Say you live in France and watch TV on your computer. At 3.5 mbps second for the average channel (some channels have a low bandwidth version, and some others are HD and I think that they consume around 8/10mbps). Let's say you look TV 4 hours a day (which seems about average for US people?). 6 x 60 x 60 x 3.5 = 75600 megs in one week if I'm not mistaken (I hope I'm not:). Add the phone and downloads, it may make a lot.
Well I'm sure happy that my 30 17mbps line (why 17 ? it's the maximum my line can do, so my ISP thinks there's no reason to give less, which seems about right to me, and I can say that everyone got used to it by now) doesn't have download caps, because otherwise I couldn't even use the services I have (TV, HDTV,movie VOD, free VOD for the programs I missed).
I'm sorry for all the people stuck with bad lines and no services, I'm sure in a few years from now US people will have much better lines than we do (especially if Google gets interested in it) but sometime some ADSL related posts/threads seem to pop out of 4 years ago.
Music industry could have provided us with an encyclopedic access to music of the world thorough history, and gathered knowledge to go with; could have developed fantastic tools to explore our heritage. Instead it let other people do it, and if anything only acts as a Mafia toward them.
"Music industry" has made itself synonymous of "music". Well, no. They have gone too far representing only the smallest common denominator to now pretend establish the rules by which music will live and prosper.
As a citizen: in France we have apparently 58 reactors, which provides around 75% of national energy needs, and greatly reduces CO2 emissions of the country, despite less than satisfying environmental politic on other fronts.
They were no publicly acknowledged serious incidents at those reactors (last year there were news about some engineers suicides cases that, according to the media, were due to the high standard of behavior: for example the media said that joking was judged inappropriate in those places).
I can't say I believe that there were no serious incidents, but what I can say is that we had a few very serious industrial accidents and that none has been caused by nuclear electricity generators. From Seveso to AZF*, a blast that killed 30 persons and injured 2500 in the city were parts of Airbus are assembled, chemical or petrochemical plants have been a lot more deadly. And I'll count the several oil tankers that raised havoc on our coasts, because it's not nothing at all.
If someday a nuclear incident happens, it will have to be huge to overshadow the various blasts of non nuclear industrial sites. And I'm not sure if such a huge accident would be possible anyway with modern reactors. And I'm glad that we don't depend as much as others on coal or oil, for ecological, economical and political reasons.
Great music was recorded in since the 20s, and there's plenty of great albums from the 30s. MP3 is what allows part of this music to survive actually. The real problem is: "Music industry", there one word too much in there.
I live in France. 35$ 20MBPS/1MPS up on copper infrastructures, providing free phone and TV (high def but not for all contents yet), with all friends and family in my small town using it quite a lot: online gaming, downloads, working from home, TV, phone, etc. And we have not even heard of any such problems (by problems I mean Net neutrality and bandwidth limits). Are the problems to come or do we have some much better copper lines than everywhere else, I frankly don't get it:(
"The only miraculous thing here is that they are doing so poorly despite these and other things massively in their favor."
But poorly on which count, there are many things to evaluate! they seem to do reasonably well all in all, like at quickly industrializing and urbanizing, and also improving their life expectancy which is now is now 71 years old. They also seem to catch up quick in the personal income area, as you can see in the first of the following links when it is compared to US incomes:
They seem to do reasonably well in many areas given where they come from, but maybe I'm only noting this because there's not many positives outlook on China in our, I believe, fearful societies, and I'm finally surprised by the relevant statistics.
"The Middle Ages witnessed the first sustained urbanization of northern and western Europe. Modern European states owe their origins to the Middle Ages, and their political boundaries as we know them are essentially the result of the military and dynastic achievements in this tumultuous period. Science, technology, agricultural production, and social identity changed drastically during this period. The Middle Ages are commonly dated from the 5th century fall of the Western Roman Empire until the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 15th century." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages
"We make things fun. 'So what if humans pass into history? It's not just a tragedy for us, but also one for nature. Without us, there is no one to witness its infinite beauty; no one to marvel at a sunset, revel in a view, or thrill to the breaking of a wave on a beach."
How am I supposed to take that sentence seriously, by drinking a lot or what ?
"Local musicians aren't able to sell their CDs. Anything popular from local bands will be sold on the street for maybe fifty cents. There is basically no music scene in China, everything is bootlegged from Hong Kong or Taiwan or the US."
For my specific perspective, of a music lover, I daily listen to a lot more Chinese music than American one. The music industry has killed the spirit of music, modern industrial music is meaningless.
