like this should not be posted on Slashdot. It takes more than just showing up at an event and taking pictures of booth girls to create a report. Please--don't even bother reading the article. How sad.
I haven't been playing WoW for many months now but when I did I was looking for a guild for quite some time.
I'm generalizing, but on the whole when someone posted that they were looking for or starting a gay-friendly guild, it was either an honest post that led to a flame of harassment or a blatant troll that pretty much ended up the same way.
And any kind of discussion of "gay-friendly guilds" in public channels was more or less the same.
The sad fact is that when the word "gay" comes up on WoW, it is usually in the context of "That was so gay," or "What are you--gay?"
Rather than starting a gay-friendly guild, I think it is more effective to look for a so-called "mature" guild or to operate a guild with guidelines that encourage mature behavior.
The irony of the situation that Ms. Andrews seems to have encountered--that sexual language guidelines used to protect gay players are apparently being used only against those same players--may not be a reality. Just because she constantly hears the word "gay" being used in a derisive manner doesn't mean that Blizzard condones such use or even tolerates it. Players who use such language may in fact be getting the same warnings that Andrews received--there's no way for us to know this.
But the problem with this derisive usage is its utter prevalence in the general chat channels. I doubt that Blizzard has the human resources to handle the number of kids (and adults) who are using this kind of language. And, I suspect, they are probably reluctant to actually ban that many players. Hiring enough people to do the banning and the subsequent drop in subscriptions would probably cut into their bottom line too excessively, I'm sorry to say.
As was clearly acknowledged, his stuff has made it onto the television screen before--like the two you mentioned. This is the first one that, if made, would be on the "big screen."
A large number of those car magazine photos are obtained by knowing where cars are driven for real-life road tests and basically being in the right place at the right time. So, for these type of photos, the car is in the public eye. There is sometimes a certain amount of disguise used on the vehicle to cover it up, but it's being driven on a public road.
First poster hit the nail on the head, this is the same old story of real-world speed gains versus more "pure" testing.
But what was more significant was his frank acknowledgement that Photoshop operating via Rosetta wasn't going to be usable by professionals. The people jumping on the accusation of hype bandwagon need to take those comments into consideration. It's not often that on a new product rollout something is said that directly translates into "Hey, don't go out and buy this right now."
Massive numbers of players attempting to flood a particular server to witness opening of new content...I don't think it's fair to characterize that as something that happens EVERY day on EVERY MMORPG.
Although this is hardly breaking news, in that it does happen in other games, I think the reason this is being presented as news is the number of people involved. WOW is working on a scale that pretty much blows away the 14,000 or so people regularly online for Eve.
So this is one of those "can we handle the scale of our popularity" issues, for which the answer for Blizzard seems to be increasingly "no" as servers are still plagued with queues and population-based lag.
They should have seen this coming and had a policy in place before it became a "difficult decision."
I don't currently have an account so I'm not sure about the locations of the new dungeons and details of the whole event, but I think one basic thing they should have done is make event off-limits to lower-level characters.
I know they want to encourage everyone's participation but I would think a cap of 20 or so would dissuade most people from starting a new toon just for the sake of watching. They could have also made a certain amount of time on the server a requirement, for example, you have to be active on the server for a month preceding the unlocking of the content.
Or, even better, you have to rank up a certain amount of tasks aiding the unlocking of the content. There are a number of solutions possible, all destined to be unpopular to one degree or another, but ANY decision would have been better than the knee-jerk resolution they chose.
No, I got that. I'm saying that in order to have been an effective jab, it had to superficially make sense. So when the topic was that Apple's value exceeded Dell's, saying that makes sense because they're the same company doesn't work--it's not clever enough because being the same company wouldn't explain the value difference.
Actually, that wouldn't make sense, would it? I mean, your troll isn't logical--selling the same product as Dell wouldn't account for Apple's greater market value. So, even as a troll it doesn't work.
I didn't, but other people on the Apple discussion boards have. The average Mac user--not someone on Slashdot--is pretty clueless to the product cycles, and I don't think it should be a case of caveat emptor.
...but as a couple others have touched on, what REALLY bugs me is the lack of an upgrade path for iLife and iWork.
