I don't know much about Starcraft, but I don't think this will be taking away from WoW any more than a remake of Super Mario in LittleBigPlanet would stop people playing the real Super Mario games. It will however be good advertising for the game and its mod-ability. I think it's win-win for Blizzard.
Besides, I don't see how this game would even be an MMO if it's just a Starcraft mod using the built in editing tools (I haven't played the latest Starcraft, but I'd have thought it was probably limited to say 4 or at a stretch 8 player online matches).
I think more than being concerned about the game mod per se, they were really mostly concerned about a semi-viable product using Starcraft in its name.
Yeah, a Starcraft mod with Starcraft in the name is a dangerous thing that should be stricken down with no mercy.
Seems it's more the "World of" bit that's the issue here.
This is not a tarnish on the guy's career. This is a major advertising event which could potentially get him noticed and get him a great job and a big gaming studio.
How you can compare one polite warning (not even a charge) - quickly retracted no less - to shooting someone or putting them in prison, I don't know.
It's kind of funny that they send out a C&D for something that will probably only make them more money. If the mod was for some other company's game then it would make sense, but when it's a mod for one of their own games, they really have nothing to lose at all.
The lawyers might not have the authority to make that call of course, but it appears that at least somebody in there has some business brains. I don't play Starcraft or WoW, and probably never will, but I'm glad they're at least giving the guy a tour, considering how much money he's potentially making them if this thing is a hit with the WoW fraternity.
What the hell are you talking about? Why are you assuming that only one applies to me? Where did I indicate which one was "my activity", and why would you try to claim that all activities are equally dangerous? It's not black and white.
I also understand there are very, very rare freak occurrences sometimes in life, so I'm not trying to be black and white about blame for accidents either, but consider this: greater than 95% of accidents are driver error, but only 5% of drivers admit to an accident being exclusively their fault ( http://www.smartmotorist.com/traffic-and-safety-guideline/what-causes-car-accidents.html ). People are far too quick to blame external factors for their own mistakes, and the roads would be a safer place if people were being more responsible. External factors do play a part in risk levels, and that's why you need to moderate your driving according to what you know.
PS - thanks for being so helpful! I'm often loathe to (purposefully) admit ignorance on Slashdot as there are a lot of douches around, but it's posters like yourself that make/. worthwhile:)
Of course I am, because they're different hazards.
High winds generally stop after a while, whereas most animals don't just stop living after a couple of hours.
The animal is also much more avoidable, and simply by reducing your speed you can reduce the damage that a crash will cause (assuming you know there are animals around, which will not always be the case).
With wind, your vehicle could be toppled even when stationary depending on the shape of your vehicle and the strength and direction of the wind in relation to your vehicle. If the wind is getting enough to make the vehicle wobble dangerously and you're in an exposed area, it seems to me that would be time to seek shelter, or park the vehicle perpendicular to the wind..
Ah. I do remember polynomials, but it has been 10 years since I've taken a Maths class, and somehow I thought that if a curve's slope was becoming sharper that it was exponential. *facepalm* At least I'm still able to optimise my code in practice:p
What would be your criteria for that war being obscure then? I suspect a lot of Americans know what it is, and I guessed it would be an American war, but I also had to guess it was the Civil war rather than to do with your independence. To those outside of the US who have never studied any US history, it's still pretty obscure. A better example to use might have been WWI perhaps.
But anyway, even if something is truly obscure in that very few people in the world know about it, I think that's all the more reason to record it.
I agree that the concept is funny , but logically this will reduce the risk of accidents, and that's all they claimed. They didn't say it would eliminate accidents, they just said that accident rates would fall, which is logically true.
I just reread my previous comment and it says "it is true that it doesn't reduce the error", I should have said "doesn't eliminate the human error".
I do pretty much think of Vista and 7 as the same thing, and I think the change in perception between the versions is quite funny. I was just making a joke *shrug* Some people even here have said that 7 is actually a lot more pleasant to use though through toned down UAC, and I don't think they had the nice shiny dock in Vista (though for that to be a reason for an OS to be called better is pretty silly - you could load a fancy dock onto any OS..)
