So because you haven't/didn't hear enough about two particulars that YOU feel are important on an issue, I'm a liar? And I wonder why this contry is so screwed up sometimes...
Indeed. Before Farenheit 9-11, no one ever thought about or discussed 9-11 and the war on terror. I'm glad he's going to get everyone to discuss the health care system again too, because I haven't heard anyone talking about it since at least yesterday, maybe even two whole days ago.
Hey, as long as I don't have to pay for the ~$10/mo of ESPN bullshit I never watch (ESPN is terrible at forcing content providers to carry more of their channels by putting major games on obscure variations, like ESPN-U), I'll be happy.
Actually I haven't owned a console since the original Nintendo (unless you wanna count the Gameboy Color I haven't played in 4 or 5 years)...so I wouldn't consider myself a fanboy of any system (but I'm no fan of Sony, I'll admit that much).
The simple fact is, there aren't many good games yet for the PS3 and they really need to work up their library.
The Wii isn't much better off...there aren't a lot of great titles yet and they keep on worrying about hardware revisions to prevent piracy. The 360 has more titles now, but they're just as guilty of the same thing.
My point is if they make it so you have to solder a mod chip in the console to pirate games, then the majority of the people will not pirate games...they don't need to keep working at it at that point. The same money could be invested making games that sell millions as opposed to preventing maybe one or two-hundred thousand pirates.
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying it's kind of a waste of time to spend a month on something that is going to be replaced with a completely different product within 5-6 months.
Yes, this is the tech world, and most things are outdated in 5-6 months...but they aren't replaced by something very different at no extra cost...that is the key difference here. It'd be the same thing if MythTV was about to undergo a major revision.
Now, given MS, it's entirely possible that the new Media Center will be worse than what they had, and people will keep the old interface for a longer period of time...but I can't predict every one of their potential(likely) failures. In which case I'll come back here and say what a wonderful review this is while I download MythTV.
Actually if he kept up on Windows he'd realize this review is pointless. The first Vista service pack is supposed to include a major overhaul of the Media Center interface (yet something else MS wanted to launch with Vista but ran out of time for). That's what should really get compared to MythTV. And I'd really like to get a good comparison too, I need to build a Media Center box later this year and am up in the air about which to choose.
But that article is not targeted at most users. It's targeted at geeks like us, who want either:
a) A quiter PC b) A PC that will last longer because their components ran cooler c) People who stress their CPUs a lot and want to ensure they are not going to die prematurely (gamers and powerusers). d) Overclockers
Also, why are datacenters and server rooms often air conditioned to well below room temperature? Longer life, true, but also better stability. See how long you can run Prime95 on your PC without an error. Eventually you will get one, and if you had the time to do some thorough testing, you would see a trend...the hotter your components, the sooner you would get an error.
Something worth noting is major PC manufacturers rarely use stock cooling. The usually have ducted systems for CPU cooling.
(Oh, nice job on including the obligatory slashdot car reference. While you probably would never see a difference between Penzoil, Valvoline, and Quaker State, you would eventually see a difference between those and bottom shelf crap oil.)
"...most well-received launch for a Massively Multiplayer game since World of Warcraft..."
Erm, I played WoW for a quite a while....ah hell, entirely too much (former Grand Marshal) and enjoyed the game and hold nothing against it...but its launch was terrible. Server instability and crashes galore...the game was offline as much as it was online for the first couple weeks. And any playtime you managed was plagued by overcrowding and latency issues. It ranks right down there with SWG and EQ: Shadows of Luclin launches. Could someone explain how that is "well-received?"
Also, why do so many people feel every midieval fantasy MMORPG has to compete with WoW? Aren't they allowed to appeal to a different and smaller audience?
There were probably decimal places on those numbers too. My guess is they just predict a monthly or yearly growth number and then divide that out day by day and end up with a number that probably has many decimal places that they round off to the nearest whole number. I'm sure they have a margin of error if you look into it.
Does it really matter if it's 3,303,992,253 or 3,304,000,000? It's actually kind of silly to round that high, because the first number is probably going to be closer.
Well let's first assume OSX and Windows were on equal footing with PC Games, and upgrading video hardware was common for users of both OS's.
If Apple were to mandate absolute perfection, you'd see a lot fewer driver releases for OSX...because they require more QA time.
So on the other hand, Windows users would be getting better performing drivers more quickly that may have a hitch here and there in select titles, while OSX users would have inferior performance, all because Apple mandates perfection.
