You can buy a third party DIMM and throw it in. Why do you say it's not an option?
Because it's far to slow without 512 MB due to constant swapping, as very clearly indicated by the poster (as you'd see if you'd read the post a bit more carefully).
If you looked at the site you'd see it is physically an option, but as the poster indicated not a realistic option.
Now, not including keyboard and mouse is a cheap move on Apple's part I mean, come on, how am I expected to use the damn thing without a keyboard?
Your "supposed" to have one already, and in the rare event you don't (in the bizzare instance you have not bought a new non-legacy computer in ~10 years) you are "supposed" to buy one seperately, either from Apple - or if selecting 'Keyboard' from the drop down list while ordering is beyond your limited abilities (as it seems) - from another vendor.
You'd only kvetch if they included them and it wasn't an option.
Christ-on-a-bike there is no pleasing some people...
I could almost guarantee that worldwide there are more MUD players than MMORPG subscribers. I don't think their popularity has dropped much at all from the early days of the public internet...
There are millions of MMORPG players, MILLIONS - we know this based on hard subscription details. Hell Lineage alone has 4 million players.
To compare with the MUD world, the largest MUD is what - Medievia? It's got less than a thousand players on at anyone time. Most have a fraction of that (>100).
I find the idea that there are millions of MUD players highly amusing - where are they all? The truth is there is not, and there never was.
This only started to happen after the Palestinian army began to use ambulances as military transport vehicles. If you want to blame someone, blame the government that militarized ambulances.
That's quite widely reported of course, and given the very limited control the Palestinian authority have over some terrorists groups I should think it has happened (and is quite dispicable, and I'm sure the Palestinian authority could have done a lot more to prevent this).
It's not fair to blame only the Palestinian authority though, the soldier that pulls the trigger (and the authority that stands behind him) also bears some. Truthfully neither the Palestinian authority or the Israeli government are exclusively to blame for what has become their 'mutual self inflicted purgetory' (to quote The Economist).
You are leaving out the fact that those Red Cresent 'ambulances' were being used to transport armed terrorists, weapons and explosives.
I'm sure there is truth in that.
However BBC have shown TV footage Israeli army also detaining both Red Cross ambulences / Medecin Sans Frontieres staff (with people inside the ambulences requiring attention). Distressed represantatives from both organisations pleaded to be let though but even after inspection the Israeli soldiers still refused. As a result, at least one of the organisations pulled out from the region perminantly. I'd note the soliders were pointing guns at the BBC camera crew and reporter too and forced them, at gunpoint, to stop filming.
This was shown on BBC News 24, I'm sure it's possilble to obtain a copy from their library if you think I'm making this up.
Then there is Sri Lanka refusing aid from Israel. What a bunch of nazis.
Not just aid from Israel (which I don't think they would have any objection to per se, dispite the checkered past between the two nations), but aid from yltra orthadox religious group it should be said (not all that welcome amoung the largely Muslim population I don't imagine, indeed likely seen as rather antagonistic in their eyes).
I'd have told them to bugger off too quite frankly (more extreme crusading religious zealots of any persuasion the world does not need - they are NOT short on volunteers), I'm sure they went into this just how antagonising they were being too. After all, Israeli been known open fire on Red Crescent ambulances attending to the wounded (including several instances captured on film, one by a BBC reporter), even resulting in the death of patients as ambulances were detained, so we know the hostility towards unwelcome aid goes both ways.
Aid from a religious group is one thing (not something I'd ever fund through charitable donations, but stomacheable) air from an en extremist religious group is another matter entirely.
Clarification on who can be called 'Sir'
on
Sir Peter Molyneux?
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· Score: 1
Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Steven Spielberg, but just Peter M OBE, here.
Just to clear something up (as people doing the correcting are getting it a bit wrong too), FWIW knighthood's from the UK government are given on occation to non UK citizens, however only UK citizens have the 'right' to call themselves "Sir $firstname" as a result.
It's actually the same award, Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, but those not holding UK citizenship are restricted to the being "$firstname $lastname KBE".
So Steven Spielberg should not use Sir Steven (nor should anyone when refering to him), for example, though Sir Tim Berners-Lee (or Sir Tim) is fine.
Er, yes because of course a single common grammar mistake in a post of that size is obviously entirely equivalent to the level of typing we were all treated to in the parent post.
I'm planning to write an sftp "browser" front end in python or maybe just figure out how to use rsync over an ssh tunnel.
Have you seen nautlius in recent gnome builds btw? It does just this, it's very good at it too (a cow-orker pointed this out to me recently).
Could do with it in Mac OS X really, though there are a few programs that support graphical interfaces for it already IIRC, even on Mac OS X. It has sftp but I like my click-n-drool interfaces.
I agree that groups will split up into small close nit communities though, I think this has already started to happen in response to the occational round of crack downs. It has the desired effect in a manner in that it does reduce overall access to material, but to be effective they are going to have to keep doing it every so often, or at least keep sending out the legal warnings (which is pretty effective in itself I think).
havent u ppl noticed that most of these *insiders* are under 18 why 'cos the law is easy on them and they can be set free no matter how much the industry lost 'cos of 'em. BTW i'm 17
17 and you type like that? Your not the sharpest tool in the box I suspect.
You are not mystically exempt from punishment because you are 17 - and that applies virtually everywhere.
The age of criminal responsbility is about 10 (in North America and Europe), but I never cease to find it surprising how many people are aware of this. From the age of about 14 you can expect to be tried as an adult (NOT as a child). If you're 16 (or in some cases 18) mummy and daddy are liable for all your fines, and will end up paying for your crimes by having their salaries docked till the amount decided upon by the court has been repaid.
Though in the event of an prosecution (or serious threat of prosecution) your realistically likely to have a large cripling fine imposed on your family, probably in an out of court settlement in which the company prosecuting will make an offer thats considerably more lenient than one the court would award (to say nothing of legal fees involved for the defendant). This is what happened to the 12 year old girl (and others) caught in an MP3 warez ring if you recall.
Additionally, another popular myth is that all records of things you've done as a child are simply automatically destroyed as soon as you reach adulthood. That isn't so, though typically after a certain number of years you can at least request the records be sealed, in some instances (such as if you are part of a warez ring) the information can remain on record permenantly (as there are specific exemptions for certain circumstances).
EQ2 dead? OK, EQ2 might not be everyone's favorite, but ripping on EQ2 while praising WoW is just fanboy talk.
I don't think it's fan boy talk at all, I think to suggest that it is, is in itself much closer to 'fanboy talk' of the EQ2 variety. EQ2 has been widley fairly reguarded as a flop because people have full knowledged of how SOE run their titles and after SWG in particular customers were very shy of them.
In a building full of developers and IT workers from 20-35 only one has taken up EQ2 to my knowledge. People have never the less intentionally avoided EQ2 because they are fully aware of what to expect from an SOE title and by and large it's not something people equate with 'fun' (or competant mangement, witness SWG, PS). As we are a European office we don't have WoW here yet (a few weeks to go), but all the MMO players here are itching to play it again after having had such a great time in the open (and closed) beta.
Sony On Line grind-a-thons simply have little appeal in the wider market; as the take up of the more traditional gaming experience found in WoW has shown, which is unique centered around allowing players to solo any quest if they wish, not worry to much about money or skill and just concentrate on fun things like exporing, gaining new abilities (at a fairly rapid pace I might add) and learning about the game world. As a consequense of course it fails the hardcore players somewhat (due to the relative ease of levelling and the aquisition of items), though the genuine diversity of classes and races should provide a significant amount of longevity. The vast majority of people prefer games to be fun-centric with many rewards and the oppertunity to explore new environments, they don't want to play some crazy 3D fantasy equivolent of a hardcore Japanese shoot-em-up.
Of course some people find hardcore games provide 'a different form of entertainment', other people find them an exercise in frustration (I fall into the latter and get quite pissed off if a game is not entertaining or if I'm frustaded by an inadequte design). While the division is much smaller in the PA reading community (for example), the majority of gamers - both dedicated and casual - are in the same camp as me to a large extent.
