In the UK neither mobile nor internet operator are able to guarantee emergency calling. And thus include a standard disclaimer on it. IIRC that's one of the obligations placed upon BT - that any phone like they have shall be usable to dial 999 even if service is otherwise discontinued.
Possibly not so much. I mean if it's related to distance from earth to sun, then given that's pretty consistant over a timeframe measured in years, it's probably ok.
Now, atomic clocks on the other hand, might have a problem.
I hope it's not something important in that outlook PST. Because PST files are a really ugly data format, that are horrifically prone to corruption and just generally 'not working'. If it's important to have archives, the tool for the job is archiving it. Not keeping it in massive piles of 'maybe I will need it' junk on your HDD.
No, I'm merely trying to point out that anything competitive is a matter of biochemical mastery _already_.
What substances someone has taken, and whether they're illegal or not is largely irrelevant to the competition at hand.
And your comparison of vehicle velocity is flawed - it's entirely possible to figure out an acceptable threshold when you're talking physics - road adhesion and kinetic energy are predictable and measurable, as are resultant dangers. You set a cut off point at which the probability of a dangerous accident is deemed 'too high'.
Whilst there's some substances which increase danger to 'everyone else' the vast majority do not. That's why drinking beer is legal, but drinking beer and then driving your 70mph killing machine is not.
But neither case has much in the way of bearing on someone smoking a joint or two, and playing Quake deathmatch.
You're saying that as if there's a discrete threshold between 'drugs' and 'not drugs'. There isn't. Every substance on the planet has chemical components in it, that if ingested can improve or degrade your performance. Things like having a good night's sleep. Eating 'sugary stuff', or eating 'starchy stuff'. Good vitamin balance. And that's even before we go near the legal stuff like caffine, which is definitely and clearly a stimuant.
It's biochemical mastery, sure. But so's having a good night's sleep and a steak dinner before an exam.
So... just forget it. Let the police deal with where there's crime, and don't even bother to try and regulate your sports. It's not going to work anyway, because there are no clear cut divisions of 'good' or 'bad'.
Relaxation can lead to doing certain tasks better. Not all of them certainly, but some. If these tasks intersect in the game you're playing, without too much 'negative' from the other tasks which are degraded, your overall performance will improve.
I have experienced much the same when drinking beer. There's some games where I get better after a pint or two - and I would note start getting worse again if I carry on drinking - there's probably a blood alcohol range where I could balance and stay at this point by occasional 'maintenance' doses. These are mostly the games that are not twitch based, but might promote an adrenaline rush (EVE online PvP gets my adrenaline flowing like nothing else - a pint or two moderates that, and I fly better.).
Conversely though, there's some games where I get noticably worse. Ones that require rapid reflexes - first person shooters would be an example - my performance degrades as soon as I have a beer. But generally improves after drinking caffine.
Lets leave the legality or not out of it - perceptual modifiers in the form of caffeine or alcohol alter performance at certain tasks. If those tasks mesh in the game you're playing, one or other will enhance your performance at that game.
If they don't, you'll do worse.
It's only reasonable to extend the assumption that illegal forms of substance use will have similar effects to a greater or lesser degree. Relaxants for some games, stimulants for others.
Paracetamol + Codine is available over the counter. It's a reasonable way of dealing with a medical problem. But what if I find that a couple of these reduces how distracted I am by the plate in my leg, and so I play better (yes, I do have a plate in my leg, and it does ache at times)? Is that cheating, or is that just overcoming an existing medical problem?
Anything performance enhancing has an impact on the tournament. Some are illegal, some legal. Some might only be legal on prescription.
Personally I think that's just a mine field, and they should just ignore it. Why does it matter if someone's baked his noodle before playing?
But then, I think they should take that approach to the olympics too - rather than the current really rather convoluted regulations about what naturally occuring substances are ok, and what are not. They should just do the 'augmented olympics' and let anything go, provided it's not obviously committing a crime in plain sight. (The latter is worth a 'stupidity' disqualification).
I think track events are dull, but having 10 runners hopped off their tits on psychotics would make it _much_ more interesting.
You seem to have a very narrow view of the properties of substances.
Drugs, legal or illegal are entirely possible to be good and bad at the same time - morphine taken for medicinal reasons still has the effects as morphine taken for recreational reasons.
Marijuana is a relaxant, amongst it's various effects. In a high stress situation (e.g. a major competition) then that can serve in such a way as it'll improve performance overall. It's other effects have an impact, sure. But there's a reason people use recreational drugs, and believe it or not, it's not because they all like screwing themselves up.
But if you were a web designer who wanted to make the most people able to access their site, they'd start with IE - firefox has to be installed, IE comes with it. Therefore the least technically literate users out there (e.g. the ones that are less likely to handle crap HTML rendering) will use IE.
