The problem with your permanent Death scenario is that it sets up the *very real* possibility that a griefer guild could totally dominate the server by making sure that *no one* could ever advance to a level to offer any real threat to them. You've, no doubt, heard the expression "The man is keeping me down"? That would totally happen on a perma-death server. It would become a tyranny, much like a dictatorship or communist system, where members of 'the party' are allowed to control all weath and power, and the death sentence is imposed on just about anyone who is viewed as a threat or a traitor.
And because of this, such a game would quickly lose most of it's subscriber base, except for members of 'the party'. Eventually, with no one to prey upon, 'the party' would either get bored, and leave the game, or turn on each other, and those weaker members that the rest of 'they party' turn on would probably leave to, resulting in a death-spiral for the game as subscribers leave. Which is why game developers don't develop games the way you suggest. No one would pay, long term, to play "Virtual Serf".
What does the phrase "1.5 million natives have been displaced from their homes" mean, in this case specifically? There is no fundamental human right to a *specific piece of property*. If those 1.5 million people were moved into comparable (or possibly even *better*) housing elsewhere in the city or in a city/town of their choice, or at least compensated with sufficient funds to purchase comparable housing, then I don't see a problem with it (we do the same thing in the US - it's called "Eminent Domain"). If those people were just thrown out on the street, or put into ghettos, that would be a violation of human rights. But, national governments need the power to re-allocate land use. Otherwise, there'd be *nowhere* for anyone to ever host the Olympics.
Sometimes, to build an airport, railroad, or public venue (such as a Stadium), you gotta move some people. That's just life. The important thing is how you accomplish that moving. It's possible to move 1.5 million people in a way that deals fairly with those people and doesn't make them homeless. I don't know if that is the case in this particular situation, but you have not offered any evidence that this is *not* the case.
"Perhaps if some great leaders played the game they could inspire the masses to band together and overthrow the griefers. A George Washington of the gaming world."
You know, I've thought about that before. The problem is, I've never seen a game where the game mechanics lend themselves to player-policing. I mean, what are you gonna do to the griefers? Hunt them down and kill them? Ok, so they respawn in a couple seconds and start all over. Throw them in jail? What jail? In games, where death is usually meaningless, and even what you can lose is rather limited, there can really be no 'punishment'. At the same time, if a game developer *did* put something like that in, it would just be a tool for griefers to make your life even more miserable.
Ultimately, there is nothing you can do to griefers. They might log out for a little while if they are getting ganked non-stop. Then log back in after a while, when the angry mob has moved and, and start griefing weaker players again.
Most game developers, instead of trying to rely on player-policing, just design the games to limit how much one player can grief another. One one end of the spectrum, you have games like City of Heroes / Villains where you have nothing to lose when dieing from enemy players, and PvP is completely concensual (you have to either go to special zones, or else to an 'arena'). On the other end of the spectrum, with something like, say Eve Online, PvP is still, at least, partially consensual (different zones are ranked differently, and if you are going to a zone where you think you might be griefed because of low security rating, you can at least prepare for it by maybe taking a ship you don't care about losing, and storing all your valuables in vaults in secure space stations).
Honestly, I don't mind that. The truth is, it's just a game and, just like I can't ultimately do anything to the griefer, griefers, ultimately, can't do anything to me. Of course, if you can potentially lose stuff that someone else can sell for real cash (like Entropia Universe), it becomes a little bit more worrisome.
In the case of the DS, I get the 'flip-ability' is
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I got to thinking about it more, and while my point is generally correct. I also realize that, perhaps in the DS' specific case, the advantage of having two screens is that they are built into seperate housings that are jointed, so you can flip the screen down for storage (much like a laptop design), but my basic point is that, outside of doing something like that, there is usually no inherent advantage to having multiple physically seperated screens, when you can just logically partition a single screen as necessary.
Re:small dual screens is kind of a dumb idea
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Ok, thanks for missing the point completely. The Nintendo DS has two screens that are whatever size - let's say 3x3 inches. It would take precisely *no additional space* to have instead used one screen that was say 3x6 inches.
small dual screens is kind of a dumb idea
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I've always thought the idea of dual screens on the Gameboy DS was a bit of a strange idea. I mean, why not just use one screen that is twice as big? Then, games that want to use a 'dual screen' concept can always split the screen in half and draw one set of stuff to one half, and another set of stuff to the other half. But, other games can use it as a single, large screen.
I personally think it probably comes down to cost - it's cheaper for Nintendo to buy two smaller screens than a single large screen. My understanding of LCD technology is that, apparently, it's difficult to grow the crystals without bad pixels, so that as the screens get larger, they rapidly get more expensive, because it's decreasingly likely that you'll get an LCD panel of a particular size without flaws - so all the flawed ones either get thrown away, or maybe they can cut them down to smaller displays (that is, cut out the bad part and end up with 1 or 2 smaller panels) and sold more cheaply at the small size?
Anyhow - *my* laptop of the future has a simple white (or neutral color) flap onto which a display can be projected, and the flap can be folded under the laptop when I want to project onto another surface, like a projection screen or white wall. That is, a laptop with built-in projector, not an LCD. (I suppose, ultimately, for power consumption purposes, you'll never have a projector built in, because it would take too much energy to run, but I can dream, right?)
I confess complete and total ignorance here. I'm just trying to figure out why it's so expensive to run the rover program?
The rovers, it's true, cost a lot of money to design, build, test, and deliver to Mars. But that is money already spent. Now that they are there, what are the major expenses of running the program? I realize that you do need staff and equipment to maintain communication with the rovers, and to send them programming, and that implies needing facilities in which to house the staff and equipment. But NASA already owns the facilities and equipment, I believe?
