In Germany families are driving around in small Fiats on the left lane with 45mph on a 3-lane-road while the two right lanes are empty...
Welcome to reality!
disclaimer: And no, aggressive looks where not on my list when I bought my last car. It was safety, comfort and speed with minium fuel consumption (in that order).
This might be true if you are looking at the "old" kind of submarines that stay out for months lurking around and waiting to launch their nuclear missiles?
This could well be the jetfighter-aequivalent for underwater. Imagine an aircraft-carrier with some of those (besides the conventional planes). They would not need power for months, but for hours only - just like jetfighters today. They could be used for covert strikes on marine installations, to approach costs unseen, to defend convoys against submarine threats or against small attack vessels, they would be able to outmaneuver every conventional fighter as long as the water below is deep enough...
"The missile controls its direction using four fins that skim the inner surface of the supercavitation envelope. To change direction, the fin or fins on the inside of the desired turn are extended, and the opposing fins are retracted"
unfortunately this is inconsistent with this statement later on:
"There are at least three variants: VA-111 Shkval - Original variant; believed to be unguided (or perhaps tracking but not very maneuverable) Shkval 2 - Current variant; believed to be guided, possibly via the use of vectored thrust, and with much longer range. A lite version currently being exported to various world navies."
Offshore-oilplatforms (and evil genius homes) usually need not be protected from tsunami-waves due to its nature:
"While everyday wind waves have a wavelength (from crest to crest) of about 100 m (300 ft) and a height of roughly 2 m (7 ft), a tsunami in the deep ocean has a wavelength of about 200 km (120 miles). This wave travels at well over 800 km/h (500 mph), but due to the enormous wavelength the wave oscillation at any given point takes 20 or 30 minutes to complete a cycle and has an amplitude of only about 1 m (3 ft). This makes tsunamis difficult to detect over deep water. Their passage usually goes unnoticed by ships." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami)
On the other hand it might help preventing damage from Rogue Waves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave). If one looks at the damage done by the Draupner Wave (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draupner_wave) the costs for fitting offshore-platforms with a system like this would be uneconomical.
Let's say you create a game on the assumption that 500,000 people will want to play the game, based on demographics and popularity of similar games. You want to sell it for $50 each so that's a $25,000,000 budget - pretty good! Your game is awesome and indeed garners 500,000 players very fast. Unfortunately only 20% of those people pay for the game (this figure seems reasonable sadly). Instead of being rewarded with a nice profit and the ability to make a new game, you are now on the verge of bankruptcy.
So after the first try you should have understood that your approach on estimating an available budget is wrong, but instead you repeat the same error ad nauseam hoping it might be different next time?
What gets me the most is how people my age (35) and a little older will almost have a conniption about their kids doing the very same things that they (and I) did when we were that age. I drank, sometimes to excess but not often. I had sex/b>, as did most of my peers. I didn't mess with drugs but I knew many who did. This is what is known as High School.
If the replacement rate for a desktop computer is 3 years, and everyone buys for $250 and Windows for $130 - that's less than $400 over 3 years... or just over $10 monthly.
But alas - the replacementrate for a desktopcomputer seldom is only 3 years - and especially office-software sees an even longer time of use.
(especially in MMORPG-type of games where everyone has to solve the same puzzle with the same steps and without the result actually changing anything...)
That's when I tended to eject the floppy and try to see how far I could toss it.
Usually a quick look around would help you find the right word. The good old times when one had to actually read the text and not mindlessly click the highlighted words in the text.
ME: look
Computer: You are standing in a dusty room. The ceiling is clogged with webs from long dead spiders and the windowpanes have gone blind, giving the room an abandoned feeling. A musty odour fills your nostrils. The floor is covered in a dusty carpet. In the twilight you can make out a door to your east and when to the north. An ancient knight's armour with a big claymore, once placed at the western wall has fallen over, it's parts now scattered on the carpet.
