Oh, no question that some government actions are the problems, not the solutions, and others are poor solutions to trivial or non-governmental problems. I'm just saying that rhetoric going as far as "No Government" being the best state, or that government has never had a solution to public problems is inherently unsound. There's a definite (albeit much smaller) level of government that I believe is the best state, and that some aspects need to be larger than just local concerns and local implementation (e.g. water allocation along major rivers, interstate infrastructure, pollution regulation, coordination of law enforcement, possibly some public research). Still, nothing much beyond the Romans there.
No problem in the history of humanity has ever been solved by the hand of government.
Except sanitation, environmental regulation, basic infrastructure... all those basic things the government seems to be quite capable of managing. The government of Rome built roads, solving problems with transportation. Also aqueducts and fountains. Government, the basic public entity solving basic public problems.
Those poor also are their gardeners and cooks and golf caddies and shoe polishers and so on, and at some point, those sick people will enter their lives in some fashion. Worse, some of those poor won't die -- they've been living in less hygienic conditions for so long their immune systems might just be capable of trucking right along, turning them into carriers. If you don't manage the disease properly, it will certainly spread right into the 0.1%'s lives and due to their rarefied life, the chances of such a person having an immune system capable of fighting off such a disease is going to be low. The plan has to either be "Be proactive and treat the sick," or "Be proactive and shoot them, then burn the bodies." "Do nothing" is the only bad option (from their supposedly callous perspective where the above "Do nothing and let them die" plan might be considered a good plan).
Currently just about every one of our southern states is racing toward third world status just as fast as they can
Is that why all the jobs are moving here? Is that why we're getting all the business investment in new factories?Is that why Texas is the number one state in business growth? Is that why Apple just expanded in Texas? Is that why Airbus is building a factory to produce A319 airliners in Alabama? Is that why Austal is building Littoral Combat Ships there for the Navy? Or why Thyssenkrupp is building a steel plant there? Have you noticed all of the auto plant construction in the South in the past two decades? Ever been to the huge shipyards in Mississippi? The aircraft plants in Georgia? The South is racing towards "Third World Status"? Try California. You know, the progressive model for America that's 3 billion in the hole, but is racing ahead to build a bullet train to nowhere at a commitment of $100 billion. The same California where jobs and people are leaving at a steady clip. You keep your progressive paradise. We'll keep taking the jobs, thanks.
Yes, yes it is. Getting FoxConn to move in because you've dropped your regulations below China's is pretty much the definition of regressive. I know it's hard to remember, but Nixon, a staunch conservative, enacted the EPA. Stripping it of power and allowing wanton destruction of the environment in the name of getting "more jobs", along with removing any concept of worker or consumer protections, will get you business, it's true... until the area is stripped bare, everyone is in severe poverty while working (and then completely destitute when they're fired under at-will clauses) and therefore unable to afford, well, anything, they're all sick from the pollution in the air and water (and therefore costing the company more to keep around as productivity drops), and then some other government gives the corporate CEO a better blow job, and you end up like Detroit. Do you want to be the next Detroit?
For your interpretation, it requires an additional comma. That is an enumerated list of 2 elements, not 3: 1) HOTS, 2) critical thinking and similar programs. If you have only 2 elements, then the conditional portion could apply to each element. However, I've as the "critical thinking" lacks the extra capitalization, I'm inclined to believe it cannot be considered a specific re-labeled OBE program. The better reading it as an enumerated list of 3 elements: 1) HOTS, 2) critical thinking, 3) similar programs that are re-labeled OBE. When there is an omitted second comma of a multi-element list, all sections following the "and" apply only to the final element. However, I'm willing to allow that they're not intelligent enough to know that (it's pretty esoteric as it is and grammar has been evolving on that point because so few people know how to use it properly - and for a living language, current usage is what matters no matter how far off it is from the original rule sets), so that leaves this as open to interpretation, except... there's one more part of the statement that clarifies things.
See, you skipped over the part that matters: the reasoning: "because it challenges fixed beliefs". In order to have critical thinking, you have to challenge fixed beliefs. Therefore, the second interpretation, where critical thinking is to be opposed directly and in and of itself, is the correct one. They have given you the clues right there to work it out. They did not say "because OBE and derivative programs have been proven ineffective", which would have lent support to your version. No, they directly attacked critical thinking and logical reasoning as the evil which must be opposed, and also mentioned two specific programs on the side.