How many staff does it take to run the program? I wouldn't think it would be a huge number of people? 20 or 30 (that might be way off, I'm just pulling numbers out of the air, admittedly, but I can't understand why it would take a lot of people to run the program)? I realize that the scientists and engineers working on a program like this would be higher paid than the general public. Assuming an average salary of 100k per year, plus benefits at, say, 20k per year, 30 people would run you 3.6M per year.
Also, quick question - sometimes in large organizations like NASA, you can get some tricks going like paying one person to work on something that benefits two programs, but who is officially working on the other program. Could the Mars Rover program be kept alive with assistance from other programs inside NASA that need to maintain 'shared infrastructure'?
To add to Orestex's reply, I'd like to add that you have to keep one thing in mind - in the scheme I propose, I would expect that either the companies would pay no license fees at all (since the idea is to auction based on best proposal) or a relatively small, flat licensing fee (something significantly cheaper than the current auction rates).
Since none of the companies would have to build the cost of a $6 billion bid into their pricing, they can offer a proposal that is $6 billion cheaper. There's still room for profit since they aren't giving such massive sums of money to the government.
I want to add one more thing to my suggestion, however. That is, the proposal should not only take money into consideration (though that should be a significant part of the consideration). It should also take into account factors such as what type of service is being proposed on that spectrum. If in a particular region, there are already 3 or more mobile-phone companies operating, I'd rather see the spectrum allocated to, e.g. a new wireless TCP/IP data service for computing devices, or some other innovative new use for spectrum, rather than more of the same. So, some kind of weighting should be given to proposals that introduce new service, or introduce new competitors into an insufficiently competitive market.
Yeah, Ok, so it's getting even more complex. I still think that if people wanted to make it work, someone could come up with some very smart solutions for some of these problems. Maybe the answer is like Orestex suggested - have committees at the state level review proposals, with the criteria I mentioned in mind, and let them vote. The only problem I foresee with that is that, well, committees have known to be corrupted by powerful interests, to serve their own agendas at the expense of the public, so I'm kind of reluctant to let politicians or appointees make such decisions.
So, did you learn nothing from my earlier post? Being a movie and being data are not two mutually exclusive thing. All movies are data. Not all datum are movies. A movie is simultaneously a movie *and* data. Just like my desk is simultaneously a desk *and* a piece of furniture *and* matter.
It wouldn't make any sense to say, "What I have here is a desk, not matter!". Similarly, it doesn't make any sense to claim that I'm saying a video on blu-ray disc isn't a movie, simply because I say it's data. My claiming that it is data is not a claim that it is not a movie.
I doubt my idea will ever be heard by anyone in power, or if it were, taken seriously but. . . wireless spectrum is kind of a public resource. Because, of course, bandwidth is relatively limited, there does need to be some sort of regulation of the spectrum, and generally, I think the FCC has done a pretty good job of that. But, these spectrum auctions bother me somewhat. They basically come down to an agreement between the arbiter of monopoly power (the Government/FCC) and private parties to charge the public the maximum amount of money possible to use the spectrum, which is, as I mentioned, a public resource - the government has no 'inherent' claim to it, only the claim that they assert by power (police/military - the power to bust down your door, seize equipment, and throw people in jail).
Because, a highest-bidder auction guarantees that whoever bids the most will have to charge the most to customers in order to cover their 'costs'. In any other area of business, US law forbids monopolies from price gouging. But in wireless communications, the government grants a monopoly to whatever organization wins the bid.
I think the FCC, in future auctions, should try to use a different model for bidding: service price bidding. That is, you award the auction to whatever company agrees to the lowest price to customers for the services provided on that spectrum. Admittedly, this is a *much* more difficult way to run an auction, because it could be hard to figure out exact price equivalencies for different types of services. Maybe you define a standard of like a khz/second, similar to how electricity is rated, which would ignore the specific service being offered on a segment of spectrum, and instead defines the price charged to end users based on how much bandwidth is used by their communications per second of time. I suppose even that could be difficult because some companies might offer un-metered services, like the all-you-can talk for $100/mo plans that Cell-carriers are currently rolling out (even that, though, I think could still be broken down to a khz/second price, based on the average number of minutes per month that the carriers expect users to actually be talking - and which could later be compared against actual usage data across the entire pool of users).
I don't know for sure what the answer is, but the idea of a highest-bidder auction for spectrum just doesn't sit well with me as a citizen and tax payer. I just think it's corrupt, and doesn't serve the public as well as it should, because it simply drives prices up. Sure, the government gets additional revenue, which theoretically could be used for the public good. But yeah, I've seen how well my government usually spends my money. I doubt we'll see any tax rate reductions from this revenue (compared to the Federal Budget, I think the money brought in by the auction is fairly puny, anyhow), so the money will probably just be spent on pork-barrel projects for well-connected companies with friends in Congress and the Executive Branch, anyhow).
First, let me point out that it appears you accidentally submitted before you had finished the full text of your post. It just kind of ends mid-sentence.
Anyhow, I've wondered, are spectrum auctions time-limited, or for posterity? If I were the government, I'd only auction spectrum for like 10 (well, maybe 15, because forcing companies to be in a situation where they must build a network, recover the costs, and make a profit in only 10 years might be a bit too short of a time) years at a time, then recover the spectrum rights after that time to either re-auction, or potentially do something else with.
I never said anything about stealing, you did. IIRC, SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) has ruled that it is permissible under fair use to do things like copying a record or CD to a cassette tape (or vice-versa), or ripping a song from my CD and loading it onto my iRiver digital music player. So, I can listen to it from the original CD, or on my computer, or on my music player. The same principle makes it legal to make backup copies of copyrighted material (whether software, music, videos, etc), as long as I own the original medium.
You would be correct if, e.g. I rented a movie from Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Netflix, etc, or borrowed the disc from a friend, and then made a 'backup'. That would just be an illegal copy. But there is such as thing as a legal copy without the permission of the copyright owner.
