PvP is player vs. player. It's players opposing each other, and providing the challenge.
It's not 'ruining your game' that someone takes your queen in chess. It actually _is_ the game.
EVE is the same. You are empowered - if you object to what someone's doing, and consider it 'ruining your fun' then you're entirely entitled to do something about it.
Some days you lose. EVE freedom includes the freedom to suck. Some people are better at things than you are. You can either learn from it, or cry about it. The former prosper and have a good game, the latter... don't.
It does suit the patient player. But you don't need to wait 2 years to start fighting - I've started a trial account to go pvping with, just to see if it could be done. I fought and beat quite a few ships in rifters and thrashers, upto and including one battlecruiser. (actually, the BC gave me money to go away when he hit structure). Yes, you need to be thinking long term, but to say you've got to wait isn't true.
The hardest part to deal with is that some evenings you get nothing 'useful' done - the people you're fighting don't undock, or perhaps you're on the wrong side of a blockade, that's settled in for the day.
Do you consider the person who beats you in a game of chess, a griefer? I mean, they're taking your pieces away.
How about the guy who charges you a fortune to stay at Mayfair in Monopoloy?
To say EVE is about 'griefing' is... well perhaps true. You win at others expense. You take 'their' ore, by mining it, you undercut them on the market. But really, the only challenge in a game, is from another player - no NPC can ever be able to exhibit the necessary level of intelligence, deviousness and strategic thinking when opposing you.
EVE is all about the players. The market is player opposition and competition. Asteroid belts get mined out by other miners. Lab space and factory time is a contended resource. Missions and NPCs exist, and they're... ok, and getting better, but basically are just a side event - another resource to be exploited, as part of the multi-player RTS that is EVE.
I've been playing for... 3, 4 years now? I forget. But it's a while, and obviously I'm therefore biased. But I'm forever saddened by the number of people who play EVE, spend 6 weeks grinding missions, and then declaring it 'meh boring' and leave again. Yes, there's parts of EVE that are boring. But there's a whole lot of other stuff to do - anything you can think of, you can go and do. That's part of the problem with it - you don't ever get told what to do, beyond those basic missions, you just have to decide to go do it. EVE is about making your own fun, which doesn't suit everyone - if what you want to do is get told by an NPC to go kill 50 rats, frankly WOW does it better. If you want an open ended game, that's a single universe, and you can do whatever you want, provided you have the firepower to back up your will, then that's EVE. You're free to do whatever. You're free to lead, you're free to follow, and you're free to fail. Player vs. Player means you're climbing the ladder, and sometimes you're stepping on the shoulders of others to get a boost. Some will do so willingly, some will... object.
It's not a game for everyone. Not everyone likes strategy games, not everyone likes winning at a cost of someone else losing. Not everyone like a game that requires you to think, plan and organise extensively - large scale fleet deployments in EVE can take significant amounts of effort. Or rather, significant amounts of effort if you want to win. It can also be necessary to abort an operation, having 'wasted' an evening of gaming, because fighting today you'll lose, because they're ready for you. Some will charge anyway, lose ships, and maybe have fun doing so. Others will not, and will go home, or do something else. This can be very frustrating, and does have an impact on morale - and morale is also important in EVE. It's a managable resource like anything else.
As said, I've played for ages, and still love it. I know others won't - some just won't like it, and others will come to the game thinking the 'wrong way' to get ahead. But I still get the shiver down my spine, and pumping adrenaline when engaging in a serious fight, and there's remarkably few games that still do that for me.
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.md.suspop.13Dec07.pdf - is a bit more of a scientific analysis, on a related point, but isn't looking at quite the same thing - conclusion is approximately the same though - the world cannot support the current population at the top level of lifestyle.
This may not be quite what I said, but... distribution isn't the _only_ problem we (and by 'we' I mean, those who aren't currently enjoying the rather nice lifestyles) face.
