The reason for this, at least around here, is the disproportionate rise in property value.
At one point, the 'mega home' was dramatically more expensive than a more modest building. In a world where the plot of land is worth 10k, a 100k building costs nearly half as much as a 200k building that's twice the size.
Today, those plots of land aren't 10k, they're 400k. After you put a 100k building on it its 500k. Or for 600k you can get build a house twice the size. As a result it just doesn't make sense to build a small house on such expensive property.
even being "subject to change without notice" cant cover an arse. they are still advertising those as they did earlier, so any client who got blown out due to bandwidth usage now can sue them now, since they are probably advertising the same package as of now with the same stats.
Terms like "Subject to change without notic", on a product you subscribe to from month to month without a contract merely means they aren't guaranteeing you anything in terms of service next month, and in return you aren't guaranteeing to be their customer next month. As long as they provided you the service they described LAST month, you've got no recourse.
As for the 2nd part, where you claim they are probably advertising the same package as of now... I'm not sure. In all the ads I've seen 'unlimited' its had an asterisk and a fine print explanation, that ulimited only means unlimited time (ie always on) and that exceptionally high bandwidth users will be asked to throttle back, or upgrade to a commercial package, and that anyone 'abusing the connection' will be disconnected.
In most cases, this is 'terms of use' stuff, not a 'contract', you aren't really 'contracting' with them to provide a particular service level. This means they can cut you off the service at their discretion. Just as you can cancel your service without notice.
The day they decide to raise their prices or charge you for using more than X MB, you can decide whether or not to continue subscribing to their service under whatever terms they like.
If you had signed something, then maybe, just maybe, you'd have some leverage on them.
Re:Same with the ipods back when they hit 1 mil.
on
A Million Zunes Sold
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· Score: 1
Pros of sansa players:
Yes they are cool little devices.
No bloated software suites (i am just assuming the zune has one because its m$. Itunes is for DAMN sure..)
I don't know about Zune either, but its probably tied heavily to Windows Media Player. As for iTunes, I disable the store links, and most of the other cruft. Yes its 'big' for an mp3 player, but for *library management* it blows away the competition. The only thing it really needs is better multi-computer support, and better multi-user support.
But the reality is that one of the killer features of ipods is iTunes. It would never have been as successful as it is without itunes. Itunes takes the drudgery and micromanagement crap out managing your music libary.
iTunes playlists, particularly 'smart playlists' based on usage, ratings, skip count, and other meta data is head and shoulders above the manually cobbled together playlists I used to abhor. I spent countless hours managing playlists, removing songs I didn't like, adding songs I did, forgetting about songs for months on end...and hating every minute of the time wasted on it.
These days I don't have to manage playlists, my smart playlists effectively learn what I like and don't like. I still have static playlists too, for when I want to listen to the Final Cut or Darkside of the Moon but mostly I just listen to my smart playlists. And they cycle tracks in and out based on when I last heard them, how often I skip them, how high i rate them. (and I can adjust ratings on the fly right on the ipod.) It may be 'bloatware suite' to you, but its what makes the ipod worth having to me.
accepts winamp playlists
I don't miss them. iTunes successor is much better. See above.
drag and drop songs to and from device just like a normal HDD (after turning off playesforsure)
It may be an advantage to someone who does want this, and yeah, you'd just end up fighting with itunes and hating it if you tried to micromanage it like this.
I wouldn't WANT to go back to using players where I have to manually drag and drop songs, and folders of songs back and forth. I agree that the fact that iPods don't support this is annoying, and I'd love to be able to do both. But if I can only have one, I'll take iTunes every time.
Less battery usage because its flash
Nanos and shuffles are flash too up to 8GB. Granted the nanos don't do video, but then the sansa's don't hold 30-80GBs like the 'video ipods' either. It depends what you want.
DRM enable/disable via hardware switch on player
Why would I want a switch to enable/disable DRM on the player?
Smaller, lighter weight
Again it depends what you want. The shuffles take the crown for small and lightweight. The 8G Sansa is an excellent video player vs the 30GB ipod if you just want light/small video. But the 30GB ipod isn't exactly heavy. Competition is good and I'm looking forward to seeing the 6th gen ipods.
USB STANDARD connection, none of this apple proprietary BS
I'm not sure what the deal is with the dock connector; but I honestly don't think apple foisted that one on us just to be annoying. Perhaps its the result of supporting USB and Firewire (back when they did) and now they are 'stuck with it' despite standardizing on USB2 now. I just don't know.
But its not like the Sansa doesn't require a special cable with some funky mini-usb on it, that's not quite the same as the cable your mini-usb camera uses... or does it? I know some sansa's have a full size male USB plug -- but I didn't think all of them did. And if you need a funky mini-usb cable, a funky dock-usb cable is hardly something to get excited about.
Bottom line, anyone who doesn't want to micromanage their library and playlists will probably be happier with an ipod, despite the sansa 'advantages'. iTunes is half the reason iPod took off like it did.
And now at this point, ipod has other soft 'advantages' that Sansa can't touch:
Yes, but -- redesigning the game to fix the flaws is impossible at this point
Yes, I grok that. I'm not suggesting that your game be 'fixed', but merely that developers working on the 'next game' pay better heed to the issues. A *lot* of current game economies are essentially built on the 'honor system' in terms of expecting players to follow the rules.
Its ironic really. All the 'dice rolls' made in tradeskill systems for example are done within the system, largely because computers are good at it, and its part of what makes the game. But if a customer were to suggest, "I'd prefer to make my own dice rolls and input them", the devs would laugh them out of the building. Not because such a thing couldn't be done trivial, but because everyone knows that letting players generate tradeskill results on the 'honor system' is going to be rampantly abused. Why would anyone think the economy be any different?
Obviously, if you don't want 'real world' economics to have a large impact on your game, relying on the 'honor system' is a colossally bad idea.
Because the games don't accurately model the real world. And they shouldn't. They're games.
Exactly. So we shouldn't feel compelled not to impose arbitrary systems that aren't 'realistic'. Games are supposed to be fun. When the real world economy hits the game one, it ceases to be fun for a lot of people.
Real-world financial systems analogies only go so far in game systems ilke this.
The point isn't necessarily to model the game economy exactly like the real world one, but rather to devise a facsimile that is both protected from the real world one, and at the same time is compelling and fun in its own right.
The holy grail of game economy design -- but it's fundamentally impossible if the economy is complex enough to be interesting.
I disagree that its fundamentally impossible. Its hard, because you need to rethink how it going to work. A simple currency based economy in the hands of the PLAYER is fundamentally broken. Move it to the realm of the CHARACTER. My newbie character is not proficient with a sword despite the fact that I'm a competent fencer. My newbie character is not proficient at carpentry despite the fact fact I can make a serviceable desk or bookshelf.
Why should my character be unrestrained when it comes to handling wealth? When every other trait about my character is locked down at 0 including where I am allowed to go, and what doors I can open, and all thise can only be increased or unlocked by *playing*, why am I allowed to participate in the 'economy' without restriction?
Make it so the key items you can buy and sell have to be 'unlocked' (perhaps you may not buy or sell lotus flowers before you have killed a man-eating lotus). Make it so that quanties or transaction values have to be unlocked (by leveling, through skills, perhaps even specific quest completion). Make it so that participating in various types of auction must be unlocked. Make it so that the size of your coin purse, or bank account must be earned. In summary make 'economics' another progression tree like 'combat' or 'crafting'.
Sure its artificial... like why can I buy Agate, but not Diamonds? But its no more artificial than why can I set agates into rings without even trying, but diamonds are 11x as hard, and if i fail why does it destroy the diamond? Or why does this sword have a level requirement? Or why is this item 'no drop'?
Whatever money I can sell the resources for is a bonus. That's why I personally always sell everything for just lower than the lowest current price on the auction house: I hate auctions that don't sell much more than I hate not making as much money as I potentially could.
Would you even bother with the 'auctions' then if the npc merchants just gave you that amount of money? Or what if you *had* to sell to the NPCs, who sold it on your behalf, and let the players bid items up. Maybe you get a percentage based on your negotiation skill. The
Bush has what a 28% approval rating these days? So the US government currently represents 28% of Americans?
The US system, at its best, frequently manges to completely sideline nearly half its population.
I wouldn't feel right about calling that a democracy.
Canada, I think is slightly better; it has plenty of issues too. But I think the structure of government here represents more people more of the time than the US system does.
It is funny, though, how people come up with these "obvious" schemes that Blizzard should implement to stop gold farmers... as if Blizzard hasn't spent the last three years putting a huge amount of thought into the situation:)
They haven't. On some level, they don't really have the will to. Those people buying gold are paying customers. Those people AOE farming instances are too. And besides doing the work to stop them cost money. Its a losing proposition on all sides. Their only real objective is to prevent the underground from becoming too offensive to the playerbase or from completely destabilizing the entire in game enconomy.
