In terms of raw speed,
WinXP > Vista
WinXP > Win7
but Win7 > Vista
For that reason, your wrapper of 30% is already off. If you were one of the many who wanted to skip Vista for something better, Win7 represents that "something better". It's slower than XP in terms of raw speed. However this is where that magical "productivity" thing comes in.
If you've used win7 (I assume you haven't) then you may have noticed that it's a lot easier to, well, do things. The start menu is nicer to use, the taskbar is just fucking excellent (imo blows leopard's bar out of the water), the massive amount of visibility and switching/multitasking tools available with win7 make daily use a bit faster, despite what neglible raw speed difference there is (I honestly can't notice any speed diff from XP but I'll trust the benchmarks). It also makes using the OS a painfree and easier than XP. Finally, due to it being "the latest thing" and having quite a good rep for a windows OS, it'll likely be at the forefront of security/updatedness. I was getting tired of XP showing its age so there's a futher reason to switch. In brief, it's a fine OS to make the upgrade from XP to.
I speak from experience; I currently am using the Win7 beta as my main OS, previously using XP. I've skipped vista entirely and thus can't comment on its performance or compare win7 with vista, and also regularly use Leopard on a separate machine. Unfortunately this is/. and whether or not I'll survive the impending karma doom is not certain:)
This stone tool is clearly a relic left behind from the Jurassic Elves, whose reign over Earth was ended almost two million years ago by the collision of the Shield of Immortality with the Sword of Penetrating Awesomeness. The world was torn asunder and all evidence of these majestic elfy creatures was lost to the massive geological events spanning between then and now, which simultaneously wiped out the Dark Dwarves of the Deep (having set up their vast cavernous cities under dormant volcanoes and all).
Unless the talking snake people are right and was infact placed by a monotheistic/polytheistic combo deity to fool everyone into thinking he doesn't exist, so that he can punish said people with eternal suffering.
It could also have belonged to the Migit, the first being to be crafted by his Noodliness' divine appendage. RAmen.
Some effects of bots are in your face: all your favourite mobs or nodes all being farmed by them, or people sitting in the AV cave helping your team lose for example. By and large the effects of widespread botting and gold farming are subtle, but are by no means tame.
Indeed. If you actually go to the glider forums you can see massive (and entertaining) threads about cheaters crying about being found out. Some of them provide screenshots of a GM telling them they're being banned.. and they often have a bot auto-reply going. Quite funny to see, really.
[GM-Dudefella]: Hello Bobthebot, this is GM Dudefella. Do you have time to talk?
[Bobthebot]: orly?
[GM-Dudefella]: yarly. Goodbye Bob!
* I should clarify that these are surface-level comparisons and are twisted to make it look like WoW is the end-all form of entertainment. It is, infact, just my opinion. Some people prefer traditional sources of entertainment. I prefer games. Some people prefer traditional games. I prefer WoW.
Occasionally I allow someone else's opinion, such as yours, to gain a foothold in my self security. Years, wasted? Wow, that sucks.
Then I remember that hey, I'm having fun, and if you compare it with "traditional" sources of fun such as rugby or cricket or movies, WoW comes out on top.
I run with ze ball! I hit ze ball with a stick! I sit for 3 hours and stare at moving pictures! I hone my character, gear and skills, culmunating in a highly co-ordinated and satisfying kill of the greatest threat to a world ever known, using effective organisation, strong tactics, practice and communication!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the DMCA was basically the bulldozing of a large section of earth coupled with the application of copious amounts of grease with the implicit goal of creating a slippery slope.
That seems pretty eloquent, considering he's addressing the kind of person that pays money for this shit. If you visit glider's forums you'll see such intellectual gems as "dam i got banned lol blizzard sux cock lol".
Were you around for the ICQ spam spam? (I say the word twice because it was really bad)
More to the point, do you use ICQ nowdays? The answer to that is almost certainly "no". For you and nearly everybody else. If you want a case study of the negative effects of spam, just take a look at the history of ICQ.
There is at least one employee assigned to this. Players can take the talk-to-a-GM channel, or they can take the much quicker and easier route: right click on the spammer's name and Report Spam.
So you don't like achieving things and prefer disposable instant gratification. That's fine -- a lot of games cater for this. Just stop pretending that WoW has to conform to your idea of a great game.
