And the irony is that I was the one here who got modded troll.
Anyway, there are two issues with the expansions. One is that there are so many of them that it costs too much over and above the subscription cost to continue buying the expansions. And two is that buying the expansions is pretty much required if you want to play the game at all, because of the rampant equipment inflation that occurs with each release - that is, if you want to continue upgrading your gear, you have to look toward the next expansion, because it's guaranteed that not only will it have new content, but the equipment available in the next expansion will beat anything you could get previously.
Sony's policy toward EQ/EQ2 is to churn out expansions as quickly as possible for the extra revenue. The first EQ2 expansion was released less than a year after the game went live, and there were two "adventure packs" (mini-expansions) released before that. By comparison, Blizzard has yet to announce the release date of its first expansion for WoW, and its equivalent to the adventure pack (aka content patch) has consisted of several dungeons available for free.
Not to make this solely a WoW versus EQ debate, note that Sony is way out ahead of the entire MMOG pack in terms of expansions. For that matter, EQ is even outrunning itself, in a sense - for the first three years of its existence, they averaged one expansion per year. Once SOE became firmly entrenched (remember, EQ was independently operated for the first 15 months by Verant Interactive), they cranked up the expansions to two per year.
No, the "killer app" for Firefox is, has been, and forever shall be Adblock.
Instant message programs and file sharing programs are a dime a dozen, but Adblock is what separates Firefox from other web browsers. It'll have a far more profound effect on the web, too, as eventually it'll become clear to advertisers that the conventional massive blinking ad in the middle of the site's content just isn't as effective as the innocuous text-only ad, because users are far more likely to block an annoying ad than they are a simple text ad.
Option A: Fix the issue as quickly as possible (perhaps as a temporary fix until a more compatible permanent fix can be issued), possibly allowing an unknown number of old pieces of software to malfunction.
Option B: Don't fix the issue immediately, allowing millions of computers to get rooted and exposing the passwords, credit card numbers, and other personally identifiable information of unprotected and unaware users to organized identity theft rings.
Are you really advocating/defending Microsoft choosing option B here?
Many physicists today believe that Ed Witten, due to his uncanny grasp of head-exploding mathematics, is our best hope for revolutionary advances in theoretical physics today.
In their estimation, the Rogue class finally gets to do its thing in an online game.
Apparently, leading the pack in terms of damage output isn't enough anymore.
Still, traps can be fun little additions that generally get neglected in MMOGs, and you generally wouldn't expect the fighter to take the delicate approach, at least not in a D&D game.
This shouldn't be difficult to fix. They just have to change the code for gdi32.dll not to register the callback function (or not to call it, perhaps). If it breaks some WMF files, then the WMF files were technically broken anyway, since the callback only gets called when the renderer has to abort for some reason (like detecting an error in the file).
Darwinia really is a fun game, if a bit short. The Tron-esque retro look is cool (and nostalgic, for those of us old enough to remember when Wolfenstein 3D was bleeding edge), plus it meant that they didn't have to hire legions of 3d artists to make a good game. In addition, the plot is really captivating. It introduces the player to artificial intelligence concepts like genetic algorithms (GAs) without being boring and pedagogical. And this is coming from someone whose life's work really does focus on GAs - their take on the topic was quite honestly fascinating.
But us Yanks didn't actually have to go through Steam to play it until it was released on Steam. I ordered the game the old fashioned way before its Steam release, and was able to download it from Introversion's servers as well as receive a hard copy on CD shipped from the UK.
Why they changed their distribution method, I don't know, unless it was somehow actually cheaper to use Valve as their US vendor rather than doing it the other way. Or maybe Valve is giving them promotional opportunities (i.e., advertising) that they couldn't get before.
For real protection against egregious DRM, fair use rights must be protected. DRM isn't really about piracy prevention, after all - it's merely a red herring. If content companies were only interested in piracy prevention, the Blu-Ray spec would be finalized by now.
The real reason for DRM is control over the consumer, ranging from hardware or software lock-in to captive audience advertising. Fair use lets us escape such abuses by allowing us to time- and space-shift content, allowing us to move legally-purchased content to other playback devices and to skip unwanted advertising. The DMCRA would be a good start - if anything, this proposed DRMPA should be added to that legislation.
Besides, the complaints regarding Sony's DRM are the same as the complaints surrounding a lot of spyware and viruses. Why should Sony's status as a multibillion dollar corporation cause it to be painted with a different brush (and have different laws applied to it) than, say, Claria?
