The big leap that probably needs to happen is the prevention of players from playing non-DRM'd files. There would have to be a transition - maybe media companies could allow customers to trade in existing DVD or redbook CD libraries for digital rights - customers could be induced in a variety of ways.
For the record, another unpopular view I have is that content creators should have be able to have "all rights reserved" and make as much money as they market will allow them to with their content. I'm also against monopolies though (like Microsoft seems to be - I don't think the RIAA is worth worrying about though)
With all due respect to your view, I believe that this idea would present an unconscionable restriction on both artists and consumers. If an artist (as many do) wishes to release his work into the wild, entirely free of protection, then it is his right to do so under the U.S. First Amendment (or similar principles in other nations) without interference from government. Preventing devices from playing non-DRM'd material would be an unconstitutional act by the U.S. government and would be immediately struck down by the courts. It is possible that the entire industry of device manufacturers could decide to institute such a restriction (since they aren't bound by Constitutional authority) but all it would take is for one manufacturer to break away for the scheme to fail. Thus, a DRM-only scheme is illegal if mandated by government and unenforcable by private industry.
Your second point is interesting, because it implies an absolute right of some individuals at the expense of others. Clearly, copyright was specifically designed to benefit content creators, allowing them a period of time in which they could exclusively profit from their creative effort. However, it's an artificial restriction that society permits upon itself because the merits of encouraging creativity are deemed to outweigh the negative of having a societal restriction. Indeed, perpetual copyright is without doubt a negative, stifling further creative works (as virtually all creative works are derivative in some fashion). As such, the debate should probably be more concerned with the excessive state of copyright inertia (of which DRM is a nasty by-product) in modern society.
You make the point that content creators should be able to:
"...make as much money as they market will allow them to with their content. I'm also against monopolies though (like Microsoft seems to be - I don't think the RIAA is worth worrying about though)" The very definition of copyright is that it is a miniature, government-enforced, time-limited monopoly on a creative work. While I would certainly agree that artists should be permitted to profit as much as possible from their works, I don't agree that such a monopoly should be in perpetuity or that the rights of the content creator trump reasonable fair use rights of consumers. As such, if an artist wishes to release a DRM-laden, heavily restricted product, he is free to do so. However, demanding that all other artists and consumers be placed under such restrictions is unacceptable.
Ultimately, most consumers don't like the assumption that we intend to defraud artists. Those that do intend to defraud artists will do so regardless of DRM or copyright restrictions. In a free market, DRM'd material and non-DRM'd material should be permitted to compete without government interference. The market will decide and I suspect it's only the big corporations that will prefer restrictions over freedom.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I couldn't provide a worthy response to your points with a snippet!
But what about people who don't pay for a TV license? This will allow THEM access to shows YOU'VE paid for... Hell, if the Beeb would offer high-quality, non-DRM'd digital programming for download, I'd pay the equivalent of a licence fee for access. I grew up in the UK and ended up living in the US for reasons out of my control at the time. Now I've established myself in this country, but I miss a lot of the stuff on the BBC. I'd happily shell out the cash for unlimited digital access to their library.
I'd really like to see the BBC move into a digital-distribution model, and making their artistic content available to the world (fee-based or not) would be both laudable and a positive reflection on the UK.
The reduction in quality is so marked that EMI has introduced higher-quality digital tracks, albeit at a premium price, in response to consumer demand. Odd. I was under the impression that the higher quality tracks were incidental to releasing non-DRM'd tracks in iTunes. Essentially, the higher quality eased the pain of another $.30 per track.
Am I the only one who involuntarily flinches whenever news comes out about movies based on games? I swear, it's an actual physical reaction to mental trauma!
