Rifts...oh the pain...make it stop. I totally agree on that one. Its sort of like the old "Want the burger without the restaurant?" line except with Rifts its, "Want the setting without the rules?". The Palladium games in general have not evolved in quality, of either rules or even the darn rulebooks (soft cover + cheap paper != durable), over the years to remain competitive with other systems. Their games all seem to suffer from the piecemeal, shoddy, and uneven (game unbalancing) rules even though there are occasionally some interesting ideas or concepts sprinkled throughout. I haven't played a Palladium game in over ten (10) years now and from what I hear I haven't missed much.
D&D is chock full of exceptions and little tiny rules that you HAVE to remember in order to play the game. And its not just one part of the system, they are abound in it, especially considering spell casting.
If you have not played D&D since AD&D 2nd edition (or maybe 1st edition?) then I can see how you might hold this opinion, but they really addressed most of those issues when they converted the game over to the D20 system and the newest release, 3.5 I believe, fixed most of the minor errata that were still hanging around from the conversion. The level of rule consistency in D&D (3.5) today is probably at least as good as the Hero System (5th edition), although Hero is more flexible (i.e. you can play almost ANY type of game with Hero whereas the D&D rules, with the possible exception of the core D20 stuff, is limited to the fantasy setting). The criticism was valid ten (10) years ago, but not as much anymore...IMHO.
As well, D&D never seemed to lend itself to roleplaying.
In my own experience the game, regardless of system, is mostly what the players and the GM choose to make of it. The system might get in the way of game sometimes, but if your players are more interested in cracking jokes and taking PlayStation breaks then it doesn't matter if you have the greatest rules system in the world...the game is going to fall apart.
If all you were looking for was a number-crunching dungeon crawl and stat min-maxing, great, go with D&D, otherwise, prepare for defeat at the hands of only a die roll.
Again, I think that this is an unfair criticism. It is true that the combat system in Rolemaster for example leads to very deadly outcomes because one bad roll can spell utter defeat. However, it is also true that sometimes the GM doesn't want to kill off the character on the basis of a single bad die roll, especially if the characters roleplayed the situation well or if they were clever and didn't insist on doing something that was obviously stupid. The rules sometimes get in the way of the game, regardless of system, and the GM should step in to smooth things out and keep things entertaining. I am not saying that the player characters should never have to suffer the consequences of their actions, but sometimes the outcomes need to be adjusted based upon the judgment of the GM and that can be the difference between a really entertaining and memorable campaign and just another game.
Alright, but this does not answer the original question of the parent. If the judge issues an order how can the RIAA or indeed any organization or individual "refuse" to comply with that order once their appeals and motions have been exhausted (i.e. they have played all of their cards and they lost). In the case of an individual I suppose that they could imprison them for contempt of court until they comply with the order or in the case of a corporation some sort of fine would probably be in order.
It was unfortunate that the previous responders had to cloud the subject and sidetrack the issue at hand by bringing up a special case, involving the branches of government and separation of powers, from current events (i.e. the Karl Rove subpoena). The Karl Rove subpoena is important in its own right and should be discussed separately, but it really irks me when people use things like this to sidetrack every other interesting discussion.
Anyway, the parent asks a good question...why the gross contempt for the legal system by the RIAA? They pulled out the legal stick first and they lost so now they are going to whine about it? Sickening...truly.
more exciting games than those that are CISC-architectured (like Rolemaster)
Hehe...ah yes Rolemaster (aka Chartmaster or Rulemonster) now that was an interesting system, exceeded perhaps only by the Hero system in its complexity. The one thing that always struck me as odd about Rolemaster was the rule concerning theoretically unlimited re-rolls of maximum individual rolls meaning that there was no upper or lower limit, at least in principle, to how well or poorly your character could roll. This led to the infamous situations where the mighty barbarian champion is felled in a single hit with a broken bottle by a very very lucky kobold. Rolemaster always struck me as being better suited to a CRPG where the complexity could be more easily managed and the true variety of the system could be better manifested in all its variations, but as a pencil paper RPG it, like the Hero system, can be very tedious to play according to the rules, whereas games like D&D sometimes fudge a bit to keep things moving along. Perhaps if I had run in a better Rolemaster campaign then I would have a better opinion of the system, but D&D always struck me as being more fun.
And unless you are a Star Trek fan, the idea of exploration for exploration's sake is a dim memory, best left with Lewis & Clark. The sad fact is, unless NASA can come up with something stunning
If NASA could come up with something like warp or hyperspace fold drive or some other type of effective interstellar travel then that would certainly be stunning, but we will not get there but cutting the funding for all pure research and development entirely. The program should continue to receive some funding, even if it is only a handful of people, so that the possibility of a breakthrough, however remote, is kept alive for future generations.
Essentially, the Semantic Web asks users to explicitly state relations between concepts and ideas to make up for our current lack of an AI capable of discerning such things for itself from natural human language.
The problem here is trust. All of the previous features of the web, whether it is javascript or metadata or something else, have invariably been abused by those seeking to game the system for profit. The semantic web is asking the marketplace to state relations in an unbiased fashion when there are powerful economic incentives to do otherwise (i.e. everything on the semantic web will end up being related to pron whether it actually is or not). Indeed there are entire businesses devoted to "optimizing" search engine results, targeting ads, spamming people to death, and other abuses. The problem was that the people that designed and built the initial web protocols and technologies did not account for the use of their network by the general public and thus did not take steps to technologically limit abuses (their network of distinguished academic colleagues was always collegial after all so there would be no widespread abuses). The semantic web will fail precisely because human nature is deceptive, not because the technology is somehow lacking.
In fact, this whole discussion is reminiscent of the conversation that Neo has with the Architect in The Matrix Reloaded. The Architect, as you may recall, explains why a system (the Matrix), which was originally designed to be a harmony of mathematical precision, ultimately failed to function, in that form, because the imperfections and flaws inherent in humanity continuously undermined its ability to function as it was intended. The same general principle is at work with the Semantic Web, the perfect system could work in a perfect world, but not in our world because humans are not perfect.
