FWIW, I just got through purchasing today at Home Depot a *150 watt equiv* flourescent light that fits in a standard incandescent screw base. However, it only consumes 42 watts of power (and therefore, can fit in a regular light socket without overloading it) and is estimated for 10,000 hours of life. Price: $10.
Not very many recent comments. I think I probably have a more seasoned outlook on this game at this point.
First, the game has bugs all over the place. For example, the enemy AI hardly, if ever, attacks (with a few exceptions). Playing on Impossible (difficulty level) can actually be incredibly easy! Many users report doing quite a lot for the first part of the game, then sitting back and hitting [NEXT TURN] 200 or so times and eventually winning the game. The brain-dead AI is a lot of it (attack strategy, and also negotiations where you have a constant war-peace-war-peace 3 turn cycle with your computerized opponents).
This isn't a joke. With a rare exception (being next to the Ithkul or something), it doesn't put up anything approaching a real fight.
The user interface is described by many as substandard. Both in terms of being a navigational hazard that has to be figured out, to being akward to do regular things, to not providing simple right-click information. Most users have to work to try to figure out how to do the most basic tasks, like colonize a planet. Back to the informational thing, you'll find that other races will chastise you for your actions. Of course, you have no idea what the action was that provoked them. Perhaps you just met them? Or they'll angrily threaten you to say that they're warming up to you.
The crowning achievement of all of this is the macromanagement concept. If the macromanagement AI doesn't work well, you're going to be micromanaging bits and pieces as you find them wrong. Worse, if the macromanagement AI works well, here are your following duties:
1. Move ships around for exploration and combat. (This _is_ micromanagement, but it is enjoyable. Glad the AI didn't take this over, and they still left it in the game.) 2. Perform diplomatic functions. 3. Perform HR functions (hire/fire leaders and spies) 4. Perform rare macromanagement functions with 2 screens of sliders and tables. 5. Hit the NEXT TURN button. Again. And Again.
Macromanagement was a horrible double-edge sword that QuickSilver cannot win with. Right now, people aren't complaining too badly about the concept. But then again, they're not really even being attacked. Wait until the pressure is on to develop better ships quickly and efficiently (defend the empire... attack others) and watch the MacroAI bust at the seams with inefficiency that the players are going to have to go and mop up.
This is a historic moment in strategy games, much like the Titanic was an historic moment in sea travel. The best good that can come of this is not to repeat it. Sometimes the purpose of your labor is to serve as a warning to others.
Too bad. I really wanted to play a MOO game.
Check out their their forum for a more up-to-date view.
Okay. They've kept it a big secret. And I thought the image I saw of them looked like someone's thumb. So, what is the secret of this Harvester race that is so compelling!!?!
Doesn't seem like a real datacenter if you're having to do your own UPS on top of the power they provide. If they are conditioning the power and you're still having to do UPSs, something is wrong. If their power is conditioned, and you're putting a UPS on top of it, you're wasteful.
Can you let us know more details that you weren't able to ask in the original question?
Some points I assumed (but I might as well right). This system is only useful if it handles big and small transactions. The big $$ transactions are what allows you to get away with a certain percentage of the small $$ transactions. If the number of big $$ transactions isn't high enough, then you'd have to either queue up or start throwing away the low $$ transactions. (Or apply other rules, as discussed, like summing up individual transactions for a particular person until they reach a certain $$ threshold.)
The entire token side is a little strange. But basically, it would seem, for those with small $$ transactions, for a large number of small transactions, they'd effectively be paid a percentage of the amount charged. The high $$ transactions wouldn't use the token system since they would always go through.
Reading through the 3+ scored comments here, I don't think anyone really has a solid idea of what is going on here. But I think I might have some insight as to what is really going on.
The problem with doing micropurchases perhaps isn't so much a hard per-transaction fee, but a commission percentage charged by the CC processors. (In other words, the processors are using statistics in order to come up with their flat % rate charged to each transaction.)
I *think* what he might be trying to do here is to use large $$ transactions in order to get small $$ transactions passed through, but without being dropped to a higher % rate. (If you have a lot of $1 transactions, your CC processor will want to bump you up to a higher % rate per transaction, for ALL transactions.)
