This is a great fucking idea. Not only would it remove bias towards high-end raiding as you've suggested, it would eliminate lag in Ironforge. No people sitting around doing nothing but eating bandwidth! Sweet.
Honestly, this solution is better than me upgrading my computer.
"it's gotten to a point where I need a clear demarcation between work life and home life..."
You are entitled to this regardless of whether you have health issues or not, and regardless of whether you think it's necessary. This is simply a choice that you make. The grandparent post includes a laundry list of things this person is able to cram into their life, but the argument is flawed. But just because the poster is happy filling every moment in his or her life with various responsibilities doesn't mean that you have to. Personally, I like to veg out in front of the TV once in a while, or re-read a trashy sci-fi novel. Other times I read work-related material. I choose, and I refuse to feel guilty for not working my ass off outside of work. My current employer, fortunately, agrees with this sentiment.
However, I used to work in IT. Computers were my hobby, at the time I didn't want to go to school, and I ended up in a systems administration position. Consequently my primary hobby was ruined for me. I didn't want to go near a computer outside of work. The problem was that this hobby wasn't replaced by anything, so I ended up resenting work on my time off - I sat around trying to figure out what to do a lot of the time because my normal enjoyable time-sink had been ruined, and consequently I was miserable. I quit my job, and went back to school.
I know many people who do their hobby as their job and are blissfully happy. The GP poster sounds like one of these people. I'm not one of them, and it's possible that you aren't either. There's nothing wrong with that. I love what I do now (research) and while I spend a lot of time at work, I don't mix my work life and my home life and I like it that way. I'm much, much happier now.
I don't say any of this to try to convince you to leave your job. I'm just trying to show that there is someone out there who is happy, and the complete opposite of the grandparent poster. In short, the GP poster is full of shit, and his personal precedence has no bearing on your life. For that matter, neither does mine. YOU choose whether or not you can be happy with work and play being the same thing.
There is no reason to emulate another console's games on yours. The systems themselves are loss leaders, in general, and if you take a loss selling an XBox360 only to have your customer buy games from which Sony gets a cut, not you, you're never going to make any money.
The last thing you want is people using your hardware to run another console's games. You make your money when people buy games for your system and you collect the licensing fees.
This is a good point, but unfortunately I mean 1.2Mbps capped. I set up my torrent client so it had a ton of ports and opened up around 40 simultaneous connection spread over two torrents. Their cumulative download rate was 1.2Mbps. When I shut one down, the other torrent scaled up and capped out at 1.2Mbps. Also, if I do manage to hit that cap when torrenting I can't even surf the net in any sort of timely manner, let alone play World of Warcraft or use any other kind of latency-sensitive app.
I'm just kind of disappointed that my connection here is poorer than the 5Mbps cable I had in Halifax before coming here.
Would you mind telling me what you paid for installation, and what your wait time for installation was? I live in Kawasaki (Tama ward) and I'm currently on an NTT DSL line using Fusion GOL as my ISP. My "12Mbps" connection cannot break around 1.2Mbps, even at low-use hours. I'm fed up with it, and the Fusion GOL support people. However, I've been told that getting fiber usually takes months to set up.
Is this true? Is the policy printed somewhere? Seeing it might make me feel a little better. As a physicist entering my PhD, I'm terrified of the anti-scientific trend I'm seeing in the United States.
"The X-Box 360 kiosks I've seen are drawing mediocre attention."
There's a PS3 'kiosk' (more of an E3 video on loop) in Yodobashi Akiba (big electronics store in Akihabara in Tokyo). It sits on one wall of a room full of Playstation 2 games. It shows MGS4 gameplay and cutscenes and it's absolutely stunning. You know what else though? Nobody pays it the slightest amount of attention. It's the Nintendo DS units running Nintendogs and the plasma TV on the wall showing a trailer for 'Shadow of the Collosus' that have people crowded around. Nobody cares about the PS3.
Why?
Well, I'm not going to pretend to know for sure, but it seems to me that the general public doesn't care about a product until they can actually buy it. I think those XBox 360 kiosks will get a lot more attention when there is a stack of XBox 360 boxes sitting beside it.
I can certainly understand the 'warm blanket' feeling of being able to get your own name. I've had mine shut out many times, most annoyingly on XBox Live where your name is quite literally your only identifying feature when searching for other players in the game lobbies.
Anyway, what bothers me about this is not that you were asked to change your name. This is typical Blizzard, and it is technically in violation of the policy, 'warm blanket' or not. The real question is, why did it take them 45 levels to call you on it? There was a player in my guild forced to change his name after he had been level 60 for almost 4 months.
Surely they can write a small routine to check for names for character strings with common prefixes (such as 'Cmdr') and flag them. You get the name, but a GM will check it out to see if it's in violation and if it is, ask you to change it when you're still less than level 10. It should be easy. What bothers me is that (I think) they only call players on the name issue if either another player complains or a GM sees you wandering and decides to make an issue of it.
The problem is that you had already established your identity when they took it from you.
That's the one. I've heard the job is crappy, but it doesn't sound like it takes up any time outside work hours (I've never worked a 9 to 5 that didn't require some sort of 'homework').
I think I can happily tune out a 9 to 5 for a year and enjoy the whole being in Japan thing.
I disagree with your assessment that there is no such thing as cheating. For the record though, your examples (such as the english using Longbows) are good, and I agree that in a life-or-death situation, 'cheating' is a complete fabrication. However, when I log into Halo 2 the situation is somewhat different. I log in with the expectation that I am playing a game, not fighting for my life.
Main Entry: game Pronunciation: 'gAm Function: noun... 3 a (1) : a physical or mental competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other.
Main Entry: cheat Pronunciation: 'chEt Function: verb... 1 b : to violate rules dishonestly (as at cards or on an examination)
Expoits are a grey area, I give you that. If it can be done within the game world, is it really cheating? Personally, I define the 'rules' of the game based on how I (and the developers) would expect the game world to act. Sometimes I am mistaken, and if I'm told, by the developers, that some behaviour or another was intended when I considered it to be unfair, I'll accept it and move on (game forums are excellent for clearing stuff like this up).
However, if the developer did NOT intend for the behaviour to be possible, then it IS cheating. The developer makes the rules, and if they didn't intend for it to be possible, then it simply shouldn't be allowed, possible or not. It's certainly possible for the catcher to grab the hitter as he takes off for first base and beat the hell out of him, but it's not really the intended way for him to prevent the runner from reaching the base safely. In sport we accept the rules and obey them. If rules are defined by the referee (developer) and they are broken, how is it not cheating?
My point is, if Bungie says you can't do something in Halo 2, it's cheating, plain and simple. This goes for any game.
"I think what most people don't like is giving up the control of maintaining the hierarchy. They LIKE creating folders and moving files about.... the very tedium that "smart folders/labels" are designed to eliminate."
This is exactly my problem with these ideas. I wasn't previously able to put my finger on why I don't like the sound of these filesystem changes. Right now I feel as though I have tight control of my filesystem. Every file is in its right place, and my investment of time in the tedious task of organizing them pays off in never having to wonder where anything is.
When I read about all these new desktop search engines, I'm confused. I never have to search my XP system for anything. I admit, I do occasionally need to search for files on my Linux boxes, but only when I have a broken package or some other OS-level thing. I certainly never lose documents, pictures or music. I know that's not exactly what desktop search is about, but from my perspective, that's how it looks.
Which brings me back to the root problem. When I hear these filesystems described, my mental image of the disk structure is of one directory with tens of thousands of files with a search engine on top of it. That freaks me out.
Don't bother correcting me on this, I *know* this isn't a good way of visualizing what they're trying to do, but until I really get to use a system like this myself, on MY files, I doubt I'm really going to get it.
