Mods, why is this marked "Troll?" I think he makes some interesting points. If you dont agree with what he has to say, respond to him. Dont hide behind your mod points.
What's at the real heart of that issue is that Microsoft Word does not and never has interoperated with anything without reverse engineering or hacking. I have entire labs that, though converted from the ODT format to Microsoft Word, will not display any of my equation objects correctly and do not allow me to convert on a non-Math-Type-enabled machine.
If every software had different implementations of the same ultimate functionality, then there would be no monoculture, as one man's implementation of something may be subject to a bug that another man's implementation is not. That is what is meant by reference to a software monoculture.
In the case of MS Word, the users of that will eventually get screwed royally becuase they're locked in, while ODF users have full access to the standard by which the ODF files are written. Thus, anyone who has ODF files can write a document viewer. If Microsoft were to die out over the next decade, all the documents(including government documents) that were written using it would either have to be converted, or a hack would have to be developed, or Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom and as a nicety to the community which used it at one point, would release the standard for its document format.
In programming there are several different ways to implement the same thing, even within the same language. If you factor in the number of languages available, you have a staggering number of possible implementations of the same functionality. The functionality will be the same, yes, but the means toward that functionality will be different.
Are you trying to use MLA style citations? The proper way to do those is to put the period after the parentheses, and the parentheses after the quotation.
Thus:
"Blarg! I am dead"(Brian Clevenger).
There's also APA, Chicago, and footnotes/endnotes. There really is no "right" way to cite a work. Just see that you cite it somehow.
"A little learning is a dang'rous thing. Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring." ~Alexander Pope
For the dense, I'm saying that a blogger is about as useful a source of information as a journalist. For real information, go to peer-reviewed journals, or even books. Journals and books reviewed by people who have degrees in the field the writer writes in are preferred sources. It's very easy for a blogger or a journalist to make an faulty assertion based on their incomplete knowledge, but very hard for a PhD to make a faulty assertion based on their complete knowledge.
Though yes, professors sometimes make mistakes. Still, bloggers are not somehow better than journalists just because they're enthusiasts in the area that they're blogging.
"I can't believe how many people are complaining about this thing being overpriced when it's being sold at a loss of between 100 and 200 dollars depending on who you ask. Yes it is expensive for a game console, but come on, there are graphics cards that cost that much."
Those of us complaining are not buying your $700 graphics card. In fact, with that attitude Sony might as well change their Playstation line's motto to "Not for everyone."
"The other thing people don't really seem to consider is that Sony has a track record for supporting their consoles. They are still going to be releasing exclusive games for the PS2 when the PS3 is being released. There hasn't been a noteworthy xbox game out since like Halo 2. Oh yeah, and it will play all PS1 and PS2 games, not that crappy emulation the 360 has. And online doesn't cost anything, and might even be decent this time around."
Funny you should mention their track record, since my old style PS2 with the HDD bay was so poorly manufactured that dust would get on the lens. I googled the problem, and Sony wasnt even providing any information on this issue. The only thing I could do since it wasnt within warranty was pay to have it shipped back to Sony so that I could then buy a refurbished PS2 for $100. I did what any sensible customer would do, and cracked it open to clean off the lens my own damn self.
"I never thought I'd see so much hatred for a linux box on/. People who are going on and on about how Blu-ray isn't going to win and they don't want to commit don't seem to be taking into account that by 2007 there are going to be 4 million blu ray players all over the world. Who wants a High Def video format? People with HDTV's who tend to be more price insensitive than the general populace and also tend to buy the most advanced technology."
Wow. 4 million? Gee. That's only.065% of the world's population. That's a considerable target audience.
"People are saying that there's no way a game is ever going to run over 1 DVD? I will bet anyone any amount of money that the new Final Fantasy game will. How many minutes of HD cutscenes can you fit on a dvd? It might even require a dual layer disk. Microsoft can back HDDVD all they want, they can give out their expansion drives for free and it won't matter. The PS3 is steep, but it will be useful for far longer than the 360. I'm going to preorder now so that I can get one by 2k7."
