AFAIK for example.WAV is a lossless format, so despite this comment being modded as funny. You *could* rip it to a digital format without losing any of the quality of the original recording. No one does it because of the filesizes this generates, but still.
The article merely states that the original recordings are already raped before they even get ported to any carrier, be it Vinyl, CD or a digital format.
Picked up a Wii this morning (had to bribe and shoot some people for it to get the last one in the country) got a extra controller and Super Mario Galaxy.
My girlfriend and me have been on a gaming binge for about 10 hours and loved every minute of it.
Boy, does the Wii take back the Fun in gaming, that's a capital F !
Of course you play all games for fun. But Wii sports and SMG is the acting crazy and loud laughs kind of fun. No new shiny item in a MMO or perfect headshot can compare to this. Sheer brilliance.
When does a human stop being a human and does it become a robot? Or a subform of one of the two?
Already we can artificially replicate large parts of the human body.
I can easily imagine that in 50 to 100 years from now we can replace any part of the body for a custom machine made part whenever needed or wanted.
New heart? check, New legs? check, does your stomach hurt? here, have another.
We might run into a bit of trouble with the brain but I dare to bet we can come pretty close to a artificial human brain in that time-span.
In that light I can imagine you could take a real human being and alter or rebuild that human completely with man-made materials.
Is it still a human in that case? or a Cyborg, or a Robot?
If you used to love that human, could you still love it when it's the same human but in a artificial form?
In the caveman analogy, the American Army would have found a new resource of (slave) laborers.
Cheap, they only need food which they can grow themselves.
Easy to control, 1 bullet and 1 caveman needed as a example for the rest.
Endless resources, you could "breed" if you wanted to.
This list could go on for a while, but you get the point I hope
First of all, you can hardly call Blizzard a small company anymore. It became a multi billion dollar industry of it's own. The Warcraft and Starcraft franchise is huge.
The difference between Blizzard and the *big* majority of other developers is that so far Blizzard haven't sold themselves out yet.
When they release something it is done, the product is finished and polished as good as it gets. They rather wait a few months, miss that oh-so important Christmas release and release it later instead of making something just work and patch it up later.
As a customer you feel the difference between such a developer and for instance a monster like EA which is just after the fast cash.
I'm sounding like your average Blizzard fan-boi now, and heck, I am one. Because experience has thought me that if I bring money to Blizzard I'm going to get something good in return.
The same experience that has tought me to never ever buy a EA title again, or for that matter never buy something from most developers again before having played the "free (as in beer) version first. Because most of the times you're going to bend over and get it from behind. The Oblivion upgrades are a good example.
We shall see. But MMO's are here to stay, because Blizzard has shown you can get some serious money from them
I disagree, they have merely shown that delivering quality pays of. This concept simply still works in most business:p
I am not a developer but I can imagine that it would be far far easier to develop a game that has to run on 2 or 3 standard (console)platforms then on a PC.
Every console has a fixed set of hardware. If it works on a console it simply works. No worries after that about compatiblity.
If you design a game for the PC you have to factor in a gazillion types of hardware which seems to me a much harder job to do.
I've recently read some stories about this botnet. From what I've gathered it's powerfull enough to do some serious damage in a society. Cyber attacks can disrupt our lives in multiple ways after all.
Imo we're just lucky so far that it hasnt been used for some serious attack on money/bank agencies, public transport, etc etc, stuff close to us and vital for average day life. (or am I just being to paranoid now?)
The hosts that are infected will most likely be bad maintained boxes, unattended, never updated. Wouldn't it be possible to write a counterworm/trojan that would delete the bot software and close the holes?
I realise the ethical issues involved here. A Trojan like this would basicly be just as "bad" as the botnet itself, on the other hand it would be for the greater good.
Has anyone ever attempted this? If not, what if someone did? Would you be pissed off if one of your forgotten and infected boxes would be cleaned this way?
Ok, call me ignorant, stupid, dumb, whatever.
But why, whenever someone makes a mistake or fucks up is the very first thought (or post in this matter) always down the line of lawsuits, cash, court, lawyers etc?
It may be common practice in the U.S. but every time it stuns me that whenever people make a mistake the very first thought is how to get maximum profit out of it and obliterate someone or something.
Whatever happend to "sorry man, I fucked up, my mistake" "oh, ok, shit happens, have a good day, watch it next time" and simply get on with your life?
To my best knowledge it was never cleared up what exactly caused the accident in the first place..
And now, almost a 100 years later, we suddenly get to hear that they lost a 3 ton meteor (how the hell do you lose a 3 ton rock?) and oh yeah, btw, that was the meteor that caused the incident!....
