True, that one's not so offensive, although I hasten to point out that "having the view blocked by the one person that absolutely couldn't wait to go to the toilet" is something I'm more likely to experience in the cinema than sitting at home watching a pirated DVD.
What?? What did you just say? Apologies if English isn't your first language, but you really need to work on using pronouns & conjunctions. Or consider switching to an ISP that doesn't charge per-word.
You're talking about meta-gaming though - power playing, min/maxing, essentially finding and exploiting all the weak-points of the system.
That's what you enjoy; fine. However, there are many players out there who just want to build a character that they like, for whatever reason, and to enjoy the game as it was intended - a massively interactive RPG. They're in it for the experience, not for out & out victory.
The term "balance" is about balancing classes, not players. If everybody had your perspective, then everybody would play Death Knights or Paladins or whichever class is currently considered slightly overpowered, and it would be a very boring world indeed. It's important that the game mechanics allow for variety of play, or it gets very stale, very quickly. Class balancing is a crucial part of that.
The requirement to have a range of significantly distinct classes in raids, with their own strengths and weaknesses, opens up the possibility of having a rock/paper/scissors arrangement of class superiority in PvP. I'm amazed it wasn't implemented in the first place - it makes much more sense than trying to balance all classes to have the same chance in any given duel.
That way, a player of greater skill will not necessarily beat a player of lower skill if they are "out-classed", as it were. It means that players have to pick their fights wisely, be more opportunistic, be more alert, and maybe go around in pairs or impromptu groups to increase their chance of survival. That would greatly enhance the experience, in my opinion - it would prevent the loss of that feeling of threat and danger when you hit the level/gear cap, and would enhance the in-group/out-group, us & them relationship between the two factions as a result.
I think every/.er needs to watch all three series, tbh:-)
Incidentally, when the scary PIRACY message comes up in the cinema, I get a little thrill from going "Yaaarrrr!" in my best piratey voice. Doing so before Pirates Of The Caribbean got an especially good reaction.
The aggressive anti-piracy clip on pretty much every DVD release in the UK really, really pisses me off. It horribly misinforms and outright lies to the public in an effort to FUD us into compliance. For those who don't know it, it goes something like this:
*Cue jarring, aggressive music, quick & jerky camera cuts*
You wouldn't steal a car.
You wouldn't steal a handbag.
You wouldn't steal this movie.
Piracy. Is. Theft.
Theft. Is. A Crime.
Quite apart from the conflation of downloading a film with stealing someone's car, the statement that "PIRACY IS THEFT" is down-right false!. Even if we accept the use of the confused term "piracy", the fact is that Theft is a clearly defined criminal act, and copyright-infringement is an entirely separately defined act. I couldn't even tell you for sure if infringing copyright is a criminal act in the UK (could someone enlighten me please).
They are both illegal, and covered by entirely different legislation. Lying to Joe Public to convince him otherwise is horribly immoral, and unfortunately - as the parent post says - seems to have worked. Most people in the UK would now find it difficult to understand the notion that they are not the same thing.
I'd learn some Chinese or Japanese before fetishising Eastern philosophy and concepts, if I were you.
FWIW, the Japanese equivalent ki means "spirit/essence" in the loosest sense, and is used to form all sorts of compound nouns - "genki" meaning healthy, well, of good spirit, "tenki" meaning weather (heaven-spirit), "samuki" meaning a cold (cold-spirit) and... "denki" meaning electricity.
In my opinion, the languages of SE Asia are mostly beautiful, elegant and expressive, but they're still languages, and they're still used by everyday people to express everyday things. The tendency for us Occidental folk to romanticise all that is exotically Eastern - just as they are wont to do with the West - is understandable, but a little silly. I don't think you'll find any Chinese or Japanese people wailing about the bastardisation of their beautiful language in this case - though a native Chinese speaker may balk at our egregious mispronunciation of this very common word.
I can honestly see it working if it's an emergent property of the mechanics rather than a deliberate attempt to generate "spontaneity".
