I won't be buying this expansion because D3 was such a huge disappointment, I don't see any expansion ever making it fun. I think my highest level character was 37 -- I stopped when I got to Hell difficulty, because there seemed no point in playing the exact same content over a third time. Meanwhile it didn't seem possible to progress without spending real-world money. Blizzard lost me with this game.
But on a related note, I have a question. Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is bringing out the new Everquest Next which looks amazing. But I swore off of Sony in 2000 after being a guide in the original Everquest. The guide program was so corrupt, and the John Smedley administration was so disrespectful of the players, that I swore never to buy another Sony game. Has Sony improved? After more than ten years I'd be willing to give them another chance if I hear that they're not the pure evil they used to be. (I know EA is still pure evil, but I haven't heard anything lately about SOE.)
Blizzard has probably lost me for ten years. We'll see if they still try to trick players into spending money, and whether they re-discover what makes game fun.
Bullets are relatively expensive for the damage they do. One bullet might cost $1 and kill one person. Bombs aren't cost effective at all unless you're counting the damage to structures as a plus, but often it is not.
Chemical weapons, on the other hand, are relatively cheap for their killing capability, and do not harm important infrastructure. $1 worth of Sarin gas will kill thousands. Chemical weapons make war too easy. That's why we're outraged when governments use them.
(Could be worse; they could be using bioweapons. $1 of weaponized smallpox could eradicate a small country all by itself. Can't wait until that's the red line someone crosses...)
It sounds as if game developers are learning what sci-fi/fantasy writers already knew; fans can be rabid and irrational. For most authors this isn't a problem because they sell in the 5 or 6 digits and there may be just one crazy fan. But every AAA video game has millions of players, so the number of crazies can be much larger.
This is why Neil Gaiman was forced to tell people that 'George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.' Because rabid fans wanted GRR to be their bitch, and because he now has such a large audience their harassment was getting out of hand.
The solution to this is to grow a thick skin and/or to get a secretary that will read and filter your mail for you. Or you could make games that only sell 10k-100k units, so the fanbase doesn't reach a critical mass of craziness...but if your company is addicted to money then being a smaller part of the market isn't an option.
The fact is that capitalism is an aberration. The first industrial revolution in the 1700s brought rail lines and new textiles, then it petered out. The second industrial revolution around 1900 brought automobiles, nuclear power, and computers; it is petering out right now. It may be that the last 200 years were a historical aberration.
Macroeconomists are coming around to the view that capitalism cannot survive without an industrial frontier -- an innovative environment full of new technologies. Without that, we go back to the stagnant economies of the middle ages. There was nothing wrong with the human spirit back then, there just weren't any opportunities. The rich controlled everything and people stayed within their social castes. It could be that we're now headed back to that state. It may be the default mode for human society.
We've had flush toilets (of one form or another) since the 31st century BC.
I know this is meant to be humorous, but the flush toilet was invented in the 1800s. It's recent technology -- about as old as the motorcar. It was inevitable that it would get the benefits of electronics...although I can't see what benefit is gained by wiring up a toilet.
I think we've gotten to the point where we put electronics into things just for the hell of it.
I wouldn't say it's great for consumers, because all the services differ. If they were all exactly the same then yeah, it would be great. But as they are there's a pain for the consumer every time we have to switch. I don't *want* to switch. I exist in this disloyal state only because they've forced me into it.
When Google Reader announced it was closing, I started a new RSS account on every service I could find. Feedly, Netvibes, Newsblur, The Old Reader, etc. I'm using Netvibes because it suits my needs best. But my accounts still exist on all those other services, and they're just one button -- 'Mark all as Read' -- from being up-to-date.
The future of the net, apparently, is complete lack of brand loyalty. I don't care who gives me the service I desire, and I don't care what they've done in the past. I'll use whatever site is most convenient and I'm ready to switch to another site at a moment's notice. I am the type of consumer that companies like Google have created. Hope they choke on us.
For that matter, you could fill the last fourth of the tube with hardened concrete, and it *still* wouldn't make a calculable difference to the stresses on the cargo. We're talking about a lot of stress on that cargo.
Sounds like fear of the boogyman and a bit of racism are really going to hurt the US in the long run.
Not racism. If we were afraid of computers built in the US by people of Chinese descent, that would be racism. But we're afraid of computers built in China. That's nationalism. (And arguably xenophobia.)
Depends. Some of the things that the Kaiju do to the Jaegers are filthy, naughty, and involve tentacles. But it's hard to say that a giant robot has been 'raped'.
Giving the prize to Obama was wishful thinking. The Nobel committee specifically said that they were awarding the prize in hopes that Obama's election would further the cause of peace. It may seem odd to award speculative prizes, but they choose to do so.
Giving the peace prize to Henry Kissinger -- now THAT was just nuts.
I totally misread that headline as saying HTTP 2.0 would be a Brony Protocol. And I was okay with that. At last, a functioning <rainbow_dash> tag. Support for Alicorn transformations. Working CSS elements (of Harmony). Yes, this would be a useful advance.
But then by the same lax standard I can claim that Jesus endorsed binary code. Matthew 5:37: "But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."
