A lot of games with 'high end' graphics like Crysis or Age of Conan for example, have APPALLING color depth.
"High-end" graphics has nothing to do with colour depth, per se. I think that it has much more to do with:
(1) the "photo-realism" effect that those games were aiming for (as opposed to the "fantasy" setting of WoW); for better or worse, Age of Conan was aiming to be "dark and gritty", for instance; and,
(2) laziness on the part of the developers. For example, I think that both Age of Conan's and Crysis' opening levels were fairly colourful, but the colour tended to wash away as the game wore on, suggesting that the graphics artists spent more time at the beginning than the ending.
(In contrast, I was fairly impressed by a recent Star Wars: The Old Republic walkthrough video which showed a really vibrant, interesting universe.)
- WoW's graphics look dramatically out-of-date (after all, the game was released in 2004, with comparatively minor updates done over the years, and the polygon counts are simply too low) - zones appear to be completely unable to handle a load of, say, more than ~40 players actively engaged in close-quarters PvP combat (witness the 'Wintergrasp' zone)
That said, it is unlikely (in my opinion) that the lag you experience in WoW when there are many players in a zone has much to do with the graphics engine, and probably has much more to do with Blizzard's "backend". From what I have personally experienced as a WoW player (and as an experienced software developer), I suspect that their database server isn't able to keep up with the massive number of queries/inserts/deletes that are required during active PvP. This doesn't necessarily point to a problem with the DB engine itself -- it usually arises because of poor database layout (there is a certain "art" to database design, balancing normalization vs. redundancy to reduce query frequencies, setting up indices, and so forth), poor SQL (it never ceases to amaze me the kind of queries that some people write), and poor overall use of the system (meaning, the server is simply processing so much information that it gets bogged down). I think that this is a fundamental issue with the WoW server/backend which has existed in the game from its inception, but which had been cleverly hidden in most regular play scenarios (e.g., generally by imposing a 40-man cap in the instanced dungeons/battlegrounds/etc.).
Given my conjecturing, I didn't find it at all surprising that Blizzard has a job open specifically focused on "performance implications of database architecture choices". But of course, this is all an opinion & speculation, so who really knows.
MS Word isn't "more widely used than TeX" in the academic community.
In a typical IEEE or ACM journal or conference, I would estimate that easily 98% of the papers are written in LaTeX (judging by the fonts and the layouts).
And, at least in engineering, most Master's or Doctoral theses are written in LaTeX.
The reasons for this are simple:
(1) BibTeX offers better bibliography formatting & support than anything provided by MS Word.
(2) When used in combination with a source code control system like CVS, LaTeX simplifies collaborative document writing. (e.g., multiple researchers can work on the same.tex file and simply have CVS merge changes together.)
(3) Writing complex documents -- such as a doctoral thesis -- where one must have a ToC, LoF, LoT, and multiple appendices each with their own bibliography can require a substantial amount of time to format in MS Word. (You'll be inserting section breaks, worrying about running vs. non-continuous headers & footers, page number consistency, and so forth.) On the other hand, these tasks are largely taken care of for you by existing LaTeX templates.
(4) Various advantages when representing complex equations.
As a Waterloo grad student, I can say for sure that Waterloo's relaxed IP policies help in securing funding from industry.... (Companies are more likely to fund research if they can benefit from it directly, and they can do so more easily when the researchers that they fund are not hindered by draconian IP regulations.)
> most people are not even knowledgeable enough > about their computers to even understand what > free software is all about, why it matters, and > why they should care.
To add to this, I think that there are many people who are familiar with free software, but who do not want to go to Stallman's extent of refusing to use or interact with non-free software.
Personally, I view software like I view any other tool in my workshop: I have some tools that I've made myself (on a lathe and all), I have some tools that I was given for free, and I have some tools that I went to Home Depot and bought outright. I use each of them, in different ways, for different tasks in order to maximize my overall efficiency and minimize my overhead.
In much the same way, I use free software for some tasks and commercial software for others. To blindly commit myself to using either free or non-free software would severely impact my productivity.
(I think that there are a lot of people who employ a similar, "moderate" philosophy.)
I've never understood the draw behind "neural networks"... it's a really cool-sounding term for an otherwise not-so-exciting algorithm.
A neural network lets you determine an approximation to a function for which there may be no closed-form expression. It's basically a piece-wise linear approximation with heuristic edge-waiting, where the edge weights are "trained" by inputting numerous samples to the "neural network".
(1) *qualified* people who've used oscilloscopes from all three of these manufacturers (2) *and* who are willing to take the time to write out a lengthy reply to your questions.
You are, however, likely to find people who've used 1 brand (largely because their employers/universities had a contract with a specific supplier). So you may get some firm opinions about one company or another, but probably not much unbiased consensus.
So, the only way to form a complete, impartial comparison is for you to try out the scopes yourself; contact an authorized dealer for each of the major manufacturers, and ask to try out the models in your price range.