Of course, this seems like averaging on top of averaging, which the CC processors will eventually see through if it doesn't allow them to make the margins they want (because you're manipulating their statistics as close as you can with a ratio of low-to-high $$ transactions).
Does this make any sense to anyone, or am I way off in left field here?
> I don't think I want another television screen > that can't also be a computer monitor.
I've written about it a few times, but I'm loving to death my Sun 24" HDTV screen, hooked up to my PC. 1920x1200 resolution (32 bits) and wide-screen goodness. And I've got a video card with good enough hardware acceleration to make playing wide-screen DVDs a joy.
But I have to say, it is a little small for a home television (even if it is a monster for a computer monitor). I really would like to see the convergence of the home television and the computer monitor, but they really are keeping those separate markets.
I'm all for the teaching of discrete maths. However, I am against only one type of math. Calculus is great. Business calc is great. Calculus mixed with Trig is something so totally alien, that few students can relate to it, and even fewer will end up with a real-world use for it. That's stuff an engineer might want. The second derivitive of COS^2/SIN means absolutely nothing.
You work for Sun. It is pretty obvious. (But in the case that you don't, your problem sounds exactly like what I face with Sun.) Yes, I download (FTP) files straight to the server that needs it rather than downloading it to my workstation and moving it again to where it is needed.
Why do I use FTP? Because Sun forgot to include a freaking command line web browser in their operating system. So, I'm forced to FTP for what I need. (Now, I could open up a desktop on the server, assuming it is installed, and try that gawd awful Java based web browser that nothing is compatible with. But that's a lot of effort and I might as well go back to a web browser on my own machine and FTP it to the server.)
Actually, thanks for reminding me. I'm going to put in a recommendation that we install Lynx on all of our systems.
You don't want to live in their Star Trek universe? Are you crazy? Because it is bland, predictable, and safe... those are the exact reasons why you'd want to live there. You don't want to live in interesting times.
I don't go to see very many movies at all. Only films that are really really interesting to me. Maybe, 6 movies a year, tops? I'm guessing that puts me as part of the crowd that you have to draw in for the big numbers. (The swing viewers?!)
The previews were kind of interesting. I've seen every Trek movie in the theater. Just the plot didn't quite capture me. Something about Romulans and an evil bad guy. Looks like lots of action, but nothing that really piqued my interest.
In the end, I think the large part of my decision not to go to theaters was the DVD. Since I didn't have an immediate need to see it, I'm more than happy to watch it in the comfort of my own home. Plus the bonus material on the DVD. Not that I have a great home theater, but the "movie experience" isn't a draw for me.
Businesses are willing to pay for value delivered. They are not, however, willing to be raked over the coals, especially by someone who is making the profit margins that Microsoft makes in an economy that has everyone else scrambling to make a buck.
I'm wondering if businesses are seeing this as an unavoidable costs. More specifically, I'm wondering if Microsoft created shockwaves through the budgets in IT departments that has led to some degree of the recent outsourcing and off-shore employees.
I'm sorry. I'm just not convinced that right now, the vast majority of users are suffering because they don't have a 64 bit address space. And I was talking about performance, not programming issues due to a 4gb address space.
In and of itself, a 64 bit processor with a 64 bit operation system really doesn't mean better performance. You've really got to have application which leverage that kind of platform. And there aren't many. On my SPARC servers (which all have 64 bit CPUs), going from a 32 bit OS to a 64 bit OS so no real improvement or degradation regarding performance in a wide variety of applications. Going 64 bits for most people mean nothing.
The main selling point for SPARC, which most people who aren't dealing with Sun don't understand, is not the CPU itself or the speed of a uniprocessor box.
It is the total package. (Admittedly, the lower part of that is the uniprocessor performance.) On the upside, Sun has some very compelling benefits. Almost all major UNIX programs (commercial) are developed for SPARC, often as the primary development platform. The binary compatibility is awesome. The binary tat I compiled on my workstation (with 5 years old technology that is several CPU generation behind) will containue to run the most modern hardware. There's no recompiling for different/newer architectures (unless you're looking to gain a specific advantage of a new processor and your compiler can do it). And probably one of the best features is an awesome scalability story. If your code does threads, or uses more than a processor at a time, you can scale from a 1 CPU to 100+ CPU configuration. No special programming to worry about clusters or to take advantage of new hardware. Additionally, because the hardware is (majority) single vendor, you gain a great deal of relaibility over platforms which has an incredible amount of diversity (wintel). Okay. That's a double edge sword, admittedly.
That said, it is too bad that Sun just can't keep up in the uniprocessor world. But it has quite a number of real-world advantages beyond performance which keep it afloat, which may surprise people.
Shown on a Channel 5 in Texas. It shows an earlier video with the space shuttle going across the screen. A bright dot comes off of the shuttle. Then another. Then a second later, the vapor trail starts.
After we grieve, we have to search for answers. One of the things that I saw, going over the crew bios, was that this wasn't one of the more experienced crews. This was the pilot's first flight. It was only the mission commander's second flight.
I absolutely am not putting this at their feet. However, it obviously will be one of the questions raised during the search for answers.
MSNBC has the crew profiles embedded in their story.
I am offended that you would presume to tell me how I should feel or respond to this incident. (Mind you, I've only read the +4 comments up to this point.) If I want to laugh to feel better, then I will laugh. If I was the age I was during the first shuttle explosion, I would participate in space shuttle jokes. But you have no right to tell me how to feel.
I admit. I am an 802.11b idiot. Like all idiots, I have a question. If I have an 802.11b base station, and my neighbor has an 802.11b base station, can we communicate between our base stations? (Any particular configuration trick?) Or is only an access card designed to talk with a base station? (For that matter, can two access cards just communicate with each other?)
Or does the writer actually seem to have more of an interest in Ricky than his game playing? Read some of that text again. His cologne. His grace. His car. His... nipple?
Slashdot Mirror
> Blind women have much lower rates of breast
cancer.
Could it be because they're not pumping gas and otherwise exposing themselves to chemicals like sighted women are?
Stupid question:
Why don't they build just one giant LED instead of creating arrays of 10 or so LEDs?
FWIW, I just got through purchasing today at Home Depot a *150 watt equiv* flourescent light that fits in a standard incandescent screw base. However, it only consumes 42 watts of power (and therefore, can fit in a regular light socket without overloading it) and is estimated for 10,000 hours of life. Price: $10.
Not very many recent comments. I think I probably have a more seasoned outlook on this game at this point.
First, the game has bugs all over the place. For example, the enemy AI hardly, if ever, attacks (with a few exceptions). Playing on Impossible (difficulty level) can actually be incredibly easy! Many users report doing quite a lot for the first part of the game, then sitting back and hitting [NEXT TURN] 200 or so times and eventually winning the game. The brain-dead AI is a lot of it (attack strategy, and also negotiations where you have a constant war-peace-war-peace 3 turn cycle with your computerized opponents).
This isn't a joke. With a rare exception (being next to the Ithkul or something), it doesn't put up anything approaching a real fight.
The user interface is described by many as substandard. Both in terms of being a navigational hazard that has to be figured out, to being akward to do regular things, to not providing simple right-click information. Most users have to work to try to figure out how to do the most basic tasks, like colonize a planet. Back to the informational thing, you'll find that other races will chastise you for your actions. Of course, you have no idea what the action was that provoked them. Perhaps you just met them? Or they'll angrily threaten you to say that they're warming up to you.
The crowning achievement of all of this is the macromanagement concept. If the macromanagement AI doesn't work well, you're going to be micromanaging bits and pieces as you find them wrong. Worse, if the macromanagement AI works well, here are your following duties:
1. Move ships around for exploration and combat. (This _is_ micromanagement, but it is enjoyable. Glad the AI didn't take this over, and they still left it in the game.)
2. Perform diplomatic functions.
3. Perform HR functions (hire/fire leaders and spies)
4. Perform rare macromanagement functions with 2 screens of sliders and tables.
5. Hit the NEXT TURN button. Again. And Again.
Macromanagement was a horrible double-edge sword that QuickSilver cannot win with. Right now, people aren't complaining too badly about the concept. But then again, they're not really even being attacked. Wait until the pressure is on to develop better ships quickly and efficiently (defend the empire... attack others) and watch the MacroAI bust at the seams with inefficiency that the players are going to have to go and mop up.
