Especially when it's trivial to determine that www.jpl.nasa.gov runs Linux.
But I guess web servers aren't servers....
And most people have a hundred and sixty 250G IDE drives on their desktop machines http://pat.jpl.nasa.gov/public/lucian/RASCHAL.html
(Hint: note the date on the bottom of that URL... I guess that system was retired in the last week, since according to the cited article, it doesn't exist.)
I have 4 (mostly) identical machines: the only difference is the number of drives in them.
3 of them Do Their Thing, mostly on RAID5 arrays.
The 4th rysncs the other 3 every hour and a few scripts for some tweaking (ie, postfix is set to defer all local mail) on some of the config files.
It has a slightly tricky lilo.conf that allows it to boot and pretend to be any of the other 3 machines (with those tweaks -- if there was a 'serious' downtime, I'd undefer local mail, but if it's going to be short, I'll just queue run it back to the 'real' server when its back).
A hot backup machine. A source of spare parts. A consistent backup.
As for who I trust: ASL Workstations (aslab.com). In the instances where we've had drive failures they've always next-day'd a new drive to us. If I -really- needed something Right Now, I could always buy a local replacement. It's never been more complex than mailing them the output of smartmontools whining about the drive failing, and the serial number of the machine.
(please don't reply about remote control blah blah blah - really you're not going to sit on your sofa song hopping like you do with TV channels)
I'm not?
I do it all the time. Hit 'Random Play->Random Songs' then hear something I'm really not in the mood to listen to and hit the forward button to skip it...
I probably hit 'skip track' on the remote 20 times a night... So, yeah, I am gonna sit on the couch 'song hopping'....
(And, yes, I sometimes hear a song on random play and do the opposite: "Oh, yeah, this is what I want to listen to right now! PERFECT!" and queue up the whole album.)
I don't have to sit next to the computer to play music... and that makes me happy.
But an ipod doesn't let you play FLAC files, doesn't have a display that's readable from 10' or more away, doesn't have the sound quality (ie DAC) that the Squeezebox does, is difficult to scale to multiple simultaneous locations (either synced or playing individual playlists from a common source), doesn't do streaming of Internet Radio....
They're entirely different ways of working with music: that's not to say portable mp3 players don't have a place (I still love my old pjbox), but despite the portable cassette/cdplayers that have been out for years, people do still buy home cd players (okay, DVD now) instead of plugging their walkman into their stereo.
Add in that the server is Open Source, and that it does 99% of the work of the process, you can have some nifty uses for that display (displaying current weather, sports scores, RSS feeds) and the active development community (the Last.FM support is top-notch -- personalized Internet Radio is a fun way to find new music.. and with the Squeezebox, you can skip songs and such from the couch.. who wants to sit at a PC to listen to music?) you do have a nifty toy to play with to tweak to your satisfaction.
I actually used Slimserver because mserv (which is what I was using for my music) began to annoy me with its quirks and horrible support for id3 tags. So I installed Slimserver and used SoftSqueeze to play music, and that worked fine...
But then I realized I wanted music in the bedroom... so I bought a Squeezebox... and then I wanted it in the living room... so I bought another...
And, now I've gone almost full circle: the sound quality from PC sound cards... sucks.
So I'm threatening to get a Squeezebox for the office.. to sit next to the computer.
exactly.. I dont see anything special about this box other than the price.. but then the page is completely devoid of facts but filled with lots of fancy flash..
One of the many advantages of Open Source is that you can see the real feature set... too bad their web page doesnt list it.
(ie, they say it does wireless: what wireless? 802.11a, b, g? Encryption? Which?)
Slim on the other hand, tells exactly what the features are and you can download the server and an emulator to play with.
Re:...and the literary work of RMS
on
Drafting GPL3
·
· Score: 1
It's not megalomania...
RMS, with much legal advice/support, put together the GPL. His name is inherently linked to the GPL (heck, just mention GPL here and watch the "I hate RMS!" flames start...). Surely you're not denying such a basic fact....
With that in mind, it's The Right Thing to remember that whatever they call "GPL" is going to be linked to him. As soon as people hear, "GPL3 is out!", you can bet RMS will be badgered by the media with his views on it.
Therefore it should reflect something that RMS is willing to say, "This is good" to. If he said, "Yeah, the GPL hit the crapper with tha v3 thing, it's all ruined, don't use it!", the whole rewrite would be lost.
That is reality, like it or not.
I don't worry about GPL3: I may think RMS is wacky at times, I think his singing sucks, and I'm sure he talks during movies about how wrong the movie is... But he has been very clear over the years about the 'why' of the GPL, and he's one of the most consistent (or stubborn if you disagree with him) people on the planet.
In practical terms, GPL3 won't really mean much. In legal terms it will help clarify the intent of those using the license to ensure that their code is Free and will only be used in Free Software.
