Things like bases are not available to heroes unless they upgrade CoH with CoV. I am in a supergroup that has a base, and I can't get to it because I haven't purchased CoV. So, essentially NCSoft thinks that I should pay $50 to get bases. Yeah right. I think I will go without and ruin the experience for my SG because they won't unlock this feature. Come on, there is a disparity now between heroes and villans running around and NCSoft is comfortable with this disparity in functionality, even though both are supposed to have access.
I am a PC games guy, but I like consoles when it comes to playing socially with my friends. I would never play a sports game like Madden, hockey, or racing on a PC. And I don't find much fun in playing those games by myself. The smack talk is the fun part for me. In any case, you can always down res your games on the PC to TV resolution, and the game will probably run much better because of it. I like higher resolution for the better detail either in how much screen I see in a game to better detail on objects like characters. I wouldn't say my back catalog sucks, but I haven't found the compulsion to try em out a second time. There isn't a single game that has captivated me so much that I have to play it now. It is a personallity thing as I don't reread books either, except computer books.
My thing is that it is hard to say what will come out in the next 4-5 years in graphics evolution. It might not be just better detail, more polygons per pass, or applying texture to those polygons on a pass. There may be something quite extraordinary that will come out and it will be available to PC gamers first. In addition, it might be available a year (a year is forever in the computer industry) after consoles come out which would allow me to enjoy the wonders of the new technology for the next 3-4 years while you are stuck at old console technology. PC and consoles have been like this forever. It is not like the XBox and Microsoft entering the console market changed things. And like you said, it is going to cost $500, but you won't see me buying it unless it is close to virtual reality and there are some good porn games to go with it. I don't understand those that buy bleeding edge technology, probably much like you don't understand my reinvestment in new/old technology every year or so.
I am not sure how development of games for a console is going to make drawing polygons to the screen any faster. Maybe they will develop algorithms to exploit 2005 hardware better, but how does that get you to the next step in technological evolution. That certainly doesn't prepare the industry so that they can reuse those algorithms in 2010 as things may be completely different by then. IMO, it is a waste of resources to try and get more out of the same thing when the industry has left that platform in the dust.
In any case, there is no animosity on my part towards consoles. They fill a niche for me that PCs don't.
Even a brand new machine could be upgraded in 6 months to a years time, but I haven't had a need to buy a brand new machine in years and upgrading the motherboard is easy and inexpensive. For instance, I was uisng the NVidia NForce Gen1 board till last Xmas. I think I got around 2-3 years out of it before games forced me to upgrade(mainly EQ2 because of I maxed out the video card interface on the motherboard at 4x AGP). So, I needed to buy a motherboard that supported either PCIx or AGP 8x. I upgraded the board to a NForce 2 and it cost me $60. I didn't need to upgrade my RAM or processor(AMD 1800) and I got an ATI 9800 video card for around $100. So, I spent around $160 dollars to be ahead of the console curve.
But in terms of upgrading to take advantage of technology that is more current than a year old console and to play the games that take advantage of the newer hardware for more spectacular effects and realism is priceless to me. All I see with a console is an aging piece of equipment that will be stuck in 2005 with games programmed to 2005 technology.
Besides, isn't it priceless that the market allows you to upgrade to a complete machine every 4 years or so with new technology and games? Else, is it really worth upgrading your old XBox because as you put it, "it is rarely worth even that much". What is the argument for upgrading from an XBox, especially when you can mod it and get a arcade emulator to play even more games on it. PC Gamers just ride a quicker change wave with games to match while console users enojy a slower change wave with a modest investment.
LOL, consoles are not like cheese or wine. Think about what you just wrote. "A console lasts 4-5 years." How many jumps in technology occur in that span of time. I don't even own my PC that I had 4-5 years ago anymore because it is irrelevent except for a paper weight or museum piece or hacking satellite receivers. In one year, I can have better graphics than a console. When the console comes out, it won't be better than what a PC can be because the same or similar technology will be available for a PC. And let's see, developers that take advantage of 2005 technology versus games that take advantage of tehcnology released in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. Can you even remember the games you were playing 4-5 years ago? If you own an XBox, you could look at your collection, but my desk has no room for old crusty PC games from 2000, much less 2003.
Here is something to ruminate on: if the gaming industry waited for technological evolution at the console rate, technology would crawl and the experience between consoles possibly would be small. If it wasn't for the PC game industry, you wouldn't have a quantum leap in performance, quality, and experience that you will have between the XBox and XBox360 or Playstation2 and Playstation3. Who do you think drives the innovation for the latest and greatest video cards from ATI or NVidia? The bleeding edge is developed for the PC and consoles benefit from it.
