The way I understood it, the GP was talking about US involvement in the middle east, which ostensibly began with the coup in 1953. A lot of crap happened even before that, but that was caused by other nations. Unless one wants to lump them all under "western meddling", which I'd rather not.
These artists need to learn to stop shooting their mouths off against the very people who support them. I completely support boycotting all major label artists, but artists like this in particular REALLY, REALLY deserve it. (Sadly, we all know that many people will continue to support artists like this, because they're pathetic fanboy lemmings who cluelessly follow their favorite artists wherever they go.)
But in this case, I think it's safe to say that they are not shooting their mouths off against the people that support them. I'd bet that most KISS fans are in the age group that doesn't even know what the internet is, so it's probably safe to say that college kids won't have an effect on their bottom line.
At level 1 gold farming is a bit more difficult, so they have to abuse the game in order to profit.
A bit more difficult? You could say that! A level 1 farmer sounds more like a copper farmer than a gold farmer to me. I suspect the farming is done on level 70 characters, and then distributed to level 1 accounts for sale. One could ostensibly farm gold for a few months, and then distribute the gold to a bunch of level 1's who then sell the gold. Blizzard then closes the accounts and the cycle begins anew with a fresh level 70. What warden best prevents is automating the process, there's not really much else you can do on the client side to speed up the farming process (except speedhacks, the bane of clientside movement).
For the company in question, inflation in their game is likely a bigger problem than inflation of a major currency. That you personally don't care was already understood.
I think the "ownership" of these virtual items is better viewed as a license to have them in the virtual world. So in this case the privilege to have access to said virtual items in their servers is what has been "stolen".
Digital music files have legal protection. It's called COPYRIGHT. This gives them ACTUAL VALUE. Try again, though.
This does not give any value to the files themselves, which are just rows of bits on a hdd. The license to legally use the files is what has value. The only difference is that digital music files have inferior DRM compared to the virtual items in the virtual game, and can thus be copied with ease by users.
That same stupid typo is in the link to the linkjacked blog version as well! Maybe the "blogger" is just some automated script that grabs stuff from other pages...
I'm not yet one of the climate change true believers.
This is what I hate about this climate change hype. Nowadays if you say that you want to do something for the environment, you're automatically assumed to mean that you want to prevent "global warming" or whatever. Personally I don't give a crap about climate change, I want mankind to pollute less and to use natural resources more efficiently because this results in an improvement in the environment. Sure, if mankind really is causing the climate to change, then that is a pretty drastic change in the environment, but we need to pollute less regardless.
If I had a tinfoil hat, I would wonder if the climate change hype is a fabrication by corporations that want an excuse for polluting. "Excuse me Exxon, could you pollute less?" "We don't think the debate on climate change has been settled yet." "Huh?!"
I don't really have a tin-foil hat, and I realize that that would be pretty short-sighted from the corporations as governments have now started to take action against CH, but that's how I sometimes feel when people talk about the environment.
And now that I read your responses to the other commenters, I see that you already thought of the problems I mentioned in my other post. Such a FS would be interesting, maybe you should start working on it?:)
I probably should have said "faster". A dedicated server with a fat pipe always beats a random assortment of peers from around the world with upload capacities varying from 1 KB/s to 100 MB/s. But that would be a reasonable trade-off for free, redundant storage. It would probably have to be limited, maybe you could get 1 MB for every MB you offer to the network? Then if you wanted a 1 MB file to be replicated on 10 peers, you would have to give 10 MB of your computers storage space to the network. Otherwise there wouldn't be enough capacity to meet demand, and the network would consist of a few overloaded peers who service hordes of leechers.
Only the connection is encrypted, all the data is readable to other peers. Also, using torrent networks as storage is not very reliable, you would still need at least one seed (or one full copy of the file between the peers). Most people would not be very interested in seeding a torrent whose only purpose is personal storage, so this would be a problem.
Unless you meant building a private torrent network, where every peer is a computer you own&control. In which case you would probably be better off using a real distributed FS.
Now that I think about it more, perhaps you meant a public network where every peer has parts of someones private files in encrypted form? That would be an interesting concept, but I believe it would be more efficient to have the files on a private server somewhere.
That's not the point. The point is that it's, well, pointless. All games would still have to be designed for the lesser cpu/gpu power of Wii 1.0, so what advantage would owning a more powerful Wii 2.0 give? Otherwise there'd also have to be Wii 2.0 games, at which point the 2.0 would pretty much be an entirely new console.
I think that is mandated by EA, as you can't skip the EA advert in the beginning of the Crysis demo. All the other ads like Nvidia, Intel etc are skippable, so the EA one has been made unskippable on purpose.