The reason people are saying the DRM crack is good is that without the DRM crack, such legal copies are essentially useless, so the crack just maintains the current legal status quo.
For anyone who is tempted to gloss over the parent as simply off-topic, or a troll, make sure to re-read the grand-parent's post, then think carefully about the parent post in the context of this discussion. I think it's extremely insightful, even though it's not immediately obvious.
Ok, yes, books are more than *just* dead trees with ink squirted on them. But guess what, they also *are* dead trees. . . with ink squirted on them. Meaning they share at least some of the properties dead trees. For example, if you needed to, you could burn them in a fire place for warmth, if it came down to it. They have a high quantity of cellulose, so if you needed a source of cellulose for some sort of chemical reaction, you could possibly use books (or other paper - magazines, newspapers, etc) if you had to.
I think the GP's point was, he should be able to backup his movies to his computer, because at a low level, Blue Ray movies are just data on the disc. He should be able to backup *any* data on a BD to his computer. Yes, movies are more than data, but they also *are* data too. The power of abstraction is that I can usually treat any two *similar* things similarly, even when they aren't identical.
So that I can drive a Chevy Corvette or a Cavalier, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, or a Toyota Camry all on the same road, because they are all automobiles. Yes, a pickup truck is *more than* a set of wheels, a frame, and a motor, which collectively fit within a certain standardized set of dimensions and under a certain maximum weight, but it *is* also a set of wheels, a frame, and a motor which collectively fit within a certain standardized set of dimensions and under a certain maximum weight, which is why it can drive on the same road as the other vehicles.
I think one of the distinguishing features of most geeks, that sets them apart from the general populace, is the fact that they have the ability to see, when it's useful, that "a book is just a dead tree", and to be able to figure out when that fact is useful. It is the foundational principle of much of engineering and computer science. Most people see the forest, or maybe the trees. A good hacker sees the forest *and* the trees.
Your response to the GP just shows that you just don't get it. It doesn't mean he's any less correct. I hope this post helps you to see that.
"You need to make the game into an online service to effectively protect it"
I for one sometimes *like* playing single-player, non-online games. I play plenty of online games too. But, well, maybe my Internet connection's not working, or maybe I just don't feel like interacting with other human beings. Or maybe I want to play a game at my own pace. Many great games of many different genres would not work well as online games (for example, there are certain types of games where timing is critical (think high-speed racing games, platformer games, etc) where making it online doesn't work as well because of lag issues. Certain types of story-driven games where making it online doesn't work well either, because you want every player to start 'at the beginning' of the story and work through it at their own pace, instead of dropping into the middle of the story. Or games where player actions have actual real, meaningful impact on the story (something quite possible with single player games, or even networked games where a small group of people works through the story together - e.g. Neverwinter Nights, etc, but that doesn't work well with most online game models).
Also, as a customer, sometimes I don't want a game that I have to keep paying for forever. The online model usually also is based on the premise of companies making me pay perpetually to play the game (2nd Life is, of course, a little bit different in that regard, but it's also not exactly a game in the traditional sense; more of just a virtual space for people to hang out in). I kind of like the model of paying 20 or 30 bucks, then being able to play the game whenever I want without paying additional fees.
"In fact, I can not think of any one invention that would have a bigger positive impact on us."
I dunno, maybe if someone invented a cheap (to both build and operate, so that the resulting electrical energy was extremely cheap), safe, practical fusion power generator. That could have a huge impact on the world.
Who insist on sticking with copper cabling, claiming "It sounds. . . I dunno. . . warmer somehow. These new superconducting cables just don't sound as good to me. I mean, I can *really* tell a difference."
"a quick check made it seem that putting a fresh install of XP on it would screw up the computer. Any ideas?"
I'm not positive on this, but I would presume that in order to install XP, you would need to format the drive and do a clean install of XP. So if by "screw up the computer" you mean, "Lose any data which wasn't backed up to another medium or another computer), yes. The only other thing I'd be slightly worried about is just verifying that all the hardware in the laptop is supported by XP - but that is pretty likely to be the case. Still, it's not guaranteed, so it might be worth taking a few minutes to check.
You may also want to download the XP drivers to a CD-Rom or something, so that, if e.g. you can't get on your network right away after installing XP, you can install the network driver from the CD. You might also want to put video drivers on the CD, so you can install the latest driver first thing, to get XP out of "VGA" mode, and into a more usable video mode right away.
On the one hand, I do agree with the need to do something about spam. OTOH, just because you haven't gotten complaints about false positives is a rather useless statement, don't you think? I mean, it's quite possible that someone would never even know that they didn't receive the legitimate email that they never got. How would they? I mean, in certain situations, someone might know they never received an email that someone told them about through another means - telephone, snail mail, in person, Instant Message, etc, but that would probably be a minority of false positives, I would suspect?
People don't have to prove their innocence when accused of wrong-doing, at least not in the US Courts (Gitmo is apparently another, very disturbing, matter).
Verizon doesn't need to prove their innocence. I am no lawyer, but it seems pretty clear and reasonable to me that if you buy a part from someone and that someone else violated the law in the production and/or sale of the part, then that other party should be the one held accountable for the violation. The only time I'd allow for an exception to that is if you can show that the first party knew (or reasonably should have known) that there was a violation, and they were conspiring with the other party to violate the law. And you would have to prove such a conspiracy, I would think.
Well, you're right, I know the manufacturer's would love to sell you new routers. But I've often wondered why there is no market for 'premium firmware upgrades'. That is, let's say I've got a Linksys home router. The hardware is perfectly capable of handling IPv6 - if the firmware just supported it. Yes, I could upgrade to OpenWrt or some other 3rd-party firmware (I think I might, soon, because I've been having on-going issues that I think might be un-fixed bugs in the official firmware), potentially, but I don't see a lot of people ever doing that (voiding your warranty and risking 'bricking' your unit is pretty scary to most people).
