the children....sheesh what kind of monster are you? Probably some kind of member of organized crime that downloads kiddie porn, while sailing the 7 seas, looking for people who have decent rights and freedoms to terrorize...while on drugs.
"The experiment was the second for the institute, whose previous effort in 1999 ended in scandal when a Canadian woman complained of being forcibly kissed by a Russian captain and said that two Russian crew members had a fist fight that left blood splattered on the walls."
Moral of the story don't put hot Canadian women on board unless you want all the men to fight over her.
Hey isn't there a launch today with a Canadian woman on board?
Nooooooooooooo!
Also note that this successful attempt was all men, no women at all. Have to wonder if that was on purpose.
Not to mention when they are selling the stuff they advertise that people need high speed, so they can download movies, etc... but then turn around once you have an account and slows your connection basically because you are doing what they told you could do?
Both Rogers and Bell in Canada do. 1.5$ per GB for standard account. 3$ per GB for a lite account. 1$ per GB for their most expensive account.
If they changed reasonable rates I wouldn't mind.
For comparison Teksavvy, an independent ISP sells it for 0.25$ cents a GB, you can also pre-pay for 100GB for 10$ (0.10 cents a GB).
So does that seem like fair prices? Also note that Teksavvy as an independent has to lease its lines from Bell, and Bell traffic shapes Teksavvy's customers as well.
Neither Bell or Rogers have a leg to stand on. They simply rely on the fact that the CRTC is spineless, and they have a duopoly. Heck reports subpoenaed from Bell even proved that their "need" to traffic shape what totally bullshit to begin with.
... edit window broke... probably due to my scathing vehemence... Anywho:
unclear if it was taken from the entire sample or some sort of aggregated polling, and that the wording (or lack thereof) would be the determining factor of how people voted. That last line pisses me off even more, because it is plainly marketing speak. If they only slowed my p2p connect by 1.5 - 3% I wouldn't give a rats ass. However it is phrased as "to as little as", which makes the sentence so meaningless that they can never be called on it. It is the same thing as those bullshit flyers that advertise some sale and say "as low as" X. Which means one particular item may be 80% off, but the rest are all normal price. The 1.5-3% sounds good, but that merely means that that is the LEAST that it will be slowed by. It may be as little as 1.5%, or conversely it may be as great as 300%. Absoult garbage anyway. Anyway both Bell and Rogers show nothing but arrogance and contempt to their customers and the CRTC as to yet has been a regulator that does nothing. I hope this changes with these hearings, but I really doubt it.
btw the slash editor or my browser is f'ed up something fierce!
I am going to ring the bullshit bell. I would not be surprised if this "survey" was done on behalf of the telecommunications industry. As the adage goes you can make statistics prove whatever you like.
First of all what "percentage" of Canadians even know wtf "traffic shaping" is? Second, even if it was explained to them in detail, would understand? Thirdly how was it explained, and with what bias? Considering for a moment that Rogers Communications describes it as "a car that parks in one lane of a busy highway at all times of the day or night, clogging the roadways for everyone unless someone takes action", then if course people are going to vote that way. Another car analogy? Really?
On top of this what they could vote for is phrased as "reasonable as long as customers are treated fairly". Wtf does that mean? Because we all know that in Canada the telecommunications industry, Rogers and Bell, certainly have a record of treating customers "fairly". Bell was quoted in these CRTC hearings to say basically it was "fair" to degrade network quality to independent ISP's because they do it to their own customers. In essence, they argue the playing field is even because they treat their customers just as shitty as they treat the independents that lease their lines. Bell and Rogers have been screwing it to the customer for as long as I can remember as they have no competition to speak of, and consumers have no choice but to bend over and smile.
The summary points out that only 20% poll had ever even heard of file shaping before, which makes the survey a bit silly. They also make a point that I just did that the people polled is
Make all your passwords some variation of this. StupidIT#3, ITMorons#5, etc...
This works two ways, you can remember your passworks, as it is always +1 (you may have to try a few iterations to get the right one).
Secondly the best part is, if you ever forget your password, you get to call IT help desk and request that they let you know your password. Nothing made my morning brighter that hearing an IT jerk tell me my password is, ITAreAllIdiots#12.
We have same problem where I work. When policy came out I protested saying this would be the case. Any gains you think you will get from a stronger policy on passwords you will lose plus whatever you had before as soon as the sticky notes come out. If all you had to do was remember one changing password it would be one thing, but usually that is not the case. I have 8 or 10 that are constantly changing and can never be the same... you have to be realistic about your expectations of you users.
This also works in another way as well to reduce security. Because everyone is forgetting their passwords, the calls to the IT Help desk increase dramatically. This means that IT help desk staff are giving out the passwords with some regularity. This makes it easier to a hacker to socially engineer a legit password to use in the system.
