Who's to say one wouldn't have dreams? Or just some kind of low-level pseudo-consciousness? Or something else entirely?
I'm not saying that any of those are possible, but I am saying that, since no human being has ever been frozen, suspended for a "long" period of time, and then thawed and revived, saying anything about the subjective experience is an iffy proposition.
I suspect that you're right - likely there'll be no notice of the lapsed time - but I wouldn't rule anything else out.
Me, I'll probably get frozen. After all, if it fails, well, I was dead anyway, and if it succeeds, go me - any world that would revive me would have to be stable/desirable enough for me to want to live in it (the Niven story, while amusing, was pretty absurd). One extra life insurance policy to cover the expense of it, it seems like a cheap enough way to slightly hedge one's bets.
Actually, someone I know who studies this stuff once told me that the day of birth is celebrated not because of the beginning of life, but because of the transition from internally to externally supported human being (he had a better term for it, but that was the gist).
Of this is a person who used to just make shit up and state it - convincingly as hell - in the middle of classes, just to watch everyone get puzzled, scramble for their textbooks and look for where the bombshell he just dropped was stated.
One fun one was the etemology of "Christmas" - he says it was a term adopted during the Spanish Inquisition and means, literally "More Christ" in Spanish. I was shocked at how many people would nod and say "That makes quite a bit of sense - I'd always thought it was somethning like that."
It's only been 2.3 months since the 360 launched. I'm not saying it'll sell 600+k more consoles in the next 1.7 months, but I'm pretty sure, if MS gets their distribution shit together they'll sell quite a few.
They are only "required" if one insists that current theories are correct and complete.
Kind of like aether was "required." And phlogistion. And igneous fluid.
I'm not saying that dark matter and dark energy don't exist - I don't know, and neither does anyone else - but I am saying that they're not necessarily "required."
I will probably be modded to troll for saying this,
I will probably be modded off-topic for saying this, but I've noticed that if one starts a comment saying "I'll probably get dinged on karma for this, but darn it, it needs to be said!" they will tend to be modified as insightful or interesting or informative, even when they are just stating the obvious.
I'm not saying that your post wasn't insightful/informative/interesting, just that because you began by saying you'll be modded a troll you boosted the probability of a +5 rating substantially.
Watch -
I'll probably be modded off-topic for this, but darn it, it needs to be said: Ice is cold. Not as cold as dry ice, but still - cold enough that it's darned uncomfortable to have to have it on your skin.
[sits back, lets the karma roll in and out - like the tides]
Not that it excuses poor QA, but the gaming environment now is much different than the gaming envirionment "back then."
How many possible configurations can a PC gaming rig have? How much more complicated are the games themselves, and the process of making them?
And fault... Who's fault is it if a game crashes with certain video cards because of a buggy driver? Is the game maker really responsible for ensuring that every possible system that meets their minimum specs can run the game?
With consoles, the games are less buggy because they have 1 target to hit. There are bugs (seemingly more now than back then) but there are also more games.
There are more automobile related fatalities now than there were in 1930. Is this because automobiles have become less safe, or is it because we have more of them, being operated in all kinds of environments, being used by a broader scope of drivers?
My food budget is approximately 150 a month. I have a decent amount of variety in my diet -
Pasta, rice, potatoes, beans, lentils, cous cous, oatmeal, spinach, peppers, tomatoes, banannas, pita, eggs, chicken, and maybe 2 times a month I'll have a steak or something similar. If I run out of spices, I skip the steak for a month and spend that on restocking the seasonings. Most importantly, there's no ramen in my house.
I make a lot of soups or long-cooking dishes - crockpot cooking is wonderful, as I can get it started in the morning and, by the time I get home, I've got a nice dinner waiting, and I can use the leftovers for lunch the next day or as a stock for my next dish.
It's pretty easy to eat a healthy diet on a very low budget if you're willing to learn to cook a little. $5 a day is plenty. I consume about 1250-1500 calories a day, and I don't get bored with the menu - I've got plenty of recipes, to where I could probably go at least a month without having the same thing twice (except for oatmeal at breakfast - I 3 the oatmeal).
Anyway - I learned to eat like this when I was in college and had to live on a food budget of a bit less than $100 a month (the mid 90's). I could certainly afford a much larger budget for food, but honestly I just don't feel the need, and I'd rather sock that extra money away for when I retire.