Nerfing TP gain from Barrage like was done to other multi-hits
Oooh, I'd be sooo happy if they did that. Barrage has become better than Meditate...:/
And, yes, I've partied in Garbaige with a level 32WAR/6PLD that had 6mp (hint: Cure1 = 8mp). I was playing DRK (and pulling) and he told me to not melee, but "just do that black magic stuff"...
So many idiots, not enough Serket spawns to train on them...
There are certainly flaws like Barrage's insane TP gain, but as someone who has one of the oldest still-running Diku's, it still impresses me how well balanced and well structured the game is.
And, yes, you can make odd jobs work.. but you have to know what you're doing, and it only works in some situations.
I do agree with DRG's accuracy though... one of my pt's in Boyadah had everyone 2 levels above the DRG.. but the DRG still managed to gain TP at about the same rate as the other melee's. And by that point in the game, skillchains and bursts are essential to getting decent xp, so TP gain is crucial.
haha... I agree with that whole thing, though I wouldn't say ff9 was just "not too bad", it was the first time since ff6 that I actually cared about the characters.
As for 7: the story always seems to be made up as they went along. "Oh, yeah forget what you saw in that earlier cutscene this is what really happened"..
ff8, I wanted Squall to die. I liked Rinoa, she reminded me of Aeris, but... then she hung around Squall too much and got as weird as him.
ff9 my only "wtf" character was Quina. The rest were all enjoyable, Quina wasn't bad, I just dont think "she" was developed as well as the others.
and FFX... oh, my. "Let's have the contradictions of ff7 but make it pretty!" I wanted them all dead.
In short, if someone thinks ff7 is the greatest ff ever, I tend to ignore everything they say.
(Now if SE would come out with FFIX for PSP, I'll buy a PSP that day...)
Best thing about ff7: the casino and choco racing (even though that was mindlessly easy, especically once you started breeding, it was fun).
This includes spam that users themselves mark as such.
And we all know how well that works with AOL's 'feedback loop' mechanism...
We have people that mail things like wedding pictures to AOL addresses.. and get marked as spam by the recipient. (Looked like a nice wedding, too, in Tilden Park in Berkeley..)
I get the job of telling our customer, "well, you mailed your wedding pictures to someone at AOL who apparently thinks it's spam... so please either tell your friend to stop marking your mail as spam, or please comply with their wishes and no longer mail them or we will get blacklisted by AOL..."
User-reported spam is fine... but there also needs to be some accountability for "user was in a pissy mood and marked everything as spam" or even "user clicked the wrong button"... AOL has no such mechanism, and the decision of their user is final. (The user can't even change their own mind and withdraw a spam complaint.)
Actually, from SCEI's slides, it looks like the parallization of the CELL is done mostly in hardware. The PPE sets up a job queue, and the SPEs pop jobs off the queue...
So the most likely method of running Linux on such a beast would be to code everything for the SPE's and have the kernel itself running on the PPE.
Well, if "all but" means "we still have thousands of trojan proxies sending spam out", then, yes, AOL has done everything but solve their own spam problems:
Jan 25 10:48:52 bombur postfix/smtpd[434]: 1D60729EB0A: reject: RCPT from ACB3BDDA.ipt.aol.com[172.179.189.218]: 550 <darlanaoxanqimohuu@aol.com>: Sender address rejected: AOL addresses must be 16 characters or less.; from=<darlanaoxanqimohuu@aol.com> to=<deleted@cmc.net> proto=SMTP helo=<ACB3BDDA.ipt.aol.com>
Yep, they've done everything -but- solve their own problems.
Jan 25 10:39:32 bombur postfix/smtpd[28000]: D471729EC6D: reject: RCPT from ACB1E8B1.ipt.aol.com[172.177.232.177]: 550 : Client host rejected: AOL refuses mail from dialups, so do we. (global-bad-clients); from= to= proto=ESMTP helo=
That would be, what, 4 minutes ago?
I have THOUSANDS of those a day.
Who do I have to thank for this, since my mail and calls to AOL for the past several months include denials that their customers can spam at all and an eventual admission that their own firewalls don't work but they're "working on it".
I agree, it wasn't that long ago that the classic 'fishing nerfs' went into place in several stages:
1) npc price on padded caps "adjusted" so that bots fishing/repairing rusty caps vanished from Rabao (and light crystals got cheap again!)
2) chance of catching monsters even in newbie zones (which -will- agg whoever fished them up, and only whoever fished them up...)
It was sooo amusing to walk into W. Saru after that change and see piles of lv1 fishermen with Lu Shang's rods dead.:)
I don't think the changes have anything to do with Wow, just part of the accelerating response from SE to the accelerating misbehavior of gil sellers.
