The player capital vs avatar capital distinction is very interesting. However, isn't avatar capital the whole point of RPG's? How hard is it to navigate around and press the "attack" or "magic" or "run away" button? I think you're on to a good idea, but it seems like a very difficult problem to solve in a way that will yield an enjoyable gaming experience.
It's easy to solve in a way that yields a fun game. What is difficult--and probably impossible--is to solve it in a way that yields a fun game with RPG mechanics. The entire gameplay style is inherently broken in this regard... which makes sense, in a way; they're called Role-Playing Games for a reason and if you remove the "role playing" aspect you're left with something fundamentally similar to Progress Quest.
I agree with you, but I'm curious what other system of merit/advancement is possible aside from "the grind." I don't play any of these games myself, but it seems inevitable that you have to work your way up in one way or another. What are the alternatives?
The alternative is actual player skill, not character "skill". You can't go on eBay and buy hours of practice; if that was possible I'd play far more musical instruments than I do. The problem with that is it requires the game be less mindless and to actually punish players somehow for failure, neither of which is popular with the MMORPG player demographic as a whole. Current MMORPGs cater to people who want a fantasy world where "working harder, not smarter" is how you get ahead. (Well, and to people who want the social interaction aspect... but that's a mostly orthogonal issue to gameplay)
Simon Tatham's Portable Games are a great example of this. Those games are -awesome- ideas. But I would be much more inclined to play them more often if they were prettied up, and the interface made better. (Yes, I -have- considered doing this myself, but I'm not an artist, and not all that great at GUI design either.)
Not that Mr. Tatham invented most (or any?) of the puzzles himself--in fact, he credits his source where possible. However, I don't see what's wrong with the interface for his games--is it just that they aren't pretty enough? The presentation is very minimalist to be sure, but they're very responsive and convey all the information you need clearly.
By the way, have you looked at how those games are implemented? There's a fairly clean separation between the puzzle logic and the display that would make implementing a new interface easier than one might expect.
My opinion is that the inventor of such a device would ptobably find themselves dead and the device destroyed in short order - too many people in high places would be permanently disrupted for them to just sit by and let it happen.
Oh, absolutely. But in the era of modern communications, trying to suppress such a device would be futile. First of all, once the plans for the device hit the internet the game is over and genie doesn't go back in the botle. Second, if one person invents it likely others will invent something similar, and eventually one of them will put the plans on the net.
In the end, the only way to enforce scarcity would be through force of government, which was my point entirely. My prediction is that we'd end up with decades of increasingly draconian restrictions, a general stagnation and failure of the economy as enforced scarcity rots the free market, and probable armed revolution as the masses demand access to the technology.
Does anyone know whether RMS has backed down on this? Or has he simply flip-flopped like politicians?
RMS is a pragmatic idealist, not a blind one. He is and always has been willing to "back down" on issues where that will, from what he sees, serve his ideals better in the long term.
I cannot believe that garbage gets modded up. My dream is nothing close to 100% unemployment, that is disgusting. The world we would live in with your dream realized is my biggest nightmare.
The point of advancement is to answer questions. The more questions we answer, the easier life gets for sure, but you continue the quest to answer questions. We should never be content with where we are as a people. We should strive to advance our species forever and always. Contentment breeds complacence. Complacence gets us nowhere.
When he says 100% unemployment, he means that noone HAS to work just to live. Does that really horrify you so?
Please realize that not everybody is as lazy as you apparently are, to be motivated only by working to avoid being left starving and homeless. On/. of all places, it should be obvious that the existance of open-source software demonstrates that creative people will continue the progress of innovation, even if not employed to do so.
Your replies are the only childish ones I see here.
Most of the replies so far have been fairly shallow - along the lines of "it would be great - nobody would ever need to work again" - well, that's as maybe, but whether you like it or not we live in a society based on capitalism.
And whether you like it or not, the creation of such a device would be the death of the current capitalist market. The only way it could survive, in an undead mockery of its real self, would be through the institution of draconian government rules about the use of such devices, in order to recreate scarcity where it no longer actually exists--precisely the situation we're currently in for digital information, actually.
I, personally have no qualms calling the creation of artificial scarcity what it is, evil. One can argue that it is a necessary evil when it comes to luxuries and entertainment, but basic necessities?
I'd say that doesn't hold for those who view the destruction - or at least marginalization - of a particularly bad industry, with its attendant effects on the culture of music, as a desirable long-term consequence. I doubt the demise of top-down music culture counts as a "loss" that "mak[es] everyone suffer."
