... The hardcore users are a tiny percentage of the market now.
Somebody better tell NewEgg and the other custom build parts online shops that they are going out of business soon.;)
The PC market isn't dead or dying, that's just silly talk. It is completely saturated and the consumers are shifting focus to different computing devices. This is completely natural and shouldn't shock anybody. The technical people that make the programs and allow the computing market to work will always need the workhorse product of the industry - that will be the Personal Computer for a very long time.
Shareholder: What is this I heard about from my son that a pirated version of SimCity is available because of "debug mode"? Other Shareholder(s): {blank stares} Frank Gibeau: It's something for testing without the online requirement for the people who wrote the game. Shareholder: {pounds desk} If it's something that allows these a**hole pirates think they can beat us, then let's remove this "debug mode". Frank Gibeau: It shall be done. Shareholder: And if I find out these people re-enable debug mode or uses it for future IPs we make, for whatever reason, I want them fired! Frank Gibeau: It shall be done.
There may be other stated ancillary reasons: social gaming, cloud enabled, anti cheating, but the main advantage always online has is Digital Restriction Management. The big dev houses and publishers are all over this. Given the current state of gaming, there isn't anything we (the collective we) can do about it. The EA's of the world have all of us by the short hairs and they know it. There is no viable market reason they will change anytime in the future.
Reason? There are way too many gamers that will still buy the product. These gamers range from too young to care to gamers who buy the game while grumbling about always on restriction and gamers for everything inbetween. The only way to change this developing trend, is to hit them where it hurts. Don't buy their game at all. You could take the time to write them a dead letter about why you refuse to buy their product, but they will relegate those letters to the looney trash bin.
So enjoy the always on DRM. Maybe technology will catch up and nearly everybody will have gaming friendly Internet connections in the future. This is unlikely in the next couple decades. So there may be a chance where the new generation of gamers will discover why DRM is a bad thing for single player games. Thus adding to the percentage of those that refuse to buy the game. But even then, a new set of gamers that are completely unconcerned will come into the market. It's a losing battle.
I wish the prospects were better, but with the instant gratification gamers types are in general - the Publishers will keep a firm grip on the bit and we'll go where they tell us. And we'll like it dammit!
These days are all about information overload. You need to simplify.
Do the following for a month. And I mean really do it - don't do it half assed. Do it completely - commit to it.
Check email only 3 times a day: Once in the morning, once during lunch, and if you must once at the close of the day. All other times, turn off the notification that you even get email. Turn off your cell phone. Shutoff all IM clients. Tell your boss that you can't be interrupted unless it's a critical client problem. Exercise self control when looking things up on the Internet, keep it work based only. In short, setup your work environment so it allows you to concentrate and focus on the task at hand.
If that still doesn't work - seriously consider finding a new career, cause this on is boring the shit out of you.
And if i had my way i'd see ALL of the politicians and pigs involved in this case thrown in jail for a decade.
Eh...jail is too good for them. Besides, with the number of corrupt people involved in this whole mess, you'd have to anex at least 10 federal prisons just to hold them all. Then there is the matter of the new corrupt people that would fill the void and the cycle would continue.
Yeah it sucks that the government is getting their big hands into this. I am glad the issue is coming out though. Perhaps this will make businesses sit up and take notice of the ramifications of data being in the cloud. Another issue that has yet to come to the fore is the legal issues of where the cloud servers are versus the originating country where the data comes from and vice versa. Including the dynamic nature of multiple geographical locations being used for failover and load balancing issues.
Just last week, my boss asked me what the cloud could do for our business and what it would take to get one setup. The easiest being Amazon S3 cloud service. I explained the benefits and the potential caveats, which included the government angle. The boss hated the thought of that. I suggested we could setup a personal business cloud, but would be responsible for the 24/7 up time & maintenance. Fun fun fun, I get to look up and see what the options are for setting up a business cloud is. Given the alternative, I agree with him though.
The thing that gets me about this story is the "IT genius" family. We are told basically nothing about them other than it consists of a husband, wife, and 17 year old son. We are told that the father did notice his son always being online and never watching TV. Didn't they start to suspect something was up with their son? If this boy truly does lack any empathy it would of shown up prior to this incident.
