Even the chess "meta-game" is more of a game than an MMO is. There is a simple, agreed-upon metric for what counts as points and how they are earned. In MMOs, there is nothing of the sort.
XP = points. Gold = points. Equipment stats = points. Pretty much everything in a mmog is points based, and its pretty well defined. Sure you have multiple scores that reflect your progress along multiple progression paths but that's hardly novel or special. We have it in baseball simulations too -- batting average, pitching records, etc... no one score defines a baseball player.
The closest you can come to that is the level of the character. times their wealth times their equipment stats times their crafting level times the number of keys they have... clearly some max-level characters have a higher 'score' than others, level is just a piece of it.
In WoW, is it wrong to level your girlfriend's character?
What do the people you are playing with think? What is the 'social contract' on this? I'd say, most people don't much care, so its tolerated without issue even though its strictly speaking against the rules. That said, powerleveling 'businesses' are largely frowned upon...
The issue isn't so much that all rules need to be followed to the letter, its that we all have to agree to play by the same rules if we're playing together. Gold farming is divisive because its effects are fairly high profile, and the community is split on what to do. A big chunk of players want it (a subset of that even live off it). And a big chunk of players don't.
Clearly, as I've said countless times, the two groups should simply be allowed to play on separate servers, each to the ruleset of their preference. That's the natural and obvious solution when two groups want to play by different rules.
Some would argue that a good mechanic is more important than a good driver. And nearly everyone would agree that in pro-motorsports both are crucial parts of the team.
But that's beside the point. All that's relevant here is what is against the rules and what isn't. Hiring mechanics is ok by the rules, farming/selling gold isn't.
The rules of soccer forbid you from using your hands. How stupid is that! You use your hands in the real world! You can use your hands in volleyball! why can't you use your hands in soccer? Because its against the rules. That's it. The only reason. Its not complex or hard, and it doesn't need to be 'justified'.
If you want to play soccer and use your hands, fine go start a game informal soccer with your friends and do whatever you like. But you can't show up to a soccer game with strangers where the rules are understood to forbid using your hands, and then expect everyone to tolerate you running around with the ball in your hands arguing that you don't have the time/skill to learn to play by the rules and should be allowed to just do whatever you want. And that Volleyball players are allowed to use their hands so why is this any different?
Posting AC since I already moderated, but you're missing one fundamental difference between Chess and WoW -- namely that there is a winning state for the former, but not the latter.
See my post in this thread about the 'chess community' the larger 'tournament scene'. (As opposed to an individual game or tournament.) In the 'chess scene' it is forbidden to purchase your ranking.
In the real world it's perfectly acceptable to pay for goods/services which you don't have the skill, time, or desire to create/do yourself, and as long as MMORPGs follow the same neverending story formula, I see nothing wrong with paying someone else for the same reasons "in-game."
Its not the real world. You aren't allowed to purchase your chess ranking either, even if you don't have the skill, time, or desire to do it yourself. And indeed like mmogs, the higher ranking doesn't change the game of chess in any meaningful way, you simply get to player against better players.
Mmogs, as you pointed out don't really change as you advance. But for a lot of people how far they've advanced is a competitive measuring stick, and the RULES support that view, because your level, wealth, and equipment according to the rules are a measure of how much you've accomplished. In a sense they are the same as your chess rank.
Personally, and as I've said numerous times, the solution that needs to occur is that multiple servers are needed. One set to satisfy the players that just want to wander around and see everything. Perhaps there should just be a level up button and bottomless gold bucket, so that they can wander around and explore the game without resorting to paying asians to make it happen. And there should be servers that are held to the rules we have now, where only those that merit -within- the rules to advance do advance.
This lets the competitive crowd do their thing while keeping the people who just want to fart around in the world and see the endgame without actually playing to get there that option. There is nothing wrong with wanting to play like that -- its just a problem because your doing it in the same space as people who don't want that. So you need your own space. If you want to see what its like to be a level 900 warlock but don't want to actually put in the effort to get one, you can make one up on the no-limit server. As long as you can transfer to the rules enforced server you won't undermine the 'real' level 900 warlocks.
The only limit I'd maybe make on the no-limits server is that content has to be unlocked first on the 'real' one. This serves 2 purposes - one that the no-limits server can't discover content first, and two, the the 'real' players can't use the no-limit server to solve unsolved content.
MMOs aren't classical games: they are too open. The "separateness" of a game, the sense that they occur in a little bubble, as it were, depended on them having straightforward beginnings and endings, a simple mechanic, players in the same space, an agreed-upon win state, and so forth.
Even chess has an equivalent: there is a massively multiplayer worldwide ranking and tournament scene, there is no straightforward beginning and ending to the scene itself, there is no win-state for the chess scene. Although a few players will be top ranked at any given point the scene itself never ends. It goes on even when you stop playing. And there is competition in this scene, and players join, advance as far as they can or will. And like MMOGs, it is forbidden to pay someone to play on your behalf, to falsify results, to bribe someone to adjust your ranking, even to manipulate who you'll be paired against in a tournament, etc. So, yes, there is a 'magic circle' around the entire world-spanning never-ending tournament scene. I woulndn't call it a game... its a service, its a community.
Its nothing to do with the individual game of chess. It is an entity all its own. And it has rules on what is and is not allowed, and the people who break them are excluded. If the individual mob battles are the chess bouts, and your chess rank represents your level. Buying a chess rank if it were possible would allow you to have bouts with higher level, and even celebrity players instead of just low level trash. Surely that would be more fun... if you've got money but not time or skill and you want to play at the end game with Kasparov and friends why not just buy up a few dozen tournament wins?