Apple either needs to start rewarding people who buy the retail versions of these "mini-suites" by allowing them to upgrade to newer versions for a lot cheaper or, similarly, offer the same reduced prices to.Mac customers, considering the amount of integration they're working on.
AFAIK, there is no policy in place for someone who, for example, buys the previous version of iWork a month before the new version comes out. That's crazy, and even if there is some avenue for appealing that, people shouldn't have to search out said avenue.
I searched their site for any indication of system requirements. Evidently they don't think it's important to indicate what platforms their game runs on...I had to go to Amazon to find out. PC-only, Mac users out of luck.
It was in the early nineties, on April Fools' Day. Warning: a bit of explanation is required.
Like most grad students in liberal arts, I spent an inordinate amount of time in Sterling Memorial Library. A wonderful building but at that time still fairly antiquated: the electronic book database didn't extend to pre-1975 titles, there was no air conditioning in the stacks (meaning book rot was even more accelerated) and there were two systems a book could be indexed under: Library of Congress or the "Yale system," a maddening combination of letters and numbers that was sure to send you in the wrong direction.
If I recall, and it has been a while, the library has 6 floors accessible by elevator and within those 6 more "between-floors" accessible only by twisty staircase. You would find your book's call number on the main floor (especially since the few computers within the stacks were either malfuctioning or being used) and then delve into the stacks.
To guide you on your way, there were one-page charts posted throughout the stacks and in the elevators that indicated which floor your book could be found, based on its call number. It was a common sight to see a confused student looking at the chart, then at the paper in their hand, then back at the chart, ad infinitum.The library also left a handy stack of these guide charts by the front desk for students to take.
I took a chart home and set about changing the floors for about half of the call number groups on the chart. Since this was way back when I worked off a grayscale Powerbook 520 with no Photoshop etc., I had to use exacto knife and photocopier.
I printed off a shitload of the fake call number charts and then, first thing in the morning on April 1, replaced every posted chart in public areas throughout the library, including within the two elevators. Then, for good measure, I replaced the helpful "take one" stack with my own version.
I left a few clues on the chart--for those who had looked for their books and then returned to look again, more carefully--indicating that it was a prank. By April 2 all the bogus charts had been replaced, but I had gotten a good laugh out of it, even though it was a subtle prank that didn't have a large, noticable payoff.
All you have to do is look at Jobs' history to see that being a "manager at Sears or Circuit City or something..." would not have satisfied his ambitions. If you're seriously suggesting that, you've misjudged the man.
You may be right about his programming talent (I'm not saying you are) but clearly you don't know a single thing about human nature.
Easter eggs don't count as news
on
Kong Lives!
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
And nor does this "alt ending" that is neither interesting nor innovative. It's not even particularly clever.
If you really want to beat WoW, for starters how about making the game playable on PC and Mac? Sony has repeatedly marginalized Mac players. Blizzard came out of the gates with a dual-platform game and showed that it's possible. Sony, on the other hand, comes out with Everquest Mac literally years after the PC release, just shortly before EQ2 is announced. Pathetic.
It's called the whine. Few parents are able to tune it out and most give in to it eventually.
But seriously, this reminds me of another news items several years ago, I think. Someone came up with a streetlight whose color accentuated skin flaws like acne and generally made skin (probably light-colored skin, but perhaps all shades) extremely unattractive. The idea was that it would discourage teenage loitering, since they're so image-conscious.
I'm not going to argue with the author's economics or his lenient attitude on farmers.
My basic feeling is that I don't want to support farming because it subverts the spirit of the game and it supports a system by which workers do not end up having better lives. Even if it were likely that farming could become a "career," I don't think it adds up to a gratifying career. I think the bottom line is that it supports a fat cat who had the capital to buy the necessary hardware and network access but someone without imagination--essentially a parasite.
The biggest gripe that I have with farmers, and that is farmers in the plural--two or more banding together to work a hunting area for hours at a time, blocking others from coming in. Sure, if you can get enough people together you can drive them off, but they are acting differently from regular players because of the extended amount of time they'll haunt an area. A regular player may chase you away with sufficient manpower, but eventually they'll have something better to do. A farmer just stays and stays.