Sure, there is a price, but the ability to upgrade is priceless. There is no ability to upgrade with a console to date. So, while you are playing games that are designed for a machine in 2005, a PC gamer can be playing games designed for technology that came out in summer of 2006, winter of 2006, summer of 2007, winter of 2007, summer of 2008 and winter of 2008. If I take into account that technology seems to eclipse itself every 6 months, it seems that console gamers are playing games built for a machine that is quickly obsolete. Next Xmas, PC gamers will be buying games that exploit technology of 2006 while console gamers will be buying games built to exploit the hardware of 2005. So, how long does it take before the PC game experience makes the console experience seem old? Not long in my estimation. The only time a console is relevent to a PC on technological terms is on its release date.
I can't remember the computer I played Civ I on, but I should have some credibility as it was a long time ago and I remember waiting for the day Civ I came out as a kid. In any case, I think there is a lot they can work on in the Civ series. AI is the number one thing me and my civ buddy lament. Diplomacy sucks as the computer can never negotiate. For instance, in Civ3, when the computer opponent offers something for money, I go through the cycle of finding out how low he will go. Now, if this was real life, I might be offended at this process of trying to low ball the other player without some kind of meaningfulreaosn or counter offer. My point here is that you can almost guess how the computer is going to treat you. How come it is that when the all the computer players get the upper hand, you don't find a computer player from some other portion of the world try to boost your position so you become a pain in the ass to your neighbors? This seems like a strong strategy and one I will play with opponents that are not close to me so one opponent doesn't come out dominating. I also hate the 20 turn rule for diplomatic exchanges. It seems too contrived and I can never remember when 20 turns is up. Why can't a diplomatic exchange last for as long as the two players find it advantageous? I also find the tech tree to be limiting in the sense that I almost always use the same strategy up the tech tree. That is boring. The only thing that limits researching certain techs sometimes is resources on the map. Also, there is no customization of technologies: like do you want more damage versus accuracy with your artillery; can you specialize your cavalry; tougher armor on your tanks. All you have in variability once a tech is discovered and you are building units is veteran versus non-veteran units and sometimes draft units. The only variable here is hit points. So, you end up building huge stacks of units just to assure victory. Taking over enemy cities is also a problem. The answer I came up with was to take cities over with a ridiculous amount of units and leave them in there at least until order had been restored. But that still didn't assure you that a city would not turn and you lose quite a few units. these are just some of the things that could be improved upon. I don't really care about the graphics and audio quality, although it makes the game a more pleasurable experience. So, I would say there is lots of room for improvement. One thing I really like over Civ1 and Civ2 is boundaries. I didn't really understand boundaries in Alpha Centauri so I never got into the game. But incorporating boundaries into the game was a feature I really appreciated.
I am a little surprised to read that you don't have your production app running in a development and/or a QA environment. If this is the case, nothing should change in the production environment until it goes through the development/QA environment and testing (where are the unit tests being ran that would expose this problem). I consider the application of patches to a production environment without testing them to be a flaw in the process as it should be expected that something could fail from a change in any of the interfaces you describe above: database, J2EE server, OS, hardware, web server, etc. This is almost like applyng a firmware change to hardware. I used to be a hardware tester and in particular, dealing with SANs; now I am a software developer. But SANs/datacenters are just as touchy and applying the latest and greatest firmware patch will sometimes screw the whole datacenter up from backup/restore problems to connectivity, etc. I must admit that even though my group runs a development and QA environment, we don't have any control over the system administration. So, we work on a bit of faith that the Sys Admins won't apply a patch that will spin us into a cycle like you describe above. I don't think there is any culpability on the part of the vendors of all the above mentioned hardware/software because there is a lot of complexity. It seems that often times the best solution to maintaining an application is to not change anything that the application relies upon. The reason my company sells Professional Services is because a any change in the data center can be so tumultuous.
Why should a consumer be inconvenienced at all because it doesn't fit into a financial institution's business plan to protect identity theft?
What real evidence suggests that serious protection measures will result in a loss of customers? Why not suggest that financial institutions will lose customers because they don't do enough to protect their customers from identity theft? I am certainly willing to get an account with a bank that will guarantee no headache if their security is breached because someone can mimic my account information. Someone else may also be more than happy to open an account on my behalf too =). I see this as the bigger problem.
identity theft. Financial institutions are so eager to sign people up for new credit cards and accounts, that they make it easy to create accounts without ever ascertaining the person's real identity. There is no excuse for this to occur, yet it falls on consumers shoulders to prove that someone has lifted their identity. It is not so much that someone has lifted someone else's identity, as the information that is required to open most accounts is not nearly enough or secure enough to acscertain a real person. It is more like a straw man. And because there isn't the technology to do it is not an excuse for allowing the abuse. The marketplace is not created to allow faulty mechanisms and bad business that create abuse and then make the consumer responsible for the faults. Either the technology and processes exist to authenticate a person and their information or it doesn't and there is no business plan until there is. Sometimes capitalism sucks.
