I dunno, I think trying to find a cure for Non-Hodkins Lymphoma is a very good use of research money. Finding a cure for it could also help advance research in solving other cancers.
agreed, no offence to the people who did the work, but it looks like model rocketry is their hobby. you know hobbies? things people do that they enjoy that have no particular purpose? some people build model trains, complete with lavish countrysides, immense attention to detail. some people like to build structures strap solid rocket engines on them and launch them. Model Rocketry isn't for everyone, And it is a "waste of time" in some respects after all it's hobby, sure you could be spending that time working, but most of the people who pursue model rocketry have a day job and do this because it brings them joy.
And when this explodes in a ball of flames, do you think they'll believe that all the time building it was wasted? nope. They had fun building it, launching it, and watching it explode. all in all a good time.
Just as a final comment, not everyone likes to be productive 24 hours a day.
It's not like this is these guys' careers or something.
Using your logic, it should be illegal to make a replica of Michelangelo's david and sell it for profit? even scale replicas? what about scale replicas of the statue of liberty? it should be illegal to copy Bartholdi's work on that too shouldn't it?
What about fanfiction? is that illegal too? Also regarding the movie props and stuff, if they just used them it wouldn't be considered theft, trespassing yes (considered to be a lot less of a serious crime than theft), but not theft if they were simply used in another movie. Using copywritten images is also different than physical theft, (more like digital trespassing). comparing the two shows an ignorance of law. props are property, images aren't. Images are copywritten works, not physical property. the statue of david is physical property. making a physical copy of it isn't removing that physical property it's a replica.
Also it's pointless to use the statue of david as an example in this case, as any copyright on the statue of David has obviously long since expired, and it's value isn't in the image, it's in the physical work itself. And numerous people have used the image without diminishing the original work (Simpsons even had an entire episode devoted to the statue of David). I suppose it does work for some arguements. Since, it shows that a work of art, can be replicated, used in other mediums, photographed, replicated, and shown off for free numerous times, and the value of the original work never decreases. in fact it increases with time.
And to be honest if somebody made a complete full scale, exact replica and named it "bob", It would be considered a knock-off, and be labeled a replica of David, and if he insisted on calling it "bob" he'd be laughed at. And again it wouldn't diminish the value of the original one bit. in fact the controversy in the media would most likely increase the value of the statue of David.
Are they really saying that 13 year old girls have to go on webcam to some creepy guy to prove they're a girl so she can play one in the game?
does anyone else think that's wrong? I mean I wouldn't let my daughter do that online.
Good point, That's another thing, it has to apply to ALL Manufacturers, not just MS. otherwise it strictly a punitive measure against Microsoft. If apple were allowed to continue bundling MAC OSX with their iMacs, and windows couldn't be bundled with a new Dell...
Here's how it would play out..
Bob goes to best buy to buy a computer, he see's one cheap for $399, brings it home, hooks it up, turns it on, "non-system disk or disk error", he calls tech support, Tech support asks him which OS he purchased with the system, He says "What's this Oh-ess? " and ultimately gets mad at the phone lackey, who then gets his manager and Bob ultimately returns the computer to best buy. he then notices the mac, and asks does that come with an Oh-ess, why yes it does. Apple then gains a new customer because most people expect a computer to come with an OS, and now magically Apple's the only manufacturer selling computers with an OS. I could see this boosting Apple's market share over the period of a few years to a majority, and in about 5-10 years, near monopoly status. MS would be falling, but Apple would now be the new market leader.
Now unbundling all OSes will annoy customers quite a bit. I used to work tech support for a Hatable Pc manufacturer, and the majority of our customers thought that the OS that came with the computer should work right out of the box, in fact quite a few of them were upset with the inital setup of having to type their name and wait a few minutes for the final installation.
So I don't know how well forcing them to install an OS when the first bring their new computer home is going to go over.
When I was in university, they published the books and isdn numbers for your courses in a very unhandy binder, which you had to copy this down, now what I'd do is get the books I need, the prices, write them all down on a piece of paper, take that home because I had to tell my folks how much my books were going to cost. so they knew what to expect... With this... it's not only legally wrong, but sometimes it's not just for competition that the behaviour is done. what if a student needed the money wired for books, and needed to know how much to ask his folks for.
