Alpha rather unhelpfully assumes you want to multiply 10 pounds by 1 kilogram
Actually, while I agree that is unhelpful, I also don't like the other assumption. Maybe I'm already growing old, but I don't mind if people actually say what they mean instead of speaking or writing in some kind of shortcut-verbs-are-too-expensive-so-I-leave-them-out abbreviated style and leave it to the listener/reader to decypher whatever it could possibly be they mean.
So if you want 10 pounds in kilograms, what exactly is the trouble with actually writing those three (counting the space) additional characters?
Correct, a dedicated download server would also do. If you're a non-commercial game, however, I figure you don't have the bandwidth and your users can contribute in exchange for the free game.
to distribute maps and other assets, which in a download-from-server approach use up precious bandwidth of the server. You know, the machine that you want to have maximum throughput and minimum latency to at that precise moment in time.
Seriously, when's the last time you heard about 100,000 PCs getting infected by malware on a USB stick?
It's certainly a good step, but the problem it solves pales compared to pretty much everything else that windos has burdened itself with over the past decade or so.
I own a wireless mouse with USB dongle, and a MacBook Pro, so I'm exactly where you want to be.
While I like the specific mouse I have a lot, if I had a choice of this mouse as bluetooth or USB, I would go with bluetooth in an instant.
When you actually travel with your notebook (and why else have one), over the years you will accumulate a good number of instances where you simply left the USB dongle at home. In your average home setup, with keyboard, mouse, iPhone, printer, etc. you have a USB hub involved, and that's usually where you'll plug in the mouse dongle. And more often than you think, that's where it'll still be when you're 300 km away, digging out our mouse and realizing it's useless.
I am glad that the GPL exists. It's an excellent license, does exactly what it aims to do, and - unlike almost all of the other options - has actually been tested in court and stood up.
Remember that the Real World MMORPG is a lot like EVE - ruthlessly capitalistic. There are huge corporations out there with no morals, ethics or reasons to not crush you if it means a profit. Like all legal documents, these are the reason you need the legalese. I'm sure there's a lot of corporations with (at least some) ethics. And a lot more common people where a simple "hey, don't claim it's yours" as license would do.
But those are not the people that you'll have to take to court. Those are not the people that will try to steal your hobby project that you put five years of your life into, and sell it as their own.
So by all means, pick whatever license suits you best. I've released stuff under at least four different licenses over the years, as well as having put some simply into the public domain.
But know why you pick which license.
And remember that ERS has an agenda (just like RMS, of course).
The cyberpunk stories were wrong. Corporations don't recruit mercenaries to engage in actual physical warfare against each other, governments or other entities they dislike - they use the courts and lobbying power to pass new laws instead.
And yes, they already enjoy the extraterritorial rights that cyberpunk novels mentioned every now and then, though very rarely in western countries. Give it ten more years.
So what I'm saying is: This has nothing whatsoever to do with being fair, levelling the playing field, competition, market or any other buzzword. This has to do with defending your profits with whatever means available. Sometimes, it is that simple.
As someone who is testing out lots and lots of games, I'm tired of the "WOW formula". Been there, done that, thank you.
There is a small number of interesting twists that I quite like, but no one game has dared to deviate much, so far. I like the addition of a second "game mode" where you can use a ship (space or sea, depending on genre) in addition to land-based missions, for example. Several titles have tried themselves in that area, some good. I also like different advancement schemes, classless etc. Very few good implementations of those. And I like different game concepts, like EVE (ruthless PvP, stop whining because it's all fair game) or A Tale In The Desert (no combat, just a social and building game).
But, only a tiny fraction of MMOs think they can do without the mindless grinding that's come to define the genre. Very few deviate from the usual "class, levels and crafting things" formula, though many succeed in covering it up somewhat and painting it differently.
I'm really looking forward to stuff like the GTA MMORPG that may or may not be in the works, for example. Things that have the potential to break with the real fundamental concepts of MMOs. In the end, if you call if "skills" or "abilities" doesn't make much difference. But an MMO without grinding, that I would try, just to see it.
And yes, I'm posting as an avid gamer who nevertheless has other things to do and other games to play. I simply can't and don't want to put in the time investment that's necessary to be anyone with all the current major MMOs.
