World of Warcraft is designed very specifically to cater to such a mix of hardcore and casual players. It does remarkably well at this, too.
The real problem with MMO games is that the almost none have anything to do with skill. Combat is based on choosing a weapon or a spell and clicking your mouse on the other guy. The higher level you've developed your character, the more damage you'll do.
Sure, there is a little bit of skill in knowing how to use your weapons and skills and what tactics to use against different opponents, but it's still really just about your level, which itself is just about how much time you've put into the character. You don't even have to put any effort into figuring out how to develop your character. Just go to some online site dedicated to the game and look for a template with a lot of good comments and high scores and build your toon on that.
MMOGs are just boring and uninteresting. They're fun until you've leveled up a bit, but even the most interesting become treadmills after a short time. How many half-assed missions or quests can you do? They're all essentially the same throughout any game.. and the same as any other similar game.
There needs to be more variety. More complexity. More player-skill dependancy (rather than point and click). I hate strategy games, but I play them almost exclusively now (except for a couple shooters online), because they're better and offer more challenge than the leveling treadmills of the generic WoW, DAOC, Matrix, etc...
Well, from Broomfield, I get dick without cable and this complex has a 'deal' with some intermediary. So I have to buy my "basic" cable through them, then go to Comcast seperately to get the rest of my offerings (over the same lines no less). It's about $100/mo for full cable, before taxes, cost of the digital converter, etc.
I hadn't watched television for two full years before I moved from my home on the west coast, but when I arrived in Broomfield, I realized it would be my only regular form of relaxation and entertainment (the only other option in this craptastically boring "city" being golf, golf and more golf - which would run the cost of my cable bill per round).
As soon as someone offers high quality on-demand services (no monthly fees, you pay for what you watch and you have a massive collection of on-demand movies and shows from all-time), I am ALL over that.
Anyway, according to the price I was quoted, standard cable (sci-fi, comedy central, etc) runs about $50/mo or more - not counting all the taxes and fees and converter. And you don't even get IFC or Starz or HBO or anything with that.
Seriously - if I lived in a less boring place, I would ditch cable again. There's no reason to have it. $110/mo buys a lot of movie tickets, books, visits to the nickel-arcade and beers.
What I want to know is, if we ditch regular air broadcasts, can we stop funding PBS? I mean, what is the point of PBS if the only way to get it is by paying a cable company $120/mo for access? In fact, let the cable companies run PBS then rather than subsidizing their business for them.
By the way, where the hell are you that cable is only $300/yr?! Try more like $1,500. Even if you just want the most basic, you're looking at about $700.
I wonder if "freedom of information and communication" will ever become an internationally recognized human right? Maybe we'll invade another country in twenty years under the premise that their citizens are "deprived of a free press and subjected to a singular propagandic source of news?
The patent office doesn't really have anything to do with preventing theft of an idea or making sure the right person gets to use their idea. The patent office is just about giving someone the exclusive right to the focus of the idea long enough to make it financially desirable for them to produce it and for someone else later to extend it. To spur "innovation" as it were (at least, in idealistic theory) by providing market-incentive.
You could do away with the patent office entirely and still rely on the court system to seek justice if someone actually STEALS your idea. STEALING your idea is clealry a different thing than simply building-on or simultaneously sharing "your" idea.
Of course, I also happen to think that the base-line for patents are absurd and made to keep the small guy out. Even if I have a bunch of great ideas, I can't afford the insane fees. I can't drop down $20,000 just because I have an idea. But an IBM or a Microsoft can afford to patent every thought of every employee for eternity and still not make a financial dent.
If someone is so scared that their child might be warped by an add for penis extensions (like there isn't FAR worse on daily television or FOX news), they can just allow their children white-list-only email communication. Problem solved.
It's your choice to let your get out on the internet alone, just like it would be your choice (not the businessman's) if you let your child wander down Times Square passing the nudie theaters and fake rolex vendors.
What I want to know is what is so criminal about marketing to children over the internet? We market to them in magazines, on television, in school, on the radio - even in their text books. They can't go a minute without being marketed to in some way. So why should spam be any different?
And what's next? Arresting some old man in line at the grocery store for making funny faces at the lady's kid in the shopping car - trying to make the kid laugh or something?
Why don't we just lock children away until they're adults. That way we won't have to worry about them and they will grow up to be perfect, healthy, safe and sane and we won't have to baby-proof everything.
Because they already own the patent and are already producing the item they have a patent on. Why should they pay $23,000 to DVForge to buy the plans and designs for the product they themselves already design and produce? It doesn't take a genius to stick an LCD display and an articulated arm with a charger at the end on it.
