Very interesting insight, thank you. This is one of those things I've always been curious about--it seems counter-intuitive to me (as aparently it did to your parent poster) that with all the redundant systems on an airplane, a simple recieve-only device could cause a problem.
Cell Phones, maybe--plus using cell-phones seems dumb, you're going to keep the switching networks busy as hell and probably drop every other minute, but an AM/FM radio? CD Player?
When airlines bundle CD Players (Low energy use & no signals intentionally broadcast) in with Cell Phones, consumers must react with skeptisism.
How serious do you really think the problem is? Do you think the restriction during takeoff and landing are enough? Is it really necessary to ever ban items like FM Radios or CD players in your opinion (I'm guessing you're not an RF expert, but having seen how the insturmentation in use, I'd value your opinion).
That's exactly what everyone who hasn't tried one has said (at least in my experience, including myself.
It's EXACTLY the same response I get when I try to tell someone they should use gmail over hotmail/Yahoo mail--it's just better in so many barely perceptible ways that it's impossible to describe.
Same response I get when I try to explain why someone should use IM instead of email...
To post a letter like you did without trying it is only displaying ignorance. I don't mean that in a rude way, I mean you really can't know unless you used one for a few months, you are ignorant of the entire thing.
Asking questions will never ever answer your questions because you have nothing in your life experience to use as a comparison.
You are right, it does nothing more than any other player--it's all preference; just like chosing a language: Ruby, python, C++, Java they all do nothing more than Basic, right? Just user preference. Of course, once they have USED all those languages, most programmers recognize that there is more to it than simple syntax and don't choose Basic.
I've been wondering lately what it would take to convert a video camera pan into a stil picture.
If you were to scan a seen, zoomed in, and then process it, you should be able to get a HUGE picture with a fairly small camera.
This process would also stabilize the image, blurs don't exist on sufficiently fast movie cameras.
So thinking along those lines, any "Fuzzy" scene (like ANY zoomed-in scene that I try to shoot with a hand-held) should be able to be filmed as a video, then processed into something with much higher density simply due to your hand movements.
You are, in effect, filling in the space between the marbles.
The other really interesting effect that this kind of processing would give you is a 3-d effect with one camera.
Picture driving along with a movie camera pointed out your side window, preferably with a fish-eye lens. That lens captured all the images you need to re-create the entire trip in 3-d. As you approach a tree, it gets one side, as you drive away, it gets the other, all you would be missing is a small section of the back. All this would be in as high a resolution as you could possibly ask for.
Since the images would be so similar but 3-D separated, a computer shouldn't have too much trouble identifying different objects within the picture. The processing system would work pretty much the same as a video card running in reverse--take in a scene and put out a bunch of bitmap-textured 3-d models.
Yes, I meant that watching it would be a heck of a lot more interesting than watching a bunch of people trapped in a house or eating roaches, don't you think?.
And from an observers POV, it would be much more interesting than any of the other crap they have come up with.
But I did mean something that would be a lot more like what you are describing. It probably would end up 23.75 hours of prep and sleeping and eating and the occasional skirmish when the oppertunity presents itself, all edited down to a nice 1 hour per day package.
Then maybe Americans could get their war fix without actually killing each other.
That's what you think, but it's probably not true. In a sitation where you are forced to react without thinking, you will rely on your conditioned responses -- which includes those learned from video games.
Now that you mention it, that's a really good point. When you really get into a video game, you occasionally run into a panic situation, where you, the player, are actually unable to think coherently (If not, your games are not immersive enough).
I'm sure that this could help you react in the real world, keep a clear mind and force yourself through a situation that is virtually impossible to emulate anywhere else (for instance, facing the possibility of your imminent death)
Perhaps that is why the Military is starting to use games to train soldiers--the ability to actually face these things without dying.
And again, if you think that you can't empathize with your avatar's death and, for a second at least, feel it as though it was your own--you are playing the wrong games.
