'No, he's writing an opinion piece against a company with a bias for it.' 'he makes it pretty clear that what he's saying is conjecture.'
A seriously biassed opinion piece based purely on conjecture. Yeah I see now how much worth this has to the world at large thanks for opening my eyes... This isnt just someones little blog hes putting this crap online for a company. So sue me if I think that perhaps it should have some worth.
'I think what you just wrote could be the most intelligent piece of slashdot journ... ok I can't stop laughing.' 'there's a reason he's published on PBS and you're not'
Um yeah its his career not mine. Nor did I ever claim I should be published or even ask to be published. That has no baring on the quality of this article whatsover. So thanks for insulting me but stick to the subject.
'He's interesting and actually cites his sources.'
Thats funny because he didnt cite any of them, he didnt cite any sources in the previous work ive read and beyond 'my good friend said' we have no idea where the information came from. Oh accept for Forbes who if you read it didnt actually back him up at all. They just point out hes got less interest in MS not that he despises them. Even you say it was based on conjecture.
'You on the other hand simply say things, pretend we all believe you, and then make guesses based on what other people do.'
Would it make it more valid to you if I said 'Oh but I know like 100 people in MS and there all good friends with Bill Gates and Paul Allen' would that suddenly give it a lot more meaning?
My points were made from evidence. I said at the end of my post anyone could find it. Perhaps I credited you with too much intelligence. I do apologise.
Then you go in to some explanation of why MS is blah blah blah. Its obvious MS are being attacked at the moment I never disputed it. In fact I agree with just about all of the hits the company is taking, but they arnt going down and once again you appear to agree with me.
'And no one sells the vast majority of their shares in a company to invest elsewhere because they have confidence in the long term value of that stock. He sold his stock for a reason: He knows Microsoft is peaking.'
What, about Bill Gates selling most his stock and Paul Allen still being connected to the company, are you not understanding? According to the article Paul Allen still has over 100 million shares thats more than a tenth of what Bill Gates has. A fair chunk when his total contribution is advisor while Gates runs the company. Oh and hes been selling his stock for a long time throughout peaks and troughs in MS's history. He didnt just suddenly sell them all when MS reached a high point.
If you want to dispute my comments you go and find some actual evidence to support this nonsense instead of defending someone who writes articles worse, and more poorly backed up, than half the MS haters on slashdot. (Hell your post was a better review of Microsofts position.)
I mean other than the fact that the article is information from a friend of a friend whos like really really good friends with the friend of Paul Allen but it also sounds suspiciously made up.
Ahh hes sold shares that must mean he hates Microsoft. Nooo Bill Gates has also sold shares a hell of a lot of them. His total stake in Microsoft was less than 10% in 2005 thats been dropping for a long time and hes still selling. Doesnt mean he despises his company now does it.
What about the punishing work while ill? Maybe he actually got Hodgkins in 1982 but he was diagnosed in 1983 DOS 2.0 came out in March doesnt exactly leave a huge amount of time for his aparent slave labour and his heroic completion of the O/S.
Oh but he left the company forever, he must have had a bad experience at the hands of evil Bill. Not quite. He is still an advisor to MS to this day. Now sure that isnt exactly a large role in the company he created but how many people with billions of dollars would stay in any position at a company that, according to this site, drove you near to death and conspired to destroy you when you were there?
I mean his leaving couldnt possibly have had anything to do with the fact that he had to work really hard before, but was now a rich man recovering from a life threatening disease. Yeah I can imagine he was raring to jump back in to long shifts at MS, but theres no chance of that with evil Bill standing guard.
Finally, the oh so familiar, Microsoft is going down, comment. Take a quick look at just about every article that guy has ever written involving Microsoft. Nearly all of them contain some way of Microsoft going down. Nearly all of them are speculatory trash often including a list of 'funny' scenarios.
This is pure flamebait from someone clearly biassed against the company. I mean trying to get me to feel sympathy for the 6th richest man in the world who has spent a large portion of his entire life living off the company this site claims crushed him...
Oh and unlike his hearsay you can do a quick search in Google and youll find information backing up every point I made. (Some of which actually came from the site he used to support him, forbes.)
A lot of people seem to be getting confused or thinking this is an April fools but to me it seemed pretty straight forward.
It was an exagerated story of geeks going mad with modifications in hardware in order to give sarcastic support towards DRM. Basically shes slagging off the companys for claiming to put DRM in to stop people doing dangerous terrifying things when in actual fact its just to make more money at the expense of normal consumers.
At least thats what I thought it ment. It seemed clear when I read it. After reading half of the comments here im beginning to think that maybe im completely wrong and in fact it was totally nonsensical waffle...
Shoot off from Earth at physically impossible speeds and youll end up crashing in to the other side of Earth a while later. Which is where the 4 dimensional space time wrapped around the surface of an ever expanding balloon idea comes from.
We can also tell that the universe is fairly consistent take a few million light years cubed of space in one part and compare it to another and itll have fairly similar characteristics. So we can make some fairly well educated guesses at how much mass there is.
A figure I found puts it at roughly 25 billion galaxies the size of the milkyway worth of mass. We are not a particularly small galaxy so thats a fair bit.
I read the PDF detailing the study and there are a couple of gaping holes in this whole thing.
First off, despite multiple studies done that prove no correlation between brain tumours and mobile phones this claims to have found something. Now I guess other factors may have come in to those other studies some bias etc. However, this article details an initial study that also showed _no_ connection. It was only after they altered the questionaires and retested people that they found something. Whats more, they then did no further alteration to the questions and simply ran with the same test only on a bigger scale.
There may be a detailed explanation of why that occured but with currently released information weve no idea how many times they were willing to alter the questions to get the answers they wanted, and no explanation of which questions were altered or why. What adds to the suspicion is the fact that the only reason the first test was thrown out was 'short latency' and 'low numbers' of people. Neither of which affect the questionaire.
So what we have is a group of people who rely on getting a result for there funding. (No differently to the previous studies.) After they got no real results from a first test, altered it in a way that appeared to have no bearing on that initial test. They then found they got results... Doesnt really inspire any confidence in there impartial testing.
Secondly, something others have pointed out already, asking a bunch of people with tumours when they started using mobile phones and then roughly getting rid of other factors that could have caused them based on a questionaire... Not a great method of working this out.
Whatever you thought of the study seen on the BBC site it raised a very good point about something that would cause a bias. 'reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on.' etc. This test doesnt even begin to try clamp down on these kinds of bias. Even if this test was entirely fair, the results are far from dramatic. With excessive use it shows only a relatively small increase in cases. With a potential for people to be increasingly suspicious of there mobiles the more they use them this could easily be put down to false assumptions.
