Same here. (It doesn't hurt to be a poor graduate student either.) I buy on taste, specs, cost, etc. Not brands. Any brand loyalty I have is due to a long experience with the brand which I picked for the previous reasons. And that loyalty goes as soon as it changes.
I built my own computer out of parts that were cheap. I bought my car because my dad and cousin had the same brand, and their cars lasted forever. I've sampled all the beer in a 100 mile radius, and I buy the ones that taste good. In fact, I've never seen a commercial for most of the things I eat and drink, nor the places I eat and drink at. My clothes are generic and purchased on sale, and I don't have a ton of luxury items. My cell phone is pay-as-you-go, and was chosen based on the lowest cost possible.
Advertising is surprisingly effective on a lot of people. However, it's clear that a minority don't pay it any attention at all, and it doesn't affect their purchasing habits.
The thing is, with some sort of karma/moderation quoting would die a swift death. If you got -0.1 karma for every troll's post you replied to, you'd soon stop replying to them. Or you'd be branded a troll yourself.
I agree that it's hard to ignore trolls with idiots replying to them. It even happens here. But with moderation and karma, it's less of a problem.
I don't know why it's so hard to tie moderation and in-game stuff together.
For a given user account, be able to see how many friends, how many "ignores", how many bans/warnings they've had. Like slashdot, have some sort of karma and ability to filter. Want to browse at -1? Go for it. Want Foes to get +2 to posts? Sure.
Something like that would solve a lot of problems. If I ignore you in game, why would I want to see your posts? If you get banned from posting, suddenly your in-game chat abilities don't work either.
You can punish a persona without resorting to a real name.
That was my first thought too. God damn beer snobs....
Sure, it can fetch and open standard, mass-produced beers, but never mind good beers, optimum serving temperature or correct glasses - this thing can't even pour a beer into a glass in the first place!
Why would I want a robot that can't even pour beer? That's the second most important part, after drinking it. And it doesn't look like it can use a growler either....
I agree with one thing - immersion requires feedback. I've faced bosses that took tons of damage, but they showed that they were taking it. Tanks like that would have pissed me off.
At the same time, I've seen bosses that appeared to take damage, but never actually took any because you hadn't pushed the magic "make them die button" that was only accessible after doing the equivalent of a platforming run past them.
In both cases, the immersion is broken due to the broken feedback from your actions. That's the sort of lack of consistency that I complained about earlier on this thread.
I dunno...I've been using tree-style tabs for a year or so now. They make far more sense to me than regular tabs, anywhere you put them.
I've got a "tree" of tabs on the left side of the browser (maximizes vertical space, since everything I use now is widescreen) where tabs spawned from a page are indented under that tab. I can expand and collapse branches.
The new "chrome" way makes no sense, and doesn't make anything better. I'm a bit surprised they didn't try this style out - it's a big improvement for me, at least.
I have a handful of usernames which have a rich history attached to them. I'm pretty identifiable by sizable groups of people in those sorts of circles. My reputation and personality are linked to those usernames.
What's not (obviously) linked to those usernames is my real name and my life. That's how I want it, and that's how it's going to stay.
Like you, I don't want something I posted 20 years ago to come back to haunt me. I don't want to be asked about one of those usernames at a job interview. That's my personal stuff. Not private, but personal. Some pseudo-anonymity serves that data well.
Extremist views are extremist views, regardless of which side it comes from.
Not entirely - it depends on what side you're on, and what stage you're considering. In the US, at least, we don't have a true left-wing party like the rest of the world does. We have this weird dichotomy of ultra-right-wing, (Republican) and Moderate-right-wing (Democrat). Even an extreme left-wing-Democrat would be considered Moderate in the rest of the world.
An extreme left-wing view in the US wouldn't be an extremist view in the rest of the world by any stretch.
However, it is amusing to find out that politicians are just learning the golden rule of "stuff you put on the internet stays there forever".
Everyone. Every mistake, every poor choice. Just like "The Hand of God", and Germany's "notched goal line", the drunken trader who improperly traded seven million barrels of oil while hammered out of his gourd is reality.
Predict all you want - you can have the best algorithms and the best data, but human fuckups will ruin those every time. Maybe, if all trades were designed and executed by computers, with no human involvement, you could predict those things. But as long as someone is required to spot someone 3 yards offside, or someone is allowed to trade millions of shares with his right hand with a scotch in his left, you're going to be unable to predict either a World Cup or a financial market.
