So when UO came out I was working at intel, we had a game lab (building out and testing the celeron SIMD based machines as intel was goaling for sub $1,000 machine)
We had 6 UO accounts...
We used to be followed around by admins who were invisibe because they were studying how we were so successful at the game.
We did use macros - but it was really about the fact that we had an OC-48 and everyone else was on a 56K modem.... and our Hide skill was 100 - but we played on 6 machines all right next to eachother and we had mule accounts - and nefarious accounts...
So we had Snoop and Sneek our mules with hide of 100, then we had both Great Lord Phlux and Dread Lord Phlux (me) and same for Mym...
We would taunt great lords with our dread lord accounts and then chase them down with our great lord accounts and they would attack us and lose their status and become dastardly and they would lose their shit.
We found this great axe that was bugged. It could kill literally any character with one hit. The mods that were following us around wound up taking the weapon, we were pissed - but they deleted the weapon as it was so bugged that we massacred many a foe.
we were skilled at kiting dragons to the top of our castle, then trapping them in corners of the castl with chests such that we would train our characters on attacking them.
We built houses around the front of the castle to enclose it, then we only used runes to teleport in, but we blocked all the other spots with bags of flour such that you could not rune into the spots...
Draygor (our third member) got too stoned and got whacked by the japanese contingent that we were at war with and he failed to put his rune in the bank....
the japanese team runed into our courtyard, and hid until we opened the door with our castle butler and then attacked and they stole every loot we had in a massive store of chests in the castle....
I have similar stories with UO... it was the best sandbox game every created. In many ways UO felt like an open world crossed between Minecraft and an Elder Scrolls game. Often even the bugs and quirks aided the whole experience too- often quickly exploited to pull off some crazy plan (like trapping a mod). In comparison, WoW and most MMORPGs feel like linear adventure games.
Game philosophy question: I wonder if the difference is between FPS and Isometric WRT how it plays on one mind.
in WOW being FPS, you are the being. in ISO youre mre omnisciently playing.
Think of Populous (not the shitty later versions, but the 80s version) -- even when you are playing as your personality, its easier to express and enjoy that personality at a macro level than a micro level.
The exception to this is that in any FPS, with PVP it is satisfying to conquer a foe directly... think Hitman sniping style... but that is quest based.
When you have an open world like UO that had no quests it much more free.
e.g. ever logged into a game you havent played in a while and been like "fuck I dont recall all these quests I was in process"? -- UO had none of that. UO was "forget damsels, gather loot and power" only and it was glorious.
the FPS genre needs to keep itself to "* Kill that guy without being killed/seen OR adventure*" like you say... but games like UO took game-thought to a new level and you were managing an empire if you could build it...
Now, with that said, I dont game much any more - so the modern version of UO would maybe be EVE, as I mentioned a guy had a full time income from managing an EVE army... thats next level cerebral.
Man, we are going to have Ghost-in-the-Shell future sooner than we planned.
(ALL gaming bleeds into reality... William Gibson and Neil Stephenson should get the Nobel prize in futurism)
Since we had all 6 accounts logged in, and right next to eachother, we would whack a guy in PVP but use our Snoop and Sneek hiding characters to grab the loot.
So if we got killed, your ghost would typically have to run back to your body - but typically the loot was gone obviously. - so we would move the Snoop and Sneek characters along the same path as our Dread Lords - and when we would whack a person with the dread lord, we would have Snoop and Sneek pickup the loot and hide.
Multiple times ppl killed our main character, attempted to loot us, knowing that we had just looted the ppl we killed but then found nothing of their friends loot on our body and were saying WTF... this is why admins followed us around. They didnt get how we were exploiting multiple accounts with such coordination.
Or if our dreadlord got whacked, we could quickly loot our own body, then hide, protecting our loot.
Snoop and Sneek, while skilled little rogues were master mages.
Recall when IN VAS FLAM was bugged and would insta-kill anyone? Yeah Snoop and Sneek have a vast kill roster with that bug.
So my story is I had a thief in occlo and I trained with a guild and we would steal from rich innocent mages. It happened that the Occlo mage shop was so crowded on that little island, it was hard for anybody to avoid us. We had the mages litterely sorrounded by thieves. I grew the character and learned some nice macros. And graduated to dungeons and stealing from lich kings and stealing from players fighting lich kings. My best take was a silver broadsword of vanquishing. The owner, not to happy, found me somehow and tried to fight my blue character in town. I called guards! And stole the rest of his stuff. Good times. I was also an Elder in UO and wow, that's a whole other story.
Similar situation. We had 5-6ms pings to the Lake Superior shard in an era when most people were on modems (IIRC at launch most people weren't even on 56k!). We sat next to each other and could see each other's screen while for other folks even IM was a novelty for team coordination.
When to others it looked like you were warping around and doing 5 things in an instant and you had great communication/coordination with your partners, you could do some serious damage.
I know you're being facetious but the program to create the f35 was $55bn and that doesn't even get you a jet off the production line. And we've build jets for decades.
NASA must be doing outstanding work for what they get out of the money.
We do a similar thing at our office. Phone interview to make sure basics are known and then a "homework" assignment. This weeds out a lot of folks who can't cut it. Then the interview itself we can get the social aspect out of the way.
Sometimes a candidate is a good coder but a horrible communicator or human :|
The sun will rise in the east and set in the west. We will keep moving forward. We have systemic issues we need to address in the country and if they don't get addressed in this cycle it'll get worse in the next. We have major income inequality. We have an issue with tax avoidance and we have a problem with US Companies dumping workers for foreign labor. We also have a healthcare issue that needs to be solved. I doubt this Republican majority will be able to touch any of it but these are still problems and will remain so until we find a solution.
