Yes, it is about control. Starting with Self Control, and working around to "what do the rest of us do when Self Control fails".
While you're sitting in your easy chair smokin', you're no more hazard than any other indoor smoker. (But we're not here to talk about house fires by sleepy smokers...) If you decide you need to make a store run for some munchies, do you know whether you're safe to do so? Do you care at that point?
Not a great deal of difference between that and alcohol, true. But we've got generations of collective "rules of thumb" for alcohol that we don't for weed. We've also got objective tests available.
And we STILL have drunk drivers on the road. The argument "I'm not a hazard in my room" is only valid if there is also a way to ensure you STAY in your room. Absent that, you DO have to consider the side issues as part of the package.
Don't install software that does things you don't want it to do.
The plugin was installed by automatic updates. The automatic update did not describe that it was going to install the plugin. Therefore, automatic updates cannot be trusted "not to do things you don't want them to do".
However, (other) automatic updates correct vulnerabilities in the operating system. Failing to install automatic updates because they can't be trusted means your system remains vulnerable to new attacks.
Remaining vulnerable is undesirable. Using automatic updates is undesirable. The only remaining option is to not use the OS.
Best argument I've seen yet for switching to Linux.
Even more amusing, you've assumed ignorance on the part of the GP, then provided an explanation that requires modest technical expertise to implement.
Myself, I think that you err: You already see that there are people who use Firefox that don't have your level of knowledge. Firefox-the-browser might not need to be responsible for uninstalling such plugins, but Firefox-the-application sure as perdition should have a tool that lets the non-techie uninstall such plugins on his personal desktop. You crow about how it would suffer in the business market, yet trivialize the home market. It's not an either-or situation. You have to win both.
Not at all. I never said to destroy the world and leave. You have to stay in the world and live with the consequences.
This is not, though, a feature of "games". If it's not fun, you can choose to leave. So you can't force anyone to "live with the consequences". In fact, you've created an environment that would be toxic to new players.
Actually been there, done that. The sandbox MMORPG game A Tale In The Desert had a disease ravage the land at one point. Many people worked on a cure. The cure was slow in coming, though, and many many people simply stopped playing. The accomplishment from making the cure wasn't worth the pain.
To kype a quote, sometimes the only way to win is not to play.
> You can't dismiss an arguement (with any credibility) just because the statistically insignificant group of people you know don't fit a hypothesis.
Two flaws...
Perhaps you misconstrued his statement, or perhaps your own statement was fatally ambiguous. Are you really saying that the number of people he doesn't know is insignificant? That's a lot of people to know personally.
However, if I take your statement to mean that his "20-30 people" is statistically insignificant, I have to ask what size of population IS statistically significant? You get large errors, with a sample size of 20-30 people, but you can still get results. You're much better arguing against how the population was selected, rather than the size of the population.
The life expectancy of 30 "close friends of Travis McGee" is much shorter and more troubled than that of 30 "people selected at random".
Further reading: PDF on Determining Appropriate Sample Size in Survey Research.
Most games these days have wikis associated with them, either administered by the game company or created by fans in absence of game company assistance. You don't imagine that tiny rule book/guide that came with the game would actually tell you enough about the game to do more than get you started, do you?
Some portions of the game are puzzles. You can work them out for yourself, or find someone who has solved the puzzle and ask them. Wikis cover that. Some portions have lots of choices, like character customization. Some are more effective than others. Wikis cover that too. And before wikis were database sites (which still have their utility, make no mistake).
Your complaints about jargon in CoH applies to every other MMORG I've played. And in most of those, the jargon does get in the way... but not fatally. If you've a mind to learn the jargon.
The "sounding dumb" thing goes hand in hand with the "friendliness to new players" social issue. One game I've seen that handled that well was one where new players were segregated from the general population while they "learned the ropes", and there were incentives for "mentors" to actually help out new players. City of Heroes has a "Help" chat channel. I've seen *almost* no "loludumb" sorts of responses on that channel. I don't know of a similar thing in WoW, though.
