They'll probably give it to a bunch of Africans. The last few times I heard a sentence that ended "... is ineffective for treating HIV.", it's always been something that was being tested on Africans. Prison populations might also work, however.
I am under the impression that Ultima V is not actually winnable. I played the game to the point where I knew everything I had to do, but I couldn't get characters to the point where they could actually *do* them. Or survive doing them, anyway. Dragon summons Demon summons Demon summons Demon... arg. Either I'd run out of reagents to cast spells or I'd get eaten alive if I went too deep into the dungeons.
Personally, I've never seen a console game I'd consider compelling. Closed platforms, poor graphics etc. But hey, I'm not a console gaming person.
Anyway, my top 10:
1. Nethack. I ascended a wishless tourist and I am *never* going to stop bragging about it on Slashdot. 2. Ultima V (I had III and V but not IV, which is supposed to be better...) 3. Scorched Earth 4. Half Life (the first one. The one that doesn't need steam) 5. Planescape: Torment / Baldur's Gate 2 6. Stargate (the Defender clone) 7. System Shock 2 8. Alpha Centauri 9. Starflight 10. Syndicate
Honorable mentions: Robot Odyssey, which I finished after only 11 years and some college-level classes in digital logic.:) Mechwarrior 2 Star Control Quake
I have an absolutely staggering gaming rig by any normal standard. Core 2 Duo @ 3.66GHz, 4GB RAM, 768MB 8800GTX. Network latency to my server of choice is around ~30ms most of the time. There are places in City of Villains that can drop me to single-digit framerates. Granted, I'm playing at 1920x1200 and high graphics settings, but that same graphics card can manage FarCry at over 100fps at that resolution..
I did some very simple performance profiling of a variety of different CPUs and graphics cards in CoV, using common screen resolutions for my SG+.
Basically, I zoned in to a particular set of XYZ coordinates in Grandville, waited until there were no mobs in my field of view and then flew to two other sets of coordinates in Grandville. I recorded stable frame rates at each location and did five trials for each hardware variation.
Generally speaking, what I found was that CPU speed matters very little. An Athlon 2500 with a Radeon 9700 or GF6900 performs about the same as an A64/3800 with a Radeon 9700 or GF6900. A Core2 Duo at 1.8GHz is more or less the same as one at 3.6GHz. Enabling SMP also makes minimal difference. Similarly, the largest differentiating factor in graphics performance seemed to be the amount of texture memory on the card. There's almost linear progression in 64MB cards vs. 128MB vs. 256MB vs. more than 256. nVidia hardware is clearly better for CoX - about 20% better in the same generation. RAM: You need 2GB minimum. Period. CityofHeroes.exe regularly uses 1.2GB by itself, and a lot of people have issues with memory leaks on top of that.
Only things I didn't try were SLI (didn't have a motherboard for it) or a PhyisX card. I wish I had the actual numbers someplace where I could link to them, but my SG's forums aren't online at the moment.
My conclusion was that the performance issues that City of Heroes has basically can't be fixed by throwing hardware at it.
I'm glad to hear that their graphic tools might get a better developer's attention. I really do love the game, with all the auras and powers and costumes and ways to travel.
But with a trackball and acceleration set to highest, I barely have to move my thumb and you're moving your whole goddamned hand like some kind of chump. Not only am I more productive with all my extra messy desk space, but I'm also more energy-efficient. I am saving precious calories and doing my part for a greener world!
Clutter hint: Switch to a trackball as your primary pointing device. That way you'll have an extra square foot or so of horizontal desk surface on which to pile things!
My desk is covered by a six inch high mound of papers, optical discs and spare kit (no food, contrary to the accusations of other people), but I can find anything I want in that pile in under 15 seconds. The only thing that actually messes me up is when co-workers put things on my desk and don't tell me. I have an in-box on my door for that, but they like to stick things on my desk anyway, just so it can be my fault when I don't know about some new item.
Nero. In fact, no software I tried for DVD burning (e.g. DVD Shrink, AnyDVD) worked under Vista. I tried the Enterprise edition, FWIW. Also, I suspect that upgraders who paid for a multi-year license for their Antivirus software are going to be in for a bit of a surprise.
Methinks you missed a pronoun or three. *SHE* is theoretically taken by some idiot who would rather spend time with a bunch of level 60 Dwarven Hunters than with her.
*I* am a socially retarded nerd who goes to the same Arby's twice a week because the cute cashier sometimes touches my hand when she gives me change.
And judging by the screenshots, I think I found someone I can look down on even more than tentacle-loving hentai freaks.
