The installer requires a connection to a server that Activision Blizzard can shut down at any time.
Not really. You can install and play SCII without any internet connection at all. You simply lose the ability to gain 'achievements' and you can't play multiplayer (obviously). The solo campaign is completely playable off-line.
IMHO, the achievements are a multi-player feature anyway. Why would I care about them if not to brag about them?;)
Blizz might be tightening the reins a bit more than I'd like, but they are FAR from the worst offender.
Anyone who started out on Windows won't want the hassles of moving their gaming over to Linux. If gaming is something you do a lot, then you're going to use the most convenient platform for it.
The whole point of playing games is that it's relaxing; getting them to work on Linux kinda spoils that!
Nail? Meet Hammer. WHAM!
As far as I've seen from personal experience, and from talking with friends, this is the key point of why gamers don't intersect with Linux users more often. From what I've been seeing, great strides have been made with Ubuntu/Wine/etc., but it's just not there yet. I don't know if this is a problem with Linux, or with availability of drivers, or something else entirely (or all of the above), but its just not there yet.
I run Windoze. This is because I'm lazy, and all I care about is playing video games. If I have to spend an hour hunting down drivers for every different piece of hardware, and read help documentation to know how to tweak 9 different settings to get the sounds to play clearly... it is too much hassle.
Dual-booting is nice, in theory, but even when I'm using an IM service, or web-browsing, I'm usually just alt-tabbed out of a video game, so there isn't much point for me.
It's starting to look to me like QoS from Comcast is luck of the draw.
They don't really give a shit at all. They barely (or don't) maintian their infrastructure, and they don't pay attention to (or don't care) about over-population of certain areas. If you're lucky, you're living somewhere where comcast put in a big enough pipe, and recently enough that it hasn't degraded yet. If you're not, your QoS sucks.
That's just they way it's been looking to me, I could be wrong.
I personally think that the UFC is exactly the same kind of ridiculousness as the VGA.
both pander to the same sort of lowest common demoninator with gratitous violence, smack talk, and (pretend) nudity. Personally, I'd rather the semi-naked women to the semi-naked men.
even if they're not in the same ballpark of lousy, they are both far below the threshold of entertaining necessary for me to want to watch either.
'black friday' is supposed to be the biggest 'shopping' day of the year, not 'spending' day. from my limited experience in retail (3 years, then i ran away to college), the day after thanksgiving is about the worst, if not THE worst day to work. the customers don't necessarily spend more, but they expect these fabulous deals and pitch a fit if they don't find them, (and often leave, if you can't deliver), and are generally annoying all day long. the weekend before Xmas is the day that things aren't on sale, cause everyone is desperate for some sort of gift, and they don't care what it costs.
I've never heard of the whole red-to-black profit BS that snopes is quoting as an explanation of 'black friday'. At least for the retail employees (rather than management), it's all about the less-than-pleasant customers on that day.
I've heard that many of them like to 'go clubbing' I don't know what it is, but I think it involves a Louisville Slugger. I recommend the head, it will incapacite the host quickly, and you're better off, if they don't have it anyway:P
my guess would be when the % certainty got to a sufficient threshold. The computer can't tell it's holding keys, but if they are metallic, on a ring, and jingle, after a while, it can be relatively certain.
if you follow certain philosophical theories then that's all the human mind does anyway, since we can't be certain that we are in fact holding keys, or that the keys exist at all.;) (not that I agree, but it is interesting to read how other people think, closer to a pragmatist myself)
They are always in the last place you bother to look. Once you've found them, you don't need to keep looking. Are they in the last place you could possibly think to look?
I can't speak for everyone, but I have a feeling you find your keys (most of the time) LONG before you run out of places you can think to look.
Just ordering all those places that I might have stuck the stupid things into a conherent search routine seems pretty CPU intensive to me, let alone moving myself to all those places to actually look, but it still never takes more than a few minutes to find them. Doesn't sound all that inefficient to me.
(I realize it might have been a joke, but so many people get worked up about 'the last place I looked' that I find it alarming more than funny)
I am still waiting for someone to point out that everything digital is really nothing but a 0 or a 1.
Everyone is copying everything.
That's kinda silly. Arrangement is important. Otherwise, everything is just protons, neutrons, and electrons, and it just gets ludicrous where you can go with that. (unless that was your point, in which case I'll just shut up now)
Maybe. I tend to agree, but the article had a couple good points. if Wii owners don't keep buying games, did Nintendo really win?
Also, Final Fantasy is likely to sell a lot of Playstations. Many FF fans are in the same category of rabid loyalty as Halo fans, and they'll shell out the green just to play the next one.
