Lucky me...I just canceled my WoW account last night, so I don't have to care about this. I'm playing Aion now. I have yet to see whether the end-game content (flying with angelic wings to engage in PvPvE in the space between two half-worlds) is truly as amazing as they are promising, but so far I find the game to be mostly a refreshing change from WoW, which had just gotten to be a ridiculous habit. Well, it could be more refreshing—I was just killing bandits at some farm...which could have been right out of a WoW quest, complete with pumpkins.
But there is a death penalty (it gets pretty expensive to buy back the experience that is being held in hock if you die a lot, so I'm going to have to break my habit of disregarding all risk that I picked up in WoW). I've been playing a week now, and I still haven't gotten over the sheer beauty of the world...and the female character models. (You can tell who the cross-dressing guys are by the fact that they all max out the booby slider during character creation.) I keep asking myself how people can fight in clothes that looks so fine. Even the low level gear looks better than anything WoW came up with for level 80s.
Oh, and the best thing of all: I haven't been turned down by groups because my gear is substandard. That alone justifies the switch, in my opinion.
You get your angel-wings at level 10, but your flying ability is very limited at that point—and woe unto you if you let the timer run out when you're at high altitudes. I've also found that flying isn't as easy as it looks...it's going to take practice. I keep getting disoriented. Better camera controls would help.
I've read a number of posts and they generally seem sarcastic and pessimistic. For those that seem genuine, I see a willingness to consider this as an opportunity to address security issues. As someone new to blogging, is there a way that this can be viewed as an opportunity to bring your skills to help our country?
Sir, you are obviously lost. You were looking for a blog, yes? This is not a blog. I don't know what/. is, but it's not a blog.
It's clear from your posting that you are either a very naive individual who has not yet absorbed the culture of realism that pervades the consensus mind of/., or you are a CIA astroturfer.
Assuming for a moment that you are serious about the "bring your skills to help our country", I have to say that though our country may need help, this help will not be provided by the Department of Homeland Security, nor by any government agency. In fact, I think it would be damned helpful to get rid of the lot of them.
Man, you critics of the Department of Vaterland/Homeland Security have got to get your priorities straight! This is serious! From TFA:
The FBI said fraudsters continue to hijack accounts on social networking sites and spread malicious software using various techniques.
Now do you see just how urgent this is? The government must act at once and with the uttermost severity to eliminate this grave threat to our freedoms and security! If our MyFace pages are under threat, then we must back our government to the hilt; no sacrifice is too great. In fact, I think everyone who reads/. should immediately volunteer to become a Cyber Enforcement Agent with the DV/HS, and work without pay until the threat has passed.
Alas, due to certain political affiliations and mishaps dating back to Berkeley in the 60s, I don't qualify for any kind of government clearance, so I will have to remain in my boring job while a younger generation marches forth to smash the threat. But I cheer you on!
That's kind of a bogus observation. If you aren't world-class, then you are at the mercy of those who are. "World-class" doesn't mean "better than anyone else in the world." It just means "good enough to hold your own with the best in the world." Really, everybody needs world-class people. The pity is that not everyone can afford them.
Actually, "world class" doesn't mean diddly—it's just filler for the mission statement they had to write, like all that other corporate nonsense (e.g. "best of breed" "forward-looking planning", "agile organization", etc. etc. etc.
I think your buzzword detector needs a fresh battery.
...
What definitely hasn't happened is the author or publisher having seen the "licensed" book being resold and brought it to court.
Once that happens all hell will break lose.
If games and software are copyrighted because they are expression of ideas, and *they* can be *licensed*;
there is nothing preventing books from getting the same "first-sale doctrine" circumventing license treatment.
Good try...but no. You see, books are really sold, whereas software is only licensed. Few publishers of (paper) books assert that they are only licensing a book to you when you buy it; both parties to such a sale agree that it is, indeed, a transfer of ownership of a material object, to wit, the book. When you pay money for software, you may well believe that you are buying something, but the seller says he's only giving you the right to run the software on terms specified in the EULA. And when you click the EULA, you agree to this.
Yes, I know this is crap, and no, I don't read the EULAs either—but that's how it is. That's why software publishers can prevent you from selling software you think you bought; they still own it and they don't agree to let some other guy use it. To me, it seems futile to insist that we are buying something that the "seller" only wants to rent; the owner of the property in question has a right to refuse to sell it to you. You can't force a software company to sell to you.
I think it would be more effective if we went along with the idea that software is licensed to us; all we want is that the licenses be fair. We want to apply the same reasoning as is applied in any fair contract: the interests of both parties must be respected. For example, we should be allowed to transfer the license to whomever we wish in return for money. We won't be selling the software of course—we will just be transferring the license.
I have some questions about this that I've been wondering about, so if there are any lawyers who read this stuff on/. could you tell me whether:
Is the agreement to accept a EULA the same thing as entering into a contract?
