You do realize that nowhere in this article does it mention that the ice melted. Only that the shelf broke off. Not slowly, but abruptly, as shown by the registration of the vibrations from the event 250km away.
Also note that the blurb on slashdot is specifically written to provoke "alarmist" responses and states things that are nowhere to be found in the article itself. Scientists are pointing fingers at global warming? The article says global warming may have something to do with it, but they're not sure if it has anything at all to do with it, let alone how much of a factor it was. Yet the blurb posted by whatever person looking for attention says scientists pointed to global warming as a major contributing factor. Just where did he read that? It's definitely not in the article he's referring to. Neither is any ice melting or rising sea levels. Only the possibility that this new ice island may wreak havoc with structures built in the area.
Read the article before posting.
Make sure your facts are facts.
Think about how easy it might be for someone to argue your claims.
Yeah, about the time they had their legal team prevent another conference from using "Web 2.0" in the name of the conference, I cancelled my safari subscription and I will never buy another book from them, again.
Now it's looking more and more like the right choice.
The other users cleared up what happens in Windows, but it should also be stated that command-backtick is not a MacOS feature. It's application specific and happens to work in some of the applications that come with MacOS. It does NOT work in tons of non-Apple applications.
Actually, it'd be faster if you listed out every column name. If you're talking about faster to write out the code for, you're obviously not writing a query for a program that's intended to be used much. There's absolutely no reason you should be deploying code containing a query that does "select *" or anything like it. You're making the database do the work of looking up the list of columns names every time that query runs. There are much more useful things to spend your caching space on (if you have any).
If you really can't stand to write queries containing the actual column names, you should be using some type of abstraction layer in whatever language you're writing your code in.
If you're not writing code and just making queries by hand to test the results, then you're even further off your rocker. (this also applies in general to the statement you made) Why would you ever NOT want to select that last value out of 100? is it going to keep your output from wrapping? (lol)
Also, those of you saying that you should never have 100 columns in your table, you're certifiable lunatics as well. If you have 100 columns that are used in every record and have very little or no duplication per row, there is no reason you should break this up into multiple tables!!! Then the database has to do joins, which again require more processing power and disk usage. It's also hard to maintain multiple tables when you really have one table after you normalize it.
For those of you that say this isn't normalized... I'm not even really sure how to answer that.... If you have several tables all with a strict 1:1 relationship, they should be in ONE table. Anything else is considered denormalized, not yet normalized. (aside from being just plain BAD!)
For those of you that say you'd never need that many columns in one table or split across multiple tables, however you'd like to think the world should work. I have an example of just that. My wife does genetic research, primarily statistical analysis of sequence data (in various forms, but that's the easiest way to sum it up). We've had discussions on this particular topic, where she had been told by someone else that she would get better performance in Oracle if she split her one table into several tables containing a smaller number of columns, each.
This is just simply not true. It also is a perfect example of a situation where you would actually need a large number of columns. There were specific bits of data that needed to be looked up quickly (like, 45'ish). You can't store it all in one column (or even just a few) and use regexes to find the bits you're looking for. You also don't want to be doing a lot of joins unless you really need to, you know.. when you actually have data that would fit into some form of normalization. Technically, you CAN do this stuff, but not if you want decent performance. If you didn't want decent performance, you could just leave the data in a text file and shell out a grep command. *sigh*
Anyway, enough ranting, but seriously people... Get a clue. Get some experience with these issues. Don't just pipe up because "hey, I've worked with databases and while I probably don't understand them very well, I don't know anybody else that understands them at all, so I'm kind of an expert!"
This is an excellent example of exactly why they should not make it optional. If it's optional, developers will be much less likely to use it. If it were built in, developers could count on taking advantage of it and therefore wouldn't mind investing the extra time and money into writing code to support it.
"I'm not sure who's supposed to be disappointed." -- The unknowing customers you're screwing over by forcing developers to not take advantage of the hardrive for fear of screwing their customers over and the developers who can no longer use the HDD for caching, etc. etc. (listed later)
"Are there developers who are disappointed? Yeah, sure." -- Did he not just say he wasn't sure who was supposed to be disappointed?