Maybe Zonk played a lot of AC/AC2, and I realize questions were constrained due to time, but I was a bit miffed at the choice of questions. Some of that could be that I had 2 of the highest moderated & discussed questions in the call for interview questions, neither of which were asked (one was on virtual economies, the other on gaming addiction). But beyond that, other very highly-ranked questions about e.g., gold farming weren't asked. All-in-all, it seemed this interview was rather softball. I'm similarly disappointed. I would have been interested to hear the responses to your questions and I had hoped he'd address mine concerning the crafting system with respect to leveling. While I certainly appreciate that the interview was time-limited, I think that asking broad questions is a poor use of time in such a circumstance. Speaking for myself, the forward-looking "nitty gritty" questions were the interesting ones, as opposed to the rather predictable, time-consuming responses to the broad (one might say historical) inquiries.
That said, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth (if you'll excuse the expression) and I appreciate Mr. Anderson taking the time to answer the questions that he did. I do wish game devs weren't quite so insular, but I understand why they prefer to avoid the howling maelstrom of fanbois.
Only the PS3 feels overpriced to me...If the PS3 were 400, I would likely buy one...But 600? No fucking way. I was one of those people complaining that the PS3 was over-priced until I found myself one day browsing for an upgrade for my 7600GT and seriously debating the viability of an 8800GTX. Now, I couldn't financially justify dropping $600 on a video card at that point, but just the fact that I was even considering purchasing a single component for my gaming rig that cost as much as the entire PS3 system was a sobering moment.
I guess it's ultimately down to perspective. Gaming is my hobby and I don't have a problem with dropping cash in exchange for entertainment. In truth, I get a bit irritated at people who scoff at the idea of spending money on gaming but don't blink an eye at dropping a similar amount of cash on their hobby. Applying this to an exclusively gaming sphere, I've decided that I'm similarly wrong for broadly claiming that the PS3 isn't worth the money. If people want to drop $600 on a console because they feel it's worth it, well I guess it's none of my damned business. The PS3 isn't worth $600 to me and, evidently, not to you either (for myself, it's also because I don't want to support the bastards at Sony) but for some folks it is.
I agree with you that the PS3 feels overpriced, but I really can't put my finger on why. As I noted above, I have no problem with the idea of dropping that sort of cash on a component, so the PS3 should be attractive. Perhaps a price-drop, a killer-app, and an abject public apology from the powers-that-be at Sony for being such asses to the community would be enough to sway me to buy a PS3. Of course, I'm under no illusions that Sony gives a damn about what I think, so I guess I'll stick with my PC and Wii.
cheers.
Depends on what you're buying. I don't buy computer gear online for just that reason. But things like books, music, movies, clothing, is pretty much guaranteed to work [or be acceptable]. Interesting. I tend to buy computer stuff almost exclusively online (usually from Newegg or a similar trusted source) precisely because they usually have a better selection, lower prices, and I can utilise customer reviews as a pretty good reliability metric. Conversely, I can't imagine buying clothing online (beyond T-shirts) since I wouldn't be able to try it on before purchase! However, I agree that books, music (especially digital distribution), and movies are excellent products for online sales.
cheers.
It's not about people who are reading Fark and whether they are at work; it's about advertisers who do not want their product associated with lewd content, and markets whose parents don't want them viewing lewd content. You knew that, right? Fark is a business, not a hobby. If, as an advertiser, you don't want your product associated with lewd content, what the fuck are you doing advertising on Fark? The entire damned website was based on lewd content, crude humour, and flame-wars. By demanding a policy that made Fark more "family/work friendly", the advertisers eviscerated the website and alienated the audience they were trying to reach.
Frankly, it struck me as some marketing idiot seeing the traffic numbers and saying "hey, we need to get access to these eyeballs!" without actually understanding how the site worked. Frankly, it was damned sad. Still, Bannination seems to be intent on carrying on the spirit and I wish them all the best. I'm already signed up.
Think beyond the next 8 weeks of your company's future, and finish games before you release them! I've always been under the impression that the pressure to release a game before it was finished almost exclusively came from publishers, rather than the game-makers themselves. Fortunately, some companies are powerful enough to ignore this pressure. No matter how loudly the fans scream about Starcraft 2, for example, I have no doubt that Vivendi isn't stupid enough to try to pressure Blizzard into releasing early.