That is to say, even if piracy is a moral wrong, pissing in the RIAA's cheerios is a moral obligation far greater.;D
That is so not true. Nothing in the scientific methods say this is infallible and can never be incorrect. It says that this is what we can determine form this. If it was to reject the entire scientific method, then we would have another method because science has proven itself wrong on may occasions.
I'm not sure what you're getting at, here. The scientific method cannot disprove itself; science itself is an unfalsifiable philosophical method--one that happens to produce useful results, nothing more. If the scientific method leads us to reject currently held scientific beliefs, that's the method in action. Rejecting current scientific views without a grounding in the scientific method, however, is inherently a rejection of the entire philosophical basis on which science is founded and from which all of science, including electronics, medicine, and other comforts of modern life, is derived.
And, just to be explicit, Creationism in all forms (including "Intelligent Design") qualifies as "without a grounding in the scientific method". Even if Creationism is true, it is inherently outside of the scientific method.
I also disagree with this statement in the same context. But I can play along with it too. Would this mean that people who do science are egotistical pompous assholes who think their work is gods gift to mankind? I think neither of our statements add anything to the discussion.
I imagine many of them are. Besides, if there is a god, I'm sure science is indeed His gift to us.;)
It isn't selfish when it is given out for all to enjoy. If someone does so without thanking them by some blind following doesn't make them selfish. it makes them someone who is taking an opportunity presented to them. It seems as if your entire opinion on this is to get people to appreciate and possibly worship you. I hope I am wrong.
If I was a poor person who accepted money from a charity, then turned around and bad-mouthed that charity at every opportunity, would you characterize that as just "taking an opportunity", not selfish at all?
There's a difference between simply not showing excessive gratitude and all but spitting in the face of the people who have helped you.
You can convince of another scientific of the error of his/her ways. You can demonstrate that another scientific is wrong. In faith, well this is another can of worm. Trying to convince somebody/a group that their faith is wrong usually end in lapidation, decapitation, torch and burning, bombing, religious war, and I pass many over. Usually people in science DO NOT bomb/burn/throw stone at each other (although I am pretty sure you can find an example of it). It is true that people can MISUSE the RESULTS of the scientific method, but unless you can show me a scientific jihad of the newtonian believer against the heretic einteinian relativist believer , burning and execution at 11, then you can't even begin to compare the DAMAGE of the first to the second.
To be fair, the same things do happen; it's just the method and character of them that differ. Holy wars may be fought with weapons and lives, academic wars are often fought with politics, reputations, and careers. Scientific arguments persuade with logic and clarity, religious arguments persuade more with emotional appeal.
Human nature is the same no matter what. Feel free to argue that the scientific approach channels that human nature in better ways overall (it often does), but people are still people in the end and neither all the science in the world nor any religion will make them into saints.
There's a big difference --- the producers and consumers of Bugs Bunny, James Bond, and Star Wars don't promote those things as being real and don't attempt to substitute events depicted therein for science. It is understood that they are strictly entertainment. You must talk to different Star Wars fans than I do...
What happens when the hypothesis cannot be proved wrong? Not because the tests validate it but because there is no such way to test it for accuracy? And there are some of those being thrown out as fact today.
Then such a hypothesis would be unfalsifiable, and therefore outside the realm of scientific consideration, which is why no accepted mainstream scientific theories can be described as such. Did that answer your question?
Lol. The earth being 4 b years old and the universe being 13 has nothing to do with what is around me today. They all could have been created without that bit of knowledge.
That is superficially true, but misleading. Both the age of the Earth and modern technology spring from the same source. To reject either is to reject the common root source--the scientific approach--which is why people involved with technology tend to take it so personally. People who reject science are ungrateful, freeloading jerks who want the benefits to society of other people's intellectual efforts without giving any respect to why those benefits exist.
It's worth noting that a lot of religious groups have the same sort of selfish freeloaders--folks who hang around for the community and assurances of spiritual salvation, but never let that religion get in the way of their greed and other worldly vices, and certainly never toss any significant effort towards helping their religious community.
Sales tax DOES reward people who save, not that I know anybody who does.
I save around 10-15% of my income; I'd do more, but given my expenses I'd be facing rapidly dimishing returns on money saved vs. time and inconvenience. Sure, I could spend the money I save on luxuries instead, but I live comfortably as is and having enough saved to live on for several months provides a certain peace of mind that is otherwise hard to come by.
Not that I expect my own habits are typical, but I doubt I'm unique, either.