For example, we have *enormous* legitimate resource transfers all the time between players where there's no cash transactions going on.
Why? Why is this happening? Don't you think the fact that this happens 'legitimately' points to a flaw in your game? *I* certainly don't transfer large amounts of wealth to complete strangers in the real world. Nobody does. Why is it happening in these games? Perhaps there is a larger failure in the world-data-model, as this really shouldn't be happening.
Picking the wheat from the chaff -- especially when we have no way to PROVE that person A paid money to person B, since that transaction happened on a website we have no control over -- is like finding one particular grain of wheat in a wheat field.
Don't worry about whether it was a paid transaction or not. You attack the 'gifting' of serious amounts of resources, regardless of 'motivation'. Ideally, you restrict it via the mechanics, so that its not 'necessary' for legitimate purposes, provide other mechanisms for legitimate purposes. (e.g. if you want a tradeskiller to process a guild-vault full of ore, set it up so that the tradeskiller can process a guild-vault full of ore without taking ownership of the ore.) If a guild wants to outfit a new recruit with guild gear, so be it, but set it up so the outfit remains the guild property, etc.
Then, once the need for massive 'gifting' has been removed. Let players know that large resources transfers are not allowed by the 'rules of the game', and make it impossible to 'accidently' exceed some threshold, or even remove certain types of direct player trade, or do centralized price fixing and let players negotiate within a range, perhaps modified by the skill/level/class/whatever.
The real goal should not be to police the economy, but ultimately to design an economy that really doesn't need to be policed. I realize that on some level the 'buy-sell' market of the in game economy is attractive to some players, at the same time in most high-fantasy rpgs they often do more to undermine the game than enhance it.
No GM in a pen and paper game would EVER offer you this choice: "You can slay the dragon and loot its scale to make the magical fire resistant shield you need, or since another party has already killed a few dragons 'elsewhere' they have a few scales and they sell for a couple hundred gold. So if you just want the shield you could go farm some high quality wolf pelts to sell and just buy the scale...aw hell... its your lucky day! it turns out the guy at that table has the finished shield, and isn't using it becuase he's got much better stuff... he'll just give it to you for the asking since he doesn't have room in his bank to store it and he's rich enough that its just a trifle to him anyways. Everyone having fun tonight??";p
Bottom line, we live in a world where business in the real world and than virtual world can interact. We have to design games knowing that this can happen. We can either embrace it a la second life, or design the games so that its effects are controlled -- even if its at the expense of certain 'realisms'.
That 'realism' can never actually be attained anyway, because in the 'real world' you only have what you have, and even if you wanted to 'cheat', you have no 'extra-dimensional resources' you can bring to bear on your 'real world' situation. So our 'real world' doesn't have to compensate for that. Our virtual ones, however, do.
Legalizing selling gold doesn't prevent the real world economy from interfering with the virtual world. It just remvoes the black market element.
And it has the same effect as legalizing drugs. Sure the street corner dealers are gone, and people stop smuggling it accross the border, and some of the violent crime goes away (and those are all 'good things'), but the heroine junkies are still going to inject their rent money and end up on the streets where they'll smash your window for spare change and pawn-able items to get their next fix (now at the 7-11). So legalization isn't really a 'real solution'.
And the organized crime elelement simply morphs, it doesn't disappear. There's always a black market for something. Legalize currency sales, and peons4hire just shifts focus to acquiring rare items, and power-levelling. What are you going to do in response to that? Put all rares into vending machines so anyone can get them? Provide a prompt at login "What level do you want to be today?" with a price list? They could I suppose... and it might even work as a game idea... but it wouldn't be WoW anymore.
There is NOTHING wrong with a GAME having arbitrary rules that dictate how you progress. When you choose to play the game you implicitly agree to play by the rules or face being kicked out of the game.
WoW should -aggressively- target both buyers and sellers of services, ban accounts, ban credit cards. Maybe even issue temporary bans to ip addresses (say 4-12 hours) [yes some ISPs NAT and banning an ip could affect hundreds of people -- so don't filter those ISPs - its not rocket science, and it will work for enough cases to be worth doing] Toss free trial accounts onto a trial server (let them server transfer when they buy the game).
Make currency trackable. (like real currency, and record transactions). Write algorithms to watch for 'suspicious behaviour' like accounts sending large sums of gold to brand new characters, which immediately transfer it to other new characters.
Modify the game rules so that low level characters simply cannot possess large sums of gold. And limit how much gold they can transfer to other characters per hour in discrete transactions. Limit the number of transactions all players can accept per hour. (To prevent a series of low level characters from each sending a small sum of money to one recipient... etc).
Basically, force the gold traders out of throwaway characters, and into characters that have to have some 'history', which can be tracked and profiled. Sure there's nothing stopping them from power levelling up characters for a single transaction but it will be comparatively easy for blizzard to track them.
The point is, there are a lot of things they can do to put a real dent in people breaking the rules if they really wanted to, but a certain (and profitable) amount of players -like- breaking those rules... and blizzard is a business first and foremost... they only crackdown to the extent that the 'problem' starts costing them "too many" subscribers.
And in that light I'd like to see MMORPG publishers create zero-tolerance servers, and more relaxed servers.
It genuinely bothers me to play on servers where farming is going one and some of my fellow players have bought their way up. It cheapens my own sense of accomplishment, and frankly I don't like associating with people who lack the integrity to play by the rules. I would like servers dedicated to people like me. I'd even welcome additonal mechanics rules like capped progress per hour to mitigate power-levelling (without affecting more relaxed 'realistic' play), etc. I'd be prepared to sacrifice some of my anomymity to gain access to that server. And to have limits on the number of IP addresses I can log in from within a time period, etc. And other measures to make the players more accountable.
Now, I'm not so arrogant as to expect everyone to play like this, and if one likes to buy gold or whatever, I don't mind them having a place to play, which is why I support running more relaxed servers too. I just don't have any interest in playing on the same server as people like this.
Why? Well, just because of all the crap software like this that somehow magically is installed on a new box.
This is one of the ways dell can afford to undercut whitebox vendors. If advertisers are subsidizing the cost of the unit by preloading cruft, dell can make a bit of profit even if they lower the price.
Everybody wins. Advertisers win because they reach an audience. Dell wins because they can capture more sales, and undercut competition. Savvy consumers win because they can get the hardware for less, and blow out the cruft software immediately after it arrives.
Un-savvy consumers lose, its true. But then, they always lose. Caveat emptor and all that.
No it's not. If you want to play a certain game and it exists only under one console (or PC) you're going to buy that fucking game along with the console.
Or not. Most xbox games made it to the PC. It was, after all, a relatively trivial port. I elected not to buy an xbox, and I really didn't miss much.
But I'm sure only a small minority of slashdot never played a video game.
I'm sure you are correct that only a small minority of slashdot never played a video game... but how many would describe themselves as 'gamers'. Slashdot is not a gamer's site. There are gamers here... lots of them... but slashdot reaches a MUCH wider audience than 'gamers'.
If you ever read gaming magazines, they don't give a Wii fanboys a warm fuzzy feeling that slashdot does.
Oh. That's easy. Gaming magazines don't have the anti-MS slant that slashdot does. (Nor the anti-sony slant, for that matter.) Its not so much that Wii is beloved its more that MS and Sony are largely reviled.
Your reading comprehension sucks. The reason those third party titles didn't come out for the cube is because they sell poorly on those system because Nintendo's first party games suck up most of those people's gaming budget.
In general that would only be true if Nintendo's first party games are outright better than those 3rd party titles. Is that really true of even the best 3rd party titles?
The reason they didn't come out for the cube is simply that they knew that wasn't where the demographic for those games was. It had nothing to do whatsoever with Nintendo's first party titles, or having to compete with them.
In any case, a console is just a computer. This is true of the 360 as it is of the Wii.
Wii is just as much a computer as Xbox 360, but its nowhere near as much a "PC". Xboxes are little more than standardized PCs.
You can't fit a current consoles power in the palm of your hand. In order to play games on a handheld, they have to be last gen (or last last gen) because you can't make a portable as powerful as current gen yet.
That isn't the point. The point is there is a thriving market for games made using 'last gen' and 'last last gen' technology. Game companies can thrive in any environment.
I am talking about gamers. A lot of Slashdotters are gamers. I don't know about you, but I don't distinguish between the two. You may be talking about casual gamers, but that isn't what all Slashdotters are.
Precisely. Your talking about 'gamers'. A lot of people on slashdot aren't gamers at all, nevermind casual gamers. And on the flipside, a lot of gamers have never heard of slashdot. The two groups aren't one in the same.
Yeah, they have the same history as I do, but funny how greed make corporations make the same mistakes over and over again.
