I heartily encourage all Congresscritters who support this to loudly and proudly claim they are interested in such a tax. Do so most loudly of all just before an election, so the electorate can help you continue your vital work.
> Unfortunately, the realities of touch use in the desktop environment and > the lack of worthwhile development around the technology are conspiring > against the notion of touch ever finding a meaningful place on the desktop
Expensive respecs only stop people who don't have at least one level 40 alt, or a big guild filled with same.
In other words, the massive costs don't really stop the people they really don't want re-speccing every day.
Part of the problem with Champions, though, is a "full respec" would let you turn a fire blaster into a superstrength might puncher into a supernatural zombie into an ice blaster into...
The "fully open" power pick system works against it since once someone gets a level 40, they can just presto-chango them into something completely 100% different.
They need a solution to that besides charging eight billion fakedollars to do it. Limit it to the frameworks, and number of powers per framework, maybe with one or two freebies to pull from elsewhere, something like that.
There are few things more feasible than devoting a few engineers to working on a product used by tens of millions. That's the core definition of mass production and mass sales.
Legion are the feasible products that had a minuscule fraction of that, at best.
No, this is a lie whose purpose is to help twist the wooden stake in the chest of XP and 2000, both of which are still well-distributed at home and in business. Hell, I only had my 2000 machine replaced with an XP machine at work 3 freakin' months ago. And I'm one who gets regular upgrades at the premium "engineering" level computer = about 90% of the bleeding edge hardware capability, as my company defines that lol.
Note Microsoft got another OS sale for this new XP machine. Gotta really twist hard now in preparation for Vista++, whatever the hell it's called.
Don't like Medicare's inannity? Talk to your Congresscritter at the next election.
Don't worry, they'll respond when a fuss is made. Remember, they're not out to do good. They're out to get and keep power. one hell of a lot more explanatory and predictive power than does the "oh he cares about me" theory. No, seriously. Don't downmod me. Read my.sig and file this away as a theory in the back of your mind and pay attention to life as it goes by. I'm not afraid of predictive theories, so why should you be?
Whether something is "life" or not is an anachronistic question. It really had meaning only in the olden days when "life" was this mysteriously animated stuff that possessed some kind of life force.
In that sense, nothing is alive today, even life, as it's just complicated chemistry.
Now if people still want to persist for romantic reasons in determining if a virus is "life" or not, I will only point out a quote I read a few years ago: "Biologists no longer argue about whether a virus or a seed is 'alive' ". It's a non-issue. They are what they are and the mechanisms are largely known.
It's just a half-step from arguing if something has a "soul" or not.
> Microsoft wants the engineers in its labs to manage their servers remotely, and is moving > development servers from a bevy of computer rooms in labs to a new green data center about > 8 miles from its Redmond campus. "I see today as a real transition point in our culture," > said Rob Bernard,
"And once we've worked out all the bugs in remote management, the employees will be fired and replaced with people in India."
Downloaded 4 other submissions to the Australian Rights Council, at sort-of random.
2 were religious organizations whining about minutia of the government distributing money to religious organizations to implement social programs.
One actually had a decent point, that religion's been doing this a lot longer than modern governments have, so for a government to come along and try to define social help as something inherently secular, to strip it of some religious cachet is thus laughable historically, and the government's interest waxed and waned heavily during the 50 years governments have even cared about social programs.
The third was a Muslim group complaining that the Australian government's definition of "sect" (or some similar word) was too narrow to cover Muslims in general. Specifically, they were not "of one language", coming from "one cultural background". They're not even one religion, in the same way Christianity is not one religion. And therefore we can't take advantage of laws against religious vilification.
The fourth was a nearly incoherent and seemingly contradictory claim that the government is not doing enough in practice to ensure Freedom of Religion, in spite of constitutional wording to the contrary, and, oh, by the way, can you let us sue or jail people who vilify us? There's that word again.
