Perhaps you need to have a discussion with your requisition department? or pen a nice letter to the VP of IT. Go over people's heads. the majority of people can get by just fine on a dual core processor of virtually any type (or even a fast single core) if they have enough hard drive space, their ram total isn't gimped, and the OS isn't bloated all to hell. Virtually every single "my computer is too slow" issue I've ever worked on has had add/remove programs, ccleaner, malwarebytes, and msconfig as the major improvements, with only stupid configurations like xp on 512mb of ram or less as the exceptions.
If, on the other hand, you actually require good hardware to do a technical job, such as 8 or 12gb of ram to run multiple VMs or hardcore cpu power to render or edit video, i.e. demanding apps that can utilize multiple cores, then by all means you should have your hardware. That's a failure on your company's part. Good hardware isn't THAT expensive. a kickass rendering station can be had for the price of maybe two "joe blow" stations. Somebody can sign off on that, it's your job to find them.
That's just what I want, to support 30 or 40 different models, brands, or hell even architectures.
To say nothing of when their own personal laptop that they used to surf horse porn last night brings some nasty viruses to work to test the corporate network.
And finally, what happens when I tell them "Sorry, you're going to need to downgrade your os/office suite/creativity suite/whatever to be compatable with the tools we've already paid thousands of dollars for and aren't going to get a new license just for your special snowflake hardware there".
No thanks. I'm happy with standardized hardware. if you keep facebook and yahoo messenger off it (thank god for corporate virus protection that can prevent unauthorized installers/msi files), it'll run nice and quick.
Seriously, a 5 year old pendium D with 2gb of ram running XP will tear the fuck out of office 2003 or 2007. This is work. Do work.
whenever anybody asks me why cars today still get worse gas mileage than cars in the 80s did, i point at the curb weight of the myriad of safety features on these cars today. you know today's sedans and hell, PERFORMANCE vehicles, are over 2 tons? we'd have been laughed out of the design meetings in the 60s and 70s for suggesting that. The challenger is a portly 4200lbs... for a 2 door coupe. That's just silly.
And while I like my bells and whistles as much as the next guy, hp and performance still is my main selling point. You're not going to sell me an 85hp car.
The orange properties are your best long term reliable moneymakers, although light purple and light blue are not bad either. Red are strong as well, and nearly as landed on as orange, but take significantly more development money for not much more payoff.
late game I find landing on developed light blues to be painful, but usually not fatal. Landing on oranges can often prove to be directly fatal, and even if not, they can often prove to be the beginning of the end. I would often work out a trade with someone landing on my hotel'd orange where instead of them mortgaging themselves to death and liquidating their hotels on baltic and mediterranian, they can keep those two and just pay me $500 (in case I land on those hotels) and give me 4 or 5 good pieces of strategic property. They still hold on to the idea that they can somehow win with their meger holdings. People LOVE those hotels, even though on expensive properties 3 houses often makes more sense, especially if you're trying to lock up the housing market to keep other people from upgrading.
Suffice to say, people don't like to play monopoly with me much anymore.
you can often pick up most quests while they are still red.
you can manually queue up for dungeons that are orange at the very least.
yes things resist you, thus challenge.
plus you can never underestimate the added challenge of grouping with people who are horrible and/or stupid.
The gathered that previous poster was looking for a harder game, I was trying to provide him with one.
What it turns out he was really commenting on is that wow is not as much of a time sink as it once was (unless you want to make it so), and things came cheaper and quicker than they once did.
Wow is certainly more convenient than it used to be, but it's not -easier-. Not really.
time taken to do a task does not necessarily indicate the difficulty of a task. Some things take less time and effort now. That's all. Other things still take a ton of effort.
I had the pleasure of raiding both c'thun before AQ40 opened up (the classic definition of hard raid encounter) AND heroic Halion (fairly comparable encounters really) and you know what? The game is still hard. I didn't do heroic 25man LK, I hear that's even worse than heroic Halion.
Very interesting idea, but then who decides which movies get funding? a "board of directors" from major movie theater chains? there's going to be some bureaucracy in there somewhere, and as soon as that's there, the seeds of MPAA 2 (the revenge!) start showing up.
