In that case sending, for example, pictures through MSN Messenger wouldnt be allowed to... If they'd go that far as a ISP I forsee good business for the first ISP that does allow servers. (Mine does btw)
In WoW classic I managed a raiding team from MC to Naxx. It started out as a burst of childish anger because I could not get a spot in the then 2(!) high-end raiding guilds on my server. So.. how hard could it be to get 40 people together and kill some stuff?
It turned out to be one of the most daunting tasks I have ever layed upon myself. (no, I do not have a management job.. that might have helped)
Point is, you have to deal with a odd 60 people, mostly male in the age range of 15 to 45 from about 12 different countries. Thus with 12 different language and cultural backgrounds. With mostly hormones and greed as their motivator. Talk about a hard crowd.
You have to melt that group into a really tight bunch of people that work together like a machine. This has to be done twice a week for several hours. Using only text msg-es and voip.
Besides the actual raiding hours you have to manage all the things around it, did the dkp update as it should, did people get the loot they should have gotten. If not, fix that. You get dozens of whine msg-es about people that feel they have been treated unfair for what ever reason. Explain why someone didn't get a spot this week, make sure your mt's don't go on a holiday all at once. If they do make sure you're prepared etc. etc.
Raiding and gear brings out the worst in people sometimes, yet you have to remain cool and solve it always just to keep the team rolling.
The tactic part of raiding is just teaching a couple of monkeys a trick. The hard part is to get those monkeys repeat that trick over and over without them walking away. If you do not have a huge amount of social skills you won't make it past the first instance as a whole team. Social skills are far far more important then the tactics.
I learned a lot during that period, more then any company could have teached me about management in the same period of time. It was fun, it was insane, I won't ever do it again but I am so glad and proud I did it.
This is one blog that doesn't really need the attention. Boston.com is already pretty renown for it's excelent photographic series.
The bigpicture section of the site is updated weekly with amazing shots of a specific subject and linked to by a large number of other websites. This post on/. is just one in many I have seen linking to them.
In short, this is one site that should be bookmarked if you're into nice photographs.
I never made a steam account but I will for this mod. I've been waiting for this mod for ages now. This is definatly worth a few bucks.
Half-Life 1 is in my books simply the best game ever made. From what I gathered this mod team has really put in a lot of effort in the remake. I say bring it on...
I wish the modteam all the best in their future carreers, by the looks of it they just secured it.
I'm pretty sure, sure as in 99% certain, that this denial by Osama was broadcasted in Europe/The Netherlands very shortly after the attacks.
I remember this very distinct because I was suprised that the US found a suspect that damn fast and that that same suspect denied it even faster (while knowing he would take the blame no matter what, so why deny the greatest act of terror ever if you are a terrorist?)
Ask your local news agency why it wasn't broadcasted in the US.......
I can understand that somehow their datagrid is connected to the net in some way. It's hard these days to run a massive scale project and not connecting it to the outside world in one way or anothr.
What scares me is the fact that they pumped in aprox. 4.4 billion euros in this project and somehow with all that money it seems that they didn't invest enough in security.
I mean, come on. A breach is one thing but "one step away" from one of the core components is pretty serious.
Tell that to my gf who absolutely loves the game. She was planning to buy the game, solely based on her experience with the earlier released creature editor.
As soon as I heard about the draconian DRM with the three activations limit I stopped her from throwing away her money.
Three activations would in our case mean she uses them in one blow. One for her comp at her place, one for the lappy she lugs arround and one for her comp at my place.
Sorry Will Wright, usenet did it's job once again. And this time I don't feel quilty one bit.
Although..
10 million paying customers and then suddenly a last final patch... "The destruction of Azeroth"
"Sorry guys, the story ends here, game over, you won!"
This is just one of the ways wars will be fought from now on.
Stopping and disrupting your the flow of information from and to your enemy is a age old tactic. Now it's taken to a virtual level but the tactic is the same. Chaos, disorder, misinformation, non information. Key elements in a war.
In the old days when a country went to war young kids would run up to the draft office in a heroic mood so they could defend their country with a gun.
Now they meet on irc and DDoS the hell out of some some server.