The issue I have is that most of our progress will be undone. The Paris Climate Accord rejected. Obamacare dismantled. Dodd Frank repealed.
It's easier to destroy the world than it is to save it.
Not even mentioning the existential crisis we face knowing that Donald J. Trump, a man who has stated the most important thing in life is to get even, has his finger on the nuclear button and there's nothing any of us can do to stop him.
As this election shows many in the middle class aren't fans of Obamacare. Maybe it isn't a boon to them as many people claim. The middle class are finding high deducable plans that increase in price by 25% each year and when it becomes too unaffordable for them, they are forced to drop it and they are fined. You'd be pissed off too.
Sure but I don't think the solution is to get rid of Obamacare, the solution is to fix it. And even getting rid of only Obamacare would be preferable compared to all the damage he could do.
The Democrats passed the ACA essentially without any Republican support. They had the power to create almost any bill they wanted. Why would anyone reasonably believe they would fix it? It is functioning exactly as designed and is enriching their donors as expected.
They really only had control for a couple of months. Abuse of the filibuster meant that they needed 60 votes in the Senate to get anything done. With Kennedy sick and Al Franken's election disputed, they didn't have 60 votes initially. After Kennedy died, the special election was won by a Republican, so they really only had 60 votes while Kennedy's interim replacement was in office. The ACA is what could be haphazardly slapped together and passed in that brief time.
Until the sun is obscured by vast clouds of dust as we sink into nuclear winter.
That probably won't happen, but it honestly worries me. The guy is far too unstable and vindictive for the kind of responsibility he's being handed.
If not that, then after all the talk of not accepting the election results, I'm worried he won't go quietly once his term or terms are over, or that he'll set a precedent for the next guy to work outside the system.
If it were just policy differences, no matter how deep, I wouldn't be a tenth as worried as I am.
Its crazy to me how different the information bubbles you and I exist in are: Everything I've seen over the course of this election pointed to Clinton being the one who would likely start WW3 and end the world in armageddon, while it would seem that you believe the exact opposite.
The basis for saying that about Clinton seems to be her somewhat more interventionist stance regarding places like Syria and Libya.
My basis for saying it about Trump is his extreme insecurity, and saying things like "When you're in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder." or "And by the way, with Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and they make gestures that our people -- that they shouldn't be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water."
It sure looks to me that the things people say about Clinton are mostly inferences they've drawn, whereas the things people say about Trump are just things Trump said.
Which is unfortunate since many of these out-of-work Trump supporters who are never getting their factory jobs back would likely benefit from basic income.
Firstly, we don't have open borders. Secondly, why not? Lots of other social programs work with the present "border situation". No illegal immigrants are drawing social security or medicaid.
Robots will not be immediately cost-effective for all production and it may be 30 years before they permeate manufacturing. Until then humans will serve.
I've complained on HN about the low quality of many goods (e.g., nail clippers) and about how the supply chain to US consumers today is no better than it was in my youth more than 50 years ago. Most of you were not yet around to know what the supply chain was like 50 years ago so please suspend your disbelief.
QC in some countries appears impervious to consumer feedback; they couldn't produce a decent set of pliers 20 years ago and they cannot today. They may never succeed due to their unique social and political histories. Lack of communication and competitive feedback in non-free markets inhibits quality. In contrast USA manufacturers 50 years ago and earlier produced very high quality goods (many still in use!).
I expect the USA to bring back production of high-quality goods and a more robust supply chain. Until someone invents a Star Trek replicator, I expect JIT inventory management to be discarded in many industries; it's primary benefit was bigger bonuses for MBAs.
No education I know of available today will prepare youth for the future they face. Once machine learning and AI become widely embedded in manufacturing and commerce, skills required will be beyond the ability of most. Meanwhile grades are falling and testing becoming more lenient.
Someday almost no one will have a job. We should plan accordingly.
"QC in some countries appears impervious to consumer feedback; they couldn't produce a decent set of pliers 20 years ago and they cannot today. They may never succeed due to their unique social and political histories."
Would you provide some examples of the countries you're thinking of? My inclination is that it's more a function of demand for cheap products and unwillingness to pay more for better quality even while complaining about the quality of what some are willing to pay for. Also, the generalization that all (or most) products coming out of a country are of equal in quality. Two counter examples come to mind as well. Japan and China have both been a source of cheap, low-quality goods during the last century, and both also produce some very high quality goods as well. I've also purchased very low-quality "Made in USA" products.
And things change, including "unique social and political histories". Is it more accurate and useful to think of differences in QC in a general way or to look more closely at the incentives and circumstances at work?
If I've mischaracterized your views, please do point it out, as that's not my intent. Thanks!
One thing that helps countries develop the expertise to produce high qualities, is selling to fickle and demanding foreigners.
Export led industrialization has worked well for the Asian Tigers, and the quality of their products is decent enough.
It's also instructive to look at Europe's industrialization in the 19th century. The Brits famously demanded Made in Germany to be marked on goods to allow the British customer to detect the inferior products. Turned out, they weren't inferior any more.
Those factory jobs are not coming back. The wall will not get built and it would not even work. What we will have is some NYC cronyism and wealth inequality increases. We may even have a recession if they decided to touch any trade agreement or increase tariffs ( based on debt load private and public institutions have). Whomever inherited the white house was going to have a bad time, this will just have to go on Trumps shoulders. :) 2018 you'll see a democrat majority in Congress.
A very flawed argument above. I assume it's to mean that since Clinton won a majority of votes from lower income people, which factory workers would fall under, the only factory workers that voted for Trump are high-paid ones, which would code in MATLAB.
At least get your site to work... I just have to talk to relatives to talk to a Trump supporter. Logic does not work with the anecdotal trump supporter I've talked to.
