Devaluing Items and Currency is a big problem in many MMOs. Items/Currency are really one of three reasons people stay in the MMO game they're in, the other two are "People Social" and "Skills/Character".
An MMO with a more stable value on high-value items and large sums of money will be more likely to keep players around. It's just no reason to stay if EVERYONE has that Vorpal Sword of Timespendedness that you spent 5 months getting, but can now be had for 5 minutes of play-time because they're manufactured for mega-cheap by Craftsman1, Craftman2, Craftsman3, or had by camping for a few days in some random location with a dozen other people.
You know, the "other kenetic weapons" thing always bothered me about films like starwars. Why didn't they equip all those fancy robots with things like rocket launchers to take out the Jedi? I mean, load of good your lightsabre would do you then.
In any case, and back to the question at hand, wouldn't a painted missle be invisible if it was reflective, as the "paint" would just be reflected laser?
I don't mean to sound crass, but wouldn't the Military have thought of things like, "Well, they'll just put mirrors on the missles if we attack them with light, Sir". Would the reflective material hold up well to such pressures as take-off and super-sonic speeds? Would mirrors on the outside disrupt internal guidance systems? What about something as simple as a cloudy sky?
Again, I'm not really sure about these sorts of things, that's why I'm asking. I guess the other question is, what's the range on this guy? Would this be use-able as a long-distance weapon against foot-soldiers? [see command and conquer for suitable reference].
For those keeping score at home, this will be the 15th Madden game - so the curse has stuck on roughly 29 percent of the games.
Notice how the article carefully describes the last four seasons. Notice how you've only produced two of fifteen possible examples. TWENTY NINE PERCENT! For those keeping track, for 71% of cover-guys, the "hex" has no effect!
Not only that, but half of the examples provided by any information on the source find something, *anything* wrong. The team suffers. The player suffers. Something terrible happens in the organization. The bottom line is, I bet we could find similar cases for any random occurance.
How about this. If you want, we'll correlate my slashdot posts with bad weather. I get to use the entire globe, I'll bet you that 29% of the time, whenever I post, the next day it's 20 degrees cooler than it was the day before and raining in at least one part of the world.
But the point is, a player is likely to have an average year as determined by his skill and a wide variety of other factors. If his Average year puts him within the 90% of all Football players, then he will have quite a few seasons where he is better than 98% of all players, and a few where is he better than 75%, or whatever it is the math works out to.
But the point is, the year he's on the cover of the magazine or box, he's had a phenomenal previous year. It's likely that he'll perform once again at his more typical 90% level or his more typical 80% level, or whatever that level happens to be, and have an "average" season.
This is a statistical "phenomenon" called "Regression to the Mean". It goes like this.
The player on the Cover of the Madden Game (or, as it's more widely known, the SI Cover) had a phenomenal last season - a standout year. Such a good season that he will help sell the product and foster media attention.
The Average player in the NFL did not have such a good season - in fact, they had an Average season. Next season, it is far more likely that the player on the cover of the Madden game will have a season more like the Average season than he will a Standout Season. That's the way a normal distribution works.
Any other explanation is just mumbo-jumbo. It's regression to the mean. I'm not sure why basic statistics seems so difficult to so many people, especially psycho sports fans: sports statisticians.
This isn't so difficult to understand. You live in a society, which is trading liberty for security. You give up certain things you would otherwise be free to do (Run rampant and kill people) for the security that no one will do the same thing to you (run rampant and kill you).
I'm not sure why this bogus maxim comes up so frequently. The student made an extremely abnormal request. Was he within his legal right to do so? Of course he was. Did he have a reason, other than to get some hidden info? Nope.
We know this *after the fact*. *After the fact* security is the only type there is: if you're already dead from someone on a murderous rampage (see paragraph one), your forfeitsure of liberty does no good whatsoever. That's why we've got folks like the police, who make sure that these sorts of things can't happen.
I saw Viet Dinh speak at Tufts University (author of the Patriot Act, in case you were wondering), and the ACLU person who was suppposed to be speaking Against him openly said (quote): "Mr. Dinh, I hereby declare you an honorary Civil Libertarian".
While you may have the right to much information, there is a good deal of informaiton that should be protected for the sake of protecting other people. This is a case where the information was given and the motive was questioned. I have difficulty believing anyone finds anything wrong with that.
