I made a sloppy edit of the first sentence of the post and chopped out a bunch of words.
What I meant to say was: I'm pretty sure that the new SWG loot system has been used by MUDs, FFXI, and D&D prior to being used in WoW. The post I was replying to stated that SWG was copying WoW, and my point was that the lot and quartermaster systems for dividing loot had been used in FFXI, which got the idea from MUDs, which got the idea from tabletop RPGs.
I don't think the majority of these are balance issues or tweaks, they are missing or mis-designed features. Some of these changes have been promised 'soon' since September 2003 and a GCW with an actual effect on the game world was promised at launch.
As far as the rift between vets and newbs - with players leaving in droves I'm sure that any newb worth anything will be snapped up by a guild and shown the ropes.
Afghanistan was at least justified by the Taliban/Al-Queda alliance. I think it is premature to call it a complete success, but the fact that there are still troops in the country does not automatically make it a failure either.
Had we not taken that foolish detour in Iraq I think Afghanistan would likely be in better shape, as that removed resources from our commitment to rebuilding the country after removing the Taliban.
And intelligent people exist in both camps, as well.
Political orthodoxy tends to distrust intelligent people because they are all too often open to discussion of "sacred topics". The idiocy of those with an opposite opinion is an article of faith to most people.
They might have spent their time watching anime filled with sexy cat girls instead. They probably figure their cat girls will team up with the blue haired kid with the 7' sword and take care of those armed autonomous robots or something.
I haven't read the book because everything by Crichton is on my list of incredibly overrated crap.
I read something by Chrichton years ago because Harlan Ellison had some good things to say about his work. I wasn't impressed and I'm sure that massive commercial success has done nothing for his quality.
Plus I rate the political opinions of authors of fiction only slightly higher than those of actors and musicians.
Re:I am the parent of this and I will respond...
on
China Bans 50 Games
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· Score: 1
"The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest level of society without a hope of emerging from their obscurity."
--"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (volume 2)", Edward Gibbon
If you read Gibbons work you will see that governments can limp along for a long time on very bad leadership. Bush isn't enough to destroy America, but his followers might be.
As for all good time travel stories being short stories, I have to disagree.
Okay, I probably should have said it would merely be very difficult to have time travel in a novel or long story. The structural problems are not only of continuity (which I believe is overrated vs good stories anyway), there are also problems created because time travel is such an easy fix. This creates problems with pace and satisfying conflict.
B5 had some major threads that ended/started with time travel. I will say that time travel is a difficult tool to use in stories - and can easily be abused, as we've seen with Star Trek. But used properly...ah...that's another story altogether.
I've never seen B5, but several people have brought it up as time travel done right in a long story - so I can accept that as a long story involving time travel done right. I still maintain that it is done wrong so often that writers and authors should think twice before attempting it.
The under-appreciated horta, the basis of one of the truly great sight gags of Futurama (the other being the robot taking his rust monster to the vet), and the best "I'm a doctor, not an X" line of the original Star Trek.
Truly, the writers for Enterprise are not worthy to be burned into a smoking smear by this magnificent creature.
I'd like to see a time travel moratorium in scifi. Unless the writer can improve on the one of the existing time travel stories or invent a new one then maybe they should just stay away.
There is a reason all the good time travel stories are short stories: time travel is destructive to structure, a short story can sustain that weakness and even make it part of the mood, a novel or long story cannot.
Is that usual now? I had textbooks 1-12 and thought that was still the standard practice. I'd be interested to know if that is a result of new ideas in how people learn or a simple cost cutting measure.
Very funny post by Linus there, the best part is that adwords picked up on the mention of "Seven Habits" and placed an ad for the Covey Foundation on the page:)
The reason that standardized curricula are important is because such a system is likely to have high staff turnover. If the material is standardized then turnover will not cause as much disruption.
Whatever happened to rehabilitation? When did we become a nation that values vindication over elevation?
Imprisonment, fines, confiscation, execution, exile, torture, humiliation, enslavement, and all other forms of social revenge were the traditional means by which society has enforced its will. The concept of rehabilitation is a fairly new addition to the punishment aspect of prison. I believe it is a useful addition, but it is secondary.
I'm sure someone in this thread will try to use reductio ad absurdum to prove that acknowledging the social revenge aspect of the criminal justice system will somehow eventually result in executing litterbugs, but the fact remains that reasonable negative reinforcement is a useful tool in rehabilitation and serves to satisfy the victim of a crime that justice has been done.
As for books, don't burn $200 per student on new books every year. Get throwaways from the local high school or university, and stock the library out of the public library's anual $1 book sale. By limiting the class offering to the above, most of those books will be good for as long as they last, and shouldn't need constant updating.
The only problem I have with that is that the book sale method would not allow standardized curricula. It's possible that locally printed digital textbooks could be used to save money and get fairly up to date and standardized material.
Overall I think you are dead on. Learning is expensive for reasons that don't need to apply to a prison school.
Also, please note that my dislike of this deflectionary tactic applies to supporters of the US as well as well as detractors of the US.
