They must have some really good shit up there in Boston. No Farscape? No DS9? And the new BSG better than TNG. Not to mention all the non-sf shows in their best sf shows of all time list.
Now, I'm not trying to start a flame-war here, but I have a serious question: What is it about the new BSG that everybody loves so much? I don't mean critics, I mean regular eight-sided-die-owning, j. random geeks. Seriously, I really want to know. I really want to like it, but I just can't get into it.
Maybe it's just that it's shot in Zapruder-Vison. I understand the reasoning for the hand-held camera look, I just don't like it. Especially in the space battle scenes.
So please, somebody out there, one of "us", explain the new BSG to me.
P.S. God help me, but I'm gonna burn my karma here in the hopes that I'll get a real answer.
The only caveat is at least one person involved has to be indispensible.
My favorite one is to build a fort out of the cube walls, and when maintenance comes to put them back, paint your faces with highlighters, go in the fort, and beat on the desks like jungle drums until they go away. I chuckle every time I think about it.
NCC is an imaginary designation for starships conceived within Star Trek. According to Star Trek chronology, the term was first used in the Original Series. It has been suggested that the prefix "NCC" was used by the creators of Star Trek analogously to the United States Navy's hull classification symbols, and was a combination of a ship prefix "NS" ("Naval Ship"), and the Soviet Union acronym "CCCP" to show that the two countries had to work together to establish Starfleet. Another more popular theory is that it derives from the 'NC' prefix used for United States airplanes - creator Gene Roddenberry and Enterprise designer Matt Jefferies (after whom the "Jeffries tube" was named) were pilots.
According to non-canonical sources, "NCC" is in reference to the contract required to build a starship and to easily be able to identify parts from ships when salvaged. It is suggested that "NCC" is short for "Naval Construction Contract", this number is imprinted into every part laid into the ship, similar to the imprinting of Naval hull numbers into parts and systems on modern ships, (i.e. CVN-65 is stamped into every part on the USS Enterprise the US aircraft carrier). The idea about an "NX" (Naval eXperimental) ship, when fully commissioned, the ship goes through refit, and becomes an "NCC" ship. Such was the case with the USS Excelisor. When she was built, she was given the number NX-2000. After being commissioned and assigned to Capt. Sulu, her number was changed to NCC-2000.
I actually like Clippy. Honestly, I wish you could pet him and play fetch with him like with petz.
It's not the hints. Clippy's helpful hints are usually not very helpful, especially when they're repetitive.
So what is it? I can only conclude that, because my office is such a soulless, dead, joy-killing hell-hole of bullshit politics, endless obstructionism, and know-nothing clock-watchers, any positive interaction at all with something even remotely resembling a life-form that seems genuinely happy to see me gives me just enough strength to go on.
How did we come to this? When did these MBA having , Harvard Business Review reading, management fad perpetuating, no geek-cred fucktards take over every IT department? How in the hell did we let the same jock shitheads that made our childhoods miserable take over our one bastion of enlightenment and turn it into just as fucked up of a situation as every other industry?
Anyway, uh... Yeah. Sorry about that. I just had to get it off my chest. I even know the answer: Money.
Seriously though, I wish you could play fetch with Clippy.
For the record, I just watched T2 again when it was on SciFi the other night, and we were all bitching about "How the hell can they make a T3 when the whole SkyNet thing doesn't happen?" Then near the end of the movie, Arnold loses more than half his arm in a big gear machine thing. So, there's your arm. I'm just sayin'.
The only problem with anonymous FTP is when the security auditors (provided by the same folks that do the financial audits, mind you) give you a "Management Comment" that anonymous FTP is a security risk. And they don't want to hear from no chroot jail or any "technical mumbo-jumbo" like that. It says right in their audit checklist that anonymous FTP is bad.
I'd like to take this opportunity to recommend the book Jefferson's Bible by Thomas Jefferson (Yes that one). (Beacon Press; July 2001; ISBN 0807077143)
I guess I don't understand why so many/.ers are confused about the Architect's dialogue. When he went off on the "unbalanced equation" bit I actually chuckled and thought to myself "GÃdel, you magnificent son-of-a-bitch! I read your book!"