As far as im concerned this study is severly flawed. The other studies are also flawed, to a degree, but until someone actually has decent evidence that these things are causing damage then its not going to stop the millions of people who use them. I certainly wouldnt say mobile phones are safe but there is still little to no evidence suggesting they harm us. (and arguably more evidence to suggest that they dont.) The presure is definately on those who have to prove a link.
Focus stealing is a royal pain in the arse. Not only in the O/S but on web pages such as dictionary.com which likes to select the whole word youve half typed in to the box so that as you continue to type you wipe out the first half.
Anyhow a couple of points.
1. TweakUI does _not_ stop focus stealing. It tries to help but there are many apps and messages that slip through. 2. Swapping application is _not_ always viable. Either the alternative will cost a lot of cash or there is no open source equivalent that doesnt have the problem just as bad.
and a couple of opinions.
1. Focus stealing has _no_ purpose accept possibly to stress how utterly arrogant the developer was in thinking that his program is more important than what I am doing. 2. It _is_ an O/S issue. Im not so sure how bad it is with Linux and Mac's but Windows is a pain for it and it can cause serious problems. If your firewall or virus scanner gets an incorrect selection made because it pops up while your typing, thats a serious issue. It is no different to malicious emails and popups which MS try to stamp out. It wouldnt be hard for them to stop focus stealing altogether or even better have an option like in TweakUI only one that actually works fully.
Despite a lot of people being a little on the self superior side about this, as if your an idiot for having the problem. I dont believe there is currently any satisfactory way to stop it. Even if the suggestions ive read did work changing apps, changing O/S, using TweakUI etc etc. Non of it should be necessary. A little tick box should suffice.
(Maybe I have selective memory but I am fairly sure this problem is getting increasingly prevelant. I dont remeber much about Win9x doing it, I remember 2k doing it very infrequently. People really shouldnt have to put up with it at all.)
It is a constant source of amazement to me that so many multiplayer games include sniper rifles.
They provide unsatisfying deaths often on both ends and are the primary tool of choice for campers. Ive left more than a handful of games because of sitting there waiting for a couple of clowns to stop sitting in a shady corner and actually go and shoot something.
I dont understand the weapon, I dont understand people who use them. Well unless they use it in my half arsed manner where Ill run around and occaisionally crouch, zoom up, and scan the horizon. Its usually just more fun to run in with a good ol shotgun.
The Railgun remains the only sniper weapon that doesnt piss me off. Not only does it not have a zoom (or at least a very effective zoom given fov bindings suck.) the game is fast enough that you dont always get hit and as soon as they have screwed up youve got a bright neon beam showing you exactly where to pour on the rockets.
Focusing is to do with the lens and the cornea. As far as I am aware there is no way of repairing that fault with exercises.
Lazy eye is caused by the brain essentially cutting out falty information being recieved from one eye and ultimately forgetting about it altogether. Exercises (and originally eyepatches) would force the brain to get it up and running again.
The brain works using massive parrallel processing and weighted pathways.
Quantum processors work using probability and super positions.
They're two entirely different technologies and cant really be compared. Neither in the complexity of there algorithms or there speeds in various situations.
It should be noted that Quantum processors arnt very fast unless they are doing very specific tasks like cryptography. Unless someone comes up with more for the qubits to do they will never become anything more than a co-processor in your average desktop of the future.
I imagine an optical processor would be much closer to how a neural processor would work as the idea is based around parallel computing. There is every chance a neural processor would be faster than even those.
'Visual perception has as much to do with the brain as it does with the eyeballs.'
Your brain isnt hurting because its having a hard time with the quantity of information input its hurting because the information input is screwed up.
'But this is nearly impossible. It just is not a pleasant experience over extended times for most people, and would probably take decades of development before we reach that point.'
I could go to my IMAX right now and watch a 3D movie for 2 hours without it being unpleasant. It clearly isnt nearly impossible.
'Right - and people are prone to headaches and fatigue when watching TV and movie screens'
Usually because of the contrast in light. Most people I know in good viewing conditions can watch TV all day without headaches and fatigue.
'People view the world by scanning theior eyes, and making small movements of their head.'
I am aware of the fact your eyes build up an image with fast inperceptable movements. It doesnt change the fact that when you're watching a TV your viewing a 2D image you cant look around the back of it.
'With viewing solid 3D objects, you can turn them, roatate them, move your head.' 'With stereoscopy, it only really works from one location in the cinema.'
If your using technology from decades ago perhaps. A modern stereoscopic cinema can provide a well focused 3D image to all of its audience. It is no different to looking at a 2D screen it only differs in the fact that the information going to each eye is slightly different. The only research ive read on the subject suggests that the human brain is incredibly tolerant to any issues with discrepancies in these two images and no upper limit on how long people can view this before having problems has been specified.
'Jesus...'
I tuned out after that it was filled so much self superior crap I figure the summary of which would go along the lines of. 'Ive no evidence at all. Its just the way it is, im well clever, please believe me.'
'If you cut to a close-up, the whole illusion is shattered - and you have to interpret a whole new perspective. It just won't work. It doesn't even work in 3D movies. Just simple cuts are jarring enough in 3D, let alone using different lenses. But cuts are a staple of the movies, part of our visual language - and in sports, the cuts are even more fast and furious, the camera angles even more varied.'
Have you seen a 3D action movie recently? There is a lot of cutting going on there. No one was jarred by it. No one was overwhelmed. With the exception of people with eye problems no one even got nauseous.
So far all your posts have done is hurl around 'facts' and situations that you claim make this an unworkable technology. You provide no evidence for this, your examples are flawed, and your whole idea is generally torn apart by the fact that people can and do watch action packed 3D technology for extended periods of time without issue.
Perhaps you are very skilled and have spent a good long time in the industry. I dont really care. If you cant provide something to back your argument up (and burden of proof is definately on you for making the claims in the first place.) then ive no more reason to believe you than any random person in the street. As ive pointed out. This technology is here, functioning and being backed by a lot of money. That seems to be pretty good proof the idea is sound.
'Michael Lewis, chairman of privately held REAL D, which created 3D prints for the Disney's "Chicken Little," said 3D technology has tested successfully on National Football League games'
You probably already know about this but thats a problem with your vision. Probably not a particularly dabilitating one but still a problem.
'A variety of vision problems can cause the problem, including amblyopia ("lazy eye"), strabismus ("crossed eye") and convergence insufficiency, a condition that inhibits one's ability to keep both eyes focused correctly on a close target.'
