The original DotA for WC3:RoC was very polished and MUCH less complicated.
The thing I liked about it was that it didn't have the "avalanche" effect that all-stars did. The characters could only level to 10, and the items were not ludicrously powerful - so there was no point at which certain heroes became absurdly powerful. I always felt allstars devolved into item farming.
+1 Obscure reference bonus (is it obscure? I think so...)
Good job indeed. Good job at writing the prequel to the new "Repo Man" movie.
Having just seen it, I made the same connection - but I came to a different conclusion. It just makes the movie look more stupid. I mean it already looked pretty poor. The story might have worked if it was made 30-40 years ago, but with medical science where it is - the thing looks pretty anachronistic.
While I was watching it, a number of things jumped out at me as silly. One of them was the cybernetic nature of all the implants - and therefore their ability to be "repo'd" at all. "Replacement organs aren't going to be mechanical" I thought to myself, and mentioned to my friend, "they are going to be biological and derived from your own cells".
This achievement pretty much bears that out. There would be no use in taking back what is essentially a "custom" organ - like this kid's trachea. It is of no use to anyone else because it uses his cells. The best you could hope for in that sort of vein (no pun intended..) would be to take it out, restrip it, and reseed it with someone else's cells. Or transplant it the traditional way (say, if it was a kidney).
But I am betting artificial scaffolds will be developed in short order (they are already working on them), and they'll be able to just fabricate organs from scratch. This will be cheaper and easier than donors anyway. People waiting for transplants are very expensive to the system - cooking one up and getting them out of the hospital fast will appeal to even the most evil CEO.
I think the future will be a bit brighter than the movie portrayed - at least in terms of artificial human organs.
The movie "The Island" has that plot.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/
They threw in a genetic memory subplot too, for good measure
I didn't play Battlefield Heroes for more than 30 minutes, so someone can come in here and correct me, but aside from the "first impression" looks the games are completely different.
BH plays in third-person, on large battlefield-style maps (capture points, tickets, etc) with a few slightly different classes that branch out more with additional unlocks - the unlock system being a very large component of the game in general. There are also vehicles on some maps.
TF2 plays in first-person on maps with various objectives (some staged objective, some escort, some CTF, etc) with many classes that are very different and have some very specific interplay between them. There is an unlock system but it is fairly minimal.
One could go into a lot more specifics, but that is the short version.
Example situation: a college student torrents a Stardock game and finds that he's playing it a lot. He decides to buy a license/serial so he can play on the official servers. He pays via CC and gets his serial. That serial is tied to his CC info in a secure database (to allow for recovery in case of theft, much like what Steam permits), and the serials are generated in the "allowed serials" database for servers at the same time they are sold (so keygens wouldn't work).
This is already how Stardock's digital distribution works (at least for their other games). The only thing they don't do is outright let you download it for free - but with no DRM you get a fully "official" game client just by going the torrent route.
You can install and play the game without entering a key.
You can buy it for digital download, which gives you a key that you can enter into the game and it will be activated and "legit" as far as Impulse (Stardock's version of Steam) is concerned. You can go directly from the "pirate" version to fully licensed legitimate version without even reinstalling.
You can also then use your stardock account to re-download the game at any time and update it at any time.
The unactivated versions have a much harder time updating (if they can update at all) and patches for games are frequent and include additional content as well (the "service")
The "selling a service" line has actually been used explicitly by Stardock.
The future is now
I think this post from elsewhere in the discussion explains the net neutrality angle well:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1196671&cid=27555493
Basically, by putting caps on bandwidth as a CABLE TV OPERATOR, you are driving people to YOUR service because it will not use the cap.
As I said to a friend just now on IRC:
because, hey, if that itunes version of your TV show counts against your cap, maybe you will use the cable guys "video on demand" instead.
I remembered reading about this topic in popular science. Here is the article:
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2006-11/better-blood
Battlefield "first response" was a major topic, as getting oxygen to the brain during the first hours was one of the keys to survival.
The fact that you initially have to activate the game online at all is restrictive.
The thing is, with Stardock games, you don't. You can install and play without it - heck you can install and play without even entering a key in some cases. It only needs the internet for updates.
I don't know why Stardock is muddying it's reputation by mentioning anything like this. One of the main reasons people like them is that they don't have DRM on their current games. You can copy the disc, install it anywhere, etc.
Impulse is just a steam-like deal that they give you in addition - so you can download the game if you lose the disc (provided you registered) and update it.
You dialed 5483.