Humans are ridiculously chaotic and unreliable, despite how advanced we think we are.
Should that be a reason to not try and introduce a new game mechanic...
In a word, yes. If you introduce a game mechanic (gimmick) that breaks the existing rules of the game, and is completely inconsistent with the rest of the game, don't use it. It destroys the immersion of the game.
My biggest pet peeve are inconsistent rules about breaking things. If you allow me to break chests in a RPG, then I should be able to break wooden doors down. If I can blow up a tank in a FPS, then I should be able to blow up turrets, doors, and break glass. If I can shoot 99 monsters in a level, I should be able to shoot the 100th as well. If he's magically immune to my bullets, and requires a side-quest to kill, that's bogus. If it takes all my ammo, and is a pain in the ass, and the side quest makes it easier/more feasible, fine. But "unbreakable", when other similar things are plenty breakable, is a sign of uncreative, rail-roading bullshit.
So that means no guns in games unless I can shoot out every window in the game world and be able to kill people vital to the storyline?
That'd be fine with me. I've played games where you can kill people vital to the storyline. It makes the game pretty realistic, when done well. When you kill the irritating little punk, then come to the tiny hole that you need someone to crawl through, the consequences of your actions are pretty clear. And that's immersive.
I totally agree. I think this goes along with the "selectively destructable items" beef which is one of my major ones. Whether it's doors, enemies, or something else - if I can destroy some of them, sometimes, I should be able to destroy all of them, all the time.
Now I'm FINE with there being a penalty for me shooting through every door, or destroying every deactivated robot I walk past. Lack of ammo, destroying things I need, killing a party member I need, etc. That's all fine and good. I just want the ability to do it consistently. That's what keeps the immersion going, regardless of whether or not I chose well, or correctly.
Thank you. I've been saying the same for a decade or two now.
All you need is to START your game with sensible rules. Then build the game around those rules. Get some good, power-gamer playtesters, and turn them loose in a room together with a prize for the most badass stunts. Make sure they don't totally break the game, and you're golden. If they do, examine how you implemented the rules.
There's no good reason to selectively enforce rules in a game. If you can't be bothered to make a consistent game, you obviously don't care enough about your game.
But I think that the feeling a game evokes is directly tied to the consistency.
The biggest things for me that break the feeling of games usually are the places where the consistency is artificially broken to drive the game forward. One of the things that infuriates me in games are monsters that are unkillable by the means that you killed EVERY OTHER MONSTER up until that point. (Quake (3 or 4?) and HL are good examples of this.) Instead of emptying your entire arsenal into it, you have to jump, dodge, and sneak around it, push a button, then it dies. Or you have to get around to the back and shoot it in its weak spot. I'm ok if the machine weakens it. I'm ok if the weak spot does more damage. But when something is fucking IMMUNE to damage UNLESS you play by the newly imposed, secret rules, it totally breaks the immersion.
As a long-time Doom player, I know how to save ammo. I know how to replay a level over and over again to use the absolute minimum ammo. Why? Because I know that there's going to be something badass that will require all the ammo I saved. When I run into that badass, with all the ammo I can possibly carry, and I empty ALL of it into that creature, it should die.
RPGs are another place where stuff like this breaks the flow of the entire game. I can smash chests, but not doors? I can pick some locks, but not others? I want to go down this road, but I'm not allowed to? This lack of consistency is EXACTLY what breaks the feel of the game.
The biggest one, that others have mentioned, are selectively destructive items. When a game lets you destroy only some items, that's a gimmick that breaks immersion. If it's wood and I can smash it, then I should be able to smash all wood of similar thickness. If I can break some glass, then I should be able to break ALL glass.
The issue is that gimmicks are used in place of plot and in place of thought. If you build destructibles into your game, you need to build them throughout the entire game. If the only time you can kick down a door is at one heroic instant, you've written a gimmick instead of a plot.
The real issue is that plots and stories are consistent. Gimmicks are not. And immersion is all about consistency.
This isn't authentically clever. As other posters have said, it's fairly obvious, and it requires more materials which is the reason most manufacturers haven't bothered to solve this "problem". However, there are two far bigger issues:
1) This works for 1 battery, or any number, all oriented the same direction If you have 2+ batteries in a row, flashlight style, it doesn't help when you orient them opposite directions. 2) If you train consumers that directions in batteries don't matter, then some non-trivial percentage of them will apply this to everything, regardless if it's licensed MS's technology or not.