No, I'm sorry, you may be right that a MMOG is a different animal than a game of chess. But the 'chess community' has all the things you claimed were exclusive to a MMOG, and the chess community has practical enforcable rules and limitations on what you can spend money on too. Hire a coach - ok. Pay the coach to play for you - not ok, etc etc.
Auto racing clearly delineates where money may NOT be spent. For example you cannot buy your qualifying time, starting position, finishing position, etc. If you wreck on lap four you are out of the race, even if you have a spare car.
You can hire better mechanics to work on the car, you can hire better drivers and pit crews. In some leagues you can purchase better parts, or even R&D your own, but there are some things you CAN'T spend money. You can't just sleep in on race day and maintain your standing by tossing some coin at someone.
Hell even Poker, which is a game played for and with real money has rules that can not be bent with currency. It is completely forbidden to try and manipulate the cards you are dealt -- you may not 'buy' 4 Aces ever.
If you took lessons on how to be a better game player, that's something different from paying someone else to actually play the game for you.
Because, at the most fundamental level, one is against the rules and one isn't.
When you agree to play a game, you essentially form a type of social contract about what the rules of that game are. If you violate that contract and start breaking the rules (aka 'cheating') it undermines the reason for playing the game itself. Its a terrible thing to do to your fellow players. Its thoughtless, rude, and literally ruins the game for many of them. Sure there are the people who don't care, who like the game enough to ignore it, or who play it like golf, where they are only concerned with their own progress measured against themselves... but for everyone who is competitive, or takes satisfaction in being recognized as a person who has done something of merit. -- for them the game is all but wrecked. What is the point of sportsmanlike competition in the face of cheating so blatant it has actually become someones job? How can one be recongized for acquiring a trophy when they are for sale on ebay to anyone with a couple bucks.
That's the key - your violating your implied agreement with the other players to play by the rules. If you were playing the game by yourself, whatever, go nuts. If you were playing the game with a few close friends who all agreed it was ok to hire gold farmers, again, whatever go nuts.
But in a mmog the other players don't agree with you and your horde of gold farmers and they're stuck. Their only recourse is to quit playing mmogs entirely because they have no ability to elect not to play with you, and no desire to play the game they way you are. And so they (rightfully) complain.
The best solution is to split the population up... there is nothing inherently wrong with gold farming, if you want to play a game that allows/incorporates it, that's fine, you should have a server where its perfectly legal. However, if you don't want to play a game that tolerates gold farming, there should be a server for you too, where its ACTIVELY policed, where players can have the security that their preferred ruleset is being actively allowed/enforced.
and so any such bad player behind a high level avatar will rapidly become apparent: a joke
Only if you let them lead. As long as they aren't complete and utter newbies and can follow directions they can participate in a raid or other content and pass for any other average player.
Sad thing is that goes for most players, even the ones who 'earned' their way. A halfwit can be perfectly competent in a decent group where someone else calls the shots and they just need to attack the designated target, or keep the tank alive, or nuke periodically or fulfill whatever their 'role' is.
Very few players are able to lead, develop situational tactics, or step outside their role. Being high level in MMOGs doesn't mean squat. Any hamster willing to run the treadmill can do it.
Being *good* MMOGs on the other hand is much harder. Unfortunately, except for the very end of the game, you can get away with just being mediocre if your equipment is good enough. Only at endgame, where you CAN'T buy better equipment does real skill become a necessity. And at endgame, its a raidgame, and individual skill is really only required of the leaders -- the average WoW player can get away with being... well.. unabashedly average.
Thing is, see, this isn't the world. Its a game. Games have always been distorted to an extent by financial interests, but games always *resist* this distortion. In theory the fastest man wins the 100 yard dash, not the richest, the best chess player wins the tournament, not the richest, etc.
Sure these players use their wealth to their advantage. They don't have to work other jobs, they can hire coaches, and personal trainers etc... but on the PLAYING FIELD, its just them. That is part of the appeal of games.
Nobody wants to play a game that simply rolls over to rich folks paying for *in-game* advantages. Its one thing to buy books about the game, hire someone to learn to be a better player, buy a faster computer, or to have enough money not to need to work so you can spend more time playing the game. Its something else to just buy advantages INSIDE the game.
In chess for example, no matter how much wealth you've expended in honing your ability to play the game itself you still can't drop a thousand bucks in someones pocket and add another queen to your side. Its simply against the rules. And that's all a game is -- a set of arbitrary rules. If you disregard the rules there is no point to playing the game.
If you want to disregard some of the rules, that's a different game. And its ok to play different games under any rules you want, but if you are playing the game with someone else, you can't just decide to which rules you want to ignore mid-stream whether they want to or not.
In other words, if you want to play games that let you buy your in game items, fine, find or start a game that allows it and play it. But don't play games that don't allow it and then break the rules.
Is there some reason this "unbreakable" DRM scheme can't simply be ported to HD DVD players if it's so wonderful?
All the HDDVD players already in the market won't support it. So if they added another layer of DRM to the discs *now*, all the early adopters would have an HDDVD player that couldn't play the new discs.
Jettas, like most any car, has some great years and some bad ones.
For example, take the Jetta when they started production in Mexico, those vehicles were just awful, but they have gotten better since. Meanwhile the ones made in Germany have been consistently good. Of course, even then there are years and models to avoid... but the point is... you CAN avoid them.
Its not playing roulette.
All this information is readily available to the consumer and its relatively easy to avoid buying the bad years or models, and indeed its possible to choose to buy vehicles that have a proven excellent track record. Your odds of getting a lemon are better when you buy a new car - sure with a new car you've got a warranty... but that just amounts to prepaying the repairs by paying the premium for a new car.
I'd rather buy a used car with an excellent track record, maintenance records, and an inspection for X and make an educated gamble on not having to spend X again in repairs vs buying a new car for 2X and not having to worry about repair costs.