Finding relevant information other than the Wikipedia page for any specialist topic is a pain in the ass.
Only if you don't know how to use a search engine properly. On the contrast, I often find the wikipedia page on any particular topic to be the least informative, at least if you want any level of detail and not just a very rough overview.
Yes, neither Google nor any competitor regularily give you the most interesting page at the top. But if you know how to narrow down your search, and realize that quality results will take you more than 10 seconds to find, then it's all pretty straightforward.
Wolfram's engine does something different, something that Semantic Web, etc. are also trying: Getting the meaning of web pages and combining various information. Something like the melting point of iron can be found very easily on Google. In fact, if you put "melting point iron" into the search box, the very first result shows you 1535C right in the 2 lines of summary.
But semantic search actually understands the meaning. For example, a semantic search engine understands that temperatures are commonly given in either Celsius or Fahrenheit and how to convert between them, and can not only answer "what's the melting point of iron?", but also "which has the higher melting point, iron or silver?".
That's pretty nifty, and something that Google does not (yet) do for you - you'd have to look up both melting points and do the comparison in your head. For one item, that's trivial. For a thousand - that's what we invented computers for, right?
Several years ago, I claimed that a huge part of the MS success is built on the expectation of continuous growth, and that the entire company would collapse if that were ever to stop. Starting with their top people being paid largely in stock options, etc.
Things have changed a bit since then, but we'll now see if I was right. What will happen if the giant falls? Can you even imagine a world without Microsoft?
by outlawing all unsolicited emails from businesses you actually do violate the First Amendment.
Bullshit.
The First guarantees freedom of speech, not freedom of advertisement. There's a crucial difference, work it out for yourself. Hint: It's got nothing to do with commercial or not.
As someone who does responsible e-mail marketing, please let me make a distinction between that and spamming.
I very much hope your distinction starts with "opt-in", otherwise there's no difference.
I make it a point to not check those "you may send me advertisement" boxes whenever I sign up anywhere. That allows me to say with absolute certainty that any advertisement that reaches my inbox is spam, and whoever sent it is a spammer.
If your distinction is any less harsh, we're going to have a nice flamewar.:-)
Everyone with any knowledge whatsoever about spam knows not to reply in any form because the only thing it does is tell the spammer your address is valid, so he can now sell it on as a "verified address" for a higher price.
Uh, why is this on/.? It should be in pretty much every FAQ about spam ever written.
At least he has the excuse of a mental illness (which is being kept hidden illegally - his psychological exams are kept under lock even though the public has a right to know).
Do you want private companies having to compete with the government? Generally, past history suggests that is a bad idea.
History also suggests very strongly that monopolies and ologopolies are bad ideas. The telco market is rapidly imploding, and very soon there will not be enough competitors left in the business to create an actual market.
If they can turn down business then obviously, the market isn't working too well, and government intervention just might bring it back to life. Apparently thanks to that they've now woken up enough to want the business, after all.
When you vote in these elections mentioned in the summary, vote for someone who does not support censorship
They're already figuring that in.
Germany is currently ruled by a "large coalition", i.e. the two major parties rule together. Every time that has happened in the past, it has resulted in a) a crappy government (check) and b) less % in the next election for both of them (we'll see that soon).
They know this will very likely happen. Both parties are struggling to show that they were the "good" part of the large coalition and the others were the ones who made it all suck. I figure they hope to make the other lose more percentages so that they can form a coalition with one or two of the other parties after the election.
Which is actually, what this is all about. Anyone who thinks that this is about the children is an idiot. This is all about show activities because this year is election year.
This article (in german) sums up most of the counter-arguments in an excellent way. It also includes a link to this interview with someone who was abused as a child and opposes the new law very strongly.
Choice quote from the interview:
Because the government only wants to fight the pictures of child abuse, not the child abuse itself.
There is massive criticism against this within Germany.
Pretty much everyone who knows anything is against it, this includes both the people who know something about the technical details (i.e. IT people) as well as those who know something about child pornography, and even people who were abused as kids.
The summary of the criticism is:
This will do nothing to stop child porn
It is extremely easy to avoid (it's just a DNS block, use a different DNS and you're good)
They block site instead of prosecuting them, including sites that are known to be in Germany
It's just a cheap show in election year
Sites linking to blocked sites will be blocked as well, which means sites like wikileaks. Since the blocklist is secret, you'll never know when you just put yourself on the list.
