is make darned sure you own no computers yourself and only use public terminals that can't be seized by the Secret Service.
Just remember what they did to a friend of mine - it started the whole Electronic Freedom Foundation when they seized ALL of his computers and returned them in little broken pieces in plastic bags, just because he was creating a game on Hackers.
And don't count on being able to use your checking accounts either - use cash.
Heck, it's so insecure we have all these virii floating around designed to use it's weaknesses, and most DBMS on a MSFT platform fail in some way around the 1 Terabyte level...
And back to the reality, one of the games that I'm involved in has recently introduced a "crime in the city" feature, and many players have been attacked as a result. However, as soon as the first criminal was arrested and mourned about the harsh punishment of being caught (lost points, jail time and whatnot), crime rate drops almost instantly.
A lot of studies have shown that what deters non-impulse crime is the certainty of being caught, the probability of being prosecuted, and the likelihood of being punished. If a crime like spam happens and they only get you 0.1 percent of the time, then it is highly likely that most spamsters will continue to operate without worries. Some myths about real prosecutions will scare off a few, but the system will react to the actual capture rate over time.
To me, its like playing a MUD to a current MMORPG. Both are fun when done correctly. A good mud doesnt need gfx if the text is rich enough but you can still get sucked into a good MMORPG just as eaisly.
Perhaps the easy access to highly-interactive MUDs, especially such things as Online Gaming, is causing confusion. But again, we were talking AD&D in particular, and the book-based versions. If you want to play Fable, or Warcraft III or IV, go for it, those are designed to be RPG, in the same way as say Sims: The Urbz is (my fave).
But trying to pretend that miniatures have been or are the normal mode of play, isn't true. They are mostly used as character aids and a side hobby to help one visualize one's own character. When you first start out, it might help you realize logistical problems with your descriptions. It's like bandannas on Survivor - they don't really do much, but they look pretty on TV.
First, let me remind you all RPGs are really Telling A Story. The more you need to use visual aids, the less the players use their imaginations, and the less rich the experience. Basically, those who fall into the trap of using visual aids are very weak DMs who need to learn how to tell better stories, and find ways to make the gameflow help them in the combined story-telling experience, none of which involve heavy visual aids. That said, a little time spent on learning better phrasing and a broader pallette of descriptions for color, smells, texture, sounds, heat/cold, and such will serve you better.
By the numbers:
1. "RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons are traditionally played on a tabletop using miniatures."
Well, no, most players never use miniatures. Miniatures were common in table-top strategy games, but are rarely used by RPG players, except when they feel like it, or for those who have a lot of cash and want to impress their moms with how easy it is to walk on small pointy objects on the stairs other than 1d4 and 1d8.
2. "The problem is that the players are only supposed to see those parts of the map that they have explored. Gamemasters are reduced to drawing explored sections of the map on the playing surface with dry-erase markers or using cardboard tiles representing stretches of corridor."
While players may use graph paper or hex paper, very few use tiles or plastic sheets and markers. Most DMs do in fact use graph paper - it works, it's easy to find, and they know how to use it.
3. "Some fellows have an expensive but elegant solution. They map out the playing area in a laptop using software such as Tabletop Mapper, which allows to game master to dynamically hide and reveal sections of the map. The laptop is attached to a 1600 lumen DLP projector mounted on the ceiling and projecting an image of the visible map onto the tabletop. The miniatures can then be moved on a dynamic map. The eye candy factor is vastly increased, gamemaster labor is reduced, and the players have more fun. The elegance is that this is an intuitive enhancement of the traditional gaming experience, instead of an unfamiliar new user interface to be mastered."
If they want me to care about IE7, they're going to need to give me something that Firefox doesn't already give me more of.
Have to agree. I read thru the article and I was going "is that all?" to each thing they mentioned.
Wake me when it has Automated Penguin Mapping protocols, or something to turn off scripted image cycling by ads. Until then, I see no reason to switch.
It's a square of the useful contributions (signal to noise ratio, where 0.8 or 80 percent useful posts to noise posts or transmissions is baseline = 1, by the delta of the change above the baseline (subtract the square of the delta of the change below the baseline).
In other words, if you get too much spam or "oops, hit the reply to all posts" or endless Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Item Of Interest replies that quote all the prior posters, it severely impacts the networks effectiveness.
