"Trying to go for the people who don't know anything about computers probably isn't the best strategy. There is hardly anyone like that out there anymore."
Very true, I believe what used to be the "knows nothing about computers" group has now become the "knows just enough to be extremely dangerous" group.
Now when coming to help a friend with a computer problem, you can be assured he's tried everything he knows to fix it. Which usually results in all manner of uninstalled or broken drivers, weird configuration settings and if he's adventurous a thoroughly wanked registry! Ah, nothing like progress.
Let's keep in mind this is a game which people play as entertainment. In game items or the island in this case have entertainment value. So you buy the island and people want to rent land off of you for whatever reason. Maybe they want to mine it or maybe they want a nice hunting ground or maybe they want to setup a house. Whatever reason, it gives them value so they pay you as the island owner to use it. In this game you can then take that in game money and convert it over to real world cash if you so choose. You can see the exchange rate on the site - 1 real world dollar = 10 in game dollars.
First off Real's "hack" was not Apple endorsed. They wanted an inroad into Apple's installed base of hardware for their DRM music product. That's pretty easy to understand. Apple is in no way wrong to close them out. Since they are competing in the same market space as Real - it only makes business sense that they would. So is this good? Well for the consumer it means LESS choice. Less choice is not good. While this is the obvious business move by Apple, that doesn't make it better for the consumer. Apple and any other music player manufacturer has no incentive to block usage of mp3 or ogg or other non-DRM format. These formats are not tied to online sales of songs and pose no threat. On the otherhand if Apple had support for DRM laden WMA, Real or other formats - that would represent a possibility that an individual would not spend his music dollar at the iTunes store. Hence the greater choice to the consumer directly translates to lack of revenue for Apple. The only way Apple is going to want another service's music to be playable on the iPod is via licensing agreements which equal cash in Apple's pocket. In a nutshell what Apple has done is logical and sound business practice given the current market for online music. However, this is no way means that it is a benefit to consumers who lose functionality in their iPod.
That being said.. does anyone actually buy music online from Real?
Project Entropia is not a standard model MMO. There is no monthly fee. You exchange your real world money for in game money. You can make in game money via crafting, trading, killing etc. You can also exchange you in game money for real world money. No need to e-bay stuff. If he rents space out for in game cash that would ultimately translate into real world cash. Will he make his money back? I have no idea but the game supports a structure where he could.
"who hasn't seen one of these games--known as first-person shooters--here's the gist of them. You're placed in a combat zone, armed with a weapon of your choice, and sent out to find and kill other players. Knife them, club them, blow them apart with a shotgun, set them afire, vaporize them with a shoulder-launched missile, drill them through the head with a sniper rifle--the choice is yours. Depending on the game, blood will spray, mist or spout. Sometimes your kills collapse in crumpled heaps, clutching their throats and twitching convincingly. Sometimes they cry in pain with human voices. Their bodies lay there for a while so you can feed off them if necessary, restoring your own health. Then you can grab their weapons and set off to find another victim, assuming you don't get killed first."
Wheeee! Never mind that maybe its the SPORT of the GAME that keeps us playing rather than the screaming human voices, blood and ragdoll physics bah-blasting people to ba-bits.
But what I would really like to know is what soldiers in Iraq would think of this caption:
"Budda-budda-zing. The Army's combat game is so lifelike that the Defense Department is using it to test new weapons systems."
I don't think you can call it lifelike unless the person in the seat next to you has his head explode when he gets fragged.
Sure it could! Just slap the 4400mAh battery on there! Might be a little heavy, but all the power you would need. Besides the heaviness will make it feel like a solid well constructed product. Not to mention since you won't be able to hold it for 4 hours, your actual battery life will be even longer!
I once worked for a company where the insane CEO (dotcom era) decided to get serious about security by requiring daily password changes. The cool thing was that they never implemented any restriction on what the passwords could be. I think the most common passwords that resulted were Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc.
I ended up getting an Asus MyPal A716. From the research I did, the graphics performance is very good. The dpad works well. Perhaps the biggest issue is that you only have 2 buttons plus the dpad click that you can really use for in game buttons. The other 2 can be used for select and start or similar functions. This model has built in 802.11b and bluetooth - but I haven't had a chance to test the bluetooth. I find it reasonably comfortable for use gaming but the GB form factors are clearly superior (although I would argue the original GBA was more comfortable than the SP version). It works well enough that my son constantly wants to use it to play.