I'll troll for better sources when I finish work, as I'm fairly sure I've seen this question before (and it'd be nice to have sources on hand)
Actually, last I checked there wasn't enough arable land to support the entire population of the world in the style that 'us in the first world countries' are used to.
Diets aren't something you do, and then stop. Changing your diet will alter your equilbrum weight, and it may converge your overall mass at a new level (this does take a lot of time, typically).
But go back to the old diet, and you'll go back to the old weight, too.
Since i can't tolerate asperatame (headaches) that means i'm stuck with sucralose or stevia for low carb flavored drinks. luckily a very nice sucralose based powdered drink mix is on the market under 2 brand names propel, and fulfill. for $2.50/10 pack and $2/10 pack respectively. This is my primary daily drink although i'm likely getting over vitaminized by this but they're water soluble vitamins.../BLOCKQUOTE
You realise that water is actually pretty low carb, right? Actually, if you're drinking _cold_ water, it has a negative amount of energy.
This is very relevant. Conservation of energy applies to food intake, and energy 'use', however your body will 'conserve' energy when supplies are low, as famine protection - you'll just spend a few weeks being lethargic, weary and 'bleuggh', but not actually using very many calories at all.
This is the major reason why eating a 'proper' breakfast is good - it 'signals' that you've got food, and are ready to do a full day of 'stuff', and hey, yeah, lets use some of those stored fat reserves, it'll be ok because there's food on hand.
I don't actually care how fast my first half tank is diminishing, beyond estimating my long term fuel economy. I do care when I'm 100miles left though, as that's when I need to start thinking about topping up.
Just because policy is violated, doesn't mean there's necessarily any negative consequences. Copying confidential stuff to my laptop doesn't cause any problems until my laptop is lost/stolen.
Mass and energy are therefore interchangable, with a scaling factor - as it cools down, there is less energy and therefore less mass, and therefore less gravitational force.
Indeed, there's certain cinema activities that it's positively a shame to have detracted from, simply because you ended up going to see a film you wanted to watch.
I work for an outsource, based as a financial institute. We have our 'work email' password. Our 'work remote access password'.
We have our standard login account password (which thankfully, is synced to the laptop encryption thingy). I also have two admin accounts for 'production', 3 for 'preproduction', and one for 'test'. There's also a few 'key' router/switch login/management accounts.
And we have a helpdesk system, and a separate change management system.
And because we're doing remote management, we're remote logging into servers.
All these passwords enforce a subtley different mix of 'strong' rules. They expire monthly, and give two weeks notice. Some of these administrative domains could be synchronized a bit better, but most could not for security reasons (you cannot access pre-prod from production, for example).
Guess what tends to happen with passwords? That's right. People use the same one, on every system. Some even scribble it down somewhere, because of the two weekly 'your password expires in 14 days' notification.
Now, once upon a time I used to use 'strong' passwords. Y'know, random-ish 8+ character strings of letter/numbers/symbols. Now I don't, because I cannot remotely keep track of a new one of those, on that many different accounts, every two weeks.
My experience with scientific programming is that it's mostly trying to solve large scale formulae. Most of those problems are implicitly parallel, and thus quite easy to distribute. You're also distributing to get your numbers crunched in the minimal possible time.
That's a whole different style of programming to the real time programing that is e.g. games code. Where you have to be fine grained enough to deal with real time user input. Your 'distributed' cycles are therefore quite a lot harder to parallelise, and you _have_ to design your program accordingly.
We're getting there, but it's still the case that you need to design what your program is doing around the idea that it will run parallel, rather than 'just let the compiler do it'.
Well, passengers are a little less bad, in that they can also be aware of traffic, and the fact that you need to pay attention to something else when the road situation changes. But mostly I agree, road fatalities are high enough that _anything_ that increases accident likelihood should be avoided, especially when it's as trivial to do so as saying 'no, you can't use your cell phone whilst driving'.
