This kind of thing comes up in driverless car threads all the time, it's quite odd. People trying to come up with complex situations that humans are likely to be terrible at themselves.
I've seen plenty around constructing some trolley-problem style moral argument about deciding who to kill in a crash. I don't know why it's expected that they'd have to solve, in a fraction of a second, a problem that people have been arguing over for years. The human reaction will probably be at the level of "jerk wheel quickly".
This couldn't be more wrong. The amount of glitches in BW that allow got micro potential is huge. It's actually one of the biggest complaints from BW players about SC2, the lack of available micro. Check out th video "Depth of Micro" by Lalush for more info on things like muta stacking, patrol micro, carrier leash range, and tons of other hidden micro.
You are also wrong about your last statement, the limiting factor for zerg that's you're talking about it APM which is pretty much unlimited for a bot. Injects can be automated without taking any attention from anything else.
Halo was an eSport but lost the qualities that made it a good eSport. The oringinal and Halo 2 were incredibly competitive games, but Halo 3 and especially Reach killed these aspects in favor of casual gameplay features.
CS GO was dead in the water eSport wise on release and took major core gameplay changes for it to get to a point where people were okay with it, but 1.6 is generally considered the better ompetetive game.
The idea that companies can just make a game an eSport is incredibly flawed. A game needs the qualities to become one. It's why the Gamecube version of Super Smash Bros, Melee, destroys the brand new one in tournament viewers despite Nintendo promoting the new game as an eSport.
Yes, you obviously can't just do a direct port of halo with autoaim and put it on pc and hope it will be a popular esport. My point was that Microsoft has the resources to MAKE halo a good esport title but they wont.
StarCraft was only ever big in Korea, StarCraft 2 is more so the opposite but that didn't come out until 2010. Counter Strike died in the mid 2000s and only in the last 2-3 years has made a big comeback.
eSports historically has gone through bubbles and we are currently in the 3rd one. No eSports has ever been dominant for a long period of time.
Even still Counter Strike GO is not a resource intensive game. No one needs a top of the line PC to play that game at max settings. Also pretty much any tournament is not broadcasting from the players computer but have dedicated observers that will always run the game at max settings. Plenty of CS pros still use 4:3 aspect ratios, but their games would be broadcast in HD.
>There have been some investigation of settings and high vs. low generally doesn't give you an advantage or disadvantage either way.
Yes and no. In a game like Starcraft where cloaked units give a slight glimmer when moving, pros universally optimize settings to enhance this glimmer as much as possible, and low graphics is one of the settings they use. More so though pros just stick to what their used to regardless of objective performance. It's why so many CS pros still use 4:3 aspect ratio.
> Yes and no. In a game like Starcraft where cloaked units give a slight glimmer when moving
Sorry I wasn't clear, I was specifically talking about CSGO. Seeing through smokes & fires isn't any better at low vs. high settings.
> It's why so many CS pros still use 4:3 aspect ratio.
Hmmm I disagree. Many of the current CSGO pros using 4:3 AR came from CS 1.6 and I think they just never felt like changing. There's no competitive advantage to it. If anything it's a FOV loss and thus a slight disadvantage but it's so minor as to not matter most of the time.
CS:GO is a terribly optimized game (a hack of the L4D2 engine ported from Xbox to PC!), and requires 300 in-game fps in the Source engine for competitive play. 300 fps is the sweet spot for no mouse acceleration and smooth mouse movements, as well as no frame drops on a 144 Hz monitor. CS:GO perf is CPU-limited, and my i7 2600 can only go up to 250 fps on all low settings, so I'm upgrading to a Skylake 6600k.
Blizzard has done a much better job with SC2; one of their goals from the start has been to optimize for low-end computers.
I've heard that the human trafficking numbers increase with legal prostitution since volume increases also, even if the percentage is lower. The Netherlands has huge problems with drug smuggling and human trafficking despite both being largely legal there.
While I don't disagree that prostitution should be legal, it's a bit more complicated than the utopia you just painted.
The situation in the Netherlands is also a lot more complicated.
Drugs are not largely legal at all, they're largely illegal. In fact, they're entirely illegal, there's just a gray area when it comes to a few soft drugs (pretty much just weed now - and I believe truffles in some head shops possibly... but no longer mushrooms.) Bringing weed into the country: still technically illegal. Other drugs: very much illegal. Regarding drug law, I would suggest looking to Portugal as a closer representation to that perfect utopia.
Regarding prostitution, I don't know enough to have much of a personal opinion on whether legalisation would help.
