You know what's really amusing? If you search through that thing, you can find some attachments regarding employee performance reviews.
That alone isn't funny, but the comments that the manager guy left in there are like word for word what I've had in the past on mine -- a box with like a one sentence generic complement, and a checkbox beside it where you can imagine the manager was just picking in a pseudo-random manner.
It's really frightening how similar most companies actually are.
It's a balance thing. Pre-BC raids were way on the side of being able to phone the raid in, because, well, they were just easier (assuming your gear is not shit).
In TBC, they tried to make harder, more challenging raid encounters -- but there are several instances (Mag, most notably) where they've gone too far, and the mechanic of the raid boils down to "one misclick by anyone is a wipe", with no chance of recovery.
It's much more exhausting for the people who run it alot, though, not for newer guilds. For guilds that are doing Mag regularly, wiping because someone lagged, or hit the wrong key by accident -- even if they knew exactly what they were doing -- sucks. It just plain sucks. They aren't learning anything, they're not interested in the encounter, it just sucks to wipe because of a random accident by one person.
In fact, I'm sorta surprised that WoW hasn't fallen back yet. Again, I don't wish it or anything, but it's not like they have a patent on what made WoW successful. Everyone else is free to copy the elements that made it sell well. It's just that everyone else seems to be surprisingly slow to understand it. Oh, they've tried to copy bits and pieces of WoW, but they just can't seem to understand _what_ they copy. It's... a bit like watching a clock maker try to copy random individual cogs from a competitor's clock, without understanding what they copy or the larger scheme of the mechanism in which it must fit in.
But eventually it's bound to happen.
The problem is that it's not just one thing that makes WoW successful. It's alot of things that Blizzard is doing right all at once. The key though, is that Blizzard, despite what you read on forums, does listen to it's players. The game as it stands now is vastly, vastly different from when even I signed up in 2005 -- and they're laregly positive changes.
World PvP sucks? They added instanced PvP.
You miss World PvP? They created world PvP "minigames".
Honour system is a joke? Scrapped, in exchange for a token system.
Unorganized instanced PvP too much of a hassle? Have short (on the order of minutes, seconds if you're up against a 'lock) 1v1 - 5v5 arena matches.
Farming for the 1% elemental drops sucks? We'll split them up into more common drops (motes), so your farming doesn't suck as much.
Crafting seems useless as a moneymaker? Epic crafted items now require a BoP drop, so you can now actually make money from your profession.
Hybrid classes and off-specs getting the shaft? There are different versions of the new class armor sets for different specs.
Instance runs taking too long? All the new 5-mans are split up into wings a'la SM, so that you can run one in less than an hour.
Want epics in 5-mans? Okay, we'll add a heroic mode, but it'll be harder, and you can't expect to go in green quest rewards.
Having trouble getting a group? We'll tie entry into heroics to specific reputation grinds which can only be done in instances, so people have incentives to run them.
Still having trouble? We'll create an actually useful LFG system, and tie entry into the LFG channel to registering with it (to avoid it looking like Trade - City)
Don't have a warlock in your group, or he's out of shards? The summoning stones can summon raid members with only 2 people present.
Reputation grinds suck ass? Okay, instead of having one or two factions with everything, and a miserable rep grind (I'm looking at you TB), we'll create lots more factions and make each grind easier.
Need an easy source of money? We'll make daily quests you can repeat each day, which give cash (and rep) rewards.
You want to fly? Sure.
Ontop off all of that listening, the technical quality of the software from Blizzard is continually top notch. They've folded in popular mods (Scrolling Combat Text, etc), and there were mentions about built-in VOIP, so voice chat won't be limited to guild runs.
Really, it's Blizzard as an organization that someone would have to copy to unseat WoW from the fantasy MMO genre, not any specific attribute of the game.
The reason that they did that with 5-mans is obvious -- it's trivial to find a group at a moments notice now, because that's what everyone is doing. At most I've waited half an hour for a group (but then again, I'm a tank...)