I imagine it would be amazing to watch once done correctly.
Imagine a quake-type game where there are, say, 4 teams of 40 people each broken up into squads of 5. This would be very similar to watching an actual war, it would require tactics, leadership and lots of skill.
Whatever the game, the trick will be depicting it in such a way that the viewer can get a good sense of what is going on from all angles, a completely different view than any of the players would have.
Goes along with the reality show I'd really love to see--extreme paintball. Stick two teams of 100 people each in a huge area and let them actually go at it for a week. You can only eat what you pack in, and you can't leave the arena unless you are "dead", but you can build fortifications, dig trenches, steal supplies and use whatever tactics let you win.
PLEASE tell me how to use it!! We have been trying for ages now.
The biggest problem is that it is virtually impossible to navigate the areas. For word documents you get a semi-sharing system. It's sort of what you'd get if you put a document in version control--the merge isn't good, but it's possible.
However, as far as I can tell, the Excel portion is horrific. There is really no decent merge, it's no better than putting it in version control.
If I'm wrong about it, would you please refer me to a summary of how to use this tool?
I thought most of the content on the internet was ripped from CDs (which they can't watermark--or at least it would be a real bitch to trace it back to a given purchaser).
on top of that, they seem to be intent to charge as much to download a song as to buy a CD, sometimes more.
So how does this do anything at all?
Now, for p0rn it's another story altogether.
This whole data protection is crap anyway! Just deal with the fact that you are competing with piracy and approach it that way. Tighten your belts a little and charge $0.75 cents a song. Charge $5 for a movie and don't even bother with anything more than trivial copy protection.
Most people would be honest if given a REASONABLE choice, and if you can't afford the $0.75--well the record company has no business making money off your broke ass anyway!
One place where watermarks might be interesting--If all the songs I'd leagally purchased were "marked" with my personal code, I could scan through them and see which ones weren't mine, then I could pay for them in bulk, converting them to marked files yet retaining the flexible MP3 format.
One of the best people in the world, my uncle Bill (an IBM employee since WAY back), bought a TRS-80 for me when I graduated Jr. High. We didn't have much money and we never would have been able to afford it otherwise.
I didn't even know I wanted it because I never thought about stuff I knew we couldn't afford, he certianly knew me better than I knew myself.
After playing with it for a year or two, I was fairly well versed at Basic, and had written some "Fast" assembly routines by figuring out Z-80 opcodes from a book and forming strings, then executing the strings or poking them into high memory.
Eventually I bought a floppy drive and got into trading games. Some nice older scoutmaster from the boy scouts (Probably not much older than I am now) used to take my brother and I and a couple other kids to a college room that had been rented for the purpose. One of the first "Wares" communities I suppose. I learned how to use different DOSes, some script programming and a little bit of compiled C.
After a while I even experimented with the hardware a little. Learned to replace ram chips (helped with my first computer job--building PCs), wrote driver code, etc.
One very important thing to consider: If there had been ANY decent games available, especially MMORPGs, I NEVER would have learned any of this and probably would be sweeping floors today. I became addicted to muds a little later--luckally after learning the basics! This is probably the most significant shaping event in my life and I kinda feel sorry for kids today because they are not forced to play the hard way.
My mom claims her brother, my Uncle Bill, was one of the top 10 people at IBM when he retired.
She also says that they didn't know smoking was bad for you back then.
Google/ig has been up for quite a while--I feel like it's been my home page forever. Each of the pages I visited from the article seem like simple copies--nothing new.
Why aren't they implementing word, excel, photoshop, All my IM clients, a couple solitare & group card games and a music+video player all with remote storage or the ability to fetch data from another computer when you access it remotely.
THEN you have a "desktop". Until then you just have the same portal you've had since YAHOO went public, but with the ability to drag stuff around.
Free speech--concepts can be taken from person to person, reworked and made your own. Once you have heard something, you can repeat it a million times to a million different people with whatever subtle difference you choose to add, or keep it up to date with new concepts.
