Cthulhu was displeased with the family's offerings.
Unfortunatley since they awoken the great Ancient one with their pleas for mercy, the heart patients and their family (and next of kin and family pets) will be eaten first and slowly.
Entourage is a horrid peice of software hands down.
Why? They had to patch in delegations and calender sharing (11.2+ versions) and even though its half ass.
If Microsoft had simply taken Outlook 2001 and ported it for OS X they would have a superior product hands down, but as of now when you are dealing with people with Outlook 2003 and Entourage mixed in and finding the exchange features are missing (you know Entourage is still missing Out off Office functionality?) it is just a mess.
Entourage is simply Outlook Express band-aided to work with Exchange and doesn't really work. I know plenty of companies who still use classic OS 9 mode with Outlook 2001 because Entourage is pretty useless for them.
Or to sell stock to investors? Usually founders of a company start with around 5% or so, and leave the rest for investors, and stock awards for employees. I wonder how that all got sorted out.
Oh... Its called "Junk Bonds".
But seriously, back in the 80's companies didn't make their fortunes from IPO'ing and sellings huge amounts of stocks like Google did. They actually had to sell something for a bit and make money before people invested in them. Well... They were supposed to. I think there was a reason that the stock market crashed in 89.
It would kind of interesting to see Notes take off again... Basically you can use it like outlook and then combine MS access in it for custom databases. However, somethings are still a big pain that make Outlook look good. (no pun intended)
If you need just email, setup an imap and use Thunderbird for your client. If you just need email and calendering then Outlook might be what you want (or maybe Groupwise if you are old school). If you need email, calenders, custom database development tied into your email, plus tons of other stuff... Then Notes is your program. Hey they even have a OS X client that is way better than MS's Entourage.
Well... If porn causes violence then why is rape and murder rates down in the US during such a prolific time of porn?
Secondly, I don't think the Vikings raped and pillaged Northern Europe because they saw an issue of playboy. Or maybe Roman orgies were causes by a time traveler showing them "Debbie Does Dallas".
Man has been violent and sexual deviants since the dawn of time. Porn just happens to more of a recent thing... Or more out in the open kind of thing. I don't think the correlation is there.
Just because a government works within legal means doesn't mean it makes it moral (or just). One should ask why the government is making subpeona's and secondly if it isn't a criminal matter then what the hell are they doing making a subpeona?
If it was civil case subpeona then the US federal government shouldn't be handling these out now would they? This should be the local and state courts. I think the problem here is that no one is bothering to question why they are stepping over their bounds of regulating interstate trade.
And using the word FUD to counter an argument is pretty much the same thing...
Private information can be subpeonaed. The Internet didn't change that.
Private information can be subpeonaed for good and just reasons for a criminal investigation under guidelines of the constitution. The war on terror didn't change that.
Or well... wasn't supposed to. The problem is that we are making crimes out of things that shouldn't be crimes and making a legal system so convoluted that all one has to do is look at a long list of secret laws and pick one that you have happened to have violated (unbeknownst to you) and send you off to jail without much due process.
I don't see the problem. Why do you think the government should have such extensive power over the hiring and firing practices of private companies?
If the people of France wish to have such a system, then what is the problem? If they elect government officials to carry out a socialist policy than it isn't very democratic if you say they aren't allowed to do so.
Socialism is quite flawed, but if the majority of people of a nation want such a system and want to have strict labor laws and don't mind the high unemployment then who are we to say they shouldn't?
Businesses and corporations are allowed only to exist for the benefit of the people of the nation. If the nation wishes to do away with such things then well... Maybe the economy is going to suck but otherwise your living in a totalitarian regime that enforces its will with a system that doesn't involve elections (ie not democracy).
Still you have to safeguard the fact that people are often willing to vote away their rights...
That's what the Supreme Court is for. Someone will bring a case, and if it's against the Constitution, it will be struck down. It's a good thing people aren't rioting in the streets.
What if the Supreme Court is also corrupt? Or no one bother's bringing the case to them? I'm not saying they are corrupt now, but what happens if in the future the system completley fails? Are you going to sit there and take it?