The story just doesn't go deep enough to provide context to the boy's actions. Yeah, taken at face value, that was easily premeditated harassment and deserves some kind of punishment. If his brain is lacking in chemicals that keep him from realizing what wrong he is doing, then it needs to be treated. Everybody deserves a shot at happiness in their lives.
Consider the alternative. Would you rather pay for the 10 or so sites that you visit on a daily basis? That's been tried and tried and tried and has always failed so far. Maybe someday in the future the magic combination of micro transactions and transparency will be stumbled upon, but it hasn't happened yet. That, and the advertising forces still believe that advertising works. A lot of people don't care about being advertised to, and in some cases they actually prefer it. So for significantly large values of stupidity or apathy, the advertising companies aren't wrong.
The technically able and the ones who care about being subjected to unhealthy amounts of lowest common denominator dreck have tools they use (Firefox, adblock plus, noscript, ghostery, etc.) to avoid the worst of it. Fortunately for them, their mostly free and unfettered access is payed for mainly by those who don't and the small percentage of overlap between the 2 sets.
Thank you for the generous time and money donation to "The Documentation Foundation"; home of LibreOffice. The extra incentive of more users having more time to devote to providing feedback to make LibreOffice better and more focused is certainly appreciated. However, in the future, perhaps consider a straight up money donation as this will be better for your business. After all, more competition is better for the consumer and if it weren't for the consumer, neither of us would be here.
For the future developers coming into the fold, there are plenty of User Interface improvements that are perfect for getting your feet wet with the project. We welcome you aboard!
I still use Gmail for several deterrent accounts and 1 main account. I've been setting these up over the past 3 months or so. So far, The count is up to 8. Google has tried to force them to sign up for Google+, but each time the sign up page presents itself I just close it down and relogin. Until Google makes Google+ mandatory for using their services, this usage pattern will repeat. When that day arrives, I'll pay for my own domain(s) and set up shop over there.
This whole social aspect of the Internet is mostly about the advertisers getting control again. I lived too long without TV to have that happen again.
The math courses are generally pretty good. If I had to rate them, I'd give them a solid B. I like the approachable style of the teaching, but sometimes the instructor just flat out gets things wrong. Most times they use the annotations on the Youtube service to point out the corrections. But for a subject as exacting as math, where you are literally trying to rewire the brain into assigning logical meaning to [initially] foreign concepts, it is a huge break in continuity. The problem is exacerbated given the fact that these new concepts come so quickly - sometimes every single 10 minute video.
I can appreciate that they are doing a free service for the betterment of society. I hope they go back through their catalog and clean up the production and content. That and the limitations of Youtube indexing are quite aggravating at times. The instructor will be narrowing in on a subject and then suddenly reference a different video that goes into more detail. The lesson notes don't have those which I find frustrating.
I don't think interpersonal teaching has anything to worry about for quite a while. As others have continually said, teaching is more about 2 way communication that just a dump of knowledge. Even computers, which are almost their own perfect teaching device, don't do well in cases of learning that require more than the instant feedback loop. The mark of a really good teacher is somebody who has such a command of the subject, is able to present the material in many different ways to aid the building of the internal connections of the brain.
In my opinion, this is the way businesses should be run. Gabe is looking at the 5 to 10 year goal of wearable computing will be powerful enough for virtual reality. I don't know if he is right, virtual reality has been virtually around the corner for nearly decades now. I hope it will be. It pretty much depends on if the processing power of the computer chip continues to follow Moore's Law. And even then, I don't know. Maybe not total virtual reality - more like augmented reality. In any case, we even could see Half Life 3 by then. Now *that* would be cool.
I respect your position on this. I don't share it though.
If UBIsoft allows their PC games to be played with a one-time online activation and no additional DRM, then I am going to support them for it. I don't pirate and the only way for me as a gaming consumer to be heard is with my wallet. UBIsoft needs to hear that less restrictive or no DRM is a Good Thing(tm) for their customers. If their latest Splinter Cell Game is released this way I will buy it, even though I'm not crazy about the gameplay style so far. The other thing to consider is the games they do release this way are yours to own. You can play it a decade later if you want. That's why I am willing to vote with my dollars and tell them it's something I approve of.