I'm certainly not going to deny that some people do badly in university because of video games (online or offline). However, the problem here is that there are certainly many reasons people fail out, and we're completely ignoring them. I have two friends I live with this year who are borderline with their grades - failing out because they play sports. One plays soccer recreationally, the other swims on the swim team. They both neglect assignments to play their sports. It is highly unlikely that either of them will be returning next year because of their marks. Is playing sports somehow a 'more valid' reason for failing out because sports are generally considered to be a healthier recreational activity than gaming?
Also, how many people do you know who failed out because they spent their first year or two in university drinking and doing pot? I can name dozens from the last four years.
Look, some people do badly in school/work/life because of games. Many people do badly for totally different reasons. It's not like gaming is causing some sort of dropout epidemic here.
To be fair to Sony, I have an early Net-MD minidisc (about three years old) and I've beaten the hell out of it. It still works perfectly. The mechanism with moving parts in anything MiniDisc-based is a lot more durable than a $39 Koss CD player you can get from CostCo. We're all skeptical of moving parts because of products like that. I imagine that (in terms of moving parts), the PSP will do much better than most expect.
I worry about the screen though. No clamshell? It looks sexy, but it's worrying.
If I had to guess I'd say that the on-board communication would be switched, such that the chips can talk one to one at 1Gbit.
For chips on different boards to talk though they would need to squeeze their traffic down the same line as all the other chips trying to talk board to board. Hence the higher bandwidth?
Back when I worked in the computer room at K-W Surplus (please excuse the horrid website, it isn't mine) we took this box of old 486DX chips and glued them onto the ends of these long thin plastic pencils. They made excellent back scratchers. We sold them for $0.99CA I think.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a great fucking idea. Not only would it remove bias towards high-end raiding as you've suggested, it would eliminate lag in Ironforge. No people sitting around doing nothing but eating bandwidth! Sweet. Honestly, this solution is better than me upgrading my computer.
"it's gotten to a point where I need a clear demarcation between work life and home life ..."
You are entitled to this regardless of whether you have health issues or not, and regardless of whether you think it's necessary. This is simply a choice that you make. The grandparent post includes a laundry list of things this person is able to cram into their life, but the argument is flawed. But just because the poster is happy filling every moment in his or her life with various responsibilities doesn't mean that you have to. Personally, I like to veg out in front of the TV once in a while, or re-read a trashy sci-fi novel. Other times I read work-related material. I choose, and I refuse to feel guilty for not working my ass off outside of work. My current employer, fortunately, agrees with this sentiment.
However, I used to work in IT. Computers were my hobby, at the time I didn't want to go to school, and I ended up in a systems administration position. Consequently my primary hobby was ruined for me. I didn't want to go near a computer outside of work. The problem was that this hobby wasn't replaced by anything, so I ended up resenting work on my time off - I sat around trying to figure out what to do a lot of the time because my normal enjoyable time-sink had been ruined, and consequently I was miserable. I quit my job, and went back to school.
I know many people who do their hobby as their job and are blissfully happy. The GP poster sounds like one of these people. I'm not one of them, and it's possible that you aren't either. There's nothing wrong with that. I love what I do now (research) and while I spend a lot of time at work, I don't mix my work life and my home life and I like it that way. I'm much, much happier now.
I don't say any of this to try to convince you to leave your job. I'm just trying to show that there is someone out there who is happy, and the complete opposite of the grandparent poster. In short, the GP poster is full of shit, and his personal precedence has no bearing on your life. For that matter, neither does mine. YOU choose whether or not you can be happy with work and play being the same thing.
I saw a tentacle in a manga a guy was reading on the Nambu line around twenty minutes ago.
Huh. That's actually a really good idea. So long as it doesn't play PS3 games (which it obviously wouldn't.) Good call.
There is no reason to emulate another console's games on yours. The systems themselves are loss leaders, in general, and if you take a loss selling an XBox360 only to have your customer buy games from which Sony gets a cut, not you, you're never going to make any money.
The last thing you want is people using your hardware to run another console's games. You make your money when people buy games for your system and you collect the licensing fees.