Doing your own due diligence is the only way that you'll be able to answer your questions to any high degree of satisfaction. This isn't an example of where you should trust random comments from the interwebz to help you do your job.
... and having lived in California for a year (in 2005), I came to realize that the US banking system was a bit backwards compared to what I'd been used to.
In Canada, all of the "utilities" withdraw funds directly from my account -- gas, electricity, water, mortgage, telephone. If a company ever made a mistake, I can call up my bank and have them undo the transaction. There is no risk, in this regard. I don't go to sleep at night because the bank is on my side.
There are some companies that will charge my credit card; this includes my car insurance and my cable tv / cellphone / ISP. I like it when my CC gets charged because I get 1% cash back.
> That was fundementally the flaw with the entire > game, it just wasn't designed. Things didn't > "click".
So true. And you were dead-on with your assessment about the arrangement of zones and lack of fast travel. By the time that I had played for a month or two, it had become clear to me that Funcom had released AoC way too early, and I got fed up with being a paying beta-tester.
I felt that there were just so many elements of AoC which were interesting in theory but terrible in implementation... and many other things that were just so bad from the get-go that it made me wonder if they had hired these guys to do their playtesting.
I am both a former WoW and AOC player. I got to level 71 in AOC before I finally called it quits; most of my friends quit a week or two before I did.
The game had a lot of potential, and the hype led me to buy it before I had read the reviews. But the potential to be good is not the same as *actually* being good.
AOC was riddled with bugs and was largely incomplete. Almost every aspect of the game had something wrong with it -- there were zones that were entirely broken (e.g., the Pyramid), character talents that didn't work, and hardware compatibility issues. The crafting, gathering, and siege systems were also largely non-functional, and I'm not sure if gear stats actually did anything.
There were other, more fundamental problems with the game, for me. For example, the zoning system (and load screens) really detracted from the "grandiose" feel. The look of the earlier levels felt fresh & innovative, but the end game was dreary and ill-conceived -- just about every zone from the Field of the Dead onward involved snowy, ice-covered mountains populated by angry humans, serpents, cavemen, and bears.
AOC lacked a certain "magical" feel that WoW had engendered in me. Leveling in WoW was about starting in a tiny corner of a huge world, and over time, coming to realize just how enormous the game world was -- how many different types of landscapes, enemies, and hidden "gems" there were. AOC, on the other hand, felt small -- by level 50, I had visited every outdoor zone, and apart from the aforementioned creature types, there just wasn't that much variety. Sure, it may be true to Howard's lore, but it felt boring nonetheless.
The zones and character design did little to encourage any "emotion" while playing -- while WoW's Duskwood felt "creepy" and Ashenvale felt "alive", AOC simply just... was. Play-wise, I was never concerned about being ganked by a human player or accidentally running into a mob that was too potent (for my level-appropriate zone) because I was almost always able to run away, even when attacked by characters 10 levels higher. Against same-level mobs, I almost never ran out of mana, and found myself grinding enemies in groups of 6 at a time. The most amusement that I had stemmed from figuring out how many critters I could pull at once without dying.
While it may have been a "smooth" launch for an MMO, it availed itself to be an unpolished, largely unfinished game. I don't like the idea of paying to beta-test other people's software, and found the game to be fairly disappointing.
I won't be partaking in AOC's "ongoing beta", and I doubt that their expansion will be any better. But I may consider WoW's next expansion -- if anything, my experience with AOC has taught me just how well Blizzard play-tests its games.
My Great Aunt was the first female high school principal in the city in which I grew up. She was both witty and strong-willed, and achieved success in both her personal and professional lives.
She passed away from Alzheimer's, perhaps the most degrading, saddening, awful disease that I can imagine. In a sense, it is a fate worse than death -- it robs 'you' of *you*. It's torturous for the afflicted -- there was a period of a few weeks or months where my Great Aunt would wake up every day and have to be reminded that her parents had already passed away. It's equally unpleasant for friends or family of the patient.
The story of my Great Aunt probably isn't all that different from that of a family member that you may know. I imagine that anyone that has seen a loved one succumb to this illness would agree that this disease has to be stopped....
LaTeX has become a virtual standard for scientific & mathematical publication, so I don't think you're going to find much in the way of replacements any time soon.
Ever try to submit a conference or journal paper to an IEEE or ACM publication? Some will allow you to submit in Word format, but most will ask you to submit the camera-ready copy in LaTeX.
LaTeX isn't without its faults, to be sure, but it's simply unbeatable when it comes to publishing acceptably-formatted academic papers.
Regarding some of your points, I think that most of them will be cleared up as you become more proficient with the language.
- Under Linux, I find that tetex has almost all of the packages that I require, and under Windows, I find that MikTex has even more.
- "you need to know commands for everything"... I can't disagree that LaTeX has a sharp learning curve, but the same can be said of any programming language.
- "table composition is torture"... Yes, it is.
- "image insertion is an odyssey if you don't have the 'right' format"... Use OpenOffice Draw to export your picture to ".eps". (Be sure to export just the "selected" image, so that it creates an eps bounding box.) This will solve 99% of your LaTeX image problems.