If you'd like a first-hand illustration of the problems in game design, you've done a good job of asking for it.
The amount of damage YOU take can have no bearing on the difficulty of the encounter. Just as a for-instance in CoH...
You take more damage while "resting" than you would normally. But you also regenerate health extremely fast. As long as the damage rate is less than the regeneration rate, you can sit there forever taking damage. (Showing also that time is not a telling factor either.)
World of Warcraft is fairly clever in this regard, in that some of the rewards ("Boss drops") are tied to battles that require novel strategies and tactics. For instance, in one boss fight, the boss splits into several parts. Which part you defeat first determines how easy it is to defeat the other fragments.... and can depend on what abilities your group has. (Can you simply gather them all up and "burn them down"? Can you take one or more out of the fight long enough to defeat them in detail? Is the group vulnerable to damage from one piece more than it is to others?) There are more than a trivial number of possible strategies available.
City of Heroes has a motif of being a "much simpler" game. There are fewer tactical decisions for a group as a whole. It's much easier to simply "drop in and play" than WoW. But you also don't have the "yay we finally learned how to defeat X" that you do with WoW. This was an early design decision for CoH. You take the bad with the good. But it does color what is possible.
Another design decision they made early on was that not all character types are equally able (though they are "more balanced" in City of Villains). Unlike WoW, they've stuck to this. This makes things even more situational. For instance, a Tanker and a Blaster paired up could mow through mobs much better than two Blasters or two Tankers might through the same foes. WoW does have 'roles' (DPS, healer, tank), true. But they are less exaggerated than in CoH.
Enhancements - In City of Heroes, each power can have up to 6 "enhancement slots". Enhancements are items that can be put in those slots to 'tweak' the power. Examples include "more damage", "accuracy", and "recharge time".
Single Origin Enhancement - an enhancement whose benefit is (typically) a 20-30% bonus (to damage done, or accuracy, or whatever). Exact values vary depending on what factor is being enhanced. (IE Accuracy has different percentages than damage resistance.)
ED - "Enhancement Diversity" - a system of diminishing returns limiting how much any given facet of a power can be improved. Where before, you could add up to six of the same type of enhancement and get full benefit from them, under ED you could hit the diminishing returns limit after applying only two. Any enhancements (of that type) after two returned barely noticeable increases.
If the guy in the next line spins out, then most likely you should have noticed suspicious behavior before, and acted accordingly...
(emphasis added)
The sentence that follows that is "therefore it is your fault". That is, you're preparing the ground to blame the following car for running into the guy who spins out.
I agree with you that braking is usually a more effective evasion strategy, for the reasons you state. I even agree that you need to watch traffic and prepare for trouble. But please don't set people up to be fall guys. Not all problems are forecast. The other driver could have a stroke. A tire could blow out. A tree could fall on him.... or you. He could swerve to avoid debris (real or imagined) that you can't see.
For all I know, the ships I steer in this game could be real ships using Google Earth, GPS, etc to do their navigation. I could wipe out an entire species in the guise of playing a game.
Hmm... 275 points for running a tanker aground in Prince William Sound? I'll get right on that!
My reaction to sites which are only accessible via Flash are 1) a complaint to the webmaster, if I can find even that much, and 2) to not use that site.
If they're so feeble as all that, then they deserve what they get.
And I'll see YOUR raise, and raise you Tron and The Last Starfighter. The former for the non-CGI CGI effects, and both for early computer graphic extravaganzas. Yes, those ARE individual pixels you're seeing on the starfighter. So what? You can still trust Robert Preston.
A link for those wanting to watch the lawyering: NY court info
A preliminary injunction has been filed, I would guess to keep the IP from being idly sold off in the bankruptcy, but no lawyers for 3DRealms has been noted on the site. "Disposition deadline" is in August 2011. How swift is that?