I don't think this is an indication that people want easier games, indeed I don't think that has anything to do with it, though I mention this as it's often cited. The truth is people just want better games that don't fall back of doing repetative tasks (or illogical puzzles, or pixel perfect jumping puzzles, or big reverse-engineering puzzles where you try to workout how the game mechanics are implimented in order to get the most out of the game, rather than concentrating on just playing it in an abstract manner) as a way of demonstrating your commitment or ability.
I have a friend who plays L2, _a lot_. He has a Jedi in SWG. He really likes to level, to challange the game mechanics and 'beat' the game. In each an every game he evaluates it and uses all his reasources to reverse engineer the game mechanics to work out what weapon used on what monters at what level will allow you to level fastest or produce the most 'wins' in PvP, down to the (what can be surprisingly complex) math routines underneath. I think that L2 caters to players like him brilliantly and is a testament to NC Soft (as is CoH I would add, which caters to a totally differnt segment of players). That L2 has have very little take off in the west is hardly surprising though, it's just no the sort of experience most people are looking for in an entertainment title.
The same is true of EQ2. The wider world is simply much more impressed with WoW, no surprise it was Penny Arcade's game of the year. As comptent a follow up as it is and as good as it's parts are, I think EQ2 is a contender for anyone's game of the year as the crucial gratifying gameplay factor just isn't there.
We'll have a better idea by the spring/summer about how the EQ2 style of MMO is going to do agains
First off, I want to clear this point up right away:
English is not an official language of Israel. It is required in school for practical reasons, not because of any official status.
WRONG. English must be taught in all schools and universities in Israel. It is an official part of the national curriculum for all schools and is not optional.
Should Slashdot support Hebrew? There's no real reason they should, being as it is an English website. However, moving from that to saying that no one should speak Hebrew is a bit of jump. Maybe you should back down from that one.
My point has never been that no one should speak Hebrew (if people are attached to a particular language for cultural reasons I so no reason why they shouldn't use it) but that it should never have been implemented as the primarily language in Israel in the first place - not when there were a number of eminently more sensible choices, not least English (or even Yiddish, which was at least still in use and did not have to be artificially resurrected).
Now, that much is in the past and there is no use in crying over split milk as the saying goes, but it doesn't make the current practice in some place of of emphasising Hebrew over English (or Arabic, for that matter) any less corrigible in my book. It's entirely designed to create and sustain a quite ridiculous layer of cultural exclusivity (all of which we see results in rather ironic noisy complaints when the rest of the world refuses to join in and provide tailor made software).
Rather than admit the blindly obvious (there are just not enough Hebrew-only speaking users to make it worth while for the likes of Apple or Microsoft, as seen in recent cases) multiple multi-national well structured corporations are accused of gross incompetence at not being able to see 'a clear gap in the market' (while as incompetent as they can be, that's one thing they are good at) and even of anti-Semitism (always a favourite insult among fervent Zionists when someone refuses to see things their way).
As for the assertion '13% of Canadians know only French' and could not function normally without the support that it is afforded as an official state language - that's entirely misleading and even incorrect - there is really only one province with practising dual nationality and that those who do speak French live overwhelmingly in a very small part of that province.
I should like to point out, that according the official government census in New Zealand 1.5 % of the country are actually Jedi Knights of all things - the point being that people do NOT give entirely accurate information on census forms (compare the number of people in the UK that say they are practising Christians with official Church of England actual attendance estimates, for an example of similar census shenanigans).
The truth is, we both know the issue is not that lots of French Canadian's on the whole CANT operate in an English speaking environment (the only exception being the very small number of older first generation immigrants who have simply never learned English) but that they do not WISH to, and more truthfully that they WISH for the option to use French, so for political and cultural reasons they cry for funding to be diverted to support their own cultural ends - however much money that costs the the state (and regardless of the cost to the Healthcare or Education systems which could otherwise benefit from the significant cost savings). THAT's the primary cause of the squewed results, and why that figure of 13% doesn't being to match the reality which Canadians recognise.
I know have no trouble going round Europe (France, Germany, Spain, Holland) using trains, taxis, shopping, getting haircuts, buying petrol, going to the hospital, or cinema or following street or motorway signs without resort to English - though of course practically everyone knows some English too - even if they are very modest about it - working out what's what in anoth
They have a number of resolutions available including IIRC a set of PowerBook native resolutions (I'm not 100% certain exactly what resolutions are avalible as don't have it hear to check). You have the option not to stretch the display at least.
Fortunately, I don't actually think stretched resolutions like 800x600 happen look that bad in WoW, but that's open to personal interpretation really.
One thing of note is that with both the Radeon AND Nvidia cards on Mac OS X is that there are driver problems that means shaders do not work properly. I don't really know the details, but specifically when enabled in any game (including the likes of Halo, Vendetta Online and others) there is a serious performance hit (I can only imagine that the Doom 3 beta must be more or less unplayable). So Blizzard have decided to remove shaders from the Mac version entirely (the options still appear in the UI, but they are grayed out). They have said they have petitioned Apple for a bug fix and are waiting for one to be released before they enable the options (because apparently it's unplayably slow).
This is by no means a show stopper, but it does mean that you don't get all neat effects like glistening snow (something I noticed with my dwarven character).
Oh and I whole hartedly recommend getting the ATI control panel/driver for Mac OS X rather than just using the default Mac OS X one. You get a control panel which you can use to set options for (a) Full Screen Anti Aliasing (which you can force at 0,2,4 or 8x on a per application basis) and (b) for texture compression (optimise for speed vrs quality).
(a) makes a lot of titles look much better assuming there is a bit of GPU power to spare, including WoW and (b) has really improved the speed of some titles form 'okay' to 'really smooth' which little visible drop in quality.
Not as many options as on the Windows Catalyst drivers but actually I prefer the Mac OS X version a lot to the ones on my AGP based 9800 Pro because I create settings on a per-application basis really simply (without 3rd party software).
the sole national language of the country of Israel
It's not the only offical language, English and Arabic are too.
London has a population of roughly 7 million; Israel, as of the most recent data... has a population of roughly 6.5 million inside the country proper, and another 3 million in the territories. Nice try, though.
Erm, I'm right you muppet, as you've just indicated (or is maths not your strong point - hint 6.5 is less than 7).
But hey, if you want to extend the size of Israel so arbitrarily (to places that ARN'T Israel) you may as well extend London to include the outer reaches of Greater Londont too, eh?
Nice try yourself though.
Your data regarding the number of French only speakers in Canada and Palestinians who speak Hebew is grossly inflated too. But from the nature of your post you don't seem to be interested in facts, merely pushing a political agenda.
It seems to me like your merely dodging the issue with an irrelivant rebuttle.
Do you feel that the way the United States government treated the native inhabitants of North America was justified? Kidnapping their young children, moving them to "boarding schools" where they were beaten if they spoke their native language or used their native-language names? Then once they were "educated" until they no longer spoke their parent's language or knew how to live as their parents lived, they were shipped back home and left to rot on the reservations. But hey, they all spoke English and had good Christian names!
There is nothing redeemable about what the setters to the United States did to the native inhabitant, I think you'd have to be a sociopath, religious zelot or fevorant jingoist to think so.
I am neither in favor of what the settlers to North America did to the native inhabitants, nor of the behaviour of the current US or Israeli administrations. 'Compliance by force' rather defeatst the purpose don't you think?
But to presume to tell the people of another nation and culture what language they should or should not speak is typical of Anglo arrogance.
Nonsense. It's common sense. The last thing it is is elitist or arrogent.
If it was another viable language canidiate the world (in both commerce and academica) would have adopted that, but English is what we have, thanks to the legacy of the British Empire and in turn to the foundations laid by others such as the strong influence of Roman Empire in Europe.
The only one here who seems to be being provincialist appears to be you, through your resistance of a system already adopted by the rest of the globe as the common language of preference.
I would happy learn Esparato if anyone bothered to use it, but the chances are I'm more likely to run into someone who speaks Klingon. I'd be equally as happy if the most prevolent language was German or French but it's not. English does and it's the most logical choice, people have clearly rejected the other 'logical' alternative, Esparato so like it or lump it it seems like it's hear to stay.
