>> That undercut Netscape together with the fact that MS prohibited OEM from bundling Netscape
And THAT was the antitrust abuse.
It had nothing to do with undercutting the prices or anything like that. It was keeping the OEMs from bundling Netscape. The price of IE had NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH IT.
Now, if Microsoft starts barring OEMs from distributing the MPEG-4 codec, THEN it'll be abuse. But given how common DivX'd movies are, I don't see that happening any time soon.
Recently, someone posted on the P2P forums about how macros are affecting EQ. This got me to thinking that maybe he was a troll. He was claiming that 3 million PP per day, per server is dumped into the economy that is not earned through entirely legitimate means.
I decided to start by checking www.playerauctions.com, and found out that on my home server right now, over 3,500K pp is for sale. Currently. That's right, it's about 3 million, 675 thousand platinum for sale. Think about that figure for a minute. That is one server, and that's only the PP that is for sale. Imagine what is NOT for sale and then tell me that 3 million PP per day per server could not easily be dumped into the game?
Next, I wanted to check the availability of said macro program, to see if in fact a person COULD as easily acquire "free PP" as the poster made it sound. I went to Yahoo and started fishing around, and came up to a lot of sites that offered the "free" macro program along with their guide at the low cost of 20 bucks. I'm sure that, if I was willing to be a bit more in depth, I would find the program itself. But how many are willing to do that?
What I did find was this site, and I am going to use it as a reference for the remainder of my article: http://www.eqtotalsecrets.com/. Not to act as a pusher, but I found this in 5 seconds. For 20 dollars I could buy this, make the money, and sell PP at half the normal cost. I would make my money back in maybe 2 hours. So yes, the program, for 20 dollars, is easily found.
So now we have checked our facts and found out that the EQ macro program IS in fact possible. We have found out that it is entirely possible that 3 million PP per day is being made per server. Now that we have our information, lets look at the effects of said facts.
First, each server averages 10k+ accounts. If you figure on any day 3K people play per server, each person plays for 4 hours a day, and the average level is 40, you can make a make a guess that each account makes 200pp per hour. This is figuring in the 500+pp per hour from Hill Giants and the no PP per hour you make in certain zones. When a newbie makes 10pp an hour and a level 60 makes 500+, the average is not that great. This is a conservative but fairly accurate guess, considering that the normal 60 can pull in about 1k an hour if he wants to. This is simply figuring in PP coming INTO the economy, not PP trading between players. So you subtract the PP coming from rezzes, spells, item trades, MQs, and so on and it's not all that much. Now you add the totals up and you come to 2.4 million PP. That's my guess at the created PP per day per server, but for the sake of argument lets say I low-balled it and 3 million a day is created, on average.
Now lets do some rough fact checking against EQTotalSecrets. At level 40, they claim you can make 950pp an hour. So 950pp with 4 hours put in a day. That comes to 3800pp a day. If the person doing this is the average player, that is. Let's assume for a moment, though, that the average person is not doing this, and it's mostly the higher-ups. According to this site you can net 4500 PP per hour. Now being fair...at level 50, let's say...I could make 3000pp an hour (using this guide), which comes to 12,000pp a play session. That's not too shabby, to say the least. That's 60,000 pp a week, and then its 3 million PP a month!
This is going to screw the economy up! ROYALLY! That's all there is to it. One person is going to introduce enough PP into the economy to create ripples, but 100 people a server can seriously do A LOT of damage in a short time. I am not an economist, but if one person in a month can create as much as the ENTIRE economy can in a day, there is going to be huge, post WWI-like German inflation. Useful things will skyrocket in cost, making it virtually impossible for the relative neophyte to attain them in a reasonable amount of time, and things that are no longer deemed useful will be destroyed, or sold for next to nothing at all. A prime example of this is that famous haste item, the Flowing Black Silk Sash. It used to cost, at the lowest, 10k. Now it runs (on my server, at least) 25k. Then, there is the Brown Chitin Protector, once among the finest of druid chest armor. It used to cost 5k. Now it costs 50pp. This is what I would call a major depression, and without an outflow of money, we will continue to see the cost of goods rise, and there is no end in sight. Without a clear, well-defined money sink, you cannot have a stable economy. They implemented the horses then added innate run speed, making the horses a pretty pony with no real use to most people. It's like the Pyreal from AC: it got hit hard by the dupe bug, and now has little to no actual value in the game. People might be willing to trade for C-notes, or whatever other form of currency the game has created, such as the shards and all them, but the pyreal itself is almost valueless.
