Every class can be run well with about 5-6 hours of reading the strat boards and your spells. It can be essentially mastered in less than a week.
I only saw two or three truly excellent people in 8 years and they played any class they picked up equally well so the issue was really that they had superhuman reflexes (so they did things exceptionally fast- I played Ultimate frisbee with one of them and his reactions were superhuman there too) more than that they had "mastered" their classes.
Becoming a real cowboy is a lot harder than becoming a real "L80 Warrior who knows his 10 abilities, the raid or group encounter strat, and pays attention instead of watching TV during a group mission or raid". A lot of being a real cowboy involves muscle memory skills that take a long time to pick up and being very tough in the face of discomfort. (I'm sure there is more).
Having run several classes as well as, and sometimes better than, people who had been in them for years, all I can say is being a mmorg tune is not rocket science. Hell, it's not even high school science.
Yes, I had a bud who paid for college for two years making about $1500 a month (probably tax free). He had several computers- and could play a lot since it was his job.
So given that image is legal (and she's clearly under age) then any new modifications of that image are legal, right (except for maybe the naughty bits hidden by the cracked glass).
So you could modify her hair... or skin color... etc. for a million different legal photos.
And then what about a new photo that is very similar.
At the least- either it is child porn and should be censored or nothing involving a completely naked sub teen female alone that hides that tiny piece is child porn. The piece is obviously salacious.
The only problem would be the game representing it self to be something it wasn't.
It hasn't been a remotely "fair" game since the day it was released.
From 1999-2003, if you had 8 hours a day free and could get off before 3pm EST, you got every good camp (before anyone else got home) and got every rare spawn. I never saw "Venril Sathis" until I chewed on the Dev's ear at the Dallas Fanfest and finally convinced them to add random timers to the spawns- which were previously fixed at 24 hours- and the servers usually were rebooted during the afternoon in those days.
Even today, People who can play 8 hours straight have a 100% chance of getting most rare spawns in one sitting, while someone who plays 2 hour sessions may never see the rare spawn (and probably can't get the rare spawn camp).
And fairly early, some wealthy players took the other route-- you can play 40 hours a week-- or you can just drop $500 and get a fully developed character from someone who played 40 hours a week (the hourly rate was often ludicrous-- probably 70 cents an hour). $700-$900 for a character with 100 days played (2400 hours).
Then there was the Legends server-- scheduled spawns, and "The best guild money can buy".
I had a good time playing- I learned some important life lessons, and my guild leading experience lead to my current team lead job (and awareness that being a manager is probably not worth it).
But I know a lot of folks are going to feel put off because of the money-- and that's just an arbitrary opinion. Having $1000 to spend is no more unfair than having 40 hours (hell- some played 80 hours) a week to play. The game was never rocket science-- I was in one of the top ten guilds for six months and it was almost identical to the casual guild I spent years in- except the people their played 6 hours a day, 6 days a week instead of 4 hours a day, 3 days a week.
A major problem starting to crop up is that some areas can't afford to keep the people incarcerated as tax income drops and municipalities go bankrupt.
Having 2% of your population incarcerated starts to be a financial drain. Especially as federal laws are enforced regarding their living conditions and medical care.
Our dumb (tm) drug laws are largely responsible or this. However, large privately run prison corporations are starting to be self perpetuating (even backing new laws that require prison time with lobby money - and yup-- large contributors to keep drugs illegal). (e.g.) http://slingshot.tao.ca/displaybi.php?0059032
Oh.. and I'd bet dollars to donuts that the DNA database will not be flushed. They'll find some way to keep it- including just ignoring the ruling.
Well, see I mean, I was driving at an optimal speed so I was getting 35mpg. Given the make and model of my car, the 35mpg would give you how fast I was going. I actually left out the make and model of my car and meant the 35mpg.... and I have a bridge for sale too, if you are looking.
I have old SD video tapes that are clearer than current comcast SD broadcasts.
For a while, I had old HD DVR recordings that were clearer than current DISH network HD broadcasts (lost when my dvr went bad).
Comcast is slowly increasing compression so it works like this.
Time A 100% - Looks fine to everyone. Time B 99% - Looks a little worse than Time A.. but after 4 months you get used to it. Time C 98% - Repeat until now which appears to maybe be 96% as good as the signal used to be.