Free Beer--You pretty much just rent beer anyway. They can stop serving it at any time and you are screwed (espically if you have become addicted). If it doesn't meet your needs in some small way, you're screwed.
Free Beer is probably not a good foundation for your business, they are only giving it to you to get you to buy better beer anyway, but it's certianly much better than paying if you're broke.
If you're flush--you might as well pay for it (tip) anyway to get the (bartenders) support.
If they can port the code to a new system (probably a PC or something) for a single person, why couldn't they then use that same port for everyone and get rid of the old machines altogether?
Most things that occur to people happen on a scale. You're not just fat or thin, you're not just smart or dumb, you are not just tall or short. Everyone falls in a range.
Why is it not obvious that autism is the same way? Where are all the partially autistic people? They are engineers and scientests. These are the reason that geeks are "Picked on" in school--not because of their hobbies, but because they actually lack genes that most people use to empathize.
We all deal with it somehow, Some overcome their lack of empathy by emulating it, some buy friends and are happy with that, and some just don't even bother. Most don't even recognize that they have a birth defect unless it's pointed out and they go back and review the mistakes they made that cost them relationships in the past...
I think the human mind is just good enough that it compensates for whatever we don't have, but that doesn't mean that everyone is truly created equal.
It's funny how someone is always ready with an excuse. They are often different, but for some reason, accepting that we are fucking up the world really hurts some people so deeply that I don't think they have the ability to comprehend it objectivly.
Well, here's the bad news--THE CLIMATE IS CHANGING. We don't know what will happen over the next century, but it's going to be an interesting ride.
The worse news--although it may actually help those in denial--there is absolutely nothing that you, as an individual, can do. You can go on a killing spree and kill everyone you've ever known and you won't even slow it. You can get the entire United States to switch from gas to electric cars and fuel them by solar power and the world-wide rate of change will still increase.
If you don't believe me, consider that America has 300 millionish people, while China and India have populations counting in the Billions--all of which are acting more like Americans every day.
I truly believe that at this point the best way for the planet to survive is going to bring it on as quickly as possible rather than dragging it out. Already we are doing untold damage to species diversity, water-tables and biosystems all across the planet. If we just get it over with quickly, maybe there will be something to salvage (and I assume the humans left, if any, will have learned a lesson, but maybe that's too much to assume)
--- Sorry about the spelling, the latest firefox upgrade broke spellbound and I haven't found a replacement.
A friend of mine (who had done quite a bit of acid, by the way) once suggested that all weight is caused by gravitons. Gravitons are little particals that attach themselves to objects moving at speed, and the faster they move the lighter they become.
This is why planes need wings. The larger the surface area, the more gravitons it can hold so the lighter it becomes, eventually lifting it off the ground.
If you don't believe me yet, hold out your arms and run around in circles as fast as you can for five minutes. You will actually FEEL lighter! What more proof do you need in this post-scientific neoconic age?
...that I really can't even put it into words. Not just Diabold or the government, mostly the people.
Thirty years ago I would have assumed that if there was the slightest hint of election fixing that ALL election officials would tear into it with abandon, and that the people would similarly tear into any official that even suggestion that it was a bad idea to look into election results.
These days I have the same confidence in our system that I have in any south-American, African or Russian system, essentially none. That said, all you ever hear from the populous is the occasional reference to "wingnuts" and liberal media trying to jack the existing government.
Perhaps I'm mostly disturbed with my own inaction. Anyone have suggestions on things I can do that really work? Voting does NOT (No matter what you have been trained to believe), talking to representatives does NOT (unless you can outbid the lobbyists whispering in their other ear--I can't). I've just given up...
Any suggestions at all?
(PS. How did Diabold get away having a name that spell-checks to Diabolism? It's like they are throwing it in our faces!!!)