I guess this means Comcast isn't going to roll out the Microsoft version they were testing in limited areas. I was interested in the Microsoft version because Comcast's software really blows. I ended up taking my Comcast DVR back because not only did nobody at Comcast know when or if the Microsoft version would ever come out, they'd never even heard of it.
Interesting. Kind of like my Qwest DSL service is apparently not provided by Qwest since I got a small business version (with multiple email accounts and a webspace and domain), so when I contact Tech Support they get very very confused.
Do you think that the Comcast insert in my mail last night offering the Digital Video Recorder was for the old MSFT offering instead of this new Tivo offering?
My brother already has this in his kitchen
on
Sunlight in a Tube
·
· Score: 1
it's a technique the romans used centuries ago.
Any bets on how long it takes the USPatentOffice to grant the patent and ignore the prior art?
or at least consider replacing all such references with Kwazai or other incredibly silly cultural references that are unlikely to be widely used by most Netizens.
After all, wouldn't it be better for Google to bring up a totally useless page in high-rank order than to help the spamsters?
On the other hand, it's great for making paper-mache giant puppets with.
They just jacked the newstand price of the local daily papers here in Seattle - doubling the price - wonder if that could perhaps have a negative impact on circulation...
great, glad that we here in the USA are now in your league - in fact, today I was just talking with some scientists and we're expecting Brazil will churn out more useful stuff than we will for some sequencing data.
Slashdot Mirror
Or should I wear a pixelated hash vest instead?
is make darned sure you own no computers yourself and only use public terminals that can't be seized by the Secret Service.
Just remember what they did to a friend of mine - it started the whole Electronic Freedom Foundation when they seized ALL of his computers and returned them in little broken pieces in plastic bags, just because he was creating a game on Hackers.
And don't count on being able to use your checking accounts either - use cash.
but we still use it.
...
Heck, it's so insecure we have all these virii floating around designed to use it's weaknesses, and most DBMS on a MSFT platform fail in some way around the 1 Terabyte level
NEXT FUD, PLEASE!
that MSFT will promise to comply and deliver something which does not comply.
....
Practice makes perfect
And back to the reality, one of the games that I'm involved in has recently introduced a "crime in the city" feature, and many players have been attacked as a result. However, as soon as the first criminal was arrested and mourned about the harsh punishment of being caught (lost points, jail time and whatnot), crime rate drops almost instantly.
A lot of studies have shown that what deters non-impulse crime is the certainty of being caught, the probability of being prosecuted, and the likelihood of being punished. If a crime like spam happens and they only get you 0.1 percent of the time, then it is highly likely that most spamsters will continue to operate without worries. Some myths about real prosecutions will scare off a few, but the system will react to the actual capture rate over time.
To me, its like playing a MUD to a current MMORPG. Both are fun when done correctly. A good mud doesnt need gfx if the text is rich enough but you can still get sucked into a good MMORPG just as eaisly.
Perhaps the easy access to highly-interactive MUDs, especially such things as Online Gaming, is causing confusion. But again, we were talking AD&D in particular, and the book-based versions. If you want to play Fable, or Warcraft III or IV, go for it, those are designed to be RPG, in the same way as say Sims: The Urbz is (my fave).
But trying to pretend that miniatures have been or are the normal mode of play, isn't true. They are mostly used as character aids and a side hobby to help one visualize one's own character. When you first start out, it might help you realize logistical problems with your descriptions. It's like bandannas on Survivor - they don't really do much, but they look pretty on TV.
I have to disagree with a lot of what he says.
First, let me remind you all RPGs are really Telling A Story. The more you need to use visual aids, the less the players use their imaginations, and the less rich the experience. Basically, those who fall into the trap of using visual aids are very weak DMs who need to learn how to tell better stories, and find ways to make the gameflow help them in the combined story-telling experience, none of which involve heavy visual aids. That said, a little time spent on learning better phrasing and a broader pallette of descriptions for color, smells, texture, sounds, heat/cold, and such will serve you better.
By the numbers:
1. "RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons are traditionally played on a tabletop using miniatures."
Well, no, most players never use miniatures. Miniatures were common in table-top strategy games, but are rarely used by RPG players, except when they feel like it, or for those who have a lot of cash and want to impress their moms with how easy it is to walk on small pointy objects on the stairs other than 1d4 and 1d8.
2. "The problem is that the players are only supposed to see those parts of the map that they have explored. Gamemasters are reduced to drawing explored sections of the map on the playing surface with dry-erase markers or using cardboard tiles representing stretches of corridor."
