Yes, it's not as simple as suggesting religion causes fighting and so on.
Most wars are over resources, sometimes lack of resources, sometimes simply human greed for more resources. Religion however tends to create the dividing line, helping determine who is on which side, but also race has many a time played an important factor here.
What religion does do however is it breeds ignorance, it allows people to take it too far. Whilst resources are an issue, this certainly seems the case in the middle east - Iran has no resource argument with Israel, yet it hates it to the point it's willing to sponsor terrorism against it based purely on religious grounds.
It's worth noting that World War II was largely a non-religious war and it had a much cleaner ending to it than most religious wars. When religion is used as a tool for hate, it's viral, it's passed down through generations - "We have to hate Christians because our fathers told us to".
So you're right, religion certainly isn't generally the trigger for violence and hatred amongst humans, but it's nearly always guilty of prolonging hate, often for hundreds of years. Again, where religion wasn't used as an excuse for war - i.e. in World War II the war in Europe and the war between the US and Japan the resolution was much more clean - the nations comprising Europe are amazingly strong together now as are Japan and the US.
If everyone became atheist yes, we'd still certainly fight, but we wouldn't end up with the decades, sometimes centuries long hatred we see in the Middle East and parts of Asia. Only a religion can teach that, why? Because as soon as you start teaching people that your set of ideas and everyone elses is wrong regardless of lack of proof or reason for your ideas, then effectively you're just creating religion - diety or not.
Yes, that's what's generally referred to as zealotry and ignorance.
If someone just wants to build Windows apps then Visual Studio is far and away the quickest and easiest way to do that.
A lot of people don't care if their software was built by an angel with a halo over his head, if that software isn't very productive they'd rather take the piece written by an average day to day coder.
Some people have better things to do than bicker about religious software vendor wars and just go for what lets them get the job done best, and sorry, but free software all too often just loses out here, until there's a realiation of that, it aint gonna change but the free software has a strong focus on getting things to work, without much effort ever being put into how it works and improving usability and productivity.
Asking people to give up usability and productivity for some moral stance is going to be about as easy as getting blood out of stone.
I support the idea of free software, but the free software movement has to accept these points and act on them as the ideology alone isn't enough to make people switch.
Oh I'm not arguing that either way - I was just pointing out that I think the parents argument was a little short-sighted, it isn't as simple as "they bought it so they can do what they want with it" because as I say there are other considerations!
I think you're probably right, I'm suprised that it's truly safe and that there aren't pollutants but they seem quite sure they've confirmed that it is and in that case you're right it's not a bad thing, particularly if it also prevents trawling which has had a devastating effect on the oceans.
I'm not sure Microsoft is really where it is because of lack of cheap alternatives else Linux, certainly since the later Ubuntu releases would be doing much better.
I think it comes down more to interoperability, businesses buy a machine, it has Windows on it, so they figure they'll just go with Windows server, then they figure they may as well develop with Visual Studio and use MS SQL for their database and so on.
I think it's more about lockin - sure people could get systems with Mac OS X cheaper, but would they really want it if it wouldn't run all the applications they've built in.NET at least without hassle? What about the fact Mac OS X server is a rather poor offering, they'd probably want to keep their Windows servers and how well would they integrate there? What about retraining their techies to deal with any problems that may arise with Macs?
Of course, one business sees their partner or customer business using Microsoft tech. so they use it to so they can interoperate with them easy, this carries on down the line is why so many businesses use MS software. I think the only way to deal with that is if a complete offering can be provided that is at least as good as Microsoft's or simply over time by pushing Microsoft to follow open standards and then building alternatives based on those standards so companies can migrate away one peice of software at a time. Whilst Mac OS X is indeed a fine OS, it's only a small part the puzzle, you'd still likely be running MS office on it and Mac OS X server leaves a lot (too much really) to be desired. For all Micrososft's faults, Visual Studio,.NET and C# really does offer the best combination of development speed, performance, application quality out there so Apple would really need to bolster up their development tools, provide a database offering that integrates as nicely with everything else in the network as MS SQL server does.
I think Microsoft just has their claws in too many markets for people to switch to a new OS regardless of price, even if many people see it as better than MS' OS, it's the whole package that Apple can't provide but Microsoft can. People are in general lazy and unwilling to take an ethical/moral/personal stand if it requires more effort and the full solution model of doing things just caters too well to that.
They've also built their fortune on making an OS you can install across x86 hardware (and even some other platforms).
It's not so much the EULA as a whole that's in question here as much as it is a specific clause of the EULA - the clause that states the OS may only be installed on a specific manufacturer's hardware. That is not Microsoft's business model so they would have absolutely no interest in helping their arch enemy protect it.
I wouldn't say it's that straightforward to be fair.
It was public property, bought entirely by the tax payers yet no one asked the tax payers if they'd like it auctioned off or recycled, it's also being sunk in a public place.
If they owned the area they were sinking it in it'd be a little more straightforward of course but I believe it's dubious to simply say it's theirs so they can do what they want.
The problem with AI discussion is that it's scarred with the popular sci-fi view of AI, it's viewed with the Asimov style rules for AI and questions about how we should treat AI.
Realistically, this is missing the point to an extent. If we were to try and create artificial life forms for the sake of living and caring about living, caring about what they do, emotions such as sadness, boredom and so on you have a point, but I don't think that's really anyone's goal. From sex AI not wanting to having sex to soldier AI suddenly not wanting to kill, there is really little use for AI that has exactly what we perceive as being the faults of humans for a specific purpose
Conciousness doesn't necessarily mean some AI should be able to go rogue and do and think what it wants, it should just be situationally aware because that's effectively what conciousness is.
The whole "Should we treat them like humans?" argument is a great philosophical debate, but it's pretty ignorant of what we want to be aiming for in reality - and that's machines that are concious in that they can respond, react and deal with the situation in which they exist or are programmed to deal with, but not that they necessarily have the facility to worry, care, get upset, get bored and that sort of thing.
