Re:Repaid already? (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30, @01:45AM (#11216800) Spit on you? SPIT ON YOU? You thin skinned little bitch. How is it that Americans get skewered (rightly so) when they reflexively interpret disagreement with US policy as anti-americanism, but Canadians and Europeans cry "The United States SPIT on us!" everytime Washington doesn't do things exactly the way you want? The Administration asked for help. They went to the UN to explain their reasons. You may disagree. That's certainly your right as a sovereign nation. But don't starting crying that you were spit on.
responding to AC is ussually a bad idea but:
I'd say a populace smear campaign against france would constitute spitting on them. You did try to rename french fries. I'm sure that was a mature and adult way of acknolowging opposing opinions. I was also in california shortly after canada declined to support you war. And I was literally spit upon. So yes a portion of your population are a little less emotionally mature then children and you are one of them AC.
Or it could simply be just the latter half of your post here.
I mean, seriously, you're going out on a limb here to make your point that you don't like what Bush did. Why not take it a step further and blame the hurricanes in Florida on the immorality on the war?
Frankly, I'm not the slightest bit curious if Bush had anything to do with that until Russia comes out and says it. Theories on this matter have little practical value.
The Germans only got owned because Italy tried invading Greece. The invasion was...less than successful...and Germany had to delay Operation Barbarossa two weeks.
I'm sure crossing a narrow straight without much air support against a strong enemy air force would have been an astonding success.
Sometimes the united states act like idiots. This little war their embarking on is one of those times. I'm going to get modded down by patriotic americans.... but this little war was a bad idea. France was letting you know this. It's going to be a horrible political mire and you best friends (Canada/France ectt...) told you it was a bad idea. What the united states does, also affects us. The French were trying to let you know it was a bad idea. Canada was being diplomatic and tried to let you know it was a bad idea. You've now spit on both of us. I dont' disagree with the point of the war, which was to start a beach head in the middle east to more directly control the oil. I just think it was done int he worst possible way (not morally I mean efficincy wise).
I don't think my congressman has alot of clout in african countries that are run by warlords.
Bullshit, The vast majority of spam orginates in the united states and targets americans. Taking a tougher stance will make it harder to find targets. Just as making things like pyramid schemes illegal makes it more difficult to set one up. Every extra step statistically reduces the amoutn of spam and scams on the internet. You'll never be rid of it but you can reduce it's penetration and increase it's costs.
Thats a lack of basic skills. Not even advanced skills. If you dont' want to get better thats fine. I will humor you. So instead of facing 6 lings when you just made your first marine you'll face 5 lurkers backed by 16 hydras and 6 lings being dropped in by 10 over lords while I have 2 expos as you get out your first tank. So you have to get the skill eventually. Extra time just garentees your doom.
I play war 3 a bit. levels mean nothing, some lvl 1 players are good players restarting or playing a different game type. I'm lvl 28 and #27 us west for 2v2 in war 3 roc. When I play 1v1 or rt games higher level players try to tell me what to do because I'm lvl 1. I will work with them to get a attack on but i'm sure I know more about war 3 then most of them.
But yet they would be the first to brake any social rules before the game such as no rush for 5 minutes
I really detest this social convention. It basically permanently hinders your ability to get better as a player. If you can't stop an early rush, your never going to get good. I'm a pretty occasional Sc/war 3 player. I have never had any trouble defending my base. Early rushes deplete yoru abiltiy to compete later, it's a valid strategy but most new players refuse to play a whole game and prefer to get higher in the tech tree. But I'm telling you now, time is the friend of a experienced palyer. If you think I'm a threat when all I have is 6 zerglings wait until I have lurkers ready to drop. I ussually humor people who ask for 5 min no rush or even 20 min no rush. But at the set time I ussually wipe them out int he next 2-3 minutes.
Upgrade to war 3 a lot of the problems with greifers are fixed. Disc = win for you. Your paired against people of approximatly your skill level. and their is eady tp use natural defence at all bases. I have rarly gotten a griefer except in a 3v3 rt game even then, the griefer gets a loss too and he won't rise very far.
Sexual reproduction solves this by using the redundancy of the two sets of DNA while simpler creatures such as bacteria don't need the hugely complex dna chains of animals and plants.
