Of course flanking is a GOOD real world strategy and might well be in other games. But it doesn't work in Lotro because the game mechanics just don't work for it. Communication between different groups is hard and distances are VERY small and if out numbered fights are over very small.
Say both sides got 48 players (2 raids). 1 side splits into 2 raids. The other side attacks one of the raids. They can then cause a wipe of that raid in a couple of seconds (or at least cripple it fataly) if the other raid is not reacting INSTANTLY, they will flank into an enemy just finishing off the last remnants.
To translate to the space program. The US got plenty of cash. it is not as if they HAVE to re-use shuttle parts or that shuttle parts are that cheap to begin with. Space development is already complex enough with you having to make many compromises between what you would like to use and what you can actually get. To deliberatly limit what you can use right from the start for the sake of some dubious cost savings is making things to complex. It would be like saying "this next program MUST be build in C, because then we can re-use some math libraries we got lying around".
Or "we must flank because that is what real armies does even if this game only emulates a VERY small amount of the real world".
It might seem unrelated but this "management project" might be easier to experience for most of us. Lord of the Rings Online PvMP. Tactics.
Two sides, uneven numbers and uneven skills. Battles tend to be tank rusk vs tank rush, or zerg vs zerg. Hit the other with all you got and see if you can wipe them out. It is the nature of the game. In the battle area there are keeps to take. First thing a SMART leader who understands KISS does is ask himself. Do I really want to add complexity to the battle by giving myself TWO goals, fighting the enemy AND taking a keep at the same time? Note that taking a keep itself already has two tasks at least, killing NPC's and stopping others on your side "accidently" pulling every NPC in the area.
KISS means, Keep It Simple Stupid. The more complex you make a task, the more trouble you create for yourself. The human brains ain't all that good at dealing with a lot of tasks so it tends to just ignore things it can't handle if overloaded. Overlooking the basics by focussing on to many complex demands at once.
In Lotro PvMP one of the basics is "you need numbers". A complex task is to try stategies like creating a diversion, flanking etc etc. Everyone who thinks they know about war might think these are valid tactics but forget one thing. KISS. Even an attempt at flanking the enemy is FAR to complex to pull off. Sure, it might work once, if you got people who REALLY work together, but 9 times out of 10 it just ends up with the enemy just wiping one part first, then the second. PvMP is Lotro is about numbers vs numbers, so stick together and hit them in force. It works, has been proven to work and is something most people can deal with. Split for instance into two groups and you waste ten minutes getting everyone to follow the right leader, while the enemy looks on and thinks "Yummie, bite sized enemy forces".
So how does this relate to the US space program? The mandate to re-use space shuttle parts. Totally unneeded complexity. Re-using existing stuff SOUNDS smart but goes against KISS because it forces you to work around ALL the problems the existing parts bring. It is in this case BLOODY clear the existing parts have troubles because if they didn't, you would be using the old system.
If you want a rocket to take you to the moon with a manned module then THAT is the design requirement. Nothing more. Rocket+manned+moon. Not +cheap. Not +beforedateX. Not +reuseparts. Not +somebodiespetproject. Everything requirement you add makes things far more complex and that is BOUND to go wrong.
People in software are of course familiar with the idea of re-usability. Re-use your code. C++ was build around the idea. The idea has its meritcs. I certainly wouldn't recommend that the next moon rocket seeks to re-invent the screw BUT there is a HUGE difference between using existing parts if it happens to be convenient and putting re-using parts as a design requirement.
Think of it like this. Using GD in your website software vs GD must be used in your website software. Using OS/2 for your desktop vs your desktop MUST use OS/2.
As a software engineer you probably seen this countless time. Software requiring the use of Oracle database to store 1 column because we use oracle in this company. Demands to have servers run windows because that is what the boss has on his desktop.
Ares has to many design requirements that have nothing to do with getting the US back on the moon and that is the reason it failed. If they had gone for a new design, re-using only if it happened naturally, then they would already have had a rocket, it would have been cheaper and it might even have been flying already. But no, it had to re-use by design to be cheaper and faster and voila, as everyone could predict, it is more expansive and slower. re-use as part of the design spec != KISS. If someone mentions re-use of code as a goal during development I have long since learned to get the hell out of the project. I suggest NASA hires me so that I can stand by with a clue-bat during their brainstorming sessions and whack anyone adding needless complexity to their projects. Seeing how much money it wastes, I would say 10 million a year would be nice starting salary. Where do I apply?
Well, do you? Do you force your kids to wear a helmet. Every second. There are hard surfaces out there and people die EVERY day from falling even if they are not doing anything dangerous.
I am willing to bet that if I do a safety study on your house and daily routine I can find dozens if not hundreds of things you could do to make your life and the life of your childeren more secure. Yet you won't because you will say that your freedom to life a normal life is worth the added risk.
Yet, when it comes to the internet, suddenly, we must protect our kids. You are the modern over protective parent who can't just accept that a percentage of kids will die or get hurt. It happens, 100 kids ride their bicycle and 1 will break their neck. Sure, you can make those 100 kids ride with sidewheels, in protected areas, with helment and body protectors. You can and you might save that 1 childs life.
For that matter. YOUR CAR KILLS CHILDEREN. If the hood was padded with soft foam it would be safer. If its speed was restricted to 10mph, it would be safer still. Hundreds of kids are killed by YOUR CAR. Do you change your car? Or do you say, me driving a 1 ton piece of metal at high speed through city streets is worth the HUNDREDS of DEATH KIDS?
That is really the point. We don't protect our kids in real life because doing so would hurt our lifestyle. But online, they must be protected, despite the far smaller risks. Because you don't see freedom on the internet as important as driving your 1 ton piece of metal at high speeds past kids on bicycles.