Idiomatically, it means an especially perverse, circular no-win situation. The "catch" in the novel refers to a policy where a soldier may request to be relieved of duty for reasons of insanity; but to wish to avoid war is, the novel notes, the desire of a sane mind. The soldier would have to be crazy to fight, but to attempt to avoid it proves him sane and forces him to fight anyways.
No, AES is a symmetric block cipher, which is a kettle of monkeys of an entirely different color. Elliptic curve vs. integer factorization or other (allegedly) trapdoor functions applies to asymmetric public key systems.
I didn't RTFA but somehow I don't think this is an appropriate realm of debate for fruit-fly scientists. Don't we have philosophers for this? Yeah, well, the philosophers have had thousands of years and have yet to come up with anything coherent. Maybe we should let the scientists have a whack at it.
That's not true--philosophers did come up with something coherent. It's called "science". Where do you think the scientific method comes from?
But for some reason some philosophers apparently missed the memo that the game's over, they won, time to move on.;)
When the victim is an RIAA or MPAA member company?
Or is that mere copyright infringement?
There's this interesting cognitive dissonance when it comes to copyright infringement. When the little guy (or gal) gets ripped off, it's called stealing; but when a large company gets ripped off, it's called sharing.
Perhaps people believe, much like in the case of lying to save someone's life, that while copyright infringement is indeed unethical and wrong, the moral imperative of pissing in the RIAA's cheerios takes priority.
Of course. Government can only grow so large, in terms of both revenue and power over the people, until it hits the tipping point where corruption becomes the norm rather than the exception, and the vast majority of laws serve only a tiny subset of the population who benefit at the expense of those who don't agree.
That's not speculation; that's the simple reality of power.
Agreed! Anyone who doesn't realize that truth clearly has not spent enough time playing Civilization III.
See my point here? I think most people understand your point, they just don't see the relevance. Anyways, are you expecting to find people on/. to argue with you? The state of affairs you argue against is indeed foolish, and I don't reasonably expect there are many people here who would champion its cause.
So call it GChat, or NinjaChat, or FreakinSweetChat, or something else! But Pidgin?
It sounds like a jungle midget headhunter. Try looking it up in a dictionary and considering why it might be an appropriate name. It's actually a fairly witty choice, just apparently outside the working vocabulary of most slashdotters.
What is "Mainainence level"? Maintaining social security? Or maintaining rate of growth?
Maintaining raw population, meaning a growth rate greater than or equal to zero. Many first-world nations (notably, Japan and much of Europe) have more people dying than being born, resulting in negative population growth.
In general, education level and availability of technology correlate negatively with birth rate, and this holds true both between countries and between socio-economic groups within countries.
you are correct. that's because clinton was driven by poll numbers and didn't do anything(regarding policy and public image) without a focus group. he was driven by mob rule and didn't have very many(if any. i can't think of one.) personal convictions that he lived and died by. if the polls said jump he'd bipartisanly ask how high?
Please explain again why being responsive to the will of the people is a bad quality in a leader? You say it like it's a bad thing. I guess you're not a big fan of democracy, huh?
Especially with the current president as a testament to the problem with sticking to "personal convictions" in the face of conflicting evidence and epic failure. I mean, what are Bush's approval ratings at these days? 35% or something?
Seriously, besides saving some pocket change, can anyone understand what Microsoft was thinking here?
Probably something like "Hey, we won! Yay!". As slashdotters typically like to point out, patents probably neither encourage nor enable innovation in software, and benefit big companies only defensively through a MAD-type strategy. This applies fully to MS, especially since they seem to have no difficulty maintaining their dominant position through non-patent means. Strengthening software patents would hurt MS overall, because it only serves to open them up to patent trolls and lawsuits from smaller "innovative" companies that come up with something 95% obvious, patent it, and sue MS for coming up with the idea.
The FUD over patents on Linux is largely just that, FUD, and this ruling won't substantially impact their ability to make up nonsense. It's all lies, hollow threats, and insinuation anyways. MS has more to lose from the possibility of patent warfare than they do from even modest success of Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
It's easy to solve in a way that yields a fun game. What is difficult--and probably impossible--is to solve it in a way that yields a fun game with RPG mechanics. The entire gameplay style is inherently broken in this regard... which makes sense, in a way; they're called Role-Playing Games for a reason and if you remove the "role playing" aspect you're left with something fundamentally similar to Progress Quest.