Sexual reproduction doesn't solve this. The telomeres degrade over time with each generation of the cells, All reproduction attached new sets of telomeres in species which it occurs.
I know everything about bnet D. And it didn't verify cd-keys. The most effective protection Blizzard had was that multiplayer on their games required the server to verify keys. BNET-D circumvented this. Essentail any copy of the blizzard games could be played without buying it. I do recall all the code used for bnet-d showed up in pirated versions of the blizzard games and pirate servers. It was in blizards interests to shut it down. This is blatantly obvious. If they didn't then the next time someone wants to emulate a server (think WOW) they'd have a very weak legal case. In the current justice system you must defend yourself or you weaken your position.
You might want to take your head out of your ass and ask, how did they stop the annoying cheaters? How did they make a service free of these people? Griefers? They didn't. all they did was allow playing the games without the need for having a valid cd-key.
The cheaters and griefers are a result of population density and how their game/match makign system worked. Bnet-D might have eventually figured out ways to screen them out, but blizzard already did (warcraft 3 had such a system, that prevented most griefing. preventing client side cheating is impossible, you'd have to move everything server side and have the client a dumb terminal.)
There was nothing noble about bnet-D. They were at best redundant, at worst leeching off of other people.
Please outline all the problems that simply money will solve.
I can only think of one, 1- King-manic isn't rich. Money will solve this.
The rest (education / health care / pverty / starvation) are more complicated then simply lacking funding. The poor are poor for more then want of money. They don't know how to manage money and thus will lose any money they have. Poor healthcare isn't just a problem with funding, money can solve a few problems but doctor and nurse shortages are very difficult to solve. Poor education has as much to do with culture as it does with funding. The education focused societies can do education cheaper then those that value other things, America will always be under educated because it doesn't value it in more of it's diverse cultures. Look at the harassment of "nerds" as an example. Money won't solve this and thus America will always be under educated until the society value the educated.
All these problems have a certain issue where moeny woudl solve, beyond this extra funding would be wasted without other changes to those systems. Right now, space exploration is under funded. thus the amount of real benifits that woudl come out of funding nasa mroe out weight the amoutn of benifits from putting the money elsewhere, such as into a horribly planned war.
(Note to overzelous patriotic american mods who will mark this troll, I have no issues about why the war is fought. It's a PR war that also advances america's desire to control the oil. this is a prudent and interesting move to secure the power base of the US. I object to the way it's beeing run. By beuracrats that give hazy unattainable goals.)
I live in canada, when the Us says jump we say "no... err how high we'll do it later under the guise of something else". We didn't sign on for the missle defence butthen we spent millions on a advanced spy sat we're essentially leasing to them. For each public "no" we give them, we give them a consession in another area. We live with and deal with the giant everyday. To say we aren't heavy influenced/controlled by them is naive. I'm not just some snotty american under estimating canada. I'm a canadadian who doesn't buy into the government line that we're not "supporting" the US in everything.
Face has nothign to do with it. They are planning to control the oil by controlling the countries that produce it. They already control Canada and Venezuela politically/economically which makes up 66% of the worlds oil (unfortunatly expensive to extract). their now aiming for the last 30$ which they do not control as directly as they like.
The future is renewable, sustainable power - Wind, Wave, Sun, Geothermal etc. Every other method relies on externalizing costs.
Everything has a cost. Solar uses highly toxic chemicals to make the cells and will require vast tracks of suitable land to generate power.
Im not particularily concerned with the security of it. But you skipped my point entirely. The fact is that it would require a great deal of very particular and specialized handling... with the dangers of theft and the resultant hysteria over dirty or nuclear weapons.
When *this* (and the others I articulated) nonsense is included, Nuclear would be out-of-the-market.
Dirty bombs are "less" dangerous then their lethal non-dirty variety. When the fuel is spent enough to be useless, it's also as radioactive as most other heavy metals. So if yo made it a dirty bomb, well you spreading a heavy metal all over but it's not that radio active anymore. so essential you spreading high toxicity/low radioactive materials around... which is about as dangerous as what standard explosives do (spreading toxic materials around). As for nuke, if you can make the timing mechaism/casing explosive shell then getting the plutonium wouldn't be too hard to simply buy. You need no extra security. The specialized handling is nothing special. The tech is around and for most industrialized processes it's abotu the same.
