Also, the activities you aspire to perform in the game such as "running a major alliance" and "controlling a starbase" are quite dull and stressful and turn the game into a job. Luckily for us, there's plenty of people that play 80 hours per week that will gladly do all of the above and more.
What you find exciting I find pretty mundane. I can run missions/quests with a group in any game. I can get into pointless random pvp in many games. What does eve have to offer except the ability to do something interesting -- corner the market on some item, sieze and hold a piece of space,... those might be dull to you, but they are the only draw to me.
And as for them 'being a full time job'... yes. Of course they are. The game is 24x7, and many of my 'competitors/opponents' in that part of the game are putting many dozens of hours in per week to keep up. So yeah, to play at that level, it becomes a full time job. But if the game itself were slowed down, enough, casual players could play at that game.
I used to play a game called tradewars2002 on a BBS. It was a rudimentary text based game that yet in many ways resembles EVE. The interesting thing was that each day I logged in I'd have a few hundred moves, that took me 30 minutes to an hour to play on average, and then I couldn't do anything until the next day. As a result anyone who could put in a few hours a week could play competitively on roughly equal footing. The game would run for a few months a winner would be declared and the game would reset and we'd start all over.
Of course, there were other tradewars servers running without turn limits, and players who had the time and internet connections could and did play 24x7. I have nothing against those players or their play style, and their games naturally advanced much faster than the ones I was in did.
I also played other BBS games that were much more complex, with player alliances, and resources, and weapons manufacturing, markets, tech trees, and so on. But I've forgotten their names.
But because of the time limited play, it didn't become a full time job to play, even to run an empire and manage allies, etc. On the average day I could spend under an hour thinking about the game, and then after that there wasn't anything more to be gained and I could go do something else without worrying that my 'competition' was getting a leg up on me by 'playing more'.
Your solution was simply not to compete. Just join a corp instead, fly around and have fun or whatever. And that's fine if that's all you want to do.
But me, I miss being able to compete for the crown in games, without having to dedicate my life to the game to be competitive.
If all they're doing is spreading out the payment over 3-4 years, with a small premium thrown in, that's not such a bad deal. I'd happily pay a $25-50 premium on software like Office in order to receive constant updates.
Once you are on a subscription model why would they bother with the new updates? Your paying them every month whether they release Office 2010 or not.
MS has to release new versions right now to maintain its sales revenues.
On a subscription model MS doesn't have to do squat to keep you paying. Sure they'll have to release token improvements from time to time to keep up appearances, and to change the format to keep competition at bay, but that's about it.
Mark my words, if they ever get us onto a subscription model, progress WILL stagnate.
I admit I didn't rtfa. however if you use bittorrent or a similar system everyone downloading at the same moment would work better and faster. Everyone would have the patches very close to the same time. At the very least that would decrease the amount of time a potential attacker has to attempt this.
Meanwhile asynchronously installing patches throughout your enterprise willy nilly the moment they show up will eventually bring your mission critical systems down.
Increasing security at the expense of stability? That's going to be a hard sell to any competent IT department.
As it is, IBM is a large multi-national corporation that is incapable of holding grudges.
You'd be surprised.
1) Individuals who may be in positions of power certainly can hold grudges. 2) Corporate culture is defined by the people in the company. Grudges held by old employees can infuse the corporate culture and wear off on new employees, reinforcing and propogating them.
Nothing that is blatantly unsound should get past the shareholders or its quarterly results fixated board, but when choosing between A and B when both are sound choices, the decision may come down to biases within the corporate culture.
Add to it security concerns, 64-bit version and it clearly becomes major PITA of Linux desktop users. Doesn't look it will change any time soon.
Actually, its just a major PITA, period.
Flash isn't any more secure on windows.
And there's no 64-bit version for windows either.
Windows x64 even ships with a proper 64-bit Internet Explorer 7, but it doesn't support flash. So to view flash in Windows x64, just like on Linux x64 you need to use a 32-bit web browser. Pretty sad.
And it goes without saying the a 64-bit build of Firefox (Minefield) doesn't work with flash on Windows x64 either.
Heh. That address resolves! 404, though.
But back up a bit and you get the whole directory structure. TONS of porn in a couple folders. But its all stuff I've seen before.:(
This is akin to someone leaving an outdoor tap running, and another person walking by with an empty glass and filling it up. You're not using the water (bandwidth), it's running (not being stored), so you're paying the same cost either way.
For now maybe. But we'll probably eventually have bandwidth the same way we get cellphone minutes in a multitude of complex connection plans...
pay-as-you-go x upload y download cap x upload, unlimited incoming, free evenings and weekends after 9pm, free bandwidth on your birthday x upload, y download, unlimited from itunes music store, youtube, and your fave-five sites etc...
When that happens using someone elses bandwidth will be depriving them of something/ costing them something. I think its going to happen eventually. I think it has to.
Additionally, there is the exposure to hassles from the likes of the RIAA, the police, etc, if you use 'borrowed' internet for something that gets their attention. Even if they are innocent, and even if its a certaint they will be cleared of all charges - its STILL a hassle, and potentially a costly one.
DHS spokesman Russ Knocke stated that "DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool."
Its also true that:
"Security cameras are a proven law-enforcement tool"
Perhaps DHS spokesman Russ Knocke would be ok with surveillance cameras being installed in his home. I mean, hey, its a proven law enforcement tool, so he should be happy to submit to it.
I highly doubt the validity of the figures you quote for folding @ home's cost. This has been a perennial topic on/.
You are right. My figures were off. The PS3 watt rating for the 90nm version is 190-220 not 280. The 65nm version is more efficient at around 157.
That brings the cost down to $188 and $137 respectively. But it bears mentioning that the.12c price I quoted was on the low end. It ranges from ~.05 to ~.24 in the US. In a state like new york its.17 so even with the corrected numbers its $356 and $264 for the 2 different PS3 cpus. People need to assess their own situation.
But even if you were right, I'd say one cannot (for example) complain about the government not funding NASA and at the same time not run Folding @ home for economical reasons. Both are great science and both are worthy of (at least) a modest amount of investment.
I don't object at all to people funding F@H. I object to people not KNOWING they are funding it, and to what extent. I object to employees installing it at work and passing the bill to their employer, to teens installing it on their computers and passing the bill to an unsuspecting parents who have little ability to really see a problem with a utility bill. Its not like a phone bill where you can see if you kids are burning out your wallet.