Now many of you are asking how easy this bug REALLY is to exploit. Well first off, its not a bug. That's part of the problem. There is no bug. I will explain this to you as I understand it. Mind you, I found this at 2amwhile working on my trade skills in EQ. I did NOT go out there looking for this bug, and I would never have noticed it if not for the fact that another PC, a blacksmith, pointed it out. I am a tailor who needs studs and bonings made occasionally. After a great degree of testing we found that with only a 75 skill in smithing, this man was able to make 5pp7gp into 7pp1gp6sp1cp. Now this is a good thing, it gives smiths a way to make PROFIT! No normal player has the 100k+ laying around to up their smithing to 200+! I am sure that boning's are the same way, with a higher degree of profit. One PC without a macro program did all this in about 7 minutes and 30 seconds. I am sure you could stream line the process down to 6 minutes, and if you had a macro program, well, 1 minute. 1 minute, 2 pp. I am adding a few gold in there because his faction with the merchants of shadow haven was apprehensive, even though his charisma was 137. This guy had been playing EQ for a month only, and still he was quickly able to do the math on this and figure it out. So, that's 60pp per hour, if you macro it, which is not much. Unless there are larger degrees of this, which there no doubt are!
Verant was probably trying to give new smiths a leg up with a way to profit. Perhaps the other trade skills have similar things, slight profit margin items built in. The problem was that it took one guy to write the code on how to exploit this, and they are going to ruin it for the rest of us. Verant actually tries to make trade skills better, and PEOPLE screw it up!
DAoC was smart, and made trade skills cost money, rather then the majority of the EQ system. EQ has little to know expenses in it, it's mostly what you can hunt up. DAoC has huge out-going expenditures, relative to the other games in its genre, because all of the best stuff is crafted, and crafted items take materials paid for, rather then materials gathered through assassinating monsters. I doubt the EQ dev team ever thought that so much money would be pumped into their system via artificial means, and they never thought it would happen on such a grand scale. I will NOT roast Verant or SoE for this mistake; instead, I am going to leave the blame up to you. I wanted to give you some information to work with, and some facts to draw from. I have made a few observations, and hopefully given you all enough to work with. Personally, though, let me direct your hatred to the players using this. They have decided to screw you over, and for good reason: 3 million PP a month, going for about 20USD per 10kpp. Actually the going rate for PP is 40USD a month, but if you only sell half of it, then you're only going to make 20USD. Only about half of the PP for sale sells. So 3million goes into 10,000 300 times. 300 times 20 is 6000. 6 grand, USD. That's cold, hard American money. That's the motivation, that's the reasoning. Money does not talk, it whispers seductively into your ear promising you everything you have ever wanted. It is the ultimate woman. The second you have a little, you want more, the second you have a little more, you want a lot. These people decided that 6000 dollars a month PER account was worth more to them than playing Everquest. Now, if I offered you 12 grand a month to macro on two computers in a game, even though you might be banned, would you?
>> Columbus was considered insane to want to sail around the world to reach India. He was ridiculed >> and almost didn't find funding. His discovery completely changed the world. There was a time when >> the suggestion that the earth was round and not the center of the universe would get you killed. >> I'm not going to list any more examples of going against conventional thought but I'm sure all of >> you can think of plenty of them.
Actually, more people at the time than you would expect knew that the earth was round.
"Sometimes the claim is made that those who opposed Columbus thought the Earth was flat, but that wasn't the case at all. Even in ancient times sailors knew that the Earth was round and scientists not only suspected it was a sphere, but even estimated its size."
Start, All Programs...oh, what's this? Set Program Access and Defaults!
Flaming Microsoft is all well and good, but you should probably know what you're talking about first. Pulling stuff out of your butt just makes us all look bad.
It's good to see that, right off the block, there are apps for a Linux-based handheld.
Granted, most of them are games, and a bit on the bad side, but Linux is starting to make mainstream strides beyond the server market...which is always good to see.