Now, if I were Cisco/Linksys (I think Cisco bought Linksys awhile back, no?), I *think* I'd rather sell people a $15 firmware update which gives them cool new features, and which requires me to manufacture 0 new hardware (so the marginal profit is *extremely high*), than to sell them a $40-$60 piece of hardware which requires me to also pay for manufacturing, shipping, and give the retail outlets who are selling it a fat margin (so that, I bet, Cisco only gets $20-30 anyhow, with the rest going to Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's, TigerDirect, etc).
But, maybe there's more margin in hardware than I realize. Granted, they have to sell hardware anyhow (e.g. for new users who don't have their hardware to begin with), but why not sell existing customers the new firmware without requiring new hardware? I suppose it comes down to there is no established precedent for people paying for firmware. . . they expect it to be free, so the market might not, at least initially, embrace buying firmware upgrades. There are also the technical support issues of having to deal with routers that got bricked because the power went out while the upgrade was in progress or something. But if the router was designed well to begin with, it should be fairly resistant to bricking during the upgrade process.
Still. . . with a marginal cost close to 0 for the 'product', and fewer other people in the chain to split the profits with (they might have to still pay some per-unit fees, like licenses if they use a proprietary 3rd-party embedded OS), it would seem like this could be a reasonably lucrative business model.
Let's say, hypothetically, you could create a perfect fingerprint matching system you could use to provide a strong encryption key for encrypting/decrypting your data. Let's say the technology couldn't be fooled - it really required *your* finger, and not a rubber mold, xerox, etc. Let's even say that it uses some sort of 'salting' technique so that someone can't just figure out your key by lifting your fingerprints - that is, knowing *just* the fingerprint would not by itself be sufficient to generate the key, but is a necessary part of the algorithm. It's still a bad idea.
I for one, would rather not give anyone, anywhere, a motive for CUTTING OFF MY FINGERS. . . or simply forcing my hand into the keypad with the finger(s) still attached (maybe drug me and push my hand into the pad while I'm unconscious).
Granted, even with password security, it's true that someone could use the 'rubber hose and a pair of pliers' technique for getting my password. Or a key logger. Or a camera in a strategic position while I'm typing my password. But given the two alternatives, where you can't show a distinct advantage for fingerprints, I'd really rather stay with the simpler technology.
I'm not a Mac user, but I'd like to throw in that once you've developed OpenGL support you get PS3, Linux (maybe BSD too?), *and* Mac support, without really developing 3 rendering paths. There might be a little bit of IO/networking stuff that you have to do seperately for each platform (I'm not sure, but I bet a lot of that stuff is abstracted away if you use a good, cross-platform engine anyhow; something along the lines of GarageGames' Torque engine, Epic's Unreal engine,or Id's Doom III/Quake 4 engine, Crystal Space, OGRE 3D, etc).
I don't see why more developers don't target OpenGL instead of DirectX. ..you get Windows support, plus a bunch of other platforms, if you want, too. Are there features in DirectX that are simply not possible in OpenGL currently?
While I can agree that you shouldn't look for someone who is identical to you their beliefs, there is a lot to be said for having some common ground at least on some of the deeper/bigger belief systems.
Do you want a wife who is going to do something downright stupid because her horoscope/astrologer/tarot card/tea leaf reader told her she should do it? Do you want to have to try to convince her why it's a bad idea, even though it should be obvious to anyone with some common sense why it's a bad idea? Do you want her raising your kids to believe that stuff?
Seriously, if you're just trying to get laid, then I guess it doesn't matter what the person you are dating believes (as long as they believe one-night stands or short-term relationships are ok), but if you are looking for a longer-term relationship, these things really matter.
It can be the difference between every big decision (should we buy a house now? Should I take this new job offer? Should we get a new car? Have a kid? 2 kids, 3 kids. . ?) being an ideological fight, or a simple matter of discussion based on a common set of shared 'foundational' beliefs.
Is a difference in belief also going to be a constant source of friction with relatives? I know in the US the popular belief is fall in love with the person, worry about the relatives later. That can work sometimes. It can't work if the relatives believe some radical ideology that justifies them kidnapping your children in order to 'raise them right' instead of letting you raise them (that's an extreme example, and I don't think applies to astrology, but I'm just throwing that out as an example of the general concept).
Ultimately, whether a person who's fundamental world-view is based on science should date someone who's worldview is based on astrology comes down to those individuals, and how they can work it out (I suppose there could reasonably be a person who's scientific, but also can believe that there might be something to astrology, and can harmonize the two).
Still, having some beliefs in common can be a very good thing for the relationship.
"Better hardware. You can always throw in a new (or extra) graphics card (relatively inexpensive) or more memory (cheap) in three years and bring your PC up to spec for the latest games. You have to buy a whole new console system at $400-$600 every three years."
That's sorta true. . . but not so much. . .
You can't upgrade the CPU (usually) without upgrading the mobo (that is, while you might be able to upgrade to a slightly faster CPU, usually you can't upgrade to the next generation of CPU which gives the big performance gains vs. the incremental upgrade from 3.0 to 3.2 GHz)
You might be able to upgrade the graphics card, once; about every 2-3 generations of graphics cards and mobos use a new physical interface (i.e. the recent transition from AGP to PCI-X), which requires a new Mobo
You can upgrade the amount of ram, but ram is constantly getting faster, and to use the faster ram requires a new mobo
Then the new Mobo might possibly require you to get a new hard drive (if, e.g. it supports only SATA, and not PATA. . . or it supports the same physical interface standard, but at a slower speed, e.g. the transitions over the years from 33Mbit/s to 66 to 100 and beyond) - yes, you could by a PCI card to provide the old interface, but at that point it might make sense to use the money instead to get a new hard drive (so that the HD isn't a performance bottleneck in your upgraded system.