- "you need to be a LaTeX Jedi master to create a new document class"... Most people should not have to create a document class -- they can comfortably start off with an "article" or "report" class and override many of the basic settings. This typically works for most cases. It's quite rare that I've seen anyone having to create a whole new document class when there are many such classes already made and available for free download. (Plus, the typical IEEE or ACM conference usually has their own style files.)
- "the compiler metaphor"... It's the compiler metaphor which makes LaTeX so powerful, in my opinion. If you read Knuth's TeX book, you'll find that Knuth did this on purpose because (to quickly summarize) he wanted people to focus less on layout and more on writing.
> you will surely have more insight into why Vista
> is a complete disaster due to Microsoft not
> learning anything from their experiences from XP.
The ONLY thing that this email shows is that, as a CEO, Bill Gates had some strong technical opinions about individual products being planned/offered by his company.
It doesn't mean that Microsoft hasn't "learned" from its XP mistakes -- the e-mail isn't related to XP or Vista. For that matter, it isn't related to anything other than MovieMaker, and the comments by a senior member of technical staff (in this case, the CEO) pointing out serious deficiencies about a product. (Perhaps the submitter doesn't work in the industry, but I can say with confidence that this kind of thing occasionally happens in pretty much all of the high-tech companies at which I've worked.)
I thought that Crysis was fun. But the final 1/4 of the single player game left much to be desired -- it was buggy as hell. (Falling through the world in the final boss fight, anyone?)
I expect that a game of this calibre should actually be finishable -- not be impossible to complete because of clipping issues with the world terrain and corrupted savegames. Their lack of support on Patch 1.3 is a slap in the face.
I urge you to download the UT3 demo and try it out for yourself before buying it.
As a huge fan of UT2k4, I was really looking forward to playing the demo for UT3... and I was extremely disappointed. For numerous reasons, I feel that Epic really slaughtered what was once a great game series. And I'm not alone; there are a ton of unhappy folk over at the UT3 Beta Feedback forum.
I've since played the COD4 demo and the Crysis demo. And Crysis will be getting my business. Its gameplay is awesome, the AI is great, and the graphics are stunning. (I really didn't enjoy FarCry very much, but Crysis has me hooked -- I've played through the demo several times already and am just amazed by how well-refined and fun-to-play it is.) Get a copy of the demo and check it out.
Of course, the software has to be installed by the owner of the Blackberry, but it would not be surprising to find out that someone has found a way to silently auto-install that software on RIM devices.
huh?! "It would not be surprising"??? Actually, I think that that would be surprising.
The fact that I can install software on my own device which allows calls to be recorded should not really come as a surprise. But if someone else could install said software without my knowledge or touching my device... well, then we would have a problem.
This article (and its segue) would best be labelled as anti-Blackberry FUD.
I've been a university student for ~11 years (bachelor's, master's, and finishing up my PhD). As university students, we tend to have little income and fairly regular (tuition) payments. (Although, scholarships and occasional co-op work terms/internships can produce "spikes" of surplus cash, and the question then becomes how to manage this influx optimally.)
Here's some brief advice based on my own experiences... I don't have the willpower to go into lengthy explanations for each point, so the first thing that I can recommend is that you start by doing some background reading. (Also, I'm skipping all of the mundane advice like "live frugally" because you've probably heard most of it before, and you want a non-bullshit answer.)
0) Pick up the "Intelligent Investor" by Graham, revised edition with commentary by Zweig. Then, read everything at: http://www.bylo.org./ When done, read everything at: http://www.ndir.com./ Once you have established this basis, you will probably understand & agree with my following comments more closely.
1) Pay off your debts first. Do not invest money while you still have debt -- paying off a 19.75% credit card balance will reap you more money than any average investment. Let me repeat that, because most people are retards and don't get this point. Do not put a cent of money into a mutual fund or stock until your debt level equals $0.00. Capiche?
2) Open an ING Direct savings account. It's free, it pays high interest, and it's secure. (I've been a customer with the Canadian version of ING Direct for more than 7 years.) Keep your spare cash there. This includes any money that you make on co-op work terms (or summer jobs, etc.).
3) Build up a sufficient supply of cash in your ING account -- enough to pay for the next 2-4 terms (or whatever you feel comfortable with). This is your "margin of safety" cash -- don't touch it. It's used in the event that you lose your job, crash your car, etc.
4) At this point, you have no debt, and you have reached your "margin of safety" amount. Once you have built up an additional $3k to $5k on top of your margin of safety, open up a discount brokerage account (e.g., E-Trade).
5) Now, start to build a "couch potato portfolio". Buy an S&P500 ETF (called a "SPY"der, in the States) from iUnits/iShares. (I recommend waiting until you have $3k to $5k to minimize the effect of brokerage commissions, as a percentage of the amount invested.)
