It motivates people to get online and play within the economy and the world. You don't play MMO's as single player either, Blizzard has obviously designed the game more like an MMO than a traditional game. You don't complain about lack of single player in MMO games either, do you?
No, but why should other people get less fun gaming experience just because some people play in weird locations or they just don't like DRM? There are plenty of other games for you. Instead of bitching about Blizzards decision to provide a cheat-free, good economy for the game why don't you go buy games from other developers and, you know, actually support those companies that don't do stuff that you don't like?
Sure, there are some situations where you cannot connect to internet, but it's really in minority.
Not really. Every heard of that concept of moving out of your basement?
I actually travel quite a lot. I lived whole last year traveling in Asia. Other than while in airplanes or on road, there really isn't that many spots where you cannot get onto internet, especially while actually staying somewhere. Even the cheapest places offered wi-fi. Besides, I would want to get online anyway.
Whenever you're on the move, you don't have a connection.
Besides, this can be mostly blamed on pirates.
The pirate copy will likely not require Internet at all, so only legitimate users will hurt from this.
Yes, and those players are also missing the multiplayer and all the extra gameplay elements to single player that online connection brings, including economy and market for items. Like I said, there's a small trade-off, but for that you get a lot more in exchange.
I think it's good. Sure, there are some situations where you cannot connect to internet, but it's really in minority. For the small trade-off you get cheat-free economy and you can play both single-player and multiplayer with the same characters. It's not like Blizzard will be closing down the servers anytime soon, battle.net is still running perfectly for Diablo 2. Besides, this can be mostly blamed on pirates. The 90% piracy rate on PC really means that game companies are starting increasingly to look into implementing as much of the game online as possible. While you can't play the game in an airplane, the overall return for that trade-off is much better.
Because when Google pulls of their development team of some of their product, it practically dies. It has been seen so many times now. But please believe it's different this time. Just like an abusive husband won't hit her wife again if she comes back, as he is different now!
Uh, the 1024 ip's are. Kwangmyong (as I described as internal network) largely isn't. But they do have the infrastructure within country, and there are a few places where it overlaps (companies in Pyongyang)
Anyone who still does anything serious with Google's products kind of deserves it. Google has been for years putting some product up just to completely discontinue it soon enough. Unlike desktop software, Google discontinuing product means that you really cannot use it anymore. Google is really hurting itself and their image with this shit and ensuring competitors products like from Microsoft will continue to be widely used.
And it's a country of 24 million sharing 1024 IP addresses
Public, connectable ip's. You seem to assumpt that their own network isn't larger than that and that they don't know how to NAT things. I'm sure they could use more if the US-controlled ICANN would give them more addresses.
And what's the point about failed communist dictatorship? I didn't say it's heaven on earth or that they're technologically light-years front of us. Just that North Korea isn't so technologically behind as people, especially US people, seem to think. And I've been there personally, as I was interested about the country and booked one of the trips they allow there.
Just to clarify the internal infrastructure. They started building their own network in 2000 which now connects all the universities, libraries, companies and even cybercafes where people casually hangout. Remember that internet to home isn't that common elsewhere in Asia either - most population go to cybercafes to check their email, play games or just surf the internet. It's really cheap too, and they stock beer and other drinks for customers.
Most people stupidly seem to assume that North Korea is technologically somewhere in the beginning of 1900. They are not.
North Korea does have internet infrastructure. They started using their block of 1024 ip addresses last year. It was assigned to them before, but late 2010 companies in the capital started using it. They also have good internal "internet" infrastructure.
Large empires have always fallen when new technologies have arisen. They allow someone else to take the new number one place. China is extremely viable candidate for this, even without the whole cyberwar thing.
It's still not a good option for kids, they want to do something fun instead of playing around with compilers and setting up the environment. This is a good list to look at what you should give to a kid to get him or her interested in programming. Something visual where he can instantly get into fun stuff. The rest comes later when the interest is there.
Linux is far from a good system for a beginning programmer, especially kids. Hell, even as a adult it's pain in the ass to set up a good programming environment. There's no way I would had done that as a kid when I had QBasic and software like Klik'n'play. Linux doesn't have such for kids. Windows does.
Most of games and educational software is Windows only. It would be stupid to change licensed XP to Linux distro (and don't start with wine, there's no way kids know how to use it and play around with the system). Just leave the XP on it, it's the best option. Ending support doesn't really mean anything, the system will still function just like before. Two years is a long time in kids life anyway.
