My trip to japan a couple years ago..

departing the US, I had to take my shoes off, seperate the liquids in my toiletries, and I could not take a drink through security. I spent an hour waiting to clear the checkpoint. And coming back I had clear security after transferring from international arrivals to domestic departures. That checkpoint took 90 minutes to clear. Ridiculous.

departing Japan, I didn't have to take my shoes off, I didn't have to dig out anything from my carry on to seperate it out, and I could take a drink through after I set it on a little scanner. I have no idea if that was a chemical sniffer or if it was just a little scale with a red and green led. But if it was security theatre, the Japanese are a lot better at it than the US. It was much faster clearing security in Japan, and less annoying. Took me about 10 minutes, maybe, to clear the checkpoint.

Sign me up for the Japanese version of airport security any day of the week.

For the pilots, yeah probably. For the crew chief hanging out the door, not at all. And they have radios.

Probably.. however.. I would laugh my ass off, if it opened the software house to lawsuits for crashing your computer, destroying your data, and whatnot despite the release from liability in the license.

After all, if I own the software and am licensing its use, its my property interfering with and damaging other property of mine. But now, I don't own the software. The development house does. And its property is damaging my property.

Jets flying in formation have their own organic computers that require offline maintanence roughly every 18 hours. Spacecraft don't have the luxury of landing to let their pilots off, or for hauling months of food, or the means to keep their pilots from going insane with the monotony. Not if they're going to be financially feasible anyway. Hence.. automated systems for maneuvering and analyzing sibling craft position, as well as getting physically discrete systems to interoperate as a single platform.

Rackspace, as an American company, should also be concerned with things like private property rights and the right to enter into contracts. Once there's widespread zealotry supporting one right over others, its only a matter of time before unfavored legal rights are eroded away.

The principle of free speech is important. But so is the right to own property and the right to contract. Right to own property is important. It is what lets you own yourself, rather than a limited class that can own you. Its what lets you own a home, a business, and the funds in your bank account. The right to contract is important too. It lets us make decisions today that depend on the behavior of others in the future.

Neither the legal free speech nor the principle of free speech for the church has been quashed. They're still able to burn their books, say what they (mostly) want, and if they really wanted, they could buy their own hardware and bandwidth. Or just find another host.

There isn't any reason to eliminate difficulty settings in an adaptive game. Easy may have a different algorithim than hardcore.. or it may just have more lenient limits to the adjustable parameters. So.. for instance, damage taken by players has a lower minimum, damage dealt has a higher minimum, enemy accuracy has higher minimum variance. And, if nothing else at all, having difficulty settings gives the game a starting point, so it doesn't have to learn that I'm not a rank rookie at FPS every time I pick up a new FPS game.

I don't find difficulty the way its done now to be terribly great. Games were hard is good but not really challenging, yet hardcore is just wtf controller-flinging ridiculous. Or games where hard difficulty isn't so difficult, except for a handful of critical challenges that are just stupidly frustrating.

Sadly, the developers that are delivering those type of games are probably going to deliver adaptable difficulty of the same (dubious) quality.

Also.. it may not be feasible to deliver adaptable difficulty for some time. Or ever. I'm pretty confident that the principle is good. But i don't know what it would take, in terms of code, processor time, whatever. So.. I'm not 100% convinced actual implementation will be any good either. Could end up the way 3d tv/movies are (currently) .. gimmicky.

And the pre determined difficulties are all we ever need. Rock Band on hard is okay, but generally easier than I care for. Expert, on the other hand, is usually too much for me. Neither setting is suitable.

If I were playing say.. Bioshock, and all I wanted to do was run and gun and not give a damn.. I could. Even if the game had adaptive difficulty, I could. Because the difficulty would respond to the fact that I was playing in a fashion that involved high volumes of fire and little care about damage taken.

Your point is meaningless because my point is that if you play in a way that is unskilled but fun, an adaptable game will adapt down for you. As I said, an adaptable game with poor adaptation is bad implementation not a failure of principle. You argue that adaptable difficulty is a failure in principle but have utterly failed to make any case as for why.

Uh.. what?

For the player seeking a difficult challenge, the game keeps adapting to his improving skills giving him that challenge. For the player seeking a casual experience, don't exert yourself. The game won't ramp up difficulty and thus you'll get the casual experience you want. If the game can't deliver on either one, thats a failure in implementation not principle.

Its games that don't adapt to skill that removes player ability to choose the experience. You get what was coded and no more (or less). Making the same assumption of two gamers of equal skill, an unadaptable game will deliver a boring snoozefest to the challenge-seeker in order to deliver an enjoyable game to the casual, skilled gamer. Or the challenge-seeker gets his skill-pushing game that freezes out the casual gamer.

And yes, games are about entertainment. They are interactive entertainment. So if you don't have the skill to play, you do not get anywhere and they're not entertaining. If you have too much skill for the game, you breeze through and they're not entertaining. This is no small part of the draw of multiplayer games. Gives you the opportunity to go against challenges of your own skill level.

Couple of nitpicks.

1) Your federal republic of germany isn't setting a speed limit and then charging to bypass it, as far as I'm aware. I have nothing against dismissing speed limits (even if only on certain segments of highways, like it is in Germany). But charging for some people to bypass the speed limit while others (in possibly the same model car, with better driving records) are subject to fines, insurance premium hikes, and possibly demerit points on your license for the same act.. is not the same as german law. If it is "okay" to drive above the posted speed limit, it should not matter if you've paid up on your protection money or not.

2)Texas restricts firearms carry at any location that posts a sign, specified in law, not just "special districts". Texas respects the individual's right to self defense, but also respects private property rights.

Apparently you learned what irony isn't from a song, and that is all you know about the word. Let me help you out with that.

Irony:

5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.

If you can't see the irony in being scammed into buying music from a service offered inside of the iTunes Music Store client, you may be beyond help.

Do you know it, mofo? No. You do not. It is not ironic that apple hardware (iphones) is being used to entice people into a scam on apple software. Especially when the software is what you use to keep your iphone up to date.

Perhaps if they were scamming you into buying music for a zune, we could talk irony.

Last I knew, which was quite some time ago, Blizzard was real explicit about the fact that you were uploading while fetching a patch. Upload speed and bytes transferred provided in the update pane.

Its the companies that don't tell you that you're part of their distribution network, or how much of your bandwidth is being consumed, that this article is against.

Well.. banks can continue to make money on frozen accounts. And.. banks can pay out less money to depositors in order to cover their costs of compliance. Your only choice is to hold cash rather than deposit.

ISPs on the other hand, charge fees. Watch the ISPs, assuming they lose in court, attach a "government compliance fee" in a separate line item. Just to make the government's "it won't cost taxpayers" line appear as the BS it is. Unless, of course, there are lots of French taxpayers without net access.

Although, it would amuse me most if the ISP that connects Elysee Palace billed them for the entire cost of the system, and disconnected them for failure to pay.

Apparently you missed the second set of "Radeon Graphics" and "FirePro Graphics" where there is no mention of AMD. Specifically for machines that will be bearing the Intel Inside stickers.

So.. pay up on your failed guarantee.

I wish this was my area of expertise.. I'd make something just so they'd come buy it from me. And then I'd make a new one.