Hey guys -- stop playing! I just heard from this guy on slashdot that apparently we're not actually having fun. Yeah I know. Must be an illusion or something. What do you mean, it's just his opinion? He said it matter of factually and with non-pseudo logic and everything!
Logic correction: By "months", he means a week or so for the best mounts. A few days if you're hardcore. Months is technically possible, if you don't actually save for it and then wonder why you automatically don't have enough gold by the time you hit 80:P
Blizzard would leave you alone. You might possibly get a GM checking in on you (you wouldn't know) if someone complained suspecting you of being a bot.
That said, I have heard of exceptional situations in which GMs have stepped in regardless of what the terms of service says. A couple examples off the top of my head, a high level guy was in Duskwood (lower level zone) killing low level alliance players over and over for about four hours straight. Normally this is fine (the blizzard stance being there is a pvp remedy available, get another high level player to beat him off). Another example is during the opening of the Gates of AQ, an important server-wide event that is carried out by a top guild. One of the steps is talking to a Keeper in Moonglade. A rival horde guild that didn't cut the mustard engaged the keeper and brought him into Orgrimmar (the top guild was Alliance) and was able to indefinitely keep it in combat there without killing it, preventing both the top guild from continuing the quest chain and the top guild from ending the combat (Orgimmar being near impossible to assault from the front). GMs stepped in and reset the Keeper back to the glade.
WoW has a strong competitive aspect to it. When you play, you gain in some way. People that play it for a few hours, then "log off" and have a bot play for the remaining 21 hours of the day, have a bit of an advantage. Most would call this an unfair advantage.
yeah, he paid for his account too. And he'll happily spam his economy-messing wares for the entire afternoon before he's banned. Why pay for this? Because the new marks^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers he acquires are well worth the miniscule cost.
Gold farming and selling is a business. An unethical business that is as dangerous as it is subtle.
- detrimental to the WoW economy in that it furthers inflation of gold and certain items
- detrimental to the folks who buy the gold as it eliminates a substantial challenge from the game, subtly eroding their own experience
- detrimental to further WoW development as resources need to be spent on curbing gold selling to prevent it spiralling totally out of control
Or, ya know, we can just leave them all alone becuz dey paid 4 it lul.
Has anybody that was already pirating, ceased pirating, because they fear the RIAA? Anyone at all? The most I figure is some soccer mum who downloaded a rick astley album and got suckered in by a "IF YOU STEAL A MOVIE / YOU'RE A CRIMINAL / NO WHITE COLLAR PRISON FOR YOU" kind of we're-going-to-get-you fear mongering.
When RIAA first started suing children, there was probably a./ story on it tagged "goodluckwiththat". I'd like to know why them giving up has people saying anything other than "about time", followed by alt tabbing to whatever they were previously doing.
Fun related fact: the "Maine Coon" pet cats in World of Warcraft were renamed to "Black Cat" after someone complained about the use of the word "Coon" (it's a racial slur in america). I think the backlash from players was magnitudes greater than anything the complainant could have conjured (probably not even black, too).
What profitable industry is Firefox meant to be breaking in to? Afaik, they rely on donations and google partnership deals. From my POV it just seems like alternative browsers want to decrease IE's market share and increase their own in a sort of self-fulfilling dream.
Isn't it just best to let MS bundle IE then have the consumer decide which browser they want to use? Why is it just MS -- what about Apple's Safari bundling or Ubuntu's Firefox bundling? They don't have monopolies but why should they be overlooked? Is MS just a big chunky target?
Call me crazy, but Opera and the like seem to be making an aweful lot of noise for something so..... trivial.
Filling out a form, downloading a 4gb ISO, burning that ISO to a DVD/flash drive and then installing a beta version of an OS on a fresh partition isn't all that comparable to grabbing some chewing gum while waiting for the checkout drone to do his thing.;)
Agreed - I've been tempted on occasion to get a legit copy of XP, only to be put off by the price. It's almost impossible to find out, but I'd like to see data on what downloaders would pay for a legit copy of XP.