When *this* (and the others I articulated) nonsense is included, Nuclear would be out-of-the-market.
Not dealing with the eventual meltdown would be a delightfull bonus.
You'll say: But meltdowns are highly improbable with new reactor design.
I'll reply now; they can never be 100% safe. And your dealing with quite a potential for a big-problem.
Lets see, there are a hundred or so nuke reactors in the world, they've been running for the last 50 years or so. So far 2 have had something resembling a meltdown. For Chernobyl it was horrible maintainence and bad design. For 3 mile island it was a leak. Total fatalities were small and collateral damage was too. Now how many people have died from a amonnia spill? how about other industrial accidents? You fears are misplaced. Both accidents had very little damage and much less then other industrial accidents.
Wind/Solar/tidal/Geothermal have limited availability, limited utility, some non-zero enviromental cost and 2 of the 4 require a lot of area to generate enough power. They will help but they are not the "future" they are part of a final solution but you'll find each has their own enviromental damage potential. Nuke does too, as will fussion. You have to weigh it against how much benifit you get from the possibel risk. Don't just regurgitate PC enviromental non-sense. Think about it instead.
What I don't think you realize is that the hardcore players invest WAY more money than that in the game. They buy items and characters and game cash on eBay, and that consumes a FORTUNE.
And you know, doing cocaine consumes a fortune too. But that does mean I have to do cocaine while I go out clubbing. Clubbing is so so expensive. Drinks and cover. Most people are happy with that as most people are happy just working for their items. But the rare few decide they want the cocaine/bought items so be it.
That sentiment has always seemed misinformed to me. At max, these games are $15 a month. If you allow yourself to be absorbed at all into the game, you will pass on an at least one activity a month. Instead of going to see a movie or to a bar, you may decide to stay in and play. These games aren't the financial hit people think they are.
Indeed, I'd spend 15$ on lunch. For the hours WOW has entained me, the tradeoff is fair. Hell the $100 I spent on war craft 3 and it's expansion was a bargain, I've played 1 game every other day fro the last 3 years. I spend 100$ on alchohol when I go out, almost all the time. Thats one night.
Every time I mention the bnetd thing i get modded down. new game is out, people don't care what kind of injustices have been forwarded by blizzard. that requires a little bit of bravery and no one has any anymore.
That because Naikrovek, What blizzard did was not morally or ethically wrong, but what bnet-d team did was morally and legally wrong. So they mod you down becuase what you say can be paraphrased as:
"Whaaaa they took away my ability to play without paying, those bastards. Their evil."
As companies go, blizzard is as good as almost any other. They support their games long long after they have to, they insist on quality over quantity or deadlines. They make polished high end products. If every game company could do the same we'd get nothign but great games from every studio. They happen to take exception to what Bnet-d group was tryign to do (emulate their servers) which allowed people to play blizzard games without paying blizzard. Blizzard has no moral obligation to help them out or let the project live. The Bnet-d team had a responsibility to protect someone else product by not trying to crack the protection(which was proven in court that they had a legal responsibility). Thus they squished em. Thats not evil. Thats like finding someone who was makign copies of the keys to your house and telling a cop, the cop arrested them and conficated their equipment. You did nothing wrong, but the keymaker did. Your vilifying blizzard is the same as someone villifying you for reporting the key copier to the cop. Sure the guy might just be making the keys to give you a spare when you need it, but it's more then blindingly obvious that he's going to do something else with the key.
Blizzard rarely is the innovator, they just bring eveyone else innovations, wrap it up in a slick, well produced package and crushes everyone else with quality.
Like BMW and Lexus. It's not the innovative parts, it's the packaging and quality you pay for.
AC There a fine line between "needless prosecuting" and "protecting their product". It's blindingly obvious to everybody but a few select OS people that bnet-d was trying to "steal" from blizzard. Blizzards authentication proccess should not be made public (as key gens would be made instantly) and Blizzard does not have any obligation to work with bnet-d to make bnet-d work legally. Bnet-d is trying to bypass a copy protection feature from blizzard. They plan to do this so you can play without paying. Blindingly obviously, so obvious that I have gone blind thinking about it.