Completely off-topic, I know, but it annoys me when I see people talking about how low food budget means you have to eat ramen.
Actually, there have frequently been patches to the client that have fixed possibilities of exploiting in many MMOs. I don't know if Diablo II counts as an "mmo" but they did change the client in order to diminish the amount of "hidden" information that could be obtained.
Further, he didn't say "patch the client" - he just said "patch" and left it to be ambiguous - servers get patches, too.
Anyway, was the initial poster's point actually unclear? There was sufficient context to reduce the ambiguity.
The person you're responding to didn't say that the rules were kept client side. He mentioned that players might exploit loopholes in the rules, not edit them to their whim.
The person's point seemed to be "If someone abuses a flaw in the rules in a Pen and Paper game, the DM can shut them down right away. If someone abuses a flaw in the rules of an on-line game, since there is no DM or omnipresent authority, they'll be able to get away with it."
Which I agree with. PnP is different from MMO, and ultimately the rules will have to change (on the server side, of course) in order to accomodate those differences and still keep things enjoyable.
Any post-9/11 hijacker would have a plan in place to remove the passengers/people from the equation. Off the top of my head, I can think of half a dozen ways to accomplish that very quickly and easily.
I definitely think there is some societal blame to be spread around for those things - however, the response I made was to a person criticizing individuals, not a society as a whole. I think, were the above problems so rampant as to actually cause a society to be on the brink of extinction, yes - at that point, the society itself (but not the individuals comprising it) is probably not worth saving.
For all we know, if it weren't for Bill Gates, hyper intelligent pigs might have taken over the planet and used US for bacon!
Or maybe Bill Gates exudes an aura that is toxic to extra dimensional florae and faunae, and so has protected us from an invasion from elsewhere!
If you're really saying that someone doing a lot of good work to combat AIDS and other problems sucks because of what harm they may have caused to the computer industry, I suggest that you might wish to review your priorities.
When he took such an obvious path as creating a nonprofit organization (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and pumping in record billions of $$$ to avoid tax
I guess you got modded "insightful" by people who are really bad at math.
Donating money to charity does not leave one with more money than one would have had if one didn't donate at all.
If I have 120 dollars and I donate 20, I get taxed on the remaining 100 dollars (let's pretend it's 35%) - so I wind up with 65 dollars.
If I have 120 dollars and I don't donate anything, and I get taxed on the 120 dollars (and let's pretend that the tax rate on 120 dollars is 40%) I wind up with 72 dollars.
So, you see, even after considering the tax benefits, one does not magically wind up with more money after donating than if they didn't.
But, you know - if reality were different, I guess maybe you would have a point.
Let's not forget those rape victims, people with cheating spouses, medical professionals who get needle sticks while saving lives, children sold into sexual slavery.
You know, you're right - I've looked it up, and am satisfied that I was incorrect on that point. I was looking for an example and I relied on the first one that popped into my head (never a good move when discussing a topic like this). Mea culpa maxima.
Please replace the Cosell example with any generic "porch monkey" comment - the main point is still the same: "monkey" is often used in a derogatory fashion towards blacks, and if one's aim is not to offend, one would do better to find other comparisons.
Also, in response to all the comments of "The software just draws comparisons based on dumb rules - surely the software can't be racist!" Easter eggs. Programmers write that software, and I would not be at all surprised if a programmer working on the comparison and recommendation software put in some things of this nature.
Lastly, I wonder what the outcry would have been like if the system recommended "Airplane!" and "9/11: A Nation Mourns" or "The Passion of the Christ" and a documentary on, say, abortion?
If one grows up being compared to monkeys as a way of demonstrating that they are less than paler people, and more generally as a paternalistic term used to put one in one's place, one gets somewhat sensitive to monkey related stuff.
Sometimes this can be very blatant - Howard Cosell saying "Would you look at that monkey run?" when describing a black football player. Sometimes this can be less blatant, and a "clever racist" (if there is such a thing) will try to say "Well, Planet of the Apes is social commentary and so is MLK, so it's just those darkies being overly uppity again!) And, yes, sometimes it can be absurd - I have some friends who attend a church that insists they boycott King Kong because it is, and I quote, "An interracial love story designed to show the black man's unquenchable and self-destructive desire for white women."
