I dunno about Permdeath but I love harsh death. Lose a level or two, lose your items. But that won't appeal to most people since it has a different playstyle.
People don't like to play it safe, they like to take risks.. then whine about the consequences.
Someone hasn't played games for long either apparently. There's patterns and as companies get big their games get stale as they prefer profits and business to innovative and fun games.
Look through Blizzard lately and their nothing but branding and marketting..
Do you really think that WoW is being developed by the same people that developed WC1,2,3/D1,D2/SC? They're marketting it through their name.. Do you really think because some marketter at Blizzard says their goal is to make a fun game, that the game will be better because of it.
But don't take my word for it... just look at Atari, they also can do no wrong.
I agree completely. these games offer nothing new that I find to be of interest. I was disgusted to here a friend say she wants to play WoW because she can ride a griffon. Then a few days later she wanted to play Lineage because the elf's skirt lifts up when they cast. There's plenty of things games could do to innovate. But they're so focused on the "Our classes/zones/races/spells are cooler". What I find of interest is things that add new elements of strategy to the game and make it more immersive, have more details (not graphical).
WoW especially, it's all hype. Read their FAQ's if you don't believe me, they're written to be vague and encompassing (marketting). You can't gleam anything about the game. Yet the community is eatting it up as if marketting never lies. Oh they say they'll make a game for the casual player (never heard any company say that before). Guess what, will NEVER happen, because it can't work by the definition of powergamer. My favorite quote is people saying Blizzard "wants to make a fun game"... seriously people are so gullible when it comes to hype.
Innovation I'd like to see
Weather patterns both in area based weather and the weather having effects on player actions. Lightning more powerful in a thunderstorm, fireballs during heatwaves and wind ruining to-hit on projectiles. Natural disasters: Snowstorms, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes. Granted this might be costly for server to compute weather patterns, but it could probably fake it pretty well.
Better economies, cities that actually produce goods (a farming town producing wheat) and other cities that need those goods. Bandits (AI) to attack the trading wagons (AI) and players can step in as either. UO had it right with mining of ore, raw materials don't just appear in a store but AI can do it also. Cities that have pools of money, isntead of making new money.
Better faction/law system... every kill in a lawful area should have consequences, players shouldn't be able to balance out by killing citizens in two warring towns. Bounties should be placed on murderers (that's what many players are) and hunters should come after you... and they should be cheap (waiting till you're weak to attack). Players can get in on game and hunt bounties too. I hate this idea of a single axis that you go up and down on. Negatives and Positives should be seperate. If Mother Teresa shoots a child, she'd still face the consequences.
If you couldn't tell I'd rather a virtual world (notice I never said realistic systems) rather then a virtual wrestling ring (which is about what some of these games feel like). Maybe I'll play MMORPG's when they IMPLEMENT something new and not just WORD something new./rant off
Unless of course that XL shirt is really an XL and not an L.
No, they'll hide the size in RFID, recognize you as an XXL and tell you that you're a L.
Married W/ Children:
Fat Woman: "I don't understand. Before aerobics, I used to fit in a size 6. I guess all that jumping expanded my feet." Al: "I see you've must've fallen on you butt a time or two."
Fat Woman: "I'd like to see some shoes please." Al: "Uh, let me guess, uh... size sevens." Fat Woman: "Yes! How did you know?" Al: "All women are sevens."
self-reply...Oops my math is off by $500.. although the exact numbers are not important, I agree with the grandparent (now great-GP) that people have to high of expectations.
60k IT jobs aren't necessary.. 40k is still very nice.. 25k is good..
His numbers were off... but BS on the rent thing. The problem is people have higher standards then their wages. Not everyone needs their own apartment. It's perfectly acceptable to rent a room/basement of someone's house. Share a room and you can get even cheaper.
Your rent numbers would be cheaper if you split the rent with a friend.
I live in Los Angeles area... 2bedroom apmt, 2ppl.. my budget (after most things split between us) $600 rent $200 food $300 utilities/DSL/gas/clothes
$1100 in essentials... $13.2k
$1300 a year on computer upgrades/tech (ok maybe this is stretching it for many slashdotters) $1500 a year on entertainment..
total 16k and I consider that comfortable..