I know Underdark is in the Forgotten Realms, but I am not familiar with Eberron. Also, I am not sure about this, but is Underdark a generic reference to underground cultures, environments, etc.? I would hope there is a different term for the underground life of Eberron.
in order to broker an agreement later on. Apple needs to make the case the iPods help sell music, and the music industry needs to insist that they are more than promotional material to sell iPods. In a sense, this conflict is a no brainer. Apple will eventually sell music at variable pricing, but they probably want to set the terms and get more profit in turn. In addition, with the music labels demanding variable pricing, Apple can deflect the criticism that it isn't them that are being greedy; the music industry is the boogie man and they are already the boogie man so might as well let them hold the mantle. But I don't expect Apple to give up the iTunes Music Store because it has brand recognition and business value probably way into the future as a content deliverer. They are also not going to cut off there nose to spite their face; in other words, they are not going to get rid of a revenue stream they control. Revenue is the life blood of any company and this is one that has developed quite successfully. So, why take a position that might threaten the loss of this lifeblood? Only to be able to come to the table and broker a sweet deal; it is part bluff, part truth.
Amen. Screw them. I don't know why a PC hardware company or an OS would throw their weight behind either spec. They aren't producing HD DVD content and an OS should be able to write/read either format as it should be a driver issue. IMO, they are throwing their weight around for the DRM and the ability to force all future PCs to play one format over the other when it is not necessary. Go AMD and Linux.
I agree and I think this is a great fundamental question.
My belief was that I was paying for a license to the content on the CD, irrespective of the media type. I think it is crazy that the content producers believe a consumer needs to buy new media with the same content everytime we go through a technological evolution. For instance, if you look at laser disk, which was the ultimate format in fidelity for a small period of time, all the content on those disks is lost even though it was paid for because laser disk players aren't manufactured anymore and the one I had broke and can't get serviced anymore. If I update my media center to DVD technology, why don't I have the right to move the content to the new media to view in my center. In other words, the content providers either believe: a) you need to keep a museum of devices to play outdated media with the same content on it; or b) they believe that you should throw away the old media and pay for a new piece of plastic with a reflective layer for the same content. What is it that people are paying for? Certainly, they aren't paying to own the content, but license as you wouldn't transfer copyright ownership. If I own a license to the content, then it should not matter what media type it comes across on. However, apparently it does matter and that is bullshit. Think about it people. Are you buying plastic and a reflective layer or are you buying the content that happens to be delivered in that manner? I would argue you are licensing the content as who cares what it is delivered on whether it is the internet or a CD.
It is complere bullshit anyway as the content providers want to get into licensing secruity algorithms and forcing manufacturers to include them in their devices. It is one industry forcing the direction of another through legislation, as opposed to the free market. This is how they build there business and congress is saying ok, we will help you. It amazes me that they have so much clout, as their industry is tiny compared to consumer electronics. When is the consumer electronics industry going to start throwing their weight around and say screw you? AS it is, with the new DRM schemes that will be released with MS Vista and viewing hi definition content, your monitor is going to have to be compliant. That seems like a good reason to stop buying consumer electronics until the new DRM takes hold because as soon as it is, all your monitors/projectors/big screen tvs will be irrelevent.
Ummm, Firefox tells you when there is a new version out. It is the little green tree next to the spinning circle of dots when you load a page. If there is an urgent release, actually I don't know the criteria or the labelling, the tree is red to indicate there is a new version. It seems if there is a plug-in update, the tree is green. But like I said, I don't know the exact meaning nor have I looked it up, but it hasn't failed me yet. I wasn't really aware of this until I clicked on it and it asked me if I wanted to get the newest Firefox, and this was a minor 1.0.x version. Howver, I don't know when this was implemented.
In addition, any reader of/. knows exactly when a new version is released because it is always anounced. That is how I usually find out about releases.
If all exploits do equal damage or exploit equally, then the numbers probably could be compared. If you are exploiting Firefox, you are exploiting an application. If you are exploiting IE, you are exploiting an OS. Hmmm, I wonder which exploits you would rather have over another (and I know we would prefer no exploits, but that is only in shangri la). It doesn't seem to me like exploits bear equal weight for each respective browser.
You probably want to give the consumer both online and brick and mortar prices. There is still a lot of incentive in buying something you can have now, as opposed to having to wait for it to be delivered in 3-5 days. The consumer will have to decide if "now" is worth the extra for a store to have a brick and mortar pressence.
I guess no one ever imagined marrying the ideas for a consumer. Completely non-obvious that a consumer would use a PDA/Cell to scan a barcode as it has been done in industry, send the numbers to a server as it has been done with online shopping with a mobile device, server sends information back as it has been done with online shopping with a mobile device, person makes up his mind as it has been done since there has been a marketplace. Wow, this is non-obvious.
What might be innovative is the figuring out what the product is based on an image of the product, not a barcode. The counterfeiters will have a hayday with this. "Sure, take a picture of my watch, it will come up as a Rolex." This might be innovative, but certainly the idea to allow the consumer to do this from a mobile device is not.
