No idea about in Canada, but in the UK under Statutory Instrument 2000 No. 2334, The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 you have the right to cancel an order at any time up to dispatch and up to 7 days from receipt of goods in which to return them and obtain a refund (which must be paid within 30 days). There are exemptions to the law - unsealed computer software, magazines, perishable goods, lottery or gambling services or if the good is personalised to the consumer.
I think I'm missing something here - virtually every RPG will have some class that could act as a police force right (guards for example)? If I steal something from someone in a virtual world and they find out it was me then I would expect the guards to be informed and take the necessary steps, and I would have to work harder to avoid the guards and, if caught, expect to be punished in some way (skill reduction, attack, whatever). If they don't find out it was me, I'd expect the guards to be informed of the theft and, if it happens regularly, I'd expect them to organise themselves to try and track down who was doing it.
The virtual world shouldn't need the application of real world laws for virtual crimes because if it is working correctly it should create its own internal laws, enforced by the players or NPCs.
Not necessarily. I know several online gameplayers who can come into a mach three quarters of the way through and still win - they do have real talent. Yes, there are a lot of cheaters out there, but that doesn't prevent someone wiping the floor with you without cheating.
What's even worse is that I've found that the media makes a difference as well - when I print out the emails I've had with this letter mixing going on inside them I find it much more noticable and laborious to read. When I read them on the screen I barely notice the rearrangement. I guess that's what years or IRC will do to a person - I've got to the point where some spelling mistakes, abbreviations and wholesale word manglings are almost invisible.
One interesting avenue of study would actually be to compare the speed at which regular email, IRC, IM and other communications technology users can read these things to the general population and the more extreme technophobe groups./me wonders how he could word a grant proposal for this...:)
You've got loads of computer bits around and you haven't even tried to cobble together machines out of them, even to use as mailservers, firewalls boxes or just to control the Blinkenlights?
I vote that we just put them out of their misery and nuke the SCO offices off the face of the planet. Oh, and make sure their families are visiting, letting this sort of wacked-out lunatic into the gene pool could be disasterous for the human race.
Australia. A moon that fell from the sky. I must admit that's a new one for me, excuse me while I put it on the shelf next to my collection of Hollow Earth and other idiotic and improbable geological claptrap theories.
You're overlooking a big bottleneck: memory access. If you precalculate your tables, they have to go into main memory, some time later you use part of a table so in needs to get into cache. If the table is big enough, the prefetch didn't get enough of it or your program does a lot of other work, you'll be constantly fetching in and out of main memory. This takes massive amounts of time compared to actually working it out on the fly unless you can be 100% certain your tables will be in cache all the time (which most of the time you can't).
One problem that I don't see addressed in the article is the different approaches games use today compared with those on old hardware. For example, on machines where the disparity between CPU and memory speed was not as great as it is today, it was common practice to precalculate many maths-intensive operations into lookup tables (usually in the form of sin tables, cos tables and so on). On a modern processor this level of precalculation can result in slower execution than just working out the maths on the fly, so most games do minimal precalculation of things like maths functions. While it's often the case that speed is not really an issue with old game ports, it would be interesting to see how they would approach the problem of porting and ensuring that the resulting game makes optimal use of the target machine.
Slashdot Mirror
No idea about in Canada, but in the UK under Statutory Instrument 2000 No. 2334, The Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 you have the right to cancel an order at any time up to dispatch and up to 7 days from receipt of goods in which to return them and obtain a refund (which must be paid within 30 days). There are exemptions to the law - unsealed computer software, magazines, perishable goods, lottery or gambling services or if the good is personalised to the consumer.
I think I'm missing something here - virtually every RPG will have some class that could act as a police force right (guards for example)? If I steal something from someone in a virtual world and they find out it was me then I would expect the guards to be informed and take the necessary steps, and I would have to work harder to avoid the guards and, if caught, expect to be punished in some way (skill reduction, attack, whatever). If they don't find out it was me, I'd expect the guards to be informed of the theft and, if it happens regularly, I'd expect them to organise themselves to try and track down who was doing it.