It looks like regular porn, but the girls are wearing elf ears and leather straps and stuff.
But, OK, that's not the worst part. The worst part: The ONE, SINGLE attractive mid-20-ish college educated young woman that I've ever had in my classes (I'm an IT Trainer. A geeky, hopelessly introverted one who will probably be a lifelong virgin) is a WoW freak. She's about 5'10", blonde, big eyes, long legs and has a little bit of a fitness-model look. She went rock-climbing in the Andes on her last vacation. She really nice and well adjusted (maybe other than playing WoW...) Seriously good looking girl... And she's a geek of the "Lord of the Rings/Magic the Gathering" variety, which probably means she'd fulfill every possible fantasy for about 3/4 of the Slashdot population.
I told her about the "Whorecraft" thing and sent her a link to the site (We send each other off-color jokes and stuff all the time). This is what she wrote back.
"I have an outfit like that. I use it to get (her boyfriend's) attention when he's been raiding too much."
There is no fucking justice in the world. That's all I'm going to say.
Well, OK, also, people who play WoW now frighten me more than ever.
I bought two from woot. $285. I don't even like nVidia GPUs. I figured I could find someone to buy them for the retail price.
Still, I did try one out. In City of Heroes, the only game I care about, it performed roughly on par with my ATI X1900XT (within 1 - 2 fps), a card that costs about 2.5 times what the 7900GS does. Granted, CoH isn't exactly an ATI-friendly game.
But whoever ends up with those cards will probably be pretty happy.
I have every personal e-mail message I've ever sent or received since 1994 sitting in my mail spool on a VPN-accessible IMAP server in my apartment. About 60,000 messages (perhaps 5GB, all told) in my "inbox". No folders. No sorting. No deleting. I can find any message I want using the search capabilities of my mail client (thunderbird or pine or elm, depending) and I can't say I've ever lost track of a discussion.
Now I understand that people have quotas on their mail spool and the like, what what the hell is up with wanting to remove messages from their inbox? And why bother trying to sort messages in to folders? Is it too hard to remember keywords from any particular exchange in a message?
"v Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders" would be the first paid expansion. The TnA factor would really drive sales, and of course that way there would be time to get the animations right Then "v Dinosaurs" and then "v Episcopalians"
The more I think about it, the more this sounds like the greatest game of all time.
There's a sign that I drive by a couple times every day for the local "Urban" radio station, advertising the morning show with "Tre, the Choklit Jok." It drives me insane every time I see it. I can't imagine who would find that combination of misspellings appealing or even appropriate, and it makes me wonder about the people who listen to that station. Are they all illiterate? Is "Tre" such a moron that he can't be bothered to add the "c" between the "o" and the "k"? Is there some greater factor of ineffable coolness in being "the Choklit Jok" instead of "the Chocolate Jock"?
Also, people who use IM-speak, even when instant messaging, should be fed to a woodchipper Fargo-style. Hopefully, when I rule the world, this edict will carry the force of law.
The A+ exam certifies that someone has a level of knowledge equivalent to six months of job experience as a computer tech. Older versions of the exam certified someone had the equivalent of 18 months. Needless to say, the difference between the tests is fairly massive. I train people for both Microsoft and CompTIA certifications. Most of the people I see in classes are either just looking for additional knowledge and don't care about the cert, or so wrapped up in getting certified that they don't pay much attention to what I'm actually teaching. Unfortunately, it's the guys in the second category who seem be the ones who go out and look for those corporate consulting jobs. Even though I think of A+, Network+ and certain of the Microsoft exams as dead simple, the truth is that if someone has actually absorbed everything they're supposed to know to pass those tests, they really *do* know a lot about PCs, Windows and repair work. IF they retain the information. I don't think the "entry level" ceritification exams do a very good job of requiring people to synthesize information, and there's no way to test how much they've retained after six months. So the certs do wind up being kind of pointless. It's frustrating to me as a professional techie and as a trainer, but on the other hand most organizations that need techs don't have the time or ability to generate their own metrics for tech skills, so we kind of have to live with the meaningless certs.
Dreamhost has been wonderful for me and for all of the people I've turned onto it. I've used some really crappy hosting in the past, my personal favorite being a hosting company that wouldn't allow FTP access to anything.
Dreamhost has been reliable and seems to be pre-configured for everything I've ever wanted to do or try.
The couple of times I've had support issues, I've gotten responses in around a half hour. No complaints. I'm happy to give them my money and to suggest others do likewise.