I see the point in protecting someone who has an idea so that they can have time to research, develop, test, produce, market and distribute their products without a competitor moving in on their idea. That is, if I come up with a great idea and Microsoft finds out I'm working on it and puts all their clout behind their own version of the product and, thus, beat me to the punch simply because of their sheer size, it isn't fair and I would tend to say it isn't right.
On the other hand, if people come up with an idea independently - meaning one did not steal the idea from the other - then whoever gets to market first gets to market first. Whoever dominates.. dominates. That's all there is to it.
Of course, the problem is in proving that you came up with the idea on your own, too. So we have this silly patent system that only allows "one true originator" of an idea. And that seems to be stifling the ass off of innovation and progress.
This PodBuddy thing seems like a reasonable idea. And it does seem unique enough to be excused from the patent (just a total layperson's opinion). It seems like the competition just doesn't want competition and it's sad that a country that prides itself on promoting innovation and small-business would so readily let one company just roll over the other to eliminate the competitive market. And not on any justifiable premise, either. Just "we have more money than you - you can't afford to contest us in court". And you're fucked.
Then again, if the DVForge guys thought they had a chance, I would think they'd push it in court (they could always recover the costs, right?). So they must feel they are actually on shaky ground, too.
If you say so. Tabs aren't "overhyped". They're just highly-praised. There's a big difference. See, if you sit someone down at a computer with a browser that does tabbed browsing and don't say a word to them, they will quickly become enamoured with the utility of them and eventually come to hate browsing without them. No hyping. No brain-washing. No shoving it in their face. Just give them a browser that does it.
Maybe windows are great for simple minds, but I tend to have a good dozen tabs open for work stuff, another dozen for my personal stuff (server/site/webmail/etc) and maybe a half dozen for various surfings throughout the day. Would I rather have one or two windows with a couple dozen tabs total? Or would I rather have 30 windows open?
I guess when you write code, you have a seperate IDE open for every file you're working on. And when you're using your email, you just have 1500 windows open instead of folders to hold your mail into some sort of cohesive space. And when you are chatting, you have 12 windows open to chat to 12 different people.
Tabs are merely the progression of ordered working spaces that you have and use (and always have) in every other environment and aspect of computing and surfing before, except now it's in the browser.
The first time I heard about tabbed browsing, I didn't even have to think about it or try it or listen to hype. I just saw a small screenshot and my brain said "Oh, yeah. Duh - that makes so much sense!".
Anyway, I wasn't bemoaning JWZ. I don't dislike the guy and have actually started visiting his site since he started covering Apple stuff the same week I bought my new 17" Powerbook and my 30" ACD. I just think that saying tabs are the worst idea ever (or whatever) is really absurd. The fact that so many people (on every browser platform) use them and wouldn't trade them for anything speaks to their functionality.
Oh. I can think of far more over-hyped things that are far bigger pieces of crap. Flickr, Livejournal, Blogging, cell phones.MAC accounts,.xxx/.info/.biz/.home TLD and podcasting for starters.
Ooh. Actually, this would make a great Ask Slashdot. I'd like to see what everyone lists as the most overhyped items of the last year or so is.:)
Way to stay on top Slashdot. Half of the stories in the last few months have been duplicates of lame stories (which often are just small blurbs about products or gadgets and not stories) long since aired on G4TV or posted on Fark, Drudgereport or Engadget and Gizmodo.
I hate to be another Slashdot-whiner, but good god. I kind of feel like my Subscription is a rip-off when most of what I'm reading I already got for free on other sites - days or weeks earlier.
I certainly do. Organizing 2.5 terrabytes of porn is a bitch. It's like "Hm... does this go in midgets or does it go in animals->poultry -- or should I create an entirely new midget and poultry sub-category?".
Worse, all of the "media catalogue" programs for Windows crash before they finish cataloguing my collection. I even tried it with iView Media Pro on my Mac and that crashed, too after about a terabyte.
This is a serious issue that, as time goes on, I believe Google will need to address. Maybe some sort of specialized Spoogle porn-search appliance?
Do you feel lucky today? - You bet I do. Spank spank!
Slashdot Mirror
World of Warcraft is designed very specifically to cater to such a mix of hardcore and casual players. It does remarkably well at this, too.
The real problem with MMO games is that the almost none have anything to do with skill. Combat is based on choosing a weapon or a spell and clicking your mouse on the other guy. The higher level you've developed your character, the more damage you'll do.
Sure, there is a little bit of skill in knowing how to use your weapons and skills and what tactics to use against different opponents, but it's still really just about your level, which itself is just about how much time you've put into the character. You don't even have to put any effort into figuring out how to develop your character. Just go to some online site dedicated to the game and look for a template with a lot of good comments and high scores and build your toon on that.