A far better idea would have been to make a new type of battery with very distinct, interlocking male and female ends, and build this shape into electronics. However, that would cost a ton, and nobody else would be on board with it.
The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic scientific training to report on science news.
As a scientist, let me play devil's advocate:
The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic legal training to report on legal news. The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic financial training to report on financial news. The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic medical training to report on medical news.
Really, what it comes down to is that we've allowed "omg, joe says so, and Brittany got a DUI" to replace actual journalism, where an actual journalist asked actual questions in an actual attempt to understand the story at hand.
A journalist, with no science training, should be able to report on science correctly, accurately, and with the simplification needed to inform the public. What we are seeing now is that there are no more journalists. What we have now are eyeball catchers, trained to catch as many eyeballs as possible.
I think a combination of yours and the GP's is spot on:
There definitely are a fair number of scientists that think everyone else is a moron. This happens across almost all populations of people (see slashdot) so that's not unique.
There is another chunk which think what you said - it's hard to engage someone on a topic who is flat wrong because of their lack of expertise. Might as well ignore them.
And as the GP noted, being able to explain enough to lay-people that they understand is called teaching. As we all know, there are limited good teachers in the world. At the same time, there are plenty of bright people who don't have any inclination to be teachers. It's a bit disingenuous to propose that all scientists be teachers. That certainly doesn't hold for other fields.
In the end, I think a lot of it comes with what one wants to spend their time on. People become scientists because they are curious about something, and want to understand it. Why then would you expect them to spend their time explaining the mundane details to someone completely naive about the topic? That's not what they are interested in doing.
If you look at college science, what's the ratio of good teachers to scientists? I bet it's on the order of 1 per 100 or worse. However, if you looked at lawyers or doctors, I bet it'd be the same sort of ratio.
Do scientists misunderstand the public? Well, were they ever trained to deal with the public? Probably not. They were trained to be scientists. Why would you expect them to be anything but?
If we look at all the politicians, stars, and CEOs who misunderstand the public, it's clear that scientists don't have a monopoly in this area.
Annoy people by leaving it unsecured, but not connected to the Internet.
No, that's just wrong.
Annoying) Mess with their surfing. Really annoying) Do so randomly. Evil) Same sort of idea using iptables, but instead of flipping html, slowly degrade speeds over the course of a couple of minutes. Satanic) Replace 10% of their images with goatse.
I drink a lot of water at work. But I have a gallon of water that rode with me on the 1000 mile trip to where I live now. It sits in my closet, on the off chance that my water goes off. I drink that, and I have a beautiful stripe of isotopes which indicate I spent a few days 1000 miles away.
Combine that with all the bottled water people drink, and all the pre-packaged drinks, and it's useless for much of anything. If I'm a mixture of water isotopes from Atlanta and Upstate NY, what does that tell you? I live in NY and travel to Georgia? I live in NY and drink a lot of Coke? I live in Idaho and subside on Coke and Saratoga Spring Water?
This seems like it would be pretty much as good as a polygraph.
Water is not a pollutant. Plants (and you!) would not survive without it.
But too much kills either. Same with CO2.
Almost everything is a pollutant in certain concentrations, and kills things that depend on it. Try eating some pure calcium metal sometime - it's not hazardous because your bones are MADE out of it!! Saying that CO2 isn't a pollutant is pretty stupid. Plants depend on it, but they also depend on a certain temperature range. CO2 changes that range. Plants also need a certain range of CO2. At the moment, most species are still doing ok. That's not a guarantee as levels continue to rise. Finally, pollutants aren't defined based on the effect on plants. There are other living things in the world besides plants.
The question is whether or not it's cost effective to do so. At the moment, it isn't. If we tax the hell out of coal and oil, it might be.
Pretty much we're at the point where we either have to legislate against coal and oil, or we have to tax carbon emissions heavily. There's no market incentive to stop with either.
Slashdot Mirror
Same here. (It doesn't hurt to be a poor graduate student either.) I buy on taste, specs, cost, etc. Not brands. Any brand loyalty I have is due to a long experience with the brand which I picked for the previous reasons. And that loyalty goes as soon as it changes.