Nope - it sure isn't. I spent way to much on a Pocket PC PDA and I admit one of the primary reasons was retro gaming. I own GBs and GBAs (yes - multiple) but I hate having to carry around multiple small cartridges which can be easily lost. My PocketPC handles NES, GB, GBC, PC Engine, Sega Master system, Game Gear, Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Spectrum and Apple 2 games as well as some SNES and Genesis (not as well). There is also GBA emulation but its not very good. The great thing - aside from the nostalgia, is that a lot of these older games are perfect for quick pickup play. Most emulators support memory saves as well - meaning you can put it down at a moments notice even if you are close to getting that high score. You can fit a hell of a lot of games on a 512MB SD card and Compact Flash drives go up to 4GB if you need more storage. The added bonuses aside from the usual PDA features are that it plays both audio and video. You get mp3, ogm, avi and mpg playback. There are also excellent native Pocket PC games including ports of Age of Empires, Warlords 2 and Ultima Underworld. RTS, RPG even FPS games are available. So yeah its expensive, but it is a hell of a toy if you can justify the cost. If you have a model with bluetooth and or 802.11b its great for ssh or terminal services too. My biggest complaint is that someone needs to come out with a gaming oriented model, so we can get a decent button layout. One of the main considerations in my purchase was the dpad and button setup.
Yes you hook up your PS2 and play some HL2... oh wait.
This article is aimed at people who want to play a specific Windows game on a different OS. We all know that consoles play games made for them just fine. We all know that its easier to put a PS2 disk in and turn it on then it is to install a computer game - even a Windows one!
Inspite of how much it may suck, there is a small niche for people who want to run some games on Linux versus running a dual boot setup, having a windows box OR playing console games. This article and the Cedega product is aimed at that niche.
My understanding is that the Nvidia 5xxxFX line runs the direct X 8.1 path in half life 2. This is mostly due to these cards being too slow at running the DX 9 path with 32bit precision (Nvidia cards do not support 24bit precision). There is a hack for running the FX series at 16bit precision on the DX 9 path which supposedly gives much better performance in HL2. Dropping the DX lvl to 8 or 7 will definately speed things up at the expense of some graphical niceties.
Um. This has nothing to do with American style PC culture. The Chinese and the Taiwanese are not the same as two different countries. They both share a cultural heritage going back thousands of years. Many Taiwanese even believe that integration is inevitable. This is more like an argument between family members. Taiwan - to mainland China - is their disident brethren. China to Taiwan are the masses that have the wrong idea. China cannot in its view "recognize" Taiwan, because that gives credence to the political views of Taiwan and implys that maybe there is something wrong with mainland China. As for India and Pakistan - well you can thank the British for that. When the land was chopped up Kashmir happened to go to India because the regional head of government was Indian (Hindu or something) inspite of the fact that the majority of the population was muslim. The true beauty of it is that the region is not some stellar economic prize. Just a harsh mountainous place. As for the Kurds - they are people without a home. It's not just Turkey that hates them. They don't have land, they don't have a country. They do have a unique cultural identity. There is no Kurdistan and noone wants to give them one. Sure it would be nice to simplify everything and say "why don't you all grow up" - but you don't have any real understanding of why these issues are ingrained in their respective cultures. Hell, if AK-47s were as common and cheap as in much of the middle east - even Star Wars vs. Star Trek might get a little heated.
I don't mean to be a flamebait - but Israel (at least the part that wasn't claimed through the resulting wars) was given based on previous "ownership" to the Jews. Inspite of the fact that other cultures occupied the land. I can't say the results have been that great. It's pretty much at the center of the division between the arab world and the west. The same wonderful type of real estate planning caused the conflict with possesion of Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Ah nothing like the break up of the English empire... The interesting thing about Taiwan is that they consider themselves (obviously rightfully so) Chinese. It's the case of having a many thousand year cultural connection versus a political difference occuring in a much shorter time span. Thus to the mainland Chinese, recognizing Taiwan is admitting validity to Taiwan's argument as a disident portion of China against the cultural revolution and the communist state.
