Yeah, but this time it looks like the online player numbers are slowly but certainly declining. Look at this link: http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility (the 6-months data seems to not show up for some reason)...Two of the missing accounts from there are mine; I quit in June for reasons other than MT introduction.
The root problem being... two separate people using the same account. I should keep my e-mail wherever the damn I choose to, even if it looks stupid to anyone else:)
It's all about having fun; the article author treats those 3 days as a quest seemingly similar to "destroy as much environment as possible within 60 seconds". That's bullshit. You need to have fun in your own way and disregard the tic-tac, else it will mess up your fun factor. What else are you willing to do to get the most out of it? (sleep deprivation?)
After reading some information on HOW they chose to close the Cluj, Romania factory, I suddenly don't mourn them anymore.
In February 2011, they had some rather secretive discussions with local authorities, informing them that they plan to close the factory down before the end of the year. Nothing official, nothing written though.
In April 2011, they sent a memo to all employees from the factory, telling them there's nothing to worry about; that Nokia has no intention of shutting the factory down.
Fast-forward to September 2011: All employees are being asked to participate to a factory-wide meeting held in a huge tent on factory premises. They are informed that Nokia is pulling out; all of them will remain jobless by the end of the year and they will receive compensation through March 2012 (3 months salary payments after shutting the place down).
Fun Fact #1: many employees there had relocated to work for Nokia; they came from various parts of the country, lured by better salaries, promises and the opportunity to work for a multi-national, apparently stable company. Some uprooted their families as well. Now they're pretty much hanging...
Fun Fact #2: I myself applied for an operational manager position there, was in talks with them but for some reason they didn't call back at some point. Now I'm happy they didn't. With a 6-months-in pregnant wife and given the current economical situation, I would've been toast.
Back and forth folds, arranged so that if I need a few extra inches, I can loosen the tight a bit, pull the amount of extra cable I need, then tighten the rest back.
Bah, my machine is also a moderate gaming rig, albeit 3 years old. The internals get pretty hot. Not ludicrously hot, though, but hot enough. But I still can't be arsed to open the case and spend half a day bent over the case to make it look pretty on the inside.
Now I'm not saying the interior is a total mess; I arranged the cables when I put the machine together back then. But I'm talking about mild arrangement, not an anally retentive attention to wire management.
Hey, this reminds me of my company's local management decision to get a contractor company and have them arrange various cabling that exists in the offices.
The guys came one week-end and did a pretty good job... except one minor aspect: You don't tie mouse, keyboard, network and power cables together.
About 3 months after this "arrangement", most plastic cable ties were cut off to allow replacement for keyboards, mice and other wired devices out there (including but not limited to drawing tablets, scanners and whatnot).
I personally ceased doing internal PC cable management a few years ago. I'm no longer interested in how it looks like on the inside. However, my desk (aka outside PC) cables are arranged so that they are easy to move around and none lay on the floor. My desk has wheels so if I want to move my desk around, I just unplug the power cord from the wall outlet and push the whole thing away. And no dust bunnies on the floor wither.
You, friend, are one of the lucky few. Don't get me wrong, I believe your story. But what if this sort of "background check" negatively affects honest people? I never stole anything from anyone, not would I ever intend to. But I failed some so-called "background checks" for stupid reasons: 1. "You were part of a carebear corporation a year and a half ago". Damn, dudes, I was playing EVE for 2 months back then. Little did I know what's what. Doh! 2. "You were part of a corporation which was red to another corporation which was blue to an alliance which is now blue to us". Say WHAT? No, please, you gotta repeat that 'cause I haven't heard you. Who are you again? What? 3. "You don't have the skills we need". No shit. What skills DO you need? needless to say I got no reply whatsoever. 4. "Do you have more than one account?" "Yes." "Application Rejected". WTF!
