You are right this is great. Next we could make phone books that have the numbers and addresses of everyone in our city. That way we can hound an old girlfriend and stalk their house. After that we can get a plane and crash it into a building of a foreign country that we dont like. Then I could buy a car and start running over children that are foolishly playing near the street.
Oh wait, that doesnt sound very good. On second thought, lets outlaw phone books, airplanes, and cars. That would make for a much better society.
Or maybe we shouldnt worry about every little crime that could be committed, and actually look at the benefits that we recieve. Maybe then we could rely on the judicial system to punish the law breakers and allow us to live more enriched lives.
I think the quote goes "people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." There is nothing about privacy in that statement. If we trade the freedom to own cars, operate airplanes, use phone books, or have detailed marketing information just because someone might use them to break the law, have we gained anything? --
You could just ask your customers about the information you need. Oh, wait, that's too intrusive. Ok, go ahead and spy on them.
Actually, asking our customers is faaaaar more intrusive. Who wants to have phone calls from every company they buy from to fill out surveys? And it usually is not as good of information anyway.
Most customers have no idea what they want. They want 20 more buttons on the screen, but they also think the screen is too "busy" looking. They never do actual analysis of what parts of the program they use the most. They just think about what they used the most yesterday, not the two years before that. They never think about how cost effective it might be to add a feature, or whether it would effect other customers.
We do listen to our customers, and provide as many means as we can for them to give us feedback. But it is not very efficient or effective for that to be our only way of getting information about our customers. And most of this information has little to do with just improving profit. It is about actually making the software better. If we succeed at making the software better then it of course does mean more profit, but isnt that how it should be? --
And you WILL still get ads for pizza and viagra, because you read slashdot, and statistical data shows that/.ers are fat and can't get it up.
Actually, I wouldnt mind that. I am not fat but I still like pizza, so getting a few coupons in the mail or online would be appreciated. And in 10-20 years I probably will start having erection problems, so discounts on viagra would also be nice. Looks like the statistical data works for me.
Getting ads for viagra and pizza is still better than for woodworking tools and auto magazines, even if it isnt exactly what I spend most of my money on right now. --
any information we are able to gain from their program usage only helps us give them a better product.
You are incorrect. It helps you gain a greater profit, which is not reinvested in the product.
Actually you are incorrect. I was not just talking about greater profit, I am talking about actual features added. By knowing what parts of the program people use the most, we can find what areas to spend the most development time on. Instead of just listening to the loudest complainers, we can help all of our customers.
Of course that also translates into greater profits (or at least continued profit), but that is because it is a business. That is the only motivation for improving a product for most businesses. I like to think that I actually improve my product just to have a sense of pride in it; but I would be doing my employees a disservice if I wasnt thinking of them and their families by making sure they still have a job. --
I cannot wait for this information to be easy and cheap to obtain. Imagine how much better GPS navigation systems would be if they always had real time data of traffic patterns, even if you live in a small midwestern town.
Everyone seams to complain about information like this being used for marketing reasons, but I for one think that is probably the best use for it. I like the idea of marketing companies actually targeting me with things I may want, instead of crap I would never use because they do not have enough information. I am the president of a small niche software company, and any information we are able to gain from their program usage only helps us give them a better product.
We arent losing any freedoms with a system like this. It isnt like the government is keeping this ultra-secret database about us secret, it is open for any company to use. And it does open up possibilities for those companies to offer consumer services that would otherwise be impossible. I see it as a net gain for society.
Although too bad I may soon have to watch my speeding a little bit more. --
I do not see why they would have a problem keeping interest alive for many years if they can get the price to a reasonable level, such as around $30k. Even if people can afford a weeklong luxurious holiday for the same price, the novelty of going into space and being weightless will probably be enough.