It's not the miles, as much as the hours:). 2 hours each way I consider a bit of a killer for a commute. Actually, anything over about 45 minutes I reckon is too much.
Well, between uninterruptible power, and air conditioning, datacentres are probably one of the highest 'power overhead' applications. There's a hell of a lot of 'waste' there, which you can design out, in some measure.
But yes, it's a priority application too - datacentres score as 'business critical' in most companies, so no matter how much it costs to run, it's cheaper than it 'not running'.
Part of the point of DC design is resiliency, and therefore you _do_ have to consider available services and supplies - like the local powergrid, and how screwed you'll be if it does hit the breaking point.
Virtualisation is a way of managing capacity and demand. It is not an either/or case with 'real iron', it's just a different way of considering the problem domain.
It's civil engineering, intersecting with 'real world IT'. Off the top of my head:
Power - redundancy, and resisiliency as much as 'just having enough'
Cooling - air conditioning is a BIG deal for a data centre - you need good air flow, and it probably doubles your electric bill.
Specialist equipment - datacentres are _mostly_ modular, based around 19" racks. But there's exceptions, such as stuff that is 'multi-rack' like tape silos.
Equipment accessibility - you'll need to add and remove servers, and possibly some really quite big and scary bits of big iron - IIRC A Symmetrix is 1.8 tonnes. You'll need a way to get that into a datacentre, which doesn't involve '10 big blokes' - spacing of your racks might not help
Putting new stuff in - a rack is 42U high. Right at the top of that rack, is going to require overhead lifting.
Cabling. Servers use a lot of cables. Some are for power, some are for networking, some are for serial terminals. You've got a mix of power cable, copper cables, fiber cables. They need to fit, they need to be possible to manipulate on the fly, and they need to not break the fibers when you lay them. You also need to be aware that a massive bundle of copper cables is not perfectly shielded, so you'll get crosstalk and intereference. And every machine in your datacentre will have 4 or more cables running into it, probably from different sources, so you need to 'deal' with that.
Operator access - if that server over there blows up, how to I get on the console to fix it. If I am on the console to fix it, how do you ensure I'm not twiddling that red button over there that I shouldn't be.
Remote/DR facilities - most datacenters have some concept of disaster planning - things as simple as 'farmer joe dug up the cable to the ISP' all the way to 'plane flew into primary data centre'. These things are relatively cheap and easy to deal with on day one, and utter nightmares to retroengineer onto a live data centre.
Expansion - power needs change, space needs change, technology changes and... well, demand for servers increases steadily. It's something to be considered that you will, sooner or later, run out of space, or have to swap out assets.
That's what springs to mind off the top of my head. There's probably a few more things. So yes, civil engineering, but with a splattering of IT contraints and difficulties.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not 'ruining your game' that someone takes your queen in chess. It actually _is_ the game.
EVE is the same. You are empowered - if you object to what someone's doing, and consider it 'ruining your fun' then you're entirely entitled to do something about it.
Some days you lose. EVE freedom includes the freedom to suck. Some people are better at things than you are. You can either learn from it, or cry about it. The former prosper and have a good game, the latter ... don't.
The hardest part to deal with is that some evenings you get nothing 'useful' done - the people you're fighting don't undock, or perhaps you're on the wrong side of a blockade, that's settled in for the day.
How about the guy who charges you a fortune to stay at Mayfair in Monopoloy?
To say EVE is about 'griefing' is ... well perhaps true. You win at others expense. You take 'their' ore, by mining it, you undercut them on the market. But really, the only challenge in a game, is from another player - no NPC can ever be able to exhibit the necessary level of intelligence, deviousness and strategic thinking when opposing you.