I'm sure our founding fathers could have not taken up their concerns with British government in the streets or they could have just stayed home? British rule and taxation of the American colonies was 100% completely legal under British Law remember! Why didn't the revolutionaries go to England and put their case through the British legal system?
Because sometime laws and the rule of the land fail when corruption and despotism take over. Didn't Jefferson and Thomas Paine teach us this?!
Like the "youth" in France? A law that actually allows a company to fire you? WE MUST MARCH!
Hey least they are doing something active... Here if they pass a law that violates the constitution or lets people die in a national disaster, we might get irrate enough to post on/. about it, but you won't see us take the day off to riot in the streets.
Hell... People were in the streets in Egypt to protest the Red Sea ferry sinking. Most of us here were hard pressed to even bother to take notice of the New Orleans fiasco other than to make some rantings on our blogs from the comfort of our homes or office.
Seriously, if we Americans had half the backbone of these foreigners that go ape crazy in the streets in protest of these minor things,we wouldn't be having these discussion about government pork. We'd have a government that wasn't run by lobbyists...
See... If 1970's America had the same amount of apathy we have today, we'd still be in Vietnam.
Americans today don't really care about morality, truth, freedom, equality, and good government. We just want the steady pay checks, food, sex, big screen TV, nice house, nice car, and whatever entertains us til we grow old and die... As long as we have our bread and circuses there isn't much of a point of us to bother changing anything.
Now you'll have to exscuse me while I go play WoW while listening to my iPod while enjoying movies I downloaded to play on my 42" plasma... I guess it might be a few more minutes before this breif outrage and desire of actually voting this year passes in a big huff of apathy. Least I have chicken.
Oh you mean... Western company's making rpg games... I thought we were talking about Cowboys and Indians type of role playing game.
Seriously, when I read the headline I was wondering what Oblivion had to do with Western 1800's era RPGs which I know were non-existant. Unless maybe there is a Oregon Trail mod out for oblivion? Hrm... Now that would be cool.
Blaming the theater for your above items is about as stupid as blaming the gas station for high gas prices.
Right, but if times change and the gas stations still sell gasonline instead of ethanol or hydrogen because everyone bought those kind of cars (like you have gotten a home theater) then it is their fault they went out of business since no one came to buy their product anymore.
Sure the movie theaters can't force hollywood to make better films, but they can sure as hell improve their quality of their theaters. If they don't like the consumers suggestions, then it is their own fault they go out of business when people no longer go.
What is the point of having 1,000 cramped seats when you only get 50 peopple for shows anyways... Might as well have been nice seats.
Great suggestions for the consumer, but unless they're going to cause you to go to the movies _a lot_ more, lousy for the operators.
Well, if no one is currently going to the theaters, aren't they making less money?
If you spend more money to provide a service and actually make a sale, then that is still more money you have than not spending money at all and not making a sale.
I hate to be the Devil's advocate (and I know about the strong desire to play MMOGs because I think I dropped out the first try of college because of Ultima Online), but I have to put a bit of a realism to what you are saying.
Addiction to MMOGs is not different than being addicted to TV, Books, or any other form of entertainment. People get addicted to porn, chatting, and surfing boring web sites.
Why? Because life really blows most of the time and usually we hate our jobs and hate our girlfirends and lives... Some of us deal better than others. Some get by with a crutch.
Peronsally, I can't go a week without drinking some type of alcoholic beverage and I get pretty bitter and hateful to people when I go any longer than that... It was either give up drinking or cigarettes and I figure drinking makes me a more socialble person and I don't smell like burnt fire all the time.
Secondly, MMOGs are not chemical addictions and should not be treated as such. Alcohol... Well it can ruin people, but unless you drive drunk all the time its not going to kill you like meth, crack, or heroine (and being from a club scene I've seen first hand people's lives being shot up pretty bad or just being dead... yes i've been unlucky enough to witness an fatal OD in my life)
Those kind of things you need to try to go cold turkey ASAP, but MMOGs and non-chemical addictions you need to simply attempt moderation or complement with something else that is more interesting.