He proved it impossible to establish the internal logical consistency of a very large class of deductive systems - elementary arithmetic, for example - unless one adopts principles of reasoning so complex that their internal consistency is as open to doubt as that of the systems themselves... Second main conclusion is... GÃdel showed that Principia, or any other system within which arithmetic can be developed, is essentially incomplete. In other words, given any consistent set of arithmetical axioms, there are true mathematical statements that cannot be derived from the set... Even if the axioms of arithmetic are augmented by an indefinite number of other true ones, there will always be further mathematical truths that are not formally derivable from the augmented set.
Thus, the founders of the Matrix, artifical beings constructed of instructions to a computer, are laid low by the fact that no logical system can account for true statements that cannot be proven and by extension computed.
I suppose it is possible that the machines that run The Matrix are immune to the incompleteness theorem due to quantum logic or some other form of advanced construction and programming. However, I would point out the theorem states that any system that relies on consistant axiomatic logic eventually falls prey to incompleteness.
(cf.On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems by Kurt GÃdel, ISBN 0486669807)
(cf.GÃdel's Proof by Nagel, et al., ISBN 0814758169, Revised Edition)
Tons of skills which used to be part of everyday life have fallen into disuse, simply because most people don't need to do them any more. And tons of new skills are aquired to fit the new needs. It's called progress.
This reminds me of an episode of the original Connections television program hosted by James Burke. In the episode I have in mind he speaks of the "Technology Trap" inherent in our modern culture. It's been years since I've seen it, so I can't really go into detail, but the upshot of it all is that most residents of any large city are only days away from starvation at any given time. If even one item in a complex and interconnected series of technologies and processes breaks down, hunger and its attendant savagery aren't far behind.
For me the issue boils down to survival. What if there is no one else to tie the net, carve the spoon, build the house or the wall, groom the horse, or tan the hide for you? (Not to mention grow the grain, slaughter the meat, weave the cloth and countless other things besides.)
In the final analysis it always and forever comes down to you and yours being able to procure these goods and services. If there is no one to trade with, it means you'll have to do it yourselves or do without. You can get by without many things, but food, water, and shelter are not on that list. (c.f.Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or Google for Maslow's Hierarchy)
Though to tell the truth, given a future in which society has collapsed, I'm sure I don't know enough about all these things. In that situation, out of all the books in my library, the one that I'd go back into the burning house for is Back to Basics by Reader's Digest (ISBN 0895779390). A close second might be The Foxfire Book (ISBN 0385073534). I don't have to worry about FM 21-76: Survival (ISBN 0967512395), because I have multiple copies stashed around, including one for my car.
And before you say so, yes I know that's a little weird. All I can say in my defense is I don't take for granted that society will be able to provide for my needs.
For the record, I write in longhand in my notebook and journal both for practice and for the pure cathartic joy it brings me. I also print in block small-capitals almost as fast as I write in longhand. (A result of drafting classes taken during my secondary schooling.)
About A New Kind of Science
on
A Good Summer Read?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I bought A New Kind of Science when it first came out, thinking that Wolfram is a genius and he must have come up with something really great to put out such a honkin' big book. I must admit that I never actually read it though. My reasons were two-fold.
First, the parts of the book that I flipped through when I first opened the package and took it out were either A) So self-congratulatory of Wolfram's "discoveries" so as to be annoying or B) Details of simple experiments with Cellular Automata conducted in Mathematica. You might have seen Commodore BASIC source code for similar experiments in Compute! magazine in 1982. Okay, maybe not, but you get my point. Even with those points against it, Wolfram appeared to make some interesting conclusions, so I decided to attempt it.
Which brings me to point the second: When I sat down and started to read the book, the lengthy copyright notice caught my eye. Lucky for me it did. Rather than go off on a rant, I'll let the copyright statement speak for itself:
Copyright 2002 by Stephen Wolfram, LLC
All rights reserved. Except as provided below, no part of this book, whether in physical, electronic or other form, may be copied, reproduced, distributed, transmitted, publicly performed or displayed without the prior written consent of the copyright holder. Nor may derivative works such as translations be produced. Visit www.wolframscience.com/nks/permissions for further information.
