You're just trolling, but I'll answer anyway. I'll quote myself:
As a result, you really wanted to avoid dying and it made the game very exciting. I never said I didn't enjoy the game; I loved the PvP and the excitement. What I do dislike, is the "rapes". That is, where groups of high level players run around killing and "raping" everyone in sight, just because they're bored and tired of the game. They get sadistic pleasure by preying on weaker players, and thats just wrong. In my opinion, PvP is only fun for everyone when theres actually some competetion and challenge to it.
My point was that this "randoming" is almost the same thing as a "virtual rape", minus the sexuality. Its not hard to imagine it being taken a step further into sexual assault.
In one particular MUD I used to play, if you died there were painful consequences such as huge xp loss and loss of all your equipment. As a result, you really wanted to avoid dying and it made the game very exciting. In addition, players could PvP freely. Since you could keep all the equipment of any character you killed, it made pure PvP a very profitable exercise.
Now, people would form groups of "randomers" and walk around the world randomly killing characters. Some people would be assholes by killing people that didn't have any equipment, were clearly newbies, or just wanted to kill monsters. The randomers found it exciting and were having fun, but obviously the player on the receiving end did not enjoy it. The randomers would try to excuse their behaviour by saying "its just a game, I can be an asshole," which is wrong.
Everyone personifies their character to a degree. They spend hours playing them, leveling them, and imagining their surroundings as they do quests. Its like how you suspend disbelief as you read a good book or watch a movie. So, when these high-level randomers come around and your character dies and you lose a lot of hard earned progress, it hits you pretty hard emotionally. I would compare it to the "virtual rape" the article talks about, since the randomer has complete power over you and he's taking pleasure in your "rape". Even though its just a game, you can't argue that this is a moral thing to do.
One obvious solution is to not get so connected with your character. This, in my opinion, is a poor solution because the connection is what makes the game interesting. As an aside, I found that the loss of this connection is what turns someone into a randomer.
A better solution is to educate the player so they are not so easy prey and can use in-game mechanisms to avoid the problems. Using the MUD as an example, the player needs to realize that they can be attacked anywhere at any time and should be on the lookout. Once you're an informed and experienced player, you'll rarely get randomed. Another example: "In Second Life, flying penises may appear during your press conference, do not be alarmed." In real life, it would be like knowing not to walk around seedy streets at night wearing skimpy clothes.
Griefers, rapists, and jerks will be ever present in games and real life. You won't be able to avoid them all, but if you're smart you won't be burnt so often.
And if there are any griefers reading this, please stop being jerks. It ruins the game for everyone else.
Btw: this means we now have a way of retrieving the VID for both HD DVD and Bluray. Meaning we effectively do not need the upcoming HPK anymore. Regards, arnezami Link and link.
I'm not quite sure if "retrieving VID for Blu-ray" means they've broken Blue-ray as well, but clearly they're making progress.
I had a similiar idea when I was in highschool and played counterstrike. Instead of mapping the school, my friend created an exact replica of MY house. The map, de_jimshouse, was perfect in every detail. We played it for hours, running around in my virtual basement shooting each other with shotguns. When we started university, we thought about mapping it as well but we got bored with it. So, according to the school board I should have had my friend arrested. This level of paranoia is insane.
Furthermore, how does "creating a map" somehow equate to "criminal"? You can't even argue that it would be a simulator or planning tool, since the only thing it would have in common to real life was the layout. Hell, walking around the school would be a better "simulation" than a counterstrike map.
... the plaintiff is required to reimburse defendant's lawyers up to the amount that they themselves spend on legal services. Apparently you haven't been following this case so I'll fill you in. Essentially, the case against the defendent was "dismissed with prejudice" and should she will be reinbursed for her legal fees. The RIAA balked at the amount she demanded and tried to argue that it was far too large an amount. The defendent replied "Well, how much did you spend? If you spent more than I did, the amount I'm asking for should be reasonable." The RIAA didn't want to reveal how much they had spent, but the judge forced them to. The amount is confidential right now, but NYCL has mentioned it might become public later. In conclusion, the charges have been dropped and the RIAA is going to be paying all/most of her legal fees.