There were 7.5 million millionaires in the U.S. in 2004, up 10% from 2003. Even if the growth drops to 5%, after 10 years that is about 12 million over that period of time. For this company to sell 52 rides a year for 10 years, that is 1560 rides. That is 0.013% of all millionaires. If your average millionaire actually buys more like 1.3 rides (accounting for spouces and children), that is 0.01%. Only 1 in every 10,000 millionaires would have to want a ride on this spaceship, and this does not even account for customers from other countries.
In all likeliness, after 5-10 years the price will start dropping as the process becomes more streamlined. As the price drops even more people would want to ride this spaceship. I know that if I was making about $200k a year I would pay to go up just once in my lifetime for $20k.
While it is definetly not guaranteed to make money, I do not see how it is that unlikely. --
Like another responder mentioned, the increase in productivity from a poster (or books) is definetly worth the cost. Even if you buy one for $20, that is incredibly cheap for what you are getting. Lets say it is a poster of the.Net 2.0 framework. You will probably be able to use it for at least 3 years until you start using the next framework. That is less than $7 a year, or $0.56 a month. If you pay a programmer only $40k a year, that is $120k over 3 years. $20 is a small price to pay.
That $40k programmer is making about $20 an hour. If that poster saves him 1 hour over 3 years it is worth the money. That means that if he saves himself only 2 seconds each week for 3 years, the poster was worth it. --
Everyone keeps commenting about how they want a lightsaber fight with the Wii without actually thinking about how poorly that would be implimented.
How would you possibly simulate a sword clash? Eventually the two light sabers will touch, but you cannot possibly simulate that with a Wii controller. There would have to be a great deal of hydrolics in any system that could simulate your lightsaber actually making contact with something other than air.
This new controller could be a great addition to a number of new gaming ideas, but a sword battle is not one of them. --
the company would have to reduce its existing Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon FX prices by between 38% and 56% for its various models, with cuts averaging about 51%
OK, so they're saying that AMD missed the mark by 4%? And that this is worthy of writing an entire article about (a very short article by the way. Your welcome for the additional ad revenue:(
They havent met the 51% mark either. The 38% to 56% range is the price cuts that need to be made to different processors. Some processors have to be cut 38%, some 40%, some 56%, with the average price cuts needed being 51%.
For instance, the Athlon 64 FX-62 has a current street price of $1018. In July it is slated to have a 21.5% price reduction to $799. But to keep AMD's aggressive price/performance competitive edge over Intel, it would have to drop to $425.14 (according to the article). That is a 58.2% price reduction.
From the article, it looks like the anticipated July 24th price cuts are going to amount to an average of 25%. That means they still have 26% to go, not 4%.
Sheesh, welcome to journalism in the internet age.
Nope, welcome to Slashdot. The land of first posts that never RTFA. --
I think his main point is not that he thinks that WoW raises the bar on how good games have to be now. It is simply that WoW takes up far more time than an average PC game. A player that may have played 6 different RPG games in a single year is now going to only play 1 or 2 because WoW takes up too much of his time.
This player may have had alot more fun with 6 different games, but he never payed attention to other games because his guild needed his help camping some dragon spawn.
If this is true, then it could have an adverse effect on the PC gaming industry because we will end up seeing less games in general. That means less chance for innovative new ideas, and probably just more churning out sequels. I am not saying that this is the case, and neither was this guy, it was just his speculation. --
You are comparing two different types of people who have different standards of what makes them happy.
If you want to compare someone with 7 million dollars to someone who makes 40k a year, then why not compare the 40k/yr joe sixpack with an average Somolian.
The GNP per capita of Somolia is about $600 (compared to $41800 in the US). This means that this 40k/yr American probably makes more in one year than a Somolian does his entire life. Very similar to the difference between a CEO and lower middle class American. Does that mean "who fucking cares" if this American with a family loses his job, because at least he makes more than a Somolian by just working part time at KFC?
While I agree that a CEO does not risk as much as the average person, it does not mean that their risks do not matter. They worked hard (or at least their family did), to get to the position they are in. They deserve to live their dream, with their mansion and two vacation homes, just as much as joe sixpack has the right to make 50x the income of an average Somolian. --
these guys saleries and buyout packages mean they'll never have to work again. They're not taking any real risks. When it comes right down to it, they're the ruling class. Succeed or fail, it doesn't matter to them, they'll aways be ok.
