Most facets of the entertainment insustry are closely scrutinized by the fan press. And there are fairly large overlaps between music lovers, movie buffs, videogamers, etc. So, you have to wonder if (1) the ESA didn't think anyone would notice that they hired one of the most hated execs in the music industry; or (2) they didn't think the fans would care; or (3) they just don't give a damn what gamers think.
I'm guessing (3), but given the bad blood between the ESA and -- well -- pretty much everyone else in the industry, you'd think they'd at least want to give the impression that they aren't a bunch of bastards with hearts of coal.
It's hard to see Dungeons & Dragons Online as a going concern, at least in its present form. If nothing else, the lack of responses to this topic illustrates how far removed it is from the typical Shashdotter's radar.
Wizards has abandoned the 3.X rules which comprise the core of DDO. All new material being published by Wizards is for the new 4.0 rules and -- consequently -- third-party publishers are likewise focusing on materials for the new version.
Also, while the Eberron setting is still supported, it's not the "core" world. In fact, the new core setting is about as removed from Eberron as you can get. Whereas Eberron is a world of long-established kingdoms and empires, the new setting (does it even have a name?) is described as being numerous petty kingdoms separated by gulfs of uncharted (and extremely hazardous) wilderness.
What would not surprise me is a sequel to DDO using the 4th edition rules, either in addition to DDO or as a successor to it. 4th Edition already plays a great deal like a MMO converted to PNP form: classes are simplified, have MMO-style roles and have neatly-defined progression trees. Making a MMO based on the new rules would be substantially simpler than what they've already accomplished and (presumably) they could reuse a huge quantity of existing assets, depending on how flexible the core game engine is and whether Turbine/Atari can swing the 4th edition license.
Huh. I had no idea that EQ and EQII were even still running. The tech's got to be looking a little dated by now... maybe it's time for EQIII (or better yet a new IP) and an upgrade path?
I find it impossible to get all bent out of shape over the prospect that I may not be able to access game demos and videos at some hypothetical point down the road when Sony decides to turn off the Qore content servers. While I still have my Xbox demo disks from 2001, I probably haven't used most of them since... well... probably 2001. I certainly can't imagine a scenario where I'll consider it a major loss if I can't access them ten years from now.
I'm a lot more concerned about my XBLA games. Most of them were purchased before my 360 red-ringed and I certainly can imagine that I might like to play them ten-plus years from now. It would be nice if they would strip the DRM from them before they turn off the authentication servers.
Everyone seems to agree that digital distribution is the future, but thinking it's going to happen without DRM is self-delusion.
That's the first thing that occurred to me. Wouldn't the fact that hypertext markup language includes the a href notation in and itself be evidence of prior art?
Established in August 2004, Like.com also said it owns almost 12 patents in the areas of visual recognition and search.
Wow, almost 12? And somehow, I don't think a patent from 2004 is going to hold up very well in this case.
'A large majority of other currency systems have accommodated the visually impaired, and the [Treasury] secretary does not explain why US currency should be any different,' the court said in its ruling.
...and I don't really see a compelling argument why the US Treasury should re-tool its entire money-printing infrastructure to accomodate a vanishingly-small percentage of the population, particularly when (as someone else pointed out) there are mechanical readers to accomodate those people.
When did we start presupposing that employees had some kind of "right to privacy" when working on their emploer's business premises during working hours? Especially the "privacy" to misuse company resources for personal purposes?
When I went to work for my present employer, I signed a document acknowledging that company-provided phone, network/Internet access and email are business tools to be used for business purposes and that my employer has the right to monitor my use of those tools. For the most part, they don't care that much when anyone uses email, phone or the Internet for personal use; they're good people and honestly care about their employees. But, that sort of employment clause is becoming increasingly common.
It's disappointing to see so many Slashdotters, most of whom purport to support limited-government, free-market thinking, bitching about how unfair/unethical/intrusive it is for companies to want to protect their technology investment, financial well-being and reputations against ignorant or malicious insiders. I have a solution too. Don't like living by someone else's rules? It's still a free country. Start your own company and make your own.
Assign a low fixed taxable value to it in year one. Say, $10. Every year, that value goes up by 50%. The idea is that the longer your intellectual property is exclusively yours, the more it's costing everyone else to not have access to that property (and the longer you've had to capitalize on it).