"I was the biggest fan of the hard drive and its potential, but the problem is that we sold 22million Xbox consoles and 5million, maybe 10million just don't care about it." -- Maybe they didn't even know it was being used in games they were playing, used for caching, storing huge save games that would require an entire memory card, used for map updates, used for patches to the game itself, etc.
"We can either ask the gamer to pay for it, pay for it ourselves, or prove that there's enough value in it and have the gamer say 'I want to pay for it' - I think that's the right model." -- again just completely missing the point, it creates a situation where developers have to make a choice to support it or not, piss off the customers that don't have one or not, etc.
"A lot of people have said: 'This is really confusing - you have different configurations and blah, blah, blah', and I'm like: what consumer electronics business in the world has three manufacturers, three brands that each make one thing that doesn't change for seven years?" -- that should be pretty damn obvious, it's the consumer electronics business that YOU are in...
The problem with making it optional is that developers will never make any cool features for the HDD unless it's ubiquitous. I think that's the main reason Sony just did away with the HDD when releasing the PSTwo. Why would developers make games that even made use of it at all, much less required it, if it just alienated the people that did not have one.
We may not see quite the same problem here, since at least it will exist as an option from the start, but no major developer is going to release a game that has any features supporting the HD without serious consideration of how it will effect the customers that don't have one.
I also agree with the first reply, FFXI will NEED the HDD, but maybe he's just using Microsoft speak (poster #2) and saying that there are no games on the system NOW that require the HDD because there's technically no system available and no games available. Wouldn't be the first time MS abused "language loopholes" to pacify the audience...
THere's an option under "game options" to have attack mode sticky, so once you start attacking it stays attacking til the target is dead.
There's even an option to defend yourself whenever you get attacked.
Those two options together (especially if you're melee) make it pretty much a game of "move near some enemies then sit and wait til they're all dead". It DOES have it's more challenging moments, but they're few and far between.;)
Even before that, we had Motor City Online. It was not an athletic sport, but it was still a sport. Car tuning and racing in a persistent online world. Buying and selling everything from parts to completely customized cars was a huge part of it, as well as point standings for racing against the clock and against other players. You made money based on your standings, not just per race.
Don't see how a baseball or golf game could be any more MMOG than that, so I don't see how it wasn't the first.
Actually, they announced the possible partnership with this company a looooong time ago, before they made the free trial period longer than 14 days.
Honestly, who knows and who cares which came first. Before they ever mentioned anything to outsiders, they had probably decided this was a good idea.
The game has been running billboards in-game for their expansions. They're actually quite cool. Advertisements for new vehicles you can only get in the new expansions, advertisements that talked about staking your claim for notum mining (the expansion allowed you to create mining towers). It was all pretty cool, actually.:)
I'm sorry, I don't think the original poster was looking for a solution, I think he just wanted to bitch that he was ripped off and have a media hypable target to blame.
I've posted this elswhere, but if you've only read the section that refers to selling the game itself, you're missing out on the key parts.
Section 1-A (that's right, the very first point discussed) in the Terms of Service states:
A. You may establish one (1) user account ("Account") with which to play World of Warcraft by accessing Blizzard Entertainment's proprietary on-line service ("Service"), pursuant to the terms, conditions and restrictions contained in this Agreement.
While Section 1-E clearly states:
E. Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize the transfer of Accounts between individuals.
since you have failed to read the terms of service yourself, I'm assuming you'll fail to see this elsehwere inthe thread as well, so there it is for you.:)
It's not even fine print, it is clearly stated when creating the account using the trial key that you will have to purchase the retail game in order to continue playing once the trial period is up.
I'd post a screenshot of the registration process if I actually felt refuting your fine print comment was worth the time....
This is definitely one of the stupidest posts Slashdot has ever seen....
If you check the terms of use page linked in the OP, you can plainly see near the top:
1. Establishment of Your World of Warcraft Account.
A. You may establish one (1) user account ("Account") with which to play World of Warcraft by accessing Blizzard Entertainment's proprietary on-line service ("Service"), pursuant to the terms, conditions and restrictions contained in this Agreement.
as well as section 1-E:
E. Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize the transfer of Accounts between individuals.
I don't see how this person has any right whatsoever to have a new account registered for a CD key that already has an account registered with it.... it just doesn't make ANY sense. By that train of thought, one person could buy the game then hand it along to every person he knows, letting each new person register a new account and bypassing the purchase price of the game itself.... no sense whatsoever.
