Your idea is rejected because it's too cool. Please try again with something that would require more grinding. Fair enough. Hmmm...okay, the cure will only be effective on those who have exalted status with the goblin HMO Booty Bay?
Not to mention you can have characters jump all the way across the world in seconds through World of Warcraft, I'd like to see that kind of transportation in real life. On the time-scale of a RL disease, flying from the U.S. to Europe is virtually instantaneous transmission across the world. A virulent disease that is highly communicable but has an incubation period in which there is little or no outward sign of infection would go global pretty quickly with such a fast vector as air travel.
You could literally stand on top of the bank in Org and watch the disease spread. It was actually a bit terrifying. Indeed. It occurs to me that perhaps Blizzard might take what was essentially an oversight and turn it into a world event. A properly designed disease, spread at a reasonable rate and requiring a cure that would confer immunity after that, might be an interesting community event. A slow, constant loss of hp when online might result in healers becoming almost doctors while other classes searched for a cure. Bandages, alchemy, herbs, and so on could have a role to play. Obviously some deeper thought would be required on this, but I thought it an interesting idea.
Actually, the demo is important for ensuring that the game will run properly on one's computer before laying out $50 for it.
Irrational has been pretty sensitive to the plot-relevant details of their game being ruined by spoilers, so I'm hopeful that the demo won't spoil the full game.
Fair point. My understanding though is that the demo is essentially the first hour of the game and therefore playing the demo might well serve to take some of the initial lustre off of what is evidently a sublime experience. I've already taken the chance (since my PC is fairly well specced) and pre-loaded the game via Steam, so I have no interest in the demo. I can definitely agree with you though that the demo might serve as a testing device for more marginal systems.
I suspect both Spider man 3 and The Bourne Ultimatum will also be available in easily downloadable bittorents that can be converted to any local format you desire:) Not if your connection is comcastic.:P
We're still chipping away at the graphic design, but i'm very happy with the underlying code and how it's scaling.
I'm thinking the anonymous posting feature is probably one we shouldn't have implemented. It's a good site. I'm taking a break from it (until the whole anon posting and political flamewar stuff is sorted) but I like what I see when I check in.
Alright, you're the second person I've seen post about how Oregonians hate Californians. I'm typing this from the midwest and am totally ignorant of this phenomenon, care to elaborate? It's not limited to Oregon. There's a fairly common bumper-sticker here in Colorado that reads "Californians go home, and take the Texan with you!" Essentially, a great deal of resentment exists because of the perception that Californians are moving into Colorado because of how great the state is, and then busily start trying to turn it into California. Fortunately we have Boulder, which serves as sort of a honey-pot to concentrate Californians where we can keep an eye on them.;)
Seems to me some moderators need to reread (if they read at all) the moderators guide and mod to promote instead of demote. I'll apologise right now for being offtopic in this thread, but I thought this merited a reply. I tend to get mod points about once a week or so, and do my best to moderate fairly and judiciously. In fact, I can only recall modding a post "flamebait" once, and that post thoroughly deserved the mod. That said, I also try to maintain a 1:1 relationship between moderating and meta-moderating sessions, as the system must be self-correcting for poor mods. For you, and those like you who believe that the moderation system is periodically abused, please take the time to meta-moderate and give some feedback. Sure, for all I know the feedback goes straight into Slashdot's/dev/null but I figure trying to provide some oversight to the mod system beats just complaining about it.
Actually, years ago we had a C-Band provider that did offer an a-la-carte plan. This was in addition to all of the free channels on the C-Band satellites, of course. However, as technology progresively got cheaper, their rates seemed to get progressively higher so that they eventually priced their services such that it just made more sense to switch to Dish Network. Interesting. What was your experience with the a-la-carte plan offered at the time? Did you take advantage of it or was it not compelling for some reason?
The a la carte system will eventually happen, just not yet. Once all the broadband connections going into enough homes are sufficient to handle the bandwidth (and likewise the core infrastructure along with it), what you'll see is middlemen (like cable companies) getting eliminated. End users will buy their products directly from the manufacturer, so to speak. I'm just waiting for the day where I can buy CNN, the History Channel, SCI-FI, and, um, the Hustler Channel or something. And that's all. Won't be long now. Any delays will be associated with the broadband itself. That's all that's in the way. Interesting. Presumably the infrastructure for an appropriately robust broadband system would remain in the hands of the cable companies, so I wonder if they'd allow themselves to be relegated to a purely technological role (maintaining the communications channels) while permitting CNN et al to directly sell their content to end users?
