I seriously don't get where you get all the content to raid 4-5 nights a week if you really were playing in a top guild.
The current pattern seems to be that hard mode progression takes about 4-5 days of intense raiding, and after that the schedule shrinks to one day of farming for a few hours. This has been the case with all the instances so far in the current expansion.
You don't get 25 people all the items they want in 4-5 days of intense raiding. it's not about getting your 1-2 items. Not to dis you here, but if you really were in a top raiding guild, you would have 25 people who knew each and every item they wanted, and they probably wanted 20 items - each working differently in a "set" as such - "i need items x,y,z, to work in such a set, but then when I get items - r,s,t,u I can get "xxx" benefit over my other set which is better overall" and so on.
Hard mode progression isn't just about getting a kill down once, it's about getting EVERYONE all the items that they want from each encounter.
So, not to be rude anon coward, but please fuck off with your 8 hours a week nonsense. Do yourself a favour and stop pugging your progression raiding. Get yourself some server or world firsts, and then understand all the effort that goes into them.
I don't mean to one up you, but I feel I should share a story from the top 1%.
Speaking as someone who has both spent many years of my life as as an isolated gamer type (and a couple of times had to go on anti-depressants), and also some periods of my life actually going out and doing things.. I have to say that if you put as much effort into real life as you do into gaming, you would get far greater rewards.
Interesting, that the two replies to this post of mine take up such a small circle of people.
You haven't 1'up'ed me. Our guild was in the top 1% of guilds and has consistently been there. Server firsts, few world firsts, but at the same time, I have spent time on mood stabilizers (I have bipolar disorder - check the sig). At the same time, I have been someone who has been into online gaming since the days of Ultima Online, and have worked for Epic Games with the development of Unreal Tournament, so I have been "in as much as can be" in games and games development - but having said that, I can't help but totally agree with the second poster's comment which I have quoted below this:
I'm not saying you can't also play games and chat online as these things are fun and definitely still have an element of sociability, but if you joined some kind of real life club or spent some time doing exercise to level up your real body instead of your avatar, you'd be feeling a lot better both mentally and physically (the two are very linked anyway.. simply being more fit really helps your mood and concentration levels), and more able to cope with the "real world" you seem to be so scared of.
While I have been pouring my efforts into both online gaming and my RL work (which is currently a Senior Performance Analyst for a multinational retailer) I have noticed that for every hour I spend honing my e-toon, I can spend the same effort at work and increase my salary. You know all the stuff you do in your guild/clan? That works in RL too. Get a job in an office. They appreciate that common sense just as much and they pay you a lot more than your guild can offer - and in dollars, not in gold.
As someone who has been through both sides of the spectrum, I can just say, games are meant for entertainment. Play them, have fun, but don't confuse entertainment with real life.
No not really, I am in one of the top Warcraft Guilds and have been so since MC was the dungeon to raid (which I wear with pride) but at the same time, playing for about 40 hours a week has just gotten too much. I can totally corroborate that article.
To be in a guild like ours, you are expected to attend 4-5 raid nights a week, which generally last 3-5 hours. That's pure raid time though, so add a half hour before that to stock up on consumables, ensure that gear is enchanted/gemmed and that sort of thing. Then of course you need some time to make some cash to buy all this stuff, so generally add in at least a half hour a day for dailies - an hour if you want to do a random daily and get the extra badgers.
Oh yeah, then add in time for ALT runs, or weekend (our guild doesn't do official raids on Friday/Saturday night) booze runs, and that's another good few hours (drunken runs take the longest - but are generally most fun) and soon, you are very very easily up to around that 40 hour week or more.
For me, it just got to be too much time. I don't enjoy playing unless it's at the pointy end of the spectrum, so I have pretty much given it away. I still log on now and again to keep in touch, chat and have a giggle, but it's amazing how much time in your life you get back when you stop a schedule like that.
FYI, I chose to stop that raid schedule when I was struggling to wake up each morning (I work Mon-Fri and leave home at 7am) and it was becoming increasingly hard to wake up on time (read: started being late 2-3 times a week) after finishing raids at midnight or later. For me, the maths was really easy - raid and have fun with online friends or keep steady well paying job.