The provision of the DirectX libraries by Microsoft for development on their XBox platform has allowed for many more third parties, including some hobbyists, to produce relatively good quality games for their platform. Is there a similar set of libraries to provide support for the advanced hardware features available on the PlayStation 3 or will each developer be compelled to build his own set of abstraction libraries?
Laptop battery life still sucks. Someone start working on a solar solution:)
Unless the efficiency of the solar cells is massively increased (unlikely) or the power requirements of laptops are massively decreased (more likely, but still not much) then you are probably SOL (pun intended) with this one.
Even on campus, good WiFi hotspots are few and far between. We need hotspots that permit ssh tunneling, and encryption that works...
There are probably too many people trying to use the hotspot simultaneously and the bandwidth per person is getting squeezed. The fact that college campuses have very high numbers of people with wireless laptops using a very limited number of hotspots, relatively speaking, to download movies from bittorrent or playing online games probably does not help the matter either. As for why they limit ssh who knows? Maybe they don't get enough requests to open those ports and have them blocked by default along with all the rest except for http, https, smtp, and ftp. If it is your own ssh server you could try running it on one of the private high ports (between 49151 and 65535) which are not generally blocked because they are used by browsers for the return trips and also by games and such. If they have a cheap hotspot or router then they may not be blocking outbound connections on those ports.
Cell phones with internet hookups are probably the only option if you are backpacking Mayan ruins...
You would probably be lucky to get a signal of any kind, cellular or otherwise, and especially at the Maya ruins. The telecommunications services in Mexico are notoriously bad and expensive to boot.
The home desktop will always be more comfortable, and as a result my files will always be there. Transferring them to the laptop on the fly is a pain when home upload speeds are so terrible with most ISP's
So why not use remote desktop or X to have a remote session from your laptop to your desktop or perhaps transfer them before you leave your dwelling? The comfort part is probably right, after all who wants to sit in the Starbuzz armchair with its sweat encrusted and dirty fabric touching your skin? No thanks...
You lose lots of weight when you are out and about, seeing as how you don't have a home food supply to compel you. A major plus.
Sort of depends upon your lifestyle. If you sit in Starbuzz all day while eating their sandwiches and drinking their coffee then it probably wont make much difference and it could even be worse. I know that for me it would be even more tempting to buy and eat more food since it is all within reach and I don't have to expend lots of effort in a kitchen to prepare it, but your mileage may vary I suppose.
The public environment can be quite distracting, especially when you know people that always come and speak to you.
This is true but people come up and speak to you no matter where you are, unless it is in the privacy of your own home and then it is family members or friends so you just cannot win on that score unless you go to the study cubicles at the university library or somewhere else that is supposed to be a quiet area and even then the other people there usually don't want to hear your fingers clicking away on the laptop keyboard while they are trying to study.
Try and find a lonely corner, and suddenly finding a power supply and/or internet link can be challenging.
Yeah, that too or you might run into someone else who is trying to do the same thing, there are only so many good spots after all...
Yes, but at what cost? The lives of thousands are being dragged through the legal muck of the court system and millions more of us live with the constant threat of that action looming above our heads, even for content that we have already paid for, because we want to format shift our purchases. Not to mention the effect on scholarly research, especially as it pertains to cryptography and other selected topics in the fields of Computer Science and Mathematics. The consumer gets fewer devices with unwanted DRM encumbrances because the hardware manufacturers don't want to fight a long and drawn out court battle over a couple of missing features in their products. The list could go on, but I think that you get my point. At the end of the day is the pain of so many thousands, perhaps millions, worth the price of you not having to go to court to protect your work (which you could do anyway and have always been able to do under the current and previous systems)? I suppose that depends upon your point of view, but it is worthy of discussion and some serious thought at the very least. So enjoy your Pyrrhic Victory if you must, but remember that the next time the DMCA strikes you may be facing the wrong end of the legal stick.
While I am no fan of Steve Ballmer I have to agree that he may be right or at least right enough that I would choose not to invest in Google, good company though it may be, at the current share prices, especially considering the relatively meager stream of advertising income compared to the massive inflow of investor monies.
Why? What's wrong with their business model, why would it fail?
Nothing, but there is such a thing as an overvalued share price and Google is the textbook example. There are other shares that are worth even more than Google, Berkshire Hathaway comes to mind, but those companies tend to generate a lot of actual real cash value each year. If one discounts the advertising revenue, which is by all accounts meager compared with the current share prices, then it becomes extremely difficult to estimate how much the remaining value, including intellectual property, human capital, and experience may eventually be worth. It is not *zero* to be sure, but exactly how much and when? The answer to that question determines how much you are willing to pay for a share and how much you ultimately earn in that investment depends upon how accurate your initial estimation was. In the meantime your $400+ dollars per share are NOT earning money doing something else. It is a substantial risk and one that not every investor is necessarily willing to take. On, the other hand, "there is a sucker born every minute," or so the saying goes.
Their revenues are increasing, and search-related advertising is hardly going to disappear -- never mind their expansion into other types of advertising.
Yes, but see above for why this does not necessarily a good investment make...
As for rate of growth, define growth. You mean rate of employee growth? Sure, exponential growth is unsustainable. But with gross profits over 6 Bn on revenue over 10 Bn, I think they've got pockets deep enough to continue to hire freely -- never mind the cash reserves of 11 Bn.
I think that he meant employee growth, but even employee growth must be justified in terms of additional value created for the business. It does not matter if the company has a bankroll of $10 x 10^4 or $10 x 10^7 dollars. If the business cannot earn at least $1 plus prime interest rate or 10 year treasury rate (4.45% currently) then that dollar should be returned to the shareholders in dividends after all of the expenses have been paid. Reinvestment is not always a good idea, it depends upon the current economic climate and the potential returns. The fact that Google has 11 Bn cash reserves is immaterial to this point.
Think about it. If they pay $200,000 annually (incl benefits) for good employees, they can still hire 30,000 of those people while still turning a gross profit.
