Not in my case.

I'm with @spoco2 with the captain mist.


>> ^dag:

Kirk. I bet this falls along age lines pretty clearly. If you grew up with TOS - it's Kirk all the way.

Picard, because just the air of captainess hung about him like a winter mist.

Oh, and Fuck Chuck.

Have you heard of Mike Scott and his band the Waterboys? It's celtic folk and/or rock and roll and the band's been around since 1983 (i.e. forever) but there's nothing on vs already (well, not that I found). I have remedied this with White birds and Mad as the mist and snow.

Light doesn't have one set speed. Each frequency of light travels at slightly different speeds. I've long had this theory, and NASA has since confirmed it. We have detected very slight differences in the time it takes different frequencies of light to travel a set distance.

As such, we cannot say light has "a" speed, but rather a range of speeds. Therefore, could it also then be possible that the speed of an individual photon can be adjusted by various means in order to either speed up or slow down?

The answer is yes. Scientists have managed to slow the "speed of light" all the way down to 38mph. How is this possible? Well, as light has mass (albeit, a very miniscule amount), it will slow when traveling through a material, such as water, glass, oil, or even air. Passing the light through a super-dense, ultra-cooled material magnifies this effect.

As we already know different frequencies of light travel at slightly different speeds, and as we also already know, we can only visibly perceive a very narrow range of frequencies (for example, we cannot see infra-red or ultra-violet, or x- or gamma-rays), isn't it then perceivable that there are frequencies of light outside of what we can see that do travel faster than "the speed of light"?

And if this is true, then what else could travel faster? Are there things we can't even hope to detect simply because they exist in our timeframe for an impossibly short amount of time?

Part of the reason light is able to travel as fast as it does is its incredibly small (by our standards anyway) mass. What if mass is infinite? What if you could shrink yourself down to the size of a photon, or better yet, small enough to live on that photon as if it were the Earth. From your new perspective, the photon would appear to be very large, and as you are now traveling with it, that photon does not seem to be going as fast. You may see things that are even smaller and appear to move even more quickly, but something like the Earth would be imperceptible to you because you are so miniscule. It would be as the Universe to you--impossibly large, and inconceivably tangible. While you would know it is there, it would stand before you as a gigantic, unknowable concept, and things even larger than that would exist merely as mists of an imaginary daydream.

Now, imagine that the electromagnetic spectrum is infinite in both directions as well. Consider the possibility that, along with light, x-rays, gamma radiation, radio waves, and all the other things we know to make up the electromagnetic spectrum, sound is also part of that spectrum. Consider that light, being high in frequency exists near the top of what we can perceive of the spectrum, and sound is near the bottom. The vibrations become so slow and so wide toward the bottom that they effect the air and other matter around us, creating sound. And while we cannot see it, we perceive it with other sensory organs. Imagine that you could slow down light to the point that you can hear it, or speed up sound to the point that you can see it.

Now take another hit before that feeling goes away.

>> ^gwiz665:

Ultimately, the service they would provide would be content before any of the knock offs. Plenty of companies have tried to make knockoffs of wow, some even with otherwise very compelling universes in the baggage (lord of the rings online, warhammer online), but no one has come close yet. Star Wars the Old Republic might, but I doubt it. A rose by any other name is still WoW. And right now they have a critical mass of users, which is all they need. They could shit in a shoebox and call it Mist of Pandaria and millions will buy it on the release day.

Sure, there exists private servers of Wow at this point too, and some people like to play on them, but for me? I wouldn't even want to. There's no challenge when everything is possible.

I think we're talking about different things. Here you're describing people making "knock offs" of WoW by actually trying to independently create a new game from scratch without directly copying any artwork or code from WoW, but still kinda looks and feels and plays like WoW.

I'm talking about firing up the DVD-burner, and making a 100% exact copy of WoW. If that were legal, people would do it. In other words, the "private server" thing. Right now they're mostly script kiddies diddling themselves with Legendary items, because if they tried to actually replicate the WoW-server service and charge money for it, they'd be forced to shut down, and probably get thrown in jail too.

If that constraint weren't there, I'm sure you'd see an explosion of "competitors" for WoW "service". And I'm sure the market would explode with all kinds of people trying to differentiate themselves on service and price, but I'm sure the competition would force the average price well below what Blizzard's charging.

And that's the rub -- without being able to hold a monopoly over the monthly service charge, or even be able to demand $40 for the expansions, would Blizzard even bother with a Mists of Pandaria expansion?

I do think we could make things a lot better if they'd stop extending the time limit on things going into the public domain. Any content older than 10 years should be public domain, period.