Ya~y, cutscenes! More non-interactivity! And FYI, if you're talking about FFXII, that's coming out on the PS2. Aldo, FYI there have been a number of dual-layer PS2 games already.
I think I'll be stepping back to let people like you decide the outcome of the format war. Those of us who dont care will be over here, playing with our Wii~ and laughing all the way to the bank.
Did somebody say SEGA? You mean I can finally play old Genesis games on something? Rock on Nintendo! I'd rather get a Wii than a new computer if that's the case.
Also, the survey only concerned a subset of the gaming group: Those gamers subscribed to IGN. The broad generalization of this group to the general gaming populace is total bullshit, as there is some significant self-selection bias in the sample group. For one thing, you had to be an IGN subscriber. Two, you had to volunteer to do the survey. I'm sure they've got millions of subscribers, but sample size alone doesnt guarentee a representative sample. If I went out and queried 3 million latinos about racism in the world, I would get a slanted response versus querying a random sample.
There is also no general control group. It would've been a more interesting survey had IGN asked their group to rank consoles according to their preference, rank various games, movies, and other lifestyle rubbish according to preference, etc.. As it is, the survey is meaningless.
I certainly wouldnt use it as justification for a purchase.
Also, the Gamasutra article seems to be a verbatim partial-copy of the press-release.
Actually, China is more likely to just ask for personal information for a player, rather than ask for an outright ban. A mere ban isnt enough action on their part, and would require Blizzard to take steps to determine whether or not the player really is Chinese. Blizzard would be more likely to Yahoo! some personal information and get players arrested. This would also sit well with the Chinese government, who would rather personally exert control over thought and action.
Are you referring to the electrical field generated by the electrodes in the channels?
The ions themselves dont generate an E-field large enough to affect anything above the molecular scale. And I would assume that the engineers have designed the channel so that there is no E-field present outside of the channel, which is entirely possible.
Essentially what they're doing on a large scale is moving electric dipoles using several differences in potential. The really cool thing about taking advantage of water's dipole nature is that you can move it in the presence of an E-field, just like any other collection of charge, and without any manipulation of the molecule. This means you could take clean tap water and use it(ignoring the large particulates in the solution). The article really isnt clear on the science, as with any news article.
Does anyone know anyone who knows anyone who works on this team? I'd be interested to see some of their research.
More importantly, can someone chime in on this? I'm still studying electricity and magnetism.
I remember playing FFXI, and they were a lot worse than WoW is about providing information to their customers. Many times, I'd get some piece of news in my squenix mailbox with such hugely informative details as:
-There was a server outage somewhere. -We are attempting to fix this problem, and would ask you to be patient. -That is all.
I've been very disappointed with the current crop of MMOs because of the sheer lack of information about the internal structure of the game. I'm not asking to see their entire network layout just because I'm a subscriber, but I grew up with MMOs where the design team would write out 2 pages of information on why the server went down, what they did to fix it, how it has impacted players, and what they've done to make it up to us.
Once in the formative years of Asheron's Call, the development team discovered that the servers werent actually backing up any of the database information because of a bug in the code base that didn't delete old database entries. Essentially, their backup disks filled up and they had to repopulate the database with the latest out of date information and fix the bug. So, they gave their playerbase free experience to compensate.
Blizzard's explanation of issues and fixes consisted routinely of "There was an issue in which one of our servers was brought down. This has been fixed. Have a nice day." It doesnt matter that we dont need to know this information. It is comforting to know that someone, somewhere, knows what the hell is going on and how to fix it. That instills confidence.
I'm no longer a customer of Blizzard. I am, however, interested in seeing how D&D Online is as it's a Turbine game--the same house that made Asheron's Call.