Of course, I am still wary. This is UBIsoft. Their evilness runs deep and it's entirely possible they just happened to get somebody friendly to gamers on this hiring cycle. I'll wait a good 2 months or so to find out what the early buyers of the game say regarding the DRM.
This person was hiding inside world geometry to avoid taking damage. There was nothing subtle about it. I agree with you that there are valid battle tactics that are positional. Hiding behind pillars during certain attacks for example. Regarding your second example, if killing the centaurs in that method presents little or no danger to your character, and you're are able to kill thousands of them for some greater than average benefit (quest items, trade materials, gold), then you should bring it up to the designers and ask them. Is it an acceptable but creative strategy for centaur slaying, or did they not intend that?
You are right, there are cases where it is honestly hard to know if a certain thing is an exploit. In a lot of those cases, it boils down to the fact that we don't have the breadth of knowledge the designers do, and it is better the error on the side of caution. I remember playing Everquest back in the day and discovering an interesting area to fish where the rate of fish caught was slightly higher than normal. In the process of testing how much higher than normal, there were a few brief periods where every cast was a fish caught. I reported that - a week later it was in the patch notes as corrected and my cleric was given a stack of peridots by a GM the next time I logged in.
I didn't do it for the potential reward, I did it in the spirit of telling the designers about something that they might of overlooked.
There are people out there that forget this, or flat out don't believe in that line of thinking. Cheating is cheating, whether in a game or in real life. Unfortunately, my nephews were brought up believing it is perfectly fine to use public aid as much as you possibly can regardless if you actually need it or not. The problem is, their yardstick for measuring what needs are is broken compared to what hardworking folk would think. Most people will file these things under desires or even luxuries, but seldom are they actually needs. For my nephews, that line of thinking easily crosses over into computer games. They think that because they found a way to "beat the system" means they should do it as often as possible before it gets changed. Their morality compass is skewed by how they were brought up to think. They honestly find nothing wrong with it. Their normal mode of thinking is selfish, and they never think about how their actions will affect others in the same group.
This is just my nephews, who unfortunately, were brought up this way. I know of many more people, some personally, some through friends, that have this same type of default mode of thinking. I will even go as far to generalize that this type of thinking can be very generational - as in it is passed down generation through generation.
Kudos for ArenaNet for towing the line and banning people who are obviously exploiting game inconsistencies or bugs. With a system this complex, nobody can expect everything to be 100% correct all the time.
For a different example, I was watching a YT vid of a GW2 raid. The leader of the raid was actively telling the other people how to use positional exploits to avoid damage so they could get through content without much danger. That kind of thing pisses me off. For almost exactly the same reasons. It almost makes me wish there was a community reward program for reporting players like this. Unfortunately, I fear there is more room for abuse then what good it would do.
The average total wage earnings for a working adult 65yro-25yro x $50,000 is $2 million dollars (before taxes). Since court judgements don't go away in bankruptcy, he would be stuck with at least garnished wages for 1/3 - 1/2 of his wage earning life. That would put me in a depressed funk for the rest of my life. Yeah sure, he'd has his freedom, but he might as well be in jail doing time. Or, if he is of the unstable sort anyway, suicide is an option.
That's what I do. I still haven't purchased ME3 or DE: Human Revolution. I'm waiting for all the DLC to come out and the game is already in the discount bin.
DLC is simply an experiment to see what the market will bear in terms of pricing. And it makes me sad to say this, but I think a large portion of the game consumers are that way. Kids who need instant gratification. Besides, it isn't their money, it's their parent's money.
Back when the iPad was first released, I couldn't believe anybody would want to own one, let alone find a use for it. Turned out my geek sense was horribly wrong and SJ managed to create a new market. There is a huge swath of people that only want a computing device to only do 3 or 4 things. That's what the iPad does and it does it well. Apple is famous for getting the little details right. I'd say the videos that I've seen of grandmas and grandpas using it without any instruction is a pure win.
