You're asking Congress to start directly regulating technical policy with how the Internet works.
Ummm..... Technically they have since it started.
Does DARPA ring a bell?
And all Telco's and Cable Co's have been FCC regulated since day one. And if you have ever worked an ISP you'll know there is plenty of regulation on how DSL, Central Offices (the phone company ones), and DSLAMs work.
The only reason you can get Speak Easy and Earthlink DSL is because of current government regulation that forces telco's to let 3rd party ISPs use their CO's for their rack equipment.
In this instance government regulation prevents over powerful already government sponsored monopolies. You remember the telco's got all that tax money in the 90's to build infrastructure?
Well if we let the telco's go hogwild then the ISPs might as well be owned directly by the government... one that wants to charge whatever they want without.
Normally I am a libertarian, but we are far too into this to let these companies run crazy without over sight.
Ungh... I have moral reservations about having Cingular (who is owned by ATT now) as my cell phone provider. Mostly because of the NSA wiretapping implications, but also due to horrid service they gave my friend of an ex one time.
Although... Does anyone else here have good things to say about Cingular? SprintPCS is so so in coverage, but their service is ok for me. Verizon has better service in general, but I tend to not like their phones.
So... Eh? Its cool, but I'm just leery of the cell phone company themselves and not Apple. Could we switch out SIM cards?
Why do slashdotters hate lawyers so much? It's always "the lawyers" and never the management of ABC or the gutless wonders at Spocko's ISP.
Because the lawyers have free will to not take the job and do something else with their skills. It is like saying that a mercenary solider isn't to blame for war crimes because he was ordered to by someone else. He signed up for the job and could have said no when they wanted to hire him.
Even more so since I doubt Disney hangs traitorous lawyers for desertion.
Don't blame religion. Blame people. People do this stuff. They may do it in the name of religion or in the name of their own greed, but it's still the people who are doing it.
Are you so sure? Some of the Crusaders did have ulterior motives and the Byzantine Emperor did have political motive for an alliance with the Western Church, but Pope Urban in 1099 had a very deep belief in what he was doing was right and in the name of god.
The Crusaders themselves believed it was their duty and in light of the fact they murdered everyone in Jerusalem and got sidetracked and sacked Constantinople on the way, they were really believing they were doing this in the name of god.
The early crusader movement at the beginning was not a political play in that sense. Entire nations and countries were moved by teachings or what they thought to be teachings to liberate lands from other people who didn't agree with them.
Think of it as a mind virus. It gets in your head and you can do things without putting logic in it. It may go against free will but during these times everyone thought it was the right thing to do. From the Church, The Kings, to your parents. And if you disagreed with any of it... You were the one was wrong and evil.
So if you were born into a society and never knew anything else but this religion and way of thinking how can you spontaneously wake up some day and say to yourself "Maybe we shouldn't be killing our religious enemies?"
You can't.
And it is shear luck of the matter that western civilization came about with the Enlightenment and Rationalism after the 1600s.
So yes... Like Nerve Gas and Nuclear bombs aren't evil entities causing problems, it may be that we should review the dangerous of misuse of them by not keeping them around or in very good check.
At least kept the safety on your gun as well as your beliefs.
To be fair, the State of Pennsylvania in the USA has some problems from England still lingering around after 400 some odd years. Technically this state is what they call a commonwealth which has some very weird laws that no one has bothered to change. In fact I'd wager England has solved much of their laws regarding commonwealth regulations.
The problem is that law makers everywhere in the world only make laws... They hardly ever get rid of them. Perhaps we should setup a second body of government whose sole task is to review and delete laws. But I doubt that will happen. Lawmakers will continuously make laws into infinite numbers until the end of time.
Different platforms, different programs, different needs.
I think it was more on the grandparents post on the idea that the fact that Vista can run more games and application.
But it is a moot point if it can't run the one application I need it to run. The fact that it can run more may not be the right tool for the right job. Like having a swiss army knife when you really need a plain phillips head screw driver.
Vista still has all the games and applications people use, most not available on any version of OS X.
But can you run Final Cut Pro on Windows?
Or even have a comparable program that doesn't make you beat your head on the keyboard? (I'm looking at you Adobe Premiere!)
But in general, most commercial apps don't have a version on OS X.
But to be really fair, if the software is open source and running on a modern version of Linux (as in that it is currently being maintained) you may see it recompiled in X11 for OS X.