Binary code? It looks to me like Jesus is mandating the use of 4-bit ALUs. He was just a man of his time, and I think they only had RISC architecture back then. (Either that, or He played Minecraft way too much.)
Doesn't everybody remember last year, when multiple reports came out from sociologists saying that food prices cause riots, and that food prices worldwide were expected to peak in the summer of 2013? Headlines like 'We have until August 2013 before riots sweep the globe', and 'We have one year before everything explodes' -- that doesn't ring a bell for anyone else?
Social unrest is correlated to the price of necessary commodities. When the poor cannot afford basic necessities, they have no choice but to get violent. Because of crop failures last year, this year is primed for social unrest EVERYWHERE.
I have a low ID, but PDP-11s were obsolete by the time I started my career. The only experience I have with a PDP-11 was in translating code from it to use on our newfangled VAX machines.
This entire article is making me feel very old. I wish I had my Atari-400 to cheer me up.
I've completely switched over to NetVibes, but I'm not happy about it. The Netvibes web page is slow to load and has buggy UI on every browser I've tried, especially on mobile platforms. But it does what I want it to do, which is give me my RSS feeds synched on several different devices, and it allows me to permanently save some articles.
TheOldReader probably has better UI -- because it's simpler -- but I don't believe it has the 'save' functionality that I need. Feedly is just god awful for what I need. Bloglines is NetVibes -- literally, it's a front-end for the same service. I don't know of any others that have what I want, but if I find one I'm ready to switch again in a heartbeat.
It's because of this, because of the timing, and because of the latest news reports that some of the information 'leaked' was faulty, that I suspect Snowden may be a Chinese asset. He may not realize it -- his Chinese handlers may be manipulating him in any number of ways -- but it really looks like he's a stooge who has been directed to do the maximum damage possible.
Whether the NSA deserves the damage done to them or not is a separate issue.
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I won't be buying this expansion because D3 was such a huge disappointment, I don't see any expansion ever making it fun. I think my highest level character was 37 -- I stopped when I got to Hell difficulty, because there seemed no point in playing the exact same content over a third time. Meanwhile it didn't seem possible to progress without spending real-world money. Blizzard lost me with this game.
But on a related note, I have a question. Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is bringing out the new Everquest Next which looks amazing. But I swore off of Sony in 2000 after being a guide in the original Everquest. The guide program was so corrupt, and the John Smedley administration was so disrespectful of the players, that I swore never to buy another Sony game. Has Sony improved? After more than ten years I'd be willing to give them another chance if I hear that they're not the pure evil they used to be. (I know EA is still pure evil, but I haven't heard anything lately about SOE.)
Blizzard has probably lost me for ten years. We'll see if they still try to trick players into spending money, and whether they re-discover what makes game fun.
Bullets are relatively expensive for the damage they do. One bullet might cost $1 and kill one person. Bombs aren't cost effective at all unless you're counting the damage to structures as a plus, but often it is not.
Chemical weapons, on the other hand, are relatively cheap for their killing capability, and do not harm important infrastructure. $1 worth of Sarin gas will kill thousands. Chemical weapons make war too easy. That's why we're outraged when governments use them.
(Could be worse; they could be using bioweapons. $1 of weaponized smallpox could eradicate a small country all by itself. Can't wait until that's the red line someone crosses...)
It sounds as if game developers are learning what sci-fi/fantasy writers already knew; fans can be rabid and irrational. For most authors this isn't a problem because they sell in the 5 or 6 digits and there may be just one crazy fan. But every AAA video game has millions of players, so the number of crazies can be much larger.
This is why Neil Gaiman was forced to tell people that 'George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.' Because rabid fans wanted GRR to be their bitch, and because he now has such a large audience their harassment was getting out of hand.
The solution to this is to grow a thick skin and/or to get a secretary that will read and filter your mail for you. Or you could make games that only sell 10k-100k units, so the fanbase doesn't reach a critical mass of craziness...but if your company is addicted to money then being a smaller part of the market isn't an option.
There's nothing wrong with 'the human spirit'.
The fact is that capitalism is an aberration. The first industrial revolution in the 1700s brought rail lines and new textiles, then it petered out. The second industrial revolution around 1900 brought automobiles, nuclear power, and computers; it is petering out right now. It may be that the last 200 years were a historical aberration.
Macroeconomists are coming around to the view that capitalism cannot survive without an industrial frontier -- an innovative environment full of new technologies. Without that, we go back to the stagnant economies of the middle ages. There was nothing wrong with the human spirit back then, there just weren't any opportunities. The rich controlled everything and people stayed within their social castes. It could be that we're now headed back to that state. It may be the default mode for human society.
The original part of Wall-E was the non-human, almost entirely non-speaking POV. That's pretty rare in both Hollywood and literary sci-fi.
I like this idea, because we can then begin developing products like Rad-X and Radaway.
We've had flush toilets (of one form or another) since the 31st century BC.
I know this is meant to be humorous, but the flush toilet was invented in the 1800s. It's recent technology -- about as old as the motorcar. It was inevitable that it would get the benefits of electronics...although I can't see what benefit is gained by wiring up a toilet.