Personally, though, I'd be more interested to see a review of the software included with the Zarius.
The problem is this: she is still living in a world of 20 years ago where the primary means for viewing and distributing photographs was as a print on paper.
The problem is this: they are still living in a world of 20 years ago where the primary means for listening to and distributing music was as a casette tape.
Our photographer thinks she is in the business of providing high quality printed photographs. In fact she is in the image-capturing business, and as the business shifts from printed to digital format, she will either adapt or fail.
The RIAA thinks they are in the business of providing high quality music CDs. In fact they are in the audio-distribution business, and as the business shifts from CD to pure digital format, they will either adapt or fail.
>> Astronomer Gregory Henry of Tennessee State University said his analysis revealed that the >> ''planet'' - one of several far-flung discoveries announced with great fanfare two years >> ago - was actually a trick of light created by giant ''star spots'' on its sun's surface.
So it seems CNN and New Scientist were right.
Granted, IANAA, so I have no idea how likely that is. But remember...a hundred years ago, people probably didn't think human flight was all that likely either.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is why it will fail in court. Better laws than this have failed due to ambiguity and potential overbreadth.
A bill written that badly is all but guaranteed to fail in the courts.
There was no Cardcaptors.
It was just an urban legend, like the live-action Ninja Turtles Series and the other dimension in Dragonball Z.
Cardcaptor Sakura?
Odd. I don't remember any Clow cards that were designed to work against banner ads.
Though I suppose the Shadow card could hide them...
>> That undercut Netscape together with the fact that MS prohibited OEM from bundling Netscape
And THAT was the antitrust abuse.
It had nothing to do with undercutting the prices or anything like that. It was keeping the OEMs from bundling Netscape. The price of IE had NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH IT.
Now, if Microsoft starts barring OEMs from distributing the MPEG-4 codec, THEN it'll be abuse. But given how common DivX'd movies are, I don't see that happening any time soon.
Liar, Liar.
Personally, I would have preferred something with Mel Brooks...but I don't think he did anything with lawyers.
Unless you count Dracula: Dead and Loving It.
Wow. It's like that movie starring Bill Murray where everything kept happening over and over.
What was it called again? Ghostbusters II?
That's what they WANT you to think!
Actually, I came up with the quote for this story before I got linked to that version of it.
You could probably get unlimited power by hooking Orwell's grave up to a turbine nowdays.
I am the Shover Robot.
I will push snow on top of Grandma.
>> America Online is developing the encrypted system in partnership with VeriSign Inc., an online
>> security firm.
I fear the arbitration policies already.
You'll probably get ignored, since S.1618 never got passed.
It's fake, and therefore, mention of it automatically marks it as spam in my filters.
All that's left is for WineX to run AC2, and I'll never have to boot into Windows again!
Sounds like the GM Darwin incident in UO to me.
Ah, well, here's the story text:
Recently, someone posted on the P2P forums about how macros are affecting EQ. This got me to thinking that maybe he was a troll. He was claiming that 3 million PP per day, per server is dumped into the economy that is not earned through entirely legitimate means.
I decided to start by checking www.playerauctions.com, and found out that on my home server right now, over 3,500K pp is for sale. Currently. That's right, it's about 3 million, 675 thousand platinum for sale. Think about that figure for a minute. That is one server, and that's only the PP that is for sale. Imagine what is NOT for sale and then tell me that 3 million PP per day per server could not easily be dumped into the game?
Next, I wanted to check the availability of said macro program, to see if in fact a person COULD as easily acquire "free PP" as the poster made it sound. I went to Yahoo and started fishing around, and came up to a lot of sites that offered the "free" macro program along with their guide at the low cost of 20 bucks. I'm sure that, if I was willing to be a bit more in depth, I would find the program itself. But how many are willing to do that?
What I did find was this site, and I am going to use it as a reference for the remainder of my article: http://www.eqtotalsecrets.com/. Not to act as a pusher, but I found this in 5 seconds. For 20 dollars I could buy this, make the money, and sell PP at half the normal cost. I would make my money back in maybe 2 hours. So yes, the program, for 20 dollars, is easily found.
So now we have checked our facts and found out that the EQ macro program IS in fact possible. We have found out that it is entirely possible that 3 million PP per day is being made per server. Now that we have our information, lets look at the effects of said facts.