It's perfectly feasible for something to be concious but also be constrained on what it can think and feel. It's a very human trait to apply the human context to non-human things but it's a mistake we mustn't make when making serious decisions as to what we should and shouldn't do. Just as your Word processor doesn't also double up as a porn site you would only make sure your AIs did what you want them to do, there's no reason that conciousness has to also mean chaos.
No doubt there is always the possibility of emergent behaviour, but to suggest complex feelings and so forth will necessarily emerge is really as ignorant as saying notepad will suddenly turn into a web browser when you open it one day. If we do not create AI systems with traits that we do not want, they will not have them just as when we create applications with features we do not want, they do not have them.
Sorry, I should clarify, that's 250 million online gamers. That is, the amount of online gamers has increase by a much bigger proportion than the number of MMO subscribers has increased by. The increase in MMO gamers is on a factor of around 10 times in the period whilst the number of online gamers has increased over 25 times. Of course, what weighs against the MMO figure is that this time 10 years ago, the MMO market was still relatively young with the only MMO in full swing being UO, Everquest had only been out about a month or two this time 10 years ago - so effectively the 8 times figure is rather generous when you consider that you're comparing the very start of an industry when figures are bound to be low, with it's current peak 10 years on. To sum up, MMOs have actually performed pretty poorly in the last decade when it comes to growth.
MMOs clearly aren't growing in proportion with online gaming in general. My point is that this is almost certainly due to a lack of diversity.
Yeah, the problem is it's a completely different type of MMO. It's not like any of the others that have come out since so there's not really anything to compare it against. If anything it's more like things like Neverwinter nights but in a bigger more open world and without NWN's levelling mechanics.
10 years ago there were 250 million people with internet access, there are now 1.5 billion.
The potential market has increased massively, and yet there are still no more than around 16 million people playing MMOs worldwide out of around 250 million gamers.
Realistically then, comparitive figures don't tell us anything much. If we're to talk about them in overall terms there's a fair argument that although WoW and WoW like games hold the MMO crown right now, MMOs really aren't holding anywhere near as much of the gaming market as they could be.
Again, I think it's a fair point that this could be because game developers see the WoW cash cow, and try and mimic it, but ultimately fail because no one wants more of the same, they want something different and that just isn't there.
Effectively, the increase in people playing MMOs games should really be higher than it is, the lack of diversity and hence inability to attract more gamers into MMOs is almost certainly the bottleneck here. WoW's system then isn't necessarily the most appealing, it's simply that it's the only option because there is no diversity. The MMO market could almost certainly be much bigger than it is if the WoW way wasn't the only way.
I think the key point is the level of flexibility in UO's skill system, the fact you could get down to 1/10th of a percentage point in a skill and it would still have some effect on your ability to do something or the availability of some skill/spell/whatever the fact that you could raise and drop skills at any time allowed for massive flexibility. The wide range of skills also allowed for flexibility.
There were cookie cutter specs that people went for sure, but always seemed much less slow and more varied than in level based systems. Of course not every character had to be cookie cutter either. I had a character that I just liked pratting around with but was fun - Jolly Roger the magic pirate. He had fishing and magery skills and it used to just be funny taking him out to sea to use those fishing nets and pull up krakens to fight and such. I had my treasure hunter who had magery skills and cartography, I had my nox mage which was for PvP and I had my crafting char which did tinkering.
I think the key thing with UO was the amount of different options and skills - the fact I could make a wooden box with my craftsmen using woodworking then attach an explosive trap to it with tinkering, then dye it bright pink and leave it at the bank for some newbie to come along and click the bright pink box only to explode and die violently was just timeless. It was just the little things like that - I think most newbies quickly learnt not to touch the brightly coloured boxes!
The way you describe your view is exactly what the article is talking about - the assumption that the WoW way is the only way that'll work, it really isn't.
It was hard to sit around in UO and there be nothing to do because in the pubs in the major cities there were chess boards and backgammon boards etc. that you could play with other players. There were public forges, where the smiths would hang around making armour for people, there was the bank where people would hang around to chat and trade.
The difference is that the UO game world was much much more alive, there were events which I suppose were quests but on a much large scale - seiges of major cities by big enemies or hoardes of smaller enemies out of the blue and that kind of thing but perhaps one of the key factors was the wide range of skills and the fact that at any point in the game you could start decreasing the amount of points in a skill - there was no reaching the level cap, sure you might fill your 700 skill points but then you figure out that maybe you don't like archery, or maybe you only use spells upto 60 skill points in magery, so you drop those and train up some more - unlike the WoW way of doing things there was no end game, the game kept on going. The game also had a much greater skill factor which helped in that if you were really really really good at the game you could defeat some of the biggest monsters single handedly so if you really were good you didn't have to prat around waiting for parties, but there was still content that you'd want to take a party for (PvP dungeons for example). In games like WoW the experience is rather binary - either you can defeat a certain mob by yourself or you need a party - there's very little scope for "If you're skilled enough you can get better rewards for yourself".
So the fact there were both challenges and reasons to play without having to wait for a party as well as content for when you did have a party meant there was little reason to sit around doing nothing anyway. Again, games like DAoC, WoW, WAR etc. effectively encourage sitting around because there is too much content you have no choice but to wait for a party for or if you've level capped and don't have a party there's suddenly a suprising lack of even reason to go and try and do anything by yourself.
"You're Godwinning yourself a bit there. The Neo-Nazi movement is openly pushing the policies of the original Nazi party."
That's a half-truth at best. The Neo-Nazi movement has no interest in many of the political policies of the original Nazi party, only an interest in using it's banner as a figurehead for their racist and homophobic campaigns. The problem is the the nationalist socialist movement had far more too it than just what it most infamously known for. As you're no doubt aware though my original comment was just an example hypothetical analogy to demonstrate the point and taking it as anything more than that is bound to lead to problems.
"The current labour party has no policies of homosexual persecution, and as such carries no "guilt by having the same name" that you argue is significant. Even so, it was the Conservative party in power at the time of Turings persecution, so that argument fails even on its own terms."