So, after 10 years its taxable value would be ($10 x 1.5^10 =) $384, which is not too unreasonable. If you think your intellectual property is worth $384 after ten years, you pay the property tax on it and move on. After 30 years, its taxable value is a little over a million dollars. After 40 years, $74 million, etc.
If that doesn't increase the taxable value fast enough, either increase the initial value of the IP or increase the factor.
TFA is long on hype, but severely lacking in details. And contradictory, or at least misleading. It refers to the Air Car as "gas free", but later states that is uses a "supplemental energy source" for speeds over 35 mph and that it can take "conventional petrol, ethanol or biofuel". Maybe that's not strictly speaking "gas", but until we have a biofuel refueling infrastructure, that means good old pump gas.
There are also a lot of unanswered questions about the pressurized air tanks. How much pressure will the tanks be under? What happens if a tank ruptures? How are the tanks filled? (If you have to fill them between trips, then there will be an energy cost associated with that, probably not an insubstantial one.) How easy are they to service/replace? How much energy is required to manufacture/remediate them?
As with so many other "green" solutions, we may ultimately find that the real energy savings aren't all they're cracked up to be. Don't get me wrong -- I applaud anyone working to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. I just believe we ought to think more critically about what we're buying into.
Hold on a second. Why should taxpayers have to pay for activities that they feel are not in the best interest of the country and that don't fall within the Constitutionally-defined powers of the Federal government? That's not greed, that's responsibility. As others have pointed out, you are morally responsible for what you pay for and I (and many other taxpayers) do not believe that our government is acting in a way that reflects well on us as a nation.
Actually, most Diebold machines sold in the past ten years don't have a "paper trail" (internal paper transaction journal) anymore; they have an electronic journal. However, banks reconcile ATM transactions to cash balances every business day (and only bank employees have physical access to the critical parts of the machine, usually under dual control), so errors are relatively rare and quickly discovered.
On the other hand, banks' take the whereabouts of their money very seriously. Probably more seriously than your local election board takes your vote.
Re:Completely absurd experimentation method
on
Can Time Slow Down?
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· Score: 1
Next waste of time and money....
No joke. This is considered funding-worthy research at top universities these days...?
In any case I would suggest that sovereignty can only be lost if a country enters an agreement it cannot later unilaterally remove itself from, I would suggest that the individual states of the USA have lost much of their sovereignty but not all (they can still leave?)
Individual states cannot secede. That was ultimately the point of the Civil War. The slavery issue was a smokescreen; the real issue was that the national government would not allow the states that formed the Confederacy to remove themselves from the Union.
More broadly, the entire idea of state sovereignty (i.e. enumerated powers) has been emasculated. The federal government has the powers it says it has. In the good old days, they used to use the Interstate Commerce Clause to justify Federal intervention in matters Constitutionally delegated to the states; now, they rarely even bother.
I could also talk about the fact that very, very few will want to live on Mars because it's lifeless dead rock, but that's another subject.:) [hint: how many people try and live in Antarctica? And that's a hell of a lot more hospitable.]
Since sunlight would be more consistently available and storm less severe, Mars might actually be of comparable hospitability to Antarctica for humans, the whole lack of a breathable atmosphere notwithstanding.
The reviewers at IGN have separate work and personal GamerTags. Maybe GameSpot employs the same practice; in my experience, Gertsmann has always been pretty diligent in his reviews.
Actually, fishybell's grasp of the facts doesn't seem too far off base to me.
First of all, the union isn't about the individual. Its about the union, hence the name union. The union is concerned with seeing that all of its members get a fair shake.
No, it's about seeing that all of its members get an unfair shake (if by "shake" you mean compensation).
In a fair free-market scenario, quantity of labor supplied would equal quantity of labor demanded. Elementary macroeconomics states that when the supply and demand curves meet, that will dictate a market quantity of labor and price (or wages, from the worker's perspective). However, when labor suppliers (unions) are able to collude on wages and labor demanders (employers) are not, that creates a situation that disproportionately favors the suppliers, artificially driving up costs (wages).
But equally wrong is your statement about fixing wages. The union isn't trying to fix wages - that would be communism.
Actaully, that would be authoritariamism. And that's exactly what unions do. They have a government-protected right to not only set minimum wages for their members, but also to create an effective labor monopoly.
So you are free to hate the unions if you wish, but please, check your facts before you blame the world on them.
I'm not sure why you felt you had to react to fishybell's post so vehemently, but I don't think he's the only one who needs to get his facts straight.
