Mind you that failing an audit can have catastrophic consequences. With regards to SOX:
"Non compliance penalties range from the loss of exchange listing, loss of D&O insurance to multimillion dollar fines and imprisonment. It can result in a lack of investor confidence. A CEO or CFO who submits a wrong certification is subject to a fine up to $1 million and imprisonment for up to ten years. If the wrong certification was submitted 'willfully', the fine can be increased up to $5 million and the prison term can be increased up to twenty years." (taken from sox-online.com)
With regard to PCI, it can be something like "What a shame, you can't do business anymore!"
Not to say that the policy in question was appropriate or in any way properly matched to the requirement, but if that extraneous middle manager five levels up doesn't get his audits in order, that nice pile of money that pays the salaries of those "working-class saps" might well end up vanishing in a heartbeat.
Holy crap, guys, you mean that constantly archiving every minute detail of my life activities/social networks/purchase decisions on services that have no obligation to protect any semblance of my privacy and, in fact, end up owning the data that I am perpetually shoveling into them might be a bad idea???
More seriously, people need to start considering the ramifications of all the data they give away for free. It's not necessarily always a bad thing to do, but the corporations aren't going to be the ones to put user privacy above profit/obligation.
I don't know if I'd go so far as to say "disturbing and objectionable" but definitely the kind of joke-in-poor-taste that results in an awkward half-chuckle and then a silent room.
It's interesting to see this asked, because I had the same questions and reservations as well. Luckly, while I was waiting on line for my Wii, I ended up standing behind someone who had many years experience doing art for console games at a fairly notable studio (Deliberately vague for privacy's sake). I asked him basically the same question and his answer was pretty much thusly (highly paraphrased):
You'd think that we start out working with huge, realistic textures and downsampling but it really doesn't work that way. While there are certainly preexisting high-res texture libraries out there, most of them suck and are therefore not used. Instead, we do our design based pretty specifically around the destination resolution in order to make sure it looks good in the game. So working on 'next-gen' type textures, we have to deal with much higher-resolution textures and variants to avoid repetition. Then we have to deal with multilayered textures, normal maps, bump maps, whatever other maps are being used. That multiplies the labor/texture ratio a lot more than if the problem were simply 'make it bigger'.
He seemed credible, and based on my admittedly limited knowledge of graphics programming and how textures work, these statements seem viable. While I'm definitely someone who is saddened by how gameplay has suffered at the hands of flash and vanity, it's definitely true that graphic artists in the gaming industry are having a lot more work in their department than ever before, and raw labor costs are clearly driving creation price up for most of these new, "HD" games.
When I started looking at DAPs, not being locked into proprietary software was one of my primary concerns. I ended up buying an iAudio M3 (which was their current model at the time) and I couldn't be happier with it. That model has been supplanted by a newer line (the X5 line), which as far as I know is an improvement in every way.
The unit operates as a standard USB 2.0 mass storage device, just a big ol blank hard drive, and I haven't had a problem connecting it to anything (Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD). Drag and drop whatever you want onto it, music or data, wherever you want. The only downside is that you do NOT get an ID3 tag based database of music, you navigate your music by the folder structure you've created on the unit. For me, that's no problem, but I could see that being an issue for others. Other notable features include a GREAT remote w/ display (I'm a big fan of being able to change tracks/playlists without having to whip out my expensive DAP wherever I may be), an "L" series with extended battery life (14-odd hours for the standard units, 30+ for the "L" units), and pretty competitive pricing.
This sounds like a totally shameless product plug (and I suppose it is in a way), but I've been exceedingly happy with this company's hardware and they're a bit underreported in mainstream tech media. Here's a link to the X5 product page, please note that it comes on 20, 30 and 60GB versions.
I am utterly saddened to see a comment like this modded "Insightful"
"Stock - A type of security that signifies ownership in a corporation and represents a claim on part of the corporation's assets and earnings." -- dictionary.com (Stock)
"A holder of stock (a shareholder) has a claim on a part of the corporation's assets and earnings. In other words, a shareholder is an owner of a company. Ownership is determined by the number of shares a person owns relative to the number of outstanding shares. For example, if a company has 1000 shares of stock outstanding, and one person owns 100 shares, that person would own and have claim to 10% of the company's assets." -- dictionary.com (Stock)
So there, that's where people learn "stuff like [that]"...with basic research on the subject. You know, the way one learns just about anything.