Wind is impractical, it will be an addition to any real solution but it lack power density and there isn't anythig you can do about that. a nuke power plant is 1000 km^2, a win farm that provides the same power is 140,000 km^2. The longer you re-use nuclear fuel, the less dagerous it becomes. Eventually it'll become as dangerous as any other heavy metal. And plutonium isn't as dangerous as you think, it takes a lot of work to get the timing right to make it a nuclear weapon. And there are precautions to store it in a way that cannot be co-opted to make weapons. Namely amagamation with silica.
I understand your stance was basically reactionary to what someone said. Nuclear power has a smaller "over all" destructive potential then hydro carbons but can have some pretty devistating "local" effects. But nuclear reactors are the best alternative until we hit the "magical" power sources such as fusion or improblability drives. We have the tech now, and the only reason why we don't use it much is because of a evil conspiracy between the enviromentalists and big oil (this idea might seem satyrical at first but even if they don't directly act together, they forward the same ends. Making hydro carbons the #1 source of power).
Nuclear power can be done well. It does cost a lot but has a huge energy density so 1 reactor can power 2-3 cities. The waste from 1 reactor is less dangerous then the output from 3 coal powerplant which would supply only 1/2 the power. we just have to put money into way to re-use/dispose of nuke waste. amalgamation with silica and re-using the fuel until it's a lot less radio active are two solutions. The Canadian reactors re-use fuel, their generally safe.
You know what, let's not deforest areas in order to build wind turbines. Let's build pre-fab turbines that lock into place in a large grid with poles that stretch above the trees. Heck, I think I'll draw that now.
And now that I think about that, this can be used to preserve forests by holding their edges in place.
err.. lets take a logistics course:
Building large structures out in the middle of the woods with complicated moving parts and a cable to the powergrip is
1- expensive. 2- not likly to be ecologically benign. 3- the opposite of likly.
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Re:Repaid already? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 30, @01:45AM (#11216800)
Spit on you? SPIT ON YOU? You thin skinned little bitch. How is it that Americans get skewered (rightly so) when they reflexively interpret disagreement with US policy as anti-americanism, but Canadians and Europeans cry "The United States SPIT on us!" everytime Washington doesn't do things exactly the way you want? The Administration asked for help. They went to the UN to explain their reasons. You may disagree. That's certainly your right as a sovereign nation. But don't starting crying that you were spit on.
responding to AC is ussually a bad idea but:
I'd say a populace smear campaign against france would constitute spitting on them. You did try to rename french fries. I'm sure that was a mature and adult way of acknolowging opposing opinions. I was also in california shortly after canada declined to support you war. And I was literally spit upon. So yes a portion of your population are a little less emotionally mature then children and you are one of them AC.
I was under the impression that municipal water systems predate NASA by several thousand years.
I was under the impression american's were taught more then pre-historic information. Apprently you prove me wrong.
Or it could simply be just the latter half of your post here.
I mean, seriously, you're going out on a limb here to make your point that you don't like what Bush did. Why not take it a step further and blame the hurricanes in Florida on the immorality on the war?
Frankly, I'm not the slightest bit curious if Bush had anything to do with that until Russia comes out and says it. Theories on this matter have little practical value.
I think the only one going out on a limb is you.
The Germans only got owned because Italy tried invading Greece. The invasion was...less than successful...and Germany had to delay Operation Barbarossa two weeks.
I'm sure crossing a narrow straight without much air support against a strong enemy air force would have been an astonding success.
Sometimes the united states act like idiots. This little war their embarking on is one of those times. I'm going to get modded down by patriotic americans.... but this little war was a bad idea. France was letting you know this. It's going to be a horrible political mire and you best friends (Canada/France ectt...) told you it was a bad idea. What the united states does, also affects us. The French were trying to let you know it was a bad idea. Canada was being diplomatic and tried to let you know it was a bad idea. You've now spit on both of us. I dont' disagree with the point of the war, which was to start a beach head in the middle east to more directly control the oil. I just think it was done int he worst possible way (not morally I mean efficincy wise).
I don't think my congressman has alot of clout in african countries that are run by warlords.