On first reading, it gave me the impression of working in a similar way to the original GTA games, whereby if you kept up a rampage, more and harder forces were dispatched to stop you. It took some skill and determination to keep that up for long, especially when the National Guard came out.
If, in the same way, it is difficult for a criminal-player to be that brazen and bad without getting stopped, then only the really skilful players will manage to become notorious enough to warrant their 15 minutes. Presumably the rewards - and fame - for stopping said criminal will be significant because it will be a similarly difficult achievement. Essentially the game's mechanics are inherently pitting the best good/evil players against one another, by emulating the real-world notion of expanding the net and pouring more resources into the bigger crimes, which would be a good thing and would encourage skilful players on both sides.
Essentially, it doesn't matter why criminal players go on their sprees - troll or not - so long as only the best players make it while the unskilled trolls get weeded out before they can start. As long as you gain fame by being good at the game rather than by being annoying, I see no reason why this couldn't work.
This is the basis for all of my interactions with inquisitive children, for a number of reasons:
It's fun to lie creatively to the credulous, even if it's immoral
Kids who aren't old or bright enough yet to spot the obvious lie wouldn't get much out of the facts anyway. A kid who is told a fact by a trusted adult will hold, use and quote it as gospel for years, without critically evaluating it. This is both annoying and problematic.
When a kid is old/bright enough to spot the lie, they are ready to understand the truth rather than just believe it. This is an effective and useful way to gauge and encourage a child's intellectual development.
Most importantly, when a child catches an adult out by deductive reasoning, and receives the truth as a reward... there is no greater sense of achievement, nor a more powerful incentive for genuine curiosity, in a child.
Curious children come from creative and interesting parents.
Crikey, what a good show that was. Every single thing was personified in the cartoon - from corpuscles to neuro-electric transmissions to individual nucleotides producing proteins - and I learned more about human biology from that show than I did from 5 years of GCSE Biology (and the show was only on at about 6.30am every Sunday in the UK, about 20 years ago).
Unfortunately I don't think it's been on TV for some time now, and I can't find it on DVD anywhere. If any of you out there are parents who want your kids to understand a little bit of biology, you can't do better than to show them this.
Actually there is a question mark around whether or not Pi is a "normal number": there was once some speculation that any given block of digits - your phone number, for example - is more likely to appear in the first n digits of Pi than in the first n digits of a randomly generated number.
This would be remarkable if true, but current best-guess AFAIK is that this is false (no proof as yet).
Still, if it is a Normal Number then it is a statistical certainty that every finite or aleph-0-infinite message imaginable occurs as a sequence within Pi, in any base. Kind of an "infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters" situation.
I'd be curious to learn how many of the four who did comply were subsequently convicted of the crimes for which they were being investigated, and what sentences these convictions entailed. I'm also very curious about what prevented the conviction of the other non-compliant nine. Essentially: was it worth it?
While I can see the arguments for and against permitting Section 49 sanctions, I want to know what the practical upshot is. Hypothetically, it may be worthwhile to a potential criminal to serve up to a couple of years in prison with a note on their record akin to "refused to assist in investigation" rather than face the potentially much more damaging convictions that their cooperation might incur.
My concern is that the law will be amended to reflect this, leading to much harsher sentencing in order to prevent this kind of cost-benefit decision being made by suspected criminals.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with the last paragraph, provided the first paragraph is properly observed: if you have a history of open honesty (and mutual respect) then there are no hard barriers on behaviour in public - you will both know intuitively what is unacceptable/hurtful/undermining behaviour. Saying that, it's vital to have that well-established foundation of trust and respect before relaxing the rules.
I would add one important piece of advice though: Remember That You Will Both Screw Up. In any close relationship, you will inevitably end up hurting one another from time to time; sometimes in everyday little ways, sometimes in almighty one-off fuck-ups. Patience and forgiveness from both parties are the only medicine for such ills, and when applied liberally and sincerely, the relationship will often be stronger after the fuck-up than before.