Not even worthwhile science should be funded like that.
Your right I was off on the original data, by about $70 bucks, because I grabbed the wrong number. Early reports on ps3 f@h rated it at 280-300W, but this was corrected down to 190-220W thereafter. My mistake there and I've posted that I was wrong already elsewhere in this thread.
As for the price of electricity, and your assertion that its 10c? vs 12c? Now were just playing statistics. I could justify mine by noting that prices are generally higher in Europe and Japan for electricity. (Its the equivalent of 25c in Japan IIRC, for example.) Or I could point out that the electricity is higher in the states where the population density is higher... so even if the average rate if you look at it by state is.10, the average person pays more than that because they mostly live in states that are higher. New York and California are both markedly above than 10c 50% and 70% higher, respectively, in fact.
But it doesn't really matter, the cost of a kWh ranges from ~.05 to ~.30. The average is between.09-.14 depending on how you arrange the data. (Especially if you consider the places where there is ladder pricing -- where the first X is one price, and beyond that its another price... a high energy device always on can move you up the rungs of the ladder into a new rate category.)
As for the newer PS3 being less power hungry, that's true too, and a fair comment.
Please stop spreading FUD about F@H and inflating the costs by more than a factor of two
Oh, so when they upgraded the PS3 to 65nm a couple million of 90nm units power consumption dropped by a factor of 2?
I really hope no one got dissuaded by the bad data in your argument
Me too. I hope they dp their own math for their own circumstances and hardware and make an informed decision for themselves.
People in New York are going to find that even with my Watt numbers as off as they were, my final result for a 90m PS3 was far too LOW. (They pay.17 per kWh. so even at the correct Wattage of 215, they pay $351 for an 'old' ps3, and 256 for a new one. Making your $111 quote only 1/3rd their correct price for a 90nm unit, and less than half the price for a 65nm unit.
If I'm spreading 'fud', what do they call it when you spread false reassurances?
And its not just New York -- Conneticut pays.18, Hawahii.24,... and lots of places in Europe and Japan are in that 15-25 ballpark. For all of -them- my numbers were too LOW.... into not running F@H when they might've contributed a key bit of research important for understanding drug candidates for P53 cancer suppression or Alzheimer's disease treatments. Perhaps I'm being melodramatic, but arguing against F@H makes me a sad panda.
Yeah, and when you walked past the unicef box and didn't put a quarter in you just made the difference between the next einstein living or dying. shame on you. just set mankind back a century.
I'm not saying people should stop contributing. I'm saying people should be AWARE of what they are contributing. And while I agree that the numbers I posted should have been more 'right', and I regret that they were off, the visibility of the issue remains important.
I support F@H's mission. I don't support them being funded largely by unsuspecting parents of teens who've essentially 'subscribed' to f@h and had the bill tacked on to mom&dad's utilities without so much as a lineitem -- or installed it on all the pcs at work thereby billing it to their employer.
I realize f@h isn't at 'fault' for this, but they have an ethical obligation to be very upfront about what it it will cost, and maybe even perform some sort of basic validation, like requiring an address and sending a snail mail to the occupant thanking them for subscribing, and advising them of the impact. Sure it won't stop people from signing up illicitly but it would mean a lot if F@H made an effort to contribute to ensure the people it was taking money from were actually aware of it.
That's interesting, but one has to wonder why one would have a PC that idles at 150W on at night in the first place unless it was doing something remotely useful? My units go to sleep, which is MUCH lower wattage than merely being idle.
There are legit reasons to have a machine 'on' all the time, but most of them should go to sleep or even hibernate, if not just get turned right off.
Using a power meter connected between my desktop and the wall I only use $24 per year 24/7 (well, add 50% more for air con) on my FX55 gaming computer.
Please show your work:
W : Wattage of your PC running full tilt? P : Price of electricity in $/kwh in your area? P 8760 : hours / year
W x 8760 = Wh (Watt-Hours) Wh / 1000 = kWh (convert from Wh to kWh) kWh * P = Total
I'd like to see how you get to $24. Because that would require either telling me that your "FX-55 gaming rig" is averaging ~16Watts at full load, that you pay less than 1/2 cent for a kWh of electricity, or that your PC is idle and sleeping a LOT more than you seem to think.
My estimates put an FX-55 gaming rig going full tilt at around 180-200W, and electricity in the first world territories ranges from 5 - 35 cents, averaging around 8-11 cents. The number of hours in a year isn't really up for dispute. So I'm curious how your going to make the numbers come out without undermining your claim.
Of course I only participate 8 hours a day during the 5 months in which heating is needed: between 11pm and 7am (midnight to 8am when DST) electricity is at about half the price or Euro 0.05/kWh. Of course this is only about 14% of the time, but the cost becomes a very acceptable 17 euros per year (much less if you consider that it contributes to heating the house).
And thats and extremely reasonable and well thought out approach to it. But do you really think you are representative of the average F@H contributor?:)
BTW, I believe that your figures are for the first PS3 with the Cell chip implemented in a 90nm process, the 65nm ones need significantly less power. The 45nm ones should be on the market after the summer, still saving quite a few watts.
Yes, your right, the numbers have come down considerably since then. I just recalc'd for the 65nm process and the price drops to around $150. (based on 135W when running F@H), and we'll see what 45nm does when its on the market.
They're a university. I'm sure they have that taken care of.
Good point.
Be interesting to see someone try and claim it though. I wonder if the IRS would agree to its validity.
Probably help if they provided you with a proper receipt of some sort, which they don't. And I don't think it'll help non-americans even if they did, unless they were registered as a chairty in other countries as well.
hm.. this way you're directly investing in 'new' science, and you know what the goal is..
Fair enough. But its a little dishonest if you don't REALIZE how much you are invested. That's my biggest issue. Once people know what it costs I have no issue if they're still willing to contribute. But it bugs me, especially since I beleive the a very significant proportion of the people contributing to F@H are not the one's paying the bills.
The other part is how much do F@H results actually cost, in aggregate? Is it good value for the science produced? They've consumed between $50 and 100 million in electricity. Could they have made better progress towards their goals if they were given the money directly? At the very least if they built their own super computer and managed the costs directly the waste would be far far less.
Not only would they be paying industrial rates for electricity instead of residential rates, they'd also be using far less of it because they'd have racks of CPUs not all powering hard drives, and what not needlessly.