The company is generating money based upon advertising revenue and EXPECTED future revenues in the form of inflow of investor money, but this does not necessarily mean that each employee is generating a gross profit by their direct efforts.
Assuming, of course, that their revenues don't drop off, which would run counter to almost every analyst's predictions.
If you are an investor in Google right now, especially if you didn't get in real early (and who but the insiders did?), you had better hope that not only does revenue NOT drop off, but that growth doesn't slow either because you are going to need some pretty powerful revenue growth to come out ahead at $400+ per share on P/E ratio of 40+.
Sony is apparently giving out the good libraries to third-party developers now, but I suspect "good" is relative.
There are basically two schools of thought regarding third-party developers, lets call the the Apple and Microsoft approaches respectively.
The Apple way goes something along the lines of, "We will strictly control quality, and thus the public perception of the hardware platform in general, by limiting access to the development tools so that only approved developers who meet quality standards and requirements will be permitted to develop official software for the platform." The corollary to the Apple way goes something like, "If we find that hackers or hobbyists are breaking our locks to do unofficial development then we will send the lawyers after them to aggressively protect our intellectual property." This approach can work to increase the public perception that Apple or whomever has a high quality platform with high quality software at the expense of fewer software titles and higher hardware prices due to economies of scale never being realized on the platform.
Conversely, the Microsoft way goes something along the lines of, "We will allow anyone and everyone to develop software for the platform, even though we know that some people will develop poor quality or crappy applications which may influence the public perception about the platform in general, because the benefits of a larger software ecosystem outweigh the costs of bad PR from bugs and crashes and its cheap so people will buy it anyway." The corollary to the Microsoft theory goes something like, "If we get too many low quality developers, hackers, or hobbyists mucking up the perception of the platform then we will introduce a label program to help customers decide which applications are best for their needs (i.e. Designed for Windows TM") and to assure some minimum level of quality."
You can decide for yourself which approach best serves the public, but Sony has clearly been doing things the Apple way from the start with the PlayStation platform and it will take a lot of effort to shift gears and change the developer perception about the closed shop nature of the PlayStation platform and Sony in general. If you want to understand the kind of attitude Sony brings to the table when working with third parties then just look at their advertising slogans (they are indicative of the general attitude at Sony):
Using almost exclusively freeware and extremely cheap hardware, I've been able to create and build a company that needs only TWO employees to run ( http://www.rlt.com/ )
It shows...hehe, but seriously is there any reason why I should feel like I've taken a trip back to 1994 when I look at your website? How many potential sales are lost due to the amateurish website? If I were you I would invest a few bucks in a redesign or perhaps partner with a bigger retail outfit like Amazon. The business may be profitable now but imagine how much more profitable it could be with a better look and brand image, especially considering that you are in retail sales.
doing a whois "just incase I'm lucky", thinking for sure someone else would have grabbed it
Just be careful where you run your whois search. There are certain registrars (ahem...GoDaddy...ahem) who have been known to log searches and preemptively purchase likely candidates so that you will be forced to buy the domain from them at an inflated price, sort of like bid sniping on e-bay but in reverse (hehe...in Soviet Russia the bid snipes YOU...yeah).
The programmers I know want to play with the Cell, myself included. From everything I've heard, it's living up to the hype, even if you only get to play with 6 of the vector units on the PS3. It's also living up to the "pain in the ass to program" stories too, but that just makes some of us want to take a shot at it even more. But that's still not enough motivation to spend $500 - $600 to screw around with it, even though the programmers could afford it.
I don't know about you, but for my own part as a programmer the last thing that I want to deal with when I am trying to get a piece of software out the door, be it a game or something else, is to be wrestling with the finicky hardware on the chip. The problem with PlayStation, from a development standpoint, is and has always been poor library support for all of the advanced hardware features, forcing each company to develop their own hardware abstraction layers and massively adding to the cost of PlayStation development. Imagine how much more productive PlayStation developers would be if they had something like DirectX available on PlayStation? As for spending $500-$600 dollars on a console that I don't have time to play anyway? No thanks. I would be happier with my money earning interest or purchasing something else instead.
As long as we keep forgiving companies who treat us like shit, they will treat us like shit.
It is not just their customers that are getting the short end of the stick. Ask yourself why there are so many relatively high quality games for the X-Box platform (original and 360) and why there are relatively fewer games for the PS3, good though they may be (and that is subjective to unless you just LOVE the Final Fantasy franchise). Microsoft for all of its faults gives good support to their developer community with DirectX, MSDN, SDKs, and good resources through their partner programs for marketing and advertising of games available on the X-Box platform. Sony on the other hand acts like its a privilege to be developing games for the PS3 what with all of the restrictions that they ram down your throat. Is it any wander that developers respond with "leave it" when Sony says, "take it or leave it"? The guys at Sony better pull their collective heads out of their collective posteriors before Microsoft eats their lunch, because if things continue like they are then Sony may surrender the console crown permanently and that is not a good thing for Sony considering that they have already lost the portable music market to Apple and their other electronics sales are fairly flat or declining for the past several years. The Sony brand has been taking a beating for a while now and this isn't helping.
The question that I have is what happens if the direct injection ethanol system should fail or if the tank of ethanol runs dry while the vehicle is in operation? Would it not be difficult and add substantially to the complexity of the engine to detect that the ethanol system has failed and thereby automatically take steps to reduce the compression ratios or else suffer severe knocking?
If this technology is to be widely deployed then it must be able to degrade and fail gracefully without causing damage to the engine. It would also be desirable for the mechanism by which the engine is switched back to regular compression ratios to be highly reliable or else the engine must be designed in such a way that damage cannot occur if the ethanol system fails.
Another interesting question is the effect of more alcohols burning in the engine and producing more water vapors which will serve to foul the oil more quickly than normally occurs in a plain gasoline engine (with minimal ethanol added to the gasoline). The oil filters are designed to handle some water contamination but this type of engine would require a more substantial filter to handle the increased load.