I think we've gotten to the point where we put electronics into things just for the hell of it.
Oh, god. Now I really want to Google 'stewpit', but I'm worried it's some keyword for a terrorist cannibal org.
I wouldn't say it's great for consumers, because all the services differ. If they were all exactly the same then yeah, it would be great. But as they are there's a pain for the consumer every time we have to switch. I don't *want* to switch. I exist in this disloyal state only because they've forced me into it.
When Google Reader announced it was closing, I started a new RSS account on every service I could find. Feedly, Netvibes, Newsblur, The Old Reader, etc. I'm using Netvibes because it suits my needs best. But my accounts still exist on all those other services, and they're just one button -- 'Mark all as Read' -- from being up-to-date.
The future of the net, apparently, is complete lack of brand loyalty. I don't care who gives me the service I desire, and I don't care what they've done in the past. I'll use whatever site is most convenient and I'm ready to switch to another site at a moment's notice. I am the type of consumer that companies like Google have created. Hope they choke on us.
Something like a drunk Swedish chef. "Vodka vodka, vodka vodka borscht."
For that matter, you could fill the last fourth of the tube with hardened concrete, and it *still* wouldn't make a calculable difference to the stresses on the cargo. We're talking about a lot of stress on that cargo.
Are you casting aspersions on our glorious, pre-ordained future full of bicycle-riding fish?
Sounds like fear of the boogyman and a bit of racism are really going to hurt the US in the long run.
Not racism. If we were afraid of computers built in the US by people of Chinese descent, that would be racism. But we're afraid of computers built in China. That's nationalism. (And arguably xenophobia.)
Depends. Some of the things that the Kaiju do to the Jaegers are filthy, naughty, and involve tentacles. But it's hard to say that a giant robot has been 'raped'.
Giving the prize to Obama was wishful thinking. The Nobel committee specifically said that they were awarding the prize in hopes that Obama's election would further the cause of peace. It may seem odd to award speculative prizes, but they choose to do so.
Giving the peace prize to Henry Kissinger -- now THAT was just nuts.
I totally misread that headline as saying HTTP 2.0 would be a Brony Protocol. And I was okay with that. At last, a functioning <rainbow_dash> tag. Support for Alicorn transformations. Working CSS elements (of Harmony). Yes, this would be a useful advance.
While unions have a potential upside for some workers, in an unregulated fashion, just as corporations, they will expand and abuse their power.
You're right. Both unions and corporations tend to misuse their power.
These days we've pretty much gotten rid of unions, though. So how do we get rid of the corporations?
Oh, we can't? Maybe we better keep 'em both, to keep both in check?
But then by the same lax standard I can claim that Jesus endorsed binary code. Matthew 5:37: "But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."
Binary code? It looks to me like Jesus is mandating the use of 4-bit ALUs. He was just a man of his time, and I think they only had RISC architecture back then. (Either that, or He played Minecraft way too much.)
Doesn't everybody remember last year, when multiple reports came out from sociologists saying that food prices cause riots, and that food prices worldwide were expected to peak in the summer of 2013? Headlines like 'We have until August 2013 before riots sweep the globe', and 'We have one year before everything explodes' -- that doesn't ring a bell for anyone else?
Social unrest is correlated to the price of necessary commodities. When the poor cannot afford basic necessities, they have no choice but to get violent. Because of crop failures last year, this year is primed for social unrest EVERYWHERE.
The Arxiv paper demonstrating the correlation, based on data from the 2008 food riots.
An article warning us from last year. And another. And another.
Sociologists have known this was coming. Governments should have known this was coming. It's going to be a brutal, bloody summer. Get ready.
I have a low ID, but PDP-11s were obsolete by the time I started my career. The only experience I have with a PDP-11 was in translating code from it to use on our newfangled VAX machines.
This entire article is making me feel very old. I wish I had my Atari-400 to cheer me up.
We've had a perfect programming language since Fortran.
That's why everything since has copied the syntax and half the operators.
Fixed that for you. Where did you think most of C syntax came from?
It's funny, because Hulk/Banner is one of the deepest, most complex characters in all of comic books.
I've completely switched over to NetVibes, but I'm not happy about it. The Netvibes web page is slow to load and has buggy UI on every browser I've tried, especially on mobile platforms. But it does what I want it to do, which is give me my RSS feeds synched on several different devices, and it allows me to permanently save some articles.
TheOldReader probably has better UI -- because it's simpler -- but I don't believe it has the 'save' functionality that I need. Feedly is just god awful for what I need. Bloglines is NetVibes -- literally, it's a front-end for the same service. I don't know of any others that have what I want, but if I find one I'm ready to switch again in a heartbeat.
It's because of this, because of the timing, and because of the latest news reports that some of the information 'leaked' was faulty, that I suspect Snowden may be a Chinese asset. He may not realize it -- his Chinese handlers may be manipulating him in any number of ways -- but it really looks like he's a stooge who has been directed to do the maximum damage possible.
Whether the NSA deserves the damage done to them or not is a separate issue.