Both parties still have members that still support and vote in a way that ensure homosexuality isn't treated fairly. Can they be held responsible directly for the specific individual Alan Turing's death? No, sure, but whilst they refuse to apologise for their parties past policies that led to that and whilst they continue to contain politicians, some often high up in the parties that support those policies then they absolutely can be held responsible for the policies that led to Turing's death because there is still a sizeable group that agree with those policies. You only have to look at more recent votes on the likes of adoption for gay couples that met massive resistance and the fact that there is no gay marriage in the UK to see that anti-homosexual sentiment and the belief that they should not be treated equally is still strong in these parties.
I believe I understand the argument you're trying to make as it is much like that that comes up with the idea that the leadership in countries such as Britain should apologise to African nations for slavery but in this case I agree that an apology is not due. The differences are that there is no sentiment that slavery is acceptable amongst the leadership today (whilst there is sentiment that homosexuality is wrong to this day), it is also the case that it was the leadership of many of those African nations that sold their population as slaves so are complicit in it themselves, and the final difference is that Britain has already acted to apologise for the slave trade in that it was one of, if not the leading force in doing away with it and forcing other countries to do away with it.
Effectively I agree that you can't be held accountable for your ancestors past but you can be held accountable for the policies that led to that situation if you haven't shown that you've entirely done away with that mindset and point of view. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives have done this when it comes to homosexuality and the fact that they have never acknowledged that what their policies did to Turing was wrong is just part of the evidence that they themselves still don't totally disagree with those policies in their entirety. If they really want to show themselves as progressive they need to draw a line under it and say yes, it was wrong, no we wholeheartedly don't support that viewpoint anymore. They have yet to do this and accept that their party lines were ever wrong in this respect.
This is one of those questions that's impossible to answer in a generic context.
If you look at something like Dead Rising, it just wouldn't work well without gore. Compare to something like Viva Pinata and it'd be pretty fucking stupid with gore.
Bletchley houses more than just the Enigma though, it's home to the UK's national computing museum, the issue in the article is that it's not being put on par with the imperial war museum.
The argument then is more that the government isn't giving computing history and education the attention it deserves.
You're suggesting that a government party exists only of the people in it and nothing more.
Following that logic one would suggest that should the Nazi party arise in Germany we should accept them because the people in the original Nazi party are no longer part of it, effectively people in it might call themselves Nazis but we shouldn't connect them to the past in anyway because they weren't there themselves. It's not that simple, a party has to accept that it has a past and it has to deal with that.
A party is more than just the people in it, parties have history and they are responsible for apologising for that history if it is bad and if they have not done so. This is particularly so as parties will continuously bring up the past in their favour when it comes to promoting themselves - The Conservatives for example will regularly mention Churchill, Wilberforce and so on as some of their great historical successes and as such they must also accept their historical failings, this goes for all parties.
The only way a group of politicians can shed their past is if they form a new party and hence lose the old identity, but if they wish to use that old identity in their favour, such that it gives them easy recognition, they must also accept it's past comes as part of that package and take responsibility for that.
I think TFA is referring to people like me, who have played other MMOs and it's WoW that was the one that didn't interest me.
Why? For exactly the stated reasons, it was just more of the same, after having played Dark Age of Camelot for 5 years. I wanted something that actually brought something new to the table than the same dull old method of questing.
I played WAR a little longer than WoW but only by about a month, I found it to end up being largely the same.
The best MMOs I've ever played were Ultima Online and Planetside followed by DAoC - DAoC only because I'd never played the likes of EQ so that style of MMO with levels, quests and such was at that point new to me.
UO was very different in that you didn't have quests and you didn't have levels, you had 700 skill points and you'd choose what to fill them with, for example you might make a craftsman character with 100 points in tailoring, 100 points in woodwork, 100 in blacksmithing, 100 in tinkering, 100 in mining etc. but you could mix and match, you could make a warrior character that had 600 points spread across fighting skills then the last 100 split between 50 in magery and 50 in blacksmithing giving you just enough magic to use the teleport spell and just enough smithing to repair your armour for example. It also didn't have quests as such, you effectively made your own - you might decide to take a bunch of friends to the depths of the hardest dungeon to kill a big named demon, but you'd do it off your own back whenever you wanted. That demon might then drop some rare metal which could be used to barter with a blacksmith to make some decent armour or it might drop a treasure map so you could then go treasure hunting.
Planetside was different because it was an MM FPS basically, so not a lot needs to be said there.
The point is that, WoW, WAR, AoC, they're all following the same theme that DAoC and Everquest before them did and that's just boring now, most people who play an MMO stick with it for years but then leave only because they've been there, done that and got bored - creating games that are identical to those people are already bored of is not going to get you anywhere, this is why no one has succeeded in overthrowing WoW which got it's playerbase because previous identical MMOs such as DAoC failed miserably when it came to marketing, promotion etc. else they'd have likely caused the same thing to happen to WoW as WoW caused to happen to WAR - people wouldn't have bothered because it was just more of the same.
The MMO market absolutely does need variation, and anyone whose played MMOs over a longer period than just WoW will realise that the WoW recipe is both not new, and not special.
I believe if a UO style game was made today and given proper marketing it'd do immensly well simply because that style of MMO hasn't been done to any reasonable manner since UO itself - a game that's effectively a much freer open world, where people create their own quests, where people can walk up to a cliff face and mine where they want along the entire cliff face rather than at specific pre-defined points - UO simply wasn't ever as rigid.
I think this is what TFA means when it says they're just WoW players and that's it - WoW did an amazing job of hype, marketing and so on to pull first time MMO players in and this is by far the majority of their playerbase - first time MMO players and it is these people they're referring to when they say they're just WoW players and that's it because they've yet to experience anything else and find out that there's much more possibilities out there when it comes to MMOs, but you can't blame them for having this view when no MMO in recent years has done anything other than just copy WoW either.
No, the fact it and the work that was done at the site were the precursor to a whole new field - Computer science and the fact that arguably the most important device in existence today, the computer, were effectively born there is why it should be saved.
It's not just any old computer and it's not just any old site, it's where computer science and the sub-field of artificial intelligence became a reality.
It seems important to save the first "anything" as a celebration of our achievements. It also has a lot of inspirational value for kids when they can see how some of the things that are taken for granted today came about - it's hard to imagine how someone could invent the computer if you look at something as complex as those we use today, but if kids are shown early models they can learn more easily how the things come about.
I seriously think the government has a problem with Bletchley park in that they were responsible for it's greatest figurehead, Alan Turing's death.
Turing was one of the main founders of modern computing, one of the mathematical greats and he used his abilities to help end the war early by preventing the German war machine keeping it's military secrets, undoubtedly many lives are owed to him.
Of course, for those that don't know his story, in the 50s he was convicted of being gay, something that was illegal at the time and was forced into hormone therapy to try and "cure" him of his homosexuality. This effected the one thing he had and held dearly - his mind, and so he committed suicide (or possibly was assassinated, but that seems unlikely) in 1954.
To this day I believe the British governments through the ages have failed to accept that their parties were responsible for the death of one of the greatest Britons of all time, and I believe the shunning of Bletchley park is a continuation of their refusal to accept that they are at fault for both Turing's death and the lack of realisation of how important Turing and Bletchley was to the British war effort.
At school we're taught about some of the greatest British engineers of all time such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, we're taught about our kings and queens, we're taught about our greatest military leaders, our greatest industrialists, but there is not a single mention of our computer scientists. If you killed loads of people in the name of Britain you'll be fine, if you helped push colonialism across the world you'll go down in history, but if you invent or help to invent the computer? arguably the single most important device of the last 50 years? Good luck your story every being well known.
The fact is, for over 60 years the successive British governments have failed computer science in the UK despite it being one of the most important countries in the world when it comes to it's developmental history from Turing to Berners-Lee to Ive (the guy who designed the iMac and iPod). The decision mentioned in the article is just further evidence of how backwards and ignorant the British government is - it cares about only a few minor sectors such as banking, and look how well that has done us - whilst the likes of Google were announcing record profits, banks had effectively failed. I believe this ignorance and a refusal to foster and support the field has cost the UK an IT industry that could truly have rivalled that of silicon valley.
Sadly that doesn't often seem to be true for a lot of cancellations nowadays (although I can't say for sure about this series as I don't know the figures).
A lot of shows get cancelled even when they are making a profit, but the TV companies seem to think they can make more profit with that time slot if they cancel it and put something else on, but this rarely seems to ever actually happen.
They'd do better if they just kept these series running until they actually had things to replace them that really would do better rather than just replacing them with stuff thats equally crap and sometimes even less profitable.
That's the crux of it. To me downloadable and rental are two words that shouldn't be used in the same sentence.
In classic video rental stores you'd rent for a fraction of the price of buying because it meant the video store could buy the film for £10 and rent it out 15 times at £1 a time to make £5 profit. It had to be rental because it was a physical object that they could only allow one person to access at a time.
Of course, that limitation is gone with downloadable content, it's a limitation that has to be created artificially and of course the vehicle for delivering that has to be DRM. Quite rightly as you say, every rental service I've seen so far that creates this artificial limitation ultimately results in a bad deal for the user in that if they want to keep playing it they'll end up paying more than they would've if they could've bought it through classic means in a shop. The same goes for the likes of XBox live's video marketplace in that you might as well just buy the DVD if you're planning to ever watch it more than once and of course watch it at your own pace rather than their artificially imposed time limitation.
As an aside though I'm not sure what you mean about XBox live marketplace content being slow to come down - I've always had it come down at 240k/s which is the fastest my connection can download at. If you're having issues downloading from there the bottleneck is almost certainly your connection so may be worth checking. The same goes for other download services like Steam, Direct2Drive etc. - download speeds have just never been an issue as far as they max out my connection. I just wish I had a faster connection!
I have not and will not ever use a software rental service. If I'm paying for software or media I wish to use I want to pay once for that digital and keep it. I don't want to be billed over and over for it. After all, it brings all the classic issues with this approach such as what if they close the store down and I only got half way through playing it and can't re-rent it to finish it off? What if I buy a game that takes two weeks to complete, get half way through it in the first week when my rental expires then they bump the cost up to twice as much if I want to finish it off in the second week?
Yes, but seeing as the speaker for the houses of parliament has just been the first one pushed out of his job in 300 years and seeing as we've also now seen 2 peers in the house of lords suspended for the first time in 300 years, it suggests that it's very likely we in the UK are at our lowest political point in 300 years.
I don't think we can criticise other nations when we let it get this bad to start with.
The UK needs a massive change - both houses need a purge and the house of lords needs to be more democratic with the ability for members to be removed permanently. Of course an election is the best way to purge the commons but whilst each party capable of getting in has members who are corrupt to the core I think we realistically need something more solid - the ability for a 3rd party to ban those who have effectively stolen from the people they are meant to serve from politics altogether.
It wont happen though, the Lords will carry on as always, the corrupt peers will be back in November and The Conservatives will not get their election until next year which they'll win hands down whilst still containing people who had their moats and swimming pools cleaned courtesy of the tax payers.
I'd wager a bet there's not a single person out there without a comp. sci. degree that can't spot many of the numerous obvious flaws in the RIAA's arguments.
The fact he offered to help her when her story is mostly only reported on technical and legal sites suggests that he has been following the case too.
The fight against the RIAA in the courts is probably the most important IT legal battle going on since the SCO battle reached it's peak and is now seeing it's long slow inevitable conclusion. It's a good way to get yourself spotted as a leading IT lawyer and as he has degrees in Law and Comp. sci. I'd guess that's where his heart is.
Yet people use apt-get instead of just downloading the tgz's directly on Linux, why is that?
Because if you do have a centralised app repository that is extremely easy to use and which contains quality, tested applications it's much easier to use than searching the internet for something that may or may not do what you want and may or may not be trojan infested.
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Yes, it's not as simple as suggesting religion causes fighting and so on.
