No, it really doesn't. Garbarge collection in the Macro or Compact framework is kind of bare-bones.
I can see it now, however. Someone used to designing a full fledged.NET web app or desktop app told to make a.NET app for the iPhone. Then they will wonder why its so slow...
I like.NET because its GC is much much better than Java's. I am even tempted to mess around with some of the cheap.NET Micro development kits that are floating around. But if its performance you need, go to C++ or even Apples Obj-C. Garbage collection is both a method to make program's easier to write and a safeguard for memory leaks. Its not a tell all cure:P
Ah, but EDS didn't PAY for the computers till three years latter. The specs are for a PC three years old so you can sell them the bottom line PC at that point.
Don't know EDS's side of it though. Could be EDS' client wanted to hold on the order. Maybe there were billing issues. I bet the client told EDS that they needed the computers and since no one renegotiated the contract, EDS asked for Compaq for the original spec quote.
This took 18 months TFA. We don't have the reams of documents they possibly went though.
I can see the manager of Sky emailing a manager at HP/EDS on why its taking so long and the manager blatantly lies. I can also see Sky, after a few months into the projects getting some off hand information decides the change the spec in mid stream.
All this compounded by the fact that neither side seriously looked at either sides contract. I am sure both's in house lawyers did, but upper management don't look at that stuff. The only people who KNOW the timeframe are the line workers. However, at that low level in the food chain they have to lie so they arn't swept up in another EDS/HP employee purge. Being some of the people I have talked to in Plano, there isn't alot of love lost at EDS anymore.
I think Sky just went to the Judge and showed them what they originally were promised and what they got. I also bet one look at the contract shows its to have no substance (i.e. EDS/HP are not liable for anything, even if the software causes a million people to die). I very much doubt there would be an 18 month court case if the contract was rock solid.
Stop trolling. I have been hit when they released debit cards for the first time. Getting a -$200 balance for just a few under $5 purchase made me scream, but it was clearly listed in the fine print and the "fees and schedule's" document. I keep track now and haven't had an overdraft since.
As long as you have a balance in the bank you have the right to go to that bank and take out all the money and close the account. Unless a COURT ORDER was obtained to freeze your account, the bank cannot just "take your money" Even then there is a list of exceptions and a process to get your money.
Paypal could hold your money for no reason other to protect other users agents "fraud" With the exception of putting a civil case to them, they can do anything they want. Take a look at the User agreement. Once nice clause in there "We may hold your funds for up to 180 Days if reasonably needed to protect against the risk of liability..." So if they "think" something is wrong, they lock you out for a quarter and there is nothing you can do and kill your business. A bank can't do this arbitrarily.
Paypal is nice for sending small funds from one person to another, but you NEVER keep your business balance in that.
They better change their dice if they are relying on that.
Seriously, what are they doing that is particularly innovative anymore. I gave up on them when X-2 came out. I am only interested in finishing 12 just so I can say I have played all the FF series (except X-2. God its like I am watching awful Bleach/Naruto filler, except its written by fan-boy's with a lotion fetish).
The problem I am having is the job systems have all been either done or not very exciting. The series doesn't make me cry like the end of the first disk of 7 did (To be fair, the rest of 7 was kind of standard fair). Even if the 12 story sounds good, its hard to get around the wow factor. I can stand a 8 hour tutorial (Wow has a 70 level tutorial:P) but I can't stand any reward at the end of it.
DragonQuest hasn't been a serious series in a while so we are left with the hope FF will have a powerful story to keep you playing. I just lost my faith in Square ever since X-2. I played the first two chapters of that game and just stopped. Its like they didn't even try. I already knew how the story was going to play out by just the hints and there was just no point.
I guess, in the end it doesn't matter. Whatever glowing/bad reviews FF13 will have, it won't matter. It will make a mint like it always does. It will have a decent, a bit simpler job system. The story will have some twists that will be easy to follow and not all-together unexpected. It will then bring their stock price up and all will be well.
If not? They always have the ready-to-go project FF7: Aeris Reborn. Its going to be an FPS.
Same here. But the article is on games that kill companies, not necessarily bad games.
Lets face it, the game was "meh". I played it mainly because it was a major tie in, but also because a friend got frustrated at it and game me it. As a gamer whore, I wouldn't pay $60 bucks for something this repetitive. You couldn't even play Neo! WTF! Even as a un-lockable charter, anything! So with all that, did it really sell 5 million units? Atari said they made a serious loss, enough to kill the studio. No doubt that thing cost an arm and a leg using all the voice actors AND their likeness. This was back in 03, where most studios might not have actors contracts to include video game tie in's. Maybe they paid to much? Forget about the broken saves or the bad crashes to desktop. If they DID sell 5 million units, how much did that game cost for them to take a MAJOR loss on it?