I'd say Chinese had a reasonable shot at supplanting it in a few years (given economic growth) but not in it's present form as the symbolic representation is too unwieldy for most people used to a Roman alphabet. Pinyin possibly, but English has an enormous head start and I can't see economic growth in China taking off fast enough to supplant that dispite what Accenture might think (especially as the birth rate will fall as the nation becomes more prosperous, and in the initial stages of growth they will be producing goods for export, meaning they are the ones who will need to adopt to the needs of those they are supplying).
So it comes back to the issue you've dodged:
Are you in most in favour of supporting a common form of communication amoung all people (the logical choice being English, for want of a better option) or are you more in favour of people promiting their own provincialist views within their particular region (including their particular language and regligion of choice)?
Personally I have little time for provincialism and religious bigotry.
The problem with the G5 iMac is the graphics card - the Nvidia 5200 was a very bad choice by Apple as it's a very poor card.
It's of note that both Nvidia and ATI cards have issues with shader support on Mac OS at the moment, due to driver problems. Apple have been petitioned by games developers about this and are aware of it.
My PowerBook (with a 1.5 Ghz G4 with 1 GB RAM and Radeon 9700 Mobility 128 MB) plays WoW admirably however, it's very playable with settings on all high/some on medium.
And I say that as someone with a reasonable gaming rig (P4 3.2 Ghz, 2 GB DDR400 RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro 256 MB, 10K RPM SATA HD).
WoW is actually one of the best performing games for Mac OS X (a platform which has been riddled with really awful ports that perform very poorly, especially since transition from Mac OS 9).
Sadly Apple made a very bad choice with the Nvidia 5200 and I feel it really hurts their brand reputation as a result.
Given that, as in Europe, English is also taught in school so you really do have to go out of your way to avoid picking it up (and even young IRC script kiddies across Europe speak pretty good English). Speaking Hebrew but not English in Canada is a bit like being born and raised in Canada but only knowing French and not English. It happens, but it's actually statistically rare and it's really not viable to cater for the few people it effects.
Let's not forget, more people live here in the city of London than live in the entire nation of Israel, and only a small percentage of them are exlusively Hebrew speakers. It's not exactly an large marget segment, especially given the difficutly of accomodating the language in practicle terms. It's not as if you see eastenders on the street demanding Cockney support in Office 2004.
Much like presenting the news or road signs in Gaelic or Welsh here in the UK, I see it as a waste of time and money for people have conciously chosen to exclude themselves from the global community. It is a prison of their own making and I don't feel they have any right to grumble, let alone sue software vendors like Microsoft or Apple for not supporting it.
I know from my own experience that both Gaelic and Welsh receive huge amounts of funding on cultural grounds when really it amounts to nothing more than national/ethnic pride - if you talk to anyone who actually speaks Gaelic in Scotland for example you'll find without a shadow of a doubt they are also SNP supporters (Scottish National Party aka [humerously] Scottish Nazi Party). The same issue arises too in Canada with French, where only ~20% of people speak French at all, and statistically almost no one speaks French exclusively. Yet in Canada, French manages to get get similar level of prominance and funding than the facts would suggest it's due (in just the same way as occurs in Wales and in Scotland).
It's about time we stopped funding crazy language schemes designed to promote a sense of 'unique cultural identity' as it serves only to segreate us and feed national pride (the greater ramifications of which I don't need to mention). We should instead surely concentrate on trying to improve on our level of communication with others and in funding common language programmes. This true more so in Israel than anywhere else in the world (given the on going conflict and the nature of it). I have no sympathy for people subverting that ideal when they faul foul as a result.
On an offtopic note, when is Slashdot going to allow hebrew in comments?
About the same time they start supporting Klingon.
There are more important things in the world (though going by the rediculous amount of noise surrounding the issue of support for Hebrew in certain applications, and now web sites, it's consistantly apparent that zionists don't think there is any greater cause in the world).
Everyone who speaks Hebrew also speaks English, unsurprising seeing that Hebrew was only recently revived as a language in the last 100 years so support for Hebrew is largely academic. It's not as if it's actually necessary for people to communicate, it's just that some people would prefer to use Hebrew than English (or even Arabic, which would be a far more inclusive choice than Hebrew).
If you start writing in Hebrew on Slashdot - as is your intent apparently - I assure you that you are going to get -5 modded down pretty much instantly on every single post.
If you think perhaps that's unfair, will you promise to read and translate every Gaelic post put up before you moderate it (and then moderate it fairly). Unless you think that for some reason you deserve special treatment and I (or anyone else with an alternative native language) do not?
A more subtle point in this article is that MMOG economies are command economies, like the economy of the U.S.S.R. These game economies are not truly driven supply and demand. The easiest solution, but the author does not touch on this idea, is to limit the amount of currency in the MMOG world. If new currency is constantly being created, then inflation is the inevitable result.
Actually to their credit games are not really full on Soviet styled planned or command economies, though it's true that WoW has more limited resources than EQ2 or SWG.
SWG does not have a command economy and to it's credit crafting and the supply of resources is very flexible and open to in game capitalist exploitation by players who see a gap in the market. However, this is not a tremdous amount of fun for lots of people (as someone once put it "SWG lets you fully immerse yourself in the SW universe, you too can be moisture farmer on Tatooine!...of course not many people actually WANT to be a moisture farmer.").
WoW has a more limited crafting system, but as a player I found it to much more appropriate (and it made crafting fun for me), though I'm sure some of the more hardcore crafters will feel it inadequate due to it's comparable simplicity.
Inflation isn't actually inevitable, and this article draws a number of false conclusions. Players spend money on goods from NPCs (which is never circulated back into the market) for all sorts of things, they spend money on health potions, bandages and buffs (as well as arrows and shots). And of course items take damage and characters log off, never to log on again.
Given this and that WoW has a partically artifical ecomony inflation is in fact not a huge issue in WoW, because NPC vedors will continue to sell certain 'standard' levels of armour and weapons at a fixed price, only specific items are liable to increase in value - namely the best equipment - (though as anyone can create a crafter and it's reasonably easy to level one in WoW, things are liable to be kept in check). Though for more complex economies like SWG, which have much harder/longer treadmills this is not always the case of course - in some games it takes a LOT of effort to be able to craft high quality/high value items so you can really control the market once you master production of them, as many people did in SWG, they ran many factories and mining operations, often through co-operation with other players in a guild.
Blizzard have (wisely IMO) not done what SWG did (which I think was a brave and interesting move on the part of the SWG developers, but not one I would have ventured to make quite yet), which was attempt to make a real player driven economy. More complex in game economies have proven to be somewhat fragile, so I think creating a somewhat artifical one (that is neither really planned, nor open) was a good move, because it allows people to concentrate more on gaming (and less on moisture farming).
One 'disaster area' of note has been Lineage 2, where items are very expensive and so in high demand at the best of times, but the game is *notorious* for the number of farmers who camp the most lucrative areas and gang up and PK other players who encroach on their space. In Lineage 2 (which is undeniably a hardcore game inentially) items are never the less astronomically expensive. The game has quite litterly hundreds if not thousands of Chinese farmers (I've seen gatherings of 50+ in one dungeon on one server alone). Another problem with them in Lineage 2 is that the dungeons are not instanced and the drops are limited, so that the presence of 'farmers' actually inflates the in game economy by making highly valueable drops much more scarcely avalible to players before they've even sold anything to anyone.
You know, I think people will actually take you more seriously if you learn how to spell loser. Maybe you are smart, but when you keep saying "luser", I tend to think your are an idiot and it is not worth my time to read your novel.
FWIW, in this instance the (mis)spelling is a deliberate play on words (and one that's in very common usage on the net, espcially amoung sysadmins, and former sysadmins).
The pun being 'user' (of a computer system, in this case WoW) + 'loser' equalling 'luser'.
[ The refrence in The Jargon File/New Hackers Dictionary places it's first usage at MIT at around 1975. ]
If you had taken the time to RTFA you would have seen that it is a rather insightful analysis of MMO economies with a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of WoW's.
If you'd read my post (and the article more clearly) you would clearly see that I have and understood it and that it has a nod towards some elements of merit. How on earth do you imagine I managed to pull quotes and make references to it if I hadn't read it?
It's not purely some act of innocent reseach he's doing here. Anyone who thinks that has not really read and understood the article.
