Well here's how I see it, perhaps a bit between the two of you.
1) The cameras will not necessarily STOP the terrorists, but may help to track them down to infiltrate or thwart their compatriots.
2) The cameras themselves are not an invasion of privacy. They're being put in a public place, where no one should expect any form of privacy.
3) They may help to deter other kinds of criminals. Late at night, most of the subway stations are nearly deserted, making them ripe territory for muggers, kidnappers, etc etc. I think security cameras would be a welcome deterrent there.
I'm not sure if I buy all the hype that these cameras will lead to an Orwellian state, with our every move being tracked. As most people here seem to realize, the government doesn't have the resources to do actually ANALYZE all of this data. If the situation changes, then my viewpoint will change accordingly, but as things are now, these cameras seem to be a good thing.
(And this is coming from someone who rides the 4/5 train to Grand Central Station twice a day)
But in the words of Dennis Miller... "That's just my opinion. I could be wrong."
I can kind of see the other side of this story. I'm writing a computer game at the moment, in my spare time. It's an adventure game in the style of the old Sierra games (Yes, AGS, for those of you in the know -- My other game-in-progress is actually a homemade isometric engine).
Being a fantasy game, the plot is a little bit "out there," but if you take out all the frills, it really does boil down to:
1) Boy meets girl 2) Girl gets kidnapped 3) Boy rescues girl
Why? Well, it's the type of plot I was brought up on. In this case, the "girl" character is actually an extremely powerful mage and deadly with a melee weapon, and is letting herself be imprisoned as part of a rather large scheme to test the boy's worth, but the basic plot remains.
The article really does hit the nail on the head here... So many adventure games and RPGs are based on the "man rescues woman" stereotype... It's a bit hard to break away from. But with any game based around a single protagonist, won't you necessarily alienate one gender? If the character is male, any kind of love story embedded in the plot (Which you have to admit will usually enrich any game that isn't based entirely on death) will always involve a female on the other end (Unless you want to take a big risk and offend a lot more people). If you switch it around and put a female in the main slot (And I'm not talking Lara Croft, which obviously still catered entirely to men), you'll just end up alienating the other half of your target audience...
Disclaimer: Yes, I'm generalizing this, and I know there are exceptions to what types of games guys and girls play, blah blah blah.
Yes, I've been trying to get into Alterac Valley for a week with no success
Yes, the game has its fair share of bugs
But yes, It's a damn fun game... Yes, the lag is about as good as could be expected with the insane number of players in close proximity... Yes, my server (Argent Dawn) is hideously imbalanced towards the alliance... And yes, every program has bugs, and Blizzard is fixing them one by one.
As long as I continue to see gradual improvements, I'm satisfied.
To be fair, there are actually two kinds of battlegrounds in WoW.
Alterac Valley is a 40 vs 40 battle, where you wrestle for control of mines (Resources = Better NPC support), graveyards (Spawn points), and towers (Defensive, like in RTS games), and eventually try to destroy the enemy town. I haven't braved the 4+ hour queue to enter Alterac yet, but it sounds pretty cool.
Warsong Gulch is a 10 vs 10 CTF game... First to capture the enemy flag three times wins. It's engineered towards smaller group tactics and more dependence on individuals.
Rogues who never stun or expose enemy armor (Or worse, waste stuns on enemies that are clearly stun-immune)... Priests who use mind blast at the beginning of combat (Which makes it very difficult to pull the monster away from them)... Warriors who charge into huge groups of enemies (Then complain when two priests can't heal them fast enough)... Druids who never shapeshift (That's only the one greatest strength of the druid class)... Mages who use area spells when we're trying to single-pull (Yay, let's piss off every monster at once!)... Hunters who can't control their pets (See comment on warriors)... Warlocks who put damage-over-time spells on sapped (stunned) enemies (Which of course prevents them from being stunned/sheeped/etc)... Paladins who don't use their seals and judgements (The only thing that makes them more than a walking tin can)...
No complaints on Shamans yet, as my two horde characters are my lowest, only 13 and 19.
The newbies I can excuse and just try to teach (I created one of every character class, so I could learn enough about each to do so)... But when I inspect their gear and see epic armor and weaponry that had to cost hundreds of gold each, it's time to kick them out of the group and find someone else.
Sounds sinister, but it might be true... Buy up some of the best people who have research relating to your company, and prevent them from selling it to your competition.
Well, I hate to waste a mod point by replying a thread I've modded, but I have to say this...