Just because they are rich doesnt mean that they dont take risks. If they have moved up to a point where they are able to take such a job (whether it is from their own merits or their family/friends), then they probably live a much richer lifestyle than your average American. To them, making $200,000 a year would not be very much money. That may seam strange to most people, but that is the world they live in. If they take a job at a company that could fail, they could be hurting their future earnings by millions of dollars.
Use the USA as an example. We have a GNP of about $12 trillion. If the President and Congress made decisions over 4 years that dropped the GNP to $4 trillion, that would be a disaster for the American public. No one would say that our government does not take risks with our population. But even if this happened, our GNP per capita would still be more than 70% of the other countries in this world.
People on slashdot would be complaining if President Bush screwed up and cut our GNP in half. But by your logic they would have nothing to compain about, because we would still be a very wealthy country.
Just because someone is more rich than you are doesnt mean that they do not take risks.
Wow, has math education in this country really that bad? (Even among geeks/nerds?)
3rd edition has the easiest math from any edition yet. Thaco was much harder to explain to a newcomer than the current BAB/AC rules. And there is no 11.474m ranges, everything is in 5ft increments. To my knowledge there are no rules for anything in the entire game that is in less than a 5ft increment.
I never have problems with the math in 3rd edition DnD. And neither have any of the players I have ever played with. 2nd edition had far more convoluted rules. WoC realized that players didnt care to have charts that tracked a female PCs menstration cycle, so they vastly simplified the rules in 3rd ed. I cant see how anyone can actually believe that 2nd edition (and expecially THACO) were better than the current system?
It doesnt make much sense for them to learn from you since they will be dead before they can apply that knowledge
They do not necessarily need to learn from a specific set of players, but they can learn from what most players do against them. If Ragnoros is supposed to be a very powerful NPC, then it must have killed quite a few PCs along the way. That means he would know alot of the standard tactics, such as the standard Warriors aggro / Mages blast away / Healers heal.
I honestly do not understand how players in those MMORPGs can have fun doing the exact same thing over and over. If the NPCs would actually fight intelligently then PvE could actually be interesting.
I just choose to vote with my wallet and not support a business plan that I think is unfair to the consumer. but I still think it's a terrible policy
That is the idea that I do not understand. While MMORPGs are more expensive than other forms of gaming, they are definetly not unfair to the consumer. How is $15 a month unfair for any hobby? I spend more money than that with one meal at a decent restaurant, and like I said before I spend far more than $15 every time I go to a movie (bring a date next time).
Would you buy a bike... that required you to pay a monthly fee just to use it?
People do something similar to this every day. It is called a car. It is a form of transportation that you have to keep putting money into (gas) very often for it to keeps working. When you buy a car you a buying something that is useless if you do not put more money into it, just like an MMORPG.
Again, I believe that you are entitled to you opinion on whether or not MMORPGs are fun to play. But they are in no shape or form an unfair business model.
You simply are not the target market for MMORPGs if you are unwilling to pay $200 a year to play a game in an online persistent world. The price for MMORPGs is very low compared to most forms of entertainment. It is cheaper than a Netflix account, or even the price of going to one movie a month in the theatres.
It all comes down to "do you play it"? If you only play an hour a week, then probably no. But if you actually play it a few hours a week then it is definetly a cheap form of entertainment. After that the only important thing is if you had fun. If you do not enjoy massively multiplayer games that is okay, just dont play. But if you dont like the game to begin with, the payment structure is probably meaningless to you.
You can be taxed for services that do not produce a product. If I am a taxi driver, I am producing a service by driving people from one location to another. But I do not produce anything. I still have to pay income taxes however.