It's easy to maintain a low turnover of staff as long as the vast majority of your staff isn't fully vested, and the stock is moving upwards.
Huh? Most people don't try to get hired or stay at a job just because of stock options. It is a nice perk, but if a company treats you like crap or you feel what you are doing is not appreciated or useful in some way then you are going to quit regardless of how much money they throw at you.
And if you are one of those people who stick around for the money even though you loathe the job, then it will suck to be your coworker, underling, or even manager of you because your performance is going to reflect your true feelings.
Which in turn results in more people leaving the sinking ship...
So rather than throwing wheelbarrows of money at employees to buy their loyalty, you'll succeed more by having a productive and worker friendly workplace.
Heck... If Google asked me I would work for them for minimum wage if they could cover my minimum living expenses otherwise (Well to fair... That would one helluva thing to have on a resume).
put them secret lists (no-fly, for example), and censored them.
I have personally been affected by the no-fly list even though I am not a target of the government campaign of "better security".
Every time I go to the airport to travel I expect to wait an extra while during the time they freak out over my name (which is very common actually) and then realize I'm not in my 40's and my middle name isn't the same as the other person (just the same initial). Then they apologize for the delay and I go on my way.
The first time was cute, but it happens every single time I go to the airport. I don't bother trying to use the automated baggage drop off teller because it won't let me without over ride from them so I always go to the counter first.
But, of course, a "robot dog" is just a program -- a program running on a box with some wires in it. It is clearly not sentient since it does exactly what it is told and feels no pain (since it is not programmed to do so). It may masquerade as consciousness, but in the end it is still run by a wholly deterministic set of instructions executing according to a fixed program.
Prove to me that you are not doing the same.
Except with flesh bits instead of wires. We only assume because we have no way to prove anyone else really has consciousness and do it because of altruism. Heck... Unless I crack open my brain, I have no way to know if I'm really human and have to take the word of my fellow man.
If there needs to be an ethical rule for robots and rights it should be not to program robots to demand something they can't get. Don't make them want to be human, don't make them want to have human rights, make them so they're "happy" in their position.
The problem is that true intelligence requires opinion.
As in... The robot or AI needs some type of opinion in order to acheive certain tasks without constant input of the human.
The best example would be Stanley's car (from DARPA Grand Challenge) in which its opinion is whether or not the object in front of it is indeed a road. If it is... Then good and it will continue driving over it.
Now if we get a household robot, in which one goes about your house and cleans dishes (or at least puts dirty dishes into the washing machine) would have to have an opinion on what constitutes a dish because you can't really brute force it with an RFID tag of all your household objects including your pets.
Even if you programmed the specs of a dish to the robot, you certainly wouldn't want it to show up in the middle of your diner and take your unfinished meal. Or perhaps a clean dish you set out with nothing on it for some other purpose.
So no only will it have to recognize a dish and locate it, but also know when it is OK to wash it. Of course you could somehow command the robot at a particular time to go clean the dishes, but what if you have other people in the household that haven't finished their meal.
It will still have to have the opinion (and hopefully correct opinion) that certain dishes are ok to take away.
Now, this gets even further complicated if the robots are in charge of the care of the human. Whether this is just a robot is looking after your kids, grandparents or following you around then it gets a bit more complicated to avoid emotions or true intelligence.
A robot must have some type of opinion on what is good and bad for the human. You could program in that death and suffering are bad for the human.
So if your grandma falls into the fireplace that the robot will know that fire causes suffering so it must be bad and pulls grandma out. Now if were stuck in a snow drift and your robot realized you were going to freeze to death his intelligence would need a gray area to know that fire in this instance would be good (at the proper distance).
There is no practical application of owning a protocol type droid unless you are elderly, disabled, and don't get on with humans very well. I mean, how feasible is it to pay $5000+ dollars to order your droid to fetch you another beer while you sit on your ass watching Deal or No Deal?
Keep in mind $5,000 is much as some real dolls and I believe there is a market for fully automated versions.
Secondly, I would gladly pay $5,000 (or more) for a general purpose house hold robot. This would of course have to carry laundry from my room to the washing machine and then fold it and put it away. It should also be able to take dishes off the table or sink and wash them or put them in a washing machine and then put them away after it is done.
Me lazy? Kind of, but you only live once and humans have shown they don't want to spend the majority of their life doing household chores.
The key is getting the jump from Roomba to Chobits/Androids. I believe a Japanese lab has promised to get a walking android up and "running" by 2010. That is only 3 years away.