I do think relating it to buying a milk jug and expecting free refills on an empty jug is pretty funny though.;) By the way, you do not get free refills of the jug if you are the original owner. Not unless you pay for a lifetime of free re-fills. Again, the original poster is just for lack of a better word, insane.
I'd post the relevant facts on this, but there have been more than a few posts already in this thread, I just had to get my own laugh in.:D
OMG this is hilariously funny.... for a few minutes anyway.:x Then you start to realize that a great many people probably believe this crap.
To one of the responses that says the same thing I am (market share vs decline in sales INCREASE) the OP even stated something about not understanding market share vs profits....
SIMPLY PUT:
Microsoft is still experiencing ANNUAL profit INCREASES (to say nothing of market share), but it just wasn't as big this last year as the year before. That does not in any way indicate that there is a declining market for Windows. >.>
OMG get a clue!
Also, in case anybody read this far.... notice that the mod that actually let the article up (timothy) even put it in the "look-out-that-carrot's-loaded" dept.;) It was already obvious before this article was even accepted how comical it was vs how accurate/useful it was. LOL
I would NOT suggest using PyOpenGL if you're new to programming, it's an unnecessary layer of complexity for very simple projects. Use it after you know how to program and have created at least a few simple things already.:)
You're acting like this is just a single customer out of the many that is interrogating Blizzard, as if to ask "how would you like it if every customer did this to you for $14/month?". Correct me if I'm wrong on that. In response though, this is not just a customer, this is a well known site that a lot of people get a good dose of their gaming information from. Blizzard knows this and hence why they have responded at length and with an air of (sometimes painful) honesty.
This has already been addressed in other replies, but I'll state it again here. Yes, real world devices have real world problems, and when real world services go down, people get pissed off, switch services, ask for refunds, reimbursements, pro-rated bills, etc.
100,00's of people complaining that one stroke in a particular comic was 1 pt off would be like 100,000's of people complaining that a building in the game was misaligned slightly, but still compeltely usable. What people are really complaining about in reference to Blizzard and WoW is not being able to access the service at all... like if people were PAYING to see Penny Arcade comics and then the site was down all the time and people couldn't see the comics or the site would be up, but viewing the comics required a login and it rejected all paying customers.
If you had bothered to read the article this post is referring to (which you obviously can't, with your head so far up your ass), you'd know that the problem had nothing to do with not spending enough money on the server infrastructure and more to do with Blizzard's extensive market research showing that even in very generous, extreme estimates, the number of people signed up to play this game would be less than HALF of what it really turned out to be.
Again, I just want to stress that we're not talking about annoying software bugs here, we're talking about not being able to use the service they are paying for. It's like buying an operating system that has a 50/50 chance of booting. >.>...or having a phone line that you might be able to call someone on... once in a while. If this were just a case of bugs like, an NPC not giving you the quest you need or items not working in game, but you could still play the game and enjoy the rest of it... I don't think people would complain 1/10th as much as they are.
Personally, I LOVE this game and like Tycho's previous posts about the game, the only thing that makes me really really mad is that I can't play! I have NO intention of returning the game. I just want the server instability (putting it lightly) to go away, so I can enjoy everything else about the game.
Access to a product that you pay a sign up fee and monthly fees for is not a priveledge, but part of the contract you enter into when you agree to pay them every month for the service they have told you you were getting for that monthly fee.
The company holds patents for what it calls "vibro-tactile" technologies that make the video game player feel as if he is "touching" an object in the game.
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize that nowhere in this article does it mention that the ice melted. Only that the shelf broke off. Not slowly, but abruptly, as shown by the registration of the vibrations from the event 250km away.
Also note that the blurb on slashdot is specifically written to provoke "alarmist" responses and states things that are nowhere to be found in the article itself. Scientists are pointing fingers at global warming? The article says global warming may have something to do with it, but they're not sure if it has anything at all to do with it, let alone how much of a factor it was. Yet the blurb posted by whatever person looking for attention says scientists pointed to global warming as a major contributing factor. Just where did he read that? It's definitely not in the article he's referring to. Neither is any ice melting or rising sea levels. Only the possibility that this new ice island may wreak havoc with structures built in the area.