While players may use graph paper or hex paper, very few use tiles or plastic sheets and markers. Most DMs do in fact use graph paper - it works, it's easy to find, and they know how to use it.
3. "Some fellows have an expensive but elegant solution. They map out the playing area in a laptop using software such as Tabletop Mapper, which allows to game master to dynamically hide and reveal sections of the map. The laptop is attached to a 1600 lumen DLP projector mounted on the ceiling and projecting an image of the visible map onto the tabletop. The miniatures can then be moved on a dynamic map. The eye candy factor is vastly increased, gamemaster labor is reduced, and the players have more fun. The elegance is that this is an intuitive enhancement of the traditional gaming experience, instead of an unfamiliar new user interface to be mastered."
This is incredible overkill.
But they can never take our Freedom!
...
Well, ok, maybe they can take it, but only if we let them
but they stole our tabbed browsing. It's all over people
If they want me to care about IE7, they're going to need to give me something that Firefox doesn't already give me more of.
Have to agree. I read thru the article and I was going "is that all?" to each thing they mentioned.
Wake me when it has Automated Penguin Mapping protocols, or something to turn off scripted image cycling by ads. Until then, I see no reason to switch.
Actually they want $15.05 for it. The $9.95 price includes a $5.10 discout for not getting a normal digital converter box.
...
Is that before tax? That would mean about $20 total, sheesh. Especially for a non-functional MSFT service, can't see doing that
it fixes the bugs introduced in PHP5.
It's a square of the useful contributions (signal to noise ratio, where 0.8 or 80 percent useful posts to noise posts or transmissions is baseline = 1, by the delta of the change above the baseline (subtract the square of the delta of the change below the baseline).
In other words, if you get too much spam or "oops, hit the reply to all posts" or endless Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Item Of Interest replies that quote all the prior posters, it severely impacts the networks effectiveness.
Kind of like meetings, really.
I think this may help people with parkinsons although they do shake quite violently (in many cases).
...
... they're way cheaper at the pet store where I get them for Python programmers.
That was my first thought too - I forwarded the article link to a friend of mine who has a fairly violent tremor.
Even the medication they use doesn't help that much
But $100 for a mouse
It's not TiVo though. It's Comcast's DVR and it's sorely lacking. See my post at ...
Ah, I stand corrected. Well, actually, I sit corrected, and hereby use the backspace key to type over this f\e\l\d\e\r\c\a\r\b\.
I guess this means Comcast isn't going to roll out the Microsoft version they were testing in limited areas. I was interested in the Microsoft version because Comcast's software really blows. I ended up taking my Comcast DVR back because not only did nobody at Comcast know when or if the Microsoft version would ever come out, they'd never even heard of it.
Interesting. Kind of like my Qwest DSL service is apparently not provided by Qwest since I got a small business version (with multiple email accounts and a webspace and domain), so when I contact Tech Support they get very very confused.
Do you think that the Comcast insert in my mail last night offering the Digital Video Recorder was for the old MSFT offering instead of this new Tivo offering?
it's a technique the romans used centuries ago.
Any bets on how long it takes the USPatentOffice to grant the patent and ignore the prior art?
I just got my Comcast bill last night and it had a paper insert on this service - they want $9.95 per month for this.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/15/business/pa pers.html
plus, they don't soak up bandwidth as much.
or at least consider replacing all such references with Kwazai or other incredibly silly cultural references that are unlikely to be widely used by most Netizens.
After all, wouldn't it be better for Google to bring up a totally useless page in high-rank order than to help the spamsters?
it's still got way too many non-targetted ads.
...
On the other hand, it's great for making paper-mache giant puppets with.
They just jacked the newstand price of the local daily papers here in Seattle - doubling the price - wonder if that could perhaps have a negative impact on circulation
I drink the Java, I spill some on the table, then I graph the absorbance factor of the paper napkin.
Now if I could just stop the shakes and not being able to sleep, I'd be fine.
great, glad that we here in the USA are now in your league - in fact, today I was just talking with some scientists and we're expecting Brazil will churn out more useful stuff than we will for some sequencing data.
No Hubble means we're third-world, no matter how you slice it.
Where the Japanese and Chinese and Europeans have their acts together while we stop spending on Science.
Sigh.
the lure of the forbidden is similar to the lure of the Dark Side of the Force.