Take Two may be using this suit to establish a claim it can take to the bankruptcy court. Once there, however, it'd have to swim with the other creditors in the pool and fight for whatever morsels it thinks is coming to it.
Hmm... no pakistani partisans anywhere but the "glowing parking lot that Pakistan becomes"? Perhaps you haven't learned the lessons of "conventional terrorism" that Pakistan, Iraq, the Phillipeans, Ireland, and elsewhere have taught over the years:
Terrorists are not restricted to territory they hold and exclude the accepted government from. Using indiscriminate weapons against them MIGHT (only might) kill those terrorists you know about. They WILL kill innocent civilians, though. Which act has a good chance of recruiting any surviving relatives of those civilians. Heck, we have enough trouble telling whether we killed terrorists when we have people on the ground, directing where conventional bombs are going.
Nuclear weapons are a great way of knocking down trees and killing lots of people in a close area. What they aren't so good at is immediately killing folks in bunkers, caves, or The Next Valley Over. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cities, recall. The places you'll find terrorists hiding in Pakistan might be the cities, sure. But likely not the majority. And if what leadership there is thinks throwing nukes around is a good idea, do you think they'd remain anywhere they thought would make a good target?
So at what point did you think that a nuclear counterstrike would be an effective idea?
But that segues into the next item:
Millions die, in the USA and PAK. But not in Europe or Japan, or Germany or France or Italy or Finland or Russia.
Assume that Pakistan IS turned into a parking lot. Let's be optimistic and say 60% casualties. All that radioactivity going to stay there? Or will it float around on the prevailing winds? Do you know? What of global weather impact?
I doubt we're talking "end of civilization as we know it", but to blithely imply "no impact" is as irrational as "the end is coming".
Without Bill Gates keeping science and engineering from developing, those people wouldn't be poor in the first place.
Please, go on. Tell me precisely how market dominance in a desktop computer operating system has kept the desperately poor of Africa from becoming "not poor". Perhaps it has to do with increased electrification of the African countryside? Brought computers and wireless connections to those people?
Or perhaps stymied some advancement in energy or food production, for lack of which the economies of the 3rd world nations have been stunted?
How about Windows' effect upon ethnic strife, racial, religious, economic, or otherwise?
Please, illuminate us with your wisdom, as I see absolutely no connection between the two.
Should malls be allowed to exclude people due to the color of their skin?
In my mind it should depend. A sole propriatership should be able to do what it wants.
As the parent noted, there is a significant difference between property opened to the public, and property open only to private parties. The facts of ownership are irrelevant.
Property intended for public use (eg a store) is subject to issues such as anti-discrimination law. As far as I know (IANAL), even the policy some stores have of "checking of bags on exit is a condition of entry" is iffy. (You aren't trespassing until you refuse to have your bag checked... at which point you were exiting anyway. You might not be welcome back, but that's later.)
I have been bitten by the "password saving browser / email goes obsolete, unnoticed / browser dies / password recovery uses inaccessible email address" event chain before. Your option at that point is: get a new account. Or maybe hypnosis.
For times when I really care about not losing the password, I try to avoid having some other agency "remember it for me". I'm more likely to remember it when I repeat it regularly. Applies to my Microsoft Exchange server as much as it does web forums.
As a technical matter, I would be surprised if the cable company stored the show independently for each consumer. It would make much more sense for the cable company to store the show with a count of the number of people 'storing' it; and keep the fact that a particular customer stored it with their account data. Much less data to keep track of.
Slashdot Mirror
You must live in a different space than me. 3x6x5 inches for me comes out to 90 cubic inches. But thanks for visiting our plane of existence!
This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with ... entertainers and any others."
Hmm... Not simply racist, then, but also discriminating against actors, musicians, performers, and even mimes!
Yes, it is about control. Starting with Self Control, and working around to "what do the rest of us do when Self Control fails".
