That whole never-forgive thing is why I hated the small community - If someone who didn't like you for whatever reason was more powerful than you, you could count on being dead at least a few times a day, and having all your stuff stolen (which really sucks in a game where most things are equipment-based). There was really nothing you could do about it, either, short of making a new character and losing all the time you put into the old one.
I don't mind the no-PVP restrictions, but getting killed multiple times a day just because there's no way to blend in with the crowd is a bit much.
I'm not sure if Quicktime for Windows deserves the title "software". It's not quite as bad as RealPlayer, but ugh. Everytime I try to play a QT file now, it searches through my CD drive for something. If there's not a disc in there, it tells me there was an error reading the disc. Reinstalling didn't help at all. What on earth is it doing? Not much I can do about it, either, since a lot of things are released in QT format... (movie trailers especially)
I'd much rather have mpeg/avi. Hell, I'd even take asf.
You can also burn CDs with the music you've purchases, provided you don't burn the same playlist more than 10 times.
I wonder if they included this restriction just to please the music studios. This is quite possibly the easiest thing to get around - burn the CD once and then just copy that CD instead of burning the files again. Unlimited copies!
It doesn't even seem like it would be worth coding that in there unless the studios required it...
Well, it looks pretty nice and all, but from the screenshots shown, the atmosphere really doesn't grab me at all. The look of it reminds me of the plethora of crappy RPGs released in the 90s. When I'm playing an MMORPG, I want it to be immersive. With all the alternative MMORPGs available today (some with an incredible atmosphere), the only thing that M59 seems to have going for it is the "small town" type feel of the servers, and I still can't decide if that's fully a good thing. I remember playing on smaller MUDs that had the same feel (where you knew everyone) and that got to be a bad thing - if you screwed something up or pissed somebody off (usually something relatively minor that people got mad about for no reason (dude, this is MY zone!)), you couldn't just blend in with the crowd and ignore them.
I'm sure it's a great game and all, but this is like playing Warcraft when you could be playing Warcraft 3 - why?
(Disclaimer: No, I'm not a graphics whore, but if I'm going to be immersed in a world for hours and hours at a time, I want to sit back and enjoy the atmosphere)
What I really want is a Shadowrun MMORPG. Cyberpunk theme, guns everywhere. It would have enough classes - Typical fighter (street samurai), Ninjaish (physical adept), Mage (... mage), Summoner (shaman), rigger, decker, etc. The way the pencil & paper game is set up would make translation to MMORPG very easy. The game could be mostly mission(quest)-based, and the quests could even be player-run. Imagine playing Mr. Johnson and being the one saying "Yeah, head over to the Shiawase facility and bring me back this..."
I'd kill for a new Shadowrun game, but MS acquired the license with and is just sitting on it. MAKE A NEW ONE DANGIT. I'd buy an X-Box just for a new SR game...
Also watch out as you read the graphs - just to keep you on your toes, he changes the colors in every one!
It seems as though he wanted to keep them the same - FreeBSD 5.1 got red most of the time, etc. I think he just got lazy eventually and just started selecting random ones. It's pretty confusing until you actually read the key for every pictures.
The problem is that people need all the capabilities of Photoshop, and they need them now. They can't wait around years for Gimp to be as good as Photoshop is now (while Photoshop is improving more and more, giving Gimp more things to try and catch up with). Yes, this activation is a pain in the ass, but there's really not much of an alternative for high-end graphics work at this point in time. Hopefully this new version doesn't have anything people can't go without, and everyone will just use old versions until Adobe figures out that people don't like activation.
I got lucky - My college had a deal with MS where you could get any of their software for $5. I got Windows XP, and since the version that they give out through the college always uses the same CD-Key, there's no activation whatsoever.
... but typically, meeting rooms and convention centers are carpeted. Would you want to get special (probably somewhat expensive) tile (and forego the comfort/looks of carpet) just so people can use this funky new network when there are alternatives already available?
They DEFINITELY are treated nicer. I remember back in my mudding days, everyone treated the female characters like queens, whether they were actually female or not. I tried it out, and lo and behold - free stuff, easy groups, and nobody killed me.
Nowadays, I just do it to fit the spirit of the character I want to be.
For the ones who like to stare, though, the Mithra race in the upcoming FFXI (10/28!) have slits cut in the back of skirts for their tail to hang out... among other things.
I don't think anyone is arguing that in general open source software doesn't innovate. I think the argument is that when it comes to GUIs, they copy everything from Microsoft.
but when we start saying that no commercial product will work, we start to look like zealots who's primary goal is to get Free Software out everywhere.
I could be wrong, but from what I've read here on Slashdot for the past 4 or 5 years, that IS the goal of a lot of people here...
What are they talking about? Half-life GAVE me arachnophobia. Now whenever I go through a dark narrow space, I start imagining huge spiders jumping up at me and gnawing at my head.
When I read the story above, I saw "Jack Herrington at the O'Reilly Network has had the audacity to claim that..." and thought to myself, "why would the person who submitted this write it like that?".
Then I read the comments, and it seems that people actually get seriously OFFENDED by statements like that! You're reacting almost as if the guy insulted your mom! Calm down... breathe...