Yeah, shitty 3rd party movie tie-ins and so forth will always make a buck, and they'll always be with us. As will "[insert sport] [insert year]" But many of the best 3rd party games that came out for the PS2 could just as easily have come out for the cube. If the Wii is the front runner this generation there's every reason to expect the best of the 3rd party efforts will make an appearance on Wii.
That statement is pure flambait and false to boot.
Flamebait? Yes. It was obvious that it would be a soft spot for you. Sorry I couldn't resist poking it. But false? Only in terms of game exclusivity, and that's an entirely artificial difference.
They are going to make games that are worthless compared to what Nintendo puts out.
Do you mean to say that Nintendo is going to have the best games?? I hardly think that will cause the Wii to slow down.
I just think the Wii is going to lose steam as soon as third party vendors realize they won't sell as many games on the Wii and that they are limited by the older hardware.
If the Wii becomes the dominant console nobody is going to abandon it. Look at how quickly 3rd parties took notice of wii and ramped up wii game production once it became obvious that it was selling far beyond expectations. They didn't all leak their brains out and forget that competing on nintendo means competing with nintendo... they KNOW what they're dealing with. They've got the same history you do.
But they know that supporting the dominant console will pay off.
and the people who own a PS3 are going to buy more games per console.
Only relevant if they buy enough more to make up for the fact that there are less of them.
(And if the games are 'worthless' compared to what nintendo releases, I'd hope even a PS3 owner would stay the hell away from them.)
As for limited by the older hardware? The ONLY situation that is going to affect is that it gets even harder to make lousy multi-platform ports on the cheap. Losing the 'Lousy ports' isn't going to harm the platform.
Also, the Wii will probably have to have a shorted lifecycle than the PS3. It just doesn't have the power for AI or graphics.
By that logic the Honda civic should have been discontinued by now. And why does anyone buy a handheld when all they do is let us play last generation games technology? Seriously. Yes, its 'limiting', but entertainment value per dollar is high. As long as that can be sustained the system will do well.
Just look at the popularity of the virtual console.
I find it interesting how many people love the Wii on here compared to the gamers I know in real life.
Comparing the/. audience to 'gamers' is a little goofy don't you think. There's a lot of us here on slashdot that aren't 'gamers', but who enjoy games.
so they just mainly 360 and PC game
Seems pretty redundant to buy two boxes for that.
And furthermore, if your own 'real world group' has already self-selected into 'gamers who play 360 + PC games' do you really think THEY are representative of the larger audience for the Wii?
Should it pose a problem, your criminal friends can spend their spare time reporting every other seal. The cops won't know the legitimate complaints from the fraudulent ones.
In some cases yes. In most cases no.
And all you need is enough time to turn that $50K investment into $5,000K.
And you aren't going to get it.
This is about cashing out a LOT of money as QUICKLY as possible by exploiting the knowledge that since you have that seal, you are safe. You will be operating in BULK.
Precisely... each domain makes a small chunk of cash, if that. Each domain costs tens of thousands. "Operating in bulk" just magnifies your losses. Additionally, the application process is designed to be expensive, and thorough... its not an online form at bulk-domains.com that you fill out anonymously. Operating in bulk will likely get you noticed. You can't just lose yourself amongst all the people buying up bulk ad landing domains and speculating on bulk domain blocks from dictionary words.
A few hundred domains, maybe a couple thousand tops, will be legit. You can't hide several hundred disposable domains a day in an environment like that.
Eventually it will be closed down. And you will already have used the profits to purchase another one.
Except, if you press shift/alt/ctrl or capslock the thing refuses to move forward.
I can't beleive how many people actually had trouble with that prompt. Between not being to find an "any" key and then once they clued in to what it was asking for they'd get tripped up by the fact not every key actually worked... it was a really badly thought out prompt.
It really should have prompted you to push the space bar or something.
Suppose there was a seal that you could only buy for $50,000 and a background check. But having that seal on your vehicle (no matter what size) meant that your shipment would NEVER be checked by law enforcement. No matter what borders you crossed. No matter what time.
Right lets keep going with that, because your analagy is flawed, and this will fix it up:
Now suppose that seal had a serial number as part of its design, and it was displayed prominently. (because each domain name is different)
Next suppose that the this seal was actually worn by the street pusher behind the 7-11 to avoid law enforcement harrassment (you know the guys who deal directly with the general public - because that's who these phish sites deal with).
Except he's not behind the 7-11 he's standing up front and center where EVERYONE can see him. (Phishers spam everybody not just suckers.)
All it takes is one guy to report that he's a drug dealer. And now he's an easy target for the cops because he's got a big seal on his car, and they've already done a background check on him so they know where he lives, who he associates with, etc, etc.
So would you spend $50k on the seal, knowing that anyone who sees you standing on the street with it can report you?
If that were true. Do you have any evidence to support the claim that one phishing site is likely to return 5000k?
How long does the average phishing site stay active before people figure it out, and it gets shutdown? Phishers, from my understanding of it, plow through junk domains, I'm not even sure they go a full day before getting knocked offline, and probably only hours before they a get added to the list of known phish sites and get blocked by 'anti-phish' software.
If criminals have to setup 500 50k sites to make $5,000k, will.. that's not going to make anybody rich. They simply aren't going to do it. Even if they can bribe people to get the domains they'll get blacklisted or delisted so quickly it just won't be worth the expense and hassle of setting them up.
Ok... so lets see... you grok that some words offend some people. right? And that some words offend a lot more people than others, right? And that some words, if spoken to the general public, are likely offend a fair number of people, right?
So, in light of all that, are we in agreement that you should avoid using those words and phrases if you don't intend to offend people? That's all that's being suggested. Suggesting that poo and shit are really the same thing if you round to the nearest whole number so people should just get over themselves for being irrational is ridiculous.
Setting aside for a moment the "WHY", lets just deal with the FACT that poo and shit are different.
That is all that's really at issue here.
Why were the particular words chosen? Why does there seem to be only one 'swear' word for each group of offensive words? Why is only one synonym bad, and why that particular one? These are the questions that you didn't even try to address.
So now we're talking about the "WHY".
Assuming that we already agree 'shit' is differant than 'poo', and we already agree that reason people say 'shit' instead of 'poo' too deliberately invoke that difference.
So why is Shit is more offensive than poo? because society has collectively agreed that this is the case.
And that's a circular argument you say! But no. Not at all. That is the reason shit is more offensive than poo.
The question you are really asking now though is: "So why did society choose shit to be offensive, and not poo". That's a different question entirely, and I agree "that's what society agreed on" is not an answer to that at all.
So why "shit" and not "poo"? Is there a reason? In a word: yes. Is it rational? Depends on what you mean by rational? If by rational you mean that there should be some way of predicting in advance using logic which words will become offensive and which won't, of course not. There is nothing about the letter's 's' 'h' 'i' 't' that are magically offensive, and no way of 'predicting' that combining them will be.
If by rational you mean that there is a reasonable explanation for it, then yes there is. Words have history. Throughout history few words are conceived of as offensive, they gain that status through their use. "Nigger" is a great example, because we can see the history... The word comes from 'negro' which itself was spanish for 'black', which itself comes from latin 'niger' for black. The word 'nigger' itself is merely 'negro' as pronounced by the American South applied to 'black people'. And even then it held no offense.
Only much later did someone, god only knows who, deliberately invoke that American South pronunciation of negro to conjure the idea of a black person in a pejorative sense by using that pronunciation to connect it with slavery, uneducated, etc. And society grokked the connection, and understood what he was trying to say. And 'nigger' started picking up that negative imagery as that pejorative use was reinforced through additional use. Notably it was offensive in the North long before it was offensive in the South. Eventually it became an 'ultimate insult' because the people using it WANTED it to be a deadly insult, and the people who heard them say it - KNEW that was what the speaker wanted.
Is that a rational explanation? I think so.
Why does there seem to be only one 'swear' word for each group of offensive words?
Theres no shortage of terms for 'vagina'.
In cases where there is just one... evidently no ones managed or bothered to introduce another one that society really picked up on. Slang terms are invented and discarded continually... few of them ever reach full cultural awareness.
Perhaps one of the reasons the 'established' ultimate words in a category are just that..."established"...once established any attempt to dethrone them by using a different word fails because despite what the speaker intends we hear it as 'falling short' of going all the way. Sort of l
So by transitive equality 1 = 2, (and really anything equals anything else). Equality is transitive, 'almost equal' is NOT.
What, exactly, differentiates the 'bad' word from the acceptable versions?
Societal norms in the 'associative baggage'. "Fuck off" is offensive precisely because its normal use in society at large is precisely to incite offense. That is -why- people choose that phrase over 'Get lost' or 'Please leave'. All three mean the same thing at some level, that speaker wishes the other to leave or cease what they are doing. But when you choose 'fuck off' you are sending that message not only that you want the other to leave, but that you want to offend them, that you wish to convey a complete and utter lack of respect for them in addition to wanting them to leave.
