The key difference here is that you're the leader of a Guild Wars guild. I've played many many hours of both Guild Wars and World of Warcraft, and I can assure you that a laid-back approach to leading a guild in WoW won't be getting you a guild of any size any time soon. At the end of the day when you're running a large (as in 50-2000+ members) guild, most of the players really just want to get something done in the game. That's too many people for them to really get personal with everyone in the guild. And quite frankly, you really can't get anything done in WoW with that kind of approach. So once you get beyond the handful of people that you just enjoy playing with, you'll find the newer players leaving as fast as more new players join. Guild Wars on the other hand is made for people with limited time, as well as other limited resources (whether that be internet bandwidth, time, or money it doesn't matter). In Guild Wars, you can literally log in, play for 30 minutes, and actually get something done. (Most missions actually take 30 minutes or less.) In WoW about the most you can expect to get done in a 30 minute session is to empty your bags, repair your armor, throw some things on the auction house, and maybe a few other such "house cleaning" details. If you're looking to do the WoW equivalent of a "mission" (the closest thing in WoW would be a 5-man dungeon instance) you can expect to spend at least 15 minutes and up to 60 or more just getting your group together, and another 15 getting everyone to the instance. And then to top it all off, gear is the single most important goal in most MMOs, (WoW in particular) and trumps player skill as well as player talent/attribute/skill/whatever builds. All that, and I haven't even mentioned yet that the end-game content of WoW requires 25 people working together in a raid (and before the expansion that was 40) while any and all of the essential Guild Wars content can be completed easily by two people (or by yourself, as is the case with 99% of it). The only content I've found in all of GW (since the addition of heroes and better henchmen control) that cannot easily be done by just two people are the elite quests and missions that become available after completing the main storyline. The bottom line here is that when all of these things are considered, Guild Wars is easier by several orders of magnitude to maintain a casual guild in.
I don't know, maybe it depends on the type of monitor. But I can easily tell a significant difference between 60hz, 70hz, 75hz, 85hz, and 100hz on any CRT monitor. The lowest refresh rate I can comfortably use on a CRT for extended periods of time is 85hz.
It's amazing. You explain very nicely just exactly why we really are the superior species and you don't even realize it.
It's quite easy to be superior species when you write the definition of "superior." Exactly.
But you don't have proof. Proof is something you can hold in your hand, and show to someone else, something that can have only one meaning, only one possible cause. The only problem is that kind of proof doesn't exist.
No actually it's not. Prejudice is if you decide that because the guy is an 11 year-old kid he must not be all that great of a player and is really not worth playing with. In this case, it seems the writer simply found the player's voice annoying and distracting - he was not using this to make a judgment about the player.
Also, preferring to play games with people your own age is not prejudice either: it's a preference, nothing more. Notice that the parent doesn't imply that younger players aren't as good or worthwhile because they're younger.
Personally, I have no problem playing with gamers of any age. I've played with people all the way from age 7 to 50+. But I have to say that if I was playing with someone and having a good time, then got on VOIP with that player and found his/her voice to be extremely annoying it really would kill the mood for me.
Nevermind the fact that the PC by and large is a DVD-only medium too Which is absolutely irrelevant. Have you ever looked at system requirements on a PC game?
I've tried looking at it from that perspective. I've even brought that up in a discussion or two. But then I take a look at the size of the salaries every last one of those jackasses pays himself, and I realize it's all just a bunch of BS. So they have to do everything they possibly can to make their company profitable? So then why don't I see them keeping their own wages at something fair and decent, like 100K to 200K a year. Most of these guys make in the millions of dollars every year - that means they're depriving their company of millions of dollars of profit every year. Surely that's not in the best interests of the corporation.