By the way, you might want to check out more progressive markets for mobile devices, like Japan, before you decide something is innovative or not.
Maybe because it costs lots of money to develop this type of system and it ends up being a gamble for cell or PDA companies if it is not enticing people to buy more phones. Please understand a little about business before making comments like the above. Not all good ideas get implemented. Companies need to see the benefit for themselves first. For Amazon, this is a bit more obvious as it might drive sales. So, they have an icentive to develop or acquire the technology that will expand their own business. Whose business does this expand for cell phones? Well, if it sold more phones because this is such a killer app, it would be available. But unfortunately, this probably doesn't help sell phones, it helps sell Amazon's merchandise. The same goes for PDAs.
With the world becoming more global in its trade and IP ruling the day, what happens when another country is producing new technologies beyond what we are doing in the US? It means that someday the US will be paying other countries for IP as opposed to the other way around. Which do you think is a better model? Either way, in the case of medicines, the consumer gets screwed. But it is a matter of where the money is flowing, not who is getting screwed and that means lots of money will be flowing out of the country for licensing IP or consuming IP from the source. Hmmm, I wonder how long a country stays rich that exports its money.
Boy, I sure feel better we are fighting "terrorism". The rest of the world has to be chuckling that we are wasting our political and capital investments on stupid rhetoric. And because the rhetoric is heating up again, this means we are only going to spend more money. Since when is declaring a war on terrorism a service to the people of the US. It is a burden.
Doesn't digital TV give broadcasters more control over the content? I kind of like the environment of analog content; broadcasters aren't privy to my consumption habits and I have a lot more convenience now that most likely will have to be paid for in the future. In addition, this will make it easy to legislate a broadcast flag for no home personal use of content unless paid for, in additon to DRM concerns. We all know the current environment of consumers being sued by the content moguls; this will give them a better tool to sue the little guy. Aren't analog broadcasts considered part of the public domain so the public can record content? With the future of digital everything, the content moguls are going to have the publics nuts in a vice grip with no public domain material. I don't know about you, but I enjoy the freedoms and convenience that come with the limits of todays technologies; DVRs, portability of content, privacy. Tomorrows technologies, even though quality wise might be better (HDTV is awesome), seems to come with a leash and a loss of personal privacy. I don't feel the content moguls should get my usage habits for free; I should get something in return instead of targetted with commercials. Since when is receiving personalized commercials a benefit. It is only a benefit for those that are advertising and those that distribute advertisements.
What will happen with Nielson ratings when DTV is mandated? Obviously, digital tuners will be making notes of what is being viewed.
This is freaking retarded. I make a compliment about how BBC is not creating a new proprietary OS license, and I am a troll. Obviously, the moderators aren't on the up and up about how complex the Open Source licensing environment is. This time slashdot moderators got it wrong. I would have thought this was an insightful comment as no one else had made a comment about how they were licensing. And being that I work with Open Source all the time, I somewhat know what I am talking about.
I guess it goes to show how intelligent the moderators on slashdot are.
Slashdot moderators are retarded. Now that is a troll.
My point would be why would I have to pay taxes at all if some people can opt out of paying for public education? Or why should I have to pay even once for someone's child's education? The answer is because we all have to. Parochial/charter schools are a luxury, not a necessity. Who else gets to dictate where there tax money is being spent? No one because it goes into a general fund and everyone (representative government) decides how it is spent. If individuals get to tailor their spending, do you think public roads would be paved? As if I want to be the sucker that doesn't dictate where my tax money is going to be spent.
Besides, where is the evidence that says schools are failing? People mimic this sentiment, but I have yet to understand how they think things could be better juxtaposed against reality, not utopia. What criteria are you using to decide schools have failed? Can your criteria singularly isolate public schools as the problem? How much money has been spent on public education; I doubt "no matter how much money"? And what does it mean for public education to have a chance; is it going somewhere? Where is the data that charter schools can save the day or parochial schools are better? I graduated from a parochial school I went to for a year and a half; I was a public school kid through my junior year. You would think I might have been an inferior student compared to my privately educated peers. Well, I graduated fifth in my class. So much for your inferior public school education.
My last point is that if we take a look at America as evidence of a country with failed public education, it doesn't seem to be failing (maybe its leadership is). So, if schools are failing and have been failing as conservatives may have you believe, then why is it that America is so dominant in the world? It must be because we are all illiterate from our public school education.
I don't think, "... 'No Child Left Behind' was something people made up and thought might help, with no verification whatsoever...".
It is rather a conservative movement to devalue public education and a move towards charter and parochial schools. Educational vouchers have become a very hot topic to provide a way for conservatives and the religious right to send their kids to private/religious schools while minimizing their own contribution towards public education. No child left behind is way to beat public schools up and make vouchers seem like a more positive alternative; after all, who wishes a child to attend a bad/failing school.