The Simpsons has done some messed up things on their show, but most parnts don't seem to have a problem with their kids watching the show
And this is exactly why Rockstar shouldn't have a problem being associated with a Simpsons Title. If the simpsons is parodying it, it can't be that bad, can it? If the parents let their kids play "Grand Theft Scratchy" cause its a Simpsons title, maybe they won't notice GTA tossed into the cart too?
*before* it starts getting applied to World of Warcraft
wait, wait, I'm having a little trouble here. Are you telling me there is something *besides* World of Warcraft?... I just don't think I can accept this. Next thing you're going to tell me is that the so-called "Outside" actually exists.
I can't say on a general scale, but the exact opposite of this is true for dogs. Small dogs like terriers can live upwards of 20 years, larger ones like mastiffs are lucky to hit 10. I have a feeling there are other exceptions as well, but I'm not familiar with what they might be.
I personally have met (both in and out of game) over a half dozen women who play WoW. I'm dating one of them. (and I don't know that many people) Seriously, watch one of the blizzcon videos. Female Gamers are rare, but not THAT rare.
If you were in the subculture, you might have a better view of the demographic.
More and more women are logging in all the time. I suspect (just my opinion, I have no proof whatsoever) that the female contingent of gamers is growing faster than gaming in general.
The author needs to not compare apples to oranges. WoW and EVE might both be round (MMO), but they aren't the same, 200k isn't even in the same ballpark with 9 million. The author needs to do some more research before they try and compare the two. How many WoW players are there per shard, for instance? I'd not be surprised if there were more than 200k players on some of the larger WoW servers.
and that bit about 40-on-40 battle size for WoW is totally bogus. That might be the largest battleground instance, but I guarantee that there have been larger PvP battles in some of the major cities. I've personally seen multi-raid group per side battles in some places. Not to mention the number of people who were on hand for the opening of the Gates of AQ and the Dark Portal.
"Some industry analysts are also reporting that the Wii has overtaken the XBOX 360 to now become the worlds market leader across console and handheld fields"
did the poster even RTFA? or have I gone blind? I don't see anything even remotely resembling this statement anywhere in the article. It says the Wii sold 1Mil units faster, but it doesn't say that it has sold more units in total than 360/DS or any other console (except PS3, but that hardly counts)yet. If there's another article being quoted, it ought to be linked, otherwise this is just poster-bias BS.
"American society cares more about athletic ability than anything else."
That's one of the things I liked best about the college I went to. MTU (Michigan Tech) completely axed the football program when government funding was reduced. The Football Program. It made my whole damn year that year, when I found out that my school cared more about education than sports. (the alumni coughed up extra to save the program, which I guess proves your point, but still, the School didn't cut funding elsewhere to save it)
However, I'm pretty sure MTU is the exception that proves the rule, it might not be the only one, but it's the only one that I'm aware of.
Slashdot Mirror
More like the Home Owner's Association, or the PTA, than the DEA, I would think.
Not really. You can install and play SCII without any internet connection at all. You simply lose the ability to gain 'achievements' and you can't play multiplayer (obviously). The solo campaign is completely playable off-line. IMHO, the achievements are a multi-player feature anyway. Why would I care about them if not to brag about them? ;)
Blizz might be tightening the reins a bit more than I'd like, but they are FAR from the worst offender.
Nail? Meet Hammer. WHAM!
As far as I've seen from personal experience, and from talking with friends, this is the key point of why gamers don't intersect with Linux users more often. From what I've been seeing, great strides have been made with Ubuntu/Wine/etc., but it's just not there yet. I don't know if this is a problem with Linux, or with availability of drivers, or something else entirely (or all of the above), but its just not there yet.
I run Windoze. This is because I'm lazy, and all I care about is playing video games. If I have to spend an hour hunting down drivers for every different piece of hardware, and read help documentation to know how to tweak 9 different settings to get the sounds to play clearly... it is too much hassle.
Dual-booting is nice, in theory, but even when I'm using an IM service, or web-browsing, I'm usually just alt-tabbed out of a video game, so there isn't much point for me.
It's starting to look to me like QoS from Comcast is luck of the draw.
They don't really give a shit at all. They barely (or don't) maintian their infrastructure, and they don't pay attention to (or don't care) about over-population of certain areas. If you're lucky, you're living somewhere where comcast put in a big enough pipe, and recently enough that it hasn't degraded yet. If you're not, your QoS sucks.
That's just they way it's been looking to me, I could be wrong.
So Gene Wolfe was right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_the_new_sun/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Urth_of_the_New_Sun/
I personally think that the UFC is exactly the same kind of ridiculousness as the VGA.
both pander to the same sort of lowest common demoninator with gratitous violence, smack talk, and (pretend) nudity.
Personally, I'd rather the semi-naked women to the semi-naked men.
even if they're not in the same ballpark of lousy, they are both far below the threshold of entertaining necessary for me to want to watch either.
The women aren't naked. They are scantily clad. They have panties and pasties on, to be exact.
