Same here, when I watch shows on the CBS or NBC websites they generally have 4-5 thirty second commercials. Usually for the same product every time. It's certainly not worth 200$ for me to avoid having to watch that. I can't imagine anyone for whom that would be a reasonable purchase unless you just venomously hate advertising for some philosophical reason.
's what batteries are for. If you can store a decent percentage of the energy then you get to use it later during your peak usage time. I would love to have a solar setup at my house as I use almost no power during the day, but use a good deal at night when I'm home. The solar cells would store up power for me in battery banks for my use later.
English is not their first language. They are from denmark or some other third world european place with 50mb connections to everyones home and a real healthcare system and everything. So sometimes they have some spelling and grammar errors that get by. In my mind all of the characters have generic european accents anyways, so the errors actually add to the comic instead of detracting for it for me.
Actually Sinfest, Least I could Do, XKCD and C&H have nothing to do with gaming. Sinfest has some of the best social and political commentary of any comic I've read. Especially the last couple of weeks of election commentary. LICD is kind of whacky as the main character is Calvin (and Hobbes) type personality who also happens to be wildly and unexpectedly successful at everything he does. It has a lot of relationship based humor and plot lines that really only make sense if you've been in a few crazy relationships. And all 8 comics are better written and better drawn, and generally just better than the comic in the article.
Sinfest, Least I could Do, Penny Arcade, Player vs Player, Little Gamers, CtrlAltDelete, XKCD, Cyanide and Happiness. Those are just the 8 that I read regularly. I've stumbled across others that were good, but didn't make it into my regular reading list which I can't recall the names of at the moment. Some of them you will find funny, some you will find retarded, but all of them are better put together than the Zippyesque drivel linked to in the article.
I would prefer to see most of the interference with local economies stopped. UN food donations destroyed the economic viability of local farmers and put them out of work. Continued interference and improved prenatal care from UN medics and US Missionaries is resulting in more babies being surviving. US missionaries reinforcing the local taboo against condoms has done nothing to help the birth rates or slow the spread of AIDS on the continent. The result is a place where the average life span for people who survive past 3 years old is around 19 with almost no one living beyond 35. Not to mention that a large portion of all of the actual useful aid like medical supplies is confiscated by warlords for their own use. If we REALLY wanted to help Africa we would be sending in the occasional team of Marines to obliterate warlord camps and airdropping condoms with instructions and a good story about how wearing them will protect you from demons. The birth rate will decline, a large part of the population will die and the remaining people will actually have enough to eat. All of these things are more useful than broadband internet, but that doesn't mean broadband internet is bad. Giving villages access to a larger view of the planet can only help things really. Even if it's not the best or most immediate help.
Re:Can you change the world in MMO's?
on
Quests
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· Score: 1
Part of the issue with changeability in the MMO world is the angle from which people are looking at the quests. While the current quest may be "Kill Hogger" the actual goal of the quest if you read the text is to stop him from destroying the farmers crops (If I remember correctly, which for the purpose of this narrative makes no difference). So why should the quest not be "Keep the pigs out of the farmers field for 20 minutes." You get XP for killing the pigs, you spend 20 minutes within the borders of the field, you get your quest reward. An almost unending string of new players ensures that there are always people around to keep the field clear of pigs. The world is unchanged, but a "difference" is made. You could even tie a merchants goods availability to whether or not the field had gone unprotected for more than 10-15 minutes. The idea of "maintenance" quests in MMOs is somewhat underlooked in my opinion. I see no reason why we shouldn't see quests that direct you to spend X number of minutes performing Y task instead of just ordering you to kill X arbitrary monsters. Even the idea of doing things like mining would work here, a quest that involves players mining an area for a set amount of time to ensure that the towns in the area always have goods to produce weapons/armor. If no one is mining an area then the goods run out and are not replenished. Questing can be so much more than the current MMORPG view of it. Not every quest must be epic.
Actually replying to this because it's my comment and I thought I was logged in when I posted it.