I agree entirely with your point, however. I loved NWN and was utterly disappointed by the long-anticipated NWN2, which was buggy beyond belief and brought my fairly well set-up system to its knees for no apparent reason. Damn, they would have done better to just revamp the graphics and sound a bit on the original game and release it with a new story!
I would doubt it, after all its a racial characteristic of Dwarves and Dragons. If the devs would be willing to let a Balrog rampage around periodically eating all of the gold farmers, I'd actually subscribe to the game!
The idea of crafting systems in MMORPGs seem to be very popular with the player base, with many individuals quite content to pursue crafting to the exclusion of most other things. Two problems seem to intractable, though: low-level items flood the server and are therefore worthless; and one cannot advance a character's level as a crafter. In WoW, for example, many crafting recipes/skills are restricted by level, necessitating players to grind mobs for the appropriate levels.
How does LotRO plan to handle these problem as the player-base expands? Is it possible that players will be allowed to gain experience from crafting rather than by mob-grinding or quests? Will it be feasible for an individual to gain renown on a server as a master craftsman (which should be extremely difficult to attain) if they only want to spend their time in Bree rather than strangling Orcs?
Engineering is about trade offs, and marketing is about understanding value. Your points are well-made, and I agree that there is something of a knee-jerk reaction that if something is popular, it must be somehow crap or hyped. That a product might genuinely succeed on its own merits doesn't seem to occur to some people. However, I think perhaps you have a slightly rosy view of marketing. While marketing is certainly an avenue of information dissemination for a new or improved product (in accordance with your "understanding value" idea), I think a very large portion of marketing is actually creating value in the minds of consumers, without regard as to whether that value actually exists or not. I recall from a college marketing course that the phrase "creating a need" was used frequently. One could say that creating a need for a product is somewhat like having a solution in search of a problem. If the problem (need) doesn't exist, have you actually increased overall value by creating a need in order to fulfill it?
FWIW, even though marketing irritates the crap out of me most of the time, I understand that it's necessary and is a discipline that stretches beyond simple advertisements. I just can't imagine working in an industry where people actively avoid your work, forcing you to be ever more aggressive to communicate your "message".
Last year the Secetary of the Air Force (SECAF) hijacked the realm of cyberspace for the Air Force, when he announced the Air Force's new mission to provide the President with "[options] in in air, space and now cyberspace." Yes, but in all fairness it's certainly part of the USAF's mission. We've been defending freedom from our cubicles for a long time now and they don't call us the "chair force" for nothing!
Don't take this the wrong way, but you're being awfully naive. You may as well act bewildered about why people would commit crimes in real life, when they could just play fair! No offense taken. Believe me, I'm well-aware of why people do it and I've heard a lot of justifications. I suppose I just have a hard time trying to imagine having that mindset. Or perhaps I find it contemptible. Actually, there is no ambiguity there: I do find cheating at a game to be a contemptible act and my opinion of the people who do it is accordingly low.
What possible source of satisfaction can such a victory be? Topping the charts in an FPS by using an aimbot must be a hollow experience. Or do such people pin the tiny thread of their insecure pride upon such victories by convincing themselves that cheating makes them "smarter"? Or in WoW, wouldn't the nagging knowledge that you bought your gear/character or botted your way to max level put an irrevocable tarnish on interactions with others who had actually played the game?
Yeah, I guess the world is full of these dipshits and dealing with them is an inevitable part of being a gamer. I just don't really get why people cheat at games...the victory is hollow and if you don't want to play it properly, then fuck off.
also, EVOLUTION is not a THEORY its a FACT. I'm afraid you're making the same mistake that the creationists do. The syntax of your statement places "theory" in an opposing position to "fact", suggesting the the former is an unproven assertion whereas the latter is a proven assertion. In science, theories contain facts (at least, as far as our observations can discern) rather than existing as facts.