No worries, we had it lying in our backyard all the time, never felt a urge or saw the reason to let the rest of the world know....
"u will not find me a real WoW addict who is not depressed, and you will not cure anyone of depression simply by removing WoW."
Though I am sure there are plenty of examples to be found that match your descripition here, I beg to differ this is the defacto standard of all 'hardcore' WoW players.
I have been playing WoW since launch, so has my gf (yes, they exist) we both play WoW quite intense and by some standards you could call us addicts. Apart from spending a lot of time on the game we still have our social life, go out to concerts etc, both have jobs, friends, actively sport and maintain other hobbies and I can asure you we are not depressed;p
WoW is a hobby, just like we have other hobbies.
So hey, it looks like we still maintain that so called "Real Life" quite well (horror for some, I know)
But wait, there is more...
The guild we are in (in other games refered to as a clan) consists out of aprox. 80 players. On our server we are known as a pretty hardcore guild. The majority of people in this guild are mostly mature people with jobs, families, active social lifes etc. WoW is just a time consuming hobby to them too.
I know there are also a lot of people that did get in some kind of trouble because of WoW and their gaming habbits but if these people wouldnt have met WoW something else would have come on their path and take their life down the drain.
With 9 million subscribers WoW is a good example of the current society, if nothing else, that's the scary thought, not WoW itself.
Overhyped story, putting folders with porn on your desktop is fairplay if you ask me.
This is the equivalent of putting a porn magazine on the passenger seat of your car, taking it to a garage for a repair and after it being suprised the mechanic read it or photocopied it.
If the video had shown the geek was scanning for hidden, encrypted folders or drives, tried to crack em and whatnot, now that would be unenthical, but this... jeez.
I'd like to try it but can't.
My box is aprox 3 years old, when I bought it it was a absolute state-of-the-art machine. All parts high-end, top of the line.
Nowadays my comp. is mediocre at best compared to new machines and parts. But still a viable box for homeuse and gaming.
I tried installing Vista, yet it won't recognise half my hardware and my raidsetup is something the install. can't coop with.
I'm sorry, but if MS expects me to buy a completely new comp just because it won't run Vista while my comp is still very viable by today's standards they need to get their heads out of their........
The fact alone that they are considering this says enough already about the confidence in their own management system.
I gave EVE a go with a trial account, was toying with the idea to ditch WoW and go full on with EVE, but now....... Only when hell freezes over I'm gonna send my cash to a company that asks the public to keep an eye out for corrupt staffmembers.
I've been playing WoW since almost from launch date and am a bit bored of it by now.
Looking for a new mmorpg to play I decided to give LOTRO a shot since it looked most apealing to me after WoW.
I never even finished my 10 day trial because of the horrible ui design. Like the parent said the ui is just to clunky, hardly customisable and not intuitive. The fact that it's hardly mod-able made me decide not to cough up the cash for the complete game and fees.
But in all fairness, I think sometimes us WoW addicts forget how Blizzard spoiled us massively.
WoW is still in most aspects the best designed game overall in my opinion. In my search for another mmorpg after WoW life I've tried about a dozen others. Not one of them came close to WoW. Some had some nice and refreshing touches but the overall design of WoW, the way everything smoothly blends in, the way all of the things just work and you can have everything you need via mods is still unmatched in mmmorpg land.
Another thing that greatly disturbed me was the fact that I had to pay for the lotro trial. Not much, about 3 euro's orso, but still.
Paying for trials is a big no no in my book. If you want to lure me into your game you'd better make sure my first encounter is a pleasant one.
If a publisher doesnt even want to give his trial for free it says something about the thought after the whole project. *money, money, money, from wherever we can get it*
Gl to all other developers that are working on the "WoW killer".
With paranoia spread that far and deep into the society who needs terrorists?
They have won already...
This is pathetic, practices like this resembles stuff invented in WWII. I thought the world had learned a lesson or two back then, apparantly not.
I met my girlfriend 2.5 years ago, at that point she was using her computer only to send some emails, browse some sites and do stuff for school/work.
Now she owns a casemodded computer including a pretty state-of-the-art videocard and simular soundsystem and tft monitoy. When she is at my place in the weekends she brings her rig with her and we play lot's of lan-games together. And she also goes with me to a monthly lan party.
It's all a question of training my friend.. training....
Slashdot Mirror
If I had any modpoints, I'd spent em all on you. This is so true.
AFAIK for example.WAV is a lossless format, so despite this comment being modded as funny. You *could* rip it to a digital format without losing any of the quality of the original recording. No one does it because of the filesizes this generates, but still.