The author, copyright holder and publisher wish to encourage further development of the science in this book, while maintaining its intellectual integrity and preserving the value of their substantial creative and financial investments through the maintenance of appropriate legal and other rights.
Discoveries and ideas introduced in the this book, whether presented at length or not, and the legal rights and goodwill associated with them, represent valuable property of Stephen Wolfram, LLC, and when they or work based on them is described or presented, whether for scholarly purposes or otherwise, appropriate attribution should be given. For purposes of scholarly citation this book is a primary source and should be cited accordingly.
Individual verbatim quotations of up to twenty lines of plain text may be made for scholarly purposes if this book is clearly identified and cited as the source. Visit www.wolframscience.com/nks/reprints for information on classroom reprints and copying arrangements.
[Two sections concerning illustrations and Mathematica source code use restrictions, reading much the same as the rest of the copyright statement, which I skip for brevity's sake]
Certain material in this book may be proprietary, and may for example be or become the subject of US or foreign patents, pending or issued. Inclusion in this book shall not be construed as implying any license of any sort. Visit www.wolframscience.com/nks/licensing for licensing information.
[There's a little more but I've made my point]
I read no further than the end of the copyright statement and haven't opened the book since except for the purpose of this post.
Perhaps people might think it unreasonable, but I have to take issue with a book claiming to deliver A New Kind of Science in which all the science appears to be held under lock and key. Where the hell would we be if Newton, et al. patented calculus, or Knuth patented algorithmic analysis?
So all I can offer is my completely uninformed opinion based solely on my layman's interpetation of the copyright statement: Stop before you infect your mind with Wolfram's IP.
While insurance coverage (or the lack thereof) isn't really the topic at hand, I submit the following article for your perusal vis a vis "The Health Insurance Situation":
The article details the 1996 testimony in front of the congressional Health and Environment committee of Dr. Linda Peeno. To quote from the introduction,
Dr. Linda Peeno is a former medical reviewer for Humana, a large health insurance provider based in Louisville, Kentucky. While working for Humana, Dr. Peeno had an epiphany when she discovered that a sculpture of a tall, thin woman by Alberto Giacometti - which was displayed in the rotunda of the company's Louisville HQ from 1987 to 1994 - cost $488,000. It was roughly the same amount as the cost of a heart transplant for a Humana patient for which she had recently denied payment on a technicality, according to a recent article in The New York Times.
Obviously this site has an agenda of its own, and I can't say I agree with their conclusions on every matter. In this case however, I believe they have a valid point to make concerning the nature of the health insurance industry.
And to try to add at least an air of topicality to this post, I did notice one thing: this device seems very expensive, even taking into account that it is a medical device and subject to stricter regulations. Hopefully increased production will drive the cost and thus the price down. From what I understand from other posters who have suffered from stuttering, this little thing is like an answer to a prayer. I would hope that every child that needs one will get one, even if they are poor, or their stuttering is a "pre-existing condition".
Sorry that I didn't put a . I figured, incorrectly it seems, that most people would realize that the second part of my comment was a facetious counter-point to the first part. I freely admit that I shouldn't have posted while still angry, but damn if it doesn't make me so angry I can't see straight.
As for the first part... Definitive proof, no. That's why I suggested that charges be filed and our legal system try to mete out some justice in this matter. While not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, it is our legal system.
I grant the point that NASA decision makers couldn't have predicted the outcome; they didn't have any data from which to make a prediction. From the admittedly sketchy evidence I've seen in the papers and elsewhere, it seems they didn't even attempt to determine the extent or nature of the damage, despite the warnings of the engineers.
My main point is that the people at the top had command responsibility for the astronauts. This is something more than just being a manager or having fiduciary responsibility. I recommend The Challenge of Command by Roger H. Nye (ISBN 0399528040; Perigee; October 2001) for further reading on the subject.
