I have to agree. The problem is mixing GPL and non-GPL code is a legal nightmare. Non-commercial wine, to the extent that I've seen it, is not YET capable of running Microsoft Office bits, and commercial wine is not totally open source.
But it does, just not out of the box. Get one of the commercial wine distributions (I've used many) and Excel, Word, Outlook and Powerpoint all work relatively well.
But what is needed more is just assurance that they are doing all they can to fix the issue......even if that means them bringing online 20+ servers a week for 4 weeks.
And that's exactly what we don't get. I don't care if they said "You guys are crushing our servers, because of that we're going to have to limit the number of people who can login during prime time." As long as I had assurances they were doing something, I'd be cool with it. If you look on the main page, or any of the boards, you'll see no mention of the horrible weekend from the Blues (the Moderators of the boards).
But in all honesty, its the truth. Regardless of their intentions, Blizzard has to date, done a horrible job in saying "hey guys, we know there are problems, but we're doing x, y and z to set them right." Instead, they often give the appearance to be ignoring everyone playing the game. Many of us in the industry understand that there are finite abilities for switches, routers and servers to be able to handle a set number of connections, but we also understand that no matter how large an environment is, it can be load balanced (ala Google or similar). The biggest part where they drop the ball at Blizzard is by keeping the users out of the loop. They have to understand, the average player is in their 20's and a techie.
I was in beta, I've been playing since literally day one, I'll play until my entire guild quits to move on to something better (I've been with the same guild since Asheron's Call in 2001), but that doesn't mean I enjoy my "CANNOT AUTHENTICATE" errors when they pop up on my screen.
The problem with this logic is that most of the downtimes happen on the weekend, when everyone is trying to play. I can realistically only play 3 days a week (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) making my 'days' worth $15 / 12 = $1.25
That, times the three days I lost is almost enough to rent a different game. Going by your method, we have to subtract out the.5 day we lose every Tuesday for the 'weekly maintenance' period.
You're not the first that this has happened to. Worst are the clans who've been disbanded since early in the game, without their money being refunded or being renamed. A lot of the discontent for this came up when groups were disbanded literally a day into the game, when gold was VERY hard to come by. The players couldn't regroup, as they had generally liquidated everything to get the gold necessary to form the original guild.
It happens. Its their game, their ball, and they decide how to play. As you said - you're playing at their table with their dice. I'm sorry it happened to you while there are still players out there with names like "liqmywang" but I s'pose Blizzard had to start somewhere.
Sun has had x86 servers for a while. It has had no effect on their SPARC sales, nor will it in the future. People who buy Sun will continue to purchace their SPARC servers until they discontinue making them. I'd be willing to say with the SPARC IV's coming out soon, that Sun is in no hurry to switch off their home platform.
Overall, the game is in pretty good shape. That's not to say it doesn't have its shortcomings (by a longshot).
1) The new honor system has encouraged camping of foreign cities, killing of quest givers. This has the effect of causing the newbies headaches while trying to get those first 20 or so levels.
2) Most of the servers are heavily biased in favor of the Alliance. Its a constant headache on my server (Cenarius) but most of the non-pvp servers suffer from it as well.
3) Most of the classes don't have their uber-high end content in yet, even though there were lvl 60's by the end of the first week of the game (mostly due to the extremely long development / beta phase - everyone knew where to level before the game came out).
4) Most of the "End Game" requires large groups of capped players to co-operate for very little in reward. Most of the levels getting to that point are for the most part ignored aside from the quests to get there.
5) Every class has severe issues ranging from the Paladain's class uninterruptable shield that lets it flee or do a full heal during battle (a PITA during PvP), to Hunters having no real role in the game, to Warriors being nurfed at the end of Beta to the point where they have problems holding Aggro (their intended purpose).
All of that aside - its a blast to play. I love getting on and defending Ogrimar from the Alliance. Even though I'm not level capped, my Warlock's curses can actually be somewhat useful (assuming I live long enough to use them) in large "Epic" battles (aka Zergs).
Say it with me now. Its for the purpose of having FUN, not learning. If I wanted to learn I'd crack open a book and read or something. If I want to kill off Native Americans the old fashoned way with a musket, then I play a game.
