A word many forgot. Value. If there is value in buying a game or service then people will buy it. I didn't buy Batman A.C. until it was $10 bucks. Why? That's what it is worth to me. $60? No game is worth that to me. There isn't any value in it. It's that simple. I played Eve Online and paid $15 a month for it, it was worth it because the service they provided (uptime, patches, content, etc.) was worth it. It had value.
"Why pay for it when you can copy it?" Because it isn't worth my time. I go to Steam, see if there is a deal for something $10 and if there is I buy it. IT's not worth my time running around digging through spyware infested Torrent sites to sit around for 6 hours while I try to download it only to find the last 5% of it is only being seeded by 2 peers. I get patches, content, dlc, multiplayer, etc through steam and what is even better, I don't have to do a damn thing beyond click Install and maybe, maybe once in a while fill in some info.
Gates was right, the future is Software as a Service because people don't want to pay for software but they will pay for service. Much like people eating at a Denny's\Embers: you aren't there for the food. Everything there you could make yourself (copy). Rather, you are there for the service. You want someone else to cook it and hopefully someone competent and cute to bring you said food.
Here let me hit my time machine button for a sec.... yep... just as I thought. Everyone said the same damn thing about Microsoft 15 years ago. The same thing about Oracle 10 years ago. The same thing was said for just about every proprietary system and vendor over the years.
Every dumb ass that bought that EA shit stain deserved every second of their queue times. Lets see: Gutted map sizes with Regions 1/4 the size of Sim City 4 (+1 step backwards) plus actual cities smaller then Sim City 1 (+4 steps backwards) along with gutted gameplay (no underground utility design, no subways... +3 steps backwards) along with always online requirement and DRM (+10 steps backwards), pre-order nonsense (imagine paying up front at a restaurant for you food.... +2 steps backwards) in exchange for Curved Roads (-1 step backwards... wait, nm Sim City 4 had mods that added those +0 then) and no modding support (+10 steps backwards).
It's almost like EA was jealous that Monte Cristo made a shittier Sim City game then Societies (Cities XL) and wanted to 1-up Monte Cristo in the fucking horrible Sim Socialist genre so they made this "Sim City" which is more a Cities XL 2 then anything else. It's just missing that magical "No, the state has decreed that only Executives can purchase these homes. Be gone peasant and free market subscriber!"
Try Lexis Nexis and law libraries and actually read the case law and state laws rather then Google. I'll take actual case law and statutes rather then the random opinions of bloggers and journalists who skimmed a few cases for exceptions.
No it's natural selection and adaptation. Evolution requires going from a lower to higher order of life. Some reptiles evolved into birds. Some ancient fish evolved into a whale. A bird getting a different beak is adaptation. When the mosquito gets a new organ, an extra set of legs, then we'll call it evolution. When a cook develops a tolerance to spicy food, he hasn't evolved...
Why? If your mean dog bites an intruder in all 50 states you are liable for assault, and your dog will be put down and you will, not might, be liable for the intruder's injuries. I can't find a single state in the USA, that has ANY protection for home owner's if their pet assaults an intruder. (At least that I could find in 2 hours of searching.)
Gun control advocates love to indicate the 'logic' that less guns correlates to less homicides. But Logic, also requires that negation hold true. More guns = more homicides... right? However when gun sales have surged in the last 10 years, increasing nearly 40% in the last 10 years, homicides, especially gun related homicides, are down. Funny how "a clear correlation between guns and homicides" breaks down when applying basic statistics..0003% of guns used in homicides... clearly a problem with guns, if and only if you lust after leaving people defenseless and powerless. Of course if less gun = less homicides then more guns = more homicides which... well isn't true.
Wait it isn't linear... wait there are more regressors... wait there are more excuses and attempts to over-fit a model... Did you know that the price of gasoline correlates to the number of homicides committed between the hours of 9 PM CST and 11:41 PM CST. Of course the question is how strong the correlation is. Good lore you would be surprised what you can make correlate to something.