This what I'm living on, but I'm earning more (savings).. Granted my numbers are only short term equilibrium. It misses many of the longterm important things, such as school loans, saving for a house (though thats not an essential), retirement, car maintenance/replacement.
Part of the problem is us Americans seem to have to much expectation for lifestyle. These kind of things slow our development, since we're spending our money (our productivity) on throw-away goods and services. People buying cars/computers increases future productivity... people buying DVD's/fashion/fragrances might make us feel good today, but does nothing for tomorrow.
There's a serious problem with that question. By only considering the "average Iraqi" you discount all the outliers. You may want to discount some outliers (Saddam is worse off today for example).. but these outliers are the ones MOST effected by the occurances over there. It would completely ignore political prisoners.
For example was the average american better off with slavery being abolished... probably not but it was improvement for overall Americans. The average person would be unaffected (at least directly) if all people with green-dyed hair were killed.
The proper way in my opinion to measure off Iraq's quality of life is to take the summation of every Iraqi's happiness (yes even Saddam's) before and after. The problem is how do you quantify happiness.
Note: I know some slashdotters will chime in about the definition of average but in this context average is not used in a mathematical sense. Average in this sense means the most ordinary, quite close to Mode in mathematics.
I may sound offtopic but its important to define your question if you want a proper answer. Otherwise it can both be true and false with varying interpretations.
I guess I don't use high enough resolution (I use 1600x1200) that sensitivity would matter (and considering I have a mouse for home computers it probably wouldn't support that kind of sensitivty anyways)... I prefer PS2 because it's more responsive.
The polling rates on USB is just to slow for mice compared to PS2. Since most mice support both (with an adapter) Shake your mouse all over the place on both USB and PS2. USB will just teleport from spot to spot while PS2 will follow a path.
I'd like to go to USB (I already am for my keyboard) just to be hotswappable, but I can't move the mouse over when the response is inferior.
Actually most of the drivers (excluding some teenagers, street racers etc) are pretty good in California most of time... But you're right, when we get hard rains, do NOT go on the road. After Xmas we had some pretty bad storms, the ride back (an hour) I saw four totalled cars.. and people were still going 80 despite heavy winds, heavy rains and shitty visibility.
[Most] People in California don't change their driving habits at all for rain.
I don't think TC will hit home users for a long time for a simple reason. You can't upgrade individual components in Trusted Computers, and it requires you to get a new Monitor/Mouse/Keyboard (that support secure I/O, ie encryption) and possibly replace a significant amount of network infrastructure (Firewalls/NATS).. That means a large expense for most endusers. I'd believe the sky is falling before I'll believe The TCPA will stop P2P..
BTW Palladium was renamed to NGSCB (I believe it's Next Gen Secure Computing Base)
They claim to be able to do 5000 checks per second... but I'm sure that doesn't include the time to transfer the files to be compared. I doubt they'll want it put on every client also, because that leads to too much scrutiny. Once someone figures out what its measuring, I doubt it'll hold up.
The problem with it sounds likes its doing whole tracks. What if you cut off 5 seconds of the track? or adjust the timescale by factor of 2 (which can be undone on other side)
I could care less about music, but I still find this all interesting.
That advertising you hate is what makes it possible for those shows to be made. I love advertising for that reason I just hate being subjected to it. How else could you get a newspaper so cheap, or so many free websites. The HBO model only works because there's so few pay channels. I wouldn't mind being able to pick and choose channels and pay individually, but I realize the channels I like probably don't have as high as viewership and their budget would go down.
Furthermore advertising places the burden on consumers in an uneven manner, one that's biased in geeks favor. Consider this, the consumers cost for much of the web is being subjected to advertising (through popups, banners, etc) but a geek can avoid those. Hence I love pop-ups, since there's so many people out there PAYING to make my experience better and I don't get the detriment of those pop-ups. Now apply that TV, just use a TIVO (or similar) to skip commercials.