As harsh as it may sound. We as a society must constantly balance the freedom of all vs the protection of all. Worrying about online predators is just plain silly if you ignore all the other threaths to your childerens safety. When I see you demanding strict speed controls, mandatory protection on cars for pedestratrians, severe criminal punishement of those who endanger the lives of kids through their actions on the road etc etc, then I would be a LOT more willing to presume that your insistence on online protection is not just a kneejerk reaction to pretend you care when you really don't.
The biggest predator case in history was of course Detreux in Belgium. He didn't use the internet. He used cars. Ergo, cars should be banned. Think of the childeren. Only pedo's drive cars.
He wasn't. The elections that put Hitler in power were manipulated and crooked. If the election of hitler had been honest, could he really be called a dictator of the german people? At what point does the voter become responsible for the results of his vote?
The modern western turkey was founded by Ataturk and is currently enforced by the military. The democracy part of Turkey ONLY exists as long as it does what the military wants and in the past the military HAS intefened several times when the elected leaders did NOT do what it wants.
The sad and confusing thing is that from a WESTERN point of view it is the MILITARY that is right and the public/voter/elected leaders who are wrong. It is the MILITARY that wants a STRICT seperation of church and state, even going so far that Turkey is NOT an islamic nation. It has NO STATE RELIGION. There is equality, press freedom etc etc. Because the military says so.
The voter however in recent years has been increasingly voting for religious parties. The reasons for this are complex. Part of the problem is that the current system works to well. In those cases people tend to forget what brings them their current prosperity. Turkey is doing amazingly well but it is a bit like the US where places like New York and LA are being outvoted by the people from the bible belt. So, right now the country is being torn. If the voter is allowed to elect religious leaders then that is the democracy that the EU wants in its members BUT it would also mean Turkey slides into an islamic nation the EU does NOT want on its borders. Allow the military to keep the current system and Turkey is dictatorship in all but name, something the EU could never allow a member to be.
As for the individual Turk, well, there is of course no such thing. You might as well label all US slashdotters along with that comment in Oprah story yesterday where she was considered new age because she said there might be more then one way to heaven then through jesus. The religious right is on the rise. Turkey is struggling with its desire to be a democracy and the risk this would cause it to slide into a islamic dictatorship.
It does raise the intresting question, if people elected their dictators, is it still a dictatorship? Make no mistake, the people who protest this bloggers ban are NOT intrested in democracy. They want to turn Turkey into an Islamic state where the islamic law rules. They just know that their best bet to get this is through the voting booth because any violent means to do this would be opposed harshly by the military.
Westerners find this hard to understand. We are used to thinking of the military as the opressors. Not the guardians of freedom.
If you ever played WoW, you would know that its customer base is rather... well... yucky.
WoW is the 12yr olds paradise who need desperatly an E-penis. Of course there are exceptions but WoW attracts its customers because it is an extremely simple game to grind rather then master or enjoy.
Don't get me wrong. You CAN master and/or enjoy WoW, but that is not what the majority of its 10 million subscribers do. They grind. They are not intrested in story, character development, immersion. They want to grind XP, get fat loot and show of their "rares".
Age of Conan had a LOT of problems but one "new" thing it did was introduce dialog trees in its quests. Not that advanced but leading to the following complaint from a player who went back to WoW:
"Why can't the dialog trees default the best options to 1 or provide a popup to confirm if you are making an important choice because I just press 1 to skip through all of them as I want to get on with the quest without reading".
If I was a little bit lazy I would find the original post. AoC at some points gave you the choice of your quest reward be in the dialog. If I remember correctly, it was the epic quest chain.
So the developers introduced a story, a background and the WoW player base just wanted to get it over with to grind loot.
AoC also had other problems, it had no loot, no armour. The game was supposed to be skill based, not based on what loot you had on you. The forums were filled with endless complaints that the armour from lvl 10 wasn't that different from lvl 40. IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE! This way, a hardcore player and a casual player would have similar stats, very important in a PvP game that doesn't want to cater only to the most hardcore grinders.
Further problem, items weren't bind on equip, meaning you could pass them on easily once you no longer had a use for them. This meant there were no rare items to begin with, nothing special about them if there were rare and in plenty supply for low low prices. Again, no end of complaints despite the fact that this was how the game was designed. on purpose.
The complaints of course all were from the people who wanted AoC to be WoW. AoC had lots of problems but not being WoW was not one of them.
Going deliberatly after the WoW market means you HAVE TO be WoW. And not the WoW some ppl play, but the WoW 10 million people play. That is a very risky market to enter. First, Blizzard has shown they are the best at making WoW and nobody else has even come close. In fact everyone else has had to make a living by NOT being WoW and attracting customers who do NOT WANT WOW! If you introduce the perfect WoW clone, then why would people come to you? They already invested lots of money and time in WoW, so why would they switch?
if you change the smallest bit, the WoW fans will complain till you change things, but they will go back to WoW anyway and you will loose all those who hated WoW and wanted something different. If only there was an example of an MMORPG that attracted people who didn't like WoW style but the game went ahead and changed to attract WoW players, failed to attract them but repulsed its old players. Anyone? Maybe some Sci-Fi movie based MMORPG. *cough*SWG NGE*cough*
AoC showed on thing, the MMORPG market is huge. You can attract a MILLION customers at launch. You do NOT have to be a WoW clone but you have to very clear about WHAT you game is going to be like from the start (DEMO) and have it WORK.
The above "works", where ALL collect the head. Raids where only ONE collects the head get annoying. But how trivial would it be to re-write the quest so that you don't collect the head but get the proof of your deed some other way.
Or even, introduce a GROUP inventory and the quest item goes in there and the GROUP turns it in?
Other solutions:
A group quest doesn't end until it is turned in, so no splitting the moment the boss dies, the group has to return it together. MMO's LOVE time sinks.
Leader obtains the item, the engine tags all the players that assisted the leader and when the leader turns it in, their logs are updated.
Only one person gets the quest and hires other players to assist him. Maybe by promising them a share of the spoils, a reward or outright paying for their services.
Just copying the methods from single player computer RPG's does not work.
