Doctors, lawyers and teachers don't build things. Engineers do and often have to pick up the past work of others. Ask a carpenter, plumber or electrician what they think of other people's past work. You'll find similar calls of idiocy.
The entire game is not capped. It's been that way since beta started. The framerate cap variables have also been published from shortly after the beta came out.
Why Blizzard doesn't cap their games at 60fps (or hell 120fps if they think 60 is too low for some reason) I don't know. There's really no reason to render frames faster than that, even if you can.
"I'm somewhat curious about why we got mentioned myself. I mean, I know us Canadians love any acknowledgment that the rest of the world remembers we exist above the states but really? Is it because we're stereotypically cold?"
It's because TFA was posted on a Canadian news website.
Same applies to the anti-GM-food people who try to get the public into a panic by suggesting that GM food will make them sick or whatever, when the true agenda of the people who started the anti-GM movement is simply a far-left anti-corporate one. The misinformation they spread about GM foods is just as bad, if not worse, than the lack of information about which products are and aren't genetically modified.
That said, Monsanto is a bunch of assholes because they sue farmers for doing what farmers are supposed to do.
Some people who are anti-GM are really just anti-Monsanto, because let's face it, a majority of GM crops come from Monsanto. Monsanto has destroyed family farming, destroyed everything that farmers have worked for forever, and replaced it with corporate farming under threat of lawsuits. I want to support sustainability in local farming where farmers can keep their seeds without the threat of being sued by Monsanto. I'm not against GM crops, I'm against GM crop lawsuits by the likes of Monsanto.
"They just don't seem to enjoy it the way they did in Boxer's day. So maybe these camps are killing things."
Boxer was making $300k/year at the time playing SC. I'm sure he enjoyed that quite a bit. Don't be fooled, the top Korean players in SC make a ton of money from sponsorships. That's why people go to these camps.
"Without F/E/V I feel like I'm subject to somebody's vision of "clean minimalist design" where they thought they knew what was best for the user. For cryin' out loud, if I wanted to use a Mac I'd already be using one."
FWIW, the Mac version of Chrome *does* have File/Edit/View still in the menubar (working as expected), and does not hide http:/// or in any other way mangle your copying of urls.
" Blizzard pledged "never again" but somehow I doubt that they'll stick to that pledge if it threatens them with any real opportunity costs."
You're overreacting. Blizz did stick to this pledge and there is nothing to point to the fact that they won't here. My Mac client patched just fine, so did a friend's. Do they have bugs to iron out in the mac client? Sure, but patching issues aren't a huge deal. They have 3 months to fix them. There were patching issues in the Windows client earlier as well, these got sorted out. I see nothing in the Mac beta that makes me think they won't reach launch on time.
"and reading the beta forums one is left with impression that there are still severe balance issues between races."
People tend to shout "imba" when they lose and can't figure out a proper counter. The problem with balancing a game like SC is that so much of the actual game balance comes out in the metagame, and this takes time. SC:BW hasn't been changed in, what, 7 years? And yet the way the game is played today is totally different than 7 years ago. What was once thought was OP is now not a big deal, people figured out how to stop it. If you keep mucking with units and balance, you never have the opportunity to see if the player base will "learn" how to counter challenges on its own.
John almost bit it at the end as well, though not because of power. I watched it live on this web stream. With about 500k left he took a bathroom break. He had racked up a ton of free ships, so it wasn't a big deal. Or, it didn't *seem* like a big deal. Having sacrificed maybe 10 ships on the bathroom break, he came back and was not on his game. He kept dying to little errors. When he was 300k from the record, about 58 hours into his play session, he was down to only two ships left. It was fairly tense in the chat room as the speed at which he was losing ships was faster than him getting free ones (you get a free ship every 10k). It looked very possible that he may end up losing this game right at the end and not reaching the record.
Thankfully at that point he went on a tear, racked up another 5 or 6 ships and kept it at about that for the rest of the game. As soon as he passed the mark he was done. Killed a few asteroids but basically just let it kill him until game over.
One interview actually got ended when the interviewer told me that I was a fossil and too behind the times to be part of their company because I didn't have accounts.
Whether you know it or not, this person did you a favor.
"For every used game sold, the game editor gets ZERO."
They already got their money, on the original sale. They have no right to any other money because they no longer own the item in question. Don't like that? Then don't deal in tangible/tradable goods. This of course is why game companies love downloadable sales. They can cut out used games when everything is virtualized.
I'm in no way a supporter of Flash, but how is this any different than anything else in the browser with a:hover state? With the advent of HTML5 and the Canvas element, which does work on the iPad et al, you're going to run into the same issues if you program them the same way. Now I get his concern that Flash devs would have to rewrite a lot of their already written stuff to work on the iPad if it allowed Flash, but I fail to see how this is any different from the multitude of websites that use hover drop downs for navigation and the like.
The point that we shouldn't be relying on hover states because of the push towards touch devices is a good one but it's not an exclusive problem to Flash. The reason Flash shouldn't be on the iPad, etc, is because it's a horrible bloated and proprietary plugin, and Canvas, HTML5 video, etc can do the same thing. Flash is now a dead end technology. It's only a matter of time before it's phased out altogether.