Details are washed out- colors are over or under saturated. And I see outright artifacts once in a while.
They are scamming us for bandwidth. It's like the lobster in the water slowly getting in a worse and worse situation but it's happening... slowly.
HD is not worth the money compared to decent SD.
HD is not worth the money compared to DVD.
---
Now... the latest thing they are doing (even on HD) is overlaying moving commercials for other shows. These have me about ready to shut off the stations and go to netflix and dvd. A few days ago, a person actually SLID DOWN A FRIKKIN ROPE from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen about 1/3 of the way into the show from the left side. I have no memory of what show the ad was for but I'm still pissed off about it.
I see HD and other quality recordings from other places via torrent and they don't have this bs on them. I can't believe that artists/directors, etc. would have lawsuits and force the "This show was modified" message and then be happy with dancing 8" high people on the screen waving their arms for your attention while you are in the middle of a dramatic scene for the current show.
And... ability in the world being distributed on a bell curve, some of these people are correct.
Some people can drive at.08 drunk better than many other people can drive sober. Some people can drive while talking on the cell phone better than many other people drive on their best day.
At some level of drunkenness, every one drives worse than the worst sober driver. For some kinds of cell phone conversations, everyone drives worse than the worst sober driver.
I've driven for years with a cell phone with no problem. It's especially nice on cross state trips.
I almost T-Boned a lady one morning when I was not on the cell phone because she was clearly distracted by her cell phone- she was looking at me in horror holding her phone up to her head as I braked from about 35mpg to a stop less than 10 feet from her.
I almost drove into a ditch (also while not on the phone) about 15 years ago when a person gave me very bad news right as we were coming up to a turn in the road.
Life is complicated and we get ham-handed lowest common denominator laws.
Most people I know can probably drive fine at.10. But.12 is very close to.10. And most people I know are solidly drunk at.12. I think that the.08 rule is really about stopping the.12 people from getting on the road (and about MADD moms going overboard).
Agree... one is like a slap in the face while the other is like an homage. (oh . there is such a bad joke in there that I realized as I finished that... but i'll leave it as an exercise to the reader.)
If you have insurance, you pay the deductible, $200 a year for the 1st procedure, and then you get 5 procedures for free which blue cross pays $75 each.
Meanwhile a person without insurance pays $1500 per procedure for all six procedures.
The break down is..
99.9% of the procedures go for $75..05 of the procedures go for $1500 (laughably called "retail" price).05 of the procedures go for $1500- but are really "free: (to people who can't pay). So the hospital gets a $500 "tax break" from *you* and *me* to cover that $1500 "loss".
Both countries have rich and deep histories of democratic values.
Where is this coming from? The wealthy? Have they "won the game" and now want to lock it in?
Or has the military/security complex gotten too big?
These are now a much bigger threat than terrorism- which might at most kill a few thousand people. If the government goes bad while possessing all these powers, the death count will be much higher. And then you add in the "torture is okay/not really torture" right wing meme that's been building (Thanks! Liberals behind "24" for helping too with that!) -- it gets damn scary.
I will be in costume as a 22nd century starship captain transported back to the early 2000's before the eugenics war, complete with period costume "blue jean", a "polo" shirt, a "belt", and some "loafers". There I will flirt and fall in love with a beautiful young girl but she will spurn me when I try to use period slang and say "Yea, I was hanging out posting on slashdot the other day..."
After saving the life of an unknown child in the 3rd row by preventing his or her romulan assassination (and thereby preserving the time continuity), I will return sadder and wiser to the present, insult my chief officer and we will all have a good laugh about it on the bridge.
Okay... slashdot has forced this horrible new formatting on me. In firefox, the text entry window is about 2" wide and a mile high.
GRRRR. Went to preferences and no way to change it. Buttons move around when I click them too. Can't believe it looks so horrible in V3.0.3 of Firefox.
---
Haircut bomb bunny bomb... Making a relation between bomb, haircut, and bunny which will generate more false positives.
Clearly real emails should include random words obviously ignorable to humans but that will be swept up with matching engines.
God, the entire world is going to orwellian fascism-- can't believe what is coming out of the uk today... losing right to protection against self incrimination... because its on the computer.
My passionately liberal friends keep a very clean house.
My passionately conservative friends house is stark it is so clean and organized.