Re:Unless they actually said it
on
Why Myths Persist
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· Score: 2, Insightful
are you completely ignoring the fact that dispite the fact that nobody in the administration said that Saddam caused 9/11, that there is still a belief among many people that he was in fact the cause? Also it doesn't have to be composed solely of idiots, idiots can repeat what they thought they heard, and repeat it ad nauseum eventually non-idiots will hear that myth. or recieve it in the form of email and forward it to 50 of their friends, who send it to 50 of their friends, and soon we have people wondering where this whole thing came from.
Re:Unless they actually said it
on
Why Myths Persist
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
well,
Actually it's not partisan politics. It's partisan politics if the democrats accuse bush of saying exactly that, which I haven't seen. The point the post you replied to was making and you completely chose to ignore calling it "all partisan politics", had nothing to do with partisan politics at all, but rather the basic point the OP made.
If I talk about bob and in the same breath mention 9/11, if that sentence comes from somebody in a position of knowledge or power, enough times, everything between bob and 9/11 blends, and misforms, and becomes bob caused 9/11
This is the beginning of Myths. nothing partisan about it. For a completely unpolitical thing. Bob saw Lisa at the bar last night (Bob saw her from across the room, but the phrasing is key and it's perfectly accurate), will eventually become Bob went out with Lisa, to Bob and Lisa are a couple, to Bob had sex with Lisa. Now all Bob did was see her from across the room, and now both their names are attached to this stigma.
Most games yes, however now we're hitting a wall technologically. There's a point where current graphics, are good enough. look at half-life 2. it's still going strong, look at the sims. these are games that are older than 2 years and are still selling very well. Writing an ambitious game like this will take more than 2 years to work out all the bugs. there is a ton of gameplay in it. And they not only have to write all this gameplay mechanics, but playtest, re-work, fix bugs, make it fun. for most games a 2 year dev cycle is ample time for that. mostly because they're already on tried and true game mechanics. FPS, RTS, RPG, MMORPG... all tried and true principles, each with their own challenges and ability to customize to make your game unique. throw in a game like spore, and you have a game that spans genres, spans gameplay styles, developing that game, will take time. and I actually think that right now is the best time to do it. yes the hardware it was targetting may be the previous years, and you have a better system when it's released, that really doesn't hurt sales any, in fact it allows people who have a slower box run it fine. it expands your audience. take Doom 3 it had really steep requirements, not many people had the box to run it well, and there were many complaints. some people even going as far as to say they should have delayed until the hw was available.
You say history shows that when a game is ambitious overhyped and delayed multiple times the odds aren't good, I think delays are actually sometimes good for the game. as long as the people working on it care about producing a good game. They'll take the extra time to make the game great. this has been shown in history too... Everyone throws in Duke forever... I really don't think spore can even be considered in the same class... as for the release date of "when it's done", Doom3 had that, half-life2 had that, tons of games have had that be the release date from the dev team. Marketing drones are the ones who kill games, they're the ones who kill the games that have been delayed multiple times. after all it's the marketing drones who announce the release dates. and set the deadlines. sometimes deadlines simply can't be met. is that the developer's fault? maybe, but most likely the deadlines were too strict and too soon. especially since I know how hard game devs work.
Anyone else find that they're counting 110% in that list?
sure 2% is probabally part of 87%, but where's the other 8? could they be the "linux plans?" aka not a full company wide rollout of linux, but stay with existing versions of windows, and roll out linux to a select few?
and hmm, didn't this come out when XP was released 5 years ago? similar stats? looks similar.
and btw, I loev how so many people complain about the steep hw requirements of vista. when just 5 years ago, people were complaining about the steep hw requirments of XP, and 12 years ago, windows 95... I'd just like to welcome our new IT folks to the wonderful time that is a windows launch...
in 2 years the hw requirements will be moot...
that would just be bad engineering. you could surely adjust the plates tension, take a run on a rubberized track. and then again on a concrete track, and come back and post again. a sandy beach is simply the other extreme. too soft or too hard energy is wasted, but if you set it right, (again using the rubberized track as an example because I LOVE running on rubberized tracks..) it gives just enough to absorb the shock for you, rather than your shins and knees, but doesn't give too much so that you have to work hard to keep balance.
and I have run on sandy beaches, it works entirely different muscle groups than running on hard ground. but there's less impact running on a beach, and you're more at risk for pulled muscles rather than impact injuries.
yes the energy has to come from somewhere, but wouldn't the plates act as a shock absorber, rather than the downward energy being absorbed by your shin, it's being depressed down. If anything, with the appropriate tension it'd almost make it easier/more comfortable to walk, similar to certain rubberized walking surfaces. less impact on your shins and knees. the energy that is being used already exists and is being wasted walking on concrete (being absorbed by the shin and knee). so the law of thermodynamics is maintained, it just converts wasted energy into useful energy.