"The realization hit me when everyone started bashing the PS3, which contains a very impressive processor"
They were probably some posts with interesting information on the processor and I'm sure that few denied that it was indeed powerful. You're right, they may be more people, today, like me who don't really work in IT. But I think that the PS3 argument isn't really fair, a game console shouldn't be only judged by its technical specs.
Question: most of the artists I like are not well known. I can find almost 100% of what I'm looking for on P2P, around 50% on amazon US (I can use it from Europe but why do - in 2007 - I have to pay 25$ for one short album, it seems insane to me, especially if the artist is long dead).
So do I-tune or any totally legal service provides for example:
-Ali Akbar Khan, "Connoisseur" label recordings.
-Nils Landgren and Esbjörn Svensson, for aexample the "Layers of Light" album
-Debussy played by Casadesus and Maréchal - Cello sonata (1930)
-the real first albums (not compilations) of Billie Holiday ?
-Hamza el Din ?
-Zhou Yu ?
If there's one legal music service with affordable prices that has this kind of music, I'm probably sold. I just don't know about it yet ?
Large companies already have more ways to get their point across than individuals do. Also, Google news users may give more credit to the "smaller side". Isn't it this trend that Slashdot and other news oriented social sites represent ?
I must admit that has a French I am terrified by the backlash against Muslims in large parts of the society, though it's apparently not a bad as northern countries like Sweden or Denmark. What frightens me is that there are some wild assumptions and more importantly, messed up ideas about ethnicity, religion, or culture. And messed up ideas about demographics.
I don't want to say that there are no problems either, but no Muslim I know frightens me like the fear fueled Eurabia mindset. I know that 95% of Europeans will feel the opposite (which is precisely what I find frightening, given our now long history of scare crowing, finger pointing and finally warmongering..; but it seem that because we've not decimated ourselves since 50 years we have the highest moral ground in the world), but is is simply my opinion.
The problem, I just can't see, and demographics won't make the trick ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurabia ), how there will EVER be enough hard liner Muslims to integrates Sharia law as our laws. And until then, you can call a killing "honor", it is a killing nonetheless, whichever culture is yours. If we could manage to work upon our native problems with beaten and killed wives because of alcohol, unemployment and such, it would save a lot more lives than to focus on so called "honor" murders.
But hey, we're addict to scapegoats by here, that's how it went, how it goes, and why it will finish badly once again.
There's a difference between stealing because you cannot do otherwise or stealing to get something slightly better that you could afford. I'm sure that there are enough people who prefer a morally legit version to a better but not paid for version.
"But having a brand symbol on your jacket or shirt is not the same as having a full-page advertisement printed on it."
Why would companies advertise on sportsmen clothes if it wasn't advertisement. Get real.
Can't answer for everybody: I can afford a phone, but one sure thing is that I'm laughing at the idea of spending 500$ in a...phone... with a heavy two years contract. Laughing.
I wonder is there's anybody addicted to casino or other games who hasn't a mental problem to boot. I have a hard time believing that a non addictive, non depressive person can be addicted by something with no direct chemical activity on the organism. But thanks for answering, really.
"And, oh by the way, trying to use the same tactic Muslims always use -- point fingers at others to distract from the issue at hand."
Damn Muslims, they are all the same nowadays.
"You are quite possibly right, but you missed one: You will never cure a WoW addiction simply by removing depression."
But won't you cure the most problematic addictions? because, I guess, no one in his right mind has self damaging addictions for the fun of it.
I'm not sure how housing 2000 players in a Wow city is possible, if not at the expense of well thought topography. Maybe it could add to the roleplay, but I'm not the kind of players that often go to the tavern, drinking virtual alcohol with virtual money... I prefer the pvp part of the game, especially the surprise pvp. I'm not too bad at surviving ganking attempts.
There are older games that are better than remakes, but most often it is in depreciated genres, and I wouldn't compare Blizzard's work with the CodeMaster rehashes.
So, in short, I think you underestimate the strong points of WoW, which is a great game for many reasons: dynamism of the fights (at least when I'm in ^^), non generic landscapes and cities, great support (patches), overall great game engine and update system.
I'm an older gamer, but quite frankly there's nothing in your list (housing? taking other player stuff?) that would make WoW a better game for me.
From a naive perspective, I figure that we have a canoe, and that going to the moon is like going through the British Channel, and going to Mars is like going several times the Pacific Ocean. That's would be why we're not there yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Say you live in France and watch TV on your computer. At 3.5 mbps second for the average channel (some channels have a low bandwidth version, and some others are HD and I think that they consume around 8/10mbps). Let's say you look TV 4 hours a day (which seems about average for US people?). 6 x 60 x 60 x 3.5 = 75600 megs in one week if I'm not mistaken (I hope I'm not :). Add the phone and downloads, it may make a lot.