Sports may not be popular on Slashdot, but lets get real. Football is probably the *worst* game you could have picked as an example of something you'd rather not watch.
Maybe it's simply because you've never taken the time to sit down and learn the rules, but Football - at least, American Football - is an incredibly complex mental game, perhaps moreso than it is a physical game. Choosing plays, defenses, substitution packages, and everything that goes into the mental game is just the beginning - then, there's the execution and the physical aspect.
Football is a fantastic spectator sport for many reasons, but one is the wide array of appeal. It has many different levels of action, all of which are important and interesting.
If you wanted a sport to pick on, maybe Boxing, which has little mental game on the abstract, strategic level - and even then, it's still hard to say that there's no thought that goes into a title fight.
a) Huge media attention from the beginning. It's something that's never been done before. That's essentially "free" advertising.
b) Un-editable content. While there are many ads in major league baseball already [see: the scoreboard, the stadium, etc], there are none on the field of play. If something big happens in these games, they can't edit the spiderman logo out.
c) Mention by the announcers. Something like a), except, this is going to be a big deal.
d) Regular advertising. Yeah, they'll be visible on many plays of the game.
If you are at a small arcade they will usually replace a joystick if you ask nicely, the mall arcades often employ people who wouldn't even know how to change a joystick. They just give you your coins back, put the game out of order and tell whoever the tech is to fix it when he comes in that week.
Hey. I worked in a mall arcade. I could replace on a joystick on almost all the machines in the store [some had special locks or keys which prevented employee access]. That being said, you know why it wasn't done while we were on shift collecting your change and things? Time.
When there are 2 employees working the entire store, one can't take ~25 minutes and fix a single broken game out of a hundred or so. It's far more efficient for a tech-guy to come in for an 8 hour shift than it is for the entire store to be short handed every time something small breaks.
Google can just lock the number of IPs that can access an account in X amount of time.
Say, 1 every minute, or 5 every 20 minutes.
This would have NO effect on 100% of the customer base and shut down the "transmit stuff using google as the warez site" option, since Warez works around "swarming".
The Funny thing about all these anti-419 ideas - especially the laws - is that it's probably easier to take out the stupid people here than it is to take out the stupid scammers in Nigeria.
The new Microsoft Email Initiative has promised to do just that- Every time people use their mail client, clippy will pop up with questions like:
Will you: a) Give money away to people you don't know. b) Double click nude.pics.exe.vbs.exe.jpg.exe c) Mail this pyramid scheme to 30 other people d) None of the above
You can't sue someone for breaking the law and then find out how and why they broke the law midway through the trial.
If that were so, in the real-world, Police could search you without a warrant, because they wouldn't need to prove any cause for the search. "We think Joe Blow is breaking the law somehow" isn't good enough to get a search warrant right now, you have to say how specifically he's doing and how you know.
SCO's idea of law is the same thing that's going on in Guantanimo Bay. Snag the person, accuse them of doing 'something illegal', dig through their life and try to find something.
And they're going to get this information from tracking the kids? What, is the wristband going to ask for a bite of your burger?
Come on now. There's privacy concerns, and then there's stupid privacy concerns. Someone might be watching you from the bushes with binoculars, too. Damn those bushes and their tricksy ways!
Oh come on. It has nothing to do with parents by the time kids get in college.
Here's the reason: Two words. They're both "bling". College kids don't have nearly as much dispensible income as singles with real jobs, and love listening to music.
Slashdot Mirror
Devaluing Items and Currency is a big problem in many MMOs. Items/Currency are really one of three reasons people stay in the MMO game they're in, the other two are "People Social" and "Skills/Character".
An MMO with a more stable value on high-value items and large sums of money will be more likely to keep players around. It's just no reason to stay if EVERYONE has that Vorpal Sword of Timespendedness that you spent 5 months getting, but can now be had for 5 minutes of play-time because they're manufactured for mega-cheap by Craftsman1, Craftman2, Craftsman3, or had by camping for a few days in some random location with a dozen other people.
You know, the "other kenetic weapons" thing always bothered me about films like starwars. Why didn't they equip all those fancy robots with things like rocket launchers to take out the Jedi? I mean, load of good your lightsabre would do you then.