Yes, and here's what would happen if you got what you're asking for:
1) Cable company transmits to you sufficient data for all channels, but "locks" the ones you didn't pick out.
2) You and others gripe that this is DRM, greedy, &c.
3) Someone starts a website showing how to unlock those channels.
4) Another good deed goes punished.
Nonsense. My gripe with DRM is two-fold: I don't like my business transactions with a company having any basis in the idea that I'm dishonest; and I don't want to have to deal with restrictive and unreasonable (in my view) usage polices, again predicated on the idea that I'll violate their copyright if given half a chance. I don't think it's an unreasonable stance and I suspect it's a position shared by a large portion of the Slashdot readership. For example, I support the iTunes Plus model because I prefer digital distribution for music with no unreasonable restrictions on usage. I have no intention of filesharing my music library and don't support those who believe that such files should be freely distributed without appropriate compensation to the artists.
With respect to your point about the cable company transmitting all data to me but locking the unsubscribed channel, I don't regard not having access to something I haven't paid for as DRM, but rather regard restrictions upon reasonable usage as unacceptable DRM. Besides, wouldn't it be far more efficient to simply transmit the data on-demand, or simply transmit the subscribed channels? I think we need to move away from the idea of channels playing non-stop with set program cycles, and push for true on-demand programming. This would obviate the need for Tivo-type devices and free up bandwidth. The caveat is that I'm not remotely technically qualified to speak to the feasibility of this proposal and thus I'm entirely open to being corrected by someone who knows more than I.
Don't you mean redundancy/tech/history/science/history/redundancy channels?;-) Damn, and I looked at that sentence twice before I submitted. In my defense, this is Slashdot and I didn't expect anyone to actually read my comment!
You're assuming that all channels have equal monetary value. If you only watch 5 or 10 obscure, unpopular channels, your cable bill might go down. Otherwise, all of those less well-known channels that you never watch are essentially free anyway. With the amount of television that I usually watch, I end up paying about $1/hour, which I think is pretty reasonable for the channels that I watch. Good point. I pay a similar rate for on-demand streaming from Netflix, which allows an hour of streamed content per dollar paid for the monthly subscription. It's actually a nice little bonus, and perhaps a dollar per hour (of uninterrupted content) is a pretty reasonable rate. I think my main point though is that I don't care for a plan in which I pay say $60/month for what ultimately turns out to be five channels I'm really interested in. The other channels aren't "free" but are subsidised by my bill. Similarly, people who watch VH1 obsessively probably aren't terribly interested in TLC or SciFi. Much better, in my mind, to simply pay for what one uses, rather than what is available. Differential pricing for popular vs. unpopular channels is an interesting idea, and it would be interesting to see at price-points people would accept for various content.
Here's an idea for the cable broadcasters... drop the rates or give me the option to select only the channels (a per-channel fee, if you will) I want to watch instead of lumping me into a "plan" that gives me a massive subset of them. I've been campaigning for this for years. Ideally, I'd like to see a true a la carte system that let me pick as many or as few channels as I liked, but I'd accept a 5, 10 or 15 channel plan too. Some have argued that indie or less well-known channels would suffer, but I don't see it as my responsibility to subsidise them. Alternatively, I'd even go for a "geek" channel package (that would obviously need a more marketable name) that contained the usual suspects beloved by the tech/history/science/history watchers. Until this happens, however, I refuse to pay a hefty cable bill for a channel line-up that consists of 90% channels that I have no interest in and are stuffed with commercials.
In a perfect world, there'd be pure digital distribution of television series and movies. All content would be streamed on-demand in a high-quality format, with a basic fee covering access to the network and perhaps a low-cost fee per hour of watching (like $.25 per hour) with no interstitial commercial "messages". I'd be very happy with that.
Well, for me it took a while before I had figured out what the color scale was representing. I'd prefer numbers or a bar that can be filled from 0 to 100%. And I'm not colorblind. That's fair enough. I actually like the idea of a bar that's filled to a greater or less extent depending upon the article's score, as that's also an excellent visual representation. I guess my point is that a numerical score is all well and good, but a simple visual representation is arguably a superior method of parsing a large number of items. Since the firehose project faces precisely this problem, being able to quickly visualise relative standings is invaluable.