You make an excelent point that was already addressed in the original post. Here people shop networks/providers then phones. (I say here even though i'm in canada as the situation is the same) But you don't answer this question.
Why can't I buy a phone at a store, throw in a sim card for the carrier of my choice. I for one would LOVE that. having had to change providers, get a new phone when I loved my old one. (battery life was great, speakers were great, perfect size feel everything,) I would have Loved to just switch it over to a new carrier. but I couldn't do that.
Also what was the age of the appartment building? is it possible they had asbestos in the roof? They could have easily disturbed the asbestos, and caused it to break up in the air and that could have caused the cancer. or any other construction
also what kind of cancer did they die of? did they all die of similar cancers? or did they die of different cancers?
It's not the host ISP that's inserting the ads, It's the "Client" ISP, for example
Joe Smith buys a computer and buys high speed internet from "ECI" the Evil Cable ISP. Joe Smith visits Bob's Website, Bob, who hates ads never put any on his webpage, and instead makes his money through online sales of his product. Now Joe loads up Bob's webpage to purchase a widget from Bob, and he sees Ads all over Bob's Website. Bob who has GHI (Good Highspeed ISP) visits his website and there's no ads. ECI is putting the Ads on Bob's website. and collecting all the revenue from those ads. Profiting off of Bob's Website.
and vista runs perfectly fine on my 3 year old 3.0 Ghz P4 with 1 gb of ram. and an ati 9600 pro video card...
and XP ran great on my system back when I got it (P3 1 Ghz, with 256MB Ram).
back in 95 people were complaining about having to upgrade their 386s and 486s for windows 95. Is this a new phenomenon to release an operating system that works best on the higher end systems of the day, and not so good on the lower end systems of the day? nope. heck windows 3.1 didn't care too much for XTs either.
another thing, yeah they don't need to become relevant again, they are still. But, The "At the same frequency" has me a bit confused. since AMD has often had a higher performance per frequency, That's not news, however the "same frequency" did not = "same pricepoint" and a similar freqency product from AMD cost more than from intel. example a 2 Ghz Athlon XP (3000+) was more than a 2.0 GHz P4. while the similar pricepoint 2000+ ran at 1.66 Ghz...
I'd like to see a price-point comparison...
I really don't understand the objection to this. Anyone who works with printers these days knows that this is already a standard business model for companies like Xerox, Minolta, etc. who sell laser printer/scanner/copiers and charge per page. the per page cost usually includes toner, maintenance, service, and it's usually very reasonable. I've seen per page contracts as low as.3 cents a page.
HP finally caught up with the bandwagon. and is trying to jump on. This isn't new, this isn't revolutionary, the only thing revolutionary about this printer is the method of printing. which i don't know if it will have a big market. It'd have to be competitive to our colour laser Minolta... in both price and performance/quality.
well I've personally seen several versions.
ones with firewire, ones without, ones with 2 USB ports , ones with only one USB port, the mini version. not as much whining about that i must admit.
i know at least one person who hated the firewire disappearing (his original died, and he went and bought a second one and it was missing the firewire), although i never did know what it was for.
That's actually the idea.
We have it here in Alberta, it's provincially run, so it's a little better than federal. The point is to get rid of the fees to dump old hardware. i'm a packrat so i've still got my 14" hercules monitor in my basement, so I really don't know if there's still a fee or not... it's been on for a few years now.
It really doesn't add that much to the cost. i mean you're spending $200 whats another 10?
9 was just a dream,
a proper ending to the series is well deserved. I always thought a quest to re-unite Sosaria would make a great bookend for the series. afterall the stranger split sosaria into 4 worlds, he should bring it back together now that he's the avatar!
actually there were. you had a sword. you could kill if you wanted to, it made it harder though. it was best to just knock them out, but if they attacked you, you had to fight back and that would be to the death. some missions had the "no kill" rule, but not all of them. and if you killed them you had to use a water arrow to wash up the blood and move the body or else guards would be alerted to your presence.