Actually, I'm not sure I mind the term "pre-owned" as it implies previous ownership, something Sony seems to want to ignore. If I "own" something, it's within my rights to sell it as I see fit. Sony no longer has a claim on it, and yet they still seem to want to claim it as theirs.
Re:Still not quite sure why twitter is necessary
on
Two Scoops of Buzz
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· Score: 1
There's been talk about trying to open up the silos represented by these applications.
This is exactly the long range plan of Buzz. They are trying to open it up so that someday in the future, it won't matter where your social profile is stored, if things are open enough, everything can interconnect. People who think that Buzz is just another Facebook or Twitter are missing the bigger picture they're trying to build here. See:
You can make Buzz a billion times better than twitter and implement new features, but if the iPhone holds a reasonable market share, and the iPhone doesn't let you update it, it's not likely to take off.
I'm not sure what you're talking about, iPhone integration was built into Buzz from day 1. In fact it's better than normal Buzz because if you let it use your geolocation you can see other buzzes near your current vicinity on Google maps.
I can see people having fun with board games on the iPad but I'm not sure it really trumps a real board game. Most board games aren't overly expensive as it is.
But what I do think the iPad could be really good at is custom audio controller interfaces. More and more of these interfaces are starting to show up on computers, but much of the mouse/keyboard input doesn't really match the real life use of tweaking knobs and levers. Multi-touch on a larger screen is a much better translation of this, and given how much physical audio controllers can cost, a few software reproductions of them could end up being a cost benefit for users.
"And you can't write videogames in HTML5. Flash will be around for a while."
HTML5 is not just the video tag (as much as people seem to think it is). It also includes things like the canvas element, that, when combined with JS, can certainly make games possible. There really is little reason to use Flash at all anymore.
First, any math class can be useful to programmers. I went full double major CS and Mathematics and found all my classes useful. Set Theory perhaps is the most closely related to CS, but all of them can have value depending on what you get into after your studies. Also, whether one is "harder" should not make a difference. If anything it should make you want to take it more. Exercise your brain in all different ways, it will benefit you in the end regardless.
"idiot driver should be prosecuted since everyone knows the third light from the top is regular green and not a turn signal"
What happens if the stop light is horizontal? The summary mentions WI, which allows horizontal traffic lights. Someone coming from a state like MN (which only has vertical lights) could easily be confused by this.
Slashdot Mirror
Doctors, lawyers and teachers don't build things. Engineers do and often have to pick up the past work of others. Ask a carpenter, plumber or electrician what they think of other people's past work. You'll find similar calls of idiocy.
"At times, his average play session would persist for over 11 hours, crippling his life and ability to function."
Actually it's not "at times" it was all the time. 11 hours every single day for 5 years = 20,000 hours.
The entire game is not capped. It's been that way since beta started. The framerate cap variables have also been published from shortly after the beta came out.
Why Blizzard doesn't cap their games at 60fps (or hell 120fps if they think 60 is too low for some reason) I don't know. There's really no reason to render frames faster than that, even if you can.
"I'm somewhat curious about why we got mentioned myself. I mean, I know us Canadians love any acknowledgment that the rest of the world remembers we exist above the states but really? Is it because we're stereotypically cold?"
It's because TFA was posted on a Canadian news website.
Some people who are anti-GM are really just anti-Monsanto, because let's face it, a majority of GM crops come from Monsanto. Monsanto has destroyed family farming, destroyed everything that farmers have worked for forever, and replaced it with corporate farming under threat of lawsuits. I want to support sustainability in local farming where farmers can keep their seeds without the threat of being sued by Monsanto. I'm not against GM crops, I'm against GM crop lawsuits by the likes of Monsanto.
"Everyone who has accomplished more than me in a game has no life. Everyone who has accomplished less is a noob."
"They just don't seem to enjoy it the way they did in Boxer's day. So maybe these camps are killing things."
Boxer was making $300k/year at the time playing SC. I'm sure he enjoyed that quite a bit. Don't be fooled, the top Korean players in SC make a ton of money from sponsorships. That's why people go to these camps.
"Without F/E/V I feel like I'm subject to somebody's vision of "clean minimalist design" where they thought they knew what was best for the user. For cryin' out loud, if I wanted to use a Mac I'd already be using one."
FWIW, the Mac version of Chrome *does* have File/Edit/View still in the menubar (working as expected), and does not hide http:/// or in any other way mangle your copying of urls.
Google makes an extension to do this in gDocs for just this purpose.
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nnbmlagghjjcbdhgmkedmbmedengocbn
" Blizzard pledged "never again" but somehow I doubt that they'll stick to that pledge if it threatens them with any real opportunity costs."
You're overreacting. Blizz did stick to this pledge and there is nothing to point to the fact that they won't here. My Mac client patched just fine, so did a friend's. Do they have bugs to iron out in the mac client? Sure, but patching issues aren't a huge deal. They have 3 months to fix them. There were patching issues in the Windows client earlier as well, these got sorted out. I see nothing in the Mac beta that makes me think they won't reach launch on time.
"and reading the beta forums one is left with impression that there are still severe balance issues between races."