You can see it if you watch closely here: http://www.ifilm.com/video/2920222/show/23733/
I admit they are supposed to 'look' naked, but they're not.
'black friday' is supposed to be the biggest 'shopping' day of the year, not 'spending' day.
from my limited experience in retail (3 years, then i ran away to college), the day after thanksgiving is about the worst, if not THE worst day to work. the customers don't necessarily spend more, but they expect these fabulous deals and pitch a fit if they don't find them, (and often leave, if you can't deliver), and are generally annoying all day long.
the weekend before Xmas is the day that things aren't on sale, cause everyone is desperate for some sort of gift, and they don't care what it costs.
I've never heard of the whole red-to-black profit BS that snopes is quoting as an explanation of 'black friday'. At least for the retail employees (rather than management), it's all about the less-than-pleasant customers on that day.
I've heard that many of them like to 'go clubbing' :P
I don't know what it is, but I think it involves a Louisville Slugger. I recommend the head, it will incapacite the host quickly, and you're better off, if they don't have it anyway
my guess would be when the % certainty got to a sufficient threshold.
;)
The computer can't tell it's holding keys, but if they are metallic, on a ring, and jingle, after a while, it can be relatively certain.
if you follow certain philosophical theories then that's all the human mind does anyway, since we can't be certain that we are in fact holding keys, or that the keys exist at all.
(not that I agree, but it is interesting to read how other people think, closer to a pragmatist myself)
They are always in the last place you bother to look. Once you've found them, you don't need to keep looking.
Are they in the last place you could possibly think to look?
I can't speak for everyone, but I have a feeling you find your keys (most of the time) LONG before you run out of places you can think to look.
Just ordering all those places that I might have stuck the stupid things into a conherent search routine seems pretty CPU intensive to me, let alone moving myself to all those places to actually look, but it still never takes more than a few minutes to find them. Doesn't sound all that inefficient to me.
(I realize it might have been a joke, but so many people get worked up about 'the last place I looked' that I find it alarming more than funny)
That's kinda silly. Arrangement is important. Otherwise, everything is just protons, neutrons, and electrons, and it just gets ludicrous where you can go with that.
(unless that was your point, in which case I'll just shut up now)
Maybe. I tend to agree, but the article had a couple good points. if Wii owners don't keep buying games, did Nintendo really win? Also, Final Fantasy is likely to sell a lot of Playstations. Many FF fans are in the same category of rabid loyalty as Halo fans, and they'll shell out the green just to play the next one.
I'm sure there's a joke here about filling a gas tank with sugar, and a 'sweet ride' but it's not coming to me :P
65000 ft/tank. None of them managed to keep moving after that.
It's been patented. It's called the Leftorium.
I beleive that it qualifies as a parasitic infection.
I personally have met (both in and out of game) over a half dozen women who play WoW. I'm dating one of them. (and I don't know that many people) Seriously, watch one of the blizzcon videos. Female Gamers are rare, but not THAT rare.
If you were in the subculture, you might have a better view of the demographic.
More and more women are logging in all the time. I suspect (just my opinion, I have no proof whatsoever) that the female contingent of gamers is growing faster than gaming in general.
The author needs to not compare apples to oranges. WoW and EVE might both be round (MMO), but they aren't the same, 200k isn't even in the same ballpark with 9 million. The author needs to do some more research before they try and compare the two. How many WoW players are there per shard, for instance? I'd not be surprised if there were more than 200k players on some of the larger WoW servers.
and that bit about 40-on-40 battle size for WoW is totally bogus. That might be the largest battleground instance, but I guarantee that there have been larger PvP battles in some of the major cities. I've personally seen multi-raid group per side battles in some places. Not to mention the number of people who were on hand for the opening of the Gates of AQ and the Dark Portal.
We are. You might recognize them better using the term 'Pigeon' however. Or so one theory goes :P
"Some industry analysts are also reporting that the Wii has overtaken the XBOX 360 to now become the worlds market leader across console and handheld fields" did the poster even RTFA? or have I gone blind? I don't see anything even remotely resembling this statement anywhere in the article. It says the Wii sold 1Mil units faster, but it doesn't say that it has sold more units in total than 360/DS or any other console (except PS3, but that hardly counts)yet. If there's another article being quoted, it ought to be linked, otherwise this is just poster-bias BS.
"American society cares more about athletic ability than anything else." That's one of the things I liked best about the college I went to. MTU (Michigan Tech) completely axed the football program when government funding was reduced. The Football Program. It made my whole damn year that year, when I found out that my school cared more about education than sports. (the alumni coughed up extra to save the program, which I guess proves your point, but still, the School didn't cut funding elsewhere to save it) However, I'm pretty sure MTU is the exception that proves the rule, it might not be the only one, but it's the only one that I'm aware of.