Not only are many of today's "professionally" (i.e.union) written TV shows just godawful, but in the future we'll need to factor in the possibility of strikes affecting ship dates? IMO, it'd be for the best to keep the unions -- particularly traditional media writers' guilds -- far, far away from videogames. You'll get better results from print media authors anyways.
Slashdot Mirror
Most facets of the entertainment insustry are closely scrutinized by the fan press. And there are fairly large overlaps between music lovers, movie buffs, videogamers, etc. So, you have to wonder if (1) the ESA didn't think anyone would notice that they hired one of the most hated execs in the music industry; or (2) they didn't think the fans would care; or (3) they just don't give a damn what gamers think.
I'm guessing (3), but given the bad blood between the ESA and -- well -- pretty much everyone else in the industry, you'd think they'd at least want to give the impression that they aren't a bunch of bastards with hearts of coal.
It's hard to see Dungeons & Dragons Online as a going concern, at least in its present form. If nothing else, the lack of responses to this topic illustrates how far removed it is from the typical Shashdotter's radar.
Wizards has abandoned the 3.X rules which comprise the core of DDO. All new material being published by Wizards is for the new 4.0 rules and -- consequently -- third-party publishers are likewise focusing on materials for the new version.
Also, while the Eberron setting is still supported, it's not the "core" world. In fact, the new core setting is about as removed from Eberron as you can get. Whereas Eberron is a world of long-established kingdoms and empires, the new setting (does it even have a name?) is described as being numerous petty kingdoms separated by gulfs of uncharted (and extremely hazardous) wilderness.
What would not surprise me is a sequel to DDO using the 4th edition rules, either in addition to DDO or as a successor to it. 4th Edition already plays a great deal like a MMO converted to PNP form: classes are simplified, have MMO-style roles and have neatly-defined progression trees. Making a MMO based on the new rules would be substantially simpler than what they've already accomplished and (presumably) they could reuse a huge quantity of existing assets, depending on how flexible the core game engine is and whether Turbine/Atari can swing the 4th edition license.
Huh. I had no idea that EQ and EQII were even still running. The tech's got to be looking a little dated by now... maybe it's time for EQIII (or better yet a new IP) and an upgrade path?
Please. Think of the children.
I find it impossible to get all bent out of shape over the prospect that I may not be able to access game demos and videos at some hypothetical point down the road when Sony decides to turn off the Qore content servers. While I still have my Xbox demo disks from 2001, I probably haven't used most of them since... well... probably 2001. I certainly can't imagine a scenario where I'll consider it a major loss if I can't access them ten years from now.
I'm a lot more concerned about my XBLA games. Most of them were purchased before my 360 red-ringed and I certainly can imagine that I might like to play them ten-plus years from now. It would be nice if they would strip the DRM from them before they turn off the authentication servers.
Everyone seems to agree that digital distribution is the future, but thinking it's going to happen without DRM is self-delusion.
That's not the worst of it. Without Wolverine's regenerative abilities, having the claws pop out through your skin would be a real limited-use thing.
Wow, almost 12? And somehow, I don't think a patent from 2004 is going to hold up very well in this case.
Sounds like Catholicism to me.
When did we start presupposing that employees had some kind of "right to privacy" when working on their emploer's business premises during working hours? Especially the "privacy" to misuse company resources for personal purposes?
When I went to work for my present employer, I signed a document acknowledging that company-provided phone, network/Internet access and email are business tools to be used for business purposes and that my employer has the right to monitor my use of those tools. For the most part, they don't care that much when anyone uses email, phone or the Internet for personal use; they're good people and honestly care about their employees. But, that sort of employment clause is becoming increasingly common.
It's disappointing to see so many Slashdotters, most of whom purport to support limited-government, free-market thinking, bitching about how unfair/unethical/intrusive it is for companies to want to protect their technology investment, financial well-being and reputations against ignorant or malicious insiders. I have a solution too. Don't like living by someone else's rules? It's still a free country. Start your own company and make your own.
Also available from Amazon and for rental through NetFlix.
I actually think parent was being too kind. The choices seemed arbitrary at best and the commentary covered the full spectrum from innane to juvenile.
And just for the record, I think If It Moves, Shoot It! is an outstanding name.
Assign a low fixed taxable value to it in year one. Say, $10. Every year, that value goes up by 50%. The idea is that the longer your intellectual property is exclusively yours, the more it's costing everyone else to not have access to that property (and the longer you've had to capitalize on it).