No pen&paper RPG does this stupid "A head for every group member" OR "only 1 person gets a reward for this quest" thing.
I can't buy a McLaren F1 either. So the F1 ain't a car. There are MANY custom made cars, you cannot buy. So they don't qualify either. Hell, you can't buy my car. So my car is not car.
2. You can only drive it at speed on salt flats.
If you were able to find a 9 mile long straight and wide piece of asfalt it would do as well.
3. You can't drive it on public roads (driver and pedestrian safety, shooting flames of death, etc).
The salt flat is public property.
4. Even if you could drive it on-road, its turning radius is probably a mile!
Never seen turning radius as a definition of a car.
A better title might be "British team seeks to break land speed record, again." or even better "Yaaaawn"
A good title for you might be "twit who doesn't belong on slashdot but some kind of barbie website". I take that back. It is an insult to all 12yr old girls.
The GP just says that when given the choice between killing a child and not killing a child the choice ain't hard. Any sane person would conclude that the person did NOT kill the child. You on the other hand with no further info automatically seem to conclude that either the person killed a child for a minor reward OR that someone who does NOT kill a child for a minor reward needs to be taken into care.
The problem with the water from a gameplay perpespective is simple. You always need water, every building does. So indeed, became a boring repetitive task of each time having to lay out a water grid. There was no alternative, you just drew a grid, and that was it. X spaces apart, once you figured that out, all you did was just draw a grid on any new area you wanted to develop and be done with it.
No depth, just micro-management. Just like the placing of the antlers on your charger. You place it, turn it, color it but the only thing that matters is to get the ones with the biggest charge bonus, just one of them and be done with it.
I get the feeling that Spore originally was meant to be more but Maxis has always had trouble delivering. SimCity of course were amazing games. For their time. It is the reason the francise died. Because as it aged, the graphics improved but the quality of the simulation didn't and we as players became aware that more was needed. More paths, more options, more choice. Instead SimCity and the likes have always had a rather narrow path to victory and if veered of that path, the game model couldn't cope.
Spore is perhaps the greatest failure. It seems originally to have been a game about evolution or at least to use evolution.
There have been games in this nature before, so it can be done. I remember an ancient game that used clay-motion animation for its creatures that allowed you to breed creatures and cull them to get the ones best suited to their enviroment.
But there is NOTHING of that in this game. As the article mentions, antlers on your back help you charge skill. You charge backwards?
There is just one TINY hint at the slightest possibilty of evolution, fruits. If you are small, you can only reach fallen fruit, if you are tall, you can get the highest fruits. There is no difference in the fruits but it is the one and only time the build of your creature seems to matter.
The rest of the time, it just don't matter. You can't even make a monster eater with a dozen mouths that devours everything in its path, or a super defensive creature because multiple items don't stack their bonusses.
The game just completly failed to live up to its early promises. I get the feeling Will Wright is following in Molyneux's footsteps. Once a person who made innovative and fun game but one who increasingly just can't deliver on his promises.
To bad because a game that uses evolution to judge your creationism could be a lot of fun.
It is a simple problem but very hard to get around because the problem used to simply not exist. Standards.
Get this and get this if you get nothing else. STANDARDS HAVE GONE OUT THE WINDOW in the digital age.
ALL VHS was VHS. A LP's were LP's. All cassette tapes were cassete tapes.
Sure, there were competing standards for a short time but by and large, to the consumer media tech had one standard.
Now, in the digital age, this is no longer true. iPod may be synonmous with MP3 player but the fact is that it barely got 50% of the market. The rest of the market is split by dozens of brands each with dozen of models. Each model has its own system, its own capabilities.
This is why iTunes is NOT the standard method to distribute music. Nor is MS fairplay. Hey, even zune didn't support that.
This hampers DRM (and don't we all feel sad about this), how are you going to get your DRM method on all devices? Apple doesn't even bother with it, that is why it is trivial to convert iTunes music to MP3's and they don't license their solution out. Why would a MP3 maker bother with supporting fairplay when nobody uses it? And when so few players support it, nobody is going to use it.
Sure, Sony is a big company, but we all know how succesful it has been in the MP3 market. The company that OWNS the walkman has totally lost its touch, choosing to push its own formats over making money.
Unless someone comes up with a solution of DRM that works with just the file and doesn't need any software installed on devices that can't have software installed it can't work.
This new system doesn't fix that. Why is going to buy a Marlin enabled device when there are no services that use it, and what service is going to support it when nobody is buy marlin enabled devices?
Apples DRM slipped in by accident. People didn't buy iPod's because of iTunes. It just came with it. MS has totally screwed up its own changes by dropping its own system on its own MP3 players.
Saying that Apple and MS are the big boys in DRM land says it all. THERE IS NO DRM INDUSTRY. The consumer not only doesn't want it, but has no need for it. The industry, the hardware makers only offers it if it thinks the extra checkmark on the box is worth the effort and increasingly, they don't.
What people forget if that there is equality, no freedom, then the opinion of the public can't be judged.
Remember that this guy was arrested and sentenced to death for speaking against the goverment. So, who would go out on the street to show support for this guy after that clear warning?
To make it simpler to understand. In 1943, would you have expected people to hold a protest vigil to protest the forced deportation of jews, in berlin?
The so called support for this guys sentence is highly suspect when you consider it done in a country where people disagree with the approved opinion are sentenced to death.
Dictatorships REALLY do not function the same way as democracies. Remember this the next time you are stuck behind some silly protest about nothing or affected by a strike. They are the essential tools of freedom. For one small group to be able to annoy the hell out of the majority without fear is what freedom is all about.
I have little doubt that the so called support for this guys sentence is 99% "Hi, we are going to kill this guy for disagreeing with us. Do you agree with us?"
As for US involvement, the US always does this. It goes in with the best intentions but can never understand that those who speak the best english, seem most agreeable and welcome a foreign goverment to bolster their power RARELY are the good guys. The US just doesn't get foreign policy. It is almost as if the entire US population has a blindspot when it comes to the rest of the world.