This is a good point, but unfortunately I mean 1.2Mbps capped. I set up my torrent client so it had a ton of ports and opened up around 40 simultaneous connection spread over two torrents. Their cumulative download rate was 1.2Mbps. When I shut one down, the other torrent scaled up and capped out at 1.2Mbps. Also, if I do manage to hit that cap when torrenting I can't even surf the net in any sort of timely manner, let alone play World of Warcraft or use any other kind of latency-sensitive app. I'm just kind of disappointed that my connection here is poorer than the 5Mbps cable I had in Halifax before coming here.
Would you mind telling me what you paid for installation, and what your wait time for installation was? I live in Kawasaki (Tama ward) and I'm currently on an NTT DSL line using Fusion GOL as my ISP. My "12Mbps" connection cannot break around 1.2Mbps, even at low-use hours. I'm fed up with it, and the Fusion GOL support people. However, I've been told that getting fiber usually takes months to set up.
Hey Jackass, you know what the target audience for manga is in Japan? You know, not the kiddies? Wake the fuck up.
Is this true? Is the policy printed somewhere? Seeing it might make me feel a little better. As a physicist entering my PhD, I'm terrified of the anti-scientific trend I'm seeing in the United States.
"The X-Box 360 kiosks I've seen are drawing mediocre attention."
There's a PS3 'kiosk' (more of an E3 video on loop) in Yodobashi Akiba (big electronics store in Akihabara in Tokyo). It sits on one wall of a room full of Playstation 2 games. It shows MGS4 gameplay and cutscenes and it's absolutely stunning. You know what else though? Nobody pays it the slightest amount of attention. It's the Nintendo DS units running Nintendogs and the plasma TV on the wall showing a trailer for 'Shadow of the Collosus' that have people crowded around. Nobody cares about the PS3.
Why?
Well, I'm not going to pretend to know for sure, but it seems to me that the general public doesn't care about a product until they can actually buy it. I think those XBox 360 kiosks will get a lot more attention when there is a stack of XBox 360 boxes sitting beside it.
I can certainly understand the 'warm blanket' feeling of being able to get your own name. I've had mine shut out many times, most annoyingly on XBox Live where your name is quite literally your only identifying feature when searching for other players in the game lobbies.
Anyway, what bothers me about this is not that you were asked to change your name. This is typical Blizzard, and it is technically in violation of the policy, 'warm blanket' or not. The real question is, why did it take them 45 levels to call you on it? There was a player in my guild forced to change his name after he had been level 60 for almost 4 months.
Surely they can write a small routine to check for names for character strings with common prefixes (such as 'Cmdr') and flag them. You get the name, but a GM will check it out to see if it's in violation and if it is, ask you to change it when you're still less than level 10. It should be easy. What bothers me is that (I think) they only call players on the name issue if either another player complains or a GM sees you wandering and decides to make an issue of it.
The problem is that you had already established your identity when they took it from you.
God damn, I wish I could tax-deduct my iPod.
That's the one. I've heard the job is crappy, but it doesn't sound like it takes up any time outside work hours (I've never worked a 9 to 5 that didn't require some sort of 'homework').
I think I can happily tune out a 9 to 5 for a year and enjoy the whole being in Japan thing.
I'm just about to leave for Japan to work for a couple with a very similar policy. Would you mind telling me what company it was that you worked for?
I disagree with your assessment that there is no such thing as cheating. For the record though, your examples (such as the english using Longbows) are good, and I agree that in a life-or-death situation, 'cheating' is a complete fabrication. However, when I log into Halo 2 the situation is somewhat different. I log in with the expectation that I am playing a game, not fighting for my life.
...
...
Main Entry: game
Pronunciation: 'gAm
Function: noun
3 a (1) : a physical or mental competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other.
Main Entry: cheat
Pronunciation: 'chEt
Function: verb
1 b : to violate rules dishonestly (as at cards or on an examination)
Expoits are a grey area, I give you that. If it can be done within the game world, is it really cheating? Personally, I define the 'rules' of the game based on how I (and the developers) would expect the game world to act. Sometimes I am mistaken, and if I'm told, by the developers, that some behaviour or another was intended when I considered it to be unfair, I'll accept it and move on (game forums are excellent for clearing stuff like this up).