> "I've just filed for a patent on a new approach to motion capture that is simple, > cheap, easy, accurate, and portable. It's RF-based, accurate to 1 mm
Michigan used to have a required typing class that most kids took in 8th grade or so. It was some attempt to ensure everybody had at least one marketable skill.
But somewhere in the last 20 years it disappeared. Although "typing" on a typewriter is long gone, it's now used more than ever for computers.
Why get rid of it when it's far more useful than it ever was back then?
> "Two teenage girls (aged 10 and 12) found themselves trapped/lost in a stormwater drain in > Adelaide, South Australia. The interesting point of this article that makes it Slashdot worthy"
>> And if you don't like it, move back where your grandfather came from! >> >> We shall do just FINE here, in the company of Voltaire and Jefferson. > > Perhaps I misunderstood the tone of your post, but you do realize I was > agreeing with you, right?
Lord I hope not! Look again at the name. It would break his theme.
I presume the UK has done an analysis of current workers and found out that 1. they have an inordinate number of former crooks and pervs, and 2. that said workers actually constitute a threat as measured by past results.
After adjustment, storage capacity has increased about 100,000x per dollar in the last 25 years. To get to a petabyte in the desktop price range requires just another 10 years or so.
The whole point of "broadband" is that it does support streaming audio and video.
If they want to offer some kind of medium-band fast surfing speed, then call it that. Don't try to lie about it.
How about "not quite so-broadband"? Or "grampa-band"?
Politicians love to do this kind of crap, though. Want to divert federal money for the Great Lakes to your precious little local lake? Fine, just get Congress to declare your late a Great Lake For The Purpose of This Bill.
People who make carrot jelly upset you stupidly legally defined jelly to be made with fruit? Fine! Don't get rid of the definition as over-intrusive actions of the government. Rather, just redefine carrots as fruit.
> Warriors are masters of close combat. They are about grit, > power, and sheer strength. They use their great physical > strength and prowess to pound the enemy and provide cover for allies.
Jesus Christ! Another game where warriors are crap-damage pseudo-controllers instead of, oh, I don't know, an actual warrior.
Champions Online has a 5-star system. You die, you lose all your stars. They start building up the longer you fight and stay alive. The more you have, the more goose your powers get. Something like that.
Anyway, back in the day, we didn't have no steenking slap on the wrist death penalties. No, your character died and you lost three levels of XP and had to go rescue your body within 30 minutes or it vaporized with all your stuff, and you liked it! >:-(
That it was impossible for your now-naked group to fight its way back into the dungeon to the body area was part of the challenge! So you went and got a high level guy to wade in there and/drag your corpses out and hope he didn't/drag 'em deeper to the king's throne room.
And if worse came to worse, your magnificent, tarnished two-hander, the first upgrade from rusty, and looted from a zombie in the desert, was gone. And you liked it!
Well, on the one hand, one does want a cheat-prevention program to be hard to uninstall, otherwise what's the point? It's like outlawing guns and being shocked -- shocked! -- that the crooks didn't cough them up.
The best bet for the future is to develop data mining techniques to analyze player responses to deduce who is probably using a bot or a cheat program, then do a direct analysis from there (e.g. a fast Turing test, for example.) That way it's all server-side.
It'll still be a running battle with the cheat hack developers, but at least it won't rely so heavily on such intrusive software.
Slashdot Mirror
I prefer to take it at face value, sometimes.
I heartily encourage all Congresscritters who support this to loudly and proudly claim they are interested in such a tax. Do so most loudly of all just before an election, so the electorate can help you continue your vital work.
Don't be ashamed of your position!
> Unfortunately, the realities of touch use in the desktop environment and
> the lack of worthwhile development around the technology are conspiring
> against the notion of touch ever finding a meaningful place on the desktop
Under the desktop, however, is another matter.
Expensive respecs only stop people who don't have at least one level 40 alt, or a big guild filled with same.
In other words, the massive costs don't really stop the people they really don't want re-speccing every day.
Part of the problem with Champions, though, is a "full respec" would let you turn a fire blaster into a superstrength might puncher into a supernatural zombie into an ice blaster into...