Incidentally, there would be substantially less file swapping going on of TV shows if the networks made them available on DVD or electronically. I'd love to be able to go FOX and buy the episode of the Futurama I missed the other night for a reasonable - considering it was free on the air price.
Or even better, offer a couple versions. Offer one that you pay for that has no commercials, then offer another one that's free, but leaves in the commercials and disables the fast forward button and the position slider. This way, if you want to be cheap and not pay for it, you can still get your program and they'll get ad revenue that they know you can't just fast forward through, and if you don't want the commercials, they'll still get the revenue from you paying. This works out well for everyone, and they can even make it into a GREAT opportunity to make even more revenue - ads on the site, merchandising, etc.
Why they don't do something like this is beyond me. What would be the point of tracking down the programs and downloading them over a (more often than not) relatively slow P2P connection when you could download them from the hundreds-of-Kbps TV-network's server for free? They could drastically cut down on piracy, make a bunch more money, and make the consumers happy.
I've tried Gnutella many times, and every time have been disappointed. Besides the fact that it's relatively clunky, it's usually hard to find things and even harder to get a real download going.
KaZaA is okay, but the music is usually low quality, and I definitely wouldn't trust downloading any sort of executable file over it.
For music I use WinMX. It reminds me a lot of the old Napster - you can find just about anything on it. Sometimes you have to wait in line for the download, but such is life.
For just about anything, though, bittorrent is where it's at. Find a good hub and you can get whatever you want, usually pretty darn quickly. Of course, the problem is finding that hub, since A) A lot of the good ones don't want every Joe Schmoe knowing about them and B) A lot of the time the good public ones require something ridiculous like 50GB shared and 10 slots open. Once you find a nice one, though, you're set forever with whatever you need.
They're most definitely still there - It's just that now someone else is handling all the customers. They're still keeping control over the infrastructure and doing all the back-end stuff. They can still screw things up.
Wake them? They sit there at night refreshing Slashdot every 5 seconds. You cannot escape them - they are everywhere, waiting for the chance to pounce on an article such as this with cries of "But we get OSX!" and "If you look at it this way, the G5 really is faster!" They cannot be reasoned with. FEAR!
Slashdot Mirror
That whole never-forgive thing is why I hated the small community - If someone who didn't like you for whatever reason was more powerful than you, you could count on being dead at least a few times a day, and having all your stuff stolen (which really sucks in a game where most things are equipment-based). There was really nothing you could do about it, either, short of making a new character and losing all the time you put into the old one.
I don't mind the no-PVP restrictions, but getting killed multiple times a day just because there's no way to blend in with the crowd is a bit much.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I hear that Magneto-Optical drives conflict horribly with the new X-Optical drives.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
So easy to use, no wonder it's number one!
Err, sorry... I'm getting my corporate slogans mixed up.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I'm not sure if Quicktime for Windows deserves the title "software". It's not quite as bad as RealPlayer, but ugh. Everytime I try to play a QT file now, it searches through my CD drive for something. If there's not a disc in there, it tells me there was an error reading the disc. Reinstalling didn't help at all. What on earth is it doing? Not much I can do about it, either, since a lot of things are released in QT format... (movie trailers especially)
I'd much rather have mpeg/avi. Hell, I'd even take asf.
I think it's a plot to get us to buy Apples.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
You can also burn CDs with the music you've purchases, provided you don't burn the same playlist more than 10 times.
I wonder if they included this restriction just to please the music studios. This is quite possibly the easiest thing to get around - burn the CD once and then just copy that CD instead of burning the files again. Unlimited copies!
It doesn't even seem like it would be worth coding that in there unless the studios required it...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Well, it looks pretty nice and all, but from the screenshots shown, the atmosphere really doesn't grab me at all. The look of it reminds me of the plethora of crappy RPGs released in the 90s. When I'm playing an MMORPG, I want it to be immersive. With all the alternative MMORPGs available today (some with an incredible atmosphere), the only thing that M59 seems to have going for it is the "small town" type feel of the servers, and I still can't decide if that's fully a good thing. I remember playing on smaller MUDs that had the same feel (where you knew everyone) and that got to be a bad thing - if you screwed something up or pissed somebody off (usually something relatively minor that people got mad about for no reason (dude, this is MY zone!)), you couldn't just blend in with the crowd and ignore them.
I'm sure it's a great game and all, but this is like playing Warcraft when you could be playing Warcraft 3 - why?
(Disclaimer: No, I'm not a graphics whore, but if I'm going to be immersed in a world for hours and hours at a time, I want to sit back and enjoy the atmosphere)
-- Dr. Eldarion --
What I really want is a Shadowrun MMORPG. Cyberpunk theme, guns everywhere. It would have enough classes - Typical fighter (street samurai), Ninjaish (physical adept), Mage (... mage), Summoner (shaman), rigger, decker, etc. The way the pencil & paper game is set up would make translation to MMORPG very easy. The game could be mostly mission(quest)-based, and the quests could even be player-run. Imagine playing Mr. Johnson and being the one saying "Yeah, head over to the Shiawase facility and bring me back this..."