Why after 6 months it went to bargain bin prices? I remember, just going to Fry's that Christmas, seeing this thing on sale for $29, then dropping to $19 in February. The only reason games drop that badly THAT soon, is that the store had to much stock and the original vender won't take the overflow.
The game was ok. But like the Matrix, it was over hipped, over priced, and in the end forgettable:P
Your right. Blizzard really put the minimum standard for a good MMOG with all those innovations.
It makes me wonder though why other newer MMORG's don't even do these basic things? I don't see any MMORGs with a plug in system and I think STO is the only "new" one coming out with a phasing system. Its all right there. Blizzard did ALL the work for everyone. I think "no one does it right" is because the publishers don't want the game to last more than two years.
It really makes me wonder about Swtor. They seem to be doing things right out of the box, but can anyone catch up anymore with WoW's 5 year head start:P
Need to see the quests on the Ally side. I have been horde so long I don't even know how they feel about the whole situation:P
God, RFC in Heroic. Humm. Makes me wonder if they will revamp the badge system. You do heroics at 80 because there isn't any other loot that drops that you can use. There is no reason to bother with heroics at 70 as you will hit 74 by the time you have all your teir. By then the quest loot is better at Norhrend. I see them getting rid of Valor and Conquest badges, but how do you handle the badge loot at 70 then? The only people I know who even bother with Justice badges is board max 80's who do the whole "Lock it at 70 for BC" thing.
I thought maybe giving badges for everyone who completes BC randoms, so when you hit 70 you can buy one or two pieces of Justice gear.
I'll just be happy when everything has an 80 heroic though. Even PoS has lost its magic:P
And STO isn't? Evey space mission I have been in involves "Blow X ships up, Protect X station"
There are a few missions where you don't have to kill things, but they all are still based off the three MMORG principles for quests:
1. Collect X Items from the ground and/or other NPC's 2. Collect X Items from dead NPC's you have killed. 3. Kill Boss/Unique NPC
Even if your speaking theoretically, I have yet to see even a single player game that has done that without the word "Point-and-Click". There has to be a "game" in the RPG/MMORG and likewise there has to be a "story" in the game. Heck, look at pen and paper RPG's. The DND 2nd rules are full of workarounds, extra rules, etc because people WANTED more from the game part. Without the game part, its just some guy telling a story. Any DnD player, of any edition, will tell you the roll of the dice gives an element of excitement, randomness, to the story.
Its the same in WoW. I spent hours trying to get my DPS to hit 6k constantly on WoW so I could get in an ICC group. Not for justthe Frost Badges. It's that I have wanted to kill Arthas ever since the end of Frozen Throne off WC3. If I still can't get into an ICC group, I will damn well get my Priest up to 80 and gear him up. I want to be there when blizzard opens the instance for it.
Sure WoW has a large complex algorithm on how you attack things. It can even be argued that your still a noob till you get to 70,"Where the real game begins." But if it didn't have a good story, friends you could regularly play with, and an engine that makes it challenging at all levels of play, it would not be on top right now.
PS - Though, to be honest, what happens once we "kill" the Lich King? He was/is the boggie man of all of Northriend and personaly shows up in many of the quests your on. Cataclysm will solve the content issue below level 60, but where will the story go after that:P
Been in the closed beta for a bit. You need a proper interface now a days.
Might play it more now, but the PvP has been a long time coming and I am not sure how fun it will be. I haven't been able to even get high enough to play Klingon with only 3 hour play sessions, twice a week.
Then its the way its set up. Ok I understand its an MMO, but it doesn't seem like the group abilities or classes are well balanced. Going in its hard to understand how one class helps another and all the ground fights seem to be "everyone shoot as fast as you can" kind of situations. Its not even a good "trinity" You have to make you ship do all three if you want to do any of the missions. Case in point for the ground missions where your given a bunch of red shirts if you don't have enough named crew. I have to start out as a tank type and get a science officer as I just can't get the AI to tank properly. Without a threat/dps plug in, I am not even sure if my weapons are doing as well as they should.
That's the crux of the matter now a days. In WoW I can get the Recount plug-in and Omen to figure out if one build works better than another. They built their interface, from day one, to be as configurable as possible. But in STO? They spent months telling use "The interface is the last to get developed" Really? Most of WoW's innovations came FROM the community of plug-in's. I cannot imaging playing wow without a raid grid let alone without recount. With the current interface STO has, I can't see managing more than 10 players reliably. As it is now, most "group" missions are free for all's anyway.