I agree that they missed on the end-game content. Not just because it takes interminable 5-man runs to get there, but because the encounters themselves are so much harder. It used to be that you could/afk through all of MC but Rag, as long as you weren't like the MT or his healer. In BC raids, it's basically "one misclick by anyone in the raid is a wipe". It's was easier to get 7 40-mans a week pre-BC than it is to get 5 25-mans post BC, because it's much harder work now. Before it was just tagging along for the ride.
Best buy devotes almost 1/4th of the floor space to music.
Not around here they don't. The amount of floor space they have for music in the two here is tiny. I stopped at one to pick up a CD for listening to on a road trip recently, and they had next to nothing. One aisle for old releases, and 1/2 an aisle for new releases. The vast majority of what I presume used to be the music space is now taken up with video games and DVDs.
I recall when Doom 3 came out, the QuakeCon that year webcast the matches that were being played there (some Doom3 1v1 deathmatch, as well as some Q3 CTF matches there). I was watching these on my living room TV as they were being webcast, and I kind of realized something about watching games or sports on TV -- they are only truly interesting if you know enough about the game to play it yourself.
i.e. being a Canadian, I wasn't able to avoid learning how to play hockey as a child. Not that I'm any good at it, but I know the rules, I know the point of the game, and I understand what it means when different things happen. However, I find Football (either kind, take your pick) mind numbingly boring -- because I never really played them, I haven't really internalized the rules, and don't know enough about the tactics of the game(s) to be interested in them.
Similarly, watching Q3CTF and Doom3 (especially the 1v1 matches), I really got into them because I understood what they were doing, and I could anticipate the reactions and behaviour of the competitors. The same is true with watching (PvE) WoW videos -- I get into them because I understand what's going on.
I have a feeling that's going to be the largest impediment to gaming on TV -- sports rules change very slowly, and not by very much. Even if you haven't watched NHL hockey in six years, you'd be able to sit down and clearly understand what's going on[1] within a few minutes. If someone was watching Q3 videos online six years ago, and then sat down today to watch -- umm, Halo2 or something? what are people playing these days? -- it wouldn't be even close to the same. It would be like watching an entirely new sport every few years.
No, of course not. Aside from the obvious job security issues:
Anything I need on Linux is likely free already.
My managers are actually willing to spend money on things that are necessary.
Most pirated software and even keygens has some form of trojan or something in it these days, and I'm not willing to risk embarrassing myself by getting an infection.
=ERROR REPORT==== 31-Mar-2007::13:04:48 === Error in process <0.30.0> with exit value: {badarith,[{erl_eval,eval_op,3},{shell,exprs,6},{s hell,eval_loop,3}]}
=ERROR REPORT==== 31-Mar-2007::13:04:53 === Error in process <0.43.0> with exit value: {badarith,[{erl_eval,eval_op,3},{shell,exprs,6},{s hell,eval_loop,3}]}
And now here's where I have to (apparently) talk about the development methodology of the above, as my characters per line (CPL) is apparently insufficient to warrant contribution to this particular line of topical discussion (i.e. "thread" -- in the Usenet sense, not in the concurrency sense -- although I suppose since there are many discussions happening concurrently, it could be considered analogous). I do find it nice that, while slashcode tells me my CPL (characters per line) for a current post, it doesn't actually tell me the threshold past which I am permitted to contribute to a "thread" (i.e. unit of discussion, distinct from unit of computation, as per above).
I think it's on the right track, though, it just needs more of the polish that the underlying Ubuntu system has.
.... you mean the underlying Debian system. The reason it's so polished at that level is that it's the result of an entire other organization doing that work for them. The Ubuntu part of the system really is just the UI polish, and updating some packages for that purpose.
You know, people mope about not being able to code in an environment that resembles the simple / effective style of Ataris and C64s from our childhood...