People tend to shout "imba" when they lose and can't figure out a proper counter. The problem with balancing a game like SC is that so much of the actual game balance comes out in the metagame, and this takes time. SC:BW hasn't been changed in, what, 7 years? And yet the way the game is played today is totally different than 7 years ago. What was once thought was OP is now not a big deal, people figured out how to stop it. If you keep mucking with units and balance, you never have the opportunity to see if the player base will "learn" how to counter challenges on its own.
John almost bit it at the end as well, though not because of power. I watched it live on this web stream. With about 500k left he took a bathroom break. He had racked up a ton of free ships, so it wasn't a big deal. Or, it didn't *seem* like a big deal. Having sacrificed maybe 10 ships on the bathroom break, he came back and was not on his game. He kept dying to little errors. When he was 300k from the record, about 58 hours into his play session, he was down to only two ships left. It was fairly tense in the chat room as the speed at which he was losing ships was faster than him getting free ones (you get a free ship every 10k). It looked very possible that he may end up losing this game right at the end and not reaching the record.
Thankfully at that point he went on a tear, racked up another 5 or 6 ships and kept it at about that for the rest of the game. As soon as he passed the mark he was done. Killed a few asteroids but basically just let it kill him until game over.
Whether you know it or not, this person did you a favor.
As a ham, the FCC already has all my information. So for me personally, it's not that big of a deal.
"For every used game sold, the game editor gets ZERO."
They already got their money, on the original sale. They have no right to any other money because they no longer own the item in question. Don't like that? Then don't deal in tangible/tradable goods. This of course is why game companies love downloadable sales. They can cut out used games when everything is virtualized.
I'm in no way a supporter of Flash, but how is this any different than anything else in the browser with a :hover state? With the advent of HTML5 and the Canvas element, which does work on the iPad et al, you're going to run into the same issues if you program them the same way. Now I get his concern that Flash devs would have to rewrite a lot of their already written stuff to work on the iPad if it allowed Flash, but I fail to see how this is any different from the multitude of websites that use hover drop downs for navigation and the like.
The point that we shouldn't be relying on hover states because of the push towards touch devices is a good one but it's not an exclusive problem to Flash. The reason Flash shouldn't be on the iPad, etc, is because it's a horrible bloated and proprietary plugin, and Canvas, HTML5 video, etc can do the same thing. Flash is now a dead end technology. It's only a matter of time before it's phased out altogether.
Actually, I'm not sure I mind the term "pre-owned" as it implies previous ownership, something Sony seems to want to ignore. If I "own" something, it's within my rights to sell it as I see fit. Sony no longer has a claim on it, and yet they still seem to want to claim it as theirs.
This is exactly the long range plan of Buzz. They are trying to open it up so that someday in the future, it won't matter where your social profile is stored, if things are open enough, everything can interconnect. People who think that Buzz is just another Facebook or Twitter are missing the bigger picture they're trying to build here. See:
http://www.google.com/buzz/dclinton/XxER6oP4WGe/The-best-way-to-get-a-sense-of-where-the-Buzz-API
I'm not sure what you're talking about, iPhone integration was built into Buzz from day 1. In fact it's better than normal Buzz because if you let it use your geolocation you can see other buzzes near your current vicinity on Google maps.
I can see people having fun with board games on the iPad but I'm not sure it really trumps a real board game. Most board games aren't overly expensive as it is.
But what I do think the iPad could be really good at is custom audio controller interfaces. More and more of these interfaces are starting to show up on computers, but much of the mouse/keyboard input doesn't really match the real life use of tweaking knobs and levers. Multi-touch on a larger screen is a much better translation of this, and given how much physical audio controllers can cost, a few software reproductions of them could end up being a cost benefit for users.
"Is it really worth it to spend 6% of your total yearly revenue on the licensing fee for one video codec?"
I dunno, is it worth it to potentially lose a vast amount of your user base in the future if you don't?
"And you can't write videogames in HTML5. Flash will be around for a while."
HTML5 is not just the video tag (as much as people seem to think it is). It also includes things like the canvas element, that, when combined with JS, can certainly make games possible. There really is little reason to use Flash at all anymore.
First, any math class can be useful to programmers. I went full double major CS and Mathematics and found all my classes useful. Set Theory perhaps is the most closely related to CS, but all of them can have value depending on what you get into after your studies. Also, whether one is "harder" should not make a difference. If anything it should make you want to take it more. Exercise your brain in all different ways, it will benefit you in the end regardless.
"That was the excuse they used for going after the bloggers; the intent was to discourage anyone else from leaking anything like this again."
Then they're doing it wrong. One thing all bloggers crave is publicity. I'm not sure you can get much more publicity for your blog than this.
"idiot driver should be prosecuted since everyone knows the third light from the top is regular green and not a turn signal"
What happens if the stop light is horizontal? The summary mentions WI, which allows horizontal traffic lights. Someone coming from a state like MN (which only has vertical lights) could easily be confused by this.
"I have a five digit UID and am nihilistic enough to awaken eldritch horrors purely out of curiosity to see what would happen."
Oh great, now I bet Jon Katz will start posting stories again. :/