Real life is real and it is not a game based on chance. The RPG genre (of which MMOs are the newest incarnations) are not real and they are a game based on chance.
A few crude examples: - When you drive to work every day do you roll a d% to see if you make it there alive? - When you eat a sandwich, do you roll a fortitude save to not get poisoned? - Do you buy tons of flour, yeast, sugar and salt to grind your way to making a perfect roast? (I loved that cartoon, wish I had a link to it right now)
It is escapism because it's not real. It's a way to pass through life without facing it and it's a very common situation now a days. Add a touch of narcisism and denial with the real possibilities to escape from the real world and you have yourselves our times.
I'm sorry to shed such negative light on it but it's a social problem and denying won't do us any good.
I threw the wikipedia links in there to show I'm not making this up, virtual-selves is a problem and "it's just a game" or other cliches are oversimplifications to a greater problem.
I read the article last friday and was shocked because it wasn't a joke!
I've recently started playing an MMORPG that's very roleplay-oriented and I have a lot of fun interacting with all the different stories each character has but I find that some folks take the game WAY to seriously. I don't know, I'm firmly and happily planted in the real world and I escape to the virtual one for a bit of entertaining psychodrama at the price of a few hours of my nights.
I'd love to whip out the old cliche "it's just a game" but it would be an oversimplification of the situation but the article shoots the argument down.
There are folks that participate in online gaming as a means of escape - life is hell and they want another chance elsewhere and they live these lives online.
Boy, psychiatrists and psycologists are making a fortune these days!
I can understand clearly what he means, the world of online RPG - be it WoW or a NWN-Persistent World - is very compelling, especially when role playing is an important part of the game. It's clear that PnP games lack the visuals, special effects and dynamic movements of a MMO world.
That said and taking his advice into consideration, one problem still sticks out. Most pen and paper game have one GM while online games have, at least, a team of GMs - most aren't actually online all the time but they're all developing new content and quests for adhoc/preplaned parties of adventurers.
A PnP game needs to be scripted by the GM and conducted by him and that takes time and preparation, something that not all of them have.
Combat, in games, is decided in seconds (against weaker foes) but in a tabletop game, it might take a few minutes to squash a group of goblins, not to mention that combat has to be worked one player/monster at a time since the GM can only give full attention to one thing.
Good advice, but not very easily implemented without a computer with a NWN-like Aurora Toolkit to create your own fantasy world in.
You're assuming that in their culture they have the same values that you do.
I'm actually pretty sure they don't since even very close cultures, like the US and the UK, put different weights on different things. Take nudity on the TV - "wardrobe malfunctions" in the UK are laughed at when in the US they're to be feared because of the outrageous fundamentalist backlash.
I understand the waves of hatred towards Google for their chinese policy but I believe most people REALLY do take their liberty of access to information for granted.
Corporations do what they must to protect their intrests - see Ambrose Biere's "Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility." Google does it in China because they want a presence there as MSN and Yahoo and whatever-else-there-is-out-there.
Freedom of access to information is not an unalienable human right, in today's world, it's a privilege so enjoy it before someone comes and snaps it up from under you.
I really don't understand all the hatemongering about games, are people SO worried about "everybody elses's kids" that they ignore that teaching moral and ethics is the parents job?
This may be obvious but sometimes it's painfully obvious that the editor just doesn't bother actually reading the article and will submit an article that isn't a short blurb but plainly false and/or flame bait.
It may be hard work but a quick glance and a short two paragraph read isn't gonna kill anyone.
I find it obvious that they have absolutely no intention of changing from legacy MS-centric software to free software (be it what it may). Free software has oficially become a bargaining chip for corporations that want to bring down the cost of Microsoft solutions.
I think it's a bad move to REALLY throw the yoke on Microsoft. The IOC being savy business men they are, smell MS's fears in the air and they threaten Microsoft's costs down - just like AOL did with them a little while ago:
AOL: LOL! M$, lower your prices or we'll use Mozilla, it'z 1337! ROFLMO!!!!1 Microsoft: O RLY? Here! AOL: w00t. U teh r0x0rZ!!! Microsoft: WTF?