Read the article before posting.
Make sure your facts are facts.
Think about how easy it might be for someone to argue your claims.
It's really that simple.
Yeah, about the time they had their legal team prevent another conference from using "Web 2.0" in the name of the conference, I cancelled my safari subscription and I will never buy another book from them, again.
Now it's looking more and more like the right choice.
@O'Reilly: GG NEWBS
The other users cleared up what happens in Windows, but it should also be stated that command-backtick is not a MacOS feature. It's application specific and happens to work in some of the applications that come with MacOS. It does NOT work in tons of non-Apple applications.
Actually, it'd be faster if you listed out every column name. If you're talking about faster to write out the code for, you're obviously not writing a query for a program that's intended to be used much. There's absolutely no reason you should be deploying code containing a query that does "select *" or anything like it. You're making the database do the work of looking up the list of columns names every time that query runs. There are much more useful things to spend your caching space on (if you have any).
If you really can't stand to write queries containing the actual column names, you should be using some type of abstraction layer in whatever language you're writing your code in.
If you're not writing code and just making queries by hand to test the results, then you're even further off your rocker. (this also applies in general to the statement you made) Why would you ever NOT want to select that last value out of 100? is it going to keep your output from wrapping? (lol)
Also, those of you saying that you should never have 100 columns in your table, you're certifiable lunatics as well. If you have 100 columns that are used in every record and have very little or no duplication per row, there is no reason you should break this up into multiple tables!!! Then the database has to do joins, which again require more processing power and disk usage. It's also hard to maintain multiple tables when you really have one table after you normalize it.
For those of you that say this isn't normalized... I'm not even really sure how to answer that.... If you have several tables all with a strict 1:1 relationship, they should be in ONE table. Anything else is considered denormalized, not yet normalized. (aside from being just plain BAD!)
For those of you that say you'd never need that many columns in one table or split across multiple tables, however you'd like to think the world should work. I have an example of just that. My wife does genetic research, primarily statistical analysis of sequence data (in various forms, but that's the easiest way to sum it up). We've had discussions on this particular topic, where she had been told by someone else that she would get better performance in Oracle if she split her one table into several tables containing a smaller number of columns, each.
This is just simply not true. It also is a perfect example of a situation where you would actually need a large number of columns. There were specific bits of data that needed to be looked up quickly (like, 45'ish). You can't store it all in one column (or even just a few) and use regexes to find the bits you're looking for. You also don't want to be doing a lot of joins unless you really need to, you know.. when you actually have data that would fit into some form of normalization. Technically, you CAN do this stuff, but not if you want decent performance. If you didn't want decent performance, you could just leave the data in a text file and shell out a grep command. *sigh*
Anyway, enough ranting, but seriously people... Get a clue. Get some experience with these issues. Don't just pipe up because "hey, I've worked with databases and while I probably don't understand them very well, I don't know anybody else that understands them at all, so I'm kind of an expert!"
From ebgames website, "Xbox 360 Memory Unit (64 MB)" page:
"Required in absence of hard drive to play on Xbox Live and to save game progress."
So yeah, the base system with it's free Live! trial will REQUIRE a memory card.
This is an excellent example of exactly why they should not make it optional. If it's optional, developers will be much less likely to use it. If it were built in, developers could count on taking advantage of it and therefore wouldn't mind investing the extra time and money into writing code to support it.
From the article:
"I'm not sure who's supposed to be disappointed." -- The unknowing customers you're screwing over by forcing developers to not take advantage of the hardrive for fear of screwing their customers over and the developers who can no longer use the HDD for caching, etc. etc. (listed later)
"Are there developers who are disappointed? Yeah, sure." -- Did he not just say he wasn't sure who was supposed to be disappointed?
"I was the biggest fan of the hard drive and its potential, but the problem is that we sold 22million Xbox consoles and 5million, maybe 10million just don't care about it." -- Maybe they didn't even know it was being used in games they were playing, used for caching, storing huge save games that would require an entire memory card, used for map updates, used for patches to the game itself, etc.
"We can either ask the gamer to pay for it, pay for it ourselves, or prove that there's enough value in it and have the gamer say 'I want to pay for it' - I think that's the right model." -- again just completely missing the point, it creates a situation where developers have to make a choice to support it or not, piss off the customers that don't have one or not, etc.
