What will ultimately happen is that players will support both disk types after a while
That won't happen. Part of the contract companies sign to be able to produce Blu-Ray players specifically state that they cannot produce dual Bluray/HD-DVD players. I don't have a direct link available, but it's been discussed ad nauseum on Twit. This really angered companies like LG and Sanyo who already had dual-players in R&D.
As it has been suggested, Microsoft will probably lock the hacked 360s from Live. Well i got news for you: unlike the original XBOX, a 360 with no Live is a crippled 360, even with only the silver account that is free: -
No download service for game patchs Never had it for my Xbox, or PS2, or Dreamcast, or PS1. Never affected my enjoyment. Check (not to mention patches for XBox games are readilly available on the warez scene, same will happen for the 360).
No Live marketplace (which will exclude Live Arcade games) Never used live under Xbox. Never affected my enjoyment. Check
no original xbox backward game compatibility; Still have a fully functional XBox for XBox games. Check
No achievements, - no leaderboards. Never used Live under Xbox. Never affected my enjoyment. Check
So it's not only online gaming that get's cut down... Only 1 out of your 4 arguments didn't involve online gaming, so yeah, it's only online gaming that gets cut down.
So I have news for you. An Xbox 360 without Live capability might be crippled for you, but you don't represent 100% of the market. I know a lot of people who wouldn't be the least bit affected by being locked out or not using the Live component, myself included.
(Sidenote: I'm not encouraging piracy, but I do believe that once you own a product you should be able to do what you want with it if it causes no harm. I don't think me running XBMC on my XBox ever caused anyone any harm)
I have to 2nd this recommendation. We use Lucent's VitalQIP as well for IP tracking/delegation (as well as DNS). Very stable and scalable. You can even plug in homegrown scripts if there's something specific you require it to do that it doesn't do out of the box.
Actually none of the ISPs have any interest in reducing spam. They make to much money off of the spam operators and the sites that host the products provided by the spammers. Taking actual measures to reduce spam would cost the ISPs to much money.
This got moderated as insightful? As a sysadmin for a big ISP, I've seen millions upon millions spent to fight spam in just hardware/software solutions, let alone the man hours spent fighting it, keeping the mail platform up, fully manned abuse helpdesk, etc.... Please do some homework instead of just making an off the cuff remark which has no validity.
I blame the game companies for making a game that is so tedious to play and level that people are willing to pay others to do it for them.
You're placing the blame on the wrong people. The blame is with the Me generation who want everything right now. Instead of working and EARNING things from their effort, they'd rather spend cash to get instant gratification. If you want to play that type of game, go buy a single player game with built in godmode.
I didn't say it wasn't possible for some guilds. I said forcing guilds to change thier raid nights (which is what was stated in the article) wasn't a smart idea. For some guilds, mine included, 40 man raiding during weekdays is almost impossible (though we do raid BWL on Wednesdays). Our guild makeup is probably 70% working folks, 30% students, with a huge 3 hour time difference between east coast and west coast folks. Running 40 man instances during the week is highly undesirable for us. So we hit MC on Fridays, BWL/Ony Saturdays. And until BWL becomes farm status for us, we hit BWL/Ony on Wednesdays as well.
But suggest that Blizzard should force guilds to raid during non peak days is just absolutely ridiculous. That's just asking Blizz to avoid the issue instead of adressing the problem.
I call Shinanigans! Since the last patch, I can count on one finger the amount of times I had to wait in queue for my server. Previous to the patch, there was a nightly queue of 800+ users with sometimes over an hour wait. And the one time I had to wait, I was 400th+ in queue and only waited 7 minutes to get in, compared to 30+ minutes when I was stuck in similar queues before. So Blizzard is tackling the problem and has done some tweaking and fixing to reduce/eliminate queues.
I also love this little nugget of bull droppings "and forcing large "guilds" of players to carefully stagger their schedules each week so as to not cause horrible lag for each other.".