I understand why DC is wasteful as a power distribution mechanism, but I wonder if it wouldn't be useful at this point to throw a single 110vac to 12vdc transformer into every house. You could easily make it battery backed and have it shut off the transformer whenever the battery is full.
Then make some sockets with 5 prongs (backwards compatible with the original 3, of course) and you are good to go. Your PC, video equipment (including LCD monitors/TVs), clocks, and most of your small appliances could run off the new DC wires, and would even be resistant to power outages (Immune if you could recharge the battery with your car).
The more I think about it, the more this looks like a REALLY GOOD IDEA. Is there a reason this won't work? Do DC wires have to be too thick to power that much equipment or something? Will they interfere with AC when run in the same conduit? If not, I'm seriously going to think about including something like this in my house when I build it.
Many muds used to go more into hiding stats. It's a little annoying, but I agree that people who "Play" attempting to level all the time are really missing the point.
I used to have more on muds with low level groups attacking level 8 targets than as a top-level character doing anything.
If they really wanted to fix these systems, I recommend a more serious punishment for death (say, loss of 1/3 or 1/2 of your levels), Items that break and cannot be fixed, and DMs that provide "Surprises" for high leve characters that occasionally get them killed. The occasional complete reset doesn't hurt either. Keep the players off their toes and make players who really don't enjoy playing any more just QUIT!
The most horrid, retarted, immature thing you can ever do is bitch about how they can't take away your levels, character or weapon because of how much time you invested and how it cost so much money. These people should be wiped from existance, or at least the game. If it isn't fun to level, go do something that IS fun and let others discover and enjoy the game without your useless overbearing presence.
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Very interesting insight, thank you. This is one of those things I've always been curious about--it seems counter-intuitive to me (as aparently it did to your parent poster) that with all the redundant systems on an airplane, a simple recieve-only device could cause a problem.
Cell Phones, maybe--plus using cell-phones seems dumb, you're going to keep the switching networks busy as hell and probably drop every other minute, but an AM/FM radio? CD Player?
When airlines bundle CD Players (Low energy use & no signals intentionally broadcast) in with Cell Phones, consumers must react with skeptisism.
How serious do you really think the problem is? Do you think the restriction during takeoff and landing are enough? Is it really necessary to ever ban items like FM Radios or CD players in your opinion (I'm guessing you're not an RF expert, but having seen how the insturmentation in use, I'd value your opinion).
What could possibly be worth an extra $50?
That's exactly what everyone who hasn't tried one has said (at least in my experience, including myself.
It's EXACTLY the same response I get when I try to tell someone they should use gmail over hotmail/Yahoo mail--it's just better in so many barely perceptible ways that it's impossible to describe.
Same response I get when I try to explain why someone should use IM instead of email...
To post a letter like you did without trying it is only displaying ignorance. I don't mean that in a rude way, I mean you really can't know unless you used one for a few months, you are ignorant of the entire thing.
Asking questions will never ever answer your questions because you have nothing in your life experience to use as a comparison.
You are right, it does nothing more than any other player--it's all preference; just like chosing a language: Ruby, python, C++, Java they all do nothing more than Basic, right? Just user preference. Of course, once they have USED all those languages, most programmers recognize that there is more to it than simple syntax and don't choose Basic.
Not only that but we've solved that pesky space elevator problem.
I've been wondering lately what it would take to convert a video camera pan into a stil picture.
If you were to scan a seen, zoomed in, and then process it, you should be able to get a HUGE picture with a fairly small camera.
This process would also stabilize the image, blurs don't exist on sufficiently fast movie cameras.
So thinking along those lines, any "Fuzzy" scene (like ANY zoomed-in scene that I try to shoot with a hand-held) should be able to be filmed as a video, then processed into something with much higher density simply due to your hand movements.
You are, in effect, filling in the space between the marbles.
The other really interesting effect that this kind of processing would give you is a 3-d effect with one camera.
