Mod parent up. It isn't something that gets mentioned usually, but it is important.
I also have Clearwire in Seattle. When playing WOW, my latency can be all over the map, depending on who's using the connection. This summer, I was usually lagging 210-550 milliseconds, which for a newb was tolerable. Sometimes though it would spike to 2000-3000 milliseconds, which made playing the game quite a pain. It was highly dependent on the time of day -- early morning was always the best for gaming, dinner hour the worst.
For anything other than that, I'm pretty satisfied. They block Skype to sell their own VOIP stuff, but I use my cellphone exclusively anyway so it doesn't affect me. My internet browsing is fine, and downloading Linux ISOs and such is no more of a pain than doing it with Comcast. Plus, if I move out of the apartment, I can take my Internet with me and be hooked up the same day I move in -- no waiting on some cable guy to come around.
Ironically, wouldn't some kind of system akin to Guitar Hero actually be useful for a deaf person to experience the music? Admittedly 5 notes is far to little, but with moving colors and notes, combined with watching the performers, it could at once convey the intricacies of the music. Imagine an overlay of the drums, vocals, lead & bass guitars -- could turn out quite awesome. In the end, aren't light and sound part of the same large spectrum of waves?
Actually, IBM is not primarily a hardware company, but their hardware is definitely big. According to their last annual report, hardware (along with financing) was only 23% of their pre-tax income, down 2% from 2003. Software made up 40% and Services made up the remaining 37%. But their hardware is now focused on bleeding edge tech and R&D, servers, mainframes, and supercomputers.
doctors can't operate on themselves, in a similar analog.
A little off-topic, but actually that does happen sometimes. For example, the person who invented spinal anesthesia, August Beir, subjected himself to the procedure to prove its effectiveness.
Actually, according to a recent OP-ED in the WSJ, the best government for the economy tends to be a divided government, where one party controls Congress and the other the Presidency. A few choice quotes from the article:
Superficially at least, the Democratic claims are true: Since 1948, the Standard & Poor's 500 total return (capital gains plus dividends) has averaged 15.6% when a Democrat was in the White House and only 11.1% when a Republican was in the White House.
You get a similar result if you look at growth in real gross domestic product. Under Democratic presidents, the average since 1948 has been 4.2%. Under Republican presidents it has been only 2.8%.
But it's not so simple when you study that "study." First, not all Democrats act like Democrats, and not all Republicans act like Republicans. John F. Kennedy, for example, was an enthusiastic supply-side tax cutter, and George H.W. Bush raised taxes. Bill Clinton promoted free trade, and Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls.
If you assign those four presidents to the opposite party based on that -- make the two Democrats into Republicans and the two Republicans into Democrats -- the numbers completely reverse. Now stocks average 14.7% under Republicans and only 10.5% under Democrats.
In fact, it turns out that if you do just one single switch -- if you make Richard Nixon into a Democrat -- it's enough to reverse the numbers. Then stocks average 14% under Republicans and only 12.1% under Democrats. This fact discredits this whole study more than it does Republicans, or even Richard Nixon himself. Any analysis that can be undone by omitting or changing a single data point isn't very robust.
He makes a few other good points in there, including lagging results, but his ultimate conclusion is that,
"If the electorate were really smart, it would elect a Democratic president and a Republican Congress. Under that deal, stocks have averaged a 20.2% total return, and real GDP averaged 4%. That tells us that economic and stock market success isn't really about partisan politics at all. Sadly, nobody has a political incentive to conduct a study about that.
Note: This comment copied from another I made in the article about the book Quests.
The only way I can see something like this happening -- and I think it could blow open MMOs -- is having different servers always in different, fluxuating states. This would require thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of playable servers, and character transfer would have to be seamless and very quick.
My first though along this line in terms of WoW is a ranking of zone control, from 100% Horde to 100% Alliance. With the sheer number of players and instances, there will always be zones that are roughly 50-50 (or zones where control doesn't switch, like today). New players can choose a friendly or constant server to level on, and switch to a different one if their preference changes (they want to PVP more) or if the balance of power on the server shifts out of your favor. Hardcore gamers and guilds can control a server, sway a neutral one, or try to retake one that is already overwhelmed by the opposing faction. The emphasis here is on PVP, but you could probably create a third faction (the Burning Legion, perhaps?) to creatively mess with the other two, making for interesting outcomes.