You're in the trap of thinking that all debt is bad debt.
And your in the trap of false dichotomy.
Do I: a) Go out and buy a 10 year old car with money scraped out of my ashtray and pulled out of my couch b) Go out and buy a new (or nearly new) car on credit I would argue "b" -- if you want to keep that good job it's imperitive that you show up to work on time every day.
how about c) Buy a car like my Jetta which cost 5k and over the last two years has required a new muffler. I could probably still sell the car tomorrow for the same 5k it cost me.
the fact is that most people won't go to court, because they know they were breaking the law.
Around here, its a total scam. If you just pay the fine, that's the end of it. If you dispute it and go to court and lose not only do you take time off work, pay the fine, AND because you've self-identified they now convict a person instead of just assessing a penalty to the owner of the car, so they apply 'points' to your license, which affect your insurance rates etc. Better by far to just pay the fine.
If you weren't driving the car, better to just get the money from whoever was, and pay the fine on their behalf. If you actually indentify your friend / family member as the driver yes *they* have to pay, but they get nailed with the aforementioned 'points' because they've been positively identified -- by you. Great way to endear yourself to your friends and family, 'rat em out to the cops' for a legal infraction usually on par with jaywalking.
Secondly, these machines give photographic evidence. I'm not sure what you mean by "the tape," as it is usually a still photograph (either on film, or a digital image) and the machines are certified and accepted as evidence in court. Why would there be no evidence, when you have been given the ticket based on evidence? if that didn't exist, you wouldn't get the ticket in the first place.
Actually, this CAN be a successful avenue of attack. Just because the police assert something doesn't make it automatically true. You can challenge the evidence. Was the camera properly maintained? When was the last time it was calibrated? Is that in accordance with operations procedures? Was the person who calibrated it certified to calibrate it? (Maybe the certified officer was off that day, and his partner who'd done it with him a hundred times set it up... but wasn't actually certified to do it...) Was the instrument it was calibrated against itself certified. Was he certified to operateon this exact model? Was the person who trained the person who calibrated it certified himself... etc. etc. etc.
And if you can find a 'i' that wasn't dotted or a 't' that wasn't crossed along the way, it can actually invalidate the evidence. Especially if the judge doesn't care for the photo-enforcement revenue program. (And they often don't, but they can only judge a case, not the law itself... so if you give them a justification to throw the case out, they very well might.) Of course, this often isn't practical. You can't just show up in court and start demanding all of this... and the effort it would take to get all this paperwork is usually more than the fine is worth... but that's beside the point. The point is you often can challenge the evidence.
There are lots of places that address the basic science behind global warming, but if you're unwilling to try to understand that basic science, then it makes more sense to accept the wisdom of the majority than the wisdom of the minority under the theory that sometimes the minority is right. (Sometimes they are, but that's the exception and not the rule.)
Unforutunately the only time the minority is right, is when the majority is wrong. So in order for science to progress the minority view has to be allowed to flourish. Not every minority view is right, but the one thing we DO know about science is that our current model is WRONG. The only way to improve that model is to consider new/minority views.
How does a minority view gain the critical mass it needs to overturn the establishment if people propose just going with the establishment. Entrenching scientific consensus may not be threat to 'democracy' but it is a threat to scientific progress.
On the subject I don't KNOW that humans caused global warming, but the data correlation is VERY compelling with no real alternatives. It is reasonable to act on the assumption the global warming is our fault, even if it isn't. That said the whole 'maybe warmer is better' theory is actually a very interesting question, and one that SHOULD be looked at -- scientifically. For all the flack that NASA guy took for suggesting it he's absolutely right. What makes us think the climate we had is the best one? In fact, we have a significant body of evidence that the climate we have periodically puts my entire country under a mile of ice.
Now I'm not advocating closing our eyes and embracing the unknown, and just hoping that it all works out. I think we should try to keep the climate within historical norms, and reduce greenhouse emissions... for now. But having said that, I think its ignorant to suggest that the historical climate is automatically the best one, and we should be open to the idea and possibility of making the world even more hospitable than it already is.
Being forced to support cable channels my family will never watch is the same as being forced to eat one meal a day at that restaurant down the street that no one likes.
How so? If you never watch the channels you don't like, how it is the same as being forced to eat (and only eat) at the one restaurant you don't like.
I'd say its more like going to an all-inclusive Mexican resort hotel and only eating in 4 of 5 restaurants because you didn't care for the menu of one of them.
Not that people can't remember it, but seeing as most people can't remember an arbitrary string of digits more than 6 or 7 long its a hell of a lot better than 4.
How is it different then paying someone to mow my lawn?
Probably for much the same reason you can't Kasparov to sit in for you halfway through a tournament chess game if you'd rather go to a movie, but don't want to 'fall behind', and hey, Kasparov might even level you up a bit.
The difference is that its a game. The game has rules. The rules are arbitrary. Whether they 'level the playing field' or 'give someone an advantage' or 'keep inflation in check' are really immaterial to the big picture.
They are the rules.
If you don't like the rules, don't play the game. Breaking the rules in a single player game or if all the other players consent is fine because everyone has agreed to it. And the rules have effectively been changed. Breaking the rules when the other players do not agree is simply cheating, and players tend not to enjoy playing people who cheet. They actively seek to avoid playing with them.
MMOGs are an interesting phenomena - they're a massively multiplayer environment where significant rules don't get enforced, leading to widespread irritation by a large number of the players, who have no effective power or ability to remove themselves from the company or influence of the people cheating.
The only 'solution' is to design games with rulesets that can be enforced better by the game servers. The open virtual economy in most mmogs have been very poorly designed with respect to allowing the rules of the game to be enforced.