Then when you upgrade the Mobo, so that you can upgrade everything else, the new mobo might require a new case and power supply, or other new components (almost certainly it requires new RAM, but you were planning to buy that anyhow)
By the time you finish upgrading your computer, you've spent enough money that it might have made more sense to by a medium-spec next gen machine, instead of trying to upgrade your last-gen machine to high-spec (for that generation). Because the medium spec machine will likely be more powerful than the high-spec last-gen machine. Or, you have, really, bought a new computer, one part at a time, anyhow, and probably spent $400-$600, at least, to do it.
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The problem with your permanent Death scenario is that it sets up the *very real* possibility that a griefer guild could totally dominate the server by making sure that *no one* could ever advance to a level to offer any real threat to them. You've, no doubt, heard the expression "The man is keeping me down"? That would totally happen on a perma-death server. It would become a tyranny, much like a dictatorship or communist system, where members of 'the party' are allowed to control all weath and power, and the death sentence is imposed on just about anyone who is viewed as a threat or a traitor.
And because of this, such a game would quickly lose most of it's subscriber base, except for members of 'the party'. Eventually, with no one to prey upon, 'the party' would either get bored, and leave the game, or turn on each other, and those weaker members that the rest of 'they party' turn on would probably leave to, resulting in a death-spiral for the game as subscribers leave. Which is why game developers don't develop games the way you suggest. No one would pay, long term, to play "Virtual Serf".
What does the phrase "1.5 million natives have been displaced from their homes" mean, in this case specifically? There is no fundamental human right to a *specific piece of property*. If those 1.5 million people were moved into comparable (or possibly even *better*) housing elsewhere in the city or in a city/town of their choice, or at least compensated with sufficient funds to purchase comparable housing, then I don't see a problem with it (we do the same thing in the US - it's called "Eminent Domain"). If those people were just thrown out on the street, or put into ghettos, that would be a violation of human rights. But, national governments need the power to re-allocate land use. Otherwise, there'd be *nowhere* for anyone to ever host the Olympics.
Sometimes, to build an airport, railroad, or public venue (such as a Stadium), you gotta move some people. That's just life. The important thing is how you accomplish that moving. It's possible to move 1.5 million people in a way that deals fairly with those people and doesn't make them homeless. I don't know if that is the case in this particular situation, but you have not offered any evidence that this is *not* the case.
"Perhaps if some great leaders played the game they could inspire the masses to band together and overthrow the griefers. A George Washington of the gaming world."
You know, I've thought about that before. The problem is, I've never seen a game where the game mechanics lend themselves to player-policing. I mean, what are you gonna do to the griefers? Hunt them down and kill them? Ok, so they respawn in a couple seconds and start all over. Throw them in jail? What jail? In games, where death is usually meaningless, and even what you can lose is rather limited, there can really be no 'punishment'. At the same time, if a game developer *did* put something like that in, it would just be a tool for griefers to make your life even more miserable.
Ultimately, there is nothing you can do to griefers. They might log out for a little while if they are getting ganked non-stop. Then log back in after a while, when the angry mob has moved and, and start griefing weaker players again.
Most game developers, instead of trying to rely on player-policing, just design the games to limit how much one player can grief another. One one end of the spectrum, you have games like City of Heroes / Villains where you have nothing to lose when dieing from enemy players, and PvP is completely concensual (you have to either go to special zones, or else to an 'arena'). On the other end of the spectrum, with something like, say Eve Online, PvP is still, at least, partially consensual (different zones are ranked differently, and if you are going to a zone where you think you might be griefed because of low security rating, you can at least prepare for it by maybe taking a ship you don't care about losing, and storing all your valuables in vaults in secure space stations).
Honestly, I don't mind that. The truth is, it's just a game and, just like I can't ultimately do anything to the griefer, griefers, ultimately, can't do anything to me. Of course, if you can potentially lose stuff that someone else can sell for real cash (like Entropia Universe), it becomes a little bit more worrisome.
I got to thinking about it more, and while my point is generally correct. I also realize that, perhaps in the DS' specific case, the advantage of having two screens is that they are built into seperate housings that are jointed, so you can flip the screen down for storage (much like a laptop design), but my basic point is that, outside of doing something like that, there is usually no inherent advantage to having multiple physically seperated screens, when you can just logically partition a single screen as necessary.
Ok, thanks for missing the point completely. The Nintendo DS has two screens that are whatever size - let's say 3x3 inches. It would take precisely *no additional space* to have instead used one screen that was say 3x6 inches.
I've always thought the idea of dual screens on the Gameboy DS was a bit of a strange idea. I mean, why not just use one screen that is twice as big? Then, games that want to use a 'dual screen' concept can always split the screen in half and draw one set of stuff to one half, and another set of stuff to the other half. But, other games can use it as a single, large screen.
I personally think it probably comes down to cost - it's cheaper for Nintendo to buy two smaller screens than a single large screen. My understanding of LCD technology is that, apparently, it's difficult to grow the crystals without bad pixels, so that as the screens get larger, they rapidly get more expensive, because it's decreasingly likely that you'll get an LCD panel of a particular size without flaws - so all the flawed ones either get thrown away, or maybe they can cut them down to smaller displays (that is, cut out the bad part and end up with 1 or 2 smaller panels) and sold more cheaply at the small size?
Anyhow - *my* laptop of the future has a simple white (or neutral color) flap onto which a display can be projected, and the flap can be folded under the laptop when I want to project onto another surface, like a projection screen or white wall. That is, a laptop with built-in projector, not an LCD. (I suppose, ultimately, for power consumption purposes, you'll never have a projector built in, because it would take too much energy to run, but I can dream, right?)
