That is actually true and also the reason why until recently almost all German cars had no cupholders - people did not need them, nobody WANTED to drink a coffee in the car on the way to work. And when you use the car to drive to your holiday place, you just bring a big bottle of water or coke or whatever and place that somewhere else in the car. Only since more German cars get exported to e.g. the US, cupholders become standard - it is cheaper to build all cars, even the ones for Germany, the same.
Only 30.000 pages? I got an old HP Laserjet 6p (must also be like 12 years old now or so) which has done over 100.000 pages by now and is still going strong, and I know that the old Laserjet 4+ we had at work did much, much more than that. But you are right, the old printers were built to much higher quality standards. Back then, a laser printer was something expensive and was expected to last a long time. Today's printers are not built to the same mechanical standards. That's why I would choose a model for which you can replace faulty parts easily, like for example the Kyocera models.
If by "genuine" you mean "non-botted", then I guess one hand is enough to count them. All the lvl 85 players I can think of right now are VERY suspicious.
There needs to be a good balance of being able to solo and being able to group in any mmorpg. If a game is designed in such a way that you practically HAVE to group up to get anything done, you will get to experience lots of problems:
a.) not everybody plays at the same time, i.e. it is possible to log on and everybody on your friendlist / in your guild is already doing something in game, so you just sit there and can't do shit. b.) partying with random people in the game (i.e. people you do not know) often turns out to be a Bad Thing, because there ARE idiots and 12 year olds out there, and many people think they can get away with anything if they can hide behind the anonymity of an online game. Just read e.g. the WoW forums and the funny threads about horrible experiences in pick up groups. c.) a.) and b.) makes people build their own private parties (e.g. fire up a second game client and run your own support class character for your own private party) so that they CAN solo even if the game is not designed for it.
NCSoft's other game Lineage 2 is a good example of how not to do it when you want to create a game for US/euro players. It is a pretty good game, because it allows for lots of guild vs. guild politics and drama, but it fails horribly if you just want to log on in the evening and have a little bit of fun. You cannot really do much at higher levels without either having REGULAR game sessions with players of all the necessary classes, or you have to buy several game accounts and build your own little xp party with the needed support classes. So it definitely is not a game for casual players, and that is why it never became any big thing on markets outside Korea. It definitely is not a flop, it has its dedicated followers and people who leave it sooner or later come back because there just are not that many games which put such emphasis on politics/drama and working together as a guild, but it still is a niche game and casual players who try it out leave in horror after a few days. It works very well in Korea though, simply because of the player mentality there. Where western players prefer individual success, they have a much easier time building regular groups of friend who do everything together, and then this kind of game design works, of course.
When I pre-order a video game, I get a pre-recorded call the day before it comes out to remind me to pick it up. Should this be illegal?
RTFA
"The change will not affect your ability to continue to receive calls that deliver informational prerecorded messages - notifying you, for example, that your flight has been cancelled, or that you have a service appointment. Such purely "informational" calls are not covered by the TSR because they do not attempt to sell the called party any goods or services, the FTC said."
That is NOT Gate's writing style and there are several mistakes as well that point to someone other than gates wrote the letter.
"I go to microsoft.com they have a download center" HUH? Cince when does the Head executive of the company refer to the company as "they" instead of "we"?
I read this mail as Bill Gates "pretending" to be Joe Random User. He wants to try out how a random Windows user would experience downloading/installing Movie Maker. So what he is telling the guy he is writing to is "I act like a random, non-professional user. I want to get Movie Maker. So I go to www.microsoft.com, since I know that they have a download page."
If you read the email like this, all the other criticism about the writing style ("Bill Gates should know why you have to reboot the computer") make sense - a normal user WOULD ask "why do I have to reboot my computer now, I reboot it every night!"
"I read instructions on the Internet on how to mod GTA so that I could see a sex scene, and when I followed those instructions, the game actually let me see a sex scene! Now I feel surprised, shocked and offended and want $5!"
Sometimes I really wonder if there are any normal people left in this world.
Linux and Merchandising
on
Tux Dolls?
