I cannot believe you had the... what's the brit word for it... bollocks? whatever, to compare Packard Bell to Apple for hardware.
You've just compared a Dodge Neon (with a turbo stuffed in it!!11!1) to a Corvette. Yeah some of the numbers are the same, but you've still got a rolling turd.
Seriously, spec out a Dell XPS with the same stuff that's in the Apple and you have a real comparison... and very similar price.
And also, you can't compare a 22" screen to a 24", as the price jump between those two sizes is significant (assuming you choose reasonable quality).
Long stints of programming (or dare I say, WoW play... hours upon hours upon hours) absolutely causes forearm and wrist pain/tingling for me.
So, pardon the low intellect phrase, but "DUH!". WTF. It clearly does. Those who don't use computer nonstop rarely suddenly develop such pains, but those of us who do often do.
File this under "Contrarians because it's the _in_ thing to be."
Yes, it must be particularly embarrassing to be Microsoft with such a "superior" platform, but yet still be trounced by something so old and technologically unsophisticated.
Hello Microsoft, I have a clue for you...
It's worth also noting that playing cards are still very popular, and they're rather low-tech too! Plus, despite being very cheap, I don't think they're sold a loss. Hehe.
So this is all great, but please argue how having three clear color dots with different meanings, but no visible difference on the window is user friendly? Oh yes, I can hover to see the symbol appear, but that's absolute junior level candy.
And when I want to make a window wider from the left side, what do I have to do? If memory serves me, I can hold a special key down and then drag the left side (without a pointer symbol to suggest so).
How about having to actually open Finder and sift thru dozens and dozens of files and folders under Applications just to find an app. It's almost like they forgot to put some sort of app-finder thingy. Oh sure, I can drag them to my quick bar, but maybe I don't want them there because I so rarely use them.
As someone who lives on both OS X AND XP (and has lived alongside with KDE and Gnome to a lesser degree), I must say that they all have bonuses and weakenesses.
XP window behavior and decorations "just work", and are clearly labeled, and don't require using two hands to operate.
OS X has expose, which can be handy. OS X, to some degree (and KDE as well) have dialog prompts with verbs on the buttons. Anyone can do this and everyone should. Yes/No Ok/Cancel should die.
Vista's app launcher start button thingy does seem an improvement over all the rest.
Whether the measurements are accurate or practical, one must note that Symantec has an interest in seeing people continue to use IE because, historically, IE users are more likely to get viruses.
More risk and more problems means Symantec has an easier time selling its services.
I won't go line by line to refute your wishful thinking post.
But you should consider that there are plenty of companies who live by their network and service availability and who are running vastly larger datacenters than Blizzard is.
5.5M users (or 6 or 6.5 or whatever they're up to now) pales in comparison to what many financial institutions support every day, or what payment processing companies support, or what trading and clearing companies support.
And the size of database that Blizzard supports is a joke to what telecom companies support, for example.
The simple fact is that Blizzard is not giving their network and server operations business the proper attention or resources.
Like they say on the WoW forums "come back when you're 60"... well, "come back when you've graduated college and managed your own datacenter".
Haha. How can my previous (parent) post be offtopic when, at least when I wrote it, the Blizzard WoW Forums were unavailable, so the post referred to by the submission was not readable?
Get real. +1 for the Blizzard fanboi who modded it offtopic./sarcasm
I know I'm on the forums often, and they've got problems often. Sometimes there's scheduled maintenance, often there's not.
For some unknown reason, Blizzard just does a poor job much of the time. If Blizzard were in the financial industry they'd be out of business already.
I can tell by the style of your post that you too miss posting on the WoW forums. I imagine it's hard to go more than an hour or two without an outlet for your "lern2play" and "crymorenoob" comments...
Sure, I've been there on maintenance day, and that's probably the worst it ever is.
Still thought, I'm baffled that on some days it's just rotten (or Login Server Down) when there's no obvious excuse. The forums weren't working right today before/.... why not?
It's not that simple. I spent time on servers where allies were most populous, and on servers where horde were most populous.
It's actually not fun to be on either side if the numbers are way out of whack. If you're in a huge majority, (and you like world PvP), you find little opportunity to have engaging, entertaining (challenging) PvP.