Bullshit, The vast majority of spam orginates in the united states and targets americans. Taking a tougher stance will make it harder to find targets. Just as making things like pyramid schemes illegal makes it more difficult to set one up. Every extra step statistically reduces the amoutn of spam and scams on the internet. You'll never be rid of it but you can reduce it's penetration and increase it's costs.
Thats a lack of basic skills. Not even advanced skills. If you dont' want to get better thats fine. I will humor you. So instead of facing 6 lings when you just made your first marine you'll face 5 lurkers backed by 16 hydras and 6 lings being dropped in by 10 over lords while I have 2 expos as you get out your first tank. So you have to get the skill eventually. Extra time just garentees your doom.
I play war 3 a bit. levels mean nothing, some lvl 1 players are good players restarting or playing a different game type. I'm lvl 28 and #27 us west for 2v2 in war 3 roc. When I play 1v1 or rt games higher level players try to tell me what to do because I'm lvl 1. I will work with them to get a attack on but i'm sure I know more about war 3 then most of them.
But yet they would be the first to brake any social rules before the game such as no rush for 5 minutes
I really detest this social convention. It basically permanently hinders your ability to get better as a player. If you can't stop an early rush, your never going to get good. I'm a pretty occasional Sc/war 3 player. I have never had any trouble defending my base. Early rushes deplete yoru abiltiy to compete later, it's a valid strategy but most new players refuse to play a whole game and prefer to get higher in the tech tree. But I'm telling you now, time is the friend of a experienced palyer. If you think I'm a threat when all I have is 6 zerglings wait until I have lurkers ready to drop. I ussually humor people who ask for 5 min no rush or even 20 min no rush. But at the set time I ussually wipe them out int he next 2-3 minutes.
Upgrade to war 3 a lot of the problems with greifers are fixed. Disc = win for you. Your paired against people of approximatly your skill level. and their is eady tp use natural defence at all bases. I have rarly gotten a griefer except in a 3v3 rt game even then, the griefer gets a loss too and he won't rise very far.
Sexual reproduction solves this by using the redundancy of the two sets of DNA while simpler creatures such as bacteria don't need the hugely complex dna chains of animals and plants.
Sexual reproduction doesn't solve this. The telomeres degrade over time with each generation of the cells, All reproduction attached new sets of telomeres in species which it occurs.
You do realize they have it exclusivly licenced to EA? Quality isn't their concern. Quantity is.
I know everything about bnet D. And it didn't verify cd-keys. The most effective protection Blizzard had was that multiplayer on their games required the server to verify keys. BNET-D circumvented this. Essentail any copy of the blizzard games could be played without buying it. I do recall all the code used for bnet-d showed up in pirated versions of the blizzard games and pirate servers. It was in blizards interests to shut it down. This is blatantly obvious. If they didn't then the next time someone wants to emulate a server (think WOW) they'd have a very weak legal case. In the current justice system you must defend yourself or you weaken your position.
You might want to take your head out of your ass and ask, how did they stop the annoying cheaters? How did they make a service free of these people? Griefers? They didn't. all they did was allow playing the games without the need for having a valid cd-key.
The cheaters and griefers are a result of population density and how their game/match makign system worked. Bnet-D might have eventually figured out ways to screen them out, but blizzard already did (warcraft 3 had such a system, that prevented most griefing. preventing client side cheating is impossible, you'd have to move everything server side and have the client a dumb terminal.)
There was nothing noble about bnet-D. They were at best redundant, at worst leeching off of other people.
Please outline all the problems that simply money will solve.
I can only think of one,
1- King-manic isn't rich. Money will solve this.
The rest (education / health care / pverty / starvation) are more complicated then simply lacking funding. The poor are poor for more then want of money. They don't know how to manage money and thus will lose any money they have. Poor healthcare isn't just a problem with funding, money can solve a few problems but doctor and nurse shortages are very difficult to solve. Poor education has as much to do with culture as it does with funding. The education focused societies can do education cheaper then those that value other things, America will always be under educated because it doesn't value it in more of it's diverse cultures. Look at the harassment of "nerds" as an example. Money won't solve this and thus America will always be under educated until the society value the educated.