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actually according to the last trade on yahoo finance, it's actually $46975.37
Slight difference. $3000 whats the difference?
I dunno, I think trying to find a cure for Non-Hodkins Lymphoma is a very good use of research money. Finding a cure for it could also help advance research in solving other cancers.
agreed, no offence to the people who did the work, but it looks like model rocketry is their hobby. you know hobbies? things people do that they enjoy that have no particular purpose? some people build model trains, complete with lavish countrysides, immense attention to detail. some people like to build structures strap solid rocket engines on them and launch them. Model Rocketry isn't for everyone, And it is a "waste of time" in some respects after all it's hobby, sure you could be spending that time working, but most of the people who pursue model rocketry have a day job and do this because it brings them joy. And when this explodes in a ball of flames, do you think they'll believe that all the time building it was wasted? nope. They had fun building it, launching it, and watching it explode. all in all a good time. Just as a final comment, not everyone likes to be productive 24 hours a day. It's not like this is these guys' careers or something.
Using your logic, it should be illegal to make a replica of Michelangelo's david and sell it for profit? even scale replicas?
what about scale replicas of the statue of liberty? it should be illegal to copy Bartholdi's work on that too shouldn't it?
What about fanfiction? is that illegal too? Also regarding the movie props and stuff, if they just used them it wouldn't be considered theft, trespassing yes (considered to be a lot less of a serious crime than theft), but not theft if they were simply used in another movie. Using copywritten images is also different than physical theft, (more like digital trespassing). comparing the two shows an ignorance of law. props are property, images aren't. Images are copywritten works, not physical property. the statue of david is physical property. making a physical copy of it isn't removing that physical property it's a replica.
Also it's pointless to use the statue of david as an example in this case, as any copyright on the statue of David has obviously long since expired, and it's value isn't in the image, it's in the physical work itself. And numerous people have used the image without diminishing the original work (Simpsons even had an entire episode devoted to the statue of David). I suppose it does work for some arguements. Since, it shows that a work of art, can be replicated, used in other mediums, photographed, replicated, and shown off for free numerous times, and the value of the original work never decreases. in fact it increases with time.
And to be honest if somebody made a complete full scale, exact replica and named it "bob", It would be considered a knock-off, and be labeled a replica of David, and if he insisted on calling it "bob" he'd be laughed at. And again it wouldn't diminish the value of the original one bit. in fact the controversy in the media would most likely increase the value of the statue of David.
Are they really saying that 13 year old girls have to go on webcam to some creepy guy to prove they're a girl so she can play one in the game? does anyone else think that's wrong? I mean I wouldn't let my daughter do that online.
Good point, That's another thing, it has to apply to ALL Manufacturers, not just MS. otherwise it strictly a punitive measure against Microsoft. If apple were allowed to continue bundling MAC OSX with their iMacs, and windows couldn't be bundled with a new Dell...
Here's how it would play out..
Bob goes to best buy to buy a computer, he see's one cheap for $399, brings it home, hooks it up, turns it on, "non-system disk or disk error", he calls tech support, Tech support asks him which OS he purchased with the system, He says "What's this Oh-ess? " and ultimately gets mad at the phone lackey, who then gets his manager and Bob ultimately returns the computer to best buy. he then notices the mac, and asks does that come with an Oh-ess, why yes it does. Apple then gains a new customer because most people expect a computer to come with an OS, and now magically Apple's the only manufacturer selling computers with an OS. I could see this boosting Apple's market share over the period of a few years to a majority, and in about 5-10 years, near monopoly status. MS would be falling, but Apple would now be the new market leader.
Now unbundling all OSes will annoy customers quite a bit. I used to work tech support for a Hatable Pc manufacturer, and the majority of our customers thought that the OS that came with the computer should work right out of the box, in fact quite a few of them were upset with the inital setup of having to type their name and wait a few minutes for the final installation.
So I don't know how well forcing them to install an OS when the first bring their new computer home is going to go over.