You need to be specifically tested for this kind of stuff as you can have apparently perfect vision and still have those effects due to the brain compensating. They can actually cause other problems as well like headaches and squinting etc. It can also get worse as time goes on, but I believe treatments are fairly succesful.
Im not entirely sure if there are people with absolutely no eye issues that cant see 3D movies but its worth getting your eyes checked out anyway.
Which isnt braintstrain because like the poster said brainstrain doesnt exist. (Unless your doing that really annoying physics with a brick on a ramp and suvat... maybe thats just me.)
'Even if it did get nearly "real" - that's not what people want, either.'
There is a huge difference between 'real' and 'comfortable to view' you appear to be mixing them up. If you can provide 3D vision well enough the imagery can be as real or as unreal as you want itll still be a pleasant experience. If you cant then even if the imagery is reality itself people are going to get eyestrain after a couple of minutes and have to stop viewing.
'Physical objects are much easier for your brain to process than virtual images.'
Would you like to back that up with any evidence at all? The only reason we see 2D images from televisions with recognisable 3D is because of the translation the brain does on the information. We see in 2D, the 3D is just an illusion created by bringing the 2 images from the eyes together. Yet your saying it takes more effort for your brain to take the two images fed in from 3D glasses than it would for the brain to take in two images from reality? They're exactly the same process. All the work done is accomplished by the glasses themselves.
While sorting out focus may still be an issue there is no problem with overloading the senses here. (Unless they project the stereoscopic images out of sync something that modern equipment wont do, or they show some particularly garish sports action.) To be honest if there were, IMAX wouldnt be making the vast amounts of money it is out of 3D movies, we wouldnt be getting 3D monitors up and running, and 3D technology in the home would still be a dream.
'What? Who told you that? Take the classic example: Put water in a bucket and spin around. Is it gravity that's pulling watter perpendicular to the normal pull of gravity? No'
Yes I am aware of centrifugal force as a reactionary force to the centripetal force. Its just that as your comment goes on to explain youd have to actually be connected to the centripetal force in order to have the reactionary force. Centrifugal force in and of itself doesnt exist.
Your comment appears to point out the same issues that I came up with in my previous conversations that means that the idea wouldnt work with just casual walking around. Youd have to be strapped or magentised to the rotating surface at all times else float away from it and no longer have any artificial gravity effects.
It also clicked why spinning a central shaft isnt the same as spinning the rotating part as I completley ignored the force that causes it to spin in the first place. Though it still occaisionally fools my brain as if im looking at an optical illusion. Im guessing this was why I was bad at science.
Robin: YAAAAAaaaawwwwnnn!!! Games have sexy women in them, sex sells, its disgraceful, yadda yadda yadda.
Frank: I get the idea that people shouldnt be concentrating on realism over the gaming experience but he seems to be against getting to the point where we can simulate reality. In my opinion that will be a grand day indeed. I mean where do you go after that? You cant have better graphics, you cant supe up a computer to get more detail out or rely on some new fangel graphics engine. Its when weve perfected graphics that we will _have_ to start coming up with the truly unique and wonderful gameplay.
Seamus: Really good view and I have to say I havent really thought of it like that much at all. My only problem with it is that its a visous cycle. The developers need the millions to get business up and running with original ideas, the publishers have the millions but dont want to risk original ideas.
The only way the industry is breaking free is actually in a similar way to what Seamus mentions. The stars of the game industry have started to crack open original lines. Will Right Sid Meir Peter Moloneux recognised names that they know will sell and as a result they get away with a lot more experimental stuff. Best article of the lot.
Jonathon Blow: Has some good points games can be incredible without the innovation. However, he kind of ends up pointing out an innovation that would really help games... If its only been used once its still fairly innovative. (Though id say blood lines also managed to give a far more wide spectrum than just Good and Evil.)
Chris Crawford: My lecturers in AI (Marc Cavassa and Fred Charles) Have been doing some impressive work in to interactive story telling. However, I dont see it as this huge reviver of the games industry. Indeed I dont think the industry is as 'brain dead' as he makes out. (Especially in Nintendo's corner.) Its just another innovation that will make games popular again for a while.
Jane Pinkard: Decent common sense. Got a problem then fix it. Wont stop me slagging off shitty games though.
Chris Hecker: I am not in the games are art camp. I certainly dont agree that they can be compared to Movies and Comic Books. He himself points out some massive differences. Yes games are cool but I didnt see much of a point to his rave.
Actually spinning space ships has always hurt my head.
You see you get in to a spaceship and lets assume your in deep space and there is absolutely no other force acting on you at all.
Now you start to spin the space ship.
To get to the bit where my head starts to hurts. If you were measuring all the movement that was occuring from the bridge which is connected to the shaft that the rest is spinning around then the ship is rotating around it. If you are measuring movement from the rotating part the shaft and bridge are rotating. There is no distinction between them. So if spining a ship around a shaft causes an outwards force how would that be different to spinning the shaft and nothing else. How would that exert any force on you at all? If that doesnt exert any force then how, with no point of refrence, do you determine which part is spinning around or within the other?
I used to believe this was all a misconception probably spurred by the idea of centrifugal force (Which doesnt actually exist.) However a friend tried to make out that it was perfectly sound and I was never able to put across the flaws well enough for us to come to a conclusion.
Yes I know about that. Wrap to multiple lines will flood half my screen the extender bar gets horrendously cluttered and goes off the bottom. Neither is a match for simply cycling through the pages youve opened.
wrapping has potential if it shrunk the tabs to a degree first but it only takes about 5 in order to go on the next line.
Close buttons on tabs is the worst idea ive ever seen. (Well thats a bit of an exageration but itll stress my point.)
You open up say seventy tabs on a spree of web page opening. Your tabs are now no bigger than the close button that is on them. Suddenly you find your losing tabs to accidental close button hits and you have no idea which have gone. You have to sift back through all the information to find what was missed.
All of this for what reason? Is it much faster than just hitting a close button thats off to the right of the bar? Is it faster than middle clicking? Nope.
Now Firefox has done some things to make the feature work better. It doesnt shrink tabs too far and the x button vanishes when you have too many open. This minimises the problem. Doesnt get rid of it and when its a pointless feature why even bother. Opera (my current choice of browser) isnt so leniant. Itll shrink tabs down ad infinitum.
While they were creating these great close buttons why did they decide that the fact when you open too many it just vanishes off the bar wasnt a bit more of a priority? (Im also uncertain if firefox has fixed its tendency to forget the address of web pages that dont open correctly. I shouldnt have to have an extension for something so basic.)