How exactly are you going to force guilds to stagger their raiding schedules? If you're talking Molten Core, BWL or 40 man AQ, those don't just take an hour to run through. They take several hours. Then take into consideration that most people work for a living or go to school, so most raid nights end up being on the weekend. Then take into consideration that people are in different timezones, and most guilds have their raid start times in accordance. Start a raid at 10pm server time (US servers)? That leaves out the east coast folks. The day Blizzard restricts when my guild can raid is the day I quit WoW (and I don't mean the current time restrictions when you're saved to an instance). Forcing, heck even asking guilds to do this is totally unacceptable. And considering instances are usually run on different servers than the 'open air' part of the game, having guilds raiding has little affect outside of instances. (Proof: I've seen many a server crashes where people in instances weren't kicked out, they kept on playing, while everyone not in an instance got kicked out of the game).
I cant fully check as I'm at work right now, but for people in Christian Crusaders, Thottbot "Last updates" range from 180 days to 70 days. I do remember them advertising their guild (looking for new members) over the xmas holidays. So that guild has been in existance for at least 6 months.
And, by the way, there are no religion-based guilds in WoW. The very idea of religous guilds is a practical joke that spread around the internet, with some people taking it seriously.
That's incorrect. Maybe there's none on the server you play on, but there's a few Christian guilds on Suramar. Heck, the proof is in the pudding. From Thottbot:
So where's North Amerca ByThanksgiving? Is it off the I-95?
I swear, this is the exact reason why I don't pay for a subscription. For a 'professional' site like Slashdot (paid salaries, subscriptions, etc..), it seems to be run by 14 year olds. Heavy grammatical and typing mistakes, dual(triple, quadruple, etc..) posts. C'mon guys, things are getting worse instead of getting better.
Funny, I've owned indoor cats all my life, including the 4 I have now. They have not shown any need or want to ever go outside. Heck, 3 of my 4 current cats won't even go out on a leesh,as they claw the carpet to stay indoors. Only 1 will merrily go outside, but when she does she doesn't wander around or do her business. she just happily walks beside whomever is walking her (and this is the one who used to be a stray before we took her in).
Everyone I know in my circle of friends, acquaintances and family who do let their cats roam free have either lost a cat by either it never returning home or getting run over by a car. If you want to take that risk (along with the risk of them catching life-ending diseases like feline HIV from fighting with other cats), go right ahead. I value the lives of my pets too much to do that. All it takes is one time.
As a cat owner, I feel that anyone outside of farmers who let their cats wander outside to be absolutely irresponsible. Cats are domesticated and should be kept indoors, or leashed when taking them for a walk. The only time cats should be allowed to roam free is when you own a large piece of land and actually need them to catch critters (IE: farm).
There are very important questions to ask yourself before going this route. Are you going to be fully going to VoIP? If so, how much phone downtime can your company afford to take? Power outages, network outages, etc... will affect VoIP when it wouldn't affect a POTS. Are you willing to have no phone service for hours on end in case of a failure? How much business could potentially be lost by going this route?
So basically any telephone lines/numbers that are critical to the business should be kept on POTS. VoIP is still in its infancy and too many things can go wrong.
MS has to be losing a lot more than 126$ per console. I'm pretty sure MS is not selling the 360 to retailers for 399$, and in turn the retailers are selling it for the same price. I'm sure there's probably a 10-50% markup. Then take into consideration all the non-physical stuff like promotions/marketing costs, R&D costs, etc... and I'm sure the number is much much higher than 126$ loss on each box.
This is reason #1 why I'm waiting about a year to buy a 360. For MS to work out most of the big bugs.I can't say I feel sorry for anyone who's experiencing these problems. It's a risk you take when you rush out to buy untested technology. It shouldn't be this way, but its a fact of technology life. If people wouldn't be so quick to go out and buy, maybe companies might start smartening up.
Other reasons include:
-My current X-Box currently still have lots of life left in it. -Prices will go down. -Won't have to stand in line to get one, or go from store to store. -More selection of games.
Re:Absolute rubbish
on
MMORPG Evolution
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Want to hazard a guess at how many people play World of Warcraft because either of the Warcraft connection, or the Diablo/Blizzard connection? I've not seen any figures, but I'd guess it's a significant part of the player base.