I confess complete and total ignorance here. I'm just trying to figure out why it's so expensive to run the rover program?
The rovers, it's true, cost a lot of money to design, build, test, and deliver to Mars. But that is money already spent. Now that they are there, what are the major expenses of running the program? I realize that you do need staff and equipment to maintain communication with the rovers, and to send them programming, and that implies needing facilities in which to house the staff and equipment. But NASA already owns the facilities and equipment, I believe?
How many staff does it take to run the program? I wouldn't think it would be a huge number of people? 20 or 30 (that might be way off, I'm just pulling numbers out of the air, admittedly, but I can't understand why it would take a lot of people to run the program)? I realize that the scientists and engineers working on a program like this would be higher paid than the general public. Assuming an average salary of 100k per year, plus benefits at, say, 20k per year, 30 people would run you 3.6M per year.
Also, quick question - sometimes in large organizations like NASA, you can get some tricks going like paying one person to work on something that benefits two programs, but who is officially working on the other program. Could the Mars Rover program be kept alive with assistance from other programs inside NASA that need to maintain 'shared infrastructure'?
To add to Orestex's reply, I'd like to add that you have to keep one thing in mind - in the scheme I propose, I would expect that either the companies would pay no license fees at all (since the idea is to auction based on best proposal) or a relatively small, flat licensing fee (something significantly cheaper than the current auction rates).
Since none of the companies would have to build the cost of a $6 billion bid into their pricing, they can offer a proposal that is $6 billion cheaper. There's still room for profit since they aren't giving such massive sums of money to the government.
I want to add one more thing to my suggestion, however. That is, the proposal should not only take money into consideration (though that should be a significant part of the consideration). It should also take into account factors such as what type of service is being proposed on that spectrum. If in a particular region, there are already 3 or more mobile-phone companies operating, I'd rather see the spectrum allocated to, e.g. a new wireless TCP/IP data service for computing devices, or some other innovative new use for spectrum, rather than more of the same. So, some kind of weighting should be given to proposals that introduce new service, or introduce new competitors into an insufficiently competitive market.
Yeah, Ok, so it's getting even more complex. I still think that if people wanted to make it work, someone could come up with some very smart solutions for some of these problems. Maybe the answer is like Orestex suggested - have committees at the state level review proposals, with the criteria I mentioned in mind, and let them vote. The only problem I foresee with that is that, well, committees have known to be corrupted by powerful interests, to serve their own agendas at the expense of the public, so I'm kind of reluctant to let politicians or appointees make such decisions.
So, did you learn nothing from my earlier post? Being a movie and being data are not two mutually exclusive thing. All movies are data. Not all datum are movies. A movie is simultaneously a movie *and* data. Just like my desk is simultaneously a desk *and* a piece of furniture *and* matter.
It wouldn't make any sense to say, "What I have here is a desk, not matter!". Similarly, it doesn't make any sense to claim that I'm saying a video on blu-ray disc isn't a movie, simply because I say it's data. My claiming that it is data is not a claim that it is not a movie.
I doubt my idea will ever be heard by anyone in power, or if it were, taken seriously but. . . wireless spectrum is kind of a public resource. Because, of course, bandwidth is relatively limited, there does need to be some sort of regulation of the spectrum, and generally, I think the FCC has done a pretty good job of that. But, these spectrum auctions bother me somewhat. They basically come down to an agreement between the arbiter of monopoly power (the Government/FCC) and private parties to charge the public the maximum amount of money possible to use the spectrum, which is, as I mentioned, a public resource - the government has no 'inherent' claim to it, only the claim that they assert by power (police/military - the power to bust down your door, seize equipment, and throw people in jail).
Because, a highest-bidder auction guarantees that whoever bids the most will have to charge the most to customers in order to cover their 'costs'. In any other area of business, US law forbids monopolies from price gouging. But in wireless communications, the government grants a monopoly to whatever organization wins the bid.
I think the FCC, in future auctions, should try to use a different model for bidding: service price bidding. That is, you award the auction to whatever company agrees to the lowest price to customers for the services provided on that spectrum. Admittedly, this is a *much* more difficult way to run an auction, because it could be hard to figure out exact price equivalencies for different types of services. Maybe you define a standard of like a khz/second, similar to how electricity is rated, which would ignore the specific service being offered on a segment of spectrum, and instead defines the price charged to end users based on how much bandwidth is used by their communications per second of time. I suppose even that could be difficult because some companies might offer un-metered services, like the all-you-can talk for $100/mo plans that Cell-carriers are currently rolling out (even that, though, I think could still be broken down to a khz/second price, based on the average number of minutes per month that the carriers expect users to actually be talking - and which could later be compared against actual usage data across the entire pool of users).
I don't know for sure what the answer is, but the idea of a highest-bidder auction for spectrum just doesn't sit well with me as a citizen and tax payer. I just think it's corrupt, and doesn't serve the public as well as it should, because it simply drives prices up. Sure, the government gets additional revenue, which theoretically could be used for the public good. But yeah, I've seen how well my government usually spends my money. I doubt we'll see any tax rate reductions from this revenue (compared to the Federal Budget, I think the money brought in by the auction is fairly puny, anyhow), so the money will probably just be spent on pork-barrel projects for well-connected companies with friends in Congress and the Executive Branch, anyhow).
First, let me point out that it appears you accidentally submitted before you had finished the full text of your post. It just kind of ends mid-sentence.
Anyhow, I've wondered, are spectrum auctions time-limited, or for posterity? If I were the government, I'd only auction spectrum for like 10 (well, maybe 15, because forcing companies to be in a situation where they must build a network, recover the costs, and make a profit in only 10 years might be a bit too short of a time) years at a time, then recover the spectrum rights after that time to either re-auction, or potentially do something else with.