Its just, I kind of gave up most of the way in the beta. It was hard just playing maybe 6 hours a week. Then you go to the forms and see all the people wining about how its either not good enough or that its a wow/CO clone without giving any kind of true comparison. Sure your the captain of a star ship, but it also feels constrained somehow.
The new 3.3 patch from WoW comes out, it became fun to PLAY it. After 4 hours I finally have an 80 and doing high level stuff now. I never have to hunt for a group for heroics, no more being dropped because I can only do 2k DPS just because I am starting. I bet they will be setting up raids with this system at some point as well. Heck, even though I play Blackrock ALL THE FREAKING TIME on my 51 pally, at least I can GO there. I always skip it because I could never find groups for it.
STO have been arguing for the last 6 months about how "the interface is the last to be implemented" That kind of thinking is the reason most people get turned off in the first week of a MMO:P
So your definition of a terrorist is someone reading a newspaper on the street with brown skin?
Look, I hate cops. I hate being in fear of someone who is paid to carry around a gun and find something "wrong" with you and could care less about it. But I LOVE our criminal system. Their job is to put you in jail and let the judge decide what to do with you. You don't have to tell them anything, they are not there to help you at all. Their entire purpose is that of Tier 1 technical support. They put you on hold till a judge sees you and a case is filed. They are front line soldiers where ALL they see EVERYDAY is beatings, shootings robbery's, and kidnappings. They CAN NOT shoot a person without a good reason. So while I fear them, I also know that the best they can do to someone who is polite, says "sir", and does everything they ask is to be arrested. The judge is the only guy I have to worry about.
Your wrong. These cops were scared. If they did what training dictated they would of arrested this guy and interrogated him for days before finding nothing. Instead they decided to judge him on the street because he lived in the wrong apartment, sitting at the wrong time, with the wrong colored skin. There was no reason for this. They should of just come clean the first day and instead made eveyone fear the police just a little more.
They properly have a shared mini-bath house in the place. Its fairly common at low rent apartments.
If your going cheap however, a bath house is better as they have a fixed rate set by the government for all the public ones. Of course paying the 5 dollar entry charge is cheap, but they get you on all the extras. (Want a towel? How about soap? etc.) Just be sure you know the rules before going in so your not seen as a "dumb American" Also they are very wary of foreigners so many of the private ones may be off limits.
Of course its all be declining. Most modern apartment complexes have built in baths now. You usually don't even have to worry about it as a foreigner as most places that server them have built in showers. Even a friend of mine who stayed in Tokyo for a month off in the outskirts got a good deal and a shower.
Yea, I remember reading a trade paper about this. The issue was the bus for the 486 was too slow. The original 8087, 287, 387 all just monitored the data bus and some signal pins. Once you sent a x87 op code, the co processor would kick in.
Intel, initaly, just wanted the 486 to be the high end replacement for the 386DX. Remember, the 386DX didn't have the co-processor, but the 486 did. When they were working on the SX chip in the late 90's they were also working on the ideas for the DX2. They concluded that they couldn't get a co-processor to work well with the 486 bus without changing the pin signaling. 486's were just starting to take off in a big way too and Intel didn't want to mess around with the socket till they finished Socket 4.
I was also told from an asside that while the technical reason was good enough, Intel didn't want to deal with the co-processor idea anymore because of support issues. Not to mention having to compete with cheaper co-processors from AMD.
How about a 3 year working Dell Desktop/Laptop/Server tech with more than a thousand calls under my belt?
Their phone support for anything below Gold is bleh. You get four hour service though, your golden. While I can get to the second tier quickly, we will get that part out and fix that computer as quickly as we can. Baring parts not being local, I can usually get parts for any server under an hour here in the Metroplex.
When it works, it works good. When the only part in the nation is in Austin, then your down for a day:P
I can't answer for the front light tech support however. But Dell is trying to make all business class support, even low end, stay in the US.
You DO know the PCIe is a bus right? You don't JUST plug a video card into it, this is not AGP world now.
Most modern motherboards use the PCIe bus for everything. Built in network cards, the keyboard controller, USB ports all run on that bus on the board. Just because there are no slots on the board dosn't mean it doesn't use it all internal.