Your attitude towards your mutual funds genuinely confuses me. If you dislike them so much, why do you bother putting any money in? If you don't see any real growth, why do you carry on the investment? On the one hand, you're upset that your money hasn't grown. You "REALLY don't want to have to think about this shit. Someone should do it for [you]." So you're saying that someone should take care of and grow your money for you without you having to put in any effort. On the other hand you declare that you're 'old fashioned' and insist on working for your money, and that people who gain money without working (at something you define as legitimate work) for it are somehow in the wrong. So which is it? The good ol' Protestant Work Ethic, or "Someone should make my money more money for me because doing it myself is hard and I don't get it?"
Not to mention that as a man who works in a technical field, you should understand the equally 'old fashioned' idea of RTFM. I hope you've never complained about an ignorant user, or someone who wanted you to do every simple little computing task for them. Your attitude towards managing your own assets seems to be a lot like theirs towards their computers...only they just want free time and help, you want free money!
Having worked with brokers in the past and spoken with them at length to attempt to get an idea of how they do their job, I can assure you that investing is not "a pool cue to move billiard balls around a table". There's a lot of research, planning, analysis and careful thought put into trying to find the wisest strategies for investing. Is it a guess in the end? Well sure, nobody knows the future. But blasting an entire field simply because you couldn't bother taking the 5 minutes it would take to at least get a vague idea of what it involves? That's not "insulting" so much as it is offensively stupid.
If you want to talk about what of value is created by the market...well that's a tough call. There's a lot of room for discussion on that point, and if you want to take the stance of "no" there's a lot of good arguments you could make. However, think about all the brokers out there putting in 9-12 hour days to try their best to grow the mutual funds that millions of Americans (I'm sure other nations as well, though I'm not as familiar with how their markets work) have their savings and retirement funds invested in. Maybe it's a super-idealistic idea, but if I could go home knowing I'd given a few million people $5 each more towards retirement with my day's work, I think I'd feel like I accomplished something tangible.
Then we go back to a lengthy discussion about the "evils" of these large corporations. So let's do these one by one.
The Sony Mavicam purchase - First you complain about how the manufacturer's warranty is "unacceptable"....yet you obviously accept it because you're buying their product. An angst-ridden teenager working a shitty job (and earning comission, most likely, for each warranty he sells) looks at you funny for not going for it. But in the end, you gave him your money.
DirecTV - You liked your TV rates, but t
Hardly a "new unqiue application"
on
PSPCasting
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Erm, you guys do know that Sony already has software available for the PSP that will convert any video file you can drag and drop onto it (Yes, DivX, XviD, etc.) into MPEG4 and put it on your PSP....and images as well....
It's called Image Converter. It's bundled with the PSP (At least the pack that comes with the memory stick gets a CD with it, otherwise it's free from Sony with registration). What's the point of this guy reinventing the wheel?
The question you're asking is good, but unfortunately it runs over all the other questions involved in raising a child, mostly privacy issues. A computer isn't a magical corrupting box that will bury your child in sin. If anything a computer is a source of personal empowerment. It lets you do/learn what you already want to do/learn, only better and faster in many cases. That's the most important thing to remember, until the user specifically tells it to do something, the computer does nothing. If your child has no interest in pornography or bombmaking, chances are very high that they would never attempt to find information on either of those things and, should they encounter such material, they just wouldn't be interested. If your child DOES have interest in such things, well, maybe you have some things to talk about with him/her. Keeping the knowledge away from them will only work for so long.
