I can't imagine hiring someone dumb enough to list WOW on a resume. (Hint: employers want to hire people who want to WORK.)
Coming from the perspective of an officer of a large guild and raid leader, I can. This is going to come across as a personal anecdote, but what the heck.
Let's take your average raid team. This is a group of folks playing different classes, different specs, having different roles, playing the game their own way. I have to bring them all together and co-ordinate their efforts in order to defeat the raid encounters. For all of us, that's some serious teamwork right there. For me, it's a test of my own leadership abilities: giving the correct strategy to defeat the encounters, being able to identify any problems (such as "OK, we hit enrage on Zon'ozz because ranged was standing too far away from the boss, and the ping-pong ball was taking too long to travel. If you guys stand closer, that may buy us the time we need" -- and next pull, they did that and we got our first heroic kill), and having the ability to see the bigger picture. (In my case, being INTJ helps...:)
Now, these are all skills that one could bring into the workplace, and indeed into real life. Sadly, the masses out there think that gaming is a real waste of time, induces psychopathic tendencies in people -- we see this brought up all the time whenever some random kid goes on the rampage and shoots/blows up a whole lot of people. And this isn't restricted to World of Warcraft only; we've seen Doom blamed for Columbine, we've seen Call of Duty shouldering blame for last year's Norway attacks (Breivik did admit to use the game as "target-simulation", but here I'd argue that if he were to do that, there's a more fundamental psychiatric issue in there)... it's a rather lengthy list. What a lot of people don't realise is the positive effects that gaming could have. Member of a raid team? The guy knows the importance and value of teamwork. Raid/guild leader? He knows how to lead, and the burden of doing so. (In my case, being unexpectedly thrust into the raid leader role after the established guard suddenly quit the game in favour of SW:TOR has, over the last few months, taught me that I have leadership abilities that I previously never realised I had.) That's just some examples from one game; there's bound to be plenty more from others.
That being said, if you're going to put this kind of thing forward to prospective employers, know your prospective employer. If your employer understands this kind of thing (mine does: we're a fairly large and well-respected ISP in our part of the world), they'll be far more receptive to this kind of thing (a lot of folks play World of Warcraft here, including my direct manager). If your prospective employer doesn't (let's say a large financial institution), then that's probably going to count against you, for reasons I've put forward above.
At the end of the day, what one does outside of the workplace is totally up to them (obviously, so long as it doesn't negatively affect what they actually do in the workplace!). As one of the other people who have replied to this post says: "there's nothing wrong with having hobbies". We're not all mindless drones; we all have a need to get out there and enjoy ourselves. If we get enjoyment from hacking on the Linux kernel, from socialising with friends, from playing games... so be it.
I mean, who the hell can still support Garrosh Hellscream?
This may come as a bit of a surprise to some hardcore Alliance faithful, but there's quite a few Horde players who share that sentiment. I've seen on some realms that, when the Alliance decides to do a raid on Orgrimmar, some person will put up a warning in trade chat, followed by most of the rest of/2 replying with some or other variant of "So? Just clear a path from Grommash Hold to the main gate. Hopefully, this time we'll get lucky and the bastard won't respawn."
Major bugs have little bugs, which, being fixed, can cause 'em. And little bugs from tiny bugs, and on it goes ad nauseam. The bigger bugs themselves can be pernicious, tangled creatures; So suck it up and ship the phone and we'll just call them "features".
(I don't necessarily agree with all of ESR's points myself, but his essay is kind of like a creed that the OSS Folks That Matter religiously follow -- so, like it or not, you have to follow it too.)
In my opinion, the biggest hurdle that Valve will face won't be porting Steam itself over to Linux, but porting the library of games over.
While I don't know what the actual facts and figures are, I think that it's a fairly safe bet that most of the games on there will have been coded around Microsoft's DirectX graphics API, making the games themselves Windows-only. Yes, they can be rewritten to use OpenGL instead, but this would require substantial effort -- Valve would have the resources to do this with their own titles, but some of the other publishers on Steam may be of the opinion that it's not worth the effort.
This is as close to a perfect example as one can get as to why vendor lock-in is a bad thing. Arguably, the DirectX lock-in is probably why gaming on OS X hasn't really taken off either.
Still, this move by Valve could well be the snowball that sets off the avalanche...
The average wall is two half inch think drywall sheets and air. External walls have insulation, but that stuff is designed not to be very dense. Studs are dense, but they are only every 16 or so inches.
Perhaps in your part of the world, the average wall is like that -- but that doesn't mean that that's applicable throughout the rest of the world. Over here (Cape Town), stuff generally gets built with bricks, and the walls of my apartment are of sufficient thickness that my Desire HD has an extremely hard time picking up the wireless signal from an adjacent room.
Yeah, I know that the idea of a shark^H^H^H^H^Haeroplane wielding a laser sounds really cool to us nerds, but... when you think about all the other problems that the USA is dealing with (budget deficit, etc.), as well as some of the other crazy stunts that you guys have been trying to pull lately (*cough* SOPA and its descendants), then as someone outside of the US, I have to ask one simple question: has your government now gone completely mad?
(Admittedly, my own government isn't much better (ZA), but still.)
TFA mentions (and I quote): "the focus for Windows RT is development on the new Windows runtime, or WinRT..." -- so, I'm guessing that that's where the name comes from. I blame lack of caffeine at the time for leaving that out of the submission.
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I can't imagine hiring someone dumb enough to list WOW on a resume. (Hint: employers want to hire people who want to WORK.)