Also, as soon as we recognize that there's a team of a hundred people or more making a mainstream movie, we need someone to properly distribute money and manage resources. More bureaucracy. People hire managers to take care of that crap so they don't have to. Managers unionize. MPAA 3 (the quickening!) is born.
Is it possible to have a movie industry that can produce and distribute films like the lord of the rings, star wars, iron man, narnia, die hard, etc without a structure of middle men making it all happen? Is it human nature for the "artists" (Directors, actors, cgi generators, etc) to want to hire people to do the bureaucratic and political "shit work" that takes time away from their art? isn't it human nature for those "shit work" people to then try and strengthen their own position? wouldn't that lead us right back to where we're at?
I fully admit I never read the FA. I read the summary.
Still though, I wonder how many feel that it shouldn't be illegal because it's morally wrong, and how many feel it shouldn't be illegal just because they like to do it and don't want to be punished for doing something they like to do?
Of course, I don't think that is the kind of question you generally get honest replies to.
Then you get to the hairy part of the argument as well. Let's say that you decriminalize filesharing of copyrighted materals and manage to abolish the RIAA and the MPAA. Through some magical means, all compensation of music goes directly to the artist/band. Great. Now, how many people who are used to getting their music for free are now going to suddenly start paying for it?
Some, sure, some... but I am of the opinion that many people (most in fact) who currently get their music free are used to getting it for free and will continue to get it for free. moreover if you make it no longer illegal to copy, a lot of people who previously paid for everything in order to be upstanding citizens will now look at their options and go "I can pay money for this music, or I can get it free, legally." Who is still going to pay? People will drag out examples where artist so-and-so made a song/album free and accepted only donations, or a "pay what you feel is fair" sort of deal etc, that were successful. I contend that those were more experiments to prove a point and if ALL music fit that standard, it'd be a different sort of deal. Human nature is to want to get as much as you can for as little outlay as possible as long as it's not harmful to you to do so.
This is not even to start on moviemaking. As long as a musical artist owns a guitar and a microphone he can record an album in his spare time. The same can't be said of a director. You can't just say "I have a camera, my friends and I are going to take 4 months off of work to make a movie." The BEST movie you get out of that is Clerks or Paranormal Activity. You don't get any more LOTRs or Iron Mans.
In all of this, I'm not saying I agree with the current status quo, not at all, I'm simply saying that the "slashdot position" isn't free from it's own issues as well. The MPAA and RIAA are lieing corrupt organizations, but the current starte of the market doesn't allow for musicians/moviemakers to make a living doing their art in much other way. Maybe we need a modified system, not to trash it and start over?
So if you believe the current model is outdated, do whatever you want, just don't give them your money. Do not pay for movies or music.
Actually, I very rarely do. Mostly just for Christmas presents and the like. That's the funny thing about the majority of people who have tried to rip me a new one in these comments. They think I'm the enemy. If only such vigor could be harnessed in a positive fashion.
But then you have lobbies like the NRA and NAACP which (to the best of my knowledge,I haven't wikipedia'd it) were originally nothing more than a gathering of like-minded socially active people that had strong philosophies on a certain subject that grew into giant lobbying machines.
who is to say the pirate party doesn't do the same?
Those laws are still on the books, and the letter of the law says that they're still illegal. If you've got a prosecutor with a bug up his butt he very well can still prosecute you for breaking any of those laws. Some of them are SO contrary to -current- public opinion (the intermarriage law) that he would probably receive political and social backlash for attempting to prosecute it, but the letter of the law still says he can.
Until those laws are repealed, the legality of those actions are not in question. They -are- illegal. Most of the time nobody is going to bother to prosecute them, and most people are going to ignore them, but the state of the legality of those actions is unambiguous. They are illegal.
Whether their legality MATTERS to you is a different question entirely than my original point.
Illegal and immoral are different. What you're talking about is immoral.
Legality and morality have NEVER been the same.
This is partially due to varying definitions of morality. your morality is not my morality is not obama's morality is not micheal steele's morality etc.
As I mentioned in another post, if you want to change laws, you can change things slowly by changing public opinion, or you can change things quickly with guns and a militia. Which ones are you more likely to do?