"A lot of people have said: 'This is really confusing - you have different configurations and blah, blah, blah', and I'm like: what consumer electronics business in the world has three manufacturers, three brands that each make one thing that doesn't change for seven years?" -- that should be pretty damn obvious, it's the consumer electronics business that YOU are in...
The problem with making it optional is that developers will never make any cool features for the HDD unless it's ubiquitous. I think that's the main reason Sony just did away with the HDD when releasing the PSTwo. Why would developers make games that even made use of it at all, much less required it, if it just alienated the people that did not have one.
We may not see quite the same problem here, since at least it will exist as an option from the start, but no major developer is going to release a game that has any features supporting the HD without serious consideration of how it will effect the customers that don't have one.
I also agree with the first reply, FFXI will NEED the HDD, but maybe he's just using Microsoft speak (poster #2) and saying that there are no games on the system NOW that require the HDD because there's technically no system available and no games available. Wouldn't be the first time MS abused "language loopholes" to pacify the audience...
THere's an option under "game options" to have attack mode sticky, so once you start attacking it stays attacking til the target is dead.
;)
There's even an option to defend yourself whenever you get attacked.
Those two options together (especially if you're melee) make it pretty much a game of "move near some enemies then sit and wait til they're all dead". It DOES have it's more challenging moments, but they're few and far between.
Even before that, we had Motor City Online. It was not an athletic sport, but it was still a sport. Car tuning and racing in a persistent online world. Buying and selling everything from parts to completely customized cars was a huge part of it, as well as point standings for racing against the clock and against other players. You made money based on your standings, not just per race.
o nline
:)
Don't see how a baseball or golf game could be any more MMOG than that, so I don't see how it wasn't the first.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/motor-city-
P.S. Shot Online is from 2003. MCO is from 2001.
I guess I should have qualified my post with the information that I've actually done a fair amount of windows scripting using vbscript. ;)
It's the recommended (and pretty standard) way to script Adobe applications on Windows.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/
Actually, they announced the possible partnership with this company a looooong time ago, before they made the free trial period longer than 14 days.
:)
Honestly, who knows and who cares which came first. Before they ever mentioned anything to outsiders, they had probably decided this was a good idea.
The game has been running billboards in-game for their expansions. They're actually quite cool. Advertisements for new vehicles you can only get in the new expansions, advertisements that talked about staking your claim for notum mining (the expansion allowed you to create mining towers). It was all pretty cool, actually.
.. you'd know that was a design feature and you should never criticize a renowned architect when he puts a gate in the wrong place!
I'm sorry, I don't think the original poster was looking for a solution, I think he just wanted to bitch that he was ripped off and have a media hypable target to blame.
Your words are wasted on him. >.>
I've posted this elswhere, but if you've only read the section that refers to selling the game itself, you're missing out on the key parts.
:)
Section 1-A (that's right, the very first point discussed) in the Terms of Service states:
A. You may establish one (1) user account ("Account") with which to play World of Warcraft by accessing Blizzard Entertainment's proprietary on-line service ("Service"), pursuant to the terms, conditions and restrictions contained in this Agreement.
While Section 1-E clearly states:
E. Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize the transfer of Accounts between individuals.
since you have failed to read the terms of service yourself, I'm assuming you'll fail to see this elsehwere inthe thread as well, so there it is for you.
It's not even fine print, it is clearly stated when creating the account using the trial key that you will have to purchase the retail game in order to continue playing once the trial period is up.
I'd post a screenshot of the registration process if I actually felt refuting your fine print comment was worth the time....
This is definitely one of the stupidest posts Slashdot has ever seen....
;) By the way, you do not get free refills of the jug if you are the original owner. Not unless you pay for a lifetime of free re-fills. Again, the original poster is just for lack of a better word, insane.
If you check the terms of use page linked in the OP, you can plainly see near the top:
1. Establishment of Your World of Warcraft Account.
A. You may establish one (1) user account ("Account") with which to play World of Warcraft by accessing Blizzard Entertainment's proprietary on-line service ("Service"), pursuant to the terms, conditions and restrictions contained in this Agreement.
as well as section 1-E:
E. Blizzard Entertainment does not recognize the transfer of Accounts between individuals.
I don't see how this person has any right whatsoever to have a new account registered for a CD key that already has an account registered with it.... it just doesn't make ANY sense. By that train of thought, one person could buy the game then hand it along to every person he knows, letting each new person register a new account and bypassing the purchase price of the game itself.... no sense whatsoever.