All these problems have a certain issue where moeny woudl solve, beyond this extra funding would be wasted without other changes to those systems. Right now, space exploration is under funded. thus the amount of real benifits that woudl come out of funding nasa mroe out weight the amoutn of benifits from putting the money elsewhere, such as into a horribly planned war.
(Note to overzelous patriotic american mods who will mark this troll, I have no issues about why the war is fought. It's a PR war that also advances america's desire to control the oil. this is a prudent and interesting move to secure the power base of the US. I object to the way it's beeing run. By beuracrats that give hazy unattainable goals.)
I live in canada, when the Us says jump we say "no... err how high we'll do it later under the guise of something else". We didn't sign on for the missle defence butthen we spent millions on a advanced spy sat we're essentially leasing to them. For each public "no" we give them, we give them a consession in another area. We live with and deal with the giant everyday. To say we aren't heavy influenced/controlled by them is naive. I'm not just some snotty american under estimating canada. I'm a canadadian who doesn't buy into the government line that we're not "supporting" the US in everything.
actually most of that debt is owed to people who's children will "pay" it off. A lot of it is borrowed from the american people in the form of bonds.
Face has nothign to do with it. They are planning to control the oil by controlling the countries that produce it. They already control Canada and Venezuela politically/economically which makes up 66% of the worlds oil (unfortunatly expensive to extract). their now aiming for the last 30$ which they do not control as directly as they like.
The future is renewable, sustainable power - Wind, Wave, Sun, Geothermal etc. Every other method relies on externalizing costs.
Everything has a cost. Solar uses highly toxic chemicals to make the cells and will require vast tracks of suitable land to generate power.
Im not particularily concerned with the security of it. But you skipped my point entirely. The fact is that it would require a great deal of very particular and specialized handling... with the dangers of theft and the resultant hysteria over dirty or nuclear weapons.
When *this* (and the others I articulated) nonsense is included, Nuclear would be out-of-the-market.
Dirty bombs are "less" dangerous then their lethal non-dirty variety. When the fuel is spent enough to be useless, it's also as radioactive as most other heavy metals. So if yo made it a dirty bomb, well you spreading a heavy metal all over but it's not that radio active anymore. so essential you spreading high toxicity/low radioactive materials around... which is about as dangerous as what standard explosives do (spreading toxic materials around). As for nuke, if you can make the timing mechaism/casing explosive shell then getting the plutonium wouldn't be too hard to simply buy. You need no extra security. The specialized handling is nothing special. The tech is around and for most industrialized processes it's abotu the same.
When *this* (and the others I articulated) nonsense is included, Nuclear would be out-of-the-market.
Not dealing with the eventual meltdown would be a delightfull bonus.
You'll say: But meltdowns are highly improbable with new reactor design.
I'll reply now; they can never be 100% safe. And your dealing with quite a potential for a big-problem.
Lets see, there are a hundred or so nuke reactors in the world, they've been running for the last 50 years or so. So far 2 have had something resembling a meltdown. For Chernobyl it was horrible maintainence and bad design. For 3 mile island it was a leak. Total fatalities were small and collateral damage was too. Now how many people have died from a amonnia spill? how about other industrial accidents? You fears are misplaced. Both accidents had very little damage and much less then other industrial accidents.
Wind/Solar/tidal/Geothermal have limited availability, limited utility, some non-zero enviromental cost and 2 of the 4 require a lot of area to generate enough power. They will help but they are not the "future" they are part of a final solution but you'll find each has their own enviromental damage potential. Nuke does too, as will fussion. You have to weigh it against how much benifit you get from the possibel risk. Don't just regurgitate PC enviromental non-sense. Think about it instead.
What I don't think you realize is that the hardcore players invest WAY more money than that in the game. They buy items and characters and game cash on eBay, and that consumes a FORTUNE.
And you know, doing cocaine consumes a fortune too. But that does mean I have to do cocaine while I go out clubbing. Clubbing is so so expensive. Drinks and cover. Most people are happy with that as most people are happy just working for their items. But the rare few decide they want the cocaine/bought items so be it.
That sentiment has always seemed misinformed to me. At max, these games are $15 a month. If you allow yourself to be absorbed at all into the game, you will pass on an at least one activity a month. Instead of going to see a movie or to a bar, you may decide to stay in and play. These games aren't the financial hit people think they are.