Further, science as both a methodology and as an intellectual system frowns upon absolute declarations. Perhaps the most fundamental and indeed beautiful thing about science is that nothing is written in stone and everything is fair game for questioning. Of course, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but nothing is considered off-limits.
Thus, I would suggest that your assertion above does more to harm non-scientists' perception of evolutionary theory than help it. Far better, in my opinion, to say that a large body of evidence strongly supports evolutionary theory, including a great deal of science at the genetic level that is producing concrete medical results. For the record, I'd agree with you that evolution is factual, well-elucidated, and good science.
I would also state that most religious people who challenge evolutionary theory do so because it contradicts a literal reading of their holy text, and that such people are in fact primarily debating the origin of life, unaware that evolutionary theory is silent on that subject. Abiogenesis--the hypothesis that most religious people seem to confuse with evolution--is far less well-supported than evolutionary theory and is consequently far more contentious.
To end, here's a bit of humour and philosophy from one of my favourite sources:
...it's simply unwieldy to say "string hypothesis", whereas "string theory" has a nice ring to it. Probably the best approach to take here is not to worry too much about semantics like the labels we put on ideas. That was basically the gist of what I was trying to say to creationists in my above post: "debate evolution if you like, but don't waste my time arguing about labels like 'theory'. Fair enough. However in science I think the difference between hypothesis and theory is not mere semantics, since the term used actually conveys information. The Foo Hypothesis carries a different weighting in my mind than Foo Theory, since the latter presumably has a body of evidence to support it.
That said, your point is well-taken. Science vs. Religion discussions always seem to devolve into semantics, which doesn't really serve the argument. My only concern with semantics is that I hate to see argument by obfuscation, or arguments predicated on misunderstanding. However, that many people furiously try to use rational arguments to debate the veracity of fundamentally irrational things should probably eclipse any concerns I might have about word usage!
I can see it in our TV program. About 20 years ago, we had talk shows (no, not the Springer kind. Talk shows where experts discussed controversal topics. And with discussed I don't mean "support the official opinion and nod heads", but real discussion)... I desperately wish the U.S. had an adversarial and sharp-witted televised discussion forum along the lines of Question Time instead of the insipid, near-scripted political appearances with pre-approved questions we currently endure. QT has a podcast excerpt now and again, and the whole thing can be watched in terrible quality streaming from the website. I think a program(me) like this would be just the kick in the rear that American politics desperately needs.
Excellent. As a physicist, perhaps you'd be willing to answer a question I've been wondering about for a while now.
Physics is probably my weakest area of science but I thoroughly enjoy reading layman-level explanations of some of the strange stuff out there. Naturally, String Theory has been a pretty hot topic of late (indeed a friend of mine rather amusingly proclaims it to be scientific evidence for the principles of Buddhism!) but I cannot help but wonder how it attained the "theory" designator. Isn't it more of a hypothesis or set of hypotheses, especially since neither it nor its predictions seem to be particularly testable?
Again, I freely acknowledge that my knowledge of physics is pretty weak and therefore a reply of "you moron, it's completely testable!" might be in order. But I thought I'd ask someone qualifed.:)
cheers.
I'm attaching this as a reply to the first post in the hopes that it will be seen by people entering the thread and thus head off some inevitable posts. Creationists, this is addressed to you.
Here goes:
The word "theory" is not synonymous with the word "hypothesis" in science.
Please, please try to remember this when you instinctively want to cry "but it's only a theory!" when talking about evolutionary theory. As has doubtless been explained to you ad nauseum by the scientifically-inclined, Theory is a designator that must be earned and requires a reasonable body of supporting evidence. So while indeed the colloquial allows the use of "I have a theory" to mean a hypothesis, this is not correct in science.
Make whatever other arguments you will, but please stop making this elementary mistake.
cheers.
Up until now, since the release of WoW, gold spam has followed a nearly expontential curve...
So you might be wondering, where does a spammer get an account? Most people think they use trial accounts, or they buy accounts. Of course, both are usable. Trial accounts are locked down for many things, but they aren't locked down to the local 'say' channel.