I'm sorry, was linking to their own platform not going close enough to the source? They oppose programs that might challenge beliefs. That is the core of critical thinking. So yes, they want to get rid of critical thinking. It's right there, in their own words. It's not "we oppose this specific program, because it doesn't work." It's "we oppose this program, and any that teach similar skills, because it might work, and we're scared of our children being able to do that."
While I'm amazed that the current administration has as much support as it does, especially considering how off-message it has gotten, I'm even more amazed that the Republican party has any support at all, given that their message is literally "We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority"
Yes, let's get rid of critical thinking! That'll help! Wouldn't want any kids getting the idea they're supposed to evaluate and judge any beliefs they might hold for the possibility they could be faulty, or examine the bullshit the media is trying to feed them...
So if they stay on-message, they're terrible, and when they go off-message, they're doing pretty much what the current administration is doing anyway. There's no chance of a win on that side. I'm really hoping for a Third-Party revolution of some sort, but I don't think it'll ever get that far. The corporate election machine is too good at what they do.
Ok, since you missed the point... what makes your brain so special? What causes sentience to exist there, but not in any other chemical or physical reaction? Here, let me break it down further for you:
If you understand logic gates, how an ALU works, and how to program a computer using a low lwvel language like assembly, you know that computers aren't sentient.
Until you understand how neurons work, and how learning works, you can't know whether computers are or are not sentient. And if you do know those things, there's millions of dollars waiting for you to publish your findings.
Anyway, how does the randomness that we see, such as nuclear decay, actually happen? Generating random numbers from a computer is impossible, and the current idea that the universe is deterministic with random elements seems a little contradictory to me.
And realistically, employers lack the ability to determine upfront whether you're a quick learner or not. If you're looking for a Python programmer and you have a hundred resumes that say "Python", why would you solicit a hundred more that don't? The prior experience criteria is a filter that saves everyone time...
The problem comes when you get 100,000 resumes that say "Python" on them, so HR ups the requirement to something well beyond what's reasonable or even possible, rather than requesting X years Python and Y years related experience, or just Z years of related experience. During one of the bust phases, I remember seeing positions for programmers requiring more years of Java experience than the language had existed. The only people that could apply, according to the requirements listed, were required to be liars.
None of your argument affects those who bought the game for the multiplayer experience.
Except you'd still have LAN play, and Local Direct-Connect Servers. Also, if you happen to still have an old copy of BNetD around, you might be able to use that to play with just your friends. I can have full use of the multiplayer game experience with Diablo 2 and never touch Blizzard's servers. I can create an off-line character and I believe I can use it on the "Open Battle.Net" when the servers are back up. So I disagree -- I think most of my argument also applies to those who bought the game for a multiplayer (albeit non-anonymous/public multiplayer) experience. If you want to play multi, but with friends, it applies fully. If you want to meet new people, then (and only then) do you have a point (which could be mitigated by alternative meeting systems, such as a forum).
Most people wanted to play solo anyway, but couldn't even do that due to the inadequate server capacity.
Citation needed here.
I'll admit, my use of "most" probably would require a citation. I'll scale it back to this: I have talked to a couple hundred people at various gaming events that all played Diablo 2, and about 10 in total ever played online in a public game. They would all have been perfectly well served by LAN-play, and more than half hadn't even bothered with that -- even when available, they often preferred to play on their own, so they could go at their own pace and not feel either rushed, or feel like they were being slowed down to someone else's speed. These are players that play lots of other games multiplayer, including several that played various MMORPGs, including those that came out at about the same time as Diablo 2. Most treated D2 as a solo game, and IIRC most of that half that had never bothered with LAN play also never played beyond the Normal Mode. They played it to play it through once -- no-grinding, no-trading, no "end-game". Kill all the bosses once, done forever.
Of those people I have talked to since Diablo 3 was announced, I believe only 1 has expressed any interest in public games, and some have said they'll play with a group of friends. Most said they'd play through at least once solo (most of them for the first run, so they could enjoy the story with no spoilers). All of them have said they would play solo at some point.
