No, that was an idiotic thing to say. The last thing this country needs is a mindless population of sheep that falls in line whenever the administration decides it wants to go to war. Doing so would make you the very opposite of patriotic.
I think you misunderstand what is being said. Maybe we should not have gone to war, fine. That is very different from supporting the troops. The soldiers did not just up and decide to invade Iraq one day, the elected civilian government decided to send them there. Chances are, a good many of the soldiers on the ground do not want to be there and/or disagree with the war. However, short of going AWOL, they have no choice in the matter. If you want to bitch to someone, contact a congressman near you.
In response to the "they shouldn't have become soldiers" argument, I have to say don't forget who many of the soldiers are. I would guess that almost none of the enlisted men and women joined up because they wanted to go kill people. Some probably joined because they wanted a career serving their country. Maybe some others joined because they had no real goals in life and looked to the military as one source of dicipline and training. Many more probably joined for the college tuition benefits. Think about that for a second. Some young kids fresh out of high school, most from poor(er) families, decide to serve in the military for a few years so they can go to college and perhaps carve out a better life for themselves and your attitude is "fuck em, they shouldn't have become soldiers?"
It's because of people that took the risk during peacetime to join the military that we have the freedoms that we do today. So yes, I also agree that we have a duty to support our soldiers in the best possible manner. Protest the war all you want, but direct your anger at the source of the problem: the politicians that started it, the same ones that continually erode the freedoms military servicemen are willing to die for.
I don't know the history of Trolltech and I get the feeling from other people that they did some unsavory things in the past. At the moment however, I can't see anything wrong with them. They release their code under the GPL for anyone that wants to use it under an open source license (you can publish your software under any open source license - not just the GPL). If you want to distribute a closed source application, that's when you must buy a commercial license. The commercial license lets you publish under any license you want (although it's obviously intended for developers' own closed source ones). From their open source download page:
Can I use the Open Source Edition to write commercial software?
Only if you plan to publish the software exclusively under the GPL.
I admit that is a little confusing but it seems that if your application is open source and non-commercial, you have no problem at all. If your application is open source and commercial, you must use the GPL. If your application is closed source (commercial or not), you must purchase a commercial license.
Embrace: Do a complete reversal; say that open standards are a great idea, far better than our own proprietary asshattery.
Extend: So yeah, we're all about open standards now and look we've got our own version OpenXML. It's obviously better (or at least that's what people will believe thanks to our unstoppable marketing department) so we'll add extra tags and change the format of existing ones. Oh by the way, this means that only Microsoft products will create this and only Microsoft products will understand this but that's not our fault, honestly.
Extinguish: Well everyone seems to be using our version of the open document format since 90% of all computer users use our software so only masochists use that 'other' standard. We'll repeatedly change the standard by making each version of our software understand only a new version of it. After everyone is frustrated by the lack of stability in a so called standard, we'll do another 180 and point out how much better and stable closed source/standards are and move everyone back to safe, trustworthy Microsoft standards that Just Works(tm).
I know co-workers who are fans of wikipedia, but majority of them don't realize how the material is published or even that they can contribute.
Well assuming they actually read the text of the article and are not just scanning for big words to make them look smart, what do they think those little "edit" links next to each section of article text are for? More than that, who told them about Wikipedia without mentioning a little about it? I'm not saying that you are embellishing the reality of your co-workers' cognitive deficiencies but even the front page of Wikipedia says this:
If that welcome line didn't say enough already, it links to two wiki pages about Wikipedia and about the editing. Needless to say, I've never met an 'expert' that has that severe of a case of a lack of attention to detail. In that case we may be better off with those people not reading the article carefully enough, misunderstanding the information, and spouting off their misrepresentation of the topic instead of adding their own 'expert' opinion causing confusion and frustration for the rest of us.
*Please note that I am not disparaging against non-experts, I too lack the experience to be considered an expert in any field. I fully support the idea of a wiki and understand that several intelligent non-experts can combine their own knowledge to create a single pool of information at the same level, or even above that, of an expert. I am merely suggesting that people who lack the attention to detail to notice all the ways to get to the edit page of a wiki article also lack the attention to detail necessary to acquire anything more than a common knowledge understanding of a topic.
I thought that was a good thing? The 100% free software (as in beer) folks aside, isn't a situation where a company sells a product but gives away their software (under the GPL no less) for use in open source programs a good thing?
"Best answer" would require a judgement that no human being is qualified to make. Enjoyment of the chaos is at best, irrelevant.
I'm going to have to fundamentally disagree with you here then. We arrive at the best answer through our own observations (which would include the observations shared by others) and if we cannot trust those... well, all I see down that path is madness. Am I really here? Am I actually having a discussion with you? Am I really being arrested for running around town naked and setting fires or are these people dressed up as police officers really demons that need to be cleansed...? You get the idea. Perhaps it's just the way that my mind works or that I'm just so firmly entrenched in my own mythical existance that I am unable or at least unwillingly to accept that my direct observations are not real. In any case debating whether or not your readily confirmed observations are are real or accurate in our defined sense of the word seems completely unproductive to me. If it is the case that all our arrogantly decided best answers are in fact completely inaccurate and all the new wonders that spring up from our knowledge seemingly everday are in fact just a cruel joke being played upon us by the chaotic universe or mischeivous God, have we really lost anything going beyond our qualifications to make real world judgement calls about our existance? On the other hand if it turns out by some twist of fate that even the infinitely scoped forces of chaos are befuddled at how we've managed to get it right, like a million monkies trying to write Shakespeare, how much farther have we come by making our ass-out-of-u-and-me assumptions rather than wondering if maybe it's all make believe?
Unfortuneately it's based on the axiom that accuracy is possible to begin with- far better would be to retain *all* the edits and let people decide for themselves.
Well perhaps I misunderstand what you mean but Wikipedia does retain all the edits so that people can decide for themselves. Looking at the 'history' tab of the Taylor series page I linked to previously shows literally dozens of edits from many sources. Maybe it would be better if all of the changes could be displayed and handled by the reader at the same time but, to my knowledge, no human being possesses the capability of parsing that much data simultaneously and few have the attention span to read through them all linearly.
Accuracy is not possible- only refinements of the mythos. Taylor is quite accurate within his basic axiomatic mythos- but outside of that mythos he becomes inaccurate.
Same kind of thing as above. No, I cannot prove (to you at least) with any satisfaction that 1 + 1 = 2 but such vacuous axioms are the foundation for the science and mathematics that have built us a world in which we can discuss the accuracy of such a basic concept instantaneously over vast distances - proving their accuracy suitably for me and I can see no way to reconcile our differing viewpoints on this.
Those that do not, cannot actually build new knowledge- they can only refine their own religious mythos. I'm not saying that there isn't a place for that- there most certainly is. What I am saying is that NEW knowledge comes from NEW models- not from rehashing the old ones.