Pshaw, youngins these days I tell ya. Back when I was a half growed whippersnapper we had to run them bits our selfs fer Pa. We jus had to make do with what we had. We used skeeters. Pa would say "now run on over there to the Joneses Jimmy, an show em yore hand." Iffn ye had a skeeter bite on your hand it was a one and inffn ye didn't it were a zero. Sometimes though your hands would get all scratched up and it got kinna hard ta tell iffn ye had a bite or not. Them was the "lost bits". An did I mention we had to run it barefoot in the middle of the winter through snow up to our chins, an it were uphill both ways? Ah those were the days. Now are ye gonna help me shoot this here deer on this puter thing or not?
The graphics are exactly as dissapointing to you as Halo was to every PC gamer out there when it was released.
The halo series has NEVER had amazing graphics...it's been pretty, but far from amazing in comparison to other FPS's at the time.
I love console gaming as much as I love PC gaming, but fucking hell Halo-claimers are annoying little roaches. ( a Halo-claimer is someone that "claims" Halo was the most revolutionary game evah!) I have to agree with you 100%. I've tried Halo - its only real claim to fame is that at the time Halo 1 came out, it had no competition on consoles. The PC version was one of the worst FPS's I've ever tried.
As for that being modded "Troll"... obviously someone with mod points has absolutely no fucking clue what "Troll" means in this case. It may have been somewhat flamebait (debatable) but definitely not a troll.
I don't think that's the issue at all. I think the real issue is that we took over this land and made it "our" country in the first place. You really have to see it from both perspectives.
First, you have the perspective of the Europeans who came over to settle here. Many of them were fugitives, and were just looking for a safe place to call home. North America looked extremely inviting - it was merely inhabited by barbarians, and open to the taking! Many of the settlers really wanted nothing more than to just live here peacefully and call it home; they only defended themselves against the "Indians" at first.
But then you also have the perspective of the other side: the native Americans. Many of the tribes in the east that the Europeans first encountered didn't really have a concept of land ownership. Land was a resouce: you used it efficiently and respected it, and the land was good to you. Which was also why many of the tribes attempted to be peaceful at first. But then the "white men" started changing the land. Trees were being cut down (for farmland, housing, etc.), and before long it was obvious the new settlers were going to completely destroy the land as they knew it. Their way of life was being changed against their will - and naturally they rebelled and tried to get rid of the European settlers.
The end result has basically been a (relatively) slow invasion of North America by the Europeans that not only took the land away from the previous "owners", but also completely obliterated their way of life. Most of this was not done with malicious intent by the "invaders" but it was done all the same.
Um... and this is news how? I've known for a long time (pretty much ever since I first looked at Dell's PC configurations 10+ years ago) that getting any upgrades (except the free ones of course) from them is not cost-effective. The benefit of going with Dell is that you can get that notebook PC for $400... and then thumb your nose at them and give them the finger while you go buy your RAM, internal wireless card, and an external hard drive from Newegg for roughly 30%-50% of what Dell would have charged you. And these are all upgrades that can easily be installed in about 5 minutes by anyone who knows how to work a screwdriver. Heck, for the price difference you can afford to take your laptop and new parts to the local PC repair shop and have them install them for you and still come out ahead.
That's an interesting opinion but completely irrelevant in this case. The key here is that it is possible to produce a very popular and profitable movie for next to nothing. $200,000,000 budget and high-profile stars not required.
Well, the thing with ATI cards and drivers is they can be kind of hit or miss. One prime example is my friend's PC that he was trying to use a 9800 Pro in for his kids. Nothing he did could get the card to work. Finally he started doing some searches online and discovered that many other people had the same issues, and that the 9800 simply doesn't work with his motherboard. There's also been many instances where a certain driver version with a certain card model would not work with certain games, motherboards, etc.
For myself, I've had a few issues with the drivers hanging on install or causing a BSOD after reboot. But like I said, never really a big deal. In all cases I was able to sort things out with a reinstall of the drivers, or uninstall and reinstall an earlier version of drivers that worked fine.
It's been a long while since I tried Omega, but the few times I did they ended up being worse than ATI's drivers.
I've personally never had enough trouble with ATI drivers to make a big deal out of it, which I guess is partly why I still use them.