Picture driving along with a movie camera pointed out your side window, preferably with a fish-eye lens. That lens captured all the images you need to re-create the entire trip in 3-d. As you approach a tree, it gets one side, as you drive away, it gets the other, all you would be missing is a small section of the back. All this would be in as high a resolution as you could possibly ask for.
Since the images would be so similar but 3-D separated, a computer shouldn't have too much trouble identifying different objects within the picture. The processing system would work pretty much the same as a video card running in reverse--take in a scene and put out a bunch of bitmap-textured 3-d models.
Yes, I meant that watching it would be a heck of a lot more interesting than watching a bunch of people trapped in a house or eating roaches, don't you think?.
And from an observers POV, it would be much more interesting than any of the other crap they have come up with.
But I did mean something that would be a lot more like what you are describing. It probably would end up 23.75 hours of prep and sleeping and eating and the occasional skirmish when the oppertunity presents itself, all edited down to a nice 1 hour per day package.
Then maybe Americans could get their war fix without actually killing each other.
That's what you think, but it's probably not true. In a sitation where you are forced to react without thinking, you will rely on your conditioned responses -- which includes those learned from video games.
Now that you mention it, that's a really good point. When you really get into a video game, you occasionally run into a panic situation, where you, the player, are actually unable to think coherently (If not, your games are not immersive enough).
I'm sure that this could help you react in the real world, keep a clear mind and force yourself through a situation that is virtually impossible to emulate anywhere else (for instance, facing the possibility of your imminent death)
Perhaps that is why the Military is starting to use games to train soldiers--the ability to actually face these things without dying.
And again, if you think that you can't empathize with your avatar's death and, for a second at least, feel it as though it was your own--you are playing the wrong games.
I imagine it would be amazing to watch once done correctly.
Imagine a quake-type game where there are, say, 4 teams of 40 people each broken up into squads of 5. This would be very similar to watching an actual war, it would require tactics, leadership and lots of skill.
Whatever the game, the trick will be depicting it in such a way that the viewer can get a good sense of what is going on from all angles, a completely different view than any of the players would have.
Goes along with the reality show I'd really love to see--extreme paintball. Stick two teams of 100 people each in a huge area and let them actually go at it for a week. You can only eat what you pack in, and you can't leave the arena unless you are "dead", but you can build fortifications, dig trenches, steal supplies and use whatever tactics let you win.
PLEASE tell me how to use it!! We have been trying for ages now.
The biggest problem is that it is virtually impossible to navigate the areas. For word documents you get a semi-sharing system. It's sort of what you'd get if you put a document in version control--the merge isn't good, but it's possible.
However, as far as I can tell, the Excel portion is horrific. There is really no decent merge, it's no better than putting it in version control.
If I'm wrong about it, would you please refer me to a summary of how to use this tool?
Thanks
on our body somewhere, say on our foreheads and make it machine readable--like a tatto or something.
That would be cool.
I thought most of the content on the internet was ripped from CDs (which they can't watermark--or at least it would be a real bitch to trace it back to a given purchaser).
on top of that, they seem to be intent to charge as much to download a song as to buy a CD, sometimes more.
So how does this do anything at all?
Now, for p0rn it's another story altogether.
This whole data protection is crap anyway! Just deal with the fact that you are competing with piracy and approach it that way. Tighten your belts a little and charge $0.75 cents a song. Charge $5 for a movie and don't even bother with anything more than trivial copy protection.
Most people would be honest if given a REASONABLE choice, and if you can't afford the $0.75--well the record company has no business making money off your broke ass anyway!
One place where watermarks might be interesting--If all the songs I'd leagally purchased were "marked" with my personal code, I could scan through them and see which ones weren't mine, then I could pay for them in bulk, converting them to marked files yet retaining the flexible MP3 format.
One of the best people in the world, my uncle Bill (an IBM employee since WAY back), bought a TRS-80 for me when I graduated Jr. High. We didn't have much money and we never would have been able to afford it otherwise.