As for questing, this would also make it easy to find a server where a major or minor event has/has not happened, or a quest has/has not been completed. You couldn't do that for most trivial quests (e.g. kill 10 centaurs, collect 20 hoofs), but for ones that could affect the other available quests, items, zones, it could be done. Then you could always get your quest if you want, or just decide to abandon it and try something new.
Naturally, this means a huge increase in the hardware and software capabilities of the MMO creator, and a heck of a lot more planning for conditional maps, quests, items, NPC dialog, etc. It may even mean much smaller worlds for a while. But hardware costs continue to plummet. And would everyone, from casual to hardore gamers, be willing to pay more for it? I would bet so.
Re:Can you change the world in MMO's?
on
Quests
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· Score: 1
The only way I can see something like this happening -- and I think it could blow open MMOs -- is having different servers always in different, fluxuating states. This would require thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of playable servers, and character transfer would have to be seamless and very quick.
My first though along this line in terms of WoW is a ranking of zone control, from 100% Horde to 100% Alliance. With the sheer number of players and instances, there will always be zones that are roughly 50-50 (or zones where control doesn't switch, like today). New players can choose a friendly or constant server to level on, and switch to a different one if their preference changes (they want to PVP more) or if the balance of power on the server shifts out of your favor. Hardcore gamers and guilds can control a server, sway a neutral one, or try to retake one that is already overwhelmed by the opposing faction. The emphasis here is on PVP, but you could probably create a third faction (the Burning Legion, perhaps?) to creatively mess with the other two, making for interesting outcomes.
As for questing, this would also make it easy to find a server where a major or minor event has/has not happened, or a quest has/has not been completed. You couldn't do that for most trivial quests (e.g. kill 10 centaurs, collect 20 hoofs), but for ones that could affect the other available quests, items, zones, it could be done. Then you could always get your quest if you want, or just decide to abandon it and try something new.
Naturally, this means a huge increase in the hardware and software capabilities of the MMO creator, and a heck of a lot more planning for conditional maps, quests, items, NPC dialog, etc. It may even mean much smaller worlds for a while. But hardware costs continue to plummet. And would everyone, from casual to hardore gamers, be willing to pay more for it? I would bet so.
I agree that getting the plane on the ground is the best answer, and that the strengthened door would help that.
Whether a terrorist can kill a person a minute, with many passengers confined in a long, narrow space, is more of a combat question than one of the will of the people on the plane. We could debate tactics and such (terrorists jam the drink cart in the aisle -- but the passengers would dislodge it -- not if the terrorists throw the Cokes at them) but I don't know nearly enough about combat tactics to do that. My point is, if the terrorist can kill people on board, and the pilot has to make the choice to (a) get to the ground regardless, (b) hand over control, or (c)fight, I imagine some pilots would choose (b) for the sake of the passengers. But the more easily the passengers can fight back, the less harm the terrorist can do and the less of a threat he is to the safety of the flight. The pilot won't worry about the passengers as much and will more readily attempt to land the plane.
I'm grateful that you, as a pilot, would have the nerves required to not panic and land the plane. I don't know if I would.
Terrorist: "...and I will kill one person every minute until you open this door." What would you do?
The only way to protect planes from being hijacked is to not disadvantage everyone else on the plane who didn't sneak a weapon on and let people carry knifes and such on board. Guns are still a bad idea, since bullet holes in the fuselage would be bad, but other than firearms in the cabin it should be ostensibly allowed.
I don't see making profit as fundamental to what corporations should be doing. What's wrong with just producing a good product, earning enough to sustain a reasonable size and get better at what they produce, and paying workers a fair wage?
You're right that a corporation doesn't have to make a profit. They could just maintain what they do and not do anything bigger. But there is probably a reason that most do. Taking profits lets them save for a rainy day, replace broken machines, or plan for increasing costs. I think the more common reason (at least at the beginning) is to make more products for more people, satisfy more customers. Otherwise, if your product or service is successful, you won't leave so many people unhappy they can't get one. I think growing a business that serves people is just as noble as not devoting a corporation to the almighty dollar.