Maybe I should make a disclaimer: I wasn't trying to say that ATI has lots of problems with their Windows drivers - just that they have more than NVidia does, and that this has been the case pretty much ever since there's been an ATI vs. NVidia competition. Which, again, I don't think is news to anyone.
Sigh, yet another general statement without supporting evidence. I think your post is a sly bit of astroturfing for NVidia. No it's not. I can't really say much about the Nvidia drivers because I've never owned an Nvidia card personally. But when I have to install them for someone else, they always just seem to work.
I've used ATI ever since I finally gave up my Voodoo2. I have just about every version of drivers ATI released since the first Catalyst came out, and quite a few from before. They all worked, for the most part, but the install process does not seem as streamlined as Nvidia's, and I still keep hearing from people who have a problem with this or that part of the driver install process crashing, not working properly after reboot, etc. I've also encountered a few drivers over the years myself that required some extra work and a couple reinstalls to get them to work properly. However ATI has come a long way, I'll readily agree to that. Their drivers today are much better than they were when I first started using them.
For WHQL certification, we all know that doesn't mean a whole lot. I've used non-WHQL drivers that worked perfectly every time on many different machines, as well as certified drivers that caused BSODs.
Yes I know this is all just anecdotal evidence, and it is only intended as such so please take it with a grain of salt.
It's also no secret that ATI has long had problems with their drivers for Windows too.
No, this is not a troll. I use ATI cards almost exclusively myself and I prefer them over NVidia, but I do have to admit that Nvidia's drivers as a general rule seem much better designed and simpler to install.
And that's why so many of the locations in the game look exactly like they did in the movies instead of how they're described in the books, right? Take a good look at Bag End for starters.
Yes, they did draw things from the books that are not in the movies but the movies are still clearly the primary inspiration for the game.
I liked the movies too and have watched over and over. I do stress to others that this is not LoTR or Tolkien's work at all. It is an entirely different story as told by jackson and co. That it simply what it is.... Wow, you hit the nail right on the head and I could not agree with you more. What really bugs me though is people who have seen the movies and think that's what LotR is.
The/. title is misleading... as usual. Nowhere does the "flawed survey" suggest that XP is more secure than Vista. They use terms like "Vista is only marginally more secure" and "Vista brings little or no security gains over its predecessor". But then, apparently they're not even quite sure themselves because in almost every "test" they discuss in their article, Vista catches at least some things that XP misses.
And their conclusion at the end:
THE BOTTOM LINE
Based on the Test Center's findings, businesses that migrate their Windows PCs from XP to Vista will get a slightly more secure OS. But as the Finjan reports showed, Vista's security remains wafer thin.
Finally, something to agree on.:) Yes, more or less.:)
I do have to say though, that while I support the original duration of copyright, I also think that in today's digital age it should actually be shorter. My preference would be 5 years plus a 5 year extension. And here's why.
1.) In the digital age, it's much easier and faster to distribute your work. It doesn't take 14 years any more to "print" enough copies of your "work" to get it out to everyone who wants to buy it. Now it only takes a matter of a few months.
2.) Since it's much easier to distribute work, most copyrighted works today generate the majority of their income in the first year. Particularly in the case of music, if an album is still popular enough to be selling any significant number of copies after five years you can be damn sure the artist has already made a bundle off it and are probably set financially well enough that they could go years without an income.
3.) I really don't see why artists are entitled to have a continued income off work they did in the past any more than anyone else. Like I already mentioned, if an artist is really in it primarily for the money and what they've created is truly marketable, it usually generates a pretty massive income in the first year alone. A typical pop album that took a year to create will (based on demand for that album) generate an income as much or more than most other types of jobs. So if you're a construction worker making $20/hr building houses, and you help build a really nice house that takes a year to build, why shouldn't you still be collecting money from building that house thirty years down the road if artists are entitled to that type of compensation? Artists are just as capable of saving and investing their earnings as anyone else.
4.) It really doesn't even need to be mentioned since everyone already knows it, but for the sake of completeness I'll include this. In many cases now it's not the artists at all that really benefit from the long-term copyright. It's whatever corporation that bought out their work.