ME: pick up claymor
Computer: I don't understand claymor
ME: puck up claymore
Computer: Learn to type you moron!
ME: take claymore
Computer: You stagger under the weight of the big sword. You can barely carry it and how someone could weild this in a fight is beyond you....
As I said, wind is great but it needs to be backed up with hydro and probably nuclear to have a reliable system.
You can't backup wind with nuclear, as those reactors can't be powered and down fast. Nuclear power is only useful for the basic (primary) load that can be planned days ahead. During low load (nighttime for example) the excess energy gets stored in pump storage hydro power plants.
Gas turbines or the named storage plants are fast enough to compensate for load shiftings in wind energy production.
Google doesn't want the liability. If anything kills eBay it's going to be getting sued by every luxury good maker on the planet. EBay claims they want to ensure authentic goods but is unwilling to take the steps needed to ensure authenticity - namely physical inspection of items and their paper trail. Such physical inspection is completely outside Google's business model so they would be in the same boat eBay is liability-wise.
You can't be serious with the idea that ebay should physically inspect items and/or the paper trail. Ebay is a platform, it is not even part of the contract between seller and buyer. Ebay is as responsible for fake products sold on that platform as a road-builder is for some drug-transport, or as an ISP for copyright violations by its users.
If Ebay is made aware of auctions that violate some sort of copyright that auction has to be taken down. If the seller gets prosecuted they will have to disclose his profile to the police. It is the business of the rightsholder to fight counterfeits.
If Warhammer needs six more months too "cook", then what's stopping you from buying it six months after its release when all the cities and classes have been included?
They delayed for one year so they can complete 2 cities. With the whole lot of bugfixes to be expected during the first 6-12 months of the gamerelease where do you think the ressources will come from that add so much content in 6 months?
For all the whining over Trials of Atlantis, it actually increased the size of the playerbase, not the other way around, and got people playing longer.
While the number of subscriptions based on Mythics announcements increased after toa-release (http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html) people still argue this was due to an increase in buffbot-accounts, seeing a widerange adoption at that time. ToA was a mistake, since it introduced overpowered abilities and classes that even today still have live with pathing- and LOS-bugs. It alienated especially casual gamers who did not have time or patience to sit through 6-10 hour-raids. While those raids might be common in other MMORPGS like WoW, too, players can enjoy the game without them. Mythic made the abilities acquired by those raids a must-have in DAoC-RvR, thus killing playing-experience for many players.
Mythic did learn something from DAoC, but they could have learned a lot more, especially regarding balance- and population-issues - and planned accordingly. Mythic has a bad track record in balancing classes, introducing abilities that are inherently overpowered, or become so when combined with other abilities and afterwards overnerfing those classes. I do not trust Mythic and especially not Mark Jacobs with my money before I have seen the final product work.
As usual the question beforehand to be answered is:
Relative to there percentage of all cars speeding, are more red cars speeding then others? Maybe people with a speeding habid are more likely to buy a red car than a black one...
I still seem to be unable to grasp why there ought to be a problem with accepting evolution and believing in god.
Everyone who has ever build something (anything...) knows that it is easier to calculate/build/program something for a very specific purpose, then to calculate/build/program an algorithm/machine/... that adapts to different tasks it gets presented with.
Humans have yet to create something that is able to replicate even in a basic fashion. (see http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/07/210205 for a basic example) The desert races of autonomous vehicles shows that we know next to nothing about adapting to changing environments.
So maybe it took some god (one, many, whatever one would prefer to believe) to develope something as sophisticated as evolution, a self adapting, self replicating mechanism with the purpose of proliferating "life" as in "alive".
In Warhammer, there are only two factions (sides.) And I played BETA for 3 months I NEVER SAW A SINGLE, NON-CHAOS player. EVER. With only two sides the oldest problem MMO's face crops up, un-balanced populations.
While I agree with you on that point, I doubt instancing is a good solution.