What I am saying is not that we should rehash old ideas, quite the opposite in fact. We should instead take existing knowledge and use it to formulate new ideas. If someone had not first discovered that light could be refracted through lenses of shaped glass to produce a magnified image, would Galileo have discovered the orbits of several other planets, giving more support for a heliocentric model of the solar system? Would it be possible for one person to have done both? Sure but such extraordinary people are also extraordinarily rare and even they will have in some way built their new knowledge on the foundation of another's. Few can claim to have made an impact on science and mathema
Groups of human beings are incapable of accuracy; that's the whole problem with peer-reviewed systems to begin with.
What the hell does that mean? If three people all see two apples sitting on a table independently of each other and then later form a group and decide the same fact, is it suddenly inaccurate by the mystical properties of a group decision? I think I've caught a glimpse of several other posts you've made on this topic and I think you are trying to say that it is impossible for human beings, singly or otherwise, to be entirely accurate about anything. If we take this as being true for a moment, then the best we can hope to do as mere mortals is go with the best answer - that is the one most widely accepted by people with the greatest understanding of the subject. If we don't, all we have is chaos and while you and a select few others of our species may enjoy that, the rest of us do not.
Unless of course you're wrong too. In which case you're contributing to the inaccuracy of Wikipedia.
Of course, by your standards you are wrong so it is impossible for Wikipedia (or any other source of knowledge for that matter) to be correct. In which case, you haven't done much to compromise the integrity of the information and your inaccurate change is likely to draw more attention to the already hopelessly incorrect information. In a world where it is possible to be correct this would be a good thing. Part of the Wikipedia process is that people make changes, even incorrect changes. If an article exists that is somewhat accurate but is missing some more intricate details, that may go unnoticed. If some moron comes along and makes some glaring error in his edit, that increases the chance that someone with more expertise in the subject matter will notice this massive error and will not only fix the mistake but will pass on some additional knowledge thereby increasing the overall accuracy.
Take a Taylor series expansion for example. If you calculate the Taylor series expansion of the sin trigonometric function for example, you get a bunch of terms of a polynomial that approximates the value of the sin function. The farther out you expand the series, that is the more terms you add to the polynomial, the more accurate the result. Taken to infinity you get the final solution, sin. Oh and I've got 2 Calculus books that agree with Wikipedia on this so I suppose I should contact the authors about their mistakes, the various trigonometry and calculus professors I've had in the past too. Too bad Taylor himself is no longer with us, we could all have a good chuckle about his inacuracies. The point is that we learn by expanding on the works of other and incorporating them into our own successes, and failures too, and thereby increase the accuracy of our statements.
Actually, it's even worse in that case- because it short circuits the learning process. Which means it's a cop out to actually using thought and logic to support your position.
Again, just what are you trying to say here, that we should never turn to other, more knowledgeable sources of information and should instead learn everything by ourselves from scratch? Is it not a good method to take an existing idea and bring it in to a debate to be re-examined and used to build more knowledge?
Should every budding mathematician have to start from nothing and come up with even the most basic things like algebra and geometry on his own? If so I must say that an idea like that is utter bullshit. That we are able to build upon the knowledge gained and given by others is a defining quality of our species, or perhaps higher intelligence in general. I may be able to teach a primate to communicate in sign language but the animal is not going to provide any method to pass that knowledge on to its decendents and thus there has been no true advancement in the primate 'society'. The fact is, or perhaps I
Visible light: 4.00 * 10^14 Hz to 7.50 * 10^14 Hz Ultraviolet: 7.50 * 10^14 Hz to 3.00 * 10^16 Hz X-Rays: > 3.00 * 10^16 Hz Gamma-Rays: typically on the order of 10^20 and higher
The parent is right about the rest... Gamma rays are extremely high energy and are ionizing (i.e very bad for your health). So yes, gamma rays are just electromagnetic radiation like any form of light but they have little to do with happiness:)
And, statistically, getting in our vehicles and driving to work is the most dangerous thing we do everyday. I suppose we should have remote locks on our cars that you have to call the county sheriff's department to unlock before you can drive as well then?
Whether those statistics are correct or not, trying to protect people from themselves is likely to be unsuccessful at best - even more so by legislating it. Stupid people will do stupid things no matter what anyone says about it. They're still going to look down the barrel of their loaded gun, still going to drive 90 miles per hour in heavy rain while talking on their cell phone, still going to hold wood they're cutting with their hand in front of the power saw, still going to run with scissors/sharp objects... you get the point. You'll also notice that locking up any of the dangerous (yet important and useful) items I just mentioned would not stop the obvious injury/death. The only thing it would do is reduce the speed at which you could access said item which certainly could be a problem in a case where quick action is required (like a home invasion).
Granted, being robbed while you are at home is not likely to happen but is that really a good reason to waste society's resources in a doomed attempt to save the idiots from themselves?
Lower TCO indeed because you get Microsoft's Genuine Intergalactic Technical Support hotline.
"Thank you for calling Microsoft's Genuine Intergalactic Technical Support. If you are experiencing a problem with a factory installed Windows Galaxy edition, please contact your manufacturer.
If you are calling about a non-critical issue, please emit one tachyon burst directed at Microsoft's Genuine Advantage Galactic Transmission satellite.
If you are calling about a security hole that was exploited by the Scourge causing the destruction of half your intergalactic fleet, please wait one (1) business day before targeting Microsoft's campus with your quantum torpedos.
If you are experiencing a total system failure preventing your navagation computer from function and are on a direct collision course with Earth, please wait on the line for a Microsoft Certified Windows Galaxy edition technician. Please note that we are experiencing a high call volume at this time, and you may be on hold for 12-24 hours.
Thank you for calling Microsoft's Genuine Intergalactic Technical Support. Microsoft, what planet do you want to go to today?"
That's 10,000 people who would have paid for your book but didn't.
Why must we go through this same argument everytime the concept of a pay-after-viewing scheme comes up? Someone viewing your media without paying for it does not equal a lost sale.
I love to read. However, books aren't exactly dirt cheap (especially if you want the hard-cover versions), and combined with all the other forms of entertainment I enjoy (music, movies, games, etc), I don't have a lot of extra money to spend on lots of books. That means I don't buy books that I'm not very confident I'll enjoy reading. Now if I can get a book from the Internet for no cost to myself, I'd be much more willing to read it. Notice how I'm now able to read books that I would not have before because of the expense. Now, if I read through the whole thing and I like what I have read, I'm quite happy to jot down the author's name to look for future works and send them $20-30 for having read their book. More than once have I read a book online that the author gave away for free that I wanted to pay for.
I'm not saying that this is a perfect system, but it apparently does work in the words of this author himself. I mostly just wanted to point out that a free download does not necessarily mean a lost sale. Are there people who will download and enjoy the book without paying? Almost certainly. However, how much more might the author gain by people reading his book who otherwise would have passed it over because the risk was too high?