Hell, just take a look at the from their site: (For the purposes of this I've assumed that it costs 'volunteers' on average $10 to run a cpu per month in electricty.)
A final note about overhead. You lose 10-20% efficiency right off the top with F@H due to the lack a tax receipt. I can donate $250 to a registered charity at the same cost to me as buying $200 worth of electricty due to the taxes. Or conversely when you donate $200 to F@H -you- pay an extra 20-50 in taxes vs had you given the same $200 to a registered charity.
but if i had to choose, and if i had a choice, i'd rather invest in an @home project.. i find it a lot more intrinsically motivating than knowing i'm keeping a statistic alive that in 10-20 years might start earning their country some money through taxation because he's had his K-6 education.
Between those two I'm inclined to agree. I tend to mostly donate to small local organizations myself.
There was information when the PS3/F@H launched that consumption was 280-300W, but apparently that was actually around 200-220W so my post above was out by ~$70, and now with the newer lower wattage PS3s the price comes down even more.
But even at 135W, assuming the same.12c kWh I used in my original post that's ~$150/year. Maybe not a big deal to some, but how many would still sign up if they had to pay $150 to f@h directly instead of having it nickle and dime them daily on their power bill? I suspect the user count would be orders of magnitude lower.
Folding @ Home on a PS3 costs the average participant around $150-200 year in electricity if they run it 24x7. Up to $400+ in places where electricity is more expensive. PCs average less, but only because so many of them are lower power, while all PS3s are high wattage.
I think its a worthwhile project, but the electricity people are donating isn't free and F@H uses a lot more electricity than most people think. "Oh, I've got my PC on anyway", or "Oh it can't be as much as my fridge." both of which are mistaken, your fridge uses a fraction of what a PS3 running F@H does, and even if your PC is on, running at idle or going to sleep uses a LOT less power than maxxing out the cpu and/or gpu 24x7.
A PS3 running @ 280W 24x7 for a year:
280W x 24h/d x 365d/y = 2452800 Watt-hours/year or 2452 kWh/y
at $@.12/kWh that'll cost you: $294.00 / year
Then multiply that by the number of PC's running it... it adds up fast.
Like I said, its a good program and a good cause, BUT its not free. A kid/teen shouldn't be running it without a parents permission and understanding of the cost.
I don't like the F@H 'propaganda' because I think its somewhat deceptive about the costs. Its relying on peoples attitude that their free cpu time is truly free to prevent them thinking about the real costs. If you probe they don't lie about the costs, but ethically they really should be more upfront about them.
And now that there is money involved, I should choose the best use of it. When I'm faced with a decision of choosing the best place to donate $300 I think their are other causes more worthy of my money than F@H. But that's a personal choice. If you want to donate to F@H, by all means do so.
One final issue - generally when you donate more than $10-20 to charity you get a tax receipt. $150-500 quite a bit more than $10.
The Faceboogle concept assumes that I want to search just for those things which already match my existing online footprint.
Not only that, it seems to me that its assuming you only search for products (to buy). I can see how a review about a recently announced video card might get 'pushed' to me...
But if I'm looking for information about how to barbeque chicken, or how to treat a burn wound caused by hot barbequed chicken, or how to remove barbeque sauce stains from a white carpet, or how to install a new white carpet... really is that going to 'push itself' to me?
I spend a big chunk of my time searching for technical articles on very specific subjects. For example "how to bind an asp.net 2.0 gridview to a linq to sql datasource via an objectdatasource and support 2 way databinding, paging, sorting, using only poco objects outside of the data access layer, where the generated sql queries are clean and efficient (no loading 100,000 records when I only want 10, etc).
Or how to get dual monitors working 'just so' in ubuntu on an nvidia 8800GTS.
I don't have the slightest bit of interest regarding a 'how to' article on how to bind an asp.net 2.0 gridview to a data reader... I'm not interested in an NHibernate article, I'm not interested in how it might be done in Ruby, I'm not interested in how it was done during the beta,... etc, etc.
As for the ubutu search - I'm not interested in how its done with an ATI card, or with two PCI cards...etc.
And once I have my answer, I'm not generally really interested in more discussion on the subject.
I can't imagine how a 'push' model would do anything remotely relevant in a LOT of cases.
That's not multicasting. Multicasting is where the packet is only sent once, and multiple receivers get it. Caching won't do that because if 2 people request data from the cache, it must be sent twice.
Actually it is a form of multi-casting if you think about from the right perspective.
Consider a web server X hosting file-x:
"Multicasting is where the packet is only sent once, and multiple receivers get it"
From web server X, we have "multi-casting". It sent file-x only once, and multiple receivers got it.
Its true more locally to the ISP it had to replicate that packet for each receiver that got it. But then again, isn't that what a router does if it multi-casts to different subnets?
I agree its not really 'multi-cast' but it does deliver a lot of the same benefits, and its store and forward mode of operation gives it timeshifting advantages. It doesn't have deliver the packet simultaneously, it can deliver them when the clients want them.
The main thing is that from an ISPs point of view, bandwidth goes DOWN because now when people want a piece of something they can often get it from the cache which isn't nearly as 'costly' as getting it from another subscriber (choking the very limited upstream on the last mile) or from another ISP... which isn't 'free'.
The trouble with caching though is that it would be a minefield from liability perspective to the likes of the RIAA/MPAA and anyone else who is being 'victimized' by p2p.
Combine that VM with a firewall. Now it's going to ask you for permission, at the very least, to spam.
Perhaps, but now we're out beyond what Ubuntu offers too.
Can't be stolen if the network is sufficiently locked down.
Either I have to jump through hoops when my software doesn't work, or I get something firewall popup spam. Even my linux boxes aren't that locked down for outgoing. You are right, but its got to be more painless to get mainstream acceptance.
Can't be trashed, because you are keeping backups, right?
I wouldn't need isolated profiles or VMs then either if I'm just worried about getting 'trashed', if we can assume I can just restore from a backup, then it might as well be a baremetal restore from my backup software live cd, which only takes an hour or so. It takes that long simply because I have some 250GB of data. But my point is, why bother just restoring the profile, when restoring another 10GB of OS+Programs is really a drop in the bucket.
the real reason was that apps would generally behave well if you ran them under another account,
Which is now going to be the case in Windows Vista forwards. Its just going to take a bit of time for the legacy apps to die off and be replaced. And even historically on windows major servers like IIS and SQL server and Exchange can all run in their own isolated accounts. Its really not unique to unix. Although unix has been doing it longer, and seems to have a better track record of not having flaws... at least lately. (Unix had PLENTY of holes in it when microsoft servers were still children.)