You should probaly point out that he might not be able to play online games so much if he looses his job and that you should maybe setup something fun for him. Like movies... Bar hopping... Maybe a concert. Some place where he can maybe meet a girl or other people with same interests. Don't make him do it if he doesn't want to, but maybe ask if there is anything he wants to do other than play online.
Heck... Why don't you encourage a person with an MMOG addiction to meet more players like him at game conventions (like dragon con or penny arcade con) so that maybe he can meet other people that also have the same problem and he can go "Geez.. That guy is really addicted to that game... Oh wait..."
Simply saying... "Hey! You play this game too much! You should be more socialble!" without providing an alternative really makes for a bleak life. He should turn his addiction into something into something acceptable past time and perhaps gain from it.
Either way... I feel his pain and understand your MUD story from college. I think the only reason I quit Ultima Online is when OSI changed the game so much that it was no longer fun... *grumbles* Til this day I am so tempted to go back.
No. If WoW gold was tied to your credit card, then it would be pegged to a static value to the dollar. Kind of like how the yuan is pegged to the dollar. Now it would be a matter of how much money your are willing to spend rather than how much gold a single farmer can farm.
2. It gets harder to get money the "normal" way.
Not really. They'll be less farmers since you can just get WoW gold from your credit cards directly and I'm assuming that unless your credit card company is paying asian farmers and doesn't have a deal to get gold from Blizzard direclty, that the need for farmers would just go away.
Not that this is a bad thing... It just means people will buy their gold directly from the corporations rather than the farmers and then the farmers will loose their income and go away.
If you want to make your gold the old fashioned way you still can and now without the hassle of massive farmer, but... This still means your gameplay experience will be determined by how much money you put into the game rather than how much time you put into the game.
However this is neither here nor there, because the real root of this problem is that WoW's economy is not a zero sum system and is broke to begin with. All one has to do to create the currency is kill things and sell the items they drop (or they have gold on them) this means that there is an infinite supply of gold into the game.
Either they are going to have to make it closer to the real world and have a limited supply of currency or they will have to have a limited supply of items or creatures that you can kill. As in prices of items drop the more people sell them to NPC vendors, NPC vendors items increase in price due to inflation, animals and mobs go extince, and items found become more scarce...
The problem is that most people don't want to play a game like that, but in reality that is the only way to make a real world economy. Unless you live with real world inflation and scarcity there is no way an MMOG can say it has a real economy. (I think Ralph Koster tried this in early Ultima Online but no one liked it... Maybe some other game will try it in the future)
Yes, because as historical elections have shown, paper ballots are tamper-proof. No one has ever been known to rig or steal an election when a paper trail existed.
Well... Paper trails make it less easy to rig elections. It is a bit easier to type in "format C:/y" (or "rm -f") than to hide, burn, or bring in a truck load of 100,000 fake ballots.
With a rigged die-bold machine it could simply be counting the vote contrary to what the person is putting in or not at all if the vote is undesirable and the voter would not be the wiser. If it printed out a receipt or displayed paper before they fed it back into the machine. They'd have physical proof.
Of course Stalin's old quote comes to mind:
"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
To be fair.... Hitler was legally elected into power before he assumed control of the government.
Secondly, the annexation of Austria and Sudetanland was actually held to a German referendum (hence why referendum's are illegal in Germany these days).
So yeah... Democracy and Fascism can tie into each other and elections can be used to create fascist states and take away freedoms.
It is the reason why the founding fathers of the United States created the electoral college, bill of rights, and checks and ballances in the Federal government (Executive brance vetoes over the congress vs their 2/3rds over ride powers etc)
They were quite aware of the fact that sometimes people will willingly vote away their freedoms to those in power or those who were elected might usurp the democratic process. The best solution was to limit powers of elected officials or find ways to balance them out.
Slashdot Mirror
At least not for me in Firefox. Mind a cut and paste?
Cthulhu was displeased with the family's offerings.
Unfortunatley since they awoken the great Ancient one with their pleas for mercy, the heart patients and their family (and next of kin and family pets) will be eaten first and slowly.
Entourage is a horrid peice of software hands down.
Why? They had to patch in delegations and calender sharing (11.2+ versions) and even though its half ass.