I built my own computer out of parts that were cheap. I bought my car because my dad and cousin had the same brand, and their cars lasted forever. I've sampled all the beer in a 100 mile radius, and I buy the ones that taste good. In fact, I've never seen a commercial for most of the things I eat and drink, nor the places I eat and drink at. My clothes are generic and purchased on sale, and I don't have a ton of luxury items. My cell phone is pay-as-you-go, and was chosen based on the lowest cost possible.
Advertising is surprisingly effective on a lot of people. However, it's clear that a minority don't pay it any attention at all, and it doesn't affect their purchasing habits.
The thing is, with some sort of karma/moderation quoting would die a swift death. If you got -0.1 karma for every troll's post you replied to, you'd soon stop replying to them. Or you'd be branded a troll yourself.
I agree that it's hard to ignore trolls with idiots replying to them. It even happens here. But with moderation and karma, it's less of a problem.
I don't know why it's so hard to tie moderation and in-game stuff together.
For a given user account, be able to see how many friends, how many "ignores", how many bans/warnings they've had. Like slashdot, have some sort of karma and ability to filter. Want to browse at -1? Go for it. Want Foes to get +2 to posts? Sure.
Something like that would solve a lot of problems. If I ignore you in game, why would I want to see your posts? If you get banned from posting, suddenly your in-game chat abilities don't work either.
You can punish a persona without resorting to a real name.
Actually, there's an easier way. I'm liable to commit genocide in the near future. If Google gives me $10 million, I'll make sure I don't.
Laugh all you want, but that $10 million would do more good for the world in my hands than where it is now...
Amazingly louder, actually. As a transplant from the NE to the midwest, the concrete roads here are stunningly loud.
I'm surprised that people put up with it, really.
That was my first thought too. God damn beer snobs....
Sure, it can fetch and open standard, mass-produced beers, but never mind good beers, optimum serving temperature or correct glasses - this thing can't even pour a beer into a glass in the first place!
Why would I want a robot that can't even pour beer? That's the second most important part, after drinking it. And it doesn't look like it can use a growler either....
A link with a few more links for the UW method for doing this can be found here. It includes a hardware diagram at the bottom.
I agree with one thing - immersion requires feedback. I've faced bosses that took tons of damage, but they showed that they were taking it. Tanks like that would have pissed me off.
At the same time, I've seen bosses that appeared to take damage, but never actually took any because you hadn't pushed the magic "make them die button" that was only accessible after doing the equivalent of a platforming run past them.
In both cases, the immersion is broken due to the broken feedback from your actions. That's the sort of lack of consistency that I complained about earlier on this thread.
I dunno...I've been using tree-style tabs for a year or so now. They make far more sense to me than regular tabs, anywhere you put them.
I've got a "tree" of tabs on the left side of the browser (maximizes vertical space, since everything I use now is widescreen) where tabs spawned from a page are indented under that tab. I can expand and collapse branches.
The new "chrome" way makes no sense, and doesn't make anything better. I'm a bit surprised they didn't try this style out - it's a big improvement for me, at least.
You really have no clue what the extreme left in the US is, do you?
I think it was "flamebait" for lack of "ignorant".
You hit the nail on the head.
I have a handful of usernames which have a rich history attached to them. I'm pretty identifiable by sizable groups of people in those sorts of circles. My reputation and personality are linked to those usernames.
What's not (obviously) linked to those usernames is my real name and my life. That's how I want it, and that's how it's going to stay.
Like you, I don't want something I posted 20 years ago to come back to haunt me. I don't want to be asked about one of those usernames at a job interview. That's my personal stuff. Not private, but personal. Some pseudo-anonymity serves that data well.
Extremist views are extremist views, regardless of which side it comes from.
Not entirely - it depends on what side you're on, and what stage you're considering. In the US, at least, we don't have a true left-wing party like the rest of the world does. We have this weird dichotomy of ultra-right-wing, (Republican) and Moderate-right-wing (Democrat). Even an extreme left-wing-Democrat would be considered Moderate in the rest of the world.
An extreme left-wing view in the US wouldn't be an extremist view in the rest of the world by any stretch.
However, it is amusing to find out that politicians are just learning the golden rule of "stuff you put on the internet stays there forever".
Everyone. Every mistake, every poor choice. Just like "The Hand of God", and Germany's "notched goal line", the drunken trader who improperly traded seven million barrels of oil while hammered out of his gourd is reality.