While you're sitting in your easy chair smokin', you're no more hazard than any other indoor smoker. (But we're not here to talk about house fires by sleepy smokers...) If you decide you need to make a store run for some munchies, do you know whether you're safe to do so? Do you care at that point?
Not a great deal of difference between that and alcohol, true. But we've got generations of collective "rules of thumb" for alcohol that we don't for weed. We've also got objective tests available.
And we STILL have drunk drivers on the road. The argument "I'm not a hazard in my room" is only valid if there is also a way to ensure you STAY in your room. Absent that, you DO have to consider the side issues as part of the package.
Don't install software that does things you don't want it to do.
The plugin was installed by automatic updates. The automatic update did not describe that it was going to install the plugin. Therefore, automatic updates cannot be trusted "not to do things you don't want them to do".
However, (other) automatic updates correct vulnerabilities in the operating system. Failing to install automatic updates because they can't be trusted means your system remains vulnerable to new attacks.
Remaining vulnerable is undesirable. Using automatic updates is undesirable. The only remaining option is to not use the OS.
Best argument I've seen yet for switching to Linux.
Even more amusing, you've assumed ignorance on the part of the GP, then provided an explanation that requires modest technical expertise to implement.
Myself, I think that you err: You already see that there are people who use Firefox that don't have your level of knowledge. Firefox-the-browser might not need to be responsible for uninstalling such plugins, but Firefox-the-application sure as perdition should have a tool that lets the non-techie uninstall such plugins on his personal desktop. You crow about how it would suffer in the business market, yet trivialize the home market. It's not an either-or situation. You have to win both.
Not at all. I never said to destroy the world and leave. You have to stay in the world and live with the consequences.
This is not, though, a feature of "games". If it's not fun, you can choose to leave. So you can't force anyone to "live with the consequences". In fact, you've created an environment that would be toxic to new players.
Actually been there, done that. The sandbox MMORPG game A Tale In The Desert had a disease ravage the land at one point. Many people worked on a cure. The cure was slow in coming, though, and many many people simply stopped playing. The accomplishment from making the cure wasn't worth the pain.
To kype a quote, sometimes the only way to win is not to play.
> You can't dismiss an arguement (with any credibility) just because the statistically insignificant group of people you know don't fit a hypothesis.
Two flaws...
Perhaps you misconstrued his statement, or perhaps your own statement was fatally ambiguous. Are you really saying that the number of people he doesn't know is insignificant? That's a lot of people to know personally.
However, if I take your statement to mean that his "20-30 people" is statistically insignificant, I have to ask what size of population IS statistically significant? You get large errors, with a sample size of 20-30 people, but you can still get results. You're much better arguing against how the population was selected, rather than the size of the population.
The life expectancy of 30 "close friends of Travis McGee" is much shorter and more troubled than that of 30 "people selected at random".
Further reading: PDF on Determining
Appropriate Sample Size in Survey Research.
Got ya covered: Mez
Most games these days have wikis associated with them, either administered by the game company or created by fans in absence of game company assistance. You don't imagine that tiny rule book/guide that came with the game would actually tell you enough about the game to do more than get you started, do you?
Some portions of the game are puzzles. You can work them out for yourself, or find someone who has solved the puzzle and ask them. Wikis cover that. Some portions have lots of choices, like character customization. Some are more effective than others. Wikis cover that too. And before wikis were database sites (which still have their utility, make no mistake).
Your complaints about jargon in CoH applies to every other MMORG I've played. And in most of those, the jargon does get in the way ... but not fatally. If you've a mind to learn the jargon.
The "sounding dumb" thing goes hand in hand with the "friendliness to new players" social issue. One game I've seen that handled that well was one where new players were segregated from the general population while they "learned the ropes", and there were incentives for "mentors" to actually help out new players. City of Heroes has a "Help" chat channel. I've seen *almost* no "loludumb" sorts of responses on that channel. I don't know of a similar thing in WoW, though.