Real-money-transfer is a problem because there aren't proper controls on in-game-money-transfer; its just that simple.
Suppose I leave some of my CDs on a table in one of the university common rooms; maybe I wanted to make them available for my fellow students to use in the common room, maybe I left them for a friend to pickup. What if there happens to be a PC in that room with a CD burner available for student use? Is that now 'distribution' too?
Anyone can come along and make a copy. What's the difference, exactly?
Free markets can work things out for themselves. If something is truly bad, society naturally curbs it's distribution through outrage over the transaction.
So your litmus test on whether something is 'good' or 'bad' is the level of outrage? That's open to abuse.
All you have to do is do the transactions in secret and they aren't truly bad anymore?
Or perhaps, a megacorporation, through marketing, indoctrination, lobbying, and other efforts directly affect the populations moral compass, and ultimately accept whatever the corporation wishes to do as 'normal and acceptable'.
Or better still do both.
I wonder if that could work? I wonder...Could you get people to injest toxic chemicals, sawdust, and clay instead of food? Could you get them to wear shoes made by impoverished starving children? Or wear jewelry mined by slaves threatened daily with mutilation and execution? Could you make them deal with companies and governments that execute their citizens for speaking the truth? Could you get them to help those governments keep those people in line, and help catch them if they step out?
Surely not. Surely the outrage from such transactions would prevent them from occuring if they were truly bad!
Oh wait. I guess you can get people to do those things.
Apparently its pretty easy too. You just have to keep most people a safe distance away from the atrocities and lie to them. Between the two the appropriate level of 'outrage' required to stop the transactions can generally be contained.
How will I make any money now with a broken equation?
Oh wait, its not broken, it just computers sum(1..n-1)
So not only is it still useful, but I can tell my customers that if they want to use the sum(1..n) they just need to plug in n+1 into my patented solution, whew, that's an easy fix!
Of course, seeing as that substitution yeilds 'your' patented solution:
Clearly, just adding 'n' to my patent algorithm is not innovative enough to warrant your own patent, especially since adding n to a algorithm that adds 1..n-1 is an obvious enhancement to extend the cycle further. After all, what's next some bright guys going to come along and patent my algorithm + 2n+1 [or +(n)+(n+1)] to have it compute 2 extra terms?! And patent that? I think not!! These derivative algorithms all clearly an infringe on mine. See you in court, sucker!!
The motivation to further science 'commercially' has historically been the ability to patent inventions that are derived from that science. We didn't allow intellectual protection of the science itself. That was not an accident.
Protecting a particular applied use of the science vs protecting the science itself.
The reason we don't wish to protect basic science is that it does not serve society to have it protected. Its not intrinsically different in terms of how hard it is, or phsyics vs math, or real vs mental, or anything so abstruse.
Its different because the science needs to open for further advances to the science.
The RSA algorithm, if it were only applied to the particular implementation should be protectable (and it is, see copyright). But the math that goes into the RSA shouldn't be. Not because its not 'hard', but because its basic science.
IMO neither is deserving of a patent. The hardware implementation is hardly innovative.
Or, to phrase it another way, why is the world free to copy one but not the other?
Its better to work with examples that make sense, like the difference between a working hard disc, and someones obersvation that hey you could use magnets to change state of something. Its not that the latter wasn't innovative thinking when it was thought up, but its not a patentable *invention*. There are countless different ways an idea might be 'implemented' in an invention. But if you simply patent the abstract idea for the process itself, then it covers every possible implementation.
And when the 'idea' itself is simply a mathematical equation, patenting leads to near absurdities. RSA encryption is really simple to implement; anyone who is given the algorithm, or even just the underlying mathematics and rough explanation of technique can do it. I'm not saying RSA wasn't an innovative idea, merely that it didn't lead to or require any innovative inventions to make real.
The RSA idea itself was the hard part. Unfortunately, the RSA idea is really no different than the Pythagorean theorem, or the forumula for computing the volume of an oval cylinder, its pure math. Do we really want to live in a world where the first person to solve an equation 'owns' the solution. And once solved, no one else may find the area of a triangle or compute the volume of a cylinder without licensing fees, even if the problem is easy enough for a high schooler to solve and merely no one had been asked to solve it?
Should the equation: sum(1..n) = (n^2-n)/2 be something someone can own, just because it requires some creativity to prove it?
As ideas not inventions become patentable innovation and creativity are stopped in their tracks because truly innovative inventions are limited in scope -- so you can identify them, license them, or take a different approach when you prefer to step around them. But abstract ideas? rough processes or techniques?... its impossible not to borrow from them, reuse them, derive from them, even completely innocently.
Don't get -too- excited here. You may recall IE5 was released for the Mac. It was its own completely warped version of IE that had to be tested and hacked around separately from all versions of IE for Windows.
Granted the Safari port is likely using a very similiar codebase as the Mac version so that this won't be the same nightmare IE Mac was, however, basic differences between platforms in terms of font handling, font availability, window handling in general, and any other relevant 'subsystems' that ultimately depend on the OS might behave differently.
Testing for Safari under windows will be worth doing, and it will likely help head off issues on Safari Mac, but you haven't done the job right and can't be certain it will work on a Mac until you test on a Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
Even the chess "meta-game" is more of a game than an MMO is. There is a simple, agreed-upon metric for what counts as points and how they are earned. In MMOs, there is nothing of the sort.
... clearly some max-level characters have a higher 'score' than others, level is just a piece of it.
XP = points. Gold = points. Equipment stats = points. Pretty much everything in a mmog is points based, and its pretty well defined. Sure you have multiple scores that reflect your progress along multiple progression paths but that's hardly novel or special. We have it in baseball simulations too -- batting average, pitching records, etc... no one score defines a baseball player.