This is prevalent enough that I would say that this would be a bigger risk than anyone actually trying to hack their way in. I mean why expend the effort and technical knowlege to break in (other than for fun) when you can just call up the local underpaid help desk jockey, give him a song and dance about a forgotten password, and have them send you a new one. Sure there is always policy in place to prevent this, but people bend or break the rules all the time.
I disagree. I see no reason that LAN parties would be obsolete. However the make up has changed.
Two things have changed. One is the industry sells a shit ton of laptops now, and for many years now, more lap tops than desktops. If anything this trend would see MORE LAN parties than ever before, if only because everyone is more portable now. The second thing is the people who might participate in LAN parties are more "mainstream" if you will, and are probably less tech savvy and don't care all that much about the latest and greatest hardware, so long as "it just works". That seems to be the trend these days.
That said you get a different type of LAN party, and this is what Blizzard is banking on. First of all if you think that StarCraft2 will not be designed to run on a laptop with integrated graphics your insane. If you look at any software that Blizzard has ever done, the one thing that they have been smart and consistent about is making software that will run on a very large range of hardware. Sure it may not look as good with everything dialed down, but if you can carry it around with you, that may be viewed as a decent trade off. So given that, these people are not the type that would spend a lot of time to try and figure out how the heck to network all their shit together to have a LAN party. Blizzard could have probably created something, but they already have something that does this, called Battlenet. Sure everyone connecting to Battlenet to network to the guy sitting next to you is not as fast as a direct network, but then again most will not be able to take advantage of speed due to hardware anyway.
This is not to say that hardcore LAN parties would not happen, but from a business perspective they are likely hitting their largest market this way, and that is not to mention the other advantages they gain from doing this (Piracy, control, expand on brand battlenet and invest in making it better, etc...)
I personally still think it is a dick move, as it sort of does screw over its loyal hardcore fan base (like me). I know I am not happy about it, but I understand their reasons for doing it, and if you think about it, it makes sense from their perspective, just not from mine. I know the decision moved me from the will defiantly pre-order and buy right away category, to they will probably buy it eventually category.
Fallout 3 was a great game. Graphics were not the best. I think one of may favorite elements what the music which I would think is odd, but I think I felt the same about Bioshock. Done right it establishes the mood and the surroundings just as much as any graphics. Best part is you don't need a 500$ card to take advantage of it either!
Yeah I didn't mention PvP as I don't really ever do that. From my experience most dabble, but few do that as their primary form of entertainment in WOW (Battlegrounds and Arena I mean). They are also the group that requires skill and sort of ignores leveling for the most part, as they will want to create "twink" toons at the high level of each level category and stay there.
You are correct in the raids however. I have done the Sartharoin difficulty battle with one and two drakes, I don't think we ever got the 3rd one. While yes better gear drops, we were doing it for the achievement mostly I think.
One thing that Blizzard hasn't done a good job at is balancing raid instances after an expansion has been dropped. Basically the older ones are harder to do with little reward, so everyone stops doing them altogether except for a novelty.
I remember when BC came out everyone dropped Scholomance like a bad cold. Yet to get the epic pally mount you MUST do it, and you also need mats from there. Finding the mats on the AH go up in price by 1000 percent because no one runs it anymore, and having to beg people to run it with you just so you can get your mount was a bit of a jerk move by blizzard.
I see this as a question of Difficulty vs Market. Blizzard had done a very good job positioning here.
Skill you can define in any "game" by using knowlege correctly.
Leveling is progression of Avatar to "harder" portions of a game or sometimes just "different" portions of a game.
Basically in WOW you have two types of people (there are more I know, but in a very high level general sense only two).
One are those players Leveling. The other are those players who are finished leveling and are now raiding.
They are two significantly different portions of the game and really have little to do with each other, other than one must do one before the other (wow three "others" just like that!, that's gotta be bad English).
Leveling is pretty easy and really doesn't take much skill. It is more about learning the controls and spending time. Raiding is about knowing what to do, teamwork and social networking, and does take some skill.
Not everyone is all that serious about it. So you keep you high level players happy by having content that rewards skill, while at the same time have some non-skill related game play for those that just want to play a bit.
If you think about it, the skilled players are going to storm through the leveling to get at the end game raiding part of the game, while those that are not really into that will likely take some time just to finish leveling. So you keep both segments of your market busy and playing, and paying until you come out with your next expansion. Then you raise the level bar by 10 and repeat.
Its more about knowing your market and keeping players happy than skill vs leveling. Blizzard is interested in making money, and keeping people happy to come back for more so they can make more money. Its not really an academic discussion on game type, it really is moot.
Man in France was just sentenced for 12,591 MP3 files, 426 movies, 16 full TV-series and dozens of items of pirated software. The man was sentenced to 33,000 euros ($46,200) in damages and a 2 month suspended jail sentence.
They are not quite as big of jerks over there it seems. He had considerably more than 24 songs and was only fined about 50k.