Regardless, even if running only a single VM, there are advantages.
I agree, but this isn't really Vista vs Ubuntu anymore. Ubuntu would be just as annoying to use if it were that locked down and all the apps ran in VMs. The only reason ubuntu is better of than Vista is that it doesn't have the legacy ecosystem of malware and misbehaved applications. That's an argument in favor of Ubuntu to be sure, but the 'pain' experienced by windows users with Vista is largely a temporary transition issue, as it matures to what we've already got in Ubuntu in terms of security. We won't have UAC spam once applications are written to work properly in their own accounts.
I've yet to see a non-simple strategy game where a bot can compete with even a moderately experience human (barring games that have badly designed rules such that there's a trivially implementable best strategy).
You really don't seem to see the implications in a mmorpg. The bot doesn't need to be competive with a human, it just needs to be competitive with not being there at all. And that sets the bar pretty low.
A 50ft unshielded cable would sound awful and staticy.
So? Nobody said you should use a 50' ft coat hanger.
I still think monster cables are a massive rip off but, assuming that the forum post is legit, comparing the cables to a wire hanger at that short of a length isn't really fair and its not surprising they had similar sound.
Its fair for cables at that short of a length. And MOST cables are that short of a length. 4 of my 6 home theatre speakers are within 2m of the reciever. And All of the components are with in 2m of the receiver.
So monster is clearly an obscene rip off for probably 13 of the 15 cables in my HT. The two 30ft lines that handle the rears would be undecided, and a separate test for those would be needed. Fortunately, I can tell you that I used wire much much cheaper than monster for those too, and its been 100% interference free.
I can't say for sure whether or not the misaligned copper atoms and the odd trapped oxygen molecule in the sheath are muddying the sound, which is what monsters marketing materials are telling me, but I guess my ears just aren't that good... but I am debating springing for the monster hdmi cable which is designed to let those 1's through without getting turned sideways and making my picture quality less warm and the audio less punchy.:)
How would investing more playtime into EVE give you an advantage over other players?
Simple.
Suppose you spend 80 hours a week in game. Suppose I play 15 hours a week, but buy ISK to keep up with you in terms of in game cash.
Our characters wealth and skills would be equivalent, right.
But who is more likely to run a major alliance, control a starbase, or do anything else of real significance?
You see, the guy 'in game' has a massive advantage. He's spending 80 hours a week meeting people, building friendships, trust, networks, alliances, and has his finger on the community. You can't simply buy that.
The only thing you can get from playing a lot is more money, but if you really wanted that, there are other legit ways to acquire it without investing time.
What? Selling those time cards for ISK? Come on.
1) If the 15 hour/wk crowd decided to play keep up with the full time players there would be more time codes flooding the market than ore. Supply would outstrip demand a 1000 to 1. Its a solution for a handful of players maybe, but hardly a general solution.
2) I want to play for what I get in eve, not buy it. Its a game, first and foremost.
3) My commitment to Eve is 'several hours a week', and 15$/month or whatever. I'd like to see competitive play at this level. There are many thousands of us after all, so there's certainly no lack of opportunity for a 'league' for us.
But no, we're forced onto the hardcore server, where a chunk of the competition completely and utterly and permanently outclasses us, and we are forced to either dramatically up our committment in time or money to keep up... or come to terms with the fact that we can either remain irrelevant or become cogs in someone elses machine.
Yet if I want to race cars on the weekend, I can take the car of my choice and get into a competitive race with others in the same class of vehicle and skill, with a similiar level of commitment to the sport. I'm not put on the road with pro-drivers in F-1 cars and told that if I want to see anything remotely competitive then I'd better dedicate a lot more time and/or money to the pursuit.
That's just silly... yet that's the competition model in all MMOs to date.
A script can only automate trivial things, it cannot do the thinking for you.
Really? You've never played an RTS, you know, against the AI? Sure the AI's can generally be beaten once you've gotten the hang of the game unless the AI is given massive 'advantages'. But in an MMO the bot can play when your not online, even if its not as effective as a player its far more effective than not playing at all.
And the bot can back you up. You + a semi-competent bot >> You by yourself. Imagine an RTS where you and I are playing against each other "1 on 1" but there is actually a 3rd starting point with an AI run opponent that happens to be allied to you. That can't do anything but give you a huge edge.
I don't know much about Eve but since it's an MMO I expect it to have little twitch gaming.
If something as simple as going to a rock extracting ore and returning it to base can be automated, you can go to sleep and wake up millions richer. Surely that's going to have an effect to your overall success.
In such a situation automating tasks will only give you a small boost as the most important actions are those the computer cannot do for you.
Even just automating locking on target, firng weapons, setting optimum distance, and monitoring shield levels could be automated it make a difference.
If something as simple as following you around, and attacking your target and healing you when you are wounded can be automated you'll be more than a match for any other 'solo' player of similiar 'level' that you encounter. If that other player is two-boxing, you'll still have the edge, because your bot is handling itself semi-competently allowing you to focus 100% on your primary, while your opponent has to either neglect his 2nd box or divide his time. Both of which will cost.
And my bot fleet scales... I have have 3,4,5,6,... 15... 25 ships all following me around, concentrating on my target, and healing eachother. Sure I'm no match for 25 actual players, but I'll take a gang of 5 or 6 effortlessly maybe even 10-15 or more. What my bots fleet lacks for in skill they make up in raw dps...
And when it comes time to mine... well I would be very nearly on par with a corporation with 25 players, and potentially I can mine while I'm at work, sleeping, eating... a
and hey maybe I don't even need 25 accounts... maybe I just need to belong to a corp with 25 members and some trust... and now we're mining 24x7 whether we're on or not, when we're ready to play or mining fleet bot logs off and we log on. When we leave for work/school/sleep/food, we rejoin the bot mining fleet...
Slashdot Mirror
Also, the activities you aspire to perform in the game such as "running a major alliance" and "controlling a starbase" are quite dull and stressful and turn the game into a job. Luckily for us, there's plenty of people that play 80 hours per week that will gladly do all of the above and more.