If you'd like a first-hand illustration of the problems in game design, you've done a good job of asking for it.
The amount of damage YOU take can have no bearing on the difficulty of the encounter. Just as a for-instance in CoH...
You take more damage while "resting" than you would normally. But you also regenerate health extremely fast. As long as the damage rate is less than the regeneration rate, you can sit there forever taking damage. (Showing also that time is not a telling factor either.)
World of Warcraft is fairly clever in this regard, in that some of the rewards ("Boss drops") are tied to battles that require novel strategies and tactics. For instance, in one boss fight, the boss splits into several parts. Which part you defeat first determines how easy it is to defeat the other fragments. ... and can depend on what abilities your group has. (Can you simply gather them all up and "burn them down"? Can you take one or more out of the fight long enough to defeat them in detail? Is the group vulnerable to damage from one piece more than it is to others?) There are more than a trivial number of possible strategies available.
City of Heroes has a motif of being a "much simpler" game. There are fewer tactical decisions for a group as a whole. It's much easier to simply "drop in and play" than WoW. But you also don't have the "yay we finally learned how to defeat X" that you do with WoW. This was an early design decision for CoH. You take the bad with the good. But it does color what is possible.
Another design decision they made early on was that not all character types are equally able (though they are "more balanced" in City of Villains). Unlike WoW, they've stuck to this. This makes things even more situational. For instance, a Tanker and a Blaster paired up could mow through mobs much better than two Blasters or two Tankers might through the same foes. WoW does have 'roles' (DPS, healer, tank), true. But they are less exaggerated than in CoH.
Enhancements - In City of Heroes, each power can have up to 6 "enhancement slots". Enhancements are items that can be put in those slots to 'tweak' the power. Examples include "more damage", "accuracy", and "recharge time".
Single Origin Enhancement - an enhancement whose benefit is (typically) a 20-30% bonus (to damage done, or accuracy, or whatever). Exact values vary depending on what factor is being enhanced. (IE Accuracy has different percentages than damage resistance.)
ED - "Enhancement Diversity" - a system of diminishing returns limiting how much any given facet of a power can be improved. Where before, you could add up to six of the same type of enhancement and get full benefit from them, under ED you could hit the diminishing returns limit after applying only two. Any enhancements (of that type) after two returned barely noticeable increases.
...or listening to NPR...
Naw, then they'd have to put time restrictions on it too: It's okay to listen to Fresh Air, but not to Car Talk....
What? I thought my user ID was private! Oh, the shame!
If the guy in the next line spins out, then most likely you should have noticed suspicious behavior before, and acted accordingly...
(emphasis added)
The sentence that follows that is "therefore it is your fault". That is, you're preparing the ground to blame the following car for running into the guy who spins out.
I agree with you that braking is usually a more effective evasion strategy, for the reasons you state. I even agree that you need to watch traffic and prepare for trouble. But please don't set people up to be fall guys. Not all problems are forecast. The other driver could have a stroke. A tire could blow out. A tree could fall on him. ... or you. He could swerve to avoid debris (real or imagined) that you can't see.
For all I know, the ships I steer in this game could be real ships using Google Earth, GPS, etc to do their navigation. I could wipe out an entire species in the guise of playing a game.
Hmm... 275 points for running a tanker aground in Prince William Sound? I'll get right on that!
Dude! Where's my planet?
My reaction to sites which are only accessible via Flash are 1) a complaint to the webmaster, if I can find even that much, and 2) to not use that site.
If they're so feeble as all that, then they deserve what they get.
You mean, like forming some kind of primitive ice-lathe?
And I'll see YOUR raise, and raise you Tron and The Last Starfighter. The former for the non-CGI CGI effects, and both for early computer graphic extravaganzas. Yes, those ARE individual pixels you're seeing on the starfighter. So what? You can still trust Robert Preston.