MMOGs are just boring and uninteresting. They're fun until you've leveled up a bit, but even the most interesting become treadmills after a short time. How many half-assed missions or quests can you do? They're all essentially the same throughout any game.. and the same as any other similar game.
There needs to be more variety. More complexity. More player-skill dependancy (rather than point and click). I hate strategy games, but I play them almost exclusively now (except for a couple shooters online), because they're better and offer more challenge than the leveling treadmills of the generic WoW, DAOC, Matrix, etc...
So popular, there's only two posts after all this time.
Well, from Broomfield, I get dick without cable and this complex has a 'deal' with some intermediary. So I have to buy my "basic" cable through them, then go to Comcast seperately to get the rest of my offerings (over the same lines no less). It's about $100/mo for full cable, before taxes, cost of the digital converter, etc.
I hadn't watched television for two full years before I moved from my home on the west coast, but when I arrived in Broomfield, I realized it would be my only regular form of relaxation and entertainment (the only other option in this craptastically boring "city" being golf, golf and more golf - which would run the cost of my cable bill per round).
As soon as someone offers high quality on-demand services (no monthly fees, you pay for what you watch and you have a massive collection of on-demand movies and shows from all-time), I am ALL over that.
Anyway, according to the price I was quoted, standard cable (sci-fi, comedy central, etc) runs about $50/mo or more - not counting all the taxes and fees and converter. And you don't even get IFC or Starz or HBO or anything with that.
Seriously - if I lived in a less boring place, I would ditch cable again. There's no reason to have it. $110/mo buys a lot of movie tickets, books, visits to the nickel-arcade and beers.
What I want to know is, if we ditch regular air broadcasts, can we stop funding PBS? I mean, what is the point of PBS if the only way to get it is by paying a cable company $120/mo for access? In fact, let the cable companies run PBS then rather than subsidizing their business for them.
By the way, where the hell are you that cable is only $300/yr?! Try more like $1,500. Even if you just want the most basic, you're looking at about $700.
We'll be sure to notify the Goatse guy that he has lost one from his fanbas. :(
Can you get Katamari for the PC? If so, I'm all over it. It looks fun, but I'm not going to spend $230 for a console, one game and taxes.
No, I was trying to make a child-molestation joke. Sheesh.
If bad humor can't be appreciated at Slashdot, where CAN it be -- oooh lookie, FARK!
Because... 4mm thick sheets of plastic insulate really well.
I think you have ADD.
I'd rather send my child down a street past nudie theaters, strip clubs and fake rolex vendors than the disney store or MTV studios.
Shut up. We're talking about Iran tonight - not America. :D
I wonder if "freedom of information and communication" will ever become an internationally recognized human right? Maybe we'll invade another country in twenty years under the premise that their citizens are "deprived of a free press and subjected to a singular propagandic source of news?
I pretty much agree.
The patent office doesn't really have anything to do with preventing theft of an idea or making sure the right person gets to use their idea. The patent office is just about giving someone the exclusive right to the focus of the idea long enough to make it financially desirable for them to produce it and for someone else later to extend it. To spur "innovation" as it were (at least, in idealistic theory) by providing market-incentive.
You could do away with the patent office entirely and still rely on the court system to seek justice if someone actually STEALS your idea. STEALING your idea is clealry a different thing than simply building-on or simultaneously sharing "your" idea.
Of course, I also happen to think that the base-line for patents are absurd and made to keep the small guy out. Even if I have a bunch of great ideas, I can't afford the insane fees. I can't drop down $20,000 just because I have an idea. But an IBM or a Microsoft can afford to patent every thought of every employee for eternity and still not make a financial dent.
If someone is so scared that their child might be warped by an add for penis extensions (like there isn't FAR worse on daily television or FOX news), they can just allow their children white-list-only email communication. Problem solved.
It's your choice to let your get out on the internet alone, just like it would be your choice (not the businessman's) if you let your child wander down Times Square passing the nudie theaters and fake rolex vendors.
347 petabytes? Why not store it all as petafiles?
*duck*
What I want to know is what is so criminal about marketing to children over the internet? We market to them in magazines, on television, in school, on the radio - even in their text books. They can't go a minute without being marketed to in some way. So why should spam be any different?
And what's next? Arresting some old man in line at the grocery store for making funny faces at the lady's kid in the shopping car - trying to make the kid laugh or something?
Why don't we just lock children away until they're adults. That way we won't have to worry about them and they will grow up to be perfect, healthy, safe and sane and we won't have to baby-proof everything.
Because they already own the patent and are already producing the item they have a patent on. Why should they pay $23,000 to DVForge to buy the plans and designs for the product they themselves already design and produce? It doesn't take a genius to stick an LCD display and an articulated arm with a charger at the end on it.