I don't like when people make a cause to stamp out advertising... it'll only make it worse for everyone. What would happen if everyone had pop-ups disabled?? Sites would instead do clickthroughs ads (or Loading page, please look at this advertisement for 15 seconds)...
I'm about as anti-consumerism as they come, but I recognize when it benefits me.
It was aiming for the X-Box audience with their target market...
in Halo 2, Master Chief's costume will be made of dyed mink fur and that in scene one, we remove his helmet forever so you can see his long golden hair. And his lipstick.
According to the article its a black box.. It's not a black box if it has extra hidden throughputs.
"A black box is a system where we have a well defined understanding of its inputs and output characteristics, but no idea what's going on inside." -Wikipedia
I dunno what it'd be called otherwise.. maybe just module. Not that I think they'll be that precise with their language.
You're the exact kind of person that doesn't belong having a gun. Someone who instead of deciding whether it's appropriate to shoot, is already shooting to kill. Individuals aren't supposed to judge and punish the actions of others.
Sure draw the gun, warning shots even.. but deadly force should only be to protect from immediate harm.
It could be a repo man, a teenager playing a prank.. or even your own kids. I sure hope you don't have children in your household.
That repo man, shouldn't have to be worried about whether the lowlife that can't pay his bills has a gun. The situation rests on the shoulders of the person who didn't pay his bills, and the repo man shouldn't have to take a risk. He should go in shoot the people in the beds... get the kids too... better put one in the doggies head too.. He can't be bothered to figure out "reasonable force".
Bottom line you're the one that's creating life threatening situation with that kind of attitude. There is no winning an argument over morality and I won't convince you.. but rest assured I'm always right.
When I used to work at Kinko's they had a story during the training about this. The shortversion of the story went that at one of the branches, the feds came one night and surrounded the place, and the whole thing like the movies. Apparently they tracked down the serial number to a color copier there.
This is California, where its definately illegal to make the counterfeits (not just use it). I dunno if they were being truthful or just trying to intimidate trainees from trying it. I can tell you the copiers we had didn't shut down when someone tried copying money self-service... but we stopped him.
Furthermore at the time I was working there, color copiers weren't that advanced. You could get one side copied right, but good luck copying the back with proper margins (you'd need to make a whole sheet of bills to fix it).. which pretty much puts you back to photoshop.
RP isn't determined by the game so much as it's determined by the community. The only successful RP communities I've seen were formed because the twinks would get ostrasized. The problem is getting a large enough RP community that it has the ABILITY to ostrasize twinks and not let them be overwhelmed.
Anyone ever play a consent based mu*? No one can drag you into an RP scene without your permission. So if someone wanted to be ass they could go into the plaza and shout out how the government is all evil but refuse to RP with any of the feds that want to beat/imprison the guy. Sounds like it'd be pretty awful, but it works on smallscale since no one else has to RP with that twink either, he gets ignored and leaves. RP breaks on largescale because you don't deal with the same people day to day, reputations mean nothing.
Why's this matter? No one wants to play the oppressed character. You can't get together a hundred friends and oppress a single person.. cuz that person can just leave, log off, etc. You can only hinder their fun. Not that I'd want to play a game where I can be oppressed. What kind of society can you build with only predators and no prey. Few players want to play a weak character, but in real RP games they're some of the best fun. All of my favorite characters were the ones with serious flaws.. a junkie, a mute and a character with a crippled arm were my most memorable.
These games are all based on the reward is power... thats what makes the players act that way.
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno about Permdeath but I love harsh death. Lose a level or two, lose your items. But that won't appeal to most people since it has a different playstyle.
People don't like to play it safe, they like to take risks.. then whine about the consequences.
"It's not that it's a MMORPG, it's that its a BLIZZARD GAME. Like I said, someone must not have played a blizzard game before."
How was the Phantom Menace?
Someone hasn't played games for long either apparently. There's patterns and as companies get big their games get stale as they prefer profits and business to innovative and fun games.
Look through Blizzard lately and their nothing but branding and marketting..
Do you really think that WoW is being developed by the same people that developed WC1,2,3/D1,D2/SC? They're marketting it through their name..