My complaint was that I thought it only had a single 2.5Gbps bus channel for everything outside of the processor. It was too limiting as if you wanted an MPEG4 decoder chip, you would use a good porton of the bandwith trasfing to the cpu's video controler. Hell, lets not even think about gaming. You can't get most of the figures out of Areo without at least DX10 compatibility. The new Microsoft 2010 supposed to render windows in DirectX supposedly. I was wrong however. A closer look at the white paper showed:
"Support 4 lanes in each direction, 2.5 Gbps per lane per direction, poin-to-point DMI interface to Intel NM10 Express chipset."
Its just when you look at the pins, electrically, it looks like a PCIe interface so I was confused. 6Gbps is enough for anything on that laptop. I just worry that intel has the DMI bus locked so no one can make their own chip set.
There will NEVER be a system, using this chip, with a DVI out neither. Why? The CPU outputs DIRECTLY to VGA. It has a LDVS interface, but it doesn't look like you can split it off for a second display. Maybe as a motherboard but never for the laptop. With the exception of directly connecting it to memory, the only outside interface to the chipset is its "direct media interface", but it looks like the same signaling for PCI-E. One channel.
Thats it. You got a PC with a signle PCI-E slot, were all your USB/Wireless/Ethernet and Hard drive pipe though. They did this to lock down the chip.
All that being said, if they make this chip cheap enough then everything I said is moot. IF the D510 sells for under 299 and the D400's make a 199 laptop, its worth it for the price. But if AMD can get on the ball with their new chip and the ion chipset, they might win this war.
Honestly, I think it really should. Looking at ALL those electronics makes you wonder why each has to be connected the way they are. I mean, isn't it possible to build all those parts into a bunch of PCIe cards and build just a few computers for them? It be much more effective to have 10 receivers on a single board, so you can monitor 10 channels at once, than have 10 individual radios.
Though, when I think about it, you can get those 144mhz radios REALLY cheap if you buy them used. Be a control nightmare though, how the hell do you manage all those radios other then how he has it up:P
This has been done and its going to be "done" many times before.
What amazed me was that Google translate did a REALLY good job of traslating that article. Its not perfect, but you can read it and understand fairly clearly.
A decent amine called Starship Operators had some interesting concepts. I like the idea that the warp engines don't work inside of a sun gravity well and a majority of the weeks of travel was between the outer edge of a gravity well to the planet itself. No force fields just really good heat plating designed to reduce heat. It could be said that the whole point of these space battles was just trying to microwave the other side faster:P
How most ships were built around a decent long range weapon designed to insta-kill the other ship once its in range. Having a complete observatory on a ship because you had to magnify visual sight so much it took very powerful telescopes. Even if you had visual sight, it takes close to 8 minutes for a plasma or projectile to hit.
Its based off some novels that makes me really wish I could read Japanese. My main complaint about the anime is the ending. After all this time of staying fairly true to physics they seemed to just make some stuff up at the end to end the series.
As for the plot points for the characters? Meh. Nothing I haven't seen in any other semi-political amine in space. They could of expanded the charters a bit more but in the end, they went with a short and sweet simple anime series.
Yea its very nice. Supports 3D acceleration too. I play wow in a box while my main system is network isolated:) I recommend VMplayer to everyone who wants to mess with it.
Meh, this reviewer obviously doesn't use any of these systems professionally. Virtual box seems nice but it was only recently it support live migration. Its always been a "work in progress" from my point of view and I only really use it when I have a dd image of something I need to mess with. Not sure about Parallels though. I have heard of them but never really looked at them.
To be honest, however, VMware really needs to catch up. I bought 7 not for the extra features but because I had a lot of vmdk files with multiple path snapshots. Hell, its why I bought the 6 upgrade from 5.
Mind you, this is all on the workstation development side. Start talking server and VMware wins, hands down over all other technology's. But then, they are expensive enough to make people pause before they drop for a ESX license. Hell, went to the Parallels site for the first time, and that $999 price for a server license is very tempting.
Your right, my mistake. Some reason I thought the achievement system started back in 2007. It basically got me back into the game and I just can't live without it now;) Haha, look at his guild, either this is an alt or a friend of his.
That guy is very close too, but looks like he missed the Mask's from Hallows Eve. Have to wait a year for that one or find someone to buy them off of. (Can't remember if they are nodrop) God, Needy looks like a monster to get though.
Slashdot Mirror
Case in point: George W. Bush graduated from Yale. Doubt the BA in Arts helped more than the connections to become president.
No, it really doesn't. Garbarge collection in the Macro or Compact framework is kind of bare-bones.
I can see it now, however. Someone used to designing a full fledged .NET web app or desktop app told to make a .NET app for the iPhone. Then they will wonder why its so slow...