I'm aware of the Lineage phenomenon - does anyone have comparative numbers on north american users vs. asian? Lineage was a predominantly Korean MMO. In Lineage 2 are you playing on the same servers as other countries? Or do they run different servers per country?
Your point one makes no sense. They are making the ad and submitting it to NYT when it's done. This has nothing to do with the NYT's imaging. Generally speaking, even with a nice press - newsprint is considerably less resolution than say a glossy magazine. The ink tends to spread out more on newsprint. Odds are the rendering time has to do with translation of the postscript (vector) elements through a RIP (raster image processing) for output to a proofer. This can take quite a while for a significantly complex page.
I don't know if this ad is the way to go but I will say that the press FireFox has gotten has reached upper managemeent. Both the president of our publications division and the COO have asked me specifically about FireFox. The reason being? They saw an article saying it helps prevent spyware and popups. As just about anyone using a PC is aware to some degree of popups and spyware - often times aware and feeling powerless/clueless to handle the problem. They also realize that cleaning out spyware can be a drain on IT resources which equals money out the door. This awareness has helped me to begin to roll out FireFox on employees computers and given me the backing up to shoot down anyone who complains about missing Internet Explorer. (In all honesty that RARELY happens)
This just in!
Yet another MMORPG will have an update! As of a couple of days ago the juicy, new free with your monthly subscription fee content of City of Heroes Issue 3 has been preloaded on my hard drive!
Analysis suggests this 140MBish package will feature a new zone for levels 20-30, a crazy spooky ghost ship and a killer octopus!
New epic power pools allow your archetype to get powers not normally associated with its class!
Reached level 50? Then you can start all over again with your choice of whacky new space alien characters! That's right! Complete with strange new powers of transformation!
Also on the plate fabulous nerfs... err adjustments for the tanker and scrapper classes!
When will this madness be unleashed on Paragon City? Stay tuned and hold on to your capes true believers!
Uh. Users aren't ON Gamespy. Gamespy is a server browser. Another tool can find and connect to the same servers that Gamespy uses. I personally can't stand Gamespy. I REALLY hate games that bundle Gamespy - but it's the free version complete with ads. So I get to watch ads to play the game I spent $50 on. The problem I can see is if the embedded browsers using Gamespy stop working when it pulls Mac support.
This is a classic and now out of print fantasy game. As a kid I owned it and all the expansions. Sad to say its out of print and goes for an ungodly amount of money on Ebay. I'm especially saddened that Games Workshop has no intention of doing a new version - leaving my only options the $100+ used copies.
"Ask not what the GIMP can do for you, ask what you can do for the GIMP."
One of the companies I work with is a magazine publisher and while we use Photoshop in actual magazine production - we DO use the GIMP for Editorial or sales people that need to do basic image tasks. They ask for Photoshop, but budget wise it makes no sense. The biggest problem is when you tell them you are going to give them the GIMP they look at you pretty funny.
And yes I am sure there are photographer/coders who would be interested in helping the GIMP. That doesn't address the basic question of what someone would do with the GIMP when they have Photoshop IF they are not a developer wishing to get involved with an open source project. And I am honestly interested if there are particular things that the GIMP does better. I'm not trying to flame. The main reason not to have two tools that do the same job is because you get used to using one and your efficiency goes up. The Photoshop shortcuts and method of work are pretty hardwired into me after 10 years. As for the mustard vs. ketchup. They don't perform the same function. They are both condiments but of very different flavors. Even stating the low cost of the ketchup is kind of wrong. I mean open source may mean low cost but it doesn't necessarily mean low quality.
Well, if you are using Photoshop - what exactly would the benefit of installing GIMP be? I'm not that familiar with GIMP having been a user of Photoshop for over 10 years. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is the scripting support in GIMP. Although Photoshop does have a macro system (actions).
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Very true, I believe what used to be the "knows nothing about computers" group has now become the "knows just enough to be extremely dangerous" group.
Now when coming to help a friend with a computer problem, you can be assured he's tried everything he knows to fix it. Which usually results in all manner of uninstalled or broken drivers, weird configuration settings and if he's adventurous a thoroughly wanked registry! Ah, nothing like progress.