The virtual world shouldn't need the application of real world laws for virtual crimes because if it is working correctly it should create its own internal laws, enforced by the players or NPCs.
"Isn't that thinking like a teenager?"
;)
Now you know why teenagers are so dangerous. They think just like terrorists!
"I mean if you ARE getting seriously "0wn3d""
Not necessarily. I know several online gameplayers who can come into a mach three quarters of the way through and still win - they do have real talent. Yes, there are a lot of cheaters out there, but that doesn't prevent someone wiping the floor with you without cheating.
An excellent summary!
As long as we spend as long over it as BSD...
What's even worse is that I've found that the media makes a difference as well - when I print out the emails I've had with this letter mixing going on inside them I find it much more noticable and laborious to read. When I read them on the screen I barely notice the rearrangement. I guess that's what years or IRC will do to a person - I've got to the point where some spelling mistakes, abbreviations and wholesale word manglings are almost invisible.
/me wonders how he could word a grant proposal for this... :)
One interesting avenue of study would actually be to compare the speed at which regular email, IRC, IM and other communications technology users can read these things to the general population and the more extreme technophobe groups.
You've got loads of computer bits around and you haven't even tried to cobble together machines out of them, even to use as mailservers, firewalls boxes or just to control the Blinkenlights?
:)
What sort of slashdot reader are you?!
Yeah, just like no one actually runs attachments from emails. /me goes off to delete another 3MB of Swen emails..
Simple solution: get more missiles, and blow up all of them.
Well, the voices do say there's a fine line between genius and insanity.....
Maybe they all want to be sued for trademark infringement by Les Editions Albert Rene...
That could be fun too.
Well, maybe....
Always remember the 11th commandment: Thou Shalt Not Get Caught.
If you can't cover your tracks, you're no good as a sysadmin..
Or with a TARDIS.
I vote that we just put them out of their misery and nuke the SCO offices off the face of the planet. Oh, and make sure their families are visiting, letting this sort of wacked-out lunatic into the gene pool could be disasterous for the human race.
We had a school uniform you insensitive clod!
Sacrelige? Probably, and depending on which woman plays the good Doctor, they may have to add an "a" to the name....
(that's my juvenile joke for the day delt with...)
Australia. A moon that fell from the sky. I must admit that's a new one for me, excuse me while I put it on the shelf next to my collection of Hollow Earth and other idiotic and improbable geological claptrap theories.
You're overlooking a big bottleneck: memory access. If you precalculate your tables, they have to go into main memory, some time later you use part of a table so in needs to get into cache. If the table is big enough, the prefetch didn't get enough of it or your program does a lot of other work, you'll be constantly fetching in and out of main memory. This takes massive amounts of time compared to actually working it out on the fly unless you can be 100% certain your tables will be in cache all the time (which most of the time you can't).
One problem that I don't see addressed in the article is the different approaches games use today compared with those on old hardware. For example, on machines where the disparity between CPU and memory speed was not as great as it is today, it was common practice to precalculate many maths-intensive operations into lookup tables (usually in the form of sin tables, cos tables and so on). On a modern processor this level of precalculation can result in slower execution than just working out the maths on the fly, so most games do minimal precalculation of things like maths functions. While it's often the case that speed is not really an issue with old game ports, it would be interesting to see how they would approach the problem of porting and ensuring that the resulting game makes optimal use of the target machine.
And there was me thinking the 11th commandment was
Thou shalt not get caught.
And yeah, why don't they just rename the RIAA to the Church Of Scientology, Music Organisation..
It gets better, I hear they're also sponsoring classes on how to drown puppies for kids who want to become Recording Industry Ass. of America lawyers.
(yes, this is a joke. Probably.)
I don't know, seems about as accurate as half of the stuff around here. All we need for it to be perfect is for him to post it twice... ;)
"The age of such laws ends here."
I hope I never have to remind you that you said that.