... those might be dull to you, but they are the only draw to me.
What you find exciting I find pretty mundane. I can run missions/quests with a group in any game. I can get into pointless random pvp in many games. What does eve have to offer except the ability to do something interesting -- corner the market on some item, sieze and hold a piece of space,
And as for them 'being a full time job'... yes. Of course they are. The game is 24x7, and many of my 'competitors/opponents' in that part of the game are putting many dozens of hours in per week to keep up. So yeah, to play at that level, it becomes a full time job. But if the game itself were slowed down, enough, casual players could play at that game.
I used to play a game called tradewars2002 on a BBS. It was a rudimentary text based game that yet in many ways resembles EVE. The interesting thing was that each day I logged in I'd have a few hundred moves, that took me 30 minutes to an hour to play on average, and then I couldn't do anything until the next day. As a result anyone who could put in a few hours a week could play competitively on roughly equal footing. The game would run for a few months a winner would be declared and the game would reset and we'd start all over.
Of course, there were other tradewars servers running without turn limits, and players who had the time and internet connections could and did play 24x7. I have nothing against those players or their play style, and their games naturally advanced much faster than the ones I was in did.
I also played other BBS games that were much more complex, with player alliances, and resources, and weapons manufacturing, markets, tech trees, and so on. But I've forgotten their names.
But because of the time limited play, it didn't become a full time job to play, even to run an empire and manage allies, etc. On the average day I could spend under an hour thinking about the game, and then after that there wasn't anything more to be gained and I could go do something else without worrying that my 'competition' was getting a leg up on me by 'playing more'.
Your solution was simply not to compete. Just join a corp instead, fly around and have fun or whatever. And that's fine if that's all you want to do.
But me, I miss being able to compete for the crown in games, without having to dedicate my life to the game to be competitive.
If all they're doing is spreading out the payment over 3-4 years, with a small premium thrown in, that's not such a bad deal. I'd happily pay a $25-50 premium on software like Office in order to receive constant updates.
Once you are on a subscription model why would they bother with the new updates? Your paying them every month whether they release Office 2010 or not.
MS has to release new versions right now to maintain its sales revenues.
On a subscription model MS doesn't have to do squat to keep you paying. Sure they'll have to release token improvements from time to time to keep up appearances, and to change the format to keep competition at bay, but that's about it.
Mark my words, if they ever get us onto a subscription model, progress WILL stagnate.
I admit I didn't rtfa. however if you use bittorrent or a similar system everyone downloading at the same moment would work better and faster. Everyone would have the patches very close to the same time. At the very least that would decrease the amount of time a potential attacker has to attempt this.
Meanwhile asynchronously installing patches throughout your enterprise willy nilly the moment they show up will eventually bring your mission critical systems down.
Increasing security at the expense of stability? That's going to be a hard sell to any competent IT department.
As it is, IBM is a large multi-national corporation that is incapable of holding grudges.
You'd be surprised.
1) Individuals who may be in positions of power certainly can hold grudges.
2) Corporate culture is defined by the people in the company. Grudges held by old employees can infuse the corporate culture and wear off on new employees, reinforcing and propogating them.
Nothing that is blatantly unsound should get past the shareholders or its quarterly results fixated board, but when choosing between A and B when both are sound choices, the decision may come down to biases within the corporate culture.
Add to it security concerns, 64-bit version and it clearly becomes major PITA of Linux desktop users. Doesn't look it will change any time soon.
Actually, its just a major PITA, period.
Flash isn't any more secure on windows.
And there's no 64-bit version for windows either.
Windows x64 even ships with a proper 64-bit Internet Explorer 7, but it doesn't support flash. So to view flash in Windows x64, just like on Linux x64 you need to use a 32-bit web browser. Pretty sad.
And it goes without saying the a 64-bit build of Firefox (Minefield) doesn't work with flash on Windows x64 either.
This is akin to someone leaving an outdoor tap running, and another person walking by with an empty glass and filling it up. You're not using the water (bandwidth), it's running (not being stored), so you're paying the same cost either way.
For now maybe. But we'll probably eventually have bandwidth the same way we get cellphone minutes in a multitude of complex connection plans...
pay-as-you-go
x upload y download cap
x upload, unlimited incoming, free evenings and weekends after 9pm, free bandwidth on your birthday
x upload, y download, unlimited from itunes music store, youtube, and your fave-five sites
etc...
When that happens using someone elses bandwidth will be depriving them of something/ costing them something. I think its going to happen eventually. I think it has to.
Additionally, there is the exposure to hassles from the likes of the RIAA, the police, etc, if you use 'borrowed' internet for something that gets their attention. Even if they are innocent, and even if its a certaint they will be cleared of all charges - its STILL a hassle, and potentially a costly one.
DHS spokesman Russ Knocke stated that "DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool."
Its also true that:
"Security cameras are a proven law-enforcement tool"
Perhaps DHS spokesman Russ Knocke would be ok with surveillance cameras being installed in his home. I mean, hey, its a proven law enforcement tool, so he should be happy to submit to it.
I highly doubt the validity of the figures you quote for folding @ home's cost. This has been a perennial topic on /.
.12c price I quoted was on the low end. It ranges from ~.05 to ~.24 in the US. In a state like new york its .17 so even with the corrected numbers its $356 and $264 for the 2 different PS3 cpus. People need to assess their own situation.
You are right. My figures were off. The PS3 watt rating for the 90nm version is 190-220 not 280. The 65nm version is more efficient at around 157.
That brings the cost down to $188 and $137 respectively. But it bears mentioning that the
But even if you were right, I'd say one cannot (for example) complain about the government not funding NASA and at the same time not run Folding @ home for economical reasons. Both are great science and both are worthy of (at least) a modest amount of investment.
I don't object at all to people funding F@H. I object to people not KNOWING they are funding it, and to what extent. I object to employees installing it at work and passing the bill to their employer, to teens installing it on their computers and passing the bill to an unsuspecting parents who have little ability to really see a problem with a utility bill. Its not like a phone bill where you can see if you kids are burning out your wallet.
Not even worthwhile science should be funded like that.
Your right I was off on the original data, by about $70 bucks, because I grabbed the wrong number. Early reports on ps3 f@h rated it at 280-300W, but this was corrected down to 190-220W thereafter. My mistake there and I've posted that I was wrong already elsewhere in this thread.