He makes it quite clear he has made money selling items from EVE as well and has done this to earn a living, and has even tried to make a living at day trading. He is NOT merely commenting or researching this topic, he's someone actively exploiting the system for his own benifit, but who also happens to be posting his experiences of doing so (and note his disgruntled tone at having his ebay auctions torn down).
I've also pointed out that you don't need to actually sell items to see what they are worth (because exchange rates are posted in numerous places and can be garned from ebay too, which shows how much people are actually paying for items).
I reject the 'Winnower Rider' defence ("I'm not not shoplifing, I'm just researching for a part"), he has has freedly admitted to doing this in order to make personally profit, and he's made it very clear that is a direct goal of his - and that he is doing this material reasons, not the lofty goals of academic research into on line economies.
I suggest you re-read the article and judge it's tone more clearly.
From the WoW EULA "You may not exploit World of Warcraft for any commercial purpose".
It's not rocket science, DON'T DO IT, and don't encorage or tacitly condone it with articles like this. What next, posts from lusers along the lines of 'I keep trying to steal from my work but I find it's not profitable' and hints on 'How to get rich stealing office supplies'?
Contrary to what this luser is claming, Blizzard have said NOT to do it from the outset (and do note, this guy WAS selling things on eBay, this is NOT just 'research into economic theory'). To quote from his web site "Some of you may know at one time I tried my hand as a professional day-trader." - a day trader, GTG, does his greed and stupidity know no bounds?
He appears to be a useless article that's unable to find a job that he enjoys and that pays reasonbly well and that actually contributes something to society. Apparently unable to compete in a legitimate market (e.g. in a game like Entropy or There.com where it's perfectly acceptible to sell virtual items for real world money) he's left trying to eek out a living by illegally selling items in other games under the counter, with no regard for the cost to others of his own actions.
I would note that you can easily obtain information about the real world value of a curreny from eBay and the various sites that also illicitly sell in game currency.
There is some interesting information in the article but the truth is you don't need to actually break a legally binding contract (which is exactly what this guy has done) in order to do this level of research.
What's laughable is it's not even in depth nor even that accurate. He states 'I personally believe that the next big thing in MMOs will be tighter integration of real-life cash with in-game property. Game like Second Life, Roma Victor, and Project Entropia are just a few that are paving the way.And while each has significant flaws, I believe the first to get it right (or more realistically, right enough) will be the first to break into the mass market.'. Good Fucking Greif - if that's likely, why then has WoW (which has taken the hardest line yet of any recent MMO on the enforcing it's ban on reselling) just spanked their subscription figures into the next decade?
People don't want micropayments for items in a fantasy game, most people don't want to be constantly reminded of their already huge credit card bill and people are already tetchy enough about spending money on subscribing to games as it is (just look at the gap Guild Wars has been made to fill).
While I do there still exists an excellent oppertunity for a Virtual World that isn't a badly implimented pile of crap (like Second Life of there.com - both of which are stunnlingly retarded and apparently written by someone who's never written any software for humans, just in case you've not tried either of them) and that in such an environment I think you could conceiveably have micropayment system, that sort of system is more social activity (where most of the goods being bought are mere 'virtual bling' and the rest unlock specific features and sub games for a given length of time) and is a very distinct from a fantasy game people play to have fun in (like WoW or CoH) where the items themselves are tools (and rewards) for fun, not usually 'fun' in themselves.
In fantasy games (from SWG to WoW to L2) items such as weapons and armour represent something very different. They represent dedication to the game and a certain level of knowledge of, and achivement within the framework of the game , as opposed to say to there.com which is for virtual Chavs with little money but who like to spend what they do have on virtual clothing and bling to make people think they are not the hoop-earring wearing, council house dwelling virtual chavscum they so clearly are.
In short, it's clear people don't want to play fantasy games and pay for items in them with real world money. They have made that patently clear, it's mind boggling that the evidence for this seems to have eluded some people.
The Terms of Service for the World of Warcraft indicate that all items in game are property of Blizzard (lame, yes.) They also ban accounts of users caught selling items for real money. I disagree with the policy, but thats how it is for now.
One reason it's like that because that makes things more inaccessible to players who don't earn a lot of money IRL, because if you could set a price on items less people would play because they would not realistically be able to afford to play. Another is to do with the sticky issue of liability.
I earn over twice the US national average, so paying over the odds for items not going to be a huge problem for me, but I am not a selfish fuckup and I realise what sort of a problem that causes for others (including other people in my office who work long hours, maybe don't earn a lot of money and just want to sit back and have some fun in a virtual world at the end of the day). I realise how much a fubard economy spoils an otherwise enjoyable experience, and so I personally think it's a great idea.
Oh man. I spent about two years tracking Mandrake development (cooker) religiously, and still am a big fan of URPMI for package management. But to say portage is not a package manager is just preposterous. The only thing I really miss is the reverse dependency checking when you uninstall something (although it's apparently coming soon), but it has other things to compensate.
I would say I'm happy without having to have package management on the desktop, where I'm more likely to want to do whacky stuff (CVS builds of X/GNOME), but for any serious work I think package management (ala deb/RPM, even Sun's PKG) is the way to go. I honestly don't consider Gentoo to have package management, just a way to install packages and satisfy dependancies.
I need to be able to rely on the ability to install and uninstall both the particular package and it's dependancies, have very specific build dependancies, and the ability to check the integrity of all binaries on the system against what the package management system expects (partly for security reasons, but primarily to ensure compatibility and make debugging faults easier).
I find this important because it's often - even usually - not me that's ends up using the software. I often need to be able to say to the end user/on call worker/operations guy, "Just install this.deb and it will not only install the software, but check for dependancies, check for any custom hacks to relevant dependancies and request to remove any incompatible or conflicting software and replace them with known compatible versions where applicable", this greatly reduces the propensity for them fubaring the system and is definitely worth the brief time it takes me to write a control file and then run 'dpkg --build'.
It's also still possible to do 'funky' stuff on the desktop with src packages: Just download the src package, tweak, rebuild package, use 'dpkg -i' (or equivalent), ideally give it a custom name/version) and install, maintaining the integrity of the system.
On the FreeBSD servers here, because of the ports system I find people often do lots of horrible hacky things because the flexible nature of the ports system encourages it to some degree (which is not a flame, just my experience here and in previous environments with both FreeBSD and Slackware), and I can only imagine the similar dubious hackery if using Gentoo on servers.
In the case of gentoo that is good. I use unix myself and am deep into it, but it doesn't take me much reading about gentoo to realize that it is only for hard-core computer people
I don't think that's true at all. Gentoo is VERY misunderstood, mostly by IRC script kiddies.
Gentoo is not some 1337 power user distribution, and neither for that matter is Slackware. Slackware IS an appropriate distribution for people looking for a FreeBSD style desktop Linux distribution. Gentoo falls into a similar category, but it has an inferior install procedure, and emerge isn't as good as Slackware's package install system (and believe me, I'm no fan of Slackware).
Neither have actual package management, making them both unsuitable for most commercial environments, and Gentoo doesn't even have an installer to speak of. That's not a FEATURE, as much as it's dressed up to be, it's just utterly backwards. Sure I could manually build and install Linux from scratch but the last time I did was around 1995 - since then the only other time I've gone through the hassle of install the entire OS from scratch was in 2001 with HURD (and that's only because there was no installer).
http://funroll-loops.org/ explains the issue so well, so I won't repeat the arguments here. But really, Gentoo is just an utter waste of time.
You only have to read some of the statements on the site to see how utterly clueless some of the users advocating it are:
"if you use debian heres a warning (at least if you enter the debian channel): dont come in as root, you never hear the end of it, which was very annoying."
"I don't think that Debian can really compete with Gentoo. Sure it might be okay, but when it comes to dependencies, you probably are still going to have to get them all on your own. Or is there something like portage in the Debian world as well?"
"I am a long time Gentoo user, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I believe that as hardware gets faster, it makes sense to migrate to a largely source-based Linux system. Binary packages encourage inconsistency and incompatibility, whearas source encourages unified development frameworks and integration."
It's a wonder some people's brains just don't implode, I swear.
Slashdot Mirror
You can buy a third party DIMM and throw it in. Why do you say it's not an option?