Let's keep in mind this is a game which people play as entertainment. In game items or the island in this case have entertainment value. So you buy the island and people want to rent land off of you for whatever reason. Maybe they want to mine it or maybe they want a nice hunting ground or maybe they want to setup a house. Whatever reason, it gives them value so they pay you as the island owner to use it.
In this game you can then take that in game money and convert it over to real world cash if you so choose. You can see the exchange rate on the site - 1 real world dollar = 10 in game dollars.
First off Real's "hack" was not Apple endorsed. They wanted an inroad into Apple's installed base of hardware for their DRM music product. That's pretty easy to understand.
Apple is in no way wrong to close them out. Since they are competing in the same market space as Real - it only makes business sense that they would.
So is this good? Well for the consumer it means LESS choice. Less choice is not good. While this is the obvious business move by Apple, that doesn't make it better for the consumer.
Apple and any other music player manufacturer has no incentive to block usage of mp3 or ogg or other non-DRM format. These formats are not tied to online sales of songs and pose no threat.
On the otherhand if Apple had support for DRM laden WMA, Real or other formats - that would represent a possibility that an individual would not spend his music dollar at the iTunes store. Hence the greater choice to the consumer directly translates to lack of revenue for Apple. The only way Apple is going to want another service's music to be playable on the iPod is via licensing agreements which equal cash in Apple's pocket.
In a nutshell what Apple has done is logical and sound business practice given the current market for online music. However, this is no way means that it is a benefit to consumers who lose functionality in their iPod.
That being said.. does anyone actually buy music online from Real?
Project Entropia is not a standard model MMO. There is no monthly fee. You exchange your real world money for in game money. You can make in game money via crafting, trading, killing etc. You can also exchange you in game money for real world money. No need to e-bay stuff.
If he rents space out for in game cash that would ultimately translate into real world cash.
Will he make his money back? I have no idea but the game supports a structure where he could.
"who hasn't seen one of these games--known as first-person shooters--here's the gist of them. You're placed in a combat zone, armed with a weapon of your choice, and sent out to find and kill other players. Knife them, club them, blow them apart with a shotgun, set them afire, vaporize them with a shoulder-launched missile, drill them through the head with a sniper rifle--the choice is yours. Depending on the game, blood will spray, mist or spout. Sometimes your kills collapse in crumpled heaps, clutching their throats and twitching convincingly. Sometimes they cry in pain with human voices. Their bodies lay there for a while so you can feed off them if necessary, restoring your own health. Then you can grab their weapons and set off to find another victim, assuming you don't get killed first."
Wheeee! Never mind that maybe its the SPORT of the GAME that keeps us playing rather than the screaming human voices, blood and ragdoll physics bah-blasting people to ba-bits.
But what I would really like to know is what soldiers in Iraq would think of this caption:
"Budda-budda-zing. The Army's combat game is so lifelike that the Defense Department is using it to test new weapons systems."
I don't think you can call it lifelike unless the person in the seat next to you has his head explode when he gets fragged.
Dust... Screen... Dude.
Errr.
Dust... Screen... RMA.
Sure it could! Just slap the 4400mAh battery on there! Might be a little heavy, but all the power you would need. Besides the heaviness will make it feel like a solid well constructed product. Not to mention since you won't be able to hold it for 4 hours, your actual battery life will be even longer!
Well then, will someone PLEASE inform the sales force I support? I absolutely HATE Palm's hotsync and would really love to never see it again. Ever.
I once worked for a company where the insane CEO (dotcom era) decided to get serious about security by requiring daily password changes.
The cool thing was that they never implemented any restriction on what the passwords could be.
I think the most common passwords that resulted were Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday etc.
I never really understood why "Native American" was considered a PC term.
I mean it wasn't America until the West made it America.
I ended up getting an Asus MyPal A716. From the research I did, the graphics performance is very good. The dpad works well. Perhaps the biggest issue is that you only have 2 buttons plus the dpad click that you can really use for in game buttons. The other 2 can be used for select and start or similar functions.
This model has built in 802.11b and bluetooth - but I haven't had a chance to test the bluetooth.