Microsoft is betting there is another emerging market out there. I saw the keynote where Ballmer, etc. demonstrated the Surface. If they truly have their act together and have put some serious attention on the "little details"and integrated in their office products into the a functional and smart device that is enterprise friendly, then they could very well have a winner here. The bet is since Apple is not very enterprise friendly, businesses will purchase these by the quarterly budget load once it has been verified that it can do a good job for business type folks. I wish them well. Competition is good and all that.
Personally, I won't be using one, but then I am not their target demographic - in my opinion. I am the DIY computer geek. I'll always own my own full fledged computer with all its unfettered glory so I can do all the stuff that I do on a daily basis because I enjoy doing programmery and integration type stuff.
Well, I endorse the intent of this, but the main reason the free flow of digital goods is blocked by region is because of the balkanized licensing of media. Geo-IP blocking is a consequence of this, not a cause of it.
Agreed with everything. This is hardly common knowledge though. It should be more transparent. Itemize the charges for regional fees/taxes and this will get the regular public aware of the issue and then maybe something can start to be done about it. As you say though, good luck with that. The interested parties don't want that kind of information revealed because it precisely gives the consumers something to target.
Education is the answer and it will take a long time.
The underlying question is why, for the love of all that is good in this world, would you eat at a McDonald's in France?
There are a number of reasons, but the most likely one in this case is his kids wanted to eat at McDonalds. The parents then decided fine, it's a known food item that the spawn like and we can treat them.
Read the Exec, Order. This is not about monitoring specific communication, it's about maintaining the integrity of the communication network so that in the event of an emergency communication doesn't go down.
For those of us in NYC, we should remember core telephone, pager, and cellular infrastructure going down back on 9/11...circuit congestion was through the fucking roof, and someone is turning a "must make communications possible" into "BB is watching you."
The spin is disgusting, and the brainless will never actually read the executive order and understand it anyway. Da govment gona take my phone! Dey do this in E-jupt and Ly-bia. Fucking retards, the lot of you.
I read the Executive Order. Here is the section that I think people are getting riled about. Emphasis added is mine.
Sec. 5.6. The Federal Communications Commission performs such functions as are required by law, including: (a) with respect to all entities licensed or regulated by the Federal Communications Commission: the extension, discontinuance, or reduction of common carrier facilities or services; the control of common carrier rates, charges, practices, and classifications; the construction, authorization, activation, deactivation, or closing of radio stations, services, and facilities; the assignment of radio frequencies to Federal Communications Commission licensees; the investigation of violations of pertinent law; and the assessment of communications service provider emergency needs and resources; and
(b) supporting the continuous operation and restoration of critical communications systems and services by assisting the Secretary of Homeland Security with infrastructure damage assessment and restoration, and by providing the Secretary of Homeland Security with information collected by the Federal Communications Commission on communications infrastructure, service outages, and restoration, as appropriate.
So...if I understand the/. summary right, it states the DHS can shutdown portions of the communications network (not specified, most likely the Internet augmented by other more traditional means, perhaps shortwave radio). What I have pasted here directly from the order states nothing of the sort. It says the FCC has that power provided it is within current laws.
Granted, there is a LOT I don't understand about these things and there probably is some slippery slope argument being applied here, but I don't immediately see it.
Effectively we've reached a point now where you have to actually buy a copy of many games for every person in the house that wants to play multiplayer, rather than where you'd just need a copy per household previously.
Wait... What? You're upset by this? You think you should be able to play the game on multiple consoles at once, but only pay for one copy of the game?
Am I missing something? This sounds ludicrous.
Errrm...Almost all non-digital games for home enjoyment you pay one price for multiple people to enjoy it. Monopoly, card games, Dominoes, Chutes & Ladders, the list is nearly endless. Those gaming companies don't seem to have a problem with revenue, Sure they aren't making money hand over fist but they are good stable companies. It is only recently with digital games that the publishers have seen the opportunity to charge per person and are trying like hell to make sure it happens. Even digital games of the past 10-15 years have had an option for reduced price for household licensing or flat out one price for the game that you could use at multiple computers in the house expressly for the point of multi-player gaming.
Slashdot Mirror
... The hardcore users are a tiny percentage of the market now.