I'll be honest, reading your proposed rules makes me angry. In my house, one's room was sacred territory. My parents had no right to know what I was doing in there, and no right to set foot inside without my permission. They had no desire to do those things, those were the rules they found acceptable for dealing with privacy. If I wanted to keep things from them, I did, and because of this my relationship with them is a lot better then it would otherwise have been. Heh and yes, if they made rules I didn't like I simply broke them because it suited me, until they realized that I was going to do what I wanted anyway (heh I was an EXTREMELY difficult child to raise). Now, these are the rules that worked for me, I don't know you or your children or your relationship, and everyone's different. But I can tell you that having that privacy didn't make me into a horrible person nor did it mean my parents didn't care about me. It was just our way of living
Even if you never actually intend to enforce your rules, or pry into your children's lives, the way your rules are stated makes it sound like you do. They can't close their door so you can always watch them, they can't close what they're doing if you come by so nothing they do can escape your notice, and they can't lie about what they were doing so even if you don't see anything you can just guess until they're forced to confess. Again, I fully admit tht I know nothing of you, your parenting, or your children, but just from these items I can say these rules sound very opressive, whatever your intent is.
In answer to your question, I'd say, let your kids have their privacy. Make sure they get out of their rooms every once in a while, talk to them as much as you can, be the best dad you can be, as I'm sure you're already doing. If you've been doing a good job so far, this shouldn't be much of an issue, your kids will already understand right from wrong and have a good moral foundation to stand upon as they face the world. And yes, everyone at some point lies about what they're doing on the net, people (children AND adults) need privacy. It's usually nowhere near as harmful as it sounds:)
Game balance is the art of making sure that all the facets of your game environment are interesting, worth using in at least a decent amount of situations, yet not overpowered. The best example I can give you for a well-balanced RTS would have to be the venerable and amazingly underappreciated Total Annihilation. I'm not going to wax poetic about the game, just get it and play it for weeks (heh with the expansion of course).
See there's where we disagree. In my opinion, hackneyed "workarounds" are no substitute for actual game balance. Saying that the select-only-a-few-at-a-time decision is a proper way to limit rush tactics (i.e. the Zerg) is just silly, that doesn't balance the Zerg, just throws an obsticle in front of the player and hopes the player finds no way around it to the rotten core. And the "rock-paper-scissors" kind of unit balance you describe with your siege tank vs zealot comparison just seems silly to me...every unit will always have one specific unit it's extremely weak against, and because of that can be as powerful as it wants to be otherwise? That's not balance and thoughtful unit design, that's a bunch of lame excuses for not doing those things.
LOL seeing as it still completely, applies, I'm simply going to repost (with some edits and additions) an earlier post of mine concerning WarCraft 3.
It seems to me that spending $65 on the "WarCraft 2 Graphics Upgrade Pack" would be like buying an expensive gift for a way-too-spolied child. Let's think about this for a minute. A company offers a product, gives us a date for it, lists a ton of features. Sounds like a good deal. Until they start pushing the date back. Still, no big deal. Then they start cutting features...like mad. Now if this was any other company, we'd all be panning their product and despising him, but for some reason everyone LOVES Blizzard for it
Countless people have called games like WC3 and SC some of the "greatest games ever". I am standing up right here and preparing to argue it soundly. This is not a troll, it's a statement of belief. Warcraft 2 was a great game; it was innovative for its time and introduced a brand new game setting. Since that point, Starcraft, Diablo 2, and WarCraft 3 (based on my experiances with the beta) have been simply TERRIBLE games. Buggy, unbalanced, uninteresting, lacking strategic or tactical depth (in the cases of StarCraft and WC3), using cheap workarounds to fix fundimental game flaws (i.e. Hey, if we let them only select a limited # of units at once, noone can rush right? right?), and always ALWAYS falling far short of the grand feature-scapes originally planned for them. Why would I want to play StarCraft or WarCraft 3 when I could play larger, richer games with far more depth (ohh...say...Total Annihilation comes to mind).
Now, to be fair, these comments relate to WarCraft 3 only through my experiance with the beta version. I honestly do not know if the game has changed since then, and if it has my opinions might change as well. But here is what I saw. The game was very pretty, it looks quite nice. However, the game mechanic hasn't changed or evolved at all since WC2. Same extremely limited unit selection, same "rock-paper-scissors" unit balance that makes "strategy" equal to "Just build some of each and run at each other". The "Hero" units were unimpressive and seemed to only be more powerful normal units that could somehow use Town Portal. The "Unaligned NPCs" were just weak units you killed to get at some resources. Games were fast and pointless, the races were unbalanced at that point, there was no strategy at all as you could never have enough units to enact a given strategy.