The USA doesn't have a gun problem, it has a gang violence problem. You take out gang related homicides and guess what, were are nearly identical to Canada, England, France, Iceland, Norway, Spain, Germany, and the rest of the top 30 peaceful nations per 100,000. The problem is inner city poverty, broken homes, and poor childhood development which is the American cocktail for gangs.
Keep your head in the sand and keep ignoring the gang violence problem. Yeah ban the last line of defense citizens have against those lawless gangs...
The plastics you'd use in a 3D printer aren't going to work all that well compared to the plastics they use for example in Glocks. Not to mention you'd still need to machine the trigger assembly, magazine well, safety assembly, fire select, etc.
Would be nice to be able to make custom grips and stocks but that plastic crap (relatively speaking) the 3D printers use isn't worth it. We tried making a test Glock grip (solid even, no magazine well) and a 4 lb weight. Snapped the grip in half easily. Perhaps with some heat treatment or additional additives in the plastic (baking it perhaps) might make the plastic work better but right now, it's too... brittle... I guess is the best term. The problem is the way the printer prints, the bond isn't very good between layers base when force is applied perpendicular to the printing plane. Our test grips all break along the plane of the printing. We did another test where we printed out a grip with an approximate magazine well and fitted in a hollow metal slip in there to see if that would shore it up. It just cracks around the metal slip. I think baking it might help with the layers bonding together better but for those of us hoping to get custom grips, stocks, ammo and magazine containers etc are going to have to wait a bit longer. We even tried rotating the print so the plane was rotate 90 degrees and out test pendulum just kept snapping the grip either to the left or right depending on where it hit.
Once someone figures out how to do a fluro polymer type plastic in a 3D printer then we can get some real utility printing done.
MMOs built an industry on Software as a Subscription. Now they move to the F2P model, it still is at a fundamental level Software as a Service\Subscription.
The problem is none of the mods are doing any transaction logging needed for catching cheaters. You can easily handles 200k players in 1 location when there are no checks against movement speeds, positional coherence, etc. This is a non-story at best.
Hey lets put this in perspective, remember all the people that were murdered by Christian extremists when Mel Gibson made that Passion of the Christ film? And lets not forget all those that died when the Last Temptation of Christ was released. Don't forget those murdered in the name of Christ when Andrew Loyd Webber released Jesus Christ Superstars and certainly have a moment of peace for those murdered every time South Park, Family Guy, The Simpsons, and Comic Artists featured Jesus. I mean don't you remember the "Dogma" massacres as a result of of that film? When Penny Arcade featured Jesus as Metal don't you remember the number of attempts on their lives?
It's a religion of peace people, lets keep this in perspective. Don't let a small, vocal, organized, group of extremists pain a picture of a religion is evil. I am certain those responsible will be arrested by their fellow Muslims and prosecuted for murder by their fellow Muslims.
Now the question you have to ask, "am I being sarcastic, or playing this comment straight?"
No real space battles would happen at long distances. It would be too easy for counter-measures to be deployed at those ranges. At 1000 miles firing two missiles at opposing ships the counter-measures (either opposing missiles, flack, etc) would have several minutes to intercept and make adjustments. At a million, they'd have hours of making minor ( 1 degree) adjustments to intercept. The exception to this rule would be if laser weapons are involved. With conventional ballistics, not really an option for long range engagement. There is a funny but oddly realistic lecture in Mass Effect about shooting a projectile in space that also explains why long range engagements are not a real option. We're not even getting into gravity, plotting an accurate shot over a milion miles would have to account for every object of significant mass between the origin and target. Impractical at best.
When you were a child you played cowboy and indians or cops and robbers. Eventually the argument broke out "I shot you\no you didn't" and thus the first rules of RPGs was born. The actions were abstracted into semi-random determinations. You got two dice out and the highest roll wins.
Once that was done, like any game objectives were added. Rules were added to support resolving objects. RPGs progressed.