A link for those wanting to watch the lawyering: NY court info
A preliminary injunction has been filed, I would guess to keep the IP from being idly sold off in the bankruptcy, but no lawyers for 3DRealms has been noted on the site. "Disposition deadline" is in August 2011. How swift is that?
Take Two may be using this suit to establish a claim it can take to the bankruptcy court. Once there, however, it'd have to swim with the other creditors in the pool and fight for whatever morsels it thinks is coming to it.
I find a number of your assumptions questionable.
Game over
Hmm... no pakistani partisans anywhere but the "glowing parking lot that Pakistan becomes"? Perhaps you haven't learned the lessons of "conventional terrorism" that Pakistan, Iraq, the Phillipeans, Ireland, and elsewhere have taught over the years:
Terrorists are not restricted to territory they hold and exclude the accepted government from. Using indiscriminate weapons against them MIGHT (only might) kill those terrorists you know about. They WILL kill innocent civilians, though. Which act has a good chance of recruiting any surviving relatives of those civilians. Heck, we have enough trouble telling whether we killed terrorists when we have people on the ground, directing where conventional bombs are going.
Nuclear weapons are a great way of knocking down trees and killing lots of people in a close area. What they aren't so good at is immediately killing folks in bunkers, caves, or The Next Valley Over. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cities, recall. The places you'll find terrorists hiding in Pakistan might be the cities, sure. But likely not the majority. And if what leadership there is thinks throwing nukes around is a good idea, do you think they'd remain anywhere they thought would make a good target?
So at what point did you think that a nuclear counterstrike would be an effective idea?
But that segues into the next item:
Millions die, in the USA and PAK. But not in Europe or Japan, or Germany or France or Italy or Finland or Russia.
Assume that Pakistan IS turned into a parking lot. Let's be optimistic and say 60% casualties. All that radioactivity going to stay there? Or will it float around on the prevailing winds? Do you know? What of global weather impact?
I doubt we're talking "end of civilization as we know it", but to blithely imply "no impact" is as irrational as "the end is coming".
Without Bill Gates keeping science and engineering from developing, those people wouldn't be poor in the first place.
Please, go on. Tell me precisely how market dominance in a desktop computer operating system has kept the desperately poor of Africa from becoming "not poor". Perhaps it has to do with increased electrification of the African countryside? Brought computers and wireless connections to those people?
Or perhaps stymied some advancement in energy or food production, for lack of which the economies of the 3rd world nations have been stunted?
How about Windows' effect upon ethnic strife, racial, religious, economic, or otherwise?
Please, illuminate us with your wisdom, as I see absolutely no connection between the two.
How clever of you to close your copyrighted post by plagiarizing any number of EULAS.
But that's orthogonal to what I was saying there.
Isn't that Normal for Slashdot?
Should malls be allowed to exclude people due to the color of their skin?
In my mind it should depend. A sole propriatership should be able to do what it wants.
As the parent noted, there is a significant difference between property opened to the public, and property open only to private parties. The facts of ownership are irrelevant.
There are private "members only" "clubs" that make use of this distinction. See this article on private golf clubs.
Property intended for public use (eg a store) is subject to issues such as anti-discrimination law. As far as I know (IANAL), even the policy some stores have of "checking of bags on exit is a condition of entry" is iffy. (You aren't trespassing until you refuse to have your bag checked... at which point you were exiting anyway. You might not be welcome back, but that's later.)
I have been bitten by the "password saving browser / email goes obsolete, unnoticed / browser dies / password recovery uses inaccessible email address" event chain before. Your option at that point is: get a new account. Or maybe hypnosis.
For times when I really care about not losing the password, I try to avoid having some other agency "remember it for me". I'm more likely to remember it when I repeat it regularly. Applies to my Microsoft Exchange server as much as it does web forums.
As a technical matter, I would be surprised if the cable company stored the show independently for each consumer. It would make much more sense for the cable company to store the show with a count of the number of people 'storing' it; and keep the fact that a particular customer stored it with their account data. Much less data to keep track of.