I find it reasonably comfortable for use gaming but the GB form factors are clearly superior (although I would argue the original GBA was more comfortable than the SP version).
It works well enough that my son constantly wants to use it to play.
Nope - it sure isn't. I spent way to much on a Pocket PC PDA and I admit one of the primary reasons was retro gaming. I own GBs and GBAs (yes - multiple) but I hate having to carry around multiple small cartridges which can be easily lost.
My PocketPC handles NES, GB, GBC, PC Engine, Sega Master system, Game Gear, Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Spectrum and Apple 2 games as well as some SNES and Genesis (not as well). There is also GBA emulation but its not very good.
The great thing - aside from the nostalgia, is that a lot of these older games are perfect for quick pickup play. Most emulators support memory saves as well - meaning you can put it down at a moments notice even if you are close to getting that high score.
You can fit a hell of a lot of games on a 512MB SD card and Compact Flash drives go up to 4GB if you need more storage.
The added bonuses aside from the usual PDA features are that it plays both audio and video. You get mp3, ogm, avi and mpg playback.
There are also excellent native Pocket PC games including ports of Age of Empires, Warlords 2 and Ultima Underworld. RTS, RPG even FPS games are available.
So yeah its expensive, but it is a hell of a toy if you can justify the cost.
If you have a model with bluetooth and or 802.11b its great for ssh or terminal services too.
My biggest complaint is that someone needs to come out with a gaming oriented model, so we can get a decent button layout. One of the main considerations in my purchase was the dpad and button setup.
Yes you hook up your PS2 and play some HL2... oh wait.
This article is aimed at people who want to play a specific Windows game on a different OS.
We all know that consoles play games made for them just fine. We all know that its easier to put a PS2 disk in and turn it on then it is to install a computer game - even a Windows one!
Inspite of how much it may suck, there is a small niche for people who want to run some games on Linux versus running a dual boot setup, having a windows box OR playing console games. This article and the Cedega product is aimed at that niche.
My understanding is that the Nvidia 5xxxFX line runs the direct X 8.1 path in half life 2. This is mostly due to these cards being too slow at running the DX 9 path with 32bit precision (Nvidia cards do not support 24bit precision).
There is a hack for running the FX series at 16bit precision on the DX 9 path which supposedly gives much better performance in HL2.
Dropping the DX lvl to 8 or 7 will definately speed things up at the expense of some graphical niceties.
Um. This has nothing to do with American style PC culture.
The Chinese and the Taiwanese are not the same as two different countries. They both share a cultural heritage going back thousands of years. Many Taiwanese even believe that integration is inevitable. This is more like an argument between family members. Taiwan - to mainland China - is their disident brethren. China to Taiwan are the masses that have the wrong idea.
China cannot in its view "recognize" Taiwan, because that gives credence to the political views of Taiwan and implys that maybe there is something wrong with mainland China.
As for India and Pakistan - well you can thank the British for that. When the land was chopped up Kashmir happened to go to India because the regional head of government was Indian (Hindu or something) inspite of the fact that the majority of the population was muslim. The true beauty of it is that the region is not some stellar economic prize. Just a harsh mountainous place.
As for the Kurds - they are people without a home. It's not just Turkey that hates them. They don't have land, they don't have a country. They do have a unique cultural identity. There is no Kurdistan and noone wants to give them one.
Sure it would be nice to simplify everything and say "why don't you all grow up" - but you don't have any real understanding of why these issues are ingrained in their respective cultures.
Hell, if AK-47s were as common and cheap as in much of the middle east - even Star Wars vs. Star Trek might get a little heated.
I don't mean to be a flamebait - but Israel (at least the part that wasn't claimed through the resulting wars) was given based on previous "ownership" to the Jews. Inspite of the fact that other cultures occupied the land.
I can't say the results have been that great. It's pretty much at the center of the division between the arab world and the west.
The same wonderful type of real estate planning caused the conflict with possesion of Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
Ah nothing like the break up of the English empire...
The interesting thing about Taiwan is that they consider themselves (obviously rightfully so) Chinese. It's the case of having a many thousand year cultural connection versus a political difference occuring in a much shorter time span.