I used to think very strongly that it would. Last year I visited (as a tourist, not as a customer) Europe's largest brothel [0], in Germany, and came away with the opinion that if people are going to pay for sex, in a legal system like this is the best way for it. And I still see the benefits, but I've also since read up a little and found out many of the girls in that brothel were still trafficked over, still have pimps, etc.
But... don't be too quick to jump to one conclusion or the other. Maybe the NL situation would be better if the entire world also legalised it? Maybe there are different ways of doing it to the way NL has done it. Etc.
It is. You can run a "legal" business, but still have to deal with the mob on your back door. I know someone who quit running a coffeeshop for only this reason.
While i'm not sure whether legalization or the Swedish approach works best(criminalization of purchase), but if we want to prevent trafficking, maybe it's possible to use some sort of lie detector(standard, fmri, P300), etc - and ask girls whether they work for themselves, or are forced , or trafficked - and only let girls who work for themselves work in legal brothels ?
It won't be perfect, but maybe it can reduce trafficking ?
EDIT: please down just downvote, explain what's wrong with my line of reasoning ?
While regular polygraphs are not reliable, I think usage for P300(i.e. brain fingerprinting) is more reliable, and even used in some courts.
for some numbers ,see[1]- "With both P300 and P300-MERMER, error rate was 0 %: determinations were 100 % accurate, no false negatives or false positives; also no indeterminates. Countermeasures had no effect. Median statistical confidence for determinations was 99.9 % with P300-MERMER and 99.6 % with P300"
So maybe this could be a good starting point for something useful for trafficking prevention ?
They have an error rate - which makes them in admissable as a tool for deciding whether someone should go to jail. That's reasonable.
On the other hand, their are routinely used in classified agencies for some tasks.
So maybe ,even with this error rate, we could see reduction at trafficking , at some risk of loss for freedom of profession. Maybe the benefits are big and the disadvantages are quite small(depending on error rates, etc) ? Maybe it's a worthwhile tradeoff ?
You make it seem as if lie detectors somewhat work, except that they have a stochastic failure rate of x%. They don't, they're snake oil. Whole libraries have been written about it, one can start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph and follow the literature from there. No civilized country allows lie detectors to be used for any 'real' purposes except the US.
So no, it's not a worthwhile tradeoff, because it's hardly better than rolling dice.
I have also heard that human trafficking increases after legalisation. This makes sense to me since other relatively unpleasant jobs are also done by illegal immigrants in many countries.
My remaining question is how we draw the line between voluntary illegal immigration and human trafficking for this class of work. I'd guess from my perspective even the voluntary immigration would seem beyond harrowing and carries risk of abuse and death along the way, so it would be easy to paint all of it as bad, yet clearly many think this is the best chance for them and their families.
But its the content creators being punished, not the ad companies. If anything ad blockers are in their interest since the type of person who blocks ads is probably the type of person to ignore them anyway.
I don't think so. If an ad isn't displayed, then the impression probably doesn't count and the publishing site doesn't get paid. It would certainly hurt the content creator more.
>It would certainly hurt the content creator more.
I think you could make the argument that you affect the content creator to a higher degree (larger percent of income) but I suspect you affect the ad company to a higher dollar amount. Nonetheless it's a negative for both.
The content creator gets paid by the ad company for showing you the ad, the ad company gets paid if you click on it.
With that in mind, there is a net-positive outcome for the ad-company if users who aren't going to click on the ads use ad-block, because that means they don't have to pay the content creator for showing ads that nobody clicked on. They only miss possible profit if you're using ad-block but would have clicked on an ad were it presented to you, which is unlikely considering ad-block is generally opt-in. Depending on the ratio of how much they make per-click vs. how much they pay the content-creator per ad, they could definitely come-out with more money due to users using ad-block and not requiring them to pay the content creator when they wouldn't have clicked on the ad anyway.
Not all ads are click based. You're thinking primarily of AdSense and a lot of retargeting ads but most ads are still bought on a CPM basis based on views. Yes, if a publisher consistently shows ads that have a low CTR (clickthrough rate), then the ad network should optimize out of displaying that ad on that site.
Its disproportionately high for the publisher. Niche sites with demographics that overlap with adblockers demographic get hit harder than other sites. The ad company will find other places to serve their ads (unless its a product catering to the same demo). (Full disclosure, I work in ads and ad blocker has never cut into our cash money. That being said I'd be interested to hear from another advertiser who has been affected)
Maybe ad blockers should emulate downloading and displaying ads, perhaps via proxy servers to minimize throughput. That would protect content creators, no?