Well, that's my two cents. I'm sure there's some good counter-arguments and people who disagree with me.:)
No no, you missed it.
In the time it takes to get a 70 char decently geared (say 40 days) He didn't say the time to level to 70, he said the time to gear up a 70.
You're either trolling or you completely missed the point of my post. Either way, I'm not interested in some long drawn-out discussion on metaphysics; I've been in plenty of those before. But thanks for playing.
That is not YOUR choice. It is the AUTHOR'S choice to make THEIR WORK available such that you can copy it everywhere. Do you understand the difference?? That tells me all I need to know. It tells me that you're one of the people who doesn't understand the purpose of copyright at all.
For the rest of your post, way to go you really gave those straw men hell. Nice job.
Slashdot Mirror
The key difference here is that you're the leader of a Guild Wars guild. I've played many many hours of both Guild Wars and World of Warcraft, and I can assure you that a laid-back approach to leading a guild in WoW won't be getting you a guild of any size any time soon. At the end of the day when you're running a large (as in 50-2000+ members) guild, most of the players really just want to get something done in the game. That's too many people for them to really get personal with everyone in the guild. And quite frankly, you really can't get anything done in WoW with that kind of approach. So once you get beyond the handful of people that you just enjoy playing with, you'll find the newer players leaving as fast as more new players join. Guild Wars on the other hand is made for people with limited time, as well as other limited resources (whether that be internet bandwidth, time, or money it doesn't matter). In Guild Wars, you can literally log in, play for 30 minutes, and actually get something done. (Most missions actually take 30 minutes or less.) In WoW about the most you can expect to get done in a 30 minute session is to empty your bags, repair your armor, throw some things on the auction house, and maybe a few other such "house cleaning" details. If you're looking to do the WoW equivalent of a "mission" (the closest thing in WoW would be a 5-man dungeon instance) you can expect to spend at least 15 minutes and up to 60 or more just getting your group together, and another 15 getting everyone to the instance. And then to top it all off, gear is the single most important goal in most MMOs, (WoW in particular) and trumps player skill as well as player talent/attribute/skill/whatever builds. All that, and I haven't even mentioned yet that the end-game content of WoW requires 25 people working together in a raid (and before the expansion that was 40) while any and all of the essential Guild Wars content can be completed easily by two people (or by yourself, as is the case with 99% of it). The only content I've found in all of GW (since the addition of heroes and better henchmen control) that cannot easily be done by just two people are the elite quests and missions that become available after completing the main storyline. The bottom line here is that when all of these things are considered, Guild Wars is easier by several orders of magnitude to maintain a casual guild in.
I don't know, maybe it depends on the type of monitor. But I can easily tell a significant difference between 60hz, 70hz, 75hz, 85hz, and 100hz on any CRT monitor. The lowest refresh rate I can comfortably use on a CRT for extended periods of time is 85hz.
No no, that's much too practical. I propose we colonize Jupiter next!!
No actually it's not. Prejudice is if you decide that because the guy is an 11 year-old kid he must not be all that great of a player and is really not worth playing with. In this case, it seems the writer simply found the player's voice annoying and distracting - he was not using this to make a judgment about the player.
Also, preferring to play games with people your own age is not prejudice either: it's a preference, nothing more. Notice that the parent doesn't imply that younger players aren't as good or worthwhile because they're younger.
Personally, I have no problem playing with gamers of any age. I've played with people all the way from age 7 to 50+. But I have to say that if I was playing with someone and having a good time, then got on VOIP with that player and found his/her voice to be extremely annoying it really would kill the mood for me.
I've tried looking at it from that perspective. I've even brought that up in a discussion or two. But then I take a look at the size of the salaries every last one of those jackasses pays himself, and I realize it's all just a bunch of BS. So they have to do everything they possibly can to make their company profitable? So then why don't I see them keeping their own wages at something fair and decent, like 100K to 200K a year. Most of these guys make in the millions of dollars every year - that means they're depriving their company of millions of dollars of profit every year. Surely that's not in the best interests of the corporation.