Somebody better tell NewEgg and the other custom build parts online shops that they are going out of business soon. ;)
The PC market isn't dead or dying, that's just silly talk. It is completely saturated and the consumers are shifting focus to different computing devices. This is completely natural and shouldn't shock anybody. The technical people that make the programs and allow the computing market to work will always need the workhorse product of the industry - that will be the Personal Computer for a very long time.
Shareholder: What is this I heard about from my son that a pirated version of SimCity is available because of "debug mode"?
Other Shareholder(s): {blank stares}
Frank Gibeau: It's something for testing without the online requirement for the people who wrote the game.
Shareholder: {pounds desk} If it's something that allows these a**hole pirates think they can beat us, then let's remove this "debug mode".
Frank Gibeau: It shall be done.
Shareholder: And if I find out these people re-enable debug mode or uses it for future IPs we make, for whatever reason, I want them fired!
Frank Gibeau: It shall be done.
There may be other stated ancillary reasons: social gaming, cloud enabled, anti cheating, but the main advantage always online has is Digital Restriction Management. The big dev houses and publishers are all over this. Given the current state of gaming, there isn't anything we (the collective we) can do about it. The EA's of the world have all of us by the short hairs and they know it. There is no viable market reason they will change anytime in the future.
Reason? There are way too many gamers that will still buy the product. These gamers range from too young to care to gamers who buy the game while grumbling about always on restriction and gamers for everything inbetween. The only way to change this developing trend, is to hit them where it hurts. Don't buy their game at all. You could take the time to write them a dead letter about why you refuse to buy their product, but they will relegate those letters to the looney trash bin.
So enjoy the always on DRM. Maybe technology will catch up and nearly everybody will have gaming friendly Internet connections in the future. This is unlikely in the next couple decades. So there may be a chance where the new generation of gamers will discover why DRM is a bad thing for single player games. Thus adding to the percentage of those that refuse to buy the game. But even then, a new set of gamers that are completely unconcerned will come into the market. It's a losing battle.
I wish the prospects were better, but with the instant gratification gamers types are in general - the Publishers will keep a firm grip on the bit and we'll go where they tell us. And we'll like it dammit!
These days are all about information overload. You need to simplify.
Do the following for a month. And I mean really do it - don't do it half assed. Do it completely - commit to it.
Check email only 3 times a day: Once in the morning, once during lunch, and if you must once at the close of the day. All other times, turn off the notification that you even get email. Turn off your cell phone. Shutoff all IM clients. Tell your boss that you can't be interrupted unless it's a critical client problem. Exercise self control when looking things up on the Internet, keep it work based only. In short, setup your work environment so it allows you to concentrate and focus on the task at hand.
If that still doesn't work - seriously consider finding a new career, cause this on is boring the shit out of you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SxWMI9zg3s
And if i had my way i'd see ALL of the politicians and pigs involved in this case thrown in jail for a decade.
Eh...jail is too good for them. Besides, with the number of corrupt people involved in this whole mess, you'd have to anex at least 10 federal prisons just to hold them all. Then there is the matter of the new corrupt people that would fill the void and the cycle would continue.
Sorry for the gratuitous pun.
Yeah it sucks that the government is getting their big hands into this. I am glad the issue is coming out though. Perhaps this will make businesses sit up and take notice of the ramifications of data being in the cloud. Another issue that has yet to come to the fore is the legal issues of where the cloud servers are versus the originating country where the data comes from and vice versa. Including the dynamic nature of multiple geographical locations being used for failover and load balancing issues.
Just last week, my boss asked me what the cloud could do for our business and what it would take to get one setup. The easiest being Amazon S3 cloud service. I explained the benefits and the potential caveats, which included the government angle. The boss hated the thought of that. I suggested we could setup a personal business cloud, but would be responsible for the 24/7 up time & maintenance. Fun fun fun, I get to look up and see what the options are for setting up a business cloud is. Given the alternative, I agree with him though.
The thing that gets me about this story is the "IT genius" family. We are told basically nothing about them other than it consists of a husband, wife, and 17 year old son. We are told that the father did notice his son always being online and never watching TV. Didn't they start to suspect something was up with their son? If this boy truly does lack any empathy it would of shown up prior to this incident.