Ultimately, the service they would provide would be content before any of the knock offs. Plenty of companies have tried to make knockoffs of wow, some even with otherwise very compelling universes in the baggage (lord of the rings online, warhammer online), but no one has come close yet. Star Wars the Old Republic might, but I doubt it. A rose by any other name is still WoW. And right now they have a critical mass of users, which is all they need. They could shit in a shoebox and call it Mist of Pandaria and millions will buy it on the release day.

Sure, there exists private servers of Wow at this point too, and some people like to play on them, but for me? I wouldn't even want to. There's no challenge when everything is possible. I'm certain that even if a joint effort between developers of all sorts banded together to copy and create an MMO like wow, it would likely be crap, because they have no other incentive to make it than "because we can". Design decisions based on that are not good - look at linux. Even Mozilla is a company nowadays. A command structure is essential in creating a massive work of art in a reasonable time.

Making a copy of WoW isn't "just" making a copy of WoW, it's enormous. By the time someone has copied it to the finer details, the game will have moved on to something else; systems change all the time.

A good example of something happening like you say is Vampires: Bloodlines where the community made a huge amount of "community patches" to fix the game, after the developer went bankrupt. I like that, but they could do it because the things they were fixing were straight forward. If they wanted to make entirely new things, who decides which things are good and bad? Like wikipedia, they would need custodians. A private company like Blizzard does not have that problem.

I was certainly a little too broad when I said all intellectual property is bunk. First of all I have a problem with the umbrella term of IP. I don't think it's helpful. Different types of IP have different solutions and problems. Some are more bunk than others. (Wtf is with they way rights to music works? What is it now, 100 years after the artist dies? Crazy.)

Like you I am philosophically on the "you can't own ideas, man"-wagon, but practically I'm more loose with my morals - hell, morals are fluid baby.

I'll say this. I would rather have 50000 people playing my game and 50 people paying for it, than I would have 50 people playing my game and paying for it any day.

>> ^NetRunner:

I think this is the most plausible way I've seen anyone square this circle. I'm just not sure it really holds up to scrutiny.
Philosophically, I'm in the "information isn't property" camp, but I also put food on the table by creating intellectual property.
The confluence of my own philosophical tastes on this topic would be that not only should "making copies" be legalized, it should actually be criminal to withhold any sort of scientific or engineering advance from the broader public, especially for selfish gain.
But, I think that would essentially destroy software companies as we know them. I think Blizzard & WoW would have trouble making the case to people that their service is worth $140/yr. That's especially true in the kind of world in which any content they generate can just be copied by a knockoff service provider just as easily as the original copy of WoW was in the first place.
I have trouble even imagining what sort of service they'd be able to compete on in that world. Uptime? In-game customer service? Best policing of player misbehavior? It can't be bugfixes (copyable), and it can't be content (also copyable).
I think ultimately WoW would have to become something more like an open source project -- the community provides all bugfixes and content gratis. Blizzard ultimately would have to give up any kind of creative or engineering control at that point, and also give up on having a revenue stream of millions of dollars a month, too. They'd just be a glorified hosting company. Companies like Microsoft probably wouldn't even be that.
It'd probably be better for the whole world that way, but not so awesome for incumbents in the industry.
You know, people like you and me.
>> ^gwiz665:
Essentially you couldn't. You would not be able to provide a better service without spending a very very large amount of money and effort into doing it. An MMO is a service, and you have to provide more than just stable servers for it to work, you also have to create new content, bug fixes etc to maintain the integrity of the product.
You can design your way out of it easily. Free to play is one way of doing it, which we have a lot of success with on iOS and the big shots on PC are waking up to as well, finally. Apple in general have their app rejection policy which keeps the most things at bay, but of course there is jailbreaks, which I don't much care for.
I don't have a problem with people copying, although I would of course prefer they give me lots of money. If they corrupt our product however, with map hacks, cheats etc. then it's a much different issue.
I think it's a problem that many different types of media is lumped together under "intellectual property", because I do think things like Art, music etc should be protected from forgeries and that the original artist should be compensated for his time, otherwise we would have no art at all.
The industry is changing to provide a better service still though. Look at music - who buys CDs anymore? We have things like Spotify and Grooveshark who stream just about any music easily supported by commercials.
Any Blizzard game, and all their future games, will need a persistent internet connection, both for piracy issues but also for better service - instant patching, social networking etc. Same with steam.

really @budzos?

"Psh, it's only a 175 foot drop that sends you hurdling at the ground at 65+ mph for 3 and half minutes.

