The problem was that anything different was met with howls of derision and demands for nerfs. Creature handlers went from being ridiculously overpowered to nearly completely worthless, Bounty Hunters went from being an elite class that was actually fairly interesting to being a "dabbler" class that people took a single track in so they could be a TKM and hunt jedi, commando, combat medic, ranged combat in general was reworked and made weaker over and over till you had nothing left but: buff bots, crafters, melee monsters and jedi. The other options still existed, but only someone with ridiculously good gear (often since made unavailable for new players) could make it work.
Absolutely someone at SOE dropped the ball, but I really blame marketing much more than I blame the development team - they had a design vision of a builder world and player generated content that was actually moving in the right direction, then someone decided that the "elder game" had to be jedi because that is part of the brand and the game fell apart.
Like PvP, there was zero skill required and was merely about pushing the same two buttons over and over again.
PvP was slightly more complicated than PvE, much of the PvE game I would literally start a macro and just let it run unattended through the combat.
The game really was more a "builder game" than a combat game. Sure the combat was pretty bland, but the player cities and bases and guilds made it fun because it had an actual effect on the world - at least until the melee upgrade, introduction of holo-grinding and finally the massive proliferation of jedi destroyed the game and drove players away.
Maybe they will make another incremental improvement in natural language processing, but like you, I am not holding my breath.
But this is probably more about research than producing an immediately useful tool, even the incredibly optimistic statement about "at least a decade" seems to point in that direction.
We know that programing errors make it into shipped code. Ignoring that reality is not a sensible option, so we must code defensively.
I should clarify that. In container classes, searches, or any utility code I assert all sorts of things. Every time I add, seach, iterate, delete, etc. I check all sorts of internal consistency. Live code can generally not do that at anything near the same attention to detail, the error handling code is present, but at a much coarser level. Asserts are a tool like debugging memory allocators, clarify, electric fence, etc. Such tools are used in an entirely different way than error handling or defensive coding.
You can test "impossible" and expensive conditions with asserts. The assert does not have any cost in non-debug build and remains as a comment about what you believe the state of the program at that point.
If you are testing for live errors with asserts then you are wrong, if you are still checking for programing errors in live runs then you are wrong. Asserts and error handling are two very different things.
Generally no one but the developers and QA should have a binary with asserts enabled (one exception I can think of being customers that have their own acceptance tests that require debug builds be available to them). I agree completely that there are much more graceful ways to handle an actual error in live - but that is the job of error handling code.
Assertions do not detect runtime errors, they do not even detect incorrect assumptions about data formating, they detect programming errors. An assertion is a statement you make what the state of some portion of the program at that point, if the library is asserting on you then either the assert (and the library itself) is wrong or your use of the library is wrong, either way the assert has done exactly what it was supposed to do - alerted you to a programming error.
It doesn't hurt other VoIP providers by making them worse, even if they maintain their current service levels they will look bad in comparison to the lower latency, higher quality offering of the ISP.
Since the ISP can send their VoIP traffic through dedicated virtual circuits (of whatever variety) and offload at preferential peering points (or to another subscriber on the same network) they can deliver a much better experience for their own VoIP apps. No more robot voice, random spots of dead air, or occasional electronic bursts, they can probably even do better e911 implementations - all those things will be very important for mainstream acceptance by people who expect VoIP to work exactly like their old land line.
That is all well within the bounds of legality. Add in the fact that the ISPs will play around the edges of legality in finding ways to actually degrade competing VoIP traffic and cover their asses at the same time and there is an actual problem.
Good lord, I am not saying all horde players are mature, or that all alliance players are immature - there are good and bad players on both sides, but it is my experience that there are more jerks playing the "good guys" than the "bad guys". Is that really so hard to get through your skull?
I was talking more specifically about patents on physical inventions, but I can imagine software constructs that would qualify as an actual invention. No amount of copyright will protect a physical or software device once it released to a public audience, and that is the point at which a "producer" (eg MS, IBM) could swoop in and take the market from the inventor.
The thing is that patents don't suck, really - can you think of a better way to make raw research pay off than to award the inventor a limited time monopoly on the results? Any other system would simply make inventors bear the cost of research and then a producer could swoop in for the profit. The thing that sucks is the awarding of software patents for a ridiculous length of time and for trivial non-inventions.
I have many more than 2 instances. Try TM on any server for an example of "run in and gank the flight keeper and quest givers" play style by alliance. I don't deny that there are horde players who do the exact same thing, but you have to look at a few facts.
The alliance outnumbers the horde an average of 2:1 across all servers.
Most 14 year old males want to be the hero of whatever game they play - so they choose the "good guy" side.
Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory lets us know that even a normal person can become a fuckwad given anonymity and an audience, the corollary is that every teen boy given these conditions will become an asshole.
Given those facts it is only natural that there be more assholes playing alliance. That doesn't mean there are not assholes playing horde, or that every alliance is an asshole - it just means that number and percentage wise there is a greater number of them in the alliance.
The expected result when you put a series in quotes is to turn the entire series into a single token and only find documents that match the resulting token. I've never read up on how google stores and searche so I am not sure why google doesn't work that way, but it really is a constant irritation as it is so contrary to what you would expect.