Maybe TA has spoiled me. I'm used to massive 2000-unit battles where you actually USE all 9 unit hotkeys, feint and probe, battle across a massive map. Strategy and production were vital tools as you pushed forward to conquer territory. Admittedly, maybe such things aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I don't understand how the RTS genre has remained the exact same game since the original C+C (which, I do know, wasn't even the first RTS). Many people have tried to innovate somewhat, but where's the evolution? Shouldn't we demand MORE instead of eating up what's only vaguely satisfactory?? To put it very plainly, Blizzard's RTS games are no more interesting or complex then playing War or Spit. Sure, those games can be fun sometimes too, but a deck of cards is a lot less then $65, and so is the number of broken promises and lowered expectations.
I admit my ignorance to the nature of the original lawsuit. Sun is definitely right to take issue with someone else breaking their language and marring their reputation. HOWEVER, what I don't understand is Part 2. Sun won the lawsuit, that's great, fairness meted out. But since when did Microsoft lose the right to simply not include Sun's product? While they have NO right to break Java, they have EVERY right to simply drop it.
I just don't understand this entire JVM issue. The argument seems to go something like this:
1 - Microsoft didn't include a JVM in Windows.
2 - Getting a JVM is confusing and not ReallyEasy(tm) for grandma
3 - Microsoft had damn well better put a JVM in Windows!
OK now...let's see what happens when we abstractify this argument.
1 - Company A won't include competing company B's part in its machine
2 - Putting Company B's part in isn't easy!
3 - Company A should help its competition by including said part.
Seems kinda silly doesn't it? Now I am in no way saying MS is sparklin' clean, or that they haven't participated in intensely overbearing and monopolistic practices. They're no angel at all. But this SPECIFIC issue seems really silly to me. Do we honestly expect a company to willingly compete against itself? One might ask the philosophical question of: Seeing the necessary end-result of capitalism and being so displeased with it, how can we at the same time so enthusiastically support the system?
Hmm, seems to me that spending $65 on the WarCraft 2 Graphics Upgrade Pack would be like buying an expensive gift for a way-too-spolied child. Let's think about this for a minute. A company offers a product, gives us a date for it, lists a ton of features. Sounds like a good deal. Until they start pushing the date back. Still no big deal. Then they start cutting features...like mad. Now if this was any other company, we'd all be panning their product and despising him, but for some reason everyone LOVES Blizzard for it
I read earlier in this list of posts "I don't think anyone would argue that Blizzard makes good games" (paraphrased, but something to that effect). I am standing up right here and preparing to argue it soundly. This is not a troll, it's a statement of belief. Warcraft 2 was a great game. Since that point, Starcraft, Diablo 2, and WarCraft 3 (based on my experiances with the beta) have been simply TERRIBLE games. Buggy, unbalanced, uninteresting, lacking strategic or tactical depth (in the cases of StarCraft and WC3), using cheap workarounds to fix fundimental game flaws (i.e. Hey, if we let them only select a limited # of units at once, noone can rush right? right?), and always ALWAYS falling far short of the grand feature-scapes originally planned for them. Why would I want to play StarCraft or WarCraft 3 when I could play larger, richer games with far more depth (ohh...say...Total Annihilation comes to mind).
Now, to be fair, these comments relate to WarCraft 3 only through my experiance with the beta version. I honestly do not know if the game has changed since then, and if it has my opinions might change as well. But here is what I saw. The game was very pretty, it looks quite nice. However, the game mechanic hasn't changed or evolved at all since WC2. Same extremely limited unit selection, same "rock-paper-scissors" unit balance that makes "strategy" equal to "Just build some of each and run at each other". The "Hero" units were unimpressive and seemed to only be more powerful normal units that could somehow use Town Portal. The "Unaligned NPCs" were just weak units you killed to get at some resources. Games were fast and pointless, the races were unbalanced at that point, there was no strategy at all as you could never have enough units to enact a given strategy.
Maybe TA has spoiled me. I'm used to massive 2000-unit battles where you actually USE all 9 unit hotkeys, feint and probe, battle across a massive map. Strategy and production were vital tools as you pushed forward to conquer territory. Admittedly, maybe such things aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I don't understand how the RTS genre has remained the exact same game since the original C+C. Many people have tried to innovate somewhat, but where's the evolution? Shouldn't we demand MORE instead of eating up what's only vaguely satisfactory??