When I was in university, they published the books and isdn numbers for your courses in a very unhandy binder, which you had to copy this down, now what I'd do is get the books I need, the prices, write them all down on a piece of paper, take that home because I had to tell my folks how much my books were going to cost. so they knew what to expect... With this... it's not only legally wrong, but sometimes it's not just for competition that the behaviour is done. what if a student needed the money wired for books, and needed to know how much to ask his folks for.
are you completely ignoring the fact that dispite the fact that nobody in the administration said that Saddam caused 9/11, that there is still a belief among many people that he was in fact the cause? Also it doesn't have to be composed solely of idiots, idiots can repeat what they thought they heard, and repeat it ad nauseum eventually non-idiots will hear that myth. or recieve it in the form of email and forward it to 50 of their friends, who send it to 50 of their friends, and soon we have people wondering where this whole thing came from.
well,
Actually it's not partisan politics. It's partisan politics if the democrats accuse bush of saying exactly that, which I haven't seen. The point the post you replied to was making and you completely chose to ignore calling it "all partisan politics", had nothing to do with partisan politics at all, but rather the basic point the OP made.
If I talk about bob and in the same breath mention 9/11, if that sentence comes from somebody in a position of knowledge or power, enough times, everything between bob and 9/11 blends, and misforms, and becomes bob caused 9/11
This is the beginning of Myths. nothing partisan about it. For a completely unpolitical thing. Bob saw Lisa at the bar last night (Bob saw her from across the room, but the phrasing is key and it's perfectly accurate), will eventually become Bob went out with Lisa, to Bob and Lisa are a couple, to Bob had sex with Lisa. Now all Bob did was see her from across the room, and now both their names are attached to this stigma.
hey maybe thats why chinese became so popular in the firefly future...
Most games yes, however now we're hitting a wall technologically. There's a point where current graphics, are good enough. look at half-life 2. it's still going strong, look at the sims. these are games that are older than 2 years and are still selling very well. Writing an ambitious game like this will take more than 2 years to work out all the bugs. there is a ton of gameplay in it. And they not only have to write all this gameplay mechanics, but playtest, re-work, fix bugs, make it fun. for most games a 2 year dev cycle is ample time for that. mostly because they're already on tried and true game mechanics. FPS, RTS, RPG, MMORPG... all tried and true principles, each with their own challenges and ability to customize to make your game unique. throw in a game like spore, and you have a game that spans genres, spans gameplay styles, developing that game, will take time. and I actually think that right now is the best time to do it. yes the hardware it was targetting may be the previous years, and you have a better system when it's released, that really doesn't hurt sales any, in fact it allows people who have a slower box run it fine. it expands your audience. take Doom 3 it had really steep requirements, not many people had the box to run it well, and there were many complaints. some people even going as far as to say they should have delayed until the hw was available. You say history shows that when a game is ambitious overhyped and delayed multiple times the odds aren't good, I think delays are actually sometimes good for the game. as long as the people working on it care about producing a good game. They'll take the extra time to make the game great. this has been shown in history too... Everyone throws in Duke forever... I really don't think spore can even be considered in the same class... as for the release date of "when it's done", Doom3 had that, half-life2 had that, tons of games have had that be the release date from the dev team. Marketing drones are the ones who kill games, they're the ones who kill the games that have been delayed multiple times. after all it's the marketing drones who announce the release dates. and set the deadlines. sometimes deadlines simply can't be met. is that the developer's fault? maybe, but most likely the deadlines were too strict and too soon. especially since I know how hard game devs work.
Jayne: This has a name, I call her Vera
Anyone else find that they're counting 110% in that list? sure 2% is probabally part of 87%, but where's the other 8? could they be the "linux plans?" aka not a full company wide rollout of linux, but stay with existing versions of windows, and roll out linux to a select few? and hmm, didn't this come out when XP was released 5 years ago? similar stats? looks similar. and btw, I loev how so many people complain about the steep hw requirements of vista. when just 5 years ago, people were complaining about the steep hw requirments of XP, and 12 years ago, windows 95... I'd just like to welcome our new IT folks to the wonderful time that is a windows launch... in 2 years the hw requirements will be moot...
that would just be bad engineering. you could surely adjust the plates tension, take a run on a rubberized track. and then again on a concrete track, and come back and post again. a sandy beach is simply the other extreme. too soft or too hard energy is wasted, but if you set it right, (again using the rubberized track as an example because I LOVE running on rubberized tracks..) it gives just enough to absorb the shock for you, rather than your shins and knees, but doesn't give too much so that you have to work hard to keep balance. and I have run on sandy beaches, it works entirely different muscle groups than running on hard ground. but there's less impact running on a beach, and you're more at risk for pulled muscles rather than impact injuries.
yes the energy has to come from somewhere, but wouldn't the plates act as a shock absorber, rather than the downward energy being absorbed by your shin, it's being depressed down. If anything, with the appropriate tension it'd almost make it easier/more comfortable to walk, similar to certain rubberized walking surfaces. less impact on your shins and knees. the energy that is being used already exists and is being wasted walking on concrete (being absorbed by the shin and knee). so the law of thermodynamics is maintained, it just converts wasted energy into useful energy.