I'm not certain, but I think you are just Godwin'd this news post... No, he didn't. Mentioning Hitler or the Nazi regime isn't automatically an instance of Godwin's Law. The last time I checked, a direct (and usually fallacious) comparison need to be made in order to invoke Godwin's Law.
Call me when you rank your firehose stories by popularity using a number, okay? Presumably it wouldn't be a big deal to put a numeric indicator along with each colour, perhaps using green as a zero point above which yellow, orange, and red would have positive values and of course the blue/violet/black ratings would have the appropriate negative values.
That said, depending upon how many people contribute to firehose community moderation, perhaps the 9% figure is an acceptable loss in the view of the coders. Colour is a faster and arguably more intuitive way of ranking something, in my opinion, although I'm not sure I'd have chosen red as the "approved" colour. Your point is well-taken, though, so perhaps the powers-that-be will add a numeric indicator in addition to the visual one.
How much props can you give a bunch of guys who are really making the same match-3 games and Bejeweled clones over and over again? Your point is well-taken, but I have to point to Puzzle Quest on the DS as a Bejeweled-type game that is as addictive as crack and deserving of huge props.
Actually, they have a tendency to sneak minor graphics updates into patches. I forget when it was, but they updated a number of spells somewhere before patch 1.9. Moonfire stopped being a beam that came from absolutely nowhere, and instead had a fullmoon like energyball at the top of the beam. I remember being very happy about the change. Yes, I remember seeing some nifty new graphics for certain things like spells, pally blessings, and the like. I could have sworn I had heard something about WoW getting a graphics overhaul, but a quick google doesn't bring up anything I recognise, so perhaps I'm mistaken. Either that, or WoW 2 will have them!
Molyneux is a guy I have very mixed feelings about. He headed up Bullfrog when they made Dungeon Keeper, one of the first games I've ever played from the evil perspective, and a game that earns him huge cool points in my mind. The trouble is, the guy keeps talking about making games that I really want to play but then isn't able to deliver. Black and White is an excellent example: huge potential, but the delivery lacked...something. I can't decide whether I like the guy for being such a visionary, or dislike him for constantly taunting me with game experiences I can't have!
Pilots can only work a certain number of hours per month (I forget if this is an FAA rule or just part of their collective contract). It's due to the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) which are very specific as to how many hours may be flown in a given time period, how many rest hours are required, and so on. Some airlines really push the line though (even to the point of breaking the FAR) by doing things like assuming any time the pilot isn't in the cockpit is "rest" time, including travel to-and-from hotels. Pilots, predictably, don't find these antics amusing and thus serious tension arises between airline management and the line crews. Union negotiation is often seen as the only protection that crews have from these practices, although pilot unions aren't exactly popular either.
I've heard that Blizzard is planning at some point to do a graphics update to WoW. Presumably they'll try to time it so that the majority of their user-base can still play without a problem. Actually, I wonder if it's possible to have players in the same server using different graphics assets or whether that would cause geometry issues. Alternatively, perhaps Blizzard could have a "classic" set of servers and a "high-res" set. Based upon the popularity of the servers with the new graphics, they could decide when and if a complete migration was appropriate. Not being a dev of any kind, however, I'm speculating from a rear orifice.
I'm praying that they don't update the graphics, though, as that might just be enough to drag me back into that life-stealing game.
Please refrain from making such authoritative statements when your knowledge is so out of date. I thought the sentence "IANAGeneticist, but I believe that the jury is still out on the concept of "junk DNA"." had sufficient qualifiers to ensure that any reader was aware the statement was not in any way authoritative and represented only my understanding as a non-geneticist. Given that I was responding to an individual who had explicitly asserted that large portions of DNA sequences were "garbage", perhaps your energies might be better exerted there.
Retrovirus contain RNA which through reverse transcription modifies the hosts DNA. Large portions of DNA are useless garbage only there as place holders. I'm not sure that our relatively rudimentary understanding of genetics is capable of supporting this assertion. While introns are certainly excised during transcription, to suggest that they, and other non-coding sequences, are "useless garbage" is probably not a scientific viewpoint. While it may seem that non-coding portions of DNA simply serve as placeholders at our currently level of understanding, it is perhaps possible that these repeating sequences are part of a secondary code that serves a useful (but as yet unclear) function. IANAGeneticist, but I believe that the jury is still out on the concept of "junk DNA".