Slashdot Mirror
Mind you that failing an audit can have catastrophic consequences. With regards to SOX:
"Non compliance penalties range from the loss of exchange listing, loss of D&O insurance to multimillion dollar fines and imprisonment. It can result in a lack of investor confidence. A CEO or CFO who submits a wrong certification is subject to a fine up to $1 million and imprisonment for up to ten years. If the wrong certification was submitted 'willfully', the fine can be increased up to $5 million and the prison term can be increased up to twenty years." (taken from sox-online.com)
With regard to PCI, it can be something like "What a shame, you can't do business anymore!"
Not to say that the policy in question was appropriate or in any way properly matched to the requirement, but if that extraneous middle manager five levels up doesn't get his audits in order, that nice pile of money that pays the salaries of those "working-class saps" might well end up vanishing in a heartbeat.
Holy crap, guys, you mean that constantly archiving every minute detail of my life activities/social networks/purchase decisions on services that have no obligation to protect any semblance of my privacy and, in fact, end up owning the data that I am perpetually shoveling into them might be a bad idea???
More seriously, people need to start considering the ramifications of all the data they give away for free. It's not necessarily always a bad thing to do, but the corporations aren't going to be the ones to put user privacy above profit/obligation.
I don't know if I'd go so far as to say "disturbing and objectionable" but definitely the kind of joke-in-poor-taste that results in an awkward half-chuckle and then a silent room.
It's interesting to see this asked, because I had the same questions and reservations as well. Luckly, while I was waiting on line for my Wii, I ended up standing behind someone who had many years experience doing art for console games at a fairly notable studio (Deliberately vague for privacy's sake). I asked him basically the same question and his answer was pretty much thusly (highly paraphrased):
You'd think that we start out working with huge, realistic textures and downsampling but it really doesn't work that way. While there are certainly preexisting high-res texture libraries out there, most of them suck and are therefore not used. Instead, we do our design based pretty specifically around the destination resolution in order to make sure it looks good in the game. So working on 'next-gen' type textures, we have to deal with much higher-resolution textures and variants to avoid repetition. Then we have to deal with multilayered textures, normal maps, bump maps, whatever other maps are being used. That multiplies the labor/texture ratio a lot more than if the problem were simply 'make it bigger'.
He seemed credible, and based on my admittedly limited knowledge of graphics programming and how textures work, these statements seem viable. While I'm definitely someone who is saddened by how gameplay has suffered at the hands of flash and vanity, it's definitely true that graphic artists in the gaming industry are having a lot more work in their department than ever before, and raw labor costs are clearly driving creation price up for most of these new, "HD" games.
When I started looking at DAPs, not being locked into proprietary software was one of my primary concerns. I ended up buying an iAudio M3 (which was their current model at the time) and I couldn't be happier with it. That model has been supplanted by a newer line (the X5 line), which as far as I know is an improvement in every way.
The unit operates as a standard USB 2.0 mass storage device, just a big ol blank hard drive, and I haven't had a problem connecting it to anything (Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD). Drag and drop whatever you want onto it, music or data, wherever you want. The only downside is that you do NOT get an ID3 tag based database of music, you navigate your music by the folder structure you've created on the unit. For me, that's no problem, but I could see that being an issue for others. Other notable features include a GREAT remote w/ display (I'm a big fan of being able to change tracks/playlists without having to whip out my expensive DAP wherever I may be), an "L" series with extended battery life (14-odd hours for the standard units, 30+ for the "L" units), and pretty competitive pricing.
This sounds like a totally shameless product plug (and I suppose it is in a way), but I've been exceedingly happy with this company's hardware and they're a bit underreported in mainstream tech media. Here's a link to the X5 product page, please note that it comes on 20, 30 and 60GB versions.
http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/x5/
So there, that's where people learn "stuff like [that]"...with basic research on the subject. You know, the way one learns just about anything.
