Many a player leveled to 20 and created a wizard, and then a realm for his fellow players to explore on MUDs. And while I appreciate the high-production value of WoW, I miss the days of very clearly exploring different projections of other people's minds. Granted, many realms were boring, but there were some truly genius ones too.
There are two parts to a chip. The design, and the manufacturing process. Intel is still destroying everyone on the manufacturing front. They were the first with 300mm wafers. They were the first with 65nm processes. They will be the first with 45nm processes. Meanwhile they are learning their lessons on the design side and finally taking on the on-die memory-controller issue. They have to be careful when they do this because that will be a platform upgrade (motherboard + CPU + (maybe) RAM).
Nehalem is looking like a serious round-house punch to AMD. Of course, AMD is not standing still, and they may yet use their agility to find a response.
I wasn't complaining about my situation. That's you projecting your disagreement as a problem with me or my character. Which, I resent. But, your misguided post speaks for the problems I perceive with your neural net.
Unless your use of the 2nd person was the "royal 2nd person."
Unfortunately, a lot of people don't realize that "salaried" often equivocates to "exploited." It's the last "golden handcuff" whose shine hasn't worn off.
So who will be Spaceburton? If NASA can't pioneer research and technologies and guide that process, where does NASA go for space-flight services? SpaceX is already being looked to as a partner in developing space exploration for NASA. I'm wondering if NASA will be contracting out no-bid launch contracts with "Space Services" companies soon.
One choice better than no choice?
on
Norway Outlaws iTunes
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
What I found interesting about this article is that it seems to advocate one choice is better than no choice, and implies Norway is harming its citizens and consumers by depriving them of a monopoly.
This tends to be the self serving argument monopolists use when justifying their actions. "By enhancing the user experience by bundling a product the user experience is enhanced. Depriving them of our monopolistic business model harms them."
In my view, choice is never bad. Competition is good. Apple won their market share by out-innovating the rest of the pack. But history is full of examples of the stagnation occurs once a market is consolidated. So I think other players should be allowed to work with iTunes.
I think probability is what should be used for game design, and statistics should be used to verify the design. Statistical analysis is especially important for complex systems where adjusting the value of a variable may have non-obvious side-effects. However, if every aspect of the game-play and mechanics somehow completely "checksums" or, for every buff there is an equal and opposite buff/debuff, then a game may well be in trouble. That kind of symmetry is boring.
For example, in the first Warcraft, there wasn't much difference between the Orcs and Humans in terms of game mechanics. I seem to remember the spells being different, but otherwise pretty much everything the same. That wasn't nearly as interesting as future iterations in the game or WoW. And both in future versions of Warcraft, Starcraft, and WoW, a big part of the patching pertains to "tuning" all sorts of numbers that get plugged into combat formula's to keep the playing field even.
Reproducing the elasticity and strength attributes would be great. It would be even cooler if the synthetic materials developed were also biodegradable.
Keeping in mind I'm a noob about this law stuff in general....
Why wasn't Novell doing all of this monitoring and watching in the first place? And why didn't they realize they were getting scammed sooner? While I'm happy to see Novell drop the hammer on SCO, it seems like a reactive "Hey... wait a minute" type of hammer. I wonder if Novell would have been taking these court actions without the IBM/SCO suit pushing the issue of the UNIX license into the headlines?
Elegance has do to with the underlying idea expressed, not the syntax of the language.I think there are two types of elegance.
There's the elegance of a solution to a problem. That is, the algorithm. And then there is the elegance of the implementation of an algorithm.
Give two programmers an elegent algorithm to implement in a given language, and there's a chance one of them will find a way to express the solution in the syntax of the language in a beautiful way, whereas the other one won't.
It struck me while reading this thread you and the person you were talking to may not have been talking about the same sort of elegance.
I really can't figure out why you're modded up and some of your respondees are modded down for trolling, but in any case...
Your last paragraph is alleges that people aren't complaining in a way that hurts Blizzard (via the bottom line) for fear WoW will close its doors due to being unprofitable. That's the only way I can see your sweeping generalization applying to the WoW in particularly. There seems to be a supposition, both in my interpretation and your original text, that people who complain about the service but don't quit can only be doing so because they are afraid of losing access to the game all together and are slaves to marketing.