However, if the developer did NOT intend for the behaviour to be possible, then it IS cheating. The developer makes the rules, and if they didn't intend for it to be possible, then it simply shouldn't be allowed, possible or not. It's certainly possible for the catcher to grab the hitter as he takes off for first base and beat the hell out of him, but it's not really the intended way for him to prevent the runner from reaching the base safely. In sport we accept the rules and obey them. If rules are defined by the referee (developer) and they are broken, how is it not cheating?
My point is, if Bungie says you can't do something in Halo 2, it's cheating, plain and simple. This goes for any game.
"I think what most people don't like is giving up the control of maintaining the hierarchy. They LIKE creating folders and moving files about.... the very tedium that "smart folders/labels" are designed to eliminate."
This is exactly my problem with these ideas. I wasn't previously able to put my finger on why I don't like the sound of these filesystem changes. Right now I feel as though I have tight control of my filesystem. Every file is in its right place, and my investment of time in the tedious task of organizing them pays off in never having to wonder where anything is.
When I read about all these new desktop search engines, I'm confused. I never have to search my XP system for anything. I admit, I do occasionally need to search for files on my Linux boxes, but only when I have a broken package or some other OS-level thing. I certainly never lose documents, pictures or music. I know that's not exactly what desktop search is about, but from my perspective, that's how it looks.
Which brings me back to the root problem. When I hear these filesystems described, my mental image of the disk structure is of one directory with tens of thousands of files with a search engine on top of it. That freaks me out.
Don't bother correcting me on this, I *know* this isn't a good way of visualizing what they're trying to do, but until I really get to use a system like this myself, on MY files, I doubt I'm really going to get it.
Why not? Americans keep telling other countries what to do (DMCA, anyone?). This seems only fair.
I'm certainly not going to deny that some people do badly in university because of video games (online or offline). However, the problem here is that there are certainly many reasons people fail out, and we're completely ignoring them. I have two friends I live with this year who are borderline with their grades - failing out because they play sports. One plays soccer recreationally, the other swims on the swim team. They both neglect assignments to play their sports. It is highly unlikely that either of them will be returning next year because of their marks. Is playing sports somehow a 'more valid' reason for failing out because sports are generally considered to be a healthier recreational activity than gaming?
Also, how many people do you know who failed out because they spent their first year or two in university drinking and doing pot? I can name dozens from the last four years.
Look, some people do badly in school/work/life because of games. Many people do badly for totally different reasons. It's not like gaming is causing some sort of dropout epidemic here.
I do love my domestic beers.
A six-pack of Sleeman's Honey Brown is a reasonable generic fee for informal tech support to friends.
To be fair to Sony, I have an early Net-MD minidisc (about three years old) and I've beaten the hell out of it. It still works perfectly. The mechanism with moving parts in anything MiniDisc-based is a lot more durable than a $39 Koss CD player you can get from CostCo. We're all skeptical of moving parts because of products like that. I imagine that (in terms of moving parts), the PSP will do much better than most expect.
I worry about the screen though. No clamshell? It looks sexy, but it's worrying.
Hahah, you should try working in it! Yeesh. No wonder I went back to school.
If I had to guess I'd say that the on-board communication would be switched, such that the chips can talk one to one at 1Gbit.
For chips on different boards to talk though they would need to squeeze their traffic down the same line as all the other chips trying to talk board to board. Hence the higher bandwidth?
Just a guess.
Back when I worked in the computer room at K-W Surplus (please excuse the horrid website, it isn't mine) we took this box of old 486DX chips and glued them onto the ends of these long thin plastic pencils. They made excellent back scratchers. We sold them for $0.99CA I think.
...It IS.. isn't it?
*checks article*
It's been a long day, but I'm pretty sure that's what the article says.
I worry that perhaps I'm missing the point here.