I like .NET because its GC is much much better than Java's. I am even tempted to mess around with some of the cheap .NET Micro development kits that are floating around. But if its performance you need, go to C++ or even Apples Obj-C. Garbage collection is both a method to make program's easier to write and a safeguard for memory leaks. Its not a tell all cure:P
Ah, but EDS didn't PAY for the computers till three years latter. The specs are for a PC three years old so you can sell them the bottom line PC at that point.
Don't know EDS's side of it though. Could be EDS' client wanted to hold on the order. Maybe there were billing issues. I bet the client told EDS that they needed the computers and since no one renegotiated the contract, EDS asked for Compaq for the original spec quote.
This took 18 months TFA. We don't have the reams of documents they possibly went though.
I can see the manager of Sky emailing a manager at HP/EDS on why its taking so long and the manager blatantly lies. I can also see Sky, after a few months into the projects getting some off hand information decides the change the spec in mid stream.
All this compounded by the fact that neither side seriously looked at either sides contract. I am sure both's in house lawyers did, but upper management don't look at that stuff. The only people who KNOW the timeframe are the line workers. However, at that low level in the food chain they have to lie so they arn't swept up in another EDS/HP employee purge. Being some of the people I have talked to in Plano, there isn't alot of love lost at EDS anymore.
I think Sky just went to the Judge and showed them what they originally were promised and what they got. I also bet one look at the contract shows its to have no substance (i.e. EDS/HP are not liable for anything, even if the software causes a million people to die). I very much doubt there would be an 18 month court case if the contract was rock solid.
If that so, then I made a mistake. I met to many morons who don't trust banks with their money and keep it in their damn closets.
Banks CANNOT Freeze your assets for no reason!
Stop trolling. I have been hit when they released debit cards for the first time. Getting a -$200 balance for just a few under $5 purchase made me scream, but it was clearly listed in the fine print and the "fees and schedule's" document. I keep track now and haven't had an overdraft since.
As long as you have a balance in the bank you have the right to go to that bank and take out all the money and close the account. Unless a COURT ORDER was obtained to freeze your account, the bank cannot just "take your money" Even then there is a list of exceptions and a process to get your money.
Paypal could hold your money for no reason other to protect other users agents "fraud" With the exception of putting a civil case to them, they can do anything they want. Take a look at the User agreement. Once nice clause in there "We may hold your funds for up to 180 Days if reasonably needed to protect against the risk of liability..." So if they "think" something is wrong, they lock you out for a quarter and there is nothing you can do and kill your business. A bank can't do this arbitrarily.
Paypal is nice for sending small funds from one person to another, but you NEVER keep your business balance in that.
They better change their dice if they are relying on that.
Seriously, what are they doing that is particularly innovative anymore. I gave up on them when X-2 came out. I am only interested in finishing 12 just so I can say I have played all the FF series (except X-2. God its like I am watching awful Bleach/Naruto filler, except its written by fan-boy's with a lotion fetish).
The problem I am having is the job systems have all been either done or not very exciting. The series doesn't make me cry like the end of the first disk of 7 did (To be fair, the rest of 7 was kind of standard fair). Even if the 12 story sounds good, its hard to get around the wow factor. I can stand a 8 hour tutorial (Wow has a 70 level tutorial:P) but I can't stand any reward at the end of it.
DragonQuest hasn't been a serious series in a while so we are left with the hope FF will have a powerful story to keep you playing. I just lost my faith in Square ever since X-2. I played the first two chapters of that game and just stopped. Its like they didn't even try. I already knew how the story was going to play out by just the hints and there was just no point.
I guess, in the end it doesn't matter. Whatever glowing/bad reviews FF13 will have, it won't matter. It will make a mint like it always does. It will have a decent, a bit simpler job system. The story will have some twists that will be easy to follow and not all-together unexpected. It will then bring their stock price up and all will be well.
If not? They always have the ready-to-go project FF7: Aeris Reborn. Its going to be an FPS.
Same here. But the article is on games that kill companies, not necessarily bad games.
Lets face it, the game was "meh". I played it mainly because it was a major tie in, but also because a friend got frustrated at it and game me it. As a gamer whore, I wouldn't pay $60 bucks for something this repetitive. You couldn't even play Neo! WTF! Even as a un-lockable charter, anything! So with all that, did it really sell 5 million units? Atari said they made a serious loss, enough to kill the studio. No doubt that thing cost an arm and a leg using all the voice actors AND their likeness. This was back in 03, where most studios might not have actors contracts to include video game tie in's. Maybe they paid to much? Forget about the broken saves or the bad crashes to desktop. If they DID sell 5 million units, how much did that game cost for them to take a MAJOR loss on it?