Besides the consumer application, general purpose robots (if cheap enough) could replace a great deal of manual labor everywhere. This is the goal of most Japanese car companies (Honda/Toyota) because of the labor shortage Japan is having right now.
And the military will continue with robots until it can remove the human factor from the majority of combat situations making wars politically reasonable as in "Wars without casualties". At least casualties for the US.
But personally, I'd be happy with a consumer model of Stanley's winning car to drive me places.
Bill Gates talking about what may happen to the world if robotics hit critical mass is rather dumb right now though.
Pretend it is 1987 instead of 2007 and that we are talking about the internet bubble in 1997.
Now, just think what what life will be like in 2017.
The point here is that Bill Gates is talking about this rather than a scientist which means the prospect of robots have gone form the label to the business planning sector. Which means the consumer sector is not far off.
Sure, today the software's too difficult to install and lacks some features. But if that ever changes it could mean a big change in how social networking pages interact with each other: No more middle-man.
We had all this back with the E/N pages back in 2000 before Livejournal (and way before Myspace) but the problem is that non-technical people outnumber the technical so E/N pretty much died out.
Why not just run all those server processes within the same OS?
Because not all server process were written for the same OS.
Granted if the source code is available you might be able to recompile it, but if it is not then you don't have much of a choice to to use the OS it was written for.
You could have one box per OS approach, but due to fact that hardware is become fast enough to make this a moot point and you'll save money on the electric bill alone to make it worth your while.
Watch the movie again, the old man guarding the grail mentions that the grails effects only work if dont pass the great seal, that is the boundaries of immortality.
Which leaves a very big plot hole on who made the great seal and what is it?
And why does it have anything with the holy grail? Since presumptuously the grail in itself is the power to immortality, but why does it matter that the seal had anything to do with this? Did Jesus show up and bless the seal when the knights made the temple in the Middle ages?
Lastly... Why can't the seal be moved. If immortality is achievable why not move the seal or move into the temple with modern luxuries?
It's common for the Extreme Right, and their fellow travelers in the government, to invent disasters from selected wars so they can save us all by the application of Fascism, at the expense of our personal liberties, of course.
But seriously... If popular opinion is not correct, then are you saying democracy (or representative forms of government) is not correct either?
I don't support socialism a bit, but if a nation got together and 95% of the people wanted it... Would not democracy entail that it is right to do so?
I know the usually two camps of this argument is "Ban all the gold farmers!" or "Who cares?", but to me I don't care for the practice, but I don't blame the farmers.
I think it is a sign that the game is too tedious or that there are too many times sinks in order to actually play the game.
Collecting gold and loot should actually be the fun part of the game. Not the actually sitting around with your treasure or spending it on items that are required for you to have fun.
In games that require leveling, the disparity between players is quite large and a level 1 player can't see the same content as level 20 and the level 20 can't see the same content as players at 60. This is a discouragement for casual players who don't have the ability to spend 10+ hours per week in the game.
Personally, when it ceases to be fun I quit the game all together. It just isn't worth the effort or my money. While others (who have more money than they should) pay gold farmers to actually enjoy the game without effort.
Personally the last MMOG that I really enjoyed was Shadowbane because it was more about PvP rather than sitting around killing mobs to get to the next level and Shadowbane's leveling wasn't that grueling either and the power disparity between levels wasn't that huge.
But I still think Ultima Online has the best system of advancement with skills rather than levels and players were all pretty much equal in terms of time sinks. Sure there was gold farming, but to me killing monsters and raiding dungeons was just as fun as actually have property in the game.
Of course you could always craft items for a living which made things interesting too.
On a side note... There is a debate that the Taiwan earthquake has also caused a reduction in spam or botnets. I've notice an extreme drop in my levels on various email accounts and according to digg the number of tracked bots dropped from 500,000 to 400,000.
Of course it could be the influx of new computer or kids home for the holidays fixing their parents.
Slashdot Mirror
You're asking Congress to start directly regulating technical policy with how the Internet works.
Ummm..... Technically they have since it started.
Does DARPA ring a bell?
And all Telco's and Cable Co's have been FCC regulated since day one. And if you have ever worked an ISP you'll know there is plenty of regulation on how DSL, Central Offices (the phone company ones), and DSLAMs work.
The only reason you can get Speak Easy and Earthlink DSL is because of current government regulation that forces telco's to let 3rd party ISPs use their CO's for their rack equipment.