I am somewhat confused by your position on the Liberal Party.
It is generally considered that they are a slightly left party. By generally, I mean every media source, every political pundit, in fact every source I know. I seriously thought you got had a typo or just mixed up your sentence... I guess this isn't the case. I don't think they are right of center. I think it is more likely the case that some right of center choices were made because they have some corruption in their ranks. If you look at the party line, some of their decisions don't exactly line up very well with their positions, likely due to a payoff someplace.
You are correct about the Conservatives though, many did leave after the amalgamation, and were replaced with more hardliners if you can call them that. The Conservatives are probably more right wing now than they have been in decades, or as far back as I know anyway. You are also correct in that the only reason they are somewhat moderate right now is that they have yet to win a majority, so the other parties have reigned them in, or lack there of.
This may be why you think the Liberals are more right because they are voting with the Conservatives with most things lately. This has more to do with the Liberals being in shambles and not wanting an election where they would lose seats to the Conservatives. They are pretty much just voting to stay an election, which is purely politically motivated and has nothing to do with their actual policies.
Should the Conservatives ever win a majority, I fear bad things would occur shortly thereafter.
Only really one reason to: Off site backup. You can have 8 1TB drives in a double mirrored RAID all backed up to 4 additional HD and it would do you a lick of good if your house burns down, etc...
I don't do it, and most do not that are not big companies, but it is out there.
Ooops, I added the Bloc into the wrong place. I forgot about them and added them later, which makes what I said about the Conservatives confusing. Basically they had the same problem as the Liberals have now. There USED to be two right, and two left parties who were also pretty centric, but each one having one party that is a little more extreme than the other. In both cases, one of the parties was considerably bigger than the other. Alliance and Liberals were the big contenders with the Progressive Conservatives on the decline and roughly the same size as ndp, thus:
The two on the right merged forming the "Conservatives", thus:
ndp --- LIBERALS --- CENTER --- CONSERVATIVES
So it is no real wonder than the Conservatives won the election, as anyone with any Right leanings has no where to vote but them, where as anyone with Left feelings are basically split. In fact one of the tactics of the Liberals last election was to basically say "Please don't vote for NDP, you need to vote for use otherwise the Conservatives will win, and they are pure evil!". Which is more less true really.
However the NDP and Liberals have some fundamental differences in doctrine, and many of the Liberal representatives are old school political jerks.
The Conservatives and PC parties also had some pretty fundamental differences as well, however were pretty much tricked into merging. During the Progressive Conservative leaders convention, it was down to two leaders, Peter McKay and Scott Brison. Brison capitulated to McKay with the one condition that the PC party never merge with the Alliance, and even got McKay to sign documents to that effect. However the first thing that McKay did when he got power was to agree to merge the PC party with the Alliance Party. Brison shortly after quit the Conservative Party, and joined the Liberal Party. Him being gay and the Alliance being pretty much anti-gay I am sure had something to do with that. (Yes that is how Centric that PC party was in that they almost had a gay leader).
Anyway so many people consider McKay a party traitor, and I am sure he just considered it good politics.
If the Liberals wish to win a majority government they are going to have to consider doing two things: One is, Removing many of the old guard from their ranks. I am looking right at those who take money from lobby groups to whore out the power given to them by their constituents. Two is adopting some of ideals that the NDP adheres to and think about merging with the NDP Party.
Giving votes less choice rather than more choice seems to be the way to go these days. Should be the opposite of that, but I am not sure how that is going to happen without proportional representation which doesn't look like it is going to happen anytime soon.
Um no. The Liberal Party is certainly NOT a "right-wing" party.
Both the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party are centrist parties, however the Conservative party is considerably more right of center than the Liberal Party is left of center. So to review the Liberal party is a centrist slightly leftist party.
The NDP of New Democratic Party is defiantly a left of center party, but is close enough to the center that they erode the Liberal vote.
The Bloc Quebecois Party is a slightly right of center political party that pretty much has the mandate of looking after Quebec's interests. Its a provincial party that runs federally. They will never have power, but are able to get seats. I doubt they have any representation outside of Quebec.
The Conservatives had this problem, but they amalgamated the Progressive Conservatives (slightly right of center) and the Alliance/Reform Parties (Far right of center). Strangely enough they are in power right now. This was pretty much the work of Peter McKay who is now a Minister in the Conservative Government. The phrase "Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven" comes to mind. He isn't PM, but he at least has some power.
The Green party despite its name is a bit of a dichotomy of sorts. From its policies and principles it is also a centrist party with slight right leanings, with however a "green" environmental slant. However because they try and run a representative in every riding, and they types that seem drawn to this type of party, many of the leaders seem to be your stereotypical tree hugging hippy types, which generally speaking typically have far left views. So while they say one thing, I am not sure this is the actual consensus of their leaders more of a party line.