Likewise, if you're way outnumbered, you never get any good PvP because you're constantly being steamrolled. Personally I prefer this to being on the majority side though, because at least I'll have plenty of potential targets - the problem is just finding them in 1s or 2s.
Try to go to the forums and see the post and you're met with a blank, empty forum.
Of course this is because WoW forums have had problems all day, even before the/. post. I know because I'm fairly active there.
It's unfathomable how Blizzard manages to NOT be able to support even their forums. Granted they have a good number of users of the forums, but it's a fraction of their playerbase (a fair bit of which is non-English anyway, and wouldn't be on the US forums.)
Point is, Blizzard needs, and has needed to for a long time, fire their business CIO. Whoever is the top of the chain responsible for network, server, and forum performance and stability needs to be replaced by someone with real large-scale internet-service experience.
I still offer to pay $100 for an off-the-record, name-never-to-be-published full detailing of Blizzard's network and operations systems. I'd like to know if it's simply a problem of demanding too much from too few resources, if it's ineptitude on the part of admins, or if it's full-blown poor architectural design.
Just goes to show how screwed up the puritanical US view (at least of those in power) on media is. It's ok for a youngster to see graphic violence, but god help 'em if they see tits! (And frankly, those are some of the poorest 3d representations of tits I can recall seeing.)
Sex and attraction to physical attributes of people is natural (it's part of human survival). At least amongst thinking people, violence is NOT required for human survival. But yet, it's cool to watch someone get their ass kicked, but it's totally unreasonable to depict a naked human form.
I could rant for hours about this. I think the ratings nazis just need a good fuck, personally. Then maybe they could relax and enjoy natural life. I know I enjoy it:)
WoW has had "issues" since hour one when it went public. Right now their troubles may indeed be their "provider" (just one? they have that much money riding on just one provider?), but in the past they've had plenty of issues of their own creation.
If we could see inside Blizzard I think we'd find a company that knows how to make good games, but one that doesn't have a good record at making good management decisions on how to run them.
There's little point in me going into great detail about the many mistakes and poor decisions they've made, but I can say that if they were a financial institution we wouldn't be discussing this. Finance seems to have this understanding that time is money. Somehow Blizzard hasn't quite caught on that 5.5 million subscribers might eventually go away, especially if they get frustrated enough with the downtime/lag. Sure, there's not much place for those gamers to go, but this may not be true in 1-3 years.
Excuse me for being anal, but this does not specifically include gold. It states that players may not make property claims (because Blizzard owns everything), but gold sellers are not claiming property ownership. They are selling access to gold.
The proof is in the enforcement though (or lack thereof). If Blizzard had a real issue with the sale of earned gold, it would already have made eBay cease to allow the sale of gold. Lastly, Blizzard has made additional official statements about this topic where they specifically mentioned that illegitimately-acquired gold (from exploiting bugs or using bots/macros) would be confiscated from any account that it had been passed to.
So from the lack of specific inclusion of the word "gold" or "money" in the ToS, and from the total lack of enforcement of a perceived ban on the practice of gold sales, I take that to mean that there is no such policy.
There is nothing in the terms of service that says that earned gold cannot be sold to other players. If you believe otherwise, please quote the relavent section of ToS.
Now, accounts that sell gold that was earned from hacks or exploits, yes those can be (and do get) banned. That is why Blizzard warned on the forums that if you buy gold from a source that stole it (by gaining access to another's account) or earned it from expliots, then that gold will be removed from your account (or the items purchased with it).
I do wonder about this. I actually think most of the people who buy the overpriced junk are actually alternate characters of players who already have established (reasonably wealthy) 60s. They start a new character, and they can afford to pay 1g for a level 20 robe.
Seriously I doubt that he makes much money doing this disservice, but I could be wrong. Much of the stuff I see overpriced are items that really no smart player would wear anyway.
You're right though, people who buy gold are more able to overpay and are less likely to care, so they contribute to the problem. But all this really leads to the issue of how WoW's economic simulation is poor. I'm not an economist, and my command of their vocabulary is poor, but there's some name for an economic system where the money supply grows and grows (leading to inflation) and there's nothing to suck things out. Since equipment doesn't ever permanently wear out, the only way gear ever goes away is by becoming soulbound (worn or equipped), and then discarded as a player outgrows it. But the rate of that compared to the rate of influx of found equipment is way out of whack.