In this instance government regulation prevents over powerful already government sponsored monopolies. You remember the telco's got all that tax money in the 90's to build infrastructure?
Well if we let the telco's go hogwild then the ISPs might as well be owned directly by the government... one that wants to charge whatever they want without.
Normally I am a libertarian, but we are far too into this to let these companies run crazy without over sight.
Ungh... I have moral reservations about having Cingular (who is owned by ATT now) as my cell phone provider. Mostly because of the NSA wiretapping implications, but also due to horrid service they gave my friend of an ex one time.
Although... Does anyone else here have good things to say about Cingular? SprintPCS is so so in coverage, but their service is ok for me. Verizon has better service in general, but I tend to not like their phones.
So... Eh? Its cool, but I'm just leery of the cell phone company themselves and not Apple. Could we switch out SIM cards?
Maybe a stable (and available to us that don't work in GPL hippie-ville) API is needed
BSD?
Why do slashdotters hate lawyers so much? It's always "the lawyers" and never the management of ABC or the gutless wonders at Spocko's ISP.
Because the lawyers have free will to not take the job and do something else with their skills. It is like saying that a mercenary solider isn't to blame for war crimes because he was ordered to by someone else. He signed up for the job and could have said no when they wanted to hire him.
Even more so since I doubt Disney hangs traitorous lawyers for desertion.
Don't blame religion. Blame people. People do this stuff. They may do it in the name of religion or in the name of their own greed, but it's still the people who are doing it.
Are you so sure? Some of the Crusaders did have ulterior motives and the Byzantine Emperor did have political motive for an alliance with the Western Church, but Pope Urban in 1099 had a very deep belief in what he was doing was right and in the name of god.
The Crusaders themselves believed it was their duty and in light of the fact they murdered everyone in Jerusalem and got sidetracked and sacked Constantinople on the way, they were really believing they were doing this in the name of god.
The early crusader movement at the beginning was not a political play in that sense. Entire nations and countries were moved by teachings or what they thought to be teachings to liberate lands from other people who didn't agree with them.
Think of it as a mind virus. It gets in your head and you can do things without putting logic in it. It may go against free will but during these times everyone thought it was the right thing to do. From the Church, The Kings, to your parents. And if you disagreed with any of it... You were the one was wrong and evil.
So if you were born into a society and never knew anything else but this religion and way of thinking how can you spontaneously wake up some day and say to yourself "Maybe we shouldn't be killing our religious enemies?"
You can't.
And it is shear luck of the matter that western civilization came about with the Enlightenment and Rationalism after the 1600s.
So yes... Like Nerve Gas and Nuclear bombs aren't evil entities causing problems, it may be that we should review the dangerous of misuse of them by not keeping them around or in very good check.
At least kept the safety on your gun as well as your beliefs.
To be fair, the State of Pennsylvania in the USA has some problems from England still lingering around after 400 some odd years. Technically this state is what they call a commonwealth which has some very weird laws that no one has bothered to change. In fact I'd wager England has solved much of their laws regarding commonwealth regulations.
The problem is that law makers everywhere in the world only make laws... They hardly ever get rid of them. Perhaps we should setup a second body of government whose sole task is to review and delete laws. But I doubt that will happen. Lawmakers will continuously make laws into infinite numbers until the end of time.
No, ring a bell like Alexander Graham Bell kind of bell.
As a child, that warning label only perked my interest on putting pens and various other non-pencils into the electric pencil sharpener.
Different platforms, different programs, different needs.
I think it was more on the grandparents post on the idea that the fact that Vista can run more games and application.
But it is a moot point if it can't run the one application I need it to run. The fact that it can run more may not be the right tool for the right job. Like having a swiss army knife when you really need a plain phillips head screw driver.
Vista still has all the games and applications people use, most not available on any version of OS X.
But can you run Final Cut Pro on Windows?
Or even have a comparable program that doesn't make you beat your head on the keyboard? (I'm looking at you Adobe Premiere!)
But in general, most commercial apps don't have a version on OS X.
But to be really fair, if the software is open source and running on a modern version of Linux (as in that it is currently being maintained) you may see it recompiled in X11 for OS X.
It's easy to maintain a low turnover of staff as long as the vast majority of your staff isn't fully vested, and the stock is moving upwards.