Are there legal standards that a contract must meet in terms of fairness for both sides?
If the answer to the previous two questions is affirmative, then could a significant number of the EULAS by which software is licensed be challenged under this standard?
It should be pretty obvious what I'm wishing for: the establishment of a fundamental legal standard of fairness that must be met for a EULA to be binding. If this is feasible, then we should pursue legal challenges to the present software licensing policies in the courts.
If this line of attack is not feasible, then we will have to work on changing the law. There is no reason why software licensees can't have as much legal clout as, say gun owners. We need an electronic freedom organization modeled after the NRA. That means having a single large organization which collects lots of dues, hires lobbyists in Washington, and scares the crap out of politicians.
I looked up what he's talking about if anyone's curious.
Apparently tempered safety glass is made to explode into tiny fragments
Yes, but today's car windshields aren't made of tempered glass. The "safety glass" in windshields consists of 2 layers of non-tempered glass separated by a flexible plastic film. So there's no way you're going to break someones windshield with a ceramic "booger". You may succeed in making a small area of the windshield crack or pit. Of course, anyone who attempts to do such a thing is somewhere on the complete-asshole-psychopath continuum, and should be treated accordingly.
That clarifies the scenario. I suspect that your PHB-of-the-moment got this fecal matter dropped on him from on high. If you'd been listening at his door you probably would have heard him muttering to himself: "Get out that circuit board design by when?...oh noes...what to do? Ah! This calls for a human sacrifice!"
See, your PHB had to have an excuse to cover his butt. So he handed the brown mess to a contractor—i.e., somebody who doesn't even work for the company, and whom nobody cares about. Then he told his boss: "Man, that contractor from Dead Body Shops really screwed us over! What a totally incompetent idiot! But you know how those body shops are...man I certainly would never actually hire anybody like this!" At this point, all the upper-middle managers in the meeting are nodding sympathetically, because this is a well-known and efficacious ritual. They work themselves into a state of sincerely believing that it really wasn't your boss's fault, that you were a lazy, incompetent, crack-smoking moron (people will believe anything about a contractor once he ceases to exist in the local frame of reference). They will then absolve your ex-PHB of his sins, "cut him some slack", and "give him time to get the new guy (and future sacrifice) up to speed".
I don't know about the rest of you, but i always make a point of lying through my teeth when it comes to online subscriptions to anything - especially a game. When asked, I'm a 12 year old redhaired girl living in Namibia.
Now back to their stats. How do they know 50% is 13 years or younger? Right. They ask for your birthdate. And then assume that you click the truth...
Rrrrrright. And then they accept your credit card information?
My biggest issue is:
- Without the gear, you cannot raid.
- Without raiding, you cannot get the gear.
How am I supposed to enjoy end-game content when I can't get into a group because my DPS is around 1k too low for these "elite" groups?
I certainly know whereof you speak...I pretty much soloed my Warlock to level 80 in PvE. Then I had to find something else to do, so I thought I'd try raiding. I quickly found out that my DPS was dismally substandard for raid groups—if I even got into a group, I was quickly ejected —sometimes very rudely indeed. Words like "freeloader" and "parasite" were used to describe me.
Actually, I don't have any quarrel with these groups—though I wish they had been more polite; I wasn't trying to commit a crime, for crying out loud. As far as I'm concerned, a group is certainly free to set its own criteria for admission. I think the problem is really one of game design; it's a fundamental flaw that I first noticed in the later, degenerate days of Everquest, and it is this: DPS is everything.
I think the drift to DPS-centric game design is probably due to a couple of factors. First, it's relatively easy to design a game around this concept—it's just a matter of hit points and how much damage you allow players to inflict over time. Second, I think that a lot of players like it because it's so easily quantifiable. (And if you look, you will find web sites dedicated to the precise calculation of Damage Per Second for every WoW class that would put some dissertations on quantum physics to shame.)
To me, this is just awful. I want the game to be a fantasy in which I can vacation after a hard day of Reality[TM]; I want it to require skill, pluck, and quick thinking. I want to be part of a group of adventurers who have a sense of humor, and whose primary goal is to have fun. I don't want winning or losing to be a matter than can be calculated at all. That makes it work! (Can you just imagine a fantasy story in which the Noble Knight yells at the Damsel in Distress to shut up because he needs quiet while he works his PDA to compare his DPS to that of the dragon? "Sorry," he says after much brow-furrowing, "I'm just not geared for this. The dragon is gonna take me apart, so sit tight while I round up some higher tier armor, ok lady?")