Technically--and I'm seeing this all throughout the comments in this--we can't ask corporations to do anything. We're asking the people who make the decisions to behave in certain ways, and nothing a person does is objective. But people can decide to behave in ways that are good for the community or not. Unlike corporations.
Well, I think we don't mean the same thing when you say that. First, I think we can ask whatever we want of them, but that doesn't obligate them to do anything. If enough of us ask strongly enough, perhaps the community pressure will compel the corp to act. Or we channel that request into law through votes, and now that request is a requirement. So we can ask things of corporations, but they are only obligated to obey the law.
Corporations can also decide to behave in ways that are good for the community, but usually they also serve to draw more consumers. It isn't just the leader or the people, but the "corporate peson" is involved. Often this happens through sponsoring local events or donating materials/time/money/employees to community activities. Usually they find it's good for business. That material/time/money didn't belong to the people at the corporation, but to the corporation itself. When Home Depot donates to Habitat for Humanity, it does so as a corporation. Granted people make the decisions at companies, but those decisions cause the company to act. So I think we mean the same thing when you say only the people make decisions and I say corporations make decisions.
I left out a point I wanted to make, but that's okay. I think that the counter to the problems people often see with corporation acting to maximize shareholder value is that there is no timeframe established for that goal. Personally I believe corporations should work to maximize shareholder value in the long term, not short term. That means not focusing on the numbers for this quarter, but having a vision 3-5 years out, even if the execs will have left the company by then.
We count on things like a corporation existing in the future, continuing to produce products, pay employees, and in doing so bringing stability to the market. I don't want a company to make hundreds of dollars this month if it means they won't be in a position to make thousands of dollars this year. They can still act in their best short-term interest as long as it doesn't badly damage their long-term interests of maximizing value through either gaining market share, increasing margins, or what have you.
The problem with asking a corporation to do anything other than, essentially, make money is that nothing else is going to be as objective. Even if a corporation doesn't exist to make money (a non-profit, or example, or a corp actually focused on service instead of profits), making money is fundamental to their existence. Aside from undue help from the government, the corporation won't last if they can't at least maintain value.
If we start asking corporations to do something else as well, that something else won't be objective, especially if it is supposed to act in the interests of the nation. First, serving two goals that will undoubtedly conflict at times will only hurt their ability to serve either. Second, that other goal won't be set by the corporation, making the goals and plans of it subject to someone who may know nothing about it -- say, someone in Washington, D.C. And that person is going to be elected sometime every 2, 4, or 6 years, and who is not free from the undue influence of competitors and other third parties.
This post is actually turning into a post against regulation, which is essentially the goal of the article. But since the way they propose we determine "national interest" is through legislation, and since the legislators change every couple years, it would make it much better for corporations and us if they left "national interest" to someone else.
We need to realize that the interests of the American global corporation, whose interest is profit, and the interests of most Americans, who want a higher standard of living, have been diverging.
No they aren't. Every person who owns stock in that company is interested in that company's increased business abroad. Every consumer of that company's goods is concerned with the prices they can achieve through going global. But everyone who would rather buy local or not buy products from certain countries is free to buy from somewhere else. That varigated demand is all about higher standards of living and allowing each person to decide what that higher standard is for him or her. That freedom is only provided by the multitude of companies we have making our stuff for us. Forcing corporations to be held accountable to subjective "national interest" is going to limit their freedom to do what they want with their money (within reason) and limit our freedom to do what we want with our money for some cause that we as consumers may not believe in.
We vote with our dollars. Legislating a national interest infringes on our ability to determine for ourselves what that is. It would be great if we could eliminate competition and instead all cooperate (cooperation is inherently more efficient than competition). But since we'll never all cooperate, especially on an issue as broad and complex as national interest, we ought to stick to maximizing competition.
This is a terrible case, especially because it is grossly simplified. It would be extremely easy to see how something so extreme would not be "commonplace". But I'll work with what you've provided.
B has options. B could sell the land to either A or C, or perhaps some third party D(if this is at all like the real world, there is probably someone else besides A and C who sees value in the land). Either A or C should be equally interested in splitting the land with B, since they are eager to split it with each other. I'm sure that, at the right price, B could sell all of it to either A or C exclusively -- if they want some of the land, why wouldn't A or C want all of it now instead of waiting for a family to slowly starve to death, then having to deal with the remains, only to split it with the other?
