Dr Brain

One has to think long and hard about security before releasing an open source client. Either you do server side checks (or peer to peer) or you completely lock down the client. Server side checks limits the number of players that can connect, since the server has to do physics processing for every client. This is why traditional games are limited to 16-64 players, and SubSpace can handle 500+. Open clients also make knowledge hacking inevitable, which is why I don't believe a pure open source client will succeed. I think the best compromise is to open up the physics engine and high level handling code, but keep the security code secret. This way features can be added, but only authorized configurations can be utilized. Also, there is enough information out there for anyone with some basic encryption theory and a bit of assembly knowledge to crack continuum's protocol.

I accept that there is a need for taxes for certain things. I don't believe that covers hospitals, but police forces and fire stations are in a grey area. It may be possible to privatize them, or it may not. Taxes are needed to cover national defense (unless a way can be found to privatize this), a legal system of last resort (private arbitration being preferred in every case), a system for prevention of monopolies, and a system for copyright and patents (hopefully without the corruption of our current one). You simply can't imagine a world without government. You're filled with so much hatred that you think that companies will gouge people just because they're companies. I can only assume you've never been shopping or paid for anything in your life. I can't conceive of the sheltered life you must live to have the worldview that you do. You can't create these absurd scenarios and expect to disprove my point with them. I know exactly how life would be with a small government. One needs only to look at history. There was human civilization before welfare, public schools, and public fire stations. Public militias existed and never became anything like the mafia. In this age of globalized economies and instant communication, the need for a centralized government is less than ever. Many of the problems that government solved no longer exist. You're oversimplifying my Venus argument. Whether you're doing this on purpose or not, I cannot tell. Feel free to call me dumb for not believing in Global Warming, something for which there is no scientific evidence (science being defined as a hypothesis that fits the data, instead of the other way around). I believe that's the same argument used by you against religion (I could be thinking of someone else, though).

That's the best you can come up with? Firemen and ambulances? How do you justify the rest? I only have one question: do you think you know what to do with my money better than I do? If the answer is yes, then the discussion will end there, as that's the original question that started this thread.

I'm not saying charities will take care of it. I'm saying people will take care of it through charities. If the charity isn't getting the job done, you send your money to a charity that will. Charities exist to forward the cause of those that donate, not the other way around. If your charity doesn't understand that, you need to take your money elsewhere. It's the same with every other company. If a gas station is trying to preach religiousity to you, maybe it's time to take your business elsewhere. If your grocery store isn't living up to your expectations, you need to patron a different one. If Dell is giving you a hard time, maybe you should try HP. If you're not happy with how Walmart treats you, try Target. If you don't like Joe's Pizzeria, try a different pizza place. Most companies will bend over backwards to help resolve any issues you've got, since they know their competitor would love to have your business. The same can't be said about the DMV. Telling me that there are bad companies out there doesn't change anything. It only matters if they have no competition (like the government, or telecomm monopolies).

So don't donate to those ones. There are plenty of other ones that don't. Indeed it's true that they don't have identical goals. State run welfare programs measure success by how many people utilize the program. Private charities measure success by how many people no longer have to. Guess which I'd rather have my money forcibly taken to support?

I've witnessed price gouging only in monopolistic markets, which I'm entirely opposed to. I don't believe the government should allow a single telephone company to operate in a region. Regulation of monopolies is the *one* service that I think governments should exist to provide (technically I believe there are two other fundamental reasons, but they're not as necessary, and not at all applicable to this discussion). The idea is to get the abusers working against each other so that the consumer benefits. Why can't Ontario car owners go out of town/province for their insurance needs? Presumably because there's a law? Why can't new companies start up? Because the government regulates them too heavily? The rest of your rant is about politicians. I don't believe that politicians will become better people once the government gets more power. I actually tend to believe the exact opposite. That's why I want as small a government as possible, so that the evil is limited in scope. Yes, we are taught to love thy neighbor, but that's not the job of the government. That's the job of charities and churches.

Nope. That's not what it means. Brush up on your basic economics. In a monopoly, that's not even true. In a free and competitive market, it will charge the price where supply and demand intersect. If they charges more, then their competitors will put them out of business. If they charge less, they'll put themselves out of business. Health care is not a free market. It's been regulated into a monopoly in nearly every area. Government creating a problem by destroying companies, then stepping in to "solve" it isn't proof that government is good and companies are bad. Try again. The people who can't afford that already can't afford the taxes and have moved elsewhere. I don't see how your argument makes any sense. No, it doesn't. It only shows your own ignorance of basic economics. Doesn't the fact that they pay for the contracting pretty much prove that companies ask for reasonable prices? I'm just asking that the overhead be removed, and that I get to choose which companies I patron. Less, of course. I won't be paying for services I don't use, and I'll be getting a better deal on things I do use.

Maybe if you were less cryptic during the whole process it wouldn't have escalated to the point where you had to be suspended.