The article merely states that the original recordings are already raped before they even get ported to any carrier, be it Vinyl, CD or a digital format.
For me, today,
Picked up a Wii this morning (had to bribe and shoot some people for it to get the last one in the country) got a extra controller and Super Mario Galaxy.
My girlfriend and me have been on a gaming binge for about 10 hours and loved every minute of it.
Boy, does the Wii take back the Fun in gaming, that's a capital F !
Of course you play all games for fun. But Wii sports and SMG is the acting crazy and loud laughs kind of fun. No new shiny item in a MMO or perfect headshot can compare to this.
Sheer brilliance.
I think we can take this a little further,
When does a human stop being a human and does it become a robot? Or a subform of one of the two?
Already we can artificially replicate large parts of the human body.
I can easily imagine that in 50 to 100 years from now we can replace any part of the body for a custom machine made part whenever needed or wanted.
New heart? check, New legs? check, does your stomach hurt? here, have another.
We might run into a bit of trouble with the brain but I dare to bet we can come pretty close to a artificial human brain in that time-span.
In that light I can imagine you could take a real human being and alter or rebuild that human completely with man-made materials.
Is it still a human in that case? or a Cyborg, or a Robot?
If you used to love that human, could you still love it when it's the same human but in a artificial form?
In the caveman analogy, the American Army would have found a new resource of (slave) laborers.
Cheap, they only need food which they can grow themselves.
Easy to control, 1 bullet and 1 caveman needed as a example for the rest.
Endless resources, you could "breed" if you wanted to.
This list could go on for a while, but you get the point I hope
I predict that as soon as Blizzard's legal department is done with them they will need millions....
Very true,
A few months ago there was a band playing in Lower City, Shattrath.
Those guys were awesome, I instantly bought new game-card.
Those were all users online you insensitive clod.
The difference between Blizzard and the *big* majority of other developers is that so far Blizzard haven't sold themselves out yet.
When they release something it is done, the product is finished and polished as good as it gets. They rather wait a few months, miss that oh-so important Christmas release and release it later instead of making something just work and patch it up later.
As a customer you feel the difference between such a developer and for instance a monster like EA which is just after the fast cash.
I'm sounding like your average Blizzard fan-boi now, and heck, I am one. Because experience has thought me that if I bring money to Blizzard I'm going to get something good in return.
The same experience that has tought me to never ever buy a EA title again, or for that matter never buy something from most developers again before having played the "free (as in beer) version first. Because most of the times you're going to bend over and get it from behind. The Oblivion upgrades are a good example.
We shall see. But MMO's are here to stay, because Blizzard has shown you can get some serious money from them
I disagree, they have merely shown that delivering quality pays of. This concept simply still works in most business
I am not a developer but I can imagine that it would be far far easier to develop a game that has to run on 2 or 3 standard (console)platforms then on a PC.
Every console has a fixed set of hardware. If it works on a console it simply works. No worries after that about compatiblity.
If you design a game for the PC you have to factor in a gazillion types of hardware which seems to me a much harder job to do.
First things first, IANAE (I am not a expert)
I've recently read some stories about this botnet. From what I've gathered it's powerfull enough to do some serious damage in a society. Cyber attacks can disrupt our lives in multiple ways after all.
Imo we're just lucky so far that it hasnt been used for some serious attack on money/bank agencies, public transport, etc etc, stuff close to us and vital for average day life. (or am I just being to paranoid now?)
The hosts that are infected will most likely be bad maintained boxes, unattended, never updated. Wouldn't it be possible to write a counterworm/trojan that would delete the bot software and close the holes?
I realise the ethical issues involved here. A Trojan like this would basicly be just as "bad" as the botnet itself, on the other hand it would be for the greater good.
Has anyone ever attempted this? If not, what if someone did? Would you be pissed off if one of your forgotten and infected boxes would be cleaned this way?
Just being curious..
To stay on topic of myths.
For worldpeace!
Ok, call me ignorant, stupid, dumb, whatever. But why, whenever someone makes a mistake or fucks up is the very first thought (or post in this matter) always down the line of lawsuits, cash, court, lawyers etc?
It may be common practice in the U.S. but every time it stuns me that whenever people make a mistake the very first thought is how to get maximum profit out of it and obliterate someone or something.
Whatever happend to "sorry man, I fucked up, my mistake" "oh, ok, shit happens, have a good day, watch it next time" and simply get on with your life?
Call me stupid, but........
WHY?
I mean, it's not like you're going to let the purchase of a cd depend on the volume lvl it was recorded on. Or am I getting that old?
"We lost Iraq, not 'a rock'." Please, leave the "we" out of there.