Not in my state. 16 is the age of consent, and while the consenting minor is still a minor, there can be a 5 year age seperation between the two consenting to sex. The age seperation is, of course, up in age. It's still statutory rape if he/she is below 16 and you're above but not by 5 years.
Though I agree that whoever keeps using that survey needs to cite some goddamn research before they go around spreading the information. Statistics taken out of context are as dangerous to discussions as saccharin is to lab rats.
I think the parent is referring to the fact that he would like to graph things using SVG. I know that if I lowered the accuracy of a graph in a scientific document, it could lead to some very embarassing explanations. For graphing, you should not have to compromise accuracy or precision for a smaller filesize.
If he just wants the image, then reducing the accuracy would definately work wonders. If he's not, then I know of some developers who might want to add a niche group to their list of targets.
1.) Build a massive rocket launch platform somewhere on the equator. 2.) Load up a bunch of nuclear waste inside the rocket on the pad. 3.) Wait for the pad to be just on the cusp of daybreak, then launch the rocket toward the sun. The earth's rotational momentum has just given you a cheap boost. 4.) ??? 5.) Profit.
Some of us quit playing World of Timesink and FFXI because both games had the capacity to eat our schedules whole. I got into a high-level raiding guild last college quarter, and I had to quit two weeks into the quarter because I realised that I wasnt going to be able to participate in everything they did and still go to all my classes.
The problem that I had with FFXI was their requirement of a 5-person party for everything. I didnt enjoy having to sit in zones typing "42THF LFP" for an hour so that I could spend 30 minutes getting crap experience before someone screwed up and wiped the entire group. Skilled parties in FFXI were so few and far between for me that I clearly remember what the party was composed of, and why it didnt suck.
There was also a huge problem I had with the subjob eliteists who would not accept me into their party without a specific job/subjob combination. It was really annoying getting invited, then removed because I was subbing Warrior and they wanted that extra 4 DEX from an offhand. Nevermind that my damage from Sneak/Trick was capped anyway, so even if I had more +DEX/+AGI gear, I could never actually break the cap.
Finally, I quit playing THF and started leveling WAR, then eventually I just quit because I realised that there was nothing I could do with less than an 8 hour time investment.
Both games have their problems. WoW's problem centers more around the complete lack of casual content. They say they're designing a casual-friendly game, then they turn around at endgame and dont release any dungeons for less than 20 people. When they do release small-group endgame dungeons, the equipment provided is not consistent with the rest of the endgame. Their solution to casual-friendly playing is to not give casuals any decent equipment. Then they dont seperate people into different battlegrounds, so the hardcore players grind casuals all day.
Does anyone remember Asheron's Call, the MMO with regular monthly storyline updates including new content, and new storyline? At one point in this game, PvP players were defending a crystal from other PvP players, and the developers had promised that any server on which the crystal was not broken would have a completely different storyline. The only reason there was an Asheron's Call expansion was because there was too much content to release a patch and have it finish downloading in a reasonable amount of time.
AC was also the only MMO that I could play casually and have fun doing it. You could spend hours going over your plan for your character, because there were so many options. I heard that later on it started sucking, especially when they introduced NPC "buffers" in town and other time-saving methods that eliminated the need for knowing magic schools. But early on, it rocked being a fistfighter who knew 3 schools of magic.
The AC team would also host monthly developer chats where they would query users as to what would be an interesting add. And they also used their judgement as developers as to what they would add, too. I remember one update the development team added "blunt swords" which were staff weapons, to placate a request.
Episodic gaming doesnt have to take the form of releasing multiple expansions to deliver storyline. AC was quite successful as an MMO. AC2 is a different story. If there is one game that I wish I could go back to and play all over again, it would be Asheron's Call.
To hell with your fishing sidequests, your quest grinding, your search for the Large Crisp Basilisk Urethra for that recipie. Just let me whip up some healing meat pies and go slay buggies for an hour while I kick back after a long study session. That would be MMO heaven. That was Asheron's Call.