The story just doesn't go deep enough to provide context to the boy's actions. Yeah, taken at face value, that was easily premeditated harassment and deserves some kind of punishment. If his brain is lacking in chemicals that keep him from realizing what wrong he is doing, then it needs to be treated. Everybody deserves a shot at happiness in their lives.
Consider the alternative. Would you rather pay for the 10 or so sites that you visit on a daily basis? That's been tried and tried and tried and has always failed so far. Maybe someday in the future the magic combination of micro transactions and transparency will be stumbled upon, but it hasn't happened yet. That, and the advertising forces still believe that advertising works. A lot of people don't care about being advertised to, and in some cases they actually prefer it. So for significantly large values of stupidity or apathy, the advertising companies aren't wrong.
The technically able and the ones who care about being subjected to unhealthy amounts of lowest common denominator dreck have tools they use (Firefox, adblock plus, noscript, ghostery, etc.) to avoid the worst of it. Fortunately for them, their mostly free and unfettered access is payed for mainly by those who don't and the small percentage of overlap between the 2 sets.
Being a geek is fun and in this case healthier.
Dear Microsoft,
Thank you for the generous time and money donation to "The Documentation Foundation"; home of LibreOffice. The extra incentive of more users having more time to devote to providing feedback to make LibreOffice better and more focused is certainly appreciated. However, in the future, perhaps consider a straight up money donation as this will be better for your business. After all, more competition is better for the consumer and if it weren't for the consumer, neither of us would be here.
For the future developers coming into the fold, there are plenty of User Interface improvements that are perfect for getting your feet wet with the project. We welcome you aboard!
Best Wishes,
LibreOffice Development Team
I still use Gmail for several deterrent accounts and 1 main account. I've been setting these up over the past 3 months or so. So far, The count is up to 8. Google has tried to force them to sign up for Google+, but each time the sign up page presents itself I just close it down and relogin. Until Google makes Google+ mandatory for using their services, this usage pattern will repeat. When that day arrives, I'll pay for my own domain(s) and set up shop over there.
This whole social aspect of the Internet is mostly about the advertisers getting control again. I lived too long without TV to have that happen again.
The math courses are generally pretty good. If I had to rate them, I'd give them a solid B. I like the approachable style of the teaching, but sometimes the instructor just flat out gets things wrong. Most times they use the annotations on the Youtube service to point out the corrections. But for a subject as exacting as math, where you are literally trying to rewire the brain into assigning logical meaning to [initially] foreign concepts, it is a huge break in continuity. The problem is exacerbated given the fact that these new concepts come so quickly - sometimes every single 10 minute video.
I can appreciate that they are doing a free service for the betterment of society. I hope they go back through their catalog and clean up the production and content. That and the limitations of Youtube indexing are quite aggravating at times. The instructor will be narrowing in on a subject and then suddenly reference a different video that goes into more detail. The lesson notes don't have those which I find frustrating.
I don't think interpersonal teaching has anything to worry about for quite a while. As others have continually said, teaching is more about 2 way communication that just a dump of knowledge. Even computers, which are almost their own perfect teaching device, don't do well in cases of learning that require more than the instant feedback loop. The mark of a really good teacher is somebody who has such a command of the subject, is able to present the material in many different ways to aid the building of the internal connections of the brain.
In my opinion, this is the way businesses should be run. Gabe is looking at the 5 to 10 year goal of wearable computing will be powerful enough for virtual reality. I don't know if he is right, virtual reality has been virtually around the corner for nearly decades now. I hope it will be. It pretty much depends on if the processing power of the computer chip continues to follow Moore's Law. And even then, I don't know. Maybe not total virtual reality - more like augmented reality. In any case, we even could see Half Life 3 by then. Now *that* would be cool.
I respect your position on this. I don't share it though.
If UBIsoft allows their PC games to be played with a one-time online activation and no additional DRM, then I am going to support them for it. I don't pirate and the only way for me as a gaming consumer to be heard is with my wallet. UBIsoft needs to hear that less restrictive or no DRM is a Good Thing(tm) for their customers. If their latest Splinter Cell Game is released this way I will buy it, even though I'm not crazy about the gameplay style so far. The other thing to consider is the games they do release this way are yours to own. You can play it a decade later if you want. That's why I am willing to vote with my dollars and tell them it's something I approve of.