Millions of dedicated citizens do still wield more power in this country than corporations. The problem is I don't think most people are as dedicated to the cause as you seem to think they are.
Bottom line : With enough money to create pressure some wishes (just not the ones of the citizens) do become Law, even if its not good for the community.
Yes they do. As others have pointed out the RIAA/MPAA have made it VERY obvious that it's illegal. It's the same as them "not knowing" that cigarettes are bad for you. How did you miss the infomercials? You knew, you just thought it didn't matter.
I was into the warez scene when I was 14 and I damn right knew it was illegal. I just didn't care.
There's a big difference between not knowing and not caring. "Kids" just don't care because they have the "I'm impervious to harm" mentality.
Sure, I admit that it annoyed me that I paid like 1000g for my shaman to have dual spec, my priest got it for like 50g, and my mage got it for 10g or 15g or something...
But you know what, I'm glad that I didn't have to pay 1000g 3 times.
It's a case of psychology. not to mention that if a law criminalizes a majority of the population, it can't possibly be a good law.
Well, with the possible exception of civil rights laws, as someone else pointed out, I agree.
My line of thinking is that just sitting at home DOING it isn't likely to get anything changed given the opposition.
I have the utmost respect for people like the pirate party. These people are putting money, their reputations, and possibly even their livelihood, where their mouth is.
Laws are not changed by people sitting at home doing nothing proactively towards changing the laws, which is what my point was.
The FA basically says "file sharers don't think it's illegal", when it very obviously is. It's probably worded poorly, it probably should say "file sharers don't WANT it to be illegal", in which case there is a long road ahead with some entrenched foes.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you need to have a discussion with your requisition department? or pen a nice letter to the VP of IT. Go over people's heads. the majority of people can get by just fine on a dual core processor of virtually any type (or even a fast single core) if they have enough hard drive space, their ram total isn't gimped, and the OS isn't bloated all to hell. Virtually every single "my computer is too slow" issue I've ever worked on has had add/remove programs, ccleaner, malwarebytes, and msconfig as the major improvements, with only stupid configurations like xp on 512mb of ram or less as the exceptions.
If, on the other hand, you actually require good hardware to do a technical job, such as 8 or 12gb of ram to run multiple VMs or hardcore cpu power to render or edit video, i.e. demanding apps that can utilize multiple cores, then by all means you should have your hardware. That's a failure on your company's part. Good hardware isn't THAT expensive. a kickass rendering station can be had for the price of maybe two "joe blow" stations. Somebody can sign off on that, it's your job to find them.
That's just what I want, to support 30 or 40 different models, brands, or hell even architectures.
To say nothing of when their own personal laptop that they used to surf horse porn last night brings some nasty viruses to work to test the corporate network.
And finally, what happens when I tell them "Sorry, you're going to need to downgrade your os/office suite/creativity suite/whatever to be compatable with the tools we've already paid thousands of dollars for and aren't going to get a new license just for your special snowflake hardware there".
No thanks. I'm happy with standardized hardware. if you keep facebook and yahoo messenger off it (thank god for corporate virus protection that can prevent unauthorized installers/msi files), it'll run nice and quick.
Seriously, a 5 year old pendium D with 2gb of ram running XP will tear the fuck out of office 2003 or 2007. This is work. Do work.
It's in the article? no wonder I couldn't find it.
no kidding. Since when did "a blogger" get to define what's true?
Where's the peer reviewed studies?
"Get away from that, you don't know the components!"
"'American' components!? 'Russian' components!? All made in Taiwan!"
whenever anybody asks me why cars today still get worse gas mileage than cars in the 80s did, i point at the curb weight of the myriad of safety features on these cars today. you know today's sedans and hell, PERFORMANCE vehicles, are over 2 tons? we'd have been laughed out of the design meetings in the 60s and 70s for suggesting that. The challenger is a portly 4200lbs... for a 2 door coupe. That's just silly.
And while I like my bells and whistles as much as the next guy, hp and performance still is my main selling point. You're not going to sell me an 85hp car.
Well, unless it weighs 600lbs.