Try MythTV instead...the commercial DVR service providers (who really only provide you a listing service and a crippled player anyway) have long since quit giving a crap about customer service or going to bat for their customers when the content companies come knocking at their doors with lawsuit threats.
Not true, unless you regard the U.S. as the only civilized country in the world. The majority of "civilized" countries lead a peaceful existence *due* to the fact that they pose no threat to their neighbors.
You are not taking a long enough view of history. It is the nature of mankind to kill his fellow man and take what belongs to his neighbor for himself by force. This is the one constant throughout all of history from the stone age right up until recent times which can be regarded as anomalous compared to the previous 9,950 years of recorded history. War is not always waged due to a perceived threat from another nation, sometimes men and nations wage war simply because they want more and they have no qualms about killing to get what they want.
As for the U.S., you may be right, but don't forget that you are rapidly losing your economic and military supremacy which will turn your (enforced) peaceful existence upside down -- live by the sword....
This may be true in the grand scheme of things, although I don't agree with the rapidly part. Remember that the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was a gradual process taking hundreds of years to run its course and the United States is still a strong and growing nation. As for living by the sword well let us just say that on balance the United States uses far more carrot than stick when all things are considered. In fact I would argue that we have shown remarkable restraint thus far with Iran despite their nuclear saber rattling and this is not because we do not have the resources to engage them if it comes to that. The United States is using only a fraction of its power in the current conflicts...they don't call it the arsenal of democracy for nothing. I am not advocating that we, the United States, go looking for trouble, quite the opposite, I believe that our government is actually playing the North Korea and Iran issues fairly intelligently with the sanctions and other diplomatic measures. However, we are quite capable of handling the matters militarily if it comes to that which hopefully it will not, but with people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and people shouting "death to America" it makes diplomacy difficult. At least the Russians were pragmatic about the situation whereas these Iranians and North Koreans are simply nuts.
Why should they, do you care about their laws? Often I can see the U.S. trying to pass their own interest as law (remember the International Court of Justice?).
That was precisely my point. International laws have always been and always will be without teeth and largely unenforceable. If you want to enforce your will or your law (i.e. no anti-satellite weapons) then you MAY...not always but MIGHT have to go to war to enforce it.
"OMG, another madman is able to attack us on our soil. Let us pass a law through the U.N. to forbid him getting this ability!" Now this a sad stance.
The United States is simply working their dispute through the proper channels, which includes UN resolutions and the Security Council. This what civilized people do BEFORE they pick up the guns. The Iranians and the other nations of the middle east would do well to heed this example. There is nothing sad about it, this is the proper way to pursue the matter diplomatically on an international level.
Even sadder, I find, is the way the U.S. are disregarding other nations feelings in regarding that matter; believe me, I was scared shit when GWB was elected for a second term (Let's be honest, he is not the brightest guy around, and he holds his finger on the button. Now thats a dangerous combo!)
How are we disregarding other nations feelings? If they wish to have an honest debate then the floor of the UN, the Security Council, and the court of world opinion are all open to them. The United States, unlike some other nations, does not suppress debate and the opinions of others. If they wish to spea
I just find it hard to justify putting in WarCraft when it didn't even spawn the genre it "represents" in the first place
While this is technically true, it is also true to say that very few people either played or remember the prototypes of the modern real-time strategy genre during the 1980s. Indeed, even the first game which mostly resembled the genre in its modern form (i.e. using the mouse to move units, gathering resources, etc...), Dune II from Westwood Studios in 1992, was not widely played and would not be immediately recognized by the average gamer. It was really the WarCraft series, beginning in 1994, from Blizzard that exploded the genre into the mainstream and cemented its long-term popularity. The Wikipedia article on real-time strategy games really sums up the history quite nicely (including some obscure early games that I was previously unfamiliar with).
There is this persistent notion among some people that negotiation, international sanctions, and legal actions (i.e. lawsuits and the court systems) can resolve all of the worlds problems when in fact history clearly demonstrates that the opposite is the case. To be more specific, if you pass a "law" saying that all such systems are banned and that they should be "destroyed on launch" then who is going to enforce that and how? The enemies of the United States do not care about our laws and they have called out their challenge to a contest of arms in a fight to the death. There will be no enforcement of "destroyed on launch" unless you are willing to go to war and destroy it yourself by strength and force of arms. The civilized society that we enjoy here in the west is built upon the implicit threat of violent force to back up and maintain that system. The system, such as it is, cannot exist without that threat and therefore it is also trumped by the very same threat which is why it is sometimes necessary to fight or else give in and there is really no way around that.
The Motorola phones on the T-Mobile plans seem to be fairly open as per the factory spec from Motorola. I was able to upload a collection of MP3 ringtones that I cut myself directly from my PC to the handset via the included micro USB cable as soon as I got home with it. I just plugged the phone in and copied the files directly to the memory card (Windows XP sees it as a removable disk drive). In fact that was part of the reason why I chose to go with T-Mobile rather than Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T because the majors are usually the ones that are playing the feature stripping, lockdown, $4 per ringtone which expires in 2 weeks games that drive consumers nuts (because most people don't think about such things when they purchase their phone and realize only later that there are these "gotchas" and that they are locked in to a two year agreement with a hefty termination fee).
Seriously, how long is it until servers check which elements I have downloaded and warn me to turn off my adblocker?
or what? they wont show you their content? If they do that then F them because their competition is just a click away. If the advertisers and marketers hadn't been so damn greedy in the early days and abused every feature for advertising gain (i.e. pop-up, pop-under, dancing flash always on top ads, and the rest) then people wouldn't have so quick to develop such powerful counter-measures and blocking tools to shut them up. They poisoned the water hole and they can damn well drink from it now that the tables have turned.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about that but they could wind up with a Rule 11 sanction, and that is a major consequence for a litigation lawyer.
For the benefit of the uninitiated amongst us, including myself, would you please explain what a "Rule 11 sanction" is? Thank you.
and... god help me, Rifts.