Because in war it's such a bright idea to have much skin exposed?
Sorry, some camouflage make-up applied to the parts of the face you can't hide seems like a lot simpler, cheaper, more reliable and simply superior in all other aspects.
And that's why opt-out should be illegal. No exceptions. Massive fines. That would end all the spam and scamming right there, at least for the legal part (you still have to find and prosecute the guys, of course, but you don't need any huge laws).
So where are the class-action lawsuits? Americans, I'm looking at you, you make a case out of everything, what's taking you so long?
that a lot of "pirated" Bit Torrent software contains malware. Not just the Windows versions, but the Mac and Linux and BSD Unix versions as well.
When you download pirated software you take a risk that it contains a trojan.
It is also true that lot of commercial, regularily bought, software contains malware and trojans. We've had these discussions with the Sony rootkit, or with the Starforce "copy protection" which ranks right up there with the worst malware except that it doesn't put you into a botnet. There have also been a few cases of "real" malware that got unto install CDs.
The problem still is that you have to give full access to your machine to an untrusted installer for a friggin game. At least here OS X has an advantage that is not leveraged enough. You can install most programs into a sandbox, say with no permissions into the home dir of a different user and then run it as that user when you want to play. It's not much hassle, but it isn't the default mode of operation, and it really should be. Especially games almost never need any priviledges except to read/write their own directory and to access your screen and input devices.
To claim that this implies that quantum-mechanical behavior would be evident in the larger-scale process shows a misunderstanding of the physics.
Or that statement does.
There are a couple well-known quantum effects that are evident in or even directly observable as macroscopic effects. Or are you saying that Schrödinger's cat is not alive, and not dead, but its state is "not evident" even after opening the box? We've all observed the particle-wave-duality in highschool. And there are some crystals of macroscopic size that are being used to directly observe quantum effects on them.
What's so non-obvious about people being stupid? That's not the point. Science isn't about proving people stupid, it's about proving how stupidity works. "People are stupid" doesn't explain anything, it's just a killer phrase.
Slashdot Mirror
Alpha rather unhelpfully assumes you want to multiply 10 pounds by 1 kilogram
Actually, while I agree that is unhelpful, I also don't like the other assumption. Maybe I'm already growing old, but I don't mind if people actually say what they mean instead of speaking or writing in some kind of shortcut-verbs-are-too-expensive-so-I-leave-them-out abbreviated style and leave it to the listener/reader to decypher whatever it could possibly be they mean.
So if you want 10 pounds in kilograms, what exactly is the trouble with actually writing those three (counting the space) additional characters?
Correct, a dedicated download server would also do. If you're a non-commercial game, however, I figure you don't have the bandwidth and your users can contribute in exchange for the free game.
to distribute maps and other assets, which in a download-from-server approach use up precious bandwidth of the server. You know, the machine that you want to have maximum throughput and minimum latency to at that precise moment in time.
Wake me when they disable "autorun" for E-Mails.
Seriously, when's the last time you heard about 100,000 PCs getting infected by malware on a USB stick?
It's certainly a good step, but the problem it solves pales compared to pretty much everything else that windos has burdened itself with over the past decade or so.
I own a wireless mouse with USB dongle, and a MacBook Pro, so I'm exactly where you want to be.
While I like the specific mouse I have a lot, if I had a choice of this mouse as bluetooth or USB, I would go with bluetooth in an instant.
When you actually travel with your notebook (and why else have one), over the years you will accumulate a good number of instances where you simply left the USB dongle at home. In your average home setup, with keyboard, mouse, iPhone, printer, etc. you have a USB hub involved, and that's usually where you'll plug in the mouse dongle. And more often than you think, that's where it'll still be when you're 300 km away, digging out our mouse and realizing it's useless.
I am glad that the GPL exists. It's an excellent license, does exactly what it aims to do, and - unlike almost all of the other options - has actually been tested in court and stood up.
Remember that the Real World MMORPG is a lot like EVE - ruthlessly capitalistic. There are huge corporations out there with no morals, ethics or reasons to not crush you if it means a profit. Like all legal documents, these are the reason you need the legalese. I'm sure there's a lot of corporations with (at least some) ethics. And a lot more common people where a simple "hey, don't claim it's yours" as license would do.