Sounds like those Alliance players where doing a raid on the Undercity, which is perfectly fair play.
Uhm, no - I was there (hi T!) and it was The Sepulcher on the ER Roleplaying server, and it was raining assholes that day. I also have fond memories of The Den (level 1-5 area) being constantly haunted by an alliance rogue who would come in and kill all the NPCs, taunt very low level players into fighting him and then stealth around and scream leet speak insults in numerics at the high level horde who would come to send him on his way. Or the Night Elf warrior who constantly comes in and kills all the bankers in Orgimmar. Or the random '??' level dwarves who spit on me and challenge me to duels when I'm near TM.
So sorry pal, in my experience as well a large percentage of the biggest assholes tend to choose the "good guy" side in any MMO. The hard core assholes are an exception on both sides, but you tend not to notice the people who play fair and honorably.
More specifically, if you have a dishonor system the low level characters can hang around a higher level enemy waiting for their pray to become weak before attacking and the higher level guy can do nothing because of dishonor. There are ways to solve this problem but solving it causes other similar problems instead.
I believe that there are still possible technical solutions for a high vs. low honor system. Depending on the level difference and what color the lowbie is to you then there could be a system such as:
Yellow - no dishonor for killing this foe
Green - dishonor for killing this foe unless they have done 1000 points damage total to your party/raid or hung around the area unflagged for 5 minutes prior to entering pvp
Grey - dishonor for killing this foe unless they have done greater than 500 points damage to you or hung around the area unflagged for great than 10 minutes prior to entering pvp
The "honorably killable" flag would last for 5 minutes and turn the foe red to you, "dishonorably killable" characters are orange to differentiate them, do not count as foe for macro or tab (you would need to click to attack them), and are not affected by AoE unless it is centered on them.
Obviously those numbers are pulled out of my back pocket, but I think that the basic idea is workable and could be done in such a way as to make it obvious to participants who is an honorable kill and who is not an honorable kill.
Trade secrets have been outed in the past by accident with absolutely no wrongdoing involved. Someone copied on an email who shouldn't have been, an unlisted web page going up on a public server with no link on the front page is stumbled upon, a pdf going up on a public ftp server for convenience, mail admin gets copied on an error, etc.
There are an infinite number of ways for someone to come into possession of trade secrets with no wrongdoing on the part of an NDA signatory or the recipient of the trade secret. That is the point people are trying to make about the assumption of a crime having been committed.
If you think WIPO was a creation of public servants whose only interest was the good of society as a whole, you need to find a new and safer recreational drug.
Absolutely not, I was just pointing out that this kind of crap has been planned for decades, longer than the existence of some of the corporations accused of masterminding it.
I can't imagine that this message went over well with the audience. PTO "reform" was one of the first neo-con victories back in the early 90s. But maybe MS is trying to get the group most likely to be hostile to the idea to at least think about it.
As an aside, in their rush to assume that big bad American corporations are behind the software patent and DMCA-like copyright pushes in Canada, Europe, and Australia, people often forget that these nations are all WIPO signatories. Those nations are actually already bound by an agreement to enact such laws. America does not have a monopoly on shortsighted greed, jingoism, or other foolishness.
He should care because SW is commercial entertainment, not art. Lucas has lost at least $60 of my money and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. I'm sure the money doesn't matter to Lucas at this point, but it does to the big business aspect of Hollywood.
No matter how you look at them, the first two movies of the trilogy have been awful movies. Without the SW name attached to them they would have been complete financial failures. Alienating the existing fanbase devalues the name itself, since the work itself is poor the name is the only real value remaining in the franchise.
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Absolutely someone at SOE dropped the ball, but I really blame marketing much more than I blame the development team - they had a design vision of a builder world and player generated content that was actually moving in the right direction, then someone decided that the "elder game" had to be jedi because that is part of the brand and the game fell apart.
PvP was slightly more complicated than PvE, much of the PvE game I would literally start a macro and just let it run unattended through the combat.
The game really was more a "builder game" than a combat game. Sure the combat was pretty bland, but the player cities and bases and guilds made it fun because it had an actual effect on the world - at least until the melee upgrade, introduction of holo-grinding and finally the massive proliferation of jedi destroyed the game and drove players away.
But this is probably more about research than producing an immediately useful tool, even the incredibly optimistic statement about "at least a decade" seems to point in that direction.
I should clarify that. In container classes, searches, or any utility code I assert all sorts of things. Every time I add, seach, iterate, delete, etc. I check all sorts of internal consistency. Live code can generally not do that at anything near the same attention to detail, the error handling code is present, but at a much coarser level. Asserts are a tool like debugging memory allocators, clarify, electric fence, etc. Such tools are used in an entirely different way than error handling or defensive coding.
So of course they blame that "devuhl wahshup" game, it's in their nature - they're hicks.
If you are testing for live errors with asserts then you are wrong, if you are still checking for programing errors in live runs then you are wrong. Asserts and error handling are two very different things.