You make an excelent point that was already addressed in the original post. Here people shop networks/providers then phones. (I say here even though i'm in canada as the situation is the same) But you don't answer this question. Why can't I buy a phone at a store, throw in a sim card for the carrier of my choice. I for one would LOVE that. having had to change providers, get a new phone when I loved my old one. (battery life was great, speakers were great, perfect size feel everything,) I would have Loved to just switch it over to a new carrier. but I couldn't do that.
Also what was the age of the appartment building? is it possible they had asbestos in the roof? They could have easily disturbed the asbestos, and caused it to break up in the air and that could have caused the cancer. or any other construction also what kind of cancer did they die of? did they all die of similar cancers? or did they die of different cancers?
It's not the host ISP that's inserting the ads, It's the "Client" ISP, for example Joe Smith buys a computer and buys high speed internet from "ECI" the Evil Cable ISP. Joe Smith visits Bob's Website, Bob, who hates ads never put any on his webpage, and instead makes his money through online sales of his product. Now Joe loads up Bob's webpage to purchase a widget from Bob, and he sees Ads all over Bob's Website. Bob who has GHI (Good Highspeed ISP) visits his website and there's no ads. ECI is putting the Ads on Bob's website. and collecting all the revenue from those ads. Profiting off of Bob's Website.
and vista runs perfectly fine on my 3 year old 3.0 Ghz P4 with 1 gb of ram. and an ati 9600 pro video card... and XP ran great on my system back when I got it (P3 1 Ghz, with 256MB Ram). back in 95 people were complaining about having to upgrade their 386s and 486s for windows 95. Is this a new phenomenon to release an operating system that works best on the higher end systems of the day, and not so good on the lower end systems of the day? nope. heck windows 3.1 didn't care too much for XTs either.
another thing, yeah they don't need to become relevant again, they are still. But, The "At the same frequency" has me a bit confused. since AMD has often had a higher performance per frequency, That's not news, however the "same frequency" did not = "same pricepoint" and a similar freqency product from AMD cost more than from intel. example a 2 Ghz Athlon XP (3000+) was more than a 2.0 GHz P4. while the similar pricepoint 2000+ ran at 1.66 Ghz... I'd like to see a price-point comparison...
I really don't understand the objection to this. Anyone who works with printers these days knows that this is already a standard business model for companies like Xerox, Minolta, etc. who sell laser printer/scanner/copiers and charge per page. the per page cost usually includes toner, maintenance, service, and it's usually very reasonable. I've seen per page contracts as low as .3 cents a page.
HP finally caught up with the bandwagon. and is trying to jump on. This isn't new, this isn't revolutionary, the only thing revolutionary about this printer is the method of printing. which i don't know if it will have a big market. It'd have to be competitive to our colour laser Minolta... in both price and performance/quality.
well I've personally seen several versions. ones with firewire, ones without, ones with 2 USB ports , ones with only one USB port, the mini version. not as much whining about that i must admit. i know at least one person who hated the firewire disappearing (his original died, and he went and bought a second one and it was missing the firewire), although i never did know what it was for.
That's actually the idea. We have it here in Alberta, it's provincially run, so it's a little better than federal. The point is to get rid of the fees to dump old hardware. i'm a packrat so i've still got my 14" hercules monitor in my basement, so I really don't know if there's still a fee or not... it's been on for a few years now. It really doesn't add that much to the cost. i mean you're spending $200 whats another 10?
9 was just a dream, a proper ending to the series is well deserved. I always thought a quest to re-unite Sosaria would make a great bookend for the series. afterall the stranger split sosaria into 4 worlds, he should bring it back together now that he's the avatar!
actually there were. you had a sword. you could kill if you wanted to, it made it harder though. it was best to just knock them out, but if they attacked you, you had to fight back and that would be to the death. some missions had the "no kill" rule, but not all of them. and if you killed them you had to use a water arrow to wash up the blood and move the body or else guards would be alerted to your presence.