I've seen several JP players (who can't play WoW) with "Chinese (Gil-finder) (Death) (You can have this)" in their search comments.... Not to mention the cited incidents of GM's applauding people that have kited Stroper Chymes (the mob that drops the cited ring) for hours to frustrate the gil sellers, as well as one report of GM's actually attacking chyme campers...
The gilsellers esacalating misbehavior is the reason for the changes, not WoW.
The dumbing down of MMORPG's, IMHO, is clear from WoW... not only has perm-death no place in the present MMORPG world, now there's no real penalty at all for dying, just a minor inconvenience.
Not able to work well as a team player? Okay, you can level up solo!
Not willing to devote a lot of time to a game? Okay, we'll make it so you can reach max level in a couple or three weeks. We'll even give you XP while you're not logged in!
Frustrated at crafting and losing your items on a failed craft? Okay, you will always succeed in your craft!
(Things like this: Every attempt to create an item using a recipe is successful. As you create items your skill in your chosen Profession goes up. Recipes are color coded (like items and quests), and as your skill goes up recipes begin to become relatively "easier".... it becomes 'easier' to always succeed? But you always succeed anyway, where did you actually improve?)
WoW certainly appears to be exactly as Bartle fortold.... And the 'next gen' will be even worse.
In the days of text muds, there was a term for games that pulled all the risk (and therefore all the accomplishment) from a game: Twink.
I find the value of such a fanboy review to be highly suspect.
As others pointed out, there are certainly problems with the game even from people who mostly enjoy it. An honest opinion piece would include limitations of the game.
An honest opinion would also allow that this is NOT the sort of game that everyone will enjoy. Yes, you can get to levelcap in a matter of weeks.. solo. For some that may be a good thing, unlike the lonely DRG sitting in Jeuno on FFXI waiting for an invite...
But for people who are able and willing to devote more time to a game this is a serious limitation: we are willing to invest lots of time in our character development, and everything I can see of WoW does not reward that. (With the FFXI Job system, if you get bored of being a PLD, you can always level BLM or SMN or something for a change of pace... With WoW, you will have to start a new character to do that.)
The review is so biased in favor of WoW that it sounds more like an advertisement than a review. The claims that it will make every MMORPG player happy are utter bullpucky, and any gamer that has the credentials the reviewer claims should know that.
Please, please, make Zonk stop reviewing games: he is clearly unwilling to take a deep breath and seriously consider all aspects of a game before he starts typing. No game is able to please "every gamer, every MMOG player, and everyone who's ever picked up a fantasy book".
I don't know what you mean about a tie between crafting skills and job level. There isn't one other than an economic barrier (it's hard for a level 10 to afford gold beastcoins, but not too hard for a level 70 to steal them).
The death penalty really isn't that bad.. it helps to befriend WHM's (and to party with them). Heck, wait until you do a Dynamis run and die 3-4 times in a couple hours and are still down only a couple hundred xp. (Gotta love Raise3:))
I do agree with the other points... as much as I love crabs and beetles (aspir mmm...), it gets a little tedious... "FFXI: A Crab For Every Level!"
Though at higher levels some of the better XP mobs are things like Manticores which make things more interesting.
Some of these were bigger problems in beta, because we had a much smaller server population, so I'm hoping that with the introduction of European players, this will help things out a bit. Likewise, the expansion zones (40 new zones????) should be helpful, too, as it was in beta when Zilart was finally unlocked and we could leave the Crawler's Nest and play in Altepa and QSC, as well as introducing new monsters and that whole "uhoh, where does this go" sense of dread that makes games fun.
Of course, I doubt anyone will ever xp on tonberries... Grudge sucks and spending a few hours killing them would get painful.
Personally, I'm very impressed with what Square has done: it certainly has failings, which you've done will to point out, but despite hating MMORPG's, I've been stuck on ffxi for 13 months now.:)
The Hard Drive fits into a slot on the back of the PS2 (look and you'll see the cover.. the HD slides into there), but the power/control connection comes from the network adaptor that attaches over that slot. If you just slid a hard drive in there, it would have no power and no control/data connections to the PS2, you may as well have slid a sandwich in there (which may be more functional, since at least a warm sandwich is good to eat).
The menus are pretty simple (and they're the same on Windows from what I've heard, which confuses Windows users).
On PS2, you press the square button, and a menu comes up on the right hand side of the screen with generic things like 'Status', 'Abilities', 'Quests', 'Missions', etc. Those can each bring up submenus.
For actual combat, a menu appears on the left side, with 'Switch Target', 'Magic', 'Abilities', 'Disengage', etc. The melee is handled automatically (ie, you don't press buttons to swing your sword around), but you can choose 'Magic', scroll to 'Cure III', then use the arrows to choose who to cast it on.