Well I'm sure happy that my 30 17mbps line (why 17 ? it's the maximum my line can do, so my ISP thinks there's no reason to give less, which seems about right to me, and I can say that everyone got used to it by now) doesn't have download caps, because otherwise I couldn't even use the services I have (TV, HDTV,movie VOD, free VOD for the programs I missed).
I'm sorry for all the people stuck with bad lines and no services, I'm sure in a few years from now US people will have much better lines than we do (especially if Google gets interested in it) but sometime some ADSL related posts/threads seem to pop out of 4 years ago.
Music industry could have provided us with an encyclopedic access to music of the world thorough history, and gathered knowledge to go with; could have developed fantastic tools to explore our heritage. Instead it let other people do it, and if anything only acts as a Mafia toward them.
"Music industry" has made itself synonymous of "music". Well, no. They have gone too far representing only the smallest common denominator to now pretend establish the rules by which music will live and prosper.
As a citizen: in France we have apparently 58 reactors, which provides around 75% of national energy needs, and greatly reduces CO2 emissions of the country, despite less than satisfying environmental politic on other fronts.
/ azftour2.jpg
They were no publicly acknowledged serious incidents at those reactors (last year there were news about some engineers suicides cases that, according to the media, were due to the high standard of behavior: for example the media said that joking was judged inappropriate in those places).
I can't say I believe that there were no serious incidents, but what I can say is that we had a few very serious industrial accidents and that none has been caused by nuclear electricity generators. From Seveso to AZF*, a blast that killed 30 persons and injured 2500 in the city were parts of Airbus are assembled, chemical or petrochemical plants have been a lot more deadly. And I'll count the several oil tankers that raised havoc on our coasts, because it's not nothing at all.
* http://montoulouse.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized
If someday a nuclear incident happens, it will have to be huge to overshadow the various blasts of non nuclear industrial sites. And I'm not sure if such a huge accident would be possible anyway with modern reactors. And I'm glad that we don't depend as much as others on coal or oil, for ecological, economical and political reasons.
Great music was recorded in since the 20s, and there's plenty of great albums from the 30s. MP3 is what allows part of this music to survive actually. The real problem is: "Music industry", there one word too much in there.
I live in France. 35$ 20MBPS/1MPS up on copper infrastructures, providing free phone and TV (high def but not for all contents yet), with all friends and family in my small town using it quite a lot: online gaming, downloads, working from home, TV, phone, etc. And we have not even heard of any such problems (by problems I mean Net neutrality and bandwidth limits). Are the problems to come or do we have some much better copper lines than everywhere else, I frankly don't get it :(
"The only miraculous thing here is that they are doing so poorly despite these and other things massively in their favor."
But poorly on which count, there are many things to evaluate! they seem to do reasonably well all in all, like at quickly industrializing and urbanizing, and also improving their life expectancy which is now is now 71 years old. They also seem to catch up quick in the personal income area, as you can see in the first of the following links when it is compared to US incomes:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/140
http://tools.google.com/gapminder/
They seem to do reasonably well in many areas given where they come from, but maybe I'm only noting this because there's not many positives outlook on China in our, I believe, fearful societies, and I'm finally surprised by the relevant statistics.
"The Middle Ages witnessed the first sustained urbanization of northern and western Europe. Modern European states owe their origins to the Middle Ages, and their political boundaries as we know them are essentially the result of the military and dynastic achievements in this tumultuous period. Science, technology, agricultural production, and social identity changed drastically during this period. The Middle Ages are commonly dated from the 5th century fall of the Western Roman Empire until the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 15th century."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages
And so goes your argument to nothing.
"We make things fun. 'So what if humans pass into history? It's not just a tragedy for us, but also one for nature. Without us, there is no one to witness its infinite beauty; no one to marvel at a sunset, revel in a view, or thrill to the breaking of a wave on a beach."
How am I supposed to take that sentence seriously, by drinking a lot or what ?
"Local musicians aren't able to sell their CDs. Anything popular from local bands will be sold on the street for maybe fifty cents. There is basically no music scene in China, everything is bootlegged from Hong Kong or Taiwan or the US." For my specific perspective, of a music lover, I daily listen to a lot more Chinese music than American one. The music industry has killed the spirit of music, modern industrial music is meaningless.