Most wars are over resources, sometimes lack of resources, sometimes simply human greed for more resources. Religion however tends to create the dividing line, helping determine who is on which side, but also race has many a time played an important factor here.
What religion does do however is it breeds ignorance, it allows people to take it too far. Whilst resources are an issue, this certainly seems the case in the middle east - Iran has no resource argument with Israel, yet it hates it to the point it's willing to sponsor terrorism against it based purely on religious grounds.
It's worth noting that World War II was largely a non-religious war and it had a much cleaner ending to it than most religious wars. When religion is used as a tool for hate, it's viral, it's passed down through generations - "We have to hate Christians because our fathers told us to".
So you're right, religion certainly isn't generally the trigger for violence and hatred amongst humans, but it's nearly always guilty of prolonging hate, often for hundreds of years. Again, where religion wasn't used as an excuse for war - i.e. in World War II the war in Europe and the war between the US and Japan the resolution was much more clean - the nations comprising Europe are amazingly strong together now as are Japan and the US.
If everyone became atheist yes, we'd still certainly fight, but we wouldn't end up with the decades, sometimes centuries long hatred we see in the Middle East and parts of Asia. Only a religion can teach that, why? Because as soon as you start teaching people that your set of ideas and everyone elses is wrong regardless of lack of proof or reason for your ideas, then effectively you're just creating religion - diety or not.
Yes, that's what's generally referred to as zealotry and ignorance.
If someone just wants to build Windows apps then Visual Studio is far and away the quickest and easiest way to do that.
A lot of people don't care if their software was built by an angel with a halo over his head, if that software isn't very productive they'd rather take the piece written by an average day to day coder.
Some people have better things to do than bicker about religious software vendor wars and just go for what lets them get the job done best, and sorry, but free software all too often just loses out here, until there's a realiation of that, it aint gonna change but the free software has a strong focus on getting things to work, without much effort ever being put into how it works and improving usability and productivity.
Asking people to give up usability and productivity for some moral stance is going to be about as easy as getting blood out of stone.
I support the idea of free software, but the free software movement has to accept these points and act on them as the ideology alone isn't enough to make people switch.
Oh I'm not arguing that either way - I was just pointing out that I think the parents argument was a little short-sighted, it isn't as simple as "they bought it so they can do what they want with it" because as I say there are other considerations!
I think you're probably right, I'm suprised that it's truly safe and that there aren't pollutants but they seem quite sure they've confirmed that it is and in that case you're right it's not a bad thing, particularly if it also prevents trawling which has had a devastating effect on the oceans.
I'm not sure Microsoft is really where it is because of lack of cheap alternatives else Linux, certainly since the later Ubuntu releases would be doing much better.
I think it comes down more to interoperability, businesses buy a machine, it has Windows on it, so they figure they'll just go with Windows server, then they figure they may as well develop with Visual Studio and use MS SQL for their database and so on.
I think it's more about lockin - sure people could get systems with Mac OS X cheaper, but would they really want it if it wouldn't run all the applications they've built in .NET at least without hassle? What about the fact Mac OS X server is a rather poor offering, they'd probably want to keep their Windows servers and how well would they integrate there? What about retraining their techies to deal with any problems that may arise with Macs?
Of course, one business sees their partner or customer business using Microsoft tech. so they use it to so they can interoperate with them easy, this carries on down the line is why so many businesses use MS software. I think the only way to deal with that is if a complete offering can be provided that is at least as good as Microsoft's or simply over time by pushing Microsoft to follow open standards and then building alternatives based on those standards so companies can migrate away one peice of software at a time. Whilst Mac OS X is indeed a fine OS, it's only a small part the puzzle, you'd still likely be running MS office on it and Mac OS X server leaves a lot (too much really) to be desired. For all Micrososft's faults, Visual Studio, .NET and C# really does offer the best combination of development speed, performance, application quality out there so Apple would really need to bolster up their development tools, provide a database offering that integrates as nicely with everything else in the network as MS SQL server does.
I think Microsoft just has their claws in too many markets for people to switch to a new OS regardless of price, even if many people see it as better than MS' OS, it's the whole package that Apple can't provide but Microsoft can. People are in general lazy and unwilling to take an ethical/moral/personal stand if it requires more effort and the full solution model of doing things just caters too well to that.
They've also built their fortune on making an OS you can install across x86 hardware (and even some other platforms).
It's not so much the EULA as a whole that's in question here as much as it is a specific clause of the EULA - the clause that states the OS may only be installed on a specific manufacturer's hardware. That is not Microsoft's business model so they would have absolutely no interest in helping their arch enemy protect it.
I wouldn't say it's that straightforward to be fair.
It was public property, bought entirely by the tax payers yet no one asked the tax payers if they'd like it auctioned off or recycled, it's also being sunk in a public place.
If they owned the area they were sinking it in it'd be a little more straightforward of course but I believe it's dubious to simply say it's theirs so they can do what they want.
The problem with AI discussion is that it's scarred with the popular sci-fi view of AI, it's viewed with the Asimov style rules for AI and questions about how we should treat AI.
Realistically, this is missing the point to an extent. If we were to try and create artificial life forms for the sake of living and caring about living, caring about what they do, emotions such as sadness, boredom and so on you have a point, but I don't think that's really anyone's goal. From sex AI not wanting to having sex to soldier AI suddenly not wanting to kill, there is really little use for AI that has exactly what we perceive as being the faults of humans for a specific purpose
Conciousness doesn't necessarily mean some AI should be able to go rogue and do and think what it wants, it should just be situationally aware because that's effectively what conciousness is.
The whole "Should we treat them like humans?" argument is a great philosophical debate, but it's pretty ignorant of what we want to be aiming for in reality - and that's machines that are concious in that they can respond, react and deal with the situation in which they exist or are programmed to deal with, but not that they necessarily have the facility to worry, care, get upset, get bored and that sort of thing.