So, I'd say it's somewhat disingenuous to say "Gosh, I don't know why people would get so upset that someone is comparing Monkeys Gone Wild with Martin Luther King! It's so absurd!" It comes off as rather false.
For further reading, I recommend "How to Rent a Negro" - pretty funny take on a less than funny subject.
E.g.: Killing another person is wrong, except when in self-defense or defending another.
So it is okay to kill abortion providers, if one believes that abortion == murdering a human being, and that by killing the doctor they're saving lives?
This is why the law isn't open to individual interpretation. Everyone's got a different idea of what is moral and what isn't.
I don't know if it's general or just for the program - I was told about it when I was signing up for the program, though. The cost of the card thing was $9.99 (I think - might usually be $15 but I got a discount) - it also comes with a year's subscription to their gaming magazine, which, while not tremendously useful, does provide more reading material for the can.
However, there are some options that you didn't mention. The pessimist in me suspects these will be the options that publishers explore.
1. Create games with a single-registration online component, such as your account key in World of Warcraft.
2. Pressurs console manufacturers to lock games to the first system that plays them, DRM style.
3. Move to an Xbox Live Arcade style download-only service.
4. Make re-selling games illegal.
I suspect you're right, which is really kind of sad. I'd hope that the people running publishing houses would at least be bright enough to realize that the best solutions - for them, profit wise - are the ones that increase the size of the market and make people want to do business with them.
Many people said that Apple couldn't sell digital music when it was so easy to pirate it - but iTunes proves the value in the warm-fuzzy approach instead of the antagonistic approach taken by the music industry.
So, if publishers have a problem with used game sales, I suggest that they REALLY pay attention and maximize their profits by finding a happy medium approach, rather than ultimately minimize their profits by pissing off and alienating their customer base with draconian practices.
I really hope that made sense - I'm so tired I'm seeing spots.
If developers want to avoid getting screwed on the used game market, they can do a number of things:
1) Create titles so compelling that no-one will want to wait for the used market.
2) Create titles so original/replayable that no-one will want to sell them to create that market.
3) Lobby their publishers to reduce the retail price so that more people will be willing to pay full retail.
4) Stop working with publishers who keep amping up prices while forcing absurd schedules making quality slip.
There are many games I'd be interested in, but there's just no way in hell I'm going to spend $50 on them, as much as I game, and as varied as my tastes are. So I rent, and, if I "more or less" liked the game when I rented, I'll buy it used.
The only time I buy new stuff is when I rented and absolutely loved the game and want to help encourage similar development - Katamari Damacy, for example. I bought a dozen copies to give as gifts. And there are some games I have that are years and years old that I *still* come back and play with regularity and, in fact, have bought multiple copies because I've lost my disks or switched platforms.
I was at a Gamestop the other day and saw someone come in to sell some games. Not 10 minutes later, 2 of those used games got resold to other customers at a pretty good margin.
Initial sale: call it 49.99 (of which...? is profit?) Buy it back used, currently popular title: -$25 Sell it used: $45 Buy it back re-used: $-15 Sell it re-used: $35 Buy it back re-re-used: -$5 Sell it re-re-used: $20
Off of that life-cycle for one game, they can easily make $55 bucks off of one game that had a maximum retail price of $50 bucks.
Because used game sales are so attractive, they offer incentives for people to buy and sell used games - I have one of those membership cards, and I get %10 off of the price of used games as well as a %10 bonus to the trade in value when I sell games, and also they'll let me bring a used game back for a full refund if I do so within a week of purchase, no questions asked.
Even better, they have huge leeway with what they can charge for the games - I tend to get pretty good deals when I haggle a little.
Win win for the retailer and consumer, in my opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
Who's to say one wouldn't have dreams? Or just some kind of low-level pseudo-consciousness? Or something else entirely?
I'm not saying that any of those are possible, but I am saying that, since no human being has ever been frozen, suspended for a "long" period of time, and then thawed and revived, saying anything about the subjective experience is an iffy proposition.
I suspect that you're right - likely there'll be no notice of the lapsed time - but I wouldn't rule anything else out.