Slashdot Mirror
True, that one's not so offensive, although I hasten to point out that "having the view blocked by the one person that absolutely couldn't wait to go to the toilet" is something I'm more likely to experience in the cinema than sitting at home watching a pirated DVD.
Just sayin'.
What?? What did you just say? Apologies if English isn't your first language, but you really need to work on using pronouns & conjunctions. Or consider switching to an ISP that doesn't charge per-word.
You're talking about meta-gaming though - power playing, min/maxing, essentially finding and exploiting all the weak-points of the system.
That's what you enjoy; fine. However, there are many players out there who just want to build a character that they like, for whatever reason, and to enjoy the game as it was intended - a massively interactive RPG. They're in it for the experience, not for out & out victory.
The term "balance" is about balancing classes, not players. If everybody had your perspective, then everybody would play Death Knights or Paladins or whichever class is currently considered slightly overpowered, and it would be a very boring world indeed. It's important that the game mechanics allow for variety of play, or it gets very stale, very quickly. Class balancing is a crucial part of that.
Rock/paper/scissors, anyone?
The requirement to have a range of significantly distinct classes in raids, with their own strengths and weaknesses, opens up the possibility of having a rock/paper/scissors arrangement of class superiority in PvP. I'm amazed it wasn't implemented in the first place - it makes much more sense than trying to balance all classes to have the same chance in any given duel.
That way, a player of greater skill will not necessarily beat a player of lower skill if they are "out-classed", as it were. It means that players have to pick their fights wisely, be more opportunistic, be more alert, and maybe go around in pairs or impromptu groups to increase their chance of survival. That would greatly enhance the experience, in my opinion - it would prevent the loss of that feeling of threat and danger when you hit the level/gear cap, and would enhance the in-group/out-group, us & them relationship between the two factions as a result.
I think every /.er needs to watch all three series, tbh :-)
Incidentally, when the scary PIRACY message comes up in the cinema, I get a little thrill from going "Yaaarrrr!" in my best piratey voice. Doing so before Pirates Of The Caribbean got an especially good reaction.
The aggressive anti-piracy clip on pretty much every DVD release in the UK really, really pisses me off. It horribly misinforms and outright lies to the public in an effort to FUD us into compliance. For those who don't know it, it goes something like this:
Quite apart from the conflation of downloading a film with stealing someone's car, the statement that "PIRACY IS THEFT" is down-right false!. Even if we accept the use of the confused term "piracy", the fact is that Theft is a clearly defined criminal act, and copyright-infringement is an entirely separately defined act. I couldn't even tell you for sure if infringing copyright is a criminal act in the UK (could someone enlighten me please).
They are both illegal, and covered by entirely different legislation. Lying to Joe Public to convince him otherwise is horribly immoral, and unfortunately - as the parent post says - seems to have worked. Most people in the UK would now find it difficult to understand the notion that they are not the same thing.
PS. Sorry, I was rather rude. It's a reasonable question if you don't already know the answer.
Illegal != Criminal. There are whole swathes of law which are not "criminal law".
Okay, now I feel like a prat for starting out sounding like an authoritative arsehole - sorry, and you're welcome :-)
...actually the name of a bay on the Southern Island, popular with land-yachters - Kiwichiwee
I'd learn some Chinese or Japanese before fetishising Eastern philosophy and concepts, if I were you.
FWIW, the Japanese equivalent ki means "spirit/essence" in the loosest sense, and is used to form all sorts of compound nouns - "genki" meaning healthy, well, of good spirit, "tenki" meaning weather (heaven-spirit), "samuki" meaning a cold (cold-spirit) and... "denki" meaning electricity.
In my opinion, the languages of SE Asia are mostly beautiful, elegant and expressive, but they're still languages, and they're still used by everyday people to express everyday things. The tendency for us Occidental folk to romanticise all that is exotically Eastern - just as they are wont to do with the West - is understandable, but a little silly. I don't think you'll find any Chinese or Japanese people wailing about the bastardisation of their beautiful language in this case - though a native Chinese speaker may balk at our egregious mispronunciation of this very common word.