The same thing happened in Iraq. Contratry to popular opinion in the US, Saddam actually was extremely liberal. Until western pressure forced him to become ever more reliant on religious support. Doesn't mean he was a nice guy, he wasn't. But toppling him doesn't make thing suddenly get better and in many way things got a lot worse.
Gay rights for instance have gone from tolerant to being prosecuted.
The enemy of my enemy doesn't have to be your friend. Neither is your enemy always your worsed enemy. The US just doesn't get this.
Check what type of sound files a LOT of games are now using. No longer MP3 but ogg. Same goes true for a lot of other stuff in games.
Remember that games are content. Apache, linux, php, perl, mysql etc etc are OPENSOURCE products used to host websites with content. Nobody says that if all software becomes opensource all website content will be opensource.
The simple fact is that producing a game is a LOT of work, not so much because of the engine, but because of the amount of art/content needed.
Part of the problem is also that designing games for your own use doesn't work for a lot of games. Opensource is usually developed because the developer had a need for it. What need do you have of a game you made yourself? That you played over and over during development and know every secret of? It would be boring as hell to play, the developer would have no use for it.
There are FOSS games out there and some are pretty decent but big budget titles like Mass Effect or a WoW are never going to happen because they need to much content where somebody just sits down and creates for hour after hour and that is hard to get done without paying someone.
Odd as it may sound, developing games just ain't no fun and unlike a utility program you get little personal use out of it.
If you read more carefully, he doesn't want DRM, he wants Trusted Computing. His talk about encryption on the PC, that isn't DRM. The only way encryption after all work is if the system is a black box with no way to intercept the signals. Trusted Computing, making DRM seem like childs play.
It is not unknown for PC-gamers to update their hardware for a game. Can't update a console. You are stuck with what it was designed to be years ago. Why do you think SWG and EQ from SONY never made it to the console? Because they can't. Games that were once state of the art (and don't forget that even WoW pushed some machines at launch) find themselves with better and better hardware in their lifetime.
As a console developer, you are always stuck with the current generation of hardware. You can never push beyond it, never just say "fuck it, we need 4 gigs and that is the market we are going after". Any decent developer knows how to deal with multiple settings. Just lower the texture detail often helps a lot with performance but it means you can have amazing screenshots and low specs at the same time.
Sorry, but if your company was unable to come up with a PC spec to aim at, they can't have been very good. All it requires is to look at what PC's dell sells to consumers. Similar to having to research just what the spread is between console versions (HD space) and accesories.
The number of things we don't have a clue about is staggering.
The number of planets that can support life. We just don't know, we presume we have observed some planets but they might be failed stars and have no direct observations for far.
We don't know exactly where life can and cannot occur. For that matter, we only have our own planet to judge what is alive and what isn't. There is no prove one way or another that oxygen is needed for instance to create life.
We don't know if space travel between stars is possible. Faster then light travel would change the rules as any species with such tech could settle countless planets and perhaps wipe out other civilizations OR seed them (Star Trek).
We don't know how life starts. Was life started on earth or did it arrive from somewhere else? Huge difference between life starting on its own on every planet OR there being some galaxy wide single seed.
Counting the number of earth like planets is just plain silly. If life can only start in space and then find a planet, earth might be totally unsuitable for the first start. It also presumes life can only exist under earth like conditions yet we KNOW that even life on earth varies widely. If some species can survive on the bottom of the ocean outside the influence of the sun, is it impossible to imagine a lifeform that exist in space itself?
No, I am sorry but until we can actually go and look our estimates of the number of civilizations is between 1 and 1+.
Let everyone worry about the tracking and data gathering. It stops people from actually worrying about the slide to a goverment that might use it.
A total surveilance system that is NOT used is harmless. But a goverment that WANTS a total surveilance system can introduce one anytime they want to.
Focus on keep democracy going, not worrying about what some goverment might use someday. Prevent them from coming into power.
Remember that the phone-tapping done by the bush administration didn't use any new tech. Phone taps have been around since phones have been around. Hell, telegraphs and telex was tapped. What happened is that a goverment was allowed into power that used the tech.
Fighting the tech is impossible unless you want society to stop advancing. Stop the wrong people from getting into power instead.
Of course, that would require you to vote for someone on other grounds then the one promising you a tax cut or who seems to a be a likeable guy. America, were a guy looses the election because he just seems to smart.
It often takes time for it to become clear just how right Stallman is but so far he always is. Why do you think his detractors focus on Herd and the GNU/Linux naming? Because they can't argue with his theories.
First sign someone is right, his enemies attack him on non-issues.
And exploiters, geez, everyone knows suicide belts are way overpowered and just have to get nerfed ASAP in a patch. But the dev's just LOVE their muslim fundementalists.
The Torah (note the H) is a precise document, it has to be copied ACCURATELY. Part of the problem is that Hebrew is a hellish language with plenty of possibilities for errors if it is not perfectly written. Just the slightest error changes might change the meaning.
Torah scrolls, those long rolls of parchments on two spindles, are therefor made by hand by trained scribes. This takes a long time, well over a year and makes these items very expensive. Luckily, these scrolls are ONLY needed for official occasions.
What you are talking about here is the Torah scrolls for religious occasions. NOT the Torah itself. The document itself may be reproduced no matter how you want it. Yes, you may photocopy a Torah scroll.
But the 'prop' used during official occasions is to be an accurate copy of the 'original' with no alterations of any kind. Be they translations, errors, updates, corrections etc etc. It is to keep the text pure. The reason why this is so important is that with hand-copying over hundred of years it is trivial to slip in errors. We all know the new testament has been edited numerous times and that entire testaments have been edited out. To keep 'jews' 'jews' you have to keep the same text.