Me, I'll probably get frozen. After all, if it fails, well, I was dead anyway, and if it succeeds, go me - any world that would revive me would have to be stable/desirable enough for me to want to live in it (the Niven story, while amusing, was pretty absurd). One extra life insurance policy to cover the expense of it, it seems like a cheap enough way to slightly hedge one's bets.
Actually, someone I know who studies this stuff once told me that the day of birth is celebrated not because of the beginning of life, but because of the transition from internally to externally supported human being (he had a better term for it, but that was the gist).
Of this is a person who used to just make shit up and state it - convincingly as hell - in the middle of classes, just to watch everyone get puzzled, scramble for their textbooks and look for where the bombshell he just dropped was stated.
One fun one was the etemology of "Christmas" - he says it was a term adopted during the Spanish Inquisition and means, literally "More Christ" in Spanish. I was shocked at how many people would nod and say "That makes quite a bit of sense - I'd always thought it was somethning like that."
It's only been 2.3 months since the 360 launched. I'm not saying it'll sell 600+k more consoles in the next 1.7 months, but I'm pretty sure, if MS gets their distribution shit together they'll sell quite a few.
They are only "required" if one insists that current theories are correct and complete.
Kind of like aether was "required." And phlogistion. And igneous fluid.
I'm not saying that dark matter and dark energy don't exist - I don't know, and neither does anyone else - but I am saying that they're not necessarily "required."
I can definitely help you - just pack it up and ship it over to me and I'll get right to work on getting XP to boot on it.
My address is as follows:
Free iMac for the Sandtiger
P.O. Box 733-t
Chicago, Il 60613
I'll let you know how it goes once it arrives.
Thanks!
P.S.: Please update the RAM before sending it - 512 for XP just isn't enough.
I will probably be modded to troll for saying this,
I will probably be modded off-topic for saying this, but I've noticed that if one starts a comment saying "I'll probably get dinged on karma for this, but darn it, it needs to be said!" they will tend to be modified as insightful or interesting or informative, even when they are just stating the obvious.
I'm not saying that your post wasn't insightful/informative/interesting, just that because you began by saying you'll be modded a troll you boosted the probability of a +5 rating substantially.
Watch -
I'll probably be modded off-topic for this, but darn it, it needs to be said: Ice is cold. Not as cold as dry ice, but still - cold enough that it's darned uncomfortable to have to have it on your skin.
[sits back, lets the karma roll in and out - like the tides]
Buffet was pretty well known for shunning tech stocks - he claimed he wouldn't invest in anything he didn't understand.
Not that it excuses poor QA, but the gaming environment now is much different than the gaming envirionment "back then."
How many possible configurations can a PC gaming rig have? How much more complicated are the games themselves, and the process of making them?
And fault... Who's fault is it if a game crashes with certain video cards because of a buggy driver? Is the game maker really responsible for ensuring that every possible system that meets their minimum specs can run the game?
With consoles, the games are less buggy because they have 1 target to hit. There are bugs (seemingly more now than back then) but there are also more games.
There are more automobile related fatalities now than there were in 1930. Is this because automobiles have become less safe, or is it because we have more of them, being operated in all kinds of environments, being used by a broader scope of drivers?
My favorite thing to do with bread is to bake in whole cloves (well, peeled and seperated and soaked) of garlic. Sourdough + garlic... Oh mamma!
My food budget is approximately 150 a month. I have a decent amount of variety in my diet -
Pasta, rice, potatoes, beans, lentils, cous cous, oatmeal, spinach, peppers, tomatoes, banannas, pita, eggs, chicken, and maybe 2 times a month I'll have a steak or something similar. If I run out of spices, I skip the steak for a month and spend that on restocking the seasonings. Most importantly, there's no ramen in my house.
I make a lot of soups or long-cooking dishes - crockpot cooking is wonderful, as I can get it started in the morning and, by the time I get home, I've got a nice dinner waiting, and I can use the leftovers for lunch the next day or as a stock for my next dish.
It's pretty easy to eat a healthy diet on a very low budget if you're willing to learn to cook a little. $5 a day is plenty. I consume about 1250-1500 calories a day, and I don't get bored with the menu - I've got plenty of recipes, to where I could probably go at least a month without having the same thing twice (except for oatmeal at breakfast - I 3 the oatmeal).