The Marijuana Party is a leftist party, and pretty much a joke. They get votes from 3 types of people, stoners, College Kids, and a few people serious about the issue. While being leftist they are essentially a party with only one real goal, which is the legalization of Marijuana. So pretty much one dimensional.
The new Pirate Party is pretty much like the Marijuana Party. One dimensional with a small voting base and not hope of actually making any difference. Sorry. Heck I might even vote for them, but they pose little threat in our political system. Of the three big parties, only the NDP have made any statements about copyright that is about the same as the Pirate Party so likely would only be taking voters from this segment.
There are also a host of other parties out there:
Family Coalition Party - Wacko religious Far Right. Communist Party - Wacko Far Left.
and a bunch others I am sure.
However our system is a bit messed up. It is pretty much a two party system, and has been dominated by two parties forever. Only The Conservatives, Liberal, NDP, and Green parties run a representatives in every riding, and I suspect the Green's only do it in a attempt for legitimacy and full party status (which comes money any privileges). The problem is none of the little guys is ever going to win a seat without proportional representation. The problem with getting proportional representation is that most people vote either for the Conservatives (or whatever they call themselves that year) or the Liberals, and both they parties would lose some power to proportional representation, so why would anyone who votes for either party vote for that? Unless the political landscape becomes more fragmented (the opposite seems true, you need to amalgamate to win) I can't ever see Proportional Representation coming to Canada. It seems to be a sort of self reinforcing cycle if you think about it. Because we don't have this, this happens, and because that happens, the first will never happen, repeat.
I was going to reply this is no one else did. To many studies these days seem to like to play that board game in OfficeSpace, you know "Jump to Conclusions". Cause and Causation are too different things, and just because two variables are interrelated doesn't mean your conclusions are valid in any way. Studies like this have to be looked at carefully to see how well they make their leaps of conclusion. From the summary (and we all know how those can be) it does not look very promising.
As many pointed out BMI is almost worthless. It is too simplistic a model, and while it takes an average, I think the variance is so high as to make it far from practical to use for this kind of study. I am 5'10" and 200lb, considered almost obese which is a joke. Nor would I qualify myself as a "body builder" or an "Athlete". I am a pretty active healthy guy though, that could possibly lose a few (5-10) pounds.
Anyway that all aside, the first think that came to my mind, is when are they weighing these people and for how long. That seems like more of an indicator than anything else. This would have to be a fairly long term study to make the kind of assumption that they are making, and somehow I doubt that is the case. I think a fairly safe assumption is that there is a increased percentage of people that would lose a significant amount of weight before death. Depending on how sick they are this may alter the data considerably. Also I think it is also fairly easy to say with some confidence that for the most part, that more old people die. Along that line of thinking, near the end of ones lifespan, it could be that people get frail and lose the weight they may have had when they were in their prime. Along with that, not everyone maintains the same amount of weigh throughout his or her lifetime, which could also lead to statistical inconsistencies. This would indeed have to be a very through and intensive study to even gain a kernel of truth that may be used to post some sort of conclusion. It seems more likely that they are making assumptions upon assumptions, and using aggregated statistics to prove whatever they feel like proving that day.
If you had asked me this question say 10 or 12 years ago I would have jumped on the bandwagon and said "Fsck Ya!".
However upon thinking about it and seeing some of these sort of automated systems work in the meantime, would have to change my vote to "No Thanks".
In one corner you may get more people to vote, it might be more convenient, and results could be pretty much real time, all of which is kind of nice.
On the other side, there is just way too much potential for abuse.
Some have mentioned about coercion and votes and such, but that does not scare me as it would have to be at a scale to make it ridiculous to make any difference in the end result, and frankly if it does we have bigger problems. What would be more worrisome to me is electronic tampering to simply just change votes. With the paper system, you have actual evidence, that would be hard to duplicate. You have physical people, who are responsible for, and also there to take the blame for if things go bad at each particular level, which makes the system accountable. It also allows for an audit of the results, and an investigation.
So while there are some potential pluses to running an electronic system and perhaps someday we will, I would have to say that low tech is the right tech for something this important. I believe it will work in the future, but identification verification and auditing technologies would have to be more advanced to make it work. This is partially a technological issue, but I think even more so a social shift. We will reach some saturation point in technological integration of citizens and then it may be feasible, but I do not think we are there just yet.
Slashdot Mirror
the children....sheesh what kind of monster are you? Probably some kind of member of organized crime that downloads kiddie porn, while sailing the 7 seas, looking for people who have decent rights and freedoms to terrorize...while on drugs.
Leegola: What else can we slay? Is that a hobbit over there?
Titanius Anglesmith: No, that's a hobo and a rabbit. But they're making a hobbit.
The book is 72 years old. Smeg off you vultures!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit
Better than their first attempt:
"The experiment was the second for the institute, whose previous effort in 1999 ended in scandal when a Canadian woman complained of being forcibly kissed by a Russian captain and said that two Russian crew members had a fist fight that left blood splattered on the walls."