Because it's far to slow without 512 MB due to constant swapping, as very clearly indicated by the poster (as you'd see if you'd read the post a bit more carefully).
If you looked at the site you'd see it is physically an option, but as the poster indicated not a realistic option.
Now, not including keyboard and mouse is a cheap move on Apple's part I mean, come on, how am I expected to use the damn thing without a keyboard?
Your "supposed" to have one already, and in the rare event you don't (in the bizzare instance you have not bought a new non-legacy computer in ~10 years) you are "supposed" to buy one seperately, either from Apple - or if selecting 'Keyboard' from the drop down list while ordering is beyond your limited abilities (as it seems) - from another vendor.
You'd only kvetch if they included them and it wasn't an option.
Christ-on-a-bike there is no pleasing some people...
I could almost guarantee that worldwide there are more MUD players than MMORPG subscribers. I don't think their popularity has dropped much at all from the early days of the public internet...
There are millions of MMORPG players, MILLIONS - we know this based on hard subscription details. Hell Lineage alone has 4 million players.
To compare with the MUD world, the largest MUD is what - Medievia? It's got less than a thousand players on at anyone time. Most have a fraction of that (>100).
I find the idea that there are millions of MUD players highly amusing - where are they all? The truth is there is not, and there never was.
This only started to happen after the Palestinian army began to use ambulances as military transport vehicles. If you want to blame someone, blame the government that militarized ambulances.
That's quite widely reported of course, and given the very limited control the Palestinian authority have over some terrorists groups I should think it has happened (and is quite dispicable, and I'm sure the Palestinian authority could have done a lot more to prevent this).
It's not fair to blame only the Palestinian authority though, the soldier that pulls the trigger (and the authority that stands behind him) also bears some. Truthfully neither the Palestinian authority or the Israeli government are exclusively to blame for what has become their 'mutual self inflicted purgetory' (to quote The Economist).
You are leaving out the fact that those Red Cresent 'ambulances' were being used to transport armed terrorists, weapons and explosives.
I'm sure there is truth in that.
However BBC have shown TV footage Israeli army also detaining both Red Cross ambulences / Medecin Sans Frontieres staff (with people inside the ambulences requiring attention). Distressed represantatives from both organisations pleaded to be let though but even after inspection the Israeli soldiers still refused. As a result, at least one of the organisations pulled out from the region perminantly. I'd note the soliders were pointing guns at the BBC camera crew and reporter too and forced them, at gunpoint, to stop filming.
This was shown on BBC News 24, I'm sure it's possilble to obtain a copy from their library if you think I'm making this up.
Then there is Sri Lanka refusing aid from Israel. What a bunch of nazis.
Not just aid from Israel (which I don't think they would have any objection to per se, dispite the checkered past between the two nations), but aid from yltra orthadox religious group it should be said (not all that welcome amoung the largely Muslim population I don't imagine, indeed likely seen as rather antagonistic in their eyes).
I'd have told them to bugger off too quite frankly (more extreme crusading religious zealots of any persuasion the world does not need - they are NOT short on volunteers), I'm sure they went into this just how antagonising they were being too. After all, Israeli been known open fire on Red Crescent ambulances attending to the wounded (including several instances captured on film, one by a BBC reporter), even resulting in the death of patients as ambulances were detained, so we know the hostility towards unwelcome aid goes both ways.
Aid from a religious group is one thing (not something I'd ever fund through charitable donations, but stomacheable) air from an en extremist religious group is another matter entirely.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Steven Spielberg, but just Peter M OBE, here.
Just to clear something up (as people doing the correcting are getting it a bit wrong too), FWIW knighthood's from the UK government are given on occation to non UK citizens, however only UK citizens have the 'right' to call themselves "Sir $firstname" as a result.
It's actually the same award, Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, but those not holding UK citizenship are restricted to the being "$firstname $lastname KBE".
So Steven Spielberg should not use Sir Steven (nor should anyone when refering to him), for example, though Sir Tim Berners-Lee (or Sir Tim) is fine.
Pot.. kettle.. black.
Er, yes because of course a single common grammar mistake in a post of that size is obviously entirely equivalent to the level of typing we were all treated to in the parent post.
You muppet.
I'm planning to write an sftp "browser" front end in python or maybe just figure out how to use rsync over an ssh tunnel.
Have you seen nautlius in recent gnome builds btw? It does just this, it's very good at it too (a cow-orker pointed this out to me recently).
Could do with it in Mac OS X really, though there are a few programs that support graphical interfaces for it already IIRC, even on Mac OS X. It has sftp but I like my click-n-drool interfaces.
I agree that groups will split up into small close nit communities though, I think this has already started to happen in response to the occational round of crack downs. It has the desired effect in a manner in that it does reduce overall access to material, but to be effective they are going to have to keep doing it every so often, or at least keep sending out the legal warnings (which is pretty effective in itself I think).
havent u ppl noticed that most of these *insiders* are under 18 why 'cos the law is easy on them and they can be set free no matter how much the industry lost 'cos of 'em. BTW i'm 17
17 and you type like that? Your not the sharpest tool in the box I suspect.
You are not mystically exempt from punishment because you are 17 - and that applies virtually everywhere.
The age of criminal responsbility is about 10 (in North America and Europe), but I never cease to find it surprising how many people are aware of this. From the age of about 14 you can expect to be tried as an adult (NOT as a child). If you're 16 (or in some cases 18) mummy and daddy are liable for all your fines, and will end up paying for your crimes by having their salaries docked till the amount decided upon by the court has been repaid.
Though in the event of an prosecution (or serious threat of prosecution) your realistically likely to have a large cripling fine imposed on your family, probably in an out of court settlement in which the company prosecuting will make an offer thats considerably more lenient than one the court would award (to say nothing of legal fees involved for the defendant). This is what happened to the 12 year old girl (and others) caught in an MP3 warez ring if you recall.
Additionally, another popular myth is that all records of things you've done as a child are simply automatically destroyed as soon as you reach adulthood. That isn't so, though typically after a certain number of years you can at least request the records be sealed, in some instances (such as if you are part of a warez ring) the information can remain on record permenantly (as there are specific exemptions for certain circumstances).
EQ2 dead? OK, EQ2 might not be everyone's favorite, but ripping on EQ2 while praising WoW is just fanboy talk.
I don't think it's fan boy talk at all, I think to suggest that it is, is in itself much closer to 'fanboy talk' of the EQ2 variety. EQ2 has been widley fairly reguarded as a flop because people have full knowledged of how SOE run their titles and after SWG in particular customers were very shy of them.
In a building full of developers and IT workers from 20-35 only one has taken up EQ2 to my knowledge. People have never the less intentionally avoided EQ2 because they are fully aware of what to expect from an SOE title and by and large it's not something people equate with 'fun' (or competant mangement, witness SWG, PS). As we are a European office we don't have WoW here yet (a few weeks to go), but all the MMO players here are itching to play it again after having had such a great time in the open (and closed) beta.
Sony On Line grind-a-thons simply have little appeal in the wider market; as the take up of the more traditional gaming experience found in WoW has shown, which is unique centered around allowing players to solo any quest if they wish, not worry to much about money or skill and just concentrate on fun things like exporing, gaining new abilities (at a fairly rapid pace I might add) and learning about the game world. As a consequense of course it fails the hardcore players somewhat (due to the relative ease of levelling and the aquisition of items), though the genuine diversity of classes and races should provide a significant amount of longevity. The vast majority of people prefer games to be fun-centric with many rewards and the oppertunity to explore new environments, they don't want to play some crazy 3D fantasy equivolent of a hardcore Japanese shoot-em-up.
Of course some people find hardcore games provide 'a different form of entertainment', other people find them an exercise in frustration (I fall into the latter and get quite pissed off if a game is not entertaining or if I'm frustaded by an inadequte design). While the division is much smaller in the PA reading community (for example), the majority of gamers - both dedicated and casual - are in the same camp as me to a large extent.
I don't think this is an indication that people want easier games, indeed I don't think that has anything to do with it, though I mention this as it's often cited. The truth is people just want better games that don't fall back of doing repetative tasks (or illogical puzzles, or pixel perfect jumping puzzles, or big reverse-engineering puzzles where you try to workout how the game mechanics are implimented in order to get the most out of the game, rather than concentrating on just playing it in an abstract manner) as a way of demonstrating your commitment or ability.