Then we needed a narrative to tie together the objectives and quests were born.
"If we cannot own people, we'll own their thoughts and charge them for the privilege of thinking." "The chains of bondage can be forged from more then iron and steel." "Imagination is a dangerous force that allows people to dream of a better world without us." "The most important factor in tyranny is to ensure a high cost of challenging it."
So this guy engages in espionage, breaks international protocol and violates the confidentiality of the Diplomatic Bag, and people actually expect governments to let him go free? Wikileaks has already cost lives by not consistently redacting names in their publications. As far as I am concerned a rape charges is the least of his worries.
"...the answer to a personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators..."
Bluntly now they have an email and an sample of your secret question. Given a question of "What is your Mother's Maiden Name" then script kiddies now have your email address and one of your potential secret question responses. WTF wouldn't you hash the answers....
They now have an email address, your phone number, a secret answer response. Christ all might Activision.... way to fuck up. Now ever script kiddie with that data dump is going to spam every major site with those email address and now with at least one potential secret question response... just wow...
...did not have a reasonable likelihood of succeeding, the court may award the recovery of full costs to the prevailing party, including reasonable attorney’s fees, other than the United States...
All this bill does is give judges the ability to required the loser to pay up. The legal definition and use of the word MAY is very important. MAY gives the judge discretion, SHALL does not. IANALBMWIAPL and she says this effectively does nothing other then give a judge the same ability to require one side to pay up without having to dismiss the case with prejudice. Nothing more then giving the judge more tools to punish trolls.
Slashdot Mirror
A word many forgot. Value. If there is value in buying a game or service then people will buy it. I didn't buy Batman A.C. until it was $10 bucks. Why? That's what it is worth to me. $60? No game is worth that to me. There isn't any value in it. It's that simple. I played Eve Online and paid $15 a month for it, it was worth it because the service they provided (uptime, patches, content, etc.) was worth it. It had value.
"Why pay for it when you can copy it?" Because it isn't worth my time. I go to Steam, see if there is a deal for something $10 and if there is I buy it. IT's not worth my time running around digging through spyware infested Torrent sites to sit around for 6 hours while I try to download it only to find the last 5% of it is only being seeded by 2 peers. I get patches, content, dlc, multiplayer, etc through steam and what is even better, I don't have to do a damn thing beyond click Install and maybe, maybe once in a while fill in some info.
Gates was right, the future is Software as a Service because people don't want to pay for software but they will pay for service. Much like people eating at a Denny's\Embers: you aren't there for the food. Everything there you could make yourself (copy). Rather, you are there for the service. You want someone else to cook it and hopefully someone competent and cute to bring you said food.
Here let me hit my time machine button for a sec.... yep... just as I thought. Everyone said the same damn thing about Microsoft 15 years ago. The same thing about Oracle 10 years ago. The same thing was said for just about every proprietary system and vendor over the years.
"How dare you disagree with me and not like my way of life. YOU MUST BE SILENCED IN THE NAME OF TOLERANCE!!!!", typical.
Every dumb ass that bought that EA shit stain deserved every second of their queue times. Lets see: Gutted map sizes with Regions 1/4 the size of Sim City 4 (+1 step backwards) plus actual cities smaller then Sim City 1 (+4 steps backwards) along with gutted gameplay (no underground utility design, no subways... +3 steps backwards) along with always online requirement and DRM (+10 steps backwards), pre-order nonsense (imagine paying up front at a restaurant for you food.... +2 steps backwards) in exchange for Curved Roads (-1 step backwards... wait, nm Sim City 4 had mods that added those +0 then) and no modding support (+10 steps backwards).
It's almost like EA was jealous that Monte Cristo made a shittier Sim City game then Societies (Cities XL) and wanted to 1-up Monte Cristo in the fucking horrible Sim Socialist genre so they made this "Sim City" which is more a Cities XL 2 then anything else. It's just missing that magical "No, the state has decreed that only Executives can purchase these homes. Be gone peasant and free market subscriber!"