My PvP sucked but I was very good at exploration and evading blockades. I was also a pretty good scout. I had literally thousands of bookmarks for most nullsec regions, especially NPC-owned ones. I could roam for weeks and not get shot. So my "lack of skill" would still bring value to many corporations. I was part of a corporation for 4 months, all I did all day was guard them while they were endlessly mining in 0.0. At some point I got bored and told them "guys, I intend to leave, I'm bored here". I thought they would understand and my act of honesty would be appreciated. They were all "oh man, so sorry you are leaving us" but next day I logged on to find myself KICKED from the corp and marked with RED standings. I had to bribe a mate who was thinking of leaving as well to smuggle my stuff out of their 0.0 outpost. Now a couple more things: 1. That guy who stole from you... he did that because he was granted access to that stuff. 2. EVE is not a harsh place. it's a place full of douchebags and corporations that require you to dedicate your life to EVE. Well screw that. Screw the mentality represented by: "That guy, man, he old, he from 2004, he must be uber-imba! This new guy, he new, he only from 2009, he must suxx0rz!".
Yes, Eve disappointed me. I am not thinking of returning anywhere in the near future. My money go now somewhere else.
You are right. It's why I quit EVE after some (I'd say too much) time.
Actually I never got scammed (despite a few close calls), but I kind of hated the virtual world.
You couldn't join a corporation without "background checks" and people were, simply put, paranoid to the bone. All I ever wanted is to shoot some NPCs and explore. My goals in EVE were fairly simple: Kill NPCs, get nice loot, use that loot to kill NPCs, ad nauseam. With friends.
But EVE is about people mindlessly killing each others' ships, blobbing their way into "enemy" territory, struggle for power and scam each other like there's no tomorrow.
Truth be told, I've had enough of this shit in RL to make it appealing to any extent in a virtual world. EVE is a nice universe, but it's pestered with scum. As my grandpa used to say (about the world in general): "It's very good looking. Too bad it's populated".
I've come to a point where the game is actually boring because I have more cash than I need and nothing left to work for because skills take so long to train. I have the best gear I can buy for my skills, and my progression to bigger and better things is limited entirely by the flow of time rather than anything that gives me an incentive to play the game. I consider this an immense design flaw. Level 4 missions are boring. Mining is boring. Exploring is marginally interesting in the same way as a sudoku puzzle but ultimately futile because it just nets me more money. Switching to a PvP clone slows down skill training which is admittedly a tough decision in the face of mounting boredom. There is no reason for me to even log in besides managing investments and talking to corpmates. Needless to say I'm looking forward to Diablo3.
Buy a PvP character and use it as money sink. No need to endlessly train a new character, especially if you bathe in ISK.
True. But with dirt cheap RAM and some coding wizardry, I'm guessing good, complex games can be created this way.
My machine is almost 4 years old and has 8 GB of RAM (DDR2). I looked up DDR3 prices today and you can get 24 GB RAM (6x4 GB) for around 220 USD. Certainly cheaper than a good Video Card (which is around 300 USD).
Also... current games don't usually take full advantage of multi-core CPUs (quad cores might be utilized, but 6-cores are not yet utilized effectively by PC Game implementations) - BUT! With software-based procedural generation, the extra CPU power would certainly come in handy.
...Yes, I am aware that coding can be a bitch and that it's very difficult to achieve what I think about here. But is it really impossible or worse than what we see in current game incarnations? I can't really say.
Procedural generation works better than you would expect.
Look at these two examples:.debris (http://91.202.41.234/debris/) and.kkrieger (http://91.202.41.234/kkrieger) - they occupy virtually no space, are lengthy, interactive and perfectly playable on any modern machine with average CPU capabilities.
Windows Server? Like 2008, 2003 and so on? Also "Other" pretty much should include stuff that doesn't identify properly when interrogated, or doesn't identify at all.
...And, of course, Linux took all the difference:)
Now seriously though, old computers die. New computers come in, they either have no XP drivers or come with preinstalled/bundled Windows 7, or Linux flavors, or whatever, not to mention the vast array of Mobile devices which can connect to the Internet and have no room for Win XP. Windows XP use falling is expected, just like any old OS or OS version. I suspect much of the change comes simply because time passes.
Okay; I should have explained it in more words, although it's a bit off-topic.
The movie ITSELF was good. Nice special effects and some scenes were definitely brilliant (burning train being one of my favorites). But the changes from the original idea (the novel) were atrocious in their core.
I mean, take the whole "buried machines" idea. Some aliens came a million years ago and said "what? No worthy enemy? Just some ape-like primitives around? Fuck it, let's just bury these machines and come back after 10 thousand centuries." I mean, COME ON!
