I agree with you that making organization easier is good, but think the stat simplification falls into the same line. I want to play WoW, not John from accounting's Glorious Spreadsheet Simulator 2010. If spirit gives everyone MP5 regardless of gearing so much the better. Go is simple, but no one complains it's not hard enough. I'm tired of keeping 4 sets of gear for my raiding druid (caster/healer/feral tank/feral damage) anyway.
I really love the new dungeons in the heroic upgrade. WoW for me is not a "lifestyle"...if I've got an hour to kill and I want to run a dungeon, why not? And yes, the heroics are too easy/boring..except the new ones which I like. The only problem is when you can only raid once a week, how are you supposed to get to ToC25? (I've been raiding for the past month, and have gotten 2 drops...both for off-spec.) And it is class specific. It's very easy to find cloth DPS or plate tank gear. Leather casting gear? Oh do you mean the DPS or the healer kind?
I'd like to see them further simplify things. There's already some items you can buy that are just item level 245 plate gear (your choice). But that's me. Oh, and can I do the difficult raiding content every day so I can practice? Thanks;)
"I'd really like to take this job, but I have family obligations that would prevent me from being on call during most weekends, is that OK?"
That should be your response. Come up with some good or BS reason why you can't work Friday or be on call during weekends. Then compromise
You know, you visit your parents in Timbuktu on weekends 3 hours away and can't be on call then since there's no reception. If he's OK with that, then just go home and turn your phone off on weekends...whether you visit your parents or not. And if you still have to work some weekends, OK, but at least now it's not the norm.
If he can't work with your needs, he'll probably keep you at your current post but at least here you're meeting him half-way.
Give them uber elite looking weapons and models that offer no gameplay advantages. Mounts in WoW work like this and people still pay a premium for an "awesome looking" mount.
The approach they were using wasn't even a bad one...it's worked for Guild Wars (see their PvP versions), it just didn't work for them.
...but most people don't realize it. Well, there's gold farmers, etc, but I'm talking legit. For ~$55, you can get 300% experience for 3 months if you don't mind playing with a friend (see linked accounts on the WoW page). When the new expansion comes out, you'll simply be able to pay money to have your old character with one of the new races without a second of grinding.
So Blizzard's moving there too. Their CEO is leading the charge...he plans to "exploit" all of their IP to the fullest.
"35-year-old Mindy Lanoux of San Antonio, who has melanoma that has spread to her liver and lungs, her odds of surviving in the single digits. She has been to the hospital 16 times in nine months, spending a week there each time for treatments so debilitating she wanted to give up. But she keeps returning, smearing peppermint oil under her nose when she walks in the medical center’s door to hide the odor.
“The smell gets to me,” Ms. Lanoux said. “It smells like cleaning products and the sickness and the medicines. It takes your brave edge off.”
I recently watched someone near the end of their life in that same hospital...it wasn't pleasant, despite the care givers' best efforts. I can imagine that there's some classical conditioning built up between the smells and sickness/death.
I don't see how the "tweet" format can ever contain anything more than shit
E=MC^2 (6 chars)
How's that?;) For googling mathematical formulas, it might actually be nice. I can imagine not remembering how to calculate standard deviation, check the value of a constant, or take some exotic integral off the top of my head...and 160 chars or less would be perfect for an answer.
Maybe what is the capital of X questions could be useful twitter fodder...maybe you could even ask topical questions like "Is interstate 10 closed right now in Houston?"...others like "Is Kanye West dead?" may not be so helpful;)
I'll wait and try it...maybe it won't suck...Google has released good products in the past and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
The problem is that in the case of healthcare, money shouldn't be the goal of the enterprise. And rational self-interest through care denial is my only good explanation for US life expectancy.
I wish my healthcare was more like my car insurance -- which is also a government mandate. I choose (not my employer). My company is a fortune 500 entirely owned by the people it insures. If there's a profit for a quarter, I get a letter apologizing for charging too much and they give me a refund. It's also got stellar reviews. It's also gotten pretty consistently stellar ratings for the people it employs.
So no, in practice, there's more effective means of providing insurance (from a cost/customer happiness/financial solvency perspective.) But hey, maybe you like phone trees in India (mine's in San Antonio) and customer service whose job it is to be efficient while denying you coverage (since they're employed by shareholders).
Unfortunately, since it's your company's job to provide health care rather than your choice, this model doesn't work for health care at the moment.
I can't think of any sane reason to use this configuration.
So, you've got two PCI-express slots in your system. If you bought the graphics card for physics, and you're worried about drain, go buy a second one. And then use SLI. You'll get better graphics performance since the physics processing doesn't use the whole card's processing power.
This isn't a knock against ATI; it's just that if you want to use physics and have high performance, it just makes sense to have 2 cards do the rendering rather than 1.
The reason for doing this isn't likely some evil hatred of ATI; it's probably testing. I'm a developer of commercial openGL software...and we target certain graphics cards. We test the bejesus out of them and then, sometimes, have to go in and fix code or provide support to the vendor when a bug pops up. I think nVidia thought the developers/testing manpower would have better been spent on something else...even porting the physics engine to ATI would be a better use of time.
I just finished reading Robert Wright's newish book, The Evolution of God, and he argues mostly the same. Empires largely care about things like profits and soldiers, letting people mostly keep their culture -- not out of any altruistic motive -- but simple pragmatism.
The situation may be different though...the "part of" situation is entirely different from the "near large empire". While the Soviet Union largely consisted of certain Balkan countries in a de facto way (e.g. the rulers were chosen by Moscow and hence not really independent), maybe it could've explained the peace between western Europe at that point?
When teenagers got the internet. Seriously. Back in the 70's and even 80's there was a certain prestige with working with these very expensive high tech pieces of equipment. You were a bit of a wizard.
Now computing is a commodity. You can buy it by the hour at a cafe...and your 12 year old relatives can write things to one another that make your eyeballs want to melt: this isn't the utopia anyone was promised.
I was talking last night about a guy who spent 20 years servicing printers. As these things went from $3,000 to $120 for your typical office printer...he's gone from actually servicing machines to driving 30 minutes to replace an ink cartridge.
I was reading an autobiography of one of the Sudanese exiles from the Darfur (What is the What?) region and he'd said something similar: British rule was good for Sudan since it kept the rivalries between north and south in check...plus the Brits built schools.
Seemed a bit better to him than mass human slaughter and exile.
If someone's smart, most IT work is pretty easy/learnable -- just RTFM ya know?
Trying to teach some arrogant 1337 h4x0|2 to not have tourette syndrome when working with customers and treating them in a way that they'll want to come back...not so much
Slavery is profoundly wrong and no action taken to promote or sustain it can be considered moral.
Succeeding or not succeeding is not essential moral issue. How else did the US or Texas come about if not for succession?
But the Civil War was only about states' rights insofar as that meant their right to join a new country when a president was elected from a newly formed abolitionist party who threatened to infringe on the state "right" of slavery.
Qt is already extremely multiplatform -- it's the only language/toolkit (other than Java) where I can code on Win/Linux/Mac/Cell phone and have it just work.
Python's cross-platform nature makes it seem pretty natural to use with a cross-platform toolkit. But that's just me;)
Exactly! That's why I think lag is a descriptive term. You could be killed by a lag spike in wintergrasp, but it's much more difficult to determine what it's caused by. I can't do 25 man raids for example because I disconnect due to lag. I can't tell if it's my CPU (quad-core core 2 duo), GPU (Nvidia GTX 260), memory (4 GB), network connection (100 Mb/s private LAN), OS (WinXP 32 bit), or maybe even my detail level (maxed out everything on a 1920x1200 monitor).
But I can play on a TF2 server with 32 people and 60 FPS.
I'm happy to say it's lag, but until I experiment a bit more, I can't tell you what's causing the lag.
Aren't most lag spikes caused by server glitches (including too much going on)? Or is that called the "server is a piece of shit"? And how are you supposed to tell the difference without access to said server?
I couldn't participate in the beta because I wasn't chosen. So how could I participate? There was no product to buy -- otherwise I would've. And it's particularly relevant since that's why BNetd was designed in the first place -- people forget this. I won't dismiss your argument about BNetD devs wanting to help, but they did shut down after all and didn't attempt a Pirate Bay.
And that's what's different between my argument and the pirate->buy argument. I tried something I literally was unable to in any other way (again, not for sale) and then purchased it once it was possible.
Once I buy something, I can do whatever I want with it, so far as it doesn't harm anyone. There's no EULA when I buy a skateboard saying I can't modify it or start a website about how to do so. And why not?
Why do I give up all my rights, simply because the product is electronic? That's what I don't see.
And no, I don't boycott either Blizzard or Apple, but continue to buy their products (mostly happily) with a few minor reservations.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you that making organization easier is good, but think the stat simplification falls into the same line. I want to play WoW, not John from accounting's Glorious Spreadsheet Simulator 2010. If spirit gives everyone MP5 regardless of gearing so much the better. Go is simple, but no one complains it's not hard enough. I'm tired of keeping 4 sets of gear for my raiding druid (caster/healer/feral tank/feral damage) anyway.
I really love the new dungeons in the heroic upgrade. WoW for me is not a "lifestyle"...if I've got an hour to kill and I want to run a dungeon, why not? And yes, the heroics are too easy/boring..except the new ones which I like. The only problem is when you can only raid once a week, how are you supposed to get to ToC25? (I've been raiding for the past month, and have gotten 2 drops...both for off-spec.) And it is class specific. It's very easy to find cloth DPS or plate tank gear. Leather casting gear? Oh do you mean the DPS or the healer kind?
I'd like to see them further simplify things. There's already some items you can buy that are just item level 245 plate gear (your choice). But that's me. Oh, and can I do the difficult raiding content every day so I can practice? Thanks;)
"I'd really like to take this job, but I have family obligations that would prevent me from being on call during most weekends, is that OK?"
That should be your response. Come up with some good or BS reason why you can't work Friday or be on call during weekends. Then compromise
You know, you visit your parents in Timbuktu on weekends 3 hours away and can't be on call then since there's no reception. If he's OK with that, then just go home and turn your phone off on weekends...whether you visit your parents or not. And if you still have to work some weekends, OK, but at least now it's not the norm.
If he can't work with your needs, he'll probably keep you at your current post but at least here you're meeting him half-way.
Time to get an alt;)
Give them uber elite looking weapons and models that offer no gameplay advantages. Mounts in WoW work like this and people still pay a premium for an "awesome looking" mount.
The approach they were using wasn't even a bad one...it's worked for Guild Wars (see their PvP versions), it just didn't work for them.
Maybe the game just wasn't any good?
...but most people don't realize it. Well, there's gold farmers, etc, but I'm talking legit. For ~$55, you can get 300% experience for 3 months if you don't mind playing with a friend (see linked accounts on the WoW page). When the new expansion comes out, you'll simply be able to pay money to have your old character with one of the new races without a second of grinding.
So Blizzard's moving there too. Their CEO is leading the charge...he plans to "exploit" all of their IP to the fullest.
"Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)" --Linus Torvalds
Sounds like a private cloud to me! Now to write secretly embed messages into the Linux kernel so I don't have to worry about losing my documents.
They should rename it Phoenix. Or maybe Firebird!
You see, open source projects never have naming conflicts.
revenues nearly tripled from $23B to $58B on Ballmer's watch....
56 / 23 ~= 2.43
Unless we're in some strange universe, Ballmer increased revenue almost 2 and a half times...or over two times. 3 is out.
Unless he's doing some fun rounding I'm unaware of.
Slashdot is a great engineering community
He must be new here;)
"35-year-old Mindy Lanoux of San Antonio, who has melanoma that has spread to her liver and lungs, her odds of surviving in the single digits. She has been to the hospital 16 times in nine months, spending a week there each time for treatments so debilitating she wanted to give up. But she keeps returning, smearing peppermint oil under her nose when she walks in the medical center’s door to hide the odor.
“The smell gets to me,” Ms. Lanoux said. “It smells like cleaning products and the sickness and the medicines. It takes your brave edge off.”
From NY Times article on MD Anderson Cancer Center
I recently watched someone near the end of their life in that same hospital...it wasn't pleasant, despite the care givers' best efforts. I can imagine that there's some classical conditioning built up between the smells and sickness/death.
I don't see how the "tweet" format can ever contain anything more than shit
E=MC^2 (6 chars)
How's that?;) For googling mathematical formulas, it might actually be nice. I can imagine not remembering how to calculate standard deviation, check the value of a constant, or take some exotic integral off the top of my head...and 160 chars or less would be perfect for an answer.
Maybe what is the capital of X questions could be useful twitter fodder...maybe you could even ask topical questions like "Is interstate 10 closed right now in Houston?"...others like "Is Kanye West dead?" may not be so helpful;)
I'll wait and try it...maybe it won't suck...Google has released good products in the past and I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Which version doesn't devolve into a bunch of space-invader style minigames with matrix-style slow motion surgery?
Yes, I do...but apparently you don't. A non-profit or co-op's primary goal isn't to make money. As it is with any group with shareholders.
And no, since my company chooses my health insurance, I don't get a choice of health insurance...just between whatever plans Blue Cross offers.
Is there some part of this that's incoherent?
If you still think I'm full of shit, this is an enlightening bipartisan discussion of the topic. But you probably don't want that. We're happier when our views are simply confirmed.
The problem is that in the case of healthcare, money shouldn't be the goal of the enterprise. And rational self-interest through care denial is my only good explanation for US life expectancy.
I wish my healthcare was more like my car insurance -- which is also a government mandate. I choose (not my employer). My company is a fortune 500 entirely owned by the people it insures. If there's a profit for a quarter, I get a letter apologizing for charging too much and they give me a refund. It's also got stellar reviews. It's also gotten pretty consistently stellar ratings for the people it employs.
So no, in practice, there's more effective means of providing insurance (from a cost/customer happiness/financial solvency perspective.) But hey, maybe you like phone trees in India (mine's in San Antonio) and customer service whose job it is to be efficient while denying you coverage (since they're employed by shareholders).