In that case I'd definitely have taken the safe but illegal route;) The same thing did happen to me once before in a Landrover, which was much, much heavier than I realised (it had the lightest steering of any car I've ever driven and the body shell was paper thin, but there was still a lot of weight in the chassis, pretty deceptive). I tried braking down a cobbled hill and just ended up sliding ever so slowly into the road, thankfully there was nobody else around. I'd still say it was my own fault though, I should have been going slower because I did know it was going to be a downhill section. I did the same thing again braking on a downhill corner the same winter I think. After that I learned to be much more careful with that thing, and these days in general I try never to brake on corners, always before as much as possible. The best thing to be doing on a corner is applying slight acceleration to counteract the slowing force of tyre friction and air resistance on the vehicle, to keep the car balanced and distribute grip evenly over the tyres. If you drive smoothly and aware of the car's balance you can retain good control even in slippy conditions.
I'm am slightly sympathetic as a lot of people simply aren't aware of many of the probable dangers out there, but the way you started the story made it very clear that there was a lot of potential for ice. Even after the weather warms up a bit, there can still be areas with microclimates which have not melted yet, especially after dips or slopes in the road where water can accumulate, mostly where the road is in shadow so the ice never quite gets a chance to melt. My car park is like a damn ice rink for days after snow disappears around the rest of the city, and my parking spot is on a slope at the upper end of the car park. I hate it! But anyway, you said that the weather hadn't even warmed up yet so you should definitely be expecting some areas to still be icy. You don't quite have to crawl around as if you're already driving on ice, but you have to be aware that it could happen and think ahead to which parts of the road may still be icy (as long as you know the road of course, and if you don't know the road then driving as if there is ice around every blind corner or dip in the road isn't actually a dumb idea). If it's first snowfall then there's not likely to be any ice, but for a while after snow and for a few days (maybe even weeks in some cases where the area is constantly in shadow) even if the weather is warming up, you still have to be careful.
Sorry if I'm seeming too patronising and unsympathetic. I know we're all just human and we can't know everything. I'm just hoping that I can help to make people more aware of the problems they could be facing on the road, and who knows, maybe it'll stop someone having a bad accident.
It's true, there are genuine cases where the driver isn't to blame - but it is very rare, and the more people that take responsibility for their driving rather than making excuses or just hoping for the best, the safer the roads will be.
If you did the only places you'd drive the limit would be wide open fields.
Yep. You obviously don't need to slow down for every tree etc you see, but if you know that kids play regularly in some woods or whatever near the road, then of course you should be careful. In America the city roads are wider so it's probably not so bad, but here in the UK there are often parked cars right next to the road with only just enough space for 2 cars to squeeze by each other in between the parked cars, so you don't always get to put space between yourself and the parked cars. In that kind of situation it isn't a bad idea to slow down, or at least be more attentive of people possibly walking between the cars. In our advanced driving course we were taught to always be on the lookout for things like shadows or other giveaways that there might be people behind cars about to walk out etc. When you're paying that much attention you can't help but slow down a bit anyway, and sometimes 20mph is a more sensible speed to be doing even in a 30 zone.
Don't get me wrong, I hate when people drive under the limit for no reason, and on any road with good visibility then even in wet conditions I'm still often doing the speed limit, but if you're unsure about some situation, it is always better to slow down of course. Even if you're driving around country roads with wide open fields, you should be watching for houses, which could have hidden entrances on a bend that aren't signposted, so it would be prudent to slow down in such a situation, etc. When you do try to consider every possible thing that could go wrong, and regularly check your mirrors so that you are always pretty aware of even what's going on behind you then yes indeed, you do slow down more often, and a lot of the time you'll be slowing down or checking your mirrors with basically no benefit. But doing such things means that whenever someone does do something stupid, you're ready for it and can hopefully react to avoid a bad accident.