So, the Torah may be copied anyway you want, but the official Torah scrolls MUST, to avoid errors, be copied by exactly, and since doing this by hand was the only way, were are copied by hand by trained scribes AND checked before being certified.
Your post is sadly rather typical of peoples understanding of religions. They hear something, that in a way is true but fail to understand the why and how.
To translate. A zip file containing the source code for a gnu project must contain the gnu license. Conclusion, gnu code must be put into zip files.
Slashdot Mirror
Two of the smartest people YOU have ever met.
Missing detail, he is from texas. IQ 120. For the entire state.
Of course flanking is a GOOD real world strategy and might well be in other games. But it doesn't work in Lotro because the game mechanics just don't work for it. Communication between different groups is hard and distances are VERY small and if out numbered fights are over very small.
Say both sides got 48 players (2 raids). 1 side splits into 2 raids. The other side attacks one of the raids. They can then cause a wipe of that raid in a couple of seconds (or at least cripple it fataly) if the other raid is not reacting INSTANTLY, they will flank into an enemy just finishing off the last remnants.
To translate to the space program. The US got plenty of cash. it is not as if they HAVE to re-use shuttle parts or that shuttle parts are that cheap to begin with. Space development is already complex enough with you having to make many compromises between what you would like to use and what you can actually get. To deliberatly limit what you can use right from the start for the sake of some dubious cost savings is making things to complex. It would be like saying "this next program MUST be build in C, because then we can re-use some math libraries we got lying around".
Or "we must flank because that is what real armies does even if this game only emulates a VERY small amount of the real world".
Subject says it all
It might seem unrelated but this "management project" might be easier to experience for most of us. Lord of the Rings Online PvMP. Tactics.
Two sides, uneven numbers and uneven skills. Battles tend to be tank rusk vs tank rush, or zerg vs zerg. Hit the other with all you got and see if you can wipe them out. It is the nature of the game. In the battle area there are keeps to take. First thing a SMART leader who understands KISS does is ask himself. Do I really want to add complexity to the battle by giving myself TWO goals, fighting the enemy AND taking a keep at the same time? Note that taking a keep itself already has two tasks at least, killing NPC's and stopping others on your side "accidently" pulling every NPC in the area.
KISS means, Keep It Simple Stupid. The more complex you make a task, the more trouble you create for yourself. The human brains ain't all that good at dealing with a lot of tasks so it tends to just ignore things it can't handle if overloaded. Overlooking the basics by focussing on to many complex demands at once.
In Lotro PvMP one of the basics is "you need numbers". A complex task is to try stategies like creating a diversion, flanking etc etc. Everyone who thinks they know about war might think these are valid tactics but forget one thing. KISS. Even an attempt at flanking the enemy is FAR to complex to pull off. Sure, it might work once, if you got people who REALLY work together, but 9 times out of 10 it just ends up with the enemy just wiping one part first, then the second. PvMP is Lotro is about numbers vs numbers, so stick together and hit them in force. It works, has been proven to work and is something most people can deal with. Split for instance into two groups and you waste ten minutes getting everyone to follow the right leader, while the enemy looks on and thinks "Yummie, bite sized enemy forces".
So how does this relate to the US space program? The mandate to re-use space shuttle parts. Totally unneeded complexity. Re-using existing stuff SOUNDS smart but goes against KISS because it forces you to work around ALL the problems the existing parts bring. It is in this case BLOODY clear the existing parts have troubles because if they didn't, you would be using the old system.
If you want a rocket to take you to the moon with a manned module then THAT is the design requirement. Nothing more. Rocket+manned+moon. Not +cheap. Not +beforedateX. Not +reuseparts. Not +somebodiespetproject. Everything requirement you add makes things far more complex and that is BOUND to go wrong.
People in software are of course familiar with the idea of re-usability. Re-use your code. C++ was build around the idea. The idea has its meritcs. I certainly wouldn't recommend that the next moon rocket seeks to re-invent the screw BUT there is a HUGE difference between using existing parts if it happens to be convenient and putting re-using parts as a design requirement.
Think of it like this. Using GD in your website software vs GD must be used in your website software. Using OS/2 for your desktop vs your desktop MUST use OS/2.
As a software engineer you probably seen this countless time. Software requiring the use of Oracle database to store 1 column because we use oracle in this company. Demands to have servers run windows because that is what the boss has on his desktop.
Ares has to many design requirements that have nothing to do with getting the US back on the moon and that is the reason it failed. If they had gone for a new design, re-using only if it happened naturally, then they would already have had a rocket, it would have been cheaper and it might even have been flying already. But no, it had to re-use by design to be cheaper and faster and voila, as everyone could predict, it is more expansive and slower. re-use as part of the design spec != KISS. If someone mentions re-use of code as a goal during development I have long since learned to get the hell out of the project. I suggest NASA hires me so that I can stand by with a clue-bat during their brainstorming sessions and whack anyone adding needless complexity to their projects. Seeing how much money it wastes, I would say 10 million a year would be nice starting salary. Where do I apply?
Well, do you? Do you force your kids to wear a helmet. Every second. There are hard surfaces out there and people die EVERY day from falling even if they are not doing anything dangerous.
I am willing to bet that if I do a safety study on your house and daily routine I can find dozens if not hundreds of things you could do to make your life and the life of your childeren more secure. Yet you won't because you will say that your freedom to life a normal life is worth the added risk.
Yet, when it comes to the internet, suddenly, we must protect our kids. You are the modern over protective parent who can't just accept that a percentage of kids will die or get hurt. It happens, 100 kids ride their bicycle and 1 will break their neck. Sure, you can make those 100 kids ride with sidewheels, in protected areas, with helment and body protectors. You can and you might save that 1 childs life.
For that matter. YOUR CAR KILLS CHILDEREN. If the hood was padded with soft foam it would be safer. If its speed was restricted to 10mph, it would be safer still. Hundreds of kids are killed by YOUR CAR. Do you change your car? Or do you say, me driving a 1 ton piece of metal at high speed through city streets is worth the HUNDREDS of DEATH KIDS?