6) Every subsequent $3k to $5k that you save is then used to build up a diversified portfolio of (a total of) 3 or 4 ETFs covering the S&P500, the NASDAQ, MSCI EAFE, and possibly a Japaense/European/Canadian index. Over time (as the evidence suggested at http://www.bylo.org/ would suggest), your low-cost ETF portfolio will outperform a vast majority of actively-managed mutual funds, and it requires relatively little maintenance on your part. This is exactly the kind of portfolio you want to build as a student -- you want an investment platform that you can put on "cruise control" while you focus on more important things (like studying, partying, getting a girlfriend/boyfriend, etc.).
By the time you're ready to move on to more advanced stock/bond investing, you will probably know that there are better forums for these kinds of questions, and you will go there. Good luck.
I've seen a number of people asking how a single-player RPG can be as compelling or as fun as an MMO, and wanted to take a second to address that. I played WoW -- my first MMO -- for over 9 months, levelling my priest to 60 and various alts to mid-40s. I played every instance in the game (at the time), and had some epics. All told, I had a relatively enjoyable experience. But there were a number of factors that pushed me away from WoW, and whose absences I consider to be very compelling advantages for single player RPGs.
1) The time commitment became unreasonable. I got married, and found myself unable (and unwilling) to devote 3+ contiguous hours per night on raids. (I felt that it was more important for me to spend time with my wife.) Single player RPGs, on the other hand, provide instant-action, and allow you to save the game, turn the computer off, and come back to it at a more convenient time.
2) MMOs become quite reptitious. After 6+ months at level 60, in WoW, having run {Scholo,Strat,ZG,MC,etc.} for the umpteenth time, the game becomes a little long in the tooth. Moddable RPGs, on the other hand, can be enhanced with new scenarios that keep things fresh and entertaining. And, if the single player game becomes boring, it tends to be a lot easier to "walk away" from; after all, you're only "out" the cost of the boxed game -- you don't have a "built up" investment in months' worth of online play that keeps sucking you back into playing.
3) Guild drama, in an MMO, can become annoying. Having to deal with people whining about small things (loot, class roles [feral druids, shadow priests *gasp*], and so forth) can be amusing in small doses, but it can also eat away at you. The only drama in single player games is created by you. (Or, conversely, your spouse, if she sees you playing when you should be cleaning the dishes.:) )
4) MMOs tend to offer worse (possibly less immersive) story lines than single player RPGs. Some single player RPGs, including Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, have fantastic stories which will leave you feeling happy and satisfied by the end.
5) There are a slew of other issues in MMOs that don't usually affect single player RPGs, such as prolonged server downtimes, long queue times, class imbalances, "griefers", and so on. These issues can build up over time and ultimately serve to turn people off.
It is in the interest of all shareholders, including the company's employees and officers, that the share price achieves some stability.
I feel that this is incorrect -- Google and its board of directors have a responsibility to ensure that the company remains stable and grows at a reasonable rate. By and large, Google is not responsible for ensuring that its share price become "stable" -- that is for the investors on Wall street to decide.
It is not uncommon, incidentally, for companies not to offer quarterly guidance. This is particularly the case with companies and in industries that are cyclical (e.g., perhaps they sell more apples in May to August, but practically none in January to April). Berkshire Hathaway offers only a single, yearly report (no quarterly updates), for, as explained by Warren Buffett (its CEO), quarterly guidance merely serves to satiate the manic-depressive Wall Street than to give meaningful insight into company operations.
I think that the fact that Google has chosen not to offer guidance is a good thing, since it is still growing its core business and may go several months with negative earnings (e.g., it might be expending lots on R&D, buying businesses, or building infrastructure) despite positive growth on a yearly basis.
We are online again the WorldWind application can be downloaded from the following mirrors:
BEST:
http://128.102.102.126:9080/mirror/worldwind-1_2 .z ip http://128.102.102.129:9080/mirror/worldwind-1 _2.z ip http://kiosk.arc.nasa.gov:8090/worldwind-1_2.z ip http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/archivetmps/worldwind-1 _2.z ip
... ever consider Sybase's SQL Anywhere Studio? The suite costs $400 USD, and comes with a database engine (and other programs to help you create forms, etc.). Some alternate links here and here.
The Adaptive Server Anywhere RDBMS is rock-solid and fast, and runs under Linux. It integrates nicely with any ODBC-based (or JDBC-based) front-end application, and offers true SQL99 compliance. It also has Java support built into it, so you could actually run a web server from within the DB engine. I've been using it quite happily for a few years.
Redhat 9 and Fedora Core 1 both ship with JFS support -- the graphical installer, however, does not offer it as an option.
So, what I usually do when installing a new copy of Fedora or Redhat is to drop to a console, and use fdisk + mkfs.jfs manually. Then, when I get to the right page in the installer, I can simply set it to not reformat the partition but to use it as the "/" mount point, and voila -- my computer has JFS.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of games with 'high end' graphics like Crysis or Age of Conan for example, have APPALLING color depth.