Apparently its common practice to see how much the other party has spent on legal fees to determine what is reasonable as reinbursement.
While I hope that they will bounce back as well, failing to meet projected revenues is never a good thing. The market agrees and AMD's stock fell 2% in after hours trading. Of course, if the market felt AMD was doomed it would have fallen a lot further.
But I also have to point out that millions of people around the world have bought PS3s and are loving the experience - and frankly they become our advocates and evangelists far more effectively than I could ever be. Are there any PS3 owners here that would like to promote the system? I'm genuinely curious to see if there are people satisfied with their purchase and are excited enough to promote it.
Do you happen to be a government employee?
"Our security consultant uninstalled all the stored procedures. They were too insecure." "Uh, I can reinstall the procedures, I have the SQL Server CD with me." "Get OUT."
In an earlier comment, Mr. Haselton posted a transcript of the hearing here. If you read it, you'll find the story isn't quite as clear cut as he makes it out to be.
Now, I agree that the accused was probably a spammer and should have punished for his crimes, but Mr. Haselton did NOT argue his case very well. I think the dismissal of the claims was more a result of Mr. Haseltons poor presentation than anything else. He was not particularly organized, presented too much irrelevant information and had a poor flow. It is true that the judge interrupted him a number of times, but IMO it was simply to make Mr. Haselton get to the point.
At the beginning of his presentation, Mr. Haselton did not clearly explain the technical details. I'm still not quite sure what bulletproof-hosting is and why it makes the spammer liable for damages. It appears the judge felt the same way. Second, Mr. Haselton's evidence wasn't particularly compelling since he didn't produce the tape, nor did he produce the disclaimer. That might be irrelevant to the case (IANAL) but the judge clearly wanted it.
I don't want to be hard on Mr. Haselton since he's not a lawyer, but it appears that he lost due to a poorly argued case rather than judicial corruption and incompetence. As an aside, this proves why people hire lawyers in the first place; they know how to present information in a logical and clear manner, and know what the judge is looking for.
I don't mean to troll but the "truly free distro" as you describe it doesn't sound very wonderful to me. I'm not quite the average consumer, but 90% of the things I use my PC for are non-free by your definition. You won't see any mass-adoption unless the free distro could provide the same or better functionality and be user-friendly. Unfortunately, I don't really see that happening unless current trends change drastically. This is probably why Ubuntu is moving in the opposite direction from "completely free" and is gaining popularity as a result.
To me, "truly free" sounds nice philosophically but not practically.
The "unlimited copying" comment reminded me of a presentation I heard in 2005. Essentially, the argument is that since hyperdistribution through bittorrent has been invented and can never be un-invented or stopped effectively, the current distribution model of producer - distributor - consumer can't continue. He argues that since the REAL funding for productions comes from advertisers, the producer should cut out the middle-man and distribute the content themselves. Using embedded advertising and virtually costless distribution, producers can continue to make money and prosper.
Of course, the presentation was two years ago and the changes he proposed still haven't come to pass. Even so, I think his ideas still have merit and everyone knows industries can be slow to adopt to change.
Interesting. I didn't notice that until you pointed it out.
Looking further, we can see that the last AMD story, AMD's New DRM, was submitted by DefectiveByDesign which links to the FSF page.
Another possible example is the story AMD Athlon 64 6000+ Launched And Tested, which was submitted by Spinnerbait. It doesn't link to a page, but its a pretty suggestive name.
Perhaps the editors are surreptitiously inserting their opinions into the submissions. On the other hand, this can all be explained by submitters trying to be clever. But thats not nearly as fun.
Somewhat offtopic, but I found this interesting.
I went from paying under $3/pack of smokes to over $5 In Canada, small packs of smokes cost something like CAD $15 because of taxes. I don't smoke, so I don't know the exact price. Hell, I couldn't afford it even if I wanted to.
While your post is somewhat confusing, you make a couple of good points. 1) Never accept things blindly 2) Don't accept a theory simply because the scientist is popular.
However, I don't understand what you are arguing for in the rest of your post. What is your point?