There's an aspect of whiny loserdom in that post. Competition is a wonderful thing. The urge to be the best at something, the urge to WIN. It's healthy. In fact it's necessary for the continued improvement of our quality of life. Kids should be encouraged to try their very best to win if they are competing. Adults who compete should be trying as hard as they can to win. And EVERYONE should compete at something. Telling people that it's ok to lose, as long as you try is bullshit. I don't want my surgeon thinking, "Well, it's ok if he dies, so long as I tried.". Having a strong competitive instinct and a will to win is vital to being a truly successful person. Even if you aren't competing against other people you should be challenging yourself. Go run the 400 3 times a week and try to get your time a little bit better each time. Do as many pullups as you can every day, trying to get 1 more each time. Solve the NYT crossword for time, trying to get better each time. But strive for excellence damnit. Mediocrity is not a goal.
No, the free market doesn't cause the socialization of risk. That's government interference. What you're calling for is greater government interference in the economy when past evidence shows that the government as a collective entity knows bugger all about economics. What you should be advocating is fewer government controls on the formation of new business, less government intervention, fewer taxes, fewer government institutions, etc... The private market does damn near everything better than the feds and should be allowed to do so in peace.
I'm against the corporate bailouts and think they were idiotic as well. The feds need to get their hands off of the economy before they really and truly wreck it up, if it's not already too late.
Even if that is true it's not up to someone else to decide for ME what enough profit or enough growth is, or what standard of living is high enough for me. If I decide I'm making enough profit then that's fine. But you can't come in and tell me I have enough money now and can't stop adjusting the price of my goods to match the demand.
You call that price gouging, I call that supply and demand.
Your assertion that profit is evil (clearly you think that) baffles me. If people are willing to pay a certain price for an object why should I sell that object for less?
Umm, because if the cost of my widget doubled then the chances are that the cost of many many other things in the economy have also gone up. Which means my 2000 profit goes about as far as my 1000 profit did before. Nothing in the economy exists in isolation. Not to mention that with fluctuating demand a company doesn't always get to maintain that profit margin, if demand dips one year and I don't make any profit I have to have something stored away or I go out of business. To continue my previous example, I'm putting 500$ away out of that 1000$ against leaner times. So when I make 2000 I put 1000$ away to make up for the higher cost of the goods. If I were to reduce my profit to 1000 and still put away only 500 then there is a higher chance that with fluctuating demand I would hit a point where I couldn't make it through a low demand year.
"Profit" is not just extra money that the business gets to put into a big skyscraper sized bin so the executives can roll around in it. Profits are the amount of money earned beyond the cost of producing the saleable goods but that doesn't mean there's no use/need for that money. In order for the business to grow to meet future demands for its product those profits have to be reinvested in the company. Some of the profits have to be put away for times when the income of the company drops or for emergencies. Generally those costs are not built into the cost of the goods being produced either. You obviously have never run a business and had to try to plan for every eventuality and build that into the price of your goods. It's just not possible. You account for what you can measure and quantify, build as much of that into the cost as you can and still be competitive and try to make some kind of profit to insulate you against the things you can't plan for and prepare you for future growth.
The oil companies are responsible for all kinds of horrible things including predatory business practices, sitting on patents, etc... etc... But price gouging isn't one of them. The high cost of gas in the US is being caused by inadequate refinery capacity, a weakened dollar, and growing demand for petroleum from developing nations.
If my cost to make a widget is 90$, and I sell them for 100$ apiece, and I sell 100 of them I have a profit of $1000 and a profit margin of 10$. If the cost goes up to 180$/widget to make, and I sell them for 200$ and sell 100 of them again I have made $2000 and my profit marge is 20$.
In both cases I am making 10% of your cost in profit. But from the first situation to the second my profits have DOUBLED. Should I have reduced my profit margin to 5%? What if my business isn't sustainable with a 5% profit margin? Oh, and if you take a look the oil companies have a pretty thin profit margin, much less than 10%. So quit harping on the "record profits" of the oil companies. It just demonstrates your complete lack of understanding of economics at the most basic level.