A remake of Star Ocean 2 for the DS, maybe with some hot Cart swapping action would be awesome. While we're at it, why not remake a bunch of the old PSX RPGs for the DS? The graphics are slightly better, and some of the sprite-based ones like Persona 2 and Star Ocean 2 would be a really fun play, especially if they hacked in save-anywhere features so that you could play it when you have time to kill. Tales of Eternia anyone?
Why is this modded troll? He's making a perfectly valid point that PETA and Greenpeace, are actually doing more damage than they prevent by extreme Green-ism.
I, for one, agree with him. I've never seen PETA support their claims with studies, or any other form of admissable scientific data. I've not seen one shred of evidence from them that their movement would help save animals. Maddox, even though what he writes is usually flamebait, presents data, from an authority. Who's laughing now, PETA?
And what about Greenpeace? What do they have to gain by opposing all forms of unclean power? What about the damage done to the ecosystem by hydroelectric power, as the new resevoirs drastically change local climates? How is that any better than storing a little bit of radioactive material underground, in sealed casques? If these casques are properly designed, how much of that radioactivity will ever leak out? None. Compare this to the ecological damage caused by hydroelectric power.
I would move that Greenpeace should be modded Troll.
It's okay to promote environmental ethics, but protesting nuclear power because of two accidents out of several-hundred plants is like being afraid of plane travel because a few planes out of several-thousand have crashed; Especially with what we know about engineering for safe, economical nuclear power. A lot of lives could be saved--lives that are lost due to pollution-related ilnesses--if we would only lose our fear of nuclear power. Thank you Greenpeace for undermining the one form of power that has the potential, in tandem with other technologies, to enable clean, economical transportation for our children and their children.
I would like my children to know what a tree looks like, not what it looked like.
I dont have a MySpace account because it's frequented by scenesters and goths who have no real other method of networking. The real nerds use IRC and multiplayer games to network, and do it quite successfully. A lot of my friends from college have Myspace accounts because they're trendy and you can get hooked up with people really easily on there. One of my friends solicits hook-ups on there. There's nothing wrong with it, but I'm not enough of a scenester to want to use that place. If I'm really hard-up for a date or some companionship, I could always join a social club like my dad did. I just dont belong to the same cultural set that produced the Myspace movement. I hang out with them though.
Arent most, if not all tertiary sources to be avoided in undergraduate research projects? The reason they're called tertiary sources is because they sit out on the periphery of a subject, and skim the most important facts off the surface. This is true of Wikipedia, Brittanica, and every other encyclopaedia I've read.
My english instructor loves Wikipedia, but she doubtless would not accept a paper that heavily cites Wikipedia, as she would not have any sense of the authority with which any claim was posed.
Generally instructors prefer your research to go deeper beneath the surface of a subject, often into books written by authorities on the subject. You can tell when you probably shouldnt be using a source because the source does not have a name or other authority identified with it. Encyclopaedias, even Wikipedia, are good places to start to get an overview of a subject, but they are not the end-all be-all of human knowledge.
Hell, even periodical databases can be filled with meaningless information. Half the "articles" posted in ProQuest and EBSCOHost on the history of mathematics are actually book reviews. If I had had time though, the book reviews would've been useful as pointers to something with a bit more authority.
What a researcher should be looking for in a source isnt just information. Anyone can give you information, and it can be bad information or good information. What you should be looking for in a source is the level of authority with which someone speaks. I certainly would doubt the level of research that a lay-person has done into the history of Algebra, and would not cite any of that in any of my papers.
Slashdot Mirror
Mods, why is this marked "Troll?" I think he makes some interesting points. If you dont agree with what he has to say, respond to him. Dont hide behind your mod points.