Slashdot Mirror
Things like bases are not available to heroes unless they upgrade CoH with CoV. I am in a supergroup that has a base, and I can't get to it because I haven't purchased CoV. So, essentially NCSoft thinks that I should pay $50 to get bases. Yeah right. I think I will go without and ruin the experience for my SG because they won't unlock this feature. Come on, there is a disparity now between heroes and villans running around and NCSoft is comfortable with this disparity in functionality, even though both are supposed to have access.
I am a PC games guy, but I like consoles when it comes to playing socially with my friends. I would never play a sports game like Madden, hockey, or racing on a PC. And I don't find much fun in playing those games by myself. The smack talk is the fun part for me. In any case, you can always down res your games on the PC to TV resolution, and the game will probably run much better because of it. I like higher resolution for the better detail either in how much screen I see in a game to better detail on objects like characters. I wouldn't say my back catalog sucks, but I haven't found the compulsion to try em out a second time. There isn't a single game that has captivated me so much that I have to play it now. It is a personallity thing as I don't reread books either, except computer books.
My thing is that it is hard to say what will come out in the next 4-5 years in graphics evolution. It might not be just better detail, more polygons per pass, or applying texture to those polygons on a pass. There may be something quite extraordinary that will come out and it will be available to PC gamers first. In addition, it might be available a year (a year is forever in the computer industry) after consoles come out which would allow me to enjoy the wonders of the new technology for the next 3-4 years while you are stuck at old console technology. PC and consoles have been like this forever. It is not like the XBox and Microsoft entering the console market changed things. And like you said, it is going to cost $500, but you won't see me buying it unless it is close to virtual reality and there are some good porn games to go with it. I don't understand those that buy bleeding edge technology, probably much like you don't understand my reinvestment in new/old technology every year or so.
I am not sure how development of games for a console is going to make drawing polygons to the screen any faster. Maybe they will develop algorithms to exploit 2005 hardware better, but how does that get you to the next step in technological evolution. That certainly doesn't prepare the industry so that they can reuse those algorithms in 2010 as things may be completely different by then. IMO, it is a waste of resources to try and get more out of the same thing when the industry has left that platform in the dust.
In any case, there is no animosity on my part towards consoles. They fill a niche for me that PCs don't.
Even a brand new machine could be upgraded in 6 months to a years time, but I haven't had a need to buy a brand new machine in years and upgrading the motherboard is easy and inexpensive. For instance, I was uisng the NVidia NForce Gen1 board till last Xmas. I think I got around 2-3 years out of it before games forced me to upgrade(mainly EQ2 because of I maxed out the video card interface on the motherboard at 4x AGP). So, I needed to buy a motherboard that supported either PCIx or AGP 8x. I upgraded the board to a NForce 2 and it cost me $60. I didn't need to upgrade my RAM or processor(AMD 1800) and I got an ATI 9800 video card for around $100. So, I spent around $160 dollars to be ahead of the console curve. But in terms of upgrading to take advantage of technology that is more current than a year old console and to play the games that take advantage of the newer hardware for more spectacular effects and realism is priceless to me. All I see with a console is an aging piece of equipment that will be stuck in 2005 with games programmed to 2005 technology. Besides, isn't it priceless that the market allows you to upgrade to a complete machine every 4 years or so with new technology and games? Else, is it really worth upgrading your old XBox because as you put it, "it is rarely worth even that much". What is the argument for upgrading from an XBox, especially when you can mod it and get a arcade emulator to play even more games on it. PC Gamers just ride a quicker change wave with games to match while console users enojy a slower change wave with a modest investment.
LOL, consoles are not like cheese or wine. Think about what you just wrote. "A console lasts 4-5 years." How many jumps in technology occur in that span of time. I don't even own my PC that I had 4-5 years ago anymore because it is irrelevent except for a paper weight or museum piece or hacking satellite receivers. In one year, I can have better graphics than a console. When the console comes out, it won't be better than what a PC can be because the same or similar technology will be available for a PC. And let's see, developers that take advantage of 2005 technology versus games that take advantage of tehcnology released in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. Can you even remember the games you were playing 4-5 years ago? If you own an XBox, you could look at your collection, but my desk has no room for old crusty PC games from 2000, much less 2003.
Here is something to ruminate on: if the gaming industry waited for technological evolution at the console rate, technology would crawl and the experience between consoles possibly would be small. If it wasn't for the PC game industry, you wouldn't have a quantum leap in performance, quality, and experience that you will have between the XBox and XBox360 or Playstation2 and Playstation3. Who do you think drives the innovation for the latest and greatest video cards from ATI or NVidia? The bleeding edge is developed for the PC and consoles benefit from it.
Sure, there is a price, but the ability to upgrade is priceless. There is no ability to upgrade with a console to date. So, while you are playing games that are designed for a machine in 2005, a PC gamer can be playing games designed for technology that came out in summer of 2006, winter of 2006, summer of 2007, winter of 2007, summer of 2008 and winter of 2008. If I take into account that technology seems to eclipse itself every 6 months, it seems that console gamers are playing games built for a machine that is quickly obsolete. Next Xmas, PC gamers will be buying games that exploit technology of 2006 while console gamers will be buying games built to exploit the hardware of 2005. So, how long does it take before the PC game experience makes the console experience seem old? Not long in my estimation. The only time a console is relevent to a PC on technological terms is on its release date.