The orange properties are your best long term reliable moneymakers, although light purple and light blue are not bad either. Red are strong as well, and nearly as landed on as orange, but take significantly more development money for not much more payoff.
late game I find landing on developed light blues to be painful, but usually not fatal. Landing on oranges can often prove to be directly fatal, and even if not, they can often prove to be the beginning of the end. I would often work out a trade with someone landing on my hotel'd orange where instead of them mortgaging themselves to death and liquidating their hotels on baltic and mediterranian, they can keep those two and just pay me $500 (in case I land on those hotels) and give me 4 or 5 good pieces of strategic property. They still hold on to the idea that they can somehow win with their meger holdings. People LOVE those hotels, even though on expensive properties 3 houses often makes more sense, especially if you're trying to lock up the housing market to keep other people from upgrading.
Suffice to say, people don't like to play monopoly with me much anymore.
Carlosspicyweiner@compuserv.net
ftw.
you can often pick up most quests while they are still red.
you can manually queue up for dungeons that are orange at the very least.
yes things resist you, thus challenge.
plus you can never underestimate the added challenge of grouping with people who are horrible and/or stupid.
The gathered that previous poster was looking for a harder game, I was trying to provide him with one.
What it turns out he was really commenting on is that wow is not as much of a time sink as it once was (unless you want to make it so), and things came cheaper and quicker than they once did.
Wow is certainly more convenient than it used to be, but it's not -easier-. Not really.
time taken to do a task does not necessarily indicate the difficulty of a task. Some things take less time and effort now. That's all. Other things still take a ton of effort.
I had the pleasure of raiding both c'thun before AQ40 opened up (the classic definition of hard raid encounter) AND heroic Halion (fairly comparable encounters really) and you know what? The game is still hard. I didn't do heroic 25man LK, I hear that's even worse than heroic Halion.
Very interesting idea, but then who decides which movies get funding? a "board of directors" from major movie theater chains? there's going to be some bureaucracy in there somewhere, and as soon as that's there, the seeds of MPAA 2 (the revenge!) start showing up.
Also, as soon as we recognize that there's a team of a hundred people or more making a mainstream movie, we need someone to properly distribute money and manage resources. More bureaucracy. People hire managers to take care of that crap so they don't have to. Managers unionize. MPAA 3 (the quickening!) is born.
Is it possible to have a movie industry that can produce and distribute films like the lord of the rings, star wars, iron man, narnia, die hard, etc without a structure of middle men making it all happen? Is it human nature for the "artists" (Directors, actors, cgi generators, etc) to want to hire people to do the bureaucratic and political "shit work" that takes time away from their art? isn't it human nature for those "shit work" people to then try and strengthen their own position? wouldn't that lead us right back to where we're at?
I fully admit I never read the FA. I read the summary.
Still though, I wonder how many feel that it shouldn't be illegal because it's morally wrong, and how many feel it shouldn't be illegal just because they like to do it and don't want to be punished for doing something they like to do?
Of course, I don't think that is the kind of question you generally get honest replies to.
Then you get to the hairy part of the argument as well. Let's say that you decriminalize filesharing of copyrighted materals and manage to abolish the RIAA and the MPAA. Through some magical means, all compensation of music goes directly to the artist/band. Great. Now, how many people who are used to getting their music for free are now going to suddenly start paying for it?
Some, sure, some... but I am of the opinion that many people (most in fact) who currently get their music free are used to getting it for free and will continue to get it for free. moreover if you make it no longer illegal to copy, a lot of people who previously paid for everything in order to be upstanding citizens will now look at their options and go "I can pay money for this music, or I can get it free, legally." Who is still going to pay? People will drag out examples where artist so-and-so made a song/album free and accepted only donations, or a "pay what you feel is fair" sort of deal etc, that were successful. I contend that those were more experiments to prove a point and if ALL music fit that standard, it'd be a different sort of deal. Human nature is to want to get as much as you can for as little outlay as possible as long as it's not harmful to you to do so.
This is not even to start on moviemaking. As long as a musical artist owns a guitar and a microphone he can record an album in his spare time. The same can't be said of a director. You can't just say "I have a camera, my friends and I are going to take 4 months off of work to make a movie." The BEST movie you get out of that is Clerks or Paranormal Activity. You don't get any more LOTRs or Iron Mans.
