Uhhh... These are desktop PCs? You specified "laptop" in your first sentence, so I would have thought you'd specify it further down if that's what you meant. There's no reason to have user data stored on the local machine at all. All it does is needlessly choke up bandwidth when synchronising (you do sync it with the server, right? Or do you have some other backup mechanism in place?).
My bad. At the hospital we use Desktop PC's except for the areas where we need mobility and we use laptops on rolling carts and more recently the Pellham Sloane PC's on Howard Medical mobility carts with built-in batteries.
For those machines, we're using an application called Cerner which is a web-accessible, citrix application with the hosting computers (and all the data and the backups, and everything) located at the remote facility. So there is no need for the nurses and the doctors to have anything saved on those machines be they the desktops at the observation areas and nursing stations, or on the mobile units.
The administrators on the other hand need things like Office and have non-EPHI data stored on their local machines. We encourage placing the data on the RAID where it'll be protected and backed up...but some just do not and thanks to the administration, this is not something we can force.
As for the rest? Well done, you've started taking system images instead of reloading all of the patches, drivers, and necessary software for every build. Save yourself a little time and do the same thing with your home PC with PING
Already using it at home and on the servers at the hopsital. It works, it works well, and it's free. Can't beat that with a stick.
This is why whenever I buy a computer or a laptop, the first thing that I do is to slick the damn thing and install the operating system as I see fit.
Whether this be Windows or some flavor of *nix, I just wipe out all the partitions and install from fresh.
I learned that lesson with an HP laptop I bought in 2005. No matter what I did, no matter what I uninstalled, I could not get more than 45% of my hard drive free.
I did a fresh load of XP and low and behold, I was only using 10% of the drive with Office, XP, my music files, a couple of games and my applications in my "Must Have" list.
Ever since, I do this on all of the ones at the hospital. I made a fresh load version for every configuration we have and I keep an image saved on our servers. Since we don't allow anything to be saved on the local computers that are on the hospital floors (our way of enforcing HIPPA on our electronically protected health information (EPHI)), this means that if someone sneaks online and lets slip in a virus, I can just wipe-restore from the network, run updates, and the computer is back in business in usually less than an hour. Less than 15 minutes in some cases.
For administration PC's, it's a bit longer. I have to backup their data first and then slick and reload. Then I have to put the data back. So that's more in the 30-90 minutes category.
1. There is the fact that with most video games, we are forced in game to pay attention to everything that moves as it may be a threat. This is the case in First Person Shooters as well as driving games. In order to not get ganked by either the game's AI or by other players, we gamers need to learn spacial awareness and the ability to access and analyze anything that could potentially be a threat and/or opposition.
2. The Unites States Air Force frequently uses Microsoft Flight Simulator installed PC's in the dorms of trainee pilots. While it does nothing whatsoever for actual feel of the plane in flight, they have noticed that avid players of MSFS are often many hours ahead of "raw" pilots when it comes to simulator practice. It also is a great teaching aid for plotting courses since MSFS shoots for realism. If you're landing at LAX on Runway "X" in the game, it is going to look like and have the same landmarks as the real Runway "X" in the real world. Not to mention the flight paths, routings from airport to airport, fuel considerations, etc.
3. There is also the issue of getting out the pent up aggressions that one can develop on the real road. How many times has someone cut someone off and that person wishes that they could just gun the engine and ram that sonovabitch off of the overpass and into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer? God knows I've wished that many times myself. With the video games, you CAN. You can get your anger out by either firing up a FPS and blowing something away all the while imagining that it is the person who cut you off, you can fire up a road racing game and just randomly start slamming cars into a multi-car pile up of Brobdingnagian Proportions. You can even lose yourself in an RPG or a MMO game to let yourself de-stress and forget what was bothering you.
What's next? Stealing candy from babies? Stomping kittens in front of toddlers? Or how about an XBox Live message to all accounts under the age of 7 telling them that Santa Claus is dead because you killed him and sodomized his rapidly cooling corpse?
And just when I was starting to not dislike Microsoft as much as I used to.
While I do agree that the split-screen way of playing is getting a little dated. I know I've certainly never enjoyed playing that way (too distracting and hard to follow who is playing what some times and some games), I do not agree that we are seeing the end of the LAN party and face-to-face interaction while gaming.
My Tuesday night World of Warcraft gaming group is an example of that.