It doesn't claim that those tests either represent the whole of the HTML5 spec or any draft thereof, or even that they test behavior required by the spec or any draft thereof, or even -- except by implication -- that passing them indicates behavior that is acceptable under some draft of the HTML5 spec.
In Australia (where I am from) an advertisement needs to either have a disclaimer (normally small text at the bottom) if there is vagueness about what it is saying, or what the advertisement says needs to be taken at face value - meaning "what it implies".
Wouldn't this be a great opportunity for one of the internet watchdogs to make a suit against MS here? HTML5 hasn't been agreed to yet, here is an advertisement saying that IE9 is 100% compliant.
Leave it to the gambling/entertainment industry to take a leisure activity and make it into an uber-competitive hellscape.
Oh, to your query, I don't think they are allowed "spare time."
Gambling Industry? What are you on about, this sounds pretty much exactly what my World of Warcraft guild was like - except we didn't get paid, and I don't think half of then knew what fresh laundry was...
Two BP representatives scheduled to testify in Lousiana on Thursday, today, dropped out. Mr. Vidrine cited an undisclosed medical issue. Another top BP official, the well-site leader, who was scheduled to testify, Robert Kaluza, declined to do so, asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Transocean's assistant marine engineer on the Deepwater Horizon also called in sick.
Can you cover your ears with your hands and sing "la la la" loudly please?
3) The defendant's attorney doesn't like what their client has done and is in fact helping me out.
I'm all for 'sticking it to the man', but the fact you're in appeals, and boasting on Slashdot that the opposing legal counsel is "helping you out"... I'm not sure is such a good thing.
I was thinking that too as I read it. Wouldn't it also be grounds for the person he is suing to request a mistrial, which would possibly result in overturning the original ruling?
Righto, now if we can only find a language or dialect where a bleep type sound is actually a "bad" word, we can get THEIR representatives to use the exact same arguments against this Parents Television Council and get them to remove the Bleeps due to the indecent use of such language and we can watch the show it was meant to be.
I really liked the end of your post. It's so true. You can't slot it different people into different roles and just expect them to work to the same levels, and you certainly can't expect that a C grade person will work as well as an A grade person.
And maybe... just maybe... we can get back to having senior engineers, and real mentors, and training people.... ah the dream world I live in.
You can. Learn to network. Go in, do your best. Don't be afraid to take extra work to get things done. This will earn you kudos with everyone. As you work with these people, try to determine who the A grade guys are and who is the next level down, and then the next one down again and so on. Now, when you need something done, ask the good guys for help, but try to make it as easy for them as possible. Go out of your way to make their job easy if you are the one asking for the favor. Be sure to return favors when they ask for things in return.
Pay attention to the little things. Need a half hour of someone's time with a solution? Bring them a coffee. Arrange meetings where it will be easy for the OTHER person to be. Above all, treat them like PEOPLE, not resources - even if you outrank them.
That sort of little shit, that stuff REALLY gets noticed by others. That's when you get your "good people" work together.
Huh? That hasn't been my experience. Most fresh-faced college graduates in my experience tend to be extremely nervous and well-aware of their lack of experience.
I should have specified it in my post I guess, while my background has been in software development, I work under the business side of my company at the moment in a solution and business application role, so the majority of degrees we deal with are business (logistics mainly) based. It probably does make a significant difference in attitudes.
When I have people applying for roles here, I have found some rather funny perceptions, in the way that we look at a degree and the person with the degree looks at their degree.
For me, if someone is applying for a role and they have a related degree, I assume that they probably know a little about the theory behind it, but have no clue in terms of how the real world functions. For those with certificates, I generally have an even lower opinion.
Most kids fresh with a degree assume they know just about all there is to know about that field.
The amusing part comes when they find out that even with their degree, they basically come in at the bottom rung of the ladder - a large number seem to think that because they have a relevant degree, they will start off in middle management or a team lead role.
Degree or no degree, when you come to work here, you pretty much start at the bottom and have to prove to everyone that you are actually capable of doing the job we hired you for. That often means working under people without degrees, but ones with years of experience in the real world. For a lot of kids fresh out of uni, that's a bitter pill to swallow it seems.
... I should mention I can't eat anything remotely fishy. Makes me heave.
Oddly, Calamari is not among those things.