I have an SACD player. And a DVD-Audio player. And on a month-to-month basis I buy essentially every disc of classical music released in both formats. Yes, I'm a niche enthusiast, but I love the hell out of my surround sound orchestral music.
Joe Sixpack - at least in the form of the Steelworkers I see every day - has the equipment to enjoy HDaudio. These guys all have surround sound systems that they mostly bought as part of a kit with a DVD player three or four years ago. Maybe they have it hooked up right and maybe they don't, but they do have the equipment.
Of course, these are also guys who aren't aware that DVDs have commentary tracks or subtitles that can be turned on or off...
HDVideo is being pushed on us early largely because DVD is considered by content owners to be much too easy to pirate. The technology (e.g. HDMI, let alone a disc format) isn't ready for prime time, nor is there anything like a reasonable installed base of displays. Joe Sixpack might have a 50" SDTV, but even if he's got something better (and if he does, it's probably an EDTV, not an HDTV), he's probably much more impressed by the size of the screen than the quality of the picture.
Honestly, the most compelling argument I can make for HDTV (not necessarily HDDVD formats), is for detail-obsessed sports fanatics. Eight times as many pixels can make the argument over a referee's call that much more outrageous.:) HDDVD generically isn't bringing anything to the table except confusion among potential consumers.
I think advancement of consumer AV pretty much stops at the point when there's no need to rewind a tape. Anything beyond that is in the realm of niche product, no matter who you are. Don't get me wrong: I'd rather have better picture or better sound on a physical medium than have some asstastic, compressed to hell proprietary computer file, but even as one of those people in the SACD/DVDA niche, I can't see anyone caring about HD-video yet.
Slashdot Mirror
They'll probably give it to a bunch of Africans. The last few times I heard a sentence that ended "... is ineffective for treating HIV.", it's always been something that was being tested on Africans.
Prison populations might also work, however.
You win the internet, good sir.
HD-DVD has:
Serenity
HD-DVD wins and it's not even close.
I am under the impression that Ultima V is not actually winnable.
I played the game to the point where I knew everything I had to do, but I couldn't get characters to the point where they could actually *do* them. Or survive doing them, anyway. Dragon summons Demon summons Demon summons Demon... arg. Either I'd run out of reagents to cast spells or I'd get eaten alive if I went too deep into the dungeons.
Personally, I've never seen a console game I'd consider compelling. Closed platforms, poor graphics etc.
:)
But hey, I'm not a console gaming person.
Anyway, my top 10:
1. Nethack. I ascended a wishless tourist and I am *never* going to stop bragging about it on Slashdot.
2. Ultima V (I had III and V but not IV, which is supposed to be better...)
3. Scorched Earth
4. Half Life (the first one. The one that doesn't need steam)
5. Planescape: Torment / Baldur's Gate 2
6. Stargate (the Defender clone)
7. System Shock 2
8. Alpha Centauri
9. Starflight
10. Syndicate
Honorable mentions:
Robot Odyssey, which I finished after only 11 years and some college-level classes in digital logic.
Mechwarrior 2
Star Control
Quake
I have an absolutely staggering gaming rig by any normal standard. Core 2 Duo @ 3.66GHz, 4GB RAM, 768MB 8800GTX. Network latency to my server of choice is around ~30ms most of the time.
There are places in City of Villains that can drop me to single-digit framerates.
Granted, I'm playing at 1920x1200 and high graphics settings, but that same graphics card can manage FarCry at over 100fps at that resolution..
I did some very simple performance profiling of a variety of different CPUs and graphics cards in CoV, using common screen resolutions for my SG+.
Basically, I zoned in to a particular set of XYZ coordinates in Grandville, waited until there were no mobs in my field of view and then flew to two other sets of coordinates in Grandville. I recorded stable frame rates at each location and did five trials for each hardware variation.
Generally speaking, what I found was that CPU speed matters very little. An Athlon 2500 with a Radeon 9700 or GF6900 performs about the same as an A64/3800 with a Radeon 9700 or GF6900. A Core2 Duo at 1.8GHz is more or less the same as one at 3.6GHz. Enabling SMP also makes minimal difference.
Similarly, the largest differentiating factor in graphics performance seemed to be the amount of texture memory on the card. There's almost linear progression in 64MB cards vs. 128MB vs. 256MB vs. more than 256. nVidia hardware is clearly better for CoX - about 20% better in the same generation.
RAM: You need 2GB minimum. Period. CityofHeroes.exe regularly uses 1.2GB by itself, and a lot of people have issues with memory leaks on top of that.