You can also macro things: underneath all the gui is a command line suitable for Macros. You can, for example have a macro for Cure3, that is:/magic "Cure III" <st>
You bring up the macros using the L2 and R2 buttons, then choose the macro. The <st> will give you a chance to 'select target' for who you'll cast the spell on. You can, of course, make more complex ones, and most people do. The macros are also bound to function keys on the keyboard.
The user interface should be a breeze for anyone with console experience to pick up. It's unusual for the typical Windows game, but it gets pretty simple and fast to navigate with (no moving from keyboard to controller to keyboard needed).
The only bad thing about this is what it means for Beta Testers.
March.. -sucks-.
Those of us in Beta have no idea when Beta will end, but there is a feeling that it will end in another month or so when the Windows release comes out. At which point, they may very well kick all the PS2 users off the server as well.
That would mean six months without FFXI, which, well, sucks.:(
I hope that Square-Enix considers that the Beta testers are already hopelessly addicted, and like a good pusher, lets us move to Retail as soon as possible, perhaps letting us be 'prerelease' customers, or even just upgrading us to retail as soon as we provide billing information (ie, don't even bother sending back the HD.. they'll flip a switch and upgrade us).
I guess it is possible, since from the wording of the announcement, the HD is no longer going to be sold seperately 'soon', but FFXI is being used to push the HD. So at least some of Sony and Square-Enix's marketing has changed since the Japan release. Maybe they already know how addictive FFXI is, and how bad it would be for the beta testers to go through withdrawals.
(Oh, did I mention Dragoon in FFXI is amazingly cool? The 2-hour skill summons a pet wyvern, which you get to name... the wyvern lasts until it dies.. if you rest properly it can last forever.)
I'm a PS2 beta tester (and from what Square has told me, they won't spank me for saying what I'm saying in this post...) and have different views from you, or at least I think I do, since I have to weed out your negatives to figure out what it is that you're saying.
I don't know what you mean about XP. Last night I decided to start up a new job (THF for the lv15 innate for treasure hunting.... I need Gil!), and, at level 4 was getting XP-Chains solo. 100xp followed by 120xp. Oh, yeah, and I'm too cheap to keep buying level 1 armor, and too much of a packrat to waste storage space on it... so I was fighting in just a pair of pants, and a lv1 sword.)
(For those that don't know: you get a bonus for an "Experience Chain"... you have to keep killing harder monsters in a row, and each kill then gets you an xp bonus. I killed two monsters that were precisely my level, one after another, so I got 100 for the first and a 20% bonus on the second.)
You really can't work alone on FFXI. You can do well until level 10, at which point it gets harder and harder to solo, regardless of class.
But this is normal for MMORPGs: the trick is to get a Good party (and there are many, many, many bad ones) and go for some serious monsters. With a couple people able to heal in the party, you'll be able to trade off on healing duties to keep xp chains going.
As for lack of quests, um, I haven't found that. I have 70 some quests completed, most of them in my home town (I dislike the others and am not there often enough to pick up and complete quests). I have another ten or so on my 'accepted but not completed' list.
You will find that as you complete quests, you will be offered more. (Your 'fame' is a key factor in which quests you have been offered, and is partially based on quests you've completed.)
(So, yes, it's good to do the 'this only pays 100gil' quests: they increase your fame.)
All in all, I'm very impressed with FFXI.
After far too many years wasted on MUDs, this is very much like a good old MUD, except with a lot more thought in it (mm... spell casting times, mages can get interrupted, where the thief stands helps sneak attack, varying speeds on weapons, NPC-generated quests, an auction that isn't as annoying as a global shout, a working economy where players don't just collect gil and wonder how they heck they'd ever spend it all, and it's even pretty.)
I even like the 'little' touches, like the circus that visits the first-ranked nation, complete with a fire-eating Galka, or the fireworks that were on sale for a couple weeks in July: no use, but they were fun to set off.
The real key, I think, is that this is not a game for loners.
If you don't want to work as a team, you will find FFXI very difficult. Some things will be downright impossible (like Windurst Mission 8) without partying.
Most of all FFXI passed the Girlfriend Test.
When the Beta arrived, I was told, "okay, you can only play that for 2 hours a day, you can't ignore me!" (I'm sure you've all heard something like that...)
Here it is two months later, and our nightly routine is to play. We play together (sometimes things happen fast so an extra set of eyes helps, sometimes one person remembers directions better than the other... etc).
Yep, FFXI even managed to convince the "I hate online games and I hate final fantasy!" girlfriend that Square has a hit.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a desktop machine, of course.
For someone with a Very Big Desk.
Especially when it's trivial to determine that www.jpl.nasa.gov runs Linux.
l
But I guess web servers aren't servers....
And most people have a hundred and sixty 250G IDE drives on their desktop machines
http://pat.jpl.nasa.gov/public/lucian/RASCHAL.htm
(Hint: note the date on the bottom of that URL... I guess that system was retired in the last week, since according to the cited article, it doesn't exist.)