As I said, I noticed this design drift back in my Everquest days. I started playing right when EQ (the first one, not that sorry waste of pixels, EQ2) first came out. I can truly say that some the most enjoyable recreational experiences I have ever had were in that game. I played a dark elf enchanter, and I'd picked that combo because it was supposed to be difficult. After the first couple of years, during which I had put a lot of energy into becoming a first rate crowd-control specialist, I gradually realized that nobody really needed crowd control anymore. During the early period of EQ, a crowd control specialist was just as essential to any adventuring group as a healer or a tank, because the game was designed to make "adds" just about inevitable in every fight. When adds happened, my chanter would hit them with a stun and a mezz, and I'd often be keeping 3 to 5 mobs staring blankly into space, waiting for their turn to be slaughtered. But then they jacked up the DPS of just about every melee class to the point where adds could be "off tanked" by a bard or pally or berserker, or anybody that wasn't wearing a nightshirt for armor.
This totally ruined the game for me. Sure, my guildies would have pity on me and let me come along (heck, they might need a dose of crack, and I could slow almost as good as a Shaman), but it was just charity. Plus, there were too many nights when there weren't enough guildies on, and I just couldn't get a group. Seeing as soloing a chanter in EQ was as much fun as walking a tightrope in a ice storm wearing greased turtles strapped to your feet instead of shoe
piecharts are a bad way to represent comparative data like this in the first place...3D pie charts may look fancy, but they make it more difficult to compare the actual data (which is supposed to be the whole point of plotting it)
Give that man a cigar. This is exactly what I thought when I looked at the.gov page: this is no worse than any other Power Point presentation I've sat through. The real problem isn't some error in the algorithm that draws the pie, but in the notion that tarting up a graph by making it 3-D somehow makes it better. Of course, the opposite is true—in art, perspective is used to create an illusion of depth in a 2-D medium. But illusion is precisely what we don't want in the visual representation of data! Because artistic perspective distorts the presented object (in this case, our pie), it's much harder to judge the relative size of the pieces. In fact, how do we even know that this is a circular pie? Most pies I've eaten were circular, but maybe this one is elliptical, perhaps with the major axis perpendicular to the plane surface it's been projected on.
It's not just pie charts that are misused in this way; the same thing can be said about just any type of 3D chart that's commonly used in presentations and reports for business or government organizations—the effects of perspective make it difficult or impossible to tell what is really going on. Consequently, these "visual aids" do not clarify data, but obfuscate it.
Some critics blame this on PowerPoint and similar tools (like this one provided by Google), and it's true that these tools make it easy to produce bad visual representations of data. The most vociferous and articulate of these critics is Edward Tufte, who goes so far as to blame the Challenger shuttle disaster on PowerPoint (take a look at Tufte's web page about PowerPoint, or better yet, buy his books!). I wouldn't go quite as far as Tufte; these tools are just like any tools; they can be used ineptly or deceptively, just as they can be used to clarify and enlighten. The real problem lies in the managerial culture that dominates both American business and government. This culture pretends to be rational and "scientific", as defined by whatever management fads are current, but it's not really interested in serious thought or analysis, just in keeping up appearances. So I don't think 3D charts are going away any time soon.
After about a year in space you cannot walk when you land on earth.
This isn't necessarily a problem. Sure, if you want to walk around Earth then you're going to be in a bit of a fix... But what if you plan on spending the rest of your days in space? What if it's a one-way trip?
Yeah, and I know the exact demographic who would be interested in this: baby boomers. My body is starting to age, and gravity is definitely being more of a drag every day. So what we need are "retirement homes" in space. It would not be difficult to explain the benefits of weightlessness to the average decrepit guy or sagging woman, and this demographic has money. So...the way to get the space program kick-started is to take up a collection, and fund a private company to build space habits for people who want to stay there permanently. Because zero gravity has drawbacks, the habitats could be spun to simulate some gravity. It would be ideal! Even most totally crippled people could move around normally. For those who prefer solid ground under their feet, we'd have the Lunatic Home...er "Serenity Gardens on Luna". Heck I'm serious—I'd invest in such a venture.
Why go for an augmented reality when you can have a demented reality?
Exactly what I have always thought! Virtual reality tech would be best employed helping me to function in "the real world", while eliminating much of the harsh unpleasantness and petty annoyances entailed by said reality. It might be tempting, for example, to have my VR contacts and earplugs filter out people I don't like (e.g. the PHB), but such an "ignore list" could lead to collision problems, not to mention losing my job. However, it would definitely be more fun if I could see the PHB as Donald Duck or Darth Vader.
Another problem that could be solved by VR is my inability to remember people's names (which will become much worse when everyone looks like gnomes, orcs, Star Trek characters, or speaking blobs of goo). The solution is obvious—the computer linked to my VR lenses would know who is near me, and cause their names to float above their heads, just like in a present-day MMPORG.
And of course I'd work like mad to hack into the VR network, so my boss would see me industriously at work while I'm lying on some Cancun beach. Verily, my enthusiasm waxes enormously as I consider the vista of incredibly life-enhancing possibilities inherent in this technology.