Every Tuesday, my wife and I and three of our friends meet at our house and we'll to Random Instances and general quests all the while having dinner, trading amusing anecdotes, showing off strange YouTube videos, etc.
And I'm not the only ones who do that. Many in my guild are clusters of friends who LAN party at their friends houses. There is the Texas Cluster, the Washington State cluster and there's us which is the Maryland cluster. We have the scattered ones, but that's 15 people (three groups of five) who enjoy an online game as a personal interactive experience with real people under the same roof.
So is it as dead or as dying as the article says, or is it in a state of evolution? A change into something a little different than we're traditionally used to?
And here is the biggest problem with dealing with anything that evolves. Someone or something else will come along and evolve a way to defeat it. This happens in the world of biological viruses and bacteria, this happens in the world of animals, this happens in the world of Electronic Viruses and Spyware, and this happens with encryption.
I remember when the contest was to crack either the 56-bit or the 64-bit (do not remember exactly which) and it was done in a matter of days and not the years it was thought of happening in.
I remember when 8 character alpha numeric passwords were thought to be enough to be secure.
My brother-in-law at the NSA who works on securing the Government's firewalls says that it is an uphill battle at best.
I can honestly say that none of the stories of anything getting cracked surprises me any more. It seems that it is not a question of "if" it can be cracked, but "when" and "how quickly".
Since the Doctor suggested the Wii Fit, then I have no problems with the idea of the Government pay for the Wii Fit. If this were in the US, then I would agree that the Insurance company pay for it.
HOWEVER!
Since the Wii can be used for more than just the physical fitness applications, the Wii itself should not be paid for.
I would like to see a study done where my children are tossed into the mix.
First of all, all three have a very strong desire to read which I instilled into them thanks to bedtime stories, reading times, and the allowing of the children to stay up late if they weren't tired...provided that they were reading.
This didn't impact sleep as the most determined of them only made it 45 minutes as a record before sleep clubbed them like baby harp seals.
They also enjoy interactive past times such as Role Playing games. Granted the current kick at the moment is Car Wars (I still have my compendium and Uncle Albert's Catalog from Hell), but there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a bunch of children applying the math they learned figuring out how much armor they can mount on the car and how fast they can get it to go. But, even then they have to read the manuals, they laugh at the jokes and they're getting interested in GURPS ( I'm so proud) and that involves a lot of reading.
Sure they play video games, but unlike many parents, I do not let the PS3 or the Wii become the electronic babysitter. They get some time per child per day and on weekends when the weather is nasty as all heck they'll get more time on the video games...but I monitor and make sure that they do not become so sucked into the world of electrons that they do not enjoy the world beyond it.
So, I blame the parenting. The simple fact that so many parents allow their children to be raised by electrons is the real cause as to why the test scores are showing a difference between those with and those without. They need to run a third grouping of those with and with parental guidance.
I use WiFiFoFum at my hospital to check the strength of the Wireless AP's scattered through the floors. At the moment I'm using it on a Intermec CN3 handheld scanner that we're using for Medicine scanning and verification. I wanted to get an iTouch or an iPhone so I could use it on that device since I may or may not be able to keep the CN3 that I'm currently using as my dedicated Test Platform.
By denying us access to such tools, Apple is alienating the IT Professional community and may drive us to find other applications or even (in their eyes) worse, jail-breaking the damn things so we CAN run whatever the hell we want and not what THEY want us to run.
Remember the days when we used to mock Microsoft and their advertisements by saying "Microsoft: You WILL go here today!"?
Precisely! With WoW that I play now, I have to have a healthy dose of caution from the environment and occasionally from other players for 5 minutes when I have no choice BUT to kill a PVP-classed mob...
But all in all I have the chance to enjoy the game and to explore it as I feel able to. I don't have to hide my L-45 Night-Elf Hunter from the 6-pack of L-80 Horde players who are there to gank the King of Stormwind. I can just let them go about their business and I'll go about mine.
I do frequently curse them out when they slaughter the only auctioneers in town and I have to wait for them to respawn, but I'm not in mortal terror and I can just wait until they get bored and move on.
The funny thing is, I do look forward to the time when I can PVP in the battlegrounds or raiding cities for craps-n-giggles. I just don't want anything to prevent me from hitting that level of gaming like UO used to.
As you said, one red-rated prick with a fireball and you were starting all over again, naked and broke.
For all of 5 days. Then it became a cringe-making hell for me.
Unless you were one of the uber-elite of gamers out there who knew how to level to demi-godhood on the servers, you were their prey.
The game became less and less fun the more I tried to simply to do something...anything to get better than a lowbie character, the more frustrating it became. I tried mining, and was frequently killed for my hard work. Logging, anything...I was a target for players who wanted nothing more than to kill and enjoy the sweat off of their victim's brow. I couldn't earn money, couldn't advance...
In fact, the only thing I was great at was dying.
Not exactly something I want to sink money into month after month. After 15 days, I gave it up as a bad idea.
Everquest came along with something that allowed the PvP'ers to have their fun and would leave us casual players to progress at our own pace. There was no real need to level to the max in nothing flat just to stay alive, one could enjoy the game. World of Warcraft did something different, but has the same result.
Why are games going this way? Because look at the "Make Love, Not Warcraft" episode of Southpark. Once someone was able to kill at will and in fact seemed to get off on ganking lower-than-he characters...people stopped playing the game. The Fictional Blizzard company in the episode saw millions of their user base turning off their computers and going outside to play.
The real Blizzard and other companies running MMORPG games would have a very real version of this problem. In fact, once EQ came out, people jumped from UO to it and most of them said that EQ was far superior not for graphics, or world development...but for the simple fact that they could PLAY the game and not flee anything that was controlled by another player.
That's why everyone maximizes game play and leaves options for people to decide to play PvP without interfering with everyone else who doesn't want to play that game.
Sure it sucks for the PvP'ers, but that's why there are PvP servers. If you want to be that kind of player...there's your world to do it in.
Well, here's a question. How many people are going to use the software router functions? Honestly?
Apart from say some chap at an airport paying the fee to get access and then sharing it to his friends/coworkers/family members so they can get net access wiithout paying for it...who is going to use that feature all the time?
Take me for an example. I played with the software for all of 30 minutes. I got my Wii to share my laptop's 3G card and said "Wow! That's Spiffy!" and then turned it off and turned my Comcast connected hardware router back on.
Why would you need a software router unless you didn't have a hardware router in your house.
For that matter if you didn't have a hardware router and just happen to be able to get your mitts on a USB Wireless Adaptor for cheap...I could see you using the software...but then you're using no more or less of the 2.4GHz band than some chap WITH the hardware router.
So, Is it really the fault of the software, or is it a fault of the simple fact that everyone and their grandmother makes wireless devices on 2.4 instead of using the other bands?
While I would consider other document forms, PDF is the one that has the market share. Most of the e-books I've gotten for my RPG resources have been in that format.
So while I'm open to other forms, I do have to go with what I have several gigs of.
The Kindle does have one disadvantage that is making me give the Nook a stronger look.
PDF's.
I buy a lot of Role Playing materials from Steve Jackson Games' "e23" site. They are in very high quality PDF documents and something that can display them without having to lug around a large, heavy, and massively power hungry laptop is a god send.
However, even though I legally own a copy of the PDF, Amazon refused to convert the PDF into a Kindle Ready file due to (as I was informed) copyright issues.
The Nook supports PDF out of the box and the internal file storage as well as the expansion slot gives me the room for all of the PDF's that I have.
So while it might not be a Kindle Killer, it has some features that put it close enough to the Kindle to make it a worthwhile contender.
For the hard-core gamer I'm sure that this is considered the height of EVIL and is something of a hell-worthy trespass for them.
However for the casual gamer (say someone who doesn't have the time required to develop the "Mad Skillz" needed to play these games) this is a godsend.
There are games out there with very in-depth stories and as the game progresses and gets harder, many find that a particular section is flat-out beyond them and the only way they'll ever get to see the end of the story is to look up cheats, walkthroughs...or now this new system.
There are times when I've asked someone to get me through one little annoying section that I've tried for hours to defeat...at times even WITH the walkthrough. Being told how to do something is not the same as being able to do it with some of the "twitch" games out there where the solution involves precise timing that many hard-core and/or avid gamers develop. I get help with that "one" spot and I'll beat the rest of the game on my own in my own time.
This is a good thing and it gives an option and a choice for the players. They can choose to beat the game on their own, or they can choose to get a little help. Let the game give these options and let the players decide. It's the best way.
I do that on AT&T with a Sony Ericsson W350i. Now I have the unlimited data option on my account and thus there is no charge for the tethering to my laptop with my USB cable.
It shows up in my statement every time I use the service and every bit that passes gets documented in my bill (it's darn thick).
Thus it beggars the question of why Apple hasn't activated the feature on their phone with the only carrier that is *allowed* (AT&T) to use the phone in the United States, when the carrier in question already allows this function on other phones.
"So, no, it doesn't need to be put in future versions of Windows. Instead, Windows users need to start using the features of the current version(s). And, you know, stop using admin accounts when they don't really need them."
Ah, there's the rub. The fact that so many people are asking that this be a feature in future versions when it in fact has as you say been a staple for quite some time......indicates that Microsoft has failed the end user by not informing us of that function in a way that doesn't require one to be a dyed-in-the-wool techhead.
Lets not forget the fact of HOW they label the account statuses in windows. Power User and Restricted User. In the buzzword minded generation of computer users, more is better and in their minds Power User sounds better than Restricted User.
After who wants to drop hard earned money on a home computer and only to be restricted?
MS needs co consider going more towards a root/user structure like *nix or at least letting the general public aware of these functions, how to use them, and why it's important not to be on the internet superhighway with your ass hanging out the window.
I never thought of that. Windows is such a pain to use at all without the admin access that most people just shrug, set themselves up as a Power User just so they can use the damn thing.
But when you think about it, in the *nix community running as standard users is a staple...the norm if you will of computer operation. If you're logged on as "Bob" and you need the Admin-level access (install something, access a file that is not owned by your account, etc) you fire up "sudo" or a terminal window and SU it for a while.
If it's a nice graphical interface in either usage or installation...it'll even pop up and say "I'm sorry, you need admin access. Do you have the password?" And if you do then it'll just shrug and bloody well go and do it.
This is something that needs to be put in future versions of Windows. That and stop requiring The Sims 2 to have administrator access just so you can play paper dolls.
Indeed. If no information was given out to state any way in which payment could be rendered, then there is nothing the Germans or the German government can do to require payment.
Just uninstall the program, delete the installer and have done with it.
However...
If the site needs a form of payment to cover it's costs for bandwidth, that's legal and technically not a charge for the software. If that's the case and the "I agree..." button was checked before the download started, then the person needed to do a better job of reading the ToS before doing the download and is responsible for the download fees.
Also, anyone who suggests the software to anyone needs to be mindful of the fact that to be certain of getting it for free is to go to openoffice.org and get it there and nowhere else...unless you're dead certain that it's a legit mirror.
...but odds are that this is not going to fly. I can see in my mind a repeat of Lenny Bruce's bit where he in one of his comedy sets replaced the word "fuck" with "fish" and told his audience that was the plan. He'd make some comments like (while looking at a pretty woman) "Hey Baby, wanna fish?" and other such comments.
It can't go through because as Lenny Bruce proved, you don't have to say the profanity because the person listening will do it for you as long as you put it into context.
Hell! Take a look at British Sci-Fi comedy Red Dwarf. They use "smeg" and you *know* what profanity it's replacing.
"What the Smegging Smeg has he smegging done?" in anyone's mind translates into "What the fucking hell has he fucking done?"
Or "Oh smeg!" is clearly "Oh Hell!"
It's the context. Ban the words and you'll find that the people are putting the profanity in themselves...and you can't legislate thoughts.
As for the SC Government? They can go and smurf themselves for all I care.
Here at the hospital we drag all of the old dead drives over to the MRI suite during a time when they don't have anyone scheduled.
Wave a drive in a 90,000 gauss field for a minute and it's pretty hard to recover. We tested this by sending it off to a data recovery sppecialist company and they told us that it was irrecoverable.
The Government might have better luck...but the average person isn't going to get squat.
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Uhhh... These are desktop PCs? You specified "laptop" in your first sentence, so I would have thought you'd specify it further down if that's what you meant. There's no reason to have user data stored on the local machine at all. All it does is needlessly choke up bandwidth when synchronising (you do sync it with the server, right? Or do you have some other backup mechanism in place?).
My bad. At the hospital we use Desktop PC's except for the areas where we need mobility and we use laptops on rolling carts and more recently the Pellham Sloane PC's on Howard Medical mobility carts with built-in batteries.
For those machines, we're using an application called Cerner which is a web-accessible, citrix application with the hosting computers (and all the data and the backups, and everything) located at the remote facility. So there is no need for the nurses and the doctors to have anything saved on those machines be they the desktops at the observation areas and nursing stations, or on the mobile units.
The administrators on the other hand need things like Office and have non-EPHI data stored on their local machines. We encourage placing the data on the RAID where it'll be protected and backed up...but some just do not and thanks to the administration, this is not something we can force.
As for the rest? Well done, you've started taking system images instead of reloading all of the patches, drivers, and necessary software for every build. Save yourself a little time and do the same thing with your home PC with PING
Already using it at home and on the servers at the hopsital. It works, it works well, and it's free. Can't beat that with a stick.
This is why whenever I buy a computer or a laptop, the first thing that I do is to slick the damn thing and install the operating system as I see fit.
Whether this be Windows or some flavor of *nix, I just wipe out all the partitions and install from fresh.
I learned that lesson with an HP laptop I bought in 2005. No matter what I did, no matter what I uninstalled, I could not get more than 45% of my hard drive free.
I did a fresh load of XP and low and behold, I was only using 10% of the drive with Office, XP, my music files, a couple of games and my applications in my "Must Have" list.
Ever since, I do this on all of the ones at the hospital. I made a fresh load version for every configuration we have and I keep an image saved on our servers. Since we don't allow anything to be saved on the local computers that are on the hospital floors (our way of enforcing HIPPA on our electronically protected health information (EPHI)), this means that if someone sneaks online and lets slip in a virus, I can just wipe-restore from the network, run updates, and the computer is back in business in usually less than an hour. Less than 15 minutes in some cases.
For administration PC's, it's a bit longer. I have to backup their data first and then slick and reload. Then I have to put the data back. So that's more in the 30-90 minutes category.
And here are my reasons.
1. There is the fact that with most video games, we are forced in game to pay attention to everything that moves as it may be a threat. This is the case in First Person Shooters as well as driving games. In order to not get ganked by either the game's AI or by other players, we gamers need to learn spacial awareness and the ability to access and analyze anything that could potentially be a threat and/or opposition.
2. The Unites States Air Force frequently uses Microsoft Flight Simulator installed PC's in the dorms of trainee pilots. While it does nothing whatsoever for actual feel of the plane in flight, they have noticed that avid players of MSFS are often many hours ahead of "raw" pilots when it comes to simulator practice. It also is a great teaching aid for plotting courses since MSFS shoots for realism. If you're landing at LAX on Runway "X" in the game, it is going to look like and have the same landmarks as the real Runway "X" in the real world. Not to mention the flight paths, routings from airport to airport, fuel considerations, etc.
3. There is also the issue of getting out the pent up aggressions that one can develop on the real road. How many times has someone cut someone off and that person wishes that they could just gun the engine and ram that sonovabitch off of the overpass and into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer? God knows I've wished that many times myself. With the video games, you CAN. You can get your anger out by either firing up a FPS and blowing something away all the while imagining that it is the person who cut you off, you can fire up a road racing game and just randomly start slamming cars into a multi-car pile up of Brobdingnagian Proportions. You can even lose yourself in an RPG or a MMO game to let yourself de-stress and forget what was bothering you.
So my bet is for safer because of gaming.
Picking on a mentally disadvantaged child.
What's next? Stealing candy from babies? Stomping kittens in front of toddlers? Or how about an XBox Live message to all accounts under the age of 7 telling them that Santa Claus is dead because you killed him and sodomized his rapidly cooling corpse?
And just when I was starting to not dislike Microsoft as much as I used to.
While I do agree that the split-screen way of playing is getting a little dated. I know I've certainly never enjoyed playing that way (too distracting and hard to follow who is playing what some times and some games), I do not agree that we are seeing the end of the LAN party and face-to-face interaction while gaming.
My Tuesday night World of Warcraft gaming group is an example of that.
Every Tuesday, my wife and I and three of our friends meet at our house and we'll to Random Instances and general quests all the while having dinner, trading amusing anecdotes, showing off strange YouTube videos, etc.
And I'm not the only ones who do that. Many in my guild are clusters of friends who LAN party at their friends houses. There is the Texas Cluster, the Washington State cluster and there's us which is the Maryland cluster. We have the scattered ones, but that's 15 people (three groups of five) who enjoy an online game as a personal interactive experience with real people under the same roof.
So is it as dead or as dying as the article says, or is it in a state of evolution? A change into something a little different than we're traditionally used to?
And here is the biggest problem with dealing with anything that evolves. Someone or something else will come along and evolve a way to defeat it. This happens in the world of biological viruses and bacteria, this happens in the world of animals, this happens in the world of Electronic Viruses and Spyware, and this happens with encryption.
I remember when the contest was to crack either the 56-bit or the 64-bit (do not remember exactly which) and it was done in a matter of days and not the years it was thought of happening in.
I remember when 8 character alpha numeric passwords were thought to be enough to be secure.
My brother-in-law at the NSA who works on securing the Government's firewalls says that it is an uphill battle at best.
I can honestly say that none of the stories of anything getting cracked surprises me any more. It seems that it is not a question of "if" it can be cracked, but "when" and "how quickly".
Well if you put it together like that, you are correct. However if you'll read the article you'll notice that the battery cradles are
[ ]
[ ]
instead of [ ][ ]
And the terminal contacts as well as the internal circuitry will sort it out.
It's a nice idea and makes life simple, especially for the people who are baffled by the battery diagrams.
Since the Doctor suggested the Wii Fit, then I have no problems with the idea of the Government pay for the Wii Fit. If this were in the US, then I would agree that the Insurance company pay for it.
HOWEVER!
Since the Wii can be used for more than just the physical fitness applications, the Wii itself should not be paid for.
I would like to see a study done where my children are tossed into the mix.
First of all, all three have a very strong desire to read which I instilled into them thanks to bedtime stories, reading times, and the allowing of the children to stay up late if they weren't tired...provided that they were reading.
This didn't impact sleep as the most determined of them only made it 45 minutes as a record before sleep clubbed them like baby harp seals.
They also enjoy interactive past times such as Role Playing games. Granted the current kick at the moment is Car Wars (I still have my compendium and Uncle Albert's Catalog from Hell), but there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a bunch of children applying the math they learned figuring out how much armor they can mount on the car and how fast they can get it to go. But, even then they have to read the manuals, they laugh at the jokes and they're getting interested in GURPS ( I'm so proud) and that involves a lot of reading.
Sure they play video games, but unlike many parents, I do not let the PS3 or the Wii become the electronic babysitter. They get some time per child per day and on weekends when the weather is nasty as all heck they'll get more time on the video games...but I monitor and make sure that they do not become so sucked into the world of electrons that they do not enjoy the world beyond it.
So, I blame the parenting. The simple fact that so many parents allow their children to be raised by electrons is the real cause as to why the test scores are showing a difference between those with and those without. They need to run a third grouping of those with and with parental guidance.
I use WiFiFoFum at my hospital to check the strength of the Wireless AP's scattered through the floors. At the moment I'm using it on a Intermec CN3 handheld scanner that we're using for Medicine scanning and verification. I wanted to get an iTouch or an iPhone so I could use it on that device since I may or may not be able to keep the CN3 that I'm currently using as my dedicated Test Platform.
By denying us access to such tools, Apple is alienating the IT Professional community and may drive us to find other applications or even (in their eyes) worse, jail-breaking the damn things so we CAN run whatever the hell we want and not what THEY want us to run.
Remember the days when we used to mock Microsoft and their advertisements by saying "Microsoft: You WILL go here today!"?
Precisely! With WoW that I play now, I have to have a healthy dose of caution from the environment and occasionally from other players for 5 minutes when I have no choice BUT to kill a PVP-classed mob...
But all in all I have the chance to enjoy the game and to explore it as I feel able to. I don't have to hide my L-45 Night-Elf Hunter from the 6-pack of L-80 Horde players who are there to gank the King of Stormwind. I can just let them go about their business and I'll go about mine.
I do frequently curse them out when they slaughter the only auctioneers in town and I have to wait for them to respawn, but I'm not in mortal terror and I can just wait until they get bored and move on.
The funny thing is, I do look forward to the time when I can PVP in the battlegrounds or raiding cities for craps-n-giggles. I just don't want anything to prevent me from hitting that level of gaming like UO used to.
As you said, one red-rated prick with a fireball and you were starting all over again, naked and broke.
Years ago, I played UO and enjoyed it.