I can't remember the computer I played Civ I on, but I should have some credibility as it was a long time ago and I remember waiting for the day Civ I came out as a kid. In any case, I think there is a lot they can work on in the Civ series. AI is the number one thing me and my civ buddy lament. Diplomacy sucks as the computer can never negotiate. For instance, in Civ3, when the computer opponent offers something for money, I go through the cycle of finding out how low he will go. Now, if this was real life, I might be offended at this process of trying to low ball the other player without some kind of meaningfulreaosn or counter offer. My point here is that you can almost guess how the computer is going to treat you. How come it is that when the all the computer players get the upper hand, you don't find a computer player from some other portion of the world try to boost your position so you become a pain in the ass to your neighbors? This seems like a strong strategy and one I will play with opponents that are not close to me so one opponent doesn't come out dominating. I also hate the 20 turn rule for diplomatic exchanges. It seems too contrived and I can never remember when 20 turns is up. Why can't a diplomatic exchange last for as long as the two players find it advantageous? I also find the tech tree to be limiting in the sense that I almost always use the same strategy up the tech tree. That is boring. The only thing that limits researching certain techs sometimes is resources on the map. Also, there is no customization of technologies: like do you want more damage versus accuracy with your artillery; can you specialize your cavalry; tougher armor on your tanks. All you have in variability once a tech is discovered and you are building units is veteran versus non-veteran units and sometimes draft units. The only variable here is hit points. So, you end up building huge stacks of units just to assure victory. Taking over enemy cities is also a problem. The answer I came up with was to take cities over with a ridiculous amount of units and leave them in there at least until order had been restored. But that still didn't assure you that a city would not turn and you lose quite a few units. these are just some of the things that could be improved upon. I don't really care about the graphics and audio quality, although it makes the game a more pleasurable experience. So, I would say there is lots of room for improvement. One thing I really like over Civ1 and Civ2 is boundaries. I didn't really understand boundaries in Alpha Centauri so I never got into the game. But incorporating boundaries into the game was a feature I really appreciated.
I am a little surprised to read that you don't have your production app running in a development and/or a QA environment. If this is the case, nothing should change in the production environment until it goes through the development/QA environment and testing (where are the unit tests being ran that would expose this problem). I consider the application of patches to a production environment without testing them to be a flaw in the process as it should be expected that something could fail from a change in any of the interfaces you describe above: database, J2EE server, OS, hardware, web server, etc. This is almost like applyng a firmware change to hardware. I used to be a hardware tester and in particular, dealing with SANs; now I am a software developer. But SANs/datacenters are just as touchy and applying the latest and greatest firmware patch will sometimes screw the whole datacenter up from backup/restore problems to connectivity, etc. I must admit that even though my group runs a development and QA environment, we don't have any control over the system administration. So, we work on a bit of faith that the Sys Admins won't apply a patch that will spin us into a cycle like you describe above. I don't think there is any culpability on the part of the vendors of all the above mentioned hardware/software because there is a lot of complexity. It seems that often times the best solution to maintaining an application is to not change anything that the application relies upon. The reason my company sells Professional Services is because a any change in the data center can be so tumultuous.
Why should a consumer be inconvenienced at all because it doesn't fit into a financial institution's business plan to protect identity theft? What real evidence suggests that serious protection measures will result in a loss of customers? Why not suggest that financial institutions will lose customers because they don't do enough to protect their customers from identity theft? I am certainly willing to get an account with a bank that will guarantee no headache if their security is breached because someone can mimic my account information. Someone else may also be more than happy to open an account on my behalf too =). I see this as the bigger problem.
identity theft. Financial institutions are so eager to sign people up for new credit cards and accounts, that they make it easy to create accounts without ever ascertaining the person's real identity. There is no excuse for this to occur, yet it falls on consumers shoulders to prove that someone has lifted their identity. It is not so much that someone has lifted someone else's identity, as the information that is required to open most accounts is not nearly enough or secure enough to acscertain a real person. It is more like a straw man. And because there isn't the technology to do it is not an excuse for allowing the abuse. The marketplace is not created to allow faulty mechanisms and bad business that create abuse and then make the consumer responsible for the faults. Either the technology and processes exist to authenticate a person and their information or it doesn't and there is no business plan until there is. Sometimes capitalism sucks.
I know Underdark is in the Forgotten Realms, but I am not familiar with Eberron. Also, I am not sure about this, but is Underdark a generic reference to underground cultures, environments, etc.? I would hope there is a different term for the underground life of Eberron.