I don't think sunset times are constant even across time zones, so you'd still have to find out the local sunset time for that walk on the beach. I understand your point though, and I think your doctor's office example is a better one. Ignoring the fact that office hours are not reliably constant even with our current system, you should still be able to make an educated guess about whether the office is open or not. If it's mid morning or afternoon, it's probably safe to say the doctor is in. If it's getting late in the day, you may be out of luck (depending on the type of medical facility we are talking about, of course).
I think one of the biggest problems with moving to a standard world time is that we are all used to thinking in terms of the time system we were taught at a very young age. It's really the same problem as the US moving to the metric system. While many people (myself included) consider the metric system to be superior to the US customary units, we're all used to thinking in terms of inches, feet, miles per hour, gallons, etc. This of course causes many people (myself included) to be uncomfortable applying a different set of terms to common physical quantities. Even though it's inconvenient, it does wonders for interoperability with little concern for conversion errors. It'd be easy to forget how many hours off from your normal time your vacation spot is (or just make a miscalculation), and then miss your favorite TV show, for example.
It's certainly not a perfect idea, but it's interesting and worthy of some discussion I think.
Who said anything about making half the world nocturnal? The only thing that would change by having a standard world time is the "time" people do their normal activities. Instead of going to work at 8:00 AM you might go in at 1:00 PM and work until 9:00 PM. Our time-keeping system already works this way, it just obfuscates it somewhat. The time zones are set up so that 8:00 AM CST is the same relative time of day (morning), as it is for people in China at 8:00 AM (it's morning for them though it's significantly off for people on the other side of the world). My time zone is GMT-5 so while people are just getting up for work at GMT, it's still very early morning for me and I'm fast asleep. What difference does it make if I go to work at 1:00 PM world time (still the same as 8:00 AM as far as I'm concerned) instead of 8:00 AM?
Just to be perfectly clear, everyone would still go to sleep when it was dark and everyone would still get up for work/school/whatever when it became light out again. It would just VASTLY simplify moving between our current time zones or communicating with people in a different one. If someone works from 12:00 AM to 8:00 AM world time and I work from 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM world time, it's going to be damn easy to know that 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM is the timeslot we have to work with for meetings.
The attack helicopters are very powerful, yes. The only time I've thought them to be overpowered was during one game where two guys (obviously very practiced) from a clan flew the Mi-28 on the Sharqi Peninsula map. The pilot was very good at flying and the gunner was extremely accurate. They effectively controlled most of the map by themselves... They made regular sweeps of the main USMC base easily killing all infantry and destroying the SuperCobra before it even got an inch off the roof, and captured and patrolled the surrounding bases in the meantime.
Except for that one instance, I've never found helicopters to be any more challenging than a tank. The Anti-Tank kit can be quite effective at destroying the helicopters as they come in for a close range attack or to capture a flag. The AA missile sites are also quite effective (especially since the majority of helicopter pilots are amateurs). The most effective means of taking out a helicopter (that I've seen) is a fighter jet. The fighter's cannon can do a lot of damage to a helicopter quickly. If there is some teamwork (I know, a very rare thing in BF2), the fighter pilot can coordinate with a soldier on the ground to have one use up the helicopter's flares and the other take it out with missiles. If a helicopter is spawn camping a base, just respawn as AT and you'll likely destroy it (especially since someone else spawning at the base has the same idea).
The key is teamwork. A well balanced squad that works together well can dominate the usually chaotic battlefield all by themselves. I personally love flying the attack helicopters, just because I find it to be extremely fun - I don't really care about score all that much. There have been games where I have the highest score by far because I kill everyone before they can even get a shot off at me. Other games, I never even fire a missile because the defenders were vigilant and coordinated enough to shoot me down quickly. So yes, most of the time BF2 is little more than a free-for-all with big guns and vehicles but the times you have a well coordinated team are awe inspiring:)
I have to agree with this. While I've never been exceptionally pleased with Comcast's service or support, it's been decent at least. Lately, however, my connection quality has been terrible. First off, I'm not even getting anywhere near the bandwidth I'm supposed to be getting (less than half). More frustrating however, is the fact that a significant portion of my packets seemingly disappear and it seems to come in waves. My connection will run fine for a few minutes and then all (or nearly all) of my traffic is lost for several seconds. Which effectively causes a disconnect in any online game, ssh sessions to be dropped, and file downloads/uploads to be choked up - frustrating to say the least. I did some speed tests just a little while ago: (All numbers in kbps): down / up 487 / 354 405 / 357 136 / 354 2601 / 356 3175 / 323 2665 / 362
The first three low numbers were so low because the speed test client was just sitting there waiting for packets to come in (apparently this was one of the trouble times). Not only that but, unless I'm mistaken, my connection is supposed to be 7Mbps (8? they like to claim they've upped their speeds so often it's hard to know) down and 768kbps up. Not even my best speed test is greater than half my supposed bandwidth. Anyone else with Comcast having problems like this? Given Comcast's competence level in the past it doesn't surprise me all the much, I'm just pissed that they're basically the only deal in town... too bad a T1 is too expensive for me at the moment.
Nobody said anything about your willingness to pay - it's the cost. You're paying to much for something and using a flimsy justification about the effect on the industry.
All I'm saying is at least be honest about being a shill, instead of trying to portray yourself as some kind of hero for wanting to protect industry profits.
In this case (EULAs for clarity), I think the law does care about expectations. EULAs have appeared several times in court cases and, unless I'm mistaken, their enforceability is still unclear. Given that, courts are likely to use common sense for cases of EULA violations. If someone says "Oh I didn't know I couldn't pirate this on the Internet because I didn't read the EULA," the judge is unlikely to be lenient. If on the other hand the case is "I didn't know the EULA said I give the company the right to look at all of my personal data, I thought it just said the usual stuff," I would be willing to bet the judge might side with the end user given that the extra condition was unobvious and is shady in the first place.
As far as the "explicitness" of the understanding of the operations of a virus scanner, I meant it in two ways. The first is that I deliberately install it, deliberately update the virus definitions, and (most importantly) deliberately click the 'Scan Now' button (or whatever it may be called). This is a far cry from "The Warden" which is not explicit installed or configured by me, and is not explicitly activated by me. The second point is the communication of data to another party. To my knowledge, most virus scanners do not send any data about your files or detected viruses detected. I believe that some corporate editions of these programs can send suspicious files to the anti-virus company to examine and determine if there is a problem and provide a fix. However, if it does this, it will ask the administrator before doing so or may even just flag the file and require the administrator to manually email it (I'm not sure how this process works - I don't deal with this kind of stuff for my job). Again, a far cry from "The Warden" which automatically sends out data it has collected (the form it does so in is irrelevant) and there is not even a notification that it has done so.