The best tabs in my opinion remain IE7 beta's. A little ironic and also I know people will disagree. Do keep in mind before laying in to me that I do still use Opera or Firefox as an overall package. I just think there tabs are quite poor. (Opera with its terrible collapse order and close buttons, Firefox with its vanishing off screen and no open tab button.)
How id make them. Have the new page button and layout of opera, the collapse order of firefox and the simple buttons and ability to scroll through tabs off screen of IE.
Youd think with three competitive browsers one of them would at least give me the option to have all that.
Err IBM is primarily involved in hardware and services. Not software.
They can have all the staff they want. Id wager there are quite a few companies with more staff than MS. That doesnt change the fact MS makes well over $30 billion from its software revenue.
IBM makes about a tenth of that from software alone.
More or less any RTS will do it. They pretty much all give the option of having any configuration of players. So if you want you set her up with a couple of AI helpers and try take them all down. Alternatively you do what I did when I started playing Total Annihilation.
Me and a friend both faught on the same team he had more experience so he was on defence. Meanwhile behind the lines I was building any ol base I wanted, which taught me what buildings there were and what they all did. Shortly after that I started building all manner of offensive units and structures.
Only took a couple of games for us to start building seperate self sustaining bases. Although even if it takes longer experienced players typically love to be on the front line defence in TA. (It gets seriously hectic and weve had a kill counter go up by over 300 units in a matter of seconds.)
Im fairly sure you can do that kind of thing with any RTS but TA is cheap to buy has a spare CD for multiplayer games and is still arguably the greatest muliplayer RTS ever created.
Flawed view the adverts connection with games.
on
Shock Game Advertising
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Having now seen the advert in question I think it was an incredibly poor choice to make his point. (Although from his over the top description you wouldnt think so.) It would appear his only grievance is with the fact it is a woman. While it is true that its possible to play on the fairly hypocritical impulse for most men I know (including myself) to be shocked by any woman being killed, this advert was perfectly suited to the game it was connected to.
It was not gratuitous, the blood was subtle, the damage amounted to a dark spot on the head. The layout and the title perfectly matched the style that the Hitman games have oozed since day 1.
My only concern about this advert is that its presented in a magazine that younger children may look through as well and it really is too mature for a young kid to be looking at. (but then you could argue the same for a large chunk of everything in these magazines.)
I stress mature though. Its a far cry from the blood and guts or big boobs bouncing everywhere of many other adverts. Its most certainly nothing like some of the other adverts that have been posted about on this thread, that including Gary Glitter and the death of Princess Diana.
This was only the beginning of what I found wrong with his views.
He claims that visceral rewards remove longevity, thats odd because games like GTA, Painkiller, Quake (which even invented a word for its viscera) and even Carmageddon2 have massive longevity purely down to a good old fashioned slaughter fest.
He claims the adverts have gotten increasingly grotesque. Yet I remeber when Doom was around and the adverts were flooded with gore. (I believe one scheme involved them posting pieces of meat to people...)The whole argument reminds me of people who say cinema has become far too horrific while forgeting films like last house on the left or chainsaw massacre. (There are dozens more examples.)
His paragraph on the game causing a decline in the standard of advertising, therefore make more family friendly games is absurd. Its kind of like saying dont ever write a horror novel because its blurb might be shocking. Or dont ever make a horror film because its trailer might be to frightning.
His alternatives and solutions essentially cut off any possibility of having adult or gory games. (You cant really make Hitman without the viscera...) As ive made clear before these simply shouldnt be removed they are a valid area of gaming. Sim City or Tetris are fun but sometimes its fun to Gib some people too.
His point that the industry is producing to much of this is also incorrect as the top charts typically have The Sims and such in them. Even if a lot of people are making visceral games (Which looking at a list of PC games at metacritic I could also dispute), the're not getting very far with them.
Finally his conclusion (and article as a whole) is also deeply flawed. Once again raising the issue of killing women, he has absolutely no basis for his complaint as the hitman games are regarded as a good series and the community at large are eagerly awaiting the next one.
It makes how wrong he is very clear. If it takes bad games to make bad adverts then why is the bad advert, he picked out himself, for an already well respected game series. Ahh well im sure people will spot plenty of flaws in my post as well.
Adverts may have become to crass, but if they did, they did it a long time ago and whatever advert you see its really no reflection of the quality of the final game, shocking or otherwise.
Oh well I guess ill go tell them to stop being selfish and quit making enough money to live so you can continue to play your game with the ample amounts of cash you earn...
'These people are doing something that disrupts the economy in online games'
Evidence?
The one study that ive seen in to how gold farming affects the economy in an online game actually showed it improved it. All these refrences to it destroying the ecomony appear to be based on nothing more than rumour and 'Well it just has to.'
Dont get me wrong im not saying goldmining is right. I think the situation is pretty messed up and people in China are doing more or less slave labour in order to get by. Thats a huge problem. Im glad, (and it probably is empowering for them) that its not all misery. It could be so much better though.
The problem from the point of view of some player who wants a nicer game experience... yeah not to bothered about that. Contact Blizzard (As the game creators it is actualy _their_ fault.) or stop playing it or something, you know options that the chinese gold farmers dont actually have.
Whilst in university one my lecturers described an early issue with motion sickness.
Basically when computers couldnt run at the massive amounts of fps they do today the skipped or lost frames play havok with some people and they get nausea after a bit.
The same effect can occur today if you are running your games at too high a setting. (Just high enough to stay roughly smooth but low enough not to cause major jitters.)
I used to get motion sickness a while ago but no longer do so that kind of backs this up but ive never done the full research to verify all of this.
'Thats sophistry. Without that information it would not be possible for people to steal the content'
Okay. So the torrent site is now illegal for linking to illegal content.
Search engines link in to the torrent site that is illegal. So I guess now all of them are illegal. Plenty of people link to the search engines including the Opera Internet browser. They are therefore illegal as well. Windows links me to starting Opera. I guess Windows is now illegal as well (Oh and so is Linux). Dell supplied me with Windows. The're also illegal. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Just because the companies in America have pushed through absolutely insane laws doesnt make the rest of the world quite so utterly mad.
Slashdot Mirror
'No, he's writing an opinion piece against a company with a bias for it.'
3 42993865292117190603h tml
'he makes it pretty clear that what he's saying is conjecture.'
A seriously biassed opinion piece based purely on conjecture. Yeah I see now how much worth this has to the world at large thanks for opening my eyes... This isnt just someones little blog hes putting this crap online for a company. So sue me if I think that perhaps it should have some worth.