Your average firefox user has at least has to go to a _little_ effort to install it. `
Actually, the way it's done in telephone/online banking that I'm aware of, is that the operator gets prompted by their app for 'letter 1,2,4'. They key them in. Then they are given a 'pass/fail', without exposing any of the password to them (well, obviously they know that what letters 1,2 and 4 are if it works).
I'm not entirely sure how it ended up happening the other way, it smells a bit of urban myth to me.
Thus your password being sent in the clear, is travelling across the internet in plain text. It's also getting written to disk on at least one mail server, possibly more.
I order from Amazon, because I like their recommendations system, and their huge catalogue. I'll batch my orders, and when I get enough for free delivery, I'll press the button.
That works nicely for me.
If I'm after something _right now_ i'll go out and buy it, but usually this is on _my_ schedule (e.g. I feel like a new film to watch) rather than anything to do with publisher/distribution schedules.
*shrug*. Don't understand the people who must have the new release RIGHT NOW. It smells too much of being sheep lead around by the almight marketing shepherd.
I can't help but wonder at the sanity of someone so desparate to buy a computer game they'll go out at midnight to get it.
I mean, seriously. A game is a leisure activity, not a life essential. Is it really so hard to wait a few hours? Or just wait for it to get delivered, or something?
Well, most governments have a 'classification' system, which amongst other things specified what's considered 'acceptable' with stuff like hard disks that have had protectively marked material on it.
It wouldn't be all that hard to say 'we will treat all this information as 'Secret' as defined by the government, and have the same requirements and constraints as regards clearances'.
Supreme Commander is good, the sequel - Forged Alliance - is better.
Big shift in the gameplay dynamics away from 'simcity, rush nuke' to something a little more reliant on going out and controlling territory. And make experimentals and nukes a bit more 'usable, but not instant victory' which as someone who likes a 'proper' lategame, rather than a 'he who nukes first wins' suits me well.
I've had oodles of grief from VMs running as DCs for exactly this reason - they pick up clock skew as they're not running _quite_ in real time. And so they drift, and as soon as they hit the... is it 5 minute? Kerberos window, your whole domain goes nuts.
I'm in a corp which has very extensive mining capability. We build capital ships. We can pull down the minerals to do this in about 16 hours of mining on a corp op. We have experience of people trying to steal ore, and it's just not an issue. But then, whilst EVE says 'you can mine' it does not say 'this means you'll be good at it'. We have, on occasion, gone after ore thieves. People interfering with our activity, we can, and do go and kick them in the face.
EVE is not like other games - you are empowered to do something about it.
I like to use the analogy that EVE is a strategy game. It has many of the same elements as e.g. Supreme Commander, or C&C. You have resource management and denial as one of the realms you must excel if you want to do well. But it's only one of them. Ships, mods, ammo, pilots are also resources that need to be managed. Pilots especially, you need to be looking to their morale, because if they're not having fun, they're not logging in. But you also need to be considering whether you are being effective with how you deploy your ships - whilst faction fitted ships are more effective, I know few people who PvP with them, because having a ship performing better is outweighed by conserving the resources need to replace (or more likely, deploy other pilots in well fitted ships).
EVE is a game of freedom. You are free to fail. You are free to do something about anything you have a problem with. But much like an RTS, if you don't build any anti-air, and then get killed by an air strike, then it's not them that's griefing you - it's you that have left major oversights in your tactics and strategy.
EVE is not so limited, this is true. I prefer to think of EVE as a real time strategy game. It has many of the same elements - the ability to build a 'base', the ability to form an army. Resource management, conservation and denial - even your ammo costs isks, so you get to choose whether to use cheap T1 ammo, or expensive faction ammo. Or ships indeed - expensive ships are powerful, but they are not cost effective. A Titan is no match for 60 billion investment in battleships. A faction fitted battleship will win a straight fight with another one, but it won't with the 10 or so that _could_ have been funded by it.
There's unit veterancy and discipline - a well organised, disciplined group of pilots will typically beat a rabble. There's unit cohesion - if they're used to working together, and have set up mutually supportive ships, they're working together more effeciently. And then there's morale - it's vitally important in a game where your pilots might find something else to do, to maintain a good level of morale.
There's resources to be contested, armys to build, worlds to conquer. But you don't get to be a Supreme Commander, without proving you're worthy - experienced pilots don't follow fools gladly.
This is why I use the chess analogy for EVE - EVE is a strategy game, with subelements that can be delegated. You can be a master miner, and contribute a great deal, but don't lose sight of the fact that you do not win C&C by Tiberium Harvesters alone.