To add to your statement: The playerbase has often provided Mythic with creative and balanced ideas on how to adress population imbalance (and relogging to the winning team) by relating the numbers and strengths of NPCs in RvR-zones to the relation of players online/playing in each realm.
I think instancing is not a good solution, as it takes the uncertainty from the equation, where one does not know if he (and his companions) might confront a larger enemy any time soon. Especially in DAoC one could witness one group of players (who played together regularly for some time and had top of the line equipment and abilities) fought two groups of enemies where for a long time no one knew who would win. Instancing just by numbers of players is one of the worst ideas in MMOs ever. (and could as well be done in a LAN-game with a lobby...)
Mythic has developed RvR in Dark Age of Camelot and has tested most of the concepts there. The whole concept of RvR as an endgame is mostly neglected by other MMOs, most have a PvP-ruleset or limited arenas with gameconcepts taken from Shooters like CTF. In my opinion RvR is the best concept for an endgame, as opponents are evolving, developing new tactics and counters and introducing human creativity to the game.
Unfortunately (but not entirely unexpected...) it has shown, that players behave like ordinary human beings and try to maximize profit (in the case of DAoC in realm-points) while minimizing risk. While not as ubiquitous as on pure PvP-rulesets some players tend(ed) to heavily use textures, geometry and game mechanics.
Additionally Mythic designed many aspects in DAoC with a certain usecase in mind and seldom thought of the consequences of combining certain aspects. Often they totally underestimated the impact of their doings on the RvR-endgame, but they seem to have learned something from their past mistakes. At least in my opinion the latest expansions have been better balanced. With Warhammer they decided to limit the possible combinations (fewer classes, fewer abilities) to make it easier to estimate gaming-impact of changes.
To me Mythic still has to prove, that they have lost their tendency to introduce overpowered abilities to the game and overnerfing them afterwards. I think they especially need someone to tell them about RNG, as the one they use in DAoC has a strong tendency to produce streaks (shown by large tests from the playerbase and posted on vnboards) while Mythic still claims it to be working fine.
I've no idea, but there's no real reason to hold a title back from the UK just because they haven't translated it into French, Italian, German and Spanish (assuming it's not one of those titles with a language select in it, which are rare these days).
This is 100% speculation, but EU trade law is rather strict on companies trying to hinder the free flow of products throughout the EU, so it sounds possible at least:
Maybe the reason is EU trade-law. If a US-version of a game gets released in the UK maybe it could get sold everywhere in the EU. So a european version with english and a couple of other languages gets "localized" and that version gets released later when all languages are ready to prevent french people playing a game in english (or whatever stupid reasons the industry came up with for region codes and the like...)
Wow, so all criminals have to do is make sure their victims are never found, thus making it illegal for police and others to even start searching? Brilliant!
Wow, so all criminals have to do is make sure their victims do not have cellphones on them when they dump the body, thus making it pointless to locate them via phone-records.
If you would tell me that disoriented persons could be located that way I am all for it, but please do not start up some bogus-arguments about solving crimes that way.
If you want REAL privacy, dig that old phone out of the drawer and pay cash for a pre-pay sim.
A couple of weeks ago I bought a couple of prepaid-sims for a company-event. They where intended for the staff of the rented building who I wanted to be available via phone.
I had to leave copies of my personal ID for all six simcards...
Explosives are about the only "new" things, though I'm sure I just haven't looked hard enough yet.
That could be seen as a concussion weapon using air instead of a club or a stone or whatever was used thousands of years ago.
The methods of depriving a body of something it needs to function are finite. Even bombs that use up all oxygen leading to suffocation would only be a rehash of the hands-around-the-neck.
Its just a matter of how far you broaden your point of view.
Slashdot Mirror
If thats the case and you are located in europe you might sue your employer at the ECHR (http://www.echr.coe.int/echr/index.htm)
In Germany families are driving around in small Fiats on the left lane with 45mph on a 3-lane-road while the two right lanes are empty...