It all depends on how much you make from it and whether or not the IRS will even bother taxing you. In truth, you must file every time you win $100 in a friendly poker game at your friend's house. But if you dont file it, the IRS is not going to notice that you are living outside of your means. But if you live in a $300k house with 2 cars but dont file any income, they will come after you. It doesnt matter how you got the money. Even if it is from dividends from stocks or interest from savings accounts, you will be taxed.
Even today, if you are making $40k off of online sales of virtual Two-Handed Swords and have no other job, you will be taxed on that $40k. If the IRS notices that is. --
Graduating does help the university. A student who is at the college for 4 years gives them more money than a student who is only at college for 2. So a student that flunks out gives them very little money. So if they see too many students flunking, they have to do something to keep the students there. It is the same as in the business world, it is usually harder to hire someone new than to keep a mediocre employee around.
I am not saying that I agree with them, but it is obviously how they are thinking. Anyone, regardless of intelligence or skill, can pass college. Some degrees are too tough, like engineering or physics, but mostly just because your average person doesnt have the math skill. CS degrees have dumned down enough to where anyone can get one. CS can be a very difficult and demanding discipline, but colleges are making it as easy as possible.
The school does its best (through a hard course schedule) to get rid of those who are not up to the challenge.
Plenty of school have their "weed out" classes, but they usually just weed out students with bad studying skills, not students with bad CS skills. My college had a very difficult Assembler class, which almost half of students fail the first time. But it was hard mostly because it had alot of homework and the tests were poorly written. Missing one question could have a cascading effect that made you miss many more. I got an 88 on one test (second highest out of a couple hundred students) because I missed only 1 problem, but that made 4 other answers wrong that depending on that one mistake.
And even though it is a hard class, there is also summer school offered if you fail so that it doesnt set back your class schedule. You can also ask around for which teacher is easiest. And just taking it a second time is much easier because you have seen the tests and written the programs already. They arent exactly the same tests, but close enough that you know what you are going to see. The "best" students are the ones who get copies of old tests from upper class friends, not the ones who can program well.
What University do you teach at? My experience comes from my own college career and that of my friends and employees. That ranges from "tech school" CS degrees (like Devry), to decent state schools, to very good universities (such as UofI Champaign and Stanford). While you may be a very good professor (I had a few gems even in community college), I doubt your school is different than any other. Some are definetly better than others (Stanford vs Devry), but they are all governed by one rule: How many students can we graduate?
Some schools are very selective in who is let into the college, but that is a direct function of how good their applicants are. Students graduating from the University of Illinois are generally only better because they had the best students to begin with, not because the education is much better. Most colleges also have "weed out" classes that help get rid of students without the motivation to finish their degree. These classes rarely actually test their CS skill or knowledge, but simply their test taking and studying skills.
All of this is designed so teachers spend as little time as possible teaching students, but instead just go through the motions and keep the assembly line moving. When I finally find a decent CS major I am going to double his pay just to keep him, because they are just that rare. Most of my friends graduated with CS degrees from either Northern Illinois University or University of Illinois (Champaign), and almost all of them are not worth any more than my tech support staff.
Damn, where do you live? Im thinking of moving my company to your town if people actually only expect to make $20k a year doing programming work. We pay between $30k-$40k for relatively inexperienced programmers, and that is in a small town of about 30,000 people where you can buy a big house for $200k. I worked for $21k for about a year while my friend and I were starting up the company, but that was only because of the growth potential of the company we started.
You can surely make alot more than $25k if you really looked. For gods sake just find some kind of niche software, program it yourself in your spare time, and start selling it online. That is what I did, and I do not think that I am a rare genius. I didnt even have much freetime, but you can make $25k working part time at a factory while you are doing it.
Only people with no motivation or no skill make $25k a year for any extended period of time. You claim you have the skill, so it must be a lacking in motivation.
Slashdot Mirror
You are right this is great. Next we could make phone books that have the numbers and addresses of everyone in our city. That way we can hound an old girlfriend and stalk their house. After that we can get a plane and crash it into a building of a foreign country that we dont like. Then I could buy a car and start running over children that are foolishly playing near the street.
