yet there is a clear "level" difference - among the players.
My hunch is that MUDs/PWs/MMOs/VWs, whatever you want to call them, need to take a page from the FPS rulebook and make player capital (skill) more important than avatar capital (Edward Castronova's term for levels, gold, gear, etc.). Make the game something that takes years to master, but that years is not spent simply leveling up a toon and I think you have a recipe.
I look at it this way, if people are willing to spend money to NOT experience part of the game, then there is a fundamental design flaw in the game. As long as MMO designers use the grind because it makes their world sticky, there will be RMT. Some people have more money than time or more money than patience. I'd not hesitate to buy a character and skip the grind myself, though I don't play on MMOs because they are centered on... surprise... the grind.
So if publishers really want to stop RMT, they should look at the cause and not the symptom.
"I trust that the US will now press the UN for resolutions condemning countries for human right abuses and acts which break international law, even if it means some of its own agents would be at risk of prosecution?"
Why not? What's an expendable agent against a political opportunity? Case in point, Valerie Plame.
NWN2 is alive and kicking. The problem it had was something else entirely. Firstly - It simply takes forever and a day to build a high quality area in the NWN2 toolset. In NWN1, you could slap a reasonably decent area together in 15 minutes and within an hour it was polished. NWN2 is at least an order of magnitude more time consuming to do level design for. A lot of NWN1 RP worlds that are migrating to NWN2 are still not yet in beta. Players, by and large, are impatient and wandered off. They'll be back when the expansion comes out and the worlds will be ready fro them. NWN2 suffered (and still does) from some multiplayer related bugginess. If it will succeed at all as a PW platform, that needs to be taken care of before the expansion hits the streets.
In 2007, there are also other options for teams building the kind of hardcore RP worlds that can only thrive in a non-commercial environment. There is an MMO kit for the Torque engine in development ( http://www.mmoworkshop.com/ ) that looks promising and Multiverse ( http://www.multiverse.net/ ), while still not yet ready for prime time, also has the potential for supporting a large number of community worlds.
Chances are, the call center rep is already looking at your account when he/she asks for it. I goofed around with computer telephony a bit back in the early 90's and I remember that already then the tech was pretty standard to pull the number and do the database lookup automatically. Saving the call center a few seconds per call adds up. The reasons they ask for it are a) people found it disconserting to have the call center rep greet them by name before they said anything and b) you might not be calling form your home number. That was the early 90's, before CRM systems were the rage.
Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment "free music" rhetoric. If it is so profitable, why can't the music industry put up an ad-supported free download site? I hate to sound like an RIAA stooge, but I just can't resist this. I've never willingly bought a DRMed track, but I'd pay extra for a non-DRMed track before I'd take a bootleg torrent of the same thing. The music industry does not put up an ad supported free download site because the revenue from it would be lower than what they currently have. They would be stupid to do so. As for Pirate Bay, paint me cynical, but... their business model is simply trading in someone else's work. The revenue stream from ads may not be as high as it is for the content creation itself; but without that content, Pirate Bay would not be running. For all of their self important pontification (/. word of the day), they are simply sponging on other peoples' work.
Let me put it another way. If you want to make yourself unpopular, stroll on over to deviant art and start telling people that they should GPL their work. A hobby of mine is building small, community virtual worlds. It's easy to find programmers for small OSS projects. What is very close to impossible to find is skilled and talented artists willing to put their stuff out under GPL. There are a number of OSS mud/mmo projects. Its easy to get code. It is nearly impossible to get good art to go with it. Now why is that?
Not all conflicts are about religion, but it makes a fine and dandy marker if "us" and "them". So does skin color, dialect, nationality, etc. My point was that paople will always find something, SOMETHING, to define that us and them. If you need another example, take an American and an English speaking Canadian. If you keep any conversation away from politics, most Europeans could not tell the difference. Now, tell a Canadian that they are just like Americans. I advise wearing a flak jacket when you do this.
Most things do work the way the majority wants, in the long run. I may have read your previous post a bit differently than you intended to write. I have quite a bit of experience dealing with leftist fundamentalists who can't get it out of their heads that violent revolution is the "only way" as well as off the deep end right wingers (of the American variety) who think that the government is trampling on their rights because they have to pay taxes and can't own and carry personal rocket launchers (yes, I once had a guy tell me that it should be legal to own RPGs - to keep the government in check you see). These fringe types tend to be dismissive of democracy because they can't get anyone to agree with them.