Most seafood that isn't a fish generally doesn't taste like fish though. Crab, lobster, mussels, oysters, even octopus generally don't taste all that similar to fish.
Smell is pretty friggin' important to actual survival, so I'm not sure I'd classify it as minor.
If I had to pick which sense I was going to lose, smell would be it. I don't disagree that it's useful, but compared to sight, hearing, touch it rates pretty small. Same with taste.
What would you prefer to keep if you had a choice? Taste/smell or sight?
Actually, there is a vast amount of data that could be applicable to civilian transport. If they can indeed get scramjets really working - and by really, I mean around five times fast as this bad boy, it could mean a DRASTIC price reduction to get things into orbit. A scramjet needs to get to about mach 25 to reach escape velocity, which is significantly faster than this test, but give it time. Let them run this thing, let them run data and the next one might be looking at another mach or two and so on.
A mach here, a mach there and soon you are talking real machs.
The first scramjet based engine that gets into orbit will be a milestone for space industry, exploration and all future generations to remember. Scramjets require a tiny fraction of the fuel (read: price) that a normal engine needs to achieve a similar speed, they just need to be going fast already to fire up, hence why all these test vehicles generally use attached booster rockets to get them up to a few mach. With luck, the day that space travel no longer requires massive solid boosters just got one day closer.
As an underweight person who sits on the computer all day I see this as all good news. My glass is all full.
That's because you never eat or drink you silly skinny person! Now, start drinking from that glass and eating from your plate before you wither away!! Here at/. we have ways to deal with such "full glasses". Now, DRINK!
So if someone posts an application with claims X, Y and Z and it's a rehash of an old idea, someone can just post a comment "Yo examiner, this was done in FVWM in 1995. Reject this shit."
But do you sit there sifting through applications? I don't. I have better things to do with my free time. I think just about everyone else would too. Perhaps a different twist on this is that a patent can be quickly and easily invalidated if someone shows prior art after it has been granted. However, in that case, would it actually then be transferred to the people that whose work was used to throw it out?
But that's the problem in itself right there. Yes, chances are that there is little "new" being done in software for the most part, and that someone has done [patent idea] before, but just imagine trying to find just the right bit of software, or just the right platform to show it's been done before.
The patent office couldn't instigate a "Prove no-one has done it before" process as that would be just ludicrous, but at the same time, having the right people on hand to show "just exactly where it HAS been done before" may not be 1) cheap, 2) practical and 3) possible.
There simply isn't an easy solution to this. If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc. If you don't abolish patents, you still end up with the farcical joke that we have now.
Here, it really is a lose - lose scenario. Except if you are a patent lawyer.
Furthermore, the crucial advantage of hydrogen is the lack of carbon atoms, its combustion (or catalyzed oxidation, as in a fuel cell) resulting only in water.
Which is irrelevant when the carbon is obtained from CO2 in the atmosphere - in which case the amount removed when producing the fuel is equal to the amount added when burning the fuel so the net effect is zero.
Not irrelevant at all. Sure, the initial outlook may be that it's not producing any additional carbon going into the air, but it's still not as good as another source that is providing a negative carbon emission (ie, taking out and not replacing).
Using the "it was already there" logic you end up with some people being careful not to add anything, while others don't care at all. Result, carbon going into the air. If you have certain people taking out of the air and not putting as much back, it at least subtracts from the overall amount going in. They sort of make up for the slack folks in the department. Result, LESS carbon in the air.
What? The hell you say! You didn't read the article before opening your big mouth and suggesting a moronic solution? I'm shocked! I have grown to expect so much more from Slashdot intellectuals. I'm disappointed.
Ummmm, hi. I noticed you have a really low uID, so I needed to ask, have you been asleep for a very long time? Maybe a secret undercover flight to say... Mars? Perhaps a little time spent frozen in a glacier and only recently woke up?
People don't read articles on/. anymore. Sorry to burst that bubble.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately you are not a climate satellite, so you don't win anything.
I thought that's what this article is all about. The climate satellites haven't won anything for years.
So, what do I win?
I seriously don't get where you get all the content to raid 4-5 nights a week if you really were playing in a top guild.
The current pattern seems to be that hard mode progression takes about 4-5 days of intense raiding, and after that the schedule shrinks to one day of farming for a few hours. This has been the case with all the instances so far in the current expansion.