I never said anything about stealing, you did. IIRC, SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) has ruled that it is permissible under fair use to do things like copying a record or CD to a cassette tape (or vice-versa), or ripping a song from my CD and loading it onto my iRiver digital music player. So, I can listen to it from the original CD, or on my computer, or on my music player. The same principle makes it legal to make backup copies of copyrighted material (whether software, music, videos, etc), as long as I own the original medium.
You would be correct if, e.g. I rented a movie from Blockbuster, Hollywood Video, Netflix, etc, or borrowed the disc from a friend, and then made a 'backup'. That would just be an illegal copy. But there is such as thing as a legal copy without the permission of the copyright owner.
The reason people are saying the DRM crack is good is that without the DRM crack, such legal copies are essentially useless, so the crack just maintains the current legal status quo.
For anyone who is tempted to gloss over the parent as simply off-topic, or a troll, make sure to re-read the grand-parent's post, then think carefully about the parent post in the context of this discussion. I think it's extremely insightful, even though it's not immediately obvious.
Ok, yes, books are more than *just* dead trees with ink squirted on them. But guess what, they also *are* dead trees. . . with ink squirted on them. Meaning they share at least some of the properties dead trees. For example, if you needed to, you could burn them in a fire place for warmth, if it came down to it. They have a high quantity of cellulose, so if you needed a source of cellulose for some sort of chemical reaction, you could possibly use books (or other paper - magazines, newspapers, etc) if you had to.
I think the GP's point was, he should be able to backup his movies to his computer, because at a low level, Blue Ray movies are just data on the disc. He should be able to backup *any* data on a BD to his computer. Yes, movies are more than data, but they also *are* data too. The power of abstraction is that I can usually treat any two *similar* things similarly, even when they aren't identical.
So that I can drive a Chevy Corvette or a Cavalier, a Ford F-150 pickup truck, or a Toyota Camry all on the same road, because they are all automobiles. Yes, a pickup truck is *more than* a set of wheels, a frame, and a motor, which collectively fit within a certain standardized set of dimensions and under a certain maximum weight, but it *is* also a set of wheels, a frame, and a motor which collectively fit within a certain standardized set of dimensions and under a certain maximum weight, which is why it can drive on the same road as the other vehicles.
I think one of the distinguishing features of most geeks, that sets them apart from the general populace, is the fact that they have the ability to see, when it's useful, that "a book is just a dead tree", and to be able to figure out when that fact is useful. It is the foundational principle of much of engineering and computer science. Most people see the forest, or maybe the trees. A good hacker sees the forest *and* the trees.
Your response to the GP just shows that you just don't get it. It doesn't mean he's any less correct. I hope this post helps you to see that.
"You need to make the game into an online service to effectively protect it"
I for one sometimes *like* playing single-player, non-online games. I play plenty of online games too. But, well, maybe my Internet connection's not working, or maybe I just don't feel like interacting with other human beings. Or maybe I want to play a game at my own pace. Many great games of many different genres would not work well as online games (for example, there are certain types of games where timing is critical (think high-speed racing games, platformer games, etc) where making it online doesn't work as well because of lag issues. Certain types of story-driven games where making it online doesn't work well either, because you want every player to start 'at the beginning' of the story and work through it at their own pace, instead of dropping into the middle of the story. Or games where player actions have actual real, meaningful impact on the story (something quite possible with single player games, or even networked games where a small group of people works through the story together - e.g. Neverwinter Nights, etc, but that doesn't work well with most online game models).
Also, as a customer, sometimes I don't want a game that I have to keep paying for forever. The online model usually also is based on the premise of companies making me pay perpetually to play the game (2nd Life is, of course, a little bit different in that regard, but it's also not exactly a game in the traditional sense; more of just a virtual space for people to hang out in). I kind of like the model of paying 20 or 30 bucks, then being able to play the game whenever I want without paying additional fees.
"In fact, I can not think of any one invention that would have a bigger positive impact on us."
I dunno, maybe if someone invented a cheap (to both build and operate, so that the resulting electrical energy was extremely cheap), safe, practical fusion power generator. That could have a huge impact on the world.
Who insist on sticking with copper cabling, claiming "It sounds. . . I dunno. . . warmer somehow. These new superconducting cables just don't sound as good to me. I mean, I can *really* tell a difference."
"a quick check made it seem that putting a fresh install of XP on it would screw up the computer. Any ideas?"
I'm not positive on this, but I would presume that in order to install XP, you would need to format the drive and do a clean install of XP. So if by "screw up the computer" you mean, "Lose any data which wasn't backed up to another medium or another computer), yes. The only other thing I'd be slightly worried about is just verifying that all the hardware in the laptop is supported by XP - but that is pretty likely to be the case. Still, it's not guaranteed, so it might be worth taking a few minutes to check.
You may also want to download the XP drivers to a CD-Rom or something, so that, if e.g. you can't get on your network right away after installing XP, you can install the network driver from the CD. You might also want to put video drivers on the CD, so you can install the latest driver first thing, to get XP out of "VGA" mode, and into a more usable video mode right away.
On the one hand, I do agree with the need to do something about spam. OTOH, just because you haven't gotten complaints about false positives is a rather useless statement, don't you think? I mean, it's quite possible that someone would never even know that they didn't receive the legitimate email that they never got. How would they? I mean, in certain situations, someone might know they never received an email that someone told them about through another means - telephone, snail mail, in person, Instant Message, etc, but that would probably be a minority of false positives, I would suspect?
People don't have to prove their innocence when accused of wrong-doing, at least not in the US Courts (Gitmo is apparently another, very disturbing, matter).
