It's all about the rules of the game. If the rules say you can pay cash to get virtual stuff, fine. If you don't like it, leave the game (as I did, EQ2).
if the Code of Conduct says buying gold is cheating (which it does for WoW), then its cheating.
This guy thought he was special...that the rules did not apply to him...
I think it's definitely a question of "horses for courses"
Haskell is superb for mathematical problems, partly because the syntax is very mathematical, partly because the compiler implementation is well optimised for that kind of problem. (I often wonder why it doesn't get more use for stuff like encryption). Completely Open Source, of course.
Python is wondrous for network-related stuff - its a real strength of the language - and also seems to get alot of use as a language for installations and mods.
Perl is the regular expression king, no question, and its also possible to write very economical (fast to type, fast to run) code. The Bash-vim-Perl combination is still the most God-like way to program.
There are so many great free languages and libraries out there, its a good time to be a geek.
I always say that a million bucks might not bring me happiness, but I am definitely prepared to give it a try.
In the end, however rich they are, everyone works on something - even if its managing their investments in the morning, and fixing the fences on their ranch in the afternoon.
I've got the older Treo 180 and am just as happy, again because you can install any Palm app you like. It plays a decent game of Go, lets me keep up with RSS feeds, email, newsgroups, blogging, I can even telnet to my Linux shell account.
I don't need much more technology at the mo.
I wonder whether it might also find an application in armored vehicles. To drop out of the back of a C130, a vehicle has to be 17 or 18 metric tonnes, whereas a typical main battle tank presently weighs in at 60 tonnes.
Uber-steel would make a significant contribution to lightening the load. That way our brave boys can drop out of planes to bring death, er, liberty to the evil-doers - and also avoid getting fragged by said evil-doers' RPG-7s.
Usually I'd say games look great now, you can look at the sky or out to sea. I'd say immersiveness needs more than that though: you have to feel you can interact with the world. Graphics help, but there is definitely more to it.
Its not so much AI as game design (though beyond a certain point its hard to tell those apart)
Total immersion is something the Massively Multiplayer online games promise (and strive for) but most never really deliver. In theory a big old world filled with people should take you away from the day to day, and put you in a "golden land of opportunity and adventure". In practice that never seems to happen.
One of the reason is the graphics. For a game to look good graphically, the sprites have to be very detailed and have a comprehensive set of animations. The problem is, this makes the game run slow and is very expensive to produce.
The alternative is to have simple graphics and have lots of stuff. But people get tired of looking at the same blocky or glowy items.
So you end up with great looking, empty worlds, or worlds filled with stuff, all of it ugly. My hope is that as graphics kind of "plateau" people will switch back to developing gameplay and worlds that people want to spend time in.
There are some businesses who say, obeying the law and keeping people safe is all business ethics should be about.
To me, though, great businesses are all about truth. They know the truth of their own capabilities, the truth of what their customers need, the truth of what works and what doesn't, and without bullshitting anyone, they just get on and do the business.
That's not to say you dont have marketers or lawyers or accountants: you need these in modern business. But as soon as you have marketers and lawyers battling over just how much to lie to the public, and accountants doing "creative accounting", you might as well shut up shop.
Same happened with Asherons Call 2, which pretty much killed off the franchise. They took a complex, content-rich game system from the first game and turned it into a fairly lame beat-em-up. Nice graphics, shame about almost everything else.
Well, I came into the game in the last two months, and found it to be alot of fun.
I guess they made a few mistakes, like putting unimplemented skills in the skills list, rather than doing what other games do and bringing them in later and charging for them. But it probably had more skills actually implemented than many other such games. The content was all there, but a little hard to find. Cool if you like that kind of thing, but not if you're the typical l335t gamer. Graphics were fine when I got there.
The thing about it was it wasnt put out by an huge, evil megacorp, but a small independent company. We need to get our heads around the fact that games are like movies or bands. Little indy games are cool, like little indy movies or unsigned bands that nobody has heard of. They are not going to be as slick as stuff from the big guys perhaps, but then you are not handing over a cheque to people who would sue you at the drop of a hat.
I am amazed that people who will have nothing to do with Microsoft or Sony on the PC, will own a Playstation or XBox. It's time we wised up.
There's something of "Gresham's Law" happening here, where bad coinage drives out good.
When the majority of users were altruistic, the sum was more than the parts. These days, there is so much crap flying around the net, the stuff you really want it for is becoming harder to get to. The more people connect, the worse it gets.
So, to get to the note from your long-lost friend, you have to wade through hundreds of spam messages. To find the great hobbyist website on, say, model aircraft, you have to search through a whole pile of commercial ones who will charge you for the priviledge of looking at their ads.