That is really the point. We don't protect our kids in real life because doing so would hurt our lifestyle. But online, they must be protected, despite the far smaller risks. Because you don't see freedom on the internet as important as driving your 1 ton piece of metal at high speeds past kids on bicycles.
As harsh as it may sound. We as a society must constantly balance the freedom of all vs the protection of all. Worrying about online predators is just plain silly if you ignore all the other threaths to your childerens safety. When I see you demanding strict speed controls, mandatory protection on cars for pedestratrians, severe criminal punishement of those who endanger the lives of kids through their actions on the road etc etc, then I would be a LOT more willing to presume that your insistence on online protection is not just a kneejerk reaction to pretend you care when you really don't.
The biggest predator case in history was of course Detreux in Belgium. He didn't use the internet. He used cars. Ergo, cars should be banned. Think of the childeren. Only pedo's drive cars.
He wasn't. The elections that put Hitler in power were manipulated and crooked. If the election of hitler had been honest, could he really be called a dictator of the german people? At what point does the voter become responsible for the results of his vote?
The modern western turkey was founded by Ataturk and is currently enforced by the military. The democracy part of Turkey ONLY exists as long as it does what the military wants and in the past the military HAS intefened several times when the elected leaders did NOT do what it wants.
The sad and confusing thing is that from a WESTERN point of view it is the MILITARY that is right and the public/voter/elected leaders who are wrong. It is the MILITARY that wants a STRICT seperation of church and state, even going so far that Turkey is NOT an islamic nation. It has NO STATE RELIGION. There is equality, press freedom etc etc. Because the military says so.
The voter however in recent years has been increasingly voting for religious parties. The reasons for this are complex. Part of the problem is that the current system works to well. In those cases people tend to forget what brings them their current prosperity. Turkey is doing amazingly well but it is a bit like the US where places like New York and LA are being outvoted by the people from the bible belt. So, right now the country is being torn. If the voter is allowed to elect religious leaders then that is the democracy that the EU wants in its members BUT it would also mean Turkey slides into an islamic nation the EU does NOT want on its borders. Allow the military to keep the current system and Turkey is dictatorship in all but name, something the EU could never allow a member to be.
As for the individual Turk, well, there is of course no such thing. You might as well label all US slashdotters along with that comment in Oprah story yesterday where she was considered new age because she said there might be more then one way to heaven then through jesus. The religious right is on the rise. Turkey is struggling with its desire to be a democracy and the risk this would cause it to slide into a islamic dictatorship.
It does raise the intresting question, if people elected their dictators, is it still a dictatorship? Make no mistake, the people who protest this bloggers ban are NOT intrested in democracy. They want to turn Turkey into an Islamic state where the islamic law rules. They just know that their best bet to get this is through the voting booth because any violent means to do this would be opposed harshly by the military.
Westerners find this hard to understand. We are used to thinking of the military as the opressors. Not the guardians of freedom.
If you ever played WoW, you would know that its customer base is rather... well... yucky.
WoW is the 12yr olds paradise who need desperatly an E-penis. Of course there are exceptions but WoW attracts its customers because it is an extremely simple game to grind rather then master or enjoy.
Don't get me wrong. You CAN master and/or enjoy WoW, but that is not what the majority of its 10 million subscribers do. They grind. They are not intrested in story, character development, immersion. They want to grind XP, get fat loot and show of their "rares".
Age of Conan had a LOT of problems but one "new" thing it did was introduce dialog trees in its quests. Not that advanced but leading to the following complaint from a player who went back to WoW:
"Why can't the dialog trees default the best options to 1 or provide a popup to confirm if you are making an important choice because I just press 1 to skip through all of them as I want to get on with the quest without reading".
If I was a little bit lazy I would find the original post. AoC at some points gave you the choice of your quest reward be in the dialog. If I remember correctly, it was the epic quest chain.
So the developers introduced a story, a background and the WoW player base just wanted to get it over with to grind loot.
AoC also had other problems, it had no loot, no armour. The game was supposed to be skill based, not based on what loot you had on you. The forums were filled with endless complaints that the armour from lvl 10 wasn't that different from lvl 40. IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE! This way, a hardcore player and a casual player would have similar stats, very important in a PvP game that doesn't want to cater only to the most hardcore grinders.
Further problem, items weren't bind on equip, meaning you could pass them on easily once you no longer had a use for them. This meant there were no rare items to begin with, nothing special about them if there were rare and in plenty supply for low low prices. Again, no end of complaints despite the fact that this was how the game was designed. on purpose.
The complaints of course all were from the people who wanted AoC to be WoW. AoC had lots of problems but not being WoW was not one of them.
Going deliberatly after the WoW market means you HAVE TO be WoW. And not the WoW some ppl play, but the WoW 10 million people play. That is a very risky market to enter. First, Blizzard has shown they are the best at making WoW and nobody else has even come close. In fact everyone else has had to make a living by NOT being WoW and attracting customers who do NOT WANT WOW! If you introduce the perfect WoW clone, then why would people come to you? They already invested lots of money and time in WoW, so why would they switch?
if you change the smallest bit, the WoW fans will complain till you change things, but they will go back to WoW anyway and you will loose all those who hated WoW and wanted something different. If only there was an example of an MMORPG that attracted people who didn't like WoW style but the game went ahead and changed to attract WoW players, failed to attract them but repulsed its old players. Anyone? Maybe some Sci-Fi movie based MMORPG. *cough*SWG NGE*cough*
AoC showed on thing, the MMORPG market is huge. You can attract a MILLION customers at launch. You do NOT have to be a WoW clone but you have to very clear about WHAT you game is going to be like from the start (DEMO) and have it WORK.
The above "works", where ALL collect the head. Raids where only ONE collects the head get annoying. But how trivial would it be to re-write the quest so that you don't collect the head but get the proof of your deed some other way.