So, after 10 years its taxable value would be ($10 x 1.5^10 =) $384, which is not too unreasonable. If you think your intellectual property is worth $384 after ten years, you pay the property tax on it and move on. After 30 years, its taxable value is a little over a million dollars. After 40 years, $74 million, etc.
If that doesn't increase the taxable value fast enough, either increase the initial value of the IP or increase the factor.
TFA is long on hype, but severely lacking in details. And contradictory, or at least misleading. It refers to the Air Car as "gas free", but later states that is uses a "supplemental energy source" for speeds over 35 mph and that it can take "conventional petrol, ethanol or biofuel". Maybe that's not strictly speaking "gas", but until we have a biofuel refueling infrastructure, that means good old pump gas.
There are also a lot of unanswered questions about the pressurized air tanks. How much pressure will the tanks be under? What happens if a tank ruptures? How are the tanks filled? (If you have to fill them between trips, then there will be an energy cost associated with that, probably not an insubstantial one.) How easy are they to service/replace? How much energy is required to manufacture/remediate them?
As with so many other "green" solutions, we may ultimately find that the real energy savings aren't all they're cracked up to be. Don't get me wrong -- I applaud anyone working to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. I just believe we ought to think more critically about what we're buying into.
Because Bono's going to save the world! Didn't you get the press release?
Well, at least it gives them the necessary skills to vote for the approved major-party candidates in future presidential elections.
Hold on a second. Why should taxpayers have to pay for activities that they feel are not in the best interest of the country and that don't fall within the Constitutionally-defined powers of the Federal government? That's not greed, that's responsibility. As others have pointed out, you are morally responsible for what you pay for and I (and many other taxpayers) do not believe that our government is acting in a way that reflects well on us as a nation.
Actually, most Diebold machines sold in the past ten years don't have a "paper trail" (internal paper transaction journal) anymore; they have an electronic journal. However, banks reconcile ATM transactions to cash balances every business day (and only bank employees have physical access to the critical parts of the machine, usually under dual control), so errors are relatively rare and quickly discovered.
On the other hand, banks' take the whereabouts of their money very seriously. Probably more seriously than your local election board takes your vote.
My employer has already done this preemptively to reduce the likelihood of this kind of man-in-the-middle attack.
More broadly, the entire idea of state sovereignty (i.e. enumerated powers) has been emasculated. The federal government has the powers it says it has. In the good old days, they used to use the Interstate Commerce Clause to justify Federal intervention in matters Constitutionally delegated to the states; now, they rarely even bother.
Since sunlight would be more consistently available and storm less severe, Mars might actually be of comparable hospitability to Antarctica for humans, the whole lack of a breathable atmosphere notwithstanding.
The reviewers at IGN have separate work and personal GamerTags. Maybe GameSpot employs the same practice; in my experience, Gertsmann has always been pretty diligent in his reviews.
Actually, fishybell's grasp of the facts doesn't seem too far off base to me.
First of all, the union isn't about the individual. Its about the union, hence the name union. The union is concerned with seeing that all of its members get a fair shake.
No, it's about seeing that all of its members get an unfair shake (if by "shake" you mean compensation).
In a fair free-market scenario, quantity of labor supplied would equal quantity of labor demanded. Elementary macroeconomics states that when the supply and demand curves meet, that will dictate a market quantity of labor and price (or wages, from the worker's perspective). However, when labor suppliers (unions) are able to collude on wages and labor demanders (employers) are not, that creates a situation that disproportionately favors the suppliers, artificially driving up costs (wages).
But equally wrong is your statement about fixing wages. The union isn't trying to fix wages - that would be communism.
Actaully, that would be authoritariamism. And that's exactly what unions do. They have a government-protected right to not only set minimum wages for their members, but also to create an effective labor monopoly.
So you are free to hate the unions if you wish, but please, check your facts before you blame the world on them.
I'm not sure why you felt you had to react to fishybell's post so vehemently, but I don't think he's the only one who needs to get his facts straight.
Not only are many of today's "professionally" (i.e.union) written TV shows just godawful, but in the future we'll need to factor in the possibility of strikes affecting ship dates? IMO, it'd be for the best to keep the unions -- particularly traditional media writers' guilds -- far, far away from videogames. You'll get better results from print media authors anyways.