Your attitude towards your mutual funds genuinely confuses me. If you dislike them so much, why do you bother putting any money in? If you don't see any real growth, why do you carry on the investment? On the one hand, you're upset that your money hasn't grown. You "REALLY don't want to have to think about this shit. Someone should do it for [you]." So you're saying that someone should take care of and grow your money for you without you having to put in any effort. On the other hand you declare that you're 'old fashioned' and insist on working for your money, and that people who gain money without working (at something you define as legitimate work) for it are somehow in the wrong. So which is it? The good ol' Protestant Work Ethic, or "Someone should make my money more money for me because doing it myself is hard and I don't get it?"
Not to mention that as a man who works in a technical field, you should understand the equally 'old fashioned' idea of RTFM. I hope you've never complained about an ignorant user, or someone who wanted you to do every simple little computing task for them. Your attitude towards managing your own assets seems to be a lot like theirs towards their computers...only they just want free time and help, you want free money!
Having worked with brokers in the past and spoken with them at length to attempt to get an idea of how they do their job, I can assure you that investing is not "a pool cue to move billiard balls around a table". There's a lot of research, planning, analysis and careful thought put into trying to find the wisest strategies for investing. Is it a guess in the end? Well sure, nobody knows the future. But blasting an entire field simply because you couldn't bother taking the 5 minutes it would take to at least get a vague idea of what it involves? That's not "insulting" so much as it is offensively stupid.
If you want to talk about what of value is created by the market...well that's a tough call. There's a lot of room for discussion on that point, and if you want to take the stance of "no" there's a lot of good arguments you could make. However, think about all the brokers out there putting in 9-12 hour days to try their best to grow the mutual funds that millions of Americans (I'm sure other nations as well, though I'm not as familiar with how their markets work) have their savings and retirement funds invested in. Maybe it's a super-idealistic idea, but if I could go home knowing I'd given a few million people $5 each more towards retirement with my day's work, I think I'd feel like I accomplished something tangible.
Then we go back to a lengthy discussion about the "evils" of these large corporations. So let's do these one by one.
The Sony Mavicam purchase - First you complain about how the manufacturer's warranty is "unacceptable"....yet you obviously accept it because you're buying their product. An angst-ridden teenager working a shitty job (and earning comission, most likely, for each warranty he sells) looks at you funny for not going for it. But in the end, you gave him your money.
DirecTV - You liked your TV rates, but t
Erm, you guys do know that Sony already has software available for the PSP that will convert any video file you can drag and drop onto it (Yes, DivX, XviD, etc.) into MPEG4 and put it on your PSP....and images as well....
It's called Image Converter. It's bundled with the PSP (At least the pack that comes with the memory stick gets a CD with it, otherwise it's free from Sony with registration). What's the point of this guy reinventing the wheel?
Info on the software is here:
http://forum.lik-sang.com/showthread.php?t=1929
The question you're asking is good, but unfortunately it runs over all the other questions involved in raising a child, mostly privacy issues. A computer isn't a magical corrupting box that will bury your child in sin. If anything a computer is a source of personal empowerment. It lets you do/learn what you already want to do/learn, only better and faster in many cases. That's the most important thing to remember, until the user specifically tells it to do something, the computer does nothing. If your child has no interest in pornography or bombmaking, chances are very high that they would never attempt to find information on either of those things and, should they encounter such material, they just wouldn't be interested. If your child DOES have interest in such things, well, maybe you have some things to talk about with him/her. Keeping the knowledge away from them will only work for so long.
:)
I'll be honest, reading your proposed rules makes me angry. In my house, one's room was sacred territory. My parents had no right to know what I was doing in there, and no right to set foot inside without my permission. They had no desire to do those things, those were the rules they found acceptable for dealing with privacy. If I wanted to keep things from them, I did, and because of this my relationship with them is a lot better then it would otherwise have been. Heh and yes, if they made rules I didn't like I simply broke them because it suited me, until they realized that I was going to do what I wanted anyway (heh I was an EXTREMELY difficult child to raise). Now, these are the rules that worked for me, I don't know you or your children or your relationship, and everyone's different. But I can tell you that having that privacy didn't make me into a horrible person nor did it mean my parents didn't care about me. It was just our way of living
Even if you never actually intend to enforce your rules, or pry into your children's lives, the way your rules are stated makes it sound like you do. They can't close their door so you can always watch them, they can't close what they're doing if you come by so nothing they do can escape your notice, and they can't lie about what they were doing so even if you don't see anything you can just guess until they're forced to confess. Again, I fully admit tht I know nothing of you, your parenting, or your children, but just from these items I can say these rules sound very opressive, whatever your intent is.
