I remember back in mid-2005 that one of the servers I had a character on went down for 2-3 days.
Blizzard gave me a five day credit on my account and I continued playing on other servers during that time period.
Still... I remember the bad times when walking around Ironforge or Orgrimmar near the Auction Houses would lag my computer... not just because of the number of people, but also because it only had 512MB of RAM. Doubling that reduced the problem considerably.
Language are not open source, just particular implementations of a language (ie: a compiler, an interpreter, a runtime, etc) can be open source
The de facto quality of a programming language is defined by the quality of its leading implementations. Such qualities include freedom. For instance, C is free because GCC is free.
I disagree. C is "free" because it's standardized and anyone can write a compiler and stdlib for it, under which standard C programs* will compile just fine. Unfortunately, a lot of programmers write code using specific extensions only supported by certain compilers, which won't compile under other C compilers.
The linux kernel is a good example of this, as it won't compile under anything but GCC.
These extensions hurt the language as a whole. I'm not free to compile it under the software platform I choose to, thus violating my freedom to run the program the way I wish... which is apparently a big issue right now, as running things the way I want is the entire point of moving to the GPL v3.
*Libraries may need to be compiled first and the caveat above applies to those as well.
And did I mention no bugs? Oh no doubt there are some skills or weapons wich don't quite do what they say but mostly the game just fucking works.
Really? When I last tried it (during one of the Betas), every quest I tried that involved escorting an NPC not inside an instance was bugged and refused to start.
WoW may be simplistic compared to its predecessors and competitors, but it's been as well-produced as any other Blizzard product-- that is to say, polished to an eye-searing shine.
I've found that to be the case with most Blizzard games. They don't do anything particularly innovative (Real Time Strategy existed before Warcraft, MMORPGs existed before WoW), but the level of polish on a Blizzard game is far above and beyond any other game in the same genre.
I've own Warcrafts 1-3 and Warcraft 1 was nothing more than Dune 2 set in a fantasy world... Polish didn't arrive until Warcraft 2, where the sprite size was increased significantly and the control scheme was replaced with one that doesn't suck.
1. I think it's fairly obvious now that the retail box is to pay for the time and effort of developing the client and the monthly fees are to cover bandwith and server maintenance.
The fee for the client is mostly to encourage subscriptions, IMO. Once someone has invested $50, they're not likely to subscribe for a month and then drop it, or they'll have wasted $60, not $10. I think the pricing is determined by how to maximize revenue, not how to cover specific costs -- though it's important that subscription revenues are greater than bandwidth/server costs. At any rate, it's the opposite of a dealer giving someone crack for free to get them hooked -- instead they make them pay enough that they're hooked out of a sense of money already invested...
Welcome to the Internet. Internet Service Providers (on both the client and business ends) tend to charge both setup and monthly fees on services. I know that my ISP wanted me to pay a setup fee for my cable Internet, plus I obviously pay monthly fees. They'd laugh at me if I said I wanted to pay one or the other. The same goes for businesses leasing unmanaged servers, managed servers, or T1/T2/DS3/Gigabit lines.
It's a fact that Blizzard pays out the wazoo to AT&T (for example) for hosting their servers. It's a fact that MMO makers are out there to make money. It's a fact that most MMOs don't follow the "instance everything" route that Arena did for Guild Wars, which could have cut back on their bills considerably (It's conjectured that it costs significantly more to run one large non-instanced world (plus some instances) than it is to run a few small towns with the rest of the world instanced).
They also are charging about what you'd normally pay for a new computer/video game.
Of course, most MMOs have a trial version, so you can see whether or not you like the game before you buy it.
I cannot remember what year SWG came out (2000? 01?), but what I do distinctly remember is that Raph Koster was in charge of development and production overall AFTER he left the Ultima Online development team where he'd been for about two years after retail release (release September 1997).
I've tried using Perl with FastCGI before. It bugged me that you have to manually loop the accept call. It means that you have to wrap any code written for plain CGI... something that mod_perl's Apache::Request does for you.
I used to fall on the spaces side until I realized how iritating it is to respace things when you move down an indentation level and you're not using an IDE.
I've been a staunch tab supporter ever since.
It's not just that, either. If one uses tabs, then anyone else who has to edit it can set the tab size to whatever they wish. If Paul has a super widescreen monitor and wants his tab size set to 16 characters, more power to him! If George has a super small monitor and uses 2 character tabs, that's his choice.
Windows Inc would have no interest in ensuring Office Inc's or IE Inc's success, so they might bundle Firefox or OpenOffice with every copy of Windows shipped.
Firstly, Microsoft was only going to be split into two companies (this is actually my fault for not reading up about it for my previous post).
Secondly, to my knowledge, the new companies would have the same shareholders at the beginning. What's to stop them from forging an agreement between the two companies?
It's sort of like, if there was one company that made all cars and all gas. They would have no interest in making car's more fuel efficient. Breaking up the monopoly makes sense -- competition is good for the consumer and for innovation.
Er, yes, but Microsoft was going to be split along business units. To extend your own analogy, having one company that makes all the cars and a second company that makes all the gas is relatively no different than what you started with if both companies have the same shareholders.
If Microsoft had been broken into a variety of little companies like the judge wanted 10 years ago, we'd all have much better products now because of the resulting competition.