My conservative girlfriend's house used to be extremely neat but her newest job leaves her tired all the time and the house has suffered (getting her a roomba).
I am libertarian (fiscally conservative and socially liberal unlike modern "conservatives" who are socially conservative, pro-wealthy, and fiscally irresponsible). My house is frequently a wreck- but the roomba has helped me a ton.
I am not seeing a strong correlation but I do see some correlation.
The fact that congress makes an exception and allows this business to limit competition in a way that would be illegal for any other non-sports business is not evidence of a tin foil hat.
It's more related to the fact that I've always lacked excitement in cheering for a group of random millionaires (not even residents of my own city or state any more-- and some from other countries) who via free agency now randomly change cities and allegiances from year to year like ronin.
I don't care what you do with your time- but when you start taking my frakking tax dollars to pay for your stadium's for your cartel of millionaires, it does piss me off just a bit.
Doesn't change the fact that it is a legal cartel. The availability of professional football is highly limited.
What you are saying is that there are a total of perhaps 240 people in the ENTIRE world qualified to play professional football.
That's just daft.
There are 6.2 billion people in the world man. If only 1 in a million people were qualified to play professional football, there would be 6,200 people qualified to play. Hell- if only 1 in TEN million were qualified to play, that would be over the current team rosters.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't tell you (it's a secret) but I can pass on that the rat was *very* uncomfortable.
While I agree with your point to some degree.
Every class can be run well with about 5-6 hours of reading the strat boards and your spells.
It can be essentially mastered in less than a week.
I only saw two or three truly excellent people in 8 years and they played any class they picked up equally well so the issue was really that they had superhuman reflexes (so they did things exceptionally fast- I played Ultimate frisbee with one of them and his reactions were superhuman there too) more than that they had "mastered" their classes.
Becoming a real cowboy is a lot harder than becoming a real "L80 Warrior who knows his 10 abilities, the raid or group encounter strat, and pays attention instead of watching TV during a group mission or raid". A lot of being a real cowboy involves muscle memory skills that take a long time to pick up and being very tough in the face of discomfort. (I'm sure there is more).
Having run several classes as well as, and sometimes better than, people who had been in them for years, all I can say is being a mmorg tune is not rocket science. Hell, it's not even high school science.
Yes, I had a bud who paid for college for two years making about $1500 a month (probably tax free).
He had several computers- and could play a lot since it was his job.
So given that image is legal (and she's clearly under age) then any new modifications of that image are legal, right (except for maybe the naughty bits hidden by the cracked glass).
So you could modify her hair... or skin color... etc. for a million different legal photos.
And then what about a new photo that is very similar.
At the least- either it is child porn and should be censored or nothing involving a completely naked sub teen female alone that hides that tiny piece is child porn. The piece is obviously salacious.
Ah well.. stupid laws.
Some people have money.
Some people have time.
The only problem would be the game representing it self to be something it wasn't.
It hasn't been a remotely "fair" game since the day it was released.
From 1999-2003, if you had 8 hours a day free and could get off before 3pm EST, you got every good camp (before anyone else got home) and got every rare spawn. I never saw "Venril Sathis" until I chewed on the Dev's ear at the Dallas Fanfest and finally convinced them to add random timers to the spawns- which were previously fixed at 24 hours- and the servers usually were rebooted during the afternoon in those days.
Even today, People who can play 8 hours straight have a 100% chance of getting most rare spawns in one sitting, while someone who plays 2 hour sessions may never see the rare spawn (and probably can't get the rare spawn camp).
And fairly early, some wealthy players took the other route-- you can play 40 hours a week-- or you can just drop $500 and get a fully developed character from someone who played 40 hours a week (the hourly rate was often ludicrous-- probably 70 cents an hour). $700-$900 for a character with 100 days played (2400 hours).
Then there was the Legends server-- scheduled spawns, and "The best guild money can buy".
I had a good time playing- I learned some important life lessons, and my guild leading experience lead to my current team lead job (and awareness that being a manager is probably not worth it).
But I know a lot of folks are going to feel put off because of the money-- and that's just an arbitrary opinion. Having $1000 to spend is no more unfair than having 40 hours (hell- some played 80 hours) a week to play. The game was never rocket science-- I was in one of the top ten guilds for six months and it was almost identical to the casual guild I spent years in- except the people their played 6 hours a day, 6 days a week instead of 4 hours a day, 3 days a week.