Spammers also get accounts in other ways too. People who purchase power-leveling services, for example, are at risk of allowing their account to be compromised to a spammer. People who go to websites claiming they have WoW exploits/cheats are at risk of using a keylogger and compromising their account. Then there's stolen credit cards and false account numbers. Four words solve the problem: Ban. By. Credit. Card.
This, coupled with the inability of trial accounts to send tells (or hell, segregating trial accounts onto trial servers), would provide a cheap, technical fix for an annoyingly organic problem. As far as people getting hit by keyloggers by trying to download cheat macros (such as automated mob farming or other activities barred by the EULA) or people whose accounts are compromised by "power-levelling services", I'm afraid I don't have much sympathy. A ban by credit card, necessitating a nice chat with a Blizzard rep to get the ban removed, would both heavily inconvenience farmers while providing an incentive for actual players to police the activity on their account ("Timmy, you got the entire damned family banned again because you were screaming 'shitcock' in Trade").
Actually, I've always been curious as to how people justify buying gold or using power-levelling services. The argument I usually hear is that they are too busy with a job to level a character and "just want to play". Presumably these people wouldn't join a tennis league and then demand to use an oversize racquet because they're too busy with their job to learn to play skillfully. Would they think it acceptable to buy points in some sort of sports fantasy league from another player because they don't have the time to properly manage their team?
If you're going to play a game with a lot of other people, why not play it on equal terms? And if you don't have as much time to devote to the game as others, then either accept that with good grace or move on to a different game for which you do have the time. I suppose that shortcuts, cheating, and griefing are an inevitable side-effect a large crowd of people playing, but it's really bloody annoying!
Why the hell when I post does it not maintain my breaks? Is it because I'm not hitting preview and just hitting submit? this is pissing me off because my posts look totally disorganized. Either use the plaintext option to the left of the Preview button for a WYSIWYG entry, or embed the appropriate HTML tags for formatting. It looks as though you're formatting it as plaintext, but submitting as HTML formatted and thus get a giant paragraph.
I doubt it. Blizzard tends to aim low with their specs and the zoom would be resource intensive. Also it would make players with less powerful computers have a distinct disatvantage because they could not zoom as quickly or as efficiently. War 3 both had a fixed aspect ratios specifically to give people the same view regaurdless of Monitor resolution. I could be wrong. No, you may well be correct. It's been a long time since I played WC3 so I couldn't recall whether a zoom function existed for that one or not. Now that I've thought about it a little more, I'm wondering exactly how much a zoom function would affect gameplay. I'm not a game designer so I have no idea exactly what sort of resources are required to implement a zoom. Is it so resource intensive that it would make a notable difference on lower-end computers that can otherwise handle the game?
The crux of the issue seems to be the competitive play that is understandably a prime focus for SC2. Do these competitions standardise resolutions too, since higher res graphics make units more distinguishable? Would a zoom function really skew gameplay at the competition level where most people would presumably have a proper gaming rig? Now I'm wondering.
From all the screenshots and demos it looks like very little of the battlefield is visible at a time. This is one thing I didn't like about Starcraft, but I understood because it ran at such a low resolution. Heh, I still habitually flick the scroll-wheel on my mouse whenever I boot up a game of Starcraft because I feel as though I'm zoomed in much too closely! I hope that SC2 will have a much greater (i.e. actually has one) zoom function, but that the demos are so closely zoomed in order to show unit details.
Now what I'd really like to see is multi-monitor support that would give me a 2D map on my second monitor instead of the little minimap in the corner. SupCom kinda fired my imagination as to how useful that can be in an RTS. I rather suspect, however, that such a feature won't be seen because of the focus of competitive play and the lack of a second screen for many players.