What's at the real heart of that issue is that Microsoft Word does not and never has interoperated with anything without reverse engineering or hacking. I have entire labs that, though converted from the ODT format to Microsoft Word, will not display any of my equation objects correctly and do not allow me to convert on a non-Math-Type-enabled machine.
If every software had different implementations of the same ultimate functionality, then there would be no monoculture, as one man's implementation of something may be subject to a bug that another man's implementation is not. That is what is meant by reference to a software monoculture.
In the case of MS Word, the users of that will eventually get screwed royally becuase they're locked in, while ODF users have full access to the standard by which the ODF files are written. Thus, anyone who has ODF files can write a document viewer. If Microsoft were to die out over the next decade, all the documents(including government documents) that were written using it would either have to be converted, or a hack would have to be developed, or Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom and as a nicety to the community which used it at one point, would release the standard for its document format.
In programming there are several different ways to implement the same thing, even within the same language. If you factor in the number of languages available, you have a staggering number of possible implementations of the same functionality. The functionality will be the same, yes, but the means toward that functionality will be different.
Are you trying to use MLA style citations? The proper way to do those is to put the period after the parentheses, and the parentheses after the quotation.
Thus:
"Blarg! I am dead"(Brian Clevenger).
There's also APA, Chicago, and footnotes/endnotes. There really is no "right" way to cite a work. Just see that you cite it somehow.
"A little learning is a dang'rous thing.
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring."
~Alexander Pope
For the dense, I'm saying that a blogger is about as useful a source of information as a journalist. For real information, go to peer-reviewed journals, or even books. Journals and books reviewed by people who have degrees in the field the writer writes in are preferred sources. It's very easy for a blogger or a journalist to make an faulty assertion based on their incomplete knowledge, but very hard for a PhD to make a faulty assertion based on their complete knowledge.
Though yes, professors sometimes make mistakes. Still, bloggers are not somehow better than journalists just because they're enthusiasts in the area that they're blogging.
"I can't believe how many people are complaining about this thing being overpriced when it's being sold at a loss of between 100 and 200 dollars depending on who you ask. Yes it is expensive for a game console, but come on, there are graphics cards that cost that much."
/. People who are going on and on about how Blu-ray isn't going to win and they don't want to commit don't seem to be taking into account that by 2007 there are going to be 4 million blu ray players all over the world. Who wants a High Def video format? People with HDTV's who tend to be more price insensitive than the general populace and also tend to buy the most advanced technology."
.065% of the world's population. That's a considerable target audience.
Those of us complaining are not buying your $700 graphics card. In fact, with that attitude Sony might as well change their Playstation line's motto to "Not for everyone."
"The other thing people don't really seem to consider is that Sony has a track record for supporting their consoles. They are still going to be releasing exclusive games for the PS2 when the PS3 is being released. There hasn't been a noteworthy xbox game out since like Halo 2. Oh yeah, and it will play all PS1 and PS2 games, not that crappy emulation the 360 has. And online doesn't cost anything, and might even be decent this time around."
Funny you should mention their track record, since my old style PS2 with the HDD bay was so poorly manufactured that dust would get on the lens. I googled the problem, and Sony wasnt even providing any information on this issue. The only thing I could do since it wasnt within warranty was pay to have it shipped back to Sony so that I could then buy a refurbished PS2 for $100. I did what any sensible customer would do, and cracked it open to clean off the lens my own damn self.
"I never thought I'd see so much hatred for a linux box on
Wow. 4 million? Gee. That's only
"People are saying that there's no way a game is ever going to run over 1 DVD? I will bet anyone any amount of money that the new Final Fantasy game will. How many minutes of HD cutscenes can you fit on a dvd? It might even require a dual layer disk. Microsoft can back HDDVD all they want, they can give out their expansion drives for free and it won't matter. The PS3 is steep, but it will be useful for far longer than the 360. I'm going to preorder now so that I can get one by 2k7."
Ya~y, cutscenes! More non-interactivity! And FYI, if you're talking about FFXII, that's coming out on the PS2. Aldo, FYI there have been a number of dual-layer PS2 games already.