I'd kill for a new Shadowrun game, but MS acquired the license with and is just sitting on it. MAKE A NEW ONE DANGIT. I'd buy an X-Box just for a new SR game...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Also watch out as you read the graphs - just to keep you on your toes, he changes the colors in every one!
It seems as though he wanted to keep them the same - FreeBSD 5.1 got red most of the time, etc. I think he just got lazy eventually and just started selecting random ones. It's pretty confusing until you actually read the key for every pictures.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
The problem is that people need all the capabilities of Photoshop, and they need them now. They can't wait around years for Gimp to be as good as Photoshop is now (while Photoshop is improving more and more, giving Gimp more things to try and catch up with). Yes, this activation is a pain in the ass, but there's really not much of an alternative for high-end graphics work at this point in time. Hopefully this new version doesn't have anything people can't go without, and everyone will just use old versions until Adobe figures out that people don't like activation.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I got lucky - My college had a deal with MS where you could get any of their software for $5. I got Windows XP, and since the version that they give out through the college always uses the same CD-Key, there's no activation whatsoever.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
... but typically, meeting rooms and convention centers are carpeted. Would you want to get special (probably somewhat expensive) tile (and forego the comfort/looks of carpet) just so people can use this funky new network when there are alternatives already available?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
They DEFINITELY are treated nicer. I remember back in my mudding days, everyone treated the female characters like queens, whether they were actually female or not. I tried it out, and lo and behold - free stuff, easy groups, and nobody killed me.
Nowadays, I just do it to fit the spirit of the character I want to be.
For the ones who like to stare, though, the Mithra race in the upcoming FFXI (10/28!) have slits cut in the back of skirts for their tail to hang out... among other things.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I don't think anyone is arguing that in general open source software doesn't innovate. I think the argument is that when it comes to GUIs, they copy everything from Microsoft.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Of course, anyone can still go in there afterwards and open the unprotected databases with Excel and change the contents of them...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
but when we start saying that no commercial product will work, we start to look like zealots who's primary goal is to get Free Software out everywhere.
I could be wrong, but from what I've read here on Slashdot for the past 4 or 5 years, that IS the goal of a lot of people here...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
What are they talking about? Half-life GAVE me arachnophobia. Now whenever I go through a dark narrow space, I start imagining huge spiders jumping up at me and gnawing at my head.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
If they would play reruns of Mr. Wizard, I'd be sold!
-- Dr Eldarion --
When I read the story above, I saw "Jack Herrington at the O'Reilly Network has had the audacity to claim that ..." and thought to myself, "why would the person who submitted this write it like that?".
Then I read the comments, and it seems that people actually get seriously OFFENDED by statements like that! You're reacting almost as if the guy insulted your mom! Calm down... breathe...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
They could, but then they'd have to license Bezos' new "direct linking" technology.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Incidentally, there would be substantially less file swapping going on of TV shows if the networks made them available on DVD or electronically. I'd love to be able to go FOX and buy the episode of the Futurama I missed the other night for a reasonable - considering it was free on the air price.
Or even better, offer a couple versions. Offer one that you pay for that has no commercials, then offer another one that's free, but leaves in the commercials and disables the fast forward button and the position slider. This way, if you want to be cheap and not pay for it, you can still get your program and they'll get ad revenue that they know you can't just fast forward through, and if you don't want the commercials, they'll still get the revenue from you paying. This works out well for everyone, and they can even make it into a GREAT opportunity to make even more revenue - ads on the site, merchandising, etc.
Why they don't do something like this is beyond me. What would be the point of tracking down the programs and downloading them over a (more often than not) relatively slow P2P connection when you could download them from the hundreds-of-Kbps TV-network's server for free? They could drastically cut down on piracy, make a bunch more money, and make the consumers happy.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Would you like fries with that?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Ugh, thanks for the correction. It's past 1 and I'm still not awake.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I've tried Gnutella many times, and every time have been disappointed. Besides the fact that it's relatively clunky, it's usually hard to find things and even harder to get a real download going.
KaZaA is okay, but the music is usually low quality, and I definitely wouldn't trust downloading any sort of executable file over it.
For music I use WinMX. It reminds me a lot of the old Napster - you can find just about anything on it. Sometimes you have to wait in line for the download, but such is life.
For just about anything, though, bittorrent is where it's at. Find a good hub and you can get whatever you want, usually pretty darn quickly. Of course, the problem is finding that hub, since A) A lot of the good ones don't want every Joe Schmoe knowing about them and B) A lot of the time the good public ones require something ridiculous like 50GB shared and 10 slots open. Once you find a nice one, though, you're set forever with whatever you need.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
They're most definitely still there - It's just that now someone else is handling all the customers. They're still keeping control over the infrastructure and doing all the back-end stuff. They can still screw things up.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Wake them? They sit there at night refreshing Slashdot every 5 seconds. You cannot escape them - they are everywhere, waiting for the chance to pounce on an article such as this with cries of "But we get OSX!" and "If you look at it this way, the G5 really is faster!" They cannot be reasoned with. FEAR!
-- Dr. Eldarion --