Anyway - I learned to eat like this when I was in college and had to live on a food budget of a bit less than $100 a month (the mid 90's). I could certainly afford a much larger budget for food, but honestly I just don't feel the need, and I'd rather sock that extra money away for when I retire.
Completely off-topic, I know, but it annoys me when I see people talking about how low food budget means you have to eat ramen.
Actually, there have frequently been patches to the client that have fixed possibilities of exploiting in many MMOs. I don't know if Diablo II counts as an "mmo" but they did change the client in order to diminish the amount of "hidden" information that could be obtained.
Further, he didn't say "patch the client" - he just said "patch" and left it to be ambiguous - servers get patches, too.
Anyway, was the initial poster's point actually unclear? There was sufficient context to reduce the ambiguity.
The person you're responding to didn't say that the rules were kept client side. He mentioned that players might exploit loopholes in the rules, not edit them to their whim.
The person's point seemed to be "If someone abuses a flaw in the rules in a Pen and Paper game, the DM can shut them down right away. If someone abuses a flaw in the rules of an on-line game, since there is no DM or omnipresent authority, they'll be able to get away with it."
Which I agree with. PnP is different from MMO, and ultimately the rules will have to change (on the server side, of course) in order to accomodate those differences and still keep things enjoyable.
Any post-9/11 hijacker would have a plan in place to remove the passengers/people from the equation. Off the top of my head, I can think of half a dozen ways to accomplish that very quickly and easily.
I definitely think there is some societal blame to be spread around for those things - however, the response I made was to a person criticizing individuals, not a society as a whole. I think, were the above problems so rampant as to actually cause a society to be on the brink of extinction, yes - at that point, the society itself (but not the individuals comprising it) is probably not worth saving.
For all we know, if it weren't for Bill Gates, hyper intelligent pigs might have taken over the planet and used US for bacon!
Or maybe Bill Gates exudes an aura that is toxic to extra dimensional florae and faunae, and so has protected us from an invasion from elsewhere!
If you're really saying that someone doing a lot of good work to combat AIDS and other problems sucks because of what harm they may have caused to the computer industry, I suggest that you might wish to review your priorities.
When he took such an obvious path as creating a nonprofit organization (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and pumping in record billions of $$$ to avoid tax
I guess you got modded "insightful" by people who are really bad at math.
Donating money to charity does not leave one with more money than one would have had if one didn't donate at all.
If I have 120 dollars and I donate 20, I get taxed on the remaining 100 dollars (let's pretend it's 35%) - so I wind up with 65 dollars.
If I have 120 dollars and I don't donate anything, and I get taxed on the 120 dollars (and let's pretend that the tax rate on 120 dollars is 40%) I wind up with 72 dollars.
So, you see, even after considering the tax benefits, one does not magically wind up with more money after donating than if they didn't.
But, you know - if reality were different, I guess maybe you would have a point.
Let's not forget those rape victims, people with cheating spouses, medical professionals who get needle sticks while saving lives, children sold into sexual slavery.
Those people are idiots, too, right, Gravis Zero?
You know, you're right - I've looked it up, and am satisfied that I was incorrect on that point. I was looking for an example and I relied on the first one that popped into my head (never a good move when discussing a topic like this). Mea culpa maxima.
Please replace the Cosell example with any generic "porch monkey" comment - the main point is still the same: "monkey" is often used in a derogatory fashion towards blacks, and if one's aim is not to offend, one would do better to find other comparisons.
Also, in response to all the comments of "The software just draws comparisons based on dumb rules - surely the software can't be racist!" Easter eggs. Programmers write that software, and I would not be at all surprised if a programmer working on the comparison and recommendation software put in some things of this nature.
Lastly, I wonder what the outcry would have been like if the system recommended "Airplane!" and "9/11: A Nation Mourns" or "The Passion of the Christ" and a documentary on, say, abortion?
If one grows up being compared to monkeys as a way of demonstrating that they are less than paler people, and more generally as a paternalistic term used to put one in one's place, one gets somewhat sensitive to monkey related stuff.