Also, I did a fairly quick google search to find some articles providing evidence of a young earth, but I didn't find ANYTHING convincing. The only decent article I found has been thoroughly discredited by another scientist. Heres the link.
Fair enough, the Chinese stock market are volatile and have been growing at tremendous rate for the last few years. Clearly there is the chance that speculation may be causing a bubble which means the market is overvalued. I was wrong about that in my original post. That said, the Chinese stock market isn't simply a hollow shell being propped up by the Chinese government, which was implied by the GGP. There is real strong growth in the country.
I still stand by my statement of the currency price being too low.
I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that these effects would only appear if the fake money was traded freely between currencies. Since the virtual currency is only used in China and is linked only to the yuan, would the real-fake effect you describe show up?
Well, if the currency was like any other "real" currency, the government would just use the exchange rate available on the currency market. The problem is that virtual currencies such as the QQ dollar are NOT traded on a currency market, and never will be. The Chinese government will never allow the QQ dollar to coexist peacefully with the yuan, since that would result in loss of control over the yuan. Since the virtual currency will never be traded on an open market, its impossible to value your assets correctly. That will cause a problem with taxation, but I'm sure governments would prefering losing some tax revenue over losing complete control over their currency.
As the article mentions (yes I did read it), there are already market-makers of a sort for the QQ currency. Essentially, they convert QQ dollars to yuan and back. Like all market-makers, I assume they charge a spread that allows them to earn a small percentage on each transaction.
Clearly, the barrier to development of this virtual currency market is that the Chinese Government (or any other government for that matter) doesn't want it. There are a few reasons, but the most obvious are loss of control, dilution of "real" currency, and inadequate backing of the currency. For example, the Chinese government has control over the supply of yuan (they print it), and back the yuan's value. QQ coins on the other hand, are only "real" in the sense that Tencent allows you buy things with them. While the Chinese government will always support the yuan, Tencent can't guarantee the QQ will always have value. If Tencent went bust, or had an employee suddenly issue billions of QQ dollars, the value of the currency would plummet.
Given the above, this currency will never be allowed to exist peacefully with the yuan. It will never be used for big business to business transactions, so we'll never see specialized markets for lending or futures.
Slashdot Mirror
My point was that this "randoming" is almost the same thing as a "virtual rape", minus the sexuality. Its not hard to imagine it being taken a step further into sexual assault.
This may take awhile but I'll get to the point.
In one particular MUD I used to play, if you died there were painful consequences such as huge xp loss and loss of all your equipment. As a result, you really wanted to avoid dying and it made the game very exciting. In addition, players could PvP freely. Since you could keep all the equipment of any character you killed, it made pure PvP a very profitable exercise.
Now, people would form groups of "randomers" and walk around the world randomly killing characters. Some people would be assholes by killing people that didn't have any equipment, were clearly newbies, or just wanted to kill monsters. The randomers found it exciting and were having fun, but obviously the player on the receiving end did not enjoy it. The randomers would try to excuse their behaviour by saying "its just a game, I can be an asshole," which is wrong.
Everyone personifies their character to a degree. They spend hours playing them, leveling them, and imagining their surroundings as they do quests. Its like how you suspend disbelief as you read a good book or watch a movie. So, when these high-level randomers come around and your character dies and you lose a lot of hard earned progress, it hits you pretty hard emotionally. I would compare it to the "virtual rape" the article talks about, since the randomer has complete power over you and he's taking pleasure in your "rape". Even though its just a game, you can't argue that this is a moral thing to do.
One obvious solution is to not get so connected with your character. This, in my opinion, is a poor solution because the connection is what makes the game interesting. As an aside, I found that the loss of this connection is what turns someone into a randomer.
A better solution is to educate the player so they are not so easy prey and can use in-game mechanisms to avoid the problems. Using the MUD as an example, the player needs to realize that they can be attacked anywhere at any time and should be on the lookout. Once you're an informed and experienced player, you'll rarely get randomed. Another example: "In Second Life, flying penises may appear during your press conference, do not be alarmed." In real life, it would be like knowing not to walk around seedy streets at night wearing skimpy clothes.