A criticism of the US in Iraq is answered with a criticism regarding the condition of women in Afghanistan or the invasion of Tibet. A criticism of political executions in China or massive censorship is answered with a criticism of Guantanamo.
I use the term "morals" to describe the trustworthiness and goodness of a nation, but the word is really insufficient - because nations are not "good guys" and "bad guys". The morality of a nation is really only useful as an index of trust.
In the end it all comes down to self interest. When nations talk about morals they are either justifying an action, seeking to prevent another nation from taking an action, or vilifying an action undertaken by another nation.
My post intentionaly ignores moral authority, hypocrisiy, and the US telling other nations what to do.
The point of my post is that every time *anyone* (even some random Joe on slashdot) criticizes China as dangerous someone rushes in and says "the US is more dangerous". I'm saying that the tactic is misleading, the point irrelevant. The "morality" of the US has *nothing* to do with the "morality" of China.
Mothers of 5 year olds know the correct answer to this: "you ignore the civil rights abuses of those other countries and work on your own".
It really irritates me when people try to pretend like the Chinese, Libyans, Syrians, etc are suddenly beyond reproach because the US has committed some actions like theirs.
So yes, the US has human rights violations and yes, the US has invaded a sovereign nation for a lie. But that does not remove the stain of such actions on any other nation that has committed them. The recent actions of the US do not change the fact that China has a recent history of civil rights abuses and unjust wars.
When all is said and done there remain pragmatic reasons for the US to distrust China. No "yellow peril/red menace", just a nascent world power with massive natural resources, a highly regimented social order, anger over victimization during colonialism, and a population that is 1/6 the entire world.
When you look at it you will see MS enters markets that already exist.
Discovering new markets is risky and can seldom be accomplished by force, it is generally left to agile risk takers - qualities not associated with giant corporations. Had MS attempted to invent the Internet it would have been an incredible failure, by entering an existing market owning a key piece they did very well.
The initial success of MS was founded on incredible luck, but their continued success depends on an excellent eye for opportunity and extremely aggressive use of power and leverage.
The thing this article misses is that also when things get popular open source people come in too and write their own versions for free.
Which is the real thing that drives prices down.
Open source is something fairly new to the consumer application market and I agree that it potentially has the power to drive prices down, but what has driven prices down historically has been economy of scale - which is always associated with consolidation by a few very large players.
I agree that world opinion is fickle enough to not be worth courting, although I do not hold it in the contempt that seems to be conservative fashion. Waging an unjustified war goes beyond ignoring world opinion to the point of antagonizing world opinion. The useless death of 1000+ American soldiers, the Billions of dollars this war will cost us, the loss of the goodwill of allies, the creation of a vast terrorist training ground, and the death of an unknown number of Iraqi civilians should all count for something against Bush.
I agree that dem activists screaming at passers-by is no way to sway moderates and likely alienates them. I even understand that some people voted for Bush just for nominations to the supreme court. What I don't understand is how Bush's actions can be viewed as anything other than reckless by a moderate.
The left is not that simple. I'm more on the liberal side of things in the sense that I believe that human rights need to be protected from business, but I'm anti-abortion after the first month, pro-gun, anti-Israel, pro-separation of church and state, pro-gay marriage/civil-union, and think Moore/Franken/Coulter/Limbaugh and Hollywood liberals are all pompous fools who oversimplify complex subjects for credulous fools.
I said that right continuing to believe that Bush is a good president is an irrational act, it doesn't prevent my seeing that sort of irrationality in the left.
Slashdot Mirror
I do agree that there are probably quite a few copies of AoCP occupying bookshelves for no reason other than to impress visitors.
I made a sloppy edit of the first sentence of the post and chopped out a bunch of words.
What I meant to say was: I'm pretty sure that the new SWG loot system has been used by MUDs, FFXI, and D&D prior to being used in WoW. The post I was replying to stated that SWG was copying WoW, and my point was that the lot and quartermaster systems for dividing loot had been used in FFXI, which got the idea from MUDs, which got the idea from tabletop RPGs.
As far as the rift between vets and newbs - with players leaving in droves I'm sure that any newb worth anything will be snapped up by a guild and shown the ropes.
I'm pretty sure that loot system in at least a dozen MUDs (and FFXI), as it was a somewhat common loot method in tabletop RPGs.
Had we not taken that foolish detour in Iraq I think Afghanistan would likely be in better shape, as that removed resources from our commitment to rebuilding the country after removing the Taliban.
Political orthodoxy tends to distrust intelligent people because they are all too often open to discussion of "sacred topics". The idiocy of those with an opposite opinion is an article of faith to most people.
Uhm, no. It is typical authoritarian thinking which tends to be indulged in by most people.
They might have spent their time watching anime filled with sexy cat girls instead. They probably figure their cat girls will team up with the blue haired kid with the 7' sword and take care of those armed autonomous robots or something.
I read something by Chrichton years ago because Harlan Ellison had some good things to say about his work. I wasn't impressed and I'm sure that massive commercial success has done nothing for his quality.