Do you really think because some marketter at Blizzard says their goal is to make a fun game, that the game will be better because of it.
But don't take my word for it... just look at Atari, they also can do no wrong.
I agree completely. these games offer nothing new that I find to be of interest. I was disgusted to here a friend say she wants to play WoW because she can ride a griffon. Then a few days later she wanted to play Lineage because the elf's skirt lifts up when they cast. There's plenty of things games could do to innovate. But they're so focused on the "Our classes/zones/races/spells are cooler". What I find of interest is things that add new elements of strategy to the game and make it more immersive, have more details (not graphical).
/rant off
WoW especially, it's all hype. Read their FAQ's if you don't believe me, they're written to be vague and encompassing (marketting). You can't gleam anything about the game. Yet the community is eatting it up as if marketting never lies. Oh they say they'll make a game for the casual player (never heard any company say that before). Guess what, will NEVER happen, because it can't work by the definition of powergamer. My favorite quote is people saying Blizzard "wants to make a fun game"... seriously people are so gullible when it comes to hype.
Innovation I'd like to see
Weather patterns both in area based weather and the weather having effects on player actions. Lightning more powerful in a thunderstorm, fireballs during heatwaves and wind ruining to-hit on projectiles. Natural disasters: Snowstorms, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes. Granted this might be costly for server to compute weather patterns, but it could probably fake it pretty well.
Better economies, cities that actually produce goods (a farming town producing wheat) and other cities that need those goods. Bandits (AI) to attack the trading wagons (AI) and players can step in as either. UO had it right with mining of ore, raw materials don't just appear in a store but AI can do it also. Cities that have pools of money, isntead of making new money.
Better faction/law system... every kill in a lawful area should have consequences, players shouldn't be able to balance out by killing citizens in two warring towns. Bounties should be placed on murderers (that's what many players are) and hunters should come after you... and they should be cheap (waiting till you're weak to attack). Players can get in on game and hunt bounties too. I hate this idea of a single axis that you go up and down on. Negatives and Positives should be seperate. If Mother Teresa shoots a child, she'd still face the consequences.
If you couldn't tell I'd rather a virtual world (notice I never said realistic systems) rather then a virtual wrestling ring (which is about what some of these games feel like). Maybe I'll play MMORPG's when they IMPLEMENT something new and not just WORD something new.
Unless of course that XL shirt is really an XL and not an L.
No, they'll hide the size in RFID, recognize you as an XXL and tell you that you're a L.
Married W/ Children:
Fat Woman: "I don't understand. Before aerobics, I used to fit in a size 6. I guess all that jumping expanded my feet."
Al: "I see you've must've fallen on you butt a time or two."
Fat Woman: "I'd like to see some shoes please."
Al: "Uh, let me guess, uh... size sevens."
Fat Woman: "Yes! How did you know?"
Al: "All women are sevens."
Yes because DDoSing a government institution costs money out of THEIR pocketbooks... err
self-reply...Oops my math is off by $500.. although the exact numbers are not important, I agree with the grandparent (now great-GP) that people have to high of expectations.
60k IT jobs aren't necessary.. 40k is still very nice.. 25k is good..
His numbers were off... but BS on the rent thing. The problem is people have higher standards then their wages. Not everyone needs their own apartment. It's perfectly acceptable to rent a room/basement of someone's house. Share a room and you can get even cheaper.
Your rent numbers would be cheaper if you split the rent with a friend.
I live in Los Angeles area... 2bedroom apmt, 2ppl.. my budget (after most things split between us)
$600 rent
$200 food
$300 utilities/DSL/gas/clothes
$1100 in essentials... $13.2k
$1300 a year on computer upgrades/tech (ok maybe this is stretching it for many slashdotters)
$1500 a year on entertainment..
total 16k and I consider that comfortable..
This what I'm living on, but I'm earning more (savings).. Granted my numbers are only short term equilibrium. It misses many of the longterm important things, such as school loans, saving for a house (though thats not an essential), retirement, car maintenance/replacement.