Jesus effing christ on a stick. Get your blue state heads out of your collective asses and HAVE FUN instead of insisting that everyone tries to conform to your concept of "HOW THINGS SHOULD BE."
The only way to fix the latter is to have parents be aware of the rating system on games. I'm not sure what else the gaming industry can do other than having the ratings there, and possibly forcing all rental / sales places to display the code and have them talk to parents about the game's details for any game rated "Teen" or above so the parents know what they're getting into. Sadly, most of the people selling games (especially at places like Wal*Mart or the likes) don't have a clue when it comes to games.
I'm all for this. Honestly, you don't have any rights as a minor in the US anyway, why not add this to the pile.
Perhaps I should expand. I have historically not used any revision control, but have kept old versions of the files around by extensive use of cp and ln.
The current version of what I'm working on will be in a directory called program-ddmmyy_rev_minorrev with a link from program -> the current revision.
Generally this works, but the things I'm generally working with are scripts of little consequence and less than 1000 lines. If the new revision doesn't work, I can just link back the old one, and I'm running again.
Lets face it - Alt-F-S or Esc-w-q-! is a hell of a lot easier than checking into a CVS server and uploading your new code.
Yes there are easier ways to implement CVS or at least RCS, but most people don't care. Its not that important if your development team is small or if the project is broken down into chunks where each person is in charge of small bits of code.
A lot of people are playing this as their first MMORPG, and don't remember the launches of others. Star Wars has been out two years and is still unstable.
Stability takes time. WoW is still one of the best MMORPG's out there today.
The best part is that the Author admits that in this version, you can't do single file restores.
If he was worried about single file restores and didn't want something complicated, why not just drag his entire drive over using a window manager type application like Nautilus. It isn't brain surgery (and hell - cp will even do it cheaply and easily and can be setup in cron in a snap for anyone but the most new newbie).
The actual Sims behaviour is created in the actual game engine itself. The engine is kept seperate from the addons due to the existance of an extra program that does the installation (basically - it splits out the pieces of a.sim2package and puts them in apropriate sub-directories).
The actual virus like behaviour is due to the way EA's site works.
Basically - you create the house using your copy of the game, with whatever tiles you have installed and loaded. Once you're happy with the results, you upload them to the server inside the game. The game then compares the objects to those in the standard game, as well as those in the game database (every object is given a unique ID and checksum from what I've seen so far), and variants are uploaded as well as part of the upload. The more unique objects your house has, the bigger it is.
~/bin - Programs I've written or found useful, but not enough to install to the entire system. ~/wip - Work In Progress - scripts that I'm working on or debugging with each having its own sub-directory, these are usually things I'm working on to make my life easier. ~/Documents - following the Redhat / Mandrake nomenclature, I keep all 'office' type documents under that main heading. Sub-folders for things that have more than one document. ~/Projects - similar to wip, but with things that generally have a deadline. ~/tmp - misc files like output files from scripts, or truss outputs (I'm a Solaris guy). ~/www linked to ~/.htdocs - if I am serving content - this is where it goes ~/mnt - personal mounts - usually to other workstations / servers but also to removable media.
I'm a big fan of links, so rather than copying binaries around, I tend to link them into my bin, then have a short $PATH of ~/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
Never, but we did have people return them when I used to work in one of the old grocery stores (one old lady had a relatively mature fetus in one of her eggs (they were not mass-packaged), and returned the whole dozen - I don't blame her). The point is that for the day to day things that have to be bought, its impractical to buy outside the US.
It could *POSSIBLY* be that the uncensored images are slightly disturbing or pornographic. Turn the censor off and they come right up (thanks to Cyberdyne for pointing that out in my/. Journal).
Google is playing the game safer than most of the internet (/. included), which is probably a smarter move that just claiming "I have no control over the content" when in reality they do (as proven by/.'s removal of posts in the past due to litigation from Microsoft).
They generally rely on google rankings (their proprietary code) in order to do this effectively.
If someone googlebombed them (google search for "Litigious Bastards"), I would assume it is possible to unrank images just as it is possible to unrank webpages.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to agree. The problem is mixing GPL and non-GPL code is a legal nightmare. Non-commercial wine, to the extent that I've seen it, is not YET capable of running Microsoft Office bits, and commercial wine is not totally open source.