·
· Score: 1
Well, stuffed animals are available - Suse has them, for example at http://www.suse.de/de/produkte/merchandising/pingu in/
Slashdot Mirror
That is actually true and also the reason why until recently almost all German cars had no cupholders - people did not need them, nobody WANTED to drink a coffee in the car on the way to work. And when you use the car to drive to your holiday place, you just bring a big bottle of water or coke or whatever and place that somewhere else in the car. Only since more German cars get exported to e.g. the US, cupholders become standard - it is cheaper to build all cars, even the ones for Germany, the same.
Only 30.000 pages? I got an old HP Laserjet 6p (must also be like 12 years old now or so) which has done over 100.000 pages by now and is still going strong, and I know that the old Laserjet 4+ we had at work did much, much more than that. But you are right, the old printers were built to much higher quality standards. Back then, a laser printer was something expensive and was expected to last a long time. Today's printers are not built to the same mechanical standards. That's why I would choose a model for which you can replace faulty parts easily, like for example the Kyocera models.
If by "genuine" you mean "non-botted", then I guess one hand is enough to count them. All the lvl 85 players I can think of right now are VERY suspicious.
There needs to be a good balance of being able to solo and being able to group in any mmorpg. If a game is designed in such a way that you practically HAVE to group up to get anything done, you will get to experience lots of problems:
a.) not everybody plays at the same time, i.e. it is possible to log on and everybody on your friendlist / in your guild is already doing something in game, so you just sit there and can't do shit.
b.) partying with random people in the game (i.e. people you do not know) often turns out to be a Bad Thing, because there ARE idiots and 12 year olds out there, and many people think they can get away with anything if they can hide behind the anonymity of an online game. Just read e.g. the WoW forums and the funny threads about horrible experiences in pick up groups.
c.) a.) and b.) makes people build their own private parties (e.g. fire up a second game client and run your own support class character for your own private party) so that they CAN solo even if the game is not designed for it.
NCSoft's other game Lineage 2 is a good example of how not to do it when you want to create a game for US/euro players. It is a pretty good game, because it allows for lots of guild vs. guild politics and drama, but it fails horribly if you just want to log on in the evening and have a little bit of fun. You cannot really do much at higher levels without either having REGULAR game sessions with players of all the necessary classes, or you have to buy several game accounts and build your own little xp party with the needed support classes. So it definitely is not a game for casual players, and that is why it never became any big thing on markets outside Korea. It definitely is not a flop, it has its dedicated followers and people who leave it sooner or later come back because there just are not that many games which put such emphasis on politics/drama and working together as a guild, but it still is a niche game and casual players who try it out leave in horror after a few days. It works very well in Korea though, simply because of the player mentality there. Where western players prefer individual success, they have a much easier time building regular groups of friend who do everything together, and then this kind of game design works, of course.
Yes, it is a fake. If you follow the "scientology" links at the left side of the article, you even will get rickrolled :-)
But I guess it's not too far from what a REAL article by Miscavige would be like...
When I pre-order a video game, I get a pre-recorded call the day before it comes out to remind me to pick it up. Should this be illegal?
RTFA
"The change will not affect your ability to continue to receive calls that deliver informational prerecorded messages - notifying you, for example, that your flight has been cancelled, or that you have a service appointment. Such purely "informational" calls are not covered by the TSR because they do not attempt to sell the called party any goods or services, the FTC said."
That is NOT Gate's writing style and there are several mistakes as well that point to someone other than gates wrote the letter.
"I go to microsoft.com they have a download center" HUH? Cince when does the Head executive of the company refer to the company as "they" instead of "we"?
I read this mail as Bill Gates "pretending" to be Joe Random User. He wants to try out how a random Windows user would experience downloading/installing Movie Maker. So what he is telling the guy he is writing to is "I act like a random, non-professional user. I want to get Movie Maker. So I go to www.microsoft.com, since I know that they have a download page."If you read the email like this, all the other criticism about the writing style ("Bill Gates should know why you have to reboot the computer") make sense - a normal user WOULD ask "why do I have to reboot my computer now, I reboot it every night!"
"I read instructions on the Internet on how to mod GTA so that I could see a sex scene, and when I followed those instructions, the game actually let me see a sex scene! Now I feel surprised, shocked and offended and want $5!"
Sometimes I really wonder if there are any normal people left in this world.
Well, stuffed animals are available - Suse has them, for example at http://www.suse.de/de/produkte/merchandising/pingu in/