To attach the example, the restraint placed on B such that neither A nor C will let anyone deliver anything to B over their property is irrational. Surely B has a way to get to the local farmer's market, or for his children to go to school, or for his wife to buy goods. It is not reasonable to entertain that A and C can collectively cut off B from the outside world. Even if this is so, B would almost certainly risk trespassing in order to save his family from starvation.
The land isn't enough "to support [B] and his family living there", so it can't be that great a value. It isn't big enough for a helicopter, so clearly it is rather small. Since it is apparently being used for agriculture, either crop prices are high or there isn't any commercial value for it (especially if it is cut off from the public by A and C). Neither A nor C would have a great interest in the land if it has little value. They have even less motivation to split it! It would be more rational for either A or C to pay the pittance that the land is worth and have B take his family somewhere else.
In a true libertarian system, or any system other than the one you described, B has access to goods and services provided by other parties, because a Libertarian system would foster many competitors to meet the needs of A, B, and C. B wouldn't be starved to death. The scenario is too extreme to be at all "commonplace".
I believe we already have a meatspace variant of the sports you suggested: field hockey. Not exactly how you described it, but field hockey is exactly the little hooked stick into a "hoop" of sorts.
Is there a reason the summary pits the Content owner versus the Consumer in paying for infrastructure? Shouldn't we include the ISPs themselves? Just wondering why this submitter left that out.
(I'd add the government, but that ends up being the Consumer in the end)
I think the reason video games are a good platform for music because of the attachment of the experience. When gaming, people become engrossed in what they are doing and absorb all elements of the game, including the music. For me I easily recall the different themes from some of my favorite games. Over-world themes in particular are very stuck, but games I loved to play over and over (Banjo-Kazooie, various Zelda games, etc.) are songs I won't forget.
More to the point though, I am also attached to whatever music I put on while I was playing. Whenever I hear some songs, it instantly takes me back to playing that game. The same goes for pop songs today. If you put the song in an engrossing atmosphere, people get attached. It's no different than hearing the "NHL Tonight" theme and thinking hockey, or hearing "Zombie Nation" and thinking college hoops.
I'm not surprised that people like the songs, and then seek the artist. Any exposure to the music in these environments is good for the artist.
Building an IT Infrastructure Around Mars sounds like an excellent new topic for "Ask Slashdot". There are enough experts here in the most random scientific arenas to discuss something hypothetically very cool.
I'm seeing the same thing FF2/XP, though my URLs don't look any different than usual. For example, my URL for the Scareware article is: http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/15/232258
Not sure what it is, but I think Taco will save the day. He doesn't get to be a Commander for nothing.
I would bet that, while it can't replace actual sports, it could replace other healthy activities like meditation, yoga, stretching or even light aerobics. The Wii Balance Board looks like it can help people with those, and I'm sure there are some health benefits from those like lower stress etc. While you might stretch the health benefits of something akin to DDR with a dancepad, it's still a step in a good direction for better health while still having fun with video games.
So if this new data becomes widely published and accepted, how will the RIAA/MPAA react? Do they say "Our anti-piracy methods and DRM are working, and here's the proof"? That would be exactly what we don't want to see happen.
Hopefully more data can be gathered and published showing not only what the real numbers are, but how the RIAA/MPAA get their numbers. If the EDUs of the world understand that piracy isn't as prevalent as claimed, we can hopefully see fewer DMCA letters and more advances in the fair use fronts.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up. It isn't something that gets mentioned usually, but it is important.
I also have Clearwire in Seattle. When playing WOW, my latency can be all over the map, depending on who's using the connection. This summer, I was usually lagging 210-550 milliseconds, which for a newb was tolerable. Sometimes though it would spike to 2000-3000 milliseconds, which made playing the game quite a pain. It was highly dependent on the time of day -- early morning was always the best for gaming, dinner hour the worst.