I have 4 (mostly) identical machines: the only difference is the number of drives
in them.
3 of them Do Their Thing, mostly on RAID5 arrays.
The 4th rysncs the other 3 every hour and a few scripts for some tweaking (ie, postfix is set to defer all local mail) on some of the config files.
It has a slightly tricky lilo.conf that allows it to boot and pretend to be any of the other 3 machines (with those tweaks -- if there was a 'serious' downtime, I'd undefer local mail, but if it's going to be short, I'll just queue run it back to the 'real' server when its back).
A hot backup machine. A source of spare parts. A consistent backup.
As for who I trust: ASL Workstations (aslab.com). In the instances where we've had drive failures they've always next-day'd a new drive to us. If I -really- needed something Right Now, I could always buy a local replacement. It's never been more complex than mailing them the output of smartmontools whining about the drive failing, and the serial number of the machine.
(please don't reply about remote control blah blah blah - really you're not going to sit on your sofa song hopping like you do with TV channels)
I'm not?
I do it all the time. Hit 'Random Play->Random Songs' then hear something I'm really not in the mood to listen to and hit the forward button to skip it...
I probably hit 'skip track' on the remote 20 times a night... So, yeah, I am gonna sit on the couch 'song hopping'....
(And, yes, I sometimes hear a song on random play and do the opposite: "Oh, yeah, this is what I want to listen to right now! PERFECT!" and queue up the whole album.)
I don't have to sit next to the computer to play music... and that makes me happy.
But an ipod doesn't let you play FLAC files, doesn't have a display that's readable from 10' or more away, doesn't have the sound quality (ie DAC) that the Squeezebox does, is difficult to scale to multiple simultaneous locations (either synced or playing individual playlists from a common source), doesn't do streaming of Internet Radio....
They're entirely different ways of working with music: that's not to say portable mp3 players don't have a place (I still love my old pjbox), but despite the portable cassette/cdplayers that have been out for years, people do still buy home cd players (okay, DVD now) instead of plugging their walkman into their stereo.
Add in that the server is Open Source, and that it does 99% of the work of the process, you can have some nifty uses for that display (displaying current weather, sports scores, RSS feeds) and the active development community (the Last.FM support is top-notch -- personalized Internet Radio is a fun way to find new music.. and with the Squeezebox, you can skip songs and such from the couch.. who wants to sit at a PC to listen to music?) you do have a nifty toy to play with to tweak to your satisfaction.
I actually used Slimserver because mserv (which is what I was using for my music) began to annoy me with its quirks and horrible support for id3 tags. So I installed Slimserver and used SoftSqueeze to play music, and that worked fine...
But then I realized I wanted music in the bedroom... so I bought a Squeezebox... and then I wanted it in the living room... so I bought another...
And, now I've gone almost full circle: the sound quality from PC sound cards... sucks.
So I'm threatening to get a Squeezebox for the office.. to sit next to the computer.
exactly.. I dont see anything special about this box other than the price.. but then the page is completely devoid of facts but filled with lots of fancy flash..
One of the many advantages of Open Source is that you can see the real feature set... too bad their web page doesnt list it.
(ie, they say it does wireless: what wireless? 802.11a, b, g? Encryption? Which?)
Slim on the other hand, tells exactly what the features are and you can download the server and an emulator to play with.
It's not megalomania...
RMS, with much legal advice/support, put together the GPL. His name is inherently linked to the GPL (heck, just mention GPL here and watch the "I hate RMS!" flames start...). Surely you're not denying such a basic fact....
With that in mind, it's The Right Thing to remember that whatever they call "GPL" is going to be linked to him. As soon as people hear, "GPL3 is out!", you can bet RMS will be badgered by the media with his views on it.
Therefore it should reflect something that RMS is willing to say, "This is good" to. If he said, "Yeah, the GPL hit the crapper with tha v3 thing, it's all ruined, don't use it!", the whole rewrite would be lost.
That is reality, like it or not.
I don't worry about GPL3: I may think RMS is wacky at times, I think his singing sucks, and I'm sure he talks during movies about how wrong the movie is... But he has been very clear over the years about the 'why' of the GPL, and he's one of the most consistent (or stubborn if you disagree with him) people on the planet.
In practical terms, GPL3 won't really mean much. In legal terms it will help clarify the intent of those using the license to ensure that their code is Free and will only be used in Free Software.
Nerfing TP gain from Barrage like was done to other multi-hits
:/
Oooh, I'd be sooo happy if they did that. Barrage has become better than Meditate...
And, yes, I've partied in Garbaige with a level 32WAR/6PLD that had 6mp (hint: Cure1 = 8mp). I was playing DRK (and pulling) and he told me to not melee, but "just do that black magic stuff"...
So many idiots, not enough Serket spawns to train on them...
There are certainly flaws like Barrage's insane TP gain, but as someone who has one of the oldest still-running Diku's, it still impresses me how well balanced and well structured the game is.
And, yes, you can make odd jobs work.. but you have to know what you're doing, and it only works in some situations.
I do agree with DRG's accuracy though... one of my pt's in Boyadah had everyone 2 levels above the DRG.. but the DRG still managed to gain TP at about the same rate as the other melee's. And by that point in the game, skillchains and bursts are essential to getting decent xp, so TP gain is crucial.
haha... I agree with that whole thing, though I wouldn't say ff9 was just "not too bad", it was the first time since ff6 that I actually cared about the characters.
As for 7: the story always seems to be made up as they went along. "Oh, yeah forget what you saw in that earlier cutscene this is what really happened"..
ff8, I wanted Squall to die. I liked Rinoa, she reminded me of Aeris, but... then she hung around Squall too much and got as weird as him.
ff9 my only "wtf" character was Quina. The rest were all enjoyable, Quina wasn't bad, I just dont think "she" was developed as well as the others.
and FFX... oh, my. "Let's have the contradictions of ff7 but make it pretty!" I wanted them all dead.
In short, if someone thinks ff7 is the greatest ff ever, I tend to ignore everything they say.
(Now if SE would come out with FFIX for PSP, I'll buy a PSP that day...)
Best thing about ff7: the casino and choco racing (even though that was mindlessly easy, especically once you started breeding, it was fun).
This includes spam that users themselves mark as such.
And we all know how well that works with AOL's 'feedback loop' mechanism...
We have people that mail things like wedding pictures to AOL addresses.. and get marked as spam by the recipient. (Looked like a nice wedding, too, in Tilden Park in Berkeley..)
I get the job of telling our customer, "well, you mailed your wedding pictures to someone at AOL who apparently thinks it's spam... so please either tell your friend to stop marking your mail as spam, or please comply with their wishes and no longer mail them or we will get blacklisted by AOL..."
User-reported spam is fine... but there also needs to be some accountability for "user was in a pissy mood and marked everything as spam" or even "user clicked the wrong button"... AOL has no such mechanism, and the decision of their user is final. (The user can't even change their own mind and withdraw a spam complaint.)
Actually, from SCEI's slides, it looks like the parallization of the CELL is done mostly in hardware. The PPE sets up a job queue, and the SPEs pop jobs off the queue...
C 05/26.html
So the most likely method of running Linux on such a beast would be to code everything for the SPE's and have the kernel itself running on the PPE.
See slides starting at http://www.research.scea.com/research/html/CellGD
Well, if "all but" means "we still have thousands of trojan proxies sending spam out", then, yes, AOL has done everything but solve their own spam problems:
Jan 25 10:48:52 bombur postfix/smtpd[434]: 1D60729EB0A: reject: RCPT from ACB3BDDA.ipt.aol.com[172.179.189.218]: 550 <darlanaoxanqimohuu@aol.com>: Sender address rejected: AOL addresses must be 16 characters or less.; from=<darlanaoxanqimohuu@aol.com> to=<deleted@cmc.net> proto=SMTP helo=<ACB3BDDA.ipt.aol.com>
Yep, they've done everything -but- solve their own problems.
Jan 25 10:39:32 bombur postfix/smtpd[28000]: D471729EC6D: reject: RCPT from ACB1E8B1.ipt.aol.com[172.177.232.177]: 550 : Client host rejected: AOL refuses mail from dialups, so do we. (global-bad-clients); from= to= proto=ESMTP helo=
That would be, what, 4 minutes ago?
I have THOUSANDS of those a day.
Who do I have to thank for this, since my mail and calls to AOL for the past several months include denials that their customers can spam at all and an eventual admission that their own firewalls don't work but they're "working on it".
I agree, it wasn't that long ago that the classic 'fishing nerfs' went into place in several stages:
:)
1) npc price on padded caps "adjusted" so that bots fishing/repairing rusty caps vanished from Rabao (and light crystals got cheap again!)
2) chance of catching monsters even in newbie zones (which -will- agg whoever fished them up, and only whoever fished them up...)
It was sooo amusing to walk into W. Saru after that change and see piles of lv1 fishermen with Lu Shang's rods dead.
I don't think the changes have anything to do with Wow, just part of the accelerating response from SE to the accelerating misbehavior of gil sellers.
I've seen several JP players (who can't play WoW) with "Chinese (Gil-finder) (Death) (You can have this)" in their search comments.... Not to mention the cited incidents of GM's applauding people that have kited Stroper Chymes (the mob that drops the cited ring) for hours to frustrate the gil sellers, as well as one report of GM's actually attacking chyme campers...
The gilsellers esacalating misbehavior is the reason for the changes, not WoW.
Palladin, Black Mage and Summoner...