Of course, its more complex than that; 'society' isn't a homogeneous blob; there are subgroups and words within those groups take on different or additional semantics; and context matters too. Words like 'nigger' or 'redneck' can mean entirely different things depending on who is speaking them, and who is listening. Saying fuck off to a friend might be entirely different than saying it to the sweet little old lady at the mall, both in terms of what you meant to convey, and what you actually conveyed. When you say 'fuck off' to someone you have a rapport with then the desire to offend or convey disrespect might be 'tongue in cheek'; you know that he won't be horrendously offended, and your just playing with the language.
A lack of sensitivity to this itself speaks volumes.
To spew profanity into a public chat channel is either a deliberate show of insensitivity with the desire to offend at least part of the participants, or a display of just how ignorant you are (either you are ignorant that the words are offensive to a lot of people, or that you are ignorant that those people might be present in a public chat channel).
Some words are offensive because large groups within society attach offensive semantics to them. Those words are used by them to convey disrespect and offense. Simply using them is a cue to the listener that you have no respect for them and want to rub their faces in it. For the listener that is WHY people use those words, and if the listener were to use the words that would be what *they* would be trying to convey.
I'm guessing you have no appreciation for poetry. Language isn't simple arithmetic.
a is sort of like b, and b is sort of like c, and a well its sort of like c too. They aren't equivalent. Even if they both refer to the same steaming turd on the kitchen floor.
Words have all sorts of associative baggage, nuance, and other elements. If you choose to use a euphemism, that choice is carried along with the sentence, and adds nuance to it. Even contractions; if someone says "do not" vs "don't" there can be nuance and meaning inherent in that choice. Perhaps they wished to emphasize 'not'. Or perhaps the extra syllable shifts how the sentence is balanced.
In a language where mere inflection or the placement of a pause can change the intended meaning of an entire sentence, or even invert its meaning, the suggestion that different words are simply equivalent is sheer idiocy.
Nothing. I have no problem with anyone enjoying WoW. In fact I think its great that you have a title that's designed for your tastes.
I however, don't enjoy the journey in WoW. I find it a pointless endeavour where I don't have to think to progress, where simply being awake is enough. I find that profoundly unsatisfying.
I would like to play a more challenging game. It would be nice if someone wrote a good one. I don't expect you to play it.
So WoW is a game that can be challenging if you deliberately handicap yourself. I don't deny that. Anything can be made hard if you deliberately avoid the easy route and/or handicap yourself. That doesn't make the game itself hard though.
The point is, a game was made for your tastes, it is called "Vanguard".
I'm not sure Vangaurd is any good. I haven't played it. The reviews have been terrible... and not because its "hard", but because its not finished yet. The fact that it was picked up by Sony is a point against it too... for a number of reasons.
That aside Brad is an arrogant asshat. I never liked him, and thought he was a jackass during most of early EQ. When he left I was thrilled, and then the game went to shit, and I grudgingly came to realize that Brad for all his faults, had been the counterpoint to a lot of pressure to dumb down the game.
Clearly, the direction that MMOs are going in is opposite of your tastes, so your tastes must be in the minority.
No question. Content for people who like a challenge and like to think has always been a niche market. The masses prefer things that are easy and simple. Just look at pop culture... music, movies, tv... easy and simple reign supreme.
For everyone else, there is WoW, LoTro, and the new MMOs coming out (Age of Conan and Warhammer Online).
We'll see. Warhammer is a thinking person's game. It will be interesting to see if Warhammer fans end up liking Warhammer Online if it follows WoW's lead too closely.
Yes. The popularity of reality TV adequately proves that.
Who wants to play a "game" and be "entertained" by being "brutally punished." And yes I realize that comment leaves itself open to S&M jokes, but seriously...
Civilisation? Masters of Orion II? DialboII "Hardcore" (permadeath)... there is no shortage of games out there that have the capacity to obliterate a player.
20 minutes of travel and 2 hours of monster killing just to retrieve your corpse? Sounds less like creative/intelligent game design and more like swindling lifeless suckers into sticking around and collecting their monthly fee.
This sort of thing REALLY didn't happen as much as all that to the players who got good at the game. This sort of thing happened to players who got into "PowerLevelling Grinding Groups" and got slingshot to levels far beyond their skill level, and then they'd die incessantly (and take their group out with them) whenever called upon to do anything actually 'hard'.
They didn't know how to get places. They didn't know monster aggro ranges. Or how chain aggro worked. They didn't know which mobs cast, nor what they cast. They didn't know what their own class was capable or nevermind their groupmates. They didn't know sweet fuck all. And they got brutalized everywhere they went until they either learned the game, or quit in frustration.
But if you actually played the game, exploring the low level dungeons, advancing at a slow pace, taking risks instead of just grinding in an xp spot under the watchful eye of 2-boxing elite players who would be fine even if you walked away from the keyboard for an hour. If you earned your levels and learned the nuances of the game you really didn't die that often... and when you did die you knew HOW to die... you learned to stand and die at an accessible place, perhaps near a zone in, or near your group, away from problem spawns. You learned to die near a landmark rather than run through a swamp blind and screaming. You learned to take a death to give the rezzer time to zone or campout. And you learned to take death in stride, to avoid it at all costs, and when it was inevitable to think ahead to the corpse recovery.
The game required skill and knowledge to play effectively at the high game. WoW doesn't... until you hit the raid game... and even then most of the real skill, talent, and knowledge is concentrated in a few individuals while the rest are just sheep to be herded around, valued for their 'elite' ability to do what they are told.
I notice you don't mention the exp penalty for death once in this post. Did you completely miss the point of my post which was very specific, or are you deliberately ignoring it so that the concept of not liking negative progress is the same as only caring about forward progress?
No. I didn't mention it specifically, because negative xp is not the only way it can be handled. Other games have had meaningful death penalties without negative xp.
That's why in EQ you have the rare spawns that drop the loot that get camped all day, because they want that one mob to take up literally days of your time.
That's utterly naive. Yes, that's how it worked out, but not how it was originally designed. The designers never thought for a moment that the rare items were going to get camped like that... they thought the players that ended up with them would consider them a bonus.
And for what its worth, in the original EQ you didn't *NEED* those camped weapons... they were nearly insignifant boosts over much more easily obtained items, and were never 'make or break' must haves.
And was punishing you for those "unfortunate artifacts" [stupid deaths] part of the "vision"?
No. It wasn't but not throwing out the baby with the bathwater was why they were left in. EQ had issues, lots of issues... that was one of them. No question. But WoW's solution was even stupider than leaving the problems as they were.
Sorry, but especially EQ requires grinding to advance, which is why you said the penalty for death was "2 hours of monster killing". That's grinding, boyo.
No, its not. Sorry. Your wrong. 2 hours of sitting in one spot is grinding... going to the same place everyday is grinding. But monster killing is what that game was if you didn't like killing monsters EQ wasn't a good game to play. There are lots of approaches to killing monsters that don't equal grinding.... at some point you've explored everything in your level range but you don't have enough exp to move on because you died, so grinding you go.
There was enough content at most level ranges to allow for several deaths. If you died incessantly and continually than the issue isn't the game, its the player.
what every EQ refugee I've spoken to has said is a great improvement.
And yet here we are... and many more like me.
That's why I'm able to take it easy when I'm leveling -- no matter what happens, I'll either go forward or not move at all, never will I go backwards.
Yeah. That's WoW in a nutshell. No matter what happens, you can't lose. Whee. Even the worst player in the world can make it to max level.... the worst player in the world WILL make it to max level...and then he wonders why he's not welcome in a raid guild.
EQ was a popular unforgiving game. Eve is a popular unforgiving game. Both of them had flaws and could be improved. There is room in the market for a good unforgiving game that rewarded skill and intelligence more than simply punching in the clock and getting your dose of 'progress' like WoW does.
Brad offered the promise of making that game with Vangaurd... that is why it had the hype it did.
I sure as hell don't want to spend 2 hours killing -- even spread out over time -- just to regain what I lost due to a glitch in the game. That is the height of lame.
Everybody agrees with you on that point. OK. EVERYBODY. EQ had its share of problems... that was certainly one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
apparent altruism can be reduced to self-interest
If altruism lights up the brains pleasure center, then it sounds like self-interest to me.
The reason for this, at least around here, is the disproportionate rise in property value.
At one point, the 'mega home' was dramatically more expensive than a more modest building. In a world where the plot of land is worth 10k, a 100k building costs nearly half as much as a 200k building that's twice the size.