Generally no one but the developers and QA should have a binary with asserts enabled (one exception I can think of being customers that have their own acceptance tests that require debug builds be available to them). I agree completely that there are much more graceful ways to handle an actual error in live - but that is the job of error handling code.
Assertions do not detect runtime errors, they do not even detect incorrect assumptions about data formating, they detect programming errors. An assertion is a statement you make what the state of some portion of the program at that point, if the library is asserting on you then either the assert (and the library itself) is wrong or your use of the library is wrong, either way the assert has done exactly what it was supposed to do - alerted you to a programming error.
Since the ISP can send their VoIP traffic through dedicated virtual circuits (of whatever variety) and offload at preferential peering points (or to another subscriber on the same network) they can deliver a much better experience for their own VoIP apps. No more robot voice, random spots of dead air, or occasional electronic bursts, they can probably even do better e911 implementations - all those things will be very important for mainstream acceptance by people who expect VoIP to work exactly like their old land line.
That is all well within the bounds of legality. Add in the fact that the ISPs will play around the edges of legality in finding ways to actually degrade competing VoIP traffic and cover their asses at the same time and there is an actual problem.
K, thanks - bye.
Good lord, I am not saying all horde players are mature, or that all alliance players are immature - there are good and bad players on both sides, but it is my experience that there are more jerks playing the "good guys" than the "bad guys". Is that really so hard to get through your skull?
I was talking more specifically about patents on physical inventions, but I can imagine software constructs that would qualify as an actual invention. No amount of copyright will protect a physical or software device once it released to a public audience, and that is the point at which a "producer" (eg MS, IBM) could swoop in and take the market from the inventor.
The thing is that patents don't suck, really - can you think of a better way to make raw research pay off than to award the inventor a limited time monopoly on the results? Any other system would simply make inventors bear the cost of research and then a producer could swoop in for the profit. The thing that sucks is the awarding of software patents for a ridiculous length of time and for trivial non-inventions.
I've heard from several women who quite playing alliance because of all the teen boys playing lapdance giving naked Human and Night Elf women.
How's that for immature losers most sane people want to avoid?
Given those facts it is only natural that there be more assholes playing alliance. That doesn't mean there are not assholes playing horde, or that every alliance is an asshole - it just means that number and percentage wise there is a greater number of them in the alliance.
The expected result when you put a series in quotes is to turn the entire series into a single token and only find documents that match the resulting token. I've never read up on how google stores and searche so I am not sure why google doesn't work that way, but it really is a constant irritation as it is so contrary to what you would expect.
They might sue you if they believe that you are preventing *them* from making money though.
Uhm, no - I was there (hi T!) and it was The Sepulcher on the ER Roleplaying server, and it was raining assholes that day. I also have fond memories of The Den (level 1-5 area) being constantly haunted by an alliance rogue who would come in and kill all the NPCs, taunt very low level players into fighting him and then stealth around and scream leet speak insults in numerics at the high level horde who would come to send him on his way. Or the Night Elf warrior who constantly comes in and kills all the bankers in Orgimmar. Or the random '??' level dwarves who spit on me and challenge me to duels when I'm near TM.
So sorry pal, in my experience as well a large percentage of the biggest assholes tend to choose the "good guy" side in any MMO. The hard core assholes are an exception on both sides, but you tend not to notice the people who play fair and honorably.
I believe that there are still possible technical solutions for a high vs. low honor system. Depending on the level difference and what color the lowbie is to you then there could be a system such as:
The "honorably killable" flag would last for 5 minutes and turn the foe red to you, "dishonorably killable" characters are orange to differentiate them, do not count as foe for macro or tab (you would need to click to attack them), and are not affected by AoE unless it is centered on them.
Obviously those numbers are pulled out of my back pocket, but I think that the basic idea is workable and could be done in such a way as to make it obvious to participants who is an honorable kill and who is not an honorable kill.
There are an infinite number of ways for someone to come into possession of trade secrets with no wrongdoing on the part of an NDA signatory or the recipient of the trade secret. That is the point people are trying to make about the assumption of a crime having been committed.
(just imagine the next sentence in a Luke Skywalker whine.)
Well yeah, but they're being used by the wrong people!
Absolutely not, I was just pointing out that this kind of crap has been planned for decades, longer than the existence of some of the corporations accused of masterminding it.
As an aside, in their rush to assume that big bad American corporations are behind the software patent and DMCA-like copyright pushes in Canada, Europe, and Australia, people often forget that these nations are all WIPO signatories. Those nations are actually already bound by an agreement to enact such laws. America does not have a monopoly on shortsighted greed, jingoism, or other foolishness.
Oh come on, just once way back in the 14th century and everyone acts like it is a habit or something.
He should care because SW is commercial entertainment, not art. Lucas has lost at least $60 of my money and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. I'm sure the money doesn't matter to Lucas at this point, but it does to the big business aspect of Hollywood.
No matter how you look at them, the first two movies of the trilogy have been awful movies. Without the SW name attached to them they would have been complete financial failures. Alienating the existing fanbase devalues the name itself, since the work itself is poor the name is the only real value remaining in the franchise.