He's also a publicity whore and seems awfully prone to legal woes if you buy his endless "I'm such a victim" sob stories.
So he's basically Steve Jobs' long lost twin.
(Recent Apple convert).
generally I expect to see strong opinions down here in the comments section, not in the article itsself.
Welcome to Slashdot. You must be new here?
I'm conflicted about such things.
I see the point in protecting someone who has an idea so that they can have time to research, develop, test, produce, market and distribute their products without a competitor moving in on their idea. That is, if I come up with a great idea and Microsoft finds out I'm working on it and puts all their clout behind their own version of the product and, thus, beat me to the punch simply because of their sheer size, it isn't fair and I would tend to say it isn't right.
On the other hand, if people come up with an idea independently - meaning one did not steal the idea from the other - then whoever gets to market first gets to market first. Whoever dominates.. dominates. That's all there is to it.
Of course, the problem is in proving that you came up with the idea on your own, too. So we have this silly patent system that only allows "one true originator" of an idea. And that seems to be stifling the ass off of innovation and progress.
This PodBuddy thing seems like a reasonable idea. And it does seem unique enough to be excused from the patent (just a total layperson's opinion). It seems like the competition just doesn't want competition and it's sad that a country that prides itself on promoting innovation and small-business would so readily let one company just roll over the other to eliminate the competitive market. And not on any justifiable premise, either. Just "we have more money than you - you can't afford to contest us in court". And you're fucked.
Then again, if the DVForge guys thought they had a chance, I would think they'd push it in court (they could always recover the costs, right?). So they must feel they are actually on shaky ground, too.
If you say so. Tabs aren't "overhyped". They're just highly-praised. There's a big difference. See, if you sit someone down at a computer with a browser that does tabbed browsing and don't say a word to them, they will quickly become enamoured with the utility of them and eventually come to hate browsing without them. No hyping. No brain-washing. No shoving it in their face. Just give them a browser that does it.
.MAC accounts, .xxx/.info/.biz/.home TLD and podcasting for starters.
:)
Maybe windows are great for simple minds, but I tend to have a good dozen tabs open for work stuff, another dozen for my personal stuff (server/site/webmail/etc) and maybe a half dozen for various surfings throughout the day. Would I rather have one or two windows with a couple dozen tabs total? Or would I rather have 30 windows open?
I guess when you write code, you have a seperate IDE open for every file you're working on. And when you're using your email, you just have 1500 windows open instead of folders to hold your mail into some sort of cohesive space. And when you are chatting, you have 12 windows open to chat to 12 different people.
Tabs are merely the progression of ordered working spaces that you have and use (and always have) in every other environment and aspect of computing and surfing before, except now it's in the browser.
The first time I heard about tabbed browsing, I didn't even have to think about it or try it or listen to hype. I just saw a small screenshot and my brain said "Oh, yeah. Duh - that makes so much sense!".
Anyway, I wasn't bemoaning JWZ. I don't dislike the guy and have actually started visiting his site since he started covering Apple stuff the same week I bought my new 17" Powerbook and my 30" ACD. I just think that saying tabs are the worst idea ever (or whatever) is really absurd. The fact that so many people (on every browser platform) use them and wouldn't trade them for anything speaks to their functionality.
Oh. I can think of far more over-hyped things that are far bigger pieces of crap. Flickr, Livejournal, Blogging, cell phones
Ooh. Actually, this would make a great Ask Slashdot. I'd like to see what everyone lists as the most overhyped items of the last year or so is.
It probably got lost in between all the stuff he posts from Engadget/BoingBoing/Gizmodo about octo-dogs and fire-bots.
You sound like JWZ.
Yes, if you read his "blog", he actually says how stupid and awful tabs are.
I bet he hates wireless stuff and modems without baud rates, too.
This was already on G4TV (Attack of the Show).
Way to stay on top Slashdot. Half of the stories in the last few months have been duplicates of lame stories (which often are just small blurbs about products or gadgets and not stories) long since aired on G4TV or posted on Fark, Drudgereport or Engadget and Gizmodo.
I hate to be another Slashdot-whiner, but good god. I kind of feel like my Subscription is a rip-off when most of what I'm reading I already got for free on other sites - days or weeks earlier.
I certainly do. Organizing 2.5 terrabytes of porn is a bitch. It's like "Hm... does this go in midgets or does it go in animals->poultry -- or should I create an entirely new midget and poultry sub-category?".
Worse, all of the "media catalogue" programs for Windows crash before they finish cataloguing my collection. I even tried it with iView Media Pro on my Mac and that crashed, too after about a terabyte.
This is a serious issue that, as time goes on, I believe Google will need to address. Maybe some sort of specialized Spoogle porn-search appliance?
Do you feel lucky today? - You bet I do. Spank spank!