I didn't even know I wanted it because I never thought about stuff I knew we couldn't afford, he certianly knew me better than I knew myself.
After playing with it for a year or two, I was fairly well versed at Basic, and had written some "Fast" assembly routines by figuring out Z-80 opcodes from a book and forming strings, then executing the strings or poking them into high memory.
Eventually I bought a floppy drive and got into trading games. Some nice older scoutmaster from the boy scouts (Probably not much older than I am now) used to take my brother and I and a couple other kids to a college room that had been rented for the purpose. One of the first "Wares" communities I suppose. I learned how to use different DOSes, some script programming and a little bit of compiled C.
After a while I even experimented with the hardware a little. Learned to replace ram chips (helped with my first computer job--building PCs), wrote driver code, etc.
One very important thing to consider: If there had been ANY decent games available, especially MMORPGs, I NEVER would have learned any of this and probably would be sweeping floors today. I became addicted to muds a little later--luckally after learning the basics! This is probably the most significant shaping event in my life and I kinda feel sorry for kids today because they are not forced to play the hard way.
My mom claims her brother, my Uncle Bill, was one of the top 10 people at IBM when he retired.
She also says that they didn't know smoking was bad for you back then.
I love you UB, RIP.
Google/ig has been up for quite a while--I feel like it's been my home page forever. Each of the pages I visited from the article seem like simple copies--nothing new.
Why aren't they implementing word, excel, photoshop, All my IM clients, a couple solitare & group card games and a music+video player all with remote storage or the ability to fetch data from another computer when you access it remotely.
THEN you have a "desktop". Until then you just have the same portal you've had since YAHOO went public, but with the ability to drag stuff around.
It's even worse when somebody spouts bigotry and doesn't even recognize that he is one.
Free speech--concepts can be taken from person to person, reworked and made your own. Once you have heard something, you can repeat it a million times to a million different people with whatever subtle difference you choose to add, or keep it up to date with new concepts.
Free Beer--You pretty much just rent beer anyway. They can stop serving it at any time and you are screwed (espically if you have become addicted). If it doesn't meet your needs in some small way, you're screwed.
Free Beer is probably not a good foundation for your business, they are only giving it to you to get you to buy better beer anyway, but it's certianly much better than paying if you're broke.
If you're flush--you might as well pay for it (tip) anyway to get the (bartenders) support.
If they can port the code to a new system (probably a PC or something) for a single person, why couldn't they then use that same port for everyone and get rid of the old machines altogether?
Most things that occur to people happen on a scale. You're not just fat or thin, you're not just smart or dumb, you are not just tall or short. Everyone falls in a range.
Why is it not obvious that autism is the same way? Where are all the partially autistic people? They are engineers and scientests. These are the reason that geeks are "Picked on" in school--not because of their hobbies, but because they actually lack genes that most people use to empathize.
We all deal with it somehow, Some overcome their lack of empathy by emulating it, some buy friends and are happy with that, and some just don't even bother. Most don't even recognize that they have a birth defect unless it's pointed out and they go back and review the mistakes they made that cost them relationships in the past...
I think the human mind is just good enough that it compensates for whatever we don't have, but that doesn't mean that everyone is truly created equal.
Putting Wikipedia on it would be a good start.
There are also open-source educational books coming up to speed in various quadrents of the net.
So, if I paint a Ferrari lime green and put a hand crank on it, nobody will steal it?
Depends on the size of the hand crank.
It's funny how someone is always ready with an excuse. They are often different, but for some reason, accepting that we are fucking up the world really hurts some people so deeply that I don't think they have the ability to comprehend it objectivly.
Well, here's the bad news--THE CLIMATE IS CHANGING. We don't know what will happen over the next century, but it's going to be an interesting ride.
The worse news--although it may actually help those in denial--there is absolutely nothing that you, as an individual, can do. You can go on a killing spree and kill everyone you've ever known and you won't even slow it. You can get the entire United States to switch from gas to electric cars and fuel them by solar power and the world-wide rate of change will still increase.