"High-end" graphics has nothing to do with colour depth, per se. I think that it has much more to do with:
(1) the "photo-realism" effect that those games were aiming for (as opposed to the "fantasy" setting of WoW); for better or worse, Age of Conan was aiming to be "dark and gritty", for instance; and,
(2) laziness on the part of the developers. For example, I think that both Age of Conan's and Crysis' opening levels were fairly colourful, but the colour tended to wash away as the game wore on, suggesting that the graphics artists spent more time at the beginning than the ending.
(In contrast, I was fairly impressed by a recent Star Wars: The Old Republic walkthrough video which showed a really vibrant, interesting universe.)
You bring up two interesting points:
- WoW's graphics look dramatically out-of-date (after all, the game was released in 2004, with comparatively minor updates done over the years, and the polygon counts are simply too low)
- zones appear to be completely unable to handle a load of, say, more than ~40 players actively engaged in close-quarters PvP combat (witness the 'Wintergrasp' zone)
That said, it is unlikely (in my opinion) that the lag you experience in WoW when there are many players in a zone has much to do with the graphics engine, and probably has much more to do with Blizzard's "backend". From what I have personally experienced as a WoW player (and as an experienced software developer), I suspect that their database server isn't able to keep up with the massive number of queries/inserts/deletes that are required during active PvP. This doesn't necessarily point to a problem with the DB engine itself -- it usually arises because of poor database layout (there is a certain "art" to database design, balancing normalization vs. redundancy to reduce query frequencies, setting up indices, and so forth), poor SQL (it never ceases to amaze me the kind of queries that some people write), and poor overall use of the system (meaning, the server is simply processing so much information that it gets bogged down). I think that this is a fundamental issue with the WoW server/backend which has existed in the game from its inception, but which had been cleverly hidden in most regular play scenarios (e.g., generally by imposing a 40-man cap in the instanced dungeons/battlegrounds/etc.).
Given my conjecturing, I didn't find it at all surprising that Blizzard has a job open specifically focused on "performance implications of database architecture choices". But of course, this is all an opinion & speculation, so who really knows.
MS Word isn't "more widely used than TeX" in the academic community.
In a typical IEEE or ACM journal or conference, I would estimate that easily 98% of the papers are written in LaTeX (judging by the fonts and the layouts).
And, at least in engineering, most Master's or Doctoral theses are written in LaTeX.
The reasons for this are simple:
(1) BibTeX offers better bibliography formatting & support than anything provided by MS Word.
(2) When used in combination with a source code control system like CVS, LaTeX simplifies collaborative document writing. (e.g., multiple researchers can work on the same .tex file and simply have CVS merge changes together.)
(3) Writing complex documents -- such as a doctoral thesis -- where one must have a ToC, LoF, LoT, and multiple appendices each with their own bibliography can require a substantial amount of time to format in MS Word. (You'll be inserting section breaks, worrying about running vs. non-continuous headers & footers, page number consistency, and so forth.) On the other hand, these tasks are largely taken care of for you by existing LaTeX templates.
(4) Various advantages when representing complex equations.
As a Waterloo grad student, I can say for sure that Waterloo's relaxed IP policies help in securing funding from industry.... (Companies are more likely to fund research if they can benefit from it directly, and they can do so more easily when the researchers that they fund are not hindered by draconian IP regulations.)
> most people are not even knowledgeable enough
> about their computers to even understand what
> free software is all about, why it matters, and
> why they should care.
To add to this, I think that there are many people who are familiar with free software, but who do not want to go to Stallman's extent of refusing to use or interact with non-free software.
Personally, I view software like I view any other tool in my workshop: I have some tools that I've made myself (on a lathe and all), I have some tools that I was given for free, and I have some tools that I went to Home Depot and bought outright. I use each of them, in different ways, for different tasks in order to maximize my overall efficiency and minimize my overhead.
In much the same way, I use free software for some tasks and commercial software for others. To blindly commit myself to using either free or non-free software would severely impact my productivity.
(I think that there are a lot of people who employ a similar, "moderate" philosophy.)
I've never understood the draw behind "neural networks" ... it's a really cool-sounding term for an otherwise not-so-exciting algorithm.
A neural network lets you determine an approximation to a function for which there may be no closed-form expression. It's basically a piece-wise linear approximation with heuristic edge-waiting, where the edge weights are "trained" by inputting numerous samples to the "neural network".
I highly doubt that you will find ...
(1) *qualified* people who've used oscilloscopes from all three of these manufacturers
(2) *and* who are willing to take the time to write out a lengthy reply to your questions.
You are, however, likely to find people who've used 1 brand (largely because their employers/universities had a contract with a specific supplier). So you may get some firm opinions about one company or another, but probably not much unbiased consensus.
So, the only way to form a complete, impartial comparison is for you to try out the scopes yourself; contact an authorized dealer for each of the major manufacturers, and ask to try out the models in your price range.
Doing your own due diligence is the only way that you'll be able to answer your questions to any high degree of satisfaction. This isn't an example of where you should trust random comments from the interwebz to help you do your job.