Companies can only charge what the market will take. What they want to charge and what they can charge are two very different things. Are you completely unaware of how supply and demand works? In a competitive economy, I would pay far less than I would pay in taxes. I also wouldn't pay for things I don't need. As it stands, the postal service and public schools are jokes. Garbage collection is typically contracted out to a private company, at least in the town around where I live. I will send my children to private school. I don't take advantage of public health programs, and I'm perfectly happy to pay someone to take away my trash. UPS and FedEx do a far better job than the postal service, and if it were legal for them to carry post (it's illegal for them to compete with the post office), I would utilize them. Why do I need to pay for services I'm not taking advantage of?

You may suggest it. On the other hand, how you rationalize taxes is heavily intertwined with your world view.

Regardless of the outcome of this investigation, I'd like to make it clear that another player having your login information is grounds for removal of *any* hyperspace privileges, whether that be participation in leagues, races, or any other events. Whether they actually log in during these events doesn't make any difference. It is unacceptable for other players to have that information.

The game didn't change me, I changed the game! Well, actually I learned tons of programming and graphics design through SS. I wouldn't be half the programmer I am today without this game.

No. The evidence shows that it doesn't. What the hell? Have you heard of Venus? I do believe that its proximity to the sun has more to do with its temperature than its atmosphere does. In all likelihood, it's atmosphere actually keeps it from absorbing more solar radiation. Also, if you're comparing a 36% increase of C02 on Earth to the atmosphere of Venus, you've got something else coming. As NBVegita says, back to taxes: why do I have to pay for this?

No. The evidence shows that it doesn't. Yes. Yes, I've heard that quoted before. I don't see how it's any more relevant than plotting temperatures vs. pirate population. As am I. Pick any study at random that advocates that global warming is happening written more than 5-10 years ago. Now look at their plot about what would happen to temperatures? Do they match up with what actually happened? Nope. Why is this considered science? The facts should support the hypothesis, not the other way around. Why is mars warming at the same rate as the Earth? Couldn't be that the Sun has anything to do with it, right? Why has it been getting colder for the last 10+ years? Why was 1998 the hottest year on record (I've heard challenges that it was actually 1934 that was the hottest) if the globe is getting hotter? And finally, why am I expected to pay for it when people don't have a clue what's going on? Want to put your money toward stopping global warming? Fine with me. Just don't take my money to pay.

Trans-fats springs to mind as a recent example. The govt. got involved after the fact, but it doesn't alter the fact that it would have been expunged from the market eventually. It's hard to name any aspect of life where the government doesn't step in at some point, though. There are surely better examples if you go back to when the government was smaller and less involved in day to day life. Shared resources aren't usually shared resources. Rivers for example, run through owned property. There are, however, laws that prevent the owner of an affected property from seeking reparations from a polluting company. Seems like a failure of the government, rather than the market. Public property in general is fraught with inconsistencies, and any environmental problems should be lumped in with the all other reasons not to have the concept of public property. Air is something that's not easily regulated by private entities, because of its scope. In most cases, it would be up to the town/city/state govt. to make the appropriate laws to prevent air pollution. I'm not entirely convinced this would be necessary, though, since the only cases you'd have to worry about would be individuals taking it upon themselves to pollute. Companies wouldn't tend toward this problem for the reasons already mentioned.

Global warming is a bad example, since it's not actually happening. Which would happen if it were true. It happens all the time with food products. People learn that X is bad, and stop buying products with X in them. Before long, companies stop using X altogether. And companies that don't pollute would have just as much of an incentive to tell you that they don't pollute. You can't turn on the TV without seeing an ad for a "green product". Or, since it's not an issue, maybe people have been smart all along? The only reason the green movement is taking off is because an artificial market of tax incentives has been created, not because there is an actual issue. Yes, like the 2.3 billion dollar green jobs stimulus? The idea was to create 17,000 green jobs, which is about $135,000 per job. I'm glad we have a government to waste our money, aren't you? Of course it doesn't guarantee stability. You need to oversee the market to prevent barriers to entry and monopolies.

It's only a short step from envy to hatred, after all.

You're wrong on pretty much everything there.

Companies are not run open-loop as you seem to imply. Their actions have consequences feeding back through customer approval, and having an effect on their bottom line. Yes, polluting might save them a buck today, but if people started taking their business elsewhere then they'd shape up or go bankrupt. And there'd always be a company not polluting, unless you've got a monopolistic or highly regulated market (which is a bad thing, for exactly this reason). Just like in basic controls theory, negative feedback keeps the whole system stable and responsive.

Doesn't seem like much of a joke... for (i = 0; i < 100; i++) { if (i % 3 == 2) { printf("%d\n", array[i]); } else { printf("%d ", array[i]); } } printf("\n");

lol

This is one of the major features in hscore3, but unfortunately that is still a long ways away.

PD has infinite rotation already. It just can't predict where someone will be very well. Feel free to write new aiming code for it.

I will say this just once: just because an item is useless for most people does not mean it is useless. In fact, in nearly every case, it means exactly the opposite. Antimatter mines may be useless for you because it fills a sig slot; all that means is that it's useless to you and your needs. All that means is that you are not the target audience. It's invaluable for my spider build.

ASSS already remembers the state of arena wide objects, and sends them to players upon entering. Whether this is a bug or a feature is up for debate, but that's how it is at present.