Speaking from personal experience only, it appears that the number is about 60%. Speaking with my guildmates and people on the various servers I play on, it appears that 6/10 people who are playing WoW never played an MMORPG before WoW. And out of those 60%, most have tried WoW due to having played previous Blizzard games such as Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo.
Again, from past experience, it also appears that most MMORPG players play only one MMORPG at a time. Rare are the people who are, for example, playing and paying for WoW and Everquest at the same time. So as the number of total MMORPG subscriptions rises, there's very little 'double dipping', where one person is paying for more than one subscription. This would indicate, at least from my personal view, that it would indicate the number of players is increasing. So I'm absolutely backing up your statement that "The argument about MMORPGs all drawing from the same pool of customers and simply trading them around in accordance with the latest fads is, and has been known to be for some time, complete and utter rubbish."
Actually, according to the Globe and Mail , their article stated that Quebec will PROBABLY follow suit, but no official statement or decision has been formally made. Ontario is the first province to officially announce this change.
In Ultimate Spiderman, Venom was a symbiote suit built by Peter Parker and Eddie Brock's fathers as a cancer fighting suit (no I'm not making this up). Both Peter and Eddie are smart in this universe. Unlike the traditional Marvel universe where Brock was a beefed up photographer. Sounds like they might be using the origin from Ultimate Spiderman instead. In this one, Brock is just as small as Parker (but doesn't dress as a science nerd, but as a grunge rocker). That would sorta fit in casting Topher Grace for the role.
In Intermail MX6 & MX7, you can use a sleepycat backend instead of Oracle, and I'm 99.9% they now run on Linux as well.
As far as outsourcing to India, considering I deal with them on an almost daily basis, I have never heard this. All our support still comes from the US & Australia.
Slashdot Mirror
What will ultimately happen is that players will support both disk types after a while
That won't happen. Part of the contract companies sign to be able to produce Blu-Ray players specifically state that they cannot produce dual Bluray/HD-DVD players. I don't have a direct link available, but it's been discussed ad nauseum on Twit. This really angered companies like LG and Sanyo who already had dual-players in R&D.
It already exists. I remember Patrick Norton talking about one in TWiT podcast a few months back.
As it has been suggested, Microsoft will probably lock the hacked 360s from Live. Well i got news for you: unlike the original XBOX, a 360 with no Live is a crippled 360, even with only the silver account that is free: -
No download service for game patchs Never had it for my Xbox, or PS2, or Dreamcast, or PS1. Never affected my enjoyment. Check (not to mention patches for XBox games are readilly available on the warez scene, same will happen for the 360).
No Live marketplace (which will exclude Live Arcade games) Never used live under Xbox. Never affected my enjoyment. Check
no original xbox backward game compatibility; Still have a fully functional XBox for XBox games. Check
No achievements, - no leaderboards. Never used Live under Xbox. Never affected my enjoyment. Check
So it's not only online gaming that get's cut down... Only 1 out of your 4 arguments didn't involve online gaming, so yeah, it's only online gaming that gets cut down.
So I have news for you. An Xbox 360 without Live capability might be crippled for you, but you don't represent 100% of the market. I know a lot of people who wouldn't be the least bit affected by being locked out or not using the Live component, myself included.
(Sidenote: I'm not encouraging piracy, but I do believe that once you own a product you should be able to do what you want with it if it causes no harm. I don't think me running XBMC on my XBox ever caused anyone any harm)
I have to 2nd this recommendation. We use Lucent's VitalQIP as well for IP tracking/delegation (as well as DNS). Very stable and scalable. You can even plug in homegrown scripts if there's something specific you require it to do that it doesn't do out of the box.
Actually none of the ISPs have any interest in reducing spam. They make to much money off of the spam operators and the sites that host the products provided by the spammers. Taking actual measures to reduce spam would cost the ISPs to much money.
This got moderated as insightful? As a sysadmin for a big ISP, I've seen millions upon millions spent to fight spam in just hardware/software solutions, let alone the man hours spent fighting it, keeping the mail platform up, fully manned abuse helpdesk, etc.... Please do some homework instead of just making an off the cuff remark which has no validity.