Personally I can handle a few bumps, so I'd take the performance any day of the week.
Honestly as soon as I hit a diver issue, I just check for an update and that usually clears it right up. The only time I really have to experiment with different drivers is when I'm beta testing a game.
What happens when a better way than the "known standard" comes around. Are we supposed to wait for some updated standard then updated hardware for that standard but by then don't you think some part of that standard will be obsolete?
Tweaked drivers, in most cases, only provide marginal benefits that many users would hardly notice. Yes, there are some stark exceptions where a different driver can have substantial impact, but this is often the game developer's fault as much as the hardware developer.
Yes. Windows had a Transcriber, Letter Recognizer, and Block Recognizer. You can get it to behave just like Palm Grafiti if you would like it to...the transcriber is very customizable...it will recognize words and phrases, but you can set it to reconize single letters if you would like. There is also a great 3rd party app called Caligrapher you could try too.
Unless you live in remote areas where you can only get analog coverage, your call quality will really depend on the phone. My LG VX4400 was a little sub-par, but my Motorola v710 and now Motorola K1m generally sound better or indistinguishable from a landline.
The best voice quality I've found comes from talking to some of my friends over Skype...as long as the bandwidth is there, it sounds much better than a regular phone or cellular phone. A little tinny, but other than that it sounds like they're in the room with you. When I was at college, my roommates often thought I had someone in my room with me (they hadn't figured out I was a geek and didn't have any friends that were not on the internet...)
Does this pretty well. At least much better than earlier versions of Windows. Often the buttons themselves are large and give a description of what they do on the button, and not just a yes or no answer to a question. My grandparents actually bought a new PC with Vista and they...like it better than their old one. Which is completely backwards, since they're 70+ and had learned just enough to use the old one...and with so many changes I figured they would give up and stop using it altogether. (Granted, they did upgrade from Win ME, which even Balmer or Gates would probably publicly admit was total shit.)
Some of your points are good, some are not so good...
1. Either make me pay a monthly fee, or make me pay for the client, not both. Charging for both makes it seem like you're not convinced I'll want to keep playing. By all means have a CD distributed in stores at a price that covers costs; it's just the phenomenon of paying $50 for the chance to pay another $10 that doesn't make sense.
This is a pretty valid point...this is a product of the pre-subscription marketplace. I'm not going to pretend to know the details or specifics, but retail chains probably expect to sell new titles at a certain price point. (Although they make almost no profit). Another thing is consumer perception of price and quality. A $10 game sitting on a shelf will set off the "Too good to be true" indicator to an uneducated consumer and they may not try the game. (yes, some people actually buy this stuff based on what they see on the box). There's also the point of covering development costs with a new purchase-the subscription is mostly paying for the support costs and 'free' content updates. I don't think we'll see this for any mainstream title for a while, the best we can hope for is longer initial paid subscription periods. I could see giving 3 months or so instead of one with a new purchase.
2. If you can't make the client free, make it transferable, so I can sell it if I decide I don't want to keep playing. There's no way I'm going to spend $50 on a game I may not even like, if I can't resell it to get back some of the cash.
Totally agree here...I think WoW and some others actually have a mechanism in place to allow this (or they were going to add it).
3. Include Mac and Linux. I don't run Windows and won't run Windows. There are millions of us, and we have very few MMORPG choices right now, so it's an easier niche for you to get into than the more saturated Windows market.
Optimizing graphics for three separate platforms is a pain in the ass. You're not going to see this unless the company thinks they can reclaim the investment. EQ:Mac failed horribly. WoW is the only major Mac-friendly MMO that succeeded from a business standpoint, and that is because A) Blizzard always makes their games Mac compatible B) They know they will sell millions of copies and be able to recoup their expenses. Linux is an even smaller fraction and completely out of the question from a viable business standpoint. If you want to do serious gaming, you're going to have to put your penguin brigade on standby and set up a Windows partition.
Bottom line: Don't expect major titles to support more than Windows.
4. Make it possible to play the entire game in cooperative mode. I have zero interest in deathmatches.
Almost all major MMOs have non-PVP servers...in fact some of them don't have PVP at all.
5. I prefer SF to fantasy, yet most RPGs are fantasy. I guess it's easier to artificially limit the players and work around plot issues when you have magic around and a lack of fast long distance transport and communication technologies.