Only Blizzard would have actual numbers, and I doubt anyone will ever see those outside the company, but knowing that Diablo 2 was selling well enough to regularly make the Top-10 sales lists for a decade, the online community was comparatively very small and very static for it (and I will note that of all the people I have talked to over the years, only the people who played public matches were also part of that community -- most didn't even know it existed, and didn't really care). I'm confidant for Diablo 2, the majority of sold copies to unique individuals (i.e. only counting the people who were banned multiple times for duping and re-purchased copies to get a new un-banned CDKey once) never saw Closed Battle.Net (Blizzard-stored characters) play. From that experience, I'd be willing to argue my point is likely true, but I cannot cite anything on it. Just as I suspect you cannot cite anything against it.
You are actually the first person I have ever encountered that would have skipped Day 1 play if multi-player was unavailable. Feel honored, I suppose. You might actually be a unique snowflake. If nothing else, you're the 0.1%.
Why specifically do you think it wouldn't be technically difficult? MMO servers can require multiple blades just to run at idle (0 population) due to how they're engineered. I admit, there's no particular reason the D3 servers should be over-engineered to the degree that a real MMO is -- but if they inherited any of the bloated spaghetti code that WoW uses, there's a decent chance it simply wouldn't run effectively on consumer-level hardware without a significant optimization pass for single-instance-only usage, the same way you can't strip down a 747 easily to be a single-passenger road vehicle.
Depending on the choices they made during the server creation, creating a server that could be run on consumer-level hardware while also running the client may not be simple. The over-engineered robust elements that allow it to handle millions of clients may not scale down well to have just a single instance running. I will agree it was a poor choice when they made it, but it may not be such an easy path as "strip out AH and separate achievements: Done" to correct it now. It may require a lot of stripping down how the various servers run.
quote>The game has some features (e.g. you can play and complete the game alone and never come into contact with another player) that keep it from being a full-fledged MMO in my mind, but it is very, very close.
What keeps it from being a MMO is the lack of that first "M", "Massively". You can form a party just as large as Diablo 2. There isn't even a glorified 3D chat room like Guild Wars before you go into your instance. It's no more a MMO than Diablo 2 was, and has no more need for the always-online component than Diablo 2 did. The auction house automates Battle.net trading, and nothing more. Seamless drop-in/drop-out co-op play already existed both with and without the Always-Online component of Diablo 2's Battle.net and LAN-play options. The "sheer number of players causing technical hurdles" is entirely because of their choice not to include a local-mode. It's a hurdle they put up for themselves when they already knew exactly how to make a game system that bypassed it.
Some people don't like multiplayer games, and I get that, but it does frustrate me when people rage about features that are peripheral to the game-as-designed.
Just as it frustrates me that the game-as-designed doesn't require an always-online connection, only the peripheral features do, and it could be argued that the game-as-designed would be better without many of those peripheral features because of that. Specifically, that would enable an ability to play offline or in a LAN- or Direct-Connect Local Server mode for when the main servers are, you know, offline or overloaded.
Not really. The servers themselves are the same cost whether it's the cheaters-server or the normal-server. Partitioning the accounts might take a little work, but you'd get it all back with the reduced CS claims, and the effort would be almost identical to any special-case rules you'd need to implement for your suggestion. You can even make them pay for the privilege of playing on the "No-Rules" server, as an option instead of a permanent ban. It worked a decade ago for Dragon Realms -- no reason it couldn't work in other games.
And that's a really that bad a thing, being constantly connected?
Yes, it's a really bad thing when their servers are overloaded and you can't play, or their servers are down for maintenance and you can't play, or someone hacks your account and gets you banned and you can't play, or they patch your favorite ability out of the game and you can't decide to skip the patch until you're ready to change classes, or your internet is out for any reason and you can't play, or you go to a LAN party that can't afford a major outside connection and you can't play, or you try to play a Hardcore character and you disconnect or lag out at a bad moment and die and lose your character, or, or, or...
There's a lot of reasons why it is a bad thing. The most notable reason was the First Week Launch Experience. Most people wanted to play solo anyway, but couldn't even do that due to the inadequate server capacity. The only reason that caused any problems at all was because you couldn't play in an off-line mode.
If this were an actual MMO, where the entire design is around having lots of players together, that would all be par for the course. This is an explicitly limited multiplayer experience that has no real need for the server connection at all, except for the DRM properties such a connection enforces, and an attempt to prevent some player-base fragmentation that I'd wager is not really going to have any notable effect in any case (those that would have played in offline/local modes aren't going to participate much in the extra features afforded by the always-on connection even though they're forced to be on the server where they are an option).