Russia does not have strong democratic traditions, just as Germany did not have strong democratic traditions under the Weimar republic. As for a cold war, it takes two to tango and Russia is really the only one talking cold war.
Sorry, but I gave up this hope decades ago. I don't believe in democracy anymore. The average intelligence and character of the so called majority is simply too low. Allow me to translate: I dislike democracy becasue I can't get anybody to agree with me.
Do you really want to go back to that? To tell you the truth: Yes. oh... my...
We're slipping back into the danger zone and I am not at all happy about it. Let's start by looking at the Middle East. Pakistan has the bomb, but the government is unstable and could easily be replaced by people for whom "martyrdom" is more important than life. The president of Iran regularly throws letters down a well, addressed to a centuries dead Imam, that according to Shiite legend will walk the lands again when the apocalypse happens. Oh and in the Shiite version, the apocalypse is man made and started by the "good guys". Add the fact that a previous president of Iran - a man regarded in the west as a moderate - once said that Iran could win a nuclear war against Isreal because of the geographical size differential between the two countries. Throw in Shia/Sunni rivalry and it is only a matter of time before Arab countries have the bomb. Throw in a mind boggling dose of Israeli paranoia for good measure. The truly frightening thing is that the level of hate between the Israelis, Iranians and Arabs is so deep that it would be an astonishing feat of diplomacy just the get red phones installed. The missile flight times are and land space so scarce that the various sides, the Israelis in particular, won't have the luxury of verifying that the first impacts are indeed happening before launching the counter salvo. NORAD had the luxury of waiting to see if Alaska was actually hit before they launched their own missiles. In the mideast, a technical glitch can become a garden of mushroom clouds across the region in a few minutes. So the days of those people are numbered, but at least it is regional in nature.
I think you are letting nostalgia get the better of you. Let me draw your attention to the Wikipedia Article on the cold war. The particularly interesting part is not the Cuban missile crisis, when everyone in the western world was afraid that the end might come within a few days, but rather the list of accidental near catastrophes. Living in a time when strategic nuclear forces are not on routine alert, these things have receded in terms of danger. I for one would rather not have needless saber rattling bring that danger back. Wishing to have the world sit perpetually on the brink of Armageddon just so that has a little more opposition is insane.
As for the 1984 concerns. In modern democracies with strong constitutions, sanity eventually prevails. A particular government oversteps its bounds, but is eventually reigned in. This is already happening with Bush in America. He overstepped his constitutional bounds for a few years, now things are slowly being fixed and casual disregard for the law is catching up to the Bush administration as it is becoming a target for endless legal investigations. This sort of thing happened in that same country numerous times in its history, right from the very beginning and having a strong constitution eventually forced a purge of the insanity. Situations such as the end of the Weimar Republic and Chavez's Venezuela and Putin's Russia thrive only in an environment with a weak tradition of rule of law.
Slashdot Mirror
Irrelevant argument. We are talking about language here, not politics and the majority trumps the snobbish majority. Language evolution is always bottom up and driven by people who simply can't be bothered to speak "properly". A good thing too, or we would still be stuck with the Thee/Thou silliness and the social awkardness that goes with it.
Thanks ;-)
Oh pardon me. I guess the Quebecois should also start speaking Parisian French as well. The interesting thing is that the southern dialect (not the 'standard' American English however) of American English is closer to Elizabethan than what is currently spoken in Britain, much like what is spoken in Quebec city is closed to 18th century French than modern French. Think of it as a code fork. American and British English forked in the 17th century. Claiming that one fork is "proper" is the same kind of nonsense as saying that a particular fork of Linux is pure, especially when that fork has a minority of users (60 native speakers as opposed to 300 million).
But it is always great fun provoking a Brit into a tirade about language superiority.
Wow! The majority of native speakers of a language are wrong?
Oh, I forgot, Americans are always wrong. Shame on me.
For a variety of not very good reasons we haven't purchased an unlimited films for twelve quid a month pass, we don't have Orange phones and we don't go on Wednesdays: we we're paying rack rate.
Would you mind rephrasing that in English? Something about 12 (I presume) GB pounds per month for unlimited trips to the cinema, something else about phones being orange having something to do with going on Wednesdays and something else...
/. is a specific case as it has the filter settings. Now consider the specis of blog as a whole and the specis of forum as a whole and I think the point holds.