For anything other than that, I'm pretty satisfied. They block Skype to sell their own VOIP stuff, but I use my cellphone exclusively anyway so it doesn't affect me. My internet browsing is fine, and downloading Linux ISOs and such is no more of a pain than doing it with Comcast. Plus, if I move out of the apartment, I can take my Internet with me and be hooked up the same day I move in -- no waiting on some cable guy to come around.
Ironically, wouldn't some kind of system akin to Guitar Hero actually be useful for a deaf person to experience the music? Admittedly 5 notes is far to little, but with moving colors and notes, combined with watching the performers, it could at once convey the intricacies of the music. Imagine an overlay of the drums, vocals, lead & bass guitars -- could turn out quite awesome. In the end, aren't light and sound part of the same large spectrum of waves?
Actually, IBM is not primarily a hardware company, but their hardware is definitely big. According to their last annual report, hardware (along with financing) was only 23% of their pre-tax income, down 2% from 2003. Software made up 40% and Services made up the remaining 37%. But their hardware is now focused on bleeding edge tech and R&D, servers, mainframes, and supercomputers.
PDF Warning: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/annualreport/2007/2007_ibm_annual.pdf
Garbage.
You know, there is a reason why GP got a +5 and you rate at most a +3.
Warning: Comment moderation subject to change.
Our current presidential candidates should take that page out of your father's book. I might consider voting for one of them.
I wish I had mod points for this one... Well played.
doctors can't operate on themselves, in a similar analog.
A little off-topic, but actually that does happen sometimes. For example, the person who invented spinal anesthesia, August Beir, subjected himself to the procedure to prove its effectiveness.
He makes a few other good points in there, including lagging results, but his ultimate conclusion is that,
Note: This comment copied from another I made in the article about the book Quests.
The only way I can see something like this happening -- and I think it could blow open MMOs -- is having different servers always in different, fluxuating states. This would require thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of playable servers, and character transfer would have to be seamless and very quick.
My first though along this line in terms of WoW is a ranking of zone control, from 100% Horde to 100% Alliance. With the sheer number of players and instances, there will always be zones that are roughly 50-50 (or zones where control doesn't switch, like today). New players can choose a friendly or constant server to level on, and switch to a different one if their preference changes (they want to PVP more) or if the balance of power on the server shifts out of your favor. Hardcore gamers and guilds can control a server, sway a neutral one, or try to retake one that is already overwhelmed by the opposing faction. The emphasis here is on PVP, but you could probably create a third faction (the Burning Legion, perhaps?) to creatively mess with the other two, making for interesting outcomes.
As for questing, this would also make it easy to find a server where a major or minor event has/has not happened, or a quest has/has not been completed. You couldn't do that for most trivial quests (e.g. kill 10 centaurs, collect 20 hoofs), but for ones that could affect the other available quests, items, zones, it could be done. Then you could always get your quest if you want, or just decide to abandon it and try something new.
Naturally, this means a huge increase in the hardware and software capabilities of the MMO creator, and a heck of a lot more planning for conditional maps, quests, items, NPC dialog, etc. It may even mean much smaller worlds for a while. But hardware costs continue to plummet. And would everyone, from casual to hardore gamers, be willing to pay more for it? I would bet so.
The only way I can see something like this happening -- and I think it could blow open MMOs -- is having different servers always in different, fluxuating states. This would require thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of playable servers, and character transfer would have to be seamless and very quick.
My first though along this line in terms of WoW is a ranking of zone control, from 100% Horde to 100% Alliance. With the sheer number of players and instances, there will always be zones that are roughly 50-50 (or zones where control doesn't switch, like today). New players can choose a friendly or constant server to level on, and switch to a different one if their preference changes (they want to PVP more) or if the balance of power on the server shifts out of your favor. Hardcore gamers and guilds can control a server, sway a neutral one, or try to retake one that is already overwhelmed by the opposing faction. The emphasis here is on PVP, but you could probably create a third faction (the Burning Legion, perhaps?) to creatively mess with the other two, making for interesting outcomes.
As for questing, this would also make it easy to find a server where a major or minor event has/has not happened, or a quest has/has not been completed. You couldn't do that for most trivial quests (e.g. kill 10 centaurs, collect 20 hoofs), but for ones that could affect the other available quests, items, zones, it could be done. Then you could always get your quest if you want, or just decide to abandon it and try something new.