But they forget that they have a complete and flexible language interpreter staring them in the face.
Install Firebug. It has a nice REPL console. Combine it with a simple text editor[1] and you have a complete programming environment in two windows that is :
a) Familiar (every kid doing this will be using a web browser anyway)
b) Relevant and Flashy (being able to do the cool web stuff that's apparently cool now)
c) Good - Javascript is actually a really nice language (it's been described as Scheme with C/C++ syntax), which is very easy to work with, and nothing other than the web page in the way.
d) Did I mention Familiar? Web pages are not perceived as complex or threating.
On Topic part:
The reason you thought the circle was cool was that a) you came up with it when you were a kid, and b) you understood the math behind it.
Given that, the goal would be to get your kids interested in the math -- Computer Science is really just a form of math, so if you had been doing math problems, and showed him that if you graphed ( x, y ) = ( r cos t, r sin t ) made a circle, then he might find it interesting. Or he may not, and that's fine too. But I've been doing math with my son in one form or another for two years now, and he's still only 5.
But really, unless you care, a circle is just boring.
If you find 40 man raids distasteful, then the expansion should be good news. The largest raid instance is capped at 25.
Blizzard actually *gasp!* listened to their customers (in aggregate) and tried to find ways to reduce the "contiguous time block" and "guild member herding" requirements for end-game raids.
I ended getting sucked back into playing when the expansion came out. Fortunately, I was able to walk into a best buy at random and pick up a CE. My BE Paladin (named Netherwhelp) likes his pet very much.
One game series that I fondly recall was the Starfleet Command series. While based off of the Starfleet license, which is distinct from the main Star Trek line (mainly due to the presence of Mr. Niven's Kitties), it did a god job of implementing Starfleet Battles gameplay in a modern PC game. Yes, there were differences (it was realtimeish, while SFB is anything but), but it was quite an enjoyable game.... if you could actually get to the game to begin with.
Everything about the game was buried behind a ton of buggy, useless, and invasive menus. Trying to play LAN Multiplayer with a friend was *excruciating* due to the menu system in the first two games.
It's really reasons like this that highlight how hard it is to make a good game -- in the case of SFC, the gameplay itself was great, and it could have truly been something special... had it been easier to actually, you know, get to the game.
Uhh, no, his point was that Pegasus might be old and venerable, but it had a horrible, clunky UI.
Eudora started with a simple, elegant UI (my mother still runs Eudora 3 Light). Now that Eudora's UI has become garbage, another simple, clean email client will come along.
Not really, though. What's happening these days is people are migrating to webmail. The dedicated email client is slowly becoming a special purpose program.
"Windows Vista also introduces..., kernel patch protection, mandatory driver signing..."
So they make it more difficult for new hardware to be developed, and more difficult for hardware hacking in general. Unless you just click "allow this driver to run". That's going to make lots of people who develop non-mass marketed hardware very unhappy. ... or make them port thier non-mass market stuff to Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly, there is some kind of untapped market for people who breathe margerine.
Just because they own the IP and made the first few games, does not mean that they have to make all the games in perpituity.
For example, Id Software, despite providing the engine and making Quake 1-3, did not develop Quake 4 -- it developed by Raven Software.
Awww. Unfounded speculation was so much more fun.
Thanks for ruining it, spoilsport.
I keep seeing Meatplace, and then somehow my brain translates that into "Meatspace", which is like the exact opposite.
You know what's really amusing? If you search through that thing, you can find some attachments regarding employee performance reviews.
That alone isn't funny, but the comments that the manager guy left in there are like word for word what I've had in the past on mine -- a box with like a one sentence generic complement, and a checkbox beside it where you can imagine the manager was just picking in a pseudo-random manner.
It's really frightening how similar most companies actually are.
It's a balance thing. Pre-BC raids were way on the side of being able to phone the raid in, because, well, they were just easier (assuming your gear is not shit).