Time sensitive? Science works from Planck Time to billions of years. You're not going to beat a computer for High-speed High-Frequency Trading. Designing the algorithms they use? Science. Polygraph (lie-detector) test? Science. Forensic evidence? Science.
"Works just fine" is not the same as "best method to figure things out". Gravity works just fine without science, but science is the best method to figure it out. Trial-by-Combat worked just fine for courts for thousands of years, but having a science-based system of evidence gathering, criminal behavior and psychology, ballistics, chemical signatures, and so on is a lot better.
Or those things which appear evil are actually good. Or God is willing to allow free-will actors to make their own mistakes, even if that means allowing evil. Or lacks omniscience,and therefore cannot predict outcomes perfectly. There's a lot of alternative explanations that fit the criteria specified.
You still can't see how a coastline growing or shrinking might be related to the topic of oceans rising? Or how it might be more important to a person actually living on the coast?
You have trouble seeing how someone's coastline disappearing at half a meter per year is more worrisome than a 3mm ocean level rise? Or how someone living in a subduction zone might be worried about their tectonic plate moving into the ocean at a rate of 50mm per year, more than they are about the 3mm ocean level rise? What is wrong with you?
50mm horizontal is very different from 3mm vertical. There are regions where "dry" land several miles from the normal high-tide point is still only a few inches above sea level at high tide. 3mm up can mean hundreds of meters in.
Additionally, tidal effects are felt hundreds of miles up-river. For example, I know the Hudson River feels tidal effects all the way to Albany, 140 miles up river. Here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_of_tide
So yes, a 3mm vertical rise in ocean level might matter to a lot more people than 50mm of coastal erosion, since it can have an impact along several hundred of miles of rivers and streams that aren't usually considered "coastal", and which are not having any erosion issues at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, no question that some government actions are the problems, not the solutions, and others are poor solutions to trivial or non-governmental problems. I'm just saying that rhetoric going as far as "No Government" being the best state, or that government has never had a solution to public problems is inherently unsound. There's a definite (albeit much smaller) level of government that I believe is the best state, and that some aspects need to be larger than just local concerns and local implementation (e.g. water allocation along major rivers, interstate infrastructure, pollution regulation, coordination of law enforcement, possibly some public research). Still, nothing much beyond the Romans there.
No problem in the history of humanity has ever been solved by the hand of government.
Except sanitation, environmental regulation, basic infrastructure... all those basic things the government seems to be quite capable of managing. The government of Rome built roads, solving problems with transportation. Also aqueducts and fountains. Government, the basic public entity solving basic public problems.
Those poor also are their gardeners and cooks and golf caddies and shoe polishers and so on, and at some point, those sick people will enter their lives in some fashion. Worse, some of those poor won't die -- they've been living in less hygienic conditions for so long their immune systems might just be capable of trucking right along, turning them into carriers. If you don't manage the disease properly, it will certainly spread right into the 0.1%'s lives and due to their rarefied life, the chances of such a person having an immune system capable of fighting off such a disease is going to be low. The plan has to either be "Be proactive and treat the sick," or "Be proactive and shoot them, then burn the bodies." "Do nothing" is the only bad option (from their supposedly callous perspective where the above "Do nothing and let them die" plan might be considered a good plan).
Currently just about every one of our southern states is racing toward third world status just as fast as they can
Is that why all the jobs are moving here? Is that why we're getting all the business investment in new factories?Is that why Texas is the number one state in business growth? Is that why Apple just expanded in Texas? Is that why Airbus is building a factory to produce A319 airliners in Alabama? Is that why Austal is building Littoral Combat Ships there for the Navy? Or why Thyssenkrupp is building a steel plant there? Have you noticed all of the auto plant construction in the South in the past two decades? Ever been to the huge shipyards in Mississippi? The aircraft plants in Georgia? The South is racing towards "Third World Status"? Try California. You know, the progressive model for America that's 3 billion in the hole, but is racing ahead to build a bullet train to nowhere at a commitment of $100 billion. The same California where jobs and people are leaving at a steady clip. You keep your progressive paradise. We'll keep taking the jobs, thanks.