Not all that big (only 200Gb total) but if I got 3 of them HDs as payment on an old debt. I'm sure that if I had invested a little bit more I would have bought 4 SATA drives and rigged them up. Software raid isn't quick but it'll store stuff with the added bonus of allowing a drive to fail without losing anything.
If you're into spending more money for better performance, buy a SATA RAID (levels 0,1,5) controler, there are a few on the market that aren't overly expensive, and a few SATA drives - I got a TB solution at work for less than it cost to build a new user-level PC.
A great repository of mirrors of just about everything that has ever been written and released, not to mention massive, MASSIVE, bandwidth. They are just friggin' cool - cooler than sharks with lasers on their heads!!!!1
Here in Brazil, at least in the state that I live in, the defacto monopolistic telco is actually nice to us ADSL users:
300kbps with 10Gb limit for about R$ 60, US$ 20-ish 600kbps with 15Gb limit for about R$ 100, US$ 30-ish 1Mbps with 20Gb limit for about R$ 170, US$ 60-ish
The service, in my case at least, doesn't suck.
I'm actually happy with the service they offer - ignoring the asshat spammers that scan my firewall every 0.0001 seconds for an open relay, it's not a bad service, IMVHO.
I installed FC4 on my home PC last friday (finally throwing the yoke on MS software... until Civ IV comes out and I'll install XP on my spare partition).
I run FC2 (my work notebook) and FC3 (my work desktop) and I've run FC1 and I honestly believe that FC4 is, by far, the slickest and least bloated one of them.
My memory usage is minimal, right now it's at 25% (after 30 minutes farking and slashdoting, out of 512Mb of RAM). Disk thrashing is very low - for some strange reason despite having installed it on a software RAID5.
I confess that I tweaked my bootup sequence to reduce the non-essential software and I've also tweaked KDE to load less stuff that I never use but nothing that required my 1337-4dm1n sk1llz to do.
I've also not missed a lot of applications that have been moved off the main distro. The only packages I really missed were Xine and XMMS but I trust FreshRPMs with those two. Oh wait, I also missed the complete set of screensavers. As can be seen, nothing important was left out, just my favorite media apps and eyecandy.
About the missing Abiword (that I thought I'd miss), my 1Ghz P3 is loading OpenOffice Writer fast enough to not piss me off - it's not as fast as Abiword's loading, but it's FAR faster than the OpenOffice in FC3.
Let's see.... Yeah, that's about it - I really like the new Fedora Core despite the small little bumps that appear any time you change distribution versions, none of them, so far, have been show stopping.
Let me just add that TidyHTML reformats the code, strips out excessive tags, changes a few tags into CSS equivalents (if you allow it to do so), points out open tags and, what I like the most about it, it reindents the HTML to increase readibility.
I'm currently using Nvu and HTML Tidy to build my sites.
I'm tired of using non-standard tags and I'm also tired of making webpages with VI so I've started using Nvu. It's a true WYSIWYG editor but since it's not production-grade yet I run the pages through HTML Tidy to clean up the excessive tags and markups that might get left behind in Nvu.
It has a few nice tools and since it's Gecko-based it renders in Firefox exactly like it does in the editor.
For my javascript and php work I try really hard to use KWrite, it looks just like Notepad++ and is pretty neat, and vi ('cause I'm an CLI old-fart).
Slashdot Mirror
I see your point but I cannot agree with it.
Real life is real and it is not a game based on chance.
The RPG genre (of which MMOs are the newest incarnations) are not real and they are a game based on chance.
A few crude examples:
- When you drive to work every day do you roll a d% to see if you make it there alive?
- When you eat a sandwich, do you roll a fortitude save to not get poisoned?
- Do you buy tons of flour, yeast, sugar and salt to grind your way to making a perfect roast? (I loved that cartoon, wish I had a link to it right now)
It is escapism because it's not real. It's a way to pass through life without facing it and it's a very common situation now a days. Add a touch of narcisism and denial with the real possibilities to escape from the real world and you have yourselves our times.
I'm sorry to shed such negative light on it but it's a social problem and denying won't do us any good.
I threw the wikipedia links in there to show I'm not making this up, virtual-selves is a problem and "it's just a game" or other cliches are oversimplifications to a greater problem.