I've been playing for ... 3, 4 years now? I forget. But it's a while, and obviously I'm therefore biased. But I'm forever saddened by the number of people who play EVE, spend 6 weeks grinding missions, and then declaring it 'meh boring' and leave again. Yes, there's parts of EVE that are boring. But there's a whole lot of other stuff to do - anything you can think of, you can go and do. That's part of the problem with it - you don't ever get told what to do, beyond those basic missions, you just have to decide to go do it. EVE is about making your own fun, which doesn't suit everyone - if what you want to do is get told by an NPC to go kill 50 rats, frankly WOW does it better. If you want an open ended game, that's a single universe, and you can do whatever you want, provided you have the firepower to back up your will, then that's EVE. You're free to do whatever. You're free to lead, you're free to follow, and you're free to fail. Player vs. Player means you're climbing the ladder, and sometimes you're stepping on the shoulders of others to get a boost. Some will do so willingly, some will ... object.
It's not a game for everyone. Not everyone likes strategy games, not everyone likes winning at a cost of someone else losing. Not everyone like a game that requires you to think, plan and organise extensively - large scale fleet deployments in EVE can take significant amounts of effort. Or rather, significant amounts of effort if you want to win. It can also be necessary to abort an operation, having 'wasted' an evening of gaming, because fighting today you'll lose, because they're ready for you. Some will charge anyway, lose ships, and maybe have fun doing so. Others will not, and will go home, or do something else. This can be very frustrating, and does have an impact on morale - and morale is also important in EVE. It's a managable resource like anything else.
As said, I've played for ages, and still love it. I know others won't - some just won't like it, and others will come to the game thinking the 'wrong way' to get ahead. But I still get the shiver down my spine, and pumping adrenaline when engaging in a serious fight, and there's remarkably few games that still do that for me.
It's written on the currency maybe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust
http://www.maropeng.co.za/index.php/exhibition_guide/footprint/ implies we use 'around' 2.2 hectares per person for the typical American lifestyle. (Other sources quote number as
http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/theme_b/mod09/uncom09t05bod.htm has the mean as 1.8 hectares per person available.
http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.md.suspop.13Dec07.pdf - is a bit more of a scientific analysis, on a related point, but isn't looking at quite the same thing - conclusion is approximately the same though - the world cannot support the current population at the top level of lifestyle.
This may not be quite what I said, but ... distribution isn't the _only_ problem we (and by 'we' I mean, those who aren't currently enjoying the rather nice lifestyles) face.
I'll troll for better sources when I finish work, as I'm fairly sure I've seen this question before (and it'd be nice to have sources on hand)
Actually, last I checked there wasn't enough arable land to support the entire population of the world in the style that 'us in the first world countries' are used to.
Is that when you meet a pair of boots coming the other way?
But go back to the old diet, and you'll go back to the old weight, too.
This is the major reason why eating a 'proper' breakfast is good - it 'signals' that you've got food, and are ready to do a full day of 'stuff', and hey, yeah, lets use some of those stored fat reserves, it'll be ok because there's food on hand.
I don't actually care how fast my first half tank is diminishing, beyond estimating my long term fuel economy. I do care when I'm 100miles left though, as that's when I need to start thinking about topping up.
Just because policy is violated, doesn't mean there's necessarily any negative consequences. Copying confidential stuff to my laptop doesn't cause any problems until my laptop is lost/stolen.
Mass and energy are therefore interchangable, with a scaling factor - as it cools down, there is less energy and therefore less mass, and therefore less gravitational force.
No, really. Forget about 3001.
Indeed, there's certain cinema activities that it's positively a shame to have detracted from, simply because you ended up going to see a film you wanted to watch.
I work for an outsource, based as a financial institute. We have our 'work email' password. Our 'work remote access password'.
We have our standard login account password (which thankfully, is synced to the laptop encryption thingy). I also have two admin accounts for 'production', 3 for 'preproduction', and one for 'test'. There's also a few 'key' router/switch login/management accounts.
And we have a helpdesk system, and a separate change management system.
And because we're doing remote management, we're remote logging into servers.