But those are not the people that you'll have to take to court. Those are not the people that will try to steal your hobby project that you put five years of your life into, and sell it as their own.
So by all means, pick whatever license suits you best. I've released stuff under at least four different licenses over the years, as well as having put some simply into the public domain.
But know why you pick which license.
And remember that ERS has an agenda (just like RMS, of course).
The cyberpunk stories were wrong. Corporations don't recruit mercenaries to engage in actual physical warfare against each other, governments or other entities they dislike - they use the courts and lobbying power to pass new laws instead.
And yes, they already enjoy the extraterritorial rights that cyberpunk novels mentioned every now and then, though very rarely in western countries. Give it ten more years.
So what I'm saying is: This has nothing whatsoever to do with being fair, levelling the playing field, competition, market or any other buzzword. This has to do with defending your profits with whatever means available. Sometimes, it is that simple.
As someone who is testing out lots and lots of games, I'm tired of the "WOW formula". Been there, done that, thank you.
There is a small number of interesting twists that I quite like, but no one game has dared to deviate much, so far. I like the addition of a second "game mode" where you can use a ship (space or sea, depending on genre) in addition to land-based missions, for example. Several titles have tried themselves in that area, some good.
I also like different advancement schemes, classless etc. Very few good implementations of those.
And I like different game concepts, like EVE (ruthless PvP, stop whining because it's all fair game) or A Tale In The Desert (no combat, just a social and building game).
But, only a tiny fraction of MMOs think they can do without the mindless grinding that's come to define the genre. Very few deviate from the usual "class, levels and crafting things" formula, though many succeed in covering it up somewhat and painting it differently.
I'm really looking forward to stuff like the GTA MMORPG that may or may not be in the works, for example. Things that have the potential to break with the real fundamental concepts of MMOs. In the end, if you call if "skills" or "abilities" doesn't make much difference. But an MMO without grinding, that I would try, just to see it.
And yes, I'm posting as an avid gamer who nevertheless has other things to do and other games to play. I simply can't and don't want to put in the time investment that's necessary to be anyone with all the current major MMOs.
Finding relevant information other than the Wikipedia page for any specialist topic is a pain in the ass.
Only if you don't know how to use a search engine properly. On the contrast, I often find the wikipedia page on any particular topic to be the least informative, at least if you want any level of detail and not just a very rough overview.
Yes, neither Google nor any competitor regularily give you the most interesting page at the top. But if you know how to narrow down your search, and realize that quality results will take you more than 10 seconds to find, then it's all pretty straightforward.
Wolfram's engine does something different, something that Semantic Web, etc. are also trying: Getting the meaning of web pages and combining various information. Something like the melting point of iron can be found very easily on Google. In fact, if you put "melting point iron" into the search box, the very first result shows you 1535C right in the 2 lines of summary.
But semantic search actually understands the meaning. For example, a semantic search engine understands that temperatures are commonly given in either Celsius or Fahrenheit and how to convert between them, and can not only answer "what's the melting point of iron?", but also "which has the higher melting point, iron or silver?".
That's pretty nifty, and something that Google does not (yet) do for you - you'd have to look up both melting points and do the comparison in your head. For one item, that's trivial. For a thousand - that's what we invented computers for, right?
Several years ago, I claimed that a huge part of the MS success is built on the expectation of continuous growth, and that the entire company would collapse if that were ever to stop. Starting with their top people being paid largely in stock options, etc.
Things have changed a bit since then, but we'll now see if I was right. What will happen if the giant falls? Can you even imagine a world without Microsoft?
by outlawing all unsolicited emails from businesses you actually do violate the First Amendment.
Bullshit.
The First guarantees freedom of speech, not freedom of advertisement. There's a crucial difference, work it out for yourself. Hint: It's got nothing to do with commercial or not.
As someone who does responsible e-mail marketing, please let me make a distinction between that and spamming.
I very much hope your distinction starts with "opt-in", otherwise there's no difference.
I make it a point to not check those "you may send me advertisement" boxes whenever I sign up anywhere. That allows me to say with absolute certainty that any advertisement that reaches my inbox is spam, and whoever sent it is a spammer.
If your distinction is any less harsh, we're going to have a nice flamewar. :-)
Yes, you were a fool.