'I think what you just wrote could be the most intelligent piece of slashdot journ... ok I can't stop laughing.'
'there's a reason he's published on PBS and you're not'
Um yeah its his career not mine. Nor did I ever claim I should be published or even ask to be published. That has no baring on the quality of this article whatsover. So thanks for insulting me but stick to the subject.
'He's interesting and actually cites his sources.'
Thats funny because he didnt cite any of them, he didnt cite any sources in the previous work ive read and beyond 'my good friend said' we have no idea where the information came from. Oh accept for Forbes who if you read it didnt actually back him up at all. They just point out hes got less interest in MS not that he despises them. Even you say it was based on conjecture.
'You on the other hand simply say things, pretend we all believe you, and then make guesses based on what other people do.'
Would it make it more valid to you if I said 'Oh but I know like 100 people in MS and there all good friends with Bill Gates and Paul Allen' would that suddenly give it a lot more meaning?
My points were made from evidence. I said at the end of my post anyone could find it. Perhaps I credited you with too much intelligence. I do apologise.
Facts I said -
Gates has less than 10% shares - http://evan.snew.com/ecgi/gates.cgi?0221346273903
Diagnosed in 1983 - http://www.bizography.org/biographies/paul-allen.
DOS 2.0 released in March - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS
Still an advisor at MS - http://www.thocp.net/biographies/allen_paul.htm (Also puts his a quarter of his total fortune still in MS hands. Yeah hes sure backing out.)
Then you go in to some explanation of why MS is blah blah blah. Its obvious MS are being attacked at the moment I never disputed it. In fact I agree with just about all of the hits the company is taking, but they arnt going down and once again you appear to agree with me.
'And no one sells the vast majority of their shares in a company to invest elsewhere because they have confidence in the long term value of that stock. He sold his stock for a reason: He knows Microsoft is peaking.'
What, about Bill Gates selling most his stock and Paul Allen still being connected to the company, are you not understanding? According to the article Paul Allen still has over 100 million shares thats more than a tenth of what Bill Gates has. A fair chunk when his total contribution is advisor while Gates runs the company. Oh and hes been selling his stock for a long time throughout peaks and troughs in MS's history. He didnt just suddenly sell them all when MS reached a high point.
If you want to dispute my comments you go and find some actual evidence to support this nonsense instead of defending someone who writes articles worse, and more poorly backed up, than half the MS haters on slashdot. (Hell your post was a better review of Microsofts position.)
This is such trash.
I mean other than the fact that the article is information from a friend of a friend whos like really really good friends with the friend of Paul Allen but it also sounds suspiciously made up.
Ahh hes sold shares that must mean he hates Microsoft. Nooo Bill Gates has also sold shares a hell of a lot of them. His total stake in Microsoft was less than 10% in 2005 thats been dropping for a long time and hes still selling. Doesnt mean he despises his company now does it.
What about the punishing work while ill? Maybe he actually got Hodgkins in 1982 but he was diagnosed in 1983 DOS 2.0 came out in March doesnt exactly leave a huge amount of time for his aparent slave labour and his heroic completion of the O/S.
Oh but he left the company forever, he must have had a bad experience at the hands of evil Bill. Not quite. He is still an advisor to MS to this day. Now sure that isnt exactly a large role in the company he created but how many people with billions of dollars would stay in any position at a company that, according to this site, drove you near to death and conspired to destroy you when you were there?
I mean his leaving couldnt possibly have had anything to do with the fact that he had to work really hard before, but was now a rich man recovering from a life threatening disease. Yeah I can imagine he was raring to jump back in to long shifts at MS, but theres no chance of that with evil Bill standing guard.
Finally, the oh so familiar, Microsoft is going down, comment. Take a quick look at just about every article that guy has ever written involving Microsoft. Nearly all of them contain some way of Microsoft going down. Nearly all of them are speculatory trash often including a list of 'funny' scenarios.
This is pure flamebait from someone clearly biassed against the company. I mean trying to get me to feel sympathy for the 6th richest man in the world who has spent a large portion of his entire life living off the company this site claims crushed him...
Oh and unlike his hearsay you can do a quick search in Google and youll find information backing up every point I made. (Some of which actually came from the site he used to support him, forbes.)
A lot of people seem to be getting confused or thinking this is an April fools but to me it seemed pretty straight forward.
It was an exagerated story of geeks going mad with modifications in hardware in order to give sarcastic support towards DRM. Basically shes slagging off the companys for claiming to put DRM in to stop people doing dangerous terrifying things when in actual fact its just to make more money at the expense of normal consumers.
At least thats what I thought it ment. It seemed clear when I read it. After reading half of the comments here im beginning to think that maybe im completely wrong and in fact it was totally nonsensical waffle...
The universe isnt infinite.
Shoot off from Earth at physically impossible speeds and youll end up crashing in to the other side of Earth a while later. Which is where the 4 dimensional space time wrapped around the surface of an ever expanding balloon idea comes from.
We can also tell that the universe is fairly consistent take a few million light years cubed of space in one part and compare it to another and itll have fairly similar characteristics. So we can make some fairly well educated guesses at how much mass there is.
A figure I found puts it at roughly 25 billion galaxies the size of the milkyway worth of mass. We are not a particularly small galaxy so thats a fair bit.
I read the PDF detailing the study and there are a couple of gaping holes in this whole thing.
First off, despite multiple studies done that prove no correlation between brain tumours and mobile phones this claims to have found something. Now I guess other factors may have come in to those other studies some bias etc. However, this article details an initial study that also showed _no_ connection. It was only after they altered the questionaires and retested people that they found something. Whats more, they then did no further alteration to the questions and simply ran with the same test only on a bigger scale.
There may be a detailed explanation of why that occured but with currently released information weve no idea how many times they were willing to alter the questions to get the answers they wanted, and no explanation of which questions were altered or why. What adds to the suspicion is the fact that the only reason the first test was thrown out was 'short latency' and 'low numbers' of people. Neither of which affect the questionaire.
So what we have is a group of people who rely on getting a result for there funding. (No differently to the previous studies.) After they got no real results from a first test, altered it in a way that appeared to have no bearing on that initial test. They then found they got results... Doesnt really inspire any confidence in there impartial testing.
Secondly, something others have pointed out already, asking a bunch of people with tumours when they started using mobile phones and then roughly getting rid of other factors that could have caused them based on a questionaire... Not a great method of working this out.