The "fully open" power pick system works against it since once someone gets a level 40, they can just presto-chango them into something completely 100% different.
They need a solution to that besides charging eight billion fakedollars to do it. Limit it to the frameworks, and number of powers per framework, maybe with one or two freebies to pull from elsewhere, something like that.
> New scientific evidence proves that these [giant, man-eating] birds
> did exist and were around the same time as humans in New Zealand.
The article continues: Last Thursday one bird even went so far as to tell a reporter to get the f*** away and that he had "never even met Xena."
There are few things more feasible than devoting a few engineers to working on a product used by tens of millions. That's the core definition of mass production and mass sales.
Legion are the feasible products that had a minuscule fraction of that, at best.
No, this is a lie whose purpose is to help twist the wooden stake in the chest of XP and 2000, both of which are still well-distributed at home and in business. Hell, I only had my 2000 machine replaced with an XP machine at work 3 freakin' months ago. And I'm one who gets regular upgrades at the premium "engineering" level computer = about 90% of the bleeding edge hardware capability, as my company defines that lol.
Note Microsoft got another OS sale for this new XP machine. Gotta really twist hard now in preparation for Vista++, whatever the hell it's called.
Don't like Medicare's inannity? Talk to your Congresscritter at the next election.
Don't worry, they'll respond when a fuss is made. Remember, they're not out to do good. They're out to get and keep power. one hell of a lot more explanatory and predictive power than does the "oh he cares about me" theory. No, seriously. Don't downmod me. Read my .sig and file this away as a theory in the back of your mind and pay attention to life as it goes by. I'm not afraid of predictive theories, so why should you be?
Whether something is "life" or not is an anachronistic question. It really had meaning only in the olden days when "life" was this mysteriously animated stuff that possessed some kind of life force.
In that sense, nothing is alive today, even life, as it's just complicated chemistry.
Now if people still want to persist for romantic reasons in determining if a virus is "life" or not, I will only point out a quote I read a few years ago: "Biologists no longer argue about whether a virus or a seed is 'alive' ". It's a non-issue. They are what they are and the mechanisms are largely known.
It's just a half-step from arguing if something has a "soul" or not.
> Microsoft wants the engineers in its labs to manage their servers remotely, and is moving
> development servers from a bevy of computer rooms in labs to a new green data center about
> 8 miles from its Redmond campus. "I see today as a real transition point in our culture,"
> said Rob Bernard,
"And once we've worked out all the bugs in remote management, the employees will be fired and replaced with people in India."
It's like saying the only kind of restaurant that can be profitable is McDonald's.
No there are people who love to eat at very nice restaurants. Many of whom, btw, also eat at McDonald's once in awhile.
Downloaded 4 other submissions to the Australian Rights Council, at sort-of random.
2 were religious organizations whining about minutia of the government distributing money to religious organizations to implement social programs.
One actually had a decent point, that religion's been doing this a lot longer than modern governments have, so for a government to come along and try to define social help as something inherently secular, to strip it of some religious cachet is thus laughable historically, and the government's interest waxed and waned heavily during the 50 years governments have even cared about social programs.
The third was a Muslim group complaining that the Australian government's definition of "sect" (or some similar word) was too narrow to cover Muslims in general. Specifically, they were not "of one language", coming from "one cultural background". They're not even one religion, in the same way Christianity is not one religion. And therefore we can't take advantage of laws against religious vilification.
The fourth was a nearly incoherent and seemingly contradictory claim that the government is not doing enough in practice to ensure Freedom of Religion, in spite of constitutional wording to the contrary, and, oh, by the way, can you let us sue or jail people who vilify us? There's that word again.
Well, this may be a funny article, but that thing in the picture definitely looks like a serious, portable machine gun.
Probably best not to walk down the street with it.
> "I've just filed for a patent on a new approach to motion capture that is simple,
> cheap, easy, accurate, and portable. It's RF-based, accurate to 1 mm
Can you...alter the mm's in certain areas?