Rifts...oh the pain...make it stop. I totally agree on that one. Its sort of like the old "Want the burger without the restaurant?" line except with Rifts its, "Want the setting without the rules?". The Palladium games in general have not evolved in quality, of either rules or even the darn rulebooks (soft cover + cheap paper != durable), over the years to remain competitive with other systems. Their games all seem to suffer from the piecemeal, shoddy, and uneven (game unbalancing) rules even though there are occasionally some interesting ideas or concepts sprinkled throughout. I haven't played a Palladium game in over ten (10) years now and from what I hear I haven't missed much.
they've lost sight of the constraints within which a lawyer must conduct him or herself in order to continue being a lawyer.
Does this mean that they will be disbarred and unable to practice law for flouting the orders of the judge?
D&D is chock full of exceptions and little tiny rules that you HAVE to remember in order to play the game. And its not just one part of the system, they are abound in it, especially considering spell casting.
If you have not played D&D since AD&D 2nd edition (or maybe 1st edition?) then I can see how you might hold this opinion, but they really addressed most of those issues when they converted the game over to the D20 system and the newest release, 3.5 I believe, fixed most of the minor errata that were still hanging around from the conversion. The level of rule consistency in D&D (3.5) today is probably at least as good as the Hero System (5th edition), although Hero is more flexible (i.e. you can play almost ANY type of game with Hero whereas the D&D rules, with the possible exception of the core D20 stuff, is limited to the fantasy setting). The criticism was valid ten (10) years ago, but not as much anymore...IMHO.
As well, D&D never seemed to lend itself to roleplaying.
In my own experience the game, regardless of system, is mostly what the players and the GM choose to make of it. The system might get in the way of game sometimes, but if your players are more interested in cracking jokes and taking PlayStation breaks then it doesn't matter if you have the greatest rules system in the world...the game is going to fall apart.
If all you were looking for was a number-crunching dungeon crawl and stat min-maxing, great, go with D&D, otherwise, prepare for defeat at the hands of only a die roll.
Again, I think that this is an unfair criticism. It is true that the combat system in Rolemaster for example leads to very deadly outcomes because one bad roll can spell utter defeat. However, it is also true that sometimes the GM doesn't want to kill off the character on the basis of a single bad die roll, especially if the characters roleplayed the situation well or if they were clever and didn't insist on doing something that was obviously stupid. The rules sometimes get in the way of the game, regardless of system, and the GM should step in to smooth things out and keep things entertaining. I am not saying that the player characters should never have to suffer the consequences of their actions, but sometimes the outcomes need to be adjusted based upon the judgment of the GM and that can be the difference between a really entertaining and memorable campaign and just another game.
Alright, but this does not answer the original question of the parent. If the judge issues an order how can the RIAA or indeed any organization or individual "refuse" to comply with that order once their appeals and motions have been exhausted (i.e. they have played all of their cards and they lost). In the case of an individual I suppose that they could imprison them for contempt of court until they comply with the order or in the case of a corporation some sort of fine would probably be in order.
It was unfortunate that the previous responders had to cloud the subject and sidetrack the issue at hand by bringing up a special case, involving the branches of government and separation of powers, from current events (i.e. the Karl Rove subpoena). The Karl Rove subpoena is important in its own right and should be discussed separately, but it really irks me when people use things like this to sidetrack every other interesting discussion.
Anyway, the parent asks a good question...why the gross contempt for the legal system by the RIAA? They pulled out the legal stick first and they lost so now they are going to whine about it? Sickening...truly.
more exciting games than those that are CISC-architectured (like Rolemaster)
Hehe...ah yes Rolemaster (aka Chartmaster or Rulemonster) now that was an interesting system, exceeded perhaps only by the Hero system in its complexity. The one thing that always struck me as odd about Rolemaster was the rule concerning theoretically unlimited re-rolls of maximum individual rolls meaning that there was no upper or lower limit, at least in principle, to how well or poorly your character could roll. This led to the infamous situations where the mighty barbarian champion is felled in a single hit with a broken bottle by a very very lucky kobold. Rolemaster always struck me as being better suited to a CRPG where the complexity could be more easily managed and the true variety of the system could be better manifested in all its variations, but as a pencil paper RPG it, like the Hero system, can be very tedious to play according to the rules, whereas games like D&D sometimes fudge a bit to keep things moving along. Perhaps if I had run in a better Rolemaster campaign then I would have a better opinion of the system, but D&D always struck me as being more fun.
And unless you are a Star Trek fan, the idea of exploration for exploration's sake is a dim memory, best left with Lewis & Clark. The sad fact is, unless NASA can come up with something stunning
If NASA could come up with something like warp or hyperspace fold drive or some other type of effective interstellar travel then that would certainly be stunning, but we will not get there but cutting the funding for all pure research and development entirely. The program should continue to receive some funding, even if it is only a handful of people, so that the possibility of a breakthrough, however remote, is kept alive for future generations.
Essentially, the Semantic Web asks users to explicitly state relations between concepts and ideas to make up for our current lack of an AI capable of discerning such things for itself from natural human language.
The problem here is trust. All of the previous features of the web, whether it is javascript or metadata or something else, have invariably been abused by those seeking to game the system for profit. The semantic web is asking the marketplace to state relations in an unbiased fashion when there are powerful economic incentives to do otherwise (i.e. everything on the semantic web will end up being related to pron whether it actually is or not). Indeed there are entire businesses devoted to "optimizing" search engine results, targeting ads, spamming people to death, and other abuses. The problem was that the people that designed and built the initial web protocols and technologies did not account for the use of their network by the general public and thus did not take steps to technologically limit abuses (their network of distinguished academic colleagues was always collegial after all so there would be no widespread abuses). The semantic web will fail precisely because human nature is deceptive, not because the technology is somehow lacking.
In fact, this whole discussion is reminiscent of the conversation that Neo has with the Architect in The Matrix Reloaded. The Architect, as you may recall, explains why a system (the Matrix), which was originally designed to be a harmony of mathematical precision, ultimately failed to function, in that form, because the imperfections and flaws inherent in humanity continuously undermined its ability to function as it was intended. The same general principle is at work with the Semantic Web, the perfect system could work in a perfect world, but not in our world because humans are not perfect.