Comparing a regular contract to an End User License Agreement is not a valid comparison. There is no control over the user's acceptance of the agreement. Almost all people just click accept because that's what they have been taught to do (after all you don't even need to read it if you are an 'honest' user, right? They're just there to keep the honest people honest, right?). Not only that, but there is no guarantee that the user of the application was the one that accepted the agreement (who ever installed it was the one to do that). The entire concept of a EULA is completely foreign to most people (I would wager even to those who understand them): You "agree" to them after you already payed for the product, and most of the time it's not possible or extremely difficult to find the terms of the agreement before purchasing and opening the software, upon which time you cannot return the software if you don't agree. In the case of software, the purchaser agreed to the contract of the original purchase from the retailer ("You give the software and I'll give you the amount of money you have specified"). This is the same kind of contract you agree to when you buy a car. You either pay with cash (or something similar), or you pay with credit. In either case, both sides of the contract are honored (the car dealer gets his money, you get your car). You can later decide not to pay your credit card bill (or loan) but that's a separate contract with a separate party that will just decide to collect your new car back from you to settle the tab.
A EULA in the case of a car would be like driving home in your new car and finding a license agreement that says you've given the dealer the right to record audio and video in your car to make sure you aren't "cheating" (driving faster than everyone else). Oh, and by the way, you agreed to the license by driving the car home. I may have "agreed" to their terms in the license but, at the very least, it's deceptive. You'll also notice from my previous posts that I do understand that this is in the WoW EULA and I may have agreed to it, and
Don't misunderstand me, I do realize that the activities "The Warden" engages in on your computer are described in the EULA. Not only that, but I play World of Warcraft regularly so I'm obviously at least accepting of the fact that spyware is running on my computer. My point in my original post is that this software should be considered spyware because of the fact that it collects 'personal' data (depending on your perspective) and reports it to another party without first asking you if it is alright. The other software I described would probably first pop up a dialog saying something like "You can send this information we collected to [insert company here] to help us better understand [insert problem here]. Would you like to do so now?" I would not expect a game to be snooping around my computer in the first place, and I don't believe hiding this in the EULA is an acceptable excuse. That's because I expect the EULA to be written in heavy legalese that basically boils down to "We give you and only you to use the software unless you transfer ownership completely, and we hold all rights except those explicitly granted to you by the laws of the country." If they are going to modify that basic EULA then I think there should be separate notices (perhaps in the form of a pop-up dialog box) saying "In addition to the license agreement you just accepted, we will also be running software to collect data about your system for the purposes of preventing cheating."
That said, I'm just not convinced that monitoring a player's running processes is necessary to prevent cheating, especially in a MMORPG like WoW. In a large, persistent online gaming world, all important data should be verified by the server ("Don't trust the client" should be a basic and well understood concept for any sensitive client/server system). If the client said it just moved forward 2km in a couple of seconds and this violates the maximum speed for a character of that level, the server should flag this for inspection by a GM at the very least. Similar checking should be done for all important aspects of the game. Even if something important does slip through, it's quite simple to find out who was cheating and then ban/punish them.
I've played many MMORPGs and there really has not ever been a problem with "rampant cheating." Sure, every once in a while something would pop up but the problem would quickly be fixed and the offenders punished (often with a permanent ban). Besides that, most of the big issues that happened (dupe bugs in particular) were caused by bugs in the game software, not some external hacking program. Going even further, not all external programs that modify the running software should be considered bad. I can think of one instance where such a program (IMO anyway), brought something valuable to the table that made the game more interesting, and that is the Decal program for Asheron's Call. Basically, it captured and interpreted data coming from the server and exposed events to loaded Decal plugins (just a basic COM object really). You can imagine that, at first, this caused a lot of concern among players and the developers. In time though, many useful plugins like navigation aids that would give you a route of portals to follow to reach your destination quickly, or improved communications between your allegiance appeared adding such functionality before it was implemented by the game developers. It became so ubiquitous that it was explicitly mentioned in some of the help and troubleshooting documentation.
In any case, software that spies on customers is going to be moderately successful at best. As usual with these kinds of things, it will be the casual user that gets caught and punished. The kind of moron that just downloads and runs whatever some other moron said would give him an advantage. Naturally, the moron's actions will be blatantly obvious to everyone and will be punished quickly. The truly dedicated cheaters that use subtle cheating programs that are regularly modified (resulting in a differ
Not to mention that here in Tennessee (and I'm sure other places too) it actually is law. It is against state law for movie theaters to sell a ticket for an 'R' rated movie to someone under 18, not 17 like the MPAA ratings suggest. I'm not sure if this is also part of the law, but no theater will sell more than one ticket for an 'R' rated show to someone under 21.
I think a major difference is one of expectations. When I install a virus scanner and tell it to look for virus, I have an explicit understanding that it is going to examine all of my files for traces of a virus. When I run World of Warcraft (or any other game) I expect it to be crunching numbers for physics, graphics, etc, not snooping around my system. Not only that, but the virus scanner will report back to me and will not send out data unless I explicitly agree to that. What makes these anti-cheat programs spyware is that they collect data, send it to another party, and perhaps most importantly, do so without first telling you that it is going to.
It's late and maybe I just missed where fyngyrz "tried to insult Americans." As far as I can tell, he is simply pointing out a fact that roughly 50% of the population will score below average (which if you read his first post, the fact the a score of 100 is the average mark was not necessary to point out - he says it himself). It seems to me that you've taken an emotional reaction to the term "below average." Being below average is not necessarily an insult and in my opinion at no point does fyngyrz use it as one. Example: Four people each take an IQ test and receive scores of 160, 159, 158, 157. The two who score 158 and 157 are "below average" but would still be considered "smart" as far as scientific intelligence is concerned. So again, I just don't see where he is insulting Americans or where he puts forth that 50% of the population scoring below average as a criticism of the country.
Assuming the research you conducted points out actual facts, it could show that being below average on the American IQ scale is better than being below average on the European scale (although not necessarily).
All he was saying is that at least 50% of Americans will have a harder time with science than those that are above average. IQ tests are primarily a measure of the kind of intelligence related to scientific thinking (fyngyrz once again graciously offers this information to you). Given the fact that I tend to learn new things quickly and an affinity for the sciences, I would probably score well on an IQ test. Does that make me a better person than someone that scores below average? I don't think so, it just shows that I'm good at science. Big deal, I suck at a lot of other things... Where's the insult?
I just sacrificed part of my soul to read through the entire Microsoft Office EULA so I hope you're happy:
Installation and use. You may:
(a) install and use a copy of the Software on one personal computer or other device; and
(b) install an additional copy of the Software on a second, portable device for the exclusive use of the primary user of the first copy of the Software.
No mention in the EULA of requiring the user to install and use the application only on Windows. I could be wrong but wouldn't that put them in a precarious legal position given the fact that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist?
I completely agree. Most of the time, I don't even look at the top part of the page because that's where the massive banner ads usually are. Especially so on those poorly designed sites; you know, the ones with large fonts and conflicting colors and sloppily laid out frames. Ads have cause me to become biased against sites created by people that are not trained well enough to create a clean looking website. Sometimes I just assume that poor looking sites like that are devoid of any useful information and filled with ads so I close that tab immediately. It can also be frustrating when a site then puts introductory information like the name or description of the site in the top area of the page (as it's natural to do), because I almost instantly scroll down when a page first loads to avoid the visual raping by a flashing banner.