Yea... but one of those girls would have been a guy.
It's like the yellow primer on that used car...
In all seriousness-- if the effects are this dramatic, the selection pressure is intense.
So when members of a species develop resistance they are going to do really well.
As long as it is possible to develop resistance.
A major problem starting to crop up is that some areas can't afford to keep the people incarcerated as tax income drops and municipalities go bankrupt.
Having 2% of your population incarcerated starts to be a financial drain. Especially as federal laws are enforced regarding their living conditions and medical care.
Our dumb (tm) drug laws are largely responsible or this. However, large privately run prison corporations are starting to be self perpetuating (even backing new laws that require prison time with lobby money - and yup-- large contributors to keep drugs illegal). (e.g.) http://slingshot.tao.ca/displaybi.php?0059032
Oh.. and I'd bet dollars to donuts that the DNA database will not be flushed. They'll find some way to keep it- including just ignoring the ruling.
he he he he he
Ah...
Well, see I mean, I was driving at an optimal speed so I was getting 35mpg. Given the make and model of my car, the 35mpg would give you how fast I was going. I actually left out the make and model of my car and meant the 35mpg.... and I have a bridge for sale too, if you are looking.
I have old SD video tapes that are clearer than current comcast SD broadcasts.
For a while, I had old HD DVR recordings that were clearer than current DISH network HD broadcasts (lost when my dvr went bad).
Comcast is slowly increasing compression so it works like this.
Time A 100% - Looks fine to everyone.
Time B 99% - Looks a little worse than Time A.. but after 4 months you get used to it.
Time C 98% - Repeat until now which appears to maybe be 96% as good as the signal used to be.
Details are washed out- colors are over or under saturated. And I see outright artifacts once in a while.
They are scamming us for bandwidth. It's like the lobster in the water slowly getting in a worse and worse situation but it's happening... slowly.
HD is not worth the money compared to decent SD.
HD is not worth the money compared to DVD.
---
Now... the latest thing they are doing (even on HD) is overlaying moving commercials for other shows. These have me about ready to shut off the stations and go to netflix and dvd. A few days ago, a person actually SLID DOWN A FRIKKIN ROPE from the top of the screen to the bottom of the screen about 1/3 of the way into the show from the left side. I have no memory of what show the ad was for but I'm still pissed off about it.
I see HD and other quality recordings from other places via torrent and they don't have this bs on them. I can't believe that artists/directors, etc. would have lawsuits and force the "This show was modified" message and then be happy with dancing 8" high people on the screen waving their arms for your attention while you are in the middle of a dramatic scene for the current show.
It ruins both the ad and the show.
And... ability in the world being distributed on a bell curve, some of these people are correct.
Some people can drive at .08 drunk better than many other people can drive sober.
Some people can drive while talking on the cell phone better than many other people drive on their best day.
At some level of drunkenness, every one drives worse than the worst sober driver.
For some kinds of cell phone conversations, everyone drives worse than the worst sober driver.
I've driven for years with a cell phone with no problem. It's especially nice on cross state trips.
I almost T-Boned a lady one morning when I was not on the cell phone because she was clearly distracted by her cell phone- she was looking at me in horror holding her phone up to her head as I braked from about 35mpg to a stop less than 10 feet from her.
I almost drove into a ditch (also while not on the phone) about 15 years ago when a person gave me very bad news right as we were coming up to a turn in the road.
Life is complicated and we get ham-handed lowest common denominator laws.
Most people I know can probably drive fine at .10. But .12 is very close to .10. And most people I know are solidly drunk at .12. I think that the .08 rule is really about stopping the .12 people from getting on the road (and about MADD moms going overboard).
Agree... one is like a slap in the face while the other is like an homage. (oh . there is such a bad joke in there that I realized as I finished that... but i'll leave it as an exercise to the reader.)
our new building machines brew pots 12 at a time - sealed in an insulated pumpable bottle. stays hot and fresh without extra power for hours.
I think he meant...
It would be like a japanese guy or an irish guy being selected as leader of an african country by the populace.
In theory, you should get the best person as leader- but in reality, most cultures around the world are very insular.
America is uniquely open to possibilities that do not exist elsewhere.
Sigh...
No...