The provision of the DirectX libraries by Microsoft for development on their XBox platform has allowed for many more third parties, including some hobbyists, to produce relatively good quality games for their platform. Is there a similar set of libraries to provide support for the advanced hardware features available on the PlayStation 3 or will each developer be compelled to build his own set of abstraction libraries?
Laptop battery life still sucks. Someone start working on a solar solution :)
Unless the efficiency of the solar cells is massively increased (unlikely) or the power requirements of laptops are massively decreased (more likely, but still not much) then you are probably SOL (pun intended) with this one.
Even on campus, good WiFi hotspots are few and far between. We need hotspots that permit ssh tunneling, and encryption that works...
There are probably too many people trying to use the hotspot simultaneously and the bandwidth per person is getting squeezed. The fact that college campuses have very high numbers of people with wireless laptops using a very limited number of hotspots, relatively speaking, to download movies from bittorrent or playing online games probably does not help the matter either. As for why they limit ssh who knows? Maybe they don't get enough requests to open those ports and have them blocked by default along with all the rest except for http, https, smtp, and ftp. If it is your own ssh server you could try running it on one of the private high ports (between 49151 and 65535) which are not generally blocked because they are used by browsers for the return trips and also by games and such. If they have a cheap hotspot or router then they may not be blocking outbound connections on those ports.
Cell phones with internet hookups are probably the only option if you are backpacking Mayan ruins...
You would probably be lucky to get a signal of any kind, cellular or otherwise, and especially at the Maya ruins. The telecommunications services in Mexico are notoriously bad and expensive to boot.
The home desktop will always be more comfortable, and as a result my files will always be there. Transferring them to the laptop on the fly is a pain when home upload speeds are so terrible with most ISP's
So why not use remote desktop or X to have a remote session from your laptop to your desktop or perhaps transfer them before you leave your dwelling? The comfort part is probably right, after all who wants to sit in the Starbuzz armchair with its sweat encrusted and dirty fabric touching your skin? No thanks...
You lose lots of weight when you are out and about, seeing as how you don't have a home food supply to compel you. A major plus.
Sort of depends upon your lifestyle. If you sit in Starbuzz all day while eating their sandwiches and drinking their coffee then it probably wont make much difference and it could even be worse. I know that for me it would be even more tempting to buy and eat more food since it is all within reach and I don't have to expend lots of effort in a kitchen to prepare it, but your mileage may vary I suppose.
The public environment can be quite distracting, especially when you know people that always come and speak to you.
This is true but people come up and speak to you no matter where you are, unless it is in the privacy of your own home and then it is family members or friends so you just cannot win on that score unless you go to the study cubicles at the university library or somewhere else that is supposed to be a quiet area and even then the other people there usually don't want to hear your fingers clicking away on the laptop keyboard while they are trying to study.
Try and find a lonely corner, and suddenly finding a power supply and/or internet link can be challenging.
Yeah, that too or you might run into someone else who is trying to do the same thing, there are only so many good spots after all...
Result: total victory against the infringer.
Yes, but at what cost? The lives of thousands are being dragged through the legal muck of the court system and millions more of us live with the constant threat of that action looming above our heads, even for content that we have already paid for, because we want to format shift our purchases. Not to mention the effect on scholarly research, especially as it pertains to cryptography and other selected topics in the fields of Computer Science and Mathematics. The consumer gets fewer devices with unwanted DRM encumbrances because the hardware manufacturers don't want to fight a long and drawn out court battle over a couple of missing features in their products. The list could go on, but I think that you get my point. At the end of the day is the pain of so many thousands, perhaps millions, worth the price of you not having to go to court to protect your work (which you could do anyway and have always been able to do under the current and previous systems)? I suppose that depends upon your point of view, but it is worthy of discussion and some serious thought at the very least. So enjoy your Pyrrhic Victory if you must, but remember that the next time the DMCA strikes you may be facing the wrong end of the legal stick.
While I am no fan of Steve Ballmer I have to agree that he may be right or at least right enough that I would choose not to invest in Google, good company though it may be, at the current share prices, especially considering the relatively meager stream of advertising income compared to the massive inflow of investor monies.
Why? What's wrong with their business model, why would it fail?
Nothing, but there is such a thing as an overvalued share price and Google is the textbook example. There are other shares that are worth even more than Google, Berkshire Hathaway comes to mind, but those companies tend to generate a lot of actual real cash value each year. If one discounts the advertising revenue, which is by all accounts meager compared with the current share prices, then it becomes extremely difficult to estimate how much the remaining value, including intellectual property, human capital, and experience may eventually be worth. It is not *zero* to be sure, but exactly how much and when? The answer to that question determines how much you are willing to pay for a share and how much you ultimately earn in that investment depends upon how accurate your initial estimation was. In the meantime your $400+ dollars per share are NOT earning money doing something else. It is a substantial risk and one that not every investor is necessarily willing to take. On, the other hand, "there is a sucker born every minute," or so the saying goes.
Their revenues are increasing, and search-related advertising is hardly going to disappear -- never mind their expansion into other types of advertising.
Yes, but see above for why this does not necessarily a good investment make...
As for rate of growth, define growth. You mean rate of employee growth? Sure, exponential growth is unsustainable. But with gross profits over 6 Bn on revenue over 10 Bn, I think they've got pockets deep enough to continue to hire freely -- never mind the cash reserves of 11 Bn.
I think that he meant employee growth, but even employee growth must be justified in terms of additional value created for the business. It does not matter if the company has a bankroll of $10 x 10^4 or $10 x 10^7 dollars. If the business cannot earn at least $1 plus prime interest rate or 10 year treasury rate (4.45% currently) then that dollar should be returned to the shareholders in dividends after all of the expenses have been paid. Reinvestment is not always a good idea, it depends upon the current economic climate and the potential returns. The fact that Google has 11 Bn cash reserves is immaterial to this point.
Think about it. If they pay $200,000 annually (incl benefits) for good employees, they can still hire 30,000 of those people while still turning a gross profit.
The company is generating money based upon advertising revenue and EXPECTED future revenues in the form of inflow of investor money, but this does not necessarily mean that each employee is generating a gross profit by their direct efforts.
Assuming, of course, that their revenues don't drop off, which would run counter to almost every analyst's predictions.
If you are an investor in Google right now, especially if you didn't get in real early (and who but the insiders did?), you had better hope that not only does revenue NOT drop off, but that growth doesn't slow either because you are going to need some pretty powerful revenue growth to come out ahead at $400+ per share on P/E ratio of 40+.
Sony is apparently giving out the good libraries to third-party developers now, but I suspect "good" is relative.
There are basically two schools of thought regarding third-party developers, lets call the the Apple and Microsoft approaches respectively.
The Apple way goes something along the lines of, "We will strictly control quality, and thus the public perception of the hardware platform in general, by limiting access to the development tools so that only approved developers who meet quality standards and requirements will be permitted to develop official software for the platform." The corollary to the Apple way goes something like, "If we find that hackers or hobbyists are breaking our locks to do unofficial development then we will send the lawyers after them to aggressively protect our intellectual property." This approach can work to increase the public perception that Apple or whomever has a high quality platform with high quality software at the expense of fewer software titles and higher hardware prices due to economies of scale never being realized on the platform.
Conversely, the Microsoft way goes something along the lines of, "We will allow anyone and everyone to develop software for the platform, even though we know that some people will develop poor quality or crappy applications which may influence the public perception about the platform in general, because the benefits of a larger software ecosystem outweigh the costs of bad PR from bugs and crashes and its cheap so people will buy it anyway." The corollary to the Microsoft theory goes something like, "If we get too many low quality developers, hackers, or hobbyists mucking up the perception of the platform then we will introduce a label program to help customers decide which applications are best for their needs (i.e. Designed for Windows TM") and to assure some minimum level of quality."
You can decide for yourself which approach best serves the public, but Sony has clearly been doing things the Apple way from the start with the PlayStation platform and it will take a lot of effort to shift gears and change the developer perception about the closed shop nature of the PlayStation platform and Sony in general. If you want to understand the kind of attitude Sony brings to the table when working with third parties then just look at their advertising slogans (they are indicative of the general attitude at Sony):
"Sony, like no other" and "Only Sony"
Slogans like that really say it all.
Using almost exclusively freeware and extremely cheap hardware, I've been able to create and build a company that needs only TWO employees to run ( http://www.rlt.com/ )
It shows...hehe, but seriously is there any reason why I should feel like I've taken a trip back to 1994 when I look at your website? How many potential sales are lost due to the amateurish website? If I were you I would invest a few bucks in a redesign or perhaps partner with a bigger retail outfit like Amazon. The business may be profitable now but imagine how much more profitable it could be with a better look and brand image, especially considering that you are in retail sales.
doing a whois "just incase I'm lucky", thinking for sure someone else would have grabbed it
Just be careful where you run your whois search. There are certain registrars (ahem...GoDaddy...ahem) who have been known to log searches and preemptively purchase likely candidates so that you will be forced to buy the domain from them at an inflated price, sort of like bid sniping on e-bay but in reverse (hehe...in Soviet Russia the bid snipes YOU...yeah).
Figuring out what happened in a computer system months after the fact is not easy.
Particularly when the adversary is purposefully taking steps to obfuscate, overwrite, and otherwise render the previous system state unrecoverable.
The programmers I know want to play with the Cell, myself included. From everything I've heard, it's living up to the hype, even if you only get to play with 6 of the vector units on the PS3. It's also living up to the "pain in the ass to program" stories too, but that just makes some of us want to take a shot at it even more. But that's still not enough motivation to spend $500 - $600 to screw around with it, even though the programmers could afford it.
I don't know about you, but for my own part as a programmer the last thing that I want to deal with when I am trying to get a piece of software out the door, be it a game or something else, is to be wrestling with the finicky hardware on the chip. The problem with PlayStation, from a development standpoint, is and has always been poor library support for all of the advanced hardware features, forcing each company to develop their own hardware abstraction layers and massively adding to the cost of PlayStation development. Imagine how much more productive PlayStation developers would be if they had something like DirectX available on PlayStation? As for spending $500-$600 dollars on a console that I don't have time to play anyway? No thanks. I would be happier with my money earning interest or purchasing something else instead.
As long as we keep forgiving companies who treat us like shit, they will treat us like shit.
It is not just their customers that are getting the short end of the stick. Ask yourself why there are so many relatively high quality games for the X-Box platform (original and 360) and why there are relatively fewer games for the PS3, good though they may be (and that is subjective to unless you just LOVE the Final Fantasy franchise). Microsoft for all of its faults gives good support to their developer community with DirectX, MSDN, SDKs, and good resources through their partner programs for marketing and advertising of games available on the X-Box platform. Sony on the other hand acts like its a privilege to be developing games for the PS3 what with all of the restrictions that they ram down your throat. Is it any wander that developers respond with "leave it" when Sony says, "take it or leave it"? The guys at Sony better pull their collective heads out of their collective posteriors before Microsoft eats their lunch, because if things continue like they are then Sony may surrender the console crown permanently and that is not a good thing for Sony considering that they have already lost the portable music market to Apple and their other electronics sales are fairly flat or declining for the past several years. The Sony brand has been taking a beating for a while now and this isn't helping.
The question that I have is what happens if the direct injection ethanol system should fail or if the tank of ethanol runs dry while the vehicle is in operation? Would it not be difficult and add substantially to the complexity of the engine to detect that the ethanol system has failed and thereby automatically take steps to reduce the compression ratios or else suffer severe knocking?
If this technology is to be widely deployed then it must be able to degrade and fail gracefully without causing damage to the engine. It would also be desirable for the mechanism by which the engine is switched back to regular compression ratios to be highly reliable or else the engine must be designed in such a way that damage cannot occur if the ethanol system fails.
