If you can think of a reason why I shouldn't dislike Apple, why don't you let me know what it is? I was a Mac user in the Lisa days, which is to say, as long ago as was possible. And of course, an Apple ][ (and //) user before that. I know why I hate Apple, it's not just on a humbug.

It only works if the game is sufficiently realistic, and they cannot hide the goods from the player base by simply logging out. If those swords have to be carried, transported, and stored somewhere, then that player has now made himself a game objective. Newbie swords are fast and easy to make out of readily available materials, so there's a lot of them in the world and it's difficult to remove them all from the game. If he wants to buy them all, he's got to have a way to transport them. A magical means of transporting them should itself have a cost and perhaps other limitations to make it unattractive. A physical means has its own issues, like now being a target for players and NPCs alike. Assembling a caravan takes time and effort and the criminal underworld will get wind of what you are up to and make plans accordingly.

As well, someone purchasing all the swords in the region is a noteworthy event. It could be a prelude to war! Where are these weapons going? The authorities are surely going to want to know.

Well, people are paying to play EVE, so I guess the answer is yes.

The failure is one of your imagination. If the pills were serialized and came accompanied by a printout of what was in them, then you'd have just as much assurance as you do now that the pills are what they say they are.

I would imagine using a different extruder head (or whatever it is) for each compound. Then there's nothing to clean between compounds, because it's always the same compound going through the same extruder.

Well, I did not RTFA and don't plan to, but it seems to me that if you're creating bespoke pills for people, and you're expecting people to take all of those pills, what you should do is create packets of pills which are all in the same color scheme which is always the same for that patient. I imagine sort of miniature Easter egg-like pills with very distinctive character and with patterns appropriate to the patient, taking into account colorblindness and the like. Perhaps it would even be possible to give them distinctive textures for the blind, although I picture that causing pills to have a greater tendency to lodge in place. I imagine, though, that there's someone out there with a magical new pill coating to handle just such a case...

Obviously the pills should then be printed with serial numbers so that they can be identified with more precision, but lots of people can't read numbers that small without assistance so the focus should really be on distinctive color combinations.

You should know by now that if I had meant that, I would have said it. It's just less bad, at this time. That's all I said, that's all I meant.

I don't think the code is anywhere near the hardest part of the endeavor; I'm a pretty mediocre programmer but I can envision that part. The hard part is designing an economy that both works and makes sense, with no cheating. All the money has to go somewhere and do something that makes sense, that's non-trivial. Economists argue over how economics works in the real world as it is.

You won't even notice those drones most of the time. There's a whole lot of space in which they can operate which is below aircraft but well above the humans.

The problem with that is that with many designs, it will take many shots to have a hope of reliably disabling the model. A lot of these things are just a big wad of polystyrene, which can take a whole lot of hits without really caring if they're not really good ones. Then there's the ones made of carbon fiber rods, yeah that stuff is fragile in its own way but if you don't get a solid hit with your pellet you can't expect to do anything good. Props are fragile but there's a substantial chance of a miss there for obvious reasons... unless your projectile is trailing something.

Sure, we all do, but we also remember the K6/2+ and /3+ and the K7, which were all fantastic. I wouldn't bet a lot on 'em, but I wouldn't count AMD out yet, either.

If only they could get their graphics drivers in hand, I would really be a massive fan. As it is, I did just build an FX-8350-based machine, because it hit the right price point for me.

It is different, but the difference is one of degree, not character. These guys will be doing a lot of work to censor everyday speech. Our guys do a little bit of work to target individuals.

One of the things you have to do to make a game "good" is manage difficulty. It should be possible for the player to win; depending on the difficult level, perhaps even "easy". But a challenge should be available to the player who is looking for it.

You should have to do realistic sorts of things to succeed in a game, it just shouldn't be as difficult for your character to do it as it would be for you in the really real world. But then, one's character is usually an exceptional person, so it's reasonable that they would have more success than you would.

I think the ideal would be a CO2-driven pellet which trailed the line... You could get the whole thing to be pretty small and light, ideal for mounting on another drone.

In the Wild West, if you made enough problems, they would send out the fucking Cavalry to hunt your ass down, shoot you a whole bunch, and drag your sorry leaking corpse back to town for a quick exhibit and cheap burial to remind others what lies down that road.

In the really real world, shipping is protected by threat of military action.

EVE is a cheesefest because there is insufficient motivation to provide stability.

The problem with this idea is that the muscles which grip are a lot stronger than the muscles which open the hand, so AC will make your hand clench anyway.