If I were making an MMORPG I'd completely drop the focus on gear though. Ultima Online was vastly less focused on equipment than more recent games have been. As a GrandMaster Swordsman you would typically choose between buying a GM-smith-made katana or halberd (you'd buy both to cover different situations). Here every piece of gear has some fancy name, such that there must be 10s of thousands of items in the WoW item database. Everyone just becomes desensitized. Ultimately it's not the gear that makes the game, it's the areas, the mobs, the quests, and the AI. The gear is just candy or icing, and yet that's what most people totally focus on.
I could rant for hours, but I will spare the readers:)
I sell under market too. I like being essentially guaranteed a sale.
The problem is that if you price it more "fairly" (what you think it's worth) and there's a big discrepency between your price and the AHbot's price, the AHbot will just buy it up and reprice it quickly.
I think they could put some control on the AH so that no one player could post more than X auctions within a certain period (like say no more than 20 auctions per hour per character). I don't mind arbitrage, but this is just cornering a market.
I'll watch it. Many people I know will watch it. It's a fascinating (and hopefully accurate) look at how the CGFs work. I'll bet there are many preconceived notions that will be demonstrated to not be correct, and there likely will be some surprises.
There was an article in the past that gave some insight into the gold farming business, and I recall it created quite a lot of discussion. Seems to me that means people find it interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
I cannot believe you had the... what's the brit word for it... bollocks? whatever, to compare Packard Bell to Apple for hardware.
You've just compared a Dodge Neon (with a turbo stuffed in it!!11!1) to a Corvette. Yeah some of the numbers are the same, but you've still got a rolling turd.
Seriously, spec out a Dell XPS with the same stuff that's in the Apple and you have a real comparison... and very similar price.
And also, you can't compare a 22" screen to a 24", as the price jump between those two sizes is significant (assuming you choose reasonable quality).
A few hundred thousand complete pulls of their site should make for interesting log reading and letter writing!
It certainly does for me.
Long stints of programming (or dare I say, WoW play... hours upon hours upon hours) absolutely causes forearm and wrist pain/tingling for me.
So, pardon the low intellect phrase, but "DUH!". WTF. It clearly does. Those who don't use computer nonstop rarely suddenly develop such pains, but those of us who do often do.
File this under "Contrarians because it's the _in_ thing to be."
Where in my comment did I say that making money with ads was wrong? Someone's touchy?
It should be obvious that most free websites exist just as advertising delivery vehicles. In fact, that's the foundation of the new web.
Create a new free web architecture to hold user-submitted data, and stick ads on the site.
Yes, it must be particularly embarrassing to be Microsoft with such a "superior" platform, but yet still be trounced by something so old and technologically unsophisticated.
Hello Microsoft, I have a clue for you...
It's worth also noting that playing cards are still very popular, and they're rather low-tech too! Plus, despite being very cheap, I don't think they're sold a loss. Hehe.
So this is all great, but please argue how having three clear color dots with different meanings, but no visible difference on the window is user friendly? Oh yes, I can hover to see the symbol appear, but that's absolute junior level candy.
And when I want to make a window wider from the left side, what do I have to do? If memory serves me, I can hold a special key down and then drag the left side (without a pointer symbol to suggest so).
How about having to actually open Finder and sift thru dozens and dozens of files and folders under Applications just to find an app. It's almost like they forgot to put some sort of app-finder thingy. Oh sure, I can drag them to my quick bar, but maybe I don't want them there because I so rarely use them.
As someone who lives on both OS X AND XP (and has lived alongside with KDE and Gnome to a lesser degree), I must say that they all have bonuses and weakenesses.
XP window behavior and decorations "just work", and are clearly labeled, and don't require using two hands to operate.
OS X has expose, which can be handy. OS X, to some degree (and KDE as well) have dialog prompts with verbs on the buttons. Anyone can do this and everyone should. Yes/No Ok/Cancel should die.