I blame the game companies for making a game that is so tedious to play and level that people are willing to pay others to do it for them. You're placing the blame on the wrong people. The blame is with the Me generation who want everything right now. Instead of working and EARNING things from their effort, they'd rather spend cash to get instant gratification. If you want to play that type of game, go buy a single player game with built in godmode.
I didn't say it wasn't possible for some guilds. I said forcing guilds to change thier raid nights (which is what was stated in the article) wasn't a smart idea. For some guilds, mine included, 40 man raiding during weekdays is almost impossible (though we do raid BWL on Wednesdays). Our guild makeup is probably 70% working folks, 30% students, with a huge 3 hour time difference between east coast and west coast folks. Running 40 man instances during the week is highly undesirable for us. So we hit MC on Fridays, BWL/Ony Saturdays. And until BWL becomes farm status for us, we hit BWL/Ony on Wednesdays as well. But suggest that Blizzard should force guilds to raid during non peak days is just absolutely ridiculous. That's just asking Blizz to avoid the issue instead of adressing the problem.
I call Shinanigans! Since the last patch, I can count on one finger the amount of times I had to wait in queue for my server. Previous to the patch, there was a nightly queue of 800+ users with sometimes over an hour wait. And the one time I had to wait, I was 400th+ in queue and only waited 7 minutes to get in, compared to 30+ minutes when I was stuck in similar queues before. So Blizzard is tackling the problem and has done some tweaking and fixing to reduce/eliminate queues.
I also love this little nugget of bull droppings "and forcing large "guilds" of players to carefully stagger their schedules each week so as to not cause horrible lag for each other.".
How exactly are you going to force guilds to stagger their raiding schedules? If you're talking Molten Core, BWL or 40 man AQ, those don't just take an hour to run through. They take several hours. Then take into consideration that most people work for a living or go to school, so most raid nights end up being on the weekend. Then take into consideration that people are in different timezones, and most guilds have their raid start times in accordance. Start a raid at 10pm server time (US servers)? That leaves out the east coast folks. The day Blizzard restricts when my guild can raid is the day I quit WoW (and I don't mean the current time restrictions when you're saved to an instance). Forcing, heck even asking guilds to do this is totally unacceptable. And considering instances are usually run on different servers than the 'open air' part of the game, having guilds raiding has little affect outside of instances. (Proof: I've seen many a server crashes where people in instances weren't kicked out, they kept on playing, while everyone not in an instance got kicked out of the game).
I cant fully check as I'm at work right now, but for people in Christian Crusaders, Thottbot "Last updates" range from 180 days to 70 days. I do remember them advertising their guild (looking for new members) over the xmas holidays. So that guild has been in existance for at least 6 months.
And, by the way, there are no religion-based guilds in WoW. The very idea of religous guilds is a practical joke that spread around the internet, with some people taking it seriously.
That's incorrect. Maybe there's none on the server you play on, but there's a few Christian guilds on Suramar. Heck, the proof is in the pudding. From Thottbot:
Christian Brotherhood
Christian Crusaders
Christian Fayth
Christians in Alliance
Christian Knights
Followers of Christ
etc.. etc... etc...
Revolution In North Amerca ByThanksgiving
So where's North Amerca ByThanksgiving? Is it off the I-95?
I swear, this is the exact reason why I don't pay for a subscription. For a 'professional' site like Slashdot (paid salaries, subscriptions, etc..), it seems to be run by 14 year olds. Heavy grammatical and typing mistakes, dual(triple, quadruple, etc..) posts. C'mon guys, things are getting worse instead of getting better.
Funny, I've owned indoor cats all my life, including the 4 I have now. They have not shown any need or want to ever go outside. Heck, 3 of my 4 current cats won't even go out on a leesh,as they claw the carpet to stay indoors. Only 1 will merrily go outside, but when she does she doesn't wander around or do her business. she just happily walks beside whomever is walking her (and this is the one who used to be a stray before we took her in). Everyone I know in my circle of friends, acquaintances and family who do let their cats roam free have either lost a cat by either it never returning home or getting run over by a car. If you want to take that risk (along with the risk of them catching life-ending diseases like feline HIV from fighting with other cats), go right ahead. I value the lives of my pets too much to do that. All it takes is one time.