.10, the average person pays more than that because they mostly live in states that are higher. New York and California are both markedly above than 10c 50% and 70% higher, respectively, in fact.
.09-.14 depending on how you arrange the data. (Especially if you consider the places where there is ladder pricing -- where the first X is one price, and beyond that its another price... a high energy device always on can move you up the rungs of the ladder into a new rate category.)
.17 per kWh. so even at the correct Wattage of 215, they pay $351 for an 'old' ps3, and 256 for a new one. Making your $111 quote only 1/3rd their correct price for a 90nm unit, and less than half the price for a 65nm unit.
.18, Hawahii .24, ... and lots of places in Europe and Japan are in that 15-25 ballpark. For all of -them- my numbers were too LOW. ... into not running F@H when they might've contributed a key bit of research important for understanding drug candidates for P53 cancer suppression or Alzheimer's disease treatments. Perhaps I'm being melodramatic, but arguing against F@H makes me a sad panda.
As for the price of electricity, and your assertion that its 10c? vs 12c? Now were just playing statistics. I could justify mine by noting that prices are generally higher in Europe and Japan for electricity. (Its the equivalent of 25c in Japan IIRC, for example.) Or I could point out that the electricity is higher in the states where the population density is higher... so even if the average rate if you look at it by state is
But it doesn't really matter, the cost of a kWh ranges from ~.05 to ~.30. The average is between
As for the newer PS3 being less power hungry, that's true too, and a fair comment.
Please stop spreading FUD about F@H and inflating the costs by more than a factor of two
Oh, so when they upgraded the PS3 to 65nm a couple million of 90nm units power consumption dropped by a factor of 2?
I really hope no one got dissuaded by the bad data in your argument
Me too. I hope they dp their own math for their own circumstances and hardware and make an informed decision for themselves.
People in New York are going to find that even with my Watt numbers as off as they were, my final result for a 90m PS3 was far too LOW. (They pay
If I'm spreading 'fud', what do they call it when you spread false reassurances?
And its not just New York -- Conneticut pays
Yeah, and when you walked past the unicef box and didn't put a quarter in you just made the difference between the next einstein living or dying. shame on you. just set mankind back a century.
I'm not saying people should stop contributing. I'm saying people should be AWARE of what they are contributing. And while I agree that the numbers I posted should have been more 'right', and I regret that they were off, the visibility of the issue remains important.
I support F@H's mission. I don't support them being funded largely by unsuspecting parents of teens who've essentially 'subscribed' to f@h and had the bill tacked on to mom&dad's utilities without so much as a lineitem -- or installed it on all the pcs at work thereby billing it to their employer.
I realize f@h isn't at 'fault' for this, but they have an ethical obligation to be very upfront about what it it will cost, and maybe even perform some sort of basic validation, like requiring an address and sending a snail mail to the occupant thanking them for subscribing, and advising them of the impact. Sure it won't stop people from signing up illicitly but it would mean a lot if F@H made an effort to contribute to ensure the people it was taking money from were actually aware of it.
That's interesting, but one has to wonder why one would have a PC that idles at 150W on at night in the first place unless it was doing something remotely useful? My units go to sleep, which is MUCH lower wattage than merely being idle.
There are legit reasons to have a machine 'on' all the time, but most of them should go to sleep or even hibernate, if not just get turned right off.
Using a power meter connected between my desktop and the wall I only use $24 per year 24/7 (well, add 50% more for air con) on my FX55 gaming computer.
Please show your work:
W : Wattage of your PC running full tilt?
P : Price of electricity in $/kwh in your area? P
8760 : hours / year
W x 8760 = Wh (Watt-Hours)
Wh / 1000 = kWh (convert from Wh to kWh)
kWh * P = Total
I'd like to see how you get to $24. Because that would require either telling me that your "FX-55 gaming rig" is averaging ~16Watts at full load, that you pay less than 1/2 cent for a kWh of electricity, or that your PC is idle and sleeping a LOT more than you seem to think.
My estimates put an FX-55 gaming rig going full tilt at around 180-200W, and electricity in the first world territories ranges from 5 - 35 cents, averaging around 8-11 cents. The number of hours in a year isn't really up for dispute. So I'm curious how your going to make the numbers come out without undermining your claim.
Of course I only participate 8 hours a day during the 5 months in which heating is needed: between 11pm and 7am (midnight to 8am when DST) electricity is at about half the price or Euro 0.05/kWh. Of course this is only about 14% of the time, but the cost becomes a very acceptable 17 euros per year (much less if you consider that it contributes to heating the house).
:)
And thats and extremely reasonable and well thought out approach to it. But do you really think you are representative of the average F@H contributor?
BTW, I believe that your figures are for the first PS3 with the Cell chip implemented in a 90nm process, the 65nm ones need significantly less power. The 45nm ones should be on the market after the summer, still saving quite a few watts.
Yes, your right, the numbers have come down considerably since then. I just recalc'd for the 65nm process and the price drops to around $150. (based on 135W when running F@H), and we'll see what 45nm does when its on the market.
They're a university. I'm sure they have that taken care of.
Good point.
Be interesting to see someone try and claim it though. I wonder if the IRS would agree to its validity.
Probably help if they provided you with a proper receipt of some sort, which they don't.
And I don't think it'll help non-americans even if they did, unless they were registered as a chairty in other countries as well.
hm.. this way you're directly investing in 'new' science, and you know what the goal is..
Fair enough. But its a little dishonest if you don't REALIZE how much you are invested. That's my biggest issue. Once people know what it costs I have no issue if they're still willing to contribute. But it bugs me, especially since I beleive the a very significant proportion of the people contributing to F@H are not the one's paying the bills.
The other part is how much do F@H results actually cost, in aggregate? Is it good value for the science produced? They've consumed between $50 and 100 million in electricity. Could they have made better progress towards their goals if they were given the money directly? At the very least if they built their own super computer and managed the costs directly the waste would be far far less.
Not only would they be paying industrial rates for electricity instead of residential rates, they'd also be using far less of it because they'd have racks of CPUs not all powering hard drives, and what not needlessly.
Hell, just take a look at the from their site: (For the purposes of this I've assumed that it costs 'volunteers' on average $10 to run a cpu per month in electricty.)