Well, the situation described is pretty common in many firms.
What I did in the same situation was:
1. Fix the physical security: get a clear desk policy up and running. As well as protecting you from intruders, it also means the impact of a fire will be much less.
2. Move all important files to the server (which will be backed up and has access controls).
3. Put power on passwords on all PCs, make sure they are good ones (if you need access in an emergency, there will be an administrator password held by the IT department): this means network hackers would have to get down with the hardware - they hate that.
4. For Portable PCs, deploy an encryption solution, since these are most likely to be stolen, and the only way to then prevent access would be encryption. PGP Disk is great.
5. Training: giving people a refresher which explains the risk and which shows them how and why to protect their own data will make all of the above measures more effective.
The first Asheron's Call suffered alot from the same effect. Free monthly content updates (not really free, but included in subscription cost) changed the game unrecognisably over a year or so, but didn't hit the news. They took the decision to release the Dark Majesty expansion pack, which got new people to come into the game, and had a free subscription month built in (which made it effectively free to existing players).
Personally, though, I think they should have stuck to the month on month updates: the game lost focus after the expansion pack for a long while, due to the resources needed to make/market it.
Sadly, it looks like F# was a research project: a proof-of-concept port of ML (OCaml) to.Net. Alas, functional programming is still waiting for its Larry Wall.
Re:Privacy implications are nill
on
Twist on DNA Privacy
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I often think that liberty comes from keeping the Police poor.
With limits on their resources, and given significant problems cross-referencing different pieces of data (there's no common identity number in the UK), they need a really good reason to infringe privacy.
I like MUDs/IRC as well as MMOGS, but the appeal is different. They always say the scenery is better on radio, and the same applies with a good IRC adventure: imagination creates a very compelling world. On the other hand an MMOG can be very immersive, and does seem to build stronger communities: it's more like going to a movie.
You pays your money and you takes your choice. Except you, um, don't pay any money for IRC;)
Lessig talks alot of sense on this issue. It's such a shame the arguments on this subject are, by their very nature, complex and involved. People yawn and look the other way, while the very means they use to communicate and develop ideas are sold out from under them.
Well, a firewall puts sticking plaster on the problem, but in fact the issue is that there is a vulnerability on the base system. As soon as the firewall goes down (equipment failure, software glitch, enemy action), the computer is open - to pop up messages and who knows what else.
Much better to remove the service or vulnerability that exposes you to the problem than put a firewall over it.
Look, no doubt the lawyer has a penis, right? Well, he's going to need extensive details of enlargement techniques, viagra, xxx porn.
Besides, none of the material he will get sent qualifies as spam, because he can opt out at any time. Many of these opportunities really are once in a lifetime...I'd hate to think he would miss out.
A product like, say, a movie DVD gives the buyer a number of benefits. One of these, the ability to watch the show in high quality on demand, comes with the digital file, and this file will always be copiable.
The physical commercial DVD offers a number of other benefits though. There are the sleeve notes, photographs, the idea that the item is part of a collection, or provides some kind of link to the people who made the show or its stars.
There will always be people who just want the digital file, but there will also always be others who want the other benefits. Just as in the same way that some people will drink water from the faucet whereas others buy branded bottled water.
Slashdot Mirror
This guy thought he was special...that the rules did not apply to him...
Haskell is superb for mathematical problems, partly because the syntax is very mathematical, partly because the compiler implementation is well optimised for that kind of problem. (I often wonder why it doesn't get more use for stuff like encryption). Completely Open Source, of course.
Python is wondrous for network-related stuff - its a real strength of the language - and also seems to get alot of use as a language for installations and mods.
Perl is the regular expression king, no question, and its also possible to write very economical (fast to type, fast to run) code. The Bash-vim-Perl combination is still the most God-like way to program.
There are so many great free languages and libraries out there, its a good time to be a geek.
I always say that a million bucks might not bring me happiness, but I am definitely prepared to give it a try. In the end, however rich they are, everyone works on something - even if its managing their investments in the morning, and fixing the fences on their ranch in the afternoon.
I've got the older Treo 180 and am just as happy, again because you can install any Palm app you like. It plays a decent game of Go, lets me keep up with RSS feeds, email, newsgroups, blogging, I can even telnet to my Linux shell account. I don't need much more technology at the mo.
...or stay at home and make soap: it's the yardstick of civilisation.
Uber-steel would make a significant contribution to lightening the load. That way our brave boys can drop out of planes to bring death, er, liberty to the evil-doers - and also avoid getting fragged by said evil-doers' RPG-7s.
Fantastic idea - oh, and don't forget the smart remarks they make when they frag someone.