But it does, just not out of the box. Get one of the commercial wine distributions (I've used many) and Excel, Word, Outlook and Powerpoint all work relatively well.
But what is needed more is just assurance that they are doing all they can to fix the issue......even if that means them bringing online 20+ servers a week for 4 weeks.
And that's exactly what we don't get. I don't care if they said "You guys are crushing our servers, because of that we're going to have to limit the number of people who can login during prime time." As long as I had assurances they were doing something, I'd be cool with it. If you look on the main page, or any of the boards, you'll see no mention of the horrible weekend from the Blues (the Moderators of the boards).
But in all honesty, its the truth. Regardless of their intentions, Blizzard has to date, done a horrible job in saying "hey guys, we know there are problems, but we're doing x, y and z to set them right." Instead, they often give the appearance to be ignoring everyone playing the game. Many of us in the industry understand that there are finite abilities for switches, routers and servers to be able to handle a set number of connections, but we also understand that no matter how large an environment is, it can be load balanced (ala Google or similar). The biggest part where they drop the ball at Blizzard is by keeping the users out of the loop. They have to understand, the average player is in their 20's and a techie.
I was in beta, I've been playing since literally day one, I'll play until my entire guild quits to move on to something better (I've been with the same guild since Asheron's Call in 2001), but that doesn't mean I enjoy my "CANNOT AUTHENTICATE" errors when they pop up on my screen.
The problem with this logic is that most of the downtimes happen on the weekend, when everyone is trying to play. I can realistically only play 3 days a week (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) making my 'days' worth $15 / 12 = $1.25
.5 day we lose every Tuesday for the 'weekly maintenance' period.
That, times the three days I lost is almost enough to rent a different game. Going by your method, we have to subtract out the
You're not the first that this has happened to. Worst are the clans who've been disbanded since early in the game, without their money being refunded or being renamed. A lot of the discontent for this came up when groups were disbanded literally a day into the game, when gold was VERY hard to come by. The players couldn't regroup, as they had generally liquidated everything to get the gold necessary to form the original guild.
It happens. Its their game, their ball, and they decide how to play. As you said - you're playing at their table with their dice. I'm sorry it happened to you while there are still players out there with names like "liqmywang" but I s'pose Blizzard had to start somewhere.
Sun has had x86 servers for a while. It has had no effect on their SPARC sales, nor will it in the future. People who buy Sun will continue to purchace their SPARC servers until they discontinue making them. I'd be willing to say with the SPARC IV's coming out soon, that Sun is in no hurry to switch off their home platform.
Overall, the game is in pretty good shape. That's not to say it doesn't have its shortcomings (by a longshot).
1) The new honor system has encouraged camping of foreign cities, killing of quest givers. This has the effect of causing the newbies headaches while trying to get those first 20 or so levels.
2) Most of the servers are heavily biased in favor of the Alliance. Its a constant headache on my server (Cenarius) but most of the non-pvp servers suffer from it as well.
3) Most of the classes don't have their uber-high end content in yet, even though there were lvl 60's by the end of the first week of the game (mostly due to the extremely long development / beta phase - everyone knew where to level before the game came out).
4) Most of the "End Game" requires large groups of capped players to co-operate for very little in reward. Most of the levels getting to that point are for the most part ignored aside from the quests to get there.
5) Every class has severe issues ranging from the Paladain's class uninterruptable shield that lets it flee or do a full heal during battle (a PITA during PvP), to Hunters having no real role in the game, to Warriors being nurfed at the end of Beta to the point where they have problems holding Aggro (their intended purpose).
All of that aside - its a blast to play. I love getting on and defending Ogrimar from the Alliance. Even though I'm not level capped, my Warlock's curses can actually be somewhat useful (assuming I live long enough to use them) in large "Epic" battles (aka Zergs).
The problems with the education system have no place in opposition to my rant. They are a totally different rant.
Its a game people.
G A M E
Say it with me now. Its for the purpose of having FUN, not learning. If I wanted to learn I'd crack open a book and read or something. If I want to kill off Native Americans the old fashoned way with a musket, then I play a game.
Jesus effing christ on a stick. Get your blue state heads out of your collective asses and HAVE FUN instead of insisting that everyone tries to conform to your concept of "HOW THINGS SHOULD BE."