Is there really all that big a difference between a dicussion forum and a blog? Sure the discussion forum might be moderated (as we do collectively here) and sure the blog might have a single "thread starter", but the end effect is not so different. It is opinions and opinions about opinions.
"why would a non-commercial open-source project try to please *them* instead of, y'know, people who do give something back to it?"
With that kind of arrogance, only a programmer would ever bother using it.
But I don't see any "sneaking in" events. You pay your $45 and you can just walk in? What's the point?
hehehe- seriously, I wish them luck. It would be cool to see PAX become the next E3.
The thing with E3 was that gamers drooled over it and dreamed of going. How many webcomics have sported subplots about sneaking into E3? The new format seems about making journalists happy and giving a press conference venue. So it is strictly a PR venue. If you want to read the heartbeat of the gaming industry, the GDC is the place to be. That's where devs talk to each other.
I'll reckon that buried in the EULA somewhere is a "we get to scan your hard drive" clause. Using the software is aggrememt to being scanned. Kind of hard to sue when you "agreed" to it.
As an amateur virtual world designer (http://rpg-gamerz.com/smf/index.php), this is something I've pondered a lot and don't really have an answer, but I can say a couple of things. 1- you don't see RMT in smaller, closed knit communities such as with NWN. Everyone knows everyone, so it is almost like a guild in itself. This helps, but people tend to like the eye candy of the big commercial worlds. 2- and on the RP servers, part of the advancement (titles, housing, etc) is GM granted based on the players roleplay history with that character. Only a very small percentage of MMO players are roleplayers, so this is not an answer. 3-Have you ever plyed a FPS online? I have and I get massacred every time. Everyone's toon is the same and yet there is a clear "level" difference - among the players.
My hunch is that MUDs/PWs/MMOs/VWs, whatever you want to call them, need to take a page from the FPS rulebook and make player capital (skill) more important than avatar capital (Edward Castronova's term for levels, gold, gear, etc.). Make the game something that takes years to master, but that years is not spent simply leveling up a toon and I think you have a recipe.
I look at it this way, if people are willing to spend money to NOT experience part of the game, then there is a fundamental design flaw in the game. As long as MMO designers use the grind because it makes their world sticky, there will be RMT. Some people have more money than time or more money than patience. I'd not hesitate to buy a character and skip the grind myself, though I don't play on MMOs because they are centered on... surprise... the grind.
So if publishers really want to stop RMT, they should look at the cause and not the symptom.
"I trust that the US will now press the UN for resolutions condemning countries for human right abuses and acts which break international law, even if it means some of its own agents would be at risk of prosecution?"
Why not? What's an expendable agent against a political opportunity? Case in point, Valerie Plame.
NWN2 is alive and kicking. The problem it had was something else entirely. Firstly - It simply takes forever and a day to build a high quality area in the NWN2 toolset. In NWN1, you could slap a reasonably decent area together in 15 minutes and within an hour it was polished. NWN2 is at least an order of magnitude more time consuming to do level design for. A lot of NWN1 RP worlds that are migrating to NWN2 are still not yet in beta. Players, by and large, are impatient and wandered off. They'll be back when the expansion comes out and the worlds will be ready fro them. NWN2 suffered (and still does) from some multiplayer related bugginess. If it will succeed at all as a PW platform, that needs to be taken care of before the expansion hits the streets.
In 2007, there are also other options for teams building the kind of hardcore RP worlds that can only thrive in a non-commercial environment. There is an MMO kit for the Torque engine in development ( http://www.mmoworkshop.com/ ) that looks promising and Multiverse ( http://www.multiverse.net/ ), while still not yet ready for prime time, also has the potential for supporting a large number of community worlds.
No, I advocate not moderating up or down based on level of agreement.
Chances are, the call center rep is already looking at your account when he/she asks for it. I goofed around with computer telephony a bit back in the early 90's and I remember that already then the tech was pretty standard to pull the number and do the database lookup automatically. Saving the call center a few seconds per call adds up. The reasons they ask for it are a) people found it disconserting to have the call center rep greet them by name before they said anything and b) you might not be calling form your home number. That was the early 90's, before CRM systems were the rage.
A note to the mods: Troll != I disagree
From TFA, it soundly like somebody forgot to strip the hidden data.
It's been taken down though, slashdotted before the first post even...