A lot of people I work with have their email set to check every five minutes...some every minute!
Although email has replaced the phone in a lot for a lot of our office communication, I think as long as you actually have a phone, it should be the instrument for anything that is crisis level or needs your immediate attention.
You need to train people that need to get in touch with you that they're NOT going to get immediate attention via email. Set your email to check once an hour and let people know that.
Slashdot Mirror
like this should not be posted on Slashdot. It takes more than just showing up at an event and taking pictures of booth girls to create a report. Please--don't even bother reading the article. How sad.
I'm generalizing, but on the whole when someone posted that they were looking for or starting a gay-friendly guild, it was either an honest post that led to a flame of harassment or a blatant troll that pretty much ended up the same way.
And any kind of discussion of "gay-friendly guilds" in public channels was more or less the same.
The sad fact is that when the word "gay" comes up on WoW, it is usually in the context of "That was so gay," or "What are you--gay?"
Rather than starting a gay-friendly guild, I think it is more effective to look for a so-called "mature" guild or to operate a guild with guidelines that encourage mature behavior.
The irony of the situation that Ms. Andrews seems to have encountered--that sexual language guidelines used to protect gay players are apparently being used only against those same players--may not be a reality. Just because she constantly hears the word "gay" being used in a derisive manner doesn't mean that Blizzard condones such use or even tolerates it. Players who use such language may in fact be getting the same warnings that Andrews received--there's no way for us to know this.
But the problem with this derisive usage is its utter prevalence in the general chat channels. I doubt that Blizzard has the human resources to handle the number of kids (and adults) who are using this kind of language. And, I suspect, they are probably reluctant to actually ban that many players. Hiring enough people to do the banning and the subsequent drop in subscriptions would probably cut into their bottom line too excessively, I'm sorry to say.
As was clearly acknowledged, his stuff has made it onto the television screen before--like the two you mentioned. This is the first one that, if made, would be on the "big screen."
A large number of those car magazine photos are obtained by knowing where cars are driven for real-life road tests and basically being in the right place at the right time. So, for these type of photos, the car is in the public eye. There is sometimes a certain amount of disguise used on the vehicle to cover it up, but it's being driven on a public road.
But what was more significant was his frank acknowledgement that Photoshop operating via Rosetta wasn't going to be usable by professionals. The people jumping on the accusation of hype bandwagon need to take those comments into consideration. It's not often that on a new product rollout something is said that directly translates into "Hey, don't go out and buy this right now."
Although this is hardly breaking news, in that it does happen in other games, I think the reason this is being presented as news is the number of people involved. WOW is working on a scale that pretty much blows away the 14,000 or so people regularly online for Eve.
So this is one of those "can we handle the scale of our popularity" issues, for which the answer for Blizzard seems to be increasingly "no" as servers are still plagued with queues and population-based lag.
I don't currently have an account so I'm not sure about the locations of the new dungeons and details of the whole event, but I think one basic thing they should have done is make event off-limits to lower-level characters.
I know they want to encourage everyone's participation but I would think a cap of 20 or so would dissuade most people from starting a new toon just for the sake of watching. They could have also made a certain amount of time on the server a requirement, for example, you have to be active on the server for a month preceding the unlocking of the content.
Or, even better, you have to rank up a certain amount of tasks aiding the unlocking of the content. There are a number of solutions possible, all destined to be unpopular to one degree or another, but ANY decision would have been better than the knee-jerk resolution they chose.
its
No, I got that. I'm saying that in order to have been an effective jab, it had to superficially make sense. So when the topic was that Apple's value exceeded Dell's, saying that makes sense because they're the same company doesn't work--it's not clever enough because being the same company wouldn't explain the value difference.
Actually, that wouldn't make sense, would it? I mean, your troll isn't logical--selling the same product as Dell wouldn't account for Apple's greater market value. So, even as a troll it doesn't work.
I didn't, but other people on the Apple discussion boards have. The average Mac user--not someone on Slashdot--is pretty clueless to the product cycles, and I don't think it should be a case of caveat emptor.
Apple either needs to start rewarding people who buy the retail versions of these "mini-suites" by allowing them to upgrade to newer versions for a lot cheaper or, similarly, offer the same reduced prices to .Mac customers, considering the amount of integration they're working on.