I'm sure I don't need to mention to this predominantly male, sex-starved audience how I would like to see women. And with my hacking abilities, I could control just how I look to them. Clearly, the world's geeks must pursue this avenue of research as their top priority!
Hewlett-Packard used to be one of the most innovative companies around. Now it's basically a marketing firm that buys commodity devices, sticks the HP logo on them, and sells them to gullible consumers. How did this happen? Part of it was due to a corporate culture that had grown fat and lazy, but most of it was the willful destruction of this engineering company by one person: Carly Fiorina. Yes, I'm talking about the woman who was John McCain's "economic advisor" during the last election, and distinguished herself by saying that McCain wasn't as qualified as she was, because he could never run a major corporation, as she had done.
It would indeed have been difficult for anyone to screw things up as badly as Fiorina; that does take real talent.
When Fiorina came on board, she made it clear that she did not like the company of which she had just taken control. So she methodically set about destroying the "old" HP. The first thing she did was a masterful piece of irony: she ordered that the word "Invent" would become part of the HP logo. Evidently, she thought that "branding" is all that matters; hype can be substituted for the real thing, and nobody will notice. I guess she was right.
This is not just about one bad person; it is a pattern. I think that what has happened is that the corporate managerial and financial class (and it is a sort of ruling class, in the old sense of class struggle) have become destructive parasites that suck the wealth out of our common economy, and transfer it to their own wallets. They destroy things that have value—like a creative engineering corporation—and leave behind an empty husk that only pretends to do what the old corporation actually did: invent.
Is this a hobby for you? If so, it doesn't sound like you are enjoying it. The normal response to the realization that one is not enjoying a hobby is to stop doing it. Because you have not stopped, I must suppose that either you are gaining some sort of personal satisfaction from the activity, or that it is not a hobby.
If you are doing this to make money, then you have to analyze why you are failing from a business perspective. Perhaps you are simply not charging enough money. People tend to value goods and services partly on the basis of the asking price. Give something away for free, and people think it's worthless. So perhaps if you raise your prices (which, I suppose, would mean not using the "adult teaching organisation" you are now working with), you will make more money and even have more customers. Then again, there may simply not be much of a market for the goods you are offering. In that case, you should probably stop doing this.
It sounds to me as though you wish that more people shared your concerns about computer security. I can empathize with this sentiment; I once taught philosophy, and I was disappointed to find that most people simply don't care about the kinds of questions I find fascinating. Even worse, I found that instruction in even basic mental survival skills—such as critical thinking and clear writing—simply did not sell. So I went "into computers". If your situation is indeed like mine, then I can only advise you to adjust your expectations of other people. Most adults do not have a passion to better themselves, because this requires work that has no immediate and obvious rewards. You can't take it to the bank.
There is one possibility that occurs to me: consider teaching children. If you can get to them before the educational system has managed to kill their natural curiosity, and if you have the knack for dealing with kids (I don't), then you might find them a much more willing audience.
The French always make things so complicated. For a German, getting dumb is easy: drink beer until your face turns numb and your IQ is equal to the temperature of the beer.
I thought the article was really funny. However, it's clear that Scalzi hasn't spent much time fencing. Real fighting with an edged weapon is nothing like theatrical fencing—which is what Scalzi is apparently thinking of.
In theatrical fencing, the idea is to simulate a real fight without actually risking injury to the actors, who are usually not wearing fencing masks. Thus, there's a great deal of jumping around and clashing of blades. In a real fight (or even a saber fencing bout), there's only two reasons why the combatant's blades would ever come into contact: either they are parrying, or they are trying to beat their opponent's weapon out of line to create an opening. Usually, the contact of blade on blade is only momentary—you want your blade free to move at all times.
There is one exception to this. Sometimes, a parry or beat will result in a "bind"—a maneuver something like arm-wrestling, the purpose of which is to get the upper hand through main force by pushing your opponent's weapon out of the way. Because you are pushing against his blade, friction and the angle of the forces involved prevent your blade from "sliding" down to his hand. In any case, there are well-known maneuvers for disengaging from an unwanted bind.
In a light-saber battle, your primary targets would probably be your opponent's hand and wrist, just as it is in epee and saber fencing today. This is not because you "slide down the blade" of your opponent, but for the simple reason that the hand holding the saber is the part of your opponent that is closest to you. It could be argued that hand guards like those found on contemporary epees or sabers would be a good idea for these fictional weapons...but then you might as well go for full body armor.
If I were going to object to the light-saber battles in Star Wars on grounds of realism, it would be that they last far too long. A real battle with nearly weightless edged weapons that can cut through anything shouldn't last more than 10 seconds.