Sorry if any of that is patronising, but I just like to throw some of the stuff I've learned out there to make people think more about their driving (not necessarily you, in that case I think you were being pretty sensible, and if there were people walking around on the sidewalk you hopefully would have slowed down a bit anyway). I know I used to hardly check my mirrors and often went over the speed limit in built up areas, and I'm pretty ashamed of it. It's too easy to fall into bad habits, and if nothing goes wrong then it reinforces those habits as "okay". Given time something might go wrong though, and if someone runs out while you are driving too fast for the conditions or simply not paying attention, you're screwed legally as well as emotionally. At least if you know you were doing your best to drive safely, then if something does go wrong, you know you couldn't realistically have done anything better, and hopefully if there is an accident the worst that will happen is a few broken bones.
It's true that it doesn't reduce the error, but statistically one well trained driver is going to have less accidents than 20 average drivers, so I do believe it would reduce the incidence of accidents. Trained Police drivers for example have a very low accident rate. One Police driving instructor told me that the majority of their accidents were actually small bumps in their own car park, yet they still had to report them as accidents:P
If an accident did occur of course, I don't have much faith in the AI of the following cars to be able to do anything other than slam on their brakes and hope for the best.. but seeing as this is what most humans would do anyway, and the computer is likely to do it much faster than the humans, you could possibly argue that it's almost as safe as if all these guys were well trained drivers.
Unless there is serious profit in destroying lives, but so far that isn't the case
That depends. There is profit to be had from hyping up a piece of shit software, let's call it Windies MEVisto, have everyone buy it and complain that it's destroying their lives. Because then you can bringing out a new and similar version later called Windies XP7SE "Doesn't Destroy Your Life So Much" Edition to get people to pay yet again.
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I didn't say or even imply in any of my comments that they handled it badly, in fact it's quite the opposite.
I'd appreciate if you could try to engage your brain before writing another comment.
I meant to write "at a big gaming studio" :/
That's pretty awesome to know, best comment so far :)
Yeah, but now we'll have to look for a new nerdy injoke that is the equivalent of "When hell freezes over"
When Richard Stallman shaves? Or buys a copy of MS Office?
So the words "World of" are a trademark owned by Activision? Why didn't they go after World of Goo?
The summary clearly says this was about copyright and not trademarks.
Dumbass.
I don't know much about Starcraft, but I don't think this will be taking away from WoW any more than a remake of Super Mario in LittleBigPlanet would stop people playing the real Super Mario games. It will however be good advertising for the game and its mod-ability. I think it's win-win for Blizzard.
Besides, I don't see how this game would even be an MMO if it's just a Starcraft mod using the built in editing tools (I haven't played the latest Starcraft, but I'd have thought it was probably limited to say 4 or at a stretch 8 player online matches).
Not to mention pointing out that the mod is for one of their own games, and if anything is just going to make them more money.
I think more than being concerned about the game mod per se, they were really mostly concerned about a semi-viable product using Starcraft in its name.
Yeah, a Starcraft mod with Starcraft in the name is a dangerous thing that should be stricken down with no mercy.
Seems it's more the "World of" bit that's the issue here.
This is not a tarnish on the guy's career. This is a major advertising event which could potentially get him noticed and get him a great job and a big gaming studio.
How you can compare one polite warning (not even a charge) - quickly retracted no less - to shooting someone or putting them in prison, I don't know.
It's kind of funny that they send out a C&D for something that will probably only make them more money. If the mod was for some other company's game then it would make sense, but when it's a mod for one of their own games, they really have nothing to lose at all.
The lawyers might not have the authority to make that call of course, but it appears that at least somebody in there has some business brains. I don't play Starcraft or WoW, and probably never will, but I'm glad they're at least giving the guy a tour, considering how much money he's potentially making them if this thing is a hit with the WoW fraternity.
Use your horn. [...] If it happens regularly enough eventually they might stop.
Ever been to India..? ;p
What the hell are you talking about? Why are you assuming that only one applies to me? Where did I indicate which one was "my activity", and why would you try to claim that all activities are equally dangerous? It's not black and white.