First, each server averages 10k+ accounts. If you figure on any day 3K people play per server, each person plays for 4 hours a day, and the average level is 40, you can make a make a guess that each account makes 200pp per hour. This is figuring in the 500+pp per hour from Hill Giants and the no PP per hour you make in certain zones. When a newbie makes 10pp an hour and a level 60 makes 500+, the average is not that great. This is a conservative but fairly accurate guess, considering that the normal 60 can pull in about 1k an hour if he wants to. This is simply figuring in PP coming INTO the economy, not PP trading between players. So you subtract the PP coming from rezzes, spells, item trades, MQs, and so on and it's not all that much. Now you add the totals up and you come to 2.4 million PP. That's my guess at the created PP per day per server, but for the sake of argument lets say I low-balled it and 3 million a day is created, on average.
Now lets do some rough fact checking against EQTotalSecrets. At level 40, they claim you can make 950pp an hour. So 950pp with 4 hours put in a day. That comes to 3800pp a day. If the person doing this is the average player, that is. Let's assume for a moment, though, that the average person is not doing this, and it's mostly the higher-ups. According to this site you can net 4500 PP per hour. Now being fair...at level 50, let's say...I could make 3000pp an hour (using this guide), which comes to 12,000pp a play session. That's not too shabby, to say the least. That's 60,000 pp a week, and then its 3 million PP a month!
This is going to screw the economy up! ROYALLY! That's all there is to it. One person is going to introduce enough PP into the economy to create ripples, but 100 people a server can seriously do A LOT of damage in a short time. I am not an economist, but if one person in a month can create as much as the ENTIRE economy can in a day, there is going to be huge, post WWI-like German inflation. Useful things will skyrocket in cost, making it virtually impossible for the relative neophyte to attain them in a reasonable amount of time, and things that are no longer deemed useful will be destroyed, or sold for next to nothing at all. A prime example of this is that famous haste item, the Flowing Black Silk Sash. It used to cost, at the lowest, 10k. Now it runs (on my server, at least) 25k. Then, there is the Brown Chitin Protector, once among the finest of druid chest armor. It used to cost 5k. Now it costs 50pp. This is what I would call a major depression, and without an outflow of money, we will continue to see the cost of goods rise, and there is no end in sight. Without a clear, well-defined money sink, you cannot have a stable economy. They implemented the horses then added innate run speed, making the horses a pretty pony with no real use to most people. It's like the Pyreal from AC: it got hit hard by the dupe bug, and now has little to no actual value in the game. People might be willing to trade for C-notes, or whatever other form of currency the game has created, such as the shards and all them, but the pyreal itself is almost valueless.
Now many of you are asking how easy this bug REALLY is to exploit. Well first off, its not a bug. That's part of the problem. There is no bug. I will explain this to you as I understand it. Mind you, I found this at 2amwhile working on my trade skills in EQ. I did NOT go out there looking for this bug, and I would never have noticed it if not for the fact that another PC, a blacksmith, pointed it out. I am a tailor who needs studs and bonings made occasionally. After a great degree of testing we found that with only a 75 skill in smithing, this man was able to make 5pp7gp into 7pp1gp6sp1cp. Now this is a good thing, it gives smiths a way to make PROFIT! No normal player has the 100k+ laying around to up their smithing to 200+! I am sure that boning's are the same way, with a higher degree of profit. One PC without a macro program did all this in about 7 minutes and 30 seconds. I am sure you could stream line the process down to 6 minutes, and if you had a macro program, well, 1 minute. 1 minute, 2 pp. I am adding a few gold in there because his faction with the merchants of shadow haven was apprehensive, even though his charisma was 137. This guy had been playing EQ for a month only, and still he was quickly able to do the math on this and figure it out. So, that's 60pp per hour, if you macro it, which is not much. Unless there are larger degrees of this, which there no doubt are!
Verant was probably trying to give new smiths a leg up with a way to profit. Perhaps the other trade skills have similar things, slight profit margin items built in. The problem was that it took one guy to write the code on how to exploit this, and they are going to ruin it for the rest of us. Verant actually tries to make trade skills better, and PEOPLE screw it up!