This is a historic moment in strategy games, much like the Titanic was an historic moment in sea travel. The best good that can come of this is not to repeat it. Sometimes the purpose of your labor is to serve as a warning to others.
Too bad. I really wanted to play a MOO game.
Check out their their forum for a more up-to-date view.
Okay. They've kept it a big secret. And I thought the image I saw of them looked like someone's thumb. So, what is the secret of this Harvester race that is so compelling!!?!
I don't think your complaints really have much to do with Civ 3, or MOO3, do they?
Doesn't seem like a real datacenter if you're having to do your own UPS on top of the power they provide. If they are conditioning the power and you're still having to do UPSs, something is wrong. If their power is conditioned, and you're putting a UPS on top of it, you're wasteful.
Can you let us know more details that you weren't able to ask in the original question?
Some points I assumed (but I might as well right). This system is only useful if it handles big and small transactions. The big $$ transactions are what allows you to get away with a certain percentage of the small $$ transactions. If the number of big $$ transactions isn't high enough, then you'd have to either queue up or start throwing away the low $$ transactions. (Or apply other rules, as discussed, like summing up individual transactions for a particular person until they reach a certain $$ threshold.)
The entire token side is a little strange. But basically, it would seem, for those with small $$ transactions, for a large number of small transactions, they'd effectively be paid a percentage of the amount charged. The high $$ transactions wouldn't use the token system since they would always go through.
Reading through the 3+ scored comments here, I don't think anyone really has a solid idea of what is going on here. But I think I might have some insight as to what is really going on.
The problem with doing micropurchases perhaps isn't so much a hard per-transaction fee, but a commission percentage charged by the CC processors. (In other words, the processors are using statistics in order to come up with their flat % rate charged to each transaction.)
I *think* what he might be trying to do here is to use large $$ transactions in order to get small $$ transactions passed through, but without being dropped to a higher % rate. (If you have a lot of $1 transactions, your CC processor will want to bump you up to a higher % rate per transaction, for ALL transactions.)
Of course, this seems like averaging on top of averaging, which the CC processors will eventually see through if it doesn't allow them to make the margins they want (because you're manipulating their statistics as close as you can with a ratio of low-to-high $$ transactions).
Does this make any sense to anyone, or am I way off in left field here?
> I don't think I want another television screen
> that can't also be a computer monitor.
I've written about it a few times, but I'm loving to death my Sun 24" HDTV screen, hooked up to my PC. 1920x1200 resolution (32 bits) and wide-screen goodness. And I've got a video card with good enough hardware acceleration to make playing wide-screen DVDs a joy.
But I have to say, it is a little small for a home television (even if it is a monster for a computer monitor). I really would like to see the convergence of the home television and the computer monitor, but they really are keeping those separate markets.
The revenue comes not so much banner ads, but impressions. What was your impression, anyhow?
I'm all for the teaching of discrete maths. However, I am against only one type of math. Calculus is great. Business calc is great. Calculus mixed with Trig is something so totally alien, that few students can relate to it, and even fewer will end up with a real-world use for it. That's stuff an engineer might want. The second derivitive of COS^2/SIN means absolutely nothing.
You work for Sun. It is pretty obvious. (But in the case that you don't, your problem sounds exactly like what I face with Sun.) Yes, I download (FTP) files straight to the server that needs it rather than downloading it to my workstation and moving it again to where it is needed.
Why do I use FTP? Because Sun forgot to include a freaking command line web browser in their operating system. So, I'm forced to FTP for what I need. (Now, I could open up a desktop on the server, assuming it is installed, and try that gawd awful Java based web browser that nothing is compatible with. But that's a lot of effort and I might as well go back to a web browser on my own machine and FTP it to the server.)
Actually, thanks for reminding me. I'm going to put in a recommendation that we install Lynx on all of our systems.
That only affects motherboards and daughterboards. Fatherboards are just an immune carrier.
You don't want to live in their Star Trek universe? Are you crazy? Because it is bland, predictable, and safe... those are the exact reasons why you'd want to live there. You don't want to live in interesting times.
I don't go to see very many movies at all. Only films that are really really interesting to me. Maybe, 6 movies a year, tops? I'm guessing that puts me as part of the crowd that you have to draw in for the big numbers. (The swing viewers?!)
The previews were kind of interesting. I've seen every Trek movie in the theater. Just the plot didn't quite capture me. Something about Romulans and an evil bad guy. Looks like lots of action, but nothing that really piqued my interest.
In the end, I think the large part of my decision not to go to theaters was the DVD. Since I didn't have an immediate need to see it, I'm more than happy to watch it in the comfort of my own home. Plus the bonus material on the DVD. Not that I have a great home theater, but the "movie experience" isn't a draw for me.
Businesses are willing to pay for value delivered. They are not, however, willing to be raked over the coals, especially by someone who is making the profit margins that Microsoft makes in an economy that has everyone else scrambling to make a buck.
I'm wondering if businesses are seeing this as an unavoidable costs. More specifically, I'm wondering if Microsoft created shockwaves through the budgets in IT departments that has led to some degree of the recent outsourcing and off-shore employees.
I'm sorry. I'm just not convinced that right now, the vast majority of users are suffering because they don't have a 64 bit address space. And I was talking about performance, not programming issues due to a 4gb address space.
In and of itself, a 64 bit processor with a 64 bit operation system really doesn't mean better performance. You've really got to have application which leverage that kind of platform. And there aren't many. On my SPARC servers (which all have 64 bit CPUs), going from a 32 bit OS to a 64 bit OS so no real improvement or degradation regarding performance in a wide variety of applications. Going 64 bits for most people mean nothing.
The main selling point for SPARC, which most people who aren't dealing with Sun don't understand, is not the CPU itself or the speed of a uniprocessor box.
It is the total package. (Admittedly, the lower part of that is the uniprocessor performance.) On the upside, Sun has some very compelling benefits. Almost all major UNIX programs (commercial) are developed for SPARC, often as the primary development platform. The binary compatibility is awesome. The binary tat I compiled on my workstation (with 5 years old technology that is several CPU generation behind) will containue to run the most modern hardware. There's no recompiling for different/newer architectures (unless you're looking to gain a specific advantage of a new processor and your compiler can do it). And probably one of the best features is an awesome scalability story. If your code does threads, or uses more than a processor at a time, you can scale from a 1 CPU to 100+ CPU configuration. No special programming to worry about clusters or to take advantage of new hardware. Additionally, because the hardware is (majority) single vendor, you gain a great deal of relaibility over platforms which has an incredible amount of diversity (wintel). Okay. That's a double edge sword, admittedly.
That said, it is too bad that Sun just can't keep up in the uniprocessor world. But it has quite a number of real-world advantages beyond performance which keep it afloat, which may surprise people.
Shown on a Channel 5 in Texas. It shows an earlier video with the space shuttle going across the screen. A bright dot comes off of the shuttle. Then another. Then a second later, the vapor trail starts.
After we grieve, we have to search for answers. One of the things that I saw, going over the crew bios, was that this wasn't one of the more experienced crews. This was the pilot's first flight. It was only the mission commander's second flight.
I absolutely am not putting this at their feet. However, it obviously will be one of the questions raised during the search for answers.
MSNBC has the crew profiles embedded in their story.
I am offended that you would presume to tell me how I should feel or respond to this incident. (Mind you, I've only read the +4 comments up to this point.) If I want to laugh to feel better, then I will laugh. If I was the age I was during the first shuttle explosion, I would participate in space shuttle jokes. But you have no right to tell me how to feel.
I admit. I am an 802.11b idiot. Like all idiots, I have a question. If I have an 802.11b base station, and my neighbor has an 802.11b base station, can we communicate between our base stations? (Any particular configuration trick?) Or is only an access card designed to talk with a base station? (For that matter, can two access cards just communicate with each other?)
Or does the writer actually seem to have more of an interest in Ricky than his game playing? Read some of that text again. His cologne. His grace. His car. His... nipple?
Ref: Pages one and two of this story.
"Er... "ironically" is a word."
Then you have embiggened me.
Thank you.