You don't get 25 people all the items they want in 4-5 days of intense raiding. it's not about getting your 1-2 items. Not to dis you here, but if you really were in a top raiding guild, you would have 25 people who knew each and every item they wanted, and they probably wanted 20 items - each working differently in a "set" as such - "i need items x,y,z, to work in such a set, but then when I get items - r,s,t,u I can get "xxx" benefit over my other set which is better overall" and so on.
Hard mode progression isn't just about getting a kill down once, it's about getting EVERYONE all the items that they want from each encounter.
So, not to be rude anon coward, but please fuck off with your 8 hours a week nonsense. Do yourself a favour and stop pugging your progression raiding. Get yourself some server or world firsts, and then understand all the effort that goes into them.
Dad? Where have you been? I've been worried.
Good god, I wish I could mod and post int he same thread. That's the funniest thing I have read in weeks :)
I don't mean to one up you, but I feel I should share a story from the top 1%.
Speaking as someone who has both spent many years of my life as as an isolated gamer type (and a couple of times had to go on anti-depressants), and also some periods of my life actually going out and doing things.. I have to say that if you put as much effort into real life as you do into gaming, you would get far greater rewards.
Interesting, that the two replies to this post of mine take up such a small circle of people.
You haven't 1'up'ed me. Our guild was in the top 1% of guilds and has consistently been there. Server firsts, few world firsts, but at the same time, I have spent time on mood stabilizers (I have bipolar disorder - check the sig). At the same time, I have been someone who has been into online gaming since the days of Ultima Online, and have worked for Epic Games with the development of Unreal Tournament, so I have been "in as much as can be" in games and games development - but having said that, I can't help but totally agree with the second poster's comment which I have quoted below this:
I'm not saying you can't also play games and chat online as these things are fun and definitely still have an element of sociability, but if you joined some kind of real life club or spent some time doing exercise to level up your real body instead of your avatar, you'd be feeling a lot better both mentally and physically (the two are very linked anyway.. simply being more fit really helps your mood and concentration levels), and more able to cope with the "real world" you seem to be so scared of.
While I have been pouring my efforts into both online gaming and my RL work (which is currently a Senior Performance Analyst for a multinational retailer) I have noticed that for every hour I spend honing my e-toon, I can spend the same effort at work and increase my salary. You know all the stuff you do in your guild/clan? That works in RL too. Get a job in an office. They appreciate that common sense just as much and they pay you a lot more than your guild can offer - and in dollars, not in gold.
As someone who has been through both sides of the spectrum, I can just say, games are meant for entertainment. Play them, have fun, but don't confuse entertainment with real life.
Amateurs.
No not really, I am in one of the top Warcraft Guilds and have been so since MC was the dungeon to raid (which I wear with pride) but at the same time, playing for about 40 hours a week has just gotten too much. I can totally corroborate that article.
To be in a guild like ours, you are expected to attend 4-5 raid nights a week, which generally last 3-5 hours. That's pure raid time though, so add a half hour before that to stock up on consumables, ensure that gear is enchanted/gemmed and that sort of thing. Then of course you need some time to make some cash to buy all this stuff, so generally add in at least a half hour a day for dailies - an hour if you want to do a random daily and get the extra badgers.
Oh yeah, then add in time for ALT runs, or weekend (our guild doesn't do official raids on Friday/Saturday night) booze runs, and that's another good few hours (drunken runs take the longest - but are generally most fun) and soon, you are very very easily up to around that 40 hour week or more.
For me, it just got to be too much time. I don't enjoy playing unless it's at the pointy end of the spectrum, so I have pretty much given it away. I still log on now and again to keep in touch, chat and have a giggle, but it's amazing how much time in your life you get back when you stop a schedule like that.
FYI, I chose to stop that raid schedule when I was struggling to wake up each morning (I work Mon-Fri and leave home at 7am) and it was becoming increasingly hard to wake up on time (read: started being late 2-3 times a week) after finishing raids at midnight or later. For me, the maths was really easy - raid and have fun with online friends or keep steady well paying job.
It doesn't claim that those tests either represent the whole of the HTML5 spec or any draft thereof, or even that they test behavior required by the spec or any draft thereof, or even -- except by implication -- that passing them indicates behavior that is acceptable under some draft of the HTML5 spec.
