Setting up a separate server would do nothing. The people who use this sort of software seem to be using it:
* To save time, they are too busy to level up a character and just want to get to top level so they can "play the game". These people miss the point that the game *IS* the leveling up and any end game is a bonus. * They want to get to top level and get whatever advantage they can so they can be dominant over other people - suggesting they all play on a server where they all do that is counterproductive. Its not the griefer mentality. * Cheating at a game is a sign of poor sportsmanship (a lost concept these days it seems). If someone is willing to cheat at a game, can you trust them to agree to play on a particular server where is not cheating?
I am glad they sued the living shit out of this guy and hopefully they bankrupt him. Next up they should go after his customer lists and sue the crap out of them as well. Cheating should not be tolerated, period. That leaves the rest of us who play MMOs legally to enjoy our balanced and fair gameplay if we can find it.
No I don't actually play WOW, I thought it sucked very badly, but I am tired of seeing people cheat/exploit in games and not get punished for it when they are caught.
Long time vet of DAOC here. Warhammer is making PvP factions like DAOC (only with 2 sides, Order and Destruction), and there are forts and sieges, RvR zones as well as instanced RvR. You can level up doing RvR right from level 1, and if your side wins the overall strategic battle, you get the chance to sack the other side's capital city.
Combat is slower than DAOC so there is time to figure out your next move, oh and there is Collision Detection so your tanks can actually physically block a gateway etc.
Just because *you* turned to gaming as a way to avoid real life issues, that doesn't mean its true for everyone else.
There are lots of people who spend a lot of time playing games and are not adversely affected by it I suspect. Some people play games because they like the intellectual challenge of an interactive experience and not just because they want to avoid real life.
IANAL. This is why most companies spend some money developing a retention policy and planning its implementation. It requires a bit of time from every employee to decide if a piece of information is something that requires short term, long term or permanent storage but if you get people into the habit of sorting things like email into folders that reflect the company retention policies (which need to be pretty clear and well planned both from an IT and a legal perspective) then you can reduce the cruft you retain considerably.
With clear policies on when the various categories of information can be safely and legally deleted you can reduce the storage costs and simplify the e-discovery phase if it comes up.
Likewise you need good planning and employee training on what to do when a Hold is placed. Ie, if your company enters litigation, you will place a hold on data deletion and *NOTHING* gets deleted so that the courts can't find you guilty of attempting to hide information from them in a litigation.
Any company that doesn't come up with a retention policy that takes everything into consideration, doesn't train its employees on those policies and doesn't practice what it has decided will be its policy is in for a world of hurt when suddenly its in court and has to produce emails from a specific individual or individuals from 3 years ago etc.
If your employees can generate 10Gb of data during the course of a year, then they can learn how to apply retention principles to it while they do so. Its just one more aspect of the job.
Now there are various attempts at software to automatically filter and organize your data - email and documents etc - according to key words and phrases, email addresses etc. I believe some of them are pretty well evolved and take a lot of the burden off your employees - and cover you when those employees can't be bothered to do what they should be doing according to the rules, but I have no experience with how well these work.
Despite the lurid title, its a fairly scholarly work written by a respectable scholar with ample footnotes and examples.
Witches were hung in England, but burnt in much of Europe and Scotland. There were not as many so killed as people think, but in places like Germany it was still pretty frightening. From what I recall, most of the trials and executions for Witchcraft took place in the 1500-1700s mostlly, well after the Dark Ages (in fact in the supposed Age of Enlightenment).
I would like a source on your claim that it was not done by the Church, as I believe in Europe that that was the case. In England not so much no, done by the so-called Witch-finders who were not officially sanctioned I think, but then we are talking Protestants as well so no organized church hierarchy.
Mind you the church mostly burnt heretics, ie the Cathars and Albegensians etc.
Well to be honest, Star Wars Galaxies in its earliest incarnation had a lot of "simulation" elements in it.
* Creatures spawned in the wilderness and wandered around alone or in groups. If you killed them off, they would be replaced by other mobs but not in the same location. * The economy was entirely player driven. if you wanted something, you got a crafter to make it or bought it from their vendor. There was essentially no looted items. It worked fantastically in many cases, although some items were very hard to sell and almost useless when bought. The economy was entirely market driven, and there were multiple crafting and trading classes who only produced things and engaged in trading, marketing etc.
Sadly, in subsequent versions of the game SOE/Lucas Arts removed pretty much every decent and functional element of the game and replaced with something incredibly simplistic and mostly pointless. Thats true for the entirety of the game which is now the shadow of the shadow of its former self.
Even then its more engaging in some ways than much more popular games, if you are the type to prefer a sandbox. Personally I *hate* having quests shoved down my throat and having to zone continuously every time I cross a map. Instances suck, period.
The original SWG was a classic example of a "sandbox" game, but they are sadly getting increasingly rare - in fact EVE is the only one I can think of, although Rycom (if thats the right name) probably qualifies. Vanguard might qualify too not sure.
The problem is that WOW is the antithesis of a sandbox game, and because it was so spectacularly popular, every game that comes out after it will emulate it and eschew sandboxy design I think. Certainly WAR is not a sandbox at all.
Re:Can you change the world in MMO's?
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Quests
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What you are describing is in part a sandbox game, like for example Star Wars Galaxies in its first incarnation. Yes, it did include quests which were much as you describe and entirely fixed, but it also had usergenerated content in the form of the crafting system, the player cities (which are right on the world map not in some instanced environment), and the world itself was huge in most cases (crossing Tatooine on foot in the original game would take hours and be extremely hazardous, even with vehicles (introduced later on) it would take a while to get around.