Today, those plots of land aren't 10k, they're 400k. After you put a 100k building on it its 500k. Or for 600k you can get build a house twice the size. As a result it just doesn't make sense to build a small house on such expensive property.
even being "subject to change without notice" cant cover an arse. they are still advertising those as they did earlier, so any client who got blown out due to bandwidth usage now can sue them now, since they are probably advertising the same package as of now with the same stats.
Terms like "Subject to change without notic", on a product you subscribe to from month to month without a contract merely means they aren't guaranteeing you anything in terms of service next month, and in return you aren't guaranteeing to be their customer next month. As long as they provided you the service they described LAST month, you've got no recourse.
As for the 2nd part, where you claim they are probably advertising the same package as of now... I'm not sure. In all the ads I've seen 'unlimited' its had an asterisk and a fine print explanation, that ulimited only means unlimited time (ie always on) and that exceptionally high bandwidth users will be asked to throttle back, or upgrade to a commercial package, and that anyone 'abusing the connection' will be disconnected.
In most cases, this is 'terms of use' stuff, not a 'contract', you aren't really 'contracting' with them to provide a particular service level. This means they can cut you off the service at their discretion. Just as you can cancel your service without notice.
Ok. So you have even less recourse.
The day they decide to raise their prices or charge you for using more than X MB, you can decide whether or not to continue subscribing to their service under whatever terms they like.
If you had signed something, then maybe, just maybe, you'd have some leverage on them.
Pros of sansa players:
Yes they are cool little devices.
No bloated software suites (i am just assuming the zune has one because its m$. Itunes is for DAMN sure..)
I don't know about Zune either, but its probably tied heavily to Windows Media Player. As for iTunes, I disable the store links, and most of the other cruft. Yes its 'big' for an mp3 player, but for *library management* it blows away the competition. The only thing it really needs is better multi-computer support, and better multi-user support.
But the reality is that one of the killer features of ipods is iTunes. It would never have been as successful as it is without itunes. Itunes takes the drudgery and micromanagement crap out managing your music libary.
iTunes playlists, particularly 'smart playlists' based on usage, ratings, skip count, and other meta data is head and shoulders above the manually cobbled together playlists I used to abhor. I spent countless hours managing playlists, removing songs I didn't like, adding songs I did, forgetting about songs for months on end...and hating every minute of the time wasted on it.
These days I don't have to manage playlists, my smart playlists effectively learn what I like and don't like. I still have static playlists too, for when I want to listen to the Final Cut or Darkside of the Moon but mostly I just listen to my smart playlists. And they cycle tracks in and out based on when I last heard them, how often I skip them, how high i rate them. (and I can adjust ratings on the fly right on the ipod.) It may be 'bloatware suite' to you, but its what makes the ipod worth having to me.
accepts winamp playlists
I don't miss them. iTunes successor is much better. See above.
drag and drop songs to and from device just like a normal HDD (after turning off playesforsure)
It may be an advantage to someone who does want this, and yeah, you'd just end up fighting with itunes and hating it if you tried to micromanage it like this.
I wouldn't WANT to go back to using players where I have to manually drag and drop songs, and folders of songs back and forth. I agree that the fact that iPods don't support this is annoying, and I'd love to be able to do both. But if I can only have one, I'll take iTunes every time.
Less battery usage because its flash
Nanos and shuffles are flash too up to 8GB. Granted the nanos don't do video, but then the sansa's don't hold 30-80GBs like the 'video ipods' either. It depends what you want.
DRM enable/disable via hardware switch on player
Why would I want a switch to enable/disable DRM on the player?
Smaller, lighter weight
Again it depends what you want. The shuffles take the crown for small and lightweight. The 8G Sansa is an excellent video player vs the 30GB ipod if you just want light/small video. But the 30GB ipod isn't exactly heavy. Competition is good and I'm looking forward to seeing the 6th gen ipods.
USB STANDARD connection, none of this apple proprietary BS
I'm not sure what the deal is with the dock connector; but I honestly don't think apple foisted that one on us just to be annoying. Perhaps its the result of supporting USB and Firewire (back when they did) and now they are 'stuck with it' despite standardizing on USB2 now. I just don't know.
But its not like the Sansa doesn't require a special cable with some funky mini-usb on it, that's not quite the same as the cable your mini-usb camera uses... or does it? I know some sansa's have a full size male USB plug -- but I didn't think all of them did. And if you need a funky mini-usb cable, a funky dock-usb cable is hardly something to get excited about.
Bottom line, anyone who doesn't want to micromanage their library and playlists will probably be happier with an ipod, despite the sansa 'advantages'. iTunes is half the reason iPod took off like it did.
And now at this point, ipod has other soft 'advantages' that Sansa can't touch:
Yes, but -- redesigning the game to fix the flaws is impossible at this point
Yes, I grok that. I'm not suggesting that your game be 'fixed', but merely that developers working on the 'next game' pay better heed to the issues. A *lot* of current game economies are essentially built on the 'honor system' in terms of expecting players to follow the rules.
Its ironic really. All the 'dice rolls' made in tradeskill systems for example are done within the system, largely because computers are good at it, and its part of what makes the game. But if a customer were to suggest, "I'd prefer to make my own dice rolls and input them", the devs would laugh them out of the building. Not because such a thing couldn't be done trivial, but because everyone knows that letting players generate tradeskill results on the 'honor system' is going to be rampantly abused. Why would anyone think the economy be any different?
Obviously, if you don't want 'real world' economics to have a large impact on your game, relying on the 'honor system' is a colossally bad idea.
Because the games don't accurately model the real world. And they shouldn't. They're games.
Exactly. So we shouldn't feel compelled not to impose arbitrary systems that aren't 'realistic'. Games are supposed to be fun. When the real world economy hits the game one, it ceases to be fun for a lot of people.
Real-world financial systems analogies only go so far in game systems ilke this.
The point isn't necessarily to model the game economy exactly like the real world one, but rather to devise a facsimile that is both protected from the real world one, and at the same time is compelling and fun in its own right.
The holy grail of game economy design -- but it's fundamentally impossible if the economy is complex enough to be interesting.
I disagree that its fundamentally impossible. Its hard, because you need to rethink how it going to work. A simple currency based economy in the hands of the PLAYER is fundamentally broken. Move it to the realm of the CHARACTER. My newbie character is not proficient with a sword despite the fact that I'm a competent fencer. My newbie character is not proficient at carpentry despite the fact fact I can make a serviceable desk or bookshelf.
Why should my character be unrestrained when it comes to handling wealth? When every other trait about my character is locked down at 0 including where I am allowed to go, and what doors I can open, and all thise can only be increased or unlocked by *playing*, why am I allowed to participate in the 'economy' without restriction?
Make it so the key items you can buy and sell have to be 'unlocked' (perhaps you may not buy or sell lotus flowers before you have killed a man-eating lotus). Make it so that quanties or transaction values have to be unlocked (by leveling, through skills, perhaps even specific quest completion). Make it so that participating in various types of auction must be unlocked. Make it so that the size of your coin purse, or bank account must be earned. In summary make 'economics' another progression tree like 'combat' or 'crafting'.
Sure its artificial... like why can I buy Agate, but not Diamonds? But its no more artificial than why can I set agates into rings without even trying, but diamonds are 11x as hard, and if i fail why does it destroy the diamond? Or why does this sword have a level requirement? Or why is this item 'no drop'?
Whatever money I can sell the resources for is a bonus. That's why I personally always sell everything for just lower than the lowest current price on the auction house: I hate auctions that don't sell much more than I hate not making as much money as I potentially could.
Would you even bother with the 'auctions' then if the npc merchants just gave you that amount of money? Or what if you *had* to sell to the NPCs, who sold it on your behalf, and let the players bid items up. Maybe you get a percentage based on your negotiation skill. The
Bush has what a 28% approval rating these days?
So the US government currently represents 28% of Americans?
The US system, at its best, frequently manges to completely sideline nearly half its population.
I wouldn't feel right about calling that a democracy.
Canada, I think is slightly better; it has plenty of issues too. But I think the structure of government here represents more people more of the time than the US system does.
It is funny, though, how people come up with these "obvious" schemes that Blizzard should implement to stop gold farmers... as if Blizzard hasn't spent the last three years putting a huge amount of thought into the situation :)
;p
They haven't. On some level, they don't really have the will to. Those people buying gold are paying customers. Those people AOE farming instances are too. And besides doing the work to stop them cost money. Its a losing proposition on all sides. Their only real objective is to prevent the underground from becoming too offensive to the playerbase or from completely destabilizing the entire in game enconomy.
For example, we have *enormous* legitimate resource transfers all the time between players where there's no cash transactions going on.
Why? Why is this happening? Don't you think the fact that this happens 'legitimately' points to a flaw in your game? *I* certainly don't transfer large amounts of wealth to complete strangers in the real world. Nobody does. Why is it happening in these games? Perhaps there is a larger failure in the world-data-model, as this really shouldn't be happening.