The closest you can come to that is the level of the character. times their wealth times their equipment stats times their crafting level times the number of keys they have
In WoW, is it wrong to level your girlfriend's character?
What do the people you are playing with think? What is the 'social contract' on this? I'd say, most people don't much care, so its tolerated without issue even though its strictly speaking against the rules. That said, powerleveling 'businesses' are largely frowned upon...
The issue isn't so much that all rules need to be followed to the letter, its that we all have to agree to play by the same rules if we're playing together. Gold farming is divisive because its effects are fairly high profile, and the community is split on what to do. A big chunk of players want it (a subset of that even live off it). And a big chunk of players don't.
Clearly, as I've said countless times, the two groups should simply be allowed to play on separate servers, each to the ruleset of their preference. That's the natural and obvious solution when two groups want to play by different rules.
Doesn't Mail.app use mbox storage too. I'm pretty sure it does.
Some would argue that a good mechanic is more important than a good driver. And nearly everyone would agree that in pro-motorsports both are crucial parts of the team.
But that's beside the point. All that's relevant here is what is against the rules and what isn't. Hiring mechanics is ok by the rules, farming/selling gold isn't.
The rules of soccer forbid you from using your hands. How stupid is that! You use your hands in the real world! You can use your hands in volleyball! why can't you use your hands in soccer? Because its against the rules. That's it. The only reason. Its not complex or hard, and it doesn't need to be 'justified'.
If you want to play soccer and use your hands, fine go start a game informal soccer with your friends and do whatever you like. But you can't show up to a soccer game with strangers where the rules are understood to forbid using your hands, and then expect everyone to tolerate you running around with the ball in your hands arguing that you don't have the time/skill to learn to play by the rules and should be allowed to just do whatever you want. And that Volleyball players are allowed to use their hands so why is this any different?
Posting AC since I already moderated, but you're missing one fundamental difference between Chess and WoW -- namely that there is a winning state for the former, but not the latter.
See my post in this thread about the 'chess community' the larger 'tournament scene'. (As opposed to an individual game or tournament.) In the 'chess scene' it is forbidden to purchase your ranking.
In the real world it's perfectly acceptable to pay for goods/services which you don't have the skill, time, or desire to create/do yourself, and as long as MMORPGs follow the same neverending story formula, I see nothing wrong with paying someone else for the same reasons "in-game."
Its not the real world. You aren't allowed to purchase your chess ranking either, even if you don't have the skill, time, or desire to do it yourself. And indeed like mmogs, the higher ranking doesn't change the game of chess in any meaningful way, you simply get to player against better players.
Mmogs, as you pointed out don't really change as you advance. But for a lot of people how far they've advanced is a competitive measuring stick, and the RULES support that view, because your level, wealth, and equipment according to the rules are a measure of how much you've accomplished. In a sense they are the same as your chess rank.
Personally, and as I've said numerous times, the solution that needs to occur is that multiple servers are needed. One set to satisfy the players that just want to wander around and see everything. Perhaps there should just be a level up button and bottomless gold bucket, so that they can wander around and explore the game without resorting to paying asians to make it happen. And there should be servers that are held to the rules we have now, where only those that merit -within- the rules to advance do advance.
This lets the competitive crowd do their thing while keeping the people who just want to fart around in the world and see the endgame without actually playing to get there that option. There is nothing wrong with wanting to play like that -- its just a problem because your doing it in the same space as people who don't want that. So you need your own space. If you want to see what its like to be a level 900 warlock but don't want to actually put in the effort to get one, you can make one up on the no-limit server. As long as you can transfer to the rules enforced server you won't undermine the 'real' level 900 warlocks.
The only limit I'd maybe make on the no-limits server is that content has to be unlocked first on the 'real' one. This serves 2 purposes - one that the no-limits server can't discover content first, and two, the the 'real' players can't use the no-limit server to solve unsolved content.
MMOs aren't classical games: they are too open. The "separateness" of a game, the sense that they occur in a little bubble, as it were, depended on them having straightforward beginnings and endings, a simple mechanic, players in the same space, an agreed-upon win state, and so forth.
... if you've got money but not time or skill and you want to play at the end game with Kasparov and friends why not just buy up a few dozen tournament wins?
Even chess has an equivalent: there is a massively multiplayer worldwide ranking and tournament scene, there is no straightforward beginning and ending to the scene itself, there is no win-state for the chess scene. Although a few players will be top ranked at any given point the scene itself never ends. It goes on even when you stop playing. And there is competition in this scene, and players join, advance as far as they can or will. And like MMOGs, it is forbidden to pay someone to play on your behalf, to falsify results, to bribe someone to adjust your ranking, even to manipulate who you'll be paired against in a tournament, etc. So, yes, there is a 'magic circle' around the entire world-spanning never-ending tournament scene. I woulndn't call it a game... its a service, its a community.
Its nothing to do with the individual game of chess. It is an entity all its own.
And it has rules on what is and is not allowed, and the people who break them are excluded. If the individual mob battles are the chess bouts, and your chess rank represents your level. Buying a chess rank if it were possible would allow you to have bouts with higher level, and even celebrity players instead of just low level trash. Surely that would be more fun
No, I'm sorry, you may be right that a MMOG is a different animal than a game of chess. But the 'chess community' has all the things you claimed were exclusive to a MMOG, and the chess community has practical enforcable rules and limitations on what you can spend money on too. Hire a coach - ok. Pay the coach to play for you - not ok, etc etc.
Auto racing clearly delineates where money may NOT be spent. For example you cannot buy your qualifying time, starting position, finishing position, etc. If you wreck on lap four you are out of the race, even if you have a spare car.
You can hire better mechanics to work on the car, you can hire better drivers and pit crews. In some leagues you can purchase better parts, or even R&D your own, but there are some things you CAN'T spend money. You can't just sleep in on race day and maintain your standing by tossing some coin at someone.