In Australia (where I am from) an advertisement needs to either have a disclaimer (normally small text at the bottom) if there is vagueness about what it is saying, or what the advertisement says needs to be taken at face value - meaning "what it implies".
Surely the US would have that too?
Wouldn't this be a great opportunity for one of the internet watchdogs to make a suit against MS here? HTML5 hasn't been agreed to yet, here is an advertisement saying that IE9 is 100% compliant.
That's obvious false advertising isn't it?
Leave it to the gambling/entertainment industry to take a leisure activity and make it into an uber-competitive hellscape.
Oh, to your query, I don't think they are allowed "spare time."
Gambling Industry? What are you on about, this sounds pretty much exactly what my World of Warcraft guild was like - except we didn't get paid, and I don't think half of then knew what fresh laundry was...
It's positively electrifying!
Come on, that's puntastic!
Two BP representatives scheduled to testify in Lousiana on Thursday, today, dropped out. Mr. Vidrine cited an undisclosed medical issue. Another top BP official, the well-site leader, who was scheduled to testify, Robert Kaluza, declined to do so, asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Transocean's assistant marine engineer on the Deepwater Horizon also called in sick.
Can you cover your ears with your hands and sing "la la la" loudly please?
3) The defendant's attorney doesn't like what their client has done and is in fact helping me out.
I'm all for 'sticking it to the man', but the fact you're in appeals, and boasting on Slashdot that the opposing legal counsel is "helping you out"... I'm not sure is such a good thing.
I was thinking that too as I read it. Wouldn't it also be grounds for the person he is suing to request a mistrial, which would possibly result in overturning the original ruling?
I find the bleeping indecent.
Righto, now if we can only find a language or dialect where a bleep type sound is actually a "bad" word, we can get THEIR representatives to use the exact same arguments against this Parents Television Council and get them to remove the Bleeps due to the indecent use of such language and we can watch the show it was meant to be.
And maybe... just maybe... we can get back to having senior engineers, and real mentors, and training people.... ah the dream world I live in.
You can. Learn to network. Go in, do your best. Don't be afraid to take extra work to get things done. This will earn you kudos with everyone. As you work with these people, try to determine who the A grade guys are and who is the next level down, and then the next one down again and so on. Now, when you need something done, ask the good guys for help, but try to make it as easy for them as possible. Go out of your way to make their job easy if you are the one asking for the favor. Be sure to return favors when they ask for things in return.
Pay attention to the little things. Need a half hour of someone's time with a solution? Bring them a coffee. Arrange meetings where it will be easy for the OTHER person to be. Above all, treat them like PEOPLE, not resources - even if you outrank them.
That sort of little shit, that stuff REALLY gets noticed by others. That's when you get your "good people" work together.
Huh? That hasn't been my experience. Most fresh-faced college graduates in my experience tend to be extremely nervous and well-aware of their lack of experience.
I should have specified it in my post I guess, while my background has been in software development, I work under the business side of my company at the moment in a solution and business application role, so the majority of degrees we deal with are business (logistics mainly) based. It probably does make a significant difference in attitudes.
When I have people applying for roles here, I have found some rather funny perceptions, in the way that we look at a degree and the person with the degree looks at their degree.
For me, if someone is applying for a role and they have a related degree, I assume that they probably know a little about the theory behind it, but have no clue in terms of how the real world functions. For those with certificates, I generally have an even lower opinion.
Most kids fresh with a degree assume they know just about all there is to know about that field.
The amusing part comes when they find out that even with their degree, they basically come in at the bottom rung of the ladder - a large number seem to think that because they have a relevant degree, they will start off in middle management or a team lead role.
Degree or no degree, when you come to work here, you pretty much start at the bottom and have to prove to everyone that you are actually capable of doing the job we hired you for. That often means working under people without degrees, but ones with years of experience in the real world. For a lot of kids fresh out of uni, that's a bitter pill to swallow it seems.
... I should mention I can't eat anything remotely fishy. Makes me heave.
Oddly, Calamari is not among those things.
Most seafood that isn't a fish generally doesn't taste like fish though. Crab, lobster, mussels, oysters, even octopus generally don't taste all that similar to fish.