Moral of the story don't put hot Canadian women on board unless you want all the men to fight over her.
Hey isn't there a launch today with a Canadian woman on board?
Nooooooooooooo!
Also note that this successful attempt was all men, no women at all. Have to wonder if that was on purpose.
Not to mention when they are selling the stuff they advertise that people need high speed, so they can download movies, etc... but then turn around once you have an account and slows your connection basically because you are doing what they told you could do?
I believe that may be the definition of crazy.
Both Rogers and Bell in Canada do. 1.5$ per GB for standard account. 3$ per GB for a lite account. 1$ per GB for their most expensive account.
If they changed reasonable rates I wouldn't mind.
For comparison Teksavvy, an independent ISP sells it for 0.25$ cents a GB, you can also pre-pay for 100GB for 10$ (0.10 cents a GB).
So does that seem like fair prices? Also note that Teksavvy as an independent has to lease its lines from Bell, and Bell traffic shapes Teksavvy's customers as well.
Neither Bell or Rogers have a leg to stand on. They simply rely on the fact that the CRTC is spineless, and they have a duopoly. Heck reports subpoenaed from Bell even proved that their "need" to traffic shape what totally bullshit to begin with.
... edit window broke... probably due to my scathing vehemence... Anywho:
unclear if it was taken from the entire sample or some sort of aggregated polling, and that the wording (or lack thereof) would be the determining factor of how people voted. That last line pisses me off even more, because it is plainly marketing speak. If they only slowed my p2p connect by 1.5 - 3% I wouldn't give a rats ass. However it is phrased as "to as little as", which makes the sentence so meaningless that they can never be called on it. It is the same thing as those bullshit flyers that advertise some sale and say "as low as" X. Which means one particular item may be 80% off, but the rest are all normal price. The 1.5-3% sounds good, but that merely means that that is the LEAST that it will be slowed by. It may be as little as 1.5%, or conversely it may be as great as 300%. Absoult garbage anyway. Anyway both Bell and Rogers show nothing but arrogance and contempt to their customers and the CRTC as to yet has been a regulator that does nothing. I hope this changes with these hearings, but I really doubt it.
btw the slash editor or my browser is f'ed up something fierce!
I am going to ring the bullshit bell. I would not be surprised if this "survey" was done on behalf of the telecommunications industry. As the adage goes you can make statistics prove whatever you like.
First of all what "percentage" of Canadians even know wtf "traffic shaping" is? Second, even if it was explained to them in detail, would understand? Thirdly how was it explained, and with what bias? Considering for a moment that Rogers Communications describes it as "a car that parks in one lane of a busy highway at all times of the day or night, clogging the roadways for everyone unless someone takes action", then if course people are going to vote that way. Another car analogy? Really?
On top of this what they could vote for is phrased as "reasonable as long as customers are treated fairly". Wtf does that mean? Because we all know that in Canada the telecommunications industry, Rogers and Bell, certainly have a record of treating customers "fairly". Bell was quoted in these CRTC hearings to say basically it was "fair" to degrade network quality to independent ISP's because they do it to their own customers. In essence, they argue the playing field is even because they treat their customers just as shitty as they treat the independents that lease their lines. Bell and Rogers have been screwing it to the customer for as long as I can remember as they have no competition to speak of, and consumers have no choice but to bend over and smile.
The summary points out that only 20% poll had ever even heard of file shaping before, which makes the survey a bit silly. They also make a point that I just did that the people polled is
I have same problem. I gain some satisfaction this way:
Password Month one: IHateIT#1
Password Month two: IHateIT#2
Password Month three: IHateIT#3
Make all your passwords some variation of this. StupidIT#3, ITMorons#5, etc...
This works two ways, you can remember your passworks, as it is always +1 (you may have to try a few iterations to get the right one).
Secondly the best part is, if you ever forget your password, you get to call IT help desk and request that they let you know your password. Nothing made my morning brighter that hearing an IT jerk tell me my password is, ITAreAllIdiots#12.
We have same problem where I work. When policy came out I protested saying this would be the case. Any gains you think you will get from a stronger policy on passwords you will lose plus whatever you had before as soon as the sticky notes come out. If all you had to do was remember one changing password it would be one thing, but usually that is not the case. I have 8 or 10 that are constantly changing and can never be the same... you have to be realistic about your expectations of you users.
This also works in another way as well to reduce security. Because everyone is forgetting their passwords, the calls to the IT Help desk increase dramatically. This means that IT help desk staff are giving out the passwords with some regularity. This makes it easier to a hacker to socially engineer a legit password to use in the system.