Hell even Poker, which is a game played for and with real money has rules that can not be bent with currency. It is completely forbidden to try and manipulate the cards you are dealt -- you may not 'buy' 4 Aces ever.
If you took lessons on how to be a better game player, that's something different from paying someone else to actually play the game for you.
Because, at the most fundamental level, one is against the rules and one isn't.
When you agree to play a game, you essentially form a type of social contract about what the rules of that game are. If you violate that contract and start breaking the rules (aka 'cheating') it undermines the reason for playing the game itself. Its a terrible thing to do to your fellow players. Its thoughtless, rude, and literally ruins the game for many of them. Sure there are the people who don't care, who like the game enough to ignore it, or who play it like golf, where they are only concerned with their own progress measured against themselves... but for everyone who is competitive, or takes satisfaction in being recognized as a person who has done something of merit. -- for them the game is all but wrecked. What is the point of sportsmanlike competition in the face of cheating so blatant it has actually become someones job? How can one be recongized for acquiring a trophy when they are for sale on ebay to anyone with a couple bucks.
That's the key - your violating your implied agreement with the other players to play by the rules. If you were playing the game by yourself, whatever, go nuts. If you were playing the game with a few close friends who all agreed it was ok to hire gold farmers, again, whatever go nuts.
But in a mmog the other players don't agree with you and your horde of gold farmers and they're stuck. Their only recourse is to quit playing mmogs entirely because they have no ability to elect not to play with you, and no desire to play the game they way you are. And so they (rightfully) complain.
The best solution is to split the population up... there is nothing inherently wrong with gold farming, if you want to play a game that allows/incorporates it, that's fine, you should have a server where its perfectly legal. However, if you don't want to play a game that tolerates gold farming, there should be a server for you too, where its ACTIVELY policed, where players can have the security that their preferred ruleset is being actively allowed/enforced.
and so any such bad player behind a high level avatar will rapidly become apparent: a joke
Only if you let them lead. As long as they aren't complete and utter newbies and can follow directions they can participate in a raid or other content and pass for any other average player.
Sad thing is that goes for most players, even the ones who 'earned' their way. A halfwit can be perfectly competent in a decent group where someone else calls the shots and they just need to attack the designated target, or keep the tank alive, or nuke periodically or fulfill whatever their 'role' is.
Very few players are able to lead, develop situational tactics, or step outside their role. Being high level in MMOGs doesn't mean squat. Any hamster willing to run the treadmill can do it.
Being *good* MMOGs on the other hand is much harder. Unfortunately, except for the very end of the game, you can get away with just being mediocre if your equipment is good enough. Only at endgame, where you CAN'T buy better equipment does real skill become a necessity. And at endgame, its a raidgame, and individual skill is really only required of the leaders -- the average WoW player can get away with being... well.. unabashedly average.
It's the way of the world and always has been.
Thing is, see, this isn't the world. Its a game. Games have always been distorted to an extent by financial interests, but games always *resist* this distortion. In theory the fastest man wins the 100 yard dash, not the richest, the best chess player wins the tournament, not the richest, etc.
Sure these players use their wealth to their advantage. They don't have to work other jobs, they can hire coaches, and personal trainers etc... but on the PLAYING FIELD, its just them. That is part of the appeal of games.
Nobody wants to play a game that simply rolls over to rich folks paying for *in-game* advantages. Its one thing to buy books about the game, hire someone to learn to be a better player, buy a faster computer, or to have enough money not to need to work so you can spend more time playing the game. Its something else to just buy advantages INSIDE the game.
In chess for example, no matter how much wealth you've expended in honing your ability to play the game itself you still can't drop a thousand bucks in someones pocket and add another queen to your side. Its simply against the rules. And that's all a game is -- a set of arbitrary rules. If you disregard the rules there is no point to playing the game.
If you want to disregard some of the rules, that's a different game. And its ok to play different games under any rules you want, but if you are playing the game with someone else, you can't just decide to which rules you want to ignore mid-stream whether they want to or not.
In other words, if you want to play games that let you buy your in game items, fine, find or start a game that allows it and play it. But don't play games that don't allow it and then break the rules.
Is there some reason this "unbreakable" DRM scheme can't simply be ported to HD DVD players if it's so wonderful?
All the HDDVD players already in the market won't support it. So if they added another layer of DRM to the discs *now*, all the early adopters would have an HDDVD player that couldn't play the new discs.
Luck had little to do with it.
Jettas, like most any car, has some great years and some bad ones.
For example, take the Jetta when they started production in Mexico, those vehicles were just awful, but they have gotten better since. Meanwhile the ones made in Germany have been consistently good. Of course, even then there are years and models to avoid... but the point is... you CAN avoid them.
Its not playing roulette.
All this information is readily available to the consumer and its relatively easy to avoid buying the bad years or models, and indeed its possible to choose to buy vehicles that have a proven excellent track record. Your odds of getting a lemon are better when you buy a new car - sure with a new car you've got a warranty... but that just amounts to prepaying the repairs by paying the premium for a new car.
I'd rather buy a used car with an excellent track record, maintenance records, and an inspection for X and make an educated gamble on not having to spend X again in repairs vs buying a new car for 2X and not having to worry about repair costs.
You're in the trap of thinking that all debt is bad debt.
And your in the trap of false dichotomy.
Do I: a) Go out and buy a 10 year old car with money scraped out of my ashtray and pulled out of my couch b) Go out and buy a new (or nearly new) car on credit I would argue "b" -- if you want to keep that good job it's imperitive that you show up to work on time every day.
how about c) Buy a car like my Jetta which cost 5k and over the last two years has required a new muffler. I could probably still sell the car tomorrow for the same 5k it cost me.
the fact is that most people won't go to court, because they know they were breaking the law.