Just cause you're simultaneously filled with feelings of joy, exhilaration, and the impending fear of being splattered into a fine mist at any moment..

DOES NOT mean it's an appropriate time to yell, shout or scream."

>> ^Kraz:

Lol. I paused it on the ingredients list.


STAFF OF ANUBIS
PHILOSOPHER STONE
RUBBER HAMMER
RUBBER NAILS
MOON ROCK SALT
ARCHIMEDES SCREW
HARPSICHORD
PARACHUTE
BLANK
BAG OF HOLDING
CLOUD MIST
ELVEN JOY
LUCKY PENNY
LOVE SONG
ERLENMEYER FLASK
MARCOSCOPE
SENSE OF WONDER
BLANKETY BLANKS
TEMPORAL GLITCH
HAIKU
NODS
SWEEPS
BEEPS
DEEPS
SNEEPS
REEPS
WINKS
MEMORIES
FIREBALLS
CONGRATULATIONS
LAUGHTER
LIGHTENING
STAR DUST
RINGS OF A TREE
MOTHER'S APPROVAL
MOUNTAIN AIR
CHEESINESS
INSPIRING FOOTAGE
SMILES
SECRET INGREDIENT
SMELL OF MORNING
LOVE

SALT

@SDGundamX

You make a number of fair points, and I humbly accept your chastisement of my condescending attitude (<--no sarcasm here, rereading my own post with the mist of anger gone makes me feel a tad ashamed of myself). As you can see, it is not above me to make false assumptions (re: why you didn't respond to the other comment), but at least it isn't beneath me to recognise when my bitchy ego has gotten in the way.
As for the subject matter(s), I guess we disagree on Hitchens being an alcoholic and it being inappropriate to toast him. What I still stand by - and what really pissed me off to begin with (pardon my French) - is that I do not think the discussion on the Sift has been "O'Reillyfied". Sure, people get heated and say nasty things (I am one of those), but then again, we're only human. As for making snarky comments for the sole purpose of garnering votes, I have to disagree. If you had an inkling of the kind of pestering shite shiny has been here you would understand why most of us have nothing but utter contempt for both him and the ideology he persistently preaches at us (if you feel like it, browse his comment history). I think many of these comments are in the spirit of the following quote by T. Jefferson: "Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."

I would actually be very interested in discussing whether insulting someone's beliefs is an insult to them or not (my position is obviously that it's not).

cheers

Oh wow (no pun),
I knew that WoW was altered to remove all skulls/bones from the Chinese version, but I was not aware of the Panda issue. Thanks!

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^MonkeySpank:
How did we go from Trolls and Undead to Pandas? I blame the Chinese market!
The sad part is that Alterac Valley came out 5 years ago, and it was more fun then (with shittier computers) than WoW will ever be. Vanilla AV is definite proof, to me at least, that more is not necessarily better.

Don't blame the Chinese market because they will probably BAN WoW because it now has Pandas. Apparently you cannot depict a panda dying in Chinese media or something, they don't like it. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens when this expansion launches in China.

Congratulations! Your comment has just received enough votes from the community to earn you 1 Power Point. Thank you for your quality contribution to VideoSift.

This achievement has earned you your "Silver Tongue" Level 3 Badge!

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^MonkeySpank:
How did we go from Trolls and Undead to Pandas? I blame the Chinese market!
The sad part is that Alterac Valley came out 5 years ago, and it was more fun then (with shittier computers) than WoW will ever be. Vanilla AV is definite proof, to me at least, that more is not necessarily better.

Don't blame the Chinese market because they will probably BAN WoW because it now has Pandas. Apparently you cannot depict a panda dying in Chinese media or something, they don't like it. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens when this expansion launches in China.

Heh. I remember something like that for the original Guild Wars. There was a Panda pet in the early beta of the game that had to be removed because the Chinese didn't like it. Or something.

>> ^MonkeySpank:

How did we go from Trolls and Undead to Pandas? I blame the Chinese market!
The sad part is that Alterac Valley came out 5 years ago, and it was more fun then (with shittier computers) than WoW will ever be. Vanilla AV is definite proof, to me at least, that more is not necessarily better.


Don't blame the Chinese market because they will probably BAN WoW because it now has Pandas. Apparently you cannot depict a panda dying in Chinese media or something, they don't like it. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens when this expansion launches in China.

>> ^Ryjkyj:

We have endured the breaking of the world, and must now face The Destroyer, and end his cycle... OF DESTRUCTION...


and afterwards we get to pall around with some fuzzy panda bears and play pretend!