MMOs need the same level of development for the rest of the ingame content - it needs to be emergent from player actions, the mobs need to have sufficient AI to base their actions upon circumstances in game. Then a quest can consist of "go and get the Blurg from the Blorgs" and where the blorgs are and how many there are is entirely based on all the other factors in game that may have affected their population and location. If someone else steals the Blurg first, then you will learn about it and have to get it from them etc. If everyone is out camping the Blorgs, they will move on to a different location to escape the horde of campers etc.
So far no game that I know of has anything remotely approaching an emergent NPC AI, almost all follow some very basic logic for their actions and if destroyed they simply respawn later on. This would be a huge leap forward for MMOs but I doubt we will see it anytime soon.
Sadly the typical MMO player seems to have low asperations - they want to be the biggest, baddest bastard out there and go grief other players continuously. They don't want to quest but will do so if its quicker than grinding up levels, but overall would prefer to be handed a max level character from scratch. They want the best gear, certainly better than everyone else, but resent the time and effort required to earn it.They don't want to read text at all, so following a storyline is out of the question, they prefer to read a step-by-step summary guide that lets them get the quest done with the minimum fuss and risk so they get the awesome lootz0r at the end before anyone else.
MMOs are being built for a grade 8 mentality (which is probably fair given the current intelligence of many players I have encountered), and are being made steadily simpler and simpler rather than more complex. Only a segment of the playerbase for most games wants things complex it seems. The rest just want to play endless games of counterstrik^H^H Capture the Flag in an instanced PvP zone.
Oh and the typical MMO player likes to pick a really stupid name like "IlikeCornflakes" or "Monosodium Glutamate" for their characters. Not your parents Roleplaying crowd:P
But Big Oil and the other friends of Dick Cheney have made their record profits and thats whats important:P
In the meantime you have apparently switched from Democracy to some sort of Oligarchy over the past 8 years. Hopefully the coming election a) occurs, and b) rectifies the situation. Even then I have to wonder if it will shift the real control of government and US policy back into the hands of the elected officials and not their minders.
Yes, its very sad that the current government in the US was willing to piss away your economic, scientific and cultural future just to provide immense profits to various corporations.
I was thinking more of articles like this one:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24468-2005Feb14.html
I read a great article on the subject a few weeks ago, that detailed how much of the several trillion dollars have been sunk into Iraq have been scammed by big military contractors, but alas I can't find it again. If I recall correctly it was estimated at around 20% of those trillions - so billions of dollars. I could easily be wrong though as I don't have the article to hand and one tends to inflate values in memory.
Heres another article as well:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050930/news_lz1e30cray.html
And another:
http://www.propublica.org/scandal/military-contractor-abuse/
Companies like Haliburton and Blackwater (and dozens more) are making money hand over fist, screwing the US public out of those dollars, and they have a strong lobby support and friends in government (who will no doubt retire as members of the BOD for these companies by way of thanks). Its a *huge* scam, and the US public are the victims in this.
That's why you are at war in Iraq currently. Its also why i expect that if you pull out of Iraq, you will end up somewhere else, because the money has to keep rolling into the hands of these companies.
You may think your Medicare system and other social programs are eating up tons of cash, and undoubtedly they are - but at least they improve the lives of American citizens. Contracts to Haliburton and other similar companies merely line the pockets of their corporate owners. The money currently being doled out in plastic wrapped bundles of $100k each could be spent to decrease the cost of the medical system, create jobs for those who are unemployed, start new companies that produce useful services for US citizens at home etc, rather than being spent on wasteful contract services (like paying a company 15m a month to guard flights for a month where no such flights landed etc).
"People in many western countries have an expectation that governments and businesses behave in a mostly honorable manner."
Sorry, I have no such expectation. I expect government will behave in accordance with the will of the corporations who got the politicians elected and who pay them good money. I expect that *every* politician is corrupt until proven innocent
The US for instance is currently ruled by representatives of Big Oil and private military corporations that are sucking trillions out of the hands of the US taxpayers. With that kind of money available its no wonder there is corruption abounding. When the Iraq war winds up, you can expect another one to follow because the companies making all that money at the moment will not be likely to stand for a peace. Its too good a racket
No, in most cases the purpose behind a war is to gain something, usually resources or control over resources, ports etc. While individually soldiers may be conditioned to hate the enemy as a motivation for them to keep fighting, at the national level its usually a matter of enforcing Government policy by using the military because other options seem non-viable.
While the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia probably do want to join Russia and the majority probably do view themselves as Russians and not Georgians, I would almost guarantee there is a strong economic reason for Russian to move into those areas as well - oil perhaps? Access to decent port facilities? I am really not sure, but I am sorry to say most countries do not go to war for their ideals, they go to war because they forsee significant gain for themselves - or because they are forced to defend themselves from others who see the same in their country.
Personally, I think from what I have seen so far, Russia had sufficient causus bellii in that Georgia invaded South Ossetia first and Russia was responding to that threat, but I would love to see more. Unfortunately details coming out to the news services seem to be pretty minimal so far (or simply not as important to the news services profits as concentrating on reporting about some ass named Edwards).
I am highly thankful I live in Victoria, BC and the commute to work via bus is a mere 15-25 mins, or about a 5-10 min drive. We have an okay bus system, but no rapid transit at all - and that would be a huge improvement for the folks living out in Langford and Sooke, or up the peninsula towards Sydney.
The problem I see I think is that we still have this insistence on companies being in the downtown core of a city, or in poorly serviced industrial parks. There is no *point* to the downtown core of a city in light of high speed communications and the internet etc. If we insisted on building good highspeed commuting systems based around hubs with bus systems focused on getting people to those hubs and encouraged people NOT to drive to work, then provided those hubs with suitable areas for industrial and commercial development with incentives for large companies to relocate there, we might make it possible for people to live in a more distributed environment and reduce the rediculous costs of housing that we see at the moment. Victoria could use a Skytrain like system already yet there are no plans to make anything even remotely like it and they keep raising the price of the busses:P
As it stands, I would never want to live in Vancouver again, simply because the cost of living anywhere remotely desirable is far too high and the places I am likely to be employed are going to be primarily in downtown Vancouver.