Slashdot Mirror
This means that the SC2 beta will be released November
I know you think that everyone knows all the acronyms you know...but I don't. So what is SC2???
Lucky me...I just canceled my WoW account last night, so I don't have to care about this. I'm playing Aion now. I have yet to see whether the end-game content (flying with angelic wings to engage in PvPvE in the space between two half-worlds) is truly as amazing as they are promising, but so far I find the game to be mostly a refreshing change from WoW, which had just gotten to be a ridiculous habit. Well, it could be more refreshing—I was just killing bandits at some farm...which could have been right out of a WoW quest, complete with pumpkins.
But there is a death penalty (it gets pretty expensive to buy back the experience that is being held in hock if you die a lot, so I'm going to have to break my habit of disregarding all risk that I picked up in WoW). I've been playing a week now, and I still haven't gotten over the sheer beauty of the world...and the female character models. (You can tell who the cross-dressing guys are by the fact that they all max out the booby slider during character creation.) I keep asking myself how people can fight in clothes that looks so fine. Even the low level gear looks better than anything WoW came up with for level 80s.
Oh, and the best thing of all: I haven't been turned down by groups because my gear is substandard. That alone justifies the switch, in my opinion.
You get your angel-wings at level 10, but your flying ability is very limited at that point—and woe unto you if you let the timer run out when you're at high altitudes. I've also found that flying isn't as easy as it looks...it's going to take practice. I keep getting disoriented. Better camera controls would help.
The area of saving social networking sites of course! RTFA!
I've read a number of posts and they generally seem sarcastic and pessimistic. For those that seem genuine, I see a willingness to consider this as an opportunity to address security issues. As someone new to blogging, is there a way that this can be viewed as an opportunity to bring your skills to help our country?
Sir, you are obviously lost. You were looking for a blog, yes? This is not a blog. I don't know what /. is, but it's not a blog.
It's clear from your posting that you are either a very naive individual who has not yet absorbed the culture of realism that pervades the consensus mind of /., or you are a CIA astroturfer.
Assuming for a moment that you are serious about the "bring your skills to help our country", I have to say that though our country may need help, this help will not be provided by the Department of Homeland Security, nor by any government agency. In fact, I think it would be damned helpful to get rid of the lot of them.
Man, you critics of the Department of Vaterland/Homeland Security have got to get your priorities straight! This is serious! From TFA:
The FBI said fraudsters continue to hijack accounts on social networking sites and spread malicious software using various techniques.
Now do you see just how urgent this is? The government must act at once and with the uttermost severity to eliminate this grave threat to our freedoms and security! If our MyFace pages are under threat, then we must back our government to the hilt; no sacrifice is too great. In fact, I think everyone who reads /. should immediately volunteer to become a Cyber Enforcement Agent with the DV/HS, and work without pay until the threat has passed.
Alas, due to certain political affiliations and mishaps dating back to Berkeley in the 60s, I don't qualify for any kind of government clearance, so I will have to remain in my boring job while a younger generation marches forth to smash the threat. But I cheer you on!
That's kind of a bogus observation. If you aren't world-class, then you are at the mercy of those who are. "World-class" doesn't mean "better than anyone else in the world." It just means "good enough to hold your own with the best in the world." Really, everybody needs world-class people. The pity is that not everyone can afford them.
Actually, "world class" doesn't mean diddly—it's just filler for the mission statement they had to write, like all that other corporate nonsense (e.g. "best of breed" "forward-looking planning", "agile organization", etc. etc. etc.
I think your buzzword detector needs a fresh battery.
They can protect the homeland for 1000 years.
Ja, ze Vater...I mean Homeland vill endure for a tousand years!
Yeah, but you kind of missed the joke, didn't you?
There has to be another way to show appreciation to veterans.
Sure, but all the other ways would cost money.
... What definitely hasn't happened is the author or publisher having seen the "licensed" book being resold and brought it to court.
Once that happens all hell will break lose.
If games and software are copyrighted because they are expression of ideas, and *they* can be *licensed*; there is nothing preventing books from getting the same "first-sale doctrine" circumventing license treatment.
Good try...but no. You see, books are really sold, whereas software is only licensed. Few publishers of (paper) books assert that they are only licensing a book to you when you buy it; both parties to such a sale agree that it is, indeed, a transfer of ownership of a material object, to wit, the book. When you pay money for software, you may well believe that you are buying something, but the seller says he's only giving you the right to run the software on terms specified in the EULA. And when you click the EULA, you agree to this.
Yes, I know this is crap, and no, I don't read the EULAs either—but that's how it is. That's why software publishers can prevent you from selling software you think you bought; they still own it and they don't agree to let some other guy use it. To me, it seems futile to insist that we are buying something that the "seller" only wants to rent; the owner of the property in question has a right to refuse to sell it to you. You can't force a software company to sell to you.