Try Lexis Nexis and law libraries and actually read the case law and state laws rather then Google. I'll take actual case law and statutes rather then the random opinions of bloggers and journalists who skimmed a few cases for exceptions.
No it's natural selection and adaptation. Evolution requires going from a lower to higher order of life. Some reptiles evolved into birds. Some ancient fish evolved into a whale. A bird getting a different beak is adaptation. When the mosquito gets a new organ, an extra set of legs, then we'll call it evolution. When a cook develops a tolerance to spicy food, he hasn't evolved...
Why? If your mean dog bites an intruder in all 50 states you are liable for assault, and your dog will be put down and you will, not might, be liable for the intruder's injuries. I can't find a single state in the USA, that has ANY protection for home owner's if their pet assaults an intruder. (At least that I could find in 2 hours of searching.)
It isn't AD&D if you aren't rolling THAC0. 2nd Ed FTW!
Gun control advocates love to indicate the 'logic' that less guns correlates to less homicides. But Logic, also requires that negation hold true. More guns = more homicides... right? However when gun sales have surged in the last 10 years, increasing nearly 40% in the last 10 years, homicides, especially gun related homicides, are down. Funny how "a clear correlation between guns and homicides" breaks down when applying basic statistics. .0003% of guns used in homicides... clearly a problem with guns, if and only if you lust after leaving people defenseless and powerless. Of course if less gun = less homicides then more guns = more homicides which... well isn't true.
Wait it isn't linear... wait there are more regressors... wait there are more excuses and attempts to over-fit a model... Did you know that the price of gasoline correlates to the number of homicides committed between the hours of 9 PM CST and 11:41 PM CST. Of course the question is how strong the correlation is. Good lore you would be surprised what you can make correlate to something.
The USA doesn't have a gun problem, it has a gang violence problem. You take out gang related homicides and guess what, were are nearly identical to Canada, England, France, Iceland, Norway, Spain, Germany, and the rest of the top 30 peaceful nations per 100,000. The problem is inner city poverty, broken homes, and poor childhood development which is the American cocktail for gangs.
Keep your head in the sand and keep ignoring the gang violence problem. Yeah ban the last line of defense citizens have against those lawless gangs...
I saw John Carpenter's "The Thing" and we all know how this will end with a half-assed prequel!!
He donated to the wrong party.
The plastics you'd use in a 3D printer aren't going to work all that well compared to the plastics they use for example in Glocks. Not to mention you'd still need to machine the trigger assembly, magazine well, safety assembly, fire select, etc.
Would be nice to be able to make custom grips and stocks but that plastic crap (relatively speaking) the 3D printers use isn't worth it. We tried making a test Glock grip (solid even, no magazine well) and a 4 lb weight. Snapped the grip in half easily. Perhaps with some heat treatment or additional additives in the plastic (baking it perhaps) might make the plastic work better but right now, it's too ... brittle... I guess is the best term. The problem is the way the printer prints, the bond isn't very good between layers base when force is applied perpendicular to the printing plane. Our test grips all break along the plane of the printing. We did another test where we printed out a grip with an approximate magazine well and fitted in a hollow metal slip in there to see if that would shore it up. It just cracks around the metal slip. I think baking it might help with the layers bonding together better but for those of us hoping to get custom grips, stocks, ammo and magazine containers etc are going to have to wait a bit longer. We even tried rotating the print so the plane was rotate 90 degrees and out test pendulum just kept snapping the grip either to the left or right depending on where it hit.
Once someone figures out how to do a fluro polymer type plastic in a 3D printer then we can get some real utility printing done.
I think you have confused profitable with greed again...
He committed acts that clearly fall in the category of espionage including violating the Diplomatic Bag. I'm surprised he's still alive.
MMOs built an industry on Software as a Subscription. Now they move to the F2P model, it still is at a fundamental level Software as a Service\Subscription.