It's perfectly feasible for something to be concious but also be constrained on what it can think and feel. It's a very human trait to apply the human context to non-human things but it's a mistake we mustn't make when making serious decisions as to what we should and shouldn't do. Just as your Word processor doesn't also double up as a porn site you would only make sure your AIs did what you want them to do, there's no reason that conciousness has to also mean chaos.
No doubt there is always the possibility of emergent behaviour, but to suggest complex feelings and so forth will necessarily emerge is really as ignorant as saying notepad will suddenly turn into a web browser when you open it one day. If we do not create AI systems with traits that we do not want, they will not have them just as when we create applications with features we do not want, they do not have them.
Sorry, I should clarify, that's 250 million online gamers. That is, the amount of online gamers has increase by a much bigger proportion than the number of MMO subscribers has increased by. The increase in MMO gamers is on a factor of around 10 times in the period whilst the number of online gamers has increased over 25 times. Of course, what weighs against the MMO figure is that this time 10 years ago, the MMO market was still relatively young with the only MMO in full swing being UO, Everquest had only been out about a month or two this time 10 years ago - so effectively the 8 times figure is rather generous when you consider that you're comparing the very start of an industry when figures are bound to be low, with it's current peak 10 years on. To sum up, MMOs have actually performed pretty poorly in the last decade when it comes to growth.
MMOs clearly aren't growing in proportion with online gaming in general. My point is that this is almost certainly due to a lack of diversity.
Yeah, the problem is it's a completely different type of MMO. It's not like any of the others that have come out since so there's not really anything to compare it against. If anything it's more like things like Neverwinter nights but in a bigger more open world and without NWN's levelling mechanics.
10 years ago there were 250 million people with internet access, there are now 1.5 billion.
The potential market has increased massively, and yet there are still no more than around 16 million people playing MMOs worldwide out of around 250 million gamers.
Realistically then, comparitive figures don't tell us anything much. If we're to talk about them in overall terms there's a fair argument that although WoW and WoW like games hold the MMO crown right now, MMOs really aren't holding anywhere near as much of the gaming market as they could be.
Again, I think it's a fair point that this could be because game developers see the WoW cash cow, and try and mimic it, but ultimately fail because no one wants more of the same, they want something different and that just isn't there.
Effectively, the increase in people playing MMOs games should really be higher than it is, the lack of diversity and hence inability to attract more gamers into MMOs is almost certainly the bottleneck here. WoW's system then isn't necessarily the most appealing, it's simply that it's the only option because there is no diversity. The MMO market could almost certainly be much bigger than it is if the WoW way wasn't the only way.
I think the key point is the level of flexibility in UO's skill system, the fact you could get down to 1/10th of a percentage point in a skill and it would still have some effect on your ability to do something or the availability of some skill/spell/whatever the fact that you could raise and drop skills at any time allowed for massive flexibility. The wide range of skills also allowed for flexibility.
There were cookie cutter specs that people went for sure, but always seemed much less slow and more varied than in level based systems. Of course not every character had to be cookie cutter either. I had a character that I just liked pratting around with but was fun - Jolly Roger the magic pirate. He had fishing and magery skills and it used to just be funny taking him out to sea to use those fishing nets and pull up krakens to fight and such. I had my treasure hunter who had magery skills and cartography, I had my nox mage which was for PvP and I had my crafting char which did tinkering.
I think the key thing with UO was the amount of different options and skills - the fact I could make a wooden box with my craftsmen using woodworking then attach an explosive trap to it with tinkering, then dye it bright pink and leave it at the bank for some newbie to come along and click the bright pink box only to explode and die violently was just timeless. It was just the little things like that - I think most newbies quickly learnt not to touch the brightly coloured boxes!
Have you ever actually played UO though?
The way you describe your view is exactly what the article is talking about - the assumption that the WoW way is the only way that'll work, it really isn't.
It was hard to sit around in UO and there be nothing to do because in the pubs in the major cities there were chess boards and backgammon boards etc. that you could play with other players. There were public forges, where the smiths would hang around making armour for people, there was the bank where people would hang around to chat and trade.
The difference is that the UO game world was much much more alive, there were events which I suppose were quests but on a much large scale - seiges of major cities by big enemies or hoardes of smaller enemies out of the blue and that kind of thing but perhaps one of the key factors was the wide range of skills and the fact that at any point in the game you could start decreasing the amount of points in a skill - there was no reaching the level cap, sure you might fill your 700 skill points but then you figure out that maybe you don't like archery, or maybe you only use spells upto 60 skill points in magery, so you drop those and train up some more - unlike the WoW way of doing things there was no end game, the game kept on going. The game also had a much greater skill factor which helped in that if you were really really really good at the game you could defeat some of the biggest monsters single handedly so if you really were good you didn't have to prat around waiting for parties, but there was still content that you'd want to take a party for (PvP dungeons for example). In games like WoW the experience is rather binary - either you can defeat a certain mob by yourself or you need a party - there's very little scope for "If you're skilled enough you can get better rewards for yourself".
So the fact there were both challenges and reasons to play without having to wait for a party as well as content for when you did have a party meant there was little reason to sit around doing nothing anyway. Again, games like DAoC, WoW, WAR etc. effectively encourage sitting around because there is too much content you have no choice but to wait for a party for or if you've level capped and don't have a party there's suddenly a suprising lack of even reason to go and try and do anything by yourself.
"You're Godwinning yourself a bit there. The Neo-Nazi movement is openly pushing the policies of the original Nazi party."
That's a half-truth at best. The Neo-Nazi movement has no interest in many of the political policies of the original Nazi party, only an interest in using it's banner as a figurehead for their racist and homophobic campaigns. The problem is the the nationalist socialist movement had far more too it than just what it most infamously known for. As you're no doubt aware though my original comment was just an example hypothetical analogy to demonstrate the point and taking it as anything more than that is bound to lead to problems.
"The current labour party has no policies of homosexual persecution, and as such carries no "guilt by having the same name" that you argue is significant. Even so, it was the Conservative party in power at the time of Turings persecution, so that argument fails even on its own terms."