Verizon doesn't need to prove their innocence. I am no lawyer, but it seems pretty clear and reasonable to me that if you buy a part from someone and that someone else violated the law in the production and/or sale of the part, then that other party should be the one held accountable for the violation. The only time I'd allow for an exception to that is if you can show that the first party knew (or reasonably should have known) that there was a violation, and they were conspiring with the other party to violate the law. And you would have to prove such a conspiracy, I would think.
Well, you're right, I know the manufacturer's would love to sell you new routers. But I've often wondered why there is no market for 'premium firmware upgrades'. That is, let's say I've got a Linksys home router. The hardware is perfectly capable of handling IPv6 - if the firmware just supported it. Yes, I could upgrade to OpenWrt or some other 3rd-party firmware (I think I might, soon, because I've been having on-going issues that I think might be un-fixed bugs in the official firmware), potentially, but I don't see a lot of people ever doing that (voiding your warranty and risking 'bricking' your unit is pretty scary to most people).
Now, if I were Cisco/Linksys (I think Cisco bought Linksys awhile back, no?), I *think* I'd rather sell people a $15 firmware update which gives them cool new features, and which requires me to manufacture 0 new hardware (so the marginal profit is *extremely high*), than to sell them a $40-$60 piece of hardware which requires me to also pay for manufacturing, shipping, and give the retail outlets who are selling it a fat margin (so that, I bet, Cisco only gets $20-30 anyhow, with the rest going to Best Buy, Circuit City, Fry's, TigerDirect, etc).
But, maybe there's more margin in hardware than I realize. Granted, they have to sell hardware anyhow (e.g. for new users who don't have their hardware to begin with), but why not sell existing customers the new firmware without requiring new hardware? I suppose it comes down to there is no established precedent for people paying for firmware. . . they expect it to be free, so the market might not, at least initially, embrace buying firmware upgrades. There are also the technical support issues of having to deal with routers that got bricked because the power went out while the upgrade was in progress or something. But if the router was designed well to begin with, it should be fairly resistant to bricking during the upgrade process.
Still. . . with a marginal cost close to 0 for the 'product', and fewer other people in the chain to split the profits with (they might have to still pay some per-unit fees, like licenses if they use a proprietary 3rd-party embedded OS), it would seem like this could be a reasonably lucrative business model.
Let's say, hypothetically, you could create a perfect fingerprint matching system you could use to provide a strong encryption key for encrypting/decrypting your data. Let's say the technology couldn't be fooled - it really required *your* finger, and not a rubber mold, xerox, etc. Let's even say that it uses some sort of 'salting' technique so that someone can't just figure out your key by lifting your fingerprints - that is, knowing *just* the fingerprint would not by itself be sufficient to generate the key, but is a necessary part of the algorithm. It's still a bad idea.
I for one, would rather not give anyone, anywhere, a motive for CUTTING OFF MY FINGERS. . . or simply forcing my hand into the keypad with the finger(s) still attached (maybe drug me and push my hand into the pad while I'm unconscious).
Granted, even with password security, it's true that someone could use the 'rubber hose and a pair of pliers' technique for getting my password. Or a key logger. Or a camera in a strategic position while I'm typing my password. But given the two alternatives, where you can't show a distinct advantage for fingerprints, I'd really rather stay with the simpler technology.
I'm not a Mac user, but I'd like to throw in that once you've developed OpenGL support you get PS3, Linux (maybe BSD too?), *and* Mac support, without really developing 3 rendering paths. There might be a little bit of IO/networking stuff that you have to do seperately for each platform (I'm not sure, but I bet a lot of that stuff is abstracted away if you use a good, cross-platform engine anyhow; something along the lines of GarageGames' Torque engine, Epic's Unreal engine,or Id's Doom III/Quake 4 engine, Crystal Space, OGRE 3D, etc).
.you get Windows support, plus a bunch of other platforms, if you want, too. Are there features in DirectX that are simply not possible in OpenGL currently?
I don't see why more developers don't target OpenGL instead of DirectX. .
While I can agree that you shouldn't look for someone who is identical to you their beliefs, there is a lot to be said for having some common ground at least on some of the deeper/bigger belief systems.
Do you want a wife who is going to do something downright stupid because her horoscope/astrologer/tarot card/tea leaf reader told her she should do it? Do you want to have to try to convince her why it's a bad idea, even though it should be obvious to anyone with some common sense why it's a bad idea? Do you want her raising your kids to believe that stuff?
Seriously, if you're just trying to get laid, then I guess it doesn't matter what the person you are dating believes (as long as they believe one-night stands or short-term relationships are ok), but if you are looking for a longer-term relationship, these things really matter.
It can be the difference between every big decision (should we buy a house now? Should I take this new job offer? Should we get a new car? Have a kid? 2 kids, 3 kids. . ?) being an ideological fight, or a simple matter of discussion based on a common set of shared 'foundational' beliefs.
Is a difference in belief also going to be a constant source of friction with relatives? I know in the US the popular belief is fall in love with the person, worry about the relatives later. That can work sometimes. It can't work if the relatives believe some radical ideology that justifies them kidnapping your children in order to 'raise them right' instead of letting you raise them (that's an extreme example, and I don't think applies to astrology, but I'm just throwing that out as an example of the general concept).
Ultimately, whether a person who's fundamental world-view is based on science should date someone who's worldview is based on astrology comes down to those individuals, and how they can work it out (I suppose there could reasonably be a person who's scientific, but also can believe that there might be something to astrology, and can harmonize the two).
Still, having some beliefs in common can be a very good thing for the relationship.
That's sorta true. . . but not so much. . .
By the time you finish upgrading your computer, you've spent enough money that it might have made more sense to by a medium-spec next gen machine, instead of trying to upgrade your last-gen machine to high-spec (for that generation). Because the medium spec machine will likely be more powerful than the high-spec last-gen machine. Or, you have, really, bought a new computer, one part at a time, anyhow, and probably spent $400-$600, at least, to do it.