This is prevalent enough that I would say that this would be a bigger risk than anyone actually trying to hack their way in. I mean why expend the effort and technical knowlege to break in (other than for fun) when you can just call up the local underpaid help desk jockey, give him a song and dance about a forgotten password, and have them send you a new one. Sure there is always policy in place to prevent this, but people bend or break the rules all the time.
I disagree. I see no reason that LAN parties would be obsolete. However the make up has changed.
Two things have changed. One is the industry sells a shit ton of laptops now, and for many years now, more lap tops than desktops. If anything this trend would see MORE LAN parties than ever before, if only because everyone is more portable now. The second thing is the people who might participate in LAN parties are more "mainstream" if you will, and are probably less tech savvy and don't care all that much about the latest and greatest hardware, so long as "it just works". That seems to be the trend these days.
That said you get a different type of LAN party, and this is what Blizzard is banking on. First of all if you think that StarCraft2 will not be designed to run on a laptop with integrated graphics your insane. If you look at any software that Blizzard has ever done, the one thing that they have been smart and consistent about is making software that will run on a very large range of hardware. Sure it may not look as good with everything dialed down, but if you can carry it around with you, that may be viewed as a decent trade off. So given that, these people are not the type that would spend a lot of time to try and figure out how the heck to network all their shit together to have a LAN party. Blizzard could have probably created something, but they already have something that does this, called Battlenet. Sure everyone connecting to Battlenet to network to the guy sitting next to you is not as fast as a direct network, but then again most will not be able to take advantage of speed due to hardware anyway.
This is not to say that hardcore LAN parties would not happen, but from a business perspective they are likely hitting their largest market this way, and that is not to mention the other advantages they gain from doing this (Piracy, control, expand on brand battlenet and invest in making it better, etc...)
I personally still think it is a dick move, as it sort of does screw over its loyal hardcore fan base (like me). I know I am not happy about it, but I understand their reasons for doing it, and if you think about it, it makes sense from their perspective, just not from mine. I know the decision moved me from the will defiantly pre-order and buy right away category, to they will probably buy it eventually category.
Fallout 3 was a great game. Graphics were not the best. I think one of may favorite elements what the music which I would think is odd, but I think I felt the same about Bioshock. Done right it establishes the mood and the surroundings just as much as any graphics. Best part is you don't need a 500$ card to take advantage of it either!
Now I am even more redundant...
Yeah I didn't mention PvP as I don't really ever do that. From my experience most dabble, but few do that as their primary form of entertainment in WOW (Battlegrounds and Arena I mean). They are also the group that requires skill and sort of ignores leveling for the most part, as they will want to create "twink" toons at the high level of each level category and stay there.
You are correct in the raids however. I have done the Sartharoin difficulty battle with one and two drakes, I don't think we ever got the 3rd one. While yes better gear drops, we were doing it for the achievement mostly I think.
One thing that Blizzard hasn't done a good job at is balancing raid instances after an expansion has been dropped. Basically the older ones are harder to do with little reward, so everyone stops doing them altogether except for a novelty.
I remember when BC came out everyone dropped Scholomance like a bad cold. Yet to get the epic pally mount you MUST do it, and you also need mats from there. Finding the mats on the AH go up in price by 1000 percent because no one runs it anymore, and having to beg people to run it with you just so you can get your mount was a bit of a jerk move by blizzard.
I see this as a question of Difficulty vs Market. Blizzard had done a very good job positioning here.
Skill you can define in any "game" by using knowlege correctly.
Leveling is progression of Avatar to "harder" portions of a game or sometimes just "different"
portions of a game.
Basically in WOW you have two types of people (there are more I know, but in a very high level general sense only two).
One are those players Leveling. The other are those players who are finished leveling and are now raiding.
They are two significantly different portions of the game and really have little to do with each other, other than one must do one before the other (wow three "others" just like that!, that's gotta be bad English).
Leveling is pretty easy and really doesn't take much skill. It is more about learning the controls and spending time. Raiding is about knowing what to do, teamwork and social networking, and does take some skill.
Not everyone is all that serious about it. So you keep you high level players happy by having content that rewards skill, while at the same time have some non-skill related game play for those that just want to play a bit.
If you think about it, the skilled players are going to storm through the leveling to get at the end game raiding part of the game, while those that are not really into that will likely take some time just to finish leveling. So you keep both segments of your market busy and playing, and paying until you come out with your next expansion. Then you raise the level bar by 10 and repeat.
Its more about knowing your market and keeping players happy than skill vs leveling. Blizzard is interested in making money, and keeping people happy to come back for more so they can make more money. Its not really an academic discussion on game type, it really is moot.
http://torrentfreak.com/p2p-collection-costs-man-huge-fine-suspended-sentence-090704/
Man in France was just sentenced for 12,591 MP3 files, 426 movies, 16 full TV-series and dozens of items of pirated software. The man was sentenced to 33,000 euros ($46,200) in damages and a 2 month suspended jail sentence.
