kenata

[quote who="GW Swicord" reply="7" id="2939408"]What's the point of being an indie, labor-of-love dev shop if not to be able to work on the hard stuff and put off mass-market polish until you've got a seriously cool new thing going? Wait, maybe I've half-answered my own question. That expensive new talent comes with future revenue expectations, and maybe the old 'niche' audience for Stardock games will never be large enough for the long-term business plan... [/qu

[quote who="Jafo" reply="130" id="2939382"]Oh, gosh yes. The law prohibiting murder infringes on your inalienable right to kill...and damn it, what right do we have to prohibit our self-expressive youth from taking an AK47 to their classmates and enacting their own Columbine? Gotta nurture these kiddies after all ....[/quote] It is true that some laws are necessary to maintain the public good at all. Murder and rape are not only bad for the victims but tend to be

[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="5" id="2939363"]This sucks. It was one of the few interesting things in elemental. If they continue to cut the shit they couldn't make work well in WoM, there won't even be a game to play. [/quote] I completely agree with this. In all honesty, I feel like the new vision is less of a 4x experience and more of a rpgish war game. While this might be a fun experience, especially with the new uber monsters, it won't hold my att

[quote who="Jafo" reply="110" id="2939088"]piracy was non-existent with vinyl....no-one [was likely to] own a record press to make bootlegs.[/quote] Actually, on this point you are incredibly wrong. While Vinyl was the standard medium for most residential users, magnetic tapes in the form of Reel to Reel tapes were quite common for those who sought to record and distribute audio content. In fact, during the Vietnam war over 40 years ago, the military run radio station was running a fu

[quote who="Jafo" reply="87" id="2938405"]Or Stardock's software [as IS the case]. Would it force un-moderated sites to lift their game and take more responsibility for what actual content is hosted? Yes it would, if they wished to continue to be a part of the Net. Specifically with regard to that, if this WERE the case I [and others] would NOT be chasing the removal of warez CONTINUOUSLY - involving the very same uploader on average once a week. <br

[quote who="BoogieBac" reply="37" id="2938040"]TCores: Your warning has been noted And yeah, once the separating the engine and game logic begins in earnest, it'll be via scripts, not XML logic flows (which I can certainly imagine are painful to traverse).[/quote] They already exist to an extent. Check out quests for a good example of this.

[quote who="DrJBHL" reply="82" id="2938315"]Sorry, Cars... don't see where the fear is coming from.... and China? No time soon. How does a site make the blacklist? By distributing PREDOMINENTLY warez for free or profit. That doesn't bother me. Hell, bury 'em. But NOT without Judicial revue.[/quote] You are making fairly a fairly grand assumption that the federal government wants to use its power to only shut down warez sites and that the DoJ will perform any sort of review

[quote who="DrJBHL" reply="59" id="2937801"]Sorry. That sort of idealism isn't practicable nor is it desirable.[/quote] In fact, this is clearly not the case. In several Supreme Court rulings, the opinion of the court has held that the private property and contracts can not be allowed to negatively effect the progress of the public good. The power of imminent domain clearly shows that the nation has such authority, which it exercises. Now, to your point that a property-les

[quote who="shadowtongue" reply="82" id="2937696"]As oil prices go up, other options become economically viable. - No, they won't, because producing energy costs energy (not money, surprisingly to economists). As sources with high EROI (oil) were consumed, world moves towards lower-EROI sources. That means to stay on the same energy profit, more has to be produced. The world runs on laws of physics, not economics. No wondrous technology can produce energy from nothing, because the law of

[quote who="Jafo" reply="52" id="2937511"]I have no interest in 'owning the world', just that bit of it I created from my own blood, sweat and tears. You are entirely free to keep your bit, too, but you WILL NOT be taking mine just because you think you can.[/quote] This reminds me of a quote from the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau: "The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe

[quote who="Jafo" reply="27" id="2937035"]I.P. is the ugly bastard relative of 'normal' property typically ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. Idiots confuse Intellectual with ineffectual/insignificant/irrelevant/immaterial. The actual PERTINENT end of the phrase "Intellectual Property" is the PROPERTY bit. My I.P. is MY PROPERTY, no-one else's. It's such a simple concept it beggars belief how people can MISS THE POINT. [/quote]

[quote who="Jafo" reply="21" id="2936994"] Quoting ZehDon, reply 20is able to protect their IP rights at the expense of other's rights What....the 'rights' to be free to steal others' IP?[/quote] I think you are completely correct to feel that IP theft is not necessarily a good thing, but there is a fine line here with respect to IP protection.