... but wasn't actually certified to do it...) Was the instrument it was calibrated against itself certified. Was he certified to operateon this exact model? Was the person who trained the person who calibrated it certified himself... etc. etc. etc.
Around here, its a total scam. If you just pay the fine, that's the end of it. If you dispute it and go to court and lose not only do you take time off work, pay the fine, AND because you've self-identified they now convict a person instead of just assessing a penalty to the owner of the car, so they apply 'points' to your license, which affect your insurance rates etc. Better by far to just pay the fine.
If you weren't driving the car, better to just get the money from whoever was, and pay the fine on their behalf. If you actually indentify your friend / family member as the driver yes *they* have to pay, but they get nailed with the aforementioned 'points' because they've been positively identified -- by you. Great way to endear yourself to your friends and family, 'rat em out to the cops' for a legal infraction usually on par with jaywalking.
Secondly, these machines give photographic evidence. I'm not sure what you mean by "the tape," as it is usually a still photograph (either on film, or a digital image) and the machines are certified and accepted as evidence in court. Why would there be no evidence, when you have been given the ticket based on evidence? if that didn't exist, you wouldn't get the ticket in the first place.
Actually, this CAN be a successful avenue of attack. Just because the police assert something doesn't make it automatically true. You can challenge the evidence. Was the camera properly maintained? When was the last time it was calibrated? Is that in accordance with operations procedures? Was the person who calibrated it certified to calibrate it? (Maybe the certified officer was off that day, and his partner who'd done it with him a hundred times set it up
And if you can find a 'i' that wasn't dotted or a 't' that wasn't crossed along the way, it can actually invalidate the evidence. Especially if the judge doesn't care for the photo-enforcement revenue program. (And they often don't, but they can only judge a case, not the law itself... so if you give them a justification to throw the case out, they very well might.) Of course, this often isn't practical. You can't just show up in court and start demanding all of this... and the effort it would take to get all this paperwork is usually more than the fine is worth... but that's beside the point. The point is you often can challenge the evidence.
more like being forced to pay for a meal you don't want and won't eat, while still paying for the meal you do want.
Its more like the example I gave.
I've seen a la carte pricing models and they never seem to work out your way.
If you want to pay for 4 channels but not the 5th, you end up paying 2.50$ per channel a la carte. If you get the bundle its $9 for all 5.
There are lots of places that address the basic science behind global warming, but if you're unwilling to try to understand that basic science, then it makes more sense to accept the wisdom of the majority than the wisdom of the minority under the theory that sometimes the minority is right. (Sometimes they are, but that's the exception and not the rule.)
Unforutunately the only time the minority is right, is when the majority is wrong. So in order for science to progress the minority view has to be allowed to flourish. Not every minority view is right, but the one thing we DO know about science is that our current model is WRONG. The only way to improve that model is to consider new/minority views.
How does a minority view gain the critical mass it needs to overturn the establishment if people propose just going with the establishment. Entrenching scientific consensus may not be threat to 'democracy' but it is a threat to scientific progress.
On the subject I don't KNOW that humans caused global warming, but the data correlation is VERY compelling with no real alternatives. It is reasonable to act on the assumption the global warming is our fault, even if it isn't. That said the whole 'maybe warmer is better' theory is actually a very interesting question, and one that SHOULD be looked at -- scientifically. For all the flack that NASA guy took for suggesting it he's absolutely right. What makes us think the climate we had is the best one? In fact, we have a significant body of evidence that the climate we have periodically puts my entire country under a mile of ice.
Now I'm not advocating closing our eyes and embracing the unknown, and just hoping that it all works out. I think we should try to keep the climate within historical norms, and reduce greenhouse emissions... for now. But having said that, I think its ignorant to suggest that the historical climate is automatically the best one, and we should be open to the idea and possibility of making the world even more hospitable than it already is.
Being forced to support cable channels my family will never watch is the same as being forced to eat one meal a day at that restaurant down the street that no one likes.
How so? If you never watch the channels you don't like, how it is the same as being forced to eat (and only eat) at the one restaurant you don't like.
I'd say its more like going to an all-inclusive Mexican resort hotel and only eating in 4 of 5 restaurants because you didn't care for the menu of one of them.
You have to type an 11-digit number in every time you use your card?
;)
One whole digit longer than a phone number.
Really, how long do you think this takes?
Or do you freak out every time you use a phone too?
4 digits? Mine is 11.
Not that people can't remember it, but seeing as most people can't remember an arbitrary string of digits more than 6 or 7 long its a hell of a lot better than 4.
How is it different then paying someone to mow my lawn?
Probably for much the same reason you can't Kasparov to sit in for you halfway through a tournament chess game if you'd rather go to a movie, but don't want to 'fall behind', and hey, Kasparov might even level you up a bit.
The difference is that its a game. The game has rules. The rules are arbitrary. Whether they 'level the playing field' or 'give someone an advantage' or 'keep inflation in check' are really immaterial to the big picture.
They are the rules.
If you don't like the rules, don't play the game. Breaking the rules in a single player game or if all the other players consent is fine because everyone has agreed to it. And the rules have effectively been changed. Breaking the rules when the other players do not agree is simply cheating, and players tend not to enjoy playing people who cheet. They actively seek to avoid playing with them.
MMOGs are an interesting phenomena - they're a massively multiplayer environment where significant rules don't get enforced, leading to widespread irritation by a large number of the players, who have no effective power or ability to remove themselves from the company or influence of the people cheating.
The only 'solution' is to design games with rulesets that can be enforced better by the game servers. The open virtual economy in most mmogs have been very poorly designed with respect to allowing the rules of the game to be enforced.