Your estimates are way off, staff-wise. I'm not sure how large their programming staff is, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't that NY Times article on them mention that their company has grown from under 200 to over 700 employees, most of which are doing customer support?
Well, I think I can speak on this one... All seven of my characters are on Argent Dawn, arguably one of the five most crowded servers for several reasons:
1) It's been there since the beginning
2) At launch, it was one of only two RP servers in the eastern US (Before they merged the geographical lists together)
3) Since it's the first server on the list, we get hundreds of people making level 1's on our realm, just to whine when their server is down.
That said, I really can't complain much. If I try to login during a peak time, when a bunch of other realms are down, it might be a 15-30 minute wait. Normally, there's no queue at all.
Also, just yesterday, Blizzard brought a handful of new realms online. If they give us a way to transfer characters to low-population realms, things could balance out.
(For reference, my characters are level 41, 35, 23, 20, 17, 14, and 13, though the 14 should hit 15 or 16 tonight. Yes, I'm bragging. Nyah.)
So VB.NET designers thought... what about an IsNot operator? This really shows their inability to think: Colliding the Not to the Is operator makes it only work for Is. So I still have to write (if I would opt for VB.NET)
If Not A = B Then...
End If
Oh, come on. Give them a LITTLE credit. VB just uses "<>" instead of "!=". "Is" (and soon "IsNot") are only used for reference types.
That said, if M$ can patent "IsNot", then I want patents to "CanNot", "WillNot", and "WhyNot".
"The Character Design award recognizes the overall excellence of (non-licensed) character design in a game - including, but not limited to, originality, character arc, emotional depth, etc. "
I haven't played Doom 3 (As sibling post mentioned), but do any of the characters really have personalities? WoW comes off as pretty cheesy at times, but many of the hundreds of speaking NPCs have stories behind them, different modes of speech, etc. I don't think WoW deserves the award (Can you really beat Alyx in HL2?), but the nomination seems appropriate to me.
As for the new Larry... I've boycotted that, because Al Lowe wasn't involved.
(Pardon my lack of nice formatting, but my lunch hour is almost over)
1) They could not possibly have expected the game to sell THAT well. Go back to the old triangle... Time, Resources, Quality. When the rush of new players came in, their time dropped from a year to a few weeks. Resources were relatively constant, rising much more slowly in relation to the change in time. Therefore quality drops.
2) People want to play on certain types of servers (RP, PvP, PvE). People want to play on servers in their geographical region (They used to be divided into eastern/central/mountain/pacific). People want to play on the same servers as their friends/guildmates. This naturally concentrates people on certain servers instead of evenly distributing.
3) Battlegrounds won't lag because they'll be on a dedicated server, and will be completely seperate from the rest of the realms. The price? Players will go through a loading screen instead of the smooth transitions that connect other realms. It seems plausible.
4) They're overloading their servers, and things need to be fixed. Their options are to take things down without any warning to apply those fixes, or to schedule the downtime in advance so players won't EXPECT to be able to play those times. They're making the best of a bad situation, and I applaud them for it.
5) Every program has bugs. What's the average ratio in commercial programs, per million lines of code? Imagine how much coding is involved in WoW.
6) I've been playing since the first stress test, and have been playing retail since the second day. There has been steady improvement which shows no signs of stopping.
(And no additions to 7-8... That looks about right to me)
Seriously, give them some credit. It's an amazing game, despite the bugs. They're faced with the equivalent of a long-term slashdotting, and they're keeping their servers alive. That's pretty damn impressive.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, that's right... Big, powerful headline... Why not just say something like:
"All your pin are belong to GIMP!"
This has nothing to do with the graphics programs and everything to do with bad-quality printing methods.
Well here's how I see it, perhaps a bit between the two of you.
1) The cameras will not necessarily STOP the terrorists, but may help to track them down to infiltrate or thwart their compatriots.
2) The cameras themselves are not an invasion of privacy. They're being put in a public place, where no one should expect any form of privacy.
3) They may help to deter other kinds of criminals. Late at night, most of the subway stations are nearly deserted, making them ripe territory for muggers, kidnappers, etc etc. I think security cameras would be a welcome deterrent there.
I'm not sure if I buy all the hype that these cameras will lead to an Orwellian state, with our every move being tracked. As most people here seem to realize, the government doesn't have the resources to do actually ANALYZE all of this data. If the situation changes, then my viewpoint will change accordingly, but as things are now, these cameras seem to be a good thing.