Slashdot Mirror
For the record, another unpopular view I have is that content creators should have be able to have "all rights reserved" and make as much money as they market will allow them to with their content. I'm also against monopolies though (like Microsoft seems to be - I don't think the RIAA is worth worrying about though)
With all due respect to your view, I believe that this idea would present an unconscionable restriction on both artists and consumers. If an artist (as many do) wishes to release his work into the wild, entirely free of protection, then it is his right to do so under the U.S. First Amendment (or similar principles in other nations) without interference from government. Preventing devices from playing non-DRM'd material would be an unconstitutional act by the U.S. government and would be immediately struck down by the courts. It is possible that the entire industry of device manufacturers could decide to institute such a restriction (since they aren't bound by Constitutional authority) but all it would take is for one manufacturer to break away for the scheme to fail. Thus, a DRM-only scheme is illegal if mandated by government and unenforcable by private industry.
Your second point is interesting, because it implies an absolute right of some individuals at the expense of others. Clearly, copyright was specifically designed to benefit content creators, allowing them a period of time in which they could exclusively profit from their creative effort. However, it's an artificial restriction that society permits upon itself because the merits of encouraging creativity are deemed to outweigh the negative of having a societal restriction. Indeed, perpetual copyright is without doubt a negative, stifling further creative works (as virtually all creative works are derivative in some fashion). As such, the debate should probably be more concerned with the excessive state of copyright inertia (of which DRM is a nasty by-product) in modern society.
You make the point that content creators should be able to: "...make as much money as they market will allow them to with their content. I'm also against monopolies though (like Microsoft seems to be - I don't think the RIAA is worth worrying about though)" The very definition of copyright is that it is a miniature, government-enforced, time-limited monopoly on a creative work. While I would certainly agree that artists should be permitted to profit as much as possible from their works, I don't agree that such a monopoly should be in perpetuity or that the rights of the content creator trump reasonable fair use rights of consumers. As such, if an artist wishes to release a DRM-laden, heavily restricted product, he is free to do so. However, demanding that all other artists and consumers be placed under such restrictions is unacceptable.
Ultimately, most consumers don't like the assumption that we intend to defraud artists. Those that do intend to defraud artists will do so regardless of DRM or copyright restrictions. In a free market, DRM'd material and non-DRM'd material should be permitted to compete without government interference. The market will decide and I suspect it's only the big corporations that will prefer restrictions over freedom.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I couldn't provide a worthy response to your points with a snippet!
I'd really like to see the BBC move into a digital-distribution model, and making their artistic content available to the world (fee-based or not) would be both laudable and a positive reflection on the UK.
Am I the only one who involuntarily flinches whenever news comes out about movies based on games? I swear, it's an actual physical reaction to mental trauma!
That said, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth (if you'll excuse the expression) and I appreciate Mr. Anderson taking the time to answer the questions that he did. I do wish game devs weren't quite so insular, but I understand why they prefer to avoid the howling maelstrom of fanbois.
I guess it's ultimately down to perspective. Gaming is my hobby and I don't have a problem with dropping cash in exchange for entertainment. In truth, I get a bit irritated at people who scoff at the idea of spending money on gaming but don't blink an eye at dropping a similar amount of cash on their hobby. Applying this to an exclusively gaming sphere, I've decided that I'm similarly wrong for broadly claiming that the PS3 isn't worth the money. If people want to drop $600 on a console because they feel it's worth it, well I guess it's none of my damned business. The PS3 isn't worth $600 to me and, evidently, not to you either (for myself, it's also because I don't want to support the bastards at Sony) but for some folks it is.
I agree with you that the PS3 feels overpriced, but I really can't put my finger on why. As I noted above, I have no problem with the idea of dropping that sort of cash on a component, so the PS3 should be attractive. Perhaps a price-drop, a killer-app, and an abject public apology from the powers-that-be at Sony for being such asses to the community would be enough to sway me to buy a PS3. Of course, I'm under no illusions that Sony gives a damn about what I think, so I guess I'll stick with my PC and Wii. cheers.
Ook?