Yes, yes it is. Getting FoxConn to move in because you've dropped your regulations below China's is pretty much the definition of regressive. I know it's hard to remember, but Nixon, a staunch conservative, enacted the EPA. Stripping it of power and allowing wanton destruction of the environment in the name of getting "more jobs", along with removing any concept of worker or consumer protections, will get you business, it's true... until the area is stripped bare, everyone is in severe poverty while working (and then completely destitute when they're fired under at-will clauses) and therefore unable to afford, well, anything, they're all sick from the pollution in the air and water (and therefore costing the company more to keep around as productivity drops), and then some other government gives the corporate CEO a better blow job, and you end up like Detroit. Do you want to be the next Detroit?
Not the only Microsoft Games Open(-ish) Source release: Mech Commander 2 also got that treatment.
For your interpretation, it requires an additional comma. That is an enumerated list of 2 elements, not 3: 1) HOTS, 2) critical thinking and similar programs. If you have only 2 elements, then the conditional portion could apply to each element. However, I've as the "critical thinking" lacks the extra capitalization, I'm inclined to believe it cannot be considered a specific re-labeled OBE program. The better reading it as an enumerated list of 3 elements: 1) HOTS, 2) critical thinking, 3) similar programs that are re-labeled OBE. When there is an omitted second comma of a multi-element list, all sections following the "and" apply only to the final element. However, I'm willing to allow that they're not intelligent enough to know that (it's pretty esoteric as it is and grammar has been evolving on that point because so few people know how to use it properly - and for a living language, current usage is what matters no matter how far off it is from the original rule sets), so that leaves this as open to interpretation, except... there's one more part of the statement that clarifies things.
See, you skipped over the part that matters: the reasoning: "because it challenges fixed beliefs". In order to have critical thinking, you have to challenge fixed beliefs. Therefore, the second interpretation, where critical thinking is to be opposed directly and in and of itself, is the correct one. They have given you the clues right there to work it out. They did not say "because OBE and derivative programs have been proven ineffective", which would have lent support to your version. No, they directly attacked critical thinking and logical reasoning as the evil which must be opposed, and also mentioned two specific programs on the side.
I'm sorry, was linking to their own platform not going close enough to the source? They oppose programs that might challenge beliefs. That is the core of critical thinking. So yes, they want to get rid of critical thinking. It's right there, in their own words. It's not "we oppose this specific program, because it doesn't work." It's "we oppose this program, and any that teach similar skills, because it might work, and we're scared of our children being able to do that."
While I'm amazed that the current administration has as much support as it does, especially considering how off-message it has gotten, I'm even more amazed that the Republican party has any support at all, given that their message is literally "We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority"
Yes, let's get rid of critical thinking! That'll help! Wouldn't want any kids getting the idea they're supposed to evaluate and judge any beliefs they might hold for the possibility they could be faulty, or examine the bullshit the media is trying to feed them...
So if they stay on-message, they're terrible, and when they go off-message, they're doing pretty much what the current administration is doing anyway. There's no chance of a win on that side. I'm really hoping for a Third-Party revolution of some sort, but I don't think it'll ever get that far. The corporate election machine is too good at what they do.
Ok, since you missed the point... what makes your brain so special? What causes sentience to exist there, but not in any other chemical or physical reaction? Here, let me break it down further for you:
If you understand logic gates, how an ALU works, and how to program a computer using a low lwvel language like assembly, you know that computers aren't sentient.
Until you understand how neurons work, and how learning works, you can't know whether computers are or are not sentient. And if you do know those things, there's millions of dollars waiting for you to publish your findings.
Anyway, how does the randomness that we see, such as nuclear decay, actually happen? Generating random numbers from a computer is impossible, and the current idea that the universe is deterministic with random elements seems a little contradictory to me.
Insufficient understanding or insufficient capability to completely model the system does not necessarily make in non-deterministic. That said, a computer can generate numbers as randomly as anything in the universe can be said to be random.
Of course if there is no free will I had to write this, and you had to have whatever reaction you are having to reading it.
Naturally.
What defines sentience? What makes a computer "just a tool" that cannot also be applied to a human being "just a tool"?
If you knew how computers actually worked and how they were constructed, you woudn't fool yourself into thinking that computers can think.
If you knew how brains actually worked and how they were constructed, would you still fool yourself into "thinking" that humans could think?
And realistically, employers lack the ability to determine upfront whether you're a quick learner or not. If you're looking for a Python programmer and you have a hundred resumes that say "Python", why would you solicit a hundred more that don't? The prior experience criteria is a filter that saves everyone time...