I read the article last friday and was shocked because it wasn't a joke!
I've recently started playing an MMORPG that's very roleplay-oriented and I have a lot of fun interacting with all the different stories each character has but I find that some folks take the game WAY to seriously. I don't know, I'm firmly and happily planted in the real world and I escape to the virtual one for a bit of entertaining psychodrama at the price of a few hours of my nights.
I'd love to whip out the old cliche "it's just a game" but it would be an oversimplification of the situation but the article shoots the argument down.
There are folks that participate in online gaming as a means of escape - life is hell and they want another chance elsewhere and they live these lives online.
Boy, psychiatrists and psycologists are making a fortune these days!
Netcat - I use it for almost everything network related and I'm not a networking guru.
I can understand clearly what he means, the world of online RPG - be it WoW or a NWN-Persistent World - is very compelling, especially when role playing is an important part of the game. It's clear that PnP games lack the visuals, special effects and dynamic movements of a MMO world.
That said and taking his advice into consideration, one problem still sticks out. Most pen and paper game have one GM while online games have, at least, a team of GMs - most aren't actually online all the time but they're all developing new content and quests for adhoc/preplaned parties of adventurers.
A PnP game needs to be scripted by the GM and conducted by him and that takes time and preparation, something that not all of them have.
Combat, in games, is decided in seconds (against weaker foes) but in a tabletop game, it might take a few minutes to squash a group of goblins, not to mention that combat has to be worked one player/monster at a time since the GM can only give full attention to one thing.
Good advice, but not very easily implemented without a computer with a NWN-like Aurora Toolkit to create your own fantasy world in.
You're assuming that in their culture they have the same values that you do.
I'm actually pretty sure they don't since even very close cultures, like the US and the UK, put different weights on different things. Take nudity on the TV - "wardrobe malfunctions" in the UK are laughed at when in the US they're to be feared because of the outrageous fundamentalist backlash.
UMD???
Ueapons of Mass Destruction?
I kid of course, UMDs are Universal Media Discs, in case, like me, you had no ideia what UMDs are.
I understand the waves of hatred towards Google for their chinese policy but I believe most people REALLY do take their liberty of access to information for granted.
Corporations do what they must to protect their intrests - see Ambrose Biere's "Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility." Google does it in China because they want a presence there as MSN and Yahoo and whatever-else-there-is-out-there.
Freedom of access to information is not an unalienable human right, in today's world, it's a privilege so enjoy it before someone comes and snaps it up from under you.
The subject says it all...
I really don't understand all the hatemongering about games, are people SO worried about "everybody elses's kids" that they ignore that teaching moral and ethics is the parents job?
This may be obvious but sometimes it's painfully obvious that the editor just doesn't bother actually reading the article and will submit an article that isn't a short blurb but plainly false and/or flame bait.
It may be hard work but a quick glance and a short two paragraph read isn't gonna kill anyone.
It doesn't matter, as long as you like it.
I'm a thunderbird user. Not because it's better or cooler, it's the one I'm used to using and I like it.
If you like Evolution, good for you. If you like Kmail, good for you. If you like Outlook, gasp, good for you!
As a dedicated techie, I think this is good.
As a stout catholic, condoms are evil and should not be used because every sperm is sacred.
As a dedicated techie that's also a stout catholic, I'm in a moral dilema! Couldn't they just have called this the "eAbstinence"?
I find it obvious that they have absolutely no intention of changing from legacy MS-centric software to free software (be it what it may). Free software has oficially become a bargaining chip for corporations that want to bring down the cost of Microsoft solutions.
I think it's a bad move to REALLY throw the yoke on Microsoft. The IOC being savy business men they are, smell MS's fears in the air and they threaten Microsoft's costs down - just like AOL did with them a little while ago:
AOL: LOL! M$, lower your prices or we'll use Mozilla, it'z 1337! ROFLMO!!!!1
Microsoft: O RLY? Here!
AOL: w00t. U teh r0x0rZ!!!
Microsoft: WTF?
A good editor, I remember really liking his selections of articles. I just hope he didn't pick up on the slashdot editor's habits of posting dupes.
That aside, I'll read it!
Software RAID5, I've got one along my 6 40Gb HDs.