Addition would be more properly applied to "girls require time or money". When you multiply time by money, you ensure that both terms are required to be nonzero in order for the product to be nonzero, so multiplication is correct in this case.
It's unclear whether the 18000 were from just the US-based servers or from their whole operation. It's known that the 5 million subscriber number includes all of their servers in the US, Europe, and Asia.
I'm sure the RIAA could hire some of the Soviet-era thugs who've been desperate for work. Although, if the thugs want to feel good about themselves in the morning, I hear there's a large organized crime industry in Russia as well.
I click through EULAs because I dont think they have any legal weight.
You should be careful about this philosophy, because courts have held that, in general, there is nothing wrong with EULAs. In specific cases, though, such as shrink-wrap EULAs, where the person has to buy the software before getting to read the EULA, and has no recourse if they decline the agreement; or click-past EULAs, where the person isn't actually required to consent to the EULA before they get to use the product; or particular EULA clauses that do things like try to restrict the first-sale doctrine; courts have struck down individual clauses or held the EULA to be nonbinding.
And therein lies the problem. In actual science, predictions based on the hypothesis are made and tested before any conclusion is drawn.
Besides, your meiosis/mitosis example is flawed in the "observation" stage. Lots of organisms have multiple phases in their life cycle, and it isn't unreasonable to think that sexual reproduction may have stemmed from a longer life cycle phase where a meiosis-produced cell had a significantly longer lifespan than the average egg or sperm, where the combination of two cells with half the chromosomes formed one cell. Sexual reproduction is so widely seen, among both plants and animals, that it most likely arose very early in evolutionary history, probably with few- or single-celled organisms.
Now, am I saying this is what happened? No. This is a hypothesis. The next step is to try to come up with predictions based on this hypothesis (predictions that I honestly lack the expertise to make, but I could see genetic comparisons among organisms as being a basis for at least some tests, especially if we know what genes control meiosis). Based on the results of such a test, we can conclude whether my hypothesis is possibly right or definitely wrong.
But what you're saying is this: given the observations of mitosis and meiosis, the hypothesis is that the evolution hypothesis is wrong. The prediction is that any test of evolution will bear out that the evolution hypothesis is wrong, ergo, intelligent design is right.
That's not science. It's sophistry. This is what people mean when they say ID can't be tested (perhaps it would be more accurate to say that ID proponents don't test ID) - every supposed test of ID is actually a test of evolution combined with the (flawed) assertion that ID and evolution are mutually exclusive.
This stems from a fundamental misunderstanding (on the part of the churchgoing masses who are told about ID as "scientific support" for creation) or misappropriation (on the part of ID's authors and primary proponents) of the scientific method. Tests of predictions rarely provide "positive proof" (meaning we can conclude that a hypothesis is right if the prediction is tested true) of a hypothesis, because it's usually a question that, if not impossible to answer, is orders of magnitude more difficult. Rather, the survival of a hypothesis through many, many tests of "negative disproof" (meaning, we can only conclude the hypothesis is not wrong if the prediction is tested true) is what leads to a hypothesis becoming accepted as a trustworthy basis for further science. But ID proponents turn this on its head, requiring evolution to pass some test of positive proof, rather than survive many tests of negative disproof (which it already has). They use the lack of such a positive proof test as evidence that evolution is wrong, and because of their assumption of mutual exclusivity, conclude that ID is right.
Instead, why don't the ID proponents let ID stand on its own merits, and come up with testable predictions that result from the ID hypothesis - predictions that, if they were to test false, would show that the ID hypothesis is wrong? This is what's necessary for ID to become true science, but instead of taking this necessary step, the ID proponents instead skip right to making conclusions, either because they cannot formulate such testable predictions or they fear the possibility of their predictions turning out false.
Of course, their other tactic is to skip scientific discussion altogether and leverage political arguments rather than scientific ones to ramrod ID into schools.
Slashdot Mirror
And the irony is that I was the one here who got modded troll.
Anyway, there are two issues with the expansions. One is that there are so many of them that it costs too much over and above the subscription cost to continue buying the expansions. And two is that buying the expansions is pretty much required if you want to play the game at all, because of the rampant equipment inflation that occurs with each release - that is, if you want to continue upgrading your gear, you have to look toward the next expansion, because it's guaranteed that not only will it have new content, but the equipment available in the next expansion will beat anything you could get previously.
Sony's policy toward EQ/EQ2 is to churn out expansions as quickly as possible for the extra revenue. The first EQ2 expansion was released less than a year after the game went live, and there were two "adventure packs" (mini-expansions) released before that. By comparison, Blizzard has yet to announce the release date of its first expansion for WoW, and its equivalent to the adventure pack (aka content patch) has consisted of several dungeons available for free.