Part of the problem is us Americans seem to have to much expectation for lifestyle. These kind of things slow our development, since we're spending our money (our productivity) on throw-away goods and services. People buying cars/computers increases future productivity... people buying DVD's/fashion/fragrances might make us feel good today, but does nothing for tomorrow.
There's a serious problem with that question. By only considering the "average Iraqi" you discount all the outliers. You may want to discount some outliers (Saddam is worse off today for example).. but these outliers are the ones MOST effected by the occurances over there. It would completely ignore political prisoners.
For example was the average american better off with slavery being abolished... probably not but it was improvement for overall Americans. The average person would be unaffected (at least directly) if all people with green-dyed hair were killed.
The proper way in my opinion to measure off Iraq's quality of life is to take the summation of every Iraqi's happiness (yes even Saddam's) before and after. The problem is how do you quantify happiness.
Note: I know some slashdotters will chime in about the definition of average but in this context average is not used in a mathematical sense. Average in this sense means the most ordinary, quite close to Mode in mathematics.
I may sound offtopic but its important to define your question if you want a proper answer. Otherwise it can both be true and false with varying interpretations.
Both are correct.. but there's also Multi-User Domain. Which is actually the one I heard most often.
The FreeMasons are not allowed to invite people, it's against the rules. People have to ask to join, and be sponsored by members.
I guess I don't use high enough resolution (I use 1600x1200) that sensitivity would matter (and considering I have a mouse for home computers it probably wouldn't support that kind of sensitivty anyways)... I prefer PS2 because it's more responsive.
The polling rates on USB is just to slow for mice compared to PS2. Since most mice support both (with an adapter) Shake your mouse all over the place on both USB and PS2. USB will just teleport from spot to spot while PS2 will follow a path.
I'd like to go to USB (I already am for my keyboard) just to be hotswappable, but I can't move the mouse over when the response is inferior.
Look towards XM radio then... AM/FM Radio suffers a lot more from ads then TV does IMO
If XM radio is a success then it's likely someone will take the same approach for other media.
For a second I was worried I had an unhealthy obsession.. But I'm well below average with only 1 toaster and 100 vibrators..
The clerk is really going to be confused when I try to buy 100 more vibrators and saying "I just want to fit in!"
Imagine a beowulf cluster(-fsck) of those
Actually most of the drivers (excluding some teenagers, street racers etc) are pretty good in California most of time... But you're right, when we get hard rains, do NOT go on the road. After Xmas we had some pretty bad storms, the ride back (an hour) I saw four totalled cars.. and people were still going 80 despite heavy winds, heavy rains and shitty visibility.
[Most] People in California don't change their driving habits at all for rain.
I don't think TC will hit home users for a long time for a simple reason. You can't upgrade individual components in Trusted Computers, and it requires you to get a new Monitor/Mouse/Keyboard (that support secure I/O, ie encryption) and possibly replace a significant amount of network infrastructure (Firewalls/NATS).. That means a large expense for most endusers. I'd believe the sky is falling before I'll believe The TCPA will stop P2P..
BTW Palladium was renamed to NGSCB (I believe it's Next Gen Secure Computing Base)
They claim to be able to do 5000 checks per second... but I'm sure that doesn't include the time to transfer the files to be compared. I doubt they'll want it put on every client also, because that leads to too much scrutiny. Once someone figures out what its measuring, I doubt it'll hold up.
The problem with it sounds likes its doing whole tracks. What if you cut off 5 seconds of the track? or adjust the timescale by factor of 2 (which can be undone on other side)
I could care less about music, but I still find this all interesting.
That advertising you hate is what makes it possible for those shows to be made. I love advertising for that reason I just hate being subjected to it. How else could you get a newspaper so cheap, or so many free websites. The HBO model only works because there's so few pay channels. I wouldn't mind being able to pick and choose channels and pay individually, but I realize the channels I like probably don't have as high as viewership and their budget would go down.
Furthermore advertising places the burden on consumers in an uneven manner, one that's biased in geeks favor. Consider this, the consumers cost for much of the web is being subjected to advertising (through popups, banners, etc) but a geek can avoid those. Hence I love pop-ups, since there's so many people out there PAYING to make my experience better and I don't get the detriment of those pop-ups. Now apply that TV, just use a TIVO (or similar) to skip commercials.