An Ask Slashdot I would like to see is: Why do you (or anyone you know) put ads on your page? I mean unless you have massive traffic like sites like Slashdot have, are you actually making any money on them? For most people, the best they are probably going to do is cover their hosting costs. But really, web hosting is not that expensive. I'm not so self important to think that my personal webpage or an informational page that I put up is so valuable to people that they should accept being visually raped upon entering it. Am I the only one?
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting... I imagine that Australians do not ask would-be lawyers "have you taken the bar yet?" then, eh mate?
No, that was an idiotic thing to say. The last thing this country needs is a mindless population of sheep that falls in line whenever the administration decides it wants to go to war. Doing so would make you the very opposite of patriotic.
I think you misunderstand what is being said. Maybe we should not have gone to war, fine. That is very different from supporting the troops. The soldiers did not just up and decide to invade Iraq one day, the elected civilian government decided to send them there. Chances are, a good many of the soldiers on the ground do not want to be there and/or disagree with the war. However, short of going AWOL, they have no choice in the matter. If you want to bitch to someone, contact a congressman near you.
In response to the "they shouldn't have become soldiers" argument, I have to say don't forget who many of the soldiers are. I would guess that almost none of the enlisted men and women joined up because they wanted to go kill people. Some probably joined because they wanted a career serving their country. Maybe some others joined because they had no real goals in life and looked to the military as one source of dicipline and training. Many more probably joined for the college tuition benefits. Think about that for a second. Some young kids fresh out of high school, most from poor(er) families, decide to serve in the military for a few years so they can go to college and perhaps carve out a better life for themselves and your attitude is "fuck em, they shouldn't have become soldiers?"
It's because of people that took the risk during peacetime to join the military that we have the freedoms that we do today. So yes, I also agree that we have a duty to support our soldiers in the best possible manner. Protest the war all you want, but direct your anger at the source of the problem: the politicians that started it, the same ones that continually erode the freedoms military servicemen are willing to die for.
Let's see, embrace, extend, extinguish.
Embrace: Do a complete reversal; say that open standards are a great idea, far better than our own proprietary asshattery.
Extend: So yeah, we're all about open standards now and look we've got our own version OpenXML. It's obviously better (or at least that's what people will believe thanks to our unstoppable marketing department) so we'll add extra tags and change the format of existing ones. Oh by the way, this means that only Microsoft products will create this and only Microsoft products will understand this but that's not our fault, honestly.
Extinguish: Well everyone seems to be using our version of the open document format since 90% of all computer users use our software so only masochists use that 'other' standard. We'll repeatedly change the standard by making each version of our software understand only a new version of it. After everyone is frustrated by the lack of stability in a so called standard, we'll do another 180 and point out how much better and stable closed source/standards are and move everyone back to safe, trustworthy Microsoft standards that Just Works(tm).
Thanks for playing!
Well assuming they actually read the text of the article and are not just scanning for big words to make them look smart, what do they think those little "edit" links next to each section of article text are for? More than that, who told them about Wikipedia without mentioning a little about it? I'm not saying that you are embellishing the reality of your co-workers' cognitive deficiencies but even the front page of Wikipedia says this: If that welcome line didn't say enough already, it links to two wiki pages about Wikipedia and about the editing. Needless to say, I've never met an 'expert' that has that severe of a case of a lack of attention to detail. In that case we may be better off with those people not reading the article carefully enough, misunderstanding the information, and spouting off their misrepresentation of the topic instead of adding their own 'expert' opinion causing confusion and frustration for the rest of us.
*Please note that I am not disparaging against non-experts, I too lack the experience to be considered an expert in any field. I fully support the idea of a wiki and understand that several intelligent non-experts can combine their own knowledge to create a single pool of information at the same level, or even above that, of an expert. I am merely suggesting that people who lack the attention to detail to notice all the ways to get to the edit page of a wiki article also lack the attention to detail necessary to acquire anything more than a common knowledge understanding of a topic.
I thought that was a good thing? The 100% free software (as in beer) folks aside, isn't a situation where a company sells a product but gives away their software (under the GPL no less) for use in open source programs a good thing?
"Best answer" would require a judgement that no human being is qualified to make. Enjoyment of the chaos is at best, irrelevant.
I'm going to have to fundamentally disagree with you here then. We arrive at the best answer through our own observations (which would include the observations shared by others) and if we cannot trust those... well, all I see down that path is madness. Am I really here? Am I actually having a discussion with you? Am I really being arrested for running around town naked and setting fires or are these people dressed up as police officers really demons that need to be cleansed...? You get the idea. Perhaps it's just the way that my mind works or that I'm just so firmly entrenched in my own mythical existance that I am unable or at least unwillingly to accept that my direct observations are not real. In any case debating whether or not your readily confirmed observations are are real or accurate in our defined sense of the word seems completely unproductive to me. If it is the case that all our arrogantly decided best answers are in fact completely inaccurate and all the new wonders that spring up from our knowledge seemingly everday are in fact just a cruel joke being played upon us by the chaotic universe or mischeivous God, have we really lost anything going beyond our qualifications to make real world judgement calls about our existance? On the other hand if it turns out by some twist of fate that even the infinitely scoped forces of chaos are befuddled at how we've managed to get it right, like a million monkies trying to write Shakespeare, how much farther have we come by making our ass-out-of-u-and-me assumptions rather than wondering if maybe it's all make believe?
Unfortuneately it's based on the axiom that accuracy is possible to begin with- far better would be to retain *all* the edits and let people decide for themselves.
Well perhaps I misunderstand what you mean but Wikipedia does retain all the edits so that people can decide for themselves. Looking at the 'history' tab of the Taylor series page I linked to previously shows literally dozens of edits from many sources. Maybe it would be better if all of the changes could be displayed and handled by the reader at the same time but, to my knowledge, no human being possesses the capability of parsing that much data simultaneously and few have the attention span to read through them all linearly.
Accuracy is not possible- only refinements of the mythos. Taylor is quite accurate within his basic axiomatic mythos- but outside of that mythos he becomes inaccurate.
Same kind of thing as above. No, I cannot prove (to you at least) with any satisfaction that 1 + 1 = 2 but such vacuous axioms are the foundation for the science and mathematics that have built us a world in which we can discuss the accuracy of such a basic concept instantaneously over vast distances - proving their accuracy suitably for me and I can see no way to reconcile our differing viewpoints on this.
Those that do not, cannot actually build new knowledge- they can only refine their own religious mythos. I'm not saying that there isn't a place for that- there most certainly is. What I am saying is that NEW knowledge comes from NEW models- not from rehashing the old ones.
What I am saying is not that we should rehash old ideas, quite the opposite in fact. We should instead take existing knowledge and use it to formulate new ideas. If someone had not first discovered that light could be refracted through lenses of shaped glass to produce a magnified image, would Galileo have discovered the orbits of several other planets, giving more support for a heliocentric model of the solar system? Would it be possible for one person to have done both? Sure but such extraordinary people are also extraordinarily rare and even they will have in some way built their new knowledge on the foundation of another's. Few can claim to have made an impact on science and mathema
Groups of human beings are incapable of accuracy; that's the whole problem with peer-reviewed systems to begin with.