I've been active in the Crossfit community and on the boards for a few months and have been flirting with it for over a year. But with Jiujitsu and other stuff going on I haven't been able to start until now. Been doing a 5x5 strength training routine instead. We're officially starting this Friday. Putting together my pullup/dip/squat rack/etc... station this weekend.
I've done the Matt Furey stuff before, and while those are some nice bodyweight exercises, and if you are hideously out of shape you'll get some good benefits from them, they are neither good calorie burners nor good muscle builders. A comprehensive program like Crossfit or RossTraining is much better.
Weight training will build muscle but doesn't burn a lot of calories. Things like running, swimming, and biking are the kinds of things that burn calories.
This statement is so incredibly ignorant that it makes me immediately discount everything you say. Weight training is a vital part of building and maintaining fitness and maintaining a healthy weight. A good weight lifting routine (Doesn't have to be powerlifting or bodybuilding) will burn calories with a quickness and the resulting muscle increase will improve your resting calorie burn and make it easier to lose weight and keep it off in general.
The key is intensity. High intensity workouts are better than low, take less time, build better work capacity, burn more calories, build more muscle and are generally more effective.
Check out www.crossfit.com. Most of the "Workout of the Day" workouts take around 30 minutes, some as little as 5-6 minutes, a few as long as an hour. They are all self scaling or scaled by the BrandX guys and they are heavy on MetCon which will take weight off of you with a quickness. The minimum equipment requirements are pretty low. It's nice to have a pullup bar and a bench and some freeweights. But you can sub bodyweight stuff for most of the weighted stuff and still get great benefits out of it.
I'm glad I don't run games any more then. I still hold the record at UGA for the most players killed in a legit campaign. My puzzles would require 3-4 people together to solve them while the rest of the party held off the horde of enemies. I had frequent fatal traps built into everything. The catch was that as long as you were reasonably cautious and thought ahead a little you were never in any real danger. No thought = no survival.
What I DON'T have patience for is WALKING. It's one thing to have to figure out how to unlock some complicated door puzzle, it's another thing to have to spend 20 hours walking back and forth gathering bits and pieces to "solve" a puzzle. The problem with puzzles in games is that the nature of the puzzles deteriorated over time to be moe time consuming and tedious and less clever. Get rid of the extraneous travel time associated with the puzzles and a lot of people will suddenly have a lot more patience for them.
Oh, and that will have the added bonus of stopping developers from artifically increasing the playtime of their games via incredibly long travel times.
The UFC is not "Just Brute Force" you ignorant jackass. If that were the case Brock Lesnar would be destroying everyone and Sean Sherk would have torn BJ Penn apart for the lightweight title. Skill, strategy, the ability to think and act under pressure are all more important that brute force.
Actually she's a fantastic teacher. But she is a SCIENCE teacher. Not a MATH teacher. So when the kids in her SCIENCE class can't do the basic MATH required what is she supposed to do? It's not even the fault of the kids that they are ignorant and completely without basic skills. It's the fault of their earlier education system. When you are passing kids through the elementary and middle school grades who can't read, what do you expect will happen when they hit high school? As I said before there are individual exceptions, but out of 1000 kids there may be 2-3 who actually care whether they are passing or not. Much less actively desire to learn anything.
With 25-30 kids in a classroom there simply is NOT time for a science teacher to go back and teach remedial math to a class that can't do gram to kilogram conversions.
I'm not talking about mastering the complex ins and outs of calculus, or trig, or even geometry. I'm talking about kids who are in high school who must make a SIGNIFICANT pause in order to determine that 18+11 is 29. This is not about forcing everyone to learn higher math. It's about kids getting out of elementary and middle school unable to perform basic calculations even WITH a calculator.