In answer to your question, I'd say, let your kids have their privacy. Make sure they get out of their rooms every once in a while, talk to them as much as you can, be the best dad you can be, as I'm sure you're already doing. If you've been doing a good job so far, this shouldn't be much of an issue, your kids will already understand right from wrong and have a good moral foundation to stand upon as they face the world. And yes, everyone at some point lies about what they're doing on the net, people (children AND adults) need privacy. It's usually nowhere near as harmful as it sounds
Game balance is the art of making sure that all the facets of your game environment are interesting, worth using in at least a decent amount of situations, yet not overpowered. The best example I can give you for a well-balanced RTS would have to be the venerable and amazingly underappreciated Total Annihilation. I'm not going to wax poetic about the game, just get it and play it for weeks (heh with the expansion of course).
See there's where we disagree. In my opinion, hackneyed "workarounds" are no substitute for actual game balance. Saying that the select-only-a-few-at-a-time decision is a proper way to limit rush tactics (i.e. the Zerg) is just silly, that doesn't balance the Zerg, just throws an obsticle in front of the player and hopes the player finds no way around it to the rotten core. And the "rock-paper-scissors" kind of unit balance you describe with your siege tank vs zealot comparison just seems silly to me...every unit will always have one specific unit it's extremely weak against, and because of that can be as powerful as it wants to be otherwise? That's not balance and thoughtful unit design, that's a bunch of lame excuses for not doing those things.
Well...besides any new gameplay features, "More RPG elements", two or three other races, the full-3D world (c'mon, it's still basically flat)....
LOL seeing as it still completely, applies, I'm simply going to repost (with some edits and additions) an earlier post of mine concerning WarCraft 3.
It seems to me that spending $65 on the "WarCraft 2 Graphics Upgrade Pack" would be like buying an expensive gift for a way-too-spolied child. Let's think about this for a minute. A company offers a product, gives us a date for it, lists a ton of features. Sounds like a good deal. Until they start pushing the date back. Still, no big deal. Then they start cutting features...like mad. Now if this was any other company, we'd all be panning their product and despising him, but for some reason everyone LOVES Blizzard for it
Countless people have called games like WC3 and SC some of the "greatest games ever". I am standing up right here and preparing to argue it soundly. This is not a troll, it's a statement of belief. Warcraft 2 was a great game; it was innovative for its time and introduced a brand new game setting. Since that point, Starcraft, Diablo 2, and WarCraft 3 (based on my experiances with the beta) have been simply TERRIBLE games. Buggy, unbalanced, uninteresting, lacking strategic or tactical depth (in the cases of StarCraft and WC3), using cheap workarounds to fix fundimental game flaws (i.e. Hey, if we let them only select a limited # of units at once, noone can rush right? right?), and always ALWAYS falling far short of the grand feature-scapes originally planned for them. Why would I want to play StarCraft or WarCraft 3 when I could play larger, richer games with far more depth (ohh...say...Total Annihilation comes to mind).
Now, to be fair, these comments relate to WarCraft 3 only through my experiance with the beta version. I honestly do not know if the game has changed since then, and if it has my opinions might change as well. But here is what I saw. The game was very pretty, it looks quite nice. However, the game mechanic hasn't changed or evolved at all since WC2. Same extremely limited unit selection, same "rock-paper-scissors" unit balance that makes "strategy" equal to "Just build some of each and run at each other". The "Hero" units were unimpressive and seemed to only be more powerful normal units that could somehow use Town Portal. The "Unaligned NPCs" were just weak units you killed to get at some resources. Games were fast and pointless, the races were unbalanced at that point, there was no strategy at all as you could never have enough units to enact a given strategy.