What the hell does that mean? If three people all see two apples sitting on a table independently of each other and then later form a group and decide the same fact, is it suddenly inaccurate by the mystical properties of a group decision? I think I've caught a glimpse of several other posts you've made on this topic and I think you are trying to say that it is impossible for human beings, singly or otherwise, to be entirely accurate about anything. If we take this as being true for a moment, then the best we can hope to do as mere mortals is go with the best answer - that is the one most widely accepted by people with the greatest understanding of the subject. If we don't, all we have is chaos and while you and a select few others of our species may enjoy that, the rest of us do not.
Unless of course you're wrong too. In which case you're contributing to the inaccuracy of Wikipedia.
Of course, by your standards you are wrong so it is impossible for Wikipedia (or any other source of knowledge for that matter) to be correct. In which case, you haven't done much to compromise the integrity of the information and your inaccurate change is likely to draw more attention to the already hopelessly incorrect information. In a world where it is possible to be correct this would be a good thing. Part of the Wikipedia process is that people make changes, even incorrect changes. If an article exists that is somewhat accurate but is missing some more intricate details, that may go unnoticed. If some moron comes along and makes some glaring error in his edit, that increases the chance that someone with more expertise in the subject matter will notice this massive error and will not only fix the mistake but will pass on some additional knowledge thereby increasing the overall accuracy.
Take a Taylor series expansion for example. If you calculate the Taylor series expansion of the sin trigonometric function for example, you get a bunch of terms of a polynomial that approximates the value of the sin function. The farther out you expand the series, that is the more terms you add to the polynomial, the more accurate the result. Taken to infinity you get the final solution, sin. Oh and I've got 2 Calculus books that agree with Wikipedia on this so I suppose I should contact the authors about their mistakes, the various trigonometry and calculus professors I've had in the past too. Too bad Taylor himself is no longer with us, we could all have a good chuckle about his inacuracies. The point is that we learn by expanding on the works of other and incorporating them into our own successes, and failures too, and thereby increase the accuracy of our statements.
Actually, it's even worse in that case- because it short circuits the learning process.
Which means it's a cop out to actually using thought and logic to support your position.
Again, just what are you trying to say here, that we should never turn to other, more knowledgeable sources of information and should instead learn everything by ourselves from scratch? Is it not a good method to take an existing idea and bring it in to a debate to be re-examined and used to build more knowledge? Should every budding mathematician have to start from nothing and come up with even the most basic things like algebra and geometry on his own? If so I must say that an idea like that is utter bullshit. That we are able to build upon the knowledge gained and given by others is a defining quality of our species, or perhaps higher intelligence in general. I may be able to teach a primate to communicate in sign language but the animal is not going to provide any method to pass that knowledge on to its decendents and thus there has been no true advancement in the primate 'society'. The fact is, or perhaps I
Visible light: 4.00 * 10^14 Hz to 7.50 * 10^14 Hz
:)
Ultraviolet: 7.50 * 10^14 Hz to 3.00 * 10^16 Hz
X-Rays: > 3.00 * 10^16 Hz
Gamma-Rays: typically on the order of 10^20 and higher
The parent is right about the rest... Gamma rays are extremely high energy and are ionizing (i.e very bad for your health). So yes, gamma rays are just electromagnetic radiation like any form of light but they have little to do with happiness
And, statistically, getting in our vehicles and driving to work is the most dangerous thing we do everyday. I suppose we should have remote locks on our cars that you have to call the county sheriff's department to unlock before you can drive as well then?
Whether those statistics are correct or not, trying to protect people from themselves is likely to be unsuccessful at best - even more so by legislating it. Stupid people will do stupid things no matter what anyone says about it. They're still going to look down the barrel of their loaded gun, still going to drive 90 miles per hour in heavy rain while talking on their cell phone, still going to hold wood they're cutting with their hand in front of the power saw, still going to run with scissors/sharp objects... you get the point. You'll also notice that locking up any of the dangerous (yet important and useful) items I just mentioned would not stop the obvious injury/death. The only thing it would do is reduce the speed at which you could access said item which certainly could be a problem in a case where quick action is required (like a home invasion).
Granted, being robbed while you are at home is not likely to happen but is that really a good reason to waste society's resources in a doomed attempt to save the idiots from themselves?
Lower TCO indeed because you get Microsoft's Genuine Intergalactic Technical Support hotline.
"Thank you for calling Microsoft's Genuine Intergalactic Technical Support. If you are experiencing a problem with a factory installed Windows Galaxy edition, please contact your manufacturer.
If you are calling about a non-critical issue, please emit one tachyon burst directed at Microsoft's Genuine Advantage Galactic Transmission satellite.
If you are calling about a security hole that was exploited by the Scourge causing the destruction of half your intergalactic fleet, please wait one (1) business day before targeting Microsoft's campus with your quantum torpedos.
If you are experiencing a total system failure preventing your navagation computer from function and are on a direct collision course with Earth, please wait on the line for a Microsoft Certified Windows Galaxy edition technician. Please note that we are experiencing a high call volume at this time, and you may be on hold for 12-24 hours.
Thank you for calling Microsoft's Genuine Intergalactic Technical Support. Microsoft, what planet do you want to go to today?"
That's 10,000 people who would have paid for your book but didn't.
Why must we go through this same argument everytime the concept of a pay-after-viewing scheme comes up? Someone viewing your media without paying for it does not equal a lost sale.
I love to read. However, books aren't exactly dirt cheap (especially if you want the hard-cover versions), and combined with all the other forms of entertainment I enjoy (music, movies, games, etc), I don't have a lot of extra money to spend on lots of books. That means I don't buy books that I'm not very confident I'll enjoy reading. Now if I can get a book from the Internet for no cost to myself, I'd be much more willing to read it. Notice how I'm now able to read books that I would not have before because of the expense. Now, if I read through the whole thing and I like what I have read, I'm quite happy to jot down the author's name to look for future works and send them $20-30 for having read their book. More than once have I read a book online that the author gave away for free that I wanted to pay for.
I'm not saying that this is a perfect system, but it apparently does work in the words of this author himself. I mostly just wanted to point out that a free download does not necessarily mean a lost sale. Are there people who will download and enjoy the book without paying? Almost certainly. However, how much more might the author gain by people reading his book who otherwise would have passed it over because the risk was too high?
I don't think sunset times are constant even across time zones, so you'd still have to find out the local sunset time for that walk on the beach. I understand your point though, and I think your doctor's office example is a better one. Ignoring the fact that office hours are not reliably constant even with our current system, you should still be able to make an educated guess about whether the office is open or not. If it's mid morning or afternoon, it's probably safe to say the doctor is in. If it's getting late in the day, you may be out of luck (depending on the type of medical facility we are talking about, of course).