In any case, and back to the question at hand, wouldn't a painted missle be invisible if it was reflective, as the "paint" would just be reflected laser?
I don't mean to sound crass, but wouldn't the Military have thought of things like, "Well, they'll just put mirrors on the missles if we attack them with light, Sir". Would the reflective material hold up well to such pressures as take-off and super-sonic speeds? Would mirrors on the outside disrupt internal guidance systems? What about something as simple as a cloudy sky?
Again, I'm not really sure about these sorts of things, that's why I'm asking. I guess the other question is, what's the range on this guy? Would this be use-able as a long-distance weapon against foot-soldiers? [see command and conquer for suitable reference].
Missles can't be completely covered in any material. They require propulsion and lots of other things.
Depends how accurate this laser is, that's the real "depends".
I copy/pasted that directly out of the article.
//sigh.
Four cases. Every player? Of four cases?
//sigh.
From the article.
For those keeping score at home, this will be the 15th Madden game - so the curse has stuck on roughly 29 percent of the games.
Notice how the article carefully describes the last four seasons. Notice how you've only produced two of fifteen possible examples. TWENTY NINE PERCENT! For those keeping track, for 71% of cover-guys, the "hex" has no effect!
Not only that, but half of the examples provided by any information on the source find something, *anything* wrong. The team suffers. The player suffers. Something terrible happens in the organization. The bottom line is, I bet we could find similar cases for any random occurance.
How about this. If you want, we'll correlate my slashdot posts with bad weather. I get to use the entire globe, I'll bet you that 29% of the time, whenever I post, the next day it's 20 degrees cooler than it was the day before and raining in at least one part of the world.
You're right about that Cowboys QB not existing. Aikman wore number 8, and he was the QB for Dallas in '92 / '93.
You're 100% right.
But the point is, a player is likely to have an average year as determined by his skill and a wide variety of other factors. If his Average year puts him within the 90% of all Football players, then he will have quite a few seasons where he is better than 98% of all players, and a few where is he better than 75%, or whatever it is the math works out to.
But the point is, the year he's on the cover of the magazine or box, he's had a phenomenal previous year. It's likely that he'll perform once again at his more typical 90% level or his more typical 80% level, or whatever that level happens to be, and have an "average" season.
This is a statistical "phenomenon" called "Regression to the Mean". It goes like this.
The player on the Cover of the Madden Game (or, as it's more widely known, the SI Cover) had a phenomenal last season - a standout year. Such a good season that he will help sell the product and foster media attention.
The Average player in the NFL did not have such a good season - in fact, they had an Average season. Next season, it is far more likely that the player on the cover of the Madden game will have a season more like the Average season than he will a Standout Season. That's the way a normal distribution works.
Any other explanation is just mumbo-jumbo. It's regression to the mean. I'm not sure why basic statistics seems so difficult to so many people, especially psycho sports fans: sports statisticians.
VMware.
Seriously.
Allow write access to the document folders, save-state only when *you* install something.
Spyware and everything else is gone once you restart the computer.
This isn't so difficult to understand. You live in a society, which is trading liberty for security. You give up certain things you would otherwise be free to do (Run rampant and kill people) for the security that no one will do the same thing to you (run rampant and kill you).
I'm not sure why this bogus maxim comes up so frequently. The student made an extremely abnormal request. Was he within his legal right to do so? Of course he was. Did he have a reason, other than to get some hidden info? Nope.
We know this *after the fact*. *After the fact* security is the only type there is: if you're already dead from someone on a murderous rampage (see paragraph one), your forfeitsure of liberty does no good whatsoever. That's why we've got folks like the police, who make sure that these sorts of things can't happen.
I saw Viet Dinh speak at Tufts University (author of the Patriot Act, in case you were wondering), and the ACLU person who was suppposed to be speaking Against him openly said (quote): "Mr. Dinh, I hereby declare you an honorary Civil Libertarian".
While you may have the right to much information, there is a good deal of informaiton that should be protected for the sake of protecting other people. This is a case where the information was given and the motive was questioned. I have difficulty believing anyone finds anything wrong with that.
Sports may not be popular on Slashdot, but lets get real. Football is probably the *worst* game you could have picked as an example of something you'd rather not watch.