I think it would be more effective if we went along with the idea that software is licensed to us; all we want is that the licenses be fair. We want to apply the same reasoning as is applied in any fair contract: the interests of both parties must be respected. For example, we should be allowed to transfer the license to whomever we wish in return for money. We won't be selling the software of course—we will just be transferring the license.
I have some questions about this that I've been wondering about, so if there are any lawyers who read this stuff on /. could you tell me whether:
It should be pretty obvious what I'm wishing for: the establishment of a fundamental legal standard of fairness that must be met for a EULA to be binding. If this is feasible, then we should pursue legal challenges to the present software licensing policies in the courts.
If this line of attack is not feasible, then we will have to work on changing the law. There is no reason why software licensees can't have as much legal clout as, say gun owners. We need an electronic freedom organization modeled after the NRA. That means having a single large organization which collects lots of dues, hires lobbyists in Washington, and scares the crap out of politicians.
I might have read your posting, had you a clue about paragraphs.
I looked up what he's talking about if anyone's curious.
Apparently tempered safety glass is made to explode into tiny fragments
Yes, but today's car windshields aren't made of tempered glass. The "safety glass" in windshields consists of 2 layers of non-tempered glass separated by a flexible plastic film. So there's no way you're going to break someones windshield with a ceramic "booger". You may succeed in making a small area of the windshield crack or pit. Of course, anyone who attempts to do such a thing is somewhere on the complete-asshole-psychopath continuum, and should be treated accordingly.
If you want a reference, try http://www.answers.com/topic/automobile-windshield.
Contract workers don't have rights.
That clarifies the scenario. I suspect that your PHB-of-the-moment got this fecal matter dropped on him from on high. If you'd been listening at his door you probably would have heard him muttering to himself: "Get out that circuit board design by when?...oh noes...what to do? Ah! This calls for a human sacrifice!"
See, your PHB had to have an excuse to cover his butt. So he handed the brown mess to a contractor—i.e., somebody who doesn't even work for the company, and whom nobody cares about. Then he told his boss: "Man, that contractor from Dead Body Shops really screwed us over! What a totally incompetent idiot! But you know how those body shops are...man I certainly would never actually hire anybody like this!" At this point, all the upper-middle managers in the meeting are nodding sympathetically, because this is a well-known and efficacious ritual. They work themselves into a state of sincerely believing that it really wasn't your boss's fault, that you were a lazy, incompetent, crack-smoking moron (people will believe anything about a contractor once he ceases to exist in the local frame of reference). They will then absolve your ex-PHB of his sins, "cut him some slack", and "give him time to get the new guy (and future sacrifice) up to speed".
I don't know about the rest of you, but i always make a point of lying through my teeth when it comes to online subscriptions to anything - especially a game. When asked, I'm a 12 year old redhaired girl living in Namibia.
Now back to their stats. How do they know 50% is 13 years or younger? Right. They ask for your birthdate. And then assume that you click the truth...
Rrrrrright. And then they accept your credit card information?
My biggest issue is: - Without the gear, you cannot raid. - Without raiding, you cannot get the gear. How am I supposed to enjoy end-game content when I can't get into a group because my DPS is around 1k too low for these "elite" groups?
I certainly know whereof you speak...I pretty much soloed my Warlock to level 80 in PvE. Then I had to find something else to do, so I thought I'd try raiding. I quickly found out that my DPS was dismally substandard for raid groups—if I even got into a group, I was quickly ejected —sometimes very rudely indeed. Words like "freeloader" and "parasite" were used to describe me.
Actually, I don't have any quarrel with these groups—though I wish they had been more polite; I wasn't trying to commit a crime, for crying out loud. As far as I'm concerned, a group is certainly free to set its own criteria for admission. I think the problem is really one of game design; it's a fundamental flaw that I first noticed in the later, degenerate days of Everquest, and it is this: DPS is everything.
I think the drift to DPS-centric game design is probably due to a couple of factors. First, it's relatively easy to design a game around this concept—it's just a matter of hit points and how much damage you allow players to inflict over time. Second, I think that a lot of players like it because it's so easily quantifiable. (And if you look, you will find web sites dedicated to the precise calculation of Damage Per Second for every WoW class that would put some dissertations on quantum physics to shame.)
To me, this is just awful. I want the game to be a fantasy in which I can vacation after a hard day of Reality[TM]; I want it to require skill, pluck, and quick thinking. I want to be part of a group of adventurers who have a sense of humor, and whose primary goal is to have fun. I don't want winning or losing to be a matter than can be calculated at all. That makes it work! (Can you just imagine a fantasy story in which the Noble Knight yells at the Damsel in Distress to shut up because he needs quiet while he works his PDA to compare his DPS to that of the dragon? "Sorry," he says after much brow-furrowing, "I'm just not geared for this. The dragon is gonna take me apart, so sit tight while I round up some higher tier armor, ok lady?")