While I generally empathize with the singular artist attempting to safeguard his work from potential theft, this bill is a step in the wrong direction. It would be one thing if the bill gave individual IP holders the right to sue individuals and sites in cases wherein they are posting copyrighted materials as not the work of the IP holder. However, I am skeptical of granting the federal government such blanket authority over web sites where in they can simply blacklist a site for any purpose.

Looking at the research on this topic, it is humorous that many steps have been taken by schools and education officials to put and end to school bullying while doing little to create an environment wherein bystanders are held accountable for lack of intervention. Bullying is not something new or modern, but has a long history. Some researcher have claimed that bullying creates a desensitization of violence in the bullied and those around them, yet this logic seems odd when one considers the

Ok here, Guess this game:

[quote who="CharlesCS" reply="20" id="2935907"] Quoting DrJBHL, reply 16RogueCaptain, we're growing an obese lot of kids... who stuff their faces with unhealthy food, don't go out and play and who are becoming diabetic. Care to guess what that costs? Why should everyone end up with higher health costs because of that? When you say we're, do you mean everyone as a whole or do you mean the parents that don't bother with ensuring their children are not stuffing th

I completely agree that this is another example of political double speak. However, like most political statements, there is a line of truth going through this particular statement. These new policies are definitely aimed at protected Americans and creating a framework of to protect individual privacy. However, these statements are incredibly broad and like many of our government must be taken in an extremely abstract way. In the last ten years, all efforts of the federal government to safegu

[quote who="Lord Xia" reply="10" id="2935624"]I think Jon Shafer was hired in part to add more modding into FE, right? JON!!! JON!!!! JON!!!![/quote] This may be true, though as far as I know he has been fairly insular from the mod community.

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="1" id="2935273"]What he said.[/quote] I generally agree with the OP. While I think the OP downplays the overall amount of additional content which has been created by the mod community, he is completely correct that certain aspects of the game are simple closed to the mod community. Most of us may not actually desire to change the game from a fantasy game into a space simulation, but we have no real method of changing even simple mechanics, such as modif

Sareth, I think you are thinking of Hunter :The Reckoning, which was an amazing gauntlet type game.

[quote who="Alstein" reply="97" id="2935112"] Probably end up with a dystopia either way- either feudalism or communism.[/quote] To say that we will end up in a dystopia is rather amusing as much of the world has already devolved into such a state. The disparity of wealth in the developed world has already reached levels resembling medieval times, and the feudal lords have been replaced by corporations and their boards of directors. While most individuals still retain a level of choic

While I am not happy to hear that Microsoft has bought this service, it is not exactly bothersome. More than likely you are right to say that Microsoft will probably decrease the overall quality and even add a paid licensing system to the program. However, Skype has already proved a point about communication in the internet age, and Microsoft's purchase of Skype does not detract from this. The reason that Skype has become prolific amongst internet users is the quality of the program and t

[quote who="StevenAus" reply="13" id="2933284"]But if the possibilities of the game are expanded, there would be more use for advanced AI. But it would be great to have AI that is tough without needing to get resource bonuses![/quote] There has been some research into gaming within the AI field, however, the type of game AI you are discussing is a fairly distinct beast. In general, one could build an AI for Elemental, which produced a near optimal turn once per day, and this type of A

[quote who="Heavenfall" reply="7" id="2932755"]A good scientist knows that EVERYTHING ADDS TOGETHER in a field, and ANY science is driven by an interest (whether personal or profitable).[/quote] The problem arising from this point is that privatized research does not add together for the betterment of all people. Thus, many areas of research are constantly being reinvented due to corporate and governmental secrecy, while others are being stifled completely due to creative application

You are right to point out that this is not confined to the field of AI, but is fairly widespread across all scientific fields. We are living in a time where academic research has begun to compete with privately funded patented research in ways that were inconceivable twenty years ago. In the field of Computer Science, most brilliant minds are not entering academia as researchers, but are instead entering the corporate work force, either by being hired by large corporations or by starting the