TechTV keeps getting further and further away from it's roots. "Thunderbirds" and now anime?
I agree completely.
I'm still waiting for the old G-Force cartoons(known as gatchamon in Japan). Noone has them on Kazaa, they are so hard to find. But they were hands down my favorite show when I was young. Really wish I could see it again...
So far Slashdot has been decent enough to link stories about movies that are actually worth seeing. Spirited Away, The Two Towers, maybe T3(I won't hold my breath on this one.) I don't think they've overdone it, and I do appreciate hearing everyone's comments/reviews about a particular movie that I might want to see.
But I do agree that there's legitimate concern. This is how it starts...the mafia offers you the big bucks once they realize they can get lots of exposure here. I don't think you're up to that, but try to be conscious of the danger(and I'm sure you are). If that kind of thing takes hold here....Slashdot will be just another thing people will forget about. You may be able to milk it for a few years....but you and your editors would be hitting the want-ads soon enough. I know times aren't easy right now, but please don't sell us out like that.
The primary commodity here at Slashdot is word of mouth. Product placement/endorsement endangers that.(Including modding Troll those who question the values of the endorser)
I'm kinda surprised, I would expect Germany to be one of the first countries to get broadband right. You guys have all the smart engineers right?
Or is it a matter of social policy? I heard a few weeks ago that Germany banned the playing of "Counter-strike", an on-line teams based first-person shooter. That seemed extremely odd to me...
It all seems kinda confusing to an outsider...wish I had more info but I don't know where to look. Any links?
DAOC is not a bad game. It merely examined what people didn't like in EQ and tried to address them. In the end, it seemed that they handed them the game on a silver platter.
Yes. Verant has been picking and choosing the features/improvements that DAOC builds, and then they just copy them outright. In the short-term this is a good thing. EQ is a better game because of DAOC. The new EQ user interface is almost a carbon copy of what DAOC did first(fadeable windows being the most important).
The long-term effect of this however isn't good. SOE/Verant continues to stay in the forefront of competition because there's no real IP protection in the games business. I'm usually the first to denounce IP protection, but in this case the debate is especially nasty.
After what verant/SOE has done w/ the new Planes of Power add-on, I'm certain that I don't want SOE monopolizing the MMORG market. Unless games like DAOC can capitilize on thier fresh/good ideas/changes, SOE will continue to stay ahead and draw customers.
Let me say it again, in the last year or so the only good improvements in EQ have come from thier devs observing other games. All of the bad decisions have come from SOE trying to leech more money from the customer.
" Great job. I'm glad to see someone "Gets It" about the camera angle. Its just a shame someone from outside has to do this when it should have been released this way. The camera Flame Wars when NWN was first released would never have occurred. All those folks who said "It can't be done." Probably distantly related to the same folks who thought the world was flat...."
DirectX is works great, why not make thinks easy implement DirectX in Linux.
Ahaha, ahahaha....ahahaha.....bwahahaha. You just figure it out? I mean, it's only the exact same thing Bill did with DOS to marginalize apple/amiga. See many Amiga games in the store these days?
Would it be too far fetched to wonder if game companies have considered keeping profiles on players based on everything done and said in the game?
If some value could be had from something like that, how long would it take for some enterprising game companies to captalize on it?
Yes, and this is quite frankly what is most dissapointing about this decision. It means that games like SWG will always be just games. I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but there are thousands of people who support themselves finacially by playing Everquest. They put a great deal of time/effort into accumulating valuables in order to sell them for real cash to real buyers. There are also service players who sell accounts, or offer to PL your character for a fee.
Regardless of your stand on the morality of these kinds of people, one has to admire the fact that a thriving middle class structure has actually managed to develop within an completely artificial world. This is the kind of stuff that Neil Stephenson wrote about. It was something that SOE didn't plan for, and it's something they have been trying to stop ever since.
SOE has been telling the gaming community at large that they will not tolerate sharing thier profit space with anyone. Regardless of whether or not it improves play, or expands thier subscriber base. SOE is god, players are the sheep, and they intend to keep it that way. Instead of allowing an ecosystem to develop where players can actually become professionals within the game, SOE is ensuring that its games will always be played by weekenders and late nighters...or kids during thier summer-time break. I think it's a big mistake.
A very important niche of the gaming community is being marginalized. I'm disappointed at Sony's lack of effort in trying to expand on what is one of the more interesting "side effects" of EQ. Instead they are greedily covering thier territory, and disempowering thier user base to such extent as to ensure that what happened in EQ won't be possible in SWG or EQ2.