Indeed, I'd spend 15$ on lunch. For the hours WOW has entained me, the tradeoff is fair. Hell the $100 I spent on war craft 3 and it's expansion was a bargain, I've played 1 game every other day fro the last 3 years. I spend 100$ on alchohol when I go out, almost all the time. Thats one night.
Every time I mention the bnetd thing i get modded down. new game is out, people don't care what kind of injustices have been forwarded by blizzard. that requires a little bit of bravery and no one has any anymore.
That because Naikrovek, What blizzard did was not morally or ethically wrong, but what bnet-d team did was morally and legally wrong. So they mod you down becuase what you say can be paraphrased as:
"Whaaaa they took away my ability to play without paying, those bastards. Their evil."
As companies go, blizzard is as good as almost any other. They support their games long long after they have to, they insist on quality over quantity or deadlines. They make polished high end products. If every game company could do the same we'd get nothign but great games from every studio. They happen to take exception to what Bnet-d group was tryign to do (emulate their servers) which allowed people to play blizzard games without paying blizzard. Blizzard has no moral obligation to help them out or let the project live. The Bnet-d team had a responsibility to protect someone else product by not trying to crack the protection(which was proven in court that they had a legal responsibility). Thus they squished em. Thats not evil. Thats like finding someone who was makign copies of the keys to your house and telling a cop, the cop arrested them and conficated their equipment. You did nothing wrong, but the keymaker did. Your vilifying blizzard is the same as someone villifying you for reporting the key copier to the cop. Sure the guy might just be making the keys to give you a spare when you need it, but it's more then blindingly obvious that he's going to do something else with the key.
Blizzard rarely is the innovator, they just bring eveyone else innovations, wrap it up in a slick, well produced package and crushes everyone else with quality.
Like BMW and Lexus. It's not the innovative parts, it's the packaging and quality you pay for.
AC There a fine line between "needless prosecuting" and "protecting their product". It's blindingly obvious to everybody but a few select OS people that bnet-d was trying to "steal" from blizzard. Blizzards authentication proccess should not be made public (as key gens would be made instantly) and Blizzard does not have any obligation to work with bnet-d to make bnet-d work legally. Bnet-d is trying to bypass a copy protection feature from blizzard. They plan to do this so you can play without paying. Blindingly obviously, so obvious that I have gone blind thinking about it.
So AC STFU.
Wind is impractical, it will be an addition to any real solution but it lack power density and there isn't anythig you can do about that. a nuke power plant is 1000 km^2, a win farm that provides the same power is 140,000 km^2. The longer you re-use nuclear fuel, the less dagerous it becomes. Eventually it'll become as dangerous as any other heavy metal. And plutonium isn't as dangerous as you think, it takes a lot of work to get the timing right to make it a nuclear weapon. And there are precautions to store it in a way that cannot be co-opted to make weapons. Namely amagamation with silica.
I understand your stance was basically reactionary to what someone said. Nuclear power has a smaller "over all" destructive potential then hydro carbons but can have some pretty devistating "local" effects. But nuclear reactors are the best alternative until we hit the "magical" power sources such as fusion or improblability drives. We have the tech now, and the only reason why we don't use it much is because of a evil conspiracy between the enviromentalists and big oil (this idea might seem satyrical at first but even if they don't directly act together, they forward the same ends. Making hydro carbons the #1 source of power).
Nuclear power can be done well. It does cost a lot but has a huge energy density so 1 reactor can power 2-3 cities. The waste from 1 reactor is less dangerous then the output from 3 coal powerplant which would supply only 1/2 the power. we just have to put money into way to re-use/dispose of nuke waste. amalgamation with silica and re-using the fuel until it's a lot less radio active are two solutions. The Canadian reactors re-use fuel, their generally safe.
You know what, let's not deforest areas in order to build wind turbines. Let's build pre-fab turbines that lock into place in a large grid with poles that stretch above the trees. Heck, I think I'll draw that now.
And now that I think about that, this can be used to preserve forests by holding their edges in place.
err.. lets take a logistics course:
Building large structures out in the middle of the woods with complicated moving parts and a cable to the powergrip is
1- expensive.
2- not likly to be ecologically benign.
3- the opposite of likly.