In all of this, I'm not saying I agree with the current status quo, not at all, I'm simply saying that the "slashdot position" isn't free from it's own issues as well. The MPAA and RIAA are lieing corrupt organizations, but the current starte of the market doesn't allow for musicians/moviemakers to make a living doing their art in much other way. Maybe we need a modified system, not to trash it and start over?
So if you believe the current model is outdated, do whatever you want, just don't give them your money. Do not pay for movies or music.
Actually, I very rarely do. Mostly just for Christmas presents and the like. That's the funny thing about the majority of people who have tried to rip me a new one in these comments. They think I'm the enemy. If only such vigor could be harnessed in a positive fashion.
But then you have lobbies like the NRA and NAACP which (to the best of my knowledge,I haven't wikipedia'd it) were originally nothing more than a gathering of like-minded socially active people that had strong philosophies on a certain subject that grew into giant lobbying machines.
who is to say the pirate party doesn't do the same?
Those laws are still on the books, and the letter of the law says that they're still illegal. If you've got a prosecutor with a bug up his butt he very well can still prosecute you for breaking any of those laws. Some of them are SO contrary to -current- public opinion (the intermarriage law) that he would probably receive political and social backlash for attempting to prosecute it, but the letter of the law still says he can.
Until those laws are repealed, the legality of those actions are not in question. They -are- illegal. Most of the time nobody is going to bother to prosecute them, and most people are going to ignore them, but the state of the legality of those actions is unambiguous. They are illegal.
Whether their legality MATTERS to you is a different question entirely than my original point.
you completely missed my point, but feel free to continue to enjoy your contrariness.
ignoring the law is not the same as resisting the law.
Illegal and immoral are different. What you're talking about is immoral.
Legality and morality have NEVER been the same.
This is partially due to varying definitions of morality. your morality is not my morality is not obama's morality is not micheal steele's morality etc.
As I mentioned in another post, if you want to change laws, you can change things slowly by changing public opinion, or you can change things quickly with guns and a militia. Which ones are you more likely to do?
Millions of dedicated citizens do still wield more power in this country than corporations. The problem is I don't think most people are as dedicated to the cause as you seem to think they are.
Bottom line : With enough money to create pressure some wishes (just not the ones of the citizens) do become Law, even if its not good for the community.
my point exactly.
It would be if everyone were downloading from a central server.
Bliz's reliance on peer-to-peer patching should mean that the more people who are trying to patch simultaneously, the faster it is.
Yes they do. As others have pointed out the RIAA/MPAA have made it VERY obvious that it's illegal. It's the same as them "not knowing" that cigarettes are bad for you. How did you miss the infomercials? You knew, you just thought it didn't matter.
I was into the warez scene when I was 14 and I damn right knew it was illegal. I just didn't care.
There's a big difference between not knowing and not caring. "Kids" just don't care because they have the "I'm impervious to harm" mentality.
Sure, I admit that it annoyed me that I paid like 1000g for my shaman to have dual spec, my priest got it for like 50g, and my mage got it for 10g or 15g or something...
But you know what, I'm glad that I didn't have to pay 1000g 3 times.
Well those are pretty much your only options unless you go the extreme libertarian route and start a militia.
Where are you getting the idea that they don't think it's illegal? Illegal and wrong are not one in the same.
let me check
Joe Cox, of the Portsmouth Business School, said those uploading content for others to share don't see what they're doing as illegal
^ right there.
It's a case of psychology. not to mention that if a law criminalizes a majority of the population, it can't possibly be a good law.
Well, with the possible exception of civil rights laws, as someone else pointed out, I agree.
My line of thinking is that just sitting at home DOING it isn't likely to get anything changed given the opposition.
I have the utmost respect for people like the pirate party. These people are putting money, their reputations, and possibly even their livelihood, where their mouth is.
Laws are not changed by people sitting at home doing nothing proactively towards changing the laws, which is what my point was.
The FA basically says "file sharers don't think it's illegal", when it very obviously is. It's probably worded poorly, it probably should say "file sharers don't WANT it to be illegal", in which case there is a long road ahead with some entrenched foes.