Picking the wheat from the chaff -- especially when we have no way to PROVE that person A paid money to person B, since that transaction happened on a website we have no control over -- is like finding one particular grain of wheat in a wheat field.
Don't worry about whether it was a paid transaction or not. You attack the 'gifting' of serious amounts of resources, regardless of 'motivation'. Ideally, you restrict it via the mechanics, so that its not 'necessary' for legitimate purposes, provide other mechanisms for legitimate purposes. (e.g. if you want a tradeskiller to process a guild-vault full of ore, set it up so that the tradeskiller can process a guild-vault full of ore without taking ownership of the ore.) If a guild wants to outfit a new recruit with guild gear, so be it, but set it up so the outfit remains the guild property, etc.
Then, once the need for massive 'gifting' has been removed. Let players know that large resources transfers are not allowed by the 'rules of the game', and make it impossible to 'accidently' exceed some threshold, or even remove certain types of direct player trade, or do centralized price fixing and let players negotiate within a range, perhaps modified by the skill/level/class/whatever.
The real goal should not be to police the economy, but ultimately to design an economy that really doesn't need to be policed. I realize that on some level the 'buy-sell' market of the in game economy is attractive to some players, at the same time in most high-fantasy rpgs they often do more to undermine the game than enhance it.
No GM in a pen and paper game would EVER offer you this choice: "You can slay the dragon and loot its scale to make the magical fire resistant shield you need, or since another party has already killed a few dragons 'elsewhere' they have a few scales and they sell for a couple hundred gold. So if you just want the shield you could go farm some high quality wolf pelts to sell and just buy the scale...aw hell... its your lucky day! it turns out the guy at that table has the finished shield, and isn't using it becuase he's got much better stuff... he'll just give it to you for the asking since he doesn't have room in his bank to store it and he's rich enough that its just a trifle to him anyways. Everyone having fun tonight??"
Bottom line, we live in a world where business in the real world and than virtual world can interact. We have to design games knowing that this can happen. We can either embrace it a la second life, or design the games so that its effects are controlled -- even if its at the expense of certain 'realisms'.
That 'realism' can never actually be attained anyway, because in the 'real world' you only have what you have, and even if you wanted to 'cheat', you have no 'extra-dimensional resources' you can bring to bear on your 'real world' situation. So our 'real world' doesn't have to compensate for that. Our virtual ones, however, do.
Legalizing selling gold doesn't prevent the real world economy from interfering with the virtual world. It just remvoes the black market element.
And it has the same effect as legalizing drugs. Sure the street corner dealers are gone, and people stop smuggling it accross the border, and some of the violent crime goes away (and those are all 'good things'), but the heroine junkies are still going to inject their rent money and end up on the streets where they'll smash your window for spare change and pawn-able items to get their next fix (now at the 7-11). So legalization isn't really a 'real solution'.
And the organized crime elelement simply morphs, it doesn't disappear. There's always a black market for something. Legalize currency sales, and peons4hire just shifts focus to acquiring rare items, and power-levelling. What are you going to do in response to that? Put all rares into vending machines so anyone can get them? Provide a prompt at login "What level do you want to be today?" with a price list? They could I suppose... and it might even work as a game idea... but it wouldn't be WoW anymore.
There is NOTHING wrong with a GAME having arbitrary rules that dictate how you progress. When you choose to play the game you implicitly agree to play by the rules or face being kicked out of the game.
WoW should -aggressively- target both buyers and sellers of services, ban accounts, ban credit cards. Maybe even issue temporary bans to ip addresses (say 4-12 hours) [yes some ISPs NAT and banning an ip could affect hundreds of people -- so don't filter those ISPs - its not rocket science, and it will work for enough cases to be worth doing] Toss free trial accounts onto a trial server (let them server transfer when they buy the game).
Make currency trackable. (like real currency, and record transactions). Write algorithms to watch for 'suspicious behaviour' like accounts sending large sums of gold to brand new characters, which immediately transfer it to other new characters.
Modify the game rules so that low level characters simply cannot possess large sums of gold. And limit how much gold they can transfer to other characters per hour in discrete transactions. Limit the number of transactions all players can accept per hour. (To prevent a series of low level characters from each sending a small sum of money to one recipient... etc).
Basically, force the gold traders out of throwaway characters, and into characters that have to have some 'history', which can be tracked and profiled. Sure there's nothing stopping them from power levelling up characters for a single transaction but it will be comparatively easy for blizzard to track them.
The point is, there are a lot of things they can do to put a real dent in people breaking the rules if they really wanted to, but a certain (and profitable) amount of players -like- breaking those rules... and blizzard is a business first and foremost... they only crackdown to the extent that the 'problem' starts costing them "too many" subscribers.
And in that light I'd like to see MMORPG publishers create zero-tolerance servers, and more relaxed servers.
It genuinely bothers me to play on servers where farming is going one and some of my fellow players have bought their way up. It cheapens my own sense of accomplishment, and frankly I don't like associating with people who lack the integrity to play by the rules. I would like servers dedicated to people like me. I'd even welcome additonal mechanics rules like capped progress per hour to mitigate power-levelling (without affecting more relaxed 'realistic' play), etc. I'd be prepared to sacrifice some of my anomymity to gain access to that server. And to have limits on the number of IP addresses I can log in from within a time period, etc. And other measures to make the players more accountable.
Now, I'm not so arrogant as to expect everyone to play like this, and if one likes to buy gold or whatever, I don't mind them having a place to play, which is why I support running more relaxed servers too. I just don't have any interest in playing on the same server as people like this.
Why? Well, just because of all the crap software like this that somehow magically is installed on a new box.
This is one of the ways dell can afford to undercut whitebox vendors. If advertisers are subsidizing the cost of the unit by preloading cruft, dell can make a bit of profit even if they lower the price.
Everybody wins. Advertisers win because they reach an audience. Dell wins because they can capture more sales, and undercut competition. Savvy consumers win because they can get the hardware for less, and blow out the cruft software immediately after it arrives.
Un-savvy consumers lose, its true. But then, they always lose. Caveat emptor and all that.
No it's not. If you want to play a certain game and it exists only under one console (or PC) you're going to buy that fucking game along with the console.
Or not. Most xbox games made it to the PC. It was, after all, a relatively trivial port. I elected not to buy an xbox, and I really didn't miss much.
But I'm sure only a small minority of slashdot never played a video game.
I'm sure you are correct that only a small minority of slashdot never played a video game... but how many would describe themselves as 'gamers'. Slashdot is not a gamer's site. There are gamers here... lots of them... but slashdot reaches a MUCH wider audience than 'gamers'.
If you ever read gaming magazines, they don't give a Wii fanboys a warm fuzzy feeling that slashdot does.
Oh. That's easy. Gaming magazines don't have the anti-MS slant that slashdot does. (Nor the anti-sony slant, for that matter.) Its not so much that Wii is beloved its more that MS and Sony are largely reviled.
Your reading comprehension sucks. The reason those third party titles didn't come out for the cube is because they sell poorly on those system because Nintendo's first party games suck up most of those people's gaming budget.
In general that would only be true if Nintendo's first party games are outright better than those 3rd party titles.
Is that really true of even the best 3rd party titles?
The reason they didn't come out for the cube is simply that they knew that wasn't where the demographic for those games was. It had nothing to do whatsoever with Nintendo's first party titles, or having to compete with them.
In any case, a console is just a computer. This is true of the 360 as it is of the Wii.
Wii is just as much a computer as Xbox 360, but its nowhere near as much a "PC". Xboxes are little more than standardized PCs.
You can't fit a current consoles power in the palm of your hand. In order to play games on a handheld, they have to be last gen (or last last gen) because you can't make a portable as powerful as current gen yet.
That isn't the point. The point is there is a thriving market for games made using 'last gen' and 'last last gen' technology. Game companies can thrive in any environment.
I am talking about gamers. A lot of Slashdotters are gamers. I don't know about you, but I don't distinguish between the two. You may be talking about casual gamers, but that isn't what all Slashdotters are.
Precisely. Your talking about 'gamers'. A lot of people on slashdot aren't gamers at all, nevermind casual gamers. And on the flipside, a lot of gamers have never heard of slashdot. The two groups aren't one in the same.
Yeah, they have the same history as I do, but funny how greed make corporations make the same mistakes over and over again.
Yeah, shitty 3rd party movie tie-ins and so forth will always make a buck, and they'll always be with us. As will "[insert sport] [insert year]" But many of the best 3rd party games that came out for the PS2 could just as easily have come out for the cube. If the Wii is the front runner this generation there's every reason to expect the best of the 3rd party efforts will make an appearance on Wii.
That statement is pure flambait and false to boot.