Coming from the perspective of an officer of a large guild and raid leader, I can. This is going to come across as a personal anecdote, but what the heck.
Let's take your average raid team. This is a group of folks playing different classes, different specs, having different roles, playing the game their own way. I have to bring them all together and co-ordinate their efforts in order to defeat the raid encounters. For all of us, that's some serious teamwork right there. For me, it's a test of my own leadership abilities: giving the correct strategy to defeat the encounters, being able to identify any problems (such as "OK, we hit enrage on Zon'ozz because ranged was standing too far away from the boss, and the ping-pong ball was taking too long to travel. If you guys stand closer, that may buy us the time we need" -- and next pull, they did that and we got our first heroic kill), and having the ability to see the bigger picture. (In my case, being INTJ helps... :)
Now, these are all skills that one could bring into the workplace, and indeed into real life. Sadly, the masses out there think that gaming is a real waste of time, induces psychopathic tendencies in people -- we see this brought up all the time whenever some random kid goes on the rampage and shoots/blows up a whole lot of people. And this isn't restricted to World of Warcraft only; we've seen Doom blamed for Columbine, we've seen Call of Duty shouldering blame for last year's Norway attacks (Breivik did admit to use the game as "target-simulation", but here I'd argue that if he were to do that, there's a more fundamental psychiatric issue in there)... it's a rather lengthy list. What a lot of people don't realise is the positive effects that gaming could have. Member of a raid team? The guy knows the importance and value of teamwork. Raid/guild leader? He knows how to lead, and the burden of doing so. (In my case, being unexpectedly thrust into the raid leader role after the established guard suddenly quit the game in favour of SW:TOR has, over the last few months, taught me that I have leadership abilities that I previously never realised I had.) That's just some examples from one game; there's bound to be plenty more from others.
That being said, if you're going to put this kind of thing forward to prospective employers, know your prospective employer. If your employer understands this kind of thing (mine does: we're a fairly large and well-respected ISP in our part of the world), they'll be far more receptive to this kind of thing (a lot of folks play World of Warcraft here, including my direct manager). If your prospective employer doesn't (let's say a large financial institution), then that's probably going to count against you, for reasons I've put forward above.
At the end of the day, what one does outside of the workplace is totally up to them (obviously, so long as it doesn't negatively affect what they actually do in the workplace!). As one of the other people who have replied to this post says: "there's nothing wrong with having hobbies". We're not all mindless drones; we all have a need to get out there and enjoy ourselves. If we get enjoyment from hacking on the Linux kernel, from socialising with friends, from playing games... so be it.
I mean, who the hell can still support Garrosh Hellscream?
This may come as a bit of a surprise to some hardcore Alliance faithful, but there's quite a few Horde players who share that sentiment. I've seen on some realms that, when the Alliance decides to do a raid on Orgrimmar, some person will put up a warning in trade chat, followed by most of the rest of /2 replying with some or other variant of "So? Just clear a path from Grommash Hold to the main gate. Hopefully, this time we'll get lucky and the bastard won't respawn."
Besides. It is a feature not a bug.
Major bugs have little bugs, which, being fixed, can cause 'em.
And little bugs from tiny bugs, and on it goes ad nauseam.
The bigger bugs themselves can be pernicious, tangled creatures;
So suck it up and ship the phone and we'll just call them "features".
I have been reporting that problem for a while, but they just assume that I am an idiot who just doesn't know how to use a computer.
I'm guessing that, in their eyes, you didn't ask your question in the proper form.
(I don't necessarily agree with all of ESR's points myself, but his essay is kind of like a creed that the OSS Folks That Matter religiously follow -- so, like it or not, you have to follow it too.)
In my opinion, the biggest hurdle that Valve will face won't be porting Steam itself over to Linux, but porting the library of games over.
While I don't know what the actual facts and figures are, I think that it's a fairly safe bet that most of the games on there will have been coded around Microsoft's DirectX graphics API, making the games themselves Windows-only. Yes, they can be rewritten to use OpenGL instead, but this would require substantial effort -- Valve would have the resources to do this with their own titles, but some of the other publishers on Steam may be of the opinion that it's not worth the effort.
This is as close to a perfect example as one can get as to why vendor lock-in is a bad thing. Arguably, the DirectX lock-in is probably why gaming on OS X hasn't really taken off either.
Still, this move by Valve could well be the snowball that sets off the avalanche...
Walls are dense? Where?
The average wall is two half inch think drywall sheets and air. External walls have insulation, but that stuff is designed not to be very dense. Studs are dense, but they are only every 16 or so inches.
Perhaps in your part of the world, the average wall is like that -- but that doesn't mean that that's applicable throughout the rest of the world. Over here (Cape Town), stuff generally gets built with bricks, and the walls of my apartment are of sufficient thickness that my Desire HD has an extremely hard time picking up the wireless signal from an adjacent room.
Yeah, I know that the idea of a shark^H^H^H^H^Haeroplane wielding a laser sounds really cool to us nerds, but... when you think about all the other problems that the USA is dealing with (budget deficit, etc.), as well as some of the other crazy stunts that you guys have been trying to pull lately (*cough* SOPA and its descendants), then as someone outside of the US, I have to ask one simple question: has your government now gone completely mad?
(Admittedly, my own government isn't much better (ZA), but still.)
Original submitter here. :)
TFA mentions (and I quote): "the focus for Windows RT is development on the new Windows runtime, or WinRT..." -- so, I'm guessing that that's where the name comes from. I blame lack of caffeine at the time for leaving that out of the submission.
Bit of a bland choice though, in my opinion.