"fix things, instead of replacing them"
That would require manufacturers and engineers to design things which are cheaper to fix (or even possible to fix) instead of things which are cheaper to dispose of and replace. Since said engineers and companies are in the business of selling *more* widgets, I see no reason why they would want to do this, unless they can control the manufacture and sale of the replacements parts and tools - in which case its likely they would raise the price on both because they have the market cornered. Otherwise its more logical (from a Capitalist perspective) to manufacture things which need to be replaced on a regular basis to ensure future sales. Capitalism and Green are I think mutually exclusive in many cases. Otherwise we would have lightbulbs that lasted for 20 years but cost just a little more than current bulbs - which I am sure can be made if someone wanted to make them. Instead if you buy the longer lasting ones, they cost twice as much or more than the cheap ones.
Until the US devises and deploys the first UGS (Unmanned Guilded Soldier) robots on the ground. Then going to war essentially means the US sets up a secure base on the ground and a bunch of highschool grads play video games until they run out of "lives" (err, UGS units) or the enemy all dies and they beat the level, err win the war
On a side note: why don't comments support the html DEL tag?
and finally can you imagine a UAV with a naked Natalie Portman, covered in hot grits.
You know, as a Canadian, I don't have the slightest idea what grits really are, let alone why you would want to cover up a naked Natalie Portman with them, other than presumably so you could then eat them off her body. If so why grits? why not chocolate, or steak, or even forgo the food element entirely:P
Because we have cheap universal health care, a strong economy, a low crime rate, everyone isn't armed to the teeth or carrying a concealed weapon, we aren't the perceived and hated enemy of most of the third world, our dollar is worth more than yours (although only marginally so), and generally we are a very likable and polite society? Because while we have an asshole in power at the moment (Prime Minister Stephen Harper) at least he isn't a complete criminal who should be impeached for violating his country's laws and his inauguration oath (as I see a lot of people claiming of GB Jr south of the border)? Because we don't have a DHS that is absolutely paranoid and prone to abuse its authority when you pass through the airport? Because in a National Geographic survey of the best and worst places to live (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/photogalleries/country-pictures/index.html?email=Places14Dec07) we ranked 4th in the world after Iceland, Norway, Australia, and the US ranked 12th(having dropped from 8th place in 2006)?
As well its worth noting we are our own independent country, and quite proud of it even if we don't shout it out loud the way many US citizens seem to do, so calling us "America Jr" is a shallow and meaningless insult. Canadians are very aware of how distinct we are from the US, and quite conscious of how pervading an influence US culture can be in overwhelming what makes us Canadian, but few if any consider that influence to be a good thing. The US has nothing to offer us that we don't already have.
Well actually they appear to be in a minor war in Georgia over South Ossetia. Tanks have rolled across the border etc. Thats a good little warm up right there.
I have made the purchases of course, knowing that I would want to get an HDTV eventually, my wife and I went and bought a good one that should last us a while. We also got a PS3 after careful consideration, and I have to say the Blu-Ray movies are *much* better than regular DVD in my opinion. I don't regret either purchase to be honest, but they are expensive pieces of hardware at the moment I admit.
Of course once you are used to it, the difference is mostly noticeable when you go *back* to viewing regular DVDs or TV broadcasts. The difference between the Digital TV and HDTV while still noticeable is much less and much less noticeable.
I think its mostly that the cost is too high for most people to want to pay for. Geeks are probably more inclined to shell out for good equipment in the first place and I would expect them to be early adopters as a result.
If I am an anti-virus company looking for developers, why would I possibly turn away programmers who took a course on virus development? It was a sanctioned computer course at a college or university, it would seem to me that these would be *exactly* the people you want. They should have a better understanding of how a virus developer thinks and thus have a head start on combating future viruses. Yes, it may be that some took that course because they were interested in writing malware, but many will have taken it because they want to know how to fight it. I think only a moronic close-minded company would turn these people away just because they took a course.
Its like the Dept of Justice not hiring people who took a course on criminology because they might cause a crime.
Thats the norm for all MMOs it seems. View the actual game content that you are *supposed to be enjoying* as "grind", then get to the "end game" and whine there is nothing to do. I have seen this in many people in pretty much every MMO.
Its a power thing for people I think. They don't want to compete at anything less than a level field (or preferably one that favours them) and they don't want a challenge. Its perhaps a reflection of the instant-gratification nature of our society on one hand, and the competitive nature of our society on the other. I read an article recently that was saying that pretty much every aspect of North American society is viewed as a competition these days. We have somehow concluded that we are losers if we don't compete at everything and don't win at it as well.
At the same time few players are willing to admit they have anything to learn when it comes to playing MMOs as well - so they fail to learn from their experiences and fail to learn from others. As a result the often suck very badly when playing in groups. I am sure it seems even more apparent in WOW given the number of players present.
I enjoy playing the game to play the game - leveling up a character to max means simply that I am likely to stop playing that character. The "End game" content of most games seems to be grinding to engage in PvP - and quite frankly I have no desire to associate with the typical PvP oriented player. The vast majority are complete fuckwit assholes, and they occlude the decent and competitive PvPers I wouldn't mind playing with. People also take PvP competition far far too seriously I think. PvP was fun in its earliest incarnation in DAOC for instance, until they introduced Realm Points and Realm Point Skills and suddenly we weren't fighting the enemy because they were the enemy, we were fighting them so we could personally gain more power and abilities. That ruined RvR in DAOC in the long run.
