This surprised me too. Why would anyone make a quick, 2D, puzzle game targeted to one platform? Why should I check this out when I can run things like puzzle pirates on any platform that runs java?
I imagine killing a man over an imaginary object makes the insanity plea a little easier.
I'm not so sure. Money is an imaginary object especially when there is no gold to back it up. (US currency since 1970) Imaginary things that can be traded for real things are not a strange concept to most people and I'm sure the prosecuting attorney would mention this.
I read short magazine articles as well as 1000 page books. If someone told me that publishers should stop printing books because people really just want to read magazines, I'd call them crazy.
If any of you want to remember the crazy days of the tech bubble check out the documentaries Startup.com and e-dreams.
I still remember being somewhat tech savy, going to investors conferences and "not getting" how these companies that would never make significant money were commanding these valuations. It was like being in some sci-fi movie where everyone has been replaced by pod people.
Stability and reliability (over time) are the most important features of my linux box. Open source specifications means the product can never be "end of lifed" by the manufacturer. When nvidia or ati decides to stop supporting old cards in their new drivers then you are one kernel upgrade away from an non-functional graphics card.
I'm guaranteed to buy one card to check it out. If it works well, I'll buy one for each of my linux boxes.
Everyone seems to be jumping on the fact that this guys wants to make a living buying/selling in game items. While I applaud Blizzard for wanting to prevent this, we don't have to lynch the article's author for this single point.
Some good points of the article:
WoW is so much fun to play that it is not clear if anyone would _want_ to pay for items/levels. Even if buying/selling were allowed it's possible that there would be no buyer demand.
WoW has a severe lack of money sinks for the high end content. If you hit 60 and keep playing then gold starts piling up _very_ quickly. What happens to the economy when players get bored and mail 50G from their lvl 60 to their lvl 1 alt?
I've witnessed some of this first hand. I was in alpha, closed beta, and open beta. In the final days of open beta I decided to test a new class so I created an alt on one of the old crusty alpha servers. This server was filled with 60s. I kept my character pure (no gimping) and tried to level up, group, buy and trade with the auction house, etc.
It was horrible! Not only were there very few low lvl characters but the ones that were there were equiped with the best equipment and had no incentive to trade. The auction house was barren of low level items.
I re-rolled on one of the newer servers and the game was filled with low level characters, grouping and trading. It was fun...like the alpha servers were 6 months before.
I'd like to think that Blizzard sees this problem but I'm not so sure. As soon as 1/5 or so of the players on a server hit the cap (and this will happen very quickly in WoW) the whole economy will go to hell. I don't see anything in their Under Development page that indicates otherwise.
When I built a new machine 18 months ago I specifically bought a radeon 9000 so that I could use the open source drivers. This worked fine and I was able to run glxgears and several opengl programs.
A year ago I started to test a high profile game that the developers were porting to linux. I kept trying to get the open source drivers to work but the open source drivers didn't implement enough of functionality to run the game. I could only run the game successfully via the closed source ati driver. I'm not a graphics guru so I can't tell you what specific functionality wan't implemented but the developers said there was no way they could work around it.
Anyway this isn't a total slam on the open source drivers. They are much more stable than the closed source equivalents--and you don't have to re-install the kernal modules after every kernel compile. But if you buy the drivers thinking that they will be able to run all opengl applications, think again.
As a side note: I would love to have a fully open graphics card that has the potential to have a complete opengl driver. (without reverse engineering) I'd even pay $200 for the equivalent of a $25 closed source card. Stability and driver completeness are much more important to me than price and performance.
One thing to note is that the positive reactions you see from the beta testers are from people who are, well, still playing the game. I was in the alpha since November and burt out around July. I still log in now and then to see what's new and give feedback but I'm not a rabid fan posting on the forums. I know many others who have also quit but you generally don't hear from these people on blizzard forums.
On the other hand, WoW has really perfected the Everquest style game. It's a pretty fun and easy game I think it will be very popular, but not everyone wants to play a game that is essencially a level grind.
I'm not in the beta yet, though, so I'm afraid I can't do that.:(
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you think you'll really like the game, it may be more enjoyable to play the polished retail version than the beta.
There is already a working example of this: :
the German school system (warning, this link contains cheesy midi music)
They have have several different schools, some of which are geared for a working occupation and one (Gynasium) which is for univerisity bound kids. Kids are slotted into these schools at a very young age--10yo I think. One of the things that makes this work is that (supposedly) training in a tradeskill is not associated with low prestige like it is in the states. Being a cook or a car mechanic gets a fair amount of respect and does not result in a salary that is 1/10 of a doctor.
I'm not German so if there are any Deutchlanders out there that can comment on their experiences with this system I would appreciate it.
a selection of traditional games sporting a new cleaner Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) look.
I had no idea that Gnome supported both vector graphics (via the open standard SVG) and alpha blending. (Libart) I guess I haven't been paying attention.