Someone once said: "There is no griefing in EVE, any more than there's griefing in an RTS". I think I largely agree. But yeah, missions against NPCs are always dull. Thankfully in EVE you can define your own mission scope against other player characters, and have a _real_ fight. (Or you could insist that you don't want to, because that would be griefing, and go back to grinding missions)
In chess, you agree to the contest by playing the game. Same as in EVE.
In chess, each move you make will have an impact on the overall game. Losing a piece carelessly, has a consequence.
And I have played long chess games - that took over a year to complete.
OK, so EVE is a different in style to chess, in that you're starting at a fixed point, there's only one other player, and you're not able to gain resources through the game. But I rather like the increased complexity and variance, and the fact that you can recover from a weaker position more easily, simply by co-operating with other players.
To say it's 'griefing' that someone interacts with you, and contests a resource in a multiplayer game, rather misses the point of playing an MMO at all. At least, in my opinion. I guess that's why I play EVE and still enjoy it though.
I'm not sure I agree, but I think that's more because of relative definitions of PvP. I consider invention, exploration, and manufacturing very much PvP - exploring, you're trying to find sites before anyone else. Invention and manufacturing... well, factory slots aren't particularly limited, but bottom line costs on T2 components/materials are very extensively influenced by player action.
And trading is about the most cut throat form of 'PvP' out there.
I do like the '14 day attention span' get pushed away, but the thing I truly like about EVE is that _everything_ is PvP. As a corp, we're often out in combat ships, true enough. But our 'business' is manufacturing and invention. We make quite a lot of money doing it, but I'm under no illusion that every single mineral or component we're using, has come from another player.
Slashdot Mirror
In the UK neither mobile nor internet operator are able to guarantee emergency calling. And thus include a standard disclaimer on it. IIRC that's one of the obligations placed upon BT - that any phone like they have shall be usable to dial 999 even if service is otherwise discontinued.
Now, atomic clocks on the other hand, might have a problem.
I hope it's not something important in that outlook PST. Because PST files are a really ugly data format, that are horrifically prone to corruption and just generally 'not working'. If it's important to have archives, the tool for the job is archiving it. Not keeping it in massive piles of 'maybe I will need it' junk on your HDD.
What substances someone has taken, and whether they're illegal or not is largely irrelevant to the competition at hand.
And your comparison of vehicle velocity is flawed - it's entirely possible to figure out an acceptable threshold when you're talking physics - road adhesion and kinetic energy are predictable and measurable, as are resultant dangers. You set a cut off point at which the probability of a dangerous accident is deemed 'too high'.
Whilst there's some substances which increase danger to 'everyone else' the vast majority do not. That's why drinking beer is legal, but drinking beer and then driving your 70mph killing machine is not.
But neither case has much in the way of bearing on someone smoking a joint or two, and playing Quake deathmatch.
It's biochemical mastery, sure. But so's having a good night's sleep and a steak dinner before an exam.
So ... just forget it. Let the police deal with where there's crime, and don't even bother to try and regulate your sports. It's not going to work anyway, because there are no clear cut divisions of 'good' or 'bad'.
I have experienced much the same when drinking beer. There's some games where I get better after a pint or two - and I would note start getting worse again if I carry on drinking - there's probably a blood alcohol range where I could balance and stay at this point by occasional 'maintenance' doses. These are mostly the games that are not twitch based, but might promote an adrenaline rush (EVE online PvP gets my adrenaline flowing like nothing else - a pint or two moderates that, and I fly better.).
Conversely though, there's some games where I get noticably worse. Ones that require rapid reflexes - first person shooters would be an example - my performance degrades as soon as I have a beer. But generally improves after drinking caffine.
Lets leave the legality or not out of it - perceptual modifiers in the form of caffeine or alcohol alter performance at certain tasks. If those tasks mesh in the game you're playing, one or other will enhance your performance at that game.
If they don't, you'll do worse.
It's only reasonable to extend the assumption that illegal forms of substance use will have similar effects to a greater or lesser degree. Relaxants for some games, stimulants for others.
Anything performance enhancing has an impact on the tournament. Some are illegal, some legal. Some might only be legal on prescription.
Personally I think that's just a mine field, and they should just ignore it. Why does it matter if someone's baked his noodle before playing?
But then, I think they should take that approach to the olympics too - rather than the current really rather convoluted regulations about what naturally occuring substances are ok, and what are not. They should just do the 'augmented olympics' and let anything go, provided it's not obviously committing a crime in plain sight. (The latter is worth a 'stupidity' disqualification).
I think track events are dull, but having 10 runners hopped off their tits on psychotics would make it _much_ more interesting.
Drugs, legal or illegal are entirely possible to be good and bad at the same time - morphine taken for medicinal reasons still has the effects as morphine taken for recreational reasons.