For all of 5 days. Then it became a cringe-making hell for me.
Unless you were one of the uber-elite of gamers out there who knew how to level to demi-godhood on the servers, you were their prey.
The game became less and less fun the more I tried to simply to do something...anything to get better than a lowbie character, the more frustrating it became. I tried mining, and was frequently killed for my hard work. Logging, anything...I was a target for players who wanted nothing more than to kill and enjoy the sweat off of their victim's brow. I couldn't earn money, couldn't advance...
In fact, the only thing I was great at was dying.
Not exactly something I want to sink money into month after month. After 15 days, I gave it up as a bad idea.
Everquest came along with something that allowed the PvP'ers to have their fun and would leave us casual players to progress at our own pace. There was no real need to level to the max in nothing flat just to stay alive, one could enjoy the game. World of Warcraft did something different, but has the same result.
Why are games going this way? Because look at the "Make Love, Not Warcraft" episode of Southpark. Once someone was able to kill at will and in fact seemed to get off on ganking lower-than-he characters...people stopped playing the game. The Fictional Blizzard company in the episode saw millions of their user base turning off their computers and going outside to play.
The real Blizzard and other companies running MMORPG games would have a very real version of this problem. In fact, once EQ came out, people jumped from UO to it and most of them said that EQ was far superior not for graphics, or world development...but for the simple fact that they could PLAY the game and not flee anything that was controlled by another player.
That's why everyone maximizes game play and leaves options for people to decide to play PvP without interfering with everyone else who doesn't want to play that game.
Sure it sucks for the PvP'ers, but that's why there are PvP servers. If you want to be that kind of player...there's your world to do it in.
Well, here's a question. How many people are going to use the software router functions? Honestly?
Apart from say some chap at an airport paying the fee to get access and then sharing it to his friends/coworkers/family members so they can get net access wiithout paying for it...who is going to use that feature all the time?
Take me for an example. I played with the software for all of 30 minutes. I got my Wii to share my laptop's 3G card and said "Wow! That's Spiffy!" and then turned it off and turned my Comcast connected hardware router back on.
Why would you need a software router unless you didn't have a hardware router in your house.
For that matter if you didn't have a hardware router and just happen to be able to get your mitts on a USB Wireless Adaptor for cheap...I could see you using the software...but then you're using no more or less of the 2.4GHz band than some chap WITH the hardware router.
So, Is it really the fault of the software, or is it a fault of the simple fact that everyone and their grandmother makes wireless devices on 2.4 instead of using the other bands?
My mistake. I failed to see where it had the PDF support. Thanks for the tip, I'll give it a shifty and see if it might meet my needs.
Thanks
While I would consider other document forms, PDF is the one that has the market share. Most of the e-books I've gotten for my RPG resources have been in that format.
So while I'm open to other forms, I do have to go with what I have several gigs of.
The Kindle does have one disadvantage that is making me give the Nook a stronger look.
PDF's.
I buy a lot of Role Playing materials from Steve Jackson Games' "e23" site. They are in very high quality PDF documents and something that can display them without having to lug around a large, heavy, and massively power hungry laptop is a god send.
However, even though I legally own a copy of the PDF, Amazon refused to convert the PDF into a Kindle Ready file due to (as I was informed) copyright issues.
The Nook supports PDF out of the box and the internal file storage as well as the expansion slot gives me the room for all of the PDF's that I have.
So while it might not be a Kindle Killer, it has some features that put it close enough to the Kindle to make it a worthwhile contender.
Sadly however, people will read this article and will still freak out about how the LHC is going to doom us all.
For the hard-core gamer I'm sure that this is considered the height of EVIL and is something of a hell-worthy trespass for them.
However for the casual gamer (say someone who doesn't have the time required to develop the "Mad Skillz" needed to play these games) this is a godsend.
There are games out there with very in-depth stories and as the game progresses and gets harder, many find that a particular section is flat-out beyond them and the only way they'll ever get to see the end of the story is to look up cheats, walkthroughs...or now this new system.
There are times when I've asked someone to get me through one little annoying section that I've tried for hours to defeat...at times even WITH the walkthrough. Being told how to do something is not the same as being able to do it with some of the "twitch" games out there where the solution involves precise timing that many hard-core and/or avid gamers develop. I get help with that "one" spot and I'll beat the rest of the game on my own in my own time.