I think I'll be stepping back to let people like you decide the outcome of the format war. Those of us who dont care will be over here, playing with our Wii~ and laughing all the way to the bank.
I wish I had mod points for this flamebait.
15 minutes can save you 15% on your car insurance!
Did somebody say SEGA? You mean I can finally play old Genesis games on something? Rock on Nintendo! I'd rather get a Wii than a new computer if that's the case.
Also, the survey only concerned a subset of the gaming group: Those gamers subscribed to IGN. The broad generalization of this group to the general gaming populace is total bullshit, as there is some significant self-selection bias in the sample group. For one thing, you had to be an IGN subscriber. Two, you had to volunteer to do the survey. I'm sure they've got millions of subscribers, but sample size alone doesnt guarentee a representative sample. If I went out and queried 3 million latinos about racism in the world, I would get a slanted response versus querying a random sample.
There is also no general control group. It would've been a more interesting survey had IGN asked their group to rank consoles according to their preference, rank various games, movies, and other lifestyle rubbish according to preference, etc.. As it is, the survey is meaningless.
I certainly wouldnt use it as justification for a purchase.
Also, the Gamasutra article seems to be a verbatim partial-copy of the press-release.
Actually, China is more likely to just ask for personal information for a player, rather than ask for an outright ban. A mere ban isnt enough action on their part, and would require Blizzard to take steps to determine whether or not the player really is Chinese. Blizzard would be more likely to Yahoo! some personal information and get players arrested. This would also sit well with the Chinese government, who would rather personally exert control over thought and action.
Are you referring to the electrical field generated by the electrodes in the channels?
The ions themselves dont generate an E-field large enough to affect anything above the molecular scale. And I would assume that the engineers have designed the channel so that there is no E-field present outside of the channel, which is entirely possible.
Essentially what they're doing on a large scale is moving electric dipoles using several differences in potential. The really cool thing about taking advantage of water's dipole nature is that you can move it in the presence of an E-field, just like any other collection of charge, and without any manipulation of the molecule. This means you could take clean tap water and use it(ignoring the large particulates in the solution). The article really isnt clear on the science, as with any news article.
Does anyone know anyone who knows anyone who works on this team? I'd be interested to see some of their research.
More importantly, can someone chime in on this? I'm still studying electricity and magnetism.
Wait, you mean you cant selectively choose to not install this update like I did this morning?
Ahh... mIRC. It's a shame the XiRCON is no longer being scripted for, as mIRC is essentially a clone with a few features added.
Guess I wont be touching it with a ten-foot pole then. Thanks for sharing man, much appreciated.
I remember playing FFXI, and they were a lot worse than WoW is about providing information to their customers. Many times, I'd get some piece of news in my squenix mailbox with such hugely informative details as:
-There was a server outage somewhere.
-We are attempting to fix this problem, and would ask you to be patient.
-That is all.
I've been very disappointed with the current crop of MMOs because of the sheer lack of information about the internal structure of the game. I'm not asking to see their entire network layout just because I'm a subscriber, but I grew up with MMOs where the design team would write out 2 pages of information on why the server went down, what they did to fix it, how it has impacted players, and what they've done to make it up to us.
Once in the formative years of Asheron's Call, the development team discovered that the servers werent actually backing up any of the database information because of a bug in the code base that didn't delete old database entries. Essentially, their backup disks filled up and they had to repopulate the database with the latest out of date information and fix the bug. So, they gave their playerbase free experience to compensate.
Blizzard's explanation of issues and fixes consisted routinely of "There was an issue in which one of our servers was brought down. This has been fixed. Have a nice day." It doesnt matter that we dont need to know this information. It is comforting to know that someone, somewhere, knows what the hell is going on and how to fix it. That instills confidence.