Sometimes this can be very blatant - Howard Cosell saying "Would you look at that monkey run?" when describing a black football player. Sometimes this can be less blatant, and a "clever racist" (if there is such a thing) will try to say "Well, Planet of the Apes is social commentary and so is MLK, so it's just those darkies being overly uppity again!) And, yes, sometimes it can be absurd - I have some friends who attend a church that insists they boycott King Kong because it is, and I quote, "An interracial love story designed to show the black man's unquenchable and self-destructive desire for white women."
So, I'd say it's somewhat disingenuous to say "Gosh, I don't know why people would get so upset that someone is comparing Monkeys Gone Wild with Martin Luther King! It's so absurd!" It comes off as rather false.
For further reading, I recommend "How to Rent a Negro" - pretty funny take on a less than funny subject.
Killing and imprisoning dissenters is a Bad Thing. There is no discussion needed.
I agree 100%! Imprison them first, THEN kill them. Cause if you kill them and then imprison them, that leads to a very stinky situation.
E.g.: Killing another person is wrong, except when in self-defense or defending another.
:D)
So it is okay to kill abortion providers, if one believes that abortion == murdering a human being, and that by killing the doctor they're saving lives?
This is why the law isn't open to individual interpretation. Everyone's got a different idea of what is moral and what isn't.
(And now I bet I get modded flamebait or troll
I don't know if it's general or just for the program - I was told about it when I was signing up for the program, though. The cost of the card thing was $9.99 (I think - might usually be $15 but I got a discount) - it also comes with a year's subscription to their gaming magazine, which, while not tremendously useful, does provide more reading material for the can.
However, there are some options that you didn't mention. The pessimist in me suspects these will be the options that publishers explore.
1. Create games with a single-registration online component, such as your account key in World of Warcraft.
2. Pressurs console manufacturers to lock games to the first system that plays them, DRM style.
3. Move to an Xbox Live Arcade style download-only service.
4. Make re-selling games illegal.
I suspect you're right, which is really kind of sad. I'd hope that the people running publishing houses would at least be bright enough to realize that the best solutions - for them, profit wise - are the ones that increase the size of the market and make people want to do business with them.
Many people said that Apple couldn't sell digital music when it was so easy to pirate it - but iTunes proves the value in the warm-fuzzy approach instead of the antagonistic approach taken by the music industry.
So, if publishers have a problem with used game sales, I suggest that they REALLY pay attention and maximize their profits by finding a happy medium approach, rather than ultimately minimize their profits by pissing off and alienating their customer base with draconian practices.
I really hope that made sense - I'm so tired I'm seeing spots.
If developers want to avoid getting screwed on the used game market, they can do a number of things:
1) Create titles so compelling that no-one will want to wait for the used market.
2) Create titles so original/replayable that no-one will want to sell them to create that market.
3) Lobby their publishers to reduce the retail price so that more people will be willing to pay full retail.
4) Stop working with publishers who keep amping up prices while forcing absurd schedules making quality slip.
There are many games I'd be interested in, but there's just no way in hell I'm going to spend $50 on them, as much as I game, and as varied as my tastes are. So I rent, and, if I "more or less" liked the game when I rented, I'll buy it used.
The only time I buy new stuff is when I rented and absolutely loved the game and want to help encourage similar development - Katamari Damacy, for example. I bought a dozen copies to give as gifts. And there are some games I have that are years and years old that I *still* come back and play with regularity and, in fact, have bought multiple copies because I've lost my disks or switched platforms.
I was at a Gamestop the other day and saw someone come in to sell some games. Not 10 minutes later, 2 of those used games got resold to other customers at a pretty good margin.
Initial sale: call it 49.99 (of which...? is profit?)
Buy it back used, currently popular title: -$25
Sell it used: $45
Buy it back re-used: $-15
Sell it re-used: $35
Buy it back re-re-used: -$5
Sell it re-re-used: $20
Off of that life-cycle for one game, they can easily make $55 bucks off of one game that had a maximum retail price of $50 bucks.
Because used game sales are so attractive, they offer incentives for people to buy and sell used games - I have one of those membership cards, and I get %10 off of the price of used games as well as a %10 bonus to the trade in value when I sell games, and also they'll let me bring a used game back for a full refund if I do so within a week of purchase, no questions asked.
Even better, they have huge leeway with what they can charge for the games - I tend to get pretty good deals when I haggle a little.
Win win for the retailer and consumer, in my opinion.