If you find you don't have a lot of time to play during a typical week, why not consider a more casual friendly MMO? City of Heroes/City of Villains is very casual friendly in the sense that you can login, play for an hour or so and know you accomplished something towards leveling your character. You can easily find a PUG on most servers, although the quality of players varies considerably and finding a good guild - Supergroup in COH parlance - is a good idea if you find you like the game.
The combat system is first rate, the grouped combat is awesome, almost any character type (Archetype or AT in COH parlance) is capable of soloing - although more support oriented classes are slower at it of course, and the game can be quite addicting once you get used to it. There are still tons of low level characters being leveled up that you can group with (the game is very prone to Altitis and many people are constantly making new characters). You can have a lot of characters per server so you can try out many of the ATs to see what suits you etc.
Its not a big PvP game, although PvP is available in special zones, but you are also never forced to PvP. Gameplay consists mainly of getting and completing missions (usually takes about 10-20 mins to complete a typical mission) and Task Forces (takes much longer as they are a series of missions for a group and you can't take regular missions until you complete the TF or quit it).
It has collision detection - unlike the majority of MMOs - and this is a major attraction for me an my friends. You can actually physically block a door with your character and contain the mobs etc, they can't just run through you, and you can't run through your teammates. The combat system is well designed, and each character has a definite role in most groups, although it can vary depending on your spec).
Its not for everyone, but its a great game, one of the best designed MMOs out there IMHO, and after years its still going strong and they are still adding (free) content to the game on a regular basis. It takes very little time to figure out how things work but there is enough depth that it takes a while to master a particular set of powers.
I expect the required rules for security of the data were likely in place and applicable to most employees. It would take a special kind of stupid to not have some security rules.
But those rules seldom are applied to upper echelon management who can simply say they want data X in a readable format (probably an Excel spreadsheet) put on that laptop for their trip etc. The higher you are in an organization it seems the less likely you are to think the rules apply to *you*.
Either that or this "theft" is a convenient way to explain how the data got into the hands of a commercial enterprise that purchased the data via a bribe on the side.
In any case, the CEO's of the company all the way down to the employee who lost the data should all be fined and given jail time. I know that won't happen, but it is what should happen.
Tai Chi is essentially a form of Kung Fu slowed down to maximize the exercise potential and lessen the strain on your body.
Once you have learned the essential 108 movements (its all one long cycle that puts you back where you are started, but is learned as 108 or so individual moves), you have a routine that will exercise pretty much every muscle in your body, looks cool, and requires no equipment to perform in, any stretch of ground/grass/parkinglot with a roughly 15x15 ft area free would probably do.
Its been very popular in China for centuries and obviously works quite well, given the number of old people you see doing it in droves there.
Actually I was just developing a pair of websites for them and I have no stake in what they do for a living, nor in how they do it. I merely picked up some of the information as a result of posting content into the pages and designing the website. I am no longer associated with the company in any way and will not make any financial gain, nor do I expect to ever work for them again. I was merely trying to be helpful:P
I do not work consulting in this area, and am currently employed full time elsewhere developing a private school intranet.
Thanks for interpreting my comments as being entirely self-centered, and in my own personal interest etc. I often forget that on the internet everyone assumes you are an ass automatically.
Read up on Discovery disasters as related to email though and see how many companies ended up paying massive fines or losing cases because they chose poorly when deciding how to deal with email, and you might realize my intentions were well meaning. If the OPs company goes ahead with their intended retention policy, it will stand a good chance of biting them in the butt someday and could potentially cost them millions (if for instance a Judge decides a particular email is extremly important to a case and decides that he/she should grant the request to have *all* the company computers seized so they can be searched for the missing email content, and the OP's company's expense).
Caveat: IANAL, but I used to work as a consultant for a company that helped with retention policies and the like. From what I recall, just deciding to delete all email over 180 days does not comprise a decent retention policy. I believe you are expected to keep all emails that contain data related to the conduct of your business for a reasonable period of time, and sometimes (depending on the industry) for specific periods of time.
Yes, deleting your email after a fixed period of time and consistently following that practice can be considered an Email Retention policy, but the one point I recall hearing hammered home was that "30/60/90 is not a retention policy" (referring to stages of retaining emails). If I recall correctly the consensus was that email should be retained for varying lengths of time based on the importance of the contents and that some mail should be kept indefinitely depending on legislation and subject matter.
If you get hit with a lawsuit and during the discovery phase of the trial are unable to produce critical email because you had a policy of just deleting it after X days, the Judge may tend to favor the other side on the assumption that you did so deliberately. You should really consult with a legal firm that specializes in crafting suitable retention policies rather than just adopting a blanket policy like that. In my unqualified opinion, just adopting a blanket policy of deleting all email content, regardless of content, after X days might imply to a judge that your company really didn't give it adequate thought and the relatively short period might imply that you thought email might contain incriminating content you preferred to hide. Remember that the company who sues you will most likely retain those emails longer than you, giving the impression you were nervous about the email's content when you deleted it.
If a company corresponds with another company via email, and in the course of doing so uses an email message to reach a business agreement, that email is I believe considered a legal document. If you go ahead and do the work but are unable to produce the agreement to do so down the road, you might end up unpaid at the least. If things go badly you might end up liable for damages etc. Business email should not be casually deleted. Your retention policy should, I believe, differentiate between unimportant email that doesn't deal with business matters, moderately important stuff that you might want to retain, and important correspondence that you will want to keep until long after its relevant.
Here is the company I was associated with. I am sure they are not the only ones you can talk to, but they might be a good place to start:
Slashdot Mirror
Setting up a separate server would do nothing. The people who use this sort of software seem to be using it:
* To save time, they are too busy to level up a character and just want to get to top level so they can "play the game". These people miss the point that the game *IS* the leveling up and any end game is a bonus.