Pshaw, youngins these days I tell ya. Back when I was a half growed whippersnapper we had to run them bits our selfs fer Pa. We jus had to make do with what we had. We used skeeters. Pa would say "now run on over there to the Joneses Jimmy, an show em yore hand." Iffn ye had a skeeter bite on your hand it was a one and inffn ye didn't it were a zero. Sometimes though your hands would get all scratched up and it got kinna hard ta tell iffn ye had a bite or not. Them was the "lost bits". An did I mention we had to run it barefoot in the middle of the winter through snow up to our chins, an it were uphill both ways? Ah those were the days. Now are ye gonna help me shoot this here deer on this puter thing or not?
The graphics are exactly as dissapointing to you as Halo was to every PC gamer out there when it was released.
The halo series has NEVER had amazing graphics...it's been pretty, but far from amazing in comparison to other FPS's at the time.
I love console gaming as much as I love PC gaming, but fucking hell Halo-claimers are annoying little roaches. ( a Halo-claimer is someone that "claims" Halo was the most revolutionary game evah!) I have to agree with you 100%. I've tried Halo - its only real claim to fame is that at the time Halo 1 came out, it had no competition on consoles. The PC version was one of the worst FPS's I've ever tried.
As for that being modded "Troll"... obviously someone with mod points has absolutely no fucking clue what "Troll" means in this case. It may have been somewhat flamebait (debatable) but definitely not a troll.
I don't think that's the issue at all. I think the real issue is that we took over this land and made it "our" country in the first place. You really have to see it from both perspectives.
First, you have the perspective of the Europeans who came over to settle here. Many of them were fugitives, and were just looking for a safe place to call home. North America looked extremely inviting - it was merely inhabited by barbarians, and open to the taking! Many of the settlers really wanted nothing more than to just live here peacefully and call it home; they only defended themselves against the "Indians" at first.
But then you also have the perspective of the other side: the native Americans. Many of the tribes in the east that the Europeans first encountered didn't really have a concept of land ownership. Land was a resouce: you used it efficiently and respected it, and the land was good to you. Which was also why many of the tribes attempted to be peaceful at first. But then the "white men" started changing the land. Trees were being cut down (for farmland, housing, etc.), and before long it was obvious the new settlers were going to completely destroy the land as they knew it. Their way of life was being changed against their will - and naturally they rebelled and tried to get rid of the European settlers.
The end result has basically been a (relatively) slow invasion of North America by the Europeans that not only took the land away from the previous "owners", but also completely obliterated their way of life. Most of this was not done with malicious intent by the "invaders" but it was done all the same.
Anyway, that's my take on it.
Um... and this is news how? I've known for a long time (pretty much ever since I first looked at Dell's PC configurations 10+ years ago) that getting any upgrades (except the free ones of course) from them is not cost-effective. The benefit of going with Dell is that you can get that notebook PC for $400... and then thumb your nose at them and give them the finger while you go buy your RAM, internal wireless card, and an external hard drive from Newegg for roughly 30%-50% of what Dell would have charged you. And these are all upgrades that can easily be installed in about 5 minutes by anyone who knows how to work a screwdriver. Heck, for the price difference you can afford to take your laptop and new parts to the local PC repair shop and have them install them for you and still come out ahead.
That's an interesting opinion but completely irrelevant in this case. The key here is that it is possible to produce a very popular and profitable movie for next to nothing. $200,000,000 budget and high-profile stars not required.
Yeah, it's such a shame no one's ever made a good movie on a low budget.
Oh, wait...
Well, the thing with ATI cards and drivers is they can be kind of hit or miss. One prime example is my friend's PC that he was trying to use a 9800 Pro in for his kids. Nothing he did could get the card to work. Finally he started doing some searches online and discovered that many other people had the same issues, and that the 9800 simply doesn't work with his motherboard. There's also been many instances where a certain driver version with a certain card model would not work with certain games, motherboards, etc.
