I take your point about electricity being so cheap you don't worry about switching a light on. I suppose if internet access were that cheap it might be okay, but it would have to be about 1000th of current price per KB most ISPs want to charge.
You're absolutely right. Everything I've said falls apart if the ISPs are allowed to rape us on the per-KB charge. And, based on their track records, they're probably going to charge an insanely high rate (at least in the US, I can't speak for ISPs in other countries). The rates for text messages is a clear example. For less than 200 bytes of data each, text messages should essentially be free, but the wireless providers charge a ridiculous premium for them. I don't know why I would expect them to behave any differently on a per-KB charge for Internet, especially for home ISPs where the consumers are frequently forced into a government approved duopoly.
I guess I should be careful what I ask for because I might get it. The ISPs will start charging a per-KB rate, but the rate is so high that people start counting the characters in their emails or, even worse, revert back to porn magazines. Hell, T-Mobile is already offering a pay-per-MB plan, and it's $2 per MB. If I use a gig of traffic each month, which is not unreasonable even on a cell phone, I'm facing a $2,000 bill.
If there is one easy way to damage all internet based business and innovation it is to make the internet more expensive and discourage people from using it as much as they do now.
I completely agree. I just think that a pay-per-KB rate would make the Internet cheaper for a lot of people.
I think most people pay for electricity by how much they consume. That's certainly the way it has been everywhere I've lived. While I do try to conserve energy, I don't count the seconds every time I turn on the lights. If I need the lights on or want to watch TV, I do it without thinking about how much I'm paying per second for the energy costs. The Internet could be the same way.
It should be an option, not a requirement.
An option that turns on during Friday and Saturday nights so drunken texts to professors are less likely to get you kicked out of school.
Stupid fucking disrespecting-my-goddamn-freedom-of-speech assholes.
Most games sacrifice story telling in favor of action. And that's generally a good approach.
Iif you're going to make a game that is fundamentally about the story, then you need a fully realized first act. The first act in most games consists of as little as a blurb in the manual, or, at best, a two minute (skippable) cut-scene. Assuming that this game (story) runs over ten hours, spending an hour establishing the characters doesn't seem at all excessive to me.
-Peter
With most Windows installs the Admin account is the default logon and most users don't know what risks they're taking because of it. *
* - bold emphasis mine
In the article, which dates to the introduction of Vista and carries through 7, you might find the section entitled "Built-in Administrator Account is Disabled by Default on New Installations" to be of some interest. Now once you look into that, another section that may be helpful is "All Subsequent User Accounts are Created as Standard Users." Now while the users may not be aware of UAC, the section "UAC is Enabled by Default" might also provide some insight for you. By reading further into "Access Token Changes" you'll discover that even when logged in as a built-in Administrator, applications still run with a filtered, i.e. limited access, security token by default.
Seriously, I understand that User Account Control is not necessarily without it it's flaws and detractors. Namely, amny users find it nagging and a general PITA. But to contend that Windows has no such mechanism is either being dishonest or really to not know what you are talking about.
For better or worse they've kept the peace.
So far.
When making projections for the success of this strategy it's important to remember how successful it *has* to be. On the issue of *using* nuclear weapons as opposed to be *having the ability to threaten* with them, it has to be 100% effective for a very, very long time before we can take the inevitable first failure and say, "well, on balance it was worth it."
We're making gross simplifications when we say that nuclear weapons helped us "keep the peace". It's too much to reduce the last sixty years of history to The Bomb. It was a huge part of that history, but not the only thing going on. That's the advantage of having *lived* that history as opposed to having *read* about it. What you get in history class is a neat, boiled down summation of a very messy and complicated process.
There were other things going on that probably were prerequisites to the general success of Mutually Assured Destruction as a peace keeping strategy. We can't be entirely sure which ones were critical; or if it weren't some kind of critical aggregation of circumstances.
What I worry about his the human ability to adapt to any situation. The prospect of nuclear holocaust was novel. Now it's not any longer. I'm not sure all the players who are pursuing The Bomb are all that horrified by the prospect of using it. Regional players may count on knocking out their rivals before they can become unassailable -- that's what drove the big arms race between the US and the USSR, but sooner or later somebody will get the upper hand against their bitter enemy.
And once the human race survives it's first war in which most of the damage was done by nuclear weapons (unlike WW2 in which The Bomb was an exclamation point at the end), it'll be much more ready to accept another one.
It may be that I am not directly affected in some cases, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to hit a wall sometime trying to figure out whether the uri in some cryptographic siggy is valid or not.
And how do I get that $100?
Also, using old hardware is fun.
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken