Big iron is just fine. The deal is that Intel had delusions as to what it meant and tried to apply PC standards to a world which lives at a much higher level.
PowerPC archietecture is alive and well in true big iron. It will even find its way into IBM mainframe technology. Server farms are not big iron, they are glorified PCs with a little bit more reliability yet suffer from all the issues PCs normally do.
The big iron at work here, Tandem, IBM Mainframe, and iSeries have no appreciable downtime and the majority if not all recent hardware failures were transparent to all users. Hell some of the hardware failures are transparent to support staff as IBM usually calls first.
A processor does not make you big iron any more than disk drives make a server. Its a mindset that isn't happening at Intel and one HP lost a long time ago.
While the non-technical managers overriding the decisions of the technical staff here would never lead to loss of life it still occurs and is still very frustrating.
Many of us can spend more time refuting a non-tech than actually performing the work. It can take more time refuting even most uninformed opinion than the entire projects takes from planning to completion. I have had projects stopped just before release because of some "wild hair" objection by someone higher up only to later unexplicably finding it released.
Its jealously for the most part. Not direct but that is what it still is. They need to feel superior somehow so they mask ignorance with authority. By pulling "rank" they have effectively shown the technical staff whose boss as if it makes right.
Fortunately there are times where their idiocy gets noticed by someone higher up who realizes the issue raised is nothing more than strutting and they get boxed up for a while. But eventually they pop their heads up again when the coast is clear and it is back to step one.
Sometimes I think the motto of most companies is, "We make money inspite of ourselves"
First the modem should be there as it adds very little to the cost and is present in many chipsets. Laptops are about NOT having to carry accessories. While FW800 may be excused as FW400 is there I can't give them a pass on the modem.
Many times I find the following situation, no wireless and no lan. This means modems. Yeah some hotels have internet I can connect to via lan but that still isn't widespread, or should I say widespread in hotels some business will pay for. Same goes for wireless.
If I am taking a laptop on business all I should need is the laptop, the power cord, and the case to carry it. I don't want to have a section for "exceptions". If I have one of those then I bought the wrong laptop.
This is a "PRO" model, by name it implies it will provide me everything I could use that is reasonable. That modem is far more valuable than a gimmick of a camera. Hell I already carry a digital camera around and I am sure I can use it in place of iSight (which seems more suitable to teens playing with IM and IV)
The US already puts out more grains that it can consume and this has happened while the population increased and the amount of farmed land decreased.
If crops needed to make ethanol became a source of good money we would see an increase in farm land devoted to them, but we would also see all sorts of new ways of increasing the output of land already used to grow these same crops.
I think the biggest negative impact would be less grain available from the US for the rest of the world. There are too many countries where there is little incentive to be a good farmer other than keeping your own alive, and this results in low yields which require importing from other countries. The US and a few other countries usually fill this gap. Turn around and make a more profitable use for our grain and either your going to have to turn these countries around or the plight of their people will be worse.
Get free of all the other items made using fossil fuels as well. Otherwise what are you really doing? There are many items made with fossil fuels that could be made with alternatives, provided someone would want to pay for it.
This whole idea sounds more like a "feel good" program. All those "tax benefits" to encourage the switch look good but are only to bait the hook but as with any tax used to change behaviour it will not generate the income necessary long term and new sources will be needed. Look at the "congestion tax" - do they expect vehicle use to drop so much as the original reason behind the tax is no longer applicable?
Oh well, best of luck. I think the time table is ludicrous but if they can pull it off then maybe the rest of the world can learn. If not at least one country will be slightly better off.
as the mini-maxed characters appear. UO had flexibility but at least was wise enough to limit players from becoming best at everything. Horizons had the archetypes but allowed players to pick up as many types as they wanted. In the end you have characters that could do nearly everything. Asherson's Call was open ended but attempted to contain what players could do with limiting the number of choices afforded. Yet at the same time unlimited experience meant most skills capped and characters at the end game looked very much alike.
There are other games with some openeness to character development but the end result is usually the same. Over time the players learn what skills actually are worth it and those are the only ones the players have. Throw PvP into the mix and you will see less deviation.
Having a defined role also helps players identify easier with their characters. They can learn their place fairly easily with the help of other more experience players. It also makes fighting MOBs in the game easier as you can generally know what to expect of your opponent.
It is not a waste of hardware. I tire of this damn complex some mac-heads have. OS/X isn't the end all of operating systems.
There are those of us who would like to have a computer that can boot all the operating systems. As it stands now the most limited as to where it can boot will be the OS/X system. Eventually someone will get it to boot on a PC but then your forever stuck trying to get drivers.
So the best solution is to get Windows on the Mac. It will be the most difficult. Then probably one of the many linux variations.
Now for me I can buy a macbook, have windows loaded, and be able to vpn/5250/3270 in to work with a supported platform. I am sure many others are wanting to splurge but need some sensibility in our purchase. I need a new laptop, I don't need a new "OS/X" only machine. I don't want to be trapped into one vendor for just an OS.
Did Steve Jobs tell the crowd it was only a prototype and that they would did not have anything they would be able to ship? Was it implied they were ready to move on with Intel laptops?
If he did not then this is news. Vaporware can come from anyone, if Apple starts playing that game then they deserve the same treatment.
These games aren't being dumbed down. They are becoming more accessible to a greater number of people. WOW succeeds because more people can do well in the game. Regardless of what game you play you will always find "asshats" and the like. UO not easy? Ah, come on now. The only time it wasn't easy was when it was first released and even then the biggest impediment to playing the game was the stability of the servers. There were asshats galore the first year and still are.
There is nothing wrong with games where when you die you get looted. The problem is that those games attract the very same or worse "asshats" you claim to dislike. Throw in perma-death and you will find a whole new world of asshats - roving gangs of them who will seek no other purpose other than to destroy the play of others. They won't do it for any in-game reason, they will do it because they can. I know, the argument is that the risk will keep them in check but that is never the case. They will find every little exploit that prevents their loss leaving the victim to fight with the game company to prove they didn't deserve the loss they suffered.
That is too hostile of a game world to expect players to stick around in. There have been many "PvP" centric games and if they truly did offer better game play then why haven't they succeeded? WOW succeeds because not only do they offer a world full of adventure they offer a controlled PvP that doesn't become unfairly hostile to the people participating.
As I replied to another, there is nothing preventing YOU from imposing the same restrictions you espouse for others on yourself. If you want perma death then do it! Otherwise your nothing more than a X-wing politician pontificating about the evils of the other side while blithely brushing over your same transgressions.
Until a guarantee can be made that technical issues beyond the player's control are fully addressed this type of scenario isn't going to fly.
Now how it could be done and impart some of the same "thrill" and "consequence" is to have rules where characters don't start off as lower level but midway through the game progression. Limit the number of characters that the account can use during a set period, perhaps 30 days.
This would reduce the investment but not to the point of making it meaningless. The reason why "hardcore" servers don't exist in MMORPGs of this scale is that players put a considerable amount of time into their characters and will not give that up. Not in a world where internet problems can crop up anywhere at anytime.
I also find the calls for "hardcore" servers to be pretentious simply because most of those making the calls are implying they are better players when its usually just a case of jealously that drives it.
There is NOTHING preventing players who want to play this way from imposing this rule upon themselves. Yet this is the last action these same people will ever take. Lead by example or shut up
If that is the case then OS/X is in even more trouble as the hardware pricing is totally controlled by Apple and price is driving the PC market.
Hardware is what Apple used to celebrate as being their important difference, now that they are on Intel platforms they have to rely on design. Trouble is the public wasn't keen on buying their design before and since the price didn't change neither will the buying public's opinion.
I think the Mac is on Intel simply because there was little else to do to generate new sales momentum. By going to Intel it is implied that people with the older technology will buy new Apples, thereby increasing sales and making Apple's bottom line look better. This will work in the short term but long term where is the excitement going to come from?
What do Apple computers do that Microsoft computers don't that will appeal to the general computing populace? Computing is probably too strong a term, most aren't doing more than email and surfing. Games are probably the next strongest category for most PC users. So who are they getting sales from? Simple, the Apple faithful. When those run out where do they go for more?
Corporations aren't going to switch. Most are tied by vendor now. In our case we have windows because Dell supplies on Windows PCs. We had HP before and that was because HP supplied Windows only PCs. We don't even look at Apple. Windows is entrenched here and got that way because there was no viable alternative.
Why would the general populace ever want to buy a Mac? You can talk it up all you want but the bottom line is price. If all the GP is doing is surfing/email/IM they are defintely going to be harder to sway. Photography? Nah, most people never use more than the basic features of most products.
With the migration to Intel the "Mac Tax" is more evident. This puts pressure on the geek market. Many of us would like to have a machine to run OS/X. That word "machine" is key. I'm not buying an Apple unless I can use another OS on it. My first preference is that it boot Windows as that is what I need at work and for home use. Next is Linux. So why would these new machines appeal to me? Outside of the mini the new ones will be too expensive for something just to play with.
I'll be very curious what the sales look like 1 year after the switch is complete. It is obvious most sales will be to the faithful. I just don't think they can convince the general computer populace to switch because of the obvious cost difference. Look, they couldn't convince them the premium was worth it before, how are they going to do it now when "smart consumers" can not compare Apples to Apples?
Because OS/X doesn't fulfill all the needs some of us have? I would not mind have OS/X around but damn if I am going to have a machine just for a OS.
I want OS/X, XP, and Linux on one machine. The benefit of buying the Mac is that is should be easier to support multiple OSes on it as the hardware is pretty much guaranteed.
As for the experience, if OS/X was as beautiful and stable as all the people claim a couple of my friends would not have jobs supporting people who use it.
I have yet to find a really stable OS outside of midrange computers, anything on a PC type of hardware seems to come with instability built in
Looks as if they are cutting costs. The early versions look much more refined and "professional". Hopefully it doesn't mean other corners will soon be cut.
but the article seems to never get to that point. Perhaps a better title would be "Cheating for advancement". Pretty common in MMORPGs. The big problem with some cheats is what isn't a cheat today could be one tomorrow. That occurs fairly often in the early days of a new MMORPG. Players find something that works wonders only to get slapped down when a GM/Developer/Whatnot decide its wrong.
As for making a profit from cheating. Asheron's Call has had combat macroing for years and it was condoned in writing by a developer on their own boards. All provided its attended. That last part didn't mean much and with the system of passing a percentage of earned experience up to monarchs above you macros could push characters to very high levels to where the account was worth something on the open market. Those days are long gone for that game, but similar strategies work in other games.
Now many of the cheats and exploits of days gone by are harder to pull off long term as logging has gotten much better. DB transactions can be audited as games move to true DB systems. Duping is probably the most controllable form of cheating now. Macroing still is harder to detect but in this day and age popular games have resellers of Chinese labor to level characters with thereby providing a "human" contact should the character be challenged for doing something for hours on end.
Still I look at it this way, people are going to cheat and people will get caught. It doesn't matter unless that game owner doesn't act on it. If they let the inmates take over the asylum (very close to what happened in AC1) then it becomes a real issue. It not only hurts the company which permitted the cheating/exploiting/etc but damages other companies as the people who do this take their attitudes with them.
Keep the harddrive out of my iPhonePod and you might have.
Yet Apple will need to make it so not-like phones we have today. I assume a folding design as one of celebrated parts of the iPod is it look. Now I don't expect a rotary dialing system but that wouldn't be too hard of a gimmick to add using the click wheel.
Now, if Jobs and Co would come up with a phone that can work on anyone's network and is sold through the Apple store maybe he can free the consumer from these networks. Subscriptions suck.
Now a smartphone would allow you to pause the music while the call is active and make it selectable as how to handle calls. Motorcyclist deal with similar issues, wiring together all sorts of devices and then prioritizing which has our attention and when. (as in, radar detector chirps are on top my music whereas my cell call cuts the music channel out)
When you have so many news stories about anti-competitve rules being put in place in public schools it gets depressing. From schools where getting the responses to questions right isn't as important as understanding who you are. Where schools that don't require you to graduate to get handed a diploma to ones where you have multiple class valedictorians. To read about stories that students put a stigma on success in school because its too much being like "the other race" or such non-sense. Where teacher unions are more to protect themselves than promote the education of children to school boards where the administrative salaries outweigh those of the teachers.
Education in this country needs a serious reform. The primary focus should be making our children the brightest and best in the world. If this means putting public schools into competition with private schools for taxpayer dollars then do it, its done in parts of Europe to this day! Instead we have a system which is run by people only concerned about their welfare and shoving their correctness down societies throat. The schools are not used to educate but to condition. When steps are taken to hold them accountable they run to the courts scream racism, fairness, and about religion. The people teaching our children should never have become second to the people who oversee them just as the children should never have become second to those who teach them.
First and formost disruptive students should not be allowed to force the system to adjust to them. Next teachers who cannot meet the requirements should not have the "right" to stay simply because of tenure and union muscle Schools should not have an absolute right to taxpayer money. Public, private schools, and even home schooling should all be held to the same standards. (currently some areas pass laws that are more strict on anyone but the public school!) Students who do excell need to be encouraged, not dragged down by anti-competitive practices Religon should be the domain of private or home schooling. However its existance there should not be grounds for withholding funding. The standards for funding should not even hint about requiring or disallowing religon. (again, all schooling should have the same neutral standards) Testing must be mandatory at all grades. This allows for quicker identification of students who need more help and systems than need changing.
Its been far to long that people just send their kids off to "public daycare". We do a disservice to our children and society as a whole by not pushing for the best we can have. Throwing money at the problem will not work and has proven so. We must also set levels of achievement that all sides can understand.
The number of times you have run hardware/pc-tech stories where the submitter is the owner of the site linked is what gets me.
Granted some will then submit anonymous but its far better than seeing @nnnnn.net being the same address as the story and then getting bombared with ads.
themselves! One of the major things that killed their last game, AC2, is that they made the game they wanted to play, not what the players were asking for.
--- Ken Troop's comment (he is one of the mains behind this game)
A large part of the lack of randomness in DDO is deliberate. Our philosophy has typically been very "anti-random". Personally, I have a very hard time caring or enjoying content that is either completely random, or scaled in difficulty based on, say, the size of my party. Where is the challenge? Where is the learnable/masterable experience? (Some of my best memories of early online MUD play are playing an area over and over again, learning how to succeed, learning how to master it -- if an experience is endlessly mutable, that thrill of mastery is gone). ---
In other words, if he don't like it you ain't going to get it.
Turbine is going to have to hope people see the "D&DO" part before their name. Too many gamers associate Turbine with cheating and exploiting for good reason.
Turbine used to be run by dreamers, now its run my egotist and marketers.
if I can dual boot that laptop then I will have my first Apple. See, the mini never excite me. Yeah its cheap, but only for the base model. To be usuable it gets up in price quickly, to the pricepoint of where I quickly forget about buying one.
But a dual boot laptop would be nice. Still I would hope for something other than Intel integrated graphics. Half-way decent system from Nvidia or ATI won't add that much to the price, please have them as an option.
What is to stop Apple from "agreeing" to tiered pricing while embedding more profit into the sale of each song for themselves? It would be the perfect opportunity for them to do so, raise prices and let the industry take all the blame.
The key here is to give all organizations some baselines to operate from. It also provides a method for insurers to operate under. This also provides an idea to tourist as to what to expect and guard against. If all operators have a consistent set of rules to base their own on the industry should be much better, for tourist as well as provider.
You can always go above and beyond the rules and I fully expect some will. It may even become a point of sales. As far as the terrorist angle, remember for the most part no one actually expected terrorist to crash jets into skyscrapers. Some suspected it but it was always pushed aside as too extreme. We, the public, deluded ourselves into thinking that some people would never go so far. Always the idea was hostages and possiblity of exploding a plane load of people in the air or on ground. What could be far more headline grabbing than exploding one of the first tourist filled spaceplanes or ensuring it never comes back? While it might not be damaging economically to the countries involved as a whole it will grab headlines and set back a fledgling industry.
Do you really want no enforcement of rules and protections so that we are stuck on this rock forever? Face it, for civilian use of space to occur it is going to have to be proven safe, effective, and eventually reasonably priced. Lose one flight and the effects are going to be devastating on the industry. Lose two and you can hang it up. Lose one to terrorist and its probably the same as losing two or more flights.
and Terrorist doesn't just mean guys from the Middle East. There are enough religious nuts to go around and enviro-nuts to find something like this a major attraction. We live in a world of nut-cases and unfortunately too many have the means to act on their horrid ideas of self-righteousness
Slashdot Mirror
I changed the title to better reflect the truth.
Big iron is just fine. The deal is that Intel had delusions as to what it meant and tried to apply PC standards to a world which lives at a much higher level.
PowerPC archietecture is alive and well in true big iron. It will even find its way into IBM mainframe technology. Server farms are not big iron, they are glorified PCs with a little bit more reliability yet suffer from all the issues PCs normally do.
The big iron at work here, Tandem, IBM Mainframe, and iSeries have no appreciable downtime and the majority if not all recent hardware failures were transparent to all users. Hell some of the hardware failures are transparent to support staff as IBM usually calls first.
A processor does not make you big iron any more than disk drives make a server. Its a mindset that isn't happening at Intel and one HP lost a long time ago.
While the non-technical managers overriding the decisions of the technical staff here would never lead to loss of life it still occurs and is still very frustrating.
Many of us can spend more time refuting a non-tech than actually performing the work. It can take more time refuting even most uninformed opinion than the entire projects takes from planning to completion. I have had projects stopped just before release because of some "wild hair" objection by someone higher up only to later unexplicably finding it released.
Its jealously for the most part. Not direct but that is what it still is. They need to feel superior somehow so they mask ignorance with authority. By pulling "rank" they have effectively shown the technical staff whose boss as if it makes right.
Fortunately there are times where their idiocy gets noticed by someone higher up who realizes the issue raised is nothing more than strutting and they get boxed up for a while. But eventually they pop their heads up again when the coast is clear and it is back to step one.
Sometimes I think the motto of most companies is, "We make money inspite of ourselves"
First the modem should be there as it adds very little to the cost and is present in many chipsets. Laptops are about NOT having to carry accessories. While FW800 may be excused as FW400 is there I can't give them a pass on the modem.
Many times I find the following situation, no wireless and no lan. This means modems. Yeah some hotels have internet I can connect to via lan but that still isn't widespread, or should I say widespread in hotels some business will pay for. Same goes for wireless.
If I am taking a laptop on business all I should need is the laptop, the power cord, and the case to carry it. I don't want to have a section for "exceptions". If I have one of those then I bought the wrong laptop.
This is a "PRO" model, by name it implies it will provide me everything I could use that is reasonable. That modem is far more valuable than a gimmick of a camera. Hell I already carry a digital camera around and I am sure I can use it in place of iSight (which seems more suitable to teens playing with IM and IV)
The US already puts out more grains that it can consume and this has happened while the population increased and the amount of farmed land decreased.
If crops needed to make ethanol became a source of good money we would see an increase in farm land devoted to them, but we would also see all sorts of new ways of increasing the output of land already used to grow these same crops.
I think the biggest negative impact would be less grain available from the US for the rest of the world. There are too many countries where there is little incentive to be a good farmer other than keeping your own alive, and this results in low yields which require importing from other countries. The US and a few other countries usually fill this gap. Turn around and make a more profitable use for our grain and either your going to have to turn these countries around or the plight of their people will be worse.
Get free of all the other items made using fossil fuels as well. Otherwise what are you really doing? There are many items made with fossil fuels that could be made with alternatives, provided someone would want to pay for it.
This whole idea sounds more like a "feel good" program. All those "tax benefits" to encourage the switch look good but are only to bait the hook but as with any tax used to change behaviour it will not generate the income necessary long term and new sources will be needed. Look at the "congestion tax" - do they expect vehicle use to drop so much as the original reason behind the tax is no longer applicable?
Oh well, best of luck. I think the time table is ludicrous but if they can pull it off then maybe the rest of the world can learn. If not at least one country will be slightly better off.
as the mini-maxed characters appear. UO had flexibility but at least was wise enough to limit players from becoming best at everything. Horizons had the archetypes but allowed players to pick up as many types as they wanted. In the end you have characters that could do nearly everything. Asherson's Call was open ended but attempted to contain what players could do with limiting the number of choices afforded. Yet at the same time unlimited experience meant most skills capped and characters at the end game looked very much alike.
There are other games with some openeness to character development but the end result is usually the same. Over time the players learn what skills actually are worth it and those are the only ones the players have. Throw PvP into the mix and you will see less deviation.
Having a defined role also helps players identify easier with their characters. They can learn their place fairly easily with the help of other more experience players. It also makes fighting MOBs in the game easier as you can generally know what to expect of your opponent.
Which is more fun? Really it depends on the game.
It is not a waste of hardware. I tire of this damn complex some mac-heads have. OS/X isn't the end all of operating systems.
There are those of us who would like to have a computer that can boot all the operating systems. As it stands now the most limited as to where it can boot will be the OS/X system. Eventually someone will get it to boot on a PC but then your forever stuck trying to get drivers.
So the best solution is to get Windows on the Mac. It will be the most difficult. Then probably one of the many linux variations.
Now for me I can buy a macbook, have windows loaded, and be able to vpn/5250/3270 in to work with a supported platform. I am sure many others are wanting to splurge but need some sensibility in our purchase. I need a new laptop, I don't need a new "OS/X" only machine. I don't want to be trapped into one vendor for just an OS.
Did Steve Jobs tell the crowd it was only a prototype and that they would did not have anything they would be able to ship? Was it implied they were ready to move on with Intel laptops?
If he did not then this is news. Vaporware can come from anyone, if Apple starts playing that game then they deserve the same treatment.
Being Apple does not earn one a pass.
These games aren't being dumbed down. They are becoming more accessible to a greater number of people. WOW succeeds because more people can do well in the game. Regardless of what game you play you will always find "asshats" and the like. UO not easy? Ah, come on now. The only time it wasn't easy was when it was first released and even then the biggest impediment to playing the game was the stability of the servers. There were asshats galore the first year and still are.
There is nothing wrong with games where when you die you get looted. The problem is that those games attract the very same or worse "asshats" you claim to dislike. Throw in perma-death and you will find a whole new world of asshats - roving gangs of them who will seek no other purpose other than to destroy the play of others. They won't do it for any in-game reason, they will do it because they can. I know, the argument is that the risk will keep them in check but that is never the case. They will find every little exploit that prevents their loss leaving the victim to fight with the game company to prove they didn't deserve the loss they suffered.
That is too hostile of a game world to expect players to stick around in. There have been many "PvP" centric games and if they truly did offer better game play then why haven't they succeeded? WOW succeeds because not only do they offer a world full of adventure they offer a controlled PvP that doesn't become unfairly hostile to the people participating.
As I replied to another, there is nothing preventing YOU from imposing the same restrictions you espouse for others on yourself. If you want perma death then do it! Otherwise your nothing more than a X-wing politician pontificating about the evils of the other side while blithely brushing over your same transgressions.
Until a guarantee can be made that technical issues beyond the player's control are fully addressed this type of scenario isn't going to fly.
Now how it could be done and impart some of the same "thrill" and "consequence" is to have rules where characters don't start off as lower level but midway through the game progression. Limit the number of characters that the account can use during a set period, perhaps 30 days.
This would reduce the investment but not to the point of making it meaningless. The reason why "hardcore" servers don't exist in MMORPGs of this scale is that players put a considerable amount of time into their characters and will not give that up. Not in a world where internet problems can crop up anywhere at anytime.
I also find the calls for "hardcore" servers to be pretentious simply because most of those making the calls are implying they are better players when its usually just a case of jealously that drives it.
There is NOTHING preventing players who want to play this way from imposing this rule upon themselves. Yet this is the last action these same people will ever take. Lead by example or shut up
If that is the case then OS/X is in even more trouble as the hardware pricing is totally controlled by Apple and price is driving the PC market.
Hardware is what Apple used to celebrate as being their important difference, now that they are on Intel platforms they have to rely on design. Trouble is the public wasn't keen on buying their design before and since the price didn't change neither will the buying public's opinion.
I don't think its going to happen.
I think the Mac is on Intel simply because there was little else to do to generate new sales momentum. By going to Intel it is implied that people with the older technology will buy new Apples, thereby increasing sales and making Apple's bottom line look better. This will work in the short term but long term where is the excitement going to come from?
What do Apple computers do that Microsoft computers don't that will appeal to the general computing populace? Computing is probably too strong a term, most aren't doing more than email and surfing. Games are probably the next strongest category for most PC users. So who are they getting sales from? Simple, the Apple faithful. When those run out where do they go for more?
Corporations aren't going to switch. Most are tied by vendor now. In our case we have windows because Dell supplies on Windows PCs. We had HP before and that was because HP supplied Windows only PCs. We don't even look at Apple. Windows is entrenched here and got that way because there was no viable alternative.
Why would the general populace ever want to buy a Mac? You can talk it up all you want but the bottom line is price. If all the GP is doing is surfing/email/IM they are defintely going to be harder to sway. Photography? Nah, most people never use more than the basic features of most products.
With the migration to Intel the "Mac Tax" is more evident. This puts pressure on the geek market. Many of us would like to have a machine to run OS/X. That word "machine" is key. I'm not buying an Apple unless I can use another OS on it. My first preference is that it boot Windows as that is what I need at work and for home use. Next is Linux. So why would these new machines appeal to me? Outside of the mini the new ones will be too expensive for something just to play with.
I'll be very curious what the sales look like 1 year after the switch is complete. It is obvious most sales will be to the faithful. I just don't think they can convince the general computer populace to switch because of the obvious cost difference. Look, they couldn't convince them the premium was worth it before, how are they going to do it now when "smart consumers" can not compare Apples to Apples?
Because OS/X doesn't fulfill all the needs some of us have? I would not mind have OS/X around but damn if I am going to have a machine just for a OS.
I want OS/X, XP, and Linux on one machine. The benefit of buying the Mac is that is should be easier to support multiple OSes on it as the hardware is pretty much guaranteed.
As for the experience, if OS/X was as beautiful and stable as all the people claim a couple of my friends would not have jobs supporting people who use it.
I have yet to find a really stable OS outside of midrange computers, anything on a PC type of hardware seems to come with instability built in
Looks as if they are cutting costs. The early versions look much more refined and "professional". Hopefully it doesn't mean other corners will soon be cut.
but the article seems to never get to that point. Perhaps a better title would be "Cheating for advancement". Pretty common in MMORPGs. The big problem with some cheats is what isn't a cheat today could be one tomorrow. That occurs fairly often in the early days of a new MMORPG. Players find something that works wonders only to get slapped down when a GM/Developer/Whatnot decide its wrong.
As for making a profit from cheating. Asheron's Call has had combat macroing for years and it was condoned in writing by a developer on their own boards. All provided its attended. That last part didn't mean much and with the system of passing a percentage of earned experience up to monarchs above you macros could push characters to very high levels to where the account was worth something on the open market. Those days are long gone for that game, but similar strategies work in other games.
Now many of the cheats and exploits of days gone by are harder to pull off long term as logging has gotten much better. DB transactions can be audited as games move to true DB systems. Duping is probably the most controllable form of cheating now. Macroing still is harder to detect but in this day and age popular games have resellers of Chinese labor to level characters with thereby providing a "human" contact should the character be challenged for doing something for hours on end.
Still I look at it this way, people are going to cheat and people will get caught. It doesn't matter unless that game owner doesn't act on it. If they let the inmates take over the asylum (very close to what happened in AC1) then it becomes a real issue. It not only hurts the company which permitted the cheating/exploiting/etc but damages other companies as the people who do this take their attitudes with them.
You buy time on networks. Far less expensive and easier to do. Many cell phone brands you see today don't have their own networks. There is no point.
Keep the harddrive out of my iPhonePod and you might have.
Yet Apple will need to make it so not-like phones we have today. I assume a folding design as one of celebrated parts of the iPod is it look. Now I don't expect a rotary dialing system but that wouldn't be too hard of a gimmick to add using the click wheel.
Now, if Jobs and Co would come up with a phone that can work on anyone's network and is sold through the Apple store maybe he can free the consumer from these networks. Subscriptions suck.
Now a smartphone would allow you to pause the music while the call is active and make it selectable as how to handle calls. Motorcyclist deal with similar issues, wiring together all sorts of devices and then prioritizing which has our attention and when. (as in, radar detector chirps are on top my music whereas my cell call cuts the music channel out)
When you have so many news stories about anti-competitve rules being put in place in public schools it gets depressing. From schools where getting the responses to questions right isn't as important as understanding who you are. Where schools that don't require you to graduate to get handed a diploma to ones where you have multiple class valedictorians. To read about stories that students put a stigma on success in school because its too much being like "the other race" or such non-sense. Where teacher unions are more to protect themselves than promote the education of children to school boards where the administrative salaries outweigh those of the teachers.
Education in this country needs a serious reform. The primary focus should be making our children the brightest and best in the world. If this means putting public schools into competition with private schools for taxpayer dollars then do it, its done in parts of Europe to this day! Instead we have a system which is run by people only concerned about their welfare and shoving their correctness down societies throat. The schools are not used to educate but to condition. When steps are taken to hold them accountable they run to the courts scream racism, fairness, and about religion. The people teaching our children should never have become second to the people who oversee them just as the children should never have become second to those who teach them.
First and formost disruptive students should not be allowed to force the system to adjust to them.
Next teachers who cannot meet the requirements should not have the "right" to stay simply because of tenure and union muscle
Schools should not have an absolute right to taxpayer money.
Public, private schools, and even home schooling should all be held to the same standards. (currently some areas pass laws that are more strict on anyone but the public school!)
Students who do excell need to be encouraged, not dragged down by anti-competitive practices
Religon should be the domain of private or home schooling. However its existance there should not be grounds for withholding funding. The standards for funding should not even hint about requiring or disallowing religon. (again, all schooling should have the same neutral standards)
Testing must be mandatory at all grades. This allows for quicker identification of students who need more help and systems than need changing.
Its been far to long that people just send their kids off to "public daycare". We do a disservice to our children and society as a whole by not pushing for the best we can have. Throwing money at the problem will not work and has proven so. We must also set levels of achievement that all sides can understand.
Well WinBook and MacDaddy were already taken
The number of times you have run hardware/pc-tech stories where the submitter is the owner of the site linked is what gets me.
Granted some will then submit anonymous but its far better than seeing @nnnnn.net being the same address as the story and then getting bombared with ads.
these designers know very little at Turbine.
The issue isn't that designers don't what they are doing, it becomes an issue when one of them becomes the overriding force behind what happens.
themselves! One of the major things that killed their last game, AC2, is that they made the game they wanted to play, not what the players were asking for.
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Ken Troop's comment (he is one of the mains behind this game)
A large part of the lack of randomness in DDO is deliberate. Our philosophy has typically been very "anti-random". Personally, I have a very hard time caring or enjoying content that is either completely random, or scaled in difficulty based on, say, the size of my party. Where is the challenge? Where is the learnable/masterable experience? (Some of my best memories of early online MUD play are playing an area over and over again, learning how to succeed, learning how to master it -- if an experience is endlessly mutable, that thrill of mastery is gone).
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In other words, if he don't like it you ain't going to get it.
Turbine is going to have to hope people see the "D&DO" part before their name. Too many gamers associate Turbine with cheating and exploiting for good reason.
Turbine used to be run by dreamers, now its run my egotist and marketers.
if I can dual boot that laptop then I will have my first Apple. See, the mini never excite me. Yeah its cheap, but only for the base model. To be usuable it gets up in price quickly, to the pricepoint of where I quickly forget about buying one.
But a dual boot laptop would be nice. Still I would hope for something other than Intel integrated graphics. Half-way decent system from Nvidia or ATI won't add that much to the price, please have them as an option.
What is to stop Apple from "agreeing" to tiered pricing while embedding more profit into the sale of each song for themselves? It would be the perfect opportunity for them to do so, raise prices and let the industry take all the blame.
The key here is to give all organizations some baselines to operate from. It also provides a method for insurers to operate under. This also provides an idea to tourist as to what to expect and guard against. If all operators have a consistent set of rules to base their own on the industry should be much better, for tourist as well as provider.
You can always go above and beyond the rules and I fully expect some will. It may even become a point of sales. As far as the terrorist angle, remember for the most part no one actually expected terrorist to crash jets into skyscrapers. Some suspected it but it was always pushed aside as too extreme. We, the public, deluded ourselves into thinking that some people would never go so far. Always the idea was hostages and possiblity of exploding a plane load of people in the air or on ground. What could be far more headline grabbing than exploding one of the first tourist filled spaceplanes or ensuring it never comes back? While it might not be damaging economically to the countries involved as a whole it will grab headlines and set back a fledgling industry.
Do you really want no enforcement of rules and protections so that we are stuck on this rock forever? Face it, for civilian use of space to occur it is going to have to be proven safe, effective, and eventually reasonably priced. Lose one flight and the effects are going to be devastating on the industry. Lose two and you can hang it up. Lose one to terrorist and its probably the same as losing two or more flights.
and Terrorist doesn't just mean guys from the Middle East. There are enough religious nuts to go around and enviro-nuts to find something like this a major attraction. We live in a world of nut-cases and unfortunately too many have the means to act on their horrid ideas of self-righteousness