In TBC, they tried to make harder, more challenging raid encounters -- but there are several instances (Mag, most notably) where they've gone too far, and the mechanic of the raid boils down to "one misclick by anyone is a wipe", with no chance of recovery.
It's much more exhausting for the people who run it alot, though, not for newer guilds. For guilds that are doing Mag regularly, wiping because someone lagged, or hit the wrong key by accident -- even if they knew exactly what they were doing -- sucks. It just plain sucks. They aren't learning anything, they're not interested in the encounter, it just sucks to wipe because of a random accident by one person.
In fact, I'm sorta surprised that WoW hasn't fallen back yet. Again, I don't wish it or anything, but it's not like they have a patent on what made WoW successful. Everyone else is free to copy the elements that made it sell well. It's just that everyone else seems to be surprisingly slow to understand it. Oh, they've tried to copy bits and pieces of WoW, but they just can't seem to understand _what_ they copy. It's... a bit like watching a clock maker try to copy random individual cogs from a competitor's clock, without understanding what they copy or the larger scheme of the mechanism in which it must fit in.
But eventually it's bound to happen.
The problem is that it's not just one thing that makes WoW successful. It's alot of things that Blizzard is doing right all at once. The key though, is that Blizzard, despite what you read on forums, does listen to it's players. The game as it stands now is vastly, vastly different from when even I signed up in 2005 -- and they're laregly positive changes.
Ontop off all of that listening, the technical quality of the software from Blizzard is continually top notch. They've folded in popular mods (Scrolling Combat Text, etc), and there were mentions about built-in VOIP, so voice chat won't be limited to guild runs.
Really, it's Blizzard as an organization that someone would have to copy to unseat WoW from the fantasy MMO genre, not any specific attribute of the game.
Agreement and disagreement.
/afk through all of MC but Rag, as long as you weren't like the MT or his healer. In BC raids, it's basically "one misclick by anyone in the raid is a wipe". It's was easier to get 7 40-mans a week pre-BC than it is to get 5 25-mans post BC, because it's much harder work now. Before it was just tagging along for the ride.
The reason that they did that with 5-mans is obvious -- it's trivial to find a group at a moments notice now, because that's what everyone is doing. At most I've waited half an hour for a group (but then again, I'm a tank...)
I agree that they missed on the end-game content. Not just because it takes interminable 5-man runs to get there, but because the encounters themselves are so much harder. It used to be that you could
Best buy devotes almost 1/4th of the floor space to music.
Not around here they don't. The amount of floor space they have for music in the two here is tiny. I stopped at one to pick up a CD for listening to on a road trip recently, and they had next to nothing. One aisle for old releases, and 1/2 an aisle for new releases. The vast majority of what I presume used to be the music space is now taken up with video games and DVDs.
I recall when Doom 3 came out, the QuakeCon that year webcast the matches that were being played there (some Doom3 1v1 deathmatch, as well as some Q3 CTF matches there). I was watching these on my living room TV as they were being webcast, and I kind of realized something about watching games or sports on TV -- they are only truly interesting if you know enough about the game to play it yourself.
i.e. being a Canadian, I wasn't able to avoid learning how to play hockey as a child. Not that I'm any good at it, but I know the rules, I know the point of the game, and I understand what it means when different things happen. However, I find Football (either kind, take your pick) mind numbingly boring -- because I never really played them, I haven't really internalized the rules, and don't know enough about the tactics of the game(s) to be interested in them.
Similarly, watching Q3CTF and Doom3 (especially the 1v1 matches), I really got into them because I understood what they were doing, and I could anticipate the reactions and behaviour of the competitors. The same is true with watching (PvE) WoW videos -- I get into them because I understand what's going on.