Huh? Most people don't try to get hired or stay at a job just because of stock options. It is a nice perk, but if a company treats you like crap or you feel what you are doing is not appreciated or useful in some way then you are going to quit regardless of how much money they throw at you.
And if you are one of those people who stick around for the money even though you loathe the job, then it will suck to be your coworker, underling, or even manager of you because your performance is going to reflect your true feelings.
Which in turn results in more people leaving the sinking ship...
So rather than throwing wheelbarrows of money at employees to buy their loyalty, you'll succeed more by having a productive and worker friendly workplace.
Heck... If Google asked me I would work for them for minimum wage if they could cover my minimum living expenses otherwise (Well to fair... That would one helluva thing to have on a resume).
put them secret lists (no-fly, for example), and censored them.
I have personally been affected by the no-fly list even though I am not a target of the government campaign of "better security".
Every time I go to the airport to travel I expect to wait an extra while during the time they freak out over my name (which is very common actually) and then realize I'm not in my 40's and my middle name isn't the same as the other person (just the same initial). Then they apologize for the delay and I go on my way.
The first time was cute, but it happens every single time I go to the airport. I don't bother trying to use the automated baggage drop off teller because it won't let me without over ride from them so I always go to the counter first.
Wikipedia says you're wrong.
The is quite interesting if you look at the history. Most of the early vetos were made on constitutional grounds or to protect the constitution.
Now vetos are just for politicking.
But, of course, a "robot dog" is just a program -- a program running on a box with some wires in it. It is clearly not sentient since it does exactly what it is told and feels no pain (since it is not programmed to do so). It may masquerade as consciousness, but in the end it is still run by a wholly deterministic set of instructions executing according to a fixed program.
Prove to me that you are not doing the same.
Except with flesh bits instead of wires. We only assume because we have no way to prove anyone else really has consciousness and do it because of altruism. Heck... Unless I crack open my brain, I have no way to know if I'm really human and have to take the word of my fellow man.
Descartes had some thoughts on such matters...
If there needs to be an ethical rule for robots and rights it should be not to program robots to demand something they can't get. Don't make them want to be human, don't make them want to have human rights, make them so they're "happy" in their position.
The problem is that true intelligence requires opinion.
As in... The robot or AI needs some type of opinion in order to acheive certain tasks without constant input of the human.
The best example would be Stanley's car (from DARPA Grand Challenge) in which its opinion is whether or not the object in front of it is indeed a road. If it is... Then good and it will continue driving over it.
Now if we get a household robot, in which one goes about your house and cleans dishes (or at least puts dirty dishes into the washing machine) would have to have an opinion on what constitutes a dish because you can't really brute force it with an RFID tag of all your household objects including your pets.
Even if you programmed the specs of a dish to the robot, you certainly wouldn't want it to show up in the middle of your diner and take your unfinished meal. Or perhaps a clean dish you set out with nothing on it for some other purpose.
So no only will it have to recognize a dish and locate it, but also know when it is OK to wash it. Of course you could somehow command the robot at a particular time to go clean the dishes, but what if you have other people in the household that haven't finished their meal.
It will still have to have the opinion (and hopefully correct opinion) that certain dishes are ok to take away.
Now, this gets even further complicated if the robots are in charge of the care of the human. Whether this is just a robot is looking after your kids, grandparents or following you around then it gets a bit more complicated to avoid emotions or true intelligence.
A robot must have some type of opinion on what is good and bad for the human. You could program in that death and suffering are bad for the human.
So if your grandma falls into the fireplace that the robot will know that fire causes suffering so it must be bad and pulls grandma out. Now if were stuck in a snow drift and your robot realized you were going to freeze to death his intelligence would need a gray area to know that fire in this instance would be good (at the proper distance).
There is no practical application of owning a protocol type droid unless you are elderly, disabled, and don't get on with humans very well. I mean, how feasible is it to pay $5000+ dollars to order your droid to fetch you another beer while you sit on your ass watching Deal or No Deal?
Keep in mind $5,000 is much as some real dolls and I believe there is a market for fully automated versions.
Secondly, I would gladly pay $5,000 (or more) for a general purpose house hold robot. This would of course have to carry laundry from my room to the washing machine and then fold it and put it away. It should also be able to take dishes off the table or sink and wash them or put them in a washing machine and then put them away after it is done.
Me lazy? Kind of, but you only live once and humans have shown they don't want to spend the majority of their life doing household chores.