Oh wait, that doesnt sound very good. On second thought, lets outlaw phone books, airplanes, and cars. That would make for a much better society.
Or maybe we shouldnt worry about every little crime that could be committed, and actually look at the benefits that we recieve. Maybe then we could rely on the judicial system to punish the law breakers and allow us to live more enriched lives.
I think the quote goes "people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." There is nothing about privacy in that statement. If we trade the freedom to own cars, operate airplanes, use phone books, or have detailed marketing information just because someone might use them to break the law, have we gained anything?
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You could just ask your customers about the information you need. Oh, wait, that's too intrusive. Ok, go ahead and spy on them.
Actually, asking our customers is faaaaar more intrusive. Who wants to have phone calls from every company they buy from to fill out surveys? And it usually is not as good of information anyway.
Most customers have no idea what they want. They want 20 more buttons on the screen, but they also think the screen is too "busy" looking. They never do actual analysis of what parts of the program they use the most. They just think about what they used the most yesterday, not the two years before that. They never think about how cost effective it might be to add a feature, or whether it would effect other customers.
We do listen to our customers, and provide as many means as we can for them to give us feedback. But it is not very efficient or effective for that to be our only way of getting information about our customers. And most of this information has little to do with just improving profit. It is about actually making the software better. If we succeed at making the software better then it of course does mean more profit, but isnt that how it should be?
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And you WILL still get ads for pizza and viagra, because you read slashdot, and statistical data shows that /.ers are fat and can't get it up.
Actually, I wouldnt mind that. I am not fat but I still like pizza, so getting a few coupons in the mail or online would be appreciated. And in 10-20 years I probably will start having erection problems, so discounts on viagra would also be nice. Looks like the statistical data works for me.
Getting ads for viagra and pizza is still better than for woodworking tools and auto magazines, even if it isnt exactly what I spend most of my money on right now.
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any information we are able to gain from their program usage only helps us give them a better product.
You are incorrect. It helps you gain a greater profit, which is not reinvested in the product.
Actually you are incorrect. I was not just talking about greater profit, I am talking about actual features added. By knowing what parts of the program people use the most, we can find what areas to spend the most development time on. Instead of just listening to the loudest complainers, we can help all of our customers.
Of course that also translates into greater profits (or at least continued profit), but that is because it is a business. That is the only motivation for improving a product for most businesses. I like to think that I actually improve my product just to have a sense of pride in it; but I would be doing my employees a disservice if I wasnt thinking of them and their families by making sure they still have a job.
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I cannot wait for this information to be easy and cheap to obtain. Imagine how much better GPS navigation systems would be if they always had real time data of traffic patterns, even if you live in a small midwestern town.
Everyone seams to complain about information like this being used for marketing reasons, but I for one think that is probably the best use for it. I like the idea of marketing companies actually targeting me with things I may want, instead of crap I would never use because they do not have enough information. I am the president of a small niche software company, and any information we are able to gain from their program usage only helps us give them a better product.
We arent losing any freedoms with a system like this. It isnt like the government is keeping this ultra-secret database about us secret, it is open for any company to use. And it does open up possibilities for those companies to offer consumer services that would otherwise be impossible. I see it as a net gain for society.
Although too bad I may soon have to watch my speeding a little bit more.
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I do not see why they would have a problem keeping interest alive for many years if they can get the price to a reasonable level, such as around $30k. Even if people can afford a weeklong luxurious holiday for the same price, the novelty of going into space and being weightless will probably be enough.
There were 7.5 million millionaires in the U.S. in 2004, up 10% from 2003. Even if the growth drops to 5%, after 10 years that is about 12 million over that period of time. For this company to sell 52 rides a year for 10 years, that is 1560 rides. That is 0.013% of all millionaires. If your average millionaire actually buys more like 1.3 rides (accounting for spouces and children), that is 0.01%. Only 1 in every 10,000 millionaires would have to want a ride on this spaceship, and this does not even account for customers from other countries.