Not to make this solely a WoW versus EQ debate, note that Sony is way out ahead of the entire MMOG pack in terms of expansions. For that matter, EQ is even outrunning itself, in a sense - for the first three years of its existence, they averaged one expansion per year. Once SOE became firmly entrenched (remember, EQ was independently operated for the first 15 months by Verant Interactive), they cranked up the expansions to two per year.
Everquest's 11th expansion
And this is why I don't play EQ anymore.
The other 40% is money they've milked out of other people.
Actually, that's money they were paid in exchange for goods and services. Like milk.
No, the "killer app" for Firefox is, has been, and forever shall be Adblock.
Instant message programs and file sharing programs are a dime a dozen, but Adblock is what separates Firefox from other web browsers. It'll have a far more profound effect on the web, too, as eventually it'll become clear to advertisers that the conventional massive blinking ad in the middle of the site's content just isn't as effective as the innocuous text-only ad, because users are far more likely to block an annoying ad than they are a simple text ad.
Let's review the dilemma then, shall we?
Option A: Fix the issue as quickly as possible (perhaps as a temporary fix until a more compatible permanent fix can be issued), possibly allowing an unknown number of old pieces of software to malfunction.
Option B: Don't fix the issue immediately, allowing millions of computers to get rooted and exposing the passwords, credit card numbers, and other personally identifiable information of unprotected and unaware users to organized identity theft rings.
Are you really advocating/defending Microsoft choosing option B here?
Many physicists today believe that Ed Witten, due to his uncanny grasp of head-exploding mathematics, is our best hope for revolutionary advances in theoretical physics today.
In their estimation, the Rogue class finally gets to do its thing in an online game.
Apparently, leading the pack in terms of damage output isn't enough anymore.
Still, traps can be fun little additions that generally get neglected in MMOGs, and you generally wouldn't expect the fighter to take the delicate approach, at least not in a D&D game.
I take it you're not a big fan of the space elevator.
This shouldn't be difficult to fix. They just have to change the code for gdi32.dll not to register the callback function (or not to call it, perhaps). If it breaks some WMF files, then the WMF files were technically broken anyway, since the callback only gets called when the renderer has to abort for some reason (like detecting an error in the file).
This could have been a 0-day fix, quite honestly.
What is the over/under for Microsoft getting a patch out for this?
You mean this year?
Darwinia really is a fun game, if a bit short. The Tron-esque retro look is cool (and nostalgic, for those of us old enough to remember when Wolfenstein 3D was bleeding edge), plus it meant that they didn't have to hire legions of 3d artists to make a good game. In addition, the plot is really captivating. It introduces the player to artificial intelligence concepts like genetic algorithms (GAs) without being boring and pedagogical. And this is coming from someone whose life's work really does focus on GAs - their take on the topic was quite honestly fascinating.
But us Yanks didn't actually have to go through Steam to play it until it was released on Steam. I ordered the game the old fashioned way before its Steam release, and was able to download it from Introversion's servers as well as receive a hard copy on CD shipped from the UK.
Why they changed their distribution method, I don't know, unless it was somehow actually cheaper to use Valve as their US vendor rather than doing it the other way. Or maybe Valve is giving them promotional opportunities (i.e., advertising) that they couldn't get before.
Those Swedes really know how to put in almost everything you need.
- Philip J. Fry
Yeah, plus it's just not satisfying saying "HAHA PWNED!!!!11``oneone" to your Xbox.
For real protection against egregious DRM, fair use rights must be protected. DRM isn't really about piracy prevention, after all - it's merely a red herring. If content companies were only interested in piracy prevention, the Blu-Ray spec would be finalized by now.
The real reason for DRM is control over the consumer, ranging from hardware or software lock-in to captive audience advertising. Fair use lets us escape such abuses by allowing us to time- and space-shift content, allowing us to move legally-purchased content to other playback devices and to skip unwanted advertising. The DMCRA would be a good start - if anything, this proposed DRMPA should be added to that legislation.
Besides, the complaints regarding Sony's DRM are the same as the complaints surrounding a lot of spyware and viruses. Why should Sony's status as a multibillion dollar corporation cause it to be painted with a different brush (and have different laws applied to it) than, say, Claria?
Quoth the report: "Some 94% of online women and 88% of online men use email."
And just how big is the rock that the rest of these people are living under?
If there's a road sign in the video, for example, users will try to read it and will thus miss some of the main content.