Michigan used to have a required typing class that most kids took in 8th grade or so. It was some attempt to ensure everybody had at least one marketable skill.
But somewhere in the last 20 years it disappeared. Although "typing" on a typewriter is long gone, it's now used more than ever for computers.
Why get rid of it when it's far more useful than it ever was back then?
I.e. nobody has the music except the "outlaws" since the DRM clobbered it from all their hard drives.
> "Two teenage girls (aged 10 and 12) found themselves trapped/lost in a stormwater drain in
> Adelaide, South Australia. The interesting point of this article that makes it Slashdot worthy"
as opposed to 4chan-worthy.
Someone "steals" it, hacks it, and re-posts the un-DRM'd copy so everyone has it.
Not advocating that, as I'm against it. But how is this protocol gonna stop the thing they actually wanna stop?
It's kind of like outlawing guns. The law-abiding citizens now have no guns, but the outlaws still have theirs.
>> And if you don't like it, move back where your grandfather came from!
>>
>> We shall do just FINE here, in the company of Voltaire and Jefferson.
>
> Perhaps I misunderstood the tone of your post, but you do realize I was
> agreeing with you, right?
Lord I hope not! Look again at the name. It would break his theme.
Don't laugh.
I presume the UK has done an analysis of current workers and found out that 1. they have an inordinate number of former crooks and pervs, and 2. that said workers actually constitute a threat as measured by past results.
I'll hold my breath.
After adjustment, storage capacity has increased about 100,000x per dollar in the last 25 years. To get to a petabyte in the desktop price range requires just another 10 years or so.
...and encryption technology as munitions, for that matter.
The whole point of "broadband" is that it does support streaming audio and video.
If they want to offer some kind of medium-band fast surfing speed, then call it that. Don't try to lie about it.
How about "not quite so-broadband"? Or "grampa-band"?
Politicians love to do this kind of crap, though. Want to divert federal money for the Great Lakes to your precious little local lake? Fine, just get Congress to declare your late a Great Lake For The Purpose of This Bill.
People who make carrot jelly upset you stupidly legally defined jelly to be made with fruit? Fine! Don't get rid of the definition as over-intrusive actions of the government. Rather, just redefine carrots as fruit.
Forced PvP isn't the only Fail.
> Warriors are masters of close combat. They are about grit,
> power, and sheer strength. They use their great physical
> strength and prowess to pound the enemy and provide cover for allies .
Jesus Christ! Another game where warriors are crap-damage pseudo-controllers instead of, oh, I don't know, an actual warrior.
Champions Online has a 5-star system. You die, you lose all your stars. They start building up the longer you fight and stay alive. The more you have, the more goose your powers get. Something like that.
Anyway, back in the day, we didn't have no steenking slap on the wrist death penalties. No, your character died and you lost three levels of XP and had to go rescue your body within 30 minutes or it vaporized with all your stuff, and you liked it! >:-(
That it was impossible for your now-naked group to fight its way back into the dungeon to the body area was part of the challenge! So you went and got a high level guy to wade in there and /drag your corpses out and hope he didn't /drag 'em deeper to the king's throne room.
And if worse came to worse, your magnificent, tarnished two-hander, the first upgrade from rusty, and looted from a zombie in the desert, was gone. And you liked it!
Well, on the one hand, one does want a cheat-prevention program to be hard to uninstall, otherwise what's the point? It's like outlawing guns and being shocked -- shocked! -- that the crooks didn't cough them up.
The best bet for the future is to develop data mining techniques to analyze player responses to deduce who is probably using a bot or a cheat program, then do a direct analysis from there (e.g. a fast Turing test, for example.) That way it's all server-side.
It'll still be a running battle with the cheat hack developers, but at least it won't rely so heavily on such intrusive software.
> "People don't just send you five laptops for no good reason."
No. They usually have a good reason such as vote for or against this bill.
Yeah, out of the blue, anonymously and without a suggestion of tit-for-tat "legal" bribery is definitely odd.
Less damaging than the "good reason", but odd.