Mod me down if you must, but I stand by my conclusion: If the responsible persons at the top of the hierarchy failed in their duty, there should be commensurate consequences.
... I can only hope that the crew of Columbia realised they weren't working for the same NASA that brought home Apollo 13. I'd like to see charges of willful disregard of human life or negligent homicide or something brought against the bastards who figured crossing their fingers was the best way to get them home.
I'd settle for the men in charge each spending half an hour in a room alone with the widows and orphans, who will each be given a Louisville Slugger. More than fair, and at least as much chance as they gave the astronauts.
I played AC on both Thistledown and Darktide, though mostly on TD. On DT everyone is trying to kill everyone else all the time and I found very little role-playing. It was more like Quake than an RPG. If memory serves me correctly, when I first made a DT character I was attacked before I ever got spawned in.
I haven't forgotten what UO was like in the bad old days, when solos would get killed just for being solos. That's why I switched to AC in the first place, because I thought I wanted a no PvP game. What I found out is that no PvP is more annoying because the punks and trolls have no concequences, which just makes them bolder.
In the years I played AC, UO changed and grew. As another poster said, they put in a really great craft system. They fixed some of the problems in the acquisition of gold, so I didn't have to "work" eight hours at tailoring or whatever so I could adventure for a hour. But especially they put in the "new lands" and made it so there were several grades of protection for characters, from guarded zones where attacking another character means certain death, to wild lands where there is no law but might makes right.
It's not that I want to just randomly kill people, but I want the choice. Some people just can't learn manners except at the sharp end of a sword.
I started out with UO, and switched to AC. I've also played DAoC and play tested a few that were promising but never were released. EQ gave me motion sickness, though I understand that they've fixed this since. I recently switched back to UO. I have many reasons, including the fact that all my bro's switched back to UO. One big thing though is UO doesn't limit my moral choices.
Using AC as an example, if "A$$NUGG3+" starts mouthing off to you or is just being annoying your choices are find someplace else to be, or log out. (Assuming he's not doing something you could call a GM over, of course.) Now, what I want to do, and what my character would do is kill this punk mofo and take his gear. AC doesn't really let you do that. Going PK in AC is kind of a pain (You have to do a quest), and unless you're part of the right clan you're just gonna get run out of the game. (Important Safety Tip: Unless you know it's okay for you to be there, don't go to "The Hub" as a PK.) Even then, unless the punk in question is a PK as well, you can't touch them.
Not so in UO. In UO, while there are penalties and consequences in game to killing someone who hasn't actually stolen from you or attacked you, you can kill them, for any reason or no reason at all. So when "A$$NUGG3+" says, "u r gay ur guild is gay", etc., you can beat him down. (For the record, I am one of those annoying people who role plays, so when you insult my guild, I "keep it in play" as we said back in the day.)
True, there are zones where you are protected by the "Guards", and if you try and attack someone there you probably will never land the blow before you're off to resurrect. Most places if you attack someone who is flagged as an innocent, i.e. they haven't done anything bad in game, you'll likely get a "Murder Count", but that isn't the end of the world. There are other places where it's law of the jungle.
I'll pony up the extra dough mainly because UO lets me really play my character, whereas AC and the like artificially limit my choices in order to try to eliminate "griefing." Of course, all it really does it provide griefers a consequence-free environment.
In a perfect world, the game service provider would only eliminate the cheaters, and let me take care of the griefers "in game." I am still waiting for the perfect online fantasy RPG. I have high hopes for Middle Earth, but something tells me they aren't gonna let my character "Telumhatar" riddle "A$$NUGG3+" with arrows just on general principle.
Slashdot Mirror
They must have some really good shit up there in Boston. No Farscape? No DS9? And the new BSG better than TNG. Not to mention all the non-sf shows in their best sf shows of all time list.
Now, I'm not trying to start a flame-war here, but I have a serious question: What is it about the new BSG that everybody loves so much? I don't mean critics, I mean regular eight-sided-die-owning, j. random geeks. Seriously, I really want to know. I really want to like it, but I just can't get into it.