I have a friend who plays L2, _a lot_. He has a Jedi in SWG. He really likes to level, to challange the game mechanics and 'beat' the game. In each an every game he evaluates it and uses all his reasources to reverse engineer the game mechanics to work out what weapon used on what monters at what level will allow you to level fastest or produce the most 'wins' in PvP, down to the (what can be surprisingly complex) math routines underneath. I think that L2 caters to players like him brilliantly and is a testament to NC Soft (as is CoH I would add, which caters to a totally differnt segment of players). That L2 has have very little take off in the west is hardly surprising though, it's just no the sort of experience most people are looking for in an entertainment title.
The same is true of EQ2. The wider world is simply much more impressed with WoW, no surprise it was Penny Arcade's game of the year. As comptent a follow up as it is and as good as it's parts are, I think EQ2 is a contender for anyone's game of the year as the crucial gratifying gameplay factor just isn't there.
We'll have a better idea by the spring/summer about how the EQ2 style of MMO is going to do agains
First off, I want to clear this point up right away:
English is not an official language of Israel. It is required in school for practical reasons, not because of any official status.
WRONG. English must be taught in all schools and universities in Israel. It is an official part of the national curriculum for all schools and is not optional.
Should Slashdot support Hebrew? There's no real reason they should, being as it is an English website. However, moving from that to saying that no one should speak Hebrew is a bit of jump. Maybe you should back down from that one.
My point has never been that no one should speak Hebrew (if people are attached to a particular language for cultural reasons I so no reason why they shouldn't use it) but that it should never have been implemented as the primarily language in Israel in the first place - not when there were a number of eminently more sensible choices, not least English (or even Yiddish, which was at least still in use and did not have to be artificially resurrected).
Now, that much is in the past and there is no use in crying over split milk as the saying goes, but it doesn't make the current practice in some place of of emphasising Hebrew over English (or Arabic, for that matter) any less corrigible in my book. It's entirely designed to create and sustain a quite ridiculous layer of cultural exclusivity (all of which we see results in rather ironic noisy complaints when the rest of the world refuses to join in and provide tailor made software).
Rather than admit the blindly obvious (there are just not enough Hebrew-only speaking users to make it worth while for the likes of Apple or Microsoft, as seen in recent cases) multiple multi-national well structured corporations are accused of gross incompetence at not being able to see 'a clear gap in the market' (while as incompetent as they can be, that's one thing they are good at) and even of anti-Semitism (always a favourite insult among fervent Zionists when someone refuses to see things their way).
As for the assertion '13% of Canadians know only French' and could not function normally without the support that it is afforded as an official state language - that's entirely misleading and even incorrect - there is really only one province with practising dual nationality and that those who do speak French live overwhelmingly in a very small part of that province.
I should like to point out, that according the official government census in New Zealand 1.5 % of the country are actually Jedi Knights of all things - the point being that people do NOT give entirely accurate information on census forms (compare the number of people in the UK that say they are practising Christians with official Church of England actual attendance estimates, for an example of similar census shenanigans).
The truth is, we both know the issue is not that lots of French Canadian's on the whole CANT operate in an English speaking environment (the only exception being the very small number of older first generation immigrants who have simply never learned English) but that they do not WISH to, and more truthfully that they WISH for the option to use French, so for political and cultural reasons they cry for funding to be diverted to support their own cultural ends - however much money that costs the the state (and regardless of the cost to the Healthcare or Education systems which could otherwise benefit from the significant cost savings). THAT's the primary cause of the squewed results, and why that figure of 13% doesn't being to match the reality which Canadians recognise.
I know have no trouble going round Europe (France, Germany, Spain, Holland) using trains, taxis, shopping, getting haircuts, buying petrol, going to the hospital, or cinema or following street or motorway signs without resort to English - though of course practically everyone knows some English too - even if they are very modest about it - working out what's what in anoth
Ooops saw this but forgot to respond!
They have a number of resolutions available including IIRC a set of PowerBook native resolutions (I'm not 100% certain exactly what resolutions are avalible as don't have it hear to check). You have the option not to stretch the display at least.
Fortunately, I don't actually think stretched resolutions like 800x600 happen look that bad in WoW, but that's open to personal interpretation really.
One thing of note is that with both the Radeon AND Nvidia cards on Mac OS X is that there are driver problems that means shaders do not work properly. I don't really know the details, but specifically when enabled in any game (including the likes of Halo, Vendetta Online and others) there is a serious performance hit (I can only imagine that the Doom 3 beta must be more or less unplayable). So Blizzard have decided to remove shaders from the Mac version entirely (the options still appear in the UI, but they are grayed out). They have said they have petitioned Apple for a bug fix and are waiting for one to be released before they enable the options (because apparently it's unplayably slow).
This is by no means a show stopper, but it does mean that you don't get all neat effects like glistening snow (something I noticed with my dwarven character).
Oh and I whole hartedly recommend getting the ATI control panel/driver for Mac OS X rather than just using the default Mac OS X one. You get a control panel which you can use to set options for (a) Full Screen Anti Aliasing (which you can force at 0,2,4 or 8x on a per application basis) and (b) for texture compression (optimise for speed vrs quality).
(a) makes a lot of titles look much better assuming there is a bit of GPU power to spare, including WoW and (b) has really improved the speed of some titles form 'okay' to 'really smooth' which little visible drop in quality.
Not as many options as on the Windows Catalyst drivers but actually I prefer the Mac OS X version a lot to the ones on my AGP based 9800 Pro because I create settings on a per-application basis really simply (without 3rd party software).
the sole national language of the country of Israel
It's not the only offical language, English and Arabic are too.
London has a population of roughly 7 million; Israel, as of the most recent data... has a population of roughly 6.5 million inside the country proper, and another 3 million in the territories. Nice try, though.
Erm, I'm right you muppet, as you've just indicated (or is maths not your strong point - hint 6.5 is less than 7).
But hey, if you want to extend the size of Israel so arbitrarily (to places that ARN'T Israel) you may as well extend London to include the outer reaches of Greater Londont too, eh?
Nice try yourself though.
Your data regarding the number of French only speakers in Canada and Palestinians who speak Hebew is grossly inflated too. But from the nature of your post you don't seem to be interested in facts, merely pushing a political agenda.
It seems to me like your merely dodging the issue with an irrelivant rebuttle.
Do you feel that the way the United States government treated the native inhabitants of North America was justified? Kidnapping their young children, moving them to "boarding schools" where they were beaten if they spoke their native language or used their native-language names? Then once they were "educated" until they no longer spoke their parent's language or knew how to live as their parents lived, they were shipped back home and left to rot on the reservations. But hey, they all spoke English and had good Christian names!
There is nothing redeemable about what the setters to the United States did to the native inhabitant, I think you'd have to be a sociopath, religious zelot or fevorant jingoist to think so.
I am neither in favor of what the settlers to North America did to the native inhabitants, nor of the behaviour of the current US or Israeli administrations. 'Compliance by force' rather defeatst the purpose don't you think?
But to presume to tell the people of another nation and culture what language they should or should not speak is typical of Anglo arrogance.
Nonsense. It's common sense. The last thing it is is elitist or arrogent.
If it was another viable language canidiate the world (in both commerce and academica) would have adopted that, but English is what we have, thanks to the legacy of the British Empire and in turn to the foundations laid by others such as the strong influence of Roman Empire in Europe.
The only one here who seems to be being provincialist appears to be you, through your resistance of a system already adopted by the rest of the globe as the common language of preference.
I would happy learn Esparato if anyone bothered to use it, but the chances are I'm more likely to run into someone who speaks Klingon. I'd be equally as happy if the most prevolent language was German or French but it's not. English does and it's the most logical choice, people have clearly rejected the other 'logical' alternative, Esparato so like it or lump it it seems like it's hear to stay.