* They want to get to top level and get whatever advantage they can so they can be dominant over other people - suggesting they all play on a server where they all do that is counterproductive. Its not the griefer mentality.
* Cheating at a game is a sign of poor sportsmanship (a lost concept these days it seems). If someone is willing to cheat at a game, can you trust them to agree to play on a particular server where is not cheating?
I am glad they sued the living shit out of this guy and hopefully they bankrupt him. Next up they should go after his customer lists and sue the crap out of them as well. Cheating should not be tolerated, period. That leaves the rest of us who play MMOs legally to enjoy our balanced and fair gameplay if we can find it.
No I don't actually play WOW, I thought it sucked very badly, but I am tired of seeing people cheat/exploit in games and not get punished for it when they are caught.
Long time vet of DAOC here. Warhammer is making PvP factions like DAOC (only with 2 sides, Order and Destruction), and there are forts and sieges, RvR zones as well as instanced RvR. You can level up doing RvR right from level 1, and if your side wins the overall strategic battle, you get the chance to sack the other side's capital city.
Combat is slower than DAOC so there is time to figure out your next move, oh and there is Collision Detection so your tanks can actually physically block a gateway etc.
Just because *you* turned to gaming as a way to avoid real life issues, that doesn't mean its true for everyone else.
There are lots of people who spend a lot of time playing games and are not adversely affected by it I suspect. Some people play games because they like the intellectual challenge of an interactive experience and not just because they want to avoid real life.
IANAL. This is why most companies spend some money developing a retention policy and planning its implementation. It requires a bit of time from every employee to decide if a piece of information is something that requires short term, long term or permanent storage but if you get people into the habit of sorting things like email into folders that reflect the company retention policies (which need to be pretty clear and well planned both from an IT and a legal perspective) then you can reduce the cruft you retain considerably.
With clear policies on when the various categories of information can be safely and legally deleted you can reduce the storage costs and simplify the e-discovery phase if it comes up.
Likewise you need good planning and employee training on what to do when a Hold is placed. Ie, if your company enters litigation, you will place a hold on data deletion and *NOTHING* gets deleted so that the courts can't find you guilty of attempting to hide information from them in a litigation.
Any company that doesn't come up with a retention policy that takes everything into consideration, doesn't train its employees on those policies and doesn't practice what it has decided will be its policy is in for a world of hurt when suddenly its in court and has to produce emails from a specific individual or individuals from 3 years ago etc.
If your employees can generate 10Gb of data during the course of a year, then they can learn how to apply retention principles to it while they do so. Its just one more aspect of the job.
Now there are various attempts at software to automatically filter and organize your data - email and documents etc - according to key words and phrases, email addresses etc. I believe some of them are pretty well evolved and take a lot of the burden off your employees - and cover you when those employees can't be bothered to do what they should be doing according to the rules, but I have no experience with how well these work.
Here's an article on email retention (from a quick google search, no idea how well its written)
http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid5_gci1212767,00.html
If you want a good source on this, try this book:
http://www.fieldsbooks.com/cgi-bin/fields/A469.html
Despite the lurid title, its a fairly scholarly work written by a respectable scholar with ample footnotes and examples.
Witches were hung in England, but burnt in much of Europe and Scotland. There were not as many so killed as people think, but in places like Germany it was still pretty frightening. From what I recall, most of the trials and executions for Witchcraft took place in the 1500-1700s mostlly, well after the Dark Ages (in fact in the supposed Age of Enlightenment).
I would like a source on your claim that it was not done by the Church, as I believe in Europe that that was the case. In England not so much no, done by the so-called Witch-finders who were not officially sanctioned I think, but then we are talking Protestants as well so no organized church hierarchy.
Mind you the church mostly burnt heretics, ie the Cathars and Albegensians etc.
Well to be honest, Star Wars Galaxies in its earliest incarnation had a lot of "simulation" elements in it.
* Creatures spawned in the wilderness and wandered around alone or in groups. If you killed them off, they would be replaced by other mobs but not in the same location.
* The economy was entirely player driven. if you wanted something, you got a crafter to make it or bought it from their vendor. There was essentially no looted items. It worked fantastically in many cases, although some items were very hard to sell and almost useless when bought. The economy was entirely market driven, and there were multiple crafting and trading classes who only produced things and engaged in trading, marketing etc.
Sadly, in subsequent versions of the game SOE/Lucas Arts removed pretty much every decent and functional element of the game and replaced with something incredibly simplistic and mostly pointless. Thats true for the entirety of the game which is now the shadow of the shadow of its former self.
Even then its more engaging in some ways than much more popular games, if you are the type to prefer a sandbox. Personally I *hate* having quests shoved down my throat and having to zone continuously every time I cross a map. Instances suck, period.
The original SWG was a classic example of a "sandbox" game, but they are sadly getting increasingly rare - in fact EVE is the only one I can think of, although Rycom (if thats the right name) probably qualifies. Vanguard might qualify too not sure.
The problem is that WOW is the antithesis of a sandbox game, and because it was so spectacularly popular, every game that comes out after it will emulate it and eschew sandboxy design I think. Certainly WAR is not a sandbox at all.
What you are describing is in part a sandbox game, like for example Star Wars Galaxies in its first incarnation. Yes, it did include quests which were much as you describe and entirely fixed, but it also had usergenerated content in the form of the crafting system, the player cities (which are right on the world map not in some instanced environment), and the world itself was huge in most cases (crossing Tatooine on foot in the original game would take hours and be extremely hazardous, even with vehicles (introduced later on) it would take a while to get around.