They are not quite as big of jerks over there it seems. He had considerably more than 24 songs and was only fined about 50k.
I am somewhat confused by your position on the Liberal Party.
It is generally considered that they are a slightly left party. By generally, I mean every media source, every political pundit, in fact every source I know. I seriously thought you got had a typo or just mixed up your sentence... I guess this isn't the case. I don't think they are right of center. I think it is more likely the case that some right of center choices were made because they have some corruption in their ranks. If you look at the party line, some of their decisions don't exactly line up very well with their positions, likely due to a payoff someplace.
You are correct about the Conservatives though, many did leave after the amalgamation, and were replaced with more hardliners if you can call them that. The Conservatives are probably more right wing now than they have been in decades, or as far back as I know anyway. You are also correct in that the only reason they are somewhat moderate right now is that they have yet to win a majority, so the other parties have reigned them in, or lack there of.
This may be why you think the Liberals are more right because they are voting with the Conservatives with most things lately. This has more to do with the Liberals being in shambles and not wanting an election where they would lose seats to the Conservatives. They are pretty much just voting to stay an election, which is purely politically motivated and has nothing to do with their actual policies.
Should the Conservatives ever win a majority, I fear bad things would occur shortly thereafter.
Only really one reason to: Off site backup. You can have 8 1TB drives in a double mirrored RAID all backed up to 4 additional HD and it would do you a lick of good if your house burns down, etc...
I don't do it, and most do not that are not big companies, but it is out there.
Ooops, I added the Bloc into the wrong place. I forgot about them and added them later, which makes what I said about the Conservatives confusing. Basically they had the same problem as the Liberals have now. There USED to be two right, and two left parties who were also pretty centric, but each one having one party that is a little more extreme than the other. In both cases, one of the parties was considerably bigger than the other. Alliance and Liberals were the big contenders with the Progressive Conservatives on the decline and roughly the same size as ndp, thus:
ndp --- LIBERALS --- CENTER --- Progressive Conservatives --- ALLIANCE(Formally Reform Party)
The two on the right merged forming the "Conservatives", thus:
ndp --- LIBERALS --- CENTER --- CONSERVATIVES
So it is no real wonder than the Conservatives won the election, as anyone with any Right leanings has no where to vote but them, where as anyone with Left feelings are basically split. In fact one of the tactics of the Liberals last election was to basically say "Please don't vote for NDP, you need to vote for use otherwise the Conservatives will win, and they are pure evil!". Which is more less true really.
However the NDP and Liberals have some fundamental differences in doctrine, and many of the Liberal representatives are old school political jerks.
The Conservatives and PC parties also had some pretty fundamental differences as well, however were pretty much tricked into merging. During the Progressive Conservative leaders convention, it was down to two leaders, Peter McKay and Scott Brison. Brison capitulated to McKay with the one condition that the PC party never merge with the Alliance, and even got McKay to sign documents to that effect. However the first thing that McKay did when he got power was to agree to merge the PC party with the Alliance Party. Brison shortly after quit the Conservative Party, and joined the Liberal Party. Him being gay and the Alliance being pretty much anti-gay I am sure had something to do with that. (Yes that is how Centric that PC party was in that they almost had a gay leader).
Anyway so many people consider McKay a party traitor, and I am sure he just considered it good politics.
If the Liberals wish to win a majority government they are going to have to consider doing two things: One is, Removing many of the old guard from their ranks. I am looking right at those who take money from lobby groups to whore out the power given to them by their constituents. Two is adopting some of ideals that the NDP adheres to and think about merging with the NDP Party.
Giving votes less choice rather than more choice seems to be the way to go these days. Should be the opposite of that, but I am not sure how that is going to happen without proportional representation which doesn't look like it is going to happen anytime soon.
Um no. The Liberal Party is certainly NOT a "right-wing" party.
Both the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party are centrist parties, however the Conservative party is considerably more right of center than the Liberal Party is left of center. So to review the Liberal party is a centrist slightly leftist party.
The NDP of New Democratic Party is defiantly a left of center party, but is close enough to the center that they erode the Liberal vote.
The Bloc Quebecois Party is a slightly right of center political party that pretty much has the mandate of looking after Quebec's interests. Its a provincial party that runs federally. They will never have power, but are able to get seats. I doubt they have any representation outside of Quebec.
The Conservatives had this problem, but they amalgamated the Progressive Conservatives (slightly right of center) and the Alliance/Reform Parties (Far right of center). Strangely enough they are in power right now. This was pretty much the work of Peter McKay who is now a Minister in the Conservative Government. The phrase "Better to rule in hell than serve in Heaven" comes to mind. He isn't PM, but he at least has some power.