... and having lived in California for a year (in 2005), I came to realize that the US banking system was a bit backwards compared to what I'd been used to.
In Canada, all of the "utilities" withdraw funds directly from my account -- gas, electricity, water, mortgage, telephone. If a company ever made a mistake, I can call up my bank and have them undo the transaction. There is no risk, in this regard. I don't go to sleep at night because the bank is on my side.
There are some companies that will charge my credit card; this includes my car insurance and my cable tv / cellphone / ISP. I like it when my CC gets charged because I get 1% cash back.
> That was fundementally the flaw with the entire
> game, it just wasn't designed. Things didn't
> "click".
So true. And you were dead-on with your assessment about the arrangement of zones and lack of fast travel. By the time that I had played for a month or two, it had become clear to me that Funcom had released AoC way too early, and I got fed up with being a paying beta-tester.
I felt that there were just so many elements of AoC which were interesting in theory but terrible in implementation ... and many other things that were just so bad from the get-go that it made me wonder if they had hired these guys to do their playtesting.
I am both a former WoW and AOC player. I got to level 71 in AOC before I finally called it quits; most of my friends quit a week or two before I did.
The game had a lot of potential, and the hype led me to buy it before I had read the reviews. But the potential to be good is not the same as *actually* being good.
AOC was riddled with bugs and was largely incomplete. Almost every aspect of the game had something wrong with it -- there were zones that were entirely broken (e.g., the Pyramid), character talents that didn't work, and hardware compatibility issues. The crafting, gathering, and siege systems were also largely non-functional, and I'm not sure if gear stats actually did anything.
There were other, more fundamental problems with the game, for me. For example, the zoning system (and load screens) really detracted from the "grandiose" feel. The look of the earlier levels felt fresh & innovative, but the end game was dreary and ill-conceived -- just about every zone from the Field of the Dead onward involved snowy, ice-covered mountains populated by angry humans, serpents, cavemen, and bears.
AOC lacked a certain "magical" feel that WoW had engendered in me. Leveling in WoW was about starting in a tiny corner of a huge world, and over time, coming to realize just how enormous the game world was -- how many different types of landscapes, enemies, and hidden "gems" there were. AOC, on the other hand, felt small -- by level 50, I had visited every outdoor zone, and apart from the aforementioned creature types, there just wasn't that much variety. Sure, it may be true to Howard's lore, but it felt boring nonetheless.
The zones and character design did little to encourage any "emotion" while playing -- while WoW's Duskwood felt "creepy" and Ashenvale felt "alive", AOC simply just ... was. Play-wise, I was never concerned about being ganked by a human player or accidentally running into a mob that was too potent (for my level-appropriate zone) because I was almost always able to run away, even when attacked by characters 10 levels higher. Against same-level mobs, I almost never ran out of mana, and found myself grinding enemies in groups of 6 at a time. The most amusement that I had stemmed from figuring out how many critters I could pull at once without dying.
While it may have been a "smooth" launch for an MMO, it availed itself to be an unpolished, largely unfinished game. I don't like the idea of paying to beta-test other people's software, and found the game to be fairly disappointing.
I won't be partaking in AOC's "ongoing beta", and I doubt that their expansion will be any better. But I may consider WoW's next expansion -- if anything, my experience with AOC has taught me just how well Blizzard play-tests its games.
My Great Aunt was the first female high school principal in the city in which I grew up. She was both witty and strong-willed, and achieved success in both her personal and professional lives.
She passed away from Alzheimer's, perhaps the most degrading, saddening, awful disease that I can imagine. In a sense, it is a fate worse than death -- it robs 'you' of *you*. It's torturous for the afflicted -- there was a period of a few weeks or months where my Great Aunt would wake up every day and have to be reminded that her parents had already passed away. It's equally unpleasant for friends or family of the patient.
The story of my Great Aunt probably isn't all that different from that of a family member that you may know. I imagine that anyone that has seen a loved one succumb to this illness would agree that this disease has to be stopped....
LaTeX has become a virtual standard for scientific & mathematical publication, so I don't think you're going to find much in the way of replacements any time soon.
... I can't disagree that LaTeX has a sharp learning curve, but the same can be said of any programming language.
... Yes, it is.
... Use OpenOffice Draw to export your picture to ".eps". (Be sure to export just the "selected" image, so that it creates an eps bounding box.) This will solve 99% of your LaTeX image problems.
... Most people should not have to create a document class -- they can comfortably start off with an "article" or "report" class and override many of the basic settings. This typically works for most cases. It's quite rare that I've seen anyone having to create a whole new document class when there are many such classes already made and available for free download. (Plus, the typical IEEE or ACM conference usually has their own style files.)
... It's the compiler metaphor which makes LaTeX so powerful, in my opinion. If you read Knuth's TeX book, you'll find that Knuth did this on purpose because (to quickly summarize) he wanted people to focus less on layout and more on writing.