Predict all you want - you can have the best algorithms and the best data, but human fuckups will ruin those every time. Maybe, if all trades were designed and executed by computers, with no human involvement, you could predict those things. But as long as someone is required to spot someone 3 yards offside, or someone is allowed to trade millions of shares with his right hand with a scotch in his left, you're going to be unable to predict either a World Cup or a financial market.
Humans are ridiculously chaotic and unreliable, despite how advanced we think we are.
And that's the way it should be...
I haven't played that, but if I see it on Steam or Impulse, I might give it a shot, if only for that reason.
Should that be a reason to not try and introduce a new game mechanic...
In a word, yes. If you introduce a game mechanic (gimmick) that breaks the existing rules of the game, and is completely inconsistent with the rest of the game, don't use it. It destroys the immersion of the game.
My biggest pet peeve are inconsistent rules about breaking things. If you allow me to break chests in a RPG, then I should be able to break wooden doors down. If I can blow up a tank in a FPS, then I should be able to blow up turrets, doors, and break glass. If I can shoot 99 monsters in a level, I should be able to shoot the 100th as well. If he's magically immune to my bullets, and requires a side-quest to kill, that's bogus. If it takes all my ammo, and is a pain in the ass, and the side quest makes it easier/more feasible, fine. But "unbreakable", when other similar things are plenty breakable, is a sign of uncreative, rail-roading bullshit.
So that means no guns in games unless I can shoot out every window in the game world and be able to kill people vital to the storyline?
That'd be fine with me. I've played games where you can kill people vital to the storyline. It makes the game pretty realistic, when done well. When you kill the irritating little punk, then come to the tiny hole that you need someone to crawl through, the consequences of your actions are pretty clear. And that's immersive.
I totally agree. I think this goes along with the "selectively destructable items" beef which is one of my major ones. Whether it's doors, enemies, or something else - if I can destroy some of them, sometimes, I should be able to destroy all of them, all the time.
Now I'm FINE with there being a penalty for me shooting through every door, or destroying every deactivated robot I walk past. Lack of ammo, destroying things I need, killing a party member I need, etc. That's all fine and good. I just want the ability to do it consistently. That's what keeps the immersion going, regardless of whether or not I chose well, or correctly.
Thank you. I've been saying the same for a decade or two now.
All you need is to START your game with sensible rules. Then build the game around those rules. Get some good, power-gamer playtesters, and turn them loose in a room together with a prize for the most badass stunts. Make sure they don't totally break the game, and you're golden. If they do, examine how you implemented the rules.
There's no good reason to selectively enforce rules in a game. If you can't be bothered to make a consistent game, you obviously don't care enough about your game.
But I think that the feeling a game evokes is directly tied to the consistency.
The biggest things for me that break the feeling of games usually are the places where the consistency is artificially broken to drive the game forward. One of the things that infuriates me in games are monsters that are unkillable by the means that you killed EVERY OTHER MONSTER up until that point. (Quake (3 or 4?) and HL are good examples of this.) Instead of emptying your entire arsenal into it, you have to jump, dodge, and sneak around it, push a button, then it dies. Or you have to get around to the back and shoot it in its weak spot. I'm ok if the machine weakens it. I'm ok if the weak spot does more damage. But when something is fucking IMMUNE to damage UNLESS you play by the newly imposed, secret rules, it totally breaks the immersion.
As a long-time Doom player, I know how to save ammo. I know how to replay a level over and over again to use the absolute minimum ammo. Why? Because I know that there's going to be something badass that will require all the ammo I saved. When I run into that badass, with all the ammo I can possibly carry, and I empty ALL of it into that creature, it should die.
RPGs are another place where stuff like this breaks the flow of the entire game. I can smash chests, but not doors? I can pick some locks, but not others? I want to go down this road, but I'm not allowed to? This lack of consistency is EXACTLY what breaks the feel of the game.
The biggest one, that others have mentioned, are selectively destructive items. When a game lets you destroy only some items, that's a gimmick that breaks immersion. If it's wood and I can smash it, then I should be able to smash all wood of similar thickness. If I can break some glass, then I should be able to break ALL glass.
The issue is that gimmicks are used in place of plot and in place of thought. If you build destructibles into your game, you need to build them throughout the entire game. If the only time you can kick down a door is at one heroic instant, you've written a gimmick instead of a plot.
The real issue is that plots and stories are consistent. Gimmicks are not. And immersion is all about consistency.