Or even, introduce a GROUP inventory and the quest item goes in there and the GROUP turns it in?
Other solutions:
Just copying the methods from single player computer RPG's does not work.
No pen&paper RPG does this stupid "A head for every group member" OR "only 1 person gets a reward for this quest" thing.
1. You can't (and won't ever be able to) buy one.
I can't buy a McLaren F1 either. So the F1 ain't a car. There are MANY custom made cars, you cannot buy. So they don't qualify either. Hell, you can't buy my car. So my car is not car.
2. You can only drive it at speed on salt flats.
If you were able to find a 9 mile long straight and wide piece of asfalt it would do as well.
3. You can't drive it on public roads (driver and pedestrian safety, shooting flames of death, etc).
The salt flat is public property.
4. Even if you could drive it on-road, its turning radius is probably a mile!
Never seen turning radius as a definition of a car.
A better title might be "British team seeks to break land speed record, again." or even better "Yaaaawn"
A good title for you might be "twit who doesn't belong on slashdot but some kind of barbie website". I take that back. It is an insult to all 12yr old girls.
The GP just says that when given the choice between killing a child and not killing a child the choice ain't hard. Any sane person would conclude that the person did NOT kill the child. You on the other hand with no further info automatically seem to conclude that either the person killed a child for a minor reward OR that someone who does NOT kill a child for a minor reward needs to be taken into care.
No depth, just micro-management. Just like the placing of the antlers on your charger. You place it, turn it, color it but the only thing that matters is to get the ones with the biggest charge bonus, just one of them and be done with it.
I get the feeling that Spore originally was meant to be more but Maxis has always had trouble delivering. SimCity of course were amazing games. For their time. It is the reason the francise died. Because as it aged, the graphics improved but the quality of the simulation didn't and we as players became aware that more was needed. More paths, more options, more choice. Instead SimCity and the likes have always had a rather narrow path to victory and if veered of that path, the game model couldn't cope.
Spore is perhaps the greatest failure. It seems originally to have been a game about evolution or at least to use evolution.
There have been games in this nature before, so it can be done. I remember an ancient game that used clay-motion animation for its creatures that allowed you to breed creatures and cull them to get the ones best suited to their enviroment.
But there is NOTHING of that in this game. As the article mentions, antlers on your back help you charge skill. You charge backwards?
There is just one TINY hint at the slightest possibilty of evolution, fruits. If you are small, you can only reach fallen fruit, if you are tall, you can get the highest fruits. There is no difference in the fruits but it is the one and only time the build of your creature seems to matter.
The rest of the time, it just don't matter. You can't even make a monster eater with a dozen mouths that devours everything in its path, or a super defensive creature because multiple items don't stack their bonusses.
The game just completly failed to live up to its early promises. I get the feeling Will Wright is following in Molyneux's footsteps. Once a person who made innovative and fun game but one who increasingly just can't deliver on his promises.
To bad because a game that uses evolution to judge your creationism could be a lot of fun.
It is a simple problem but very hard to get around because the problem used to simply not exist. Standards.
Get this and get this if you get nothing else. STANDARDS HAVE GONE OUT THE WINDOW in the digital age.
ALL VHS was VHS. A LP's were LP's. All cassette tapes were cassete tapes.
Sure, there were competing standards for a short time but by and large, to the consumer media tech had one standard.
Now, in the digital age, this is no longer true. iPod may be synonmous with MP3 player but the fact is that it barely got 50% of the market. The rest of the market is split by dozens of brands each with dozen of models. Each model has its own system, its own capabilities.
This is why iTunes is NOT the standard method to distribute music. Nor is MS fairplay. Hey, even zune didn't support that.
This hampers DRM (and don't we all feel sad about this), how are you going to get your DRM method on all devices? Apple doesn't even bother with it, that is why it is trivial to convert iTunes music to MP3's and they don't license their solution out. Why would a MP3 maker bother with supporting fairplay when nobody uses it? And when so few players support it, nobody is going to use it.
Sure, Sony is a big company, but we all know how succesful it has been in the MP3 market. The company that OWNS the walkman has totally lost its touch, choosing to push its own formats over making money.
Unless someone comes up with a solution of DRM that works with just the file and doesn't need any software installed on devices that can't have software installed it can't work.
This new system doesn't fix that. Why is going to buy a Marlin enabled device when there are no services that use it, and what service is going to support it when nobody is buy marlin enabled devices?
Apples DRM slipped in by accident. People didn't buy iPod's because of iTunes. It just came with it. MS has totally screwed up its own changes by dropping its own system on its own MP3 players.
Saying that Apple and MS are the big boys in DRM land says it all. THERE IS NO DRM INDUSTRY. The consumer not only doesn't want it, but has no need for it. The industry, the hardware makers only offers it if it thinks the extra checkmark on the box is worth the effort and increasingly, they don't.
What people forget if that there is equality, no freedom, then the opinion of the public can't be judged.
Remember that this guy was arrested and sentenced to death for speaking against the goverment. So, who would go out on the street to show support for this guy after that clear warning?
To make it simpler to understand. In 1943, would you have expected people to hold a protest vigil to protest the forced deportation of jews, in berlin?
The so called support for this guys sentence is highly suspect when you consider it done in a country where people disagree with the approved opinion are sentenced to death.
Dictatorships REALLY do not function the same way as democracies. Remember this the next time you are stuck behind some silly protest about nothing or affected by a strike. They are the essential tools of freedom. For one small group to be able to annoy the hell out of the majority without fear is what freedom is all about.
I have little doubt that the so called support for this guys sentence is 99% "Hi, we are going to kill this guy for disagreeing with us. Do you agree with us?"
As for US involvement, the US always does this. It goes in with the best intentions but can never understand that those who speak the best english, seem most agreeable and welcome a foreign goverment to bolster their power RARELY are the good guys. The US just doesn't get foreign policy. It is almost as if the entire US population has a blindspot when it comes to the rest of the world.