Slashdot Mirror
In terms of raw speed,
/. and whether or not I'll survive the impending karma doom is not certain :)
WinXP > Vista
WinXP > Win7
but Win7 > Vista
For that reason, your wrapper of 30% is already off. If you were one of the many who wanted to skip Vista for something better, Win7 represents that "something better". It's slower than XP in terms of raw speed. However this is where that magical "productivity" thing comes in.
If you've used win7 (I assume you haven't) then you may have noticed that it's a lot easier to, well, do things. The start menu is nicer to use, the taskbar is just fucking excellent (imo blows leopard's bar out of the water), the massive amount of visibility and switching/multitasking tools available with win7 make daily use a bit faster, despite what neglible raw speed difference there is (I honestly can't notice any speed diff from XP but I'll trust the benchmarks). It also makes using the OS a painfree and easier than XP. Finally, due to it being "the latest thing" and having quite a good rep for a windows OS, it'll likely be at the forefront of security/updatedness. I was getting tired of XP showing its age so there's a futher reason to switch. In brief, it's a fine OS to make the upgrade from XP to.
I speak from experience; I currently am using the Win7 beta as my main OS, previously using XP. I've skipped vista entirely and thus can't comment on its performance or compare win7 with vista, and also regularly use Leopard on a separate machine. Unfortunately this is
This stone tool is clearly a relic left behind from the Jurassic Elves, whose reign over Earth was ended almost two million years ago by the collision of the Shield of Immortality with the Sword of Penetrating Awesomeness. The world was torn asunder and all evidence of these majestic elfy creatures was lost to the massive geological events spanning between then and now, which simultaneously wiped out the Dark Dwarves of the Deep (having set up their vast cavernous cities under dormant volcanoes and all).
Unless the talking snake people are right and was infact placed by a monotheistic/polytheistic combo deity to fool everyone into thinking he doesn't exist, so that he can punish said people with eternal suffering.
It could also have belonged to the Migit, the first being to be crafted by his Noodliness' divine appendage. RAmen.
Mod parent funny :P
Some effects of bots are in your face: all your favourite mobs or nodes all being farmed by them, or people sitting in the AV cave helping your team lose for example. By and large the effects of widespread botting and gold farming are subtle, but are by no means tame.
Indeed. If you actually go to the glider forums you can see massive (and entertaining) threads about cheaters crying about being found out. Some of them provide screenshots of a GM telling them they're being banned.. and they often have a bot auto-reply going. Quite funny to see, really.
[GM-Dudefella]: Hello Bobthebot, this is GM Dudefella. Do you have time to talk?
[Bobthebot]: orly?
[GM-Dudefella]: yarly. Goodbye Bob!
* I should clarify that these are surface-level comparisons and are twisted to make it look like WoW is the end-all form of entertainment. It is, infact, just my opinion. Some people prefer traditional sources of entertainment. I prefer games. Some people prefer traditional games. I prefer WoW.
Occasionally I allow someone else's opinion, such as yours, to gain a foothold in my self security. Years, wasted? Wow, that sucks.
Then I remember that hey, I'm having fun, and if you compare it with "traditional" sources of fun such as rugby or cricket or movies, WoW comes out on top.
I run with ze ball!
I hit ze ball with a stick!
I sit for 3 hours and stare at moving pictures!
I hone my character, gear and skills, culmunating in a highly co-ordinated and satisfying kill of the greatest threat to a world ever known, using effective organisation, strong tactics, practice and communication!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the DMCA was basically the bulldozing of a large section of earth coupled with the application of copious amounts of grease with the implicit goal of creating a slippery slope.
That seems pretty eloquent, considering he's addressing the kind of person that pays money for this shit. If you visit glider's forums you'll see such intellectual gems as "dam i got banned lol blizzard sux cock lol".
To be honest I think the judge comprehends what Glider is and is twisting a relatively new and malleable set of laws to ensure it's buried.
Were you around for the ICQ spam spam? (I say the word twice because it was really bad)
More to the point, do you use ICQ nowdays? The answer to that is almost certainly "no". For you and nearly everybody else. If you want a case study of the negative effects of spam, just take a look at the history of ICQ.
There is at least one employee assigned to this. Players can take the talk-to-a-GM channel, or they can take the much quicker and easier route: right click on the spammer's name and Report Spam.
So you don't like achieving things and prefer disposable instant gratification. That's fine -- a lot of games cater for this. Just stop pretending that WoW has to conform to your idea of a great game.