Why after 6 months it went to bargain bin prices? I remember, just going to Fry's that Christmas, seeing this thing on sale for $29, then dropping to $19 in February. The only reason games drop that badly THAT soon, is that the store had to much stock and the original vender won't take the overflow.
The game was ok. But like the Matrix, it was over hipped, over priced, and in the end forgettable :P
Your right. Blizzard really put the minimum standard for a good MMOG with all those innovations.
It makes me wonder though why other newer MMORG's don't even do these basic things? I don't see any MMORGs with a plug in system and I think STO is the only "new" one coming out with a phasing system. Its all right there. Blizzard did ALL the work for everyone. I think "no one does it right" is because the publishers don't want the game to last more than two years.
It really makes me wonder about Swtor. They seem to be doing things right out of the box, but can anyone catch up anymore with WoW's 5 year head start:P
Need to see the quests on the Ally side. I have been horde so long I don't even know how they feel about the whole situation:P
God, RFC in Heroic. Humm. Makes me wonder if they will revamp the badge system. You do heroics at 80 because there isn't any other loot that drops that you can use. There is no reason to bother with heroics at 70 as you will hit 74 by the time you have all your teir. By then the quest loot is better at Norhrend. I see them getting rid of Valor and Conquest badges, but how do you handle the badge loot at 70 then? The only people I know who even bother with Justice badges is board max 80's who do the whole "Lock it at 70 for BC" thing.
I thought maybe giving badges for everyone who completes BC randoms, so when you hit 70 you can buy one or two pieces of Justice gear.
I'll just be happy when everything has an 80 heroic though. Even PoS has lost its magic:P
And STO isn't? Evey space mission I have been in involves "Blow X ships up, Protect X station"
There are a few missions where you don't have to kill things, but they all are still based off the three MMORG principles for quests:
1. Collect X Items from the ground and/or other NPC's
2. Collect X Items from dead NPC's you have killed.
3. Kill Boss/Unique NPC
Even if your speaking theoretically, I have yet to see even a single player game that has done that without the word "Point-and-Click". There has to be a "game" in the RPG/MMORG and likewise there has to be a "story" in the game. Heck, look at pen and paper RPG's. The DND 2nd rules are full of workarounds, extra rules, etc because people WANTED more from the game part. Without the game part, its just some guy telling a story. Any DnD player, of any edition, will tell you the roll of the dice gives an element of excitement, randomness, to the story.
Its the same in WoW. I spent hours trying to get my DPS to hit 6k constantly on WoW so I could get in an ICC group. Not for justthe Frost Badges. It's that I have wanted to kill Arthas ever since the end of Frozen Throne off WC3. If I still can't get into an ICC group, I will damn well get my Priest up to 80 and gear him up. I want to be there when blizzard opens the instance for it.
Sure WoW has a large complex algorithm on how you attack things. It can even be argued that your still a noob till you get to 70,"Where the real game begins." But if it didn't have a good story, friends you could regularly play with, and an engine that makes it challenging at all levels of play, it would not be on top right now.
PS - Though, to be honest, what happens once we "kill" the Lich King? He was/is the boggie man of all of Northriend and personaly shows up in many of the quests your on. Cataclysm will solve the content issue below level 60, but where will the story go after that:P
Been in the closed beta for a bit. You need a proper interface now a days.
Might play it more now, but the PvP has been a long time coming and I am not sure how fun it will be. I haven't been able to even get high enough to play Klingon with only 3 hour play sessions, twice a week.
Then its the way its set up. Ok I understand its an MMO, but it doesn't seem like the group abilities or classes are well balanced. Going in its hard to understand how one class helps another and all the ground fights seem to be "everyone shoot as fast as you can" kind of situations. Its not even a good "trinity" You have to make you ship do all three if you want to do any of the missions. Case in point for the ground missions where your given a bunch of red shirts if you don't have enough named crew. I have to start out as a tank type and get a science officer as I just can't get the AI to tank properly. Without a threat/dps plug in, I am not even sure if my weapons are doing as well as they should.
That's the crux of the matter now a days. In WoW I can get the Recount plug-in and Omen to figure out if one build works better than another. They built their interface, from day one, to be as configurable as possible. But in STO? They spent months telling use "The interface is the last to get developed" Really? Most of WoW's innovations came FROM the community of plug-in's. I cannot imaging playing wow without a raid grid let alone without recount. With the current interface STO has, I can't see managing more than 10 players reliably. As it is now, most "group" missions are free for all's anyway.
