Oops, context typo (yes I should have hit preview):
"Those artificial rewards, even though I have not played those games in quite a while , are still important to me, and I feel a sense of accomplishment"
Actually, a much smaller fraction of people are in high-end raiding guilds than what most people realize (think about the numbers...2-4 big guilds per server vs. the rest of the players...anyone not in the top tier guilds that wants to be in them is usually in a 2nd tier guild which is still a very small fraction of the total playerbase). It seems larger, because people in those guilds are often more vocal (partly due to the ego thing) than people that are not.
What parobably keeps the largest majority of people in the game later on is the social bonds developed with other players, and the continual drive to improve your character past the level cap (most often gear, but can be alternate forms of advancement, titles, extra abilities, crafting professions, etc). It is when those secondary options start to run out, or become too much of a time investment for the rewards obtained, that players begin to become burnt out, and quit.
The early drive is because each ding leads you closer to that final level, where all the 'cool stuff' is.
I do disagree with the deveolper though. Those artificial rewards, even though I have not played those games, are still important to me, and I feel a sense of accomplishment, even though they are just a representation of time investment, and not any actual skill or ability on my part.
Re:More than scientific learning
on
LHC Success!
·
· Score: 1
Shit....brb, heading to Wal-Mart to get a crowbar. Think they have HEV suits too? It is a Super Walmart.
Re:More than scientific learning
on
LHC Success!
·
· Score: 4, Funny
For the good of all of us!
(Except the ones who are dead.)
Re:It gives you something just as bad...
on
Review: Spore
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Unfortunately, despite the 'protest', many people are:
For fuck's sake. Why not worry about all those greeting cards with sound chips in them, or all the alkaline batteries, or printer ink cartridges thrown away? Esquire doing a one-time limited run of these is nothing compared to all of the other sources of toxic landfill materials. Quit being a pessimistic asshole and pissing on the downsides of the current popular topic and worry about some real problems.
Mwave has been good to me, the few times I ordered from them.
I purchase probably ~$3k a month in 'normal' stuff for a medium-sized business, and up to $10k for special projects. And I use this for purchsing for myself, which is quite a bit too, hehe.
If I am ordering a bunch of lower cost items ($100 or so), I immediately go to Newegg.com. Their search functionality is more robust than anywhere else, and their selection and prices are some of the best. And of course they actually treat their customers properly after the sale.
If it's a higher priced item, I hit up pricegrabber.com and see which of my 'preferred vendors' is the cheapest. That list mostly consists of:
Two sites I usually hit up also are Provantage.com and ZipZoomFly.com...they don't usually appear in the Pricegrabber results, but often have some things cheap (Provantage is good specifically with laptop hard drives and printer maintenance kits for some reason I have not figured out.)
lagoom.com is worth checking out too, my Intel Q6600 for my gaming PC was purchased there...at that time, Newegg was $530, they were $485. (Yeah, those prices suck now, early adopter penalty). It arrived very fast and their site and service was quite professional.
My favorite place for ethernet cables is: www.deepsurplus.com (free Skittles with every order...how can you lose?)
A/V Cables: monoprice.com
Also, Amazon.com is usually good for a lot of things.
ISO knew nothing was compatible with it yet. Sometimes all current formats are inadequate, so you need to make a new, better format that people can then create products to meet. Now that it is a standard, companies can work to make products compatible with it. And for what it's worth, I believe Microsoft did claim they were going to release a free plugin/update for Office 2007 to save and open OOXML files.
(I am not claiming by any stretch of the imagination that the ISO legitimately chose OOXML as a standard, there are many other reasons as to why they should not have...my point is just that your argument for why they are 'useless' is flawed.)
I can't say I remember hearing of Microsoft sue a bunch of companies over a broad patent like this before, so I guess it's better that they have it than some stupid IP holidng patent troll company.
US News and World report started the bullshit a long time ago. There used to be 4 of them, now they skip the second one or something. Someone else in the replies here linked the full details.
Basically:
If you've heard of the school (in an acedemic sense, not fucking sports), it's probably first tier.
If you haven't heard of it, it's probably third tier (second gets skipped, wtf?).
If you've heard of it from a TV ad or spam e-mail, it's probably fourth tier.
There is no official clear-cut guidline other than their annual rankings. It's overhyped bullshit that it likely making US News a ton of money.
If Linux was sold in retail channels and had marketshare like Windows, the same exact thing would happen. Quicken, Adobe XX, Roxio XX, Turbotax, etc. would all have Linux versions that would get preinstalled just the same (along with a host of 'update' programs from the manufacturer and those software vendors. It would be the same on OS X if they licensed it to 3rd party PC makers. It's just the marketshare and how Windows is sold that causes this, not Windows itself.
Obama can't even clearly explain what he stands for. He would be considered a flip-flopper, except his positions are to vague to even tell if he is. McCain is at least more concrete in what he stands for, which is good...and bad depending on your viewpoint:-)
We sit them down in front of a computer for a competency test on MS Office. They can still pass if they are used to other programs, it just makes it more difficult. These are entry level office positions that don't make much more than minimum wage (Other positions can have the competency test results ignored, but they are still a factor in most cases...we do care about potential in those areas). They are kind of temporary...most people don't hang around for more than two years or so. Very rarely is anyone promoted out of that department. It's basic document processing that we are actually looking into outsourcing overseas anyway.
My point is, if they have to learn a program, they should learn the one that most of the world uses, and not the cheapest. Let's look at costs real quick while we're at it. A retail Office Pro 07 license is $380. An educational one is $120. 1/3rd the cost. Now let's say it's a very nice school and there are 5 students to 1 PC. That's $24 per student for one year. And going by MS office updates, let's say you get 3 years out of it. That's 3 more students, bringing it down to $8. That's chump change compared to other stuff. Cost per student can easily go anywhere from $5000-$10000 per student per year. Let's take the low end of that (and dont forget with the computer:student ratio we assumed a wealthier school). The $8 paid for office is 0.16% of that. A more realistic figure may be a 10:1 Student:computer ratio, so $4 per student per year, and maybe $7500 per student so 0.05%.
I've used Lotus (retailer I worked at during high school) OO.o (during college when I was being a rebelious Linux/OSS geek) and Office in class and during internships, and MS Office is what I have been using at home and work now for over 2 years. OO.o is fairly close, but there are still several differences (especially with Office '07 becoming the standard).
Looking at the costs and benefits, I would say it is worth it. But that's just me.
The Mac Pro motherboard is an Intel design, and Apple did a few basic layout modifications to it. I was assuming most of thier other prodcts were rougly the same, but I could be mistaken.
Except most businesses use MS Office. How is that student going to look at a job when he has trouble doing some basic stuff in MS Word because they can't find the option or it's called something else? Where I work, if people come in not knowing how to use Microsoft Word and Excel, they don't get hired. Usually it's people that used Lotus (and sometimes people that think "MS Word and Excel Experience" is a suggestion, not a requirement). There is enough other crap we have to train them on, we don't have time to piss around with people that don't know how to use the software that the overwhelming majority of the business world uses. It sounds harsh, but it's the truth in a competitive job market like this.
Also, office licenses for schools are not that expensive. Especially compared to other stuff they waste money on. I'm much more concerned about the new highschool they're planning to replace the 25-year old one with that just got a nice, large addition 3 years ago.
Government offices would be much more likely to be able to get away with using OO.o. But there are some advanced features that some people would need. I know there are a lot of add-ons for Word for the legal industry, so the courts would probably need Word, and maybe some secretarial positions, etc. But I still see this as a more minor spending issue compared to many others.
The funny thing about that is, Apple designs almost all components of all of its software. They design very little of their hardware (except the outside/case). They leave most of that to other companies. I really don't think that calling them a hardware company is really valid. They sell hardware, software, and consumer electronics now. Computer hardware is not even a majority of their business anymore. Software+iPhone/iPod/iTunes outweighs their hardware sales.
And yes, I actually would like to put some firmware frome some of my TVs on others. That's also a bad comparison. It would be like Sony not allowing their firmware to be installed on other TVs, but almost every other TV manufacturer ships the same 3rd party firmware on their TVs, and it can also be installed on TVs you build yourself and Sony TVs.
You forget something...Apple still makes money on just OS X. and if this goes through, Dell, HP, etc. will probably be buying up licenses to sell to consumers (after some driver R&D and tech support training). Apple can continue without its computer hardware sales, no problem. It may have to tweak the price of OS X a bit to compensate, but I think it will be just fine.
Actually I think most people buying an XServe buy it for the looks. I mean seriously, OSX Server? You can turn a Linux Eee PC into a more functional server.
My understanding is it's a completely reworked game. Looks to be quite interesting and I am planning on checking it out myself.
Also, I love my Saitek x52 Joystick/Throttle. Lots of features and you can find it for about $90. Kinda salty, but not crazy expensive like some options, and I think it's a good value considering all the features and the quality feel. Thrustmaster has some cheaper ones (independent joy/throt) that work pretty well, but the feal cheaper and don't have nearly as many features. (As a side note, if you try to demo them in an electronics store, the x52 stick can loose it's tension if abused to hell and back by elementary children. I worked in such a store and ours was fine until some 11 year old punk thought he was Maverick and went nuts on it)
Slashdot Mirror
Oops, context typo (yes I should have hit preview):
"Those artificial rewards, even though I have not played those games in quite a while , are still important to me, and I feel a sense of accomplishment"
Actually, a much smaller fraction of people are in high-end raiding guilds than what most people realize (think about the numbers...2-4 big guilds per server vs. the rest of the players...anyone not in the top tier guilds that wants to be in them is usually in a 2nd tier guild which is still a very small fraction of the total playerbase). It seems larger, because people in those guilds are often more vocal (partly due to the ego thing) than people that are not.
What parobably keeps the largest majority of people in the game later on is the social bonds developed with other players, and the continual drive to improve your character past the level cap (most often gear, but can be alternate forms of advancement, titles, extra abilities, crafting professions, etc). It is when those secondary options start to run out, or become too much of a time investment for the rewards obtained, that players begin to become burnt out, and quit.
The early drive is because each ding leads you closer to that final level, where all the 'cool stuff' is.
I do disagree with the deveolper though. Those artificial rewards, even though I have not played those games, are still important to me, and I feel a sense of accomplishment, even though they are just a representation of time investment, and not any actual skill or ability on my part.
Shit....brb, heading to Wal-Mart to get a crowbar. Think they have HEV suits too? It is a Super Walmart.
For the good of all of us!
(Except the ones who are dead.)
Unfortunately, despite the 'protest', many people are:
"Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1 in Video Games"
http://www.amazon.com/Spore-Pc/dp/B000FKBCX4/ref=pd_ts_vg_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames
For fuck's sake. Why not worry about all those greeting cards with sound chips in them, or all the alkaline batteries, or printer ink cartridges thrown away? Esquire doing a one-time limited run of these is nothing compared to all of the other sources of toxic landfill materials. Quit being a pessimistic asshole and pissing on the downsides of the current popular topic and worry about some real problems.
I think -1 RTFA would suffice.
Mwave has been good to me, the few times I ordered from them.
I purchase probably ~$3k a month in 'normal' stuff for a medium-sized business, and up to $10k for special projects. And I use this for purchsing for myself, which is quite a bit too, hehe.
If I am ordering a bunch of lower cost items ($100 or so), I immediately go to Newegg.com. Their search functionality is more robust than anywhere else, and their selection and prices are some of the best. And of course they actually treat their customers properly after the sale.
If it's a higher priced item, I hit up pricegrabber.com and see which of my 'preferred vendors' is the cheapest. That list mostly consists of:
PCNation.com
theNerds.net
techonweb.com
PCConnection.com
Two sites I usually hit up also are Provantage.com and ZipZoomFly.com...they don't usually appear in the Pricegrabber results, but often have some things cheap (Provantage is good specifically with laptop hard drives and printer maintenance kits for some reason I have not figured out.)
lagoom.com is worth checking out too, my Intel Q6600 for my gaming PC was purchased there...at that time, Newegg was $530, they were $485. (Yeah, those prices suck now, early adopter penalty). It arrived very fast and their site and service was quite professional.
My favorite place for ethernet cables is: www.deepsurplus.com (free Skittles with every order...how can you lose?)
A/V Cables: monoprice.com
Also, Amazon.com is usually good for a lot of things.
ISO knew nothing was compatible with it yet. Sometimes all current formats are inadequate, so you need to make a new, better format that people can then create products to meet. Now that it is a standard, companies can work to make products compatible with it. And for what it's worth, I believe Microsoft did claim they were going to release a free plugin/update for Office 2007 to save and open OOXML files.
(I am not claiming by any stretch of the imagination that the ISO legitimately chose OOXML as a standard, there are many other reasons as to why they should not have...my point is just that your argument for why they are 'useless' is flawed.)
Default Opera layout: The address bar IS under the tab bar.
I can't say I remember hearing of Microsoft sue a bunch of companies over a broad patent like this before, so I guess it's better that they have it than some stupid IP holidng patent troll company.
US News and World report started the bullshit a long time ago. There used to be 4 of them, now they skip the second one or something. Someone else in the replies here linked the full details.
Basically:
If you've heard of the school (in an acedemic sense, not fucking sports), it's probably first tier.
If you haven't heard of it, it's probably third tier (second gets skipped, wtf?).
If you've heard of it from a TV ad or spam e-mail, it's probably fourth tier.
There is no official clear-cut guidline other than their annual rankings. It's overhyped bullshit that it likely making US News a ton of money.
Isn't there a continiousl warm wind blowing away from his face? I'm confused now!
If Linux was sold in retail channels and had marketshare like Windows, the same exact thing would happen. Quicken, Adobe XX, Roxio XX, Turbotax, etc. would all have Linux versions that would get preinstalled just the same (along with a host of 'update' programs from the manufacturer and those software vendors. It would be the same on OS X if they licensed it to 3rd party PC makers. It's just the marketshare and how Windows is sold that causes this, not Windows itself.
Obama can't even clearly explain what he stands for. He would be considered a flip-flopper, except his positions are to vague to even tell if he is. McCain is at least more concrete in what he stands for, which is good...and bad depending on your viewpoint :-)
We sit them down in front of a computer for a competency test on MS Office. They can still pass if they are used to other programs, it just makes it more difficult. These are entry level office positions that don't make much more than minimum wage (Other positions can have the competency test results ignored, but they are still a factor in most cases...we do care about potential in those areas). They are kind of temporary...most people don't hang around for more than two years or so. Very rarely is anyone promoted out of that department. It's basic document processing that we are actually looking into outsourcing overseas anyway.
My point is, if they have to learn a program, they should learn the one that most of the world uses, and not the cheapest. Let's look at costs real quick while we're at it. A retail Office Pro 07 license is $380. An educational one is $120. 1/3rd the cost. Now let's say it's a very nice school and there are 5 students to 1 PC. That's $24 per student for one year. And going by MS office updates, let's say you get 3 years out of it. That's 3 more students, bringing it down to $8. That's chump change compared to other stuff. Cost per student can easily go anywhere from $5000-$10000 per student per year. Let's take the low end of that (and dont forget with the computer:student ratio we assumed a wealthier school). The $8 paid for office is 0.16% of that. A more realistic figure may be a 10:1 Student:computer ratio, so $4 per student per year, and maybe $7500 per student so 0.05%.
I've used Lotus (retailer I worked at during high school) OO.o (during college when I was being a rebelious Linux/OSS geek) and Office in class and during internships, and MS Office is what I have been using at home and work now for over 2 years. OO.o is fairly close, but there are still several differences (especially with Office '07 becoming the standard).
Looking at the costs and benefits, I would say it is worth it. But that's just me.
The Mac Pro motherboard is an Intel design, and Apple did a few basic layout modifications to it. I was assuming most of thier other prodcts were rougly the same, but I could be mistaken.
Except most businesses use MS Office. How is that student going to look at a job when he has trouble doing some basic stuff in MS Word because they can't find the option or it's called something else? Where I work, if people come in not knowing how to use Microsoft Word and Excel, they don't get hired. Usually it's people that used Lotus (and sometimes people that think "MS Word and Excel Experience" is a suggestion, not a requirement). There is enough other crap we have to train them on, we don't have time to piss around with people that don't know how to use the software that the overwhelming majority of the business world uses. It sounds harsh, but it's the truth in a competitive job market like this.
Also, office licenses for schools are not that expensive. Especially compared to other stuff they waste money on. I'm much more concerned about the new highschool they're planning to replace the 25-year old one with that just got a nice, large addition 3 years ago.
Government offices would be much more likely to be able to get away with using OO.o. But there are some advanced features that some people would need. I know there are a lot of add-ons for Word for the legal industry, so the courts would probably need Word, and maybe some secretarial positions, etc. But I still see this as a more minor spending issue compared to many others.
The funny thing about that is, Apple designs almost all components of all of its software. They design very little of their hardware (except the outside/case). They leave most of that to other companies. I really don't think that calling them a hardware company is really valid. They sell hardware, software, and consumer electronics now. Computer hardware is not even a majority of their business anymore. Software+iPhone/iPod/iTunes outweighs their hardware sales.
And yes, I actually would like to put some firmware frome some of my TVs on others. That's also a bad comparison. It would be like Sony not allowing their firmware to be installed on other TVs, but almost every other TV manufacturer ships the same 3rd party firmware on their TVs, and it can also be installed on TVs you build yourself and Sony TVs.
You forget something...Apple still makes money on just OS X. and if this goes through, Dell, HP, etc. will probably be buying up licenses to sell to consumers (after some driver R&D and tech support training). Apple can continue without its computer hardware sales, no problem. It may have to tweak the price of OS X a bit to compensate, but I think it will be just fine.
Actually I think most people buying an XServe buy it for the looks. I mean seriously, OSX Server? You can turn a Linux Eee PC into a more functional server.
Begin HP/Dell/etc. is backing Psystar conspiracy theories in 3..2..1....
My understanding is it's a completely reworked game. Looks to be quite interesting and I am planning on checking it out myself.
Also, I love my Saitek x52 Joystick/Throttle. Lots of features and you can find it for about $90. Kinda salty, but not crazy expensive like some options, and I think it's a good value considering all the features and the quality feel. Thrustmaster has some cheaper ones (independent joy/throt) that work pretty well, but the feal cheaper and don't have nearly as many features. (As a side note, if you try to demo them in an electronics store, the x52 stick can loose it's tension if abused to hell and back by elementary children. I worked in such a store and ours was fine until some 11 year old punk thought he was Maverick and went nuts on it)
I find the massive waste of mod points to be humorous.
Exactly...had I actually known about the site I would have probably at least checked it out, and likely stayed a while.