Of course, I am still wary. This is UBIsoft. Their evilness runs deep and it's entirely possible they just happened to get somebody friendly to gamers on this hiring cycle. I'll wait a good 2 months or so to find out what the early buyers of the game say regarding the DRM.
This person was hiding inside world geometry to avoid taking damage. There was nothing subtle about it. I agree with you that there are valid battle tactics that are positional. Hiding behind pillars during certain attacks for example. Regarding your second example, if killing the centaurs in that method presents little or no danger to your character, and you're are able to kill thousands of them for some greater than average benefit (quest items, trade materials, gold), then you should bring it up to the designers and ask them. Is it an acceptable but creative strategy for centaur slaying, or did they not intend that?
You are right, there are cases where it is honestly hard to know if a certain thing is an exploit. In a lot of those cases, it boils down to the fact that we don't have the breadth of knowledge the designers do, and it is better the error on the side of caution. I remember playing Everquest back in the day and discovering an interesting area to fish where the rate of fish caught was slightly higher than normal. In the process of testing how much higher than normal, there were a few brief periods where every cast was a fish caught. I reported that - a week later it was in the patch notes as corrected and my cleric was given a stack of peridots by a GM the next time I logged in.
I didn't do it for the potential reward, I did it in the spirit of telling the designers about something that they might of overlooked.
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
There are people out there that forget this, or flat out don't believe in that line of thinking. Cheating is cheating, whether in a game or in real life. Unfortunately, my nephews were brought up believing it is perfectly fine to use public aid as much as you possibly can regardless if you actually need it or not. The problem is, their yardstick for measuring what needs are is broken compared to what hardworking folk would think. Most people will file these things under desires or even luxuries, but seldom are they actually needs. For my nephews, that line of thinking easily crosses over into computer games. They think that because they found a way to "beat the system" means they should do it as often as possible before it gets changed. Their morality compass is skewed by how they were brought up to think. They honestly find nothing wrong with it. Their normal mode of thinking is selfish, and they never think about how their actions will affect others in the same group.
This is just my nephews, who unfortunately, were brought up this way. I know of many more people, some personally, some through friends, that have this same type of default mode of thinking. I will even go as far to generalize that this type of thinking can be very generational - as in it is passed down generation through generation.
Kudos for ArenaNet for towing the line and banning people who are obviously exploiting game inconsistencies or bugs. With a system this complex, nobody can expect everything to be 100% correct all the time.
For a different example, I was watching a YT vid of a GW2 raid. The leader of the raid was actively telling the other people how to use positional exploits to avoid damage so they could get through content without much danger. That kind of thing pisses me off. For almost exactly the same reasons. It almost makes me wish there was a community reward program for reporting players like this. Unfortunately, I fear there is more room for abuse then what good it would do.
The average total wage earnings for a working adult 65yro-25yro x $50,000 is $2 million dollars (before taxes). Since court judgements don't go away in bankruptcy, he would be stuck with at least garnished wages for 1/3 - 1/2 of his wage earning life. That would put me in a depressed funk for the rest of my life. Yeah sure, he'd has his freedom, but he might as well be in jail doing time. Or, if he is of the unstable sort anyway, suicide is an option.
That's what I do. I still haven't purchased ME3 or DE: Human Revolution. I'm waiting for all the DLC to come out and the game is already in the discount bin.
DLC is simply an experiment to see what the market will bear in terms of pricing. And it makes me sad to say this, but I think a large portion of the game consumers are that way. Kids who need instant gratification. Besides, it isn't their money, it's their parent's money.
Don't use Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Everybody in my small office uses PDF XChange Viewer. http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer/
Back when the iPad was first released, I couldn't believe anybody would want to own one, let alone find a use for it. Turned out my geek sense was horribly wrong and SJ managed to create a new market. There is a huge swath of people that only want a computing device to only do 3 or 4 things. That's what the iPad does and it does it well. Apple is famous for getting the little details right. I'd say the videos that I've seen of grandmas and grandpas using it without any instruction is a pure win.