Smell is pretty friggin' important to actual survival, so I'm not sure I'd classify it as minor.
If I had to pick which sense I was going to lose, smell would be it. I don't disagree that it's useful, but compared to sight, hearing, touch it rates pretty small. Same with taste.
What would you prefer to keep if you had a choice? Taste/smell or sight?
Actually, there is a vast amount of data that could be applicable to civilian transport. If they can indeed get scramjets really working - and by really, I mean around five times fast as this bad boy, it could mean a DRASTIC price reduction to get things into orbit. A scramjet needs to get to about mach 25 to reach escape velocity, which is significantly faster than this test, but give it time. Let them run this thing, let them run data and the next one might be looking at another mach or two and so on.
A mach here, a mach there and soon you are talking real machs.
The first scramjet based engine that gets into orbit will be a milestone for space industry, exploration and all future generations to remember. Scramjets require a tiny fraction of the fuel (read: price) that a normal engine needs to achieve a similar speed, they just need to be going fast already to fire up, hence why all these test vehicles generally use attached booster rockets to get them up to a few mach. With luck, the day that space travel no longer requires massive solid boosters just got one day closer.
As an underweight person who sits on the computer all day I see this as all good news. My glass is all full.
That's because you never eat or drink you silly skinny person! Now, start drinking from that glass and eating from your plate before you wither away!! Here at /. we have ways to deal with such "full glasses". Now, DRINK!
so what would the point be?
Yeah, I did it too, what a horrible bunch of models. It seems as if the whole thing only has one sliding scale for inflating the model.
Also, the site just timed out three times when I tried to get their "overall progress" stats due to a sql timeout error. Stay classy bodylab.
Doctor Livingst... errr...Frankenstein I presume?
So if someone posts an application with claims X, Y and Z and it's a rehash of an old idea, someone can just post a comment "Yo examiner, this was done in FVWM in 1995. Reject this shit."
But do you sit there sifting through applications? I don't. I have better things to do with my free time. I think just about everyone else would too. Perhaps a different twist on this is that a patent can be quickly and easily invalidated if someone shows prior art after it has been granted. However, in that case, would it actually then be transferred to the people that whose work was used to throw it out?
More prior art plskthx.
But that's the problem in itself right there. Yes, chances are that there is little "new" being done in software for the most part, and that someone has done [patent idea] before, but just imagine trying to find just the right bit of software, or just the right platform to show it's been done before.
The patent office couldn't instigate a "Prove no-one has done it before" process as that would be just ludicrous, but at the same time, having the right people on hand to show "just exactly where it HAS been done before" may not be 1) cheap, 2) practical and 3) possible.
There simply isn't an easy solution to this. If you abolish software patents, it makes it very difficult for companies to realistically spend millions on development of new concepts and ideas when someone can then just take the ground breaking UI or process etc. If you don't abolish patents, you still end up with the farcical joke that we have now.
Here, it really is a lose - lose scenario. Except if you are a patent lawyer.
Furthermore, the crucial advantage of hydrogen is the lack of carbon atoms, its combustion (or catalyzed oxidation, as in a fuel cell) resulting only in water.
Which is irrelevant when the carbon is obtained from CO2 in the atmosphere - in which case the amount removed when producing the fuel is equal to the amount added when burning the fuel so the net effect is zero.
Not irrelevant at all. Sure, the initial outlook may be that it's not producing any additional carbon going into the air, but it's still not as good as another source that is providing a negative carbon emission (ie, taking out and not replacing).
Using the "it was already there" logic you end up with some people being careful not to add anything, while others don't care at all. Result, carbon going into the air. If you have certain people taking out of the air and not putting as much back, it at least subtracts from the overall amount going in. They sort of make up for the slack folks in the department. Result, LESS carbon in the air.
What? The hell you say! You didn't read the article before opening your big mouth and suggesting a moronic solution? I'm shocked! I have grown to expect so much more from Slashdot intellectuals. I'm disappointed.
Ummmm, hi. I noticed you have a really low uID, so I needed to ask, have you been asleep for a very long time? Maybe a secret undercover flight to say... Mars? Perhaps a little time spent frozen in a glacier and only recently woke up?
/. anymore. Sorry to burst that bubble.
People don't read articles on