Sshhh! We're trying to push lifestyles and agendas here people, thinking is not allowed.
The problem is none of the mods are doing any transaction logging needed for catching cheaters. You can easily handles 200k players in 1 location when there are no checks against movement speeds, positional coherence, etc. This is a non-story at best.
Hey lets put this in perspective, remember all the people that were murdered by Christian extremists when Mel Gibson made that Passion of the Christ film? And lets not forget all those that died when the Last Temptation of Christ was released. Don't forget those murdered in the name of Christ when Andrew Loyd Webber released Jesus Christ Superstars and certainly have a moment of peace for those murdered every time South Park, Family Guy, The Simpsons, and Comic Artists featured Jesus. I mean don't you remember the "Dogma" massacres as a result of of that film? When Penny Arcade featured Jesus as Metal don't you remember the number of attempts on their lives?
It's a religion of peace people, lets keep this in perspective. Don't let a small, vocal, organized, group of extremists pain a picture of a religion is evil. I am certain those responsible will be arrested by their fellow Muslims and prosecuted for murder by their fellow Muslims.
Now the question you have to ask, "am I being sarcastic, or playing this comment straight?"
No real space battles would happen at long distances. It would be too easy for counter-measures to be deployed at those ranges. At 1000 miles firing two missiles at opposing ships the counter-measures (either opposing missiles, flack, etc) would have several minutes to intercept and make adjustments. At a million, they'd have hours of making minor ( 1 degree) adjustments to intercept. The exception to this rule would be if laser weapons are involved. With conventional ballistics, not really an option for long range engagement. There is a funny but oddly realistic lecture in Mass Effect about shooting a projectile in space that also explains why long range engagements are not a real option. We're not even getting into gravity, plotting an accurate shot over a milion miles would have to account for every object of significant mass between the origin and target. Impractical at best.
When you were a child you played cowboy and indians or cops and robbers. Eventually the argument broke out "I shot you\no you didn't" and thus the first rules of RPGs was born. The actions were abstracted into semi-random determinations. You got two dice out and the highest roll wins.
Once that was done, like any game objectives were added. Rules were added to support resolving objects. RPGs progressed.
Then we needed a narrative to tie together the objectives and quests were born.
The rest is refinement to those basic cores.
Intellectual Sharecropping
"If we cannot own people, we'll own their thoughts and charge them for the privilege of thinking."
"The chains of bondage can be forged from more then iron and steel."
"Imagination is a dangerous force that allows people to dream of a better world without us."
"The most important factor in tyranny is to ensure a high cost of challenging it."
So this guy engages in espionage, breaks international protocol and violates the confidentiality of the Diplomatic Bag, and people actually expect governments to let him go free? Wikileaks has already cost lives by not consistently redacting names in their publications. As far as I am concerned a rape charges is the least of his worries.
" insane-right-wing Ayn Rand ideologue" and where did that come from? Why exactly is he mentally disturbed?
"...the answer to a personal security question, and information relating to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators..."
Bluntly now they have an email and an sample of your secret question. Given a question of "What is your Mother's Maiden Name" then script kiddies now have your email address and one of your potential secret question responses. WTF wouldn't you hash the answers....
They now have an email address, your phone number, a secret answer response. Christ all might Activision.... way to fuck up. Now ever script kiddie with that data dump is going to spam every major site with those email address and now with at least one potential secret question response... just wow...
...did not have a reasonable likelihood of succeeding, the court may award the recovery of full costs to the prevailing party, including reasonable attorney’s fees, other than the United States...
All this bill does is give judges the ability to required the loser to pay up. The legal definition and use of the word MAY is very important. MAY gives the judge discretion, SHALL does not. IANALBMWIAPL and she says this effectively does nothing other then give a judge the same ability to require one side to pay up without having to dismiss the case with prejudice. Nothing more then giving the judge more tools to punish trolls.