Ever try to submit a conference or journal paper to an IEEE or ACM publication? Some will allow you to submit in Word format, but most will ask you to submit the camera-ready copy in LaTeX.
LaTeX isn't without its faults, to be sure, but it's simply unbeatable when it comes to publishing acceptably-formatted academic papers.
Regarding some of your points, I think that most of them will be cleared up as you become more proficient with the language.
- Under Linux, I find that tetex has almost all of the packages that I require, and under Windows, I find that MikTex has even more.
- "you need to know commands for everything"
- "table composition is torture"
- "image insertion is an odyssey if you don't have the 'right' format"
- "you need to be a LaTeX Jedi master to create a new document class"
- "the compiler metaphor"
> you will surely have more insight into why Vista
> is a complete disaster due to Microsoft not
> learning anything from their experiences from XP.
The ONLY thing that this email shows is that, as a CEO, Bill Gates had some strong technical opinions about individual products being planned/offered by his company.
It doesn't mean that Microsoft hasn't "learned" from its XP mistakes -- the e-mail isn't related to XP or Vista. For that matter, it isn't related to anything other than MovieMaker, and the comments by a senior member of technical staff (in this case, the CEO) pointing out serious deficiencies about a product. (Perhaps the submitter doesn't work in the industry, but I can say with confidence that this kind of thing occasionally happens in pretty much all of the high-tech companies at which I've worked.)
I thought that Crysis was fun. But the final 1/4 of the single player game left much to be desired -- it was buggy as hell. (Falling through the world in the final boss fight, anyone?)
I expect that a game of this calibre should actually be finishable -- not be impossible to complete because of clipping issues with the world terrain and corrupted savegames. Their lack of support on Patch 1.3 is a slap in the face.
I urge you to download the UT3 demo and try it out for yourself before buying it.
As a huge fan of UT2k4, I was really looking forward to playing the demo for UT3... and I was extremely disappointed. For numerous reasons, I feel that Epic really slaughtered what was once a great game series. And I'm not alone; there are a ton of unhappy folk over at the UT3 Beta Feedback forum.
I've since played the COD4 demo and the Crysis demo. And Crysis will be getting my business. Its gameplay is awesome, the AI is great, and the graphics are stunning. (I really didn't enjoy FarCry very much, but Crysis has me hooked -- I've played through the demo several times already and am just amazed by how well-refined and fun-to-play it is.) Get a copy of the demo and check it out.
Of course, the software has to be installed by the owner of the Blackberry, but it would not be surprising to find out that someone has found a way to silently auto-install that software on RIM devices.
... well, then we would have a problem.
huh?! "It would not be surprising"??? Actually, I think that that would be surprising.
The fact that I can install software on my own device which allows calls to be recorded should not really come as a surprise. But if someone else could install said software without my knowledge or touching my device
This article (and its segue) would best be labelled as anti-Blackberry FUD.
Rational Purify is probably the best tool on the market.
... wearing any pants? I mean, could they have picked a less flattering picture?
I've been a university student for ~11 years (bachelor's, master's, and finishing up my PhD). As university students, we tend to have little income and fairly regular (tuition) payments. (Although, scholarships and occasional co-op work terms/internships can produce "spikes" of surplus cash, and the question then becomes how to manage this influx optimally.)
Here's some brief advice based on my own experiences... I don't have the willpower to go into lengthy explanations for each point, so the first thing that I can recommend is that you start by doing some background reading. (Also, I'm skipping all of the mundane advice like "live frugally" because you've probably heard most of it before, and you want a non-bullshit answer.)
0) Pick up the "Intelligent Investor" by Graham, revised edition with commentary by Zweig. Then, read everything at: http://www.bylo.org./ When done, read everything at: http://www.ndir.com./ Once you have established this basis, you will probably understand & agree with my following comments more closely.
1) Pay off your debts first. Do not invest money while you still have debt -- paying off a 19.75% credit card balance will reap you more money than any average investment. Let me repeat that, because most people are retards and don't get this point. Do not put a cent of money into a mutual fund or stock until your debt level equals $0.00. Capiche?
2) Open an ING Direct savings account. It's free, it pays high interest, and it's secure. (I've been a customer with the Canadian version of ING Direct for more than 7 years.) Keep your spare cash there. This includes any money that you make on co-op work terms (or summer jobs, etc.).
3) Build up a sufficient supply of cash in your ING account -- enough to pay for the next 2-4 terms (or whatever you feel comfortable with). This is your "margin of safety" cash -- don't touch it. It's used in the event that you lose your job, crash your car, etc.
4) At this point, you have no debt, and you have reached your "margin of safety" amount. Once you have built up an additional $3k to $5k on top of your margin of safety, open up a discount brokerage account (e.g., E-Trade).
5) Now, start to build a "couch potato portfolio". Buy an S&P500 ETF (called a "SPY"der, in the States) from iUnits/iShares. (I recommend waiting until you have $3k to $5k to minimize the effect of brokerage commissions, as a percentage of the amount invested.)