In the old days some brave soldiers would go behind enemy lines to cut of their telephone lines, now government hired nerds log in to the phone grid and simply disconnect it.
Does it really matter if the fireworks were partially faked or not?
The main goal of the ceremony is to entertain millions (perhaps billions?) of people and in my very humble opinion they succeded at that pretty damn well.
Hell, the first 1.5 hrs of the opening was one of the most magnificent shows ever to put on the face of the earth.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but they could have computer generated a lot more parts of the show and they didn't. The people in the boxes for instance?
I don't really care what was real or not.. All I know is that I frequently had to pick up my jaw from the ground. And that was the ultimate goal. Period.
I think it's quite simple, Windows XP just works and does the job properly.
Windows XP with sp2 or sp3 is rock stable. There is tons of support to be found around the web if you do run in to trouble. You can't imagine a device, no matter how obscure, and you can find decent drivers for it.
Almost all the software you can think of runs on XP by now (except for the odd highly specific packages perhaps)
XP will run nicely on older hardware by now, so no need to upgrade.
Most of the users use XP at home or are already familiar with it, so there is little to none training required.
I know I'm talking to the wrong crowd here but Microsoft actually made XP too good. Businesses and home users have little to none reason to upgrade.
The extra security added in Vista? If configured properly XP can be just as safe.
DirectX 10? Hardly any use for that in a business environment.
Other then that? Not much except for the eye candy.. Woohoo.. yes, that will make your office a lot more productive!
So why would any sane organization go through the trouble of upgrading all the machines, training the employees and running after all the new security holes and troubles that come with a new OS?
Linux and Apple are clearly taking advantage of this situation and MS... Windows 7 must be damn good otherwise Windows domination will soon be a thing of the past.
I think this whole Vista thing will be a disaster for MS far greater then Windows ME ever could be.
MS knew ME wasn't all that good and it was presented as a in-between OS, no big marketing and probbaly not so high expectations profitwise. Vista however was hailed as the 2nd coming of Christ.. well hello there Satan..:)
Ironic.
I live in, according to various sources, the most air polluted area of the Netherlands. The whole neighborhood is undergoing re-pavement as we speak. And where do they place these tiles? Right.. in one of the more greener cities of the country.
Seems to me it should have been a no-brainer to where to test these tiles.
The fact that they are willing to release a unfinished game just so they can cash in at Christmas is reason enough to not buy it at all.
It's simply a display of money before gameplay and that is in my book the biggest fault any developer can make.
Six months after the release I want to see content added that was planned for a post-release patch, not the content that should have been in there in the first place.
Warhammer just lost a future customer.....
I'm a ex WoW player, thus very spoiled, got a bit bored from it and was really looking forward to Warhammer.
But if they are already cutting corners, taking out content just to meet their releasedate I'm willing to take bets that it will be just another 100 in a dozen mmo.
This simply tells me that they're just after the next big money machine behind WoW. And that they're not after the next big near perfect game (which will earn them even more money in the end I'm sure)
And *that* is a big mistake, the first studio that will do some serious damage to the WoW customer base will be the first studio that doesn't care about the release date. A MMO is something that's ment to be played for years, the players know that now, they know they need to look for solid end-game, solid designs and not hollow prommises like "it will be patched later"
My prediction, the first studio that will eat a large chunk out of the WoW customer base will be Blizzard itself.
No other studio has the balls to develop as long as they do. 1 or 2 more expansions for WoW, then Blizzard will announce their next MMO and people will buy that even if they have to pay for it with their souls.
Slashdot Mirror
In that case sending, for example, pictures through MSN Messenger wouldnt be allowed to...
If they'd go that far as a ISP I forsee good business for the first ISP that does allow servers. (Mine does btw)
In WoW classic I managed a raiding team from MC to Naxx.
It started out as a burst of childish anger because I could not get a spot in the then 2(!) high-end raiding guilds on my server.
So.. how hard could it be to get 40 people together and kill some stuff?
It turned out to be one of the most daunting tasks I have ever layed upon myself. (no, I do not have a management job.. that might have helped)
Point is, you have to deal with a odd 60 people, mostly male in the age range of 15 to 45 from about 12 different countries. Thus with 12 different language and cultural backgrounds. With mostly hormones and greed as their motivator. Talk about a hard crowd.