AFAIK, there is no policy in place for someone who, for example, buys the previous version of iWork a month before the new version comes out. That's crazy, and even if there is some avenue for appealing that, people shouldn't have to search out said avenue.
Cripes, get a sense of humor. I was joking that he fixed the link so quickly that perhaps he could get the game ported just as quickly...
Owner of first-generation iPod. Use it every day. Couldn't participate in the legal action as my battery life is too long.
Cool, thanks. Could you also port the game to Mac please? LOL.
...seems to require registration on F13.net.
I searched their site for any indication of system requirements. Evidently they don't think it's important to indicate what platforms their game runs on...I had to go to Amazon to find out. PC-only, Mac users out of luck.
Like most grad students in liberal arts, I spent an inordinate amount of time in Sterling Memorial Library. A wonderful building but at that time still fairly antiquated: the electronic book database didn't extend to pre-1975 titles, there was no air conditioning in the stacks (meaning book rot was even more accelerated) and there were two systems a book could be indexed under: Library of Congress or the "Yale system," a maddening combination of letters and numbers that was sure to send you in the wrong direction.
If I recall, and it has been a while, the library has 6 floors accessible by elevator and within those 6 more "between-floors" accessible only by twisty staircase. You would find your book's call number on the main floor (especially since the few computers within the stacks were either malfuctioning or being used) and then delve into the stacks.
To guide you on your way, there were one-page charts posted throughout the stacks and in the elevators that indicated which floor your book could be found, based on its call number. It was a common sight to see a confused student looking at the chart, then at the paper in their hand, then back at the chart, ad infinitum.The library also left a handy stack of these guide charts by the front desk for students to take.
I took a chart home and set about changing the floors for about half of the call number groups on the chart. Since this was way back when I worked off a grayscale Powerbook 520 with no Photoshop etc., I had to use exacto knife and photocopier.
I printed off a shitload of the fake call number charts and then, first thing in the morning on April 1, replaced every posted chart in public areas throughout the library, including within the two elevators. Then, for good measure, I replaced the helpful "take one" stack with my own version.
I left a few clues on the chart--for those who had looked for their books and then returned to look again, more carefully--indicating that it was a prank. By April 2 all the bogus charts had been replaced, but I had gotten a good laugh out of it, even though it was a subtle prank that didn't have a large, noticable payoff.
You may be right about his programming talent (I'm not saying you are) but clearly you don't know a single thing about human nature.
As such, it shouldn't have made the cut.
If you really want to beat WoW, for starters how about making the game playable on PC and Mac? Sony has repeatedly marginalized Mac players. Blizzard came out of the gates with a dual-platform game and showed that it's possible. Sony, on the other hand, comes out with Everquest Mac literally years after the PC release, just shortly before EQ2 is announced. Pathetic.
But seriously, this reminds me of another news items several years ago, I think. Someone came up with a streetlight whose color accentuated skin flaws like acne and generally made skin (probably light-colored skin, but perhaps all shades) extremely unattractive. The idea was that it would discourage teenage loitering, since they're so image-conscious.
My basic feeling is that I don't want to support farming because it subverts the spirit of the game and it supports a system by which workers do not end up having better lives. Even if it were likely that farming could become a "career," I don't think it adds up to a gratifying career. I think the bottom line is that it supports a fat cat who had the capital to buy the necessary hardware and network access but someone without imagination--essentially a parasite.
The biggest gripe that I have with farmers, and that is farmers in the plural--two or more banding together to work a hunting area for hours at a time, blocking others from coming in. Sure, if you can get enough people together you can drive them off, but they are acting differently from regular players because of the extended amount of time they'll haunt an area. A regular player may chase you away with sufficient manpower, but eventually they'll have something better to do. A farmer just stays and stays.
Although email has replaced the phone in a lot for a lot of our office communication, I think as long as you actually have a phone, it should be the instrument for anything that is crisis level or needs your immediate attention.
You need to train people that need to get in touch with you that they're NOT going to get immediate attention via email. Set your email to check once an hour and let people know that.
CEO Marten Mickos was diagnosed with an advanced case of metaphoritis.