I do think relating it to buying a milk jug and expecting free refills on an empty jug is pretty funny though.
Bwahahahahahahaha!
:D
:x Then you start to realize that a great many people probably believe this crap.
;) It was already obvious before this article was even accepted how comical it was vs how accurate/useful it was. LOL
I'd post the relevant facts on this, but there have been more than a few posts already in this thread, I just had to get my own laugh in.
OMG this is hilariously funny.... for a few minutes anyway.
To one of the responses that says the same thing I am (market share vs decline in sales INCREASE) the OP even stated something about not understanding market share vs profits....
SIMPLY PUT:
Microsoft is still experiencing ANNUAL profit INCREASES (to say nothing of market share), but it just wasn't as big this last year as the year before. That does not in any way indicate that there is a declining market for Windows. >.>
OMG get a clue!
Also, in case anybody read this far.... notice that the mod that actually let the article up (timothy) even put it in the "look-out-that-carrot's-loaded" dept.
If you want to do something simple and don't know how to program at all, this is definitely the way to go.
Python is not only easy to learn, it's a great starting language. (enforces proper formatting, doesn't use crazy things like ; line endings ;)
Python.org Beginner's GuideDive Into Python (free on-line book, well written IMO)
and of course the http://pygame.org/ which the parent poster already said.
I would NOT suggest using PyOpenGL if you're new to programming, it's an unnecessary layer of complexity for very simple projects. Use it after you know how to program and have created at least a few simple things already. :)
Anyway, just wanted to give my vote for Python.
Except BlitzMax is not available YET on any platforms other than OSX. (specifically the one platform the OP does NOT need :)
You're acting like this is just a single customer out of the many that is interrogating Blizzard, as if to ask "how would you like it if every customer did this to you for $14/month?". Correct me if I'm wrong on that. In response though, this is not just a customer, this is a well known site that a lot of people get a good dose of their gaming information from. Blizzard knows this and hence why they have responded at length and with an air of (sometimes painful) honesty.
...or having a phone line that you might be able to call someone on... once in a while. If this were just a case of bugs like, an NPC not giving you the quest you need or items not working in game, but you could still play the game and enjoy the rest of it... I don't think people would complain 1/10th as much as they are.
This has already been addressed in other replies, but I'll state it again here. Yes, real world devices have real world problems, and when real world services go down, people get pissed off, switch services, ask for refunds, reimbursements, pro-rated bills, etc.
100,00's of people complaining that one stroke in a particular comic was 1 pt off would be like 100,000's of people complaining that a building in the game was misaligned slightly, but still compeltely usable. What people are really complaining about in reference to Blizzard and WoW is not being able to access the service at all... like if people were PAYING to see Penny Arcade comics and then the site was down all the time and people couldn't see the comics or the site would be up, but viewing the comics required a login and it rejected all paying customers.
If you had bothered to read the article this post is referring to (which you obviously can't, with your head so far up your ass), you'd know that the problem had nothing to do with not spending enough money on the server infrastructure and more to do with Blizzard's extensive market research showing that even in very generous, extreme estimates, the number of people signed up to play this game would be less than HALF of what it really turned out to be.
Again, I just want to stress that we're not talking about annoying software bugs here, we're talking about not being able to use the service they are paying for. It's like buying an operating system that has a 50/50 chance of booting. >.>
Personally, I LOVE this game and like Tycho's previous posts about the game, the only thing that makes me really really mad is that I can't play! I have NO intention of returning the game. I just want the server instability (putting it lightly) to go away, so I can enjoy everything else about the game.
Access to a product that you pay a sign up fee and monthly fees for is not a priveledge, but part of the contract you enter into when you agree to pay them every month for the service they have told you you were getting for that monthly fee.
Quote from Gamespot.Com article:
0 82 98.html
The company holds patents for what it calls "vibro-tactile" technologies that make the video game player feel as if he is "touching" an object in the game.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/09/23/news_61
Please mod this funny! FUNNY: (5) :D :D :D