I think one of the biggest problems with moving to a standard world time is that we are all used to thinking in terms of the time system we were taught at a very young age. It's really the same problem as the US moving to the metric system. While many people (myself included) consider the metric system to be superior to the US customary units, we're all used to thinking in terms of inches, feet, miles per hour, gallons, etc. This of course causes many people (myself included) to be uncomfortable applying a different set of terms to common physical quantities. Even though it's inconvenient, it does wonders for interoperability with little concern for conversion errors. It'd be easy to forget how many hours off from your normal time your vacation spot is (or just make a miscalculation), and then miss your favorite TV show, for example.
It's certainly not a perfect idea, but it's interesting and worthy of some discussion I think.
Who said anything about making half the world nocturnal? The only thing that would change by having a standard world time is the "time" people do their normal activities. Instead of going to work at 8:00 AM you might go in at 1:00 PM and work until 9:00 PM. Our time-keeping system already works this way, it just obfuscates it somewhat. The time zones are set up so that 8:00 AM CST is the same relative time of day (morning), as it is for people in China at 8:00 AM (it's morning for them though it's significantly off for people on the other side of the world). My time zone is GMT-5 so while people are just getting up for work at GMT, it's still very early morning for me and I'm fast asleep. What difference does it make if I go to work at 1:00 PM world time (still the same as 8:00 AM as far as I'm concerned) instead of 8:00 AM?
Just to be perfectly clear, everyone would still go to sleep when it was dark and everyone would still get up for work/school/whatever when it became light out again. It would just VASTLY simplify moving between our current time zones or communicating with people in a different one. If someone works from 12:00 AM to 8:00 AM world time and I work from 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM world time, it's going to be damn easy to know that 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM is the timeslot we have to work with for meetings.
The attack helicopters are very powerful, yes. The only time I've thought them to be overpowered was during one game where two guys (obviously very practiced) from a clan flew the Mi-28 on the Sharqi Peninsula map. The pilot was very good at flying and the gunner was extremely accurate. They effectively controlled most of the map by themselves... They made regular sweeps of the main USMC base easily killing all infantry and destroying the SuperCobra before it even got an inch off the roof, and captured and patrolled the surrounding bases in the meantime.
:)
Except for that one instance, I've never found helicopters to be any more challenging than a tank. The Anti-Tank kit can be quite effective at destroying the helicopters as they come in for a close range attack or to capture a flag. The AA missile sites are also quite effective (especially since the majority of helicopter pilots are amateurs). The most effective means of taking out a helicopter (that I've seen) is a fighter jet. The fighter's cannon can do a lot of damage to a helicopter quickly. If there is some teamwork (I know, a very rare thing in BF2), the fighter pilot can coordinate with a soldier on the ground to have one use up the helicopter's flares and the other take it out with missiles. If a helicopter is spawn camping a base, just respawn as AT and you'll likely destroy it (especially since someone else spawning at the base has the same idea).
The key is teamwork. A well balanced squad that works together well can dominate the usually chaotic battlefield all by themselves. I personally love flying the attack helicopters, just because I find it to be extremely fun - I don't really care about score all that much. There have been games where I have the highest score by far because I kill everyone before they can even get a shot off at me. Other games, I never even fire a missile because the defenders were vigilant and coordinated enough to shoot me down quickly. So yes, most of the time BF2 is little more than a free-for-all with big guns and vehicles but the times you have a well coordinated team are awe inspiring
I have to agree with this. While I've never been exceptionally pleased with Comcast's service or support, it's been decent at least. Lately, however, my connection quality has been terrible. First off, I'm not even getting anywhere near the bandwidth I'm supposed to be getting (less than half). More frustrating however, is the fact that a significant portion of my packets seemingly disappear and it seems to come in waves. My connection will run fine for a few minutes and then all (or nearly all) of my traffic is lost for several seconds. Which effectively causes a disconnect in any online game, ssh sessions to be dropped, and file downloads/uploads to be choked up - frustrating to say the least. I did some speed tests just a little while ago:
(All numbers in kbps):
down / up
487 / 354
405 / 357
136 / 354
2601 / 356
3175 / 323
2665 / 362
The first three low numbers were so low because the speed test client was just sitting there waiting for packets to come in (apparently this was one of the trouble times). Not only that but, unless I'm mistaken, my connection is supposed to be 7Mbps (8? they like to claim they've upped their speeds so often it's hard to know) down and 768kbps up. Not even my best speed test is greater than half my supposed bandwidth. Anyone else with Comcast having problems like this? Given Comcast's competence level in the past it doesn't surprise me all the much, I'm just pissed that they're basically the only deal in town... too bad a T1 is too expensive for me at the moment.
Nobody said anything about your willingness to pay - it's the cost. You're paying to much for something and using a flimsy justification about the effect on the industry.
All I'm saying is at least be honest about being a shill, instead of trying to portray yourself as some kind of hero for wanting to protect industry profits.
In this case (EULAs for clarity), I think the law does care about expectations. EULAs have appeared several times in court cases and, unless I'm mistaken, their enforceability is still unclear. Given that, courts are likely to use common sense for cases of EULA violations. If someone says "Oh I didn't know I couldn't pirate this on the Internet because I didn't read the EULA," the judge is unlikely to be lenient. If on the other hand the case is "I didn't know the EULA said I give the company the right to look at all of my personal data, I thought it just said the usual stuff," I would be willing to bet the judge might side with the end user given that the extra condition was unobvious and is shady in the first place.
As far as the "explicitness" of the understanding of the operations of a virus scanner, I meant it in two ways. The first is that I deliberately install it, deliberately update the virus definitions, and (most importantly) deliberately click the 'Scan Now' button (or whatever it may be called). This is a far cry from "The Warden" which is not explicit installed or configured by me, and is not explicitly activated by me. The second point is the communication of data to another party. To my knowledge, most virus scanners do not send any data about your files or detected viruses detected. I believe that some corporate editions of these programs can send suspicious files to the anti-virus company to examine and determine if there is a problem and provide a fix. However, if it does this, it will ask the administrator before doing so or may even just flag the file and require the administrator to manually email it (I'm not sure how this process works - I don't deal with this kind of stuff for my job). Again, a far cry from "The Warden" which automatically sends out data it has collected (the form it does so in is irrelevant) and there is not even a notification that it has done so.
Comparing a regular contract to an End User License Agreement is not a valid comparison. There is no control over the user's acceptance of the agreement. Almost all people just click accept because that's what they have been taught to do (after all you don't even need to read it if you are an 'honest' user, right? They're just there to keep the honest people honest, right?). Not only that, but there is no guarantee that the user of the application was the one that accepted the agreement (who ever installed it was the one to do that). The entire concept of a EULA is completely foreign to most people (I would wager even to those who understand them): You "agree" to them after you already payed for the product, and most of the time it's not possible or extremely difficult to find the terms of the agreement before purchasing and opening the software, upon which time you cannot return the software if you don't agree. In the case of software, the purchaser agreed to the contract of the original purchase from the retailer ("You give the software and I'll give you the amount of money you have specified"). This is the same kind of contract you agree to when you buy a car. You either pay with cash (or something similar), or you pay with credit. In either case, both sides of the contract are honored (the car dealer gets his money, you get your car). You can later decide not to pay your credit card bill (or loan) but that's a separate contract with a separate party that will just decide to collect your new car back from you to settle the tab.