Unfortunately, since it's your company's job to provide health care rather than your choice, this model doesn't work for health care at the moment.
I can't think of any sane reason to use this configuration.
So, you've got two PCI-express slots in your system. If you bought the graphics card for physics, and you're worried about drain, go buy a second one. And then use SLI. You'll get better graphics performance since the physics processing doesn't use the whole card's processing power.
This isn't a knock against ATI; it's just that if you want to use physics and have high performance, it just makes sense to have 2 cards do the rendering rather than 1.
The reason for doing this isn't likely some evil hatred of ATI; it's probably testing. I'm a developer of commercial openGL software...and we target certain graphics cards. We test the bejesus out of them and then, sometimes, have to go in and fix code or provide support to the vendor when a bug pops up. I think nVidia thought the developers/testing manpower would have better been spent on something else...even porting the physics engine to ATI would be a better use of time.
Pax Romana;)
I just finished reading Robert Wright's newish book, The Evolution of God, and he argues mostly the same. Empires largely care about things like profits and soldiers, letting people mostly keep their culture -- not out of any altruistic motive -- but simple pragmatism.
The situation may be different though...the "part of" situation is entirely different from the "near large empire". While the Soviet Union largely consisted of certain Balkan countries in a de facto way (e.g. the rulers were chosen by Moscow and hence not really independent), maybe it could've explained the peace between western Europe at that point?
When teenagers got the internet. Seriously. Back in the 70's and even 80's there was a certain prestige with working with these very expensive high tech pieces of equipment. You were a bit of a wizard.
Now computing is a commodity. You can buy it by the hour at a cafe...and your 12 year old relatives can write things to one another that make your eyeballs want to melt: this isn't the utopia anyone was promised.
I was talking last night about a guy who spent 20 years servicing printers. As these things went from $3,000 to $120 for your typical office printer...he's gone from actually servicing machines to driving 30 minutes to replace an ink cartridge.
I was reading an autobiography of one of the Sudanese exiles from the Darfur (What is the What?) region and he'd said something similar: British rule was good for Sudan since it kept the rivalries between north and south in check...plus the Brits built schools.
Seemed a bit better to him than mass human slaughter and exile.
New Orleans?
If someone's smart, most IT work is pretty easy/learnable -- just RTFM ya know?
Trying to teach some arrogant 1337 h4x0|2 to not have tourette syndrome when working with customers and treating them in a way that they'll want to come back...not so much
Slavery is profoundly wrong and no action taken to promote or sustain it can be considered moral.
Succeeding or not succeeding is not essential moral issue. How else did the US or Texas come about if not for succession?
But the Civil War was only about states' rights insofar as that meant their right to join a new country when a president was elected from a newly formed abolitionist party who threatened to infringe on the state "right" of slavery.
Qt is already extremely multiplatform -- it's the only language/toolkit (other than Java) where I can code on Win/Linux/Mac/Cell phone and have it just work.
Python's cross-platform nature makes it seem pretty natural to use with a cross-platform toolkit. But that's just me;)
Exactly! That's why I think lag is a descriptive term. You could be killed by a lag spike in wintergrasp, but it's much more difficult to determine what it's caused by. I can't do 25 man raids for example because I disconnect due to lag. I can't tell if it's my CPU (quad-core core 2 duo), GPU (Nvidia GTX 260), memory (4 GB), network connection (100 Mb/s private LAN), OS (WinXP 32 bit), or maybe even my detail level (maxed out everything on a 1920x1200 monitor).
But I can play on a TF2 server with 32 people and 60 FPS.
I'm happy to say it's lag, but until I experiment a bit more, I can't tell you what's causing the lag.
Aren't most lag spikes caused by server glitches (including too much going on)? Or is that called the "server is a piece of shit"? And how are you supposed to tell the difference without access to said server?
I couldn't participate in the beta because I wasn't chosen. So how could I participate? There was no product to buy -- otherwise I would've. And it's particularly relevant since that's why BNetd was designed in the first place -- people forget this. I won't dismiss your argument about BNetD devs wanting to help, but they did shut down after all and didn't attempt a Pirate Bay.
And that's what's different between my argument and the pirate->buy argument. I tried something I literally was unable to in any other way (again, not for sale) and then purchased it once it was possible.
Once I buy something, I can do whatever I want with it, so far as it doesn't harm anyone. There's no EULA when I buy a skateboard saying I can't modify it or start a website about how to do so. And why not?
Why do I give up all my rights, simply because the product is electronic? That's what I don't see.
And no, I don't boycott either Blizzard or Apple, but continue to buy their products (mostly happily) with a few minor reservations.