Real-money-transfer is a problem because there aren't proper controls on in-game-money-transfer; its just that simple.
Suppose I leave some of my CDs on a table in one of the university common rooms; maybe I wanted to make them available for my fellow students to use in the common room, maybe I left them for a friend to pickup. What if there happens to be a PC in that room with a CD burner available for student use? Is that now 'distribution' too?
Anyone can come along and make a copy. What's the difference, exactly?
Free markets can work things out for themselves. If something is truly bad, society naturally curbs it's distribution through outrage over the transaction.
So your litmus test on whether something is 'good' or 'bad' is the level of outrage? That's open to abuse.
All you have to do is do the transactions in secret and they aren't truly bad anymore?
Or perhaps, a megacorporation, through marketing, indoctrination, lobbying, and other efforts directly affect the populations moral compass, and ultimately accept whatever the corporation wishes to do as 'normal and acceptable'.
Or better still do both.
I wonder if that could work? I wonder...Could you get people to injest toxic chemicals, sawdust, and clay instead of food? Could you get them to wear shoes made by impoverished starving children? Or wear jewelry mined by slaves threatened daily with mutilation and execution? Could you make them deal with companies and governments that execute their citizens for speaking the truth? Could you get them to help those governments keep those people in line, and help catch them if they step out?
Surely not. Surely the outrage from such transactions would prevent them from occuring if they were truly bad!
Oh wait. I guess you can get people to do those things.
Apparently its pretty easy too. You just have to keep most people a safe distance away from the atrocities and lie to them. Between the two the appropriate level of 'outrage' required to stop the transactions can generally be contained.
Oooooo crap!
How will I make any money now with a broken equation?
Oh wait, its not broken, it just computers sum(1..n-1)
So not only is it still useful, but I can tell my customers that if they want to use the sum(1..n) they just need to plug in n+1 into my patented solution, whew, that's an easy fix!
Of course, seeing as that substitution yeilds 'your' patented solution:
((n+1)^2-(n+1))/2 = ((n^2+2n+1)-(n+1))/2 = (n^2+2n+1-n-1)/2 = (n^2+n)/2
Or, alternatively they could just compute sum(1..n) and add n. Clearly sum(1..n-1)+n = sum(1..n)
And can be shown:
(n^2-n)/2 + n = (n^2-n)/2 + 2n/2 = (n^2-n+2n)/2 = (n^2+n)/2
Clearly, just adding 'n' to my patent algorithm is not innovative enough to warrant your own patent, especially since adding n to a algorithm that adds 1..n-1 is an obvious enhancement to extend the cycle further. After all, what's next some bright guys going to come along and patent my algorithm + 2n+1 [or +(n)+(n+1)] to have it compute 2 extra terms?! And patent that? I think not!! These derivative algorithms all clearly an infringe on mine. See you in court, sucker!!
The motivation to further science 'commercially' has historically been the ability to patent inventions that are derived from that science. We didn't allow intellectual protection of the science itself. That was not an accident.
Protecting a particular applied use of the science vs protecting the science itself.
The reason we don't wish to protect basic science is that it does not serve society to have it protected. Its not intrinsically different in terms of how hard it is, or phsyics vs math, or real vs mental, or anything so abstruse.
Its different because the science needs to open for further advances to the science.
The RSA algorithm, if it were only applied to the particular implementation should be protectable (and it is, see copyright). But the math that goes into the RSA shouldn't be. Not because its not 'hard', but because its basic science.
Why is only one deserving of a patent?
IMO neither is deserving of a patent. The hardware implementation is hardly innovative.
Or, to phrase it another way, why is the world free to copy one but not the other?
Its better to work with examples that make sense, like the difference between a working hard disc, and someones obersvation that hey you could use magnets to change state of something. Its not that the latter wasn't innovative thinking when it was thought up, but its not a patentable *invention*. There are countless different ways an idea might be 'implemented' in an invention. But if you simply patent the abstract idea for the process itself, then it covers every possible implementation.
And when the 'idea' itself is simply a mathematical equation, patenting leads to near absurdities. RSA encryption is really simple to implement; anyone who is given the algorithm, or even just the underlying mathematics and rough explanation of technique can do it. I'm not saying RSA wasn't an innovative idea, merely that it didn't lead to or require any innovative inventions to make real.
The RSA idea itself was the hard part. Unfortunately, the RSA idea is really no different than the Pythagorean theorem, or the forumula for computing the volume of an oval cylinder, its pure math. Do we really want to live in a world where the first person to solve an equation 'owns' the solution. And once solved, no one else may find the area of a triangle or compute the volume of a cylinder without licensing fees, even if the problem is easy enough for a high schooler to solve and merely no one had been asked to solve it?
Should the equation: sum(1..n) = (n^2-n)/2 be something someone can own, just because it requires some creativity to prove it?
As ideas not inventions become patentable innovation and creativity are stopped in their tracks because truly innovative inventions are limited in scope -- so you can identify them, license them, or take a different approach when you prefer to step around them. But abstract ideas? rough processes or techniques?... its impossible not to borrow from them, reuse them, derive from them, even completely innocently.
Don't get -too- excited here. You may recall IE5 was released for the Mac. It was its own completely warped version of IE that had to be tested and hacked around separately from all versions of IE for Windows.
Granted the Safari port is likely using a very similiar codebase as the Mac version so that this won't be the same nightmare IE Mac was, however, basic differences between platforms in terms of font handling, font availability, window handling in general, and any other relevant 'subsystems' that ultimately depend on the OS might behave differently.
Testing for Safari under windows will be worth doing, and it will likely help head off issues on Safari Mac, but you haven't done the job right and can't be certain it will work on a Mac until you test on a Mac.