Welcome to reality!
disclaimer:
And no, aggressive looks where not on my list when I bought my last car. It was safety, comfort and speed with minium fuel consumption (in that order).
This might be true if you are looking at the "old" kind of submarines that stay out for months lurking around and waiting to launch their nuclear missiles?
This could well be the jetfighter-aequivalent for underwater. Imagine an aircraft-carrier with some of those (besides the conventional planes). They would not need power for months, but for hours only - just like jetfighters today. They could be used for covert strikes on marine installations, to approach costs unseen, to defend convoys against submarine threats or against small attack vessels, they would be able to outmaneuver every conventional fighter as long as the water below is deep enough...
from the wikipedia-article:
"The missile controls its direction using four fins that skim the inner surface of the supercavitation envelope. To change direction, the fin or fins on the inside of the desired turn are extended, and the opposing fins are retracted"
unfortunately this is inconsistent with this statement later on:
"There are at least three variants:
VA-111 Shkval - Original variant; believed to be unguided (or perhaps tracking but not very maneuverable)
Shkval 2 - Current variant; believed to be guided, possibly via the use of vectored thrust, and with much longer range.
A lite version currently being exported to various world navies."
Offshore-oilplatforms (and evil genius homes) usually need not be protected from tsunami-waves due to its nature:
"While everyday wind waves have a wavelength (from crest to crest) of about 100 m (300 ft) and a height of roughly 2 m (7 ft), a tsunami in the deep ocean has a wavelength of about 200 km (120 miles). This wave travels at well over 800 km/h (500 mph), but due to the enormous wavelength the wave oscillation at any given point takes 20 or 30 minutes to complete a cycle and has an amplitude of only about 1 m (3 ft). This makes tsunamis difficult to detect over deep water. Their passage usually goes unnoticed by ships."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami)
On the other hand it might help preventing damage from Rogue Waves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave). If one looks at the damage done by the Draupner Wave (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draupner_wave) the costs for fitting offshore-platforms with a system like this would be uneconomical.
Would those be the experts that have many failures, few successes, and been largely reactionary?
No, that would be the security-theater experts.
Let's say you create a game on the assumption that 500,000 people will want to play the game, based on demographics and popularity of similar games. You want to sell it for $50 each so that's a $25,000,000 budget - pretty good!
Your game is awesome and indeed garners 500,000 players very fast. Unfortunately only 20% of those people pay for the game (this figure seems reasonable sadly). Instead of being rewarded with a nice profit and the ability to make a new game, you are now on the verge of bankruptcy.
So after the first try you should have understood that your approach on estimating an available budget is wrong, but instead you repeat the same error ad nauseam hoping it might be different next time?
What gets me the most is how people my age (35) and a little older will almost have a conniption about their kids doing the very same things that they (and I) did when we were that age. I drank, sometimes to excess but not often. I had sex/b>, as did most of my peers. I didn't mess with drugs but I knew many who did. This is what is known as High School.
Up until that point I was about to believe you...
But "Judge Rules Sprint Early Termination Fees Illegal"
see here:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/31/1627226
If the replacement rate for a desktop computer is 3 years, and everyone buys for $250 and Windows for $130 - that's less than $400 over 3 years... or just over $10 monthly.
But alas - the replacementrate for a desktopcomputer seldom is only 3 years - and especially office-software sees an even longer time of use.
And multi-player also suffers in puzzle games.
And puzzles also suffer in multiplayer-games.
(especially in MMORPG-type of games where everyone has to solve the same puzzle with the same steps and without the result actually changing anything...)
ME: Pick up saber
Computer: I don't understand "pick up"
That's when I tended to eject the floppy and try to see how far I could toss it.
Usually a quick look around would help you find the right word. The good old times when one had to actually read the text and not mindlessly click the highlighted words in the text.
ME: look
Computer: You are standing in a dusty room. The ceiling is clogged with webs from long dead spiders and the windowpanes have gone blind, giving the room an abandoned feeling. A musty odour fills your nostrils. The floor is covered in a dusty carpet. In the twilight you can make out a door to your east and when to the north.