This isn't authentically clever. As other posters have said, it's fairly obvious, and it requires more materials which is the reason most manufacturers haven't bothered to solve this "problem". However, there are two far bigger issues:
1) This works for 1 battery, or any number, all oriented the same direction If you have 2+ batteries in a row, flashlight style, it doesn't help when you orient them opposite directions.
2) If you train consumers that directions in batteries don't matter, then some non-trivial percentage of them will apply this to everything, regardless if it's licensed MS's technology or not.
A far better idea would have been to make a new type of battery with very distinct, interlocking male and female ends, and build this shape into electronics. However, that would cost a ton, and nobody else would be on board with it.
The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic scientific training to report on science news.
As a scientist, let me play devil's advocate:
The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic legal training to report on legal news.
The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic financial training to report on financial news.
The main problem is that people should need some sort of basic medical training to report on medical news.
Really, what it comes down to is that we've allowed "omg, joe says so, and Brittany got a DUI" to replace actual journalism, where an actual journalist asked actual questions in an actual attempt to understand the story at hand.
A journalist, with no science training, should be able to report on science correctly, accurately, and with the simplification needed to inform the public. What we are seeing now is that there are no more journalists. What we have now are eyeball catchers, trained to catch as many eyeballs as possible.
I think a combination of yours and the GP's is spot on:
There definitely are a fair number of scientists that think everyone else is a moron. This happens across almost all populations of people (see slashdot) so that's not unique.
There is another chunk which think what you said - it's hard to engage someone on a topic who is flat wrong because of their lack of expertise. Might as well ignore them.
And as the GP noted, being able to explain enough to lay-people that they understand is called teaching. As we all know, there are limited good teachers in the world. At the same time, there are plenty of bright people who don't have any inclination to be teachers. It's a bit disingenuous to propose that all scientists be teachers. That certainly doesn't hold for other fields.
In the end, I think a lot of it comes with what one wants to spend their time on. People become scientists because they are curious about something, and want to understand it. Why then would you expect them to spend their time explaining the mundane details to someone completely naive about the topic? That's not what they are interested in doing.
If you look at college science, what's the ratio of good teachers to scientists? I bet it's on the order of 1 per 100 or worse. However, if you looked at lawyers or doctors, I bet it'd be the same sort of ratio.
Do scientists misunderstand the public? Well, were they ever trained to deal with the public? Probably not. They were trained to be scientists. Why would you expect them to be anything but?
If we look at all the politicians, stars, and CEOs who misunderstand the public, it's clear that scientists don't have a monopoly in this area.
Annoy people by leaving it unsecured, but not connected to the Internet.
No, that's just wrong.
Annoying) Mess with their surfing.
Really annoying) Do so randomly.
Evil) Same sort of idea using iptables, but instead of flipping html, slowly degrade speeds over the course of a couple of minutes.
Satanic) Replace 10% of their images with goatse.
Yeah, it doesn't seem that useful.
I drink a lot of water at work. But I have a gallon of water that rode with me on the 1000 mile trip to where I live now. It sits in my closet, on the off chance that my water goes off. I drink that, and I have a beautiful stripe of isotopes which indicate I spent a few days 1000 miles away.
Combine that with all the bottled water people drink, and all the pre-packaged drinks, and it's useless for much of anything. If I'm a mixture of water isotopes from Atlanta and Upstate NY, what does that tell you? I live in NY and travel to Georgia? I live in NY and drink a lot of Coke? I live in Idaho and subside on Coke and Saratoga Spring Water?
This seems like it would be pretty much as good as a polygraph.
Water is not a pollutant. Plants (and you!) would not survive without it.
But too much kills either. Same with CO2.
Almost everything is a pollutant in certain concentrations, and kills things that depend on it. Try eating some pure calcium metal sometime - it's not hazardous because your bones are MADE out of it!! Saying that CO2 isn't a pollutant is pretty stupid. Plants depend on it, but they also depend on a certain temperature range. CO2 changes that range. Plants also need a certain range of CO2. At the moment, most species are still doing ok. That's not a guarantee as levels continue to rise. Finally, pollutants aren't defined based on the effect on plants. There are other living things in the world besides plants.
The question is whether or not it's cost effective to do so. At the moment, it isn't. If we tax the hell out of coal and oil, it might be.
Pretty much we're at the point where we either have to legislate against coal and oil, or we have to tax carbon emissions heavily. There's no market incentive to stop with either.