I'm no longer a customer of Blizzard. I am, however, interested in seeing how D&D Online is as it's a Turbine game--the same house that made Asheron's Call.
Not in my state. 16 is the age of consent, and while the consenting minor is still a minor, there can be a 5 year age seperation between the two consenting to sex. The age seperation is, of course, up in age. It's still statutory rape if he/she is below 16 and you're above but not by 5 years.
Though I agree that whoever keeps using that survey needs to cite some goddamn research before they go around spreading the information. Statistics taken out of context are as dangerous to discussions as saccharin is to lab rats.
I think the parent is referring to the fact that he would like to graph things using SVG. I know that if I lowered the accuracy of a graph in a scientific document, it could lead to some very embarassing explanations. For graphing, you should not have to compromise accuracy or precision for a smaller filesize.
If he just wants the image, then reducing the accuracy would definately work wonders. If he's not, then I know of some developers who might want to add a niche group to their list of targets.
Here's what you do:
1.) Build a massive rocket launch platform somewhere on the equator.
2.) Load up a bunch of nuclear waste inside the rocket on the pad.
3.) Wait for the pad to be just on the cusp of daybreak, then launch the rocket toward the sun. The earth's rotational momentum has just given you a cheap boost.
4.) ???
5.) Profit.
We couldnt get the sharks, sir.
What do we have then?
Sea-bass.
Are they ill-tempered?
Very.
Some of us quit playing World of Timesink and FFXI because both games had the capacity to eat our schedules whole. I got into a high-level raiding guild last college quarter, and I had to quit two weeks into the quarter because I realised that I wasnt going to be able to participate in everything they did and still go to all my classes.
The problem that I had with FFXI was their requirement of a 5-person party for everything. I didnt enjoy having to sit in zones typing "42THF LFP" for an hour so that I could spend 30 minutes getting crap experience before someone screwed up and wiped the entire group. Skilled parties in FFXI were so few and far between for me that I clearly remember what the party was composed of, and why it didnt suck.
There was also a huge problem I had with the subjob eliteists who would not accept me into their party without a specific job/subjob combination. It was really annoying getting invited, then removed because I was subbing Warrior and they wanted that extra 4 DEX from an offhand. Nevermind that my damage from Sneak/Trick was capped anyway, so even if I had more +DEX/+AGI gear, I could never actually break the cap.
Finally, I quit playing THF and started leveling WAR, then eventually I just quit because I realised that there was nothing I could do with less than an 8 hour time investment.
Both games have their problems. WoW's problem centers more around the complete lack of casual content. They say they're designing a casual-friendly game, then they turn around at endgame and dont release any dungeons for less than 20 people. When they do release small-group endgame dungeons, the equipment provided is not consistent with the rest of the endgame. Their solution to casual-friendly playing is to not give casuals any decent equipment. Then they dont seperate people into different battlegrounds, so the hardcore players grind casuals all day.
Does anyone remember Asheron's Call, the MMO with regular monthly storyline updates including new content, and new storyline? At one point in this game, PvP players were defending a crystal from other PvP players, and the developers had promised that any server on which the crystal was not broken would have a completely different storyline. The only reason there was an Asheron's Call expansion was because there was too much content to release a patch and have it finish downloading in a reasonable amount of time.
AC was also the only MMO that I could play casually and have fun doing it. You could spend hours going over your plan for your character, because there were so many options. I heard that later on it started sucking, especially when they introduced NPC "buffers" in town and other time-saving methods that eliminated the need for knowing magic schools. But early on, it rocked being a fistfighter who knew 3 schools of magic.
The AC team would also host monthly developer chats where they would query users as to what would be an interesting add. And they also used their judgement as developers as to what they would add, too. I remember one update the development team added "blunt swords" which were staff weapons, to placate a request.
Episodic gaming doesnt have to take the form of releasing multiple expansions to deliver storyline. AC was quite successful as an MMO. AC2 is a different story. If there is one game that I wish I could go back to and play all over again, it would be Asheron's Call.
