Colrom

Jack Straw, Tony Blair and the Lie-Detector-Judge have a common nightmare - they are forced to have a meeting with a Sikh, a Hasidic Jew, a Muslim woman wearing a veil and a Greek Orthodox Priest. :D

Why? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well for map specific info you can keep track of kills and fatalities at various locations, for example. This can be used to make the AI work better on that map - and maybe for other maps too if you can establish the relevant correlations with map features - if you prepare for that type of thing. Regarding the why - the business of imbedding ads and monitoring views of those ads for games and other programs is an issue of commerce which needs to be regulated and monitored since it can slide into real spying quite easily and business folks are good at mischaracterizing what they are doing and how it can be applied. To tell the truth I was thinking of recent fooling around with true credit card rate structures by allowing modifications of the way payments effect the calculation of interest. which was enabled by laws. I certainly seems innocuous but I don't know. My understanding is that some folks have actually looked over the packets exchanged and they say they haven't found any reporting of info outside the scope of the game. So maybe it is not an issue this time. Still, it would be good to keep an eye out. And Politicians would probably be the right ones to see that facilitated. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The first comment relates to AI. If there is no AI there is no reason for them to research it. I was actually thinking more of games which have significant single player use. For those games collecting data on player behaviors and results can be useful. I'm sorry I can't provide any more evidence of the risks associated with spyware than the evidence of unwanted trojans which is already widely known. It is not unusual for spys to ask permission or offer something in return - like say a game. That's enough.

Why? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well for map specific info you can keep track of kills and fatalities at various locations, for example. This can be used to make the AI work better on that map - and maybe for other maps too if you can establish the relevant correlations with map features - if you prepare for that type of thing. Regarding the why - the business of imbedding ads and monitoring views of those ads for games and other programs is an issue of commerce which needs to be regulated and monitored since it can slide into real spying quite easily and business folks are good at mischaracterizing what they are doing and how it can be applied. To tell the truth I was thinking of recent fooling around with true credit card rate structures by allowing modifications of the way payments effect the calculation of interest. which was enabled by laws. I certainly seems innocuous but I don't know. My understanding is that some folks have actually looked over the packets exchanged and they say they haven't found any reporting of info outside the scope of the game. So maybe it is not an issue this time. Still, it would be good to keep an eye out. And Politicians would probably be the right ones to see that facilitated.

If the game maker or publisher is going to monitor events happening during the game, the least they could do is to monitor things useful for further development and refinement of the game - such as artificial intelligence parameter values and human intellegence parameter values and their apparent effect on in game success. Also, they should tell you what they are doing. We need some better politicians making better laws to curb or stop this kind of thing rather than enable it.

Thanks Morgoth. Hmmmm. I am so far beyond high school it is just a distant memory somewhere next to crawling around my mother's kitchen in diapers. The high school thing doesn't appeal to me - although given Obsidian's game design skills it might be cool anyway.

I'm not sure what the high school rpg idea was about. I don't understand. I know that MCA said something some time ago but what exactly did he say and what they heck did it really mean?

I wonder how it evolved.

It is peculiar to think they can get a badge for such stuff. Imagine what they could get for turning in gay boy scout leaders or illegal alliens or terrorists - oh my!

Little Miss Sunshine What a great movie!

Who could resist an invitation like that! :D

I am intrigued that they think the dungeons might be too easy until the kingpin is encountered. That might suit me just fine. One the one hand it suggests that playing with a normal strength character will allow more focus on plot and less on buffs. On the other it suggests that playing more difficult characters - like a tiefling - or drow - might be doable but challenging. Sounds pretty good. No mention of bugs. That is kinda suprising actually. There have got to be bugs. Maybe they just didn't notice.

I don't recall that. I read the press release. I don't think the AI will be two dimensional this time either. I undertstand that is difficult, but hoped they might have made some progress. I guess it's possible they have, but arn't mentioning it. If they haven't improved the AI into 2 dimensions then the maps will continue to be narrow or channeling or one side in static defense. Still a good game though.

That's great. I played them all. Atomic was a small company with a narrow focus. It was a shame they coundn't/didn't keep going. I'm glad they are sticking with the 2d perspective. The ones I like the best were Market Garden and the Russian campaign - although I thought the campaign scheme for the Russian campaign was flawed. I especially liked the flexibility to do a few different styles of attack and defence. The AI was not so smart though - it was pretty much 1 dimensional - couldn't think about flanking moves. I will be very pleased to see that improved. Great!