If Microsoft had simply taken Outlook 2001 and ported it for OS X they would have a superior product hands down, but as of now when you are dealing with people with Outlook 2003 and Entourage mixed in and finding the exchange features are missing (you know Entourage is still missing Out off Office functionality?) it is just a mess.
Entourage is simply Outlook Express band-aided to work with Exchange and doesn't really work. I know plenty of companies who still use classic OS 9 mode with Outlook 2001 because Entourage is pretty useless for them.
Or to sell stock to investors? Usually founders of a company start with around 5% or so, and leave the rest for investors, and stock awards for employees. I wonder how that all got sorted out.
Oh... Its called "Junk Bonds".
But seriously, back in the 80's companies didn't make their fortunes from IPO'ing and sellings huge amounts of stocks like Google did. They actually had to sell something for a bit and make money before people invested in them. Well... They were supposed to. I think there was a reason that the stock market crashed in 89.
Lotus Notes is cool, but it can be a pain.
It would kind of interesting to see Notes take off again... Basically you can use it like outlook and then combine MS access in it for custom databases. However, somethings are still a big pain that make Outlook look good. (no pun intended)
If you need just email, setup an imap and use Thunderbird for your client.
If you just need email and calendering then Outlook might be what you want (or maybe Groupwise if you are old school).
If you need email, calenders, custom database development tied into your email, plus tons of other stuff... Then Notes is your program. Hey they even have a OS X client that is way better than MS's Entourage.
Well... If porn causes violence then why is rape and murder rates down in the US during such a prolific time of porn?
Secondly, I don't think the Vikings raped and pillaged Northern Europe because they saw an issue of playboy. Or maybe Roman orgies were causes by a time traveler showing them "Debbie Does Dallas".
Man has been violent and sexual deviants since the dawn of time. Porn just happens to more of a recent thing... Or more out in the open kind of thing. I don't think the correlation is there.
I'm sure the effects are better than rape, murder, and rampant violence does to people.
Read the definition of a subpeona please.
Just because a government works within legal means doesn't mean it makes it moral (or just). One should ask why the government is making subpeona's and secondly if it isn't a criminal matter then what the hell are they doing making a subpeona?
If it was civil case subpeona then the US federal government shouldn't be handling these out now would they? This should be the local and state courts. I think the problem here is that no one is bothering to question why they are stepping over their bounds of regulating interstate trade.
And using the word FUD to counter an argument is pretty much the same thing...
Private information can be subpeonaed. The Internet didn't change that.
Private information can be subpeonaed for good and just reasons for a criminal investigation under guidelines of the constitution. The war on terror didn't change that.
Or well... wasn't supposed to. The problem is that we are making crimes out of things that shouldn't be crimes and making a legal system so convoluted that all one has to do is look at a long list of secret laws and pick one that you have happened to have violated (unbeknownst to you) and send you off to jail without much due process.
I don't see the problem. Why do you think the government should have such extensive power over the hiring and firing practices of private companies?
If the people of France wish to have such a system, then what is the problem? If they elect government officials to carry out a socialist policy than it isn't very democratic if you say they aren't allowed to do so.
Socialism is quite flawed, but if the majority of people of a nation want such a system and want to have strict labor laws and don't mind the high unemployment then who are we to say they shouldn't?
Businesses and corporations are allowed only to exist for the benefit of the people of the nation. If the nation wishes to do away with such things then well... Maybe the economy is going to suck but otherwise your living in a totalitarian regime that enforces its will with a system that doesn't involve elections (ie not democracy).
Still you have to safeguard the fact that people are often willing to vote away their rights...
That's what the Supreme Court is for. Someone will bring a case, and if it's against the Constitution, it will be struck down. It's a good thing people aren't rioting in the streets.
What if the Supreme Court is also corrupt? Or no one bother's bringing the case to them? I'm not saying they are corrupt now, but what happens if in the future the system completley fails? Are you going to sit there and take it?
I'm sure our founding fathers could have not taken up their concerns with British government in the streets or they could have just stayed home? British rule and taxation of the American colonies was 100% completely legal under British Law remember! Why didn't the revolutionaries go to England and put their case through the British legal system?