As I said, I noticed this design drift back in my Everquest days. I started playing right when EQ (the first one, not that sorry waste of pixels, EQ2) first came out. I can truly say that some the most enjoyable recreational experiences I have ever had were in that game. I played a dark elf enchanter, and I'd picked that combo because it was supposed to be difficult. After the first couple of years, during which I had put a lot of energy into becoming a first rate crowd-control specialist, I gradually realized that nobody really needed crowd control anymore. During the early period of EQ, a crowd control specialist was just as essential to any adventuring group as a healer or a tank, because the game was designed to make "adds" just about inevitable in every fight. When adds happened, my chanter would hit them with a stun and a mezz, and I'd often be keeping 3 to 5 mobs staring blankly into space, waiting for their turn to be slaughtered. But then they jacked up the DPS of just about every melee class to the point where adds could be "off tanked" by a bard or pally or berserker, or anybody that wasn't wearing a nightshirt for armor.
This totally ruined the game for me. Sure, my guildies would have pity on me and let me come along (heck, they might need a dose of crack, and I could slow almost as good as a Shaman), but it was just charity. Plus, there were too many nights when there weren't enough guildies on, and I just couldn't get a group. Seeing as soloing a chanter in EQ was as much fun as walking a tightrope in a ice storm wearing greased turtles strapped to your feet instead of shoe
piecharts are a bad way to represent comparative data like this in the first place...3D pie charts may look fancy, but they make it more difficult to compare the actual data (which is supposed to be the whole point of plotting it)
Give that man a cigar. This is exactly what I thought when I looked at the .gov page: this is no worse than any other Power Point presentation I've sat through. The real problem isn't some error in the algorithm that draws the pie, but in the notion that tarting up a graph by making it 3-D somehow makes it better. Of course, the opposite is true—in art, perspective is used to create an illusion of depth in a 2-D medium. But illusion is precisely what we don't want in the visual representation of data! Because artistic perspective distorts the presented object (in this case, our pie), it's much harder to judge the relative size of the pieces. In fact, how do we even know that this is a circular pie? Most pies I've eaten were circular, but maybe this one is elliptical, perhaps with the major axis perpendicular to the plane surface it's been projected on.
It's not just pie charts that are misused in this way; the same thing can be said about just any type of 3D chart that's commonly used in presentations and reports for business or government organizations—the effects of perspective make it difficult or impossible to tell what is really going on. Consequently, these "visual aids" do not clarify data, but obfuscate it.
Some critics blame this on PowerPoint and similar tools (like this one provided by Google), and it's true that these tools make it easy to produce bad visual representations of data. The most vociferous and articulate of these critics is Edward Tufte, who goes so far as to blame the Challenger shuttle disaster on PowerPoint (take a look at Tufte's web page about PowerPoint, or better yet, buy his books!). I wouldn't go quite as far as Tufte; these tools are just like any tools; they can be used ineptly or deceptively, just as they can be used to clarify and enlighten. The real problem lies in the managerial culture that dominates both American business and government. This culture pretends to be rational and "scientific", as defined by whatever management fads are current, but it's not really interested in serious thought or analysis, just in keeping up appearances. So I don't think 3D charts are going away any time soon.
After about a year in space you cannot walk when you land on earth.
This isn't necessarily a problem. Sure, if you want to walk around Earth then you're going to be in a bit of a fix... But what if you plan on spending the rest of your days in space? What if it's a one-way trip?
Yeah, and I know the exact demographic who would be interested in this: baby boomers. My body is starting to age, and gravity is definitely being more of a drag every day. So what we need are "retirement homes" in space. It would not be difficult to explain the benefits of weightlessness to the average decrepit guy or sagging woman, and this demographic has money. So...the way to get the space program kick-started is to take up a collection, and fund a private company to build space habits for people who want to stay there permanently. Because zero gravity has drawbacks, the habitats could be spun to simulate some gravity. It would be ideal! Even most totally crippled people could move around normally. For those who prefer solid ground under their feet, we'd have the Lunatic Home...er "Serenity Gardens on Luna". Heck I'm serious—I'd invest in such a venture.
Bungee cords.
Why go for an augmented reality when you can have a demented reality?
Exactly what I have always thought! Virtual reality tech would be best employed helping me to function in "the real world", while eliminating much of the harsh unpleasantness and petty annoyances entailed by said reality. It might be tempting, for example, to have my VR contacts and earplugs filter out people I don't like (e.g. the PHB), but such an "ignore list" could lead to collision problems, not to mention losing my job. However, it would definitely be more fun if I could see the PHB as Donald Duck or Darth Vader.