It is not a question of blaming God just giving him due credit. I would like to see us work with the Iraqis - including Iraqis we don't much like (Sadr, for example) - and enlist the aid of countries like Iran, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, as well as European and other countries for active control and direction, and contribute lots of money, with the aim of putting together regional policing and work projects for Iraq that do not involve ongoing US managment and control or US military presence or even the presence of military forces effectively controlled by the US. I expect that the genocide that has begun will continue to some extent - especially in the region where the greatest disruption has occured - the Sunni triangle - but will abate somewhat in the Shia and Kurdish regions - and that it will be possible to extend the spheres of peaceful activity by increasingly providing jobs and economic benefits. That's an outline of my plan. The trick - for us - is to be able to let go. I think that the more tightly we try to grasp control the more we alienate (such an appropriate word in this case) those we should just be trying to benefit and influence.

It is nuts to tie kids down that way. It's not natural. We used to play a game in grammer school (american) I have heard called "smear the gear" - or some name that sounds sorta like that " - at lunch break and such. The object was to run around with a football as long as you could keep going through and around as many other players as you could and throw the ball off just as you were tackled and brought down (smeared). It was a great game! I was very good at it. I could leave the field full of players spread out on the ground from failed efforts to nail me. I loved that! :D It was fantastic! :D Of course we also played (american) football after school with our own gear. When I was younger we played tag and hide and seek with both boys and girls. He he. I also rolled down a hill in a barrel and a big truck tire. (w00t) It's a freakin miracle I'm alive! :D It was great!

And I disagree - as you know.

I don't know whether we are helping them or not in one case or another and certainly not overall - but I do agree that Iraqis who are engaged in violence are responsible for their own actions and maybe even more. It seems that religious wars and local if not regional extermination campaigns have broken out. Those involved are fundamentally responsible. They can stop at any time. Others may have some responsibility too. I think that some of our people may have tried in the past to leverage the tensions between various sects for military or political advantage. Too bad. Some may even have staged events to move things along (supposition). Very too bad. Most Americans and Brits are clearly appalled.

As much as we may be eager to claim responsibility for all that has happened in Iraq, I think that we will have to share responsibility with many others and even God. Here is one example regarding indirect death. If we bomb a hospital and destroy it, it makes sense to see ourselves as responsible for the suffering immediately thereafter of those who would have benefited from the services of that hospital. But a year later, it is harder to see how we alone can be responsible - unless we have taken other actions which have obstructed development of new medical capabilities. I worry that it is fallacious or maybe otherwise wrong to try to assign a metric to responsibility for such things. The fact that it was a war we chose to impose on others is certainly relevant to considerations. But how?

Look Kor Qel Droma, don't dress up in my clothes and put words in my mouth calling other forum members names. :angry:

That is not necessarily why women wear a veil ... just observe the behaviour of the far-too-populous yobs in the streets when a woman of average-or-better-

EDIT: Do you know where I can find these reports? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> My problem with them is that they use the word "maximum" instead of a more appropriate word and claim that is OK because they footnote it to have a different meaning. It's like someone saying: "Frank is a nitwit*. *By nitwit we mean someone who gets lower scores than Einstein on math tests." Most folks won't see the footnote and even when they do see the footnote will be guided in their understanding by the normal understanding of "nitwit". It's just human nature. The folks at IBC understand that and yet they continue to use an inappropriate word. Regarding the Edit: On the IBQ website they list their event ID number, a brief description of the event, the news organizations which ran stories they relied on, and the date of the event. They specifically say that they don't provide links to the stories. So it is hard to dig up the stories. It is possible that they have internal records with more useful information on the relevant stories, like the dateline of the stories, the authors, and the main web pages for the sources. You could ask them. Otherwise you will need to try internet searches. It is likely this will be difficult. If you are very serious there are news research organizations that keep copies of things that may be able to help - for a price.

They also report figures for deaths they consider unrelated to the conflict - just normal stuff - heart attacks, accidents, cancer, and such. Apparantly their reported numbers for those types of deaths are way too low.

I think it is worthwhile to post an interesting piece from Paul Reynolds at the BBC. At the bottom are some comments relating to the reliability of government mortality reports. Especially interesting when put together with the observation that 93% of the deaths reported into the mortality survey were confirmed by death certificates. Oh well.

My understanding is that one of the problems with Iraqi governement figures is that their results for normal deaths are about 10% of the mortality expected from the healthiest societies in the world. In other words, if we were to believe their numbers we would have to conclude that Iraqis are overall ten times healthier than any other population on earth. This seems unlikely.

Good thought. It may be a factor.