I'd say Chinese had a reasonable shot at supplanting it in a few years (given economic growth) but not in it's present form as the symbolic representation is too unwieldy for most people used to a Roman alphabet. Pinyin possibly, but English has an enormous head start and I can't see economic growth in China taking off fast enough to supplant that dispite what Accenture might think (especially as the birth rate will fall as the nation becomes more prosperous, and in the initial stages of growth they will be producing goods for export, meaning they are the ones who will need to adopt to the needs of those they are supplying).
So it comes back to the issue you've dodged:
Are you in most in favour of supporting a common form of communication amoung all people (the logical choice being English, for want of a better option) or are you more in favour of people promiting their own provincialist views within their particular region (including their particular language and regligion of choice)?
Personally I have little time for provincialism and religious bigotry.
The problem with the G5 iMac is the graphics card - the Nvidia 5200 was a very bad choice by Apple as it's a very poor card.
It's of note that both Nvidia and ATI cards have issues with shader support on Mac OS at the moment, due to driver problems. Apple have been petitioned by games developers about this and are aware of it.
My PowerBook (with a 1.5 Ghz G4 with 1 GB RAM and Radeon 9700 Mobility 128 MB) plays WoW admirably however, it's very playable with settings on all high/some on medium.
And I say that as someone with a reasonable gaming rig (P4 3.2 Ghz, 2 GB DDR400 RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro 256 MB, 10K RPM SATA HD).
WoW is actually one of the best performing games for Mac OS X (a platform which has been riddled with really awful ports that perform very poorly, especially since transition from Mac OS 9).
Sadly Apple made a very bad choice with the Nvidia 5200 and I feel it really hurts their brand reputation as a result.
Given that, as in Europe, English is also taught in school so you really do have to go out of your way to avoid picking it up (and even young IRC script kiddies across Europe speak pretty good English). Speaking Hebrew but not English in Canada is a bit like being born and raised in Canada but only knowing French and not English. It happens, but it's actually statistically rare and it's really not viable to cater for the few people it effects.
Let's not forget, more people live here in the city of London than live in the entire nation of Israel, and only a small percentage of them are exlusively Hebrew speakers. It's not exactly an large marget segment, especially given the difficutly of accomodating the language in practicle terms. It's not as if you see eastenders on the street demanding Cockney support in Office 2004.
Much like presenting the news or road signs in Gaelic or Welsh here in the UK, I see it as a waste of time and money for people have conciously chosen to exclude themselves from the global community. It is a prison of their own making and I don't feel they have any right to grumble, let alone sue software vendors like Microsoft or Apple for not supporting it.
I know from my own experience that both Gaelic and Welsh receive huge amounts of funding on cultural grounds when really it amounts to nothing more than national/ethnic pride - if you talk to anyone who actually speaks Gaelic in Scotland for example you'll find without a shadow of a doubt they are also SNP supporters (Scottish National Party aka [humerously] Scottish Nazi Party). The same issue arises too in Canada with French, where only ~20% of people speak French at all, and statistically almost no one speaks French exclusively. Yet in Canada, French manages to get get similar level of prominance and funding than the facts would suggest it's due (in just the same way as occurs in Wales and in Scotland).
It's about time we stopped funding crazy language schemes designed to promote a sense of 'unique cultural identity' as it serves only to segreate us and feed national pride (the greater ramifications of which I don't need to mention). We should instead surely concentrate on trying to improve on our level of communication with others and in funding common language programmes. This true more so in Israel than anywhere else in the world (given the on going conflict and the nature of it). I have no sympathy for people subverting that ideal when they faul foul as a result.
Oh noes, I found a spelling mistake1!
How old are you, 12?
On an offtopic note, when is Slashdot going to allow hebrew in comments?
About the same time they start supporting Klingon.
There are more important things in the world (though going by the rediculous amount of noise surrounding the issue of support for Hebrew in certain applications, and now web sites, it's consistantly apparent that zionists don't think there is any greater cause in the world).
Everyone who speaks Hebrew also speaks English, unsurprising seeing that Hebrew was only recently revived as a language in the last 100 years so support for Hebrew is largely academic. It's not as if it's actually necessary for people to communicate, it's just that some people would prefer to use Hebrew than English (or even Arabic, which would be a far more inclusive choice than Hebrew).
If you start writing in Hebrew on Slashdot - as is your intent apparently - I assure you that you are going to get -5 modded down pretty much instantly on every single post.
If you think perhaps that's unfair, will you promise to read and translate every Gaelic post put up before you moderate it (and then moderate it fairly). Unless you think that for some reason you deserve special treatment and I (or anyone else with an alternative native language) do not?
A more subtle point in this article is that MMOG economies are command economies, like the economy of the U.S.S.R. These game economies are not truly driven supply and demand. The easiest solution, but the author does not touch on this idea, is to limit the amount of currency in the MMOG world. If new currency is constantly being created, then inflation is the inevitable result.
Actually to their credit games are not really full on Soviet styled planned or command economies, though it's true that WoW has more limited resources than EQ2 or SWG.
SWG does not have a command economy and to it's credit crafting and the supply of resources is very flexible and open to in game capitalist exploitation by players who see a gap in the market. However, this is not a tremdous amount of fun for lots of people (as someone once put it "SWG lets you fully immerse yourself in the SW universe, you too can be moisture farmer on Tatooine!...of course not many people actually WANT to be a moisture farmer.").
WoW has a more limited crafting system, but as a player I found it to much more appropriate (and it made crafting fun for me), though I'm sure some of the more hardcore crafters will feel it inadequate due to it's comparable simplicity.
Inflation isn't actually inevitable, and this article draws a number of false conclusions. Players spend money on goods from NPCs (which is never circulated back into the market) for all sorts of things, they spend money on health potions, bandages and buffs (as well as arrows and shots). And of course items take damage and characters log off, never to log on again.
Given this and that WoW has a partically artifical ecomony inflation is in fact not a huge issue in WoW, because NPC vedors will continue to sell certain 'standard' levels of armour and weapons at a fixed price, only specific items are liable to increase in value - namely the best equipment - (though as anyone can create a crafter and it's reasonably easy to level one in WoW, things are liable to be kept in check). Though for more complex economies like SWG, which have much harder/longer treadmills this is not always the case of course - in some games it takes a LOT of effort to be able to craft high quality/high value items so you can really control the market once you master production of them, as many people did in SWG, they ran many factories and mining operations, often through co-operation with other players in a guild.
Blizzard have (wisely IMO) not done what SWG did (which I think was a brave and interesting move on the part of the SWG developers, but not one I would have ventured to make quite yet), which was attempt to make a real player driven economy. More complex in game economies have proven to be somewhat fragile, so I think creating a somewhat artifical one (that is neither really planned, nor open) was a good move, because it allows people to concentrate more on gaming (and less on moisture farming).
One 'disaster area' of note has been Lineage 2, where items are very expensive and so in high demand at the best of times, but the game is *notorious* for the number of farmers who camp the most lucrative areas and gang up and PK other players who encroach on their space. In Lineage 2 (which is undeniably a hardcore game inentially) items are never the less astronomically expensive. The game has quite litterly hundreds if not thousands of Chinese farmers (I've seen gatherings of 50+ in one dungeon on one server alone). Another problem with them in Lineage 2 is that the dungeons are not instanced and the drops are limited, so that the presence of 'farmers' actually inflates the in game economy by making highly valueable drops much more scarcely avalible to players before they've even sold anything to anyone.
You know, I think people will actually take you more seriously if you learn how to spell loser. Maybe you are smart, but when you keep saying "luser", I tend to think your are an idiot and it is not worth my time to read your novel.
FWIW, in this instance the (mis)spelling is a deliberate play on words (and one that's in very common usage on the net, espcially amoung sysadmins, and former sysadmins).
The pun being 'user' (of a computer system, in this case WoW) + 'loser' equalling 'luser'.
[ The refrence in The Jargon File/New Hackers Dictionary places it's first usage at MIT at around 1975. ]
If you had taken the time to RTFA you would have seen that it is a rather insightful analysis of MMO economies with a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of WoW's.
If you'd read my post (and the article more clearly) you would clearly see that I have and understood it and that it has a nod towards some elements of merit. How on earth do you imagine I managed to pull quotes and make references to it if I hadn't read it?
It's not purely some act of innocent reseach he's doing here. Anyone who thinks that has not really read and understood the article.