Then, first time they came, they couldn't be arsed to check for microbes, I mean, microbiology is an unknown for them; all they know is teleportation and ray-spitting machines. They aren't poly-specific, no sir!
This whole debacle makes the movie unbearable as a whole. It's dumber than a bag of bricks.
Yes, in the original novel, aliens come all of a sudden (from Mars, but at the time is was still plausible) and arguably don't have time to check for viral threats (which were STILL a novelty for the late-19th-early 20th century for the general population) - and that makes the novel interesting even now: you CAN imagine the facts happening back then and it makes some sense. But mixing present time beings with conceptions from 100 years ago... that's the fail.
Also some scenes are appallingly hard to digest (from a lucid viewer's perspective): birds have no problem whatsoever trying to land on a 20-story-high piece of erratically moving machinery that makes horrible loud noises? But at the same time should be driven away by simple, rag-dressed scarecrows? Niiice...
Call me weird, but when PLOT POINTS are badly put on stage, that makes me mad. I had no problem with Independence Day or (lo and behold!) even Armageddon, because most plot points were credibly or cleverly masked away. But WotW... many plot scenes simply sucked.
...because you only bought basic support in the first place.
Let's not be unfair; I agree Oracle had pretty bad support and it's layered in such a way that it becomes either very costly or only can deal with basic issues. But if you bought basic support license and need advanced support - it's only expected to pay up some more.
It's how businesses work.
That doesn't mean I agree with how some of such businesses are configured. Some have an almost declared purpose of extorting money from you - and that I don't like.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but this time it looks like the online player numbers are slowly but certainly declining. ...Two of the missing accounts from there are mine; I quit in June for reasons other than MT introduction.
Look at this link: http://eve-offline.net/?server=tranquility
(the 6-months data seems to not show up for some reason)
The root problem being... two separate people using the same account. :)
I should keep my e-mail wherever the damn I choose to, even if it looks stupid to anyone else
You wouldn't say...
That's because people get all worked up about some bullshit ladders and Hall of Fames.
Mod the above "insightful".
It's all about having fun; the article author treats those 3 days as a quest seemingly similar to "destroy as much environment as possible within 60 seconds". That's bullshit. You need to have fun in your own way and disregard the tic-tac, else it will mess up your fun factor. What else are you willing to do to get the most out of it? (sleep deprivation?)
If traces of alpha emitters get into the tobacco, it could give you cancer.
Oh, the irony...
After reading some information on HOW they chose to close the Cluj, Romania factory, I suddenly don't mourn them anymore.
In February 2011, they had some rather secretive discussions with local authorities, informing them that they plan to close the factory down before the end of the year. Nothing official, nothing written though.
In April 2011, they sent a memo to all employees from the factory, telling them there's nothing to worry about; that Nokia has no intention of shutting the factory down.
Fast-forward to September 2011: All employees are being asked to participate to a factory-wide meeting held in a huge tent on factory premises. They are informed that Nokia is pulling out; all of them will remain jobless by the end of the year and they will receive compensation through March 2012 (3 months salary payments after shutting the place down).
Fun Fact #1: many employees there had relocated to work for Nokia; they came from various parts of the country, lured by better salaries, promises and the opportunity to work for a multi-national, apparently stable company. Some uprooted their families as well. Now they're pretty much hanging...
Fun Fact #2: I myself applied for an operational manager position there, was in talks with them but for some reason they didn't call back at some point. Now I'm happy they didn't. With a 6-months-in pregnant wife and given the current economical situation, I would've been toast.
Welcome, o, thou traveler from the past!
What you are saying was true maybe 4 years ago.
Back and forth folds, arranged so that if I need a few extra inches, I can loosen the tight a bit, pull the amount of extra cable I need, then tighten the rest back.
Bah, my machine is also a moderate gaming rig, albeit 3 years old. The internals get pretty hot. Not ludicrously hot, though, but hot enough. But I still can't be arsed to open the case and spend half a day bent over the case to make it look pretty on the inside.
Now I'm not saying the interior is a total mess; I arranged the cables when I put the machine together back then. But I'm talking about mild arrangement, not an anally retentive attention to wire management.