Naturally, this means a huge increase in the hardware and software capabilities of the MMO creator, and a heck of a lot more planning for conditional maps, quests, items, NPC dialog, etc. It may even mean much smaller worlds for a while. But hardware costs continue to plummet. And would everyone, from casual to hardore gamers, be willing to pay more for it? I would bet so.
I agree that getting the plane on the ground is the best answer, and that the strengthened door would help that.
Whether a terrorist can kill a person a minute, with many passengers confined in a long, narrow space, is more of a combat question than one of the will of the people on the plane. We could debate tactics and such (terrorists jam the drink cart in the aisle -- but the passengers would dislodge it -- not if the terrorists throw the Cokes at them) but I don't know nearly enough about combat tactics to do that. My point is, if the terrorist can kill people on board, and the pilot has to make the choice to (a) get to the ground regardless, (b) hand over control, or (c)fight, I imagine some pilots would choose (b) for the sake of the passengers. But the more easily the passengers can fight back, the less harm the terrorist can do and the less of a threat he is to the safety of the flight. The pilot won't worry about the passengers as much and will more readily attempt to land the plane.
I'm grateful that you, as a pilot, would have the nerves required to not panic and land the plane. I don't know if I would.
Terrorist: "...and I will kill one person every minute until you open this door." What would you do?
The only way to protect planes from being hijacked is to not disadvantage everyone else on the plane who didn't sneak a weapon on and let people carry knifes and such on board. Guns are still a bad idea, since bullet holes in the fuselage would be bad, but other than firearms in the cabin it should be ostensibly allowed.
Corporations can also decide to behave in ways that are good for the community, but usually they also serve to draw more consumers. It isn't just the leader or the people, but the "corporate peson" is involved. Often this happens through sponsoring local events or donating materials/time/money/employees to community activities. Usually they find it's good for business. That material/time/money didn't belong to the people at the corporation, but to the corporation itself. When Home Depot donates to Habitat for Humanity, it does so as a corporation. Granted people make the decisions at companies, but those decisions cause the company to act. So I think we mean the same thing when you say only the people make decisions and I say corporations make decisions.
I left out a point I wanted to make, but that's okay. I think that the counter to the problems people often see with corporation acting to maximize shareholder value is that there is no timeframe established for that goal. Personally I believe corporations should work to maximize shareholder value in the long term, not short term. That means not focusing on the numbers for this quarter, but having a vision 3-5 years out, even if the execs will have left the company by then.
We count on things like a corporation existing in the future, continuing to produce products, pay employees, and in doing so bringing stability to the market. I don't want a company to make hundreds of dollars this month if it means they won't be in a position to make thousands of dollars this year. They can still act in their best short-term interest as long as it doesn't badly damage their long-term interests of maximizing value through either gaining market share, increasing margins, or what have you.
If we start asking corporations to do something else as well, that something else won't be objective, especially if it is supposed to act in the interests of the nation. First, serving two goals that will undoubtedly conflict at times will only hurt their ability to serve either. Second, that other goal won't be set by the corporation, making the goals and plans of it subject to someone who may know nothing about it -- say, someone in Washington, D.C. And that person is going to be elected sometime every 2, 4, or 6 years, and who is not free from the undue influence of competitors and other third parties.
This post is actually turning into a post against regulation, which is essentially the goal of the article. But since the way they propose we determine "national interest" is through legislation, and since the legislators change every couple years, it would make it much better for corporations and us if they left "national interest" to someone else.
No they aren't. Every person who owns stock in that company is interested in that company's increased business abroad. Every consumer of that company's goods is concerned with the prices they can achieve through going global. But everyone who would rather buy local or not buy products from certain countries is free to buy from somewhere else. That varigated demand is all about higher standards of living and allowing each person to decide what that higher standard is for him or her. That freedom is only provided by the multitude of companies we have making our stuff for us. Forcing corporations to be held accountable to subjective "national interest" is going to limit their freedom to do what they want with their money (within reason) and limit our freedom to do what we want with our money for some cause that we as consumers may not believe in.
We vote with our dollars. Legislating a national interest infringes on our ability to determine for ourselves what that is. It would be great if we could eliminate competition and instead all cooperate (cooperation is inherently more efficient than competition). But since we'll never all cooperate, especially on an issue as broad and complex as national interest, we ought to stick to maximizing competition.