If you don't believe me, consider that America has 300 millionish people, while China and India have populations counting in the Billions--all of which are acting more like Americans every day.
I truly believe that at this point the best way for the planet to survive is going to bring it on as quickly as possible rather than dragging it out. Already we are doing untold damage to species diversity, water-tables and biosystems all across the planet. If we just get it over with quickly, maybe there will be something to salvage (and I assume the humans left, if any, will have learned a lesson, but maybe that's too much to assume)
---
Sorry about the spelling, the latest firefox upgrade broke spellbound and I haven't found a replacement.
A friend of mine (who had done quite a bit of acid, by the way) once suggested that all weight is caused by gravitons. Gravitons are little particals that attach themselves to objects moving at speed, and the faster they move the lighter they become.
This is why planes need wings. The larger the surface area, the more gravitons it can hold so the lighter it becomes, eventually lifting it off the ground.
If you don't believe me yet, hold out your arms and run around in circles as fast as you can for five minutes. You will actually FEEL lighter! What more proof do you need in this post-scientific neoconic age?
...that I really can't even put it into words. Not just Diabold or the government, mostly the people.
Thirty years ago I would have assumed that if there was the slightest hint of election fixing that ALL election officials would tear into it with abandon, and that the people would similarly tear into any official that even suggestion that it was a bad idea to look into election results.
These days I have the same confidence in our system that I have in any south-American, African or Russian system, essentially none. That said, all you ever hear from the populous is the occasional reference to "wingnuts" and liberal media trying to jack the existing government.
Perhaps I'm mostly disturbed with my own inaction. Anyone have suggestions on things I can do that really work? Voting does NOT (No matter what you have been trained to believe), talking to representatives does NOT (unless you can outbid the lobbyists whispering in their other ear--I can't). I've just given up...
Any suggestions at all?
(PS. How did Diabold get away having a name that spell-checks to Diabolism? It's like they are throwing it in our faces!!!)
Good point.
I understand why DC is wasteful as a power distribution mechanism, but I wonder if it wouldn't be useful at this point to throw a single 110vac to 12vdc transformer into every house. You could easily make it battery backed and have it shut off the transformer whenever the battery is full.
Then make some sockets with 5 prongs (backwards compatible with the original 3, of course) and you are good to go. Your PC, video equipment (including LCD monitors/TVs), clocks, and most of your small appliances could run off the new DC wires, and would even be resistant to power outages (Immune if you could recharge the battery with your car).
The more I think about it, the more this looks like a REALLY GOOD IDEA. Is there a reason this won't work? Do DC wires have to be too thick to power that much equipment or something? Will they interfere with AC when run in the same conduit? If not, I'm seriously going to think about including something like this in my house when I build it.
Many muds used to go more into hiding stats. It's a little annoying, but I agree that people who "Play" attempting to level all the time are really missing the point.
I used to have more on muds with low level groups attacking level 8 targets than as a top-level character doing anything.
If they really wanted to fix these systems, I recommend a more serious punishment for death (say, loss of 1/3 or 1/2 of your levels), Items that break and cannot be fixed, and DMs that provide "Surprises" for high leve characters that occasionally get them killed. The occasional complete reset doesn't hurt either. Keep the players off their toes and make players who really don't enjoy playing any more just QUIT!
The most horrid, retarted, immature thing you can ever do is bitch about how they can't take away your levels, character or weapon because of how much time you invested and how it cost so much money. These people should be wiped from existance, or at least the game. If it isn't fun to level, go do something that IS fun and let others discover and enjoy the game without your useless overbearing presence.
You had Windows/386??? It's really sad when these kids start to think they are old...
Your termal cluster was Windows PCs and not terminals/ttys???? And you had a server on site? Man, you kids were so lucky! Back in MY day...
...as long as they keep them two seperate shows...
Great, now I'm going to be writing scripts in my head all day about FireflyAD!