Maybe it's just that it's shot in Zapruder-Vison. I understand the reasoning for the hand-held camera look, I just don't like it. Especially in the space battle scenes.
So please, somebody out there, one of "us", explain the new BSG to me.
P.S. God help me, but I'm gonna burn my karma here in the hopes that I'll get a real answer.
The best dialog box of all time: Netcom's "Oops! You're Screwed" box with only an ok button.
Man, I wish you logged in to post, 'cause I'd like to friend ya.
*Ding*
We have a winner!
While the "official" reason was the possibility that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by terrorists, the true reason is greed, naturally and as usual.
Ward's Wiki has a whole page on what to do with cubicle envrionments:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LordOfTheFlies
The only caveat is at least one person involved has to be indispensible.
My favorite one is to build a fort out of the cube walls, and when maintenance comes to put them back, paint your faces with highlighters, go in the fort, and beat on the desks like jungle drums until they go away. I chuckle every time I think about it.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NCC:
Try this http://petz.com/
I actually like Clippy. Honestly, I wish you could pet him and play fetch with him like with petz.
It's not the hints. Clippy's helpful hints are usually not very helpful, especially when they're repetitive.
So what is it? I can only conclude that, because my office is such a soulless, dead, joy-killing hell-hole of bullshit politics, endless obstructionism, and know-nothing clock-watchers, any positive interaction at all with something even remotely resembling a life-form that seems genuinely happy to see me gives me just enough strength to go on.
How did we come to this? When did these MBA having , Harvard Business Review reading, management fad perpetuating, no geek-cred fucktards take over every IT department? How in the hell did we let the same jock shitheads that made our childhoods miserable take over our one bastion of enlightenment and turn it into just as fucked up of a situation as every other industry?
Anyway, uh... Yeah. Sorry about that. I just had to get it off my chest. I even know the answer: Money.
Seriously though, I wish you could play fetch with Clippy.
Sorry to butt in here, Gentlemen, but this reminds me of the motto of the old L5 Society, which I read on Jerry Pournelle's website:
"The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of us will go to the stars."
Uh... not being one to leave a nit unpicked... You're thinking of Elwood.
That gets a "Right On!"
All power to the people!
I submit putting such a sticker on the game probably would not impact sales.
For as The Gord has written in The Book of Annoyance, Chapter 18, Verses 4 and 5, no one cares what the sign says.
For the record, I just watched T2 again when it was on SciFi the other night, and we were all bitching about "How the hell can they make a T3 when the whole SkyNet thing doesn't happen?" Then near the end of the movie, Arnold loses more than half his arm in a big gear machine thing. So, there's your arm. I'm just sayin'.
The only problem with anonymous FTP is when the security auditors (provided by the same folks that do the financial audits, mind you) give you a "Management Comment" that anonymous FTP is a security risk. And they don't want to hear from no chroot jail or any "technical mumbo-jumbo" like that. It says right in their audit checklist that anonymous FTP is bad.
I'd like to take this opportunity to recommend the book Jefferson's Bible by Thomas Jefferson (Yes that one). (Beacon Press; July 2001; ISBN 0807077143)
To shamelessly appropriate from http://www.miskatonic.org/godel.html,
Thus, the founders of the Matrix, artifical beings constructed of instructions to a computer, are laid low by the fact that no logical system can account for true statements that cannot be proven and by extension computed.
I suppose it is possible that the machines that run The Matrix are immune to the incompleteness theorem due to quantum logic or some other form of advanced construction and programming. However, I would point out the theorem states that any system that relies on consistant axiomatic logic eventually falls prey to incompleteness.
(cf. On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems by Kurt GÃdel, ISBN 0486669807)
(cf. GÃdel's Proof by Nagel, et al., ISBN 0814758169, Revised Edition)
This reminds me of an episode of the original Connections television program hosted by James Burke. In the episode I have in mind he speaks of the "Technology Trap" inherent in our modern culture. It's been years since I've seen it, so I can't really go into detail, but the upshot of it all is that most residents of any large city are only days away from starvation at any given time. If even one item in a complex and interconnected series of technologies and processes breaks down, hunger and its attendant savagery aren't far behind.