"The realization hit me when everyone started bashing the PS3, which contains a very impressive processor"
They were probably some posts with interesting information on the processor and I'm sure that few denied that it was indeed powerful. You're right, they may be more people, today, like me who don't really work in IT. But I think that the PS3 argument isn't really fair, a game console shouldn't be only judged by its technical specs.
Question: most of the artists I like are not well known. I can find almost 100% of what I'm looking for on P2P, around 50% on amazon US (I can use it from Europe but why do - in 2007 - I have to pay 25$ for one short album, it seems insane to me, especially if the artist is long dead). So do I-tune or any totally legal service provides for example: -Ali Akbar Khan, "Connoisseur" label recordings. -Nils Landgren and Esbjörn Svensson, for aexample the "Layers of Light" album -Debussy played by Casadesus and Maréchal - Cello sonata (1930) -the real first albums (not compilations) of Billie Holiday ? -Hamza el Din ? -Zhou Yu ? If there's one legal music service with affordable prices that has this kind of music, I'm probably sold. I just don't know about it yet ?
Large companies already have more ways to get their point across than individuals do. Also, Google news users may give more credit to the "smaller side". Isn't it this trend that Slashdot and other news oriented social sites represent ?
I must admit that has a French I am terrified by the backlash against Muslims in large parts of the society, though it's apparently not a bad as northern countries like Sweden or Denmark. What frightens me is that there are some wild assumptions and more importantly, messed up ideas about ethnicity, religion, or culture. And messed up ideas about demographics. I don't want to say that there are no problems either, but no Muslim I know frightens me like the fear fueled Eurabia mindset. I know that 95% of Europeans will feel the opposite (which is precisely what I find frightening, given our now long history of scare crowing, finger pointing and finally warmongering..; but it seem that because we've not decimated ourselves since 50 years we have the highest moral ground in the world), but is is simply my opinion. The problem, I just can't see, and demographics won't make the trick ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurabia ), how there will EVER be enough hard liner Muslims to integrates Sharia law as our laws. And until then, you can call a killing "honor", it is a killing nonetheless, whichever culture is yours. If we could manage to work upon our native problems with beaten and killed wives because of alcohol, unemployment and such, it would save a lot more lives than to focus on so called "honor" murders. But hey, we're addict to scapegoats by here, that's how it went, how it goes, and why it will finish badly once again.
Fair enough, sorry for the last comment of mine.
There's a difference between stealing because you cannot do otherwise or stealing to get something slightly better that you could afford. I'm sure that there are enough people who prefer a morally legit version to a better but not paid for version.
Doesn't exist... in the US. Just to be precise ^^
"But having a brand symbol on your jacket or shirt is not the same as having a full-page advertisement printed on it." Why would companies advertise on sportsmen clothes if it wasn't advertisement. Get real.
Can't answer for everybody: I can afford a phone, but one sure thing is that I'm laughing at the idea of spending 500$ in a ...phone... with a heavy two years contract. Laughing.
Why? people interested by this product may not be hype machine jingoists.
I wonder is there's anybody addicted to casino or other games who hasn't a mental problem to boot. I have a hard time believing that a non addictive, non depressive person can be addicted by something with no direct chemical activity on the organism. But thanks for answering, really.
Where do the destructive overuse comes from, if people are mentally equilibrated, then ?
"And, oh by the way, trying to use the same tactic Muslims always use -- point fingers at others to distract from the issue at hand." Damn Muslims, they are all the same nowadays.
"You are quite possibly right, but you missed one: You will never cure a WoW addiction simply by removing depression." But won't you cure the most problematic addictions? because, I guess, no one in his right mind has self damaging addictions for the fun of it.
I'm not sure how housing 2000 players in a Wow city is possible, if not at the expense of well thought topography. Maybe it could add to the roleplay, but I'm not the kind of players that often go to the tavern, drinking virtual alcohol with virtual money... I prefer the pvp part of the game, especially the surprise pvp. I'm not too bad at surviving ganking attempts.
There are older games that are better than remakes, but most often it is in depreciated genres, and I wouldn't compare Blizzard's work with the CodeMaster rehashes.
So, in short, I think you underestimate the strong points of WoW, which is a great game for many reasons: dynamism of the fights (at least when I'm in ^^), non generic landscapes and cities, great support (patches), overall great game engine and update system.
I'm an older gamer, but quite frankly there's nothing in your list (housing? taking other player stuff?) that would make WoW a better game for me.
From a naive perspective, I figure that we have a canoe, and that going to the moon is like going through the British Channel, and going to Mars is like going several times the Pacific Ocean. That's would be why we're not there yet.