(And this is coming from someone who rides the 4/5 train to Grand Central Station twice a day)
But in the words of Dennis Miller... "That's just my opinion. I could be wrong."
Ok, so I'm wrong... I'm a programmer, not a physicist.
I'm not a physicist or an astronomer (Though I have an interest in both), but I believe they do this by observing the orbital path.
I think, by taking the orbital velocity and the perihelion and aphelion (sp?) of the orbit, they can calculate mass pretty accurately.
I can kind of see the other side of this story. I'm writing a computer game at the moment, in my spare time. It's an adventure game in the style of the old Sierra games (Yes, AGS, for those of you in the know -- My other game-in-progress is actually a homemade isometric engine).
Being a fantasy game, the plot is a little bit "out there," but if you take out all the frills, it really does boil down to:
1) Boy meets girl
2) Girl gets kidnapped
3) Boy rescues girl
Why? Well, it's the type of plot I was brought up on. In this case, the "girl" character is actually an extremely powerful mage and deadly with a melee weapon, and is letting herself be imprisoned as part of a rather large scheme to test the boy's worth, but the basic plot remains.
The article really does hit the nail on the head here... So many adventure games and RPGs are based on the "man rescues woman" stereotype... It's a bit hard to break away from. But with any game based around a single protagonist, won't you necessarily alienate one gender? If the character is male, any kind of love story embedded in the plot (Which you have to admit will usually enrich any game that isn't based entirely on death) will always involve a female on the other end (Unless you want to take a big risk and offend a lot more people). If you switch it around and put a female in the main slot (And I'm not talking Lara Croft, which obviously still catered entirely to men), you'll just end up alienating the other half of your target audience...
Disclaimer: Yes, I'm generalizing this, and I know there are exceptions to what types of games guys and girls play, blah blah blah.
Hear hear...
Yes, the Ironforge lag is a pain
Yes, I've been trying to get into Alterac Valley for a week with no success
Yes, the game has its fair share of bugs
But yes, It's a damn fun game... Yes, the lag is about as good as could be expected with the insane number of players in close proximity... Yes, my server (Argent Dawn) is hideously imbalanced towards the alliance... And yes, every program has bugs, and Blizzard is fixing them one by one.
As long as I continue to see gradual improvements, I'm satisfied.
To be fair, there are actually two kinds of battlegrounds in WoW.
Alterac Valley is a 40 vs 40 battle, where you wrestle for control of mines (Resources = Better NPC support), graveyards (Spawn points), and towers (Defensive, like in RTS games), and eventually try to destroy the enemy town. I haven't braved the 4+ hour queue to enter Alterac yet, but it sounds pretty cool.
Warsong Gulch is a 10 vs 10 CTF game... First to capture the enemy flag three times wins. It's engineered towards smaller group tactics and more dependence on individuals.
"Well, that certainly illustrates the diversity of the word."
- The Boondock Saints
Ugh, I've grouped with plenty of those...
Rogues who never stun or expose enemy armor (Or worse, waste stuns on enemies that are clearly stun-immune)...
Priests who use mind blast at the beginning of combat (Which makes it very difficult to pull the monster away from them)...
Warriors who charge into huge groups of enemies (Then complain when two priests can't heal them fast enough)...
Druids who never shapeshift (That's only the one greatest strength of the druid class)...
Mages who use area spells when we're trying to single-pull (Yay, let's piss off every monster at once!)...
Hunters who can't control their pets (See comment on warriors)...
Warlocks who put damage-over-time spells on sapped (stunned) enemies (Which of course prevents them from being stunned/sheeped/etc)...
Paladins who don't use their seals and judgements (The only thing that makes them more than a walking tin can)...
No complaints on Shamans yet, as my two horde characters are my lowest, only 13 and 19.
The newbies I can excuse and just try to teach (I created one of every character class, so I could learn enough about each to do so)... But when I inspect their gear and see epic armor and weaponry that had to cost hundreds of gold each, it's time to kick them out of the group and find someone else.
Sounds sinister, but it might be true... Buy up some of the best people who have research relating to your company, and prevent them from selling it to your competition.
Your encyclopedia is garbage. I tested it. I looked up "Spork" on both Encarta and Wikipedia... Guess which one gave an answer!
What a waste of effort... Why even bother making a joke article? Just say "Paris Hilton", and it's already a joke.
Damnit, don't make me crack up at work!
:)
+10 funny
Well, I hate to waste a mod point by replying a thread I've modded, but I have to say this...