I also understand there are very, very rare freak occurrences sometimes in life, so I'm not trying to be black and white about blame for accidents either, but consider this: greater than 95% of accidents are driver error, but only 5% of drivers admit to an accident being exclusively their fault ( http://www.smartmotorist.com/traffic-and-safety-guideline/what-causes-car-accidents.html ). People are far too quick to blame external factors for their own mistakes, and the roads would be a safer place if people were being more responsible. External factors do play a part in risk levels, and that's why you need to moderate your driving according to what you know.
PS - thanks for being so helpful! I'm often loathe to (purposefully) admit ignorance on Slashdot as there are a lot of douches around, but it's posters like yourself that make /. worthwhile :)
Of course I am, because they're different hazards.
High winds generally stop after a while, whereas most animals don't just stop living after a couple of hours.
The animal is also much more avoidable, and simply by reducing your speed you can reduce the damage that a crash will cause (assuming you know there are animals around, which will not always be the case).
With wind, your vehicle could be toppled even when stationary depending on the shape of your vehicle and the strength and direction of the wind in relation to your vehicle. If the wind is getting enough to make the vehicle wobble dangerously and you're in an exposed area, it seems to me that would be time to seek shelter, or park the vehicle perpendicular to the wind..
Ah. I do remember polynomials, but it has been 10 years since I've taken a Maths class, and somehow I thought that if a curve's slope was becoming sharper that it was exponential. *facepalm* At least I'm still able to optimise my code in practice :p
What would be your criteria for that war being obscure then? I suspect a lot of Americans know what it is, and I guessed it would be an American war, but I also had to guess it was the Civil war rather than to do with your independence. To those outside of the US who have never studied any US history, it's still pretty obscure. A better example to use might have been WWI perhaps.
But anyway, even if something is truly obscure in that very few people in the world know about it, I think that's all the more reason to record it.
I agree that the concept is funny , but logically this will reduce the risk of accidents, and that's all they claimed. They didn't say it would eliminate accidents, they just said that accident rates would fall, which is logically true.
I just reread my previous comment and it says "it is true that it doesn't reduce the error", I should have said "doesn't eliminate the human error".
Hmm okay. N^2 is still exponential, but obviously not as bad as e^n!
I do pretty much think of Vista and 7 as the same thing, and I think the change in perception between the versions is quite funny. I was just making a joke *shrug* Some people even here have said that 7 is actually a lot more pleasant to use though through toned down UAC, and I don't think they had the nice shiny dock in Vista (though for that to be a reason for an OS to be called better is pretty silly - you could load a fancy dock onto any OS..)
In that case I'd definitely have taken the safe but illegal route ;) The same thing did happen to me once before in a Landrover, which was much, much heavier than I realised (it had the lightest steering of any car I've ever driven and the body shell was paper thin, but there was still a lot of weight in the chassis, pretty deceptive). I tried braking down a cobbled hill and just ended up sliding ever so slowly into the road, thankfully there was nobody else around. I'd still say it was my own fault though, I should have been going slower because I did know it was going to be a downhill section. I did the same thing again braking on a downhill corner the same winter I think. After that I learned to be much more careful with that thing, and these days in general I try never to brake on corners, always before as much as possible. The best thing to be doing on a corner is applying slight acceleration to counteract the slowing force of tyre friction and air resistance on the vehicle, to keep the car balanced and distribute grip evenly over the tyres. If you drive smoothly and aware of the car's balance you can retain good control even in slippy conditions.
I'm am slightly sympathetic as a lot of people simply aren't aware of many of the probable dangers out there, but the way you started the story made it very clear that there was a lot of potential for ice. Even after the weather warms up a bit, there can still be areas with microclimates which have not melted yet, especially after dips or slopes in the road where water can accumulate, mostly where the road is in shadow so the ice never quite gets a chance to melt. My car park is like a damn ice rink for days after snow disappears around the rest of the city, and my parking spot is on a slope at the upper end of the car park. I hate it! But anyway, you said that the weather hadn't even warmed up yet so you should definitely be expecting some areas to still be icy. You don't quite have to crawl around as if you're already driving on ice, but you have to be aware that it could happen and think ahead to which parts of the road may still be icy (as long as you know the road of course, and if you don't know the road then driving as if there is ice around every blind corner or dip in the road isn't actually a dumb idea). If it's first snowfall then there's not likely to be any ice, but for a while after snow and for a few days (maybe even weeks in some cases where the area is constantly in shadow) even if the weather is warming up, you still have to be careful.