I think that was the point of Neverwinter Nights. I didn't buy any of the expansions, so I am not sure if this paradigm morphed.
in order to broker an agreement later on. Apple needs to make the case the iPods help sell music, and the music industry needs to insist that they are more than promotional material to sell iPods. In a sense, this conflict is a no brainer. Apple will eventually sell music at variable pricing, but they probably want to set the terms and get more profit in turn. In addition, with the music labels demanding variable pricing, Apple can deflect the criticism that it isn't them that are being greedy; the music industry is the boogie man and they are already the boogie man so might as well let them hold the mantle. But I don't expect Apple to give up the iTunes Music Store because it has brand recognition and business value probably way into the future as a content deliverer. They are also not going to cut off there nose to spite their face; in other words, they are not going to get rid of a revenue stream they control. Revenue is the life blood of any company and this is one that has developed quite successfully. So, why take a position that might threaten the loss of this lifeblood? Only to be able to come to the table and broker a sweet deal; it is part bluff, part truth.
Amen. Screw them. I don't know why a PC hardware company or an OS would throw their weight behind either spec. They aren't producing HD DVD content and an OS should be able to write/read either format as it should be a driver issue. IMO, they are throwing their weight around for the DRM and the ability to force all future PCs to play one format over the other when it is not necessary. Go AMD and Linux.
I agree and I think this is a great fundamental question.
My belief was that I was paying for a license to the content on the CD, irrespective of the media type. I think it is crazy that the content producers believe a consumer needs to buy new media with the same content everytime we go through a technological evolution. For instance, if you look at laser disk, which was the ultimate format in fidelity for a small period of time, all the content on those disks is lost even though it was paid for because laser disk players aren't manufactured anymore and the one I had broke and can't get serviced anymore. If I update my media center to DVD technology, why don't I have the right to move the content to the new media to view in my center. In other words, the content providers either believe: a) you need to keep a museum of devices to play outdated media with the same content on it; or b) they believe that you should throw away the old media and pay for a new piece of plastic with a reflective layer for the same content. What is it that people are paying for? Certainly, they aren't paying to own the content, but license as you wouldn't transfer copyright ownership. If I own a license to the content, then it should not matter what media type it comes across on. However, apparently it does matter and that is bullshit. Think about it people. Are you buying plastic and a reflective layer or are you buying the content that happens to be delivered in that manner? I would argue you are licensing the content as who cares what it is delivered on whether it is the internet or a CD.
It is complere bullshit anyway as the content providers want to get into licensing secruity algorithms and forcing manufacturers to include them in their devices. It is one industry forcing the direction of another through legislation, as opposed to the free market. This is how they build there business and congress is saying ok, we will help you. It amazes me that they have so much clout, as their industry is tiny compared to consumer electronics. When is the consumer electronics industry going to start throwing their weight around and say screw you? AS it is, with the new DRM schemes that will be released with MS Vista and viewing hi definition content, your monitor is going to have to be compliant. That seems like a good reason to stop buying consumer electronics until the new DRM takes hold because as soon as it is, all your monitors/projectors/big screen tvs will be irrelevent.
Ummm, Firefox tells you when there is a new version out. It is the little green tree next to the spinning circle of dots when you load a page. If there is an urgent release, actually I don't know the criteria or the labelling, the tree is red to indicate there is a new version. It seems if there is a plug-in update, the tree is green. But like I said, I don't know the exact meaning nor have I looked it up, but it hasn't failed me yet. I wasn't really aware of this until I clicked on it and it asked me if I wanted to get the newest Firefox, and this was a minor 1.0.x version. Howver, I don't know when this was implemented. In addition, any reader of /. knows exactly when a new version is released because it is always anounced. That is how I usually find out about releases.
If all exploits do equal damage or exploit equally, then the numbers probably could be compared. If you are exploiting Firefox, you are exploiting an application. If you are exploiting IE, you are exploiting an OS. Hmmm, I wonder which exploits you would rather have over another (and I know we would prefer no exploits, but that is only in shangri la). It doesn't seem to me like exploits bear equal weight for each respective browser.
You probably want to give the consumer both online and brick and mortar prices. There is still a lot of incentive in buying something you can have now, as opposed to having to wait for it to be delivered in 3-5 days. The consumer will have to decide if "now" is worth the extra for a store to have a brick and mortar pressence.
A supermarket checker:
A web enabled cell phone/PDA:
Inventory control devices used at supermarkets:
I guess no one ever imagined marrying the ideas for a consumer. Completely non-obvious that a consumer would use a PDA/Cell to scan a barcode as it has been done in industry, send the numbers to a server as it has been done with online shopping with a mobile device, server sends information back as it has been done with online shopping with a mobile device, person makes up his mind as it has been done since there has been a marketplace. Wow, this is non-obvious.
What might be innovative is the figuring out what the product is based on an image of the product, not a barcode. The counterfeiters will have a hayday with this. "Sure, take a picture of my watch, it will come up as a Rolex." This might be innovative, but certainly the idea to allow the consumer to do this from a mobile device is not.