The key is getting the jump from Roomba to Chobits/Androids. I believe a Japanese lab has promised to get a walking android up and "running" by 2010. That is only 3 years away.
Besides the consumer application, general purpose robots (if cheap enough) could replace a great deal of manual labor everywhere. This is the goal of most Japanese car companies (Honda/Toyota) because of the labor shortage Japan is having right now.
And the military will continue with robots until it can remove the human factor from the majority of combat situations making wars politically reasonable as in "Wars without casualties". At least casualties for the US.
But personally, I'd be happy with a consumer model of Stanley's winning car to drive me places.
Bill Gates talking about what may happen to the world if robotics hit critical mass is rather dumb right now though.
Pretend it is 1987 instead of 2007 and that we are talking about the internet bubble in 1997.
Now, just think what what life will be like in 2017.
The point here is that Bill Gates is talking about this rather than a scientist which means the prospect of robots have gone form the label to the business planning sector. Which means the consumer sector is not far off.
Sure, today the software's too difficult to install and lacks some features. But if that ever changes it could mean a big change in how social networking pages interact with each other: No more middle-man.
We had all this back with the E/N pages back in 2000 before Livejournal (and way before Myspace) but the problem is that non-technical people outnumber the technical so E/N pretty much died out.
To be fair, "feudal contract" systems was a bit more fair with retirement benefits.
Of course in 1200AD most people didn't live past 40.
Why not just run all those server processes within the same OS?
Because not all server process were written for the same OS.
Granted if the source code is available you might be able to recompile it, but if it is not then you don't have much of a choice to to use the OS it was written for.
You could have one box per OS approach, but due to fact that hardware is become fast enough to make this a moot point and you'll save money on the electric bill alone to make it worth your while.
Watch the movie again, the old man guarding the grail mentions that the grails effects only work if dont pass the great seal, that is the boundaries of immortality.
Which leaves a very big plot hole on who made the great seal and what is it?
And why does it have anything with the holy grail? Since presumptuously the grail in itself is the power to immortality, but why does it matter that the seal had anything to do with this? Did Jesus show up and bless the seal when the knights made the temple in the Middle ages?
Lastly... Why can't the seal be moved. If immortality is achievable why not move the seal or move into the temple with modern luxuries?
Or...
It's common for the Extreme Right, and their fellow travelers in the government, to invent disasters from selected wars so they can save us all by the application of Fascism, at the expense of our personal liberties, of course.
But seriously... If popular opinion is not correct, then are you saying democracy (or representative forms of government) is not correct either?
I don't support socialism a bit, but if a nation got together and 95% of the people wanted it... Would not democracy entail that it is right to do so?
Otherwise we might as well be totalitarian.
I don't have a problem with global warming.
What if global warming doesn't stop?
As in... We have surface temperatures of 200F?
Would you have a problem then?
Is it anyone's goal to truly fix a problem forever?
I can think of two...
Laser hair removal and vasectomies.
I know the usually two camps of this argument is "Ban all the gold farmers!" or "Who cares?", but to me I don't care for the practice, but I don't blame the farmers.
I think it is a sign that the game is too tedious or that there are too many times sinks in order to actually play the game.
Collecting gold and loot should actually be the fun part of the game. Not the actually sitting around with your treasure or spending it on items that are required for you to have fun.
In games that require leveling, the disparity between players is quite large and a level 1 player can't see the same content as level 20 and the level 20 can't see the same content as players at 60. This is a discouragement for casual players who don't have the ability to spend 10+ hours per week in the game.
Personally, when it ceases to be fun I quit the game all together. It just isn't worth the effort or my money. While others (who have more money than they should) pay gold farmers to actually enjoy the game without effort.
Personally the last MMOG that I really enjoyed was Shadowbane because it was more about PvP rather than sitting around killing mobs to get to the next level and Shadowbane's leveling wasn't that grueling either and the power disparity between levels wasn't that huge.
But I still think Ultima Online has the best system of advancement with skills rather than levels and players were all pretty much equal in terms of time sinks. Sure there was gold farming, but to me killing monsters and raiding dungeons was just as fun as actually have property in the game.
Of course you could always craft items for a living which made things interesting too.
On a side note... There is a debate that the Taiwan earthquake has also caused a reduction in spam or botnets. I've notice an extreme drop in my levels on various email accounts and according to digg the number of tracked bots dropped from 500,000 to 400,000.
Of course it could be the influx of new computer or kids home for the holidays fixing their parents.