WoW does not let you change from being a Rogue to a Shaman... If playing a certain class gets boring, you need to start a new character.
Many, many game players change their mind (or just want to play from a different vantage point) what sort of class they wish to play.
I believe the article you are referring to is this one: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20041103/bartle_ pfv.htm
The dumbing down of MMORPG's, IMHO, is clear from WoW... not only has perm-death no place in the present MMORPG world, now there's no real penalty at all for dying, just a minor inconvenience.
Not able to work well as a team player? Okay, you can level up solo!
Not willing to devote a lot of time to a game? Okay, we'll make it so you can reach max level in a couple or three weeks. We'll even give you XP while you're not logged in!
Frustrated at crafting and losing your items on a failed craft? Okay, you will always succeed in your craft!
(Things like this: Every attempt to create an item using a recipe is successful. As you create items your skill in your chosen Profession goes up. Recipes are color coded (like items and quests), and as your skill goes up recipes begin to become relatively "easier".... it becomes 'easier' to always succeed? But you always succeed anyway, where did you actually improve?)
WoW certainly appears to be exactly as Bartle fortold.... And the 'next gen' will be even worse.
In the days of text muds, there was a term for games that pulled all the risk (and therefore all the accomplishment) from a game: Twink.
I find the value of such a fanboy review to be highly suspect.
As others pointed out, there are certainly problems with the game even from people who mostly enjoy it. An honest opinion piece would include limitations of the game.
An honest opinion would also allow that this is NOT the sort of game that everyone will enjoy. Yes, you can get to levelcap in a matter of weeks.. solo. For some that may be a good thing, unlike the lonely DRG sitting in Jeuno on FFXI waiting for an invite...
But for people who are able and willing to devote more time to a game this is a serious limitation: we are willing to invest lots of time in our character development, and everything I can see of WoW does not reward that. (With the FFXI Job system, if you get bored of being a PLD, you can always level BLM or SMN or something for a change of pace... With WoW, you will have to start a new character to do that.)
The review is so biased in favor of WoW that it sounds more like an advertisement than a review. The claims that it will make every MMORPG player happy are utter bullpucky, and any gamer that has the credentials the reviewer claims should know that.
Please, please, make Zonk stop reviewing games: he is clearly unwilling to take a deep breath and seriously consider all aspects of a game before he starts typing. No game is able to please "every gamer, every MMOG player, and everyone who's ever picked up a fantasy book".
I don't know what you mean about a tie between crafting skills and job level. There isn't one other than an economic barrier (it's hard for a level 10 to afford gold beastcoins, but not too hard for a level 70 to steal them).
:))
:)
The death penalty really isn't that bad.. it helps to befriend WHM's (and to party with them). Heck, wait until you do a Dynamis run and die 3-4 times in a couple hours and are still down only a couple hundred xp. (Gotta love Raise3
I do agree with the other points... as much as I love crabs and beetles (aspir mmm...), it gets a little tedious... "FFXI: A Crab For Every Level!"
Though at higher levels some of the better XP mobs are things like Manticores which make things more interesting.
Some of these were bigger problems in beta, because we had a much smaller server population, so I'm hoping that with the introduction of European players, this will help things out a bit. Likewise, the expansion zones (40 new zones????) should be helpful, too, as it was in beta when Zilart was finally unlocked and we could leave the Crawler's Nest and play in Altepa and QSC, as well as introducing new monsters and that whole "uhoh, where does this go" sense of dread that makes games fun.
Of course, I doubt anyone will ever xp on tonberries... Grudge sucks and spending a few hours killing them would get painful.
Personally, I'm very impressed with what Square has done: it certainly has failings, which you've done will to point out, but despite hating MMORPG's, I've been stuck on ffxi for 13 months now.
Then it wouldn't work.
The Hard Drive fits into a slot on the back of the PS2 (look and you'll see the cover.. the HD slides into there), but the power/control connection comes from the network adaptor that attaches over that slot. If you just slid a hard drive in there, it would have no power and no control/data connections to the PS2, you may as well have slid a sandwich in there (which may be more functional, since at least a warm sandwich is good to eat).
Heh.. that's exactly why I like the PS2 version. I don't want to sit in a chair at the desk to play when I can lay on the couch. :)
:)
That, and, well, I don't have Windows.
The menus are pretty simple (and they're the same on Windows from what I've heard, which confuses Windows users).
/magic "Cure III" <st>
On PS2, you press the square button, and a menu comes up on the right hand side of the screen with generic things like 'Status', 'Abilities', 'Quests', 'Missions', etc. Those can each bring up submenus.
For actual combat, a menu appears on the left side, with 'Switch Target', 'Magic', 'Abilities', 'Disengage', etc. The melee is handled automatically (ie, you don't press buttons to swing your sword around), but you can choose 'Magic', scroll to 'Cure III', then use the arrows to choose who to cast it on.