190,000 PCs generating 182 TFLOPs. 191k cpus. Total Cost ~1.9M/month. ~$10,494/TFLOP/month
41,000 PS3 generating 1257 TFLOPs. 41k cpus. Total Cost ~0.4M/month. ~$326/TFLOP/month
What moron would keep the PCs running?
A final note about overhead. You lose 10-20% efficiency right off the top with F@H due to the lack a tax receipt. I can donate $250 to a registered charity at the same cost to me as buying $200 worth of electricty due to the taxes. Or conversely when you donate $200 to F@H -you- pay an extra 20-50 in taxes vs had you given the same $200 to a registered charity.
but if i had to choose, and if i had a choice, i'd rather invest in an @home project.. i find it a lot more intrinsically motivating than knowing i'm keeping a statistic alive that in 10-20 years might start earning their country some money through taxation because he's had his K-6 education.
Between those two I'm inclined to agree. I tend to mostly donate to small local organizations myself.
Accounting for the electricity cost is your problem, but they should provide the details of who you donated it to that is needed for tax purposes.
They would need to be registered charity though, for taxes. You can't just say you donated money to X and call it a day.
Thanks! You are right.
.12c kWh I used in my original post that's ~$150/year. Maybe not a big deal to some, but how many would still sign up if they had to pay $150 to f@h directly instead of having it nickle and dime them daily on their power bill? I suspect the user count would be orders of magnitude lower.
There was information when the PS3/F@H launched that consumption was 280-300W, but apparently that was actually around 200-220W so my post above was out by ~$70, and now with the newer lower wattage PS3s the price comes down even more.
But even at 135W, assuming the same
You shouldn't be joking.
Folding @ Home on a PS3 costs the average participant around $150-200 year in electricity if they run it 24x7. Up to $400+ in places where electricity is more expensive. PCs average less, but only because so many of them are lower power, while all PS3s are high wattage.
I think its a worthwhile project, but the electricity people are donating isn't free and F@H uses a lot more electricity than most people think. "Oh, I've got my PC on anyway", or "Oh it can't be as much as my fridge." both of which are mistaken, your fridge uses a fraction of what a PS3 running F@H does, and even if your PC is on, running at idle or going to sleep uses a LOT less power than maxxing out the cpu and/or gpu 24x7.
A PS3 running @ 280W 24x7 for a year:
280W x 24h/d x 365d/y = 2452800 Watt-hours/year or 2452 kWh/y
at $@.12/kWh that'll cost you: $294.00 / year
Then multiply that by the number of PC's running it... it adds up fast.
Like I said, its a good program and a good cause, BUT its not free. A kid/teen shouldn't be running it without a parents permission and understanding of the cost.
I don't like the F@H 'propaganda' because I think its somewhat deceptive about the costs. Its relying on peoples attitude that their free cpu time is truly free to prevent them thinking about the real costs. If you probe they don't lie about the costs, but ethically they really should be more upfront about them.
And now that there is money involved, I should choose the best use of it. When I'm faced with a decision of choosing the best place to donate $300 I think their are other causes more worthy of my money than F@H. But that's a personal choice. If you want to donate to F@H, by all means do so.
One final issue - generally when you donate more than $10-20 to charity you get a tax receipt. $150-500 quite a bit more than $10.
The Faceboogle concept assumes that I want to search just for those things which already match my existing online footprint.
Not only that, it seems to me that its assuming you only search for products (to buy). I can see how a review about a recently announced video card might get 'pushed' to me...
But if I'm looking for information about how to barbeque chicken, or how to treat a burn wound caused by hot barbequed chicken, or how to remove barbeque sauce stains from a white carpet, or how to install a new white carpet... really is that going to 'push itself' to me?
I spend a big chunk of my time searching for technical articles on very specific subjects. For example "how to bind an asp.net 2.0 gridview to a linq to sql datasource via an objectdatasource and support 2 way databinding, paging, sorting, using only poco objects outside of the data access layer, where the generated sql queries are clean and efficient (no loading 100,000 records when I only want 10, etc).
Or how to get dual monitors working 'just so' in ubuntu on an nvidia 8800GTS.
I don't have the slightest bit of interest regarding a 'how to' article on how to bind an asp.net 2.0 gridview to a data reader... I'm not interested in an NHibernate article, I'm not interested in how it might be done in Ruby, I'm not interested in how it was done during the beta,... etc, etc.
As for the ubutu search - I'm not interested in how its done with an ATI card, or with two PCI cards...etc.
And once I have my answer, I'm not generally really interested in more discussion on the subject.
I can't imagine how a 'push' model would do anything remotely relevant in a LOT of cases.
That's not multicasting. Multicasting is where the packet is only sent once, and multiple receivers get it. Caching won't do that because if 2 people request data from the cache, it must be sent twice.
... which isn't 'free'.
Actually it is a form of multi-casting if you think about from the right perspective.
Consider a web server X hosting file-x:
"Multicasting is where the packet is only sent once, and multiple receivers get it"
From web server X, we have "multi-casting". It sent file-x only once, and multiple receivers got it.
Its true more locally to the ISP it had to replicate that packet for each receiver that got it. But then again, isn't that what a router does if it multi-casts to different subnets?
I agree its not really 'multi-cast' but it does deliver a lot of the same benefits, and its store and forward mode of operation gives it timeshifting advantages. It doesn't have deliver the packet simultaneously, it can deliver them when the clients want them.
The main thing is that from an ISPs point of view, bandwidth goes DOWN because now when people want a piece of something they can often get it from the cache which isn't nearly as 'costly' as getting it from another subscriber (choking the very limited upstream on the last mile) or from another ISP
The trouble with caching though is that it would be a minefield from liability perspective to the likes of the RIAA/MPAA and anyone else who is being 'victimized' by p2p.
Combine that VM with a firewall. Now it's going to ask you for permission, at the very least, to spam.
Perhaps, but now we're out beyond what Ubuntu offers too.
Can't be stolen if the network is sufficiently locked down.
Either I have to jump through hoops when my software doesn't work, or I get something firewall popup spam. Even my linux boxes aren't that locked down for outgoing. You are right, but its got to be more painless to get mainstream acceptance.
Can't be trashed, because you are keeping backups, right?