Because sometime laws and the rule of the land fail when corruption and despotism take over. Didn't Jefferson and Thomas Paine teach us this?!
Being able to use a natural source of randomness that's available to everyone at once would be a major increase in the usability of one time pads.
;)
Including Eve
Sorry inside Alice and Bob encryption humor.
Like the "youth" in France? A law that actually allows a company to fire you? WE MUST MARCH!
/. about it, but you won't see us take the day off to riot in the streets.
,we wouldn't be having these discussion about government pork. We'd have a government that wasn't run by lobbyists...
Hey least they are doing something active... Here if they pass a law that violates the constitution or lets people die in a national disaster, we might get irrate enough to post on
Hell... People were in the streets in Egypt to protest the Red Sea ferry sinking. Most of us here were hard pressed to even bother to take notice of the New Orleans fiasco other than to make some rantings on our blogs from the comfort of our homes or office.
Seriously, if we Americans had half the backbone of these foreigners that go ape crazy in the streets in protest of these minor things
See... If 1970's America had the same amount of apathy we have today, we'd still be in Vietnam.
Americans today don't really care about morality, truth, freedom, equality, and good government. We just want the steady pay checks, food, sex, big screen TV, nice house, nice car, and whatever entertains us til we grow old and die... As long as we have our bread and circuses there isn't much of a point of us to bother changing anything.
Now you'll have to exscuse me while I go play WoW while listening to my iPod while enjoying movies I downloaded to play on my 42" plasma... I guess it might be a few more minutes before this breif outrage and desire of actually voting this year passes in a big huff of apathy. Least I have chicken.
Oh you mean... Western company's making rpg games... I thought we were talking about Cowboys and Indians type of role playing game.
Seriously, when I read the headline I was wondering what Oblivion had to do with Western 1800's era RPGs which I know were non-existant. Unless maybe there is a Oregon Trail mod out for oblivion? Hrm... Now that would be cool.
Blaming the theater for your above items is about as stupid as blaming the gas station for high gas prices.
Right, but if times change and the gas stations still sell gasonline instead of ethanol or hydrogen because everyone bought those kind of cars (like you have gotten a home theater) then it is their fault they went out of business since no one came to buy their product anymore.
Sure the movie theaters can't force hollywood to make better films, but they can sure as hell improve their quality of their theaters. If they don't like the consumers suggestions, then it is their own fault they go out of business when people no longer go.
What is the point of having 1,000 cramped seats when you only get 50 peopple for shows anyways... Might as well have been nice seats.
Great suggestions for the consumer, but unless they're going to cause you to go to the movies _a lot_ more, lousy for the operators.
Well, if no one is currently going to the theaters, aren't they making less money?
If you spend more money to provide a service and actually make a sale, then that is still more money you have than not spending money at all and not making a sale.
When you go to the bank, you'll present your token so they know it's you.
You mean your driver's license? I always have to show them mine when I go.
I hate to be the Devil's advocate (and I know about the strong desire to play MMOGs because I think I dropped out the first try of college because of Ultima Online), but I have to put a bit of a realism to what you are saying.
... yes i've been unlucky enough to witness an fatal OD in my life)
Addiction to MMOGs is not different than being addicted to TV, Books, or any other form of entertainment. People get addicted to porn, chatting, and surfing boring web sites.
Why? Because life really blows most of the time and usually we hate our jobs and hate our girlfirends and lives... Some of us deal better than others. Some get by with a crutch.
Peronsally, I can't go a week without drinking some type of alcoholic beverage and I get pretty bitter and hateful to people when I go any longer than that... It was either give up drinking or cigarettes and I figure drinking makes me a more socialble person and I don't smell like burnt fire all the time.
Secondly, MMOGs are not chemical addictions and should not be treated as such. Alcohol... Well it can ruin people, but unless you drive drunk all the time its not going to kill you like meth, crack, or heroine (and being from a club scene I've seen first hand people's lives being shot up pretty bad or just being dead
Those kind of things you need to try to go cold turkey ASAP, but MMOGs and non-chemical addictions you need to simply attempt moderation or complement with something else that is more interesting.