The alternative is actual player skill, not character "skill". You can't go on eBay and buy hours of practice; if that was possible I'd play far more musical instruments than I do. The problem with that is it requires the game be less mindless and to actually punish players somehow for failure, neither of which is popular with the MMORPG player demographic as a whole. Current MMORPGs cater to people who want a fantasy world where "working harder, not smarter" is how you get ahead. (Well, and to people who want the social interaction aspect... but that's a mostly orthogonal issue to gameplay)
Not that Mr. Tatham invented most (or any?) of the puzzles himself--in fact, he credits his source where possible. However, I don't see what's wrong with the interface for his games--is it just that they aren't pretty enough? The presentation is very minimalist to be sure, but they're very responsive and convey all the information you need clearly.
By the way, have you looked at how those games are implemented? There's a fairly clean separation between the puzzle logic and the display that would make implementing a new interface easier than one might expect.
SGI?
;D
SCO?
Oh, absolutely. But in the era of modern communications, trying to suppress such a device would be futile. First of all, once the plans for the device hit the internet the game is over and genie doesn't go back in the botle. Second, if one person invents it likely others will invent something similar, and eventually one of them will put the plans on the net.
In the end, the only way to enforce scarcity would be through force of government, which was my point entirely. My prediction is that we'd end up with decades of increasingly draconian restrictions, a general stagnation and failure of the economy as enforced scarcity rots the free market, and probable armed revolution as the masses demand access to the technology.
RMS is a pragmatic idealist, not a blind one. He is and always has been willing to "back down" on issues where that will, from what he sees, serve his ideals better in the long term.
The point of advancement is to answer questions. The more questions we answer, the easier life gets for sure, but you continue the quest to answer questions. We should never be content with where we are as a people. We should strive to advance our species forever and always. Contentment breeds complacence. Complacence gets us nowhere.
When he says 100% unemployment, he means that noone HAS to work just to live. Does that really horrify you so?
Please realize that not everybody is as lazy as you apparently are, to be motivated only by working to avoid being left starving and homeless. On /. of all places, it should be obvious that the existance of open-source software demonstrates that creative people will continue the progress of innovation, even if not employed to do so.
Your replies are the only childish ones I see here.
And whether you like it or not, the creation of such a device would be the death of the current capitalist market. The only way it could survive, in an undead mockery of its real self, would be through the institution of draconian government rules about the use of such devices, in order to recreate scarcity where it no longer actually exists--precisely the situation we're currently in for digital information, actually.
I, personally have no qualms calling the creation of artificial scarcity what it is, evil. One can argue that it is a necessary evil when it comes to luxuries and entertainment, but basic necessities?
I'd say that doesn't hold for those who view the destruction - or at least marginalization - of a particularly bad industry, with its attendant effects on the culture of music, as a desirable long-term consequence. I doubt the demise of top-down music culture counts as a "loss" that "mak[es] everyone suffer."
That is to say, even if piracy is a moral wrong, pissing in the RIAA's cheerios is a moral obligation far greater. ;D
I'm not sure what you're getting at, here. The scientific method cannot disprove itself; science itself is an unfalsifiable philosophical method--one that happens to produce useful results, nothing more. If the scientific method leads us to reject currently held scientific beliefs, that's the method in action. Rejecting current scientific views without a grounding in the scientific method, however, is inherently a rejection of the entire philosophical basis on which science is founded and from which all of science, including electronics, medicine, and other comforts of modern life, is derived.
And, just to be explicit, Creationism in all forms (including "Intelligent Design") qualifies as "without a grounding in the scientific method". Even if Creationism is true, it is inherently outside of the scientific method.
I also disagree with this statement in the same context. But I can play along with it too. Would this mean that people who do science are egotistical pompous assholes who think their work is gods gift to mankind? I think neither of our statements add anything to the discussion.I imagine many of them are. Besides, if there is a god, I'm sure science is indeed His gift to us. ;)
It isn't selfish when it is given out for all to enjoy. If someone does so without thanking them by some blind following doesn't make them selfish. it makes them someone who is taking an opportunity presented to them. It seems as if your entire opinion on this is to get people to appreciate and possibly worship you. I hope I am wrong.If I was a poor person who accepted money from a charity, then turned around and bad-mouthed that charity at every opportunity, would you characterize that as just "taking an opportunity", not selfish at all?
There's a difference between simply not showing excessive gratitude and all but spitting in the face of the people who have helped you.
To be fair, the same things do happen; it's just the method and character of them that differ. Holy wars may be fought with weapons and lives, academic wars are often fought with politics, reputations, and careers. Scientific arguments persuade with logic and clarity, religious arguments persuade more with emotional appeal.