In all likeliness, after 5-10 years the price will start dropping as the process becomes more streamlined. As the price drops even more people would want to ride this spaceship. I know that if I was making about $200k a year I would pay to go up just once in my lifetime for $20k.
While it is definetly not guaranteed to make money, I do not see how it is that unlikely.
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Like another responder mentioned, the increase in productivity from a poster (or books) is definetly worth the cost. Even if you buy one for $20, that is incredibly cheap for what you are getting. Lets say it is a poster of the .Net 2.0 framework. You will probably be able to use it for at least 3 years until you start using the next framework. That is less than $7 a year, or $0.56 a month. If you pay a programmer only $40k a year, that is $120k over 3 years. $20 is a small price to pay.
That $40k programmer is making about $20 an hour. If that poster saves him 1 hour over 3 years it is worth the money. That means that if he saves himself only 2 seconds each week for 3 years, the poster was worth it.
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Everyone keeps commenting about how they want a lightsaber fight with the Wii without actually thinking about how poorly that would be implimented.
How would you possibly simulate a sword clash? Eventually the two light sabers will touch, but you cannot possibly simulate that with a Wii controller. There would have to be a great deal of hydrolics in any system that could simulate your lightsaber actually making contact with something other than air.
This new controller could be a great addition to a number of new gaming ideas, but a sword battle is not one of them.
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the company would have to reduce its existing Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon FX prices by between 38% and 56% for its various models, with cuts averaging about 51%
:(
OK, so they're saying that AMD missed the mark by 4%? And that this is worthy of writing an entire article about (a very short article by the way. Your welcome for the additional ad revenue
They havent met the 51% mark either. The 38% to 56% range is the price cuts that need to be made to different processors. Some processors have to be cut 38%, some 40%, some 56%, with the average price cuts needed being 51%.
For instance, the Athlon 64 FX-62 has a current street price of $1018. In July it is slated to have a 21.5% price reduction to $799. But to keep AMD's aggressive price/performance competitive edge over Intel, it would have to drop to $425.14 (according to the article). That is a 58.2% price reduction.
From the article, it looks like the anticipated July 24th price cuts are going to amount to an average of 25%. That means they still have 26% to go, not 4%.
Sheesh, welcome to journalism in the internet age.
Nope, welcome to Slashdot. The land of first posts that never RTFA.
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A standard PC in idle only takes up about 25 Watts. While it is still alot more than 2, that is a far cry from 150.
I think his main point is not that he thinks that WoW raises the bar on how good games have to be now. It is simply that WoW takes up far more time than an average PC game. A player that may have played 6 different RPG games in a single year is now going to only play 1 or 2 because WoW takes up too much of his time.
This player may have had alot more fun with 6 different games, but he never payed attention to other games because his guild needed his help camping some dragon spawn.
If this is true, then it could have an adverse effect on the PC gaming industry because we will end up seeing less games in general. That means less chance for innovative new ideas, and probably just more churning out sequels. I am not saying that this is the case, and neither was this guy, it was just his speculation.
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You are comparing two different types of people who have different standards of what makes them happy.
If you want to compare someone with 7 million dollars to someone who makes 40k a year, then why not compare the 40k/yr joe sixpack with an average Somolian.
The GNP per capita of Somolia is about $600 (compared to $41800 in the US). This means that this 40k/yr American probably makes more in one year than a Somolian does his entire life. Very similar to the difference between a CEO and lower middle class American. Does that mean "who fucking cares" if this American with a family loses his job, because at least he makes more than a Somolian by just working part time at KFC?
While I agree that a CEO does not risk as much as the average person, it does not mean that their risks do not matter. They worked hard (or at least their family did), to get to the position they are in. They deserve to live their dream, with their mansion and two vacation homes, just as much as joe sixpack has the right to make 50x the income of an average Somolian.
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these guys saleries and buyout packages mean they'll never have to work again. They're not taking any real risks. When it comes right down to it, they're the ruling class. Succeed or fail, it doesn't matter to them, they'll aways be ok.