Only things I didn't try were SLI (didn't have a motherboard for it) or a PhyisX card.
I wish I had the actual numbers someplace where I could link to them, but my SG's forums aren't online at the moment.
My conclusion was that the performance issues that City of Heroes has basically can't be fixed by throwing hardware at it.
I'm glad to hear that their graphic tools might get a better developer's attention. I really do love the game, with all the auras and powers and costumes and ways to travel.
That's not the case at all.
But with a trackball and acceleration set to highest, I barely have to move my thumb and you're moving your whole goddamned hand like some kind of chump. Not only am I more productive with all my extra messy desk space, but I'm also more energy-efficient. I am saving precious calories and doing my part for a greener world!
Clutter hint:
Switch to a trackball as your primary pointing device. That way you'll have an extra square foot or so of horizontal desk surface on which to pile things!
My desk is covered by a six inch high mound of papers, optical discs and spare kit (no food, contrary to the accusations of other people), but I can find anything I want in that pile in under 15 seconds. The only thing that actually messes me up is when co-workers put things on my desk and don't tell me. I have an in-box on my door for that, but they like to stick things on my desk anyway, just so it can be my fault when I don't know about some new item.
Nero. In fact, no software I tried for DVD burning (e.g. DVD Shrink, AnyDVD) worked under Vista. I tried the Enterprise edition, FWIW.
Also, I suspect that upgraders who paid for a multi-year license for their Antivirus software are going to be in for a bit of a surprise.
I ascended a wishless tourist once.
I consider it more of an accomplishment than my bachelor's degree.
It's wonderful but Magpie is not working.
Sniff.
Methinks you missed a pronoun or three.
*SHE* is theoretically taken by some idiot who would rather spend time with a bunch of level 60 Dwarven Hunters than with her.
*I* am a socially retarded nerd who goes to the same Arby's twice a week because the cute cashier sometimes touches my hand when she gives me change.
Not too long ago, I saw that there are three videos on one of the more... interesting torrent sites I frequent that are titled:
"World of Whorecraft" (NSFW, duh)
And judging by the screenshots, I think I found someone I can look down on even more than tentacle-loving hentai freaks.
It looks like regular porn, but the girls are wearing elf ears and leather straps and stuff.
But, OK, that's not the worst part.
The worst part: The ONE, SINGLE attractive mid-20-ish college educated young woman that I've ever had in my classes (I'm an IT Trainer. A geeky, hopelessly introverted one who will probably be a lifelong virgin) is a WoW freak. She's about 5'10", blonde, big eyes, long legs and has a little bit of a fitness-model look. She went rock-climbing in the Andes on her last vacation. She really nice and well adjusted (maybe other than playing WoW...) Seriously good looking girl... And she's a geek of the "Lord of the Rings/Magic the Gathering" variety, which probably means she'd fulfill every possible fantasy for about 3/4 of the Slashdot population.
I told her about the "Whorecraft" thing and sent her a link to the site (We send each other off-color jokes and stuff all the time). This is what she wrote back.
"I have an outfit like that. I use it to get (her boyfriend's) attention when he's been raiding too much."
There is no fucking justice in the world.
That's all I'm going to say.
Well, OK, also, people who play WoW now frighten me more than ever.
I bought two from woot. $285.
I don't even like nVidia GPUs. I figured I could find someone to buy them for the retail price.
Still, I did try one out. In City of Heroes, the only game I care about, it performed roughly on par with my ATI X1900XT (within 1 - 2 fps), a card that costs about 2.5 times what the 7900GS does.
Granted, CoH isn't exactly an ATI-friendly game.
But whoever ends up with those cards will probably be pretty happy.
I have every personal e-mail message I've ever sent or received since 1994 sitting in my mail spool on a VPN-accessible IMAP server in my apartment. About 60,000 messages (perhaps 5GB, all told) in my "inbox". No folders. No sorting. No deleting. I can find any message I want using the search capabilities of my mail client (thunderbird or pine or elm, depending) and I can't say I've ever lost track of a discussion.
Now I understand that people have quotas on their mail spool and the like, what what the hell is up with wanting to remove messages from their inbox? And why bother trying to sort messages in to folders? Is it too hard to remember keywords from any particular exchange in a message?
The AVN Expo is a different convention that just happens to happen at the same time as the nerdfest that is CES.
Nah, I'd want them to hold off on that one.
"v Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders" would be the first paid expansion. The TnA factor would really drive sales, and of course that way there would be time to get the animations right
Then
"v Dinosaurs"
and then
"v Episcopalians"
The more I think about it, the more this sounds like the greatest game of all time.