A EULA in the case of a car would be like driving home in your new car and finding a license agreement that says you've given the dealer the right to record audio and video in your car to make sure you aren't "cheating" (driving faster than everyone else). Oh, and by the way, you agreed to the license by driving the car home. I may have "agreed" to their terms in the license but, at the very least, it's deceptive. You'll also notice from my previous posts that I do understand that this is in the WoW EULA and I may have agreed to it, and
Don't misunderstand me, I do realize that the activities "The Warden" engages in on your computer are described in the EULA. Not only that, but I play World of Warcraft regularly so I'm obviously at least accepting of the fact that spyware is running on my computer. My point in my original post is that this software should be considered spyware because of the fact that it collects 'personal' data (depending on your perspective) and reports it to another party without first asking you if it is alright. The other software I described would probably first pop up a dialog saying something like "You can send this information we collected to [insert company here] to help us better understand [insert problem here]. Would you like to do so now?" I would not expect a game to be snooping around my computer in the first place, and I don't believe hiding this in the EULA is an acceptable excuse. That's because I expect the EULA to be written in heavy legalese that basically boils down to "We give you and only you to use the software unless you transfer ownership completely, and we hold all rights except those explicitly granted to you by the laws of the country." If they are going to modify that basic EULA then I think there should be separate notices (perhaps in the form of a pop-up dialog box) saying "In addition to the license agreement you just accepted, we will also be running software to collect data about your system for the purposes of preventing cheating."
That said, I'm just not convinced that monitoring a player's running processes is necessary to prevent cheating, especially in a MMORPG like WoW. In a large, persistent online gaming world, all important data should be verified by the server ("Don't trust the client" should be a basic and well understood concept for any sensitive client/server system). If the client said it just moved forward 2km in a couple of seconds and this violates the maximum speed for a character of that level, the server should flag this for inspection by a GM at the very least. Similar checking should be done for all important aspects of the game. Even if something important does slip through, it's quite simple to find out who was cheating and then ban/punish them.
I've played many MMORPGs and there really has not ever been a problem with "rampant cheating." Sure, every once in a while something would pop up but the problem would quickly be fixed and the offenders punished (often with a permanent ban). Besides that, most of the big issues that happened (dupe bugs in particular) were caused by bugs in the game software, not some external hacking program. Going even further, not all external programs that modify the running software should be considered bad. I can think of one instance where such a program (IMO anyway), brought something valuable to the table that made the game more interesting, and that is the Decal program for Asheron's Call. Basically, it captured and interpreted data coming from the server and exposed events to loaded Decal plugins (just a basic COM object really). You can imagine that, at first, this caused a lot of concern among players and the developers. In time though, many useful plugins like navigation aids that would give you a route of portals to follow to reach your destination quickly, or improved communications between your allegiance appeared adding such functionality before it was implemented by the game developers. It became so ubiquitous that it was explicitly mentioned in some of the help and troubleshooting documentation.
In any case, software that spies on customers is going to be moderately successful at best. As usual with these kinds of things, it will be the casual user that gets caught and punished. The kind of moron that just downloads and runs whatever some other moron said would give him an advantage. Naturally, the moron's actions will be blatantly obvious to everyone and will be punished quickly. The truly dedicated cheaters that use subtle cheating programs that are regularly modified (resulting in a differ
3) Finally, the bill is laughed out of congress and ignored. In this case, they'll try again later when the climate it right.
Or just attach it as one of many riders on the latest save the children bill.
Not to mention that here in Tennessee (and I'm sure other places too) it actually is law. It is against state law for movie theaters to sell a ticket for an 'R' rated movie to someone under 18, not 17 like the MPAA ratings suggest. I'm not sure if this is also part of the law, but no theater will sell more than one ticket for an 'R' rated show to someone under 21.
I think a major difference is one of expectations. When I install a virus scanner and tell it to look for virus, I have an explicit understanding that it is going to examine all of my files for traces of a virus. When I run World of Warcraft (or any other game) I expect it to be crunching numbers for physics, graphics, etc, not snooping around my system. Not only that, but the virus scanner will report back to me and will not send out data unless I explicitly agree to that. What makes these anti-cheat programs spyware is that they collect data, send it to another party, and perhaps most importantly, do so without first telling you that it is going to.
It's late and maybe I just missed where fyngyrz "tried to insult Americans." As far as I can tell, he is simply pointing out a fact that roughly 50% of the population will score below average (which if you read his first post, the fact the a score of 100 is the average mark was not necessary to point out - he says it himself). It seems to me that you've taken an emotional reaction to the term "below average." Being below average is not necessarily an insult and in my opinion at no point does fyngyrz use it as one. Example: Four people each take an IQ test and receive scores of 160, 159, 158, 157. The two who score 158 and 157 are "below average" but would still be considered "smart" as far as scientific intelligence is concerned. So again, I just don't see where he is insulting Americans or where he puts forth that 50% of the population scoring below average as a criticism of the country.
Assuming the research you conducted points out actual facts, it could show that being below average on the American IQ scale is better than being below average on the European scale (although not necessarily).
All he was saying is that at least 50% of Americans will have a harder time with science than those that are above average. IQ tests are primarily a measure of the kind of intelligence related to scientific thinking (fyngyrz once again graciously offers this information to you). Given the fact that I tend to learn new things quickly and an affinity for the sciences, I would probably score well on an IQ test. Does that make me a better person than someone that scores below average? I don't think so, it just shows that I'm good at science. Big deal, I suck at a lot of other things... Where's the insult?
I completely agree. Most of the time, I don't even look at the top part of the page because that's where the massive banner ads usually are. Especially so on those poorly designed sites; you know, the ones with large fonts and conflicting colors and sloppily laid out frames. Ads have cause me to become biased against sites created by people that are not trained well enough to create a clean looking website. Sometimes I just assume that poor looking sites like that are devoid of any useful information and filled with ads so I close that tab immediately. It can also be frustrating when a site then puts introductory information like the name or description of the site in the top area of the page (as it's natural to do), because I almost instantly scroll down when a page first loads to avoid the visual raping by a flashing banner.
An Ask Slashdot I would like to see is: Why do you (or anyone you know) put ads on your page? I mean unless you have massive traffic like sites like Slashdot have, are you actually making any money on them? For most people, the best they are probably going to do is cover their hosting costs. But really, web hosting is not that expensive. I'm not so self important to think that my personal webpage or an informational page that I put up is so valuable to people that they should accept being visually raped upon entering it. Am I the only one?