For me the issue boils down to survival. What if there is no one else to tie the net, carve the spoon, build the house or the wall, groom the horse, or tan the hide for you? (Not to mention grow the grain, slaughter the meat, weave the cloth and countless other things besides.)
In the final analysis it always and forever comes down to you and yours being able to procure these goods and services. If there is no one to trade with, it means you'll have to do it yourselves or do without. You can get by without many things, but food, water, and shelter are not on that list. (c.f. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs or Google for Maslow's Hierarchy)
Though to tell the truth, given a future in which society has collapsed, I'm sure I don't know enough about all these things. In that situation, out of all the books in my library, the one that I'd go back into the burning house for is Back to Basics by Reader's Digest (ISBN 0895779390). A close second might be The Foxfire Book (ISBN 0385073534). I don't have to worry about FM 21-76: Survival (ISBN 0967512395), because I have multiple copies stashed around, including one for my car.
And before you say so, yes I know that's a little weird. All I can say in my defense is I don't take for granted that society will be able to provide for my needs.
For the record, I write in longhand in my notebook and journal both for practice and for the pure cathartic joy it brings me. I also print in block small-capitals almost as fast as I write in longhand. (A result of drafting classes taken during my secondary schooling.)
First, the parts of the book that I flipped through when I first opened the package and took it out were either A) So self-congratulatory of Wolfram's "discoveries" so as to be annoying or B) Details of simple experiments with Cellular Automata conducted in Mathematica. You might have seen Commodore BASIC source code for similar experiments in Compute! magazine in 1982. Okay, maybe not, but you get my point. Even with those points against it, Wolfram appeared to make some interesting conclusions, so I decided to attempt it.
Which brings me to point the second: When I sat down and started to read the book, the lengthy copyright notice caught my eye. Lucky for me it did. Rather than go off on a rant, I'll let the copyright statement speak for itself:
I read no further than the end of the copyright statement and haven't opened the book since except for the purpose of this post.
Perhaps people might think it unreasonable, but I have to take issue with a book claiming to deliver A New Kind of Science in which all the science appears to be held under lock and key. Where the hell would we be if Newton, et al. patented calculus, or Knuth patented algorithmic analysis?
So all I can offer is my completely uninformed opinion based solely on my layman's interpetation of the copyright statement: Stop before you infect your mind with Wolfram's IP.
http://www.guerrillanews.com/corporate_crime/doc2
The article details the 1996 testimony in front of the congressional Health and Environment committee of Dr. Linda Peeno. To quote from the introduction,
Obviously this site has an agenda of its own, and I can't say I agree with their conclusions on every matter. In this case however, I believe they have a valid point to make concerning the nature of the health insurance industry.
And to try to add at least an air of topicality to this post, I did notice one thing: this device seems very expensive, even taking into account that it is a medical device and subject to stricter regulations. Hopefully increased production will drive the cost and thus the price down. From what I understand from other posters who have suffered from stuttering, this little thing is like an answer to a prayer. I would hope that every child that needs one will get one, even if they are poor, or their stuttering is a "pre-existing condition".
Sorry that I didn't put a . I figured, incorrectly it seems, that most people would realize that the second part of my comment was a facetious counter-point to the first part. I freely admit that I shouldn't have posted while still angry, but damn if it doesn't make me so angry I can't see straight.
As for the first part... Definitive proof, no. That's why I suggested that charges be filed and our legal system try to mete out some justice in this matter. While not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, it is our legal system.
I grant the point that NASA decision makers couldn't have predicted the outcome; they didn't have any data from which to make a prediction. From the admittedly sketchy evidence I've seen in the papers and elsewhere, it seems they didn't even attempt to determine the extent or nature of the damage, despite the warnings of the engineers.
My main point is that the people at the top had command responsibility for the astronauts. This is something more than just being a manager or having fiduciary responsibility. I recommend The Challenge of Command by Roger H. Nye (ISBN 0399528040; Perigee; October 2001) for further reading on the subject.