Fantasy MMORPGs tend to do better, so that is what gets made more (Earth and Beyond actually tanked completely). It had nothing to do with working around plot issues. It's easy to use a supertechnology or instantaneous transporation/communication to work around plot holes in Sci-Fi too. I really like Sci-Fi myself, and would like to see more options. Eve Online, Annarchy Online, SWG..there are a few but not many. The only one really worth playing anymore is probably Eve.
6. Don't riddle the game with spyware and have an abusive EULA. Yeah, WoW got away with it, but that's no excuse.
WoW is the only one I am aware of with actual spyware-like programs. Some of them do some monitoring but nothing as invasive as WoW's warden...i've never seen flagrant abuse of such systems, it's really there to catch cheaters. As far as the EULA is concerned I've never been wro
Or look at the google ad under the post (I'm seeing eFax there).
We use that where I work and it's quite nice. It e-mails you when you recieve a fax and there is an application that you use to send them...you can send word documents, PDFs, or it interfaces directly with a scanner.
Unfortunately I don't know how much the service costs, it was in place before I begain working there.
We do persuade our customers and vendors to use e-mail as much as possible (sheet-feed scanners are not very expensive)...we used to have 20 numbers through eFax and have managed to remove five of them in a few months. If we had to, we could probably axe 5 more of them.
The people that are stealing large quantities and fencing them will find ways to reset the fingerprint reader. What this would help is the person that is thinking of swiping an iPod for themselves that is left sitting on a table while the owner goes to the restroom.
Physical security, in most cases, is there to keep honest people honest. I worked at an electronic store, and if you knew what you were doing, it is extremely easy to steal display models hooked up to the security devices (talking like the digital cameras, laptop braces are more difficult but can be done)...there are many ways to fool the system.
This won't stop people from stealing and fencing iPods on a regular basis, but it would stop quite a few opportunistic thieves...and that is probably the majority of iPod theft. And no, it won't happen overnight, it will probably take a year or two before it's common knowledge that iPods have biometric security on them.
Slashdot Mirror
So because you haven't/didn't hear enough about two particulars that YOU feel are important on an issue, I'm a liar? And I wonder why this contry is so screwed up sometimes...
Indeed. Before Farenheit 9-11, no one ever thought about or discussed 9-11 and the war on terror. I'm glad he's going to get everyone to discuss the health care system again too, because I haven't heard anyone talking about it since at least yesterday, maybe even two whole days ago.
Hey, as long as I don't have to pay for the ~$10/mo of ESPN bullshit I never watch (ESPN is terrible at forcing content providers to carry more of their channels by putting major games on obscure variations, like ESPN-U), I'll be happy.
Actually I haven't owned a console since the original Nintendo (unless you wanna count the Gameboy Color I haven't played in 4 or 5 years)...so I wouldn't consider myself a fanboy of any system (but I'm no fan of Sony, I'll admit that much).
The simple fact is, there aren't many good games yet for the PS3 and they really need to work up their library.
The Wii isn't much better off...there aren't a lot of great titles yet and they keep on worrying about hardware revisions to prevent piracy. The 360 has more titles now, but they're just as guilty of the same thing.
My point is if they make it so you have to solder a mod chip in the console to pirate games, then the majority of the people will not pirate games...they don't need to keep working at it at that point. The same money could be invested making games that sell millions as opposed to preventing maybe one or two-hundred thousand pirates.
Maybe you should try spending the cash you are using on piracy prevention to develop...*gasp*...games worth buying?
So, is this why I keep getting lots of spam email from 2038?
As long as I don't:
A) Get more junk e-mail
B) Get more jumk mail
C) Get telemarketers calling me
I could really care less. I don't care what details they use for marketing research, no matter how personal.
Jack Thompson threatening to sue MS over Halo 3:
/ 2146236
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/23
I was joking...then I went and looked at it...
So you can see the cheese that everyone knows the moon is made of?
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying it's kind of a waste of time to spend a month on something that is going to be replaced with a completely different product within 5-6 months.
Yes, this is the tech world, and most things are outdated in 5-6 months...but they aren't replaced by something very different at no extra cost...that is the key difference here. It'd be the same thing if MythTV was about to undergo a major revision.
Now, given MS, it's entirely possible that the new Media Center will be worse than what they had, and people will keep the old interface for a longer period of time...but I can't predict every one of their potential(likely) failures. In which case I'll come back here and say what a wonderful review this is while I download MythTV.
Actually if he kept up on Windows he'd realize this review is pointless. The first Vista service pack is supposed to include a major overhaul of the Media Center interface (yet something else MS wanted to launch with Vista but ran out of time for). That's what should really get compared to MythTV. And I'd really like to get a good comparison too, I need to build a Media Center box later this year and am up in the air about which to choose.