I just spoke with them on the phone(I need to switch too because I'm with directv). They say that each static IP is $2.99 more to your monthtly cost. I run 3 machines so that means 3 statics. For me it comes to $49.99 + $2.99 + $2.99. $55.97 a month.
Directv uses a router/hub so you can set up your network via NAT. This is what I've been doing, and it cost me an extra $10 for the NAT/firewall(they call it the connect/protect plan). Totalling at $59.99 a month.
So actually Speakeay is a much better deal. It costs less, and you get 3 static IPs(rather than just 1). The only problem is that it's $49.99 for 608up/128down instead of 1.5Mup/128down that directv offered. So for the big file traders this might not be the way to go. But I think I can live with 608kbps.
Also I have a suspicion that speakeasy has better latency/ping times. Can anyone confirm that?
Yes, I've got thier service too. Compared to Bell South it's been a dream.
Kinda creepy, I had no idea this was happening =(. I just wanted to log in to Slashdot to read some news...now this. For those of us who run a home business on broadband services like DSL, this is scary news indeed.
I hope it works out =(.
-Signed More pessimistic about the future every minute.
Don't judge something until you've experianced it for yourself.
Haven't we "experienced" this enough times to say enough is enough?
No, I think the review is probably right on. Trek is another of dozens of films that this has happened to. It's the current hollywood formula for sequels.
When goods movies like "The Mummy" or "Blade" come from out of nowhere and get lots of pay-per-support...Hollywood rehashes a crappy sequel as follows:
btw, this is the "..." in the 1)? 2)... 3) Profit!
1) Get cast from original movie. 2) Get makeup/costume people from MTV to work on people from step 1. 3) Get out the script to aliens. 4) Mix in the blender for 30 seconds. 5) Release movie.
This kind of recipe is easy for Hollywood execs to remember. They just keep thier production plan in the same drawer w/ the bourbon.
There are plenty of user made mods that free the camera, along with tons of other mods that expand and extend the game.
I really resent that my original post was modded as a troll. It wasn't a troll at all, it was a sincere relation of how I felt about a product that I payed good money for, and invested a lot of my time in.
I was one of the first people to buy NWN, and I stuck it out for almost 2 months. I downloaded the ONLY available camera alteration and it helped but there were some major flaws. First-person view mode wasn't available for example.
I used to love to play PnP D&D when I was younger, and have a great deal of love for the genre. But Bioware made a very clumsy job of providing for variety in the user experience. It's OK if a DM wants to disable first person mode, but it is NOT ok if these game itself doesn't support a first person view mode!
After 2 months of waiting for Bioware to get a clue and fix the problem, or perhaps for some motivated mod-dev to fix it...the problem was not addressed. It's 6 months after I stopped playing NWN out of sheer disappointment. Maybe in that amout of time things have improved. I've been too disheartened to check back.
I hope you can understand that my disappointment with the game is derived from my sincere desire to see it done right. All I saw was Bioware ignoring the requests of thousands of customers like myself who were very dissapointed with the draconion "written in stone" policy that Bioware adhered to w/ regard to fixing what very much needed to be fixed.
Initial impressions are important...especially after someone pays $60 for a game they've been waiting 2 years for. I was terribly dissapointed, and disgusted w/ Bioware's inability to admit they made a mistake with the camera angle. If it's not ok for a game company to admit they may be wrong, then there's no real way for user input to effect the kinds of changes that need to be made to improve the game.
Until they fix the camera angle, I'm sticking with EQ. Above all I need to be able to play w/o contracting chronic nack/back injuries from trying to see what's 15 feet in front of my character all day.
No, Bioware did not deliver on this one folks. They highly restricted the user environment, and there is very little customizability in the game at all(except hot-swappable keys which have been around almost a decade).
Game mods have been been a huge benefit to gamers(Half-life being the best example). But it's going to be someone else that runs with the fantasy genre.
I'm curious what kind of results the experimentation in superconductivity and semi-conductors will yield. They sound kind of mutually exlusive. But we may yet see Moore's Law revived and revised...
Superconduction is overkill at this stage of the game.
More efficient cooling technologies (liquid cooling, peltiers, etc) could keep Moore's Law alive an extra 5 years. The primary difficulty today is back-inductance. All the current in those tiny wires creates magnetic fields that resist the original current flow(this is why chips get so hot). As we all know, the cooler the chip the faster it can run.(This is because there's less back inductance at lower temperatures, superconduction being the optimal case).