You should probaly point out that he might not be able to play online games so much if he looses his job and that you should maybe setup something fun for him. Like movies... Bar hopping... Maybe a concert. Some place where he can maybe meet a girl or other people with same interests. Don't make him do it if he doesn't want to, but maybe ask if there is anything he wants to do other than play online.
Heck... Why don't you encourage a person with an MMOG addiction to meet more players like him at game conventions (like dragon con or penny arcade con) so that maybe he can meet other people that also have the same problem and he can go "Geez.. That guy is really addicted to that game... Oh wait..."
Simply saying... "Hey! You play this game too much! You should be more socialble!" without providing an alternative really makes for a bleak life. He should turn his addiction into something into something acceptable past time and perhaps gain from it.
Either way... I feel his pain and understand your MUD story from college. I think the only reason I quit Ultima Online is when OSI changed the game so much that it was no longer fun... *grumbles* Til this day I am so tempted to go back.
Sex... Drugs... Alcohol... Maybe all of the above.
Maybe he should take up smoking while he is at it?
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever." -O'Brien (from George Orwell's 1984)
Pot, meet kettle.
Roland, meet Beatles-Beatles.
I played SB for a 3 months. It was fun but not really that memorable.
Sad to see the company go though...
1. Inflation kicks in worse than ever.
No. If WoW gold was tied to your credit card, then it would be pegged to a static value to the dollar. Kind of like how the yuan is pegged to the dollar. Now it would be a matter of how much money your are willing to spend rather than how much gold a single farmer can farm.
2. It gets harder to get money the "normal" way.
Not really. They'll be less farmers since you can just get WoW gold from your credit cards directly and I'm assuming that unless your credit card company is paying asian farmers and doesn't have a deal to get gold from Blizzard direclty, that the need for farmers would just go away.
Not that this is a bad thing... It just means people will buy their gold directly from the corporations rather than the farmers and then the farmers will loose their income and go away.
If you want to make your gold the old fashioned way you still can and now without the hassle of massive farmer, but... This still means your gameplay experience will be determined by how much money you put into the game rather than how much time you put into the game.
However this is neither here nor there, because the real root of this problem is that WoW's economy is not a zero sum system and is broke to begin with. All one has to do to create the currency is kill things and sell the items they drop (or they have gold on them) this means that there is an infinite supply of gold into the game.
Either they are going to have to make it closer to the real world and have a limited supply of currency or they will have to have a limited supply of items or creatures that you can kill. As in prices of items drop the more people sell them to NPC vendors, NPC vendors items increase in price due to inflation, animals and mobs go extince, and items found become more scarce...
The problem is that most people don't want to play a game like that, but in reality that is the only way to make a real world economy. Unless you live with real world inflation and scarcity there is no way an MMOG can say it has a real economy. (I think Ralph Koster tried this in early Ultima Online but no one liked it... Maybe some other game will try it in the future)
Yes, because as historical elections have shown, paper ballots are tamper-proof. No one has ever been known to rig or steal an election when a paper trail existed.
/y" (or "rm -f") than to hide, burn, or bring in a truck load of 100,000 fake ballots.
Well... Paper trails make it less easy to rig elections. It is a bit easier to type in "format C:
With a rigged die-bold machine it could simply be counting the vote contrary to what the person is putting in or not at all if the vote is undesirable and the voter would not be the wiser. If it printed out a receipt or displayed paper before they fed it back into the machine. They'd have physical proof.
Of course Stalin's old quote comes to mind:
"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
Democracy and Fascism are not compatible.
To be fair.... Hitler was legally elected into power before he assumed control of the government.
Secondly, the annexation of Austria and Sudetanland was actually held to a German referendum (hence why referendum's are illegal in Germany these days).
So yeah... Democracy and Fascism can tie into each other and elections can be used to create fascist states and take away freedoms.
It is the reason why the founding fathers of the United States created the electoral college, bill of rights, and checks and ballances in the Federal government (Executive brance vetoes over the congress vs their 2/3rds over ride powers etc)
They were quite aware of the fact that sometimes people will willingly vote away their freedoms to those in power or those who were elected might usurp the democratic process. The best solution was to limit powers of elected officials or find ways to balance them out.