MMOs need the same level of development for the rest of the ingame content - it needs to be emergent from player actions, the mobs need to have sufficient AI to base their actions upon circumstances in game. Then a quest can consist of "go and get the Blurg from the Blorgs" and where the blorgs are and how many there are is entirely based on all the other factors in game that may have affected their population and location. If someone else steals the Blurg first, then you will learn about it and have to get it from them etc. If everyone is out camping the Blorgs, they will move on to a different location to escape the horde of campers etc.
So far no game that I know of has anything remotely approaching an emergent NPC AI, almost all follow some very basic logic for their actions and if destroyed they simply respawn later on. This would be a huge leap forward for MMOs but I doubt we will see it anytime soon.
Sadly the typical MMO player seems to have low asperations - they want to be the biggest, baddest bastard out there and go grief other players continuously. They don't want to quest but will do so if its quicker than grinding up levels, but overall would prefer to be handed a max level character from scratch. They want the best gear, certainly better than everyone else, but resent the time and effort required to earn it.They don't want to read text at all, so following a storyline is out of the question, they prefer to read a step-by-step summary guide that lets them get the quest done with the minimum fuss and risk so they get the awesome lootz0r at the end before anyone else.
MMOs are being built for a grade 8 mentality (which is probably fair given the current intelligence of many players I have encountered), and are being made steadily simpler and simpler rather than more complex. Only a segment of the playerbase for most games wants things complex it seems. The rest just want to play endless games of counterstrik^H^H Capture the Flag in an instanced PvP zone.
Oh and the typical MMO player likes to pick a really stupid name like "IlikeCornflakes" or "Monosodium Glutamate" for their characters. Not your parents Roleplaying crowd :P
But Big Oil and the other friends of Dick Cheney have made their record profits and thats whats important :P
In the meantime you have apparently switched from Democracy to some sort of Oligarchy over the past 8 years. Hopefully the coming election a) occurs, and b) rectifies the situation. Even then I have to wonder if it will shift the real control of government and US policy back into the hands of the elected officials and not their minders.
Yes, its very sad that the current government in the US was willing to piss away your economic, scientific and cultural future just to provide immense profits to various corporations.
I was thinking more of articles like this one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24468-2005Feb14.html I read a great article on the subject a few weeks ago, that detailed how much of the several trillion dollars have been sunk into Iraq have been scammed by big military contractors, but alas I can't find it again. If I recall correctly it was estimated at around 20% of those trillions - so billions of dollars. I could easily be wrong though as I don't have the article to hand and one tends to inflate values in memory. Heres another article as well: http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050930/news_lz1e30cray.html And another: http://www.propublica.org/scandal/military-contractor-abuse/ Companies like Haliburton and Blackwater (and dozens more) are making money hand over fist, screwing the US public out of those dollars, and they have a strong lobby support and friends in government (who will no doubt retire as members of the BOD for these companies by way of thanks). Its a *huge* scam, and the US public are the victims in this. That's why you are at war in Iraq currently. Its also why i expect that if you pull out of Iraq, you will end up somewhere else, because the money has to keep rolling into the hands of these companies. You may think your Medicare system and other social programs are eating up tons of cash, and undoubtedly they are - but at least they improve the lives of American citizens. Contracts to Haliburton and other similar companies merely line the pockets of their corporate owners. The money currently being doled out in plastic wrapped bundles of $100k each could be spent to decrease the cost of the medical system, create jobs for those who are unemployed, start new companies that produce useful services for US citizens at home etc, rather than being spent on wasteful contract services (like paying a company 15m a month to guard flights for a month where no such flights landed etc).
"People in many western countries have an expectation that governments and businesses behave in a mostly honorable manner."
Sorry, I have no such expectation. I expect government will behave in accordance with the will of the corporations who got the politicians elected and who pay them good money. I expect that *every* politician is corrupt until proven innocent
The US for instance is currently ruled by representatives of Big Oil and private military corporations that are sucking trillions out of the hands of the US taxpayers. With that kind of money available its no wonder there is corruption abounding. When the Iraq war winds up, you can expect another one to follow because the companies making all that money at the moment will not be likely to stand for a peace. Its too good a racket
No, in most cases the purpose behind a war is to gain something, usually resources or control over resources, ports etc. While individually soldiers may be conditioned to hate the enemy as a motivation for them to keep fighting, at the national level its usually a matter of enforcing Government policy by using the military because other options seem non-viable. While the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia probably do want to join Russia and the majority probably do view themselves as Russians and not Georgians, I would almost guarantee there is a strong economic reason for Russian to move into those areas as well - oil perhaps? Access to decent port facilities? I am really not sure, but I am sorry to say most countries do not go to war for their ideals, they go to war because they forsee significant gain for themselves - or because they are forced to defend themselves from others who see the same in their country. Personally, I think from what I have seen so far, Russia had sufficient causus bellii in that Georgia invaded South Ossetia first and Russia was responding to that threat, but I would love to see more. Unfortunately details coming out to the news services seem to be pretty minimal so far (or simply not as important to the news services profits as concentrating on reporting about some ass named Edwards).
I am highly thankful I live in Victoria, BC and the commute to work via bus is a mere 15-25 mins, or about a 5-10 min drive. We have an okay bus system, but no rapid transit at all - and that would be a huge improvement for the folks living out in Langford and Sooke, or up the peninsula towards Sydney. The problem I see I think is that we still have this insistence on companies being in the downtown core of a city, or in poorly serviced industrial parks. There is no *point* to the downtown core of a city in light of high speed communications and the internet etc. If we insisted on building good highspeed commuting systems based around hubs with bus systems focused on getting people to those hubs and encouraged people NOT to drive to work, then provided those hubs with suitable areas for industrial and commercial development with incentives for large companies to relocate there, we might make it possible for people to live in a more distributed environment and reduce the rediculous costs of housing that we see at the moment. Victoria could use a Skytrain like system already yet there are no plans to make anything even remotely like it and they keep raising the price of the busses :P
As it stands, I would never want to live in Vancouver again, simply because the cost of living anywhere remotely desirable is far too high and the places I am likely to be employed are going to be primarily in downtown Vancouver.