Sorry if I'm seeming too patronising and unsympathetic. I know we're all just human and we can't know everything. I'm just hoping that I can help to make people more aware of the problems they could be facing on the road, and who knows, maybe it'll stop someone having a bad accident.
It's true, there are genuine cases where the driver isn't to blame - but it is very rare, and the more people that take responsibility for their driving rather than making excuses or just hoping for the best, the safer the roads will be.
If you did the only places you'd drive the limit would be wide open fields.
Yep. You obviously don't need to slow down for every tree etc you see, but if you know that kids play regularly in some woods or whatever near the road, then of course you should be careful. In America the city roads are wider so it's probably not so bad, but here in the UK there are often parked cars right next to the road with only just enough space for 2 cars to squeeze by each other in between the parked cars, so you don't always get to put space between yourself and the parked cars. In that kind of situation it isn't a bad idea to slow down, or at least be more attentive of people possibly walking between the cars. In our advanced driving course we were taught to always be on the lookout for things like shadows or other giveaways that there might be people behind cars about to walk out etc. When you're paying that much attention you can't help but slow down a bit anyway, and sometimes 20mph is a more sensible speed to be doing even in a 30 zone.
Don't get me wrong, I hate when people drive under the limit for no reason, and on any road with good visibility then even in wet conditions I'm still often doing the speed limit, but if you're unsure about some situation, it is always better to slow down of course. Even if you're driving around country roads with wide open fields, you should be watching for houses, which could have hidden entrances on a bend that aren't signposted, so it would be prudent to slow down in such a situation, etc. When you do try to consider every possible thing that could go wrong, and regularly check your mirrors so that you are always pretty aware of even what's going on behind you then yes indeed, you do slow down more often, and a lot of the time you'll be slowing down or checking your mirrors with basically no benefit. But doing such things means that whenever someone does do something stupid, you're ready for it and can hopefully react to avoid a bad accident.
Sorry if any of that is patronising, but I just like to throw some of the stuff I've learned out there to make people think more about their driving (not necessarily you, in that case I think you were being pretty sensible, and if there were people walking around on the sidewalk you hopefully would have slowed down a bit anyway). I know I used to hardly check my mirrors and often went over the speed limit in built up areas, and I'm pretty ashamed of it. It's too easy to fall into bad habits, and if nothing goes wrong then it reinforces those habits as "okay". Given time something might go wrong though, and if someone runs out while you are driving too fast for the conditions or simply not paying attention, you're screwed legally as well as emotionally. At least if you know you were doing your best to drive safely, then if something does go wrong, you know you couldn't realistically have done anything better, and hopefully if there is an accident the worst that will happen is a few broken bones.
making them infeasable.
For large data sets at least. Algorithms that require O(n^2) time to run can still potentially be useful for small sets of data.
I hope I used that correctly. I get the concept, but I always forget the notation!
It's true that it doesn't reduce the error, but statistically one well trained driver is going to have less accidents than 20 average drivers, so I do believe it would reduce the incidence of accidents. Trained Police drivers for example have a very low accident rate. One Police driving instructor told me that the majority of their accidents were actually small bumps in their own car park, yet they still had to report them as accidents :P
If an accident did occur of course, I don't have much faith in the AI of the following cars to be able to do anything other than slam on their brakes and hope for the best.. but seeing as this is what most humans would do anyway, and the computer is likely to do it much faster than the humans, you could possibly argue that it's almost as safe as if all these guys were well trained drivers.
Unless there is serious profit in destroying lives, but so far that isn't the case
That depends. There is profit to be had from hyping up a piece of shit software, let's call it Windies MEVisto, have everyone buy it and complain that it's destroying their lives. Because then you can bringing out a new and similar version later called Windies XP7SE "Doesn't Destroy Your Life So Much" Edition to get people to pay yet again.