If it is so profitable, why can't the music industry put up an ad-supported free download site? I hate to sound like an RIAA stooge, but I just can't resist this. I've never willingly bought a DRMed track, but I'd pay extra for a non-DRMed track before I'd take a bootleg torrent of the same thing. The music industry does not put up an ad supported free download site because the revenue from it would be lower than what they currently have. They would be stupid to do so. As for Pirate Bay, paint me cynical, but... their business model is simply trading in someone else's work. The revenue stream from ads may not be as high as it is for the content creation itself; but without that content, Pirate Bay would not be running. For all of their self important pontification (/. word of the day), they are simply sponging on other peoples' work.
Let me put it another way. If you want to make yourself unpopular, stroll on over to deviant art and start telling people that they should GPL their work. A hobby of mine is building small, community virtual worlds. It's easy to find programmers for small OSS projects. What is very close to impossible to find is skilled and talented artists willing to put their stuff out under GPL. There are a number of OSS mud/mmo projects. Its easy to get code. It is nearly impossible to get good art to go with it. Now why is that?
Not all conflicts are about religion, but it makes a fine and dandy marker if "us" and "them". So does skin color, dialect, nationality, etc. My point was that paople will always find something, SOMETHING, to define that us and them. If you need another example, take an American and an English speaking Canadian. If you keep any conversation away from politics, most Europeans could not tell the difference. Now, tell a Canadian that they are just like Americans. I advise wearing a flak jacket when you do this.
Most things do work the way the majority wants, in the long run. I may have read your previous post a bit differently than you intended to write. I have quite a bit of experience dealing with leftist fundamentalists who can't get it out of their heads that violent revolution is the "only way" as well as off the deep end right wingers (of the American variety) who think that the government is trampling on their rights because they have to pay taxes and can't own and carry personal rocket launchers (yes, I once had a guy tell me that it should be legal to own RPGs - to keep the government in check you see). These fringe types tend to be dismissive of democracy because they can't get anyone to agree with them.
Russia does not have strong democratic traditions, just as Germany did not have strong democratic traditions under the Weimar republic. As for a cold war, it takes two to tango and Russia is really the only one talking cold war.
We're slipping back into the danger zone and I am not at all happy about it. Let's start by looking at the Middle East. Pakistan has the bomb, but the government is unstable and could easily be replaced by people for whom "martyrdom" is more important than life. The president of Iran regularly throws letters down a well, addressed to a centuries dead Imam, that according to Shiite legend will walk the lands again when the apocalypse happens. Oh and in the Shiite version, the apocalypse is man made and started by the "good guys". Add the fact that a previous president of Iran - a man regarded in the west as a moderate - once said that Iran could win a nuclear war against Isreal because of the geographical size differential between the two countries. Throw in Shia/Sunni rivalry and it is only a matter of time before Arab countries have the bomb. Throw in a mind boggling dose of Israeli paranoia for good measure. The truly frightening thing is that the level of hate between the Israelis, Iranians and Arabs is so deep that it would be an astonishing feat of diplomacy just the get red phones installed. The missile flight times are and land space so scarce that the various sides, the Israelis in particular, won't have the luxury of verifying that the first impacts are indeed happening before launching the counter salvo. NORAD had the luxury of waiting to see if Alaska was actually hit before they launched their own missiles. In the mideast, a technical glitch can become a garden of mushroom clouds across the region in a few minutes. So the days of those people are numbered, but at least it is regional in nature.
I think you are letting nostalgia get the better of you. Let me draw your attention to the Wikipedia Article on the cold war. The particularly interesting part is not the Cuban missile crisis, when everyone in the western world was afraid that the end might come within a few days, but rather the list of accidental near catastrophes. Living in a time when strategic nuclear forces are not on routine alert, these things have receded in terms of danger. I for one would rather not have needless saber rattling bring that danger back. Wishing to have the world sit perpetually on the brink of Armageddon just so that has a little more opposition is insane.
As for the 1984 concerns. In modern democracies with strong constitutions, sanity eventually prevails. A particular government oversteps its bounds, but is eventually reigned in. This is already happening with Bush in America. He overstepped his constitutional bounds for a few years, now things are slowly being fixed and casual disregard for the law is catching up to the Bush administration as it is becoming a target for endless legal investigations. This sort of thing happened in that same country numerous times in its history, right from the very beginning and having a strong constitution eventually forced a purge of the insanity. Situations such as the end of the Weimar Republic and Chavez's Venezuela and Putin's Russia thrive only in an environment with a weak tradition of rule of law.