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Same here, when I watch shows on the CBS or NBC websites they generally have 4-5 thirty second commercials. Usually for the same product every time. It's certainly not worth 200$ for me to avoid having to watch that. I can't imagine anyone for whom that would be a reasonable purchase unless you just venomously hate advertising for some philosophical reason.
's what batteries are for. If you can store a decent percentage of the energy then you get to use it later during your peak usage time.
I would love to have a solar setup at my house as I use almost no power during the day, but use a good deal at night when I'm home. The solar cells would store up power for me in battery banks for my use later.
English is not their first language. They are from denmark or some other third world european place with 50mb connections to everyones home and a real healthcare system and everything. So sometimes they have some spelling and grammar errors that get by. In my mind all of the characters have generic european accents anyways, so the errors actually add to the comic instead of detracting for it for me.
Actually Sinfest, Least I could Do, XKCD and C&H have nothing to do with gaming. Sinfest has some of the best social and political commentary of any comic I've read. Especially the last couple of weeks of election commentary. LICD is kind of whacky as the main character is Calvin (and Hobbes) type personality who also happens to be wildly and unexpectedly successful at everything he does. It has a lot of relationship based humor and plot lines that really only make sense if you've been in a few crazy relationships. And all 8 comics are better written and better drawn, and generally just better than the comic in the article.
Sinfest, Least I could Do, Penny Arcade, Player vs Player, Little Gamers, CtrlAltDelete, XKCD, Cyanide and Happiness. Those are just the 8 that I read regularly. I've stumbled across others that were good, but didn't make it into my regular reading list which I can't recall the names of at the moment.
Some of them you will find funny, some you will find retarded, but all of them are better put together than the Zippyesque drivel linked to in the article.
I also found the comic to be borderline retarded. There are dozens if not hundreds of better comics out there. How did this idiot get on NPR?
I would prefer to see most of the interference with local economies stopped. UN food donations destroyed the economic viability of local farmers and put them out of work. Continued interference and improved prenatal care from UN medics and US Missionaries is resulting in more babies being surviving. US missionaries reinforcing the local taboo against condoms has done nothing to help the birth rates or slow the spread of AIDS on the continent. The result is a place where the average life span for people who survive past 3 years old is around 19 with almost no one living beyond 35.
Not to mention that a large portion of all of the actual useful aid like medical supplies is confiscated by warlords for their own use. If we REALLY wanted to help Africa we would be sending in the occasional team of Marines to obliterate warlord camps and airdropping condoms with instructions and a good story about how wearing them will protect you from demons. The birth rate will decline, a large part of the population will die and the remaining people will actually have enough to eat.
All of these things are more useful than broadband internet, but that doesn't mean broadband internet is bad. Giving villages access to a larger view of the planet can only help things really. Even if it's not the best or most immediate help.
Part of the issue with changeability in the MMO world is the angle from which people are looking at the quests. While the current quest may be "Kill Hogger" the actual goal of the quest if you read the text is to stop him from destroying the farmers crops (If I remember correctly, which for the purpose of this narrative makes no difference). So why should the quest not be "Keep the pigs out of the farmers field for 20 minutes." You get XP for killing the pigs, you spend 20 minutes within the borders of the field, you get your quest reward. An almost unending string of new players ensures that there are always people around to keep the field clear of pigs.
The world is unchanged, but a "difference" is made. You could even tie a merchants goods availability to whether or not the field had gone unprotected for more than 10-15 minutes.
The idea of "maintenance" quests in MMOs is somewhat underlooked in my opinion. I see no reason why we shouldn't see quests that direct you to spend X number of minutes performing Y task instead of just ordering you to kill X arbitrary monsters.
Even the idea of doing things like mining would work here, a quest that involves players mining an area for a set amount of time to ensure that the towns in the area always have goods to produce weapons/armor. If no one is mining an area then the goods run out and are not replenished.
Questing can be so much more than the current MMORPG view of it. Not every quest must be epic.
Actually replying to this because it's my comment and I thought I was logged in when I posted it.
There's an aspect of whiny loserdom in that post.