Maybe it's simply because you've never taken the time to sit down and learn the rules, but Football - at least, American Football - is an incredibly complex mental game, perhaps moreso than it is a physical game. Choosing plays, defenses, substitution packages, and everything that goes into the mental game is just the beginning - then, there's the execution and the physical aspect.
Football is a fantastic spectator sport for many reasons, but one is the wide array of appeal. It has many different levels of action, all of which are important and interesting.
If you wanted a sport to pick on, maybe Boxing, which has little mental game on the abstract, strategic level - and even then, it's still hard to say that there's no thought that goes into a title fight.
a) Huge media attention from the beginning. It's something that's never been done before. That's essentially "free" advertising.
b) Un-editable content. While there are many ads in major league baseball already [see: the scoreboard, the stadium, etc], there are none on the field of play. If something big happens in these games, they can't edit the spiderman logo out.
c) Mention by the announcers. Something like a), except, this is going to be a big deal.
d) Regular advertising. Yeah, they'll be visible on many plays of the game.
This was an obvious joke, but I'm not sure if moderators really get it-
Ads really are going on baseball bases. Spiderman 2 has bought the rights to put some logos on baseball bases in the next few weeks.
Next thing you know, corporate sponsors will be buying insightful or funny slashdot posts.
THIS POST BROUGHT TO YOU BY MCDONALDS. WE'RE LOVIN' IT.
Not to burst your bubble, but the article was written by JonKatz.
Since when has that man ever been bringer of exacting knowledge?
If you are at a small arcade they will usually replace a joystick if you ask nicely, the mall arcades often employ people who wouldn't even know how to change a joystick. They just give you your coins back, put the game out of order and tell whoever the tech is to fix it when he comes in that week.
Hey. I worked in a mall arcade. I could replace on a joystick on almost all the machines in the store [some had special locks or keys which prevented employee access]. That being said, you know why it wasn't done while we were on shift collecting your change and things? Time.
When there are 2 employees working the entire store, one can't take ~25 minutes and fix a single broken game out of a hundred or so. It's far more efficient for a tech-guy to come in for an 8 hour shift than it is for the entire store to be short handed every time something small breaks.
Oh, for the love of shit.
Google can just lock the number of IPs that can access an account in X amount of time.
Say, 1 every minute, or 5 every 20 minutes.
This would have NO effect on 100% of the customer base and shut down the "transmit stuff using google as the warez site" option, since Warez works around "swarming".
The Funny thing about all these anti-419 ideas - especially the laws - is that it's probably easier to take out the stupid people here than it is to take out the stupid scammers in Nigeria.
The new Microsoft Email Initiative has promised to do just that- Every time people use their mail client, clippy will pop up with questions like:
Will you:
a) Give money away to people you don't know.
b) Double click nude.pics.exe.vbs.exe.jpg.exe
c) Mail this pyramid scheme to 30 other people
d) None of the above
Oh man, they should completely burninate Iraq if the Saddam thing doesn't hold the Media off long enough.
I don't think "issuing subpoenas" counts as a viable service in the business climate of the future.
Why don't you set up Norton Ghost or VMware and save yourself the trouble of reinstalling every month?
God, that'd be the most awful thing ever.
This sort of thing is ridiculous.
You can't sue someone for breaking the law and then find out how and why they broke the law midway through the trial.
If that were so, in the real-world, Police could search you without a warrant, because they wouldn't need to prove any cause for the search. "We think Joe Blow is breaking the law somehow" isn't good enough to get a search warrant right now, you have to say how specifically he's doing and how you know.
SCO's idea of law is the same thing that's going on in Guantanimo Bay. Snag the person, accuse them of doing 'something illegal', dig through their life and try to find something.
They'll have invented cheaper, more disposable media for AOL to bombard you with!
How does that work, anyway? When the CD is gone, does the big counter in the AOL War-Room reset to 0?
And they're going to get this information from tracking the kids? What, is the wristband going to ask for a bite of your burger?
Come on now. There's privacy concerns, and then there's stupid privacy concerns. Someone might be watching you from the bushes with binoculars, too. Damn those bushes and their tricksy ways!
OOoreeka!
Oh come on. It has nothing to do with parents by the time kids get in college.
Here's the reason: Two words. They're both "bling". College kids don't have nearly as much dispensible income as singles with real jobs, and love listening to music.
Free music is 100% more delicious.