I wouldn't need isolated profiles or VMs then either if I'm just worried about getting 'trashed', if we can assume I can just restore from a backup, then it might as well be a baremetal restore from my backup software live cd, which only takes an hour or so. It takes that long simply because I have some 250GB of data. But my point is, why bother just restoring the profile, when restoring another 10GB of OS+Programs is really a drop in the bucket.
the real reason was that apps would generally behave well if you ran them under another account,
Which is now going to be the case in Windows Vista forwards. Its just going to take a bit of time for the legacy apps to die off and be replaced. And even historically on windows major servers like IIS and SQL server and Exchange can all run in their own isolated accounts. Its really not unique to unix. Although unix has been doing it longer, and seems to have a better track record of not having flaws... at least lately. (Unix had PLENTY of holes in it when microsoft servers were still children.)
Regardless, even if running only a single VM, there are advantages.
I agree, but this isn't really Vista vs Ubuntu anymore. Ubuntu would be just as annoying to use if it were that locked down and all the apps ran in VMs. The only reason ubuntu is better of than Vista is that it doesn't have the legacy ecosystem of malware and misbehaved applications. That's an argument in favor of Ubuntu to be sure, but the 'pain' experienced by windows users with Vista is largely a temporary transition issue, as it matures to what we've already got in Ubuntu in terms of security. We won't have UAC spam once applications are written to work properly in their own accounts.
I've yet to see a non-simple strategy game where a bot can compete with even a moderately experience human (barring games that have badly designed rules such that there's a trivially implementable best strategy).
You really don't seem to see the implications in a mmorpg. The bot doesn't need to be competive with a human, it just needs to be competitive with not being there at all. And that sets the bar pretty low.
A 50ft unshielded cable would sound awful and staticy.
:)
So? Nobody said you should use a 50' ft coat hanger.
I still think monster cables are a massive rip off but, assuming that the forum post is legit, comparing the cables to a wire hanger at that short of a length isn't really fair and its not surprising they had similar sound.
Its fair for cables at that short of a length. And MOST cables are that short of a length. 4 of my 6 home theatre speakers are within 2m of the reciever. And All of the components are with in 2m of the receiver.
So monster is clearly an obscene rip off for probably 13 of the 15 cables in my HT. The two 30ft lines that handle the rears would be undecided, and a separate test for those would be needed. Fortunately, I can tell you that I used wire much much cheaper than monster for those too, and its been 100% interference free.
I can't say for sure whether or not the misaligned copper atoms and the odd trapped oxygen molecule in the sheath are muddying the sound, which is what monsters marketing materials are telling me, but I guess my ears just aren't that good... but I am debating springing for the monster hdmi cable which is designed to let those 1's through without getting turned sideways and making my picture quality less warm and the audio less punchy.
How would investing more playtime into EVE give you an advantage over other players?
Simple.
Suppose you spend 80 hours a week in game.
Suppose I play 15 hours a week, but buy ISK to keep up with you in terms of in game cash.
Our characters wealth and skills would be equivalent, right.
But who is more likely to run a major alliance, control a starbase, or do anything else of real significance?
You see, the guy 'in game' has a massive advantage. He's spending 80 hours a week meeting people, building friendships, trust, networks, alliances, and has his finger on the community. You can't simply buy that.
The only thing you can get from playing a lot is more money, but if you really wanted that, there are other legit ways to acquire it without investing time.
What? Selling those time cards for ISK? Come on.
1) If the 15 hour/wk crowd decided to play keep up with the full time players there would be more time codes flooding the market than ore. Supply would outstrip demand a 1000 to 1. Its a solution for a handful of players maybe, but hardly a general solution.
2) I want to play for what I get in eve, not buy it. Its a game, first and foremost.
3) My commitment to Eve is 'several hours a week', and 15$/month or whatever. I'd like to see competitive play at this level. There are many thousands of us after all, so there's certainly no lack of opportunity for a 'league' for us.
But no, we're forced onto the hardcore server, where a chunk of the competition completely and utterly and permanently outclasses us, and we are forced to either dramatically up our committment in time or money to keep up... or come to terms with the fact that we can either remain irrelevant or become cogs in someone elses machine.
Yet if I want to race cars on the weekend, I can take the car of my choice and get into a competitive race with others in the same class of vehicle and skill, with a similiar level of commitment to the sport. I'm not put on the road with pro-drivers in F-1 cars and told that if I want to see anything remotely competitive then I'd better dedicate a lot more time and/or money to the pursuit.
That's just silly... yet that's the competition model in all MMOs to date.
A script can only automate trivial things, it cannot do the thinking for you.
Really? You've never played an RTS, you know, against the AI? Sure the AI's can generally be beaten once you've gotten the hang of the game unless the AI is given massive 'advantages'. But in an MMO the bot can play when your not online, even if its not as effective as a player its far more effective than not playing at all.
And the bot can back you up. You + a semi-competent bot >> You by yourself. Imagine an RTS where you and I are playing against each other "1 on 1" but there is actually a 3rd starting point with an AI run opponent that happens to be allied to you. That can't do anything but give you a huge edge.
I don't know much about Eve but since it's an MMO I expect it to have little twitch gaming.
If something as simple as going to a rock extracting ore and returning it to base can be automated, you can go to sleep and wake up millions richer. Surely that's going to have an effect to your overall success.
In such a situation automating tasks will only give you a small boost as the most important actions are those the computer cannot do for you.
Even just automating locking on target, firng weapons, setting optimum distance, and monitoring shield levels could be automated it make a difference.
If something as simple as following you around, and attacking your target and healing you when you are wounded can be automated you'll be more than a match for any other 'solo' player of similiar 'level' that you encounter. If that other player is two-boxing, you'll still have the edge, because your bot is handling itself semi-competently allowing you to focus 100% on your primary, while your opponent has to either neglect his 2nd box or divide his time. Both of which will cost.
And my bot fleet scales... I have have 3,4,5,6,... 15... 25 ships all following me around, concentrating on my target, and healing eachother. Sure I'm no match for 25 actual players, but I'll take a gang of 5 or 6 effortlessly maybe even 10-15 or more. What my bots fleet lacks for in skill they make up in raw dps...
And when it comes time to mine... well I would be very nearly on par with a corporation with 25 players, and potentially I can mine while I'm at work, sleeping, eating... a
and hey maybe I don't even need 25 accounts... maybe I just need to belong to a corp with 25 members and some trust... and now we're mining 24x7 whether we're on or not, when we're ready to play or mining fleet bot logs off and we log on. When we leave for work/school/sleep/food, we rejoin the bot mining fleet...