Marijuana is a relaxant, amongst it's various effects. In a high stress situation (e.g. a major competition) then that can serve in such a way as it'll improve performance overall. It's other effects have an impact, sure. But there's a reason people use recreational drugs, and believe it or not, it's not because they all like screwing themselves up.
Your average firefox user has at least has to go to a _little_ effort to install it. `
Unix apps aren't user hostile at all. Indeed, they're extremely user friendly. They're just a bit choosier about who they make friends with.
I'm not entirely sure how it ended up happening the other way, it smells a bit of urban myth to me.
Thus your password being sent in the clear, is travelling across the internet in plain text. It's also getting written to disk on at least one mail server, possibly more.
http://xkcd.com/327/ - One of my favourites
That works nicely for me.
If I'm after something _right now_ i'll go out and buy it, but usually this is on _my_ schedule (e.g. I feel like a new film to watch) rather than anything to do with publisher/distribution schedules.
*shrug*. Don't understand the people who must have the new release RIGHT NOW. It smells too much of being sheep lead around by the almight marketing shepherd.
I mean, seriously. A game is a leisure activity, not a life essential. Is it really so hard to wait a few hours? Or just wait for it to get delivered, or something?
It wouldn't be all that hard to say 'we will treat all this information as 'Secret' as defined by the government, and have the same requirements and constraints as regards clearances'.
Supreme Commander is good, the sequel - Forged Alliance - is better.
Big shift in the gameplay dynamics away from 'simcity, rush nuke' to something a little more reliant on going out and controlling territory. And make experimentals and nukes a bit more 'usable, but not instant victory' which as someone who likes a 'proper' lategame, rather than a 'he who nukes first wins' suits me well.
That would be because pacifism is only an option when the other side agrees.
Troubleshooting that one was fun.
So, basically people aren't bothering to look for work, then are complaining that 'foreigners' are taking their jobs?
EVE is not like other games - you are empowered to do something about it.
I like to use the analogy that EVE is a strategy game. It has many of the same elements as e.g. Supreme Commander, or C&C. You have resource management and denial as one of the realms you must excel if you want to do well. But it's only one of them. Ships, mods, ammo, pilots are also resources that need to be managed. Pilots especially, you need to be looking to their morale, because if they're not having fun, they're not logging in. But you also need to be considering whether you are being effective with how you deploy your ships - whilst faction fitted ships are more effective, I know few people who PvP with them, because having a ship performing better is outweighed by conserving the resources need to replace (or more likely, deploy other pilots in well fitted ships).
EVE is a game of freedom. You are free to fail. You are free to do something about anything you have a problem with. But much like an RTS, if you don't build any anti-air, and then get killed by an air strike, then it's not them that's griefing you - it's you that have left major oversights in your tactics and strategy.
This is EVE. Freedom to suck.
There's unit veterancy and discipline - a well organised, disciplined group of pilots will typically beat a rabble. There's unit cohesion - if they're used to working together, and have set up mutually supportive ships, they're working together more effeciently. And then there's morale - it's vitally important in a game where your pilots might find something else to do, to maintain a good level of morale.
There's resources to be contested, armys to build, worlds to conquer. But you don't get to be a Supreme Commander, without proving you're worthy - experienced pilots don't follow fools gladly.
This is why I use the chess analogy for EVE - EVE is a strategy game, with subelements that can be delegated. You can be a master miner, and contribute a great deal, but don't lose sight of the fact that you do not win C&C by Tiberium Harvesters alone.
Someone once said: "There is no griefing in EVE, any more than there's griefing in an RTS". I think I largely agree. But yeah, missions against NPCs are always dull. Thankfully in EVE you can define your own mission scope against other player characters, and have a _real_ fight. (Or you could insist that you don't want to, because that would be griefing, and go back to grinding missions)
In chess, each move you make will have an impact on the overall game. Losing a piece carelessly, has a consequence.
And I have played long chess games - that took over a year to complete.
OK, so EVE is a different in style to chess, in that you're starting at a fixed point, there's only one other player, and you're not able to gain resources through the game. But I rather like the increased complexity and variance, and the fact that you can recover from a weaker position more easily, simply by co-operating with other players.
To say it's 'griefing' that someone interacts with you, and contests a resource in a multiplayer game, rather misses the point of playing an MMO at all. At least, in my opinion. I guess that's why I play EVE and still enjoy it though.
And trading is about the most cut throat form of 'PvP' out there.
I do like the '14 day attention span' get pushed away, but the thing I truly like about EVE is that _everything_ is PvP. As a corp, we're often out in combat ships, true enough. But our 'business' is manufacturing and invention. We make quite a lot of money doing it, but I'm under no illusion that every single mineral or component we're using, has come from another player.