You have to melt that group into a really tight bunch of people that work together like a machine.
This has to be done twice a week for several hours. Using only text msg-es and voip.
Besides the actual raiding hours you have to manage all the things around it, did the dkp update as it should, did people get the loot they should have gotten. If not, fix that. You get dozens of whine msg-es about people that feel they have been treated unfair for what ever reason. Explain why someone didn't get a spot this week, make sure your mt's don't go on a holiday all at once. If they do make sure you're prepared etc. etc.
Raiding and gear brings out the worst in people sometimes, yet you have to remain cool and solve it always just to keep the team rolling.
The tactic part of raiding is just teaching a couple of monkeys a trick. The hard part is to get those monkeys repeat that trick over and over without them walking away.
If you do not have a huge amount of social skills you won't make it past the first instance as a whole team. Social skills are far far more important then the tactics.
I learned a lot during that period, more then any company could have teached me about management in the same period of time.
It was fun, it was insane, I won't ever do it again but I am so glad and proud I did it.
This is one blog that doesn't really need the attention. Boston.com is already pretty renown for it's excelent photographic series.
The bigpicture section of the site is updated weekly with amazing shots of a specific subject and linked to by a large number of other websites. This post on /. is just one in many I have seen linking to them.
In short, this is one site that should be bookmarked if you're into nice photographs.
Ok, they got me...
I never made a steam account but I will for this mod. I've been waiting for this mod for ages now. This is definatly worth a few bucks.
Half-Life 1 is in my books simply the best game ever made. From what I gathered this mod team has really put in a lot of effort in the remake. I say bring it on...
I wish the modteam all the best in their future carreers, by the looks of it they just secured it.
We have a bajillion dollars. The more dollars we have. The more games we can make.
So..... how many games can you make for 25 euro these days?
I'm pretty sure, sure as in 99% certain, that this denial by Osama was broadcasted in Europe/The Netherlands very shortly after the attacks.
I remember this very distinct because I was suprised that the US found a suspect that damn fast and that that same suspect denied it even faster (while knowing he would take the blame no matter what, so why deny the greatest act of terror ever if you are a terrorist?)
Ask your local news agency why it wasn't broadcasted in the US.......
I can understand that somehow their datagrid is connected to the net in some way. It's hard these days to run a massive scale project and not connecting it to the outside world in one way or anothr.
What scares me is the fact that they pumped in aprox. 4.4 billion euros in this project and somehow with all that money it seems that they didn't invest enough in security.
I mean, come on. A breach is one thing but "one step away" from one of the core components is pretty serious.
Dito,
The only references to my real name are postings I made for work or work related. All the other private stuff is posted under a alias.
I have one profile on a social networking site and it is only viewable after I granted you permission to do so.
My private stuff is private, my employer or anyone else doesn't have any business with that and I'd like to keep it that way.
Tell that to my gf who absolutely loves the game.
She was planning to buy the game, solely based on her experience with the earlier released creature editor.
As soon as I heard about the draconian DRM with the three activations limit I stopped her from throwing away her money.
Three activations would in our case mean she uses them in one blow. One for her comp at her place, one for the lappy she lugs arround and one for her comp at my place.
Sorry Will Wright, usenet did it's job once again. And this time I don't feel quilty one bit.
So google will just turn into a unfiltered Digg frontpage you mean?
Lord, have mercy on our souls.....
The story doesn't end, ever.
Although..
10 million paying customers and then suddenly a last final patch... "The destruction of Azeroth"
"Sorry guys, the story ends here, game over, you won!"
That would be awesome *eg*
I have to hand it to Blizzard, their trailers are always of such awesome quality.
It instantly made me want to renew my account again. Must.... resist.....
Please Blizzard, stop doing this to me!
George Orwell is that you?
I don't really get what all the fuss is about.
This is just one of the ways wars will be fought from now on.
Stopping and disrupting your the flow of information from and to your enemy is a age old tactic. Now it's taken to a virtual level but the tactic is the same. Chaos, disorder, misinformation, non information. Key elements in a war.