Competition is a wonderful thing. The urge to be the best at something, the urge to WIN. It's healthy. In fact it's necessary for the continued improvement of our quality of life. Kids should be encouraged to try their very best to win if they are competing. Adults who compete should be trying as hard as they can to win. And EVERYONE should compete at something.
Telling people that it's ok to lose, as long as you try is bullshit. I don't want my surgeon thinking, "Well, it's ok if he dies, so long as I tried.". Having a strong competitive instinct and a will to win is vital to being a truly successful person. Even if you aren't competing against other people you should be challenging yourself. Go run the 400 3 times a week and try to get your time a little bit better each time. Do as many pullups as you can every day, trying to get 1 more each time. Solve the NYT crossword for time, trying to get better each time. But strive for excellence damnit. Mediocrity is not a goal.
No, the free market doesn't cause the socialization of risk. That's government interference. What you're calling for is greater government interference in the economy when past evidence shows that the government as a collective entity knows bugger all about economics. What you should be advocating is fewer government controls on the formation of new business, less government intervention, fewer taxes, fewer government institutions, etc...
The private market does damn near everything better than the feds and should be allowed to do so in peace.
I'm against the corporate bailouts and think they were idiotic as well. The feds need to get their hands off of the economy before they really and truly wreck it up, if it's not already too late.
Even if that is true it's not up to someone else to decide for ME what enough profit or enough growth is, or what standard of living is high enough for me. If I decide I'm making enough profit then that's fine. But you can't come in and tell me I have enough money now and can't stop adjusting the price of my goods to match the demand.
You call that price gouging, I call that supply and demand.
Your assertion that profit is evil (clearly you think that) baffles me. If people are willing to pay a certain price for an object why should I sell that object for less?
Your entire worldview confuses me.
Umm, because if the cost of my widget doubled then the chances are that the cost of many many other things in the economy have also gone up. Which means my 2000 profit goes about as far as my 1000 profit did before. Nothing in the economy exists in isolation.
Not to mention that with fluctuating demand a company doesn't always get to maintain that profit margin, if demand dips one year and I don't make any profit I have to have something stored away or I go out of business.
To continue my previous example, I'm putting 500$ away out of that 1000$ against leaner times. So when I make 2000 I put 1000$ away to make up for the higher cost of the goods. If I were to reduce my profit to 1000 and still put away only 500 then there is a higher chance that with fluctuating demand I would hit a point where I couldn't make it through a low demand year.
"Profit" is not just extra money that the business gets to put into a big skyscraper sized bin so the executives can roll around in it.
Profits are the amount of money earned beyond the cost of producing the saleable goods but that doesn't mean there's no use/need for that money. In order for the business to grow to meet future demands for its product those profits have to be reinvested in the company. Some of the profits have to be put away for times when the income of the company drops or for emergencies.
Generally those costs are not built into the cost of the goods being produced either. You obviously have never run a business and had to try to plan for every eventuality and build that into the price of your goods. It's just not possible. You account for what you can measure and quantify, build as much of that into the cost as you can and still be competitive and try to make some kind of profit to insulate you against the things you can't plan for and prepare you for future growth.
The oil companies are responsible for all kinds of horrible things including predatory business practices, sitting on patents, etc... etc... But price gouging isn't one of them. The high cost of gas in the US is being caused by inadequate refinery capacity, a weakened dollar, and growing demand for petroleum from developing nations.
If my cost to make a widget is 90$, and I sell them for 100$ apiece, and I sell 100 of them I have a profit of $1000 and a profit margin of 10$.
If the cost goes up to 180$/widget to make, and I sell them for 200$ and sell 100 of them again I have made $2000 and my profit marge is 20$.
In both cases I am making 10% of your cost in profit. But from the first situation to the second my profits have DOUBLED.
Should I have reduced my profit margin to 5%? What if my business isn't sustainable with a 5% profit margin?
Oh, and if you take a look the oil companies have a pretty thin profit margin, much less than 10%. So quit harping on the "record profits" of the oil companies. It just demonstrates your complete lack of understanding of economics at the most basic level.
I've been active in the Crossfit community and on the boards for a few months and have been flirting with it for over a year. But with Jiujitsu and other stuff going on I haven't been able to start until now. Been doing a 5x5 strength training routine instead. We're officially starting this Friday. Putting together my pullup/dip/squat rack/etc... station this weekend.
I've done the Matt Furey stuff before, and while those are some nice bodyweight exercises, and if you are hideously out of shape you'll get some good benefits from them, they are neither good calorie burners nor good muscle builders. A comprehensive program like Crossfit or RossTraining is much better.
www.crossfit.com
Weight training will build muscle but doesn't burn a lot of calories. Things like running, swimming, and biking are the kinds of things that burn calories.
This statement is so incredibly ignorant that it makes me immediately discount everything you say.
Weight training is a vital part of building and maintaining fitness and maintaining a healthy weight. A good weight lifting routine (Doesn't have to be powerlifting or bodybuilding) will burn calories with a quickness and the resulting muscle increase will improve your resting calorie burn and make it easier to lose weight and keep it off in general.
The key is intensity. High intensity workouts are better than low, take less time, build better work capacity, burn more calories, build more muscle and are generally more effective.
www.crossfit.com
Check out www.crossfit.com. Most of the "Workout of the Day" workouts take around 30 minutes, some as little as 5-6 minutes, a few as long as an hour. They are all self scaling or scaled by the BrandX guys and they are heavy on MetCon which will take weight off of you with a quickness.
The minimum equipment requirements are pretty low. It's nice to have a pullup bar and a bench and some freeweights. But you can sub bodyweight stuff for most of the weighted stuff and still get great benefits out of it.
Try it and see.
I'm glad I don't run games any more then. I still hold the record at UGA for the most players killed in a legit campaign. My puzzles would require 3-4 people together to solve them while the rest of the party held off the horde of enemies. I had frequent fatal traps built into everything.
The catch was that as long as you were reasonably cautious and thought ahead a little you were never in any real danger. No thought = no survival.
What I DON'T have patience for is WALKING. It's one thing to have to figure out how to unlock some complicated door puzzle, it's another thing to have to spend 20 hours walking back and forth gathering bits and pieces to "solve" a puzzle.
The problem with puzzles in games is that the nature of the puzzles deteriorated over time to be moe time consuming and tedious and less clever.
Get rid of the extraneous travel time associated with the puzzles and a lot of people will suddenly have a lot more patience for them.
Oh, and that will have the added bonus of stopping developers from artifically increasing the playtime of their games via incredibly long travel times.
The UFC is not "Just Brute Force" you ignorant jackass. If that were the case Brock Lesnar would be destroying everyone and Sean Sherk would have torn BJ Penn apart for the lightweight title. Skill, strategy, the ability to think and act under pressure are all more important that brute force.
Please do not propagate ignorant stereotypes.
Actually she's a fantastic teacher. But she is a SCIENCE teacher. Not a MATH teacher. So when the kids in her SCIENCE class can't do the basic MATH required what is she supposed to do?
It's not even the fault of the kids that they are ignorant and completely without basic skills. It's the fault of their earlier education system. When you are passing kids through the elementary and middle school grades who can't read, what do you expect will happen when they hit high school? As I said before there are individual exceptions, but out of 1000 kids there may be 2-3 who actually care whether they are passing or not. Much less actively desire to learn anything.
With 25-30 kids in a classroom there simply is NOT time for a science teacher to go back and teach remedial math to a class that can't do gram to kilogram conversions.
I'm not talking about mastering the complex ins and outs of calculus, or trig, or even geometry. I'm talking about kids who are in high school who must make a SIGNIFICANT pause in order to determine that 18+11 is 29.
This is not about forcing everyone to learn higher math. It's about kids getting out of elementary and middle school unable to perform basic calculations even WITH a calculator.