Everyone with any knowledge whatsoever about spam knows not to reply in any form because the only thing it does is tell the spammer your address is valid, so he can now sell it on as a "verified address" for a higher price.
Uh, why is this on /.? It should be in pretty much every FAQ about spam ever written.
At least he has the excuse of a mental illness (which is being kept hidden illegally - his psychological exams are kept under lock even though the public has a right to know).
Do you want private companies having to compete with the government? Generally, past history suggests that is a bad idea.
History also suggests very strongly that monopolies and ologopolies are bad ideas. The telco market is rapidly imploding, and very soon there will not be enough competitors left in the business to create an actual market.
If they can turn down business then obviously, the market isn't working too well, and government intervention just might bring it back to life. Apparently thanks to that they've now woken up enough to want the business, after all.
When you vote in these elections mentioned in the summary, vote for someone who does not support censorship
They're already figuring that in.
Germany is currently ruled by a "large coalition", i.e. the two major parties rule together. Every time that has happened in the past, it has resulted in a) a crappy government (check) and b) less % in the next election for both of them (we'll see that soon).
They know this will very likely happen. Both parties are struggling to show that they were the "good" part of the large coalition and the others were the ones who made it all suck. I figure they hope to make the other lose more percentages so that they can form a coalition with one or two of the other parties after the election.
Which is actually, what this is all about. Anyone who thinks that this is about the children is an idiot. This is all about show activities because this year is election year.
Sources:
This article (in german) sums up most of the counter-arguments in an excellent way. It also includes a link to this interview with someone who was abused as a child and opposes the new law very strongly.
Choice quote from the interview:
Because the government only wants to fight the pictures of child abuse, not the child abuse itself.
If you can read german, this comment from a satire magazin sums it up very well:
http://titanic-magazin.de/stopp.html
There is massive criticism against this within Germany.
Pretty much everyone who knows anything is against it, this includes both the people who know something about the technical details (i.e. IT people) as well as those who know something about child pornography, and even people who were abused as kids.
The summary of the criticism is:
"While I'm sure Ramji meant well,
Uh, why? He's a guy paid by a commercial company to further their interests. Unless that is what you mean by "well", there's no reason to assume that.
Because in war it's such a bright idea to have much skin exposed?
Sorry, some camouflage make-up applied to the parts of the face you can't hide seems like a lot simpler, cheaper, more reliable and simply superior in all other aspects.
And that's why opt-out should be illegal. No exceptions. Massive fines. That would end all the spam and scamming right there, at least for the legal part (you still have to find and prosecute the guys, of course, but you don't need any huge laws).
So where are the class-action lawsuits? Americans, I'm looking at you, you make a case out of everything, what's taking you so long?
that a lot of "pirated" Bit Torrent software contains malware. Not just the Windows versions, but the Mac and Linux and BSD Unix versions as well.
When you download pirated software you take a risk that it contains a trojan.
It is also true that lot of commercial, regularily bought, software contains malware and trojans. We've had these discussions with the Sony rootkit, or with the Starforce "copy protection" which ranks right up there with the worst malware except that it doesn't put you into a botnet.
There have also been a few cases of "real" malware that got unto install CDs.
The problem still is that you have to give full access to your machine to an untrusted installer for a friggin game. At least here OS X has an advantage that is not leveraged enough. You can install most programs into a sandbox, say with no permissions into the home dir of a different user and then run it as that user when you want to play. It's not much hassle, but it isn't the default mode of operation, and it really should be.
Especially games almost never need any priviledges except to read/write their own directory and to access your screen and input devices.
To claim that this implies that quantum-mechanical behavior would be evident in the larger-scale process shows a misunderstanding of the physics.
Or that statement does.
There are a couple well-known quantum effects that are evident in or even directly observable as macroscopic effects. Or are you saying that Schrödinger's cat is not alive, and not dead, but its state is "not evident" even after opening the box? We've all observed the particle-wave-duality in highschool. And there are some crystals of macroscopic size that are being used to directly observe quantum effects on them.
Why was parent modded "Insightful"?
What's so non-obvious about people being stupid? That's not the point. Science isn't about proving people stupid, it's about proving how stupidity works. "People are stupid" doesn't explain anything, it's just a killer phrase.