Hey guys -- stop playing! I just heard from this guy on slashdot that apparently we're not actually having fun. Yeah I know. Must be an illusion or something. What do you mean, it's just his opinion? He said it matter of factually and with non-pseudo logic and everything!
Logic correction: By "months", he means a week or so for the best mounts. A few days if you're hardcore. Months is technically possible, if you don't actually save for it and then wonder why you automatically don't have enough gold by the time you hit 80 :P
Blizzard would leave you alone. You might possibly get a GM checking in on you (you wouldn't know) if someone complained suspecting you of being a bot.
That said, I have heard of exceptional situations in which GMs have stepped in regardless of what the terms of service says. A couple examples off the top of my head, a high level guy was in Duskwood (lower level zone) killing low level alliance players over and over for about four hours straight. Normally this is fine (the blizzard stance being there is a pvp remedy available, get another high level player to beat him off). Another example is during the opening of the Gates of AQ, an important server-wide event that is carried out by a top guild. One of the steps is talking to a Keeper in Moonglade. A rival horde guild that didn't cut the mustard engaged the keeper and brought him into Orgrimmar (the top guild was Alliance) and was able to indefinitely keep it in combat there without killing it, preventing both the top guild from continuing the quest chain and the top guild from ending the combat (Orgimmar being near impossible to assault from the front). GMs stepped in and reset the Keeper back to the glade.
WoW has a strong competitive aspect to it. When you play, you gain in some way. People that play it for a few hours, then "log off" and have a bot play for the remaining 21 hours of the day, have a bit of an advantage. Most would call this an unfair advantage.
And the person in ironforge spamming this
/2 Gold4u.com get gold for as low as $100/5000g!
yeah, he paid for his account too. And he'll happily spam his economy-messing wares for the entire afternoon before he's banned. Why pay for this? Because the new marks^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers he acquires are well worth the miniscule cost.
Gold farming and selling is a business. An unethical business that is as dangerous as it is subtle.
- detrimental to the WoW economy in that it furthers inflation of gold and certain items
- detrimental to the folks who buy the gold as it eliminates a substantial challenge from the game, subtly eroding their own experience - detrimental to further WoW development as resources need to be spent on curbing gold selling to prevent it spiralling totally out of control
Or, ya know, we can just leave them all alone becuz dey paid 4 it lul.
Has anybody that was already pirating, ceased pirating, because they fear the RIAA? Anyone at all? The most I figure is some soccer mum who downloaded a rick astley album and got suckered in by a "IF YOU STEAL A MOVIE / YOU'RE A CRIMINAL / NO WHITE COLLAR PRISON FOR YOU" kind of we're-going-to-get-you fear mongering.
./ story on it tagged "goodluckwiththat". I'd like to know why them giving up has people saying anything other than "about time", followed by alt tabbing to whatever they were previously doing.
When RIAA first started suing children, there was probably a
DEY TUK OUR JOWBZ!
Fun related fact: the "Maine Coon" pet cats in World of Warcraft were renamed to "Black Cat" after someone complained about the use of the word "Coon" (it's a racial slur in america). I think the backlash from players was magnitudes greater than anything the complainant could have conjured (probably not even black, too).
ULTRA WHOOSH
What profitable industry is Firefox meant to be breaking in to? Afaik, they rely on donations and google partnership deals. From my POV it just seems like alternative browsers want to decrease IE's market share and increase their own in a sort of self-fulfilling dream.
Isn't it just best to let MS bundle IE then have the consumer decide which browser they want to use? Why is it just MS -- what about Apple's Safari bundling or Ubuntu's Firefox bundling? They don't have monopolies but why should they be overlooked? Is MS just a big chunky target?
Call me crazy, but Opera and the like seem to be making an aweful lot of noise for something so..... trivial.
Filling out a form, downloading a 4gb ISO, burning that ISO to a DVD/flash drive and then installing a beta version of an OS on a fresh partition isn't all that comparable to grabbing some chewing gum while waiting for the checkout drone to do his thing. ;)
Agreed - I've been tempted on occasion to get a legit copy of XP, only to be put off by the price. It's almost impossible to find out, but I'd like to see data on what downloaders would pay for a legit copy of XP.