Plus I rate the political opinions of authors of fiction only slightly higher than those of actors and musicians.
--"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (volume 2)", Edward Gibbon
If you read Gibbons work you will see that governments can limp along for a long time on very bad leadership. Bush isn't enough to destroy America, but his followers might be.
Okay, I probably should have said it would merely be very difficult to have time travel in a novel or long story. The structural problems are not only of continuity (which I believe is overrated vs good stories anyway), there are also problems created because time travel is such an easy fix. This creates problems with pace and satisfying conflict.
B5 had some major threads that ended/started with time travel. I will say that time travel is a difficult tool to use in stories - and can easily be abused, as we've seen with Star Trek. But used properly...ah...that's another story altogether.
I've never seen B5, but several people have brought it up as time travel done right in a long story - so I can accept that as a long story involving time travel done right. I still maintain that it is done wrong so often that writers and authors should think twice before attempting it.
UUOC makes baby Jesus cry.
Truly, the writers for Enterprise are not worthy to be burned into a smoking smear by this magnificent creature.
I'd like to see a time travel moratorium in scifi. Unless the writer can improve on the one of the existing time travel stories or invent a new one then maybe they should just stay away.
There is a reason all the good time travel stories are short stories: time travel is destructive to structure, a short story can sustain that weakness and even make it part of the mood, a novel or long story cannot.
Is that usual now? I had textbooks 1-12 and thought that was still the standard practice. I'd be interested to know if that is a result of new ideas in how people learn or a simple cost cutting measure.
Very funny post by Linus there, the best part is that adwords picked up on the mention of "Seven Habits" and placed an ad for the Covey Foundation on the page :)
The reason that standardized curricula are important is because such a system is likely to have high staff turnover. If the material is standardized then turnover will not cause as much disruption.
Imprisonment, fines, confiscation, execution, exile, torture, humiliation, enslavement, and all other forms of social revenge were the traditional means by which society has enforced its will. The concept of rehabilitation is a fairly new addition to the punishment aspect of prison. I believe it is a useful addition, but it is secondary.
I'm sure someone in this thread will try to use reductio ad absurdum to prove that acknowledging the social revenge aspect of the criminal justice system will somehow eventually result in executing litterbugs, but the fact remains that reasonable negative reinforcement is a useful tool in rehabilitation and serves to satisfy the victim of a crime that justice has been done.
The only problem I have with that is that the book sale method would not allow standardized curricula. It's possible that locally printed digital textbooks could be used to save money and get fairly up to date and standardized material.
Overall I think you are dead on. Learning is expensive for reasons that don't need to apply to a prison school.
A criticism of the US in Iraq is answered with a criticism regarding the condition of women in Afghanistan or the invasion of Tibet. A criticism of political executions in China or massive censorship is answered with a criticism of Guantanamo.
I use the term "morals" to describe the trustworthiness and goodness of a nation, but the word is really insufficient - because nations are not "good guys" and "bad guys". The morality of a nation is really only useful as an index of trust.
In the end it all comes down to self interest. When nations talk about morals they are either justifying an action, seeking to prevent another nation from taking an action, or vilifying an action undertaken by another nation.
The point of my post is that every time *anyone* (even some random Joe on slashdot) criticizes China as dangerous someone rushes in and says "the US is more dangerous". I'm saying that the tactic is misleading, the point irrelevant. The "morality" of the US has *nothing* to do with the "morality" of China.
It really irritates me when people try to pretend like the Chinese, Libyans, Syrians, etc are suddenly beyond reproach because the US has committed some actions like theirs.
So yes, the US has human rights violations and yes, the US has invaded a sovereign nation for a lie. But that does not remove the stain of such actions on any other nation that has committed them. The recent actions of the US do not change the fact that China has a recent history of civil rights abuses and unjust wars.
When all is said and done there remain pragmatic reasons for the US to distrust China. No "yellow peril/red menace", just a nascent world power with massive natural resources, a highly regimented social order, anger over victimization during colonialism, and a population that is 1/6 the entire world.
Discovering new markets is risky and can seldom be accomplished by force, it is generally left to agile risk takers - qualities not associated with giant corporations. Had MS attempted to invent the Internet it would have been an incredible failure, by entering an existing market owning a key piece they did very well.
The initial success of MS was founded on incredible luck, but their continued success depends on an excellent eye for opportunity and extremely aggressive use of power and leverage.
The thing this article misses is that also when things get popular open source people come in too and write their own versions for free.
Which is the real thing that drives prices down.
Open source is something fairly new to the consumer application market and I agree that it potentially has the power to drive prices down, but what has driven prices down historically has been economy of scale - which is always associated with consolidation by a few very large players.
I agree that dem activists screaming at passers-by is no way to sway moderates and likely alienates them. I even understand that some people voted for Bush just for nominations to the supreme court. What I don't understand is how Bush's actions can be viewed as anything other than reckless by a moderate.
I said that right continuing to believe that Bush is a good president is an irrational act, it doesn't prevent my seeing that sort of irrationality in the left.