Its just, I kind of gave up most of the way in the beta. It was hard just playing maybe 6 hours a week. Then you go to the forms and see all the people wining about how its either not good enough or that its a wow/CO clone without giving any kind of true comparison. Sure your the captain of a star ship, but it also feels constrained somehow.
The new 3.3 patch from WoW comes out, it became fun to PLAY it. After 4 hours I finally have an 80 and doing high level stuff now. I never have to hunt for a group for heroics, no more being dropped because I can only do 2k DPS just because I am starting. I bet they will be setting up raids with this system at some point as well. Heck, even though I play Blackrock ALL THE FREAKING TIME on my 51 pally, at least I can GO there. I always skip it because I could never find groups for it.
STO have been arguing for the last 6 months about how "the interface is the last to be implemented" That kind of thinking is the reason most people get turned off in the first week of a MMO:P
It is. They have to build robots to keep it alive
So your definition of a terrorist is someone reading a newspaper on the street with brown skin?
Look, I hate cops. I hate being in fear of someone who is paid to carry around a gun and find something "wrong" with you and could care less about it. But I LOVE our criminal system. Their job is to put you in jail and let the judge decide what to do with you. You don't have to tell them anything, they are not there to help you at all. Their entire purpose is that of Tier 1 technical support. They put you on hold till a judge sees you and a case is filed. They are front line soldiers where ALL they see EVERYDAY is beatings, shootings robbery's, and kidnappings. They CAN NOT shoot a person without a good reason. So while I fear them, I also know that the best they can do to someone who is polite, says "sir", and does everything they ask is to be arrested. The judge is the only guy I have to worry about.
Your wrong. These cops were scared. If they did what training dictated they would of arrested this guy and interrogated him for days before finding nothing. Instead they decided to judge him on the street because he lived in the wrong apartment, sitting at the wrong time, with the wrong colored skin. There was no reason for this. They should of just come clean the first day and instead made eveyone fear the police just a little more.
They properly have a shared mini-bath house in the place. Its fairly common at low rent apartments.
If your going cheap however, a bath house is better as they have a fixed rate set by the government for all the public ones. Of course paying the 5 dollar entry charge is cheap, but they get you on all the extras. (Want a towel? How about soap? etc.) Just be sure you know the rules before going in so your not seen as a "dumb American" Also they are very wary of foreigners so many of the private ones may be off limits.
Of course its all be declining. Most modern apartment complexes have built in baths now. You usually don't even have to worry about it as a foreigner as most places that server them have built in showers. Even a friend of mine who stayed in Tokyo for a month off in the outskirts got a good deal and a shower.
Yea, I remember reading a trade paper about this. The issue was the bus for the 486 was too slow. The original 8087, 287, 387 all just monitored the data bus and some signal pins. Once you sent a x87 op code, the co processor would kick in.
Intel, initaly, just wanted the 486 to be the high end replacement for the 386DX. Remember, the 386DX didn't have the co-processor, but the 486 did. When they were working on the SX chip in the late 90's they were also working on the ideas for the DX2. They concluded that they couldn't get a co-processor to work well with the 486 bus without changing the pin signaling. 486's were just starting to take off in a big way too and Intel didn't want to mess around with the socket till they finished Socket 4.
I was also told from an asside that while the technical reason was good enough, Intel didn't want to deal with the co-processor idea anymore because of support issues. Not to mention having to compete with cheaper co-processors from AMD.
How about a 3 year working Dell Desktop/Laptop/Server tech with more than a thousand calls under my belt?
Their phone support for anything below Gold is bleh. You get four hour service though, your golden. While I can get to the second tier quickly, we will get that part out and fix that computer as quickly as we can. Baring parts not being local, I can usually get parts for any server under an hour here in the Metroplex.
When it works, it works good. When the only part in the nation is in Austin, then your down for a day:P
I can't answer for the front light tech support however. But Dell is trying to make all business class support, even low end, stay in the US.
You DO know the PCIe is a bus right? You don't JUST plug a video card into it, this is not AGP world now.
Most modern motherboards use the PCIe bus for everything. Built in network cards, the keyboard controller, USB ports all run on that bus on the board. Just because there are no slots on the board dosn't mean it doesn't use it all internal.
My complaint was that I thought it only had a single 2.5Gbps bus channel for everything outside of the processor. It was too limiting as if you wanted an MPEG4 decoder chip, you would use a good porton of the bandwith trasfing to the cpu's video controler. Hell, lets not even think about gaming. You can't get most of the figures out of Areo without at least DX10 compatibility. The new Microsoft 2010 supposed to render windows in DirectX supposedly. I was wrong however. A closer look at the white paper showed:
"Support 4 lanes in each direction, 2.5 Gbps per lane per direction, poin-to-point DMI interface to Intel NM10 Express chipset."