Whatever you thought of the study seen on the BBC site it raised a very good point about something that would cause a bias. 'reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on.' etc. This test doesnt even begin to try clamp down on these kinds of bias. Even if this test was entirely fair, the results are far from dramatic. With excessive use it shows only a relatively small increase in cases. With a potential for people to be increasingly suspicious of there mobiles the more they use them this could easily be put down to false assumptions.
As far as im concerned this study is severly flawed. The other studies are also flawed, to a degree, but until someone actually has decent evidence that these things are causing damage then its not going to stop the millions of people who use them. I certainly wouldnt say mobile phones are safe but there is still little to no evidence suggesting they harm us. (and arguably more evidence to suggest that they dont.) The presure is definately on those who have to prove a link.
Focus stealing is a royal pain in the arse. Not only in the O/S but on web pages such as dictionary.com which likes to select the whole word youve half typed in to the box so that as you continue to type you wipe out the first half.
Anyhow a couple of points.
1. TweakUI does _not_ stop focus stealing. It tries to help but there are many apps and messages that slip through.
2. Swapping application is _not_ always viable. Either the alternative will cost a lot of cash or there is no open source equivalent that doesnt have the problem just as bad.
and a couple of opinions.
1. Focus stealing has _no_ purpose accept possibly to stress how utterly arrogant the developer was in thinking that his program is more important than what I am doing.
2. It _is_ an O/S issue. Im not so sure how bad it is with Linux and Mac's but Windows is a pain for it and it can cause serious problems. If your firewall or virus scanner gets an incorrect selection made because it pops up while your typing, thats a serious issue. It is no different to malicious emails and popups which MS try to stamp out. It wouldnt be hard for them to stop focus stealing altogether or even better have an option like in TweakUI only one that actually works fully.
Despite a lot of people being a little on the self superior side about this, as if your an idiot for having the problem. I dont believe there is currently any satisfactory way to stop it. Even if the suggestions ive read did work changing apps, changing O/S, using TweakUI etc etc. Non of it should be necessary. A little tick box should suffice.
(Maybe I have selective memory but I am fairly sure this problem is getting increasingly prevelant. I dont remeber much about Win9x doing it, I remember 2k doing it very infrequently. People really shouldnt have to put up with it at all.)
It is a constant source of amazement to me that so many multiplayer games include sniper rifles.
They provide unsatisfying deaths often on both ends and are the primary tool of choice for campers. Ive left more than a handful of games because of sitting there waiting for a couple of clowns to stop sitting in a shady corner and actually go and shoot something.
I dont understand the weapon, I dont understand people who use them. Well unless they use it in my half arsed manner where Ill run around and occaisionally crouch, zoom up, and scan the horizon. Its usually just more fun to run in with a good ol shotgun.
The Railgun remains the only sniper weapon that doesnt piss me off. Not only does it not have a zoom (or at least a very effective zoom given fov bindings suck.) the game is fast enough that you dont always get hit and as soon as they have screwed up youve got a bright neon beam showing you exactly where to pour on the rockets.
Different areas.
Focusing is to do with the lens and the cornea. As far as I am aware there is no way of repairing that fault with exercises.
Lazy eye is caused by the brain essentially cutting out falty information being recieved from one eye and ultimately forgetting about it altogether. Exercises (and originally eyepatches) would force the brain to get it up and running again.
The brain works using massive parrallel processing and weighted pathways.
Quantum processors work using probability and super positions.
They're two entirely different technologies and cant really be compared. Neither in the complexity of there algorithms or there speeds in various situations.
It should be noted that Quantum processors arnt very fast unless they are doing very specific tasks like cryptography. Unless someone comes up with more for the qubits to do they will never become anything more than a co-processor in your average desktop of the future.
I imagine an optical processor would be much closer to how a neural processor would work as the idea is based around parallel computing. There is every chance a neural processor would be faster than even those.
'Visual perception has as much to do with the brain as it does with the eyeballs.'
Your brain isnt hurting because its having a hard time with the quantity of information input its hurting because the information input is screwed up.
'But this is nearly impossible. It just is not a pleasant experience over extended times for most people, and would probably take decades of development before we reach that point.'
I could go to my IMAX right now and watch a 3D movie for 2 hours without it being unpleasant. It clearly isnt nearly impossible.
'Right - and people are prone to headaches and fatigue when watching TV and movie screens'
Usually because of the contrast in light. Most people I know in good viewing conditions can watch TV all day without headaches and fatigue.
'People view the world by scanning theior eyes, and making small movements of their head.'
I am aware of the fact your eyes build up an image with fast inperceptable movements. It doesnt change the fact that when you're watching a TV your viewing a 2D image you cant look around the back of it.
'With viewing solid 3D objects, you can turn them, roatate them, move your head.' 'With stereoscopy, it only really works from one location in the cinema.'
If your using technology from decades ago perhaps. A modern stereoscopic cinema can provide a well focused 3D image to all of its audience. It is no different to looking at a 2D screen it only differs in the fact that the information going to each eye is slightly different. The only research ive read on the subject suggests that the human brain is incredibly tolerant to any issues with discrepancies in these two images and no upper limit on how long people can view this before having problems has been specified.
'Jesus...'
I tuned out after that it was filled so much self superior crap I figure the summary of which would go along the lines of. 'Ive no evidence at all. Its just the way it is, im well clever, please believe me.'
'If you cut to a close-up, the whole illusion is shattered - and you have to interpret a whole new perspective. It just won't work. It doesn't even work in 3D movies. Just simple cuts are jarring enough in 3D, let alone using different lenses. But cuts are a staple of the movies, part of our visual language - and in sports, the cuts are even more fast and furious, the camera angles even more varied.'
Have you seen a 3D action movie recently? There is a lot of cutting going on there. No one was jarred by it. No one was overwhelmed. With the exception of people with eye problems no one even got nauseous.
So far all your posts have done is hurl around 'facts' and situations that you claim make this an unworkable technology. You provide no evidence for this, your examples are flawed, and your whole idea is generally torn apart by the fact that people can and do watch action packed 3D technology for extended periods of time without issue.
Perhaps you are very skilled and have spent a good long time in the industry. I dont really care. If you cant provide something to back your argument up (and burden of proof is definately on you for making the claims in the first place.) then ive no more reason to believe you than any random person in the street. As ive pointed out. This technology is here, functioning and being backed by a lot of money. That seems to be pretty good proof the idea is sound.
'Michael Lewis, chairman of privately held REAL D, which created 3D prints for the Disney's "Chicken Little," said 3D technology has tested successfully on National Football League games'
Wheres your proof?
You probably already know about this but thats a problem with your vision. Probably not a particularly dabilitating one but still a problem.