Your estimates are way off, staff-wise. I'm not sure how large their programming staff is, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't that NY Times article on them mention that their company has grown from under 200 to over 700 employees, most of which are doing customer support?
That's a pretty big expense...
Just remember, the game doesn't end at 60... Once you max out your level, there's still:
1) Dungeon raids: 40-player groups questing to destroy insanely-powerful monsters
2) Battlegrounds (Soon): Basically take an RTS and stick it into an MMORPG
3) Hero classes (In development): Something past level 60
4) PvP Raids... So you hit 60. Think you're ready to take down Thrall and claim dominance over the Orc capital?
They're included, as part of the "Stop banging the door with your cro-bar, and listen to the dialog" feature.
Well, I think I can speak on this one... All seven of my characters are on Argent Dawn, arguably one of the five most crowded servers for several reasons:
1) It's been there since the beginning
2) At launch, it was one of only two RP servers in the eastern US (Before they merged the geographical lists together)
3) Since it's the first server on the list, we get hundreds of people making level 1's on our realm, just to whine when their server is down.
That said, I really can't complain much. If I try to login during a peak time, when a bunch of other realms are down, it might be a 15-30 minute wait. Normally, there's no queue at all.
Also, just yesterday, Blizzard brought a handful of new realms online. If they give us a way to transfer characters to low-population realms, things could balance out.
(For reference, my characters are level 41, 35, 23, 20, 17, 14, and 13, though the 14 should hit 15 or 16 tonight. Yes, I'm bragging. Nyah.)
I would have put it more simply...
New study shows that solar panels may cause damage to internal organs..... when swallowed in large quantities.
Sure... Go ahead. Don't work overtime. You get "downsized" to make room for someone who will...
It sucks, but that's life.
Oh, come on. Give them a LITTLE credit. VB just uses "<>" instead of "!=". "Is" (and soon "IsNot") are only used for reference types.
That said, if M$ can patent "IsNot", then I want patents to "CanNot", "WillNot", and "WhyNot".
I'm a gamer, and the day I start talking like that (Other than here, when talking ABOUT it), is the day I put a gun to my own head...
So we're not all illiterate morons.
The only thing more disturbing than the script kiddies talking like that... The idea of the corporate automatons doing it too...
*shudder*...
(From the GDCA website)
"The Character Design award recognizes the overall excellence of (non-licensed) character design in a game - including, but not limited to, originality, character arc, emotional depth, etc. "
I haven't played Doom 3 (As sibling post mentioned), but do any of the characters really have personalities? WoW comes off as pretty cheesy at times, but many of the hundreds of speaking NPCs have stories behind them, different modes of speech, etc. I don't think WoW deserves the award (Can you really beat Alyx in HL2?), but the nomination seems appropriate to me.
As for the new Larry... I've boycotted that, because Al Lowe wasn't involved.
They're not bugs. They're undocumented features
(Pardon my lack of nice formatting, but my lunch hour is almost over)
1) They could not possibly have expected the game to sell THAT well. Go back to the old triangle... Time, Resources, Quality. When the rush of new players came in, their time dropped from a year to a few weeks. Resources were relatively constant, rising much more slowly in relation to the change in time. Therefore quality drops.
2) People want to play on certain types of servers (RP, PvP, PvE). People want to play on servers in their geographical region (They used to be divided into eastern/central/mountain/pacific). People want to play on the same servers as their friends/guildmates. This naturally concentrates people on certain servers instead of evenly distributing.
3) Battlegrounds won't lag because they'll be on a dedicated server, and will be completely seperate from the rest of the realms. The price? Players will go through a loading screen instead of the smooth transitions that connect other realms. It seems plausible.
4) They're overloading their servers, and things need to be fixed. Their options are to take things down without any warning to apply those fixes, or to schedule the downtime in advance so players won't EXPECT to be able to play those times. They're making the best of a bad situation, and I applaud them for it.
5) Every program has bugs. What's the average ratio in commercial programs, per million lines of code? Imagine how much coding is involved in WoW.
6) I've been playing since the first stress test, and have been playing retail since the second day. There has been steady improvement which shows no signs of stopping.
(And no additions to 7-8... That looks about right to me)
Seriously, give them some credit. It's an amazing game, despite the bugs. They're faced with the equivalent of a long-term slashdotting, and they're keeping their servers alive. That's pretty damn impressive.
Anyway, lunch hour is over... Back to coding...