Both parties still have members that still support and vote in a way that ensure homosexuality isn't treated fairly. Can they be held responsible directly for the specific individual Alan Turing's death? No, sure, but whilst they refuse to apologise for their parties past policies that led to that and whilst they continue to contain politicians, some often high up in the parties that support those policies then they absolutely can be held responsible for the policies that led to Turing's death because there is still a sizeable group that agree with those policies. You only have to look at more recent votes on the likes of adoption for gay couples that met massive resistance and the fact that there is no gay marriage in the UK to see that anti-homosexual sentiment and the belief that they should not be treated equally is still strong in these parties.
I believe I understand the argument you're trying to make as it is much like that that comes up with the idea that the leadership in countries such as Britain should apologise to African nations for slavery but in this case I agree that an apology is not due. The differences are that there is no sentiment that slavery is acceptable amongst the leadership today (whilst there is sentiment that homosexuality is wrong to this day), it is also the case that it was the leadership of many of those African nations that sold their population as slaves so are complicit in it themselves, and the final difference is that Britain has already acted to apologise for the slave trade in that it was one of, if not the leading force in doing away with it and forcing other countries to do away with it.
Effectively I agree that you can't be held accountable for your ancestors past but you can be held accountable for the policies that led to that situation if you haven't shown that you've entirely done away with that mindset and point of view. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives have done this when it comes to homosexuality and the fact that they have never acknowledged that what their policies did to Turing was wrong is just part of the evidence that they themselves still don't totally disagree with those policies in their entirety. If they really want to show themselves as progressive they need to draw a line under it and say yes, it was wrong, no we wholeheartedly don't support that viewpoint anymore. They have yet to do this and accept that their party lines were ever wrong in this respect.
This is one of those questions that's impossible to answer in a generic context.
If you look at something like Dead Rising, it just wouldn't work well without gore. Compare to something like Viva Pinata and it'd be pretty fucking stupid with gore.
Bletchley houses more than just the Enigma though, it's home to the UK's national computing museum, the issue in the article is that it's not being put on par with the imperial war museum.
The argument then is more that the government isn't giving computing history and education the attention it deserves.
You're suggesting that a government party exists only of the people in it and nothing more.
Following that logic one would suggest that should the Nazi party arise in Germany we should accept them because the people in the original Nazi party are no longer part of it, effectively people in it might call themselves Nazis but we shouldn't connect them to the past in anyway because they weren't there themselves. It's not that simple, a party has to accept that it has a past and it has to deal with that.
A party is more than just the people in it, parties have history and they are responsible for apologising for that history if it is bad and if they have not done so. This is particularly so as parties will continuously bring up the past in their favour when it comes to promoting themselves - The Conservatives for example will regularly mention Churchill, Wilberforce and so on as some of their great historical successes and as such they must also accept their historical failings, this goes for all parties.
The only way a group of politicians can shed their past is if they form a new party and hence lose the old identity, but if they wish to use that old identity in their favour, such that it gives them easy recognition, they must also accept it's past comes as part of that package and take responsibility for that.
I think TFA is referring to people like me, who have played other MMOs and it's WoW that was the one that didn't interest me.
Why? For exactly the stated reasons, it was just more of the same, after having played Dark Age of Camelot for 5 years. I wanted something that actually brought something new to the table than the same dull old method of questing.
I played WAR a little longer than WoW but only by about a month, I found it to end up being largely the same.
The best MMOs I've ever played were Ultima Online and Planetside followed by DAoC - DAoC only because I'd never played the likes of EQ so that style of MMO with levels, quests and such was at that point new to me.
UO was very different in that you didn't have quests and you didn't have levels, you had 700 skill points and you'd choose what to fill them with, for example you might make a craftsman character with 100 points in tailoring, 100 points in woodwork, 100 in blacksmithing, 100 in tinkering, 100 in mining etc. but you could mix and match, you could make a warrior character that had 600 points spread across fighting skills then the last 100 split between 50 in magery and 50 in blacksmithing giving you just enough magic to use the teleport spell and just enough smithing to repair your armour for example. It also didn't have quests as such, you effectively made your own - you might decide to take a bunch of friends to the depths of the hardest dungeon to kill a big named demon, but you'd do it off your own back whenever you wanted. That demon might then drop some rare metal which could be used to barter with a blacksmith to make some decent armour or it might drop a treasure map so you could then go treasure hunting.
Planetside was different because it was an MM FPS basically, so not a lot needs to be said there.
The point is that, WoW, WAR, AoC, they're all following the same theme that DAoC and Everquest before them did and that's just boring now, most people who play an MMO stick with it for years but then leave only because they've been there, done that and got bored - creating games that are identical to those people are already bored of is not going to get you anywhere, this is why no one has succeeded in overthrowing WoW which got it's playerbase because previous identical MMOs such as DAoC failed miserably when it came to marketing, promotion etc. else they'd have likely caused the same thing to happen to WoW as WoW caused to happen to WAR - people wouldn't have bothered because it was just more of the same.
The MMO market absolutely does need variation, and anyone whose played MMOs over a longer period than just WoW will realise that the WoW recipe is both not new, and not special.
I believe if a UO style game was made today and given proper marketing it'd do immensly well simply because that style of MMO hasn't been done to any reasonable manner since UO itself - a game that's effectively a much freer open world, where people create their own quests, where people can walk up to a cliff face and mine where they want along the entire cliff face rather than at specific pre-defined points - UO simply wasn't ever as rigid.
I think this is what TFA means when it says they're just WoW players and that's it - WoW did an amazing job of hype, marketing and so on to pull first time MMO players in and this is by far the majority of their playerbase - first time MMO players and it is these people they're referring to when they say they're just WoW players and that's it because they've yet to experience anything else and find out that there's much more possibilities out there when it comes to MMOs, but you can't blame them for having this view when no MMO in recent years has done anything other than just copy WoW either.
No, the fact it and the work that was done at the site were the precursor to a whole new field - Computer science and the fact that arguably the most important device in existence today, the computer, were effectively born there is why it should be saved.
It's not just any old computer and it's not just any old site, it's where computer science and the sub-field of artificial intelligence became a reality.