Not all that big (only 200Gb total) but if I got 3 of them HDs as payment on an old debt. I'm sure that if I had invested a little bit more I would have bought 4 SATA drives and rigged them up. Software raid isn't quick but it'll store stuff with the added bonus of allowing a drive to fail without losing anything.
If you're into spending more money for better performance, buy a SATA RAID (levels 0,1,5) controler, there are a few on the market that aren't overly expensive, and a few SATA drives - I got a TB solution at work for less than it cost to build a new user-level PC.
The subject says it all really.
A great repository of mirrors of just about everything that has ever been written and released, not to mention massive, MASSIVE, bandwidth. They are just friggin' cool - cooler than sharks with lasers on their heads!!!!1
Thanks guys! You guys rock!
Here in Brazil, at least in the state that I live in, the defacto monopolistic telco is actually nice to us ADSL users:
300kbps with 10Gb limit for about R$ 60, US$ 20-ish
600kbps with 15Gb limit for about R$ 100, US$ 30-ish
1Mbps with 20Gb limit for about R$ 170, US$ 60-ish
The service, in my case at least, doesn't suck.
I'm actually happy with the service they offer - ignoring the asshat spammers that scan my firewall every 0.0001 seconds for an open relay, it's not a bad service, IMVHO.
I installed FC4 on my home PC last friday (finally throwing the yoke on MS software... until Civ IV comes out and I'll install XP on my spare partition).
I run FC2 (my work notebook) and FC3 (my work desktop) and I've run FC1 and I honestly believe that FC4 is, by far, the slickest and least bloated one of them.
My memory usage is minimal, right now it's at 25% (after 30 minutes farking and slashdoting, out of 512Mb of RAM). Disk thrashing is very low - for some strange reason despite having installed it on a software RAID5.
I confess that I tweaked my bootup sequence to reduce the non-essential software and I've also tweaked KDE to load less stuff that I never use but nothing that required my 1337-4dm1n sk1llz to do.
I've also not missed a lot of applications that have been moved off the main distro. The only packages I really missed were Xine and XMMS but I trust FreshRPMs with those two. Oh wait, I also missed the complete set of screensavers. As can be seen, nothing important was left out, just my favorite media apps and eyecandy.
About the missing Abiword (that I thought I'd miss), my 1Ghz P3 is loading OpenOffice Writer fast enough to not piss me off - it's not as fast as Abiword's loading, but it's FAR faster than the OpenOffice in FC3.
Let's see.... Yeah, that's about it - I really like the new Fedora Core despite the small little bumps that appear any time you change distribution versions, none of them, so far, have been show stopping.
Sorry 'bout that... the correct link is:
http://tidy.sourceforge.net/
Let me just add that TidyHTML reformats the code, strips out excessive tags, changes a few tags into CSS equivalents (if you allow it to do so), points out open tags and, what I like the most about it, it reindents the HTML to increase readibility.
I agree about WYSIWYG making messy code, that's why I finish off my pages with a pass through TidyHTML.
It's a little more work but the results are very readable, not-messy HTML.
I typed in Edoras, Minas Tirith and Shire and nothing came up.
I know the guys and gals at Google are nerds but I see they're of the non-Tolkien-fanboy variety.
A slight shame but hey, you can't always have the lembas and eat it.
I'm currently using Nvu and HTML Tidy to build my sites.
I'm tired of using non-standard tags and I'm also tired of making webpages with VI so I've started using Nvu. It's a true WYSIWYG editor but since it's not production-grade yet I run the pages through HTML Tidy to clean up the excessive tags and markups that might get left behind in Nvu.
It has a few nice tools and since it's Gecko-based it renders in Firefox exactly like it does in the editor.
For my javascript and php work I try really hard to use KWrite, it looks just like Notepad++ and is pretty neat, and vi ('cause I'm an CLI old-fart).
Where will the torrents be posted?
...how about finishing roaming profile support?
...sigh...
Come on folks, it was built into Netscape 4.7, why is it so hard to build it into Firefox and the Suite?
Does the computer play itself or is it just simulating the game?
And I wish we could download and watch the games, EA's graphics are awsome.
They already beat the US in building a ladder to heaven, now they're trying to beat the US in building a heavier element!