By the way, you might want to check out more progressive markets for mobile devices, like Japan, before you decide something is innovative or not.
Maybe because it costs lots of money to develop this type of system and it ends up being a gamble for cell or PDA companies if it is not enticing people to buy more phones. Please understand a little about business before making comments like the above. Not all good ideas get implemented. Companies need to see the benefit for themselves first. For Amazon, this is a bit more obvious as it might drive sales. So, they have an icentive to develop or acquire the technology that will expand their own business. Whose business does this expand for cell phones? Well, if it sold more phones because this is such a killer app, it would be available. But unfortunately, this probably doesn't help sell phones, it helps sell Amazon's merchandise. The same goes for PDAs.
With the world becoming more global in its trade and IP ruling the day, what happens when another country is producing new technologies beyond what we are doing in the US? It means that someday the US will be paying other countries for IP as opposed to the other way around. Which do you think is a better model? Either way, in the case of medicines, the consumer gets screwed. But it is a matter of where the money is flowing, not who is getting screwed and that means lots of money will be flowing out of the country for licensing IP or consuming IP from the source. Hmmm, I wonder how long a country stays rich that exports its money.
Boy, I sure feel better we are fighting "terrorism". The rest of the world has to be chuckling that we are wasting our political and capital investments on stupid rhetoric. And because the rhetoric is heating up again, this means we are only going to spend more money. Since when is declaring a war on terrorism a service to the people of the US. It is a burden.
Doesn't digital TV give broadcasters more control over the content? I kind of like the environment of analog content; broadcasters aren't privy to my consumption habits and I have a lot more convenience now that most likely will have to be paid for in the future. In addition, this will make it easy to legislate a broadcast flag for no home personal use of content unless paid for, in additon to DRM concerns. We all know the current environment of consumers being sued by the content moguls; this will give them a better tool to sue the little guy. Aren't analog broadcasts considered part of the public domain so the public can record content? With the future of digital everything, the content moguls are going to have the publics nuts in a vice grip with no public domain material. I don't know about you, but I enjoy the freedoms and convenience that come with the limits of todays technologies; DVRs, portability of content, privacy. Tomorrows technologies, even though quality wise might be better (HDTV is awesome), seems to come with a leash and a loss of personal privacy. I don't feel the content moguls should get my usage habits for free; I should get something in return instead of targetted with commercials. Since when is receiving personalized commercials a benefit. It is only a benefit for those that are advertising and those that distribute advertisements.
What will happen with Nielson ratings when DTV is mandated? Obviously, digital tuners will be making notes of what is being viewed.
This is freaking retarded. I make a compliment about how BBC is not creating a new proprietary OS license, and I am a troll. Obviously, the moderators aren't on the up and up about how complex the Open Source licensing environment is. This time slashdot moderators got it wrong. I would have thought this was an insightful comment as no one else had made a comment about how they were licensing. And being that I work with Open Source all the time, I somewhat know what I am talking about. I guess it goes to show how intelligent the moderators on slashdot are. Slashdot moderators are retarded. Now that is a troll.
My point would be why would I have to pay taxes at all if some people can opt out of paying for public education? Or why should I have to pay even once for someone's child's education? The answer is because we all have to. Parochial/charter schools are a luxury, not a necessity. Who else gets to dictate where there tax money is being spent? No one because it goes into a general fund and everyone (representative government) decides how it is spent. If individuals get to tailor their spending, do you think public roads would be paved? As if I want to be the sucker that doesn't dictate where my tax money is going to be spent.
Besides, where is the evidence that says schools are failing? People mimic this sentiment, but I have yet to understand how they think things could be better juxtaposed against reality, not utopia. What criteria are you using to decide schools have failed? Can your criteria singularly isolate public schools as the problem? How much money has been spent on public education; I doubt "no matter how much money"? And what does it mean for public education to have a chance; is it going somewhere? Where is the data that charter schools can save the day or parochial schools are better? I graduated from a parochial school I went to for a year and a half; I was a public school kid through my junior year. You would think I might have been an inferior student compared to my privately educated peers. Well, I graduated fifth in my class. So much for your inferior public school education.
My last point is that if we take a look at America as evidence of a country with failed public education, it doesn't seem to be failing (maybe its leadership is). So, if schools are failing and have been failing as conservatives may have you believe, then why is it that America is so dominant in the world? It must be because we are all illiterate from our public school education.
I don't think, "... 'No Child Left Behind' was something people made up and thought might help, with no verification whatsoever...".
It is rather a conservative movement to devalue public education and a move towards charter and parochial schools. Educational vouchers have become a very hot topic to provide a way for conservatives and the religious right to send their kids to private/religious schools while minimizing their own contribution towards public education. No child left behind is way to beat public schools up and make vouchers seem like a more positive alternative; after all, who wishes a child to attend a bad/failing school.
...at least they didn't introduce a new proprietary license.