I'm not following your logic. Splitting Microsoft into an OS company, an applications company, and a hardware would have changed things how? Those companies wouldn't be competing with each other...
Slashdot Mirror
The wording of the third statement allows for it to be a company mentioned in the two previous statements.
I remember back in mid-2005 that one of the servers I had a character on went down for 2-3 days.
Blizzard gave me a five day credit on my account and I continued playing on other servers during that time period.
Still... I remember the bad times when walking around Ironforge or Orgrimmar near the Auction Houses would lag my computer... not just because of the number of people, but also because it only had 512MB of RAM. Doubling that reduced the problem considerably.
If I was Aric Wilmunder, I'd be incensed by this statement.
Oh, you don't know who Aric Wilmunder is? He's the other creator of the SCUMM engine; the guy who actually programmed it.
I said nothing about Microsoft VisualTrash++.
I disagree. C is "free" because it's standardized and anyone can write a compiler and stdlib for it, under which standard C programs* will compile just fine. Unfortunately, a lot of programmers write code using specific extensions only supported by certain compilers, which won't compile under other C compilers.
The linux kernel is a good example of this, as it won't compile under anything but GCC.
These extensions hurt the language as a whole. I'm not free to compile it under the software platform I choose to, thus violating my freedom to run the program the way I wish... which is apparently a big issue right now, as running things the way I want is the entire point of moving to the GPL v3.
*Libraries may need to be compiled first and the caveat above applies to those as well.
I think stemcel's right, those produce two per food just like a Zergling does... so I was wrong about the Zergling being the only one.
True, but I didn't want to complicate the issue.
(P.S. You also forgot the "If you have the expansion" part)
Really? When I last tried it (during one of the Betas), every quest I tried that involved escorting an NPC not inside an instance was bugged and refused to start.
While reading your post, I just pictured PC (from the Mac vs. PC commercials) playing EVE.
I've own Warcrafts 1-3 and Warcraft 1 was nothing more than Dune 2 set in a fantasy world... Polish didn't arrive until Warcraft 2, where the sprite size was increased significantly and the control scheme was replaced with one that doesn't suck.
(Warcraft 1's music was good, though)
It's not even 200 units, it's 200 food units.
Carriers, Battlecruisers, and the like take eight (8) food units each.
Whereas a Zergling takes half a food unit each (they're the lowest cost unit, all other units take at least one).
Welcome to the Internet. Internet Service Providers (on both the client and business ends) tend to charge both setup and monthly fees on services. I know that my ISP wanted me to pay a setup fee for my cable Internet, plus I obviously pay monthly fees. They'd laugh at me if I said I wanted to pay one or the other. The same goes for businesses leasing unmanaged servers, managed servers, or T1/T2/DS3/Gigabit lines.
It's a fact that Blizzard pays out the wazoo to AT&T (for example) for hosting their servers. It's a fact that MMO makers are out there to make money. It's a fact that most MMOs don't follow the "instance everything" route that Arena did for Guild Wars, which could have cut back on their bills considerably (It's conjectured that it costs significantly more to run one large non-instanced world (plus some instances) than it is to run a few small towns with the rest of the world instanced).
They also are charging about what you'd normally pay for a new computer/video game.
Of course, most MMOs have a trial version, so you can see whether or not you like the game before you buy it.
SWG launched in July 2003, I believe.
...when the FEDERAL (U.S.) Patent and Trademark office...
...are you implying that I'm a gully dwarf?
If I had mod points, I'd have tacked +1, Informative onto this post.
That kind of thing is the only time that I can think of right offhand that I mix tabs and spaces... of course Python doesn't like that.
(I haven't learned Python yet, so I'm just guessing)
I've tried using Perl with FastCGI before. It bugged me that you have to manually loop the accept call. It means that you have to wrap any code written for plain CGI... something that mod_perl's Apache::Request does for you.
Unfortunately, mod_php is still more programmer and administrator friendly than mod_perl, which probably explains why it has a higher usage rate.
Ugh... the old spaces vs. tabs debate.
I used to fall on the spaces side until I realized how iritating it is to respace things when you move down an indentation level and you're not using an IDE.
I've been a staunch tab supporter ever since.
It's not just that, either. If one uses tabs, then anyone else who has to edit it can set the tab size to whatever they wish. If Paul has a super widescreen monitor and wants his tab size set to 16 characters, more power to him! If George has a super small monitor and uses 2 character tabs, that's his choice.
I was hoping for some way of doing it via Slashdot's configuration system.
Since I can hide the section itself, it seems like a lot of work to block the category name.
I do use Firefox on ocassion, but that's mainly to test that web pages work in Firefox.
As my signature implies, it's not my main browser.
Speaking of which, is there any way to get rid of it from the sidebar instead of just hiding the contents of the category?
Firstly, Microsoft was only going to be split into two companies (this is actually my fault for not reading up about it for my previous post).
Secondly, to my knowledge, the new companies would have the same shareholders at the beginning. What's to stop them from forging an agreement between the two companies?
Er, yes, but Microsoft was going to be split along business units. To extend your own analogy, having one company that makes all the cars and a second company that makes all the gas is relatively no different than what you started with if both companies have the same shareholders.
I'm not following your logic. Splitting Microsoft into an OS company, an applications company, and a hardware would have changed things how? Those companies wouldn't be competing with each other...