Maybe TA has spoiled me. I'm used to massive 2000-unit battles where you actually USE all 9 unit hotkeys, feint and probe, battle across a massive map. Strategy and production were vital tools as you pushed forward to conquer territory. Admittedly, maybe such things aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I don't understand how the RTS genre has remained the exact same game since the original C+C (which, I do know, wasn't even the first RTS). Many people have tried to innovate somewhat, but where's the evolution? Shouldn't we demand MORE instead of eating up what's only vaguely satisfactory?? To put it very plainly, Blizzard's RTS games are no more interesting or complex then playing War or Spit. Sure, those games can be fun sometimes too, but a deck of cards is a lot less then $65, and so is the number of broken promises and lowered expectations.
I admit my ignorance to the nature of the original lawsuit. Sun is definitely right to take issue with someone else breaking their language and marring their reputation. HOWEVER, what I don't understand is Part 2. Sun won the lawsuit, that's great, fairness meted out. But since when did Microsoft lose the right to simply not include Sun's product? While they have NO right to break Java, they have EVERY right to simply drop it.
I just don't understand this entire JVM issue. The argument seems to go something like this:
1 - Microsoft didn't include a JVM in Windows.
2 - Getting a JVM is confusing and not ReallyEasy(tm) for grandma
3 - Microsoft had damn well better put a JVM in Windows!
OK now...let's see what happens when we abstractify this argument.
1 - Company A won't include competing company B's part in its machine
2 - Putting Company B's part in isn't easy!
3 - Company A should help its competition by including said part.
Seems kinda silly doesn't it? Now I am in no way saying MS is sparklin' clean, or that they haven't participated in intensely overbearing and monopolistic practices. They're no angel at all. But this SPECIFIC issue seems really silly to me. Do we honestly expect a company to willingly compete against itself? One might ask the philosophical question of: Seeing the necessary end-result of capitalism and being so displeased with it, how can we at the same time so enthusiastically support the system?
Hmm, seems to me that spending $65 on the WarCraft 2 Graphics Upgrade Pack would be like buying an expensive gift for a way-too-spolied child. Let's think about this for a minute. A company offers a product, gives us a date for it, lists a ton of features. Sounds like a good deal. Until they start pushing the date back. Still no big deal. Then they start cutting features...like mad. Now if this was any other company, we'd all be panning their product and despising him, but for some reason everyone LOVES Blizzard for it
I read earlier in this list of posts "I don't think anyone would argue that Blizzard makes good games" (paraphrased, but something to that effect). I am standing up right here and preparing to argue it soundly. This is not a troll, it's a statement of belief. Warcraft 2 was a great game. Since that point, Starcraft, Diablo 2, and WarCraft 3 (based on my experiances with the beta) have been simply TERRIBLE games. Buggy, unbalanced, uninteresting, lacking strategic or tactical depth (in the cases of StarCraft and WC3), using cheap workarounds to fix fundimental game flaws (i.e. Hey, if we let them only select a limited # of units at once, noone can rush right? right?), and always ALWAYS falling far short of the grand feature-scapes originally planned for them. Why would I want to play StarCraft or WarCraft 3 when I could play larger, richer games with far more depth (ohh...say...Total Annihilation comes to mind).
Now, to be fair, these comments relate to WarCraft 3 only through my experiance with the beta version. I honestly do not know if the game has changed since then, and if it has my opinions might change as well. But here is what I saw. The game was very pretty, it looks quite nice. However, the game mechanic hasn't changed or evolved at all since WC2. Same extremely limited unit selection, same "rock-paper-scissors" unit balance that makes "strategy" equal to "Just build some of each and run at each other". The "Hero" units were unimpressive and seemed to only be more powerful normal units that could somehow use Town Portal. The "Unaligned NPCs" were just weak units you killed to get at some resources. Games were fast and pointless, the races were unbalanced at that point, there was no strategy at all as you could never have enough units to enact a given strategy.
Maybe TA has spoiled me. I'm used to massive 2000-unit battles where you actually USE all 9 unit hotkeys, feint and probe, battle across a massive map. Strategy and production were vital tools as you pushed forward to conquer territory. Admittedly, maybe such things aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I don't understand how the RTS genre has remained the exact same game since the original C+C. Many people have tried to innovate somewhat, but where's the evolution? Shouldn't we demand MORE instead of eating up what's only vaguely satisfactory??