Vista's app launcher start button thingy does seem an improvement over all the rest.
Whether the measurements are accurate or practical, one must note that Symantec has an interest in seeing people continue to use IE because, historically, IE users are more likely to get viruses.
More risk and more problems means Symantec has an easier time selling its services.
Several non-US MMORPGs have surpassed 6M. Do some research sometime. WoW is impressive only for its growth rate, not for it's total # subscribers.
I won't go line by line to refute your wishful thinking post.
But you should consider that there are plenty of companies who live by their network and service availability and who are running vastly larger datacenters than Blizzard is.
5.5M users (or 6 or 6.5 or whatever they're up to now) pales in comparison to what many financial institutions support every day, or what payment processing companies support, or what trading and clearing companies support.
And the size of database that Blizzard supports is a joke to what telecom companies support, for example.
The simple fact is that Blizzard is not giving their network and server operations business the proper attention or resources.
Like they say on the WoW forums "come back when you're 60"... well, "come back when you've graduated college and managed your own datacenter".
Haha. How can my previous (parent) post be offtopic when, at least when I wrote it, the Blizzard WoW Forums were unavailable, so the post referred to by the submission was not readable?
/sarcasm
Get real. +1 for the Blizzard fanboi who modded it offtopic.
I know I'm on the forums often, and they've got problems often. Sometimes there's scheduled maintenance, often there's not.
For some unknown reason, Blizzard just does a poor job much of the time. If Blizzard were in the financial industry they'd be out of business already.
I can tell by the style of your post that you too miss posting on the WoW forums. I imagine it's hard to go more than an hour or two without an outlet for your "lern2play" and "crymorenoob" comments...
Sure, I've been there on maintenance day, and that's probably the worst it ever is.
/.... why not?
Still thought, I'm baffled that on some days it's just rotten (or Login Server Down) when there's no obvious excuse. The forums weren't working right today before
It's not that simple. I spent time on servers where allies were most populous, and on servers where horde were most populous.
It's actually not fun to be on either side if the numbers are way out of whack. If you're in a huge majority, (and you like world PvP), you find little opportunity to have engaging, entertaining (challenging) PvP.
Likewise, if you're way outnumbered, you never get any good PvP because you're constantly being steamrolled. Personally I prefer this to being on the majority side though, because at least I'll have plenty of potential targets - the problem is just finding them in 1s or 2s.
Try to go to the forums and see the post and you're met with a blank, empty forum.
/. post. I know because I'm fairly active there.
Of course this is because WoW forums have had problems all day, even before the
It's unfathomable how Blizzard manages to NOT be able to support even their forums. Granted they have a good number of users of the forums, but it's a fraction of their playerbase (a fair bit of which is non-English anyway, and wouldn't be on the US forums.)
Point is, Blizzard needs, and has needed to for a long time, fire their business CIO. Whoever is the top of the chain responsible for network, server, and forum performance and stability needs to be replaced by someone with real large-scale internet-service experience.
I still offer to pay $100 for an off-the-record, name-never-to-be-published full detailing of Blizzard's network and operations systems. I'd like to know if it's simply a problem of demanding too much from too few resources, if it's ineptitude on the part of admins, or if it's full-blown poor architectural design.
Just goes to show how screwed up the puritanical US view (at least of those in power) on media is. It's ok for a youngster to see graphic violence, but god help 'em if they see tits! (And frankly, those are some of the poorest 3d representations of tits I can recall seeing.)
:)
Sex and attraction to physical attributes of people is natural (it's part of human survival). At least amongst thinking people, violence is NOT required for human survival. But yet, it's cool to watch someone get their ass kicked, but it's totally unreasonable to depict a naked human form.
I could rant for hours about this. I think the ratings nazis just need a good fuck, personally. Then maybe they could relax and enjoy natural life. I know I enjoy it
Some companies like people with certs. Some don't.
Some companies like people with advanced degrees. Some don't.
Some companies like people in suits. Some don't.
Do what you want, be how you want, and network. That's how you get a job (and more likely how you get one that you'll fit into).
snuf23, please contact me at blunte@gmail.com. I've got some Hawaii questions :)
Thanks!