Mod me down if you must, but I stand by my conclusion: If the responsible persons at the top of the hierarchy failed in their duty, there should be commensurate consequences.
... I can only hope that the crew of Columbia realised they weren't working for the same NASA that brought home Apollo 13. I'd like to see charges of willful disregard of human life or negligent homicide or something brought against the bastards who figured crossing their fingers was the best way to get them home.
I'd settle for the men in charge each spending half an hour in a room alone with the widows and orphans, who will each be given a Louisville Slugger. More than fair, and at least as much chance as they gave the astronauts.
FYI, under nominal conditions most reasonably healthy people (even overweight ones) can close a 10 foot gap in less than a second.
l
e +attacker
While I don't endorse or recommend this site or the related self-defense training system, I offer as evidence:
http://www.chucktaylorasaa.com/close_quarters.htm
Which I found with the google search:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%2210+feet%22+clos
I'll second that. Keep your gold.
However I will accept brass and lead ingots and equivalent weights of smokeless powder or salt.
I played AC on both Thistledown and Darktide, though mostly on TD. On DT everyone is trying to kill everyone else all the time and I found very little role-playing. It was more like Quake than an RPG. If memory serves me correctly, when I first made a DT character I was attacked before I ever got spawned in.
I haven't forgotten what UO was like in the bad old days, when solos would get killed just for being solos. That's why I switched to AC in the first place, because I thought I wanted a no PvP game. What I found out is that no PvP is more annoying because the punks and trolls have no concequences, which just makes them bolder.
In the years I played AC, UO changed and grew. As another poster said, they put in a really great craft system. They fixed some of the problems in the acquisition of gold, so I didn't have to "work" eight hours at tailoring or whatever so I could adventure for a hour. But especially they put in the "new lands" and made it so there were several grades of protection for characters, from guarded zones where attacking another character means certain death, to wild lands where there is no law but might makes right.
It's not that I want to just randomly kill people, but I want the choice. Some people just can't learn manners except at the sharp end of a sword.
I started out with UO, and switched to AC. I've also played DAoC and play tested a few that were promising but never were released. EQ gave me motion sickness, though I understand that they've fixed this since. I recently switched back to UO. I have many reasons, including the fact that all my bro's switched back to UO. One big thing though is UO doesn't limit my moral choices.
Using AC as an example, if "A$$NUGG3+" starts mouthing off to you or is just being annoying your choices are find someplace else to be, or log out. (Assuming he's not doing something you could call a GM over, of course.) Now, what I want to do, and what my character would do is kill this punk mofo and take his gear. AC doesn't really let you do that. Going PK in AC is kind of a pain (You have to do a quest), and unless you're part of the right clan you're just gonna get run out of the game. (Important Safety Tip: Unless you know it's okay for you to be there, don't go to "The Hub" as a PK.) Even then, unless the punk in question is a PK as well, you can't touch them.
Not so in UO. In UO, while there are penalties and consequences in game to killing someone who hasn't actually stolen from you or attacked you, you can kill them, for any reason or no reason at all. So when "A$$NUGG3+" says, "u r gay ur guild is gay", etc., you can beat him down. (For the record, I am one of those annoying people who role plays, so when you insult my guild, I "keep it in play" as we said back in the day.)
True, there are zones where you are protected by the "Guards", and if you try and attack someone there you probably will never land the blow before you're off to resurrect. Most places if you attack someone who is flagged as an innocent, i.e. they haven't done anything bad in game, you'll likely get a "Murder Count", but that isn't the end of the world. There are other places where it's law of the jungle.
I'll pony up the extra dough mainly because UO lets me really play my character, whereas AC and the like artificially limit my choices in order to try to eliminate "griefing." Of course, all it really does it provide griefers a consequence-free environment.
In a perfect world, the game service provider would only eliminate the cheaters, and let me take care of the griefers "in game." I am still waiting for the perfect online fantasy RPG. I have high hopes for Middle Earth, but something tells me they aren't gonna let my character "Telumhatar" riddle "A$$NUGG3+" with arrows just on general principle.