Human nature is the same no matter what. Feel free to argue that the scientific approach channels that human nature in better ways overall (it often does), but people are still people in the end and neither all the science in the world nor any religion will make them into saints.
You must talk to different Star Wars fans than I do...
Then such a hypothesis would be unfalsifiable, and therefore outside the realm of scientific consideration, which is why no accepted mainstream scientific theories can be described as such. Did that answer your question?
That is superficially true, but misleading. Both the age of the Earth and modern technology spring from the same source. To reject either is to reject the common root source--the scientific approach--which is why people involved with technology tend to take it so personally. People who reject science are ungrateful, freeloading jerks who want the benefits to society of other people's intellectual efforts without giving any respect to why those benefits exist.
It's worth noting that a lot of religious groups have the same sort of selfish freeloaders--folks who hang around for the community and assurances of spiritual salvation, but never let that religion get in the way of their greed and other worldly vices, and certainly never toss any significant effort towards helping their religious community.
I save around 10-15% of my income; I'd do more, but given my expenses I'd be facing rapidly dimishing returns on money saved vs. time and inconvenience. Sure, I could spend the money I save on luxuries instead, but I live comfortably as is and having enough saved to live on for several months provides a certain peace of mind that is otherwise hard to come by.
Not that I expect my own habits are typical, but I doubt I'm unique, either.
A novel, for starters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22
Idiomatically, it means an especially perverse, circular no-win situation. The "catch" in the novel refers to a policy where a soldier may request to be relieved of duty for reasons of insanity; but to wish to avoid war is, the novel notes, the desire of a sane mind. The soldier would have to be crazy to fight, but to attempt to avoid it proves him sane and forces him to fight anyways.
(and many others I suspect)
No, AES is a symmetric block cipher, which is a kettle of monkeys of an entirely different color. Elliptic curve vs. integer factorization or other (allegedly) trapdoor functions applies to asymmetric public key systems.
That's not true--philosophers did come up with something coherent. It's called "science". Where do you think the scientific method comes from?
But for some reason some philosophers apparently missed the memo that the game's over, they won, time to move on. ;)
When the victim is an RIAA or MPAA member company?
Or is that mere copyright infringement?
There's this interesting cognitive dissonance when it comes to copyright infringement. When the little guy (or gal) gets ripped off, it's called stealing; but when a large company gets ripped off, it's called sharing.
Perhaps people believe, much like in the case of lying to save someone's life, that while copyright infringement is indeed unethical and wrong, the moral imperative of pissing in the RIAA's cheerios takes priority.
Of course. Government can only grow so large, in terms of both revenue and power over the people, until it hits the tipping point where corruption becomes the norm rather than the exception, and the vast majority of laws serve only a tiny subset of the population who benefit at the expense of those who don't agree.
That's not speculation; that's the simple reality of power.
Agreed! Anyone who doesn't realize that truth clearly has not spent enough time playing Civilization III.It sounds like a jungle midget headhunter. Try looking it up in a dictionary and considering why it might be an appropriate name. It's actually a fairly witty choice, just apparently outside the working vocabulary of most slashdotters.
Maintaining raw population, meaning a growth rate greater than or equal to zero. Many first-world nations (notably, Japan and much of Europe) have more people dying than being born, resulting in negative population growth.
In general, education level and availability of technology correlate negatively with birth rate, and this holds true both between countries and between socio-economic groups within countries.
Please explain again why being responsive to the will of the people is a bad quality in a leader? You say it like it's a bad thing. I guess you're not a big fan of democracy, huh?
Especially with the current president as a testament to the problem with sticking to "personal convictions" in the face of conflicting evidence and epic failure. I mean, what are Bush's approval ratings at these days? 35% or something?
Probably something like "Hey, we won! Yay!". As slashdotters typically like to point out, patents probably neither encourage nor enable innovation in software, and benefit big companies only defensively through a MAD-type strategy. This applies fully to MS, especially since they seem to have no difficulty maintaining their dominant position through non-patent means. Strengthening software patents would hurt MS overall, because it only serves to open them up to patent trolls and lawsuits from smaller "innovative" companies that come up with something 95% obvious, patent it, and sue MS for coming up with the idea.
The FUD over patents on Linux is largely just that, FUD, and this ruling won't substantially impact their ability to make up nonsense. It's all lies, hollow threats, and insinuation anyways. MS has more to lose from the possibility of patent warfare than they do from even modest success of Linux.