Firefox matters because it's once again the only open source browser that goes by standards instead of doing whatever they want. Chrome was there for a long time, but now immediately when they started to gain some market share Google decided to do what Microsoft did in the 90's and start implementing their own features and not documenting them good enough for others to implement. Then they went on and created websites that only work with Chrome. I have no idea why and when Google started acting like the new douche bag in town, but it's finally happening. And things were going so well for web designers now that Microsoft picked up their act and made IE9 standards compliant and HTML5 capable..
I simply have no idea why they think 'terrorists' will use a particular medium when they have announced they are watching it.
Well, that's the thing. People usually laught and think "oh they're so stupid" while not knowing the reasoning or background behind it. I think it's more like IT people thinking they're so much wiser and better and ignoring the fact that there might be an actual reason behind what they want to do. I'm not saying they have such for the Facebook, but the BlackBerry phones does make more sense and it could very well had been the most used phone by malicious persons especially when RIM was advertising it as secure, encrypted medium.
Chinese games work differently. You don't pay for the game or access to it, but for game items. Sort of like TF2. It's a good business model, too, and is working really good for Valve in the US. While you can get the items from store, you can also get them from drops, trading, achievements or by crafting them and it doesn't affect the gameplay negatively.
Chinese company is going out of their way to give players what they want
And at the same time US companies are removing dedicated servers completely, applying heavy DRM instead of rethinking their business model, making it impossible to create mods and in general do everything they can to hinder players ability to enjoy games how they want.
It really looks like US is going downhill and fast while other countries do things correctly and will enjoy the results.
Patents also promote investing in research & development. I doubt Microsoft and other companies would be spending billions in research if everything they discovered or came up with was immediately available to everyone else. With the US financial situation how it is, I'm surprised every american here on slashdot seem to try to bring down the last thing that is still done in the US. Research. Everything else is already produced in China, Taiwan and other cheaper countries.
Microsoft simply do not get what people want. (they never have, look at Win7...
Uh, what's wrong with Win7? I get that Vista wasn't that good OS (mostly because of the changes to driver and security models that broke old things, but they had to do it at some point so that things could improve). But Win7 is a solid product.
They are, and it's been noted several times here on slashdot too. Google isn't even the market leader in search within Russia or China, they never got anywhere near where Baidu and Yandex are.
How is this any different from VBA inside office documents having access to your local files? It's just a language... Besides, Office documents have always asked permissions to run scripts if they are present. This changes nothing else than adding alternative scripting language for those who rather use it.
Slashdot Mirror
It motivates people to get online and play within the economy and the world. You don't play MMO's as single player either, Blizzard has obviously designed the game more like an MMO than a traditional game. You don't complain about lack of single player in MMO games either, do you?
No, but why should other people get less fun gaming experience just because some people play in weird locations or they just don't like DRM? There are plenty of other games for you. Instead of bitching about Blizzards decision to provide a cheat-free, good economy for the game why don't you go buy games from other developers and, you know, actually support those companies that don't do stuff that you don't like?
I actually travel quite a lot. I lived whole last year traveling in Asia. Other than while in airplanes or on road, there really isn't that many spots where you cannot get onto internet, especially while actually staying somewhere. Even the cheapest places offered wi-fi. Besides, I would want to get online anyway.
Whenever you're on the move, you don't have a connection.
The pirate copy will likely not require Internet at all, so only legitimate users will hurt from this.
Yes, and those players are also missing the multiplayer and all the extra gameplay elements to single player that online connection brings, including economy and market for items. Like I said, there's a small trade-off, but for that you get a lot more in exchange.
I think it's good. Sure, there are some situations where you cannot connect to internet, but it's really in minority. For the small trade-off you get cheat-free economy and you can play both single-player and multiplayer with the same characters. It's not like Blizzard will be closing down the servers anytime soon, battle.net is still running perfectly for Diablo 2. Besides, this can be mostly blamed on pirates. The 90% piracy rate on PC really means that game companies are starting increasingly to look into implementing as much of the game online as possible. While you can't play the game in an airplane, the overall return for that trade-off is much better.
Last year I bought a laptop that cost $3000. Clevo. It works awesome and plays even the most newest games in full detail. What would I get for it?
Because when Google pulls of their development team of some of their product, it practically dies. It has been seen so many times now. But please believe it's different this time. Just like an abusive husband won't hit her wife again if she comes back, as he is different now!
Uh, the 1024 ip's are. Kwangmyong (as I described as internal network) largely isn't. But they do have the infrastructure within country, and there are a few places where it overlaps (companies in Pyongyang)
Anyone who still does anything serious with Google's products kind of deserves it. Google has been for years putting some product up just to completely discontinue it soon enough. Unlike desktop software, Google discontinuing product means that you really cannot use it anymore. Google is really hurting itself and their image with this shit and ensuring competitors products like from Microsoft will continue to be widely used.