Hey, this reminds me of my company's local management decision to get a contractor company and have them arrange various cabling that exists in the offices.
The guys came one week-end and did a pretty good job... except one minor aspect: You don't tie mouse, keyboard, network and power cables together.
About 3 months after this "arrangement", most plastic cable ties were cut off to allow replacement for keyboards, mice and other wired devices out there (including but not limited to drawing tablets, scanners and whatnot).
I personally ceased doing internal PC cable management a few years ago. I'm no longer interested in how it looks like on the inside. However, my desk (aka outside PC) cables are arranged so that they are easy to move around and none lay on the floor. My desk has wheels so if I want to move my desk around, I just unplug the power cord from the wall outlet and push the whole thing away. And no dust bunnies on the floor wither.
We all know what a man's best friend is, and the women have it. A big diamond is one way to get it.
You're talking about dogs, right?
You, friend, are one of the lucky few.
Don't get me wrong, I believe your story. But what if this sort of "background check" negatively affects honest people?
I never stole anything from anyone, not would I ever intend to. But I failed some so-called "background checks" for stupid reasons:
1. "You were part of a carebear corporation a year and a half ago". Damn, dudes, I was playing EVE for 2 months back then. Little did I know what's what. Doh!
2. "You were part of a corporation which was red to another corporation which was blue to an alliance which is now blue to us". Say WHAT? No, please, you gotta repeat that 'cause I haven't heard you. Who are you again? What?
3. "You don't have the skills we need". No shit. What skills DO you need? needless to say I got no reply whatsoever.
4. "Do you have more than one account?" "Yes." "Application Rejected". WTF!
My PvP sucked but I was very good at exploration and evading blockades. I was also a pretty good scout. I had literally thousands of bookmarks for most nullsec regions, especially NPC-owned ones. I could roam for weeks and not get shot. So my "lack of skill" would still bring value to many corporations.
I was part of a corporation for 4 months, all I did all day was guard them while they were endlessly mining in 0.0. At some point I got bored and told them "guys, I intend to leave, I'm bored here". I thought they would understand and my act of honesty would be appreciated. They were all "oh man, so sorry you are leaving us" but next day I logged on to find myself KICKED from the corp and marked with RED standings. I had to bribe a mate who was thinking of leaving as well to smuggle my stuff out of their 0.0 outpost.
Now a couple more things:
1. That guy who stole from you... he did that because he was granted access to that stuff.
2. EVE is not a harsh place. it's a place full of douchebags and corporations that require you to dedicate your life to EVE. Well screw that. Screw the mentality represented by: "That guy, man, he old, he from 2004, he must be uber-imba! This new guy, he new, he only from 2009, he must suxx0rz!".
Yes, Eve disappointed me. I am not thinking of returning anywhere in the near future. My money go now somewhere else.
You stole my idea! The IP police will find you!
You are right. It's why I quit EVE after some (I'd say too much) time.
Actually I never got scammed (despite a few close calls), but I kind of hated the virtual world.
You couldn't join a corporation without "background checks" and people were, simply put, paranoid to the bone. All I ever wanted is to shoot some NPCs and explore. My goals in EVE were fairly simple: Kill NPCs, get nice loot, use that loot to kill NPCs, ad nauseam. With friends.
But EVE is about people mindlessly killing each others' ships, blobbing their way into "enemy" territory, struggle for power and scam each other like there's no tomorrow.
Truth be told, I've had enough of this shit in RL to make it appealing to any extent in a virtual world. EVE is a nice universe, but it's pestered with scum. As my grandpa used to say (about the world in general): "It's very good looking. Too bad it's populated".
I've come to a point where the game is actually boring because I have more cash than I need and nothing left to work for because skills take so long to train. I have the best gear I can buy for my skills, and my progression to bigger and better things is limited entirely by the flow of time rather than anything that gives me an incentive to play the game. I consider this an immense design flaw. Level 4 missions are boring. Mining is boring. Exploring is marginally interesting in the same way as a sudoku puzzle but ultimately futile because it just nets me more money. Switching to a PvP clone slows down skill training which is admittedly a tough decision in the face of mounting boredom. There is no reason for me to even log in besides managing investments and talking to corpmates. Needless to say I'm looking forward to Diablo3.