Microsoft is betting there is another emerging market out there. I saw the keynote where Ballmer, etc. demonstrated the Surface. If they truly have their act together and have put some serious attention on the "little details"and integrated in their office products into the a functional and smart device that is enterprise friendly, then they could very well have a winner here. The bet is since Apple is not very enterprise friendly, businesses will purchase these by the quarterly budget load once it has been verified that it can do a good job for business type folks. I wish them well. Competition is good and all that.
Personally, I won't be using one, but then I am not their target demographic - in my opinion. I am the DIY computer geek. I'll always own my own full fledged computer with all its unfettered glory so I can do all the stuff that I do on a daily basis because I enjoy doing programmery and integration type stuff.
Well, I endorse the intent of this, but the main reason the free flow of digital goods is blocked by region is because of the balkanized licensing of media. Geo-IP blocking is a consequence of this, not a cause of it.
Agreed with everything. This is hardly common knowledge though. It should be more transparent. Itemize the charges for regional fees/taxes and this will get the regular public aware of the issue and then maybe something can start to be done about it. As you say though, good luck with that. The interested parties don't want that kind of information revealed because it precisely gives the consumers something to target.
Education is the answer and it will take a long time.
I wonder what would be more effective in this thought provoking conundrum?
Yeah I suppose you could get them girlfriends...or you could just take away their computer and give them an iPad instead.
The underlying question is why, for the love of all that is good in this world, would you eat at a McDonald's in France?
There are a number of reasons, but the most likely one in this case is his kids wanted to eat at McDonalds. The parents then decided fine, it's a known food item that the spawn like and we can treat them.
Read the Exec, Order. This is not about monitoring specific communication, it's about maintaining the integrity of the communication network so that in the event of an emergency communication doesn't go down.
For those of us in NYC, we should remember core telephone, pager, and cellular infrastructure going down back on 9/11...circuit congestion was through the fucking roof, and someone is turning a "must make communications possible" into "BB is watching you."
The spin is disgusting, and the brainless will never actually read the executive order and understand it anyway. Da govment gona take my phone! Dey do this in E-jupt and Ly-bia. Fucking retards, the lot of you.
I read the Executive Order. Here is the section that I think people are getting riled about. Emphasis added is mine.
Sec. 5.6. The Federal Communications Commission performs such functions as are required by law, including: (a) with respect to all entities licensed or regulated by the Federal Communications Commission: the extension, discontinuance, or reduction of common carrier facilities or services; the control of common carrier rates, charges, practices, and classifications; the construction, authorization, activation, deactivation, or closing of radio stations, services, and facilities; the assignment of radio frequencies to Federal Communications Commission licensees; the investigation of violations of pertinent law; and the assessment of communications service provider emergency needs and resources; and
(b) supporting the continuous operation and restoration of critical communications systems and services by assisting the Secretary of Homeland Security with infrastructure damage assessment and restoration, and by providing the Secretary of Homeland Security with information collected by the Federal Communications Commission on communications infrastructure, service outages, and restoration, as appropriate.
So...if I understand the /. summary right, it states the DHS can shutdown portions of the communications network (not specified, most likely the Internet augmented by other more traditional means, perhaps shortwave radio). What I have pasted here directly from the order states nothing of the sort. It says the FCC has that power provided it is within current laws.
Granted, there is a LOT I don't understand about these things and there probably is some slippery slope argument being applied here, but I don't immediately see it.
Effectively we've reached a point now where you have to actually buy a copy of many games for every person in the house that wants to play multiplayer, rather than where you'd just need a copy per household previously.
Wait... What? You're upset by this? You think you should be able to play the game on multiple consoles at once, but only pay for one copy of the game?
Am I missing something? This sounds ludicrous.
Errrm...Almost all non-digital games for home enjoyment you pay one price for multiple people to enjoy it. Monopoly, card games, Dominoes, Chutes & Ladders, the list is nearly endless. Those gaming companies don't seem to have a problem with revenue, Sure they aren't making money hand over fist but they are good stable companies. It is only recently with digital games that the publishers have seen the opportunity to charge per person and are trying like hell to make sure it happens. Even digital games of the past 10-15 years have had an option for reduced price for household licensing or flat out one price for the game that you could use at multiple computers in the house expressly for the point of multi-player gaming.