An ancient knight's armour with a big claymore, once placed at the western wall has fallen over, it's parts now scattered on the carpet.
ME: pick up claymor
Computer: I don't understand claymor
ME: puck up claymore
Computer: Learn to type you moron!
ME: take claymore
Computer: You stagger under the weight of the big sword. You can barely carry it and how someone could weild this in a fight is beyond you. ...
As I said, wind is great but it needs to be backed up with hydro and probably nuclear to have a reliable system.
You can't backup wind with nuclear, as those reactors can't be powered and down fast. Nuclear power is only useful for the basic (primary) load that can be planned days ahead.
During low load (nighttime for example) the excess energy gets stored in pump storage hydro power plants.
Gas turbines or the named storage plants are fast enough to compensate for load shiftings in wind energy production.
Google doesn't want the liability. If anything kills eBay it's going to be getting sued by every luxury good maker on the planet. EBay claims they want to ensure authentic goods but is unwilling to take the steps needed to ensure authenticity - namely physical inspection of items and their paper trail. Such physical inspection is completely outside Google's business model so they would be in the same boat eBay is liability-wise.
You can't be serious with the idea that ebay should physically inspect items and/or the paper trail. Ebay is a platform, it is not even part of the contract between seller and buyer. Ebay is as responsible for fake products sold on that platform as a road-builder is for some drug-transport, or as an ISP for copyright violations by its users.
If Ebay is made aware of auctions that violate some sort of copyright that auction has to be taken down. If the seller gets prosecuted they will have to disclose his profile to the police. It is the business of the rightsholder to fight counterfeits.
If Warhammer needs six more months too "cook", then what's stopping you from buying it six months after its release when all the cities and classes have been included?
They delayed for one year so they can complete 2 cities. With the whole lot of bugfixes to be expected during the first 6-12 months of the gamerelease where do you think the ressources will come from that add so much content in 6 months?
For all the whining over Trials of Atlantis, it actually increased the size of the playerbase, not the other way around, and got people playing longer.
While the number of subscriptions based on Mythics announcements increased after toa-release (http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html) people still argue this was due to an increase in buffbot-accounts, seeing a widerange adoption at that time.
ToA was a mistake, since it introduced overpowered abilities and classes that even today still have live with pathing- and LOS-bugs. It alienated especially casual gamers who did not have time or patience to sit through 6-10 hour-raids. While those raids might be common in other MMORPGS like WoW, too, players can enjoy the game without them. Mythic made the abilities acquired by those raids a must-have in DAoC-RvR, thus killing playing-experience for many players.
Mythic did learn something from DAoC, but they could have learned a lot more, especially regarding balance- and population-issues - and planned accordingly.
Mythic has a bad track record in balancing classes, introducing abilities that are inherently overpowered, or become so when combined with other abilities and afterwards overnerfing those classes.
I do not trust Mythic and especially not Mark Jacobs with my money before I have seen the final product work.
As usual the question beforehand to be answered is:
Relative to there percentage of all cars speeding, are more red cars speeding then others? Maybe people with a speeding habid are more likely to buy a red car than a black one...
I still seem to be unable to grasp why there ought to be a problem with accepting evolution and believing in god.
Everyone who has ever build something (anything...) knows that it is easier to calculate/build/program something for a very specific purpose, then to calculate/build/program an algorithm/machine/... that adapts to different tasks it gets presented with.
Humans have yet to create something that is able to replicate even in a basic fashion. (see http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/07/210205 for a basic example) The desert races of autonomous vehicles shows that we know next to nothing about adapting to changing environments.
So maybe it took some god (one, many, whatever one would prefer to believe) to develope something as sophisticated as evolution, a self adapting, self replicating mechanism with the purpose of proliferating "life" as in "alive".
Next weeks news: Blogging can foretell the future!