Buy a PvP character and use it as money sink. No need to endlessly train a new character, especially if you bathe in ISK.
True. But with dirt cheap RAM and some coding wizardry, I'm guessing good, complex games can be created this way.
...Yes, I am aware that coding can be a bitch and that it's very difficult to achieve what I think about here. But is it really impossible or worse than what we see in current game incarnations? I can't really say.
My machine is almost 4 years old and has 8 GB of RAM (DDR2). I looked up DDR3 prices today and you can get 24 GB RAM (6x4 GB) for around 220 USD. Certainly cheaper than a good Video Card (which is around 300 USD).
Also... current games don't usually take full advantage of multi-core CPUs (quad cores might be utilized, but 6-cores are not yet utilized effectively by PC Game implementations) - BUT! With software-based procedural generation, the extra CPU power would certainly come in handy.
Procedural generation works better than you would expect. .debris (http://91.202.41.234/debris/) and .kkrieger (http://91.202.41.234/kkrieger) - they occupy virtually no space, are lengthy, interactive and perfectly playable on any modern machine with average CPU capabilities.
Look at these two examples:
Windows Server? Like 2008, 2003 and so on? Also "Other" pretty much should include stuff that doesn't identify properly when interrogated, or doesn't identify at all.
The folks that do clean implementations 'for real' will actually hire programmers and give them specifications but absolutely no code or psuedo-code.
Yup, that definitely sounds like the Chinese Wall technique. Quite successful in... China :)
True, it was intended to be a wee bit funny :)
A true Windows XP user's mindset, because you came in second. but have no fear! It's not a bug, it's a FEATURE :)
...And, of course, Linux took all the difference :)
Now seriously though, old computers die. New computers come in, they either have no XP drivers or come with preinstalled/bundled Windows 7, or Linux flavors, or whatever, not to mention the vast array of Mobile devices which can connect to the Internet and have no room for Win XP. Windows XP use falling is expected, just like any old OS or OS version. I suspect much of the change comes simply because time passes.
Okay; I should have explained it in more words, although it's a bit off-topic.
The movie ITSELF was good. Nice special effects and some scenes were definitely brilliant (burning train being one of my favorites). But the changes from the original idea (the novel) were atrocious in their core.
I mean, take the whole "buried machines" idea. Some aliens came a million years ago and said "what? No worthy enemy? Just some ape-like primitives around? Fuck it, let's just bury these machines and come back after 10 thousand centuries." I mean, COME ON!
Then, first time they came, they couldn't be arsed to check for microbes, I mean, microbiology is an unknown for them; all they know is teleportation and ray-spitting machines. They aren't poly-specific, no sir!
This whole debacle makes the movie unbearable as a whole. It's dumber than a bag of bricks.
Yes, in the original novel, aliens come all of a sudden (from Mars, but at the time is was still plausible) and arguably don't have time to check for viral threats (which were STILL a novelty for the late-19th-early 20th century for the general population) - and that makes the novel interesting even now: you CAN imagine the facts happening back then and it makes some sense. But mixing present time beings with conceptions from 100 years ago... that's the fail.
Also some scenes are appallingly hard to digest (from a lucid viewer's perspective): birds have no problem whatsoever trying to land on a 20-story-high piece of erratically moving machinery that makes horrible loud noises? But at the same time should be driven away by simple, rag-dressed scarecrows? Niiice...
Call me weird, but when PLOT POINTS are badly put on stage, that makes me mad. I had no problem with Independence Day or (lo and behold!) even Armageddon, because most plot points were credibly or cleverly masked away. But WotW... many plot scenes simply sucked.
He changed name after doing that horrendous piece of shit called "War of the Worlds". To wash the shame away.
Turns out that wasn't enough!
...because you only bought basic support in the first place.
Let's not be unfair; I agree Oracle had pretty bad support and it's layered in such a way that it becomes either very costly or only can deal with basic issues. But if you bought basic support license and need advanced support - it's only expected to pay up some more.
It's how businesses work.
That doesn't mean I agree with how some of such businesses are configured. Some have an almost declared purpose of extorting money from you - and that I don't like.