Flamebait? Yes. It was obvious that it would be a soft spot for you. Sorry I couldn't resist poking it.
But false? Only in terms of game exclusivity, and that's an entirely artificial difference.
They are going to make games that are worthless compared to what Nintendo puts out.
/. audience to 'gamers' is a little goofy don't you think. There's a lot of us here on slashdot that aren't 'gamers', but who enjoy games.
Do you mean to say that Nintendo is going to have the best games?? I hardly think that will cause the Wii to slow down.
I just think the Wii is going to lose steam as soon as third party vendors realize they won't sell as many games on the Wii and that they are limited by the older hardware.
If the Wii becomes the dominant console nobody is going to abandon it. Look at how quickly 3rd parties took notice of wii and ramped up wii game production once it became obvious that it was selling far beyond expectations. They didn't all leak their brains out and forget that competing on nintendo means competing with nintendo... they KNOW what they're dealing with. They've got the same history you do.
But they know that supporting the dominant console will pay off.
and the people who own a PS3 are going to buy more games per console.
Only relevant if they buy enough more to make up for the fact that there are less of them.
(And if the games are 'worthless' compared to what nintendo releases, I'd hope even a PS3 owner would stay the hell away from them.)
As for limited by the older hardware? The ONLY situation that is going to affect is that it gets even harder to make lousy multi-platform ports on the cheap. Losing the 'Lousy ports' isn't going to harm the platform.
Also, the Wii will probably have to have a shorted lifecycle than the PS3. It just doesn't have the power for AI or graphics.
By that logic the Honda civic should have been discontinued by now. And why does anyone buy a handheld when all they do is let us play last generation games technology? Seriously. Yes, its 'limiting', but entertainment value per dollar is high. As long as that can be sustained the system will do well.
Just look at the popularity of the virtual console.
I find it interesting how many people love the Wii on here compared to the gamers I know in real life.
Comparing the
so they just mainly 360 and PC game
Seems pretty redundant to buy two boxes for that.
And furthermore, if your own 'real world group' has already self-selected into 'gamers who play 360 + PC games' do you really think THEY are representative of the larger audience for the Wii?
Should it pose a problem, your criminal friends can spend their spare time reporting every other seal. The cops won't know the legitimate complaints from the fraudulent ones.
In some cases yes. In most cases no.
And all you need is enough time to turn that $50K investment into $5,000K.
And you aren't going to get it.
This is about cashing out a LOT of money as QUICKLY as possible by exploiting the knowledge that since you have that seal, you are safe. You will be operating in BULK.
Precisely... each domain makes a small chunk of cash, if that. Each domain costs tens of thousands. "Operating in bulk" just magnifies your losses. Additionally, the application process is designed to be expensive, and thorough... its not an online form at bulk-domains.com that you fill out anonymously. Operating in bulk will likely get you noticed. You can't just lose yourself amongst all the people buying up bulk ad landing domains and speculating on bulk domain blocks from dictionary words.
A few hundred domains, maybe a couple thousand tops, will be legit. You can't hide several hundred disposable domains a day in an environment like that.
Eventually it will be closed down. And you will already have used the profits to purchase another one.
Not even close.
Except, if you press shift/alt/ctrl or capslock the thing refuses to move forward.
I can't beleive how many people actually had trouble with that prompt. Between not being to find an "any" key and then once they clued in to what it was asking for they'd get tripped up by the fact not every key actually worked... it was a really badly thought out prompt.
It really should have prompted you to push the space bar or something.
Suppose there was a seal that you could only buy for $50,000 and a background check. But having that seal on your vehicle (no matter what size) meant that your shipment would NEVER be checked by law enforcement. No matter what borders you crossed. No matter what time.
Right lets keep going with that, because your analagy is flawed, and this will fix it up:
Now suppose that seal had a serial number as part of its design, and it was displayed prominently. (because each domain name is different)
Next suppose that the this seal was actually worn by the street pusher behind the 7-11 to avoid law enforcement harrassment (you know the guys who deal directly with the general public - because that's who these phish sites deal with).
Except he's not behind the 7-11 he's standing up front and center where EVERYONE can see him. (Phishers spam everybody not just suckers.)
All it takes is one guy to report that he's a drug dealer. And now he's an easy target for the cops because he's got a big seal on his car, and they've already done a background check on him so they know where he lives, who he associates with, etc, etc.
So would you spend $50k on the seal, knowing that anyone who sees you standing on the street with it can report you?
Spending $50K to make $5,000K is a GREAT deal.
If that were true. Do you have any evidence to support the claim that one phishing site is likely to return 5000k?
How long does the average phishing site stay active before people figure it out, and it gets shutdown?
Phishers, from my understanding of it, plow through junk domains, I'm not even sure they go a full day before getting knocked offline, and probably only hours before they a get added to the list of known phish sites and get blocked by 'anti-phish' software.
If criminals have to setup 500 50k sites to make $5,000k, will.. that's not going to make anybody rich. They simply aren't going to do it. Even if they can bribe people to get the domains they'll get blacklisted or delisted so quickly it just won't be worth the expense and hassle of setting them up.
Ok... so lets see... you grok that some words offend some people. right?
And that some words offend a lot more people than others, right?
And that some words, if spoken to the general public, are likely offend a fair number of people, right?
So, in light of all that, are we in agreement that you should avoid using those words and phrases if you don't intend to offend people? That's all that's being suggested. Suggesting that poo and shit are really the same thing if you round to the nearest whole number so people should just get over themselves for being irrational is ridiculous.
Setting aside for a moment the "WHY", lets just deal with the FACT that poo and shit are different.
That is all that's really at issue here.
Why were the particular words chosen? Why does there seem to be only one 'swear' word for each group of offensive words? Why is only one synonym bad, and why that particular one? These are the questions that you didn't even try to address.
So now we're talking about the "WHY".
Assuming that we already agree 'shit' is differant than 'poo', and we already agree that reason people say 'shit' instead of 'poo' too deliberately invoke that difference.
So why is Shit is more offensive than poo? because society has collectively agreed that this is the case.
And that's a circular argument you say! But no. Not at all. That is the reason shit is more offensive than poo.
The question you are really asking now though is: "So why did society choose shit to be offensive, and not poo". That's a different question entirely, and I agree "that's what society agreed on" is not an answer to that at all.
So why "shit" and not "poo"? Is there a reason? In a word: yes. Is it rational? Depends on what you mean by rational? If by rational you mean that there should be some way of predicting in advance using logic which words will become offensive and which won't, of course not. There is nothing about the letter's 's' 'h' 'i' 't' that are magically offensive, and no way of 'predicting' that combining them will be.
If by rational you mean that there is a reasonable explanation for it, then yes there is. Words have history. Throughout history few words are conceived of as offensive, they gain that status through their use. "Nigger" is a great example, because we can see the history... The word comes from 'negro' which itself was spanish for 'black', which itself comes from latin 'niger' for black. The word 'nigger' itself is merely 'negro' as pronounced by the American South applied to 'black people'. And even then it held no offense.
Only much later did someone, god only knows who, deliberately invoke that American South pronunciation of negro to conjure the idea of a black person in a pejorative sense by using that pronunciation to connect it with slavery, uneducated, etc. And society grokked the connection, and understood what he was trying to say. And 'nigger' started picking up that negative imagery as that pejorative use was reinforced through additional use. Notably it was offensive in the North long before it was offensive in the South. Eventually it became an 'ultimate insult' because the people using it WANTED it to be a deadly insult, and the people who heard them say it - KNEW that was what the speaker wanted.
Is that a rational explanation? I think so.
Why does there seem to be only one 'swear' word for each group of offensive words?
Theres no shortage of terms for 'vagina'.
In cases where there is just one... evidently no ones managed or bothered to introduce another one that society really picked up on. Slang terms are invented and discarded continually... few of them ever reach full cultural awareness.
Perhaps one of the reasons the 'established' ultimate words in a category are just that..."established"...once established any attempt to dethrone them by using a different word fails because despite what the speaker intends we hear it as 'falling short' of going all the way. Sort of l
Why would you conclude that I can't appreciate poetry?
Because you asserted that different words are equivalent. More than that you asserted they were equivalent by transitivity.
Transitive equality coupled with imprecision results in absurdity. A person who enjoys logic and reason should realize that:
If "1.1 = 1.0 for our purposes" then:
1.0 = 1.1 = 1.2 = 1.3 = 1.4 = 1.5 = 1.6 = 1.7 = 1.8 = 1.9 = 2.0
So by transitive equality 1 = 2, (and really anything equals anything else).
Equality is transitive, 'almost equal' is NOT.
What, exactly, differentiates the 'bad' word from the acceptable versions?