Its just when you look at the pins, electrically, it looks like a PCIe interface so I was confused. 6Gbps is enough for anything on that laptop. I just worry that intel has the DMI bus locked so no one can make their own chip set.
No joke. I can live without a full PCI-e bus IF you give me some decent performance I would let it ride. God don't they own Ati?
But this thing? Its DESIGNED to take the Ion and anyone else who wants to make a chipset for it out of the game. Look at the whitepapers here: http://www.intel.com/products/processor/atom/techdocs.htm
There will NEVER be a system, using this chip, with a DVI out neither. Why? The CPU outputs DIRECTLY to VGA. It has a LDVS interface, but it doesn't look like you can split it off for a second display. Maybe as a motherboard but never for the laptop. With the exception of directly connecting it to memory, the only outside interface to the chipset is its "direct media interface", but it looks like the same signaling for PCI-E. One channel.
Thats it. You got a PC with a signle PCI-E slot, were all your USB/Wireless/Ethernet and Hard drive pipe though. They did this to lock down the chip.
All that being said, if they make this chip cheap enough then everything I said is moot. IF the D510 sells for under 299 and the D400's make a 199 laptop, its worth it for the price. But if AMD can get on the ball with their new chip and the ion chipset, they might win this war.
Honestly, I think it really should. Looking at ALL those electronics makes you wonder why each has to be connected the way they are. I mean, isn't it possible to build all those parts into a bunch of PCIe cards and build just a few computers for them? It be much more effective to have 10 receivers on a single board, so you can monitor 10 channels at once, than have 10 individual radios.
Though, when I think about it, you can get those 144mhz radios REALLY cheap if you buy them used. Be a control nightmare though, how the hell do you manage all those radios other then how he has it up:P
This has been done and its going to be "done" many times before.
What amazed me was that Google translate did a REALLY good job of traslating that article. Its not perfect, but you can read it and understand fairly clearly.
A decent amine called Starship Operators had some interesting concepts. I like the idea that the warp engines don't work inside of a sun gravity well and a majority of the weeks of travel was between the outer edge of a gravity well to the planet itself. No force fields just really good heat plating designed to reduce heat. It could be said that the whole point of these space battles was just trying to microwave the other side faster:P
How most ships were built around a decent long range weapon designed to insta-kill the other ship once its in range. Having a complete observatory on a ship because you had to magnify visual sight so much it took very powerful telescopes. Even if you had visual sight, it takes close to 8 minutes for a plasma or projectile to hit.
Its based off some novels that makes me really wish I could read Japanese. My main complaint about the anime is the ending. After all this time of staying fairly true to physics they seemed to just make some stuff up at the end to end the series.
As for the plot points for the characters? Meh. Nothing I haven't seen in any other semi-political amine in space. They could of expanded the charters a bit more but in the end, they went with a short and sweet simple anime series.
Yea its very nice. Supports 3D acceleration too. I play wow in a box while my main system is network isolated:) I recommend VMplayer to everyone who wants to mess with it.
Meh, this reviewer obviously doesn't use any of these systems professionally. Virtual box seems nice but it was only recently it support live migration. Its always been a "work in progress" from my point of view and I only really use it when I have a dd image of something I need to mess with. Not sure about Parallels though. I have heard of them but never really looked at them.
To be honest, however, VMware really needs to catch up. I bought 7 not for the extra features but because I had a lot of vmdk files with multiple path snapshots. Hell, its why I bought the 6 upgrade from 5.
Mind you, this is all on the workstation development side. Start talking server and VMware wins, hands down over all other technology's. But then, they are expensive enough to make people pause before they drop for a ESX license. Hell, went to the Parallels site for the first time, and that $999 price for a server license is very tempting.
I miss rescuing those scientists. It seems its all deathmatch now.
Your right, my mistake. Some reason I thought the achievement system started back in 2007. It basically got me back into the game and I just can't live without it now;) Haha, look at his guild, either this is an alt or a friend of his.
http://tw.wowarmory.com/character-achievements.xml?r=Wrathbringer&cn=Kuonet&gn=%E7%A5%9E%E6%A8%A3
That guy is very close too, but looks like he missed the Mask's from Hallows Eve. Have to wait a year for that one or find someone to buy them off of. (Can't remember if they are nodrop) God, Needy looks like a monster to get though.