And it's a country of 24 million sharing 1024 IP addresses
Public, connectable ip's. You seem to assumpt that their own network isn't larger than that and that they don't know how to NAT things. I'm sure they could use more if the US-controlled ICANN would give them more addresses.
And what's the point about failed communist dictatorship? I didn't say it's heaven on earth or that they're technologically light-years front of us. Just that North Korea isn't so technologically behind as people, especially US people, seem to think. And I've been there personally, as I was interested about the country and booked one of the trips they allow there.
Just to clarify the internal infrastructure. They started building their own network in 2000 which now connects all the universities, libraries, companies and even cybercafes where people casually hangout. Remember that internet to home isn't that common elsewhere in Asia either - most population go to cybercafes to check their email, play games or just surf the internet. It's really cheap too, and they stock beer and other drinks for customers.
Most people stupidly seem to assume that North Korea is technologically somewhere in the beginning of 1900. They are not.
North Korea does have internet infrastructure. They started using their block of 1024 ip addresses last year. It was assigned to them before, but late 2010 companies in the capital started using it. They also have good internal "internet" infrastructure.
Large empires have always fallen when new technologies have arisen. They allow someone else to take the new number one place. China is extremely viable candidate for this, even without the whole cyberwar thing.
There isn't acrologies in SimCity.
It's still not a good option for kids, they want to do something fun instead of playing around with compilers and setting up the environment. This is a good list to look at what you should give to a kid to get him or her interested in programming. Something visual where he can instantly get into fun stuff. The rest comes later when the interest is there.
Linux is far from a good system for a beginning programmer, especially kids. Hell, even as a adult it's pain in the ass to set up a good programming environment. There's no way I would had done that as a kid when I had QBasic and software like Klik'n'play. Linux doesn't have such for kids. Windows does.
Most of games and educational software is Windows only. It would be stupid to change licensed XP to Linux distro (and don't start with wine, there's no way kids know how to use it and play around with the system). Just leave the XP on it, it's the best option. Ending support doesn't really mean anything, the system will still function just like before. Two years is a long time in kids life anyway.
Firefox matters because it's once again the only open source browser that goes by standards instead of doing whatever they want. Chrome was there for a long time, but now immediately when they started to gain some market share Google decided to do what Microsoft did in the 90's and start implementing their own features and not documenting them good enough for others to implement. Then they went on and created websites that only work with Chrome. I have no idea why and when Google started acting like the new douche bag in town, but it's finally happening. And things were going so well for web designers now that Microsoft picked up their act and made IE9 standards compliant and HTML5 capable..
I simply have no idea why they think 'terrorists' will use a particular medium when they have announced they are watching it.
Well, that's the thing. People usually laught and think "oh they're so stupid" while not knowing the reasoning or background behind it. I think it's more like IT people thinking they're so much wiser and better and ignoring the fact that there might be an actual reason behind what they want to do. I'm not saying they have such for the Facebook, but the BlackBerry phones does make more sense and it could very well had been the most used phone by malicious persons especially when RIM was advertising it as secure, encrypted medium.
Chinese games work differently. You don't pay for the game or access to it, but for game items. Sort of like TF2. It's a good business model, too, and is working really good for Valve in the US. While you can get the items from store, you can also get them from drops, trading, achievements or by crafting them and it doesn't affect the gameplay negatively.
Chinese company is going out of their way to give players what they want
And at the same time US companies are removing dedicated servers completely, applying heavy DRM instead of rethinking their business model, making it impossible to create mods and in general do everything they can to hinder players ability to enjoy games how they want.
It really looks like US is going downhill and fast while other countries do things correctly and will enjoy the results.
Patents also promote investing in research & development. I doubt Microsoft and other companies would be spending billions in research if everything they discovered or came up with was immediately available to everyone else. With the US financial situation how it is, I'm surprised every american here on slashdot seem to try to bring down the last thing that is still done in the US. Research. Everything else is already produced in China, Taiwan and other cheaper countries.
Microsoft simply do not get what people want. (they never have, look at Win7...
Uh, what's wrong with Win7? I get that Vista wasn't that good OS (mostly because of the changes to driver and security models that broke old things, but they had to do it at some point so that things could improve). But Win7 is a solid product.
They are, and it's been noted several times here on slashdot too. Google isn't even the market leader in search within Russia or China, they never got anywhere near where Baidu and Yandex are.
It's not just about the CSS, but all the features gmail has and how it shows replies.
How is this any different from VBA inside office documents having access to your local files? It's just a language... Besides, Office documents have always asked permissions to run scripts if they are present. This changes nothing else than adding alternative scripting language for those who rather use it.