Societal norms in the 'associative baggage'. "Fuck off" is offensive precisely because its normal use in society at large is precisely to incite offense. That is -why- people choose that phrase over 'Get lost' or 'Please leave'. All three mean the same thing at some level, that speaker wishes the other to leave or cease what they are doing. But when you choose 'fuck off' you are sending that message not only that you want the other to leave, but that you want to offend them, that you wish to convey a complete and utter lack of respect for them in addition to wanting them to leave.
Of course, its more complex than that; 'society' isn't a homogeneous blob; there are subgroups and words within those groups take on different or additional semantics; and context matters too. Words like 'nigger' or 'redneck' can mean entirely different things depending on who is speaking them, and who is listening. Saying fuck off to a friend might be entirely different than saying it to the sweet little old lady at the mall, both in terms of what you meant to convey, and what you actually conveyed. When you say 'fuck off' to someone you have a rapport with then the desire to offend or convey disrespect might be 'tongue in cheek'; you know that he won't be horrendously offended, and your just playing with the language.
A lack of sensitivity to this itself speaks volumes.
To spew profanity into a public chat channel is either a deliberate show of insensitivity with the desire to offend at least part of the participants, or a display of just how ignorant you are (either you are ignorant that the words are offensive to a lot of people, or that you are ignorant that those people might be present in a public chat channel).
Some words are offensive because large groups within society attach offensive semantics to them. Those words are used by them to convey disrespect and offense. Simply using them is a cue to the listener that you have no respect for them and want to rub their faces in it. For the listener that is WHY people use those words, and if the listener were to use the words that would be what *they* would be trying to convey.
I'm guessing you have no appreciation for poetry. Language isn't simple arithmetic.
a is sort of like b, and b is sort of like c, and a well its sort of like c too. They aren't equivalent. Even if they both refer to the same steaming turd on the kitchen floor.
'poo' doesn't equal 'shit' doesn't equal 'turd' doesn't equal 'feces'...
Words have all sorts of associative baggage, nuance, and other elements. If you choose to use a euphemism, that choice is carried along with the sentence, and adds nuance to it. Even contractions; if someone says "do not" vs "don't" there can be nuance and meaning inherent in that choice. Perhaps they wished to emphasize 'not'. Or perhaps the extra syllable shifts how the sentence is balanced.
In a language where mere inflection or the placement of a pause can change the intended meaning of an entire sentence, or even invert its meaning, the suggestion that different words are simply equivalent is sheer idiocy.
If I enjoy the journey, what's your beef?
Nothing. I have no problem with anyone enjoying WoW. In fact I think its great that you have a title that's designed for your tastes.
I however, don't enjoy the journey in WoW. I find it a pointless endeavour where I don't have to think to progress, where simply being awake is enough. I find that profoundly unsatisfying.
I would like to play a more challenging game. It would be nice if someone wrote a good one. I don't expect you to play it.
I had hoped Vangaurd would be that game.
Oh really? How about... [bunch of stuff]
So WoW is a game that can be challenging if you deliberately handicap yourself. I don't deny that. Anything can be made hard if you deliberately avoid the easy route and/or handicap yourself. That doesn't make the game itself hard though.
The point is, a game was made for your tastes, it is called "Vanguard".
I'm not sure Vangaurd is any good. I haven't played it. The reviews have been terrible... and not because its "hard", but because its not finished yet. The fact that it was picked up by Sony is a point against it too... for a number of reasons.
That aside Brad is an arrogant asshat. I never liked him, and thought he was a jackass during most of early EQ. When he left I was thrilled, and then the game went to shit, and I grudgingly came to realize that Brad for all his faults, had been the counterpoint to a lot of pressure to dumb down the game.
Clearly, the direction that MMOs are going in is opposite of your tastes, so your tastes must be in the minority.
No question. Content for people who like a challenge and like to think has always been a niche market. The masses prefer things that are easy and simple. Just look at pop culture... music, movies, tv... easy and simple reign supreme.
For everyone else, there is WoW, LoTro, and the new MMOs coming out (Age of Conan and Warhammer Online).
We'll see. Warhammer is a thinking person's game. It will be interesting to see if Warhammer fans end up liking Warhammer Online if it follows WoW's lead too closely.
Does that mean 8 million people are idiots?
Yes. The popularity of reality TV adequately proves that.
Who wants to play a "game" and be "entertained" by being "brutally punished." And yes I realize that comment leaves itself open to S&M jokes, but seriously...
Civilisation? Masters of Orion II? DialboII "Hardcore" (permadeath)... there is no shortage of games out there that have the capacity to obliterate a player.
20 minutes of travel and 2 hours of monster killing just to retrieve your corpse? Sounds less like creative/intelligent game design and more like swindling lifeless suckers into sticking around and collecting their monthly fee.
This sort of thing REALLY didn't happen as much as all that to the players who got good at the game. This sort of thing happened to players who got into "PowerLevelling Grinding Groups" and got slingshot to levels far beyond their skill level, and then they'd die incessantly (and take their group out with them) whenever called upon to do anything actually 'hard'.
They didn't know how to get places. They didn't know monster aggro ranges. Or how chain aggro worked. They didn't know which mobs cast, nor what they cast. They didn't know what their own class was capable or nevermind their groupmates. They didn't know sweet fuck all. And they got brutalized everywhere they went until they either learned the game, or quit in frustration.
But if you actually played the game, exploring the low level dungeons, advancing at a slow pace, taking risks instead of just grinding in an xp spot under the watchful eye of 2-boxing elite players who would be fine even if you walked away from the keyboard for an hour. If you earned your levels and learned the nuances of the game you really didn't die that often... and when you did die you knew HOW to die... you learned to stand and die at an accessible place, perhaps near a zone in, or near your group, away from problem spawns. You learned to die near a landmark rather than run through a swamp blind and screaming. You learned to take a death to give the rezzer time to zone or campout. And you learned to take death in stride, to avoid it at all costs, and when it was inevitable to think ahead to the corpse recovery.
The game required skill and knowledge to play effectively at the high game. WoW doesn't... until you hit the raid game... and even then most of the real skill, talent, and knowledge is concentrated in a few individuals while the rest are just sheep to be herded around, valued for their 'elite' ability to do what they are told.
I notice you don't mention the exp penalty for death once in this post. Did you completely miss the point of my post which was very specific, or are you deliberately ignoring it so that the concept of not liking negative progress is the same as only caring about forward progress?
... at some point you've explored everything in your level range but you don't have enough exp to move on because you died, so grinding you go.
...and then he wonders why he's not welcome in a raid guild.
No. I didn't mention it specifically, because negative xp is not the only way it can be handled. Other games have had meaningful death penalties without negative xp.
That's why in EQ you have the rare spawns that drop the loot that get camped all day, because they want that one mob to take up literally days of your time.
That's utterly naive. Yes, that's how it worked out, but not how it was originally designed. The designers never thought for a moment that the rare items were going to get camped like that... they thought the players that ended up with them would consider them a bonus.
And for what its worth, in the original EQ you didn't *NEED* those camped weapons... they were nearly insignifant boosts over much more easily obtained items, and were never 'make or break' must haves.
And was punishing you for those "unfortunate artifacts" [stupid deaths] part of the "vision"?
No. It wasn't but not throwing out the baby with the bathwater was why they were left in. EQ had issues, lots of issues... that was one of them. No question. But WoW's solution was even stupider than leaving the problems as they were.
Sorry, but especially EQ requires grinding to advance, which is why you said the penalty for death was "2 hours of monster killing". That's grinding, boyo.
No, its not. Sorry. Your wrong. 2 hours of sitting in one spot is grinding... going to the same place everyday is grinding. But monster killing is what that game was if you didn't like killing monsters EQ wasn't a good game to play. There are lots of approaches to killing monsters that don't equal grinding.
There was enough content at most level ranges to allow for several deaths. If you died incessantly and continually than the issue isn't the game, its the player.
what every EQ refugee I've spoken to has said is a great improvement.
And yet here we are... and many more like me.
That's why I'm able to take it easy when I'm leveling -- no matter what happens, I'll either go forward or not move at all, never will I go backwards.
Yeah. That's WoW in a nutshell. No matter what happens, you can't lose. Whee. Even the worst player in the world can make it to max level.... the worst player in the world WILL make it to max level
EQ was a popular unforgiving game. Eve is a popular unforgiving game. Both of them had flaws and could be improved. There is room in the market for a good unforgiving game that rewarded skill and intelligence more than simply punching in the clock and getting your dose of 'progress' like WoW does.
Brad offered the promise of making that game with Vangaurd... that is why it had the hype it did.
I sure as hell don't want to spend 2 hours killing -- even spread out over time -- just to regain what I lost due to a glitch in the game. That is the height of lame.
Everybody agrees with you on that point. OK. EVERYBODY. EQ had its share of problems... that was certainly one of them.