In the old days when a country went to war young kids would run up to the draft office in a heroic mood so they could defend their country with a gun.
Now they meet on irc and DDoS the hell out of some some server.
In the old days some brave soldiers would go behind enemy lines to cut of their telephone lines, now government hired nerds log in to the phone grid and simply disconnect it.
Same old shit, new shiny cover.
Does it really matter if the fireworks were partially faked or not?
The main goal of the ceremony is to entertain millions (perhaps billions?) of people and in my very humble opinion they succeded at that pretty damn well.
Hell, the first 1.5 hrs of the opening was one of the most magnificent shows ever to put on the face of the earth.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but they could have computer generated a lot more parts of the show and they didn't. The people in the boxes for instance?
I don't really care what was real or not.. All I know is that I frequently had to pick up my jaw from the ground. And that was the ultimate goal. Period.
Rumor has it that Microsoft just ordered a large batch of new office chairs.
I think it's quite simple, Windows XP just works and does the job properly.
:)
Windows XP with sp2 or sp3 is rock stable. There is tons of support to be found around the web if you do run in to trouble. You can't imagine a device, no matter how obscure, and you can find decent drivers for it.
Almost all the software you can think of runs on XP by now (except for the odd highly specific packages perhaps) XP will run nicely on older hardware by now, so no need to upgrade.
Most of the users use XP at home or are already familiar with it, so there is little to none training required.
I know I'm talking to the wrong crowd here but Microsoft actually made XP too good. Businesses and home users have little to none reason to upgrade.
The extra security added in Vista? If configured properly XP can be just as safe.
DirectX 10? Hardly any use for that in a business environment.
Other then that? Not much except for the eye candy.. Woohoo.. yes, that will make your office a lot more productive!
So why would any sane organization go through the trouble of upgrading all the machines, training the employees and running after all the new security holes and troubles that come with a new OS?
Linux and Apple are clearly taking advantage of this situation and MS... Windows 7 must be damn good otherwise Windows domination will soon be a thing of the past.
I think this whole Vista thing will be a disaster for MS far greater then Windows ME ever could be.
MS knew ME wasn't all that good and it was presented as a in-between OS, no big marketing and probbaly not so high expectations profitwise. Vista however was hailed as the 2nd coming of Christ.. well hello there Satan..
Ironic.
I live in, according to various sources, the most air polluted area of the Netherlands. The whole neighborhood is undergoing re-pavement as we speak. And where do they place these tiles?
Right.. in one of the more greener cities of the country.
Seems to me it should have been a no-brainer to where to test these tiles.
Unlike on Mars there isn't even potential for that in the white house.
If only I could give you a years worth of mod points for that comment.
The graphic cards might be able to handle it. But you'd have to run Vista in order to get maximized settings..
Now there is a problem.
For me, the mentality.
The fact that they are willing to release a unfinished game just so they can cash in at Christmas is reason enough to not buy it at all.
It's simply a display of money before gameplay and that is in my book the biggest fault any developer can make.
Six months after the release I want to see content added that was planned for a post-release patch, not the content that should have been in there in the first place.
Warhammer just lost a future customer.....
I'm a ex WoW player, thus very spoiled, got a bit bored from it and was really looking forward to Warhammer.
But if they are already cutting corners, taking out content just to meet their releasedate I'm willing to take bets that it will be just another 100 in a dozen mmo.
This simply tells me that they're just after the next big money machine behind WoW. And that they're not after the next big near perfect game (which will earn them even more money in the end I'm sure)
And *that* is a big mistake, the first studio that will do some serious damage to the WoW customer base will be the first studio that doesn't care about the release date. A MMO is something that's ment to be played for years, the players know that now, they know they need to look for solid end-game, solid designs and not hollow prommises like "it will be patched later"
My prediction, the first studio that will eat a large chunk out of the WoW customer base will be Blizzard itself.
No other studio has the balls to develop as long as they do. 1 or 2 more expansions for WoW, then Blizzard will announce their next MMO and people will buy that even if they have to pay for it with their souls.
Don't worry,
As soon as the RIAA hears about this the funding for the project will be sucked dry.
Finally, a use for all those left over 5 1/4 inch floppydisks!