DAoC was smart, and made trade skills cost money, rather then the majority of the EQ system. EQ has little to know expenses in it, it's mostly what you can hunt up. DAoC has huge out-going expenditures, relative to the other games in its genre, because all of the best stuff is crafted, and crafted items take materials paid for, rather then materials gathered through assassinating monsters. I doubt the EQ dev team ever thought that so much money would be pumped into their system via artificial means, and they never thought it would happen on such a grand scale. I will NOT roast Verant or SoE for this mistake; instead, I am going to leave the blame up to you. I wanted to give you some information to work with, and some facts to draw from. I have made a few observations, and hopefully given you all enough to work with. Personally, though, let me direct your hatred to the players using this. They have decided to screw you over, and for good reason: 3 million PP a month, going for about 20USD per 10kpp. Actually the going rate for PP is 40USD a month, but if you only sell half of it, then you're only going to make 20USD. Only about half of the PP for sale sells. So 3million goes into 10,000 300 times. 300 times 20 is 6000. 6 grand, USD. That's cold, hard American money. That's the motivation, that's the reasoning. Money does not talk, it whispers seductively into your ear promising you everything you have ever wanted. It is the ultimate woman. The second you have a little, you want more, the second you have a little more, you want a lot. These people decided that 6000 dollars a month PER account was worth more to them than playing Everquest. Now, if I offered you 12 grand a month to macro on two computers in a game, even though you might be banned, would you?
>> Columbus was considered insane to want to sail around the world to reach India. He was ridiculed
. ht m
>> and almost didn't find funding. His discovery completely changed the world. There was a time when
>> the suggestion that the earth was round and not the center of the universe would get you killed.
>> I'm not going to list any more examples of going against conventional thought but I'm sure all of
>> you can think of plenty of them.
Actually, more people at the time than you would expect knew that the earth was round.
"Sometimes the claim is made that those who opposed Columbus thought the Earth was flat, but that wasn't the case at all. Even in ancient times sailors knew that the Earth was round and scientists not only suspected it was a sphere, but even estimated its size."
(http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Scolumb
>> They have purposely made it so IE Icon keeps reappearing when you change some of the lower level >> settings.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
Actually, the 'online shopping' is in Music Tasks. There's no pop-up...there easily COULD be, but right now, there isn't.
Second: of course it loads up in IE! You're already in it. Type a URL into address bar of the folder and you'll see what I mean.
Whether or not that should be the case is, of course, another story entirely. But right now, it is.
Actually, I downloaded the service pack with Opera.
YHT. YHL. HAND.
>> Especially when it's not in the start menu
Hmm...
Start, All Programs...oh, what's this? Set Program Access and Defaults!
Flaming Microsoft is all well and good, but you should probably know what you're talking about first. Pulling stuff out of your butt just makes us all look bad.
"There was nothing in Al Capone's Vault,
But it wasn't Geraldo's fault...D'OH!"
It's good to see that, right off the block, there are apps for a Linux-based handheld.
Granted, most of them are games, and a bit on the bad side, but Linux is starting to make mainstream strides beyond the server market...which is always good to see.
Personally, though, I'd be more interested to see a review of the software included with the Zarius.
The problem is this: she is still living in a world of 20 years ago where the primary means for viewing and distributing photographs was as a print on paper.
The problem is this: they are still living in a world of 20 years ago where the primary means for listening to and distributing music was as a casette tape.
Our photographer thinks she is in the business of providing high quality printed photographs. In fact she is in the image-capturing business, and as the business shifts from printed to digital format, she will either adapt or fail.
The RIAA thinks they are in the business of providing high quality music CDs. In fact they are in the audio-distribution business, and as the business shifts from CD to pure digital format, they will either adapt or fail.
So sayeth The Straits Times:
>> Astronomer Gregory Henry of Tennessee State University said his analysis revealed that the
>> ''planet'' - one of several far-flung discoveries announced with great fanfare two years
>> ago - was actually a trick of light created by giant ''star spots'' on its sun's surface.
So it seems CNN and New Scientist were right.
Granted, IANAA, so I have no idea how likely that is. But remember...a hundred years ago, people probably didn't think human flight was all that likely either.
>> Theft is not free speech. Theft is not free capitalistic enterprise.
It is now.