All these passwords enforce a subtley different mix of 'strong' rules. They expire monthly, and give two weeks notice. Some of these administrative domains could be synchronized a bit better, but most could not for security reasons (you cannot access pre-prod from production, for example).
Guess what tends to happen with passwords? That's right. People use the same one, on every system. Some even scribble it down somewhere, because of the two weekly 'your password expires in 14 days' notification.
Now, once upon a time I used to use 'strong' passwords. Y'know, random-ish 8+ character strings of letter/numbers/symbols. Now I don't, because I cannot remotely keep track of a new one of those, on that many different accounts, every two weeks.
That's a whole different style of programming to the real time programing that is e.g. games code. Where you have to be fine grained enough to deal with real time user input. Your 'distributed' cycles are therefore quite a lot harder to parallelise, and you _have_ to design your program accordingly.
We're getting there, but it's still the case that you need to design what your program is doing around the idea that it will run parallel, rather than 'just let the compiler do it'.
Well, passengers are a little less bad, in that they can also be aware of traffic, and the fact that you need to pay attention to something else when the road situation changes. But mostly I agree, road fatalities are high enough that _anything_ that increases accident likelihood should be avoided, especially when it's as trivial to do so as saying 'no, you can't use your cell phone whilst driving'.
Y'know, things like driving on the wrong side of the road, that kind of thing.
If something's demonstrably unsafe, then you put in laws, and then the people who persist lose their license.
It's not the miles, as much as the hours :). 2 hours each way I consider a bit of a killer for a commute. Actually, anything over about 45 minutes I reckon is too much.
But yes, it's a priority application too - datacentres score as 'business critical' in most companies, so no matter how much it costs to run, it's cheaper than it 'not running'.
Part of the point of DC design is resiliency, and therefore you _do_ have to consider available services and supplies - like the local powergrid, and how screwed you'll be if it does hit the breaking point.
Virtualisation is a way of managing capacity and demand. It is not an either/or case with 'real iron', it's just a different way of considering the problem domain.
- Power - redundancy, and resisiliency as much as 'just having enough'
- Cooling - air conditioning is a BIG deal for a data centre - you need good air flow, and it probably doubles your electric bill.
- Specialist equipment - datacentres are _mostly_ modular, based around 19" racks. But there's exceptions, such as stuff that is 'multi-rack' like tape silos.
- Equipment accessibility - you'll need to add and remove servers, and possibly some really quite big and scary bits of big iron - IIRC A Symmetrix is 1.8 tonnes. You'll need a way to get that into a datacentre, which doesn't involve '10 big blokes' - spacing of your racks might not help
- Putting new stuff in - a rack is 42U high. Right at the top of that rack, is going to require overhead lifting.
- Cabling. Servers use a lot of cables. Some are for power, some are for networking, some are for serial terminals. You've got a mix of power cable, copper cables, fiber cables. They need to fit, they need to be possible to manipulate on the fly, and they need to not break the fibers when you lay them. You also need to be aware that a massive bundle of copper cables is not perfectly shielded, so you'll get crosstalk and intereference. And every machine in your datacentre will have 4 or more cables running into it, probably from different sources, so you need to 'deal' with that.
- Operator access - if that server over there blows up, how to I get on the console to fix it. If I am on the console to fix it, how do you ensure I'm not twiddling that red button over there that I shouldn't be.
- Remote/DR facilities - most datacenters have some concept of disaster planning - things as simple as 'farmer joe dug up the cable to the ISP' all the way to 'plane flew into primary data centre'. These things are relatively cheap and easy to deal with on day one, and utter nightmares to retroengineer onto a live data centre.
- Expansion - power needs change, space needs change, technology changes and
... well, demand for servers increases steadily. It's something to be considered that you will, sooner or later, run out of space, or have to swap out assets.
That's what springs to mind off the top of my head. There's probably a few more things. So yes, civil engineering, but with a splattering of IT contraints and difficulties.