To hell with your fishing sidequests, your quest grinding, your search for the Large Crisp Basilisk Urethra for that recipie. Just let me whip up some healing meat pies and go slay buggies for an hour while I kick back after a long study session. That would be MMO heaven. That was Asheron's Call.
A remake of Star Ocean 2 for the DS, maybe with some hot Cart swapping action would be awesome. While we're at it, why not remake a bunch of the old PSX RPGs for the DS? The graphics are slightly better, and some of the sprite-based ones like Persona 2 and Star Ocean 2 would be a really fun play, especially if they hacked in save-anywhere features so that you could play it when you have time to kill. Tales of Eternia anyone?
Why is this modded troll? He's making a perfectly valid point that PETA and Greenpeace, are actually doing more damage than they prevent by extreme Green-ism.
I, for one, agree with him. I've never seen PETA support their claims with studies, or any other form of admissable scientific data. I've not seen one shred of evidence from them that their movement would help save animals. Maddox, even though what he writes is usually flamebait, presents data, from an authority. Who's laughing now, PETA?
http://maddox.xmission.com/hatemail.cgi
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=gr ill
And what about Greenpeace? What do they have to gain by opposing all forms of unclean power? What about the damage done to the ecosystem by hydroelectric power, as the new resevoirs drastically change local climates? How is that any better than storing a little bit of radioactive material underground, in sealed casques? If these casques are properly designed, how much of that radioactivity will ever leak out? None. Compare this to the ecological damage caused by hydroelectric power.
I would move that Greenpeace should be modded Troll.
It's okay to promote environmental ethics, but protesting nuclear power because of two accidents out of several-hundred plants is like being afraid of plane travel because a few planes out of several-thousand have crashed; Especially with what we know about engineering for safe, economical nuclear power. A lot of lives could be saved--lives that are lost due to pollution-related ilnesses--if we would only lose our fear of nuclear power. Thank you Greenpeace for undermining the one form of power that has the potential, in tandem with other technologies, to enable clean, economical transportation for our children and their children.
I would like my children to know what a tree looks like, not what it looked like.
I dont have a MySpace account because it's frequented by scenesters and goths who have no real other method of networking. The real nerds use IRC and multiplayer games to network, and do it quite successfully. A lot of my friends from college have Myspace accounts because they're trendy and you can get hooked up with people really easily on there. One of my friends solicits hook-ups on there. There's nothing wrong with it, but I'm not enough of a scenester to want to use that place. If I'm really hard-up for a date or some companionship, I could always join a social club like my dad did. I just dont belong to the same cultural set that produced the Myspace movement. I hang out with them though.
Arent most, if not all tertiary sources to be avoided in undergraduate research projects? The reason they're called tertiary sources is because they sit out on the periphery of a subject, and skim the most important facts off the surface. This is true of Wikipedia, Brittanica, and every other encyclopaedia I've read. My english instructor loves Wikipedia, but she doubtless would not accept a paper that heavily cites Wikipedia, as she would not have any sense of the authority with which any claim was posed. Generally instructors prefer your research to go deeper beneath the surface of a subject, often into books written by authorities on the subject. You can tell when you probably shouldnt be using a source because the source does not have a name or other authority identified with it. Encyclopaedias, even Wikipedia, are good places to start to get an overview of a subject, but they are not the end-all be-all of human knowledge. Hell, even periodical databases can be filled with meaningless information. Half the "articles" posted in ProQuest and EBSCOHost on the history of mathematics are actually book reviews. If I had had time though, the book reviews would've been useful as pointers to something with a bit more authority. What a researcher should be looking for in a source isnt just information. Anyone can give you information, and it can be bad information or good information. What you should be looking for in a source is the level of authority with which someone speaks. I certainly would doubt the level of research that a lay-person has done into the history of Algebra, and would not cite any of that in any of my papers.