Of course, it's entirely possible that the code is indeed useless, but that would seem to go against the tendency of evolution to be frugal.
Slashdot Mirror
cheers.
cheers.
Irrational has been pretty sensitive to the plot-relevant details of their game being ruined by spoilers, so I'm hopeful that the demo won't spoil the full game.
Fair point. My understanding though is that the demo is essentially the first hour of the game and therefore playing the demo might well serve to take some of the initial lustre off of what is evidently a sublime experience. I've already taken the chance (since my PC is fairly well specced) and pre-loaded the game via Steam, so I have no interest in the demo. I can definitely agree with you though that the demo might serve as a testing device for more marginal systems.
cheers.
I think I can manage to wait another 18 hours to enjoy the game as a completely fresh experience.
I'm thinking the anonymous posting feature is probably one we shouldn't have implemented. It's a good site. I'm taking a break from it (until the whole anon posting and political flamewar stuff is sorted) but I like what I see when I check in.
Good effort!
cheers.
1) Cable company transmits to you sufficient data for all channels, but "locks" the ones you didn't pick out.
2) You and others gripe that this is DRM, greedy, &c.
3) Someone starts a website showing how to unlock those channels.
4) Another good deed goes punished.
Nonsense. My gripe with DRM is two-fold: I don't like my business transactions with a company having any basis in the idea that I'm dishonest; and I don't want to have to deal with restrictive and unreasonable (in my view) usage polices, again predicated on the idea that I'll violate their copyright if given half a chance. I don't think it's an unreasonable stance and I suspect it's a position shared by a large portion of the Slashdot readership. For example, I support the iTunes Plus model because I prefer digital distribution for music with no unreasonable restrictions on usage. I have no intention of filesharing my music library and don't support those who believe that such files should be freely distributed without appropriate compensation to the artists.
With respect to your point about the cable company transmitting all data to me but locking the unsubscribed channel, I don't regard not having access to something I haven't paid for as DRM, but rather regard restrictions upon reasonable usage as unacceptable DRM. Besides, wouldn't it be far more efficient to simply transmit the data on-demand, or simply transmit the subscribed channels? I think we need to move away from the idea of channels playing non-stop with set program cycles, and push for true on-demand programming. This would obviate the need for Tivo-type devices and free up bandwidth. The caveat is that I'm not remotely technically qualified to speak to the feasibility of this proposal and thus I'm entirely open to being corrected by someone who knows more than I. Don't you mean redundancy/tech/history/science/history/redundanc
Damn, and I looked at that sentence twice before I submitted. In my defense, this is Slashdot and I didn't expect anyone to actually read my comment!
cheers.
In a perfect world, there'd be pure digital distribution of television series and movies. All content would be streamed on-demand in a high-quality format, with a basic fee covering access to the network and perhaps a low-cost fee per hour of watching (like $.25 per hour) with no interstitial commercial "messages". I'd be very happy with that.
That said, depending upon how many people contribute to firehose community moderation, perhaps the 9% figure is an acceptable loss in the view of the coders. Colour is a faster and arguably more intuitive way of ranking something, in my opinion, although I'm not sure I'd have chosen red as the "approved" colour. Your point is well-taken, though, so perhaps the powers-that-be will add a numeric indicator in addition to the visual one.
Molyneux is a guy I have very mixed feelings about. He headed up Bullfrog when they made Dungeon Keeper, one of the first games I've ever played from the evil perspective, and a game that earns him huge cool points in my mind. The trouble is, the guy keeps talking about making games that I really want to play but then isn't able to deliver. Black and White is an excellent example: huge potential, but the delivery lacked...something. I can't decide whether I like the guy for being such a visionary, or dislike him for constantly taunting me with game experiences I can't have!
I've heard that Blizzard is planning at some point to do a graphics update to WoW. Presumably they'll try to time it so that the majority of their user-base can still play without a problem. Actually, I wonder if it's possible to have players in the same server using different graphics assets or whether that would cause geometry issues. Alternatively, perhaps Blizzard could have a "classic" set of servers and a "high-res" set. Based upon the popularity of the servers with the new graphics, they could decide when and if a complete migration was appropriate. Not being a dev of any kind, however, I'm speculating from a rear orifice.
I'm praying that they don't update the graphics, though, as that might just be enough to drag me back into that life-stealing game.
Of course, it's entirely possible that the code is indeed useless, but that would seem to go against the tendency of evolution to be frugal.