The Green party despite its name is a bit of a dichotomy of sorts. From its policies and principles it is also a centrist party with slight right leanings, with however a "green" environmental slant. However because they try and run a representative in every riding, and they types that seem drawn to this type of party, many of the leaders seem to be your stereotypical tree hugging hippy types, which generally speaking typically have far left views. So while they say one thing, I am not sure this is the actual consensus of their leaders more of a party line.
The Marijuana Party is a leftist party, and pretty much a joke. They get votes from 3 types of people, stoners, College Kids, and a few people serious about the issue. While being leftist they are essentially a party with only one real goal, which is the legalization of Marijuana. So pretty much one dimensional.
The new Pirate Party is pretty much like the Marijuana Party. One dimensional with a small voting base and not hope of actually making any difference. Sorry. Heck I might even vote for them, but they pose little threat in our political system. Of the three big parties, only the NDP have made any statements about copyright that is about the same as the Pirate Party so likely would only be taking voters from this segment.
There are also a host of other parties out there:
Family Coalition Party - Wacko religious Far Right.
Communist Party - Wacko Far Left.
and a bunch others I am sure.
However our system is a bit messed up. It is pretty much a two party system, and has been dominated by two parties forever. Only The Conservatives, Liberal, NDP, and Green parties run a representatives in every riding, and I suspect the Green's only do it in a attempt for legitimacy and full party status (which comes money any privileges). The problem is none of the little guys is ever going to win a seat without proportional representation. The problem with getting proportional representation is that most people vote either for the Conservatives (or whatever they call themselves that year) or the Liberals, and both they parties would lose some power to proportional representation, so why would anyone who votes for either party vote for that? Unless the political landscape becomes more fragmented (the opposite seems true, you need to amalgamate to win) I can't ever see Proportional Representation coming to Canada. It seems to be a sort of self reinforcing cycle if you think about it. Because we don't have this, this happens, and because that happens, the first will never happen, repeat.
Apparently didn't read the summary either. 12 year study. Sounds like a long time, but not really when you consider the human lifespan.
I was going to reply this is no one else did. To many studies these days seem to like to play that board game in OfficeSpace, you know "Jump to Conclusions". Cause and Causation are too different things, and just because two variables are interrelated doesn't mean your conclusions are valid in any way. Studies like this have to be looked at carefully to see how well they make their leaps of conclusion. From the summary (and we all know how those can be) it does not look very promising.
As many pointed out BMI is almost worthless. It is too simplistic a model, and while it takes an average, I think the variance is so high as to make it far from practical to use for this kind of study. I am 5'10" and 200lb, considered almost obese which is a joke. Nor would I qualify myself as a "body builder" or an "Athlete". I am a pretty active healthy guy though, that could possibly lose a few (5-10) pounds.
Anyway that all aside, the first think that came to my mind, is when are they weighing these people and for how long. That seems like more of an indicator than anything else. This would have to be a fairly long term study to make the kind of assumption that they are making, and somehow I doubt that is the case. I think a fairly safe assumption is that there is a increased percentage of people that would lose a significant amount of weight before death. Depending on how sick they are this may alter the data considerably. Also I think it is also fairly easy to say with some confidence that for the most part, that more old people die. Along that line of thinking, near the end of ones lifespan, it could be that people get frail and lose the weight they may have had when they were in their prime. Along with that, not everyone maintains the same amount of weigh throughout his or her lifetime, which could also lead to statistical inconsistencies. This would indeed have to be a very through and intensive study to even gain a kernel of truth that may be used to post some sort of conclusion. It seems more likely that they are making assumptions upon assumptions, and using aggregated statistics to prove whatever they feel like proving that day.
Standard Slashdot Disclaimer: Did not RTFA.
IT'S A TRAP!
Only 150 years? They should have sentenced him for 15,000 years so when he gets out the bene gesserit and Atreides can kick his ass.
If you had asked me this question say 10 or 12 years ago I would have jumped on the bandwagon and said "Fsck Ya!".
However upon thinking about it and seeing some of these sort of automated systems work in the meantime, would have to change my vote to "No Thanks".
In one corner you may get more people to vote, it might be more convenient, and results could be pretty much real time, all of which is kind of nice.
On the other side, there is just way too much potential for abuse.
Some have mentioned about coercion and votes and such, but that does not scare me as it would have to be at a scale to make it ridiculous to make any difference in the end result, and frankly if it does we have bigger problems. What would be more worrisome to me is electronic tampering to simply just change votes. With the paper system, you have actual evidence, that would be hard to duplicate. You have physical people, who are responsible for, and also there to take the blame for if things go bad at each particular level, which makes the system accountable. It also allows for an audit of the results, and an investigation.
So while there are some potential pluses to running an electronic system and perhaps someday we will, I would have to say that low tech is the right tech for something this important. I believe it will work in the future, but identification verification and auditing technologies would have to be more advanced to make it work. This is partially a technological issue, but I think even more so a social shift. We will reach some saturation point in technological integration of citizens and then it may be feasible, but I do not think we are there just yet.