A la the original game,"You threw the bomb out into the street? There are lots of people out there", "Yeah, but nobody we know".
Its not so much AI as game design (though beyond a certain point its hard to tell those apart)
One of the reason is the graphics. For a game to look good graphically, the sprites have to be very detailed and have a comprehensive set of animations. The problem is, this makes the game run slow and is very expensive to produce.
The alternative is to have simple graphics and have lots of stuff. But people get tired of looking at the same blocky or glowy items.
So you end up with great looking, empty worlds, or worlds filled with stuff, all of it ugly. My hope is that as graphics kind of "plateau" people will switch back to developing gameplay and worlds that people want to spend time in.
There are some businesses who say, obeying the law and keeping people safe is all business ethics should be about.
To me, though, great businesses are all about truth. They know the truth of their own capabilities, the truth of what their customers need, the truth of what works and what doesn't, and without bullshitting anyone, they just get on and do the business.
That's not to say you dont have marketers or lawyers or accountants: you need these in modern business. But as soon as you have marketers and lawyers battling over just how much to lie to the public, and accountants doing "creative accounting", you might as well shut up shop.
Perhaps we get the games we deserve.
I guess they made a few mistakes, like putting unimplemented skills in the skills list, rather than doing what other games do and bringing them in later and charging for them. But it probably had more skills actually implemented than many other such games. The content was all there, but a little hard to find. Cool if you like that kind of thing, but not if you're the typical l335t gamer. Graphics were fine when I got there.
The thing about it was it wasnt put out by an huge, evil megacorp, but a small independent company. We need to get our heads around the fact that games are like movies or bands. Little indy games are cool, like little indy movies or unsigned bands that nobody has heard of. They are not going to be as slick as stuff from the big guys perhaps, but then you are not handing over a cheque to people who would sue you at the drop of a hat.
I am amazed that people who will have nothing to do with Microsoft or Sony on the PC, will own a Playstation or XBox. It's time we wised up.
When the majority of users were altruistic, the sum was more than the parts. These days, there is so much crap flying around the net, the stuff you really want it for is becoming harder to get to. The more people connect, the worse it gets.
So, to get to the note from your long-lost friend, you have to wade through hundreds of spam messages. To find the great hobbyist website on, say, model aircraft, you have to search through a whole pile of commercial ones who will charge you for the priviledge of looking at their ads.
It's a real problem.
What I did in the same situation was:
1. Fix the physical security: get a clear desk policy up and running. As well as protecting you from intruders, it also means the impact of a fire will be much less.
2. Move all important files to the server (which will be backed up and has access controls).
3. Put power on passwords on all PCs, make sure they are good ones (if you need access in an emergency, there will be an administrator password held by the IT department): this means network hackers would have to get down with the hardware - they hate that.
4. For Portable PCs, deploy an encryption solution, since these are most likely to be stolen, and the only way to then prevent access would be encryption. PGP Disk is great.
5. Training: giving people a refresher which explains the risk and which shows them how and why to protect their own data will make all of the above measures more effective.
Personally, though, I think they should have stuck to the month on month updates: the game lost focus after the expansion pack for a long while, due to the resources needed to make/market it.
With limits on their resources, and given significant problems cross-referencing different pieces of data (there's no common identity number in the UK), they need a really good reason to infringe privacy.
You pays your money and you takes your choice. Except you, um, don't pay any money for IRC ;)
Well, a firewall puts sticking plaster on the problem, but in fact the issue is that there is a vulnerability on the base system. As soon as the firewall goes down (equipment failure, software glitch, enemy action), the computer is open - to pop up messages and who knows what else.
Much better to remove the service or vulnerability that exposes you to the problem than put a firewall over it.
I think you'll find that though he can give his heart to Jesus, his ass belongs to the Corps.
Look, no doubt the lawyer has a penis, right? Well, he's going to need extensive details of enlargement techniques, viagra, xxx porn.
Besides, none of the material he will get sent qualifies as spam, because he can opt out at any time. Many of these opportunities really are once in a lifetime...I'd hate to think he would miss out.
A product like, say, a movie DVD gives the buyer a number of benefits. One of these, the ability to watch the show in high quality on demand, comes with the digital file, and this file will always be copiable.
The physical commercial DVD offers a number of other benefits though. There are the sleeve notes, photographs, the idea that the item is part of a collection, or provides some kind of link to the people who made the show or its stars.
There will always be people who just want the digital file, but there will also always be others who want the other benefits. Just as in the same way that some people will drink water from the faucet whereas others buy branded bottled water.
It is my firm belief that Kernighan can heal at a distance and that flowers spring up wherever he walks. Touch the screen and feel his power.