It seems important to save the first "anything" as a celebration of our achievements. It also has a lot of inspirational value for kids when they can see how some of the things that are taken for granted today came about - it's hard to imagine how someone could invent the computer if you look at something as complex as those we use today, but if kids are shown early models they can learn more easily how the things come about.
I seriously think the government has a problem with Bletchley park in that they were responsible for it's greatest figurehead, Alan Turing's death.
Turing was one of the main founders of modern computing, one of the mathematical greats and he used his abilities to help end the war early by preventing the German war machine keeping it's military secrets, undoubtedly many lives are owed to him.
Of course, for those that don't know his story, in the 50s he was convicted of being gay, something that was illegal at the time and was forced into hormone therapy to try and "cure" him of his homosexuality. This effected the one thing he had and held dearly - his mind, and so he committed suicide (or possibly was assassinated, but that seems unlikely) in 1954.
To this day I believe the British governments through the ages have failed to accept that their parties were responsible for the death of one of the greatest Britons of all time, and I believe the shunning of Bletchley park is a continuation of their refusal to accept that they are at fault for both Turing's death and the lack of realisation of how important Turing and Bletchley was to the British war effort.
At school we're taught about some of the greatest British engineers of all time such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, we're taught about our kings and queens, we're taught about our greatest military leaders, our greatest industrialists, but there is not a single mention of our computer scientists. If you killed loads of people in the name of Britain you'll be fine, if you helped push colonialism across the world you'll go down in history, but if you invent or help to invent the computer? arguably the single most important device of the last 50 years? Good luck your story every being well known.
The fact is, for over 60 years the successive British governments have failed computer science in the UK despite it being one of the most important countries in the world when it comes to it's developmental history from Turing to Berners-Lee to Ive (the guy who designed the iMac and iPod). The decision mentioned in the article is just further evidence of how backwards and ignorant the British government is - it cares about only a few minor sectors such as banking, and look how well that has done us - whilst the likes of Google were announcing record profits, banks had effectively failed. I believe this ignorance and a refusal to foster and support the field has cost the UK an IT industry that could truly have rivalled that of silicon valley.
Sadly that doesn't often seem to be true for a lot of cancellations nowadays (although I can't say for sure about this series as I don't know the figures).
A lot of shows get cancelled even when they are making a profit, but the TV companies seem to think they can make more profit with that time slot if they cancel it and put something else on, but this rarely seems to ever actually happen.
They'd do better if they just kept these series running until they actually had things to replace them that really would do better rather than just replacing them with stuff thats equally crap and sometimes even less profitable.
True it's all relative I guess!
When 240k/s is all you can get, hitting it is quite pleasing ;)
That's the crux of it. To me downloadable and rental are two words that shouldn't be used in the same sentence.
In classic video rental stores you'd rent for a fraction of the price of buying because it meant the video store could buy the film for £10 and rent it out 15 times at £1 a time to make £5 profit. It had to be rental because it was a physical object that they could only allow one person to access at a time.
Of course, that limitation is gone with downloadable content, it's a limitation that has to be created artificially and of course the vehicle for delivering that has to be DRM. Quite rightly as you say, every rental service I've seen so far that creates this artificial limitation ultimately results in a bad deal for the user in that if they want to keep playing it they'll end up paying more than they would've if they could've bought it through classic means in a shop. The same goes for the likes of XBox live's video marketplace in that you might as well just buy the DVD if you're planning to ever watch it more than once and of course watch it at your own pace rather than their artificially imposed time limitation.
As an aside though I'm not sure what you mean about XBox live marketplace content being slow to come down - I've always had it come down at 240k/s which is the fastest my connection can download at. If you're having issues downloading from there the bottleneck is almost certainly your connection so may be worth checking. The same goes for other download services like Steam, Direct2Drive etc. - download speeds have just never been an issue as far as they max out my connection. I just wish I had a faster connection!
I have not and will not ever use a software rental service. If I'm paying for software or media I wish to use I want to pay once for that digital and keep it. I don't want to be billed over and over for it. After all, it brings all the classic issues with this approach such as what if they close the store down and I only got half way through playing it and can't re-rent it to finish it off? What if I buy a game that takes two weeks to complete, get half way through it in the first week when my rental expires then they bump the cost up to twice as much if I want to finish it off in the second week?
Yes, but seeing as the speaker for the houses of parliament has just been the first one pushed out of his job in 300 years and seeing as we've also now seen 2 peers in the house of lords suspended for the first time in 300 years, it suggests that it's very likely we in the UK are at our lowest political point in 300 years.
I don't think we can criticise other nations when we let it get this bad to start with.
The UK needs a massive change - both houses need a purge and the house of lords needs to be more democratic with the ability for members to be removed permanently. Of course an election is the best way to purge the commons but whilst each party capable of getting in has members who are corrupt to the core I think we realistically need something more solid - the ability for a 3rd party to ban those who have effectively stolen from the people they are meant to serve from politics altogether.
It wont happen though, the Lords will carry on as always, the corrupt peers will be back in November and The Conservatives will not get their election until next year which they'll win hands down whilst still containing people who had their moats and swimming pools cleaned courtesy of the tax payers.
I believe he also has a degree in comp. sci.
I'd wager a bet there's not a single person out there without a comp. sci. degree that can't spot many of the numerous obvious flaws in the RIAA's arguments.
The fact he offered to help her when her story is mostly only reported on technical and legal sites suggests that he has been following the case too.
The fight against the RIAA in the courts is probably the most important IT legal battle going on since the SCO battle reached it's peak and is now seeing it's long slow inevitable conclusion. It's a good way to get yourself spotted as a leading IT lawyer and as he has degrees in Law and Comp. sci. I'd guess that's where his heart is.
Yet people use apt-get instead of just downloading the tgz's directly on Linux, why is that?
Because if you do have a centralised app repository that is extremely easy to use and which contains quality, tested applications it's much easier to use than searching the internet for something that may or may not do what you want and may or may not be trojan infested.