What asshat mod marked my parent as "troll"?
"Thank you Blizzard, may I have another?", says the fanboi moderator.
WoW has had "issues" since hour one when it went public. Right now their troubles may indeed be their "provider" (just one? they have that much money riding on just one provider?), but in the past they've had plenty of issues of their own creation.
If we could see inside Blizzard I think we'd find a company that knows how to make good games, but one that doesn't have a good record at making good management decisions on how to run them.
There's little point in me going into great detail about the many mistakes and poor decisions they've made, but I can say that if they were a financial institution we wouldn't be discussing this. Finance seems to have this understanding that time is money. Somehow Blizzard hasn't quite caught on that 5.5 million subscribers might eventually go away, especially if they get frustrated enough with the downtime/lag. Sure, there's not much place for those gamers to go, but this may not be true in 1-3 years.
Excuse me for being anal, but this does not specifically include gold. It states that players may not make property claims (because Blizzard owns everything), but gold sellers are not claiming property ownership. They are selling access to gold.
The proof is in the enforcement though (or lack thereof). If Blizzard had a real issue with the sale of earned gold, it would already have made eBay cease to allow the sale of gold. Lastly, Blizzard has made additional official statements about this topic where they specifically mentioned that illegitimately-acquired gold (from exploiting bugs or using bots/macros) would be confiscated from any account that it had been passed to.
So from the lack of specific inclusion of the word "gold" or "money" in the ToS, and from the total lack of enforcement of a perceived ban on the practice of gold sales, I take that to mean that there is no such policy.
There is nothing in the terms of service that says that earned gold cannot be sold to other players. If you believe otherwise, please quote the relavent section of ToS.
Now, accounts that sell gold that was earned from hacks or exploits, yes those can be (and do get) banned. That is why Blizzard warned on the forums that if you buy gold from a source that stole it (by gaining access to another's account) or earned it from expliots, then that gold will be removed from your account (or the items purchased with it).
Legitimately earned gold can be sold.
I do wonder about this. I actually think most of the people who buy the overpriced junk are actually alternate characters of players who already have established (reasonably wealthy) 60s. They start a new character, and they can afford to pay 1g for a level 20 robe.
:)
Seriously I doubt that he makes much money doing this disservice, but I could be wrong. Much of the stuff I see overpriced are items that really no smart player would wear anyway.
You're right though, people who buy gold are more able to overpay and are less likely to care, so they contribute to the problem. But all this really leads to the issue of how WoW's economic simulation is poor. I'm not an economist, and my command of their vocabulary is poor, but there's some name for an economic system where the money supply grows and grows (leading to inflation) and there's nothing to suck things out. Since equipment doesn't ever permanently wear out, the only way gear ever goes away is by becoming soulbound (worn or equipped), and then discarded as a player outgrows it. But the rate of that compared to the rate of influx of found equipment is way out of whack.
If I were making an MMORPG I'd completely drop the focus on gear though. Ultima Online was vastly less focused on equipment than more recent games have been. As a GrandMaster Swordsman you would typically choose between buying a GM-smith-made katana or halberd (you'd buy both to cover different situations). Here every piece of gear has some fancy name, such that there must be 10s of thousands of items in the WoW item database. Everyone just becomes desensitized. Ultimately it's not the gear that makes the game, it's the areas, the mobs, the quests, and the AI. The gear is just candy or icing, and yet that's what most people totally focus on.
I could rant for hours, but I will spare the readers
I sell under market too. I like being essentially guaranteed a sale.
The problem is that if you price it more "fairly" (what you think it's worth) and there's a big discrepency between your price and the AHbot's price, the AHbot will just buy it up and reprice it quickly.
I think they could put some control on the AH so that no one player could post more than X auctions within a certain period (like say no more than 20 auctions per hour per character). I don't mind arbitrage, but this is just cornering a market.
I'll watch it. Many people I know will watch it. It's a fascinating (and hopefully accurate) look at how the CGFs work. I'll bet there are many preconceived notions that will be demonstrated to not be correct, and there likely will be some surprises.
There was an article in the past that gave some insight into the gold farming business, and I recall it created quite a lot of discussion. Seems to me that means people find it interesting.