The only way to fix the latter is to have parents be aware of the rating system on games. I'm not sure what else the gaming industry can do other than having the ratings there, and possibly forcing all rental / sales places to display the code and have them talk to parents about the game's details for any game rated "Teen" or above so the parents know what they're getting into. Sadly, most of the people selling games (especially at places like Wal*Mart or the likes) don't have a clue when it comes to games.
I'm all for this. Honestly, you don't have any rights as a minor in the US anyway, why not add this to the pile.
Perhaps I should expand. I have historically not used any revision control, but have kept old versions of the files around by extensive use of cp and ln.
The current version of what I'm working on will be in a directory called program-ddmmyy_rev_minorrev with a link from program -> the current revision.
Generally this works, but the things I'm generally working with are scripts of little consequence and less than 1000 lines. If the new revision doesn't work, I can just link back the old one, and I'm running again.
Lets face it - Alt-F-S or Esc-w-q-! is a hell of a lot easier than checking into a CVS server and uploading your new code.
Yes there are easier ways to implement CVS or at least RCS, but most people don't care. Its not that important if your development team is small or if the project is broken down into chunks where each person is in charge of small bits of code.
A lot of people are playing this as their first MMORPG, and don't remember the launches of others. Star Wars has been out two years and is still unstable.
Stability takes time. WoW is still one of the best MMORPG's out there today.
The best part is that the Author admits that in this version, you can't do single file restores.
If he was worried about single file restores and didn't want something complicated, why not just drag his entire drive over using a window manager type application like Nautilus. It isn't brain surgery (and hell - cp will even do it cheaply and easily and can be setup in cron in a snap for anyone but the most new newbie).
The actual Sims behaviour is created in the actual game engine itself. The engine is kept seperate from the addons due to the existance of an extra program that does the installation (basically - it splits out the pieces of a .sim2package and puts them in apropriate sub-directories).
The actual virus like behaviour is due to the way EA's site works.
Basically - you create the house using your copy of the game, with whatever tiles you have installed and loaded. Once you're happy with the results, you upload them to the server inside the game. The game then compares the objects to those in the standard game, as well as those in the game database (every object is given a unique ID and checksum from what I've seen so far), and variants are uploaded as well as part of the upload. The more unique objects your house has, the bigger it is.
It'll matter to me when the price of Ram starts going up again. Until then - I don't give a damn.
~/bin - Programs I've written or found useful, but not enough to install to the entire system.
~/wip - Work In Progress - scripts that I'm working on or debugging with each having its own sub-directory, these are usually things I'm working on to make my life easier.
~/Documents - following the Redhat / Mandrake nomenclature, I keep all 'office' type documents under that main heading. Sub-folders for things that have more than one document.
~/Projects - similar to wip, but with things that generally have a deadline.
~/tmp - misc files like output files from scripts, or truss outputs (I'm a Solaris guy).
~/www linked to ~/.htdocs - if I am serving content - this is where it goes
~/mnt - personal mounts - usually to other workstations / servers but also to removable media.
I'm a big fan of links, so rather than copying binaries around, I tend to link them into my bin, then have a short $PATH of ~/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
Never, but we did have people return them when I used to work in one of the old grocery stores (one old lady had a relatively mature fetus in one of her eggs (they were not mass-packaged), and returned the whole dozen - I don't blame her). The point is that for the day to day things that have to be bought, its impractical to buy outside the US.
Sorry, but I need some eggs this afternoon, and well - its hard to fly to the EU to get them especially since I'd have to buy the plane ticket here.
It could *POSSIBLY* be that the uncensored images are slightly disturbing or pornographic. Turn the censor off and they come right up (thanks to Cyberdyne for pointing that out in my /. Journal).
Google is playing the game safer than most of the internet (/. included), which is probably a smarter move that just claiming "I have no control over the content" when in reality they do (as proven by /.'s removal of posts in the past due to litigation from Microsoft).
They generally rely on google rankings (their proprietary code) in order to do this effectively.
If someone googlebombed them (google search for "Litigious Bastards"), I would assume it is possible to unrank images just as it is possible to unrank webpages.
Apparently you aren't familiar with the fine art of trolling.
:)
Carry on