Frankly, it struck me as some marketing idiot seeing the traffic numbers and saying "hey, we need to get access to these eyeballs!" without actually understanding how the site worked. Frankly, it was damned sad. Still, Bannination seems to be intent on carrying on the spirit and I wish them all the best. I'm already signed up.
I agree entirely with your point, however. I loved NWN and was utterly disappointed by the long-anticipated NWN2, which was buggy beyond belief and brought my fairly well set-up system to its knees for no apparent reason. Damn, they would have done better to just revamp the graphics and sound a bit on the original game and release it with a new story!
I would doubt it, after all its a racial characteristic of Dwarves and Dragons. If the devs would be willing to let a Balrog rampage around periodically eating all of the gold farmers, I'd actually subscribe to the game!
The idea of crafting systems in MMORPGs seem to be very popular with the player base, with many individuals quite content to pursue crafting to the exclusion of most other things. Two problems seem to intractable, though: low-level items flood the server and are therefore worthless; and one cannot advance a character's level as a crafter. In WoW, for example, many crafting recipes/skills are restricted by level, necessitating players to grind mobs for the appropriate levels.
How does LotRO plan to handle these problem as the player-base expands? Is it possible that players will be allowed to gain experience from crafting rather than by mob-grinding or quests? Will it be feasible for an individual to gain renown on a server as a master craftsman (which should be extremely difficult to attain) if they only want to spend their time in Bree rather than strangling Orcs?
FWIW, even though marketing irritates the crap out of me most of the time, I understand that it's necessary and is a discipline that stretches beyond simple advertisements. I just can't imagine working in an industry where people actively avoid your work, forcing you to be ever more aggressive to communicate your "message".
What possible source of satisfaction can such a victory be? Topping the charts in an FPS by using an aimbot must be a hollow experience. Or do such people pin the tiny thread of their insecure pride upon such victories by convincing themselves that cheating makes them "smarter"? Or in WoW, wouldn't the nagging knowledge that you bought your gear/character or botted your way to max level put an irrevocable tarnish on interactions with others who had actually played the game?
Yeah, I guess the world is full of these dipshits and dealing with them is an inevitable part of being a gamer. I just don't really get why people cheat at games...the victory is hollow and if you don't want to play it properly, then fuck off.
cheers.
Further, science as both a methodology and as an intellectual system frowns upon absolute declarations. Perhaps the most fundamental and indeed beautiful thing about science is that nothing is written in stone and everything is fair game for questioning. Of course, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but nothing is considered off-limits.
Thus, I would suggest that your assertion above does more to harm non-scientists' perception of evolutionary theory than help it. Far better, in my opinion, to say that a large body of evidence strongly supports evolutionary theory, including a great deal of science at the genetic level that is producing concrete medical results. For the record, I'd agree with you that evolution is factual, well-elucidated, and good science.
I would also state that most religious people who challenge evolutionary theory do so because it contradicts a literal reading of their holy text, and that such people are in fact primarily debating the origin of life, unaware that evolutionary theory is silent on that subject. Abiogenesis--the hypothesis that most religious people seem to confuse with evolution--is far less well-supported than evolutionary theory and is consequently far more contentious.
To end, here's a bit of humour and philosophy from one of my favourite sources:
Do not be troubled, Bruticus.
...it's simply unwieldy to say "string hypothesis", whereas "string theory" has a nice ring to it. Probably the best approach to take here is not to worry too much about semantics like the labels we put on ideas. That was basically the gist of what I was trying to say to creationists in my above post: "debate evolution if you like, but don't waste my time arguing about labels like 'theory'. Fair enough. However in science I think the difference between hypothesis and theory is not mere semantics, since the term used actually conveys information. The Foo Hypothesis carries a different weighting in my mind than Foo Theory, since the latter presumably has a body of evidence to support it.That said, your point is well-taken. Science vs. Religion discussions always seem to devolve into semantics, which doesn't really serve the argument. My only concern with semantics is that I hate to see argument by obfuscation, or arguments predicated on misunderstanding. However, that many people furiously try to use rational arguments to debate the veracity of fundamentally irrational things should probably eclipse any concerns I might have about word usage!