6) Every subsequent $3k to $5k that you save is then used to build up a diversified portfolio of (a total of) 3 or 4 ETFs covering the S&P500, the NASDAQ, MSCI EAFE, and possibly a Japaense/European/Canadian index. Over time (as the evidence suggested at http://www.bylo.org/ would suggest), your low-cost ETF portfolio will outperform a vast majority of actively-managed mutual funds, and it requires relatively little maintenance on your part. This is exactly the kind of portfolio you want to build as a student -- you want an investment platform that you can put on "cruise control" while you focus on more important things (like studying, partying, getting a girlfriend/boyfriend, etc.).
By the time you're ready to move on to more advanced stock/bond investing, you will probably know that there are better forums for these kinds of questions, and you will go there. Good luck.
I've seen a number of people asking how a single-player RPG can be as compelling or as fun as an MMO, and wanted to take a second to address that. I played WoW -- my first MMO -- for over 9 months, levelling my priest to 60 and various alts to mid-40s. I played every instance in the game (at the time), and had some epics. All told, I had a relatively enjoyable experience. But there were a number of factors that pushed me away from WoW, and whose absences I consider to be very compelling advantages for single player RPGs.
:) )
1) The time commitment became unreasonable. I got married, and found myself unable (and unwilling) to devote 3+ contiguous hours per night on raids. (I felt that it was more important for me to spend time with my wife.) Single player RPGs, on the other hand, provide instant-action, and allow you to save the game, turn the computer off, and come back to it at a more convenient time.
2) MMOs become quite reptitious. After 6+ months at level 60, in WoW, having run {Scholo,Strat,ZG,MC,etc.} for the umpteenth time, the game becomes a little long in the tooth. Moddable RPGs, on the other hand, can be enhanced with new scenarios that keep things fresh and entertaining. And, if the single player game becomes boring, it tends to be a lot easier to "walk away" from; after all, you're only "out" the cost of the boxed game -- you don't have a "built up" investment in months' worth of online play that keeps sucking you back into playing.
3) Guild drama, in an MMO, can become annoying. Having to deal with people whining about small things (loot, class roles [feral druids, shadow priests *gasp*], and so forth) can be amusing in small doses, but it can also eat away at you. The only drama in single player games is created by you. (Or, conversely, your spouse, if she sees you playing when you should be cleaning the dishes.
4) MMOs tend to offer worse (possibly less immersive) story lines than single player RPGs. Some single player RPGs, including Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 2, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, have fantastic stories which will leave you feeling happy and satisfied by the end.
5) There are a slew of other issues in MMOs that don't usually affect single player RPGs, such as prolonged server downtimes, long queue times, class imbalances, "griefers", and so on. These issues can build up over time and ultimately serve to turn people off.
I feel that this is incorrect -- Google and its board of directors have a responsibility to ensure that the company remains stable and grows at a reasonable rate. By and large, Google is not responsible for ensuring that its share price become "stable" -- that is for the investors on Wall street to decide.
It is not uncommon, incidentally, for companies not to offer quarterly guidance. This is particularly the case with companies and in industries that are cyclical (e.g., perhaps they sell more apples in May to August, but practically none in January to April). Berkshire Hathaway offers only a single, yearly report (no quarterly updates), for, as explained by Warren Buffett (its CEO), quarterly guidance merely serves to satiate the manic-depressive Wall Street than to give meaningful insight into company operations.
I think that the fact that Google has chosen not to offer guidance is a good thing, since it is still growing its core business and may go several months with negative earnings (e.g., it might be expending lots on R&D, buying businesses, or building infrastructure) despite positive growth on a yearly basis.
"Music Phones": Because ring tones weren't annoying enough.
FYI ... This is from their webpage:
:
2 .z ip1 _2.z ipz ip1 _2.z ip
We are online again the WorldWind application can be downloaded from the following mirrors:
BEST
http://128.102.102.126:9080/mirror/worldwind-1_
http://128.102.102.129:9080/mirror/worldwind-
http://kiosk.arc.nasa.gov:8090/worldwind-1_2.
http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/archivetmps/worldwind-
... ever consider Sybase's SQL Anywhere Studio? The suite costs $400 USD, and comes with a database engine (and other programs to help you create forms, etc.). Some alternate links here and here.
The Adaptive Server Anywhere RDBMS is rock-solid and fast, and runs under Linux. It integrates nicely with any ODBC-based (or JDBC-based) front-end application, and offers true SQL99 compliance. It also has Java support built into it, so you could actually run a web server from within the DB engine. I've been using it quite happily for a few years.
Just a thought.
Redhat 9 and Fedora Core 1 both ship with JFS support -- the graphical installer, however, does not offer it as an option.
So, what I usually do when installing a new copy of Fedora or Redhat is to drop to a console, and use fdisk + mkfs.jfs manually. Then, when I get to the right page in the installer, I can simply set it to not reformat the partition but to use it as the "/" mount point, and voila -- my computer has JFS.