The same thing happened in Iraq. Contratry to popular opinion in the US, Saddam actually was extremely liberal. Until western pressure forced him to become ever more reliant on religious support. Doesn't mean he was a nice guy, he wasn't. But toppling him doesn't make thing suddenly get better and in many way things got a lot worse.
Gay rights for instance have gone from tolerant to being prosecuted.
The enemy of my enemy doesn't have to be your friend. Neither is your enemy always your worsed enemy. The US just doesn't get this.
Check what type of sound files a LOT of games are now using. No longer MP3 but ogg. Same goes true for a lot of other stuff in games.
Remember that games are content. Apache, linux, php, perl, mysql etc etc are OPENSOURCE products used to host websites with content. Nobody says that if all software becomes opensource all website content will be opensource.
The simple fact is that producing a game is a LOT of work, not so much because of the engine, but because of the amount of art/content needed.
Part of the problem is also that designing games for your own use doesn't work for a lot of games. Opensource is usually developed because the developer had a need for it. What need do you have of a game you made yourself? That you played over and over during development and know every secret of? It would be boring as hell to play, the developer would have no use for it.
There are FOSS games out there and some are pretty decent but big budget titles like Mass Effect or a WoW are never going to happen because they need to much content where somebody just sits down and creates for hour after hour and that is hard to get done without paying someone.
Odd as it may sound, developing games just ain't no fun and unlike a utility program you get little personal use out of it.
If you read more carefully, he doesn't want DRM, he wants Trusted Computing. His talk about encryption on the PC, that isn't DRM. The only way encryption after all work is if the system is a black box with no way to intercept the signals. Trusted Computing, making DRM seem like childs play.
It is not unknown for PC-gamers to update their hardware for a game. Can't update a console. You are stuck with what it was designed to be years ago. Why do you think SWG and EQ from SONY never made it to the console? Because they can't. Games that were once state of the art (and don't forget that even WoW pushed some machines at launch) find themselves with better and better hardware in their lifetime.
As a console developer, you are always stuck with the current generation of hardware. You can never push beyond it, never just say "fuck it, we need 4 gigs and that is the market we are going after". Any decent developer knows how to deal with multiple settings. Just lower the texture detail often helps a lot with performance but it means you can have amazing screenshots and low specs at the same time.
Sorry, but if your company was unable to come up with a PC spec to aim at, they can't have been very good. All it requires is to look at what PC's dell sells to consumers. Similar to having to research just what the spread is between console versions (HD space) and accesories.
We just don't have a clue.
The number of things we don't have a clue about is staggering.
Counting the number of earth like planets is just plain silly. If life can only start in space and then find a planet, earth might be totally unsuitable for the first start. It also presumes life can only exist under earth like conditions yet we KNOW that even life on earth varies widely. If some species can survive on the bottom of the ocean outside the influence of the sun, is it impossible to imagine a lifeform that exist in space itself?
No, I am sorry but until we can actually go and look our estimates of the number of civilizations is between 1 and 1+.
Let everyone worry about the tracking and data gathering. It stops people from actually worrying about the slide to a goverment that might use it.
A total surveilance system that is NOT used is harmless. But a goverment that WANTS a total surveilance system can introduce one anytime they want to.
Focus on keep democracy going, not worrying about what some goverment might use someday. Prevent them from coming into power.
Remember that the phone-tapping done by the bush administration didn't use any new tech. Phone taps have been around since phones have been around. Hell, telegraphs and telex was tapped. What happened is that a goverment was allowed into power that used the tech.
Fighting the tech is impossible unless you want society to stop advancing. Stop the wrong people from getting into power instead.
Of course, that would require you to vote for someone on other grounds then the one promising you a tax cut or who seems to a be a likeable guy. America, were a guy looses the election because he just seems to smart.
Because any goverment gives a shit about yahoo user profiles or could not simple collect the info the old database.
You are one of the reasons conspiracy theories are ALWAYS seen as the brain farts of the moronic.
It often takes time for it to become clear just how right Stallman is but so far he always is. Why do you think his detractors focus on Herd and the GNU/Linux naming? Because they can't argue with his theories.
First sign someone is right, his enemies attack him on non-issues.
Subject says it all.
Expect RIAA planes to head to a sky-craper near you, real soon.
mind you, is sueing random citizens, threatening their financial security not a form of terrorism?
And exploiters, geez, everyone knows suicide belts are way overpowered and just have to get nerfed ASAP in a patch. But the dev's just LOVE their muslim fundementalists.
The Torah (note the H) is a precise document, it has to be copied ACCURATELY. Part of the problem is that Hebrew is a hellish language with plenty of possibilities for errors if it is not perfectly written. Just the slightest error changes might change the meaning.
Torah scrolls, those long rolls of parchments on two spindles, are therefor made by hand by trained scribes. This takes a long time, well over a year and makes these items very expensive. Luckily, these scrolls are ONLY needed for official occasions.
What you are talking about here is the Torah scrolls for religious occasions. NOT the Torah itself. The document itself may be reproduced no matter how you want it. Yes, you may photocopy a Torah scroll.
But the 'prop' used during official occasions is to be an accurate copy of the 'original' with no alterations of any kind. Be they translations, errors, updates, corrections etc etc. It is to keep the text pure. The reason why this is so important is that with hand-copying over hundred of years it is trivial to slip in errors. We all know the new testament has been edited numerous times and that entire testaments have been edited out. To keep 'jews' 'jews' you have to keep the same text.
So, the Torah may be copied anyway you want, but the official Torah scrolls MUST, to avoid errors, be copied by exactly, and since doing this by hand was the only way, were are copied by hand by trained scribes AND checked before being certified.
Your post is sadly rather typical of peoples understanding of religions. They hear something, that in a way is true but fail to understand the why and how.
To translate. A zip file containing the source code for a gnu project must contain the gnu license. Conclusion, gnu code must be put into zip files.