Griefers, rapists, and jerks will be ever present in games and real life. You won't be able to avoid them all, but if you're smart you won't be burnt so often.
And if there are any griefers reading this, please stop being jerks. It ruins the game for everyone else.
Regards,
arnezami Link and link.
I'm not quite sure if "retrieving VID for Blu-ray" means they've broken Blue-ray as well, but clearly they're making progress.
Starting from 2:07 ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyM3dAu7TGg
"Let that be a lesson to the rest of you nuts!"
I have mod points but I thought I'd chyme in too.
I had a similiar idea when I was in highschool and played counterstrike. Instead of mapping the school, my friend created an exact replica of MY house. The map, de_jimshouse, was perfect in every detail. We played it for hours, running around in my virtual basement shooting each other with shotguns. When we started university, we thought about mapping it as well but we got bored with it. So, according to the school board I should have had my friend arrested. This level of paranoia is insane.
Furthermore, how does "creating a map" somehow equate to "criminal"? You can't even argue that it would be a simulator or planning tool, since the only thing it would have in common to real life was the layout. Hell, walking around the school would be a better "simulation" than a counterstrike map.
Heres an excellent sung version for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9HaNbsIfp0
No, no, its more like a car that... ah, sod it.
... the plaintiff is required to reimburse defendant's lawyers up to the amount that they themselves spend on legal services. Apparently you haven't been following this case so I'll fill you in. Essentially, the case against the defendent was "dismissed with prejudice" and should she will be reinbursed for her legal fees. The RIAA balked at the amount she demanded and tried to argue that it was far too large an amount. The defendent replied "Well, how much did you spend? If you spent more than I did, the amount I'm asking for should be reasonable." The RIAA didn't want to reveal how much they had spent, but the judge forced them to. The amount is confidential right now, but NYCL has mentioned it might become public later. In conclusion, the charges have been dropped and the RIAA is going to be paying all/most of her legal fees.Apparently its common practice to see how much the other party has spent on legal fees to determine what is reasonable as reinbursement.
While I hope that they will bounce back as well, failing to meet projected revenues is never a good thing. The market agrees and AMD's stock fell 2% in after hours trading. Of course, if the market felt AMD was doomed it would have fallen a lot further.
What exactly is it that you enjoy about it and use it for? That is, what types of games do you play, do you watch movies, do you download stuff etc?
Technically, it's called a "charter challenge" since we don't have a Constitution. But close enough.
"Uh, I can reinstall the procedures, I have the SQL Server CD with me."
"Get OUT."
In an earlier comment, Mr. Haselton posted a transcript of the hearing here. If you read it, you'll find the story isn't quite as clear cut as he makes it out to be.
Now, I agree that the accused was probably a spammer and should have punished for his crimes, but Mr. Haselton did NOT argue his case very well. I think the dismissal of the claims was more a result of Mr. Haseltons poor presentation than anything else. He was not particularly organized, presented too much irrelevant information and had a poor flow. It is true that the judge interrupted him a number of times, but IMO it was simply to make Mr. Haselton get to the point.
At the beginning of his presentation, Mr. Haselton did not clearly explain the technical details. I'm still not quite sure what bulletproof-hosting is and why it makes the spammer liable for damages. It appears the judge felt the same way. Second, Mr. Haselton's evidence wasn't particularly compelling since he didn't produce the tape, nor did he produce the disclaimer. That might be irrelevant to the case (IANAL) but the judge clearly wanted it.
I don't want to be hard on Mr. Haselton since he's not a lawyer, but it appears that he lost due to a poorly argued case rather than judicial corruption and incompetence. As an aside, this proves why people hire lawyers in the first place; they know how to present information in a logical and clear manner, and know what the judge is looking for.
I don't mean to troll but the "truly free distro" as you describe it doesn't sound very wonderful to me. I'm not quite the average consumer, but 90% of the things I use my PC for are non-free by your definition. You won't see any mass-adoption unless the free distro could provide the same or better functionality and be user-friendly. Unfortunately, I don't really see that happening unless current trends change drastically. This is probably why Ubuntu is moving in the opposite direction from "completely free" and is gaining popularity as a result.