This is a terrible case, especially because it is grossly simplified. It would be extremely easy to see how something so extreme would not be "commonplace". But I'll work with what you've provided.
B has options. B could sell the land to either A or C, or perhaps some third party D(if this is at all like the real world, there is probably someone else besides A and C who sees value in the land). Either A or C should be equally interested in splitting the land with B, since they are eager to split it with each other. I'm sure that, at the right price, B could sell all of it to either A or C exclusively -- if they want some of the land, why wouldn't A or C want all of it now instead of waiting for a family to slowly starve to death, then having to deal with the remains, only to split it with the other?
To attach the example, the restraint placed on B such that neither A nor C will let anyone deliver anything to B over their property is irrational. Surely B has a way to get to the local farmer's market, or for his children to go to school, or for his wife to buy goods. It is not reasonable to entertain that A and C can collectively cut off B from the outside world. Even if this is so, B would almost certainly risk trespassing in order to save his family from starvation.
The land isn't enough "to support [B] and his family living there", so it can't be that great a value. It isn't big enough for a helicopter, so clearly it is rather small. Since it is apparently being used for agriculture, either crop prices are high or there isn't any commercial value for it (especially if it is cut off from the public by A and C). Neither A nor C would have a great interest in the land if it has little value. They have even less motivation to split it! It would be more rational for either A or C to pay the pittance that the land is worth and have B take his family somewhere else.
In a true libertarian system, or any system other than the one you described, B has access to goods and services provided by other parties, because a Libertarian system would foster many competitors to meet the needs of A, B, and C. B wouldn't be starved to death. The scenario is too extreme to be at all "commonplace".
I believe we already have a meatspace variant of the sports you suggested: field hockey. Not exactly how you described it, but field hockey is exactly the little hooked stick into a "hoop" of sorts.
Is there a reason the summary pits the Content owner versus the Consumer in paying for infrastructure? Shouldn't we include the ISPs themselves? Just wondering why this submitter left that out.
(I'd add the government, but that ends up being the Consumer in the end)
Nothing to see here. Throwing in a towel is nothing like throwing a chair.
I think the reason video games are a good platform for music because of the attachment of the experience. When gaming, people become engrossed in what they are doing and absorb all elements of the game, including the music. For me I easily recall the different themes from some of my favorite games. Over-world themes in particular are very stuck, but games I loved to play over and over (Banjo-Kazooie, various Zelda games, etc.) are songs I won't forget.
More to the point though, I am also attached to whatever music I put on while I was playing. Whenever I hear some songs, it instantly takes me back to playing that game. The same goes for pop songs today. If you put the song in an engrossing atmosphere, people get attached. It's no different than hearing the "NHL Tonight" theme and thinking hockey, or hearing "Zombie Nation" and thinking college hoops.
I'm not surprised that people like the songs, and then seek the artist. Any exposure to the music in these environments is good for the artist.
Building an IT Infrastructure Around Mars sounds like an excellent new topic for "Ask Slashdot". There are enough experts here in the most random scientific arenas to discuss something hypothetically very cool.
I'm seeing the same thing FF2/XP, though my URLs don't look any different than usual. For example, my URL for the Scareware article is:
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/15/232258
Not sure what it is, but I think Taco will save the day. He doesn't get to be a Commander for nothing.
I would bet that, while it can't replace actual sports, it could replace other healthy activities like meditation, yoga, stretching or even light aerobics. The Wii Balance Board looks like it can help people with those, and I'm sure there are some health benefits from those like lower stress etc. While you might stretch the health benefits of something akin to DDR with a dancepad, it's still a step in a good direction for better health while still having fun with video games.
So if this new data becomes widely published and accepted, how will the RIAA/MPAA react? Do they say "Our anti-piracy methods and DRM are working, and here's the proof"? That would be exactly what we don't want to see happen.
Hopefully more data can be gathered and published showing not only what the real numbers are, but how the RIAA/MPAA get their numbers. If the EDUs of the world understand that piracy isn't as prevalent as claimed, we can hopefully see fewer DMCA letters and more advances in the fair use fronts.