'A variety of vision problems can cause the problem, including amblyopia ("lazy eye"), strabismus ("crossed eye") and convergence insufficiency, a condition that inhibits one's ability to keep both eyes focused correctly on a close target.'
You need to be specifically tested for this kind of stuff as you can have apparently perfect vision and still have those effects due to the brain compensating. They can actually cause other problems as well like headaches and squinting etc. It can also get worse as time goes on, but I believe treatments are fairly succesful.
Im not entirely sure if there are people with absolutely no eye issues that cant see 3D movies but its worth getting your eyes checked out anyway.
'people still get eyestrain.'
Which isnt braintstrain because like the poster said brainstrain doesnt exist. (Unless your doing that really annoying physics with a brick on a ramp and suvat... maybe thats just me.)
'Even if it did get nearly "real" - that's not what people want, either.'
There is a huge difference between 'real' and 'comfortable to view' you appear to be mixing them up. If you can provide 3D vision well enough the imagery can be as real or as unreal as you want itll still be a pleasant experience. If you cant then even if the imagery is reality itself people are going to get eyestrain after a couple of minutes and have to stop viewing.
'Physical objects are much easier for your brain to process than virtual images.'
Would you like to back that up with any evidence at all? The only reason we see 2D images from televisions with recognisable 3D is because of the translation the brain does on the information. We see in 2D, the 3D is just an illusion created by bringing the 2 images from the eyes together. Yet your saying it takes more effort for your brain to take the two images fed in from 3D glasses than it would for the brain to take in two images from reality? They're exactly the same process. All the work done is accomplished by the glasses themselves.
While sorting out focus may still be an issue there is no problem with overloading the senses here. (Unless they project the stereoscopic images out of sync something that modern equipment wont do, or they show some particularly garish sports action.) To be honest if there were, IMAX wouldnt be making the vast amounts of money it is out of 3D movies, we wouldnt be getting 3D monitors up and running, and 3D technology in the home would still be a dream.
'What? Who told you that? Take the classic example: Put water in a bucket and spin around. Is it gravity that's pulling watter perpendicular to the normal pull of gravity? No'
Yes I am aware of centrifugal force as a reactionary force to the centripetal force. Its just that as your comment goes on to explain youd have to actually be connected to the centripetal force in order to have the reactionary force. Centrifugal force in and of itself doesnt exist.
Your comment appears to point out the same issues that I came up with in my previous conversations that means that the idea wouldnt work with just casual walking around. Youd have to be strapped or magentised to the rotating surface at all times else float away from it and no longer have any artificial gravity effects.
It also clicked why spinning a central shaft isnt the same as spinning the rotating part as I completley ignored the force that causes it to spin in the first place. Though it still occaisionally fools my brain as if im looking at an optical illusion. Im guessing this was why I was bad at science.
Robin: YAAAAAaaaawwwwnnn!!! Games have sexy women in them, sex sells, its disgraceful, yadda yadda yadda.
Frank: I get the idea that people shouldnt be concentrating on realism over the gaming experience but he seems to be against getting to the point where we can simulate reality. In my opinion that will be a grand day indeed. I mean where do you go after that? You cant have better graphics, you cant supe up a computer to get more detail out or rely on some new fangel graphics engine. Its when weve perfected graphics that we will _have_ to start coming up with the truly unique and wonderful gameplay.
Seamus: Really good view and I have to say I havent really thought of it like that much at all. My only problem with it is that its a visous cycle. The developers need the millions to get business up and running with original ideas, the publishers have the millions but dont want to risk original ideas.
The only way the industry is breaking free is actually in a similar way to what Seamus mentions. The stars of the game industry have started to crack open original lines. Will Right Sid Meir Peter Moloneux recognised names that they know will sell and as a result they get away with a lot more experimental stuff. Best article of the lot.
Jonathon Blow: Has some good points games can be incredible without the innovation. However, he kind of ends up pointing out an innovation that would really help games... If its only been used once its still fairly innovative. (Though id say blood lines also managed to give a far more wide spectrum than just Good and Evil.)
Chris Crawford: My lecturers in AI (Marc Cavassa and Fred Charles) Have been doing some impressive work in to interactive story telling. However, I dont see it as this huge reviver of the games industry. Indeed I dont think the industry is as 'brain dead' as he makes out. (Especially in Nintendo's corner.) Its just another innovation that will make games popular again for a while.
Jane Pinkard: Decent common sense. Got a problem then fix it. Wont stop me slagging off shitty games though.
Chris Hecker: I am not in the games are art camp. I certainly dont agree that they can be compared to Movies and Comic Books. He himself points out some massive differences. Yes games are cool but I didnt see much of a point to his rave.
Actually spinning space ships has always hurt my head.
You see you get in to a spaceship and lets assume your in deep space and there is absolutely no other force acting on you at all.
Now you start to spin the space ship.
To get to the bit where my head starts to hurts. If you were measuring all the movement that was occuring from the bridge which is connected to the shaft that the rest is spinning around then the ship is rotating around it. If you are measuring movement from the rotating part the shaft and bridge are rotating. There is no distinction between them. So if spining a ship around a shaft causes an outwards force how would that be different to spinning the shaft and nothing else. How would that exert any force on you at all? If that doesnt exert any force then how, with no point of refrence, do you determine which part is spinning around or within the other?
I used to believe this was all a misconception probably spurred by the idea of centrifugal force (Which doesnt actually exist.) However a friend tried to make out that it was perfectly sound and I was never able to put across the flaws well enough for us to come to a conclusion.
Just stick the gravity generators on the roof.
IE does shrink tabs down to a point. Once there small enough the last or the first tab will cycle through them.
It doesnt have x's on its tabs it uses middle click or the close button at the far right.
This is from IE7 Beta 7.0.5112.0 There are more recent versions but I believe the same system is intact.
Yes I know about that. Wrap to multiple lines will flood half my screen the extender bar gets horrendously cluttered and goes off the bottom. Neither is a match for simply cycling through the pages youve opened.
wrapping has potential if it shrunk the tabs to a degree first but it only takes about 5 in order to go on the next line.
Close buttons on tabs is the worst idea ive ever seen. (Well thats a bit of an exageration but itll stress my point.)
You open up say seventy tabs on a spree of web page opening. Your tabs are now no bigger than the close button that is on them. Suddenly you find your losing tabs to accidental close button hits and you have no idea which have gone. You have to sift back through all the information to find what was missed.
All of this for what reason? Is it much faster than just hitting a close button thats off to the right of the bar? Is it faster than middle clicking? Nope.