Thus to the mainland Chinese, recognizing Taiwan is admitting validity to Taiwan's argument as a disident portion of China against the cultural revolution and the communist state.
I'm aware of the Lineage phenomenon - does anyone have comparative numbers on north american users vs. asian?
Lineage was a predominantly Korean MMO. In Lineage 2 are you playing on the same servers as other countries? Or do they run different servers per country?
Your point one makes no sense. They are making the ad and submitting it to NYT when it's done. This has nothing to do with the NYT's imaging.
Generally speaking, even with a nice press - newsprint is considerably less resolution than say a glossy magazine. The ink tends to spread out more on newsprint.
Odds are the rendering time has to do with translation of the postscript (vector) elements through a RIP (raster image processing) for output to a proofer. This can take quite a while for a significantly complex page.
I don't know if this ad is the way to go but I will say that the press FireFox has gotten has reached upper managemeent. Both the president of our publications division and the COO have asked me specifically about FireFox. The reason being? They saw an article saying it helps prevent spyware and popups. As just about anyone using a PC is aware to some degree of popups and spyware - often times aware and feeling powerless/clueless to handle the problem.
They also realize that cleaning out spyware can be a drain on IT resources which equals money out the door.
This awareness has helped me to begin to roll out FireFox on employees computers and given me the backing up to shoot down anyone who complains about missing Internet Explorer. (In all honesty that RARELY happens)
Sssssssssssh! I'm giving everyone I know FireFox for Christmas! Don't let them know it's free! They'll all think I'm a cheap ass!
Yet another MMORPG will have an update! As of a couple of days ago the juicy, new free with your monthly subscription fee content of City of Heroes Issue 3 has been preloaded on my hard drive!
Analysis suggests this 140MBish package will feature a new zone for levels 20-30, a crazy spooky ghost ship and a killer octopus!
New epic power pools allow your archetype to get powers not normally associated with its class!
Reached level 50? Then you can start all over again with your choice of whacky new space alien characters! That's right! Complete with strange new powers of transformation!
Also on the plate fabulous nerfs... err adjustments for the tanker and scrapper classes! When will this madness be unleashed on Paragon City? Stay tuned and hold on to your capes true believers!
oh crap i'm gonna get sued for that last line
Uh. Users aren't ON Gamespy. Gamespy is a server browser. Another tool can find and connect to the same servers that Gamespy uses.
I personally can't stand Gamespy. I REALLY hate games that bundle Gamespy - but it's the free version complete with ads. So I get to watch ads to play the game I spent $50 on.
The problem I can see is if the embedded browsers using Gamespy stop working when it pulls Mac support.
This is a classic and now out of print fantasy game. As a kid I owned it and all the expansions. Sad to say its out of print and goes for an ungodly amount of money on Ebay.
I'm especially saddened that Games Workshop has no intention of doing a new version - leaving my only options the $100+ used copies.
You can find more information here:
Talisman board game
"Ask not what the GIMP can do for you, ask what you can do for the GIMP."
One of the companies I work with is a magazine publisher and while we use Photoshop in actual magazine production - we DO use the GIMP for Editorial or sales people that need to do basic image tasks. They ask for Photoshop, but budget wise it makes no sense. The biggest problem is when you tell them you are going to give them the GIMP they look at you pretty funny.
And yes I am sure there are photographer/coders who would be interested in helping the GIMP. That doesn't address the basic question of what someone would do with the GIMP when they have Photoshop IF they are not a developer wishing to get involved with an open source project. And I am honestly interested if there are particular things that the GIMP does better. I'm not trying to flame.
The main reason not to have two tools that do the same job is because you get used to using one and your efficiency goes up. The Photoshop shortcuts and method of work are pretty hardwired into me after 10 years.
As for the mustard vs. ketchup. They don't perform the same function. They are both condiments but of very different flavors. Even stating the low cost of the ketchup is kind of wrong. I mean open source may mean low cost but it doesn't necessarily mean low quality.
Well, if you are using Photoshop - what exactly would the benefit of installing GIMP be?
I'm not that familiar with GIMP having been a user of Photoshop for over 10 years. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is the scripting support in GIMP. Although Photoshop does have a macro system (actions).