"fix things, instead of replacing them" That would require manufacturers and engineers to design things which are cheaper to fix (or even possible to fix) instead of things which are cheaper to dispose of and replace. Since said engineers and companies are in the business of selling *more* widgets, I see no reason why they would want to do this, unless they can control the manufacture and sale of the replacements parts and tools - in which case its likely they would raise the price on both because they have the market cornered. Otherwise its more logical (from a Capitalist perspective) to manufacture things which need to be replaced on a regular basis to ensure future sales. Capitalism and Green are I think mutually exclusive in many cases. Otherwise we would have lightbulbs that lasted for 20 years but cost just a little more than current bulbs - which I am sure can be made if someone wanted to make them. Instead if you buy the longer lasting ones, they cost twice as much or more than the cheap ones.
Until the US devises and deploys the first UGS (Unmanned Guilded Soldier) robots on the ground. Then going to war essentially means the US sets up a secure base on the ground and a bunch of highschool grads play video games until they run out of "lives" (err, UGS units) or the enemy all dies and they beat the level, err win the war
On a side note: why don't comments support the html DEL tag?
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
and finally can you imagine a UAV with a naked Natalie Portman, covered in hot grits.
You know, as a Canadian, I don't have the slightest idea what grits really are, let alone why you would want to cover up a naked Natalie Portman with them, other than presumably so you could then eat them off her body. If so why grits? why not chocolate, or steak, or even forgo the food element entirely :P
Because we have cheap universal health care, a strong economy, a low crime rate, everyone isn't armed to the teeth or carrying a concealed weapon, we aren't the perceived and hated enemy of most of the third world, our dollar is worth more than yours (although only marginally so), and generally we are a very likable and polite society? Because while we have an asshole in power at the moment (Prime Minister Stephen Harper) at least he isn't a complete criminal who should be impeached for violating his country's laws and his inauguration oath (as I see a lot of people claiming of GB Jr south of the border)? Because we don't have a DHS that is absolutely paranoid and prone to abuse its authority when you pass through the airport? Because in a National Geographic survey of the best and worst places to live (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/11/photogalleries/country-pictures/index.html?email=Places14Dec07) we ranked 4th in the world after Iceland, Norway, Australia, and the US ranked 12th(having dropped from 8th place in 2006)?
As well its worth noting we are our own independent country, and quite proud of it even if we don't shout it out loud the way many US citizens seem to do, so calling us "America Jr" is a shallow and meaningless insult. Canadians are very aware of how distinct we are from the US, and quite conscious of how pervading an influence US culture can be in overwhelming what makes us Canadian, but few if any consider that influence to be a good thing. The US has nothing to offer us that we don't already have.
Well actually they appear to be in a minor war in Georgia over South Ossetia. Tanks have rolled across the border etc. Thats a good little warm up right there.
I have made the purchases of course, knowing that I would want to get an HDTV eventually, my wife and I went and bought a good one that should last us a while. We also got a PS3 after careful consideration, and I have to say the Blu-Ray movies are *much* better than regular DVD in my opinion. I don't regret either purchase to be honest, but they are expensive pieces of hardware at the moment I admit.
Of course once you are used to it, the difference is mostly noticeable when you go *back* to viewing regular DVDs or TV broadcasts. The difference between the Digital TV and HDTV while still noticeable is much less and much less noticeable.
I think its mostly that the cost is too high for most people to want to pay for. Geeks are probably more inclined to shell out for good equipment in the first place and I would expect them to be early adopters as a result.
If I am an anti-virus company looking for developers, why would I possibly turn away programmers who took a course on virus development? It was a sanctioned computer course at a college or university, it would seem to me that these would be *exactly* the people you want. They should have a better understanding of how a virus developer thinks and thus have a head start on combating future viruses. Yes, it may be that some took that course because they were interested in writing malware, but many will have taken it because they want to know how to fight it. I think only a moronic close-minded company would turn these people away just because they took a course.
Its like the Dept of Justice not hiring people who took a course on criminology because they might cause a crime.
Thats the norm for all MMOs it seems. View the actual game content that you are *supposed to be enjoying* as "grind", then get to the "end game" and whine there is nothing to do. I have seen this in many people in pretty much every MMO.
Its a power thing for people I think. They don't want to compete at anything less than a level field (or preferably one that favours them) and they don't want a challenge. Its perhaps a reflection of the instant-gratification nature of our society on one hand, and the competitive nature of our society on the other. I read an article recently that was saying that pretty much every aspect of North American society is viewed as a competition these days. We have somehow concluded that we are losers if we don't compete at everything and don't win at it as well.
At the same time few players are willing to admit they have anything to learn when it comes to playing MMOs as well - so they fail to learn from their experiences and fail to learn from others. As a result the often suck very badly when playing in groups. I am sure it seems even more apparent in WOW given the number of players present.
I enjoy playing the game to play the game - leveling up a character to max means simply that I am likely to stop playing that character. The "End game" content of most games seems to be grinding to engage in PvP - and quite frankly I have no desire to associate with the typical PvP oriented player. The vast majority are complete fuckwit assholes, and they occlude the decent and competitive PvPers I wouldn't mind playing with. People also take PvP competition far far too seriously I think. PvP was fun in its earliest incarnation in DAOC for instance, until they introduced Realm Points and Realm Point Skills and suddenly we weren't fighting the enemy because they were the enemy, we were fighting them so we could personally gain more power and abilities. That ruined RvR in DAOC in the long run.