Now Firefox has done some things to make the feature work better. It doesnt shrink tabs too far and the x button vanishes when you have too many open. This minimises the problem. Doesnt get rid of it and when its a pointless feature why even bother. Opera (my current choice of browser) isnt so leniant. Itll shrink tabs down ad infinitum.
While they were creating these great close buttons why did they decide that the fact when you open too many it just vanishes off the bar wasnt a bit more of a priority? (Im also uncertain if firefox has fixed its tendency to forget the address of web pages that dont open correctly. I shouldnt have to have an extension for something so basic.)
The best tabs in my opinion remain IE7 beta's. A little ironic and also I know people will disagree. Do keep in mind before laying in to me that I do still use Opera or Firefox as an overall package. I just think there tabs are quite poor. (Opera with its terrible collapse order and close buttons, Firefox with its vanishing off screen and no open tab button.)
How id make them. Have the new page button and layout of opera, the collapse order of firefox and the simple buttons and ability to scroll through tabs off screen of IE.
Youd think with three competitive browsers one of them would at least give me the option to have all that.
Err IBM is primarily involved in hardware and services. Not software.
They can have all the staff they want. Id wager there are quite a few companies with more staff than MS. That doesnt change the fact MS makes well over $30 billion from its software revenue.
IBM makes about a tenth of that from software alone.
Yeah clearly hes talking bullshit...
More or less any RTS will do it. They pretty much all give the option of having any configuration of players. So if you want you set her up with a couple of AI helpers and try take them all down. Alternatively you do what I did when I started playing Total Annihilation.
Me and a friend both faught on the same team he had more experience so he was on defence. Meanwhile behind the lines I was building any ol base I wanted, which taught me what buildings there were and what they all did. Shortly after that I started building all manner of offensive units and structures.
Only took a couple of games for us to start building seperate self sustaining bases. Although even if it takes longer experienced players typically love to be on the front line defence in TA. (It gets seriously hectic and weve had a kill counter go up by over 300 units in a matter of seconds.)
Im fairly sure you can do that kind of thing with any RTS but TA is cheap to buy has a spare CD for multiplayer games and is still arguably the greatest muliplayer RTS ever created.
Having now seen the advert in question I think it was an incredibly poor choice to make his point. (Although from his over the top description you wouldnt think so.) It would appear his only grievance is with the fact it is a woman. While it is true that its possible to play on the fairly hypocritical impulse for most men I know (including myself) to be shocked by any woman being killed, this advert was perfectly suited to the game it was connected to.
It was not gratuitous, the blood was subtle, the damage amounted to a dark spot on the head. The layout and the title perfectly matched the style that the Hitman games have oozed since day 1.
My only concern about this advert is that its presented in a magazine that younger children may look through as well and it really is too mature for a young kid to be looking at. (but then you could argue the same for a large chunk of everything in these magazines.)
I stress mature though. Its a far cry from the blood and guts or big boobs bouncing everywhere of many other adverts. Its most certainly nothing like some of the other adverts that have been posted about on this thread, that including Gary Glitter and the death of Princess Diana.
This was only the beginning of what I found wrong with his views.
He claims that visceral rewards remove longevity, thats odd because games like GTA, Painkiller, Quake (which even invented a word for its viscera) and even Carmageddon2 have massive longevity purely down to a good old fashioned slaughter fest.
He claims the adverts have gotten increasingly grotesque. Yet I remeber when Doom was around and the adverts were flooded with gore. (I believe one scheme involved them posting pieces of meat to people...)The whole argument reminds me of people who say cinema has become far too horrific while forgeting films like last house on the left or chainsaw massacre. (There are dozens more examples.)
His paragraph on the game causing a decline in the standard of advertising, therefore make more family friendly games is absurd. Its kind of like saying dont ever write a horror novel because its blurb might be shocking. Or dont ever make a horror film because its trailer might be to frightning.
His alternatives and solutions essentially cut off any possibility of having adult or gory games. (You cant really make Hitman without the viscera...) As ive made clear before these simply shouldnt be removed they are a valid area of gaming. Sim City or Tetris are fun but sometimes its fun to Gib some people too.
His point that the industry is producing to much of this is also incorrect as the top charts typically have The Sims and such in them. Even if a lot of people are making visceral games (Which looking at a list of PC games at metacritic I could also dispute), the're not getting very far with them.
Finally his conclusion (and article as a whole) is also deeply flawed. Once again raising the issue of killing women, he has absolutely no basis for his complaint as the hitman games are regarded as a good series and the community at large are eagerly awaiting the next one.
It makes how wrong he is very clear. If it takes bad games to make bad adverts then why is the bad advert, he picked out himself, for an already well respected game series. Ahh well im sure people will spot plenty of flaws in my post as well.
Adverts may have become to crass, but if they did, they did it a long time ago and whatever advert you see its really no reflection of the quality of the final game, shocking or otherwise.
Oh well I guess ill go tell them to stop being selfish and quit making enough money to live so you can continue to play your game with the ample amounts of cash you earn...
'These people are doing something that disrupts the economy in online games'
Evidence?
The one study that ive seen in to how gold farming affects the economy in an online game actually showed it improved it. All these refrences to it destroying the ecomony appear to be based on nothing more than rumour and 'Well it just has to.'
Dont get me wrong im not saying goldmining is right. I think the situation is pretty messed up and people in China are doing more or less slave labour in order to get by. Thats a huge problem. Im glad, (and it probably is empowering for them) that its not all misery. It could be so much better though.
The problem from the point of view of some player who wants a nicer game experience... yeah not to bothered about that. Contact Blizzard (As the game creators it is actualy _their_ fault.) or stop playing it or something, you know options that the chinese gold farmers dont actually have.
Whilst in university one my lecturers described an early issue with motion sickness.
Basically when computers couldnt run at the massive amounts of fps they do today the skipped or lost frames play havok with some people and they get nausea after a bit.
The same effect can occur today if you are running your games at too high a setting. (Just high enough to stay roughly smooth but low enough not to cause major jitters.)
I used to get motion sickness a while ago but no longer do so that kind of backs this up but ive never done the full research to verify all of this.
'Thats sophistry. Without that information it would not be possible for people to steal the content'
Okay. So the torrent site is now illegal for linking to illegal content.
Search engines link in to the torrent site that is illegal. So I guess now all of them are illegal.
Plenty of people link to the search engines including the Opera Internet browser. They are therefore illegal as well. Windows links me to starting Opera. I guess Windows is now illegal as well (Oh and so is Linux). Dell supplied me with Windows. The're also illegal. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Just because the companies in America have pushed through absolutely insane laws doesnt make the rest of the world quite so utterly mad.