For myself, I've had a few issues with the drivers hanging on install or causing a BSOD after reboot. But like I said, never really a big deal. In all cases I was able to sort things out with a reinstall of the drivers, or uninstall and reinstall an earlier version of drivers that worked fine.
It's been a long while since I tried Omega, but the few times I did they ended up being worse than ATI's drivers.
I've personally never had enough trouble with ATI drivers to make a big deal out of it, which I guess is partly why I still use them.
Maybe I should make a disclaimer: I wasn't trying to say that ATI has lots of problems with their Windows drivers - just that they have more than NVidia does, and that this has been the case pretty much ever since there's been an ATI vs. NVidia competition. Which, again, I don't think is news to anyone.
I've used ATI ever since I finally gave up my Voodoo2. I have just about every version of drivers ATI released since the first Catalyst came out, and quite a few from before. They all worked, for the most part, but the install process does not seem as streamlined as Nvidia's, and I still keep hearing from people who have a problem with this or that part of the driver install process crashing, not working properly after reboot, etc. I've also encountered a few drivers over the years myself that required some extra work and a couple reinstalls to get them to work properly. However ATI has come a long way, I'll readily agree to that. Their drivers today are much better than they were when I first started using them.
For WHQL certification, we all know that doesn't mean a whole lot. I've used non-WHQL drivers that worked perfectly every time on many different machines, as well as certified drivers that caused BSODs.
Yes I know this is all just anecdotal evidence, and it is only intended as such so please take it with a grain of salt.
It's also no secret that ATI has long had problems with their drivers for Windows too.
No, this is not a troll. I use ATI cards almost exclusively myself and I prefer them over NVidia, but I do have to admit that Nvidia's drivers as a general rule seem much better designed and simpler to install.
And that's why so many of the locations in the game look exactly like they did in the movies instead of how they're described in the books, right? Take a good look at Bag End for starters.
Yes, they did draw things from the books that are not in the movies but the movies are still clearly the primary inspiration for the game.
And their conclusion at the end: THE BOTTOM LINE
Based on the Test Center's findings, businesses that migrate their Windows PCs from XP to Vista will get a slightly more secure OS. But as the Finjan reports showed, Vista's security remains wafer thin.
I do have to say though, that while I support the original duration of copyright, I also think that in today's digital age it should actually be shorter. My preference would be 5 years plus a 5 year extension. And here's why.
1.) In the digital age, it's much easier and faster to distribute your work. It doesn't take 14 years any more to "print" enough copies of your "work" to get it out to everyone who wants to buy it. Now it only takes a matter of a few months.
2.) Since it's much easier to distribute work, most copyrighted works today generate the majority of their income in the first year. Particularly in the case of music, if an album is still popular enough to be selling any significant number of copies after five years you can be damn sure the artist has already made a bundle off it and are probably set financially well enough that they could go years without an income.
3.) I really don't see why artists are entitled to have a continued income off work they did in the past any more than anyone else. Like I already mentioned, if an artist is really in it primarily for the money and what they've created is truly marketable, it usually generates a pretty massive income in the first year alone. A typical pop album that took a year to create will (based on demand for that album) generate an income as much or more than most other types of jobs. So if you're a construction worker making $20/hr building houses, and you help build a really nice house that takes a year to build, why shouldn't you still be collecting money from building that house thirty years down the road if artists are entitled to that type of compensation? Artists are just as capable of saving and investing their earnings as anyone else.
4.) It really doesn't even need to be mentioned since everyone already knows it, but for the sake of completeness I'll include this. In many cases now it's not the artists at all that really benefit from the long-term copyright. It's whatever corporation that bought out their work.
Well, that's my two cents. I'm sure there's some good counter-arguments and people who disagree with me.
You're either trolling or you completely missed the point of my post. Either way, I'm not interested in some long drawn-out discussion on metaphysics; I've been in plenty of those before. But thanks for playing.
For the rest of your post, way to go you really gave those straw men hell. Nice job.