Another interesting question is the effect of more alcohols burning in the engine and producing more water vapors which will serve to foul the oil more quickly than normally occurs in a plain gasoline engine (with minimal ethanol added to the gasoline). The oil filters are designed to handle some water contamination but this type of engine would require a more substantial filter to handle the increased load.
Try MythTV instead...the commercial DVR service providers (who really only provide you a listing service and a crippled player anyway) have long since quit giving a crap about customer service or going to bat for their customers when the content companies come knocking at their doors with lawsuit threats.
Not true, unless you regard the U.S. as the only civilized country in the world. The majority of "civilized" countries lead a peaceful existence *due* to the fact that they pose no threat to their neighbors.
You are not taking a long enough view of history. It is the nature of mankind to kill his fellow man and take what belongs to his neighbor for himself by force. This is the one constant throughout all of history from the stone age right up until recent times which can be regarded as anomalous compared to the previous 9,950 years of recorded history. War is not always waged due to a perceived threat from another nation, sometimes men and nations wage war simply because they want more and they have no qualms about killing to get what they want.
As for the U.S., you may be right, but don't forget that you are rapidly losing your economic and military supremacy which will turn your (enforced) peaceful existence upside down -- live by the sword....
This may be true in the grand scheme of things, although I don't agree with the rapidly part. Remember that the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was a gradual process taking hundreds of years to run its course and the United States is still a strong and growing nation. As for living by the sword well let us just say that on balance the United States uses far more carrot than stick when all things are considered. In fact I would argue that we have shown remarkable restraint thus far with Iran despite their nuclear saber rattling and this is not because we do not have the resources to engage them if it comes to that. The United States is using only a fraction of its power in the current conflicts...they don't call it the arsenal of democracy for nothing. I am not advocating that we, the United States, go looking for trouble, quite the opposite, I believe that our government is actually playing the North Korea and Iran issues fairly intelligently with the sanctions and other diplomatic measures. However, we are quite capable of handling the matters militarily if it comes to that which hopefully it will not, but with people like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and people shouting "death to America" it makes diplomacy difficult. At least the Russians were pragmatic about the situation whereas these Iranians and North Koreans are simply nuts.
Why should they, do you care about their laws? Often I can see the U.S. trying to pass their own interest as law (remember the International Court of Justice?).
That was precisely my point. International laws have always been and always will be without teeth and largely unenforceable. If you want to enforce your will or your law (i.e. no anti-satellite weapons) then you MAY...not always but MIGHT have to go to war to enforce it.
"OMG, another madman is able to attack us on our soil. Let us pass a law through the U.N. to forbid him getting this ability!" Now this a sad stance.
The United States is simply working their dispute through the proper channels, which includes UN resolutions and the Security Council. This what civilized people do BEFORE they pick up the guns. The Iranians and the other nations of the middle east would do well to heed this example. There is nothing sad about it, this is the proper way to pursue the matter diplomatically on an international level.
Even sadder, I find, is the way the U.S. are disregarding other nations feelings in regarding that matter; believe me, I was scared shit when GWB was elected for a second term (Let's be honest, he is not the brightest guy around, and he holds his finger on the button. Now thats a dangerous combo!)
How are we disregarding other nations feelings? If they wish to have an honest debate then the floor of the UN, the Security Council, and the court of world opinion are all open to them. The United States, unlike some other nations, does not suppress debate and the opinions of others. If they wish to spea
I just find it hard to justify putting in WarCraft when it didn't even spawn the genre it "represents" in the first place
While this is technically true, it is also true to say that very few people either played or remember the prototypes of the modern real-time strategy genre during the 1980s. Indeed, even the first game which mostly resembled the genre in its modern form (i.e. using the mouse to move units, gathering resources, etc...), Dune II from Westwood Studios in 1992, was not widely played and would not be immediately recognized by the average gamer. It was really the WarCraft series, beginning in 1994, from Blizzard that exploded the genre into the mainstream and cemented its long-term popularity. The Wikipedia article on real-time strategy games really sums up the history quite nicely (including some obscure early games that I was previously unfamiliar with).
There is this persistent notion among some people that negotiation, international sanctions, and legal actions (i.e. lawsuits and the court systems) can resolve all of the worlds problems when in fact history clearly demonstrates that the opposite is the case. To be more specific, if you pass a "law" saying that all such systems are banned and that they should be "destroyed on launch" then who is going to enforce that and how? The enemies of the United States do not care about our laws and they have called out their challenge to a contest of arms in a fight to the death. There will be no enforcement of "destroyed on launch" unless you are willing to go to war and destroy it yourself by strength and force of arms. The civilized society that we enjoy here in the west is built upon the implicit threat of violent force to back up and maintain that system. The system, such as it is, cannot exist without that threat and therefore it is also trumped by the very same threat which is why it is sometimes necessary to fight or else give in and there is really no way around that.
The Motorola phones on the T-Mobile plans seem to be fairly open as per the factory spec from Motorola. I was able to upload a collection of MP3 ringtones that I cut myself directly from my PC to the handset via the included micro USB cable as soon as I got home with it. I just plugged the phone in and copied the files directly to the memory card (Windows XP sees it as a removable disk drive). In fact that was part of the reason why I chose to go with T-Mobile rather than Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T because the majors are usually the ones that are playing the feature stripping, lockdown, $4 per ringtone which expires in 2 weeks games that drive consumers nuts (because most people don't think about such things when they purchase their phone and realize only later that there are these "gotchas" and that they are locked in to a two year agreement with a hefty termination fee).
Seriously, how long is it until servers check which elements I have downloaded and warn me to turn off my adblocker?
or what? they wont show you their content? If they do that then F them because their competition is just a click away. If the advertisers and marketers hadn't been so damn greedy in the early days and abused every feature for advertising gain (i.e. pop-up, pop-under, dancing flash always on top ads, and the rest) then people wouldn't have so quick to develop such powerful counter-measures and blocking tools to shut them up. They poisoned the water hole and they can damn well drink from it now that the tables have turned.