Under the current system...
If you have insurance, you pay the deductible, $200 a year for the 1st procedure, and then you get 5 procedures for free which blue cross pays $75 each.
Meanwhile a person without insurance pays $1500 per procedure for all six procedures.
The break down is..
99.9% of the procedures go for $75. .05 of the procedures go for $1500 (laughably called "retail" price) .05 of the procedures go for $1500- but are really "free: (to people who can't pay). So the hospital gets a $500 "tax break" from *you* and *me* to cover that $1500 "loss".
Wake up.
Just pass a law saying people without insurance get the lowest negotiated price.
That's $75 vs $1500.
If the insurance company is paying $75- why should the "rack rate" for the people without insurance be $1500???
Bah, a car analogy is the kind of thing Hitler would have used if he wanted the terrorist to win!
Screw the virtual property- I'd think assault, battery, and using a deadly weapon should be addressed first.
I just don't understand it.
Both countries have rich and deep histories of democratic values.
Where is this coming from? The wealthy? Have they "won the game" and now want to lock it in?
Or has the military/security complex gotten too big?
These are now a much bigger threat than terrorism- which might at most kill a few thousand people. If the government goes bad while possessing all these powers, the death count will be much higher. And then you add in the "torture is okay/not really torture" right wing meme that's been building (Thanks! Liberals behind "24" for helping too with that!) -- it gets damn scary.
However,
The maximum hit is refunding you $50 per user.
And the likely maximum hit is refunding you only for the downtime.
We are sorry your email was down... here is your ($50/365 ) * 2 = 27 cent refund.
I will be in costume as a 22nd century starship captain transported back to the early 2000's before the eugenics war, complete with period costume "blue jean", a "polo" shirt, a "belt", and some "loafers". There I will flirt and fall in love with a beautiful young girl but she will spurn me when I try to use period slang and say "Yea, I was hanging out posting on slashdot the other day..."
After saving the life of an unknown child in the 3rd row by preventing his or her romulan assassination (and thereby preserving the time continuity), I will return sadder and wiser to the present, insult my chief officer and we will all have a good laugh about it on the bridge.
Okay... slashdot has forced this horrible new formatting on me. In firefox, the text entry window is about 2" wide and a mile high.
GRRRR. Went to preferences and no way to change it. Buttons move around when I click them too. Can't believe it looks so horrible in V3.0.3 of Firefox.
---
Haircut bomb bunny bomb... Making a relation between bomb, haircut, and bunny which will generate more false positives.
Clearly real emails should include random words obviously ignorable to humans but that will be swept up with matching engines.
God, the entire world is going to orwellian fascism-- can't believe what is coming out of the uk today... losing right to protection against self incrimination... because its on the computer.
My passionately liberal friends keep a very clean house.
My passionately conservative friends house is stark it is so clean and organized.
My conservative girlfriend's house used to be extremely neat but her newest job leaves her tired all the time and the house has suffered (getting her a roomba).
I am libertarian (fiscally conservative and socially liberal unlike modern "conservatives" who are socially conservative, pro-wealthy, and fiscally irresponsible). My house is frequently a wreck- but the roomba has helped me a ton.
I am not seeing a strong correlation but I do see some correlation.
hmm
bomb labor bomb labor bomb labor nsa bomb labor cigarettes bomb pentagon september 11th world trade center bomb labor bunny bomb bunny bomb bunny bomb bunny bomb haircut.
The fact that congress makes an exception and allows this business to limit competition in a way that would be illegal for any other non-sports business is not evidence of a tin foil hat.
It's more related to the fact that I've always lacked excitement in cheering for a group of random millionaires (not even residents of my own city or state any more-- and some from other countries) who via free agency now randomly change cities and allegiances from year to year like ronin.
I don't care what you do with your time- but when you start taking my frakking tax dollars to pay for your stadium's for your cartel of millionaires, it does piss me off just a bit.
Doesn't change the fact that it is a legal cartel. The availability of professional football is highly limited.
What you are saying is that there are a total of perhaps 240 people in the ENTIRE world qualified to play professional football.
That's just daft.
There are 6.2 billion people in the world man. If only 1 in a million people were qualified to play professional football, there would be 6,200 people qualified to play. Hell- if only 1 in TEN million were qualified to play, that would be over the current team rosters.