Anyhow, once current fab processes reach the wall, cooling technologies will probably have several good years of improvement that will directly enchance chip performance. That gives us a little more time to research new approaches(optical computing is probably the next step).
No, it actually improves network efficiency by creating local "mirrors" for content. 23 hops to a website to California vs. 2 hops to a friend of a friend. Which do you think is more effecient?
If 6 degrees of social separation cover such a massive percentage of the human population, why wouldn't the same be true of wireless nodes?
Before this is considered a Utility? Everyone in the city will pay a monthly wi-fi bill, right along with gas, water and electric?
I swear it's so simple people...
802.11 is FREE, all you need to do is buy a lousy wireless NIC and an AP. After that you get 10mbps, instead of crappy unreliable 1.5mbps from your cable/telco. But everyone needs to do this because it's all about peer sharing.
We have an amazing opportunity staring us in the face right now. But if we don't get the ball rolling and protect our rights, some lame ass company is gonna buy out the airwaves and charge us for NOTHING(I.e. airwaves). Remember in "Space Balls" when they were breathing air out of cans? Seem a little rediculous to you? I hope so, because the same thing could very well happen to wireless internet.
All that needs to happen is for Dell, Gateway, etc. to start packaging 802.11X ready computers. They won't do that until they are convinced it's a standard component(just like CD-Roms, soundcards, etc). That means people need to start getting a clue, and word needs to get out. Buy one of these things, and set up an AP! Or, if you're a software guy...write a good P2P sharing application.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly I hope they continute with initiatives like these.
I really like Indian food, and I've been waiting for a good excuse to leave the US. I guess it's a toss-up between India and Canada.
Yes, I hear Wal-mart and Nike look for the same qualities in thier employees.
TechTV keeps getting further and further away from it's roots. "Thunderbirds" and now anime?
I agree completely.
I'm still waiting for the old G-Force cartoons(known as gatchamon in Japan). Noone has them on Kazaa, they are so hard to find. But they were hands down my favorite show when I was young. Really wish I could see it again...
As long as we're talkin' games, how about TFC2?
OK so Bush has practically no credibility in this area.
Since when does Bush need credibility? Was he elected on credibility?
Freedom of the Press
Freedom of Speech
Right to assembly
3 more rights down the drain if this succeeds.
So far Slashdot has been decent enough to link stories about movies that are actually worth seeing. Spirited Away, The Two Towers, maybe T3(I won't hold my breath on this one.) I don't think they've overdone it, and I do appreciate hearing everyone's comments/reviews about a particular movie that I might want to see.
But I do agree that there's legitimate concern. This is how it starts...the mafia offers you the big bucks once they realize they can get lots of exposure here. I don't think you're up to that, but try to be conscious of the danger(and I'm sure you are). If that kind of thing takes hold here....Slashdot will be just another thing people will forget about. You may be able to milk it for a few years....but you and your editors would be hitting the want-ads soon enough. I know times aren't easy right now, but please don't sell us out like that.
The primary commodity here at Slashdot is word of mouth. Product placement/endorsement endangers that.(Including modding Troll those who question the values of the endorser)
...is it good?
And internet by cable is *very* rare in Germany.
I'm kinda surprised, I would expect Germany to be one of the first countries to get broadband right. You guys have all the smart engineers right?
Or is it a matter of social policy? I heard a few weeks ago that Germany banned the playing of "Counter-strike", an on-line teams based first-person shooter. That seemed extremely odd to me...
It all seems kinda confusing to an outsider...wish I had more info but I don't know where to look. Any links?
Too bad capitalism is keeping the broadband market f**ed up.
Capitalism? Capitalism only works if companies have to compete for customers.
DAOC is not a bad game. It merely examined what people didn't like in EQ and tried to address them. In the end, it seemed that they handed them the game on a silver platter.
Yes. Verant has been picking and choosing the features/improvements that DAOC builds, and then they just copy them outright. In the short-term this is a good thing. EQ is a better game because of DAOC. The new EQ user interface is almost a carbon copy of what DAOC did first(fadeable windows being the most important).
The long-term effect of this however isn't good. SOE/Verant continues to stay in the forefront of competition because there's no real IP protection in the games business. I'm usually the first to denounce IP protection, but in this case the debate is especially nasty.
After what verant/SOE has done w/ the new Planes of Power add-on, I'm certain that I don't want SOE monopolizing the MMORG market. Unless games like DAOC can capitilize on thier fresh/good ideas/changes, SOE will continue to stay ahead and draw customers.
Let me say it again, in the last year or so the only good improvements in EQ have come from thier devs observing other games. All of the bad decisions have come from SOE trying to leech more money from the customer.
From the NWN website forums:
" Great job. I'm glad to see someone "Gets It" about the
camera angle. Its just a shame someone from outside has to
do this when it should have been released this way. The
camera Flame Wars when NWN was first released would never
have occurred. All those folks who said "It can't be done."
Probably distantly related to the same folks who thought
the world was flat...."
DirectX is works great, why not make thinks easy implement DirectX in Linux.
Ahaha, ahahaha....ahahaha.....bwahahaha. You just figure it out? I mean, it's only the exact same thing Bill did with DOS to marginalize apple/amiga. See many Amiga games in the store these days?
Would it be too far fetched to wonder if game companies have considered keeping profiles on players based on everything done and said in the game?
If some value could be had from something like that, how long would it take for some enterprising game companies to captalize on it?
Yes, and this is quite frankly what is most dissapointing about this decision. It means that games like SWG will always be just games. I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but there are thousands of people who support themselves finacially by playing Everquest. They put a great deal of time/effort into accumulating valuables in order to sell them for real cash to real buyers. There are also service players who sell accounts, or offer to PL your character for a fee.
Regardless of your stand on the morality of these kinds of people, one has to admire the fact that a thriving middle class structure has actually managed to develop within an completely artificial world. This is the kind of stuff that Neil Stephenson wrote about. It was something that SOE didn't plan for, and it's something they have been trying to stop ever since.
SOE has been telling the gaming community at large that they will not tolerate sharing thier profit space with anyone. Regardless of whether or not it improves play, or expands thier subscriber base. SOE is god, players are the sheep, and they intend to keep it that way. Instead of allowing an ecosystem to develop where players can actually become professionals within the game, SOE is ensuring that its games will always be played by weekenders and late nighters...or kids during thier summer-time break. I think it's a big mistake.
A very important niche of the gaming community is being marginalized. I'm disappointed at Sony's lack of effort in trying to expand on what is one of the more interesting "side effects" of EQ. Instead they are greedily covering thier territory, and disempowering thier user base to such extent as to ensure that what happened in EQ won't be possible in SWG or EQ2.
They have plans for 2 IP addresses right now.
I just spoke with them on the phone(I need to switch too because I'm with directv). They say that each static IP is $2.99 more to your monthtly cost. I run 3 machines so that means 3 statics. For me it comes to $49.99 + $2.99 + $2.99. $55.97 a month.
Directv uses a router/hub so you can set up your network via NAT. This is what I've been doing, and it cost me an extra $10 for the NAT/firewall(they call it the connect/protect plan). Totalling at $59.99 a month.
So actually Speakeay is a much better deal. It costs less, and you get 3 static IPs(rather than just 1). The only problem is that it's $49.99 for 608up/128down instead of 1.5Mup/128down that directv offered. So for the big file traders this might not be the way to go. But I think I can live with 608kbps.
Also I have a suspicion that speakeasy has better latency/ping times. Can anyone confirm that?
Yes, I've got thier service too. Compared to Bell South it's been a dream.
Kinda creepy, I had no idea this was happening =(. I just wanted to log in to Slashdot to read some news...now this. For those of us who run a home business on broadband services like DSL, this is scary news indeed.
I hope it works out =(.
-Signed
More pessimistic about the future every minute.
Don't judge something until you've experianced it for yourself.
Haven't we "experienced" this enough times to say enough is enough?
No, I think the review is probably right on. Trek is another of dozens of films that this has happened to. It's the current hollywood formula for sequels.
When goods movies like "The Mummy" or "Blade" come from out of nowhere and get lots of pay-per-support...Hollywood rehashes a crappy sequel as follows:
btw, this is the "..." in the 1)? 2)... 3) Profit!
1) Get cast from original movie.
2) Get makeup/costume people from MTV to work on people from step 1.
3) Get out the script to aliens.
4) Mix in the blender for 30 seconds.
5) Release movie.
This kind of recipe is easy for Hollywood execs to remember. They just keep thier production plan in the same drawer w/ the bourbon.
There are plenty of user made mods that free the camera, along with tons of other mods that expand and extend the game.
I really resent that my original post was modded as a troll. It wasn't a troll at all, it was a sincere relation of how I felt about a product that I payed good money for, and invested a lot of my time in.
I was one of the first people to buy NWN, and I stuck it out for almost 2 months. I downloaded the ONLY available camera alteration and it helped but there were some major flaws. First-person view mode wasn't available for example.
I used to love to play PnP D&D when I was younger, and have a great deal of love for the genre. But Bioware made a very clumsy job of providing for variety in the user experience. It's OK if a DM wants to disable first person mode, but it is NOT ok if these game itself doesn't support a first person view mode!
After 2 months of waiting for Bioware to get a clue and fix the problem, or perhaps for some motivated mod-dev to fix it...the problem was not addressed. It's 6 months after I stopped playing NWN out of sheer disappointment. Maybe in that amout of time things have improved. I've been too disheartened to check back.
I hope you can understand that my disappointment with the game is derived from my sincere desire to see it done right. All I saw was Bioware ignoring the requests of thousands of customers like myself who were very dissapointed with the draconion "written in stone" policy that Bioware adhered to w/ regard to fixing what very much needed to be fixed.
Initial impressions are important...especially after someone pays $60 for a game they've been waiting 2 years for. I was terribly dissapointed, and disgusted w/ Bioware's inability to admit they made a mistake with the camera angle. If it's not ok for a game company to admit they may be wrong, then there's no real way for user input to effect the kinds of changes that need to be made to improve the game.
NWN, great concept...poor execution.
Until they fix the camera angle, I'm sticking with EQ. Above all I need to be able to play w/o contracting chronic nack/back injuries from trying to see what's 15 feet in front of my character all day.
No, Bioware did not deliver on this one folks. They highly restricted the user environment, and there is very little customizability in the game at all(except hot-swappable keys which have been around almost a decade).
Game mods have been been a huge benefit to gamers(Half-life being the best example). But it's going to be someone else that runs with the fantasy genre.
Much obliged for modding this redundant.
Guess most slashdot readers already know this. My mistake.
Mentioning beating, how are we supposed to jerk off with those things on?
Thanks but I'll pass.
I'm curious what kind of results the experimentation in superconductivity and semi-conductors will yield. They sound kind of mutually exlusive. But we may yet see Moore's Law revived and revised...
Superconduction is overkill at this stage of the game.
More efficient cooling technologies (liquid cooling, peltiers, etc) could keep Moore's Law alive an extra 5 years. The primary difficulty today is back-inductance. All the current in those tiny wires creates magnetic fields that resist the original current flow(this is why chips get so hot). As we all know, the cooler the chip the faster it can run.(This is because there's less back inductance at lower temperatures, superconduction being the optimal case).
Anyhow, once current fab processes reach the wall, cooling technologies will probably have several good years of improvement that will directly enchance chip performance. That gives us a little more time to research new approaches(optical computing is probably the next step).
No, it actually improves network efficiency by creating local "mirrors" for content. 23 hops to a website to California vs. 2 hops to a friend of a friend. Which do you think is more effecient?
If 6 degrees of social separation cover such a massive percentage of the human population, why wouldn't the same be true of wireless nodes?
This poster said everything I wanted to say, and he said it much better than I did. So disregard my post and remember his please.
Before this is considered a Utility? Everyone in the city will pay a monthly wi-fi bill, right along with gas, water and electric?
I swear it's so simple people...
802.11 is FREE, all you need to do is buy a lousy wireless NIC and an AP. After that you get 10mbps, instead of crappy unreliable 1.5mbps from your cable/telco. But everyone needs to do this because it's all about peer sharing.
We have an amazing opportunity staring us in the face right now. But if we don't get the ball rolling and protect our rights, some lame ass company is gonna buy out the airwaves and charge us for NOTHING(I.e. airwaves). Remember in "Space Balls" when they were breathing air out of cans? Seem a little rediculous to you? I hope so, because the same thing could very well happen to wireless internet.
All that needs to happen is for Dell, Gateway, etc. to start packaging 802.11X ready computers. They won't do that until they are convinced it's a standard component(just like CD-Roms, soundcards, etc). That means people need to start getting a clue, and word needs to get out. Buy one of these things, and set up an AP! Or, if you're a software guy...write a good P2P sharing application.
Neat idea, but what about cooling?
A 1Ghz P3 generates quite a lot of heat. Wouldn't stacking them vertically like CD drives overheat them?