Re:Whose task is copy&paste
on
The Power of X
·
· Score: 1
I can't speak about the way the preload problem is handled today but when I worked at Microsoft (10 years ago) we spent an insane amount of effort to get the apps to load faster, or more accurately, to give the apps the appearance of loading more quickly. Often at startup we would just load as little of the app we could to render the main frame and then load the actual functional code in the background.
This was prioritized over code maintainabilty, obviously some features, and even some bugs.
I really can't see this being a huge priority in open source projects since code maintainability (modularity) and the associated flexibility is such a high priority in most of them. Just look at linux bootup. You could probably speed things up significantly by not running all those sh scripts in/etc/init.d/ (or running them after the console login has appeared, giving the appearance of boot) but what developer would give up that flexibility for a little speed?
I don't have a recommendation but I do have a strong anti-recommendation.
I normally recommend the associated Oreilly book for most computer topics but in the case of PostgreSQL I have to say Practical PostgreSQL is the worst Oreilly book that I have read. Most of the book is a regurgitation of the freely available postgres manual with an additional chapter that is a blatant plug for the author's proprietary product.
I thought Oreilly could do no wrong until I bought this piece of crap.
I have a friend who is working working on an upcoming MMORPG and I asked him the same question: "Why not give away the game and just charge a monthly fee?"
He responded with the following points:
1) MMORPGs are extremely expensive to run (new content must be generated so the game doesn't become sterile) so you _have_ to have a monthly fee.
2) In order to sell enough copies of the game so that you reach the critical mass of players in order to be profitable, you have to have a boxed game on a store shelf. To completely abandon retail would be suicide. In order to have a store willing to carry a game on a shelf, you can't also be giving the game away for free on the internet.
So according to him, in order to have a profitable game you have to both sell the game _and_ charge a monthly fee. Of course this is not good news for us game consumers.
Fedora isn't supposed to be a stable distribution that lets you get your work done in peace. It's a way for redhat to test the newest features before incorporating them into their stable products.
If you want stability, there are plenty of other distributions that fit the bill.
Slashdot Mirror
Another FYI: It doesn't seem to work on Windows 98. The installer claims to want Windows ME or better.
Is it possible to run the installer under WINE?
This surprised me too. Why would anyone make a quick, 2D, puzzle game targeted to one platform? Why should I check this out when I can run things like puzzle pirates on any platform that runs java?
I imagine killing a man over an imaginary object makes the insanity plea a little easier.
I'm not so sure. Money is an imaginary object especially when there is no gold to back it up. (US currency since 1970) Imaginary things that can be traded for real things are not a strange concept to most people and I'm sure the prosecuting attorney would mention this.
Robert.
Pretend episodes IV, V and VI don't exist and watch episodes I and II.
Was the story riveting?
Do you like the dialog?
Good acting?
Be honest, by any measure, the first two prequels were terrible.
I read short magazine articles as well as 1000 page books. If someone told me that publishers should stop printing books because people really just want to read magazines, I'd call them crazy.
Does anyone know if this is the service that is provided by answer.com ?
I wonder if answer.com gets much cash out of this?
Here are some facts about the case. I'm amazed at how many people continue to use this as an example of a frivolous lawsuit.
There is also a really good Too Much Coffee Man reference to the lawsuit but I can't find it.
VR is cool but don't forget that you can get a similar rapid prototype benefit from 3D printers.
If any of you want to remember the crazy days of the tech bubble check out the documentaries Startup.com and e-dreams.
I still remember being somewhat tech savy, going to investors conferences and "not getting" how these companies that would never make significant money were commanding these valuations. It was like being in some sci-fi movie where everyone has been replaced by pod people.
A similar but harder to find film is e-Dreams. It chronicles the rise and fall of kozmo.com
Does anyone remember those orange scooters that would deliver videos and junk food?
Even after I stopped playing, I still havn't worked up the courage to cancel my account yet because I don't want to lose my character.
Blizzard doesn't delete characters from cancelled accounts. You can cancel, not pay for a year, and then reactivate your account and have all your characters still there.
This is great for hardcore gamers. Cap in a couple months then cancel until a significant content patch comes out.
Yes, and this is a comment of a comment of an ad for an ad. :)
Me too.
Stability and reliability (over time) are the most important features of my linux box. Open source specifications means the product can never be "end of lifed" by the manufacturer. When nvidia or ati decides to stop supporting old cards in their new drivers then you are one kernel upgrade away from an non-functional graphics card.
I'm guaranteed to buy one card to check it out. If it works well, I'll buy one for each of my linux boxes.
Everyone seems to be jumping on the fact that this guys wants to make a living buying/selling in game items. While I applaud Blizzard for wanting to prevent this, we don't have to lynch the article's author for this single point.
Some good points of the article:
I've witnessed some of this first hand. I was in alpha, closed beta, and open beta. In the final days of open beta I decided to test a new class so I created an alt on one of the old crusty alpha servers. This server was filled with 60s. I kept my character pure (no gimping) and tried to level up, group, buy and trade with the auction house, etc.
It was horrible! Not only were there very few low lvl characters but the ones that were there were equiped with the best equipment and had no incentive to trade. The auction house was barren of low level items.