Another problem that could be solved by VR is my inability to remember people's names (which will become much worse when everyone looks like gnomes, orcs, Star Trek characters, or speaking blobs of goo). The solution is obvious—the computer linked to my VR lenses would know who is near me, and cause their names to float above their heads, just like in a present-day MMPORG.
And of course I'd work like mad to hack into the VR network, so my boss would see me industriously at work while I'm lying on some Cancun beach. Verily, my enthusiasm waxes enormously as I consider the vista of incredibly life-enhancing possibilities inherent in this technology.
I'm sure I don't need to mention to this predominantly male, sex-starved audience how I would like to see women. And with my hacking abilities, I could control just how I look to them. Clearly, the world's geeks must pursue this avenue of research as their top priority!
It would indeed have been difficult for anyone to screw things up as badly as Fiorina; that does take real talent. When Fiorina came on board, she made it clear that she did not like the company of which she had just taken control. So she methodically set about destroying the "old" HP. The first thing she did was a masterful piece of irony: she ordered that the word "Invent" would become part of the HP logo. Evidently, she thought that "branding" is all that matters; hype can be substituted for the real thing, and nobody will notice. I guess she was right.
This is not just about one bad person; it is a pattern. I think that what has happened is that the corporate managerial and financial class (and it is a sort of ruling class, in the old sense of class struggle) have become destructive parasites that suck the wealth out of our common economy, and transfer it to their own wallets. They destroy things that have value—like a creative engineering corporation—and leave behind an empty husk that only pretends to do what the old corporation actually did: invent.
Let me see if I can understand your problem.
Is this a hobby for you? If so, it doesn't sound like you are enjoying it. The normal response to the realization that one is not enjoying a hobby is to stop doing it. Because you have not stopped, I must suppose that either you are gaining some sort of personal satisfaction from the activity, or that it is not a hobby.
If you are doing this to make money, then you have to analyze why you are failing from a business perspective. Perhaps you are simply not charging enough money. People tend to value goods and services partly on the basis of the asking price. Give something away for free, and people think it's worthless. So perhaps if you raise your prices (which, I suppose, would mean not using the "adult teaching organisation" you are now working with), you will make more money and even have more customers. Then again, there may simply not be much of a market for the goods you are offering. In that case, you should probably stop doing this.
It sounds to me as though you wish that more people shared your concerns about computer security. I can empathize with this sentiment; I once taught philosophy, and I was disappointed to find that most people simply don't care about the kinds of questions I find fascinating. Even worse, I found that instruction in even basic mental survival skills—such as critical thinking and clear writing—simply did not sell. So I went "into computers". If your situation is indeed like mine, then I can only advise you to adjust your expectations of other people. Most adults do not have a passion to better themselves, because this requires work that has no immediate and obvious rewards. You can't take it to the bank.
There is one possibility that occurs to me: consider teaching children. If you can get to them before the educational system has managed to kill their natural curiosity, and if you have the knack for dealing with kids (I don't), then you might find them a much more willing audience.
Personally, I've always wanted to die in bed, of over-exertion. At the age of 109.
The French always make things so complicated. For a German, getting dumb is easy: drink beer until your face turns numb and your IQ is equal to the temperature of the beer.
I thought the article was really funny. However, it's clear that Scalzi hasn't spent much time fencing. Real fighting with an edged weapon is nothing like theatrical fencing—which is what Scalzi is apparently thinking of.
In theatrical fencing, the idea is to simulate a real fight without actually risking injury to the actors, who are usually not wearing fencing masks. Thus, there's a great deal of jumping around and clashing of blades. In a real fight (or even a saber fencing bout), there's only two reasons why the combatant's blades would ever come into contact: either they are parrying, or they are trying to beat their opponent's weapon out of line to create an opening. Usually, the contact of blade on blade is only momentary—you want your blade free to move at all times.
There is one exception to this. Sometimes, a parry or beat will result in a "bind"—a maneuver something like arm-wrestling, the purpose of which is to get the upper hand through main force by pushing your opponent's weapon out of the way. Because you are pushing against his blade, friction and the angle of the forces involved prevent your blade from "sliding" down to his hand. In any case, there are well-known maneuvers for disengaging from an unwanted bind.
In a light-saber battle, your primary targets would probably be your opponent's hand and wrist, just as it is in epee and saber fencing today. This is not because you "slide down the blade" of your opponent, but for the simple reason that the hand holding the saber is the part of your opponent that is closest to you. It could be argued that hand guards like those found on contemporary epees or sabers would be a good idea for these fictional weapons...but then you might as well go for full body armor.
If I were going to object to the light-saber battles in Star Wars on grounds of realism, it would be that they last far too long. A real battle with nearly weightless edged weapons that can cut through anything shouldn't last more than 10 seconds.
It's not a "Science story". It is a fairy tale. And a damned enjoyable one. Or do you take the "Sci" in "Sci-Fi" literally?