You can also macro things: underneath all the gui is a command line suitable for Macros. You can, for example have a macro for Cure3, that is:
You bring up the macros using the L2 and R2 buttons, then choose the macro. The <st> will give you a chance to 'select target' for who you'll cast the spell on. You can, of course, make more complex ones, and most people do. The macros are also bound to function keys on the keyboard.
The user interface should be a breeze for anyone with console experience to pick up. It's unusual for the typical Windows game, but it gets pretty simple and fast to navigate with (no moving from keyboard to controller to keyboard needed).
The only bad thing about this is what it means for Beta Testers.
:(
March.. -sucks-.
Those of us in Beta have no idea when Beta will end, but there is a feeling that it will end in another month or so when the Windows release comes out. At which point, they may very well kick all the PS2 users off the server as well.
That would mean six months without FFXI, which, well, sucks.
I hope that Square-Enix considers that the Beta testers are already hopelessly addicted, and like a good pusher, lets us move to Retail as soon as possible, perhaps letting us be 'prerelease' customers, or even just upgrading us to retail as soon as we provide billing information (ie, don't even bother sending back the HD.. they'll flip a switch and upgrade us).
I guess it is possible, since from the wording of the announcement, the HD is no longer going to be sold seperately 'soon', but FFXI is being used to push the HD. So at least some of Sony and Square-Enix's marketing has changed since the Japan release. Maybe they already know how addictive FFXI is, and how bad it would be for the beta testers to go through withdrawals.
(Oh, did I mention Dragoon in FFXI is amazingly cool? The 2-hour skill summons a pet wyvern, which you get to name... the wyvern lasts until it dies.. if you rest properly it can last forever.)
Hrm.
I'm a PS2 beta tester (and from what Square has told me, they won't spank me for saying what I'm saying in this post...) and have different views from you, or at least I think I do, since I have to weed out your negatives to figure out what it is that you're saying.
I don't know what you mean about XP. Last night I decided to start up a new job (THF for the lv15 innate for treasure hunting.... I need Gil!), and, at level 4 was getting XP-Chains solo. 100xp followed by 120xp. Oh, yeah, and I'm too cheap to keep buying level 1 armor, and too much of a packrat to waste storage space on it... so I was fighting in just a pair of pants, and a lv1 sword.)
(For those that don't know: you get a bonus for an "Experience Chain"... you have to keep killing harder monsters in a row, and each kill then gets you an xp bonus. I killed two monsters that were precisely my level, one after another, so I got 100 for the first and a 20% bonus on the second.)
You really can't work alone on FFXI. You can do well until level 10, at which point it gets harder and harder to solo, regardless of class.
But this is normal for MMORPGs: the trick is to get a Good party (and there are many, many, many bad ones) and go for some serious monsters. With a couple people able to heal in the party, you'll be able to trade off on healing duties to keep xp chains going.
As for lack of quests, um, I haven't found that. I have 70 some quests completed, most of them in my home town (I dislike the others and am not there often enough to pick up and complete quests). I have another ten or so on my 'accepted but not completed' list.
You will find that as you complete quests, you will be offered more. (Your 'fame' is a key factor in which quests you have been offered, and is partially based on quests you've completed.)
(So, yes, it's good to do the 'this only pays 100gil' quests: they increase your fame.)
All in all, I'm very impressed with FFXI.
After far too many years wasted on MUDs, this is very much like a good old MUD, except with a lot more thought in it (mm... spell casting times, mages can get interrupted, where the thief stands helps sneak attack, varying speeds on weapons, NPC-generated quests, an auction that isn't as annoying as a global shout, a working economy where players don't just collect gil and wonder how they heck they'd ever spend it all, and it's even pretty.)
I even like the 'little' touches, like the circus that visits the first-ranked nation, complete with a fire-eating Galka, or the fireworks that were on sale for a couple weeks in July: no use, but they were fun to set off.
The real key, I think, is that this is not a game for loners.
If you don't want to work as a team, you will find FFXI very difficult. Some things will be downright impossible (like Windurst Mission 8) without partying.
Most of all FFXI passed the Girlfriend Test.
When the Beta arrived, I was told, "okay, you can only play that for 2 hours a day, you can't ignore me!" (I'm sure you've all heard something like that...)
Here it is two months later, and our nightly routine is to play. We play together (sometimes things happen fast so an extra set of eyes helps, sometimes one person remembers directions better than the other... etc).
Yep, FFXI even managed to convince the "I hate online games and I hate final fantasy!" girlfriend that Square has a hit.
Squeenix hasn't given an official US Price, but it will probably be roughly what the prices is in Japan: around $10/month.
(And if you budget $1/hour for games, ie, a $50 game should be worth 50 hours of playtime, that $10/month is a bargain.)
OSS is part of enlightenment?
Since when?