This is a good thing and it gives an option and a choice for the players. They can choose to beat the game on their own, or they can choose to get a little help. Let the game give these options and let the players decide. It's the best way.
Part of me is saying that a mirrored server that is attached to the same gateways as the main server is a bad idea at best.
The other part of me wants this hacker schmuck locked in a small room with a thousand pissed off wolverines.
Hard to call...hard to call
I do that on AT&T with a Sony Ericsson W350i. Now I have the unlimited data option on my account and thus there is no charge for the tethering to my laptop with my USB cable.
It shows up in my statement every time I use the service and every bit that passes gets documented in my bill (it's darn thick).
Thus it beggars the question of why Apple hasn't activated the feature on their phone with the only carrier that is *allowed* (AT&T) to use the phone in the United States, when the carrier in question already allows this function on other phones.
Greed? Stupidity? Both?
Phoenix
"So, no, it doesn't need to be put in future versions of Windows. Instead, Windows users need to start using the features of the current version(s). And, you know, stop using admin accounts when they don't really need them."
Ah, there's the rub. The fact that so many people are asking that this be a feature in future versions when it in fact has as you say been a staple for quite some time... ...indicates that Microsoft has failed the end user by not informing us of that function in a way that doesn't require one to be a dyed-in-the-wool techhead.
Lets not forget the fact of HOW they label the account statuses in windows. Power User and Restricted User. In the buzzword minded generation of computer users, more is better and in their minds Power User sounds better than Restricted User.
After who wants to drop hard earned money on a home computer and only to be restricted?
MS needs co consider going more towards a root/user structure like *nix or at least letting the general public aware of these functions, how to use them, and why it's important not to be on the internet superhighway with your ass hanging out the window.
I never thought of that. Windows is such a pain to use at all without the admin access that most people just shrug, set themselves up as a Power User just so they can use the damn thing.
But when you think about it, in the *nix community running as standard users is a staple...the norm if you will of computer operation. If you're logged on as "Bob" and you need the Admin-level access (install something, access a file that is not owned by your account, etc) you fire up "sudo" or a terminal window and SU it for a while.
If it's a nice graphical interface in either usage or installation...it'll even pop up and say "I'm sorry, you need admin access. Do you have the password?" And if you do then it'll just shrug and bloody well go and do it.
This is something that needs to be put in future versions of Windows. That and stop requiring The Sims 2 to have administrator access just so you can play paper dolls.
Phoenix
Indeed. If no information was given out to state any way in which payment could be rendered, then there is nothing the Germans or the German government can do to require payment.
Just uninstall the program, delete the installer and have done with it.
However...
If the site needs a form of payment to cover it's costs for bandwidth, that's legal and technically not a charge for the software. If that's the case and the "I agree..." button was checked before the download started, then the person needed to do a better job of reading the ToS before doing the download and is responsible for the download fees.
Also, anyone who suggests the software to anyone needs to be mindful of the fact that to be certain of getting it for free is to go to openoffice.org and get it there and nowhere else...unless you're dead certain that it's a legit mirror.
Phoenix
...but odds are that this is not going to fly. I can see in my mind a repeat of Lenny Bruce's bit where he in one of his comedy sets replaced the word "fuck" with "fish" and told his audience that was the plan. He'd make some comments like (while looking at a pretty woman) "Hey Baby, wanna fish?" and other such comments.
It can't go through because as Lenny Bruce proved, you don't have to say the profanity because the person listening will do it for you as long as you put it into context.
Hell! Take a look at British Sci-Fi comedy Red Dwarf. They use "smeg" and you *know* what profanity it's replacing.
"What the Smegging Smeg has he smegging done?" in anyone's mind translates into "What the fucking hell has he fucking done?"
Or "Oh smeg!" is clearly "Oh Hell!"
It's the context. Ban the words and you'll find that the people are putting the profanity in themselves...and you can't legislate thoughts.
As for the SC Government? They can go and smurf themselves for all I care.
Here at the hospital we drag all of the old dead drives over to the MRI suite during a time when they don't have anyone scheduled.
Wave a drive in a 90,000 gauss field for a minute and it's pretty hard to recover. We tested this by sending it off to a data recovery sppecialist company and they told us that it was irrecoverable.
The Government might have better luck...but the average person isn't going to get squat.
Phoenix