City of Heroes has trolls. Which are kind of like Orcs.
Me have body by Superdyne!
-- anonymous Troll in Skyway City
Then again, maybe not. It IS fun, though.
I would so totally buy that if it were
Pirates v Ninjas v Zombies v Robots v Monkeys
and I'd pre-order it if it were
Pirates v Ninjas v Zombies v Robots v Monkeys v Pimps, since that would be proof of the vibrant "Urban Theme"
Yeah, I vaugely recall AT&T's then-CEO bitching about google traffic on his network in the fall of 2004. At the time I thought he was fucking nuts.
There's a sign that I drive by a couple times every day for the local "Urban" radio station, advertising the morning show with "Tre, the Choklit Jok." It drives me insane every time I see it. I can't imagine who would find that combination of misspellings appealing or even appropriate, and it makes me wonder about the people who listen to that station. Are they all illiterate? Is "Tre" such a moron that he can't be bothered to add the "c" between the "o" and the "k"? Is there some greater factor of ineffable coolness in being "the Choklit Jok" instead of "the Chocolate Jock"?
Also, people who use IM-speak, even when instant messaging, should be fed to a woodchipper Fargo-style. Hopefully, when I rule the world, this edict will carry the force of law.
The A+ exam certifies that someone has a level of knowledge equivalent to six months of job experience as a computer tech. Older versions of the exam certified someone had the equivalent of 18 months. Needless to say, the difference between the tests is fairly massive.
I train people for both Microsoft and CompTIA certifications. Most of the people I see in classes are either just looking for additional knowledge and don't care about the cert, or so wrapped up in getting certified that they don't pay much attention to what I'm actually teaching. Unfortunately, it's the guys in the second category who seem be the ones who go out and look for those corporate consulting jobs.
Even though I think of A+, Network+ and certain of the Microsoft exams as dead simple, the truth is that if someone has actually absorbed everything they're supposed to know to pass those tests, they really *do* know a lot about PCs, Windows and repair work. IF they retain the information.
I don't think the "entry level" ceritification exams do a very good job of requiring people to synthesize information, and there's no way to test how much they've retained after six months. So the certs do wind up being kind of pointless. It's frustrating to me as a professional techie and as a trainer, but on the other hand most organizations that need techs don't have the time or ability to generate their own metrics for tech skills, so we kind of have to live with the meaningless certs.
Dreamhost has been wonderful for me and for all of the people I've turned onto it. I've used some really crappy hosting in the past, my personal favorite being a hosting company that wouldn't allow FTP access to anything.
Dreamhost has been reliable and seems to be pre-configured for everything I've ever wanted to do or try.
The couple of times I've had support issues, I've gotten responses in around a half hour.
No complaints. I'm happy to give them my money and to suggest others do likewise.
I have an SACD player. And a DVD-Audio player. And on a month-to-month basis I buy essentially every disc of classical music released in both formats. Yes, I'm a niche enthusiast, but I love the hell out of my surround sound orchestral music.
:) HDDVD generically isn't bringing anything to the table except confusion among potential consumers.
Joe Sixpack - at least in the form of the Steelworkers I see every day - has the equipment to enjoy HDaudio. These guys all have surround sound systems that they mostly bought as part of a kit with a DVD player three or four years ago. Maybe they have it hooked up right and maybe they don't, but they do have the equipment.
Of course, these are also guys who aren't aware that DVDs have commentary tracks or subtitles that can be turned on or off...
HDVideo is being pushed on us early largely because DVD is considered by content owners to be much too easy to pirate. The technology (e.g. HDMI, let alone a disc format) isn't ready for prime time, nor is there anything like a reasonable installed base of displays. Joe Sixpack might have a 50" SDTV, but even if he's got something better (and if he does, it's probably an EDTV, not an HDTV), he's probably much more impressed by the size of the screen than the quality of the picture.
Honestly, the most compelling argument I can make for HDTV (not necessarily HDDVD formats), is for detail-obsessed sports fanatics. Eight times as many pixels can make the argument over a referee's call that much more outrageous.
I think advancement of consumer AV pretty much stops at the point when there's no need to rewind a tape. Anything beyond that is in the realm of niche product, no matter who you are. Don't get me wrong: I'd rather have better picture or better sound on a physical medium than have some asstastic, compressed to hell proprietary computer file, but even as one of those people in the SACD/DVDA niche, I can't see anyone caring about HD-video yet.