Just because they are rich doesnt mean that they dont take risks. If they have moved up to a point where they are able to take such a job (whether it is from their own merits or their family/friends), then they probably live a much richer lifestyle than your average American. To them, making $200,000 a year would not be very much money. That may seam strange to most people, but that is the world they live in. If they take a job at a company that could fail, they could be hurting their future earnings by millions of dollars.
Use the USA as an example. We have a GNP of about $12 trillion. If the President and Congress made decisions over 4 years that dropped the GNP to $4 trillion, that would be a disaster for the American public. No one would say that our government does not take risks with our population. But even if this happened, our GNP per capita would still be more than 70% of the other countries in this world.
People on slashdot would be complaining if President Bush screwed up and cut our GNP in half. But by your logic they would have nothing to compain about, because we would still be a very wealthy country.
Just because someone is more rich than you are doesnt mean that they do not take risks.
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>Of course you can't whack a 50% tax on petrol straight away.
You can't? The taxes are about that high already!
Sure you can. Add a new 50% tax onto something that already has a 50% tax and now you have a 125% tax.
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He meant a stove that does not use oil/gas/electricity to run.
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Wow, has math education in this country really that bad? (Even among geeks/nerds?)
3rd edition has the easiest math from any edition yet. Thaco was much harder to explain to a newcomer than the current BAB/AC rules. And there is no 11.474m ranges, everything is in 5ft increments. To my knowledge there are no rules for anything in the entire game that is in less than a 5ft increment.
I never have problems with the math in 3rd edition DnD. And neither have any of the players I have ever played with. 2nd edition had far more convoluted rules. WoC realized that players didnt care to have charts that tracked a female PCs menstration cycle, so they vastly simplified the rules in 3rd ed. I cant see how anyone can actually believe that 2nd edition (and expecially THACO) were better than the current system?
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You have the nature-vs-nuture argument exactly backwards here, moron.
And you calling anyone a "moron" is like the pot calling the kettle black. Have you ever heard of sarcasm?
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It doesnt make much sense for them to learn from you since they will be dead before they can apply that knowledge
They do not necessarily need to learn from a specific set of players, but they can learn from what most players do against them. If Ragnoros is supposed to be a very powerful NPC, then it must have killed quite a few PCs along the way. That means he would know alot of the standard tactics, such as the standard Warriors aggro / Mages blast away / Healers heal.
I honestly do not understand how players in those MMORPGs can have fun doing the exact same thing over and over. If the NPCs would actually fight intelligently then PvE could actually be interesting.
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I just choose to vote with my wallet and not support a business plan that I think is unfair to the consumer.
... that required you to pay a monthly fee just to use it?
but I still think it's a terrible policy
That is the idea that I do not understand. While MMORPGs are more expensive than other forms of gaming, they are definetly not unfair to the consumer. How is $15 a month unfair for any hobby? I spend more money than that with one meal at a decent restaurant, and like I said before I spend far more than $15 every time I go to a movie (bring a date next time).
Would you buy a bike
People do something similar to this every day. It is called a car. It is a form of transportation that you have to keep putting money into (gas) very often for it to keeps working. When you buy a car you a buying something that is useless if you do not put more money into it, just like an MMORPG.
Again, I believe that you are entitled to you opinion on whether or not MMORPGs are fun to play. But they are in no shape or form an unfair business model.
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You simply are not the target market for MMORPGs if you are unwilling to pay $200 a year to play a game in an online persistent world. The price for MMORPGs is very low compared to most forms of entertainment. It is cheaper than a Netflix account, or even the price of going to one movie a month in the theatres.
It all comes down to "do you play it"? If you only play an hour a week, then probably no. But if you actually play it a few hours a week then it is definetly a cheap form of entertainment. After that the only important thing is if you had fun. If you do not enjoy massively multiplayer games that is okay, just dont play. But if you dont like the game to begin with, the payment structure is probably meaningless to you.