Well we already knew about Salt & Pepper - I'm guessing their "secret blend of herbs & spices" also includes a touch of crack and heroin...
I can honestly see it working if it's an emergent property of the mechanics rather than a deliberate attempt to generate "spontaneity".
On first reading, it gave me the impression of working in a similar way to the original GTA games, whereby if you kept up a rampage, more and harder forces were dispatched to stop you. It took some skill and determination to keep that up for long, especially when the National Guard came out.
If, in the same way, it is difficult for a criminal-player to be that brazen and bad without getting stopped, then only the really skilful players will manage to become notorious enough to warrant their 15 minutes. Presumably the rewards - and fame - for stopping said criminal will be significant because it will be a similarly difficult achievement. Essentially the game's mechanics are inherently pitting the best good/evil players against one another, by emulating the real-world notion of expanding the net and pouring more resources into the bigger crimes, which would be a good thing and would encourage skilful players on both sides.
Essentially, it doesn't matter why criminal players go on their sprees - troll or not - so long as only the best players make it while the unskilled trolls get weeded out before they can start. As long as you gain fame by being good at the game rather than by being annoying, I see no reason why this couldn't work.
Curious children come from creative and interesting parents.
I first read this as "Where do babies come from? From the sixties!"
It is available, but not in the UK (or US): here
Crikey, what a good show that was. Every single thing was personified in the cartoon - from corpuscles to neuro-electric transmissions to individual nucleotides producing proteins - and I learned more about human biology from that show than I did from 5 years of GCSE Biology (and the show was only on at about 6.30am every Sunday in the UK, about 20 years ago).
Unfortunately I don't think it's been on TV for some time now, and I can't find it on DVD anywhere. If any of you out there are parents who want your kids to understand a little bit of biology, you can't do better than to show them this.
Actually there is a question mark around whether or not Pi is a "normal number": there was once some speculation that any given block of digits - your phone number, for example - is more likely to appear in the first n digits of Pi than in the first n digits of a randomly generated number.
This would be remarkable if true, but current best-guess AFAIK is that this is false (no proof as yet).
Still, if it is a Normal Number then it is a statistical certainty that every finite or aleph-0-infinite message imaginable occurs as a sequence within Pi, in any base. Kind of an "infinite monkeys, infinite typewriters" situation.
I'd be curious to learn how many of the four who did comply were subsequently convicted of the crimes for which they were being investigated, and what sentences these convictions entailed. I'm also very curious about what prevented the conviction of the other non-compliant nine. Essentially: was it worth it?
While I can see the arguments for and against permitting Section 49 sanctions, I want to know what the practical upshot is. Hypothetically, it may be worthwhile to a potential criminal to serve up to a couple of years in prison with a note on their record akin to "refused to assist in investigation" rather than face the potentially much more damaging convictions that their cooperation might incur.
My concern is that the law will be amended to reflect this, leading to much harsher sentencing in order to prevent this kind of cost-benefit decision being made by suspected criminals.
30 ???
40 PROFIT!!!
LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE!!!
Very, very good advice.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with the last paragraph, provided the first paragraph is properly observed: if you have a history of open honesty (and mutual respect) then there are no hard barriers on behaviour in public - you will both know intuitively what is unacceptable/hurtful/undermining behaviour. Saying that, it's vital to have that well-established foundation of trust and respect before relaxing the rules.
I would add one important piece of advice though: Remember That You Will Both Screw Up. In any close relationship, you will inevitably end up hurting one another from time to time; sometimes in everyday little ways, sometimes in almighty one-off fuck-ups. Patience and forgiveness from both parties are the only medicine for such ills, and when applied liberally and sincerely, the relationship will often be stronger after the fuck-up than before.
Neural Linguistic Programming.
Raping? Unconscious? Wow, talk about projecting...
Parking is like sex. All the good slots are taken so occasionally, if nobody's looking, you stick it in a disabled one.