The problem comes when you get 100,000 resumes that say "Python" on them, so HR ups the requirement to something well beyond what's reasonable or even possible, rather than requesting X years Python and Y years related experience, or just Z years of related experience. During one of the bust phases, I remember seeing positions for programmers requiring more years of Java experience than the language had existed. The only people that could apply, according to the requirements listed, were required to be liars.
None of your argument affects those who bought the game for the multiplayer experience.
Except you'd still have LAN play, and Local Direct-Connect Servers. Also, if you happen to still have an old copy of BNetD around, you might be able to use that to play with just your friends. I can have full use of the multiplayer game experience with Diablo 2 and never touch Blizzard's servers. I can create an off-line character and I believe I can use it on the "Open Battle.Net" when the servers are back up. So I disagree -- I think most of my argument also applies to those who bought the game for a multiplayer (albeit non-anonymous/public multiplayer) experience. If you want to play multi, but with friends, it applies fully. If you want to meet new people, then (and only then) do you have a point (which could be mitigated by alternative meeting systems, such as a forum).
Most people wanted to play solo anyway, but couldn't even do that due to the inadequate server capacity.
Citation needed here.
I'll admit, my use of "most" probably would require a citation. I'll scale it back to this: I have talked to a couple hundred people at various gaming events that all played Diablo 2, and about 10 in total ever played online in a public game. They would all have been perfectly well served by LAN-play, and more than half hadn't even bothered with that -- even when available, they often preferred to play on their own, so they could go at their own pace and not feel either rushed, or feel like they were being slowed down to someone else's speed. These are players that play lots of other games multiplayer, including several that played various MMORPGs, including those that came out at about the same time as Diablo 2. Most treated D2 as a solo game, and IIRC most of that half that had never bothered with LAN play also never played beyond the Normal Mode. They played it to play it through once -- no-grinding, no-trading, no "end-game". Kill all the bosses once, done forever.
Of those people I have talked to since Diablo 3 was announced, I believe only 1 has expressed any interest in public games, and some have said they'll play with a group of friends. Most said they'd play through at least once solo (most of them for the first run, so they could enjoy the story with no spoilers). All of them have said they would play solo at some point.
Only Blizzard would have actual numbers, and I doubt anyone will ever see those outside the company, but knowing that Diablo 2 was selling well enough to regularly make the Top-10 sales lists for a decade, the online community was comparatively very small and very static for it (and I will note that of all the people I have talked to over the years, only the people who played public matches were also part of that community -- most didn't even know it existed, and didn't really care). I'm confidant for Diablo 2, the majority of sold copies to unique individuals (i.e. only counting the people who were banned multiple times for duping and re-purchased copies to get a new un-banned CDKey once) never saw Closed Battle.Net (Blizzard-stored characters) play. From that experience, I'd be willing to argue my point is likely true, but I cannot cite anything on it. Just as I suspect you cannot cite anything against it.
You are actually the first person I have ever encountered that would have skipped Day 1 play if multi-player was unavailable. Feel honored, I suppose. You might actually be a unique snowflake. If nothing else, you're the 0.1%.
Why specifically do you think it wouldn't be technically difficult? MMO servers can require multiple blades just to run at idle (0 population) due to how they're engineered. I admit, there's no particular reason the D3 servers should be over-engineered to the degree that a real MMO is -- but if they inherited any of the bloated spaghetti code that WoW uses, there's a decent chance it simply wouldn't run effectively on consumer-level hardware without a significant optimization pass for single-instance-only usage, the same way you can't strip down a 747 easily to be a single-passenger road vehicle.
Depending on the choices they made during the server creation, creating a server that could be run on consumer-level hardware while also running the client may not be simple. The over-engineered robust elements that allow it to handle millions of clients may not scale down well to have just a single instance running. I will agree it was a poor choice when they made it, but it may not be such an easy path as "strip out AH and separate achievements: Done" to correct it now. It may require a lot of stripping down how the various servers run.
quote>The game has some features (e.g. you can play and complete the game alone and never come into contact with another player) that keep it from being a full-fledged MMO in my mind, but it is very, very close.
What keeps it from being a MMO is the lack of that first "M", "Massively". You can form a party just as large as Diablo 2. There isn't even a glorified 3D chat room like Guild Wars before you go into your instance. It's no more a MMO than Diablo 2 was, and has no more need for the always-online component than Diablo 2 did. The auction house automates Battle.net trading, and nothing more. Seamless drop-in/drop-out co-op play already existed both with and without the Always-Online component of Diablo 2's Battle.net and LAN-play options. The "sheer number of players causing technical hurdles" is entirely because of their choice not to include a local-mode. It's a hurdle they put up for themselves when they already knew exactly how to make a game system that bypassed it.