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You can be taxed for services that do not produce a product. If I am a taxi driver, I am producing a service by driving people from one location to another. But I do not produce anything. I still have to pay income taxes however.
It all depends on how much you make from it and whether or not the IRS will even bother taxing you. In truth, you must file every time you win $100 in a friendly poker game at your friend's house. But if you dont file it, the IRS is not going to notice that you are living outside of your means. But if you live in a $300k house with 2 cars but dont file any income, they will come after you. It doesnt matter how you got the money. Even if it is from dividends from stocks or interest from savings accounts, you will be taxed.
Even today, if you are making $40k off of online sales of virtual Two-Handed Swords and have no other job, you will be taxed on that $40k. If the IRS notices that is.
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Graduating does help the university. A student who is at the college for 4 years gives them more money than a student who is only at college for 2. So a student that flunks out gives them very little money. So if they see too many students flunking, they have to do something to keep the students there. It is the same as in the business world, it is usually harder to hire someone new than to keep a mediocre employee around.
I am not saying that I agree with them, but it is obviously how they are thinking. Anyone, regardless of intelligence or skill, can pass college. Some degrees are too tough, like engineering or physics, but mostly just because your average person doesnt have the math skill. CS degrees have dumned down enough to where anyone can get one. CS can be a very difficult and demanding discipline, but colleges are making it as easy as possible.
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The school does its best (through a hard course schedule) to get rid of those who are not up to the challenge.
Plenty of school have their "weed out" classes, but they usually just weed out students with bad studying skills, not students with bad CS skills. My college had a very difficult Assembler class, which almost half of students fail the first time. But it was hard mostly because it had alot of homework and the tests were poorly written. Missing one question could have a cascading effect that made you miss many more. I got an 88 on one test (second highest out of a couple hundred students) because I missed only 1 problem, but that made 4 other answers wrong that depending on that one mistake.
And even though it is a hard class, there is also summer school offered if you fail so that it doesnt set back your class schedule. You can also ask around for which teacher is easiest. And just taking it a second time is much easier because you have seen the tests and written the programs already. They arent exactly the same tests, but close enough that you know what you are going to see. The "best" students are the ones who get copies of old tests from upper class friends, not the ones who can program well.
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What University do you teach at? My experience comes from my own college career and that of my friends and employees. That ranges from "tech school" CS degrees (like Devry), to decent state schools, to very good universities (such as UofI Champaign and Stanford). While you may be a very good professor (I had a few gems even in community college), I doubt your school is different than any other. Some are definetly better than others (Stanford vs Devry), but they are all governed by one rule: How many students can we graduate?
Some schools are very selective in who is let into the college, but that is a direct function of how good their applicants are. Students graduating from the University of Illinois are generally only better because they had the best students to begin with, not because the education is much better. Most colleges also have "weed out" classes that help get rid of students without the motivation to finish their degree. These classes rarely actually test their CS skill or knowledge, but simply their test taking and studying skills.
All of this is designed so teachers spend as little time as possible teaching students, but instead just go through the motions and keep the assembly line moving. When I finally find a decent CS major I am going to double his pay just to keep him, because they are just that rare. Most of my friends graduated with CS degrees from either Northern Illinois University or University of Illinois (Champaign), and almost all of them are not worth any more than my tech support staff.
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Damn, where do you live? Im thinking of moving my company to your town if people actually only expect to make $20k a year doing programming work. We pay between $30k-$40k for relatively inexperienced programmers, and that is in a small town of about 30,000 people where you can buy a big house for $200k. I worked for $21k for about a year while my friend and I were starting up the company, but that was only because of the growth potential of the company we started.
You can surely make alot more than $25k if you really looked. For gods sake just find some kind of niche software, program it yourself in your spare time, and start selling it online. That is what I did, and I do not think that I am a rare genius. I didnt even have much freetime, but you can make $25k working part time at a factory while you are doing it.
Only people with no motivation or no skill make $25k a year for any extended period of time. You claim you have the skill, so it must be a lacking in motivation.
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