I re-rolled on one of the newer servers and the game was filled with low level characters, grouping and trading. It was fun...like the alpha servers were 6 months before.
I'd like to think that Blizzard sees this problem but I'm not so sure. As soon as 1/5 or so of the players on a server hit the cap (and this will happen very quickly in WoW) the whole economy will go to hell. I don't see anything in their Under Development page that indicates otherwise.
<analGeek>
1) overlords != overloads
2) unless overloads.get_random() returns a list containing a single string element you're in for a runtime error.
Of course if you wrote this in a compiled language you'd know this buy now. *ducks*
</analGeek>
When I built a new machine 18 months ago I specifically bought a radeon 9000 so that I could use the open source drivers. This worked fine and I was able to run glxgears and several opengl programs.
A year ago I started to test a high profile game that the developers were porting to linux. I kept trying to get the open source drivers to work but the open source drivers didn't implement enough of functionality to run the game. I could only run the game successfully via the closed source ati driver. I'm not a graphics guru so I can't tell you what specific functionality wan't implemented but the developers said there was no way they could work around it.
Anyway this isn't a total slam on the open source drivers. They are much more stable than the closed source equivalents--and you don't have to re-install the kernal modules after every kernel compile. But if you buy the drivers thinking that they will be able to run all opengl applications, think again.
As a side note: I would love to have a fully open graphics card that has the potential to have a complete opengl driver. (without reverse engineering) I'd even pay $200 for the equivalent of a $25 closed source card. Stability and driver completeness are much more important to me than price and performance.
One thing to note is that the positive reactions you see from the beta testers are from people who are, well, still playing the game. I was in the alpha since November and burt out around July. I still log in now and then to see what's new and give feedback but I'm not a rabid fan posting on the forums. I know many others who have also quit but you generally don't hear from these people on blizzard forums.
On the other hand, WoW has really perfected the Everquest style game. It's a pretty fun and easy game I think it will be very popular, but not everyone wants to play a game that is essencially a level grind.
I'm not in the beta yet, though, so I'm afraid I can't do that. :(
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you think you'll really like the game, it may be more enjoyable to play the polished retail version than the beta.
I agree. But once you hit the level cap (excellent karma) there's not enough high level content to keep the slashdot game interesting.
There is already a working example of this: : the German school system (warning, this link contains cheesy midi music)
They have have several different schools, some of which are geared for a working occupation and one (Gynasium) which is for univerisity bound kids. Kids are slotted into these schools at a very young age--10yo I think. One of the things that makes this work is that (supposedly) training in a tradeskill is not associated with low prestige like it is in the states. Being a cook or a car mechanic gets a fair amount of respect and does not result in a salary that is 1/10 of a doctor.
I'm not German so if there are any Deutchlanders out there that can comment on their experiences with this system I would appreciate it.
I was really surprised to see this:
a selection of traditional games sporting a new cleaner Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) look.
I had no idea that Gnome supported both vector graphics (via the open standard SVG) and alpha blending. (Libart) I guess I haven't been paying attention.
The above url was mistyped.
Freedesktop ClipBoard Specification
Thanks for the info!
I can't speak about the way the preload problem is handled today but when I worked at Microsoft (10 years ago) we spent an insane amount of effort to get the apps to load faster, or more accurately, to give the apps the appearance of loading more quickly. Often at startup we would just load as little of the app we could to render the main frame and then load the actual functional code in the background.
This was prioritized over code maintainabilty, obviously some features, and even some bugs.
I really can't see this being a huge priority in open source projects since code maintainability (modularity) and the associated flexibility is such a high priority in most of them. Just look at linux bootup. You could probably speed things up significantly by not running all those sh scripts in /etc/init.d/ (or running them after the console login has appeared, giving the appearance of boot) but what developer would give up that flexibility for a little speed?
I don't have a recommendation but I do have a strong anti-recommendation.
I normally recommend the associated Oreilly book for most computer topics but in the case of PostgreSQL I have to say Practical PostgreSQL is the worst Oreilly book that I have read. Most of the book is a regurgitation of the freely available postgres manual with an additional chapter that is a blatant plug for the author's proprietary product.
I thought Oreilly could do no wrong until I bought this piece of crap.
I have a friend who is working working on an upcoming MMORPG and I asked him the same question: "Why not give away the game and just charge a monthly fee?"
He responded with the following points:
1) MMORPGs are extremely expensive to run (new content must be generated so the game doesn't become sterile) so you _have_ to have a monthly fee.
2) In order to sell enough copies of the game so that you reach the critical mass of players in order to be profitable, you have to have a boxed game on a store shelf. To completely abandon retail would be suicide. In order to have a store willing to carry a game on a shelf, you can't also be giving the game away for free on the internet.
So according to him, in order to have a profitable game you have to both sell the game _and_ charge a monthly fee. Of course this is not good news for us game consumers.
Fedora isn't supposed to be a stable distribution that lets you get your work done in peace. It's a way for redhat to test the newest features before incorporating them into their stable products.
If you want stability, there are plenty of other distributions that fit the bill.