Assume Nothing

EDIT - Double post. My College's proxy is acting up.

Banned for making unfounded assumptions.

Oh, and double posting.

This, so very very much.

A: It would be extremely frustrating for a new player or any player to be forced to enter captcha codes. B: It wouldn't take much time to find a workaround to all bots should that ever be the case (there are sophisticated enough algorithms to solve capcatcha, we're not in the 1990s). C: It may be implemented in such a fashion that it's worse than the 'inconvenience' of bots in the first place, and thus counterproductive as I've said many times before. The only viable solutions I can find would be either to re-remove the wilderness/freetrade, or to remove every incentive to bot/rwt (on the demand side).

That's technically true - the amount of manpower required will also grow exponentially as the bot detection process is simply harder (the real catch would be to ban not on suspicion, but on certainty as even a relatively small 'mistakes margin' can have some catastrophic effects on their reputation) - and thus it's not viable to keep banning players as a solution. It would be interesting to see what they're likely to say at the RuneFest convention though - perhaps they will finally be more transparent about their actions. It does depends what a 'non technical' solution really entails though: it could be the re-removal of free-trade (which may again kill off a significant amount of the subscribing players, but may work relatively effectively if the GE actually worked the way it ought to); it could be the segregation of 'cheating' servers (although this is likely to have other effects not foreseen at the time of the proposal); or it could be to remove every incentive to bot/rwt - perhaps a challenging task with some high short term costs, but may have the best pay-off in the long run. I know that if they think that the trade-off between player satisfaction with alleged 'bot countermeasures' is fine then they're absolutely wrong - it goes against their primary purpose in the first place, which is to satisfy players.

Indeed, humanity will always find something to have conflict - arguably its human nature to. However, the scale and the magnitude of religiously motivated wars and deaths have been far from just 'large'.

Have you ever heard of 'Moore's law'? It's a similar concept - bots will continually get better (at an exponential rate) as they figure out ways to circumvent the system. As the detection process is harder - it's a forever losing battle. It's like fighting super diseases with antibiotics; eventually they'll evolve to a point where botting would be literally undetectable. I don't think we're very far from that stage.

The concepts of religion has been a highly divisive factor among mankind - it has been a leading cause of death for thousands of years (although I acknowledge that it's not the beliefs themselves that kills, but rather, the multiple interpretations of the said beliefs which has resulted in conflict). Considering that it contributes very little to society - it simply isn't worthwhile. Please bare in mind that it's not the religious doctrines itself that causes harm (for the most part), but rather, the people who hold said views.

It would be useful to lesson the amount of rhetoric and fallacies in your posts. Please, explain how is it prejudice and ignorance? Please realise that anecdotal evidence is likely to be distorted or cherry-picked, and thus shouldn't be used for generalisations. I for one agree that the burden of proof will always remain on those who make these meta-physical claims.

It's not exactly the same thing though - one is literally giving overbearing attention to some naive new players with very little maturity, whereas the other is to simply prevent some disasters and disease outbreaks from occuring. Ofcourse it doesn't mean he has to watch out for everything we ever think, or do, or ever will do.

Just to let you know, I've quoted your (SirParagon's) post in the 'Parenting' thread since that may serve as a better platform regarding religious upbringing (actually had a little discussion regarding that already, although hardly elaborate).

The Religion thread is getting a little overlay on this very own thread. I saw a post by SirParagon and wondered whether this could be agreeable: Thoughts?

In order to accept those arguments, one must already make assumptions regarding the existence of souls, sins and other Christian concepts. I wouldn't take every word of the Bible to be fact though - how can you be sure that the authors are credible?

Not necessarily - I would encourage them to be rational, but not reject their individual views of religion. This would be regardless of my religious beliefs - so even if I were Christian, I'd do the same.

You're an athiest. Do you plan on taking your children to church? I wouldn't encourage them to go, but rather, to question the beliefs of the Christian doctrines.

I guess JaGex doesn't quite realize what the problem was. It wasn't that the monsters weren't tough enough, or complex enough. It's simply because the very design of the combat system is mundane, and there's plenty of incentive to buy/bot one's way to success. These types of updates will only have an impact on legitimate players - a counterproductive measure, like trying to borrow your way out of a recession.

If you were religious - would you allow your child to choose his own belief, or would you force your child to follow your own religion?

How dare you be older than what I imagined you to be.

Very interesting discussion. I shouldn't interfere with it >.>, the use of language here is a little beyond my scope. What do you guys make of the idea that there may be a greater being, but they're either: not God, or a deity that doesn't concern us?

Don't expect this to last for long - it's not hard for a scripter to change a coordinate and add a variable.

I was unable to find anything particularly enlightening or intriguing in the bot related article - the issue has simply become a dead horse - regardless of how pertinent it may be. The player's acknowledge the problem, JaGex acknowledges the problem - there simply needs to be something done. I think there's a lack of unique things to talk about that isn't already heavily disputed on General Discussion. Hmmph. I didn't quite follow as much of 'Diversity' as I would've wished to. Could you explain a little to us, ALG?

Hmm - interesting, haven't considered emotional maturity. I'd agree with most of that.

Let's be clear on the gravity of the situation here. The argument is primarily concerned with 'pedophilia' - only including people with sexual attraction with children whom are prepubescent - not ephebophilia which includes those who are pubescent from the age of 15 to 19. I would see the argument revolving around the age of puberty - so if only that were to change, would the laws and social attitudes change. It's interesting though - in the past, people married at ages as young as thirteen - primarily because of the average lifespan of an individual back in the day though. Edit concerning the above post - I believe the term 'consent' were in the context of sexual consent, which would be based around the individual thus not the parents. In the eyes of the law, if the individual is unwilling/incapable or lacks the capacity to consent, then it's still unlawful.

That's a problem of social use of language - conflation is not uncommon. It's subtle but it's there - the PSA suggested that all homosexuals were sexual predators that would resort to either grooming or violence - which is simply untrue by definition. The argument that pedophilia will become a social norm is absolutely fallacious - it doesn't take into account reasoning as highlighted by Ginger_Warrior above. If you went through the logical steps, it would be impossible to deduce that conclusion without empirical evidence.