That is a weak argument. You don't need advertising to make money if what you're doing is valuable. People will compensate you for it because they know it will go away if they don't. Take the No Agenda Show[1] for example, they have no advertising. Two podcasters make a living creating six hours of original content every week and are solely supported by their listeners.
That sounds nice in theory but in actuality is complete BS. On a site like Teamliquid.net, a video game/eSports forum and team, over 50% of visitors have ad blocked enabled and they in no way make of this missed revenue from donations or TL Plus ($5/mo for ad free).
Everyone always says they only have ad block on for obnoxious sites, but that's such a load of shit. The free internet is run by ads, like it or not, and as someone who uses ad block I accept that I actively hinder it.
I don't mind if people use ad block, it's just the moral high ground people take that annoys me.
I'm responding to this post because it's a good segue (esports). I'm an esports fan myself and count as one of that 50% on the few times I visit that site. It is, unfortunately, not their fault. I have on several occasions uninstalled my ad blocker for a time -- one time it was a few months, one time it was a couple years. Both times it was ended by a single website that was a bad actor. Once it was autoplaying audio ads, which frustrated me enough that I nope'd right into installing AdBlock Plus. The second time it was a flash ad that, after about 30 seconds on the page, began consuming about half of my CPU. After I figured out why I immediately nope'd on over to AdBlock Plus once again.
For me, at least, it's a tragedy of the commons out there. All it takes is one bad actor to spoil it all.
This isn't theory, it is a concrete example of content creators who make content and make a living with absolutely zero advertisement. If you need yet another example, LWN ( http://lwn.net ) runs mostly on subscriptions, instead of ads (90% of their revenue is subscriptions).
People won't pay for bad/terrible content, that is the hard truth.
> You don't need advertising to make money if what you're doing is valuable.
Not necessarily. There is a threshold of value that must be met to make people pay directly for it. For example I run a niche site that gets 5K uniques each month - clearly I'm providing some value - but I doubt that what I provide is enough to make people pay me directly. Ads are the most effective way of solve that problem: reward content producers that can't meet that threshold but still add some value.
You've never played their recent games then. Battle.net 2.0 is routinely called 0.2 and considered a step back in every single way, aside from FB integration I guess. It didn't even have chat channels until recently or clan support. Promises made for starcraft 2 5 years ago have yet to be delivered on. Diablo 3 was a terrible cash grab and mostly abandoned by players.
After Activision purchased blizzard it has not been the same company.
You're conflating the battle.net platform that they have built, which is the launcher, the updater, etc. with concerns that people had over matchmaking and chat support.
Uplay is a horrendous piece of junk that feels like a horrendous piece of junk that's horrible DRM. Nobody talks about chat channels and clan support in Uplay, because the only function Uplay has is to sell you games and stop you from pirating games.
Battle.net serves the same purpose, but it serves it much more gracefully. Apart from some complaints about no offline only mode for Diablo and Starcraft, it's been a pretty quiet system. Even with the new launcher it's pretty respectful to players.
I think it's pretty telling that you talk about specific functions like clan support and how Diablo 3 was a cash grab. It means you're talking about gameplay features, and not about the Battle.net platform at all.
The fact is, Battle.net is pretty quiet from a DRM perspective. You don't feel violated by installing the launcher like I did when I loaded Uplay. It feels like a tool for interoperability across Blizzard instead of an attempt to outsteam steam while screwing you over trying to lock down your games.
Battle.net's launcher got me playing hearthstone, it got me playing HOTS, it let me reconnect with people that I forgot I had on my friends list from when I played WoW. It was a useful tool. This is regardless of how long it took them to get clan support in SC2 or global chat channels or matchmaking concerns or whatever else your pet issue might be. Whatever the case, I didn't feel cheated just by installing it. Whether the games are good or not are different question.
Blizzard has a huge fan base and have had much success with recent games like Hearthstone and the build up to Heroes of the Storm is also looking very promising. SC2 has stagnated and Diablo had missteps but they've made bold steps in trying to fix those problems. I don't think Activision's stewardship of Blizzard and EA are even in the same league. Blizzard has maintained a very unique and powerful brand with almost Nintendo level IP. There are a lot of characters from Blizzard games that are well known.
Also Blizzard's' international presence is very large.
Kinda sounds like you're inventing problems here and pretending human solutions exist (again, how will any truck run away in the first place?)
I'd imagine a car will hundreds of cameras and sensors in it would be better equipped to deal with crime anyways.