Better yet, replace the road sign with advertising.
lock the content providers into their DRM scheme, and all of them fight to make sure their DRM doesn't really work with anyone elses
And the ultimate irony here is that all the squabbling over DRM has nothing to do with piracy prevention at all.
Addition would be more properly applied to "girls require time or money". When you multiply time by money, you ensure that both terms are required to be nonzero in order for the product to be nonzero, so multiplication is correct in this case.
It's unclear whether the 18000 were from just the US-based servers or from their whole operation. It's known that the 5 million subscriber number includes all of their servers in the US, Europe, and Asia.
I'm sure the RIAA could hire some of the Soviet-era thugs who've been desperate for work. Although, if the thugs want to feel good about themselves in the morning, I hear there's a large organized crime industry in Russia as well.
They were probably big Randy Savage fans, and wanted MACHO as a backronym.
OH YEAH!!
But in many other areas, including Web servers and supercomputing, Microsoft is just one player among many, and often a weak player at that.
Or areas like donuts, fire hydrants, day care, and garbage trucks.
posted an e-mail thread between Steve Jobs and himself.
I always knew Steve Jobs was just a little bit crazy.
I click through EULAs because I dont think they have any legal weight.
You should be careful about this philosophy, because courts have held that, in general, there is nothing wrong with EULAs. In specific cases, though, such as shrink-wrap EULAs, where the person has to buy the software before getting to read the EULA, and has no recourse if they decline the agreement; or click-past EULAs, where the person isn't actually required to consent to the EULA before they get to use the product; or particular EULA clauses that do things like try to restrict the first-sale doctrine; courts have struck down individual clauses or held the EULA to be nonbinding.
http://www.fairterms.org/pdf/EULAcases.pdf
1. Observation:
2. Hypothesis:
3. Conclusion:
And therein lies the problem. In actual science, predictions based on the hypothesis are made and tested before any conclusion is drawn.
Besides, your meiosis/mitosis example is flawed in the "observation" stage. Lots of organisms have multiple phases in their life cycle, and it isn't unreasonable to think that sexual reproduction may have stemmed from a longer life cycle phase where a meiosis-produced cell had a significantly longer lifespan than the average egg or sperm, where the combination of two cells with half the chromosomes formed one cell. Sexual reproduction is so widely seen, among both plants and animals, that it most likely arose very early in evolutionary history, probably with few- or single-celled organisms.
Now, am I saying this is what happened? No. This is a hypothesis. The next step is to try to come up with predictions based on this hypothesis (predictions that I honestly lack the expertise to make, but I could see genetic comparisons among organisms as being a basis for at least some tests, especially if we know what genes control meiosis). Based on the results of such a test, we can conclude whether my hypothesis is possibly right or definitely wrong.
But what you're saying is this: given the observations of mitosis and meiosis, the hypothesis is that the evolution hypothesis is wrong. The prediction is that any test of evolution will bear out that the evolution hypothesis is wrong, ergo, intelligent design is right.
That's not science. It's sophistry. This is what people mean when they say ID can't be tested (perhaps it would be more accurate to say that ID proponents don't test ID) - every supposed test of ID is actually a test of evolution combined with the (flawed) assertion that ID and evolution are mutually exclusive.
This stems from a fundamental misunderstanding (on the part of the churchgoing masses who are told about ID as "scientific support" for creation) or misappropriation (on the part of ID's authors and primary proponents) of the scientific method. Tests of predictions rarely provide "positive proof" (meaning we can conclude that a hypothesis is right if the prediction is tested true) of a hypothesis, because it's usually a question that, if not impossible to answer, is orders of magnitude more difficult. Rather, the survival of a hypothesis through many, many tests of "negative disproof" (meaning, we can only conclude the hypothesis is not wrong if the prediction is tested true) is what leads to a hypothesis becoming accepted as a trustworthy basis for further science. But ID proponents turn this on its head, requiring evolution to pass some test of positive proof, rather than survive many tests of negative disproof (which it already has). They use the lack of such a positive proof test as evidence that evolution is wrong, and because of their assumption of mutual exclusivity, conclude that ID is right.
Instead, why don't the ID proponents let ID stand on its own merits, and come up with testable predictions that result from the ID hypothesis - predictions that, if they were to test false, would show that the ID hypothesis is wrong? This is what's necessary for ID to become true science, but instead of taking this necessary step, the ID proponents instead skip right to making conclusions, either because they cannot formulate such testable predictions or they fear the possibility of their predictions turning out false.
Of course, their other tactic is to skip scientific discussion altogether and leverage political arguments rather than scientific ones to ramrod ID into schools.