Some people don't like multiplayer games, and I get that, but it does frustrate me when people rage about features that are peripheral to the game-as-designed.
Just as it frustrates me that the game-as-designed doesn't require an always-online connection, only the peripheral features do, and it could be argued that the game-as-designed would be better without many of those peripheral features because of that. Specifically, that would enable an ability to play offline or in a LAN- or Direct-Connect Local Server mode for when the main servers are, you know, offline or overloaded.
Not really. The servers themselves are the same cost whether it's the cheaters-server or the normal-server. Partitioning the accounts might take a little work, but you'd get it all back with the reduced CS claims, and the effort would be almost identical to any special-case rules you'd need to implement for your suggestion. You can even make them pay for the privilege of playing on the "No-Rules" server, as an option instead of a permanent ban. It worked a decade ago for Dragon Realms -- no reason it couldn't work in other games.
And that's a really that bad a thing, being constantly connected?
Yes, it's a really bad thing when their servers are overloaded and you can't play, or their servers are down for maintenance and you can't play, or someone hacks your account and gets you banned and you can't play, or they patch your favorite ability out of the game and you can't decide to skip the patch until you're ready to change classes, or your internet is out for any reason and you can't play, or you go to a LAN party that can't afford a major outside connection and you can't play, or you try to play a Hardcore character and you disconnect or lag out at a bad moment and die and lose your character, or, or, or...
There's a lot of reasons why it is a bad thing. The most notable reason was the First Week Launch Experience. Most people wanted to play solo anyway, but couldn't even do that due to the inadequate server capacity. The only reason that caused any problems at all was because you couldn't play in an off-line mode.
If this were an actual MMO, where the entire design is around having lots of players together, that would all be par for the course. This is an explicitly limited multiplayer experience that has no real need for the server connection at all, except for the DRM properties such a connection enforces, and an attempt to prevent some player-base fragmentation that I'd wager is not really going to have any notable effect in any case (those that would have played in offline/local modes aren't going to participate much in the extra features afforded by the always-on connection even though they're forced to be on the server where they are an option).
Time sensitive? Science works from Planck Time to billions of years. You're not going to beat a computer for High-speed High-Frequency Trading. Designing the algorithms they use? Science. Polygraph (lie-detector) test? Science. Forensic evidence? Science.
"Works just fine" is not the same as "best method to figure things out". Gravity works just fine without science, but science is the best method to figure it out. Trial-by-Combat worked just fine for courts for thousands of years, but having a science-based system of evidence gathering, criminal behavior and psychology, ballistics, chemical signatures, and so on is a lot better.
Until they ca't afford gas and rely on public transportation and bicycles.
Not at all. One wouldn't use science to determine what one should spend for a share of stock (or a gallon of gasoline).
Why not? Science is certainly used for stocks and commodity trading. Also pretty useful for determining guilt or innocence.
Or those things which appear evil are actually good. Or God is willing to allow free-will actors to make their own mistakes, even if that means allowing evil. Or lacks omniscience,and therefore cannot predict outcomes perfectly. There's a lot of alternative explanations that fit the criteria specified.
You still can't see how a coastline growing or shrinking might be related to the topic of oceans rising? Or how it might be more important to a person actually living on the coast?
You have trouble seeing how someone's coastline disappearing at half a meter per year is more worrisome than a 3mm ocean level rise? Or how someone living in a subduction zone might be worried about their tectonic plate moving into the ocean at a rate of 50mm per year, more than they are about the 3mm ocean level rise? What is wrong with you?
50mm horizontal is very different from 3mm vertical. There are regions where "dry" land several miles from the normal high-tide point is still only a few inches above sea level at high tide. 3mm up can mean hundreds of meters in.
Additionally, tidal effects are felt hundreds of miles up-river. For example, I know the Hudson River feels tidal effects all the way to Albany, 140 miles up river. Here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_of_tide
So yes, a 3mm vertical rise in ocean level might matter to a lot more people than 50mm of coastal erosion, since it can have an impact along several hundred of miles of rivers and streams that aren't usually considered "coastal", and which are not having any erosion issues at all.