This isn't the case, and I think you're more interested in slapping down people who play the game and complain about the quality of service than adding real value to the conversation.
For one thing, I see almost no marketing for WoW. I've seen more ads for crappy Playstation games selling for $5.00 on the used game rack at my local game shoppe than I've seen ads for WoW. I don't receive mailing lists. I usually learn about upcoming changes through people talking in game than by reading anything.
I think people complain and don't cancel their accounts because they want to play the game they are paying money to play, and Blizzard's inability to scale their infrastructure and architecture is messing with that. On the surface that may seem like a trivial burden one must bear to enable Blizzard to make things better.
However, my other post in this thread points out how a downtime by Blizzard has manifested as the state of affairs getting worse. Also, these issues are impacting the ability of people to achieve in-game goals that require working as groups/teams. Lag kills in blackwing lair. The random authentication issues have really played havoc with some guilds even getting their raids off of the ground.
Lastly, lot of players can't play every night. Rather, they play on a schedule to accommodate the other things in their lives. When Blizzard's systems glitch up and make the game unaccessible or otherwise unplayable, that can effectively be a one week downtime for someone who can only make one night a week.
Speaking of no longer complaining about things that suck... I stopped complaining about the moderation system on Slashdot because I gave up hope of it ever improving. Not because I'm afraid the site maintainers will take the crappy mod system away from me.:P
I think my favorite outage was the "emergency downtime" to fix the authentication system to prevent "service-outtages" due to the auth-system failing.
Before that downtime, I never had a problem. Then they were down most of the day because of that issue. And then after that the authentication system has sucked ass. Long timeouts, sometimes repeatedly long timeouts resulting in authentications - just checking an effing username and password - taking 15-30 minutes. Several players in my guild have been on TS but not in game because they can't log in, and have finally given up. Even with our "show up to raids early" policy, people are just barely making it due to the auth system sporadically fritzing out.
It takes time and energy to staff a mud, manage it, and adapt it. As more and more mud admins get careers, kids, etc.... they have less time to maintain them. Sometimes they are handed off to new talent, other times they become footnotes in history due to neglect. They'll never go away all-together, but I think they are still fading away.
I followed the links and cross links to articles, blog entries that quote other blog entries... what do I get? Something worse than a USENET flamewar because the conversation is logically scattered in multiple places.
AOL turned off their USENET gateways. USENET is usable again, right?
I guess it's too soon to start counting. Based on the pre-release hype of the "next next gen" consoles, it sure feels that way though. How long have I been hearing about the CELL process? Good grief.
Blizzard has explicitly stated that hard-core players who invest alot of time will get greater rewards in terms of gear and, by association, money. They cater to that crowd. It is consciously designed that way, and that's how they keep those guys from getting bored and leaving.
It's not a "game design fault" just because you don't like it.
WoW does reward good playing. You wipe less, and instances are easier if you are a good player. Most of the flat-out good players who understand the nuances of their class are.... the hard core players.
From what I understand, nuclear power plants are owned and operated by the private sector...
That's true, and that's why the Nuclear Power Industry is yet another shining example of the taxpayer getting screwed. The reality of nuclear power is that the regulatory, legal, and construction costs are so large that for a plant to be economically viable it needs a significant portion of the construction cost removed from the books as a liability. And that's what they do, thanks to government subsidies.
If developers for Open Source, and even "Free" Software packages are being bought out and brought in house, no biggie. The truly "Free" software will live on, and if the community wants it, they will find a way to make it happen. If not, it may languish a bit, but maybe that's okay.
Even when names are appropriate, they can still be misinterpreted. My coworker's son calls Internet Explorer "E-enter". Because he selects the big "e" with the mouse and hits 'enter' to launch it.
Today it's easier on linux than it's ever been on Windows.
Not true.
I just installed ImageMagick on my Ubuntu box the other day. Took me awhile to to get dselect to get it all right and install it as the package manager GUI couldn't see it.
Slashdot Mirror
Longer than that, you young whipper-snapper.
Many a player leveled to 20 and created a wizard, and then a realm for his fellow players to explore on MUDs. And while I appreciate the high-production value of WoW, I miss the days of very clearly exploring different projections of other people's minds. Granted, many realms were boring, but there were some truly genius ones too.