If you find you don't have a lot of time to play during a typical week, why not consider a more casual friendly MMO? City of Heroes/City of Villains is very casual friendly in the sense that you can login, play for an hour or so and know you accomplished something towards leveling your character. You can easily find a PUG on most servers, although the quality of players varies considerably and finding a good guild - Supergroup in COH parlance - is a good idea if you find you like the game.
The combat system is first rate, the grouped combat is awesome, almost any character type (Archetype or AT in COH parlance) is capable of soloing - although more support oriented classes are slower at it of course, and the game can be quite addicting once you get used to it. There are still tons of low level characters being leveled up that you can group with (the game is very prone to Altitis and many people are constantly making new characters). You can have a lot of characters per server so you can try out many of the ATs to see what suits you etc.
Its not a big PvP game, although PvP is available in special zones, but you are also never forced to PvP. Gameplay consists mainly of getting and completing missions (usually takes about 10-20 mins to complete a typical mission) and Task Forces (takes much longer as they are a series of missions for a group and you can't take regular missions until you complete the TF or quit it).
It has collision detection - unlike the majority of MMOs - and this is a major attraction for me an my friends. You can actually physically block a door with your character and contain the mobs etc, they can't just run through you, and you can't run through your teammates. The combat system is well designed, and each character has a definite role in most groups, although it can vary depending on your spec).
Its not for everyone, but its a great game, one of the best designed MMOs out there IMHO, and after years its still going strong and they are still adding (free) content to the game on a regular basis. It takes very little time to figure out how things work but there is enough depth that it takes a while to master a particular set of powers.
http://www.cityofheroes.com/ if you want more information.
I expect the required rules for security of the data were likely in place and applicable to most employees. It would take a special kind of stupid to not have some security rules.
But those rules seldom are applied to upper echelon management who can simply say they want data X in a readable format (probably an Excel spreadsheet) put on that laptop for their trip etc. The higher you are in an organization it seems the less likely you are to think the rules apply to *you*.
Either that or this "theft" is a convenient way to explain how the data got into the hands of a commercial enterprise that purchased the data via a bribe on the side.
In any case, the CEO's of the company all the way down to the employee who lost the data should all be fined and given jail time. I know that won't happen, but it is what should happen.
Tai Chi is essentially a form of Kung Fu slowed down to maximize the exercise potential and lessen the strain on your body.
Once you have learned the essential 108 movements (its all one long cycle that puts you back where you are started, but is learned as 108 or so individual moves), you have a routine that will exercise pretty much every muscle in your body, looks cool, and requires no equipment to perform in, any stretch of ground/grass/parkinglot with a roughly 15x15 ft area free would probably do.
Its been very popular in China for centuries and obviously works quite well, given the number of old people you see doing it in droves there.
Actually I was just developing a pair of websites for them and I have no stake in what they do for a living, nor in how they do it. I merely picked up some of the information as a result of posting content into the pages and designing the website. I am no longer associated with the company in any way and will not make any financial gain, nor do I expect to ever work for them again. I was merely trying to be helpful :P
I do not work consulting in this area, and am currently employed full time elsewhere developing a private school intranet.
Thanks for interpreting my comments as being entirely self-centered, and in my own personal interest etc. I often forget that on the internet everyone assumes you are an ass automatically.
Read up on Discovery disasters as related to email though and see how many companies ended up paying massive fines or losing cases because they chose poorly when deciding how to deal with email, and you might realize my intentions were well meaning. If the OPs company goes ahead with their intended retention policy, it will stand a good chance of biting them in the butt someday and could potentially cost them millions (if for instance a Judge decides a particular email is extremly important to a case and decides that he/she should grant the request to have *all* the company computers seized so they can be searched for the missing email content, and the OP's company's expense).
Caveat: IANAL, but I used to work as a consultant for a company that helped with retention policies and the like. From what I recall, just deciding to delete all email over 180 days does not comprise a decent retention policy. I believe you are expected to keep all emails that contain data related to the conduct of your business for a reasonable period of time, and sometimes (depending on the industry) for specific periods of time.
There is a short summary for small businesses here:
http://www.nfib.com/object/IO_21047.html
You for sure and certain want to read through the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation if you are in the US:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act
Yes, deleting your email after a fixed period of time and consistently following that practice can be considered an Email Retention policy, but the one point I recall hearing hammered home was that "30/60/90 is not a retention policy" (referring to stages of retaining emails). If I recall correctly the consensus was that email should be retained for varying lengths of time based on the importance of the contents and that some mail should be kept indefinitely depending on legislation and subject matter.
If you get hit with a lawsuit and during the discovery phase of the trial are unable to produce critical email because you had a policy of just deleting it after X days, the Judge may tend to favor the other side on the assumption that you did so deliberately. You should really consult with a legal firm that specializes in crafting suitable retention policies rather than just adopting a blanket policy like that. In my unqualified opinion, just adopting a blanket policy of deleting all email content, regardless of content, after X days might imply to a judge that your company really didn't give it adequate thought and the relatively short period might imply that you thought email might contain incriminating content you preferred to hide. Remember that the company who sues you will most likely retain those emails longer than you, giving the impression you were nervous about the email's content when you deleted it.
If a company corresponds with another company via email, and in the course of doing so uses an email message to reach a business agreement, that email is I believe considered a legal document. If you go ahead and do the work but are unable to produce the agreement to do so down the road, you might end up unpaid at the least. If things go badly you might end up liable for damages etc. Business email should not be casually deleted. Your retention policy should, I believe, differentiate between unimportant email that doesn't deal with business matters, moderately important stuff that you might want to retain, and important correspondence that you will want to keep until long after its relevant.
Here is the company I was associated with. I am sure they are not the only ones you can talk to, but they might be a good place to start:
http://www.cohasset.com/