To me, "truly free" sounds nice philosophically but not practically.
I know its stupid to reply to myself, but I found some of Mark Pesce's more recent presentations. They can be found at his homepage under Talks.
The "unlimited copying" comment reminded me of a presentation I heard in 2005. Essentially, the argument is that since hyperdistribution through bittorrent has been invented and can never be un-invented or stopped effectively, the current distribution model of producer - distributor - consumer can't continue. He argues that since the REAL funding for productions comes from advertisers, the producer should cut out the middle-man and distribute the content themselves. Using embedded advertising and virtually costless distribution, producers can continue to make money and prosper.
Heres the link: Piracy is Good
Of course, the presentation was two years ago and the changes he proposed still haven't come to pass. Even so, I think his ideas still have merit and everyone knows industries can be slow to adopt to change.
Cheers,
Interesting. I didn't notice that until you pointed it out.
Looking further, we can see that the last AMD story, AMD's New DRM, was submitted by DefectiveByDesign which links to the FSF page.
Another possible example is the story AMD Athlon 64 6000+ Launched And Tested, which was submitted by Spinnerbait. It doesn't link to a page, but its a pretty suggestive name.
Perhaps the editors are surreptitiously inserting their opinions into the submissions. On the other hand, this can all be explained by submitters trying to be clever. But thats not nearly as fun.
Poor form to reply to myself but whatever.
h tml
I've been reading the TalkOrigins site and its actually quite excellent. Check it out if you're interested in evolution/creationism.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.
While your post is somewhat confusing, you make a couple of good points.
1) Never accept things blindly
2) Don't accept a theory simply because the scientist is popular.
However, I don't understand what you are arguing for in the rest of your post. What is your point?
Also, I did a fairly quick google search to find some articles providing evidence of a young earth, but I didn't find ANYTHING convincing. The only decent article I found has been thoroughly discredited by another scientist. Heres the link.
What is this evidence of a young earth?
disclaimer: I am not an economist.
Fair enough, the Chinese stock market are volatile and have been growing at tremendous rate for the last few years. Clearly there is the chance that speculation may be causing a bubble which means the market is overvalued. I was wrong about that in my original post. That said, the Chinese stock market isn't simply a hollow shell being propped up by the Chinese government, which was implied by the GGP. There is real strong growth in the country.
I still stand by my statement of the currency price being too low.
I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that these effects would only appear if the fake money was traded freely between currencies. Since the virtual currency is only used in China and is linked only to the yuan, would the real-fake effect you describe show up?
Well, if the currency was like any other "real" currency, the government would just use the exchange rate available on the currency market. The problem is that virtual currencies such as the QQ dollar are NOT traded on a currency market, and never will be. The Chinese government will never allow the QQ dollar to coexist peacefully with the yuan, since that would result in loss of control over the yuan. Since the virtual currency will never be traded on an open market, its impossible to value your assets correctly. That will cause a problem with taxation, but I'm sure governments would prefering losing some tax revenue over losing complete control over their currency.
As the article mentions (yes I did read it), there are already market-makers of a sort for the QQ currency. Essentially, they convert QQ dollars to yuan and back. Like all market-makers, I assume they charge a spread that allows them to earn a small percentage on each transaction.
Clearly, the barrier to development of this virtual currency market is that the Chinese Government (or any other government for that matter) doesn't want it. There are a few reasons, but the most obvious are loss of control, dilution of "real" currency, and inadequate backing of the currency. For example, the Chinese government has control over the supply of yuan (they print it), and back the yuan's value. QQ coins on the other hand, are only "real" in the sense that Tencent allows you buy things with them. While the Chinese government will always support the yuan, Tencent can't guarantee the QQ will always have value. If Tencent went bust, or had an employee suddenly issue billions of QQ dollars, the value of the currency would plummet.
Given the above, this currency will never be allowed to exist peacefully with the yuan. It will never be used for big business to business transactions, so we'll never see specialized markets for lending or futures.