You're somewhat right.
But that article is not targeted at most users. It's targeted at geeks like us, who want either:
a) A quiter PC
b) A PC that will last longer because their components ran cooler
c) People who stress their CPUs a lot and want to ensure they are not going to die prematurely (gamers and powerusers).
d) Overclockers
Also, why are datacenters and server rooms often air conditioned to well below room temperature? Longer life, true, but also better stability. See how long you can run Prime95 on your PC without an error. Eventually you will get one, and if you had the time to do some thorough testing, you would see a trend...the hotter your components, the sooner you would get an error.
Something worth noting is major PC manufacturers rarely use stock cooling. The usually have ducted systems for CPU cooling.
(Oh, nice job on including the obligatory slashdot car reference. While you probably would never see a difference between Penzoil, Valvoline, and Quaker State, you would eventually see a difference between those and bottom shelf crap oil.)
I'm sorry...but the first time I read that, I thought it said Pornographic...
"...most well-received launch for a Massively Multiplayer game since World of Warcraft..."
Erm, I played WoW for a quite a while....ah hell, entirely too much (former Grand Marshal) and enjoyed the game and hold nothing against it...but its launch was terrible. Server instability and crashes galore...the game was offline as much as it was online for the first couple weeks. And any playtime you managed was plagued by overcrowding and latency issues. It ranks right down there with SWG and EQ: Shadows of Luclin launches. Could someone explain how that is "well-received?"
Also, why do so many people feel every midieval fantasy MMORPG has to compete with WoW? Aren't they allowed to appeal to a different and smaller audience?
There were probably decimal places on those numbers too. My guess is they just predict a monthly or yearly growth number and then divide that out day by day and end up with a number that probably has many decimal places that they round off to the nearest whole number. I'm sure they have a margin of error if you look into it.
Does it really matter if it's 3,303,992,253 or 3,304,000,000? It's actually kind of silly to round that high, because the first number is probably going to be closer.
Well let's first assume OSX and Windows were on equal footing with PC Games, and upgrading video hardware was common for users of both OS's.
If Apple were to mandate absolute perfection, you'd see a lot fewer driver releases for OSX...because they require more QA time.
So on the other hand, Windows users would be getting better performing drivers more quickly that may have a hitch here and there in select titles, while OSX users would have inferior performance, all because Apple mandates perfection.
Personally I can handle a few bumps, so I'd take the performance any day of the week.
Honestly as soon as I hit a diver issue, I just check for an update and that usually clears it right up. The only time I really have to experiment with different drivers is when I'm beta testing a game.
Quite hard actually.
What happens when a better way than the "known standard" comes around. Are we supposed to wait for some updated standard then updated hardware for that standard but by then don't you think some part of that standard will be obsolete?
Tweaked drivers, in most cases, only provide marginal benefits that many users would hardly notice. Yes, there are some stark exceptions where a different driver can have substantial impact, but this is often the game developer's fault as much as the hardware developer.
Yes. Windows had a Transcriber, Letter Recognizer, and Block Recognizer. You can get it to behave just like Palm Grafiti if you would like it to...the transcriber is very customizable...it will recognize words and phrases, but you can set it to reconize single letters if you would like. There is also a great 3rd party app called Caligrapher you could try too.
Unless you live in remote areas where you can only get analog coverage, your call quality will really depend on the phone. My LG VX4400 was a little sub-par, but my Motorola v710 and now Motorola K1m generally sound better or indistinguishable from a landline.
The best voice quality I've found comes from talking to some of my friends over Skype...as long as the bandwidth is there, it sounds much better than a regular phone or cellular phone. A little tinny, but other than that it sounds like they're in the room with you. When I was at college, my roommates often thought I had someone in my room with me (they hadn't figured out I was a geek and didn't have any friends that were not on the internet...)
Does this pretty well. At least much better than earlier versions of Windows. Often the buttons themselves are large and give a description of what they do on the button, and not just a yes or no answer to a question. My grandparents actually bought a new PC with Vista and they...like it better than their old one. Which is completely backwards, since they're 70+ and had learned just enough to use the old one...and with so many changes I figured they would give up and stop using it altogether. (Granted, they did upgrade from Win ME, which even Balmer or Gates would probably publicly admit was total shit.)
Some of your points are good, some are not so good...
1. Either make me pay a monthly fee, or make me pay for the client, not both. Charging for both makes it seem like you're not convinced I'll want to keep playing. By all means have a CD distributed in stores at a price that covers costs; it's just the phenomenon of paying $50 for the chance to pay another $10 that doesn't make sense.
This is a pretty valid point...this is a product of the pre-subscription marketplace. I'm not going to pretend to know the details or specifics, but retail chains probably expect to sell new titles at a certain price point. (Although they make almost no profit). Another thing is consumer perception of price and quality. A $10 game sitting on a shelf will set off the "Too good to be true" indicator to an uneducated consumer and they may not try the game. (yes, some people actually buy this stuff based on what they see on the box). There's also the point of covering development costs with a new purchase-the subscription is mostly paying for the support costs and 'free' content updates. I don't think we'll see this for any mainstream title for a while, the best we can hope for is longer initial paid subscription periods. I could see giving 3 months or so instead of one with a new purchase.
2. If you can't make the client free, make it transferable, so I can sell it if I decide I don't want to keep playing. There's no way I'm going to spend $50 on a game I may not even like, if I can't resell it to get back some of the cash.
Totally agree here...I think WoW and some others actually have a mechanism in place to allow this (or they were going to add it).
3. Include Mac and Linux. I don't run Windows and won't run Windows. There are millions of us, and we have very few MMORPG choices right now, so it's an easier niche for you to get into than the more saturated Windows market.
Optimizing graphics for three separate platforms is a pain in the ass. You're not going to see this unless the company thinks they can reclaim the investment. EQ:Mac failed horribly. WoW is the only major Mac-friendly MMO that succeeded from a business standpoint, and that is because A) Blizzard always makes their games Mac compatible B) They know they will sell millions of copies and be able to recoup their expenses. Linux is an even smaller fraction and completely out of the question from a viable business standpoint. If you want to do serious gaming, you're going to have to put your penguin brigade on standby and set up a Windows partition.
Bottom line: Don't expect major titles to support more than Windows.
4. Make it possible to play the entire game in cooperative mode. I have zero interest in deathmatches.
Almost all major MMOs have non-PVP servers...in fact some of them don't have PVP at all.
5. I prefer SF to fantasy, yet most RPGs are fantasy. I guess it's easier to artificially limit the players and work around plot issues when you have magic around and a lack of fast long distance transport and communication technologies.
Fantasy MMORPGs tend to do better, so that is what gets made more (Earth and Beyond actually tanked completely). It had nothing to do with working around plot issues. It's easy to use a supertechnology or instantaneous transporation/communication to work around plot holes in Sci-Fi too. I really like Sci-Fi myself, and would like to see more options. Eve Online, Annarchy Online, SWG..there are a few but not many. The only one really worth playing anymore is probably Eve.
6. Don't riddle the game with spyware and have an abusive EULA. Yeah, WoW got away with it, but that's no excuse.
WoW is the only one I am aware of with actual spyware-like programs. Some of them do some monitoring but nothing as invasive as WoW's warden...i've never seen flagrant abuse of such systems, it's really there to catch cheaters. As far as the EULA is concerned I've never been wro
Or look at the google ad under the post (I'm seeing eFax there).
We use that where I work and it's quite nice. It e-mails you when you recieve a fax and there is an application that you use to send them...you can send word documents, PDFs, or it interfaces directly with a scanner.
Unfortunately I don't know how much the service costs, it was in place before I begain working there.
We do persuade our customers and vendors to use e-mail as much as possible (sheet-feed scanners are not very expensive)...we used to have 20 numbers through eFax and have managed to remove five of them in a few months. If we had to, we could probably axe 5 more of them.
...do not pass Go(.com) and do not collect $200.
Additionaly, you may visit Google Hell with no penalty, but you must route all traffic through the 'Just Visiting' proxy.
The people that are stealing large quantities and fencing them will find ways to reset the fingerprint reader. What this would help is the person that is thinking of swiping an iPod for themselves that is left sitting on a table while the owner goes to the restroom.
Physical security, in most cases, is there to keep honest people honest. I worked at an electronic store, and if you knew what you were doing, it is extremely easy to steal display models hooked up to the security devices (talking like the digital cameras, laptop braces are more difficult but can be done)...there are many ways to fool the system.
This won't stop people from stealing and fencing iPods on a regular basis, but it would stop quite a few opportunistic thieves...and that is probably the majority of iPod theft. And no, it won't happen overnight, it will probably take a year or two before it's common knowledge that iPods have biometric security on them.