Don't forget the manufacturing process.
There are two parts to a chip. The design, and the manufacturing process. Intel is still destroying everyone on the manufacturing front. They were the first with 300mm wafers. They were the first with 65nm processes. They will be the first with 45nm processes. Meanwhile they are learning their lessons on the design side and finally taking on the on-die memory-controller issue. They have to be careful when they do this because that will be a platform upgrade (motherboard + CPU + (maybe) RAM).
Nehalem is looking like a serious round-house punch to AMD. Of course, AMD is not standing still, and they may yet use their agility to find a response.
You missed my point.
I wasn't complaining about my situation. That's you projecting your disagreement as a problem with me or my character. Which, I resent. But, your misguided post speaks for the problems I perceive with your neural net.
Unless your use of the 2nd person was the "royal 2nd person."
Regards.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don't realize that "salaried" often equivocates to "exploited." It's the last "golden handcuff" whose shine hasn't worn off.
So who will be Spaceburton? If NASA can't pioneer research and technologies and guide that process, where does NASA go for space-flight services? SpaceX is already being looked to as a partner in developing space exploration for NASA. I'm wondering if NASA will be contracting out no-bid launch contracts with "Space Services" companies soon.
What I found interesting about this article is that it seems to advocate one choice is better than no choice, and implies Norway is harming its citizens and consumers by depriving them of a monopoly.
This tends to be the self serving argument monopolists use when justifying their actions. "By enhancing the user experience by bundling a product the user experience is enhanced. Depriving them of our monopolistic business model harms them."
In my view, choice is never bad. Competition is good. Apple won their market share by out-innovating the rest of the pack. But history is full of examples of the stagnation occurs once a market is consolidated. So I think other players should be allowed to work with iTunes.
I think probability is what should be used for game design, and statistics should be used to verify the design. Statistical analysis is especially important for complex systems where adjusting the value of a variable may have non-obvious side-effects. However, if every aspect of the game-play and mechanics somehow completely "checksums" or, for every buff there is an equal and opposite buff/debuff, then a game may well be in trouble. That kind of symmetry is boring.
For example, in the first Warcraft, there wasn't much difference between the Orcs and Humans in terms of game mechanics. I seem to remember the spells being different, but otherwise pretty much everything the same. That wasn't nearly as interesting as future iterations in the game or WoW. And both in future versions of Warcraft, Starcraft, and WoW, a big part of the patching pertains to "tuning" all sorts of numbers that get plugged into combat formula's to keep the playing field even.
Reproducing the elasticity and strength attributes would be great. It would be even cooler if the synthetic materials developed were also biodegradable.
Keeping in mind I'm a noob about this law stuff in general....
Why wasn't Novell doing all of this monitoring and watching in the first place? And why didn't they realize they were getting scammed sooner? While I'm happy to see Novell drop the hammer on SCO, it seems like a reactive "Hey... wait a minute" type of hammer. I wonder if Novell would have been taking these court actions without the IBM/SCO suit pushing the issue of the UNIX license into the headlines?
Conservatives would open a no-bid contract for Haliburton, pay the contract, but never verify the bulb was changed.
Elegance has do to with the underlying idea expressed, not the syntax of the language.I think there are two types of elegance.
There's the elegance of a solution to a problem. That is, the algorithm.
And then there is the elegance of the implementation of an algorithm.
Give two programmers an elegent algorithm to implement in a given language, and there's a chance one of them will find a way to express the solution in the syntax of the language in a beautiful way, whereas the other one won't.
It struck me while reading this thread you and the person you were talking to may not have been talking about the same sort of elegance.
You haven't killed Nefarion.
I really can't figure out why you're modded up and some of your respondees are modded down for trolling, but in any case...
:P
Your last paragraph is alleges that people aren't complaining in a way that hurts Blizzard (via the bottom line) for fear WoW will close its doors due to being unprofitable. That's the only way I can see your sweeping generalization applying to the WoW in particularly. There seems to be a supposition, both in my interpretation and your original text, that people who complain about the service but don't quit can only be doing so because they are afraid of losing access to the game all together and are slaves to marketing.
This isn't the case, and I think you're more interested in slapping down people who play the game and complain about the quality of service than adding real value to the conversation.
For one thing, I see almost no marketing for WoW. I've seen more ads for crappy Playstation games selling for $5.00 on the used game rack at my local game shoppe than I've seen ads for WoW. I don't receive mailing lists. I usually learn about upcoming changes through people talking in game than by reading anything.
I think people complain and don't cancel their accounts because they want to play the game they are paying money to play, and Blizzard's inability to scale their infrastructure and architecture is messing with that. On the surface that may seem like a trivial burden one must bear to enable Blizzard to make things better.
However, my other post in this thread points out how a downtime by Blizzard has manifested as the state of affairs getting worse. Also, these issues are impacting the ability of people to achieve in-game goals that require working as groups/teams. Lag kills in blackwing lair. The random authentication issues have really played havoc with some guilds even getting their raids off of the ground.
Lastly, lot of players can't play every night. Rather, they play on a schedule to accommodate the other things in their lives. When Blizzard's systems glitch up and make the game unaccessible or otherwise unplayable, that can effectively be a one week downtime for someone who can only make one night a week.
Speaking of no longer complaining about things that suck... I stopped complaining about the moderation system on Slashdot because I gave up hope of it ever improving. Not because I'm afraid the site maintainers will take the crappy mod system away from me.
I think my favorite outage was the "emergency downtime" to fix the authentication system to prevent "service-outtages" due to the auth-system failing.
Before that downtime, I never had a problem. Then they were down most of the day because of that issue. And then after that the authentication system has sucked ass. Long timeouts, sometimes repeatedly long timeouts resulting in authentications - just checking an effing username and password - taking 15-30 minutes. Several players in my guild have been on TS but not in game because they can't log in, and have finally given up. Even with our "show up to raids early" policy, people are just barely making it due to the auth system sporadically fritzing out.
THAT is AWFUL!
It takes time and energy to staff a mud, manage it, and adapt it. As more and more mud admins get careers, kids, etc.... they have less time to maintain them. Sometimes they are handed off to new talent, other times they become footnotes in history due to neglect. They'll never go away all-together, but I think they are still fading away.
Seriously,
I followed the links and cross links to articles, blog entries that quote other blog entries... what do I get? Something worse than a USENET flamewar because the conversation is logically scattered in multiple places.
AOL turned off their USENET gateways. USENET is usable again, right?
I guess it's too soon to start counting. Based on the pre-release hype of the "next next gen" consoles, it sure feels that way though. How long have I been hearing about the CELL process? Good grief.
Blizzard has explicitly stated that hard-core players who invest alot of time will get greater rewards in terms of gear and, by association, money. They cater to that crowd. It is consciously designed that way, and that's how they keep those guys from getting bored and leaving.
.... the hard core players.
It's not a "game design fault" just because you don't like it.
WoW does reward good playing. You wipe less, and instances are easier if you are a good player. Most of the flat-out good players who understand the nuances of their class are
From what I understand, nuclear power plants are owned and operated by the private sector...
That's true, and that's why the Nuclear Power Industry is yet another shining example of the taxpayer getting screwed. The reality of nuclear power is that the regulatory, legal, and construction costs are so large that for a plant to be economically viable it needs a significant portion of the construction cost removed from the books as a liability. And that's what they do, thanks to government subsidies.
If developers for Open Source, and even "Free" Software packages are being bought out and brought in house, no biggie. The truly "Free" software will live on, and if the community wants it, they will find a way to make it happen. If not, it may languish a bit, but maybe that's okay.
Just remember that Open Source != Free.
ln -s
Even when names are appropriate, they can still be misinterpreted. My coworker's son calls Internet Explorer "E-enter". Because he selects the big "e" with the mouse and hits 'enter' to launch it.
So there's mud in your eye, Mr. Article Author.
For the disk quota part, you could free up some space with: find /proc -type f | xargs compress -f
We've evolved our concept of the ultimate evil that is devoid of humanity from "commie" to "terrorist."
Get with the program or face extinction.
It's named "WinUX."
Today it's easier on linux than it's ever been on Windows.
Not true.
I just installed ImageMagick on my Ubuntu box the other day. Took me awhile to to get dselect to get it all right and install it as the package manager GUI couldn't see it.
*shrug*