In Warhammer, there are only two factions (sides.) And I played BETA for 3 months I NEVER SAW A SINGLE, NON-CHAOS player. EVER. With only two sides the oldest problem MMO's face crops up, un-balanced populations.
While I agree with you on that point, I doubt instancing is a good solution.
To add to your statement: The playerbase has often provided Mythic with creative and balanced ideas on how to adress population imbalance (and relogging to the winning team) by relating the numbers and strengths of NPCs in RvR-zones to the relation of players online/playing in each realm.
I think instancing is not a good solution, as it takes the uncertainty from the equation, where one does not know if he (and his companions) might confront a larger enemy any time soon. Especially in DAoC one could witness one group of players (who played together regularly for some time and had top of the line equipment and abilities) fought two groups of enemies where for a long time no one knew who would win.
Instancing just by numbers of players is one of the worst ideas in MMOs ever. (and could as well be done in a LAN-game with a lobby...)
Mythic has developed RvR in Dark Age of Camelot and has tested most of the concepts there. The whole concept of RvR as an endgame is mostly neglected by other MMOs, most have a PvP-ruleset or limited arenas with gameconcepts taken from Shooters like CTF. In my opinion RvR is the best concept for an endgame, as opponents are evolving, developing new tactics and counters and introducing human creativity to the game.
Unfortunately (but not entirely unexpected...) it has shown, that players behave like ordinary human beings and try to maximize profit (in the case of DAoC in realm-points) while minimizing risk. While not as ubiquitous as on pure PvP-rulesets some players tend(ed) to heavily use textures, geometry and game mechanics.
Additionally Mythic designed many aspects in DAoC with a certain usecase in mind and seldom thought of the consequences of combining certain aspects. Often they totally underestimated the impact of their doings on the RvR-endgame, but they seem to have learned something from their past mistakes. At least in my opinion the latest expansions have been better balanced.
With Warhammer they decided to limit the possible combinations (fewer classes, fewer abilities) to make it easier to estimate gaming-impact of changes.
To me Mythic still has to prove, that they have lost their tendency to introduce overpowered abilities to the game and overnerfing them afterwards.
I think they especially need someone to tell them about RNG, as the one they use in DAoC has a strong tendency to produce streaks (shown by large tests from the playerbase and posted on vnboards) while Mythic still claims it to be working fine.
I've no idea, but there's no real reason to hold a title back from the UK just because they haven't translated it into French, Italian, German and Spanish (assuming it's not one of those titles with a language select in it, which are rare these days).
This is 100% speculation, but EU trade law is rather strict on companies trying to hinder the free flow of products throughout the EU, so it sounds possible at least:
Maybe the reason is EU trade-law. If a US-version of a game gets released in the UK maybe it could get sold everywhere in the EU. So a european version with english and a couple of other languages gets "localized" and that version gets released later when all languages are ready to prevent french people playing a game in english (or whatever stupid reasons the industry came up with for region codes and the like...)
Wow, so all criminals have to do is make sure their victims are never found, thus making it illegal for police and others to even start searching? Brilliant!
Wow, so all criminals have to do is make sure their victims do not have cellphones on them when they dump the body, thus making it pointless to locate them via phone-records.
If you would tell me that disoriented persons could be located that way I am all for it, but please do not start up some bogus-arguments about solving crimes that way.
If you want REAL privacy, dig that old phone out of the drawer and pay cash for a pre-pay sim.
A couple of weeks ago I bought a couple of prepaid-sims for a company-event. They where intended for the staff of the rented building who I wanted to be available via phone.
I had to leave copies of my personal ID for all six simcards...
Explosives are about the only "new" things, though I'm sure I just haven't looked hard enough yet.
That could be seen as a concussion weapon using air instead of a club or a stone or whatever was used thousands of years ago.
The methods of depriving a body of something it needs to function are finite. Even bombs that use up all oxygen leading to suffocation would only be a rehash of the hands-around-the-neck.
Its just a matter of how far you broaden your point of view.