As a cat owner, I feel that anyone outside of farmers who let their cats wander outside to be absolutely irresponsible. Cats are domesticated and should be kept indoors, or leashed when taking them for a walk. The only time cats should be allowed to roam free is when you own a large piece of land and actually need them to catch critters (IE: farm).
A better use of this technology would be to use the paint on computer cases and CPU fans, not cars! Yes, I'm a geek.
There are very important questions to ask yourself before going this route. Are you going to be fully going to VoIP? If so, how much phone downtime can your company afford to take? Power outages, network outages, etc... will affect VoIP when it wouldn't affect a POTS. Are you willing to have no phone service for hours on end in case of a failure? How much business could potentially be lost by going this route? So basically any telephone lines/numbers that are critical to the business should be kept on POTS. VoIP is still in its infancy and too many things can go wrong.
MS has to be losing a lot more than 126$ per console. I'm pretty sure MS is not selling the 360 to retailers for 399$, and in turn the retailers are selling it for the same price. I'm sure there's probably a 10-50% markup. Then take into consideration all the non-physical stuff like promotions/marketing costs, R&D costs, etc... and I'm sure the number is much much higher than 126$ loss on each box.
This is reason #1 why I'm waiting about a year to buy a 360. For MS to work out most of the big bugs.I can't say I feel sorry for anyone who's experiencing these problems. It's a risk you take when you rush out to buy untested technology. It shouldn't be this way, but its a fact of technology life. If people wouldn't be so quick to go out and buy, maybe companies might start smartening up.
Other reasons include:
-My current X-Box currently still have lots of life left in it.
-Prices will go down.
-Won't have to stand in line to get one, or go from store to store.
-More selection of games.
Want to hazard a guess at how many people play World of Warcraft because either of the Warcraft connection, or the Diablo/Blizzard connection? I've not seen any figures, but I'd guess it's a significant part of the player base. Speaking from personal experience only, it appears that the number is about 60%. Speaking with my guildmates and people on the various servers I play on, it appears that 6/10 people who are playing WoW never played an MMORPG before WoW. And out of those 60%, most have tried WoW due to having played previous Blizzard games such as Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo. Again, from past experience, it also appears that most MMORPG players play only one MMORPG at a time. Rare are the people who are, for example, playing and paying for WoW and Everquest at the same time. So as the number of total MMORPG subscriptions rises, there's very little 'double dipping', where one person is paying for more than one subscription. This would indicate, at least from my personal view, that it would indicate the number of players is increasing. So I'm absolutely backing up your statement that "The argument about MMORPGs all drawing from the same pool of customers and simply trading them around in accordance with the latest fads is, and has been known to be for some time, complete and utter rubbish."
Wordpad, yeah that's it. A watered down version or word that's free with every OS since Win95/98.
Do you mean something like Winword which has been included in Windows since Windows95 or 98?
Actually, according to the Globe and Mail , their article stated that Quebec will PROBABLY follow suit, but no official statement or decision has been formally made. Ontario is the first province to officially announce this change.
In Ultimate Spiderman, Venom was a symbiote suit built by Peter Parker and Eddie Brock's fathers as a cancer fighting suit (no I'm not making this up). Both Peter and Eddie are smart in this universe. Unlike the traditional Marvel universe where Brock was a beefed up photographer. Sounds like they might be using the origin from Ultimate Spiderman instead. In this one, Brock is just as small as Parker (but doesn't dress as a science nerd, but as a grunge rocker). That would sorta fit in casting Topher Grace for the role.
I'm just starting to get into photography, but isnt this something a good IR filter would block out?
In Intermail MX6 & MX7, you can use a sleepycat backend instead of Oracle, and I'm 99.9% they now run on Linux as well. As far as outsourcing to India, considering I deal with them on an almost daily basis, I have never heard this. All our support still comes from the US & Australia.
That was exactly my point. Ciphertrust is not doing anything new or original. I'ts just a ripoff of Senderbase.