To my best knowledge it was never cleared up what exactly caused the accident in the first place..
And now, almost a 100 years later, we suddenly get to hear that they lost a 3 ton meteor (how the hell do you lose a 3 ton rock?) and oh yeah, btw, that was the meteor that caused the incident!....
No worries, we had it lying in our backyard all the time, never felt a urge or saw the reason to let the rest of the world know....
Yeah, right.
Because S comes after F.... DOH!
"u will not find me a real WoW addict who is not depressed, and you will not cure anyone of depression simply by removing WoW." Though I am sure there are plenty of examples to be found that match your descripition here, I beg to differ this is the defacto standard of all 'hardcore' WoW players. I have been playing WoW since launch, so has my gf (yes, they exist) we both play WoW quite intense and by some standards you could call us addicts. Apart from spending a lot of time on the game we still have our social life, go out to concerts etc, both have jobs, friends, actively sport and maintain other hobbies and I can asure you we are not depressed ;p
WoW is a hobby, just like we have other hobbies.
So hey, it looks like we still maintain that so called "Real Life" quite well (horror for some, I know)
But wait, there is more...
The guild we are in (in other games refered to as a clan) consists out of aprox. 80 players. On our server we are known as a pretty hardcore guild. The majority of people in this guild are mostly mature people with jobs, families, active social lifes etc. WoW is just a time consuming hobby to them too.
I know there are also a lot of people that did get in some kind of trouble because of WoW and their gaming habbits but if these people wouldnt have met WoW something else would have come on their path and take their life down the drain.
With 9 million subscribers WoW is a good example of the current society, if nothing else, that's the scary thought, not WoW itself.
Overhyped story, putting folders with porn on your desktop is fairplay if you ask me.
This is the equivalent of putting a porn magazine on the passenger seat of your car, taking it to a garage for a repair and after it being suprised the mechanic read it or photocopied it.
If the video had shown the geek was scanning for hidden, encrypted folders or drives, tried to crack em and whatnot, now that would be unenthical, but this... jeez.
I'd like to try it but can't.
........
My box is aprox 3 years old, when I bought it it was a absolute state-of-the-art machine. All parts high-end, top of the line.
Nowadays my comp. is mediocre at best compared to new machines and parts. But still a viable box for homeuse and gaming.
I tried installing Vista, yet it won't recognise half my hardware and my raidsetup is something the install. can't coop with.
I'm sorry, but if MS expects me to buy a completely new comp just because it won't run Vista while my comp is still very viable by today's standards they need to get their heads out of their
The fact alone that they are considering this says enough already about the confidence in their own management system.
I gave EVE a go with a trial account, was toying with the idea to ditch WoW and go full on with EVE, but now....... Only when hell freezes over I'm gonna send my cash to a company that asks the public to keep an eye out for corrupt staffmembers.
I've been playing WoW since almost from launch date and am a bit bored of it by now.
Looking for a new mmorpg to play I decided to give LOTRO a shot since it looked most apealing to me after WoW.
I never even finished my 10 day trial because of the horrible ui design. Like the parent said the ui is just to clunky, hardly customisable and not intuitive. The fact that it's hardly mod-able made me decide not to cough up the cash for the complete game and fees.
But in all fairness, I think sometimes us WoW addicts forget how Blizzard spoiled us massively.
WoW is still in most aspects the best designed game overall in my opinion. In my search for another mmorpg after WoW life I've tried about a dozen others. Not one of them came close to WoW. Some had some nice and refreshing touches but the overall design of WoW, the way everything smoothly blends in, the way all of the things just work and you can have everything you need via mods is still unmatched in mmmorpg land.
Another thing that greatly disturbed me was the fact that I had to pay for the lotro trial. Not much, about 3 euro's orso, but still.
Paying for trials is a big no no in my book. If you want to lure me into your game you'd better make sure my first encounter is a pleasant one.
If a publisher doesnt even want to give his trial for free it says something about the thought after the whole project. *money, money, money, from wherever we can get it*
Gl to all other developers that are working on the "WoW killer".
You must be new here.
With paranoia spread that far and deep into the society who needs terrorists? They have won already... This is pathetic, practices like this resembles stuff invented in WWII. I thought the world had learned a lesson or two back then, apparantly not.
I met my girlfriend 2.5 years ago, at that point she was using her computer only to send some emails, browse some sites and do stuff for school/work.
Now she owns a casemodded computer including a pretty state-of-the-art videocard and simular soundsystem and tft monitoy. When she is at my place in the weekends she brings her rig with her and we play lot's of lan-games together. And she also goes with me to a monthly lan party.
It's all a question of training my friend.. training....