I have a feeling that's going to be the largest impediment to gaming on TV -- sports rules change very slowly, and not by very much. Even if you haven't watched NHL hockey in six years, you'd be able to sit down and clearly understand what's going on[1] within a few minutes. If someone was watching Q3 videos online six years ago, and then sat down today to watch -- umm, Halo2 or something? what are people playing these days? -- it wouldn't be even close to the same. It would be like watching an entirely new sport every few years.
[1] This does not extend to league management.
And then we can finally accomplish our goal of building virtual cities in the shape of a giant wang.
You are my new best friend. Thank you.
I think you mean theoretically linearly, and in practice logarithmically.
How is that useful, intuitive, or good...? Is that supposed to make sense or something?
Here's the (much saner) situation in Perl...
Off Topic part:
You know, people mope about not being able to code in an environment that resembles the simple / effective style of Ataris and C64s from our childhood...
But they forget that they have a complete and flexible language interpreter staring them in the face.
Install Firebug. It has a nice REPL console. Combine it with a simple text editor[1] and you have a complete programming environment in two windows that is :
a) Familiar (every kid doing this will be using a web browser anyway)
b) Relevant and Flashy (being able to do the cool web stuff that's apparently cool now)
c) Good - Javascript is actually a really nice language (it's been described as Scheme with C/C++ syntax), which is very easy to work with, and nothing other than the web page in the way.
d) Did I mention Familiar? Web pages are not perceived as complex or threating.
On Topic part:
The reason you thought the circle was cool was that a) you came up with it when you were a kid, and b) you understood the math behind it.
Given that, the goal would be to get your kids interested in the math -- Computer Science is really just a form of math, so if you had been doing math problems, and showed him that if you graphed ( x, y ) = ( r cos t, r sin t ) made a circle, then he might find it interesting. Or he may not, and that's fine too. But I've been doing math with my son in one form or another for two years now, and he's still only 5.
But really, unless you care, a circle is just boring.
[1] or Aptana, if you're brave...
If you find 40 man raids distasteful, then the expansion should be good news. The largest raid instance is capped at 25.
Blizzard actually *gasp!* listened to their customers (in aggregate) and tried to find ways to reduce the "contiguous time block" and "guild member herding" requirements for end-game raids.
I ended getting sucked back into playing when the expansion came out. Fortunately, I was able to walk into a best buy at random and pick up a CE. My BE Paladin (named Netherwhelp) likes his pet very much.
Nope, Carmack was just responsible for Doom... Doom II... Quake... Quake III... Quake III... Doom III...
You're after Romero's head. And not the one in map30.
One game series that I fondly recall was the Starfleet Command series. While based off of the Starfleet license, which is distinct from the main Star Trek line (mainly due to the presence of Mr. Niven's Kitties), it did a god job of implementing Starfleet Battles gameplay in a modern PC game. Yes, there were differences (it was realtimeish, while SFB is anything but), but it was quite an enjoyable game.... if you could actually get to the game to begin with.
Everything about the game was buried behind a ton of buggy, useless, and invasive menus. Trying to play LAN Multiplayer with a friend was *excruciating* due to the menu system in the first two games.
It's really reasons like this that highlight how hard it is to make a good game -- in the case of SFC, the gameplay itself was great, and it could have truly been something special... had it been easier to actually, you know, get to the game.
Uhh, no, his point was that Pegasus might be old and venerable, but it had a horrible, clunky UI.
Eudora started with a simple, elegant UI (my mother still runs Eudora 3 Light). Now that Eudora's UI has become garbage, another simple, clean email client will come along.
Not really, though. What's happening these days is people are migrating to webmail. The dedicated email client is slowly becoming a special purpose program.
Google reveals nothing, therefore we can conclude it does not, in fact, exist.
God, that is so beautiful.
"Windows Vista also introduces
So they make it more difficult for new hardware to be developed, and more difficult for hardware hacking in general. Unless you just click "allow this driver to run". That's going to make lots of people who develop non-mass marketed hardware very unhappy.
Can the sale or distribution of instructions for building a device that violates a patent, violate a patent themselves?