I don't like when people make a cause to stamp out advertising... it'll only make it worse for everyone. What would happen if everyone had pop-ups disabled?? Sites would instead do clickthroughs ads (or Loading page, please look at this advertisement for 15 seconds)...
I'm about as anti-consumerism as they come, but I recognize when it benefits me.
The bottom line -- and an unavoidable one -- is that a billion dollars spent on the space program is a billion dollars worth of food that is not eaten
Yes we could spend a billion dollars on food that's not eaten but that seems pointless...
Instead take the billion dollars spent on food uneaten and move it somewhere useful...
It was aiming for the X-Box audience with their target market...
in Halo 2, Master Chief's costume will be made of dyed mink fur and that in scene one, we remove his helmet forever so you can see his long golden hair. And his lipstick.
According to the article its a black box.. It's not a black box if it has extra hidden throughputs.
"A black box is a system where we have a well defined understanding of its inputs and output characteristics, but no idea what's going on inside."
-Wikipedia
I dunno what it'd be called otherwise.. maybe just module. Not that I think they'll be that precise with their language.
You're the exact kind of person that doesn't belong having a gun. Someone who instead of deciding whether it's appropriate to shoot, is already shooting to kill. Individuals aren't supposed to judge and punish the actions of others.
Sure draw the gun, warning shots even.. but deadly force should only be to protect from immediate harm.
It could be a repo man, a teenager playing a prank.. or even your own kids. I sure hope you don't have children in your household.
That repo man, shouldn't have to be worried about whether the lowlife that can't pay his bills has a gun. The situation rests on the shoulders of the person who didn't pay his bills, and the repo man shouldn't have to take a risk. He should go in shoot the people in the beds... get the kids too... better put one in the doggies head too.. He can't be bothered to figure out "reasonable force".
Bottom line you're the one that's creating life threatening situation with that kind of attitude. There is no winning an argument over morality and I won't convince you.. but rest assured I'm always right.
Today slashdotters use the what's next argument... but whats next!
It's just the start of trend.. would you like sodas to be banned? men won't be allowed to pee standing up... and all babies will have RFID implanted..
For this reason don't use the whats next argument.. because if you don't reject it now.. no one will be there to reject these other ideas!
When I used to work at Kinko's they had a story during the training about this. The shortversion of the story went that at one of the branches, the feds came one night and surrounded the place, and the whole thing like the movies. Apparently they tracked down the serial number to a color copier there.
This is California, where its definately illegal to make the counterfeits (not just use it). I dunno if they were being truthful or just trying to intimidate trainees from trying it. I can tell you the copiers we had didn't shut down when someone tried copying money self-service... but we stopped him.
Furthermore at the time I was working there, color copiers weren't that advanced. You could get one side copied right, but good luck copying the back with proper margins (you'd need to make a whole sheet of bills to fix it).. which pretty much puts you back to photoshop.
RP isn't determined by the game so much as it's determined by the community. The only successful RP communities I've seen were formed because the twinks would get ostrasized. The problem is getting a large enough RP community that it has the ABILITY to ostrasize twinks and not let them be overwhelmed.
Anyone ever play a consent based mu*? No one can drag you into an RP scene without your permission. So if someone wanted to be ass they could go into the plaza and shout out how the government is all evil but refuse to RP with any of the feds that want to beat/imprison the guy. Sounds like it'd be pretty awful, but it works on smallscale since no one else has to RP with that twink either, he gets ignored and leaves. RP breaks on largescale because you don't deal with the same people day to day, reputations mean nothing.
Why's this matter? No one wants to play the oppressed character. You can't get together a hundred friends and oppress a single person.. cuz that person can just leave, log off, etc. You can only hinder their fun. Not that I'd want to play a game where I can be oppressed. What kind of society can you build with only predators and no prey. Few players want to play a weak character, but in real RP games they're some of the best fun. All of my favorite characters were the ones with serious flaws.. a junkie, a mute and a character with a crippled arm were my most memorable.
These games are all based on the reward is power... thats what makes the players act that way.