Come to think of it, why limit it to politics?
Excellent. As a physicist, perhaps you'd be willing to answer a question I've been wondering about for a while now.
:)
cheers.
Physics is probably my weakest area of science but I thoroughly enjoy reading layman-level explanations of some of the strange stuff out there. Naturally, String Theory has been a pretty hot topic of late (indeed a friend of mine rather amusingly proclaims it to be scientific evidence for the principles of Buddhism!) but I cannot help but wonder how it attained the "theory" designator. Isn't it more of a hypothesis or set of hypotheses, especially since neither it nor its predictions seem to be particularly testable?
Again, I freely acknowledge that my knowledge of physics is pretty weak and therefore a reply of "you moron, it's completely testable!" might be in order. But I thought I'd ask someone qualifed.
I'm attaching this as a reply to the first post in the hopes that it will be seen by people entering the thread and thus head off some inevitable posts. Creationists, this is addressed to you.
Here goes:
The word "theory" is not synonymous with the word "hypothesis" in science.
Please, please try to remember this when you instinctively want to cry "but it's only a theory!" when talking about evolutionary theory. As has doubtless been explained to you ad nauseum by the scientifically-inclined, Theory is a designator that must be earned and requires a reasonable body of supporting evidence. So while indeed the colloquial allows the use of "I have a theory" to mean a hypothesis, this is not correct in science.
Make whatever other arguments you will, but please stop making this elementary mistake. cheers.
So you might be wondering, where does a spammer get an account? Most people think they use trial accounts, or they buy accounts. Of course, both are usable. Trial accounts are locked down for many things, but they aren't locked down to the local 'say' channel.
Spammers also get accounts in other ways too. People who purchase power-leveling services, for example, are at risk of allowing their account to be compromised to a spammer. People who go to websites claiming they have WoW exploits/cheats are at risk of using a keylogger and compromising their account. Then there's stolen credit cards and false account numbers. Four words solve the problem: Ban. By. Credit. Card.
This, coupled with the inability of trial accounts to send tells (or hell, segregating trial accounts onto trial servers), would provide a cheap, technical fix for an annoyingly organic problem. As far as people getting hit by keyloggers by trying to download cheat macros (such as automated mob farming or other activities barred by the EULA) or people whose accounts are compromised by "power-levelling services", I'm afraid I don't have much sympathy. A ban by credit card, necessitating a nice chat with a Blizzard rep to get the ban removed, would both heavily inconvenience farmers while providing an incentive for actual players to police the activity on their account ("Timmy, you got the entire damned family banned again because you were screaming 'shitcock' in Trade").
Actually, I've always been curious as to how people justify buying gold or using power-levelling services. The argument I usually hear is that they are too busy with a job to level a character and "just want to play". Presumably these people wouldn't join a tennis league and then demand to use an oversize racquet because they're too busy with their job to learn to play skillfully. Would they think it acceptable to buy points in some sort of sports fantasy league from another player because they don't have the time to properly manage their team?
If you're going to play a game with a lot of other people, why not play it on equal terms? And if you don't have as much time to devote to the game as others, then either accept that with good grace or move on to a different game for which you do have the time. I suppose that shortcuts, cheating, and griefing are an inevitable side-effect a large crowd of people playing, but it's really bloody annoying!
The crux of the issue seems to be the competitive play that is understandably a prime focus for SC2. Do these competitions standardise resolutions too, since higher res graphics make units more distinguishable? Would a zoom function really skew gameplay at the competition level where most people would presumably have a proper gaming rig? Now I'm wondering.
Now what I'd really like to see is multi-monitor support that would give me a 2D map on my second monitor instead of the little minimap in the corner. SupCom kinda fired my imagination as to how useful that can be in an RTS. I rather suspect, however, that such a feature won't be seen because of the focus of competitive play and the lack of a second screen for many players.