He makes it quite clear he has made money selling items from EVE as well and has done this to earn a living, and has even tried to make a living at day trading. He is NOT merely commenting or researching this topic, he's someone actively exploiting the system for his own benifit, but who also happens to be posting his experiences of doing so (and note his disgruntled tone at having his ebay auctions torn down).
I've also pointed out that you don't need to actually sell items to see what they are worth (because exchange rates are posted in numerous places and can be garned from ebay too, which shows how much people are actually paying for items).
I reject the 'Winnower Rider' defence ("I'm not not shoplifing, I'm just researching for a part"), he has has freedly admitted to doing this in order to make personally profit, and he's made it very clear that is a direct goal of his - and that he is doing this material reasons, not the lofty goals of academic research into on line economies.
I suggest you re-read the article and judge it's tone more clearly.
From the WoW EULA "You may not exploit World of Warcraft for any commercial purpose".
It's not rocket science, DON'T DO IT, and don't encorage or tacitly condone it with articles like this. What next, posts from lusers along the lines of 'I keep trying to steal from my work but I find it's not profitable' and hints on 'How to get rich stealing office supplies'?
Contrary to what this luser is claming, Blizzard have said NOT to do it from the outset (and do note, this guy WAS selling things on eBay, this is NOT just 'research into economic theory'). To quote from his web site "Some of you may know at one time I tried my hand as a professional day-trader." - a day trader, GTG, does his greed and stupidity know no bounds?
He appears to be a useless article that's unable to find a job that he enjoys and that pays reasonbly well and that actually contributes something to society. Apparently unable to compete in a legitimate market (e.g. in a game like Entropy or There.com where it's perfectly acceptible to sell virtual items for real world money) he's left trying to eek out a living by illegally selling items in other games under the counter, with no regard for the cost to others of his own actions.
I would note that you can easily obtain information about the real world value of a curreny from eBay and the various sites that also illicitly sell in game currency.
There is some interesting information in the article but the truth is you don't need to actually break a legally binding contract (which is exactly what this guy has done) in order to do this level of research.
What's laughable is it's not even in depth nor even that accurate. He states 'I personally believe that the next big thing in MMOs will be tighter integration of real-life cash with in-game property. Game like Second Life, Roma Victor, and Project Entropia are just a few that are paving the way.And while each has significant flaws, I believe the first to get it right (or more realistically, right enough) will be the first to break into the mass market.'. Good Fucking Greif - if that's likely, why then has WoW (which has taken the hardest line yet of any recent MMO on the enforcing it's ban on reselling) just spanked their subscription figures into the next decade?
People don't want micropayments for items in a fantasy game, most people don't want to be constantly reminded of their already huge credit card bill and people are already tetchy enough about spending money on subscribing to games as it is (just look at the gap Guild Wars has been made to fill).
While I do there still exists an excellent oppertunity for a Virtual World that isn't a badly implimented pile of crap (like Second Life of there.com - both of which are stunnlingly retarded and apparently written by someone who's never written any software for humans, just in case you've not tried either of them) and that in such an environment I think you could conceiveably have micropayment system, that sort of system is more social activity (where most of the goods being bought are mere 'virtual bling' and the rest unlock specific features and sub games for a given length of time) and is a very distinct from a fantasy game people play to have fun in (like WoW or CoH) where the items themselves are tools (and rewards) for fun, not usually 'fun' in themselves.
In fantasy games (from SWG to WoW to L2) items such as weapons and armour represent something very different. They represent dedication to the game and a certain level of knowledge of, and achivement within the framework of the game , as opposed to say to there.com which is for virtual Chavs with little money but who like to spend what they do have on virtual clothing and bling to make people think they are not the hoop-earring wearing, council house dwelling virtual chavscum they so clearly are.
In short, it's clear people don't want to play fantasy games and pay for items in them with real world money. They have made that patently clear, it's mind boggling that the evidence for this seems to have eluded some people.
The Terms of Service for the World of Warcraft indicate that all items in game are property of Blizzard (lame, yes.) They also ban accounts of users caught selling items for real money. I disagree with the policy, but thats how it is for now.
One reason it's like that because that makes things more inaccessible to players who don't earn a lot of money IRL, because if you could set a price on items less people would play because they would not realistically be able to afford to play. Another is to do with the sticky issue of liability.
I earn over twice the US national average, so paying over the odds for items not going to be a huge problem for me, but I am not a selfish fuckup and I realise what sort of a problem that causes for others (including other people in my office who work long hours, maybe don't earn a lot of money and just want to sit back and have some fun in a virtual world at the end of the day). I realise how much a fubard economy spoils an otherwise enjoyable experience, and so I personally think it's a great idea.
Oh man. I spent about two years tracking Mandrake development (cooker) religiously, and still am a big fan of URPMI for package management. But to say portage is not a package manager is just preposterous. The only thing I really miss is the reverse dependency checking when you uninstall something (although it's apparently coming soon), but it has other things to compensate.
.deb and it will not only install the software, but check for dependancies, check for any custom hacks to relevant dependancies and request to remove any incompatible or conflicting software and replace them with known compatible versions where applicable", this greatly reduces the propensity for them fubaring the system and is definitely worth the brief time it takes me to write a control file and then run 'dpkg --build'.
I would say I'm happy without having to have package management on the desktop, where I'm more likely to want to do whacky stuff (CVS builds of X/GNOME), but for any serious work I think package management (ala deb/RPM, even Sun's PKG) is the way to go. I honestly don't consider Gentoo to have package management, just a way to install packages and satisfy dependancies.
I need to be able to rely on the ability to install and uninstall both the particular package and it's dependancies, have very specific build dependancies, and the ability to check the integrity of all binaries on the system against what the package management system expects (partly for security reasons, but primarily to ensure compatibility and make debugging faults easier).
I find this important because it's often - even usually - not me that's ends up using the software. I often need to be able to say to the end user/on call worker/operations guy, "Just install this
It's also still possible to do 'funky' stuff on the desktop with src packages: Just download the src package, tweak, rebuild package, use 'dpkg -i' (or equivalent), ideally give it a custom name/version) and install, maintaining the integrity of the system.
On the FreeBSD servers here, because of the ports system I find people often do lots of horrible hacky things because the flexible nature of the ports system encourages it to some degree (which is not a flame, just my experience here and in previous environments with both FreeBSD and Slackware), and I can only imagine the similar dubious hackery if using Gentoo on servers.
In the case of gentoo that is good. I use unix myself and am deep into it, but it doesn't take me much reading about gentoo to realize that it is only for hard-core computer people
I don't think that's true at all. Gentoo is VERY misunderstood, mostly by IRC script kiddies.
Gentoo is not some 1337 power user distribution, and neither for that matter is Slackware. Slackware IS an appropriate distribution for people looking for a FreeBSD style desktop Linux distribution. Gentoo falls into a similar category, but it has an inferior install procedure, and emerge isn't as good as Slackware's package install system (and believe me, I'm no fan of Slackware).
Neither have actual package management, making them both unsuitable for most commercial environments, and Gentoo doesn't even have an installer to speak of. That's not a FEATURE, as much as it's dressed up to be, it's just utterly backwards. Sure I could manually build and install Linux from scratch but the last time I did was around 1995 - since then the only other time I've gone through the hassle of install the entire OS from scratch was in 2001 with HURD (and that's only because there was no installer).
Gentoo is (really) for ricer's.
http://funroll-loops.org/ explains the issue so well, so I won't repeat the arguments here. But really, Gentoo is just an utter waste of time.
You only have to read some of the statements on the site to see how utterly clueless some of the users advocating it are:
"if you use debian heres a warning (at least if you enter the debian channel): dont come in as root, you never hear the end of it, which was very annoying."
"I don't think that Debian can really compete with Gentoo. Sure it might be okay, but when it comes to dependencies, you probably are still going to have to get them all on your own. Or is there something like portage in the Debian world as well?"
"I am a long time Gentoo user, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I believe that as hardware gets faster, it makes sense to migrate to a largely source-based Linux system. Binary packages encourage inconsistency and incompatibility, whearas source encourages unified development frameworks and integration."
It's a wonder some people's brains just don't implode, I swear.