In fact, that's my main problem with it: over time it's become increasingly difficult to find a real group for anything else than an endgame raid.
The problem is that many people just want to reach 58 so they can get to Outlands. Running the low-level instances probably feels like a waste of time when you'll dump most of the gear for greens in hellfire peninsula, and they only go to the instances to complete their quests.
It wouldn't be too bad. Think "epic military movie", with Master chief just someone the grunts talk about. Throw in some humanity-makes-its-last-stand plus a great soundtrack (the music is what makes Halo) and you've got a decent movie. There was a short film circling the net, which had a bit of that vibe and was made by the same director AFAIK.
If I want to play Unreal Tournament III at the best quality on my 2560x1600 30" monitor
The reason you have to spend thousands of dollars yearly is right there. If people demanded the same from consoles, they too would be unreasonably expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope this law gets passed. The sooner majority opinion on copyright law turns sour the better.
The way I understood it, the GP was talking about US involvement in the middle east, which ostensibly began with the coup in 1953. A lot of crap happened even before that, but that was caused by other nations. Unless one wants to lump them all under "western meddling", which I'd rather not.
Nations are incapable of emotion. Their populations are not.
Oh snap.
Or to be more precise, approximately 2.13 million subscribers for every lightyear between our solar system and Alpha Centauri.
In the US. Add in the European servers plus the rest of the world and the number of servers will likely be close to the magic 1000 number.
For the company in question, inflation in their game is likely a bigger problem than inflation of a major currency. That you personally don't care was already understood.
This does not give any value to the files themselves, which are just rows of bits on a hdd. The license to legally use the files is what has value. The only difference is that digital music files have inferior DRM compared to the virtual items in the virtual game, and can thus be copied with ease by users.
Especially as their business model seems to consist of selling these virtual items to their customers, so inflation is a real problem.
Probably restoration spec.
That same stupid typo is in the link to the linkjacked blog version as well! Maybe the "blogger" is just some automated script that grabs stuff from other pages...
Most likely the diplomat wanted to feel important for resolving the "major incident".
If I had a tinfoil hat, I would wonder if the climate change hype is a fabrication by corporations that want an excuse for polluting.
"Excuse me Exxon, could you pollute less?"
"We don't think the debate on climate change has been settled yet."
"Huh?!"
I don't really have a tin-foil hat, and I realize that that would be pretty short-sighted from the corporations as governments have now started to take action against CH, but that's how I sometimes feel when people talk about the environment.
And now that I read your responses to the other commenters, I see that you already thought of the problems I mentioned in my other post. Such a FS would be interesting, maybe you should start working on it? :)
I probably should have said "faster". A dedicated server with a fat pipe always beats a random assortment of peers from around the world with upload capacities varying from 1 KB/s to 100 MB/s. But that would be a reasonable trade-off for free, redundant storage. It would probably have to be limited, maybe you could get 1 MB for every MB you offer to the network? Then if you wanted a 1 MB file to be replicated on 10 peers, you would have to give 10 MB of your computers storage space to the network. Otherwise there wouldn't be enough capacity to meet demand, and the network would consist of a few overloaded peers who service hordes of leechers.
Only the connection is encrypted, all the data is readable to other peers. Also, using torrent networks as storage is not very reliable, you would still need at least one seed (or one full copy of the file between the peers). Most people would not be very interested in seeding a torrent whose only purpose is personal storage, so this would be a problem.
Unless you meant building a private torrent network, where every peer is a computer you own&control. In which case you would probably be better off using a real distributed FS.
Now that I think about it more, perhaps you meant a public network where every peer has parts of someones private files in encrypted form? That would be an interesting concept, but I believe it would be more efficient to have the files on a private server somewhere.
That's not the point. The point is that it's, well, pointless. All games would still have to be designed for the lesser cpu/gpu power of Wii 1.0, so what advantage would owning a more powerful Wii 2.0 give? Otherwise there'd also have to be Wii 2.0 games, at which point the 2.0 would pretty much be an entirely new console.
I think that is mandated by EA, as you can't skip the EA advert in the beginning of the Crysis demo. All the other ads like Nvidia, Intel etc are skippable, so the EA one has been made unskippable on purpose.
It wouldn't be too bad. Think "epic military movie", with Master chief just someone